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Tevin Interviews Curt on Consciousness, Podcasting, and UFOs
June 3, 2024
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Kurt, what is a theory of everything? So in the physics sense, it just means that there are some fundamental rules to the universe, usually mathematical. And these are what underpin every other phenomenon that we see. Now, phenomenon in the physical sense, maybe consciousness is not considered to be part of the physical. People put asterisks on that.
called the hard problem or the mind body problem, which is the hard problems like a rebranding of the mind body problem that somehow he got away with. And everyone applauds it as if it's completely original. But anyhow, many people can think of go there's a game called go or chess. And what we see are castling and we see odd moves here and there. We don't know how does that come about? We see the large scale
strategies like okay control the center maybe we see that maybe that's something reducible like that's force f equals ma
But then what underlies that you can move upon forward by one or two, but only two in the beginning. So there's all these exceptions. Like at first in the forties or fifties, there was someone named Wu who found that the, that right-handed neutrinos or right-handed particles, cobalt, cobalt 60, I believe was treated differently. There's something called chirality. So left-handed particles and right-handed particles experienced different, there's an asymmetry there.
And then someone found, okay, well, if you also reverse the charges so that you get antiparticles, then there's a symmetry and it's called CP symmetry. Then 10 years later, they're like, Oh shoot, CP symmetry is violated. So there's all these, it's akin to you move the pawn. We think it only goes up one inch, but then it turns out it can go up to, but actually only when it's the first move. And actually also, you can also take diagonally called the en passant. Yeah.
which is not the same as a regular diagonal trade. But Go is more accurate because Go is simpler and has more variety. And I think the reason why mathematicians or physicists don't speak about Go as an analogy for the physical laws and come back to chess is because
My subtle, my, I think that Go is too akin to send the cellular automata. And then people don't like to give an inch to Stephen Wolfram when you're from the Academy. So they'll stick to chess, because the Academy wants the proposed solutions to toes to come from the Academy. Yeah. That's it's it's a fascinating point that you bring up, because I find that that's
A particular focus
playing the same game at just different levels. I think of theories of everything sort of a mind body solution is like a mind body solution light. I mean, sorry, I think mind body solution is like a theories of everything light. Kind of like just bring it. What makes you say that? I think that you're approaching it a lot more mathematically and physically. I'm well with physics. And, and because of that undergrad, I know you did an undergrad in physics. So I know that you at least have that a better foundational training in it. In med school, I mean, we did
We did physics and chemistry, but not at the level you would want. I mean, I always wanted to be an astrophysicist. That was something I always wanted to do. So I was always jealous of those people who got to really study mathematics and physics a bit deeper at a university level. So I think you're able to take it further because of that. And I'm approaching it from a slightly more psychological, philosophical mind-body perspective. Pretty much trying to do the same thing, though. We're trying to both figure out what is this
Ultimate Theory of Everything. I know a part of it for you is trying to also find a worldview and end this quest. What is the German word again? Weltanschauung. Yes, and I know you want to do that. And I think it's pretty similar for me. I did a post-grad, my master's in, one of my theories was on consciousness.
I mean, rest in peace to Daniel Dennett. He was one of my heroes and a huge chunk of that peace and consciousness for my dissertation was focused on his work. His books are all behind me. He was an icon to me. In fact, there was a time where I almost called this podcast Quine and Qualia.
Were you able to speak to Dan? I chatted to him via email and we never got the chance to finally book that session. So it's kind of disappointing because we only got to chat via email. I watched your episode. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's one of the, he's one of those people I really, I think if I had to put someone on the right at the top of the list to have on this show, it would have been Daniel Dennett. So,
It's such a shame and it happened so quickly. I know, it was such a shock to me. I mean, I remember chatting to him via email not too long ago, so it is pretty absurd to me. I've lost my train of thought completely. For me, you mentioned Toe and you asked the question of what is a Toe and that's different to what is the Toe channel. So the Toe channel, the theories of everything channel is a
It has the veneer of a podcast, but I view it like a project. And a large part of that project is research. Eventually, it's going to be contributing research. There's some large plans for that, which I'll tell you about off there. That will be announced in a couple months. But anyhow. Yes. So, Growth and Deke had this quote, which said, I'm not
I'm not doing research, I'm cultivating myself. So in another perspective is that what Theories of Everything is, is a selfish project of me developing my own Veltan shown and it outwardly takes currently the form of a podcast. I think it's similar for me. This was my opportunity to sort of explore this for myself. It was just to indulge my own curiosity.
with regards to the mind body problem. I was so obsessed with this growing up. What is consciousness? What is reality? And these fundamental questions that I figured the best way to sort of go about it would be to chat to the people who are supposedly the experts in this field. And the more you chat to people, you realize they're all on different pages. There's so many different theories out there. And as close as we get, I often feel that we're still so far away.
Yeah, initially, I had listed the theories of everything that I well that occurred to me. There was approximately 12. And then I thought, well, man, I'm going to exhaust this in 12 episodes. I thought that it would be. It turns out it's more difficult to find someone who doesn't have a theory of everything, especially in the comments section. Yeah, exactly.
I find exactly the same problem. I enjoy when people email me their theories. I catalog them, I classify them and I am not like Brian Greene where I turn my nose to people who have theories, who have toes. I think that the innovations will come from the fringes and the academic center will verify it. That's a good way to look at it and I think it's
It's the same for me. I mean, I get emails from some philosophers or professors who want to chat about the mind body problem. And it's always exciting when someone approaches you and has this this theory to offer. But then it means a lot more work because you have to dig deep, read all their papers, try and figure out this whole new brand of thought. And it becomes quite exhausting. And I think that's the reason why I took the break from this podcast. I mean, you're my first guest back in about six months. It's crazy that time flies that
No, no way. I literally just focused on work, trying to get my mental health back in order, get back into working out a bit more regularly, trying to get back into my best mental and physical shape. And, and it worked. I mean, I feel a lot better. I am better. And you don't see it. I mean, because I have my channel still quite young. I mean, I feel I do everything, editing,
thumbnails all of it so it's everything's done by me this is just this is a self rotating system so the the exhaustion just took its time and working as a full-time doctor to try and get back to this channel that has almost nothing to do with medicine most of the time there are times where I try and bring in and tie in practical significance to it but for the most part this is out of my work so it's like I have to live this almost two lives every day I got a bit too much
Well, also, so explain to me, what is it that took its toll on you specifically? I think the amount of because just like you, I'm so obsessed with this topic, man. I love it too much. So when someone tells me a theory or someone proposes some sort of a mind body solution, I mean, a solution to a mind body problem for all those who don't know the term, it's
I go in-depth. I try and read all the books. I try and read all the papers. I make notes. I try and ensure that I understand it as best as I can. And sometimes I don't. So I think the amount of effort that goes into it behind the scenes, because people see the final product, of course, and it just looks like a natural conversation. But behind the scenes, I'm just burning out trying to understand things.
And yeah, it takes its toll on your mental health. And I think the more you understand theories of everything or solutions to the mind body problem, the more it can also affect your mental health from a philosophical perspective. Because psychologically, if you start applying any of the new philosophies you've learned, that has a whole nother spiraling effect. I mean, you can imagine listening to all these theories of everything. How has that impacted the way you see reality? Because I'm pretty sure it will have some sort of a
a change or a shift in your mind that can almost de-realize someone. Almost. It's an understatement. So jostled, constantly jostled. For me, it's not the studying that's difficult. It's that my mind is so, or at least used to be, still is, like I have to fight it in a sense. Maybe fight is not the right word, but intend with it. Extremely open.
And academics tend to use or see that as a virtue. I don't think it's a virtue.
I think it's... Firstly, I don't think they have it. They have this quality because, as you know, there's... People will say that so-and-so doesn't make sense. I don't get that. That's impossible. I went to Paris recently. It's hilarious because in Canada or in the States, and almost anywhere else, when you want something, like you want water, they'll say no. They'll make a rejection of you, a rejection statement.
But in Paris, they'll say something metaphysical like I'm like, oh, can I just share this with my wife though? It seemed possible It's not possible It's like oh, whoa, that's like deep man. It's not possible The structure of reality is such that you cannot share this meal with your wife. Like you have to order two anyhow Being told what's possible what's not possible and then seriously taking it on It places me
in a lubricious place where I'm a straddle and variable and that's not it's not pleasant for me it's a well that was it still is the most difficult part it's one of the reasons why I haven't pursued consciousness studies as much on the channel it's it's yeah it takes its toll yeah also when it comes to the thinking part
You mentioned that it's difficult to study for all these people and for me i find the proportional sorry i find it's proportional to how original is the is the thinker so the more original the person the less comprehensible they are and that's because.
Their self-developed toes are impenetrable and they're unfathomable. They are generally thought of alone and they have to then bounce their own thoughts off of their own walls incessantly and they come up with their own terminology and their own framework. They don't have a society of other people called your peers in academia or your colleagues to then test but also make comprehensible what their framework is.
But it doesn't mean it's the same as word salad. That's what some people will say. I find that so find that quite foolish or or well. To me, the true test isn't how difficult is the language to parse the true test is, can you then state someone's theory back to them in a manner that they would agree? So my wife, for instance, has no knowledge in biology or math.
if i'm listening to someone like michael levin who me and you would both say is a fairly clear speaker she would view that as that's just gibberish because there are words like mitochondrial dna expression that are not in her vocabulary or she they are but extremely surface level
And then if you're a high school student and you watch something from a third year, undergraduate level, you have no idea how to disembroil that from something that's at the graduate level or at the PhD level. It all looks like nonsense to you. You don't even know if it's math or computer science or physics. So Seinfeld said this in another way. He said, when you're on stage, someone was asking, doesn't make a difference how large the crowd is. He said, when you're treading water,
It doesn't matter if it's five meters deep or 5000 meters deep. It's the same to you. So in that sense, when something is just mildly incomprehensible, it's almost equivalent to being extremely incomprehensible. There's a threshold. Yes. It's also when you when you have a when you have your own sort of theory of everything, or you already come in with a preconceived my solution to the mind body problem. That's what
I found most intriguing when starting this podcast was how my own theory of consciousness and what I wrote in my own dissertation because I was fundamentally illusionist and that was where I stood in consciousness. Yeah, that's why I wrote so much on Dennett, quoted Keith Frankish quite a bit, a lot of a lot of other philosophers and
And then everything just started changing, consistent, like a week by week new theories of consciousness. When I finally sat down, tried to put myself in the shoe of this philosopher or this thinker, my views just continuously started changing. Now I just call myself ontologically agnostic. I just don't know. I really don't anymore. And when I wrote that dissertation, I remember being very confident that this is the answer. Eczema is unpredictable.
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I have a feeling that I know, but I don't know that I know. So this phrase, I don't know. Again, that's another statement that I see academics use. And they view that as a virtue again. And I don't know. I don't know how much of it is
How much of that they mean, and how much of it is just something they have to say, like, well, there are many platitudes one has to say in order to be accepted as something socially genteels, unassailable, genteel and politic, politic, political, sorry. Well, yes, politic, not political.
And the reason I say that is that you have to know something in order to not slip. That's part of partly what it feels like is actually slipping mentally. And they're not slipping. They're walking around and they're fine and they're confident. So I don't know how much of of this uncertainty is professed uncertainty is just feigned self-directed skepticism, but it's it's manufactured. Yeah.
Okay, so something I've come to recently, Weinberg, Steven Weinberg had a statement that said when he was a graduate student, he thought he had to learn every theory. And by the way, that's okay, a hidden project of theories of everything is to learn every theory that's ever been theorized. So Steven Weinberg thought he has to have to know more, more, more, more.
And the reason why I mentioned learn every theory that's ever been theorized is because I thought that I was unique in that. And then Feynman apparently on his blackboard had solve every problem that's ever been solved. And I'm like, Okay, that's cool. But that's a bit too practical. I'm a bit more. I'm a bit more abstract. And not like that untethers me from the ground. So that's a character flaw.
But anyhow, Weinberg said that he used to think that in order to do research, he had to know more and more and more. And once you get to a certain level for him, it was, I don't know, when he was 35 or so, he realized how much he didn't need to know. And that struck me because in some sense, the theories of everything channel is a statement of my own naivety, naivete, that I'm so immature that I think I need to know everything, theories of everything.
And Weinberg can also be thought of as a variation on Socrates. Socrates said, I know now that I know nothing. But Weinberg is like, I know I know now that I don't need to know everything. Hear that sound.
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Go to shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify.com slash theories. I'm not at that level yet. I still feel like I need to know and there's plenty of reasons. There's insecurity, there's drive, there's necessity. But yeah, I'm a sedulous Jim Raffertyles. It's all I do.
starting the podcast did you have what was your go-to toe did you have one no i had the ideas of them i thought loop quantum gravity was a toe because i was so uninformed and i thought maybe string theory would be the major toe that was always the one that i wanted to build up to then there was wolf rums that just came out right at the inception of the channel
How did that impact your health? Because I know you're saying that at some point you tried your best to sort of tread away from the consciousness aspect of it.
As it for that very similar reason you you feel like it does it sort of also lifts you off the ground a bit too much that the tethering is almost being completely removed at that point. It's only for that reason that I've backed away from it. That's the only reason and I haven't backed away completely. I've just listened because I can only do how much I can handle which is which which for me is pretty much impossible. I mean, I've premised my entire show on this and it does. What would you say is the difference between the heart problem and the mind body problem?
I think it's more a difference of time because the hard problem, there's always been hard problems, various aspects. I mean, Newton had a hard problem, but not dealing with the actual topic of consciousness. So I think for Newton it was gravity. I can't remember exactly which part of it. But in physics philosophy back in time, hard problems were just
Difficult problems to answer. So I do believe that framing the hard problem of consciousness and when I wrote about it, I spoke about the fact that there is technically no hard problem because the real hard problem is trying to answer all the easy problems. What is an emotion? What are thoughts? What are all these other things? I mean, we're struggling. We're trying to answer this fundamentally huge question when we still don't have the answers to all the easy problems.
So a big part of mine was this obsession of trying to, and I don't really know if I hold this view anymore. This is the tough one, you see. It's trying to talk about my views on these things when I really don't really know what I think about it anymore. But when I wrote about it, I remember fundamentally saying that the explanatory gap, for example, the heart problem, these are just terms used to sort of hide our ignorance.
And when we don't know how to explain something, it's very easy to give it a definition. And that's something I remember, Denit, really. I think it was in your channel where you might have said that definitions, maybe calm down on the definitions. I'm not sure. Was it in yours? Yeah. And try and hold back on that. And I love the idea of defining concepts. But I sometimes do think when we try to define certain things we don't know, we get stuck trying to figure out things that don't need to be known.
And because the question was what is the mind-body problem versus the heart problem. The mind-body problem is pretty much how is it possible that the psychological system is sort of manifested or repelled from a biological system. So how are psychological phenomena linked to material phenomena. And it's important to be clear because some people think that materialism and physicalism are the same thing.
than not really. Just to give you an example, one would be something like semi-field theory with a guy named John Joe McFadden. He thinks that consciousness is an electromagnetic information field. Now that is not material because he looks to matter, meat, as non-material because you can't really talk about fields as a material phenomenon.
but it is physical in the sense, from the philosophical sense. Now this is where I find definitions start becoming problematic, because they both clearly mean the same thing, but we're using certain keywords and phrases to separate them, but they are the same thing. If you're talking about something physical, you are talking about something material. So to answer your question, I actually don't have an answer for it. The difference between the mind-body problem and the heart problem
It's the same thing. We're just reframing the same problem in a different way. What would you say is... Now I know that I don't want to interview you, but I do actually desperately. So let me just take this opportunity. What would you say is an insight that you've gleaned over the past six months that have not come from the channel that you'll use on the channel or you'll carry with you to the channel?
I think being patient and taking my time. I realized how much time was left open to me. Obviously I finished work. I'm based in South Africa. All my guests, I think I've only had two South Africans on the show. All my guests are from various aspects of the world and all my interviews took place in the afternoons because I have to work full-time job during the day.
So I would, I would try my best to fit them in at 1 PM, 1 AM, 2 AM. Um, didn't matter the time. I would, if I wanted to nail down that guest, I would do whatever it took to, to have that conversation. But it just means you just feel like your next day is completely gone. You've wasted sort of weeks and they fly by and these last six months have felt like the longest six months ever because
I was actively engaging with so many things that felt like I was less on autopilot, rather more cognitively engaged with everything around. So this time what I plan to do is just interview less people, far less often, but keep the thing going regularly. I would say that's the main takeaway from that. And so less often means how many per month? Well, I was doing weekly.
Right to this. I'm either thinking of going even more than, than myself prior to six months ago. I don't know how you did it. I was doing weekly. So it was new episodes weekly, every, every Friday was posting one. Um, yeah, man, it was tough. It was the, I think, um, luckily now, even right now I've got a bunch of episodes ready and I'm slowly even uploading. I uploaded one the other day just because I've decided to start doing this, but these were prerecorded last year.
So I even have some that are left over that I just haven't posted because I just decided I needed a break. And for the new year, let me just start this. I hate New Year's resolutions. I don't really, I don't really do that as a thing, but I figured for this year, let me just try and be mind, body problem free. Well, New Year's resolutions, despite what people say, they work. Yeah, I mean, it definitely for the first week, it clearly worked for me.
Six months. It's been a while. Six months is a long time. I'm usually going to open up when if you do want to ask me about that question, I'm going to open up my own because I've never really spoken about it before. But my own dissertation is there's a quote. I mean, this obviously to pay homage to Tenet. I mean, Mr. Guy, I'm going to miss him debate. What were your thoughts chatting to him, by the way?
I was taken aback by that he doesn't care too much about definitions because as a philosopher, as a mathematician or a physicist, your definitions come first, generally speaking.
But my understanding of what he was saying was that you don't prematurely get fixated on definitions. One of the reasons would be something like imagine if your definitions are representations of reality that are that don't have truth in in and of themselves, but the reality belongs. Sorry, but the truth belongs to the reality. Like say this cup here. If you were to shine the light from the top, it's a circle from the side. It's a rectangle. OK, from another angle, it's some amorphous blob.
If you were to take the circle as the definition of this, well, that would be a bit premature. You wouldn't realize that the rectangle and this are the same. Perhaps you should examine what you're speaking about from multiple angles. You would say the scientific angles, speaking to different types of scientists, speaking to different types of philosophers.
and get an understanding of it. Maybe even an intuitive understanding because you never capture it from enough angles to accurately represent it. But you can get a gist inside you. It can motivate you at the bones at your, at your, at your system. I don't like this, this term, but sorry, system one or system two, there's one that's fast and one that's slow. It'll incorporate you at your slow level.
other than that i was happy to i was i was extremely interested in peering through his mind i find that illusionism is a
is a misnomer every time i hear an illusion like what i thought illusionism was was someone saying consciousness does not exist but then it turns out what they're saying is consciousness is not what it appears to be and then that just becomes like a trivial statement to me like almost anyone because we all know about illusions like the necker cube or that you can make someone see you well you can take psychedelics and you can see some waviness and
in the world or you can do some visual optical illusion or auditory illusion. So there's the cutaneous rabbit. I don't know if you know about that one where you have someone touch different parts of your arm at different points and at different times. And then somehow it feels like it's a continuous touching. I think that's how it goes. Or that you skip one of the dots. I forgot how that illusion goes, but it just it seems self-evident.
How else? Oh, yeah, okay. Well, he I'll tell you something that he told me off air, off air. But that I was looking forward to and then no longer can it happen because of his passing. Yeah. I mean, I've got a quote in front of me. Consciousness is an illusion off the brain, brain for the brain by the brain. That's what
That's one that Dennis once wrote in his book. So when I started mine, I wrote it was on the illusion of consciousness. I started with the Frederic Nietzsche quote. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions. That was how I started this thesis and then went over to say the word illusion comes from old French, from Latin with the original word illudere meaning to mock or to play against.
In Middle English, it was translated to mean deception or deceiving. In modern psychiatry, we agree on an illusion being a misinterpretation of our sensory inputs when it does not correspond to reality. Ironically, it is within shared illusory perceptions that we seem to agree on what reality is. This irony
has been thoroughly exposed by phenomena such as change blindness or inattentional blindness, for all those who don't know, where people fail to acknowledge changes in the appearances of even pronounced objects, visual objects in a scene, people's inclination to incorrectly but unknowingly confabulate reasons or recall inaccurate memories in an attempt to explain situations wherein they lack conscious awareness of the actual reason behind their decisions.
At some point, are you going to go over your dissertation on the channel? I was thinking about doing that at some point. It was a thought. I thought of making it maybe into some sort of a clip and
Just go into what illusionism actually is from what I meant it to be, because I think there's a big misunderstanding, as you said. People tend to think that they're talking about an illusion of consciousness, but the way Frankish defines it or the way Dennett and them sort of saw it was more, there's an illusion with the actual problem that we're talking about. So the terms that the people are using and talking about, those are the problems where
The illusion occurs. It's not necessarily that we're saying or that, not me anymore, but it's not necessarily that they're saying that this phenomenal experience does not exist. It's more that whatever you're calling it or how you're assessing it is the actual problem. That's where the illusion actually lies, which doesn't answer the question anyway. So we still don't, we still end up with the question of what is consciousness.
There are two answers that people generally take when it comes to problems like this. One is that people will say, well, the problem is our language.
and language can never capture language diminishes what you need to do is you need to meditate or experience then there's the other prong which says yeah we've said that about many phenomenon in the past and actually what was the case was that we needed a more explicated language so that we can dexterously use it and then accurately describe something whereas prior maybe we wouldn't have seen gravity is a as a gravity as a phenomenon or or force or centripetal force or centrifugal force
So where do you land on that debate?
In other words, in other words, is our language delusive and needs and watered down? And so what we need to do is experience directly? Or do we need to explicate further and refine? And that's what's holding us back from this problem, like even saying, what is consciousness, as if consciousness is just one, there are several kinds of consciousness aspect aspectual, sorry, aspectual access, self consciousness, higher order,
Exactly. So, adjectival, etc. Like, it's not clear to me where the problem lies. That's, I think, that's something I often say, which is, I think, linguistically, we do have a limitation to express this. And when you look at ancient cultures like Sanskrit, the number of punctuations, the number of the vocabulary, the diversity of the language in itself, provides you with more information to sort of explicator or generate a theory
That would be better understood by most people. So I think there might be a limitation in what we can achieve with English, for example. I do think this limits us from fundamentally understanding the true nature of reality because, I mean, we're basically stuck with this. If this is your first language. If you look at German, I mean, you're using that word to describe what you want to do with your channel overall. It's because German actually has these words. I mean, there's words for phrases.
Beautiful explanations for these complex phenomenon, and I think that's a very key factor when it comes to trying to generate any theory
Well, when it comes to these, when people say that there are different languages that have different concepts than we do, generally, what they mean is not that there are words that are untranslatable, but there are single words that are that don't have a single word correspondence in English, but or or whatever language language, but for for instance, even belt on show, you can just expand that into 12 words in English. I haven't found a word in another language that you couldn't express with more than
what are supposed to be
Untranslatable words like the feeling of the morning sun when it's Dewey out and that's awful in the language of Dubai. I don't know. I'm just making it up. But look, we were able to describe it. We just don't have a single word for that. So are you saying that there's something about English or any language, but in this case English that
You can't even understand the concept from another language. I think it just renders the challenge a lot more harder. It becomes a lot more difficult and requires a lot more effort, work, and then makes it far greater of a challenge overall. How can I best explain it? I'll give you an example. Sorry, you're going to explain, please. Go ahead.
Okay, so you could say, look, to create the pyramids of Egypt or a skyscraper in Toronto, in this case where I am, is difficult because of the limitations of our arms and our heart rate and whatever it may be that it boils down to. However, collections of us were able to do it and it just took a certain amount of time and planning. So is it the case? Do you believe that there's something
That's that we won't know because of the limitations of our language in principle, or is it? Hey, actually, we have the legos. It's just it's going to take you 50,000 years to just build up Earth from small legos. But you have the legos, you actually have the pieces currently. That's there's a there's a in physics, there's a debate
where do we know do we have enough of the language of the tools to currently do we actually have the pieces it's more framed in terms of do we have the piece the mysteries the pieces of the puzzle that we just need to put them together or is there something that we're missing when it comes to data some people think that since the 70s actually ever since the the standard model was put together ever since you had su3 this is something eric weinstein says whenever you had su3 you actually had all the pieces together
But other people will phrase it differently. The point is that some will say we're missing some pieces, so we require more. Some will say there's an inherent limitation. Some will say it's just difficult, like building a skyscraper on your own. Well, or even with teams of people, it's a tough endeavor, but it's achievable. It just takes organization and time. So where do you land? I think well, to bring it back to what I wrote about,
Just to give you a nutshell of what I spoke about in my dissertation. I used a lot of Carl Friston's work. A lot of the free energy principles spoke about psychiatry's defense for illusionism as a theory of consciousness. The main premise and the main goal was to showcase the flaws in logic, fallacies in thought, and the issues with predictions, perception, and our own perception of reality in general. And then sort of turn that around to showcase how we will
Fundamentally be unable to solve many problems the mind body problem being the main one but even it would it would have applied back when I wrote it in 2021 to two theories of everything because of these like heuristic adaptations because of these While heuristic adaptations are a big one Evolutionary limitations think about it Kurt the optical window. We can only see Roy G Biff There's this there's one fundamental fact as has a strapped only seeing this
electromagnetic radiation. It's kind of disappointing. I mean, wouldn't you love to see what UV rays really look like if you had this ability to sort of absorb those rays somehow? So these biological limitations and then also poor processing power. I mean, our brains don't do, they don't do the best job at creating a structural confirmed veridical truth for us. They're always playing tricks on us. We're always consistently
Creating these narratives in our head and I think it's because of these cumulative non Some pessimistic as I'll these I think it's these cumulative disappointing features within us that we will not be able to answer the most fundamental questions which is kind of sad because that's what the problem the goal of this podcast is for me and I Just love talking about it, though
And I think that's what makes it selfish in that sense, is that I just want to talk about it and I don't have friends here to do it with. I know how that feels, man. Yes, I know. Similar to you, I can't chat about it to my girlfriend. She's an anesthesiologist. She's an expert with biology in that sense of anesthesiology, physiology. But if I'm talking about Michael Levin's work, it's got nothing to do with her stuff.
I wish I had in-person friends to speak to about these topics.
I have fantastic people on my WhatsApp and they inform me and then the comment section. One of the reasons why I used to heart every single comment was because I want to read every single comment because they informed me there are not only a criticisms of foolish behaviors or mannerisms of mine that I need to eliminate that I was not self aware enough or
Here's an example. There was a Google AI scientist recently on the channel whose name is Hartmut Neven, and he proposes that
His theory is the opposite of Penrose's. I even described it as that in my introduction, because Penrose and Hameroff would say consciousness is produced from the formation, from the collapse of a superposition down to a single possibility. Hartmut thinks it's the opposite. It's when you have two quantum systems that come together and become entangled. So a superposition forms.
Then someone said, firstly, I love that I just love when there's a theory that you're told that it's not only incorrect, but it's fundamentally opposite to what you had thought prior, like it's maximally incorrect. I like that. But then someone pointed out actually, Hartmut poses
proposed, sorry, Hartmut says that his theory is the opposite of Hameroff's, however, Hameroff's involves gravity, because there's something to do with gravity that dictates the time that the quantum superposition collapses, and then, and consciousness is produced as a result of the quantum collapse,
Whereas in heart much heart consciousness is the same as the super. It was something akin to this. I remember thinking, okay, I like that distinction. Like, I didn't make that distinction myself. I would not have seen that because I don't. I wouldn't have reviewed the episode again, had I not read that comment. So there's several comments that then inform me. And I, yeah, that's one of the ways that there's a toe community. So there's a toe discord, there's a toe subreddit, and so on.
That's way more of the community than what I'm about to say. But the one that's a total community that affects me viscerally is that I can, that I take a pick and choose and I'm instilled and inculcated unconsciously by different comments. And it then moves me when I'm interviewing someone else. So it's almost as if by the community's Reddit posts and discord comments and YouTube comments that
They're speaking with some of the people on the channel.
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Yeah, okay. Okay. Not the reason I said that was because I was saying that I'm, I'm alone, physically speaking, but I'm not alone when it comes to my WhatsApp groups or in the comment sections. But even though the comment section is more of a one way communication, they're just screaming at me or whispering to me. No, I feel I feel exactly the same way. I think the the comments in the community play a huge role in keeping it going. I mean, I haven't, I just I just don't have the energy to
To put in the work and make those discords and do it. I think I should probably just join one of some of you guys and just at least have the opportunity to explore it. But I think that this podcast has given me that that sort of outlet and and the YouTube community, the comments. The same goes for me. I read I read all of them, try and make sure if anyone says anything important or something that's noteworthy, take it down. If someone wants me to ask someone a question for the next one, try and make sure I take that down as well.
I just don't think I put enough effort, probably, which I probably should do a bit more to actively grow that community, but still doesn't change the fact that I'm still sitting at home alone. Yes, yes. One of the reasons why sometimes people are like, hey, who do you want to interview who's dead? And I never had an answer to that until recently. Leonardo da Vinci.
And the reason is that there are so many qualities of mine that are similar to his like I'm not saying that I don't mean that with it with an ego like I'm going to paint the Mona Lisa, but I mean personality traits. So he
was self-taught. He was alone almost all the time. He had someone named Salai like an assistant, so maybe that's not entirely the case, but he was solitary. He united disparate fields and was unboundly curious, prideful at the same time, didn't write much about himself, had an ADHD mindset. He wrote backwards, suffered from deep depression, had many unfinished projects, secretive, observational,
And no connections as well. So that's something that I don't know about you. But there are two parts that I think about. And I lament when it comes to toe. One is that I don't have a physical person to speak to regularly. And then the other is that I see other channels who are growing
rapidly and I know how it works when okay if you move to this town say Texas then you're around everyone else who's in Texas and you get invited to dinners and then when you were interviewing someone in person there's a rapport there that could then hook you up with another guest and I've
not had any of these hookups, still don't have any of these connections. And so it's just like, I'm working like a dog, dog, dog, and I'm looking at other people and I'm envious. And it's, I've had to temper this quality myself, but I, if I'm being honest, it's, I feel, I feel left out. I feel like it's like, anyhow,
Man, you're just echoing exactly what I feel. So the parallels are just crazy. Even the fact that I'm in South Africa for me just puts me, I feel like I'm even far away from everything.
yes you feel like you're at a disadvantage like you have to push up more weight yeah like you're at the gym and you see people and what counts is how many reps can you do and they're lucky they get the five pound reps and you're just there with your 50 pounds you know how can i compete but nevertheless i have to i just have to
So can I tell you one of my favorite quotes? It's from Leonardo da Vinci. So he said something like, I can I don't want don't want to impose by Oh, please, please go ahead. Okay, this this episode is about you, man. So he said he was speaking to it wasn't a particular person. And I don't know, no one knows why he wrote this. Like, did he write it to? No one thinks he wrote it to someone he wrote to.
a fabricated enemy in his head he said something like the context was that he was drawing bodies from corpses and at the time no one dealt with that because why would you need to examine corpses in order to improve your drawing just draw but he saw it as integral because peeling back helped him understand how the muscles were connected and tendons and he would shine different lights at different he would use them to study so he said something like
Like basically saying, like, if you think you're better than me, then this is what the whole rant was. He said, you will perhaps be deterred by your stomach. And if that doesn't get you, then the fear of living in close quarters with quartered corpses inflate flesh will frightful to the hold. And if that doesn't deter you, then you'll lack the good draftsmanship that such a depiction requires. And if you have that, that skill in drawing, then you'll lack the knowledge of perspective
Remember, Da Vinci was one of the first that popularized perspective and perfected it. He said, and if that were so accompanied, then you'd still lack the methods of geometric demonstration, calculating the forces and constraints that muscles have. And if you have that, then you will lack the patience and not be so diligent.
So I just love that because he's saying like, look, your emotions will get the better of you or you'll lack the skill or you'll lack the IQ or you'll lack the methods that I've developed. Or even if you have all of that, you won't outwork me. So I feel like that's my internal monologue to my enemies who have no idea that I exist. You start to see the parallels. I mean, is they at what point in your life did you
come across Da Vinci's work and think like, okay, this is a guy I think I see a lot of myself in. It was when Walter Isaacson had that book on him. And then I, I recall resonating with him at the time, especially with that quote, then I forgot about it for five years. And then I just thought about it again in the past year for some reason. And I recall the, I recall what brought me back to him.
You were saying that you feel similarly, can you explain? I feel completely, I feel everything you said, I feel like I could echo it and just literally just copy paste it. I often look around in South Africa, try to find similar podcasts, similar types of people, trying to do something similar and zero success, man. I look at the top
Well, the most popular content down here, and I think some of it's ridiculous. Well, to me at least. But for the most part, this type of content isn't that popular. So I look at my audience and I think I told you this via email. The vast majority of my audience are from the US. So US is number one. I think UK is number two.
Canada's third, then Australia, then India, then South Africa. What difference does that make? I don't understand because South Africa, well, at least me growing up, I've seen, met so many scholars, so many people, and I know it's such a diverse, beautiful country. So it just confuses me. I don't really understand. Maybe it's just me not promoting the podcast well, or maybe
the type of people, I don't know, I just don't, I don't have a reason to actually, to be honest. Well, what I mean to say is, again, to go back to Seinfeld, if you're treading water, it makes no difference if it's five meters versus 5,000. So for me, if they're not in person, they're all digital in a sense. No, it doesn't make for my audience. It's mostly you us. I think I was trying to touch on that aspect where you said,
You can go in person and create those reports and get invites to these. That's the main thing that I think is affecting me the most about it. If you would like to set up an in-person group? I think honestly just to attend some consciousness conferences to just do the basic stuff. It's not even about the most extravagant
There's a conference called MindFest, which I was fortunate enough to partner with there from Florida Atlantic University.
And when you're there, there's so many people going in person, lucky for me, it's a few hours away, less than four hours away. And there is such a different quality. There was even one of the sponsors of that event is this young, ambitious visionary who said, man, Kurt, like I have, he's a student, but he was also the sponsor of the of the event because he has his own ambitions of
He's created an incubator, a thinkubator actually, for artists and philosophers and STEM people.
He said, like, man, in my class, he's a neuroscientist. I believe he said something like, like, no one speaks about this. No one speaks like this. No one speaks about these topics like this. When I went to MindFest, it's like I found my people. He felt he's just kept smiling the whole time. It's just felt so alive. So there's something about being around people in person. When I am when I'm fortunate enough to go to some conference and there's like minded people,
It's so darn fun, man. So darn fun. I'm so jealous. I mean, I'm sorry. I just I don't know why I said that. It's like you're telling me about your starving. Then I'm like, like, it's exactly this fantastic KFC. I mean, we have all of that. We have good. We've got enough Burger King, KFC, McDonald's, whatever. We've got all of that. We just don't have any mindfests. I would die to go to some of those. I mean,
There was a Mark Psalms is one of the professors here at UCT. And when he we were talking about how he went to Boston, he went to Mike Levin's lab, got to chill with Kevin Mitchell, all these great thinkers, all of them chilling together, just having these chats. And all I'm thinking is just I'm so jealous. Like, well, I would rather be I would from his cost to you though. Yeah, so he's he's literally UCT is about
20 kilometers away from me. So okay, so if he could do it, what's what's preventing you? Is it your job? Yeah, it's most money. It's working as a media. Exactly. You can't just quit my job and just go this. If I could fund this podcast of my own without this work, I would I would do it. I would try my best to sort of push in. I would get an editor I would get. I'd get a whole team involved. But I think it's just it's also a big step if I sort of if I make this bigger than it needs to be.
Then I have to say at some point decide what I really want to do. Do I want to continue to practice the medicine? And I love medicine. So, um, it's kind of like, I don't want to, I'm not sure where I want to go with it. Okay. Yeah. I can say, I was going to say something, which maybe I could talk to you about all fair, but I can tell you now, maybe you want to keep it on. You can choose to delete it if you like. I'll just delete it. Okay. Okay. So what's stopping you from saying, look,
If I want to do the podcast in the way that I want to do it, hire an editor, I want to travel to go to some place and go to three conferences. Let me tally that up. Okay, that turns out to be $12,000. Okay, let me double that. That's $24,000 just to be safe, completely safe. Can I say to Are you married? Or do you have a girlfriend? girlfriend? Yeah. Can I say to my girlfriend,
Would it be? What do you think if I just took twenty four thousand dollars and one month off just so that some people spend way more and way less time to do their trips of a lifetime and maybe they go back backpacking across Europe, maybe it takes a bit more time. But regardless, it's similar amounts of money in the same within the non margin of error, the same factor factor of 10. So what's preventing you from doing that?
I think first reason I'm saying that is that like, I've never had a job, I've always worked for myself. So money has always been super tight. So that's my but there are also other psychological issues. But when I hear that if someone's a doctor, not that you're making bank, but especially, right. All right. I think that so it's a good question. And my answer is, yeah, I think certain
Family responsibilities, my partner trying to, I mean, trying to be around, be consistent, be present would be one of them. But the main thing, I think the first mistake was I never really monetized this channel at all. So there's zero ads. I don't promote it. I don't do any sort of branding. So my first arrow would be there would be cheap alternatives to me making this better, which I could already start doing. But I just think I love doing this as a hobby so much that the moment I make this work,
Like a source of income and it becomes a job, it becomes work, the less I'm going to enjoy this. And I think that's my biggest fear overall, is if this being my main source of income and my actual job, will I love it the way I do right now? And I think that fear gets me the most. Because I can't, I think... You know Cal Newport? Sorry? Do you know Cal Newport?
So Cal Newport is a computer scientist who wrote a fantastic book. It's a short read called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And it's a quote, that's a quote from Steve Martin, which said, like, I'm going to be so great. They can't continue to ignore me basically.
So he was saying, Alan Newport was saying that it's a myth to try and find your passion, like young people tend to feel like their passions out there and what I need to do is just keep trying different options until I eventually find one that resonates with me. He said, your passion is increased the longer that you invest mentally and cognitively. Sorry, those are the same.
mentally and physically and emotionally and monetarily into a job. The more you invest in it, the more that you become near the forefront of your field. And then all of a sudden, you're able to produce research and then you start to start to like it more and more. Now, obviously, that's not a sufficient condition, but it's a necessary condition.
So I don't know, for me, I love I absolutely love what I do. I'm upset, like super upset on the days that I can't work. Yeah, I get to spend time with my wife or family or what have you. But I love knowing that okay, today's a day that I get to take a break.
Because then it means tomorrow I can go at it even harder. Because I just love going at it. I love it. I never wake up like, oh my gosh, I have to work. But that's me.
I just happened to land on something that bangs on all cylinders, and I imagine it would be similar for you, but I'm not suggesting, and again, please take this out of the podcast if this is uncouth or forward. I'm not suggesting for you to dictate your whole life trajectory or abandonment of your doctoral obligations. It's a thought of that many times.
I think if I could do this full time, this would be my job. I love this. The same passion that you have, the same energy towards this.
these topics and trying to continuously learn how to develop your worldview. If I could do this, I think maybe the first mistake is that I have not monetized and seen sort of any gains from this mentally. Yes. Yeah. Did you not monetize because you wanted to say, look, I do this completely for you all, man. Like I am not in this for anything for myself. This is for the love of learning in and of itself, slash the audience.
Yes, and then I noticed that financially that affected me a lot more because then I'm paying for all this editing equipment, all these whatever, they're trying to get all these other things prepped, organizing my trips and holidays around this. My life eventually became so much about this podcast and I had invested so much time and money that I had lost a lot of money from this. And then I started thinking, was that a good idea?
I think one of the worst mindsets or statements to say to someone is when someone's advertising a book on a podcast and they're like, Oh, look at this, this is a grifter. They're just there to sell their book. And I don't like that because number one, a book takes
thousands of hours to write and unless you've written a book, you have no idea how little the returns are. So it turns out you're making you're making less than minimum wage. Second, even if they make some money from their book, wouldn't you want that to be something that people aspire like shouldn't that be an aspiration to make money doing what you love? And when people make statements like oh my gosh, they're just promoting their movie or what have you.
That's like, they loved making that movie. They loved writing that book. Why shouldn't they be renewed? Why shouldn't there be remuneration? Yeah, so a part of the the this enveloping mindset that that encircles us
is, well, we have to be pure for our art. And I had that and I have that as well, because inside I'm an artist. I was speaking to someone named Samuel Andreyev, who has a YouTube channel, which I recommend you check out. I recommend the people who are listening to check out on music. And he was telling me, Kurt, I was saying like, what's holding musicians back? Because I thought it would just be unbridled creativity or they need government grants. And he was saying, no, no, no.
As a musician, the grant system has done more harm than good. I'm like, how can, how can that be? He said, people will say what they want to do is what Leonardo da Vinci did or what Beethoven did or Mozart did, et cetera. But all of those examples of the past, they actually were doing what they were doing for money. And when you have something where you're doing it for money, not only for money,
By the way, that's there's a complete difference between only for you should never do anything only for money. That's that's that's I don't. Oh, gosh. I agree with it. You said it untethers you from the market. So you go off in this avant-garde abstract realm. Not that there's anything wrong with avant-garde art, but doesn't sell at least not doesn't make you money, doesn't make you happy, doesn't make other people happy. Maybe it makes you feel like you're doing something out of your pure creativity.
And I thought that was such a fascinating perspective, because I remember Leonardo da Vinci even had a note to the Medici. So he was trying to get hired by the Medici's. He said, in that note, he said, Look, what I will do for you is I will architect your cities, I could create railways and or not railways railroads, I can create roads and aqua force and I'm sorry, aqua systems, systems of water, maybe they're called aqua force.
weapons of war weapons of war was a large one. He had this list of maybe 20 items number number 20. And I also draw paintings or I also paint. Like that's what we know him for. But he sold that last because he needed money. Yeah. No, so I'm not saying that I agree with Sam 100% that that the grant system is has done more harm. And also I'm not saying I don't think I'm representing his views correctly. So please just watch that podcast.
But the sentiment behind it is one that that I agree with. There's something about being tethered to the market forces. You don't have to be completely tethered. That's a bit that's that's a going askew. But being tethered that makes you enjoy what you're doing more. It actually grounds you in the same way. That's a that's a great way of thinking about it. In the same way, Carl Jung said was asked, Why did Nietzsche go mad?
He said he wasn't grounded. Like I, Carl, I'm dealing with similar thoughts, but I have my patience. I have my gardening. I have something physical that grounds me. Whereas Nietzsche didn't. I have my wife. That's what Jung said. So in some way, you can think of this as you want your creativity to be met with groundedness.
And part of that grounding is, well, I need other people to like it enough that they're voluntarily willing to give something from their pocket to me. I mean, this is exactly why. To come back to the podcast after six months, I wanted you to be my first guest man. I had a feeling you'd motivate me and inspire me to sort of continue this because I think I needed it, man. I was I was I was hesitant, not not super keen.
but I knew chatting to you would help and there's, just to sort of explain how much I love this topic, this niche, but when I finished medical, I did an M full in the Master in Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health just because I wanted to find a way to find a medical way to write about consciousness. I just slowly warped that into a way to do a master's degree in consciousness, just to write an essay on consciousness.
Mention Daniel Dennett as many times as possible. Thank a few philosophers on the way. Just to chat to some of these people. That's also how we sort of chatted via email at some point as well. But that was so unnecessary. I spent money on university fees. I did all these things. Worked to pay off those fees just to write a bunch of essays.
unconsciousness, just so that it's somehow tied into my work. It was it was completely selfish. It had nothing to do with being an academic. It was more just I just want to I want to sort of write and progress these ideas with these people and be in this realm. So I think maybe you're right. Maybe it's something I should take more seriously.
Well, there's nothing wrong with just monetizing what what you have the worst people go through is a 30 second ad. Within five seconds, they can skip it if they like and it's like three cents to you or two cents or whatever it is, but that that accumulates. And then that's something that pays for your
Hopefully that pays for your subscription software. Like it's not going to pay for rent or YouTube. Oh, and something else people don't know is that what bothers me so much is that the topics that other people talk about when they get many views, not only do the views that they get because they're speaking with famous guests, which brings them other famous guests. And that's something that I've that I've limited myself. I've been enveloped myself and said, no, I'm I'm going to stick to these
Stick to my niche of physics, consciousness, UFOs, logic, philosophy, biology. I know that sounds like it. I just said it's a niche and I listed like five disparate fields. But I mean, it's not self development. It's not I'm not speaking to Andrew Huberman and whoever else is in that ilk. But if I was to that opens the door to many others and you get all these views and the health scene and the economic scene, the finance scene,
the blockchain bitcoin scene the amount that you make from youtube ad revenue is like three times more than what you make in the science scene the science scene is one of the lowest and so then it bothers me because i see other people not only getting far more views for far less work i know because i've spoken to some of them and i know how little they study for instance i don't want to spoil anything but i was speaking to
someone one of the big wigs millions of subscribers off air and then he was saying to me that he has some interview in about in approximately one and a half hours and then I said okay so how long have you studied for her it was a woman guest he said oh no I'm just gonna study right now I'm just gonna review some notes like make some notes right now I'm like man you're gonna study an hour before the interview for the interview and that's gonna do that's gonna get five times the numbers than if I was to interview the person yeah
because I would go more in depth, etc. But also, this is just me making excuses. So I have to be honest about that. Like, partly, this is me making excuses for myself. Anyhow, then the way the manner in which this person would speak to the guests, the types of questions would not only get more views, but it would elicit more YouTube ad revenue. So it's like, it's a double whammy of desire in me to be like them, or to have some quality like them, not to be them.
Yeah, I think we're the same in that we're not sacrificing necessarily, because I mean, the guests, I mean, on that note, we've had so many, it's like revolving door with guests, our guests have been, yeah, parallels are crazy. I mean, Lawrence Krauss, Avi Loeb, Donald Hoffman, Michael Levin, there's so many we could go through. Did you speak to Anand Vaidya? Yeah, I did. How did you find out about Anand? It was from your channel.
When I saw it, I was super keen. Yeah, yeah. Anand is... The funny thing about that was... Hidden gem. The funny thing about that was you, I think you posted a lecture on him when I saw that. Yes. Then I had done an interview with him and I think you'd done an interview with him almost around the same time. Like one week. I think so because both of those episodes went up.
Around the same time and I was like, oh man, I hope good. I mean, I hope good doesn't feel like I just stole his guest. No, no, no. I did wonder how did you find out about him? And I was from your, you posted a lecture and I watched it and I thought this is actually quite intriguing. I would love to speak to this guy. Um, but that's the thing about this community, this community that we sort of have is that, I mean, I look to your channel for inspiration, for, for ways to make mine better, for, for ideas, creative,
I don't want to copy paste it though. And I even tell some guests I say, I don't really want to cover this because you've covered it with Kurt. And I say if you want to see that, maybe check out his podcast. Oh, well, that's like something else that that tugs at my heart and not in a not in the positive sense is when I see these other larger podcasters reference toe without referencing toe, like they'll say, well, you said this on a podcast,
Then I'm thinking, I know who you're speaking about, at least give me an olive branch. You have such a massive audience, it would mean everything to me. It means so much if you've referenced my name. I remember even starting one with Bernardo. I think I started by asking him about the debate he had with Susan and how awkward that sort of
Because this is the community I'm in. Of course I'm going to see your podcast. This is part of my life. I'm going to watch it. So that's how we started our conversation. I think it was in around two or three. I can't remember, but one of them. And then I even said, because at some point I thought about doing what you call theolocutions. But I said, no, I'm going to leave that to Kurt. Because a couple of guests of mine asked me if we could do that. And I said,
Let's keep, let's leave that for Kurt. I mean, I love the way he does that. That's something, even though we're not the same entity, we have nothing to do with each other. There's enough room for the both of us. I don't think I'd even need, I'm nowhere close to your, your level at this point, but I just like the way you do it. And I prefer watching you do that. And, and because I would love to see you do Theo locutions, man. Yeah, no, but because we have such, you should consider that for this season. Yeah, maybe we'll see, but I love the way you do it. That's the thing. It's you're a good moderator.
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Yeah, what do you have rules for your podcast? Like, you know how there are different, there's the 10 commandments. Okay, great. And then there's the 12 rules for life. Yeah, then there's the top five things you should know about. So whatever it may be, do you have some list somewhere, maybe internally, maybe it's not formalized of your, your dos and don'ts for the podcast? I think dues,
be always to know the guests work thoroughly. Maybe if I don't clearly understand it to make sure during that conversation, the goal would be to understand it. I think I do have some rules. One rule is it's never a debate. It's never trying to pin down where they're wrong. Even if I disagree, no matter how much I disagree. In fact, the more I disagree, the better because I try my best to ask even more open questions to
Further my understanding of what they're talking about. So that's I think the biggest rule and the rule I follow the most strictly is even if they're actively saying something I disagree with to not bring it up in that moment at all, but ask a further leading question that will allow them to explain what perhaps I'm not understanding or what I think the viewer might not understand.
Do you
push back as I'm not a journalist to understand because I'm a researcher. So some people would say that you're not asking a hard question here and there, not here and there, but over here or over there. And generally speaking, I find that the criticism of hard question
comes from the perspective of you didn't ask a question that undermines the guest's credibility. And for me, a hard question probably for you is, is one that is it's difficult to answer because it's, it has some mathematical or physical implications. So the hard question would be, does the Zariski topology have an application in physics or
okay well say that then someone would think okay i don't know i i need to think about if we're on well whatever the point is that it's not you said in 2002 that that you had dinner with this person but then later you actually revised that and said that it was this person and it wasn't dinner it was lunch and and how do you and where's your your contract with this because your content when i looked it up your contract said
Absolutely. I think that respect for the guest and the approach that you take with them is important because that warm environment actually does allow them to express themselves even clearer. That allows me to then understand their point of view a little better.
And that's it's also an interrogation technique. Not that we're interrogating, but someone is willing to be more revelatory, the more they trust you, the more warm some people call this a safe space, but not that safe space means that all that the kid gloves are on. That's not what safe space means. But it means that in this example, it means that at least for me, the way that I see it is that I'm
I'm not attempting to undermine them. I'm trying to see how is it? Oh, yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to understand, I'm trying to get to their worldview. So I, I feel prepared for a podcast, personally, maybe this is a rule, when I'm able to emulate what the guest will say to any question that I can pose in my head, can I have their software running in my brain, such that I can ask them a question from left field, and I can
I can emulate a response and it would approximate what they would actually say. Then I feel like, okay, I can do this interview. Another rule, a subtle, well, okay. And another rule. And well, I'll tell you this off air because I I'll tell you this offer. Okay, from well, I'm more excited for the off air chat than anything else. But
That's something else that I share with Leonardo da Vinci is that I'm super secretive for no reason. When you hear it, you'll be like, why didn't you just say that on air? I think we're similar in that way. I think there's a lot because I'm obviously not the one being interviewed, but I think we're very similar in that regard. And I completely understand it. And I think when you do say it, I'll probably feel like maybe I would have kept that to myself too. I don't know. But
Of all the guests that you've had so far, have you had any theories of everything or conversations that stand out and really, really gripped you to your core? I know that's a tough question. No, I almost always enjoy my past three interviews more than any of the other interviews. Whenever someone says, what's your favorite interview, it's one of the past three.
So now I'm thinking, who did I recently interview? John Vervecki, Sam Vaknin on narcissism, which was extremely interesting. I'll tell you an insight. Narcissists and psychotics have a similar failure in that they can't distinguish between what's external and what's internal. The difference between them is that the narcissist, so the psychotic places the emphasis on the external.
in other words something will be generated internally like a thought and then they'll hear it as if it came from the external okay okay so they they think everything is well okay then the narcissist would take the external to the internal so an example that came up in the interview was when someone has an idea they tell it to you you say
You don't like the idea. Two weeks later, you come up with the same exact idea, or you think you came up with it. I see. And you attribute all of that to you. That is super interesting. I never thought of psychotics and narcissists as being similar, nor would I have framed it in external versus internal. But have you ever heard of the dark triad? Yes. Yeah, because that's the Machiavellianism sort of psychopath slash narcissist.
those three features just create this deadly sort of human being.
Well, he was so psychopaths are different than psychotics. Yes, yes. I'm sure you know, I'm sure you know. So but also he was saying he doesn't like the term psychopath or sociopath. The reason is that he doesn't think that's a mental illness. Narcissists, he thinks is a mental illness. But sociopaths is more cultural, like they have qualities that we don't like as a culture. And when you look at them, they're just on like look at them on some some value of say, willingness to engage in thievery.
Okay, let's just say that there's a spectrum of people. Most people are somewhat, sometimes willing to engage. Some people are never willing to engage. Some people are as long as it gets them to their goal and they can get away with it or are going to do so. So there's a spectrum. He would say that psychotics slash sociopaths are just on the extreme end of a spectrum, but it's not as if it's a different sort. It's just of a different degree.
You mean psychopaths slash sociopaths, not psychotics. Yes. Okay, if I Yeah, I misspoke. So sociopaths and psych, and also he said that there's no distinction between them clinically. Oh, he said sociopaths is more of the this way he said as one of them is what's used in one of them is used clinically and the other isn't. But colloquially, they actually mean the same. Yeah, I mean,
Colloquially, we often tend to think of them as similar, but in general, the psychopath tends to lack sort of insight and empathy altogether completely. He can sort of kill you, murder you, eat you right there, leave you lying on the floor. Whereas the sociopath would do it and then sort of consider what was done, think about it and still kind of get away with it and move on.
Actively still do it though, but we'll think about it We'll have the thought process that goes into the fact that he did something wrong or she or whoever But they have some insight into what has happened there. So that's more of the sociopathic type of behavior clinically Whereas a psychopath just does not know that they've just so he's not he does not know he's abused this person or she's abused this man, whatever the there's no sort of
cognitive engagement with this. But again, I'm a psychologist, so just having a medical degree doesn't make everything I say about it. I often disclaim, that's a rule for me, is to often have these disclaimers on the podcast. This is purely for educational purposes only. This is nothing medical. Not medical advice, don't refuse it with it. Because the main thing is because I'm a doctor, I get stuck because I'm trying to have philosophical discussions and sometimes it takes us into these
These weird realms. I mean, if you're talking about, let's say, Tom Campbell, we've both interviewed him. And if he's talking about something like reincarnation and love and death can mean this. Some people really can misinterpret those things. I mean, if I kill myself now, that means I could possibly link up consciously with something or someone else. I mean, I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth, but that could be mistaken for medical advice. And some patients will possibly ask,
about that. So I've made it clear that this is a philosophy podcast, nothing to do with medicine, absolutely zero to do with medicine. And that's even why I try not to touch on too much practical aspects of it as well, just in case. So a rule of mine, which I can say, is if a thought occurs to me in the moment when I'm speaking to a guest, and this also carries with me in through my life. So this is not
This is one of the Kurt rules for life. I have a list of Kurt rules for life that I'm not allowed to hang on to the thought so that I can then use it, not because I'm trying to be present or, or, or in the moment or what have you, but because then it's a thought that I feel like is clever and I'm trying to one one up someone. So I have to abandon that thought if it no longer applies in 10 seconds. So I can't hold onto it and be like, so
five minutes ago, you said so and so, like unless that occurs to me in the moment right then and there, I'm not allowed to hold on to it, I have to abandon it. That's a pretty cool rule. And if I if I do then re bring it up, I have to then say it in different words, drastically different words than I originally thought of it. And then that one comes to my my need slash
Which guests do you feel gave you the most exercise?
Oh, I've given you the hardest workout if you if we're to keep it along that line. OK, is it all right if I just have a quick browse over the? Yeah, go ahead. The guest list. I mean, you've got so many at this point, it's it's incredible. How's your schedule at this point, Kurt? Do you post? Are you posting full episodes by we once a week now, once a week? Yeah.
At least once a week. So it's 1.5 times a week, because sometimes it's too consistently two per week, but then it's at least once a week. Okay, let's see.
Sorry, you may need to cut as I go through this. It's fine as you go through it. I mean, I noticed you've been exploring the short eclipse now. How's that been going?
It's going well. I have someone else who's in charge of that. So the clip titles and the thumbnails themselves, I don't do, I have say like if I disagree vehemently, I'll let the person know, but I try to take my hands off of it. I'm a perfectionist in many ways and I need to temper that quality. Yeah, no, I feel you. I think that's probably another reason why I haven't let someone take over to do these things. That's probably because of the same
bad habit, I would say. Funny thing. So Jonathan Gerrard would be one. Now, not because I'm trying to stay on my toes, but because it's such a the rapport was so great that it was like doing ping pong, where some guests are steam rollers. Like, that's the internal word I have for them, where you ask them one question, they'll go on for 20 minutes.
in some ways we like that as podcasters it makes our lives easier the audience can't accuse you of trying to interject your own thoughts too often and it's less editing as well so i have some rules of editing like there's there's there's never a reason
You never need a reason to cut to cut to the guest, but you always need a reason to cut to yourself. So I try to show myself as as as minimum minimal as possible and not have it on
The weird thing about this is I swear legitimately today almost did that because I had
But obviously I have just one camera, but today I thought, let me just do this. And what's the view called? Let me just check this thing again. What is that view called? Speaker view. Just to get me out of it and let the guest speak. I can make clips out of that. I can do whatever I want. And I thought I was only thinking about that today, which is crazy. Yeah, plenty of parallels, man.
So that's exactly what I've been thinking of doing because I also do want this this interview I've spoken the most out of all my interviews so I apologize firstly to all the audience but I'll try and edit most of my parts out because this is meant to be about you but yeah this is the most I've actually spoken in my on my podcast I think. Well I'm much more interested in asking questions than
and speaking. So if the goal of this is to get to know Kurt, then in large part, you get to know Kurt by observing Kurt ask questions and hearing what his thoughts are to them. You were saying the guess you continue. Oh, I don't recall now. Okay, that's fine. Okay, something subtle that I do is that if you were to actually examine the pixels of
I'm on the left usually and the guest is on the right. Is that my I'm a few pixels to the left. So the guest is slightly larger. And that's because I noticed that in the beginning, I was slightly larger. And so I did that unconsciously. And I knew that that was me saying, maybe I didn't, I don't know, but it could be me thinking, I'm more important than the guest. And so to counteract that,
The
That's an important point. I mean, would you do you feel that? Because I noticed you do the dual frames and then at some point you do go to single frames as well. There's so many parts of this podcast, I'm not going to know whether we should we should share or not. Should we keep this for after? Maybe we should keep this one for later, because that's something I'm curious to know just offhand anyway.
Sure. Like what makes us decide when to change angles? There's a few questions, but I'll touch on that afterwards. Let's let's maybe just go on to the normal podcast conversation for now. Sure. Tell me Kurt, you've become so obsessed to toes at this point. And what what insights do you have for for people like who watch the channel people like me? What have you gathered?
So, I have my own
There are different definitions of wisdom. So apparently, back prior to the Axial Age, I believe there was something called the continuous cosmos, it may be during the Axial Age, I'm not entirely sure, but around that era. And wisdom was how do you fit into the power structures that exist? So it was about power. And apparently, we carry this carry this over with our term prudence.
Afterward it became about how do you see through the illusion, so that comes around Plato. There's this world is somehow illusory, there's somehow a truer world, a two-world model. Someone said a professor of philosophy was putting forward a proposal.
They said, look, there are some things, some statements that you believe and you know, and you need arguments for. So you'll believe it if there are good arguments. There are some statements you will believe if there are no good, even if there are in the absence of arguments, like you'll just believe it. Now, if there are arguments against it, then that's something different. And third, there are statements where you don't believe nor disbelieve. So you just put question marks around. I'll give you some examples.
Maybe you believe that the earth goes around the sun because they're good, good arguments for it. Okay, so that's an example of one that you need good arguments for. Another would be another an example of something that you don't necessarily need good arguments for is that you exist, or other people exist. You'll just say, Okay, that's something that I can't provide a good argument for. But I will take that.
Then number three is, well, there's plenty, you don't care how many rings there are of Saturn that you put question marks around. He said, wisdom is to know what statements go into each category. I thought that's super interesting. I have a tentative definition of wisdom. This goes back to earlier, we were speaking about
Us as podcasters, people as intellectuals, academics as members of the academy, they see openness as a virtue. And I critique that because I don't believe it's actual true openness. But anyhow, I think wisdom is what if scenarios exist that you used to entertain that you would no longer?
We think that in order to be truly open, truly an intellectual, truly a contender on the cognitive stage, you need to think anything is possible, any what-if scenario. I think you need to go through a period of that, so this doesn't apply to just people who are fundamentalists from birth.
I think you need to go through a period of radical openness. And then the wisdom is which, which doors do you close? And so the quality of your what if scenarios that you're not willing to entertain are what determine your wisdom. Do you feel like you've been applying that to your choosing of guests for the podcast?
Or are you still open to having the discourse and showcase the research? I don't apply it at a conscious level. So my criteria for choosing guests is in large part 95%, if not 100%. Am I interested in this? No, it's 95, 90%. Am I interested in this? Now that interest is influenced by something that's unconscious, which is, which are the what if scenarios that I'm not willing to entertain that I'm unaware of? Sure.
And the other 10% is just strategic. So for instance, if I want to understand something about string theory, well, then understanding conformal field theory would help. So who's a conformal field theorist that I can interview in and of themselves that would take me up to string theory, something like that. So again, I say this often that toe is like the the guest order matters for me because I'm researching.
I think of where do I want to go? What are the steps along the way that are necessary preconditions or prerequisites in the university sense? With that being said, I mean, the points that you were going to tell me about after the show, I'm not super keen to hear about this. It's on my mind. I'm going to have a lot of trouble editing this podcast, I can tell you that. I apologize. This one's going to be a tough one. What do you think?
What have you noticed between the differences between between the East and the West with regards to their approach to theories of everything? Have you seen any difference? Yeah, I see what I'm told from the West about the East, which is different than what the East is. So the East and this comes from Adnan and then sorry,
I thought that the West is analytical, emphasis on logic, mathematics, reason, rationality, quote unquote, and then the East is more experiential, and airy fairy or loosey goosey, but more in touch with the present moment.
adnan said no materialism is actually more prevalent in the east than idealism and i had no idea then he told me about the history that the indian prime minister made idealism the pizza of india meaning that in italy when we think of that it's we think of pizza we just well not if you're
cultured enough and erudite etc but as a stereotype you think of pizza when you think of italy like i can't wait to try the pizza there must be the best in the world and he said that's what was the indian prime minister made it an effort
A conscious effort to make to promulgate ideal idealism, not only to the West, but to make the West think of idealism when they think of the East and vice versa or India. I think that the non dualist and the. The physical is make the same error of. A left a left brained error.
And the non-dualist is unaware of it. So the non-dualist believes that they're like, no, it's creativity, it's originality, it's embracing, it has a hugging quality, and that must be the right brain. But no, the left brain in Ian McGillgrist's work is what's responsible for abstraction and seeing two objects as the same.
So that's what it means to abstract is you take out qualities that are similar to multiple instances and then you start to manipulate those qualities. Well, that's that's being analytical. Racism is an abstraction problem because it's saying you as a brown person are the same as some other person who's brown.
So what happens when you go to non dual states? Can be seen as a pathology of the of the left brain where everything is the same. Every single thing is the same.
And the beauty of the right brain is that the right brain likes to see every instance as unique. Every little point is unique. Not only is this cup different than these earphones, but the left and the right are different than it's not even the earphones. This one is different than this one. And in fact, there are multiple facets to this cup. Furthermore, it's not just that the right brain
or the right brain worldview is supposed to be what is championed, nor the left brain, the right brain had the wisdom to give the reins over to the left brain. So that's why the book is called the master and his emissary in, in Emma Gilchrist. So it's an interplay of both.
In other words, what's the difference between the East and the West? I don't know. All I know is my watered down versions by people who think they're from the East, but have grown up in the West. And what they tell me about the East and also what I research about the East, which is heavily filtered. So what I've said is is meant to be. Interpreted through that lens. Is your are your ancestors from from India or?
Yeah, if you go far back enough, it would be the West Indies. Okay. It's from I'm from Trinidad. I think mine is from Tamil Nadu in India. I think that's so far. I'm not even sure. We've been in South Africa for almost almost 200 years now. Wow. Yeah, we were brought from India as indentured laborers. Well, not we but my ancestors as indentured laborers, aka slaves.
to cut sugar cane in South Africa. And so I've grown up fundamentally South African, which is very much influenced by American culture and Western culture. So I also have a very, even though, because there's so many who came down from South Africa, it's a watered down version, but there's a section of South Africa that's called Durban,
If you ever Google it, you'll see it's called Durban. So there's Johannesburg. There's three main cities in South Africa. Johannesburg, Cape Town. That's where Mark Solms is and a lot of great professors. And then there's Durban, which is in KwaZulu-Natal.
And it's like a mini India. So I think it's the largest city with Indians in the whole planet. Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender, juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8 only at McDonald's for limited time only prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California and for delivery outside of India. So not, not a, not country, but like city. Um,
It's the Indian population that is huge. So I was exposed because I grew up there. So I was exposed to a lot of the East in that sense as a child. And the philosophies were quite unique. And when I look back, I feel like I undermined and didn't really appreciate some of the philosophies that I was taught as a child back then since starting this podcast. Because prior to that, I was so focused on Western philosophers. Yes.
Something else about the East, about the Western East, is that I thought that meditation would dissolve your ego or make you less egotistical.
Now there's a difference. This is when I spoke to Roy Baumeister, who is someone you should speak to. It's one of the most cited people, not just scientists, the most cited people on the planet. And he's alive. I remember I've read his read his name so often in the psychological literature. So often I thought he was dead. Because it's so rare that someone has referenced this much and they're still alive. And he's alive and well. He, he studied
I don't know if he studied it, but he told me about these studies where if you get people to meditate, and they could be Zen Buddhists, but they have to be Western Zen Buddhists, this hasn't been done on Eastern Zen Buddhists, that rather than making you more selfless, you become more selfish.
And how do they measure that? Well, they look at how long are you meditating for? And then there are different criteria. Like, are you willing to tie someone else's shoe before yours? Are you willing to? Oh, let me let me bring up, let me bring up the study, please, because it's super interesting if you don't mind. I don't mind at all. That would be amazing. I'm trying to also think of other ways that could be shown. I'm trying to think one of them is
I've noticed that Western meditators tend to talk about meditation way too much, which can itself be the examples you're talking about. It's almost like now they're sort of virtue signaling the fact that they meditate. Um, yes, which really nullified become obsessed with it as well. And it goes against the non-attachment. So, okay. Zen monks who are dedicated practitioners of meditation display a higher fear of death and less willingness to give up lifesaving medicine compared to other groups.
suggesting a strong attachment to self preservation, maybe even a stronger sense of the self. So how does one make sense of this? Well, meditation increases self awareness, perhaps that can lead to heightened awareness that that could lead individuals to becoming more conscious of their strengths and weaknesses, potentially resulting in a sense of superiority. Ah, yeah, there was something about superiority as well. That was a study from
Yes, from Gobber. So the study I just mentioned was Nina Strominger, and I can give you these links to put in the description if you like. Thanks. The study I'm about to say is from Gobber. Individuals who practice meditation over weeks started to perceive themselves as superior to others in their meditation group. That's why there's a difference between ego and egotism. Their ego may be minimized, but their egotism, their inflated sense of their self-importance, self-centeredness increases.
No, and it sort of makes sense when you think about it. The East and West. It's so strange that it's bizarre that we even have to say that at this point, that it's become a thing in itself, which is more disappointing because when you chat to someone like Anand, who understands the history behind the content and gives you that context that you're looking for, it becomes super fascinating to see all the things we missed
So I have in this same document with notes, I have my my Kurt rules for life. If you want to hear some of them, let's do it. So these are numbered, but they're not in any order. Number one, never underestimate the jealousy in yourself. Your criticism of others is almost in every circumstance.
Spawned by not spawned by some cold rationality of correctness, like a teacher grading math homework. It's far deeper. It doesn't mean the analysis you provide is wrong, but it's from a wrong place, which in the long run will make it wrong regardless. Realize how much of a cretin is insecure of avaricious egotist you are, then minimize it every time it crops up by recognizing it, though not acting on it. Number two, if people want to tarnish your reputation, let them speak kindly of them regardless.
There are positive aspects to everyone, so just find those and highlight them in your enemies. Don't use high-bounding, condescending reputational words like grifter or pseudo. Keep a list of words you vow never to say. Notice which words are correlated with an embittered state and don't use those words. Consider what you're putting off. What are you avoiding? Ask yourself and
That question will bring to mind five items. Which are you avoiding most? Tackle that one. Do this daily. Number five, never say something doesn't make sense unless you can explain it in a way that the other person agrees. Senses relative to a constellation of knowledge and relations they're referencing of which you're unaware and vice versa. And some of these I'll tell you off air.
Number 10 is one that I do in Toronto. If you have a $5 bill and pass a homeless person asking for it, always give it. Don't second-guess whether they should be more or less homeless or more or less addicted. That's something I used to do. If I had some pocket change, I'd be like, okay, well, they're asking for it, but they're going to spend it on alcohol. I can tell because their face is red and they're right by the liquor store.
Hope isn't for the weak or foolish. It's a gift of the strong. Being hopeful and enthusiastic is difficult. Those are rare necessary qualities to make everything better. Everything for yourself and for those you interact with.
Number 12. In a conversation, don't try to prove yourself as correct or try to convince your interlocutor or any onlookers. This will backfire. Even if it doesn't, you'll feel like you've been able to manipulate and that has its roots in a shadowy place that you don't want. If you have something interesting to say, hold on to it for just a minute. And if this is what I talked about earlier, if the exchange changes themes, you have to cut ties with whatever clever remark you had and move along with the discussion.
Number 13 in the same vein, don't try to sound or appear clever. It won't work. It will have the opposite effect. If anything, you appear more foolish, err on the side of having others underestimate you. And I can tell you, number 15 is life is about finding a tolerable torment. The more you joyfully can answer which of your current struggles would you want to keep if you were to repeat your life, the better. What's the suffering that brings you peace? Hmm.
And then 16 is just great advice that I've heard. So these I generate on my own, but this one I heard from somewhere else be interest being interested is vastly more important than being interesting. It's almost like I want to say aim into like all these things. These are should is how many are there? Good. I have 17. Okay.
I had a feeling this list would be a long list. Do you find writing these things down, seeing it, reading it out loud to yourself, allows you to implement this more actively? How often do you come across this, let's say in your day to day? How often do you read that? I forgot about this list until today. Why do you feel reading it?
No, right now. Well, I'm glad I didn't contradict myself. That's because I was reading it. I wasn't reading ahead. And so I'm like, Oh, shoot, did I just say something that will expose me as? Because I had forgotten what I said about that I'm not that I'm supposed to abandon a thought after 10 seconds. And I realized I said 10 seconds, but over here, I said one minute. So okay, so that was a contradiction. But it's not that's that's not drastic. It's a small time windows.
is the sentiment behind it. So I feel self conscious as I read it. That's how I feel. And I just wonder if any of these will burn me. I had another one that I didn't write down. Maybe I did it and I didn't see it. But it's that I'm never allowed, never allowed to thumbs down a comment, or thumbs up my own comment. I didn't put that as a rule for life. I don't think so. But I found myself in my past, as soon as I write one comment, like this video is BS about someone, so whatever it is,
up my own comment like look other people are agreeing with me or I'll down a comment that's that's criticizing me yes I'm not allowed to do that the only time I'm allowed to downvote a comment is if it's someone saying man last week I got rich from Bitcoin and then someone else come like you could tell it's the spam yeah so I'm trying to not make the algorithm elicit the spam but or someone saying click in nudes in my bio
But other than that, I'm not allowed to thumbs down a comment. I'm only allowed to use the thumbs up button, but I can also choose to not use it. So if you just use your thumbs up everywhere, then it means nothing. So be selective, at least for me. It's strange. Do you have, have you also had that problem at some point where these random such spammy messages from like user of the one for underscore five, six, three, two, they'll give you like essays on consciousness.
Yeah, I had someone recently write me two paragraphs of some some criticism.
and they just created that account that day, like when I looked at their bio and I'm wondering why. I wonder if it's someone that I know that was like, okay, I want to say this to Kurt, but I don't want him to tie back to me. It's crazy because some of them, I once read one that was almost like, I swear it felt like a book.
This thing went on. I don't know what the limit is. So much that they had to break it up into multiple comments as replies. Yeah, I thought to myself like what this is this actually a bot or is this a person? Because this requires some some level of effort. I mean, can you see here's something new that's occurred to me in the past couple of years, the past one year. Sorry. So I encourage people to send their toes to their theories of everything, just in case people are wondering. Your toes is not. Please don't send it.
It's not a footnote. Okay, I encourage people to send them. But now I get people messaging me, and they'll message over and over. And they're just copying and pasting from chat GPT. And then they'll they'll message me their entire chat history. And they'll just keep doing it. And I, I don't have the time to even read that. And it's
quite lengthy. So I don't like that. Please filter if you're going to send me a toll, please filter it. Is this them sending you their conversation about their toll with chat GPT? I don't I don't I could be sometimes it could be okay. So you haven't yet this one time that I have in mind a particular time a particular person. Do you know this person?
No, no, no, no, this person at least at the very least, that makes it a little better. How did you decide? Okay, theories of everything include AI, physics, consciousness, and then also, I know you touch on UFOs. I mean, what? How did these topics all come together? What would what would the inclusion criteria like? And why did you exclusive? Yeah, do you think?
So the inclusion criteria is the same. It's just am I interested in it? So initially, say, 2018 and prior my whole life, I was I wouldn't even say skeptical of UFOs. I completely rejected it as a possibility.
Mm hmm. Just a moment. Because I'm recording the audio on my end. Okay. So then someone said someone who is an editor of mine for film said, watch so and so video and I forgot what it was. One was a drogue interview of someone I don't know of who and one was another one. And then I remember thinking, okay, this is interesting. Not like I'm buying it, but it's interesting. And then I was thinking, okay, I want to speak to someone on this subject. I have this channel. This was 2020.
I have this channel and who can I speak to? Okay, there's someone named Jeremy Corbell. He's spoken to someone named Bob Lazar. I've always heard of Bob Lazar since for years, decades, two decades. So why not reach out to him because he has a filmmaking background. That's a natural segue. I interviewed Jeremy
Great. I have my problems with that interview because of me, because I interjected and I had this mannerism where I would do this and it was cringe-worthy and affected. I do that all the time. Yeah. Anyhow, I can't watch interviews of myself from six months prior. It just hurts. It physically hurts my stomach. Yeah. Apparently Woody Allen's the same. He'll look away when they're playing even the trailer to a film that he just finished. He'll look away. Yes.
So that interview didn't do terribly well, didn't do poor, but it didn't do well.
and i wasn't thinking anything like currently the ufo videos on the toe channel are the most popular by an order of magnitude that was the word i was looking for earlier by the way an order of magnitude so at the time no change okay cool but i'm still interested so let me speak to kevin canoe that's a physicist i'm interested in physics my background is in physics how about obvi low great astronomer at harvard cool
Then six months from then, so a year from the first interview start the UFO videos views started to pick up. That's pretty cool because the algorithm I had no idea. Seinfeld also said from the fourth season, his show wasn't doing well. All of a sudden, four years later, it started to do extremely well. Sounds like that's super interesting.
However, I can't compromise that any interview I do, I do has to be because I'm interested in it. So, okay. It was just a, it was a blip and in my radar of a data point to, to keep in mind, this is something that many people in the audience are interested in. Okay. Who else is in this topic that I would be interested in speaking to? I don't know. Recall who Lou Elizondo, Jacques Valade, the huge names.
So I spoke to them and then somehow this, the whole, the channel, there were many polls on Reddit and Twitter about what is the best UFO channel to watch and invariably theories of everything would either win or at least be mentioned. It's like, oh my gosh, I remember sending that to a few people like, look at this poll, look at this poll.
and I just just I would be bike riding with my wife and there would be a slew of comments and I would stop and I would have to show her like look at this look at this babe we had to then make a rule I'm not allowed to speak I had to make this rule by the way I'm not allowed to speak about the channels comments until Fridays only on Fridays gonna tell us I have to save up all the positive comments and the negative ones anything I want to tell her because it would just it would ruin our lives hmm so that was pretty cool
It's the same interest of like what can be more enticing than are we alone? It's one of the fundamental questions in a theory of everything. Forget about the fundamental questions that motivate us. Theory of everything is more philosophical. That's a philosophical question. Theory of everything tends to be more analytical. But in the philosophical questions that we wonder about,
Are we alone is there? And it's that same impulse that drives someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson to study science as it does for these people who are interested in UFOs to learn more about the universe, except they didn't have the luxury of going to university. And even that's a misnomer because it implies people are uneducated. I don't like all the stereotypes. Many people, some are professors. Kevin Knuth is a professor.
so i made this whole 27 minute video almost recounting many of these thoughts and it was the only video that i didn't release it's just it's so enticing to go into the ufo scene it's enticing people don't realize and so i can see myself being pulled and i have to make sure that i'm doing it for the for the right reasons and so so far outside of one exception i've done it for the right reasons and i just want to
I need to make sure that that stays like that because the audience will sense it and I'll sense it. One of the reasons I think that the channel does so well is because people can sense that I'm coming from, I don't like the word authentic for various reasons, but from a place of inquisitiveness, from a genuine place of inquisitiveness.
And you can sort of see it as you're trying to think through what you're trying to articulate to the listener, to the guest or to whoever you're talking to at the time, which is good because that introspection and that well thought out, framed thought process makes it clear to the person watching you or listening to you that you were thinking about this, you didn't just
Come there to ramble on. You have the ability to listen, sit back, wait, pause, process the thoughts. You even have rules for yourself. I mean, don't use the last five seconds of whatever was said. If it's no longer relevant or what a minute or whatever, then forget about it. And that's, I mean, that's a pretty cool rule. That's something that I will even try to apply myself because we often find ourselves doing something like that, trying to
Remember something specific, hold on to it, keep it there, continue the conversation, bring it back later. Sometimes you just don't need to do that. Now speaking about authenticity, I have a rule about that. So never lie. Number seven is never lie. This doesn't mean you have to disclose everything as you're entitled to privacy, but indeed never lie. Number eight, building on the last, don't think you possess brutal honesty, quote unquote.
You're more likely alienating people because it's easier to be destructive than constructive. Thinking of yourself as too blunt for others to handle is virtue signaling to yourself. Stop it. Truth can always be conveyed with clemency and regard. You're not noble. Thinking of yourself as an honest person isn't a title that you give yourself. It's something earned. It's crowned by
It's crowned to you by others. And then number nine, never claim someone has it better just because they have money. Show sympathy for all your fellow humans regardless of their circumstances. The route to excusing your own behavior because of the comparative lack of funds or reprimanding someone else's because of their abundance is a dark path. Don't walk it. Don't even step a foot in it. Any people you dream of interviewing?
I'm like that you haven't had about Douglas Hofstadter, but he said no to me so often that I'm just going to respect his, his privacy. That is definitely someone I've also sent him emails. He's also told me no so far. I'll continue to, I said, what I, what I've decided is I'm going to keep like a list of emails and just every year resend it out to the same person every year. And I'll call it an annual checkup.
I don't think so. I don't think there's any dream guest any longer. Who was your dream guest prior to having them perhaps? Bob Lazar was one. Any ideas why? That's the OG.
When it comes to UFOs from my childhood, I knew that name. I didn't know how I knew that name, but I knew that name. So I, I would like to speak. Oh, and also because he, he claims to have some theory as to how they operate. It has to do with gravity, one version of gravity and another, he calls it gravity, a versus gravity B. And he had, he said it had to do with the strong force seemed
So I think you might have been a little bit more open-minded when it came to UFOs than I was because I think my only one on the show is with Avi Loeb. I think that's the only one where I think the episode is just titled
Where is everybody or are they aliens? Because I've reached framed the entire podcast to just be questions. So answering the big questions or the hard problems, trying to solve the problems. So I've made them all questions. I think it's where is everybody, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, the Fermi paradox, I do find fascinating. That is something I've always thought about. Have you watched the three body problem or read the books?
I know the storyline of it. It's such a fascinating. There's a show now? Yeah, so there's a Netflix series. And I must say, because I've read the books, they didn't do a bad job. It's actually quite cool. Have you watched Fallout? Yes, I've watched Fallout. Okay, so I'm watching Fallout now, man. I love the video game Fallout. I used to also love the video game. And I just thought,
I thought they would mess up the show because they mess up everything. Everything gets messed up nowadays. If it's made in the past five years, it's a horrible show. Like that's just it's also almost guaranteed. Yeah. What do you watch the first episode? I'm like, this is way, way better, way better than I thought. Yeah. And it gets and it's quite dark and twisted. Like, man, oh, man. And mysterious at times. When I was watching Fallout, the main what is the character without the nose is good. Yeah.
He reminds me so much of the... Have you watched Westworld? Yes. There are so many similarities between... What is his name? Ed Harris. His character. And that reminded me of the way Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy make a show. Because that's what kept me hooked, I felt. Oh, are they the same creators as Westworld? They both made Westworld. It's crazy.
And obviously, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan as well. So these guys, they are they're related. So Jonathan Nolan is Christopher Nolan's brother. It's crazy. He's the one who wrote many of Christopher Nolan's. Yes. Oh, my God. I want to be louder. I don't want those people. Again, this tiny apartment. So that's why it's so epic. And when I when I thought when I saw that they made it, I was like, oh, shit, I'm going to click this right now and just start watching this. Do you think humans are capable of coming up?
One of the views that I hold that's controversial, that I haven't encountered elsewhere,
Is that i don't think we can even say the word everything just quite odd for someone who has a channel called theories of everything. I don't think that that's a concept that is well founded and i don't think that what you can do is you can just contain like well.
so some people would say god must be a part of this universe because if you just include god into this like if this universe is separate from god just unionize with the set union with god i don't think you can i don't think the union of two sets is always like sorry i have to be careful because as soon as you say set it conjures a certain image i don't believe you just join two entities and then you could form a larger entity
I don't think the concept of all is well defined and i i also don't think it is what it is is some people say what is what it is i don't think is it is what it is. So i think we're we're lost since aristotle.
We're stuck with this classical logic in our bones. Like I mentioned, we have explicit other logics, but in our bones in the way that we think some we don't think in terms of contradictions. We don't think in terms of parrot. Well, here's another. It's not a rule of mine. It's a. It's just a thought of mine. Your intelligence is directly proportional to how. Can you so? You just directly proportional to how many
Profound thoughts do you have that are not paradoxical the reason i say that is that it's so easy to have a profound thought then you say but it's all paradox and that's why because it's the flower blooms that dies oh okay yeah and then people sit around with the pinching pinching their beards and yes it is so can you say something profound without it being paradoxical
That's this, it's not a rule for life. That's not something to guide me because it's a bit snarky. But there's that. So I'm not a believer just, well, it has to be contradictions. I think even just saying that and going back to what you said about the limitation of language, that's something else I don't believe is the case. We think of language as a hose that connects two people and you're deriding what you're saying or diminishing it
by the propagation of it and what they receive isn't always what you intend and in fact is a lesser form. I don't think that's the case. I don't know if language is to be interpreted as that. I know that's one interpretation of what language is, but language is also the fact of even sending is creative. So for instance, even in this conversation, I've learned about about my own thoughts by speaking them that I didn't know. So it's not only language isn't just the
the sending of something that's inside. It's also excavating what's underneath the waters. It's a creative process as well. So there's creation in the transfer. It's not just the transfer is sending something that has been created already. Furthermore, it's going to be diminished as it goes along. I don't think that's the case. I also don't think that I think that's almost obviously not the case because Reed Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky
That's in language and it'll evoke emotions in you that you've never had before that have never been experienced. So there's something about language that can also create. And same with while we say, well, bait, what about music? Like music is not language. Well, even to create the music, Beethoven used sheet music. You can't create that from your head. And he built on other people who use sheet music. So there was some, there's a two way process. It's like in back reaction is what they call it in physics.
I don't see it as a static entity, you throw it, it gets diminished and then back and forth and oh look, let me repudiate language because of that. I don't think so. I think language is, as much as people inflate it, I think that they deflate it. So I have several views that I don't think I've ever said any of these anywhere. And there are views that I hold fairly, my views change on a weekly, well not a weekly,
bimonthly so every two months not twice a month but every two months ambiguous word bimonthly every two months basis so this is a present deliberation of mine these are present deliberations of mine yeah i don't think all is all and i think that's what leads us astray in some ways i think that's what led
That's where I differ from Chris Langan, as much as I love Chris Langan, and Chris Langan has this theory far more articulated than mine, which are just some notes here and there, and the thoughts I've relayed to you. But he's building a theory based on a super tautology, and you can think of what I'm doing as building a super antinomy, so a super contradiction. It's the opposite.
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Yeah. Do you do you find solace in the fact that you're getting closer to this answer that you're possibly that you're that you're researching for? Or do you feel like you're getting? No, I know. I feel I feel solace in in that I can have a worldview finally. Thank God. Do you feel like you're getting closer? Like is it like you? Yes. Yes. Fine tuning this. Yes. Good. I feel closer than I've ever been.
But it doesn't mean that the ground isn't going to be swept from underneath me. All it takes is one good theory of consciousness just to flip that whole thing upside down. Yeah, that almost happened today. I don't even want to say what it was.
Sometimes I can barely say it, especially with people that I profoundly respect because I can't help but think, okay, they may be correct. Like I can't help but think. I was telling this to Verveki. Verveki thinks it's a virtue, but I don't think it's a virtue. And I think only people who haven't had their beliefs cruelly turned over, cruelly,
that they think it's a virtue. Yeah. Since starting this journey, do you feel like you've become, from a philosophical sense, let's take it back to a mind body solution approach at this point. From a philosophical sense, do you consider yourself a physicalist, idealist? Where do you stand on this? Do you feel like you have?
Now, I think they both make the same left brain error. So the idealist says all is this one entity. So it's a monist. And then the physicalist is a monist. But what the difference I see them as almost exactly the same, except one will just say what's at the bottom is consciousness, conscious experience, and then the other will say it's physical matter. But one of so one of the ways you can tell what the meaning of a word is, is in its relation to other words. So in other words,
Let's say you have a set of sentences, a set of hundred sentences that use the same word. OK, mask that word now. So put X in place of that word. Is there another word that can go there? Well, hopefully no, if it's unique. Broadly speaking, I think that a physicalist and idealist are the same, except one would say physical reality and the other would say conscious reality.
Which ism do you give most credence to? Panpsychism, idealism, is there anything that you sort of, even though you might not adopt this as your viewpoint, but you find yourself swaying towards it every now and then way more than the others? It's something I call 157ism. So it's not a dualism. It's not a trialism. It's 157ism. What is it? It sounds like a joke, but
Yeah, I'm, I find it very difficult to not be. So have you heard the term mysterious? I actually I'm not even sure if I know the definition, but I think it's just those who just firmly believe that we will never figure out what consciousness is. Why do this podcast? The more I feel like I'm going towards that route, man. It's crazy. Like at this point, yeah, I have absolutely no clue.
So that's what I'm curious to know with your theory of everything search if it's going according to your plan because mine is I feel I'm I'm drawn similarly. I also feel like maybe it's the case that I know and I just don't know that I know and I also feel like many of these questions. So the person who believes themselves to be open will say
Not you, by the way, but there's some there's someone in particular that I'm thinking of that happened recently would say, Well, I don't know. So for me, my my I don't know, lately has been replaced with that's not for me to say. Now, explain what that means. I was at the store, and there was someone who was there's a child misbehaving. And then I wanted to
Like a part of me wants to yell at the kid. And then I stop because I'm like, that's not for me to say. So many parts of reality or parts of questions that are asked of me, I feel like even questions about what is my opinion on so-and-so, it's not for me to say. So Jesus said something similar to this.
when other people are trying to throw the stone he said that's not basically saying that's not for you to say the judge is not you the judge is somewhere else and in lord of the rings it's like i don't know if this was in the book but it was definitely in the movie and it gets me every time proto was saying
Oh man, what I was saying to Gandalf, like it's holding this ring. It's like, I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened. And then it's, it's such a heart wrenching moment because you just know, like there are many times in your life you're like, man, I wish the so-and-so never came to me. I wish, I wish so-and-so never happened. And, and Gandalf says like, so do all who live through such times, but that's not for them to say.
And, or that's not for them to decide something like that. And all we have to do is just decide what we have to do with the time that we have, with the time that's given to us, something like that. That's not for them to say, that's not for you to say. That's something that I find myself relating with more and more.
You've got me thinking of Lord of the Rings now. These books above me, this whole set, it's all just Lord of the Rings, it's all just Tolkien. I love Tolkien, I don't know. It's something about the way he used language and trying to incorporate that into something more and trying to write languages and then transforming that into a book in order to make language a culture. I mean that's just such an epic thing to do.
I just think that any of the times, almost every single time, they use it so sparingly. They used it just the right amount of times in the in the films that Frodo just looks at someone else and he's holding. He's like, I can't do this, Sam. And you just you just your heart breaks and like, you know what that's like. You know what that's like to carry something and feel like you can't do it anymore and you need help. What would you say when you
The things you can say. Do you think they are of free will? Do you have volition in this? What are your thoughts on that topic? Where do you stand? Unless it's not for you to say. Yeah, that may not be for me to say, but I also am not terribly convinced by all the determinist arguments.
I don't, I'm not convinced for a few reasons, which I've written down so they don't, they're not coming to mind currently. But there are a few reasons why I'm not convinced. I also, so I also don't think here's another unconventional thought of mine. I don't think the infinite regress is a problem. And the reason is that in math, you can have higher ordinal numbers. So you can treat an infinity as a number.
So in some sense, you can just say that something happens at infinity. Maybe we have some influence to it. Like there are boundary conditions that we somehow have influence over. Maybe the the fact of, of free will is, is a question about boundary conditions. Maybe there is a relationship between boundary conditions and us. I mean, there, if you live in a deterministic world, there definitely is, because that's all that determines you is to
two facets, the machine that cranks out something, the next state and the state that goes in it, namely the input. So the input and the black box, then you get out the output and the output, which is us is inextricably tied to both. If you had a different machinery, you'd get a different output. If you had a different input, you would get a different output. Yeah. Hmm.
That's something I also feel is going to become another replacement word for consciousness at some point. Foundary condition? No, free will. I think free will at some point, once people figure out certain mechanisms of the way the brain works, how consciousness works or how electromagnetic fields work, it's going to become about how certain processes get together to create this
agency and this agency is going to become the new ian vitale which became consciousness which will become free will i feel like it's going to i feel like at some point there because i've read a few theories lately one in particular because i'm prepping for an interview is is that semi-field theory i was talking about and it's different it's slightly different from penrose and hammeroff i mean they're talking about microtubules they're talking about what you spoke about earlier
but then you've got another bunch of quantum biologists who are talking about consciousness being this electromagnetic field and and it's within this field that we're experiencing what we're experiencing right now and they've studied this in certain mammals they've looked at certain patterns apparently even one of Mike Levin's papers helped support this theory it's called semi-field theory for anyone I'll put a link in the description
c e m i consciousness ah right yeah so consciousness is an electromagnetic information field it's fascinating i must say it's actually quite interesting and in a very basic way because i'm still doing the research i haven't fully gotten in depth with it but the the electromagnetic activity that they're noticing in certain regions of the brain or the way the synapses the neurons are firing the rates at which they're firing there seems to be no correlation between
Synapses firing in this particular region of the brain and a certain thought process. So the neural correlates are not there yet. Whereas the electromagnetic correlates have already been shown. So they're ahead of the neural correlates of consciousness in that sense. This theory is already sort of doing better than your average neural materialist theory of consciousness. They're showing that these patterns
very different neurons that had nothing to do with this type of thought process in one side of the brain or different area of the brain. Yes. Can produce the same sort of thought when the right electromagnetic activity is produced around that region. I don't understand. So are you saying that like one part of the brain say that's part a at the back? Yes, there is some pattern of activity activity that occurs prior to you saying that I consciously made
No, no. So what I'm saying is action. What I'm saying is, let's say certain proteins store certain memories, for example, or certain areas of the brain, you've got certain proteins storing memory. Let's use the hippocampus. Let's just say we're in the hippocampus looking at this specific area, the specific region with specific cells. What they realize is this group of cells separately, their activity doesn't really matter in a sense.
If the same sort of electromagnetic activity occurred there, that if it occurred in a different region of the brain, if that same electromagnetic activity occurs in that different region of the brain, the same sort of thought process or mechanism of movement. So it's no longer about, okay, this region, this type of electrical activity that's occurring is the conscious correlate. It's now the electromagnetic field that's coming out of it, the patterns, the waves of the field,
That is the key to this theory. And then in this theory, what happens is this brings me back to what we were talking about is, is at this point, free will becomes when these fields, you know how troughs and cancel each other out if they're not, if you're not going to sort of go in sync, you're not going to you're going to either build up a word. I've lost my train of thought. But anyway, if at some point,
Everything is not in sync, or they from a physics perspective, if you're talking about waves going together, what is the what is the term? destructive or constructive interference. So if there's constructive interference, that is when you can make active choices. And that becomes what is free will at that point. Those are the most conscious moments. So it's those constructive interference patterns that they notice seem to be the most
If informative, interesting of sorting out agency and all the destructive ones are unconscious actions. So you blinking, you look perhaps taking a sip of your whatever you're drinking in that moment. All these unconscious moments are occurring when there's destructive interference. Every single constructive interference moment is a conscious free will attention awareness moment.
I most likely butchered that theory completely, but no, I understand. I get the gist. Yeah. So that's now that concerns me because that means free will now has become the new consciousness in that sense. I mean, you're you're only conscious when you're making agent will like decisions and we're just pushing it a little further with with something like that. But it's very interesting. I must say, the more I'm reading it, the more I'm
I'm enjoying it. Evan, I have to get going, man. Oh, sorry. I didn't even realize what the time was. Thank you so much. I'm just glad you're staying up so late. I appreciate you doing that for me. No, man, anytime. It's been such a pleasure to chat to you. I've been looking forward to this for a while and it lived up to my expectations. You're such a great thinker. Thanks for doing the work you're doing.
For someone like me watching it, I'm enjoying it. Whatever this project is, the overall goal and this research project, I'm keen to support it and be part of it in any way that you need, man. Thank you, man. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Kurt, before you go, anything you were, you need to tell me off air that you want to quickly mention before you go? Or are you that struck for time?
No, we can talk off air a bit. I just need to use the washroom and then tell my wife that she can come out. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I think that's okay. Thank you to anyone who's who continue to watch until now. Yeah. And if you like, you can watch the theories of everything channel, you can type that in.
I'll definitely put all the links in the description. Thank you so much. You've been such an amazing guest. Thanks for allowing me a chance to vent a little as well. Thanks, man.
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"text": " Hey wait, you look and sound just like me. I am you. I'm the same news programs on Sling TV for less. You mean you're me but for less money? A lot less. I'm all the favorite news programs and more on Sling TV, starting at just $40 a month. Everything great about me but for less money? Which makes me greater, don't you think? Get the news you love and more, for less. Start saving today. Visit Sling.com to see your offer."
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"text": " Kurt, what is a theory of everything? So in the physics sense, it just means that there are some fundamental rules to the universe, usually mathematical. And these are what underpin every other phenomenon that we see. Now, phenomenon in the physical sense, maybe consciousness is not considered to be part of the physical. People put asterisks on that."
},
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"text": " called the hard problem or the mind body problem, which is the hard problems like a rebranding of the mind body problem that somehow he got away with. And everyone applauds it as if it's completely original. But anyhow, many people can think of go there's a game called go or chess. And what we see are castling and we see odd moves here and there. We don't know how does that come about? We see the large scale"
},
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"end_time": 204.002,
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"text": " strategies like okay control the center maybe we see that maybe that's something reducible like that's force f equals ma"
},
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"text": " But then what underlies that you can move upon forward by one or two, but only two in the beginning. So there's all these exceptions. Like at first in the forties or fifties, there was someone named Wu who found that the, that right-handed neutrinos or right-handed particles, cobalt, cobalt 60, I believe was treated differently. There's something called chirality. So left-handed particles and right-handed particles experienced different, there's an asymmetry there."
},
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"end_time": 260.623,
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"text": " And then someone found, okay, well, if you also reverse the charges so that you get antiparticles, then there's a symmetry and it's called CP symmetry. Then 10 years later, they're like, Oh shoot, CP symmetry is violated. So there's all these, it's akin to you move the pawn. We think it only goes up one inch, but then it turns out it can go up to, but actually only when it's the first move. And actually also, you can also take diagonally called the en passant. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 279.633,
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"text": " which is not the same as a regular diagonal trade. But Go is more accurate because Go is simpler and has more variety. And I think the reason why mathematicians or physicists don't speak about Go as an analogy for the physical laws and come back to chess is because"
},
{
"end_time": 308.968,
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"text": " My subtle, my, I think that Go is too akin to send the cellular automata. And then people don't like to give an inch to Stephen Wolfram when you're from the Academy. So they'll stick to chess, because the Academy wants the proposed solutions to toes to come from the Academy. Yeah. That's it's it's a fascinating point that you bring up, because I find that that's"
},
{
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"text": " A particular focus"
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"text": " playing the same game at just different levels. I think of theories of everything sort of a mind body solution is like a mind body solution light. I mean, sorry, I think mind body solution is like a theories of everything light. Kind of like just bring it. What makes you say that? I think that you're approaching it a lot more mathematically and physically. I'm well with physics. And, and because of that undergrad, I know you did an undergrad in physics. So I know that you at least have that a better foundational training in it. In med school, I mean, we did"
},
{
"end_time": 393.985,
"index": 15,
"start_time": 364.189,
"text": " We did physics and chemistry, but not at the level you would want. I mean, I always wanted to be an astrophysicist. That was something I always wanted to do. So I was always jealous of those people who got to really study mathematics and physics a bit deeper at a university level. So I think you're able to take it further because of that. And I'm approaching it from a slightly more psychological, philosophical mind-body perspective. Pretty much trying to do the same thing, though. We're trying to both figure out what is this"
},
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"end_time": 418.422,
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"text": " Ultimate Theory of Everything. I know a part of it for you is trying to also find a worldview and end this quest. What is the German word again? Weltanschauung. Yes, and I know you want to do that. And I think it's pretty similar for me. I did a post-grad, my master's in, one of my theories was on consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 439.326,
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"start_time": 419.258,
"text": " I mean, rest in peace to Daniel Dennett. He was one of my heroes and a huge chunk of that peace and consciousness for my dissertation was focused on his work. His books are all behind me. He was an icon to me. In fact, there was a time where I almost called this podcast Quine and Qualia."
},
{
"end_time": 462.022,
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"start_time": 439.667,
"text": " Were you able to speak to Dan? I chatted to him via email and we never got the chance to finally book that session. So it's kind of disappointing because we only got to chat via email. I watched your episode. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's one of the, he's one of those people I really, I think if I had to put someone on the right at the top of the list to have on this show, it would have been Daniel Dennett. So,"
},
{
"end_time": 489.275,
"index": 19,
"start_time": 462.705,
"text": " It's such a shame and it happened so quickly. I know, it was such a shock to me. I mean, I remember chatting to him via email not too long ago, so it is pretty absurd to me. I've lost my train of thought completely. For me, you mentioned Toe and you asked the question of what is a Toe and that's different to what is the Toe channel. So the Toe channel, the theories of everything channel is a"
},
{
"end_time": 518.302,
"index": 20,
"start_time": 489.667,
"text": " It has the veneer of a podcast, but I view it like a project. And a large part of that project is research. Eventually, it's going to be contributing research. There's some large plans for that, which I'll tell you about off there. That will be announced in a couple months. But anyhow. Yes. So, Growth and Deke had this quote, which said, I'm not"
},
{
"end_time": 547.329,
"index": 21,
"start_time": 518.933,
"text": " I'm not doing research, I'm cultivating myself. So in another perspective is that what Theories of Everything is, is a selfish project of me developing my own Veltan shown and it outwardly takes currently the form of a podcast. I think it's similar for me. This was my opportunity to sort of explore this for myself. It was just to indulge my own curiosity."
},
{
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"text": " with regards to the mind body problem. I was so obsessed with this growing up. What is consciousness? What is reality? And these fundamental questions that I figured the best way to sort of go about it would be to chat to the people who are supposedly the experts in this field. And the more you chat to people, you realize they're all on different pages. There's so many different theories out there. And as close as we get, I often feel that we're still so far away."
},
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"text": " Yeah, initially, I had listed the theories of everything that I well that occurred to me. There was approximately 12. And then I thought, well, man, I'm going to exhaust this in 12 episodes. I thought that it would be. It turns out it's more difficult to find someone who doesn't have a theory of everything, especially in the comments section. Yeah, exactly."
},
{
"end_time": 629.77,
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"start_time": 601.084,
"text": " I find exactly the same problem. I enjoy when people email me their theories. I catalog them, I classify them and I am not like Brian Greene where I turn my nose to people who have theories, who have toes. I think that the innovations will come from the fringes and the academic center will verify it. That's a good way to look at it and I think it's"
},
{
"end_time": 659.121,
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"text": " It's the same for me. I mean, I get emails from some philosophers or professors who want to chat about the mind body problem. And it's always exciting when someone approaches you and has this this theory to offer. But then it means a lot more work because you have to dig deep, read all their papers, try and figure out this whole new brand of thought. And it becomes quite exhausting. And I think that's the reason why I took the break from this podcast. I mean, you're my first guest back in about six months. It's crazy that time flies that"
},
{
"end_time": 685.776,
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"start_time": 659.77,
"text": " No, no way. I literally just focused on work, trying to get my mental health back in order, get back into working out a bit more regularly, trying to get back into my best mental and physical shape. And, and it worked. I mean, I feel a lot better. I am better. And you don't see it. I mean, because I have my channel still quite young. I mean, I feel I do everything, editing,"
},
{
"end_time": 714.735,
"index": 27,
"start_time": 686.493,
"text": " thumbnails all of it so it's everything's done by me this is just this is a self rotating system so the the exhaustion just took its time and working as a full-time doctor to try and get back to this channel that has almost nothing to do with medicine most of the time there are times where I try and bring in and tie in practical significance to it but for the most part this is out of my work so it's like I have to live this almost two lives every day I got a bit too much"
},
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"text": " Well, also, so explain to me, what is it that took its toll on you specifically? I think the amount of because just like you, I'm so obsessed with this topic, man. I love it too much. So when someone tells me a theory or someone proposes some sort of a mind body solution, I mean, a solution to a mind body problem for all those who don't know the term, it's"
},
{
"end_time": 766.374,
"index": 29,
"start_time": 739.991,
"text": " I go in-depth. I try and read all the books. I try and read all the papers. I make notes. I try and ensure that I understand it as best as I can. And sometimes I don't. So I think the amount of effort that goes into it behind the scenes, because people see the final product, of course, and it just looks like a natural conversation. But behind the scenes, I'm just burning out trying to understand things."
},
{
"end_time": 796.152,
"index": 30,
"start_time": 766.937,
"text": " And yeah, it takes its toll on your mental health. And I think the more you understand theories of everything or solutions to the mind body problem, the more it can also affect your mental health from a philosophical perspective. Because psychologically, if you start applying any of the new philosophies you've learned, that has a whole nother spiraling effect. I mean, you can imagine listening to all these theories of everything. How has that impacted the way you see reality? Because I'm pretty sure it will have some sort of a"
},
{
"end_time": 826.254,
"index": 31,
"start_time": 797.244,
"text": " a change or a shift in your mind that can almost de-realize someone. Almost. It's an understatement. So jostled, constantly jostled. For me, it's not the studying that's difficult. It's that my mind is so, or at least used to be, still is, like I have to fight it in a sense. Maybe fight is not the right word, but intend with it. Extremely open."
},
{
"end_time": 838.029,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 828.473,
"text": " And academics tend to use or see that as a virtue. I don't think it's a virtue."
},
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"end_time": 866.493,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 838.882,
"text": " I think it's... Firstly, I don't think they have it. They have this quality because, as you know, there's... People will say that so-and-so doesn't make sense. I don't get that. That's impossible. I went to Paris recently. It's hilarious because in Canada or in the States, and almost anywhere else, when you want something, like you want water, they'll say no. They'll make a rejection of you, a rejection statement."
},
{
"end_time": 896.049,
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"start_time": 866.664,
"text": " But in Paris, they'll say something metaphysical like I'm like, oh, can I just share this with my wife though? It seemed possible It's not possible It's like oh, whoa, that's like deep man. It's not possible The structure of reality is such that you cannot share this meal with your wife. Like you have to order two anyhow Being told what's possible what's not possible and then seriously taking it on It places me"
},
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"text": " in a lubricious place where I'm a straddle and variable and that's not it's not pleasant for me it's a well that was it still is the most difficult part it's one of the reasons why I haven't pursued consciousness studies as much on the channel it's it's yeah it takes its toll yeah also when it comes to the thinking part"
},
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"end_time": 941.817,
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"text": " You mentioned that it's difficult to study for all these people and for me i find the proportional sorry i find it's proportional to how original is the is the thinker so the more original the person the less comprehensible they are and that's because."
},
{
"end_time": 972.449,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 943.166,
"text": " Their self-developed toes are impenetrable and they're unfathomable. They are generally thought of alone and they have to then bounce their own thoughts off of their own walls incessantly and they come up with their own terminology and their own framework. They don't have a society of other people called your peers in academia or your colleagues to then test but also make comprehensible what their framework is."
},
{
"end_time": 1000.589,
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"start_time": 972.756,
"text": " But it doesn't mean it's the same as word salad. That's what some people will say. I find that so find that quite foolish or or well. To me, the true test isn't how difficult is the language to parse the true test is, can you then state someone's theory back to them in a manner that they would agree? So my wife, for instance, has no knowledge in biology or math."
},
{
"end_time": 1021.408,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 1001.971,
"text": " if i'm listening to someone like michael levin who me and you would both say is a fairly clear speaker she would view that as that's just gibberish because there are words like mitochondrial dna expression that are not in her vocabulary or she they are but extremely surface level"
},
{
"end_time": 1048.507,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1021.613,
"text": " And then if you're a high school student and you watch something from a third year, undergraduate level, you have no idea how to disembroil that from something that's at the graduate level or at the PhD level. It all looks like nonsense to you. You don't even know if it's math or computer science or physics. So Seinfeld said this in another way. He said, when you're on stage, someone was asking, doesn't make a difference how large the crowd is. He said, when you're treading water,"
},
{
"end_time": 1077.585,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1050.077,
"text": " It doesn't matter if it's five meters deep or 5000 meters deep. It's the same to you. So in that sense, when something is just mildly incomprehensible, it's almost equivalent to being extremely incomprehensible. There's a threshold. Yes. It's also when you when you have a when you have your own sort of theory of everything, or you already come in with a preconceived my solution to the mind body problem. That's what"
},
{
"end_time": 1098.695,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1077.858,
"text": " I found most intriguing when starting this podcast was how my own theory of consciousness and what I wrote in my own dissertation because I was fundamentally illusionist and that was where I stood in consciousness. Yeah, that's why I wrote so much on Dennett, quoted Keith Frankish quite a bit, a lot of a lot of other philosophers and"
},
{
"end_time": 1128.473,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1099.155,
"text": " And then everything just started changing, consistent, like a week by week new theories of consciousness. When I finally sat down, tried to put myself in the shoe of this philosopher or this thinker, my views just continuously started changing. Now I just call myself ontologically agnostic. I just don't know. I really don't anymore. And when I wrote that dissertation, I remember being very confident that this is the answer. Eczema is unpredictable."
},
{
"end_time": 1161.715,
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"start_time": 1133.183,
"text": " Severe Eczema After an initial 4-month or longer dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintained skin that's still more clear at 1 year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, Lebrichizumab LBKZ, a 250 mg per 2 ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kg with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topical"
},
{
"end_time": 1186.323,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1161.715,
"text": " or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyphs can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to epglyphs. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with epglyphs. Before starting epglyphs, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about epglyphs and visit epglyphs.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979."
},
{
"end_time": 1221.323,
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"text": " I have a feeling that I know, but I don't know that I know. So this phrase, I don't know. Again, that's another statement that I see academics use. And they view that as a virtue again. And I don't know. I don't know how much of it is"
},
{
"end_time": 1249.991,
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"start_time": 1224.121,
"text": " How much of that they mean, and how much of it is just something they have to say, like, well, there are many platitudes one has to say in order to be accepted as something socially genteels, unassailable, genteel and politic, politic, political, sorry. Well, yes, politic, not political."
},
{
"end_time": 1282.415,
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"start_time": 1253.473,
"text": " And the reason I say that is that you have to know something in order to not slip. That's part of partly what it feels like is actually slipping mentally. And they're not slipping. They're walking around and they're fine and they're confident. So I don't know how much of of this uncertainty is professed uncertainty is just feigned self-directed skepticism, but it's it's manufactured. Yeah."
},
{
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"text": " Okay, so something I've come to recently, Weinberg, Steven Weinberg had a statement that said when he was a graduate student, he thought he had to learn every theory. And by the way, that's okay, a hidden project of theories of everything is to learn every theory that's ever been theorized. So Steven Weinberg thought he has to have to know more, more, more, more."
},
{
"end_time": 1335.384,
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"start_time": 1313.66,
"text": " And the reason why I mentioned learn every theory that's ever been theorized is because I thought that I was unique in that. And then Feynman apparently on his blackboard had solve every problem that's ever been solved. And I'm like, Okay, that's cool. But that's a bit too practical. I'm a bit more. I'm a bit more abstract. And not like that untethers me from the ground. So that's a character flaw."
},
{
"end_time": 1365.52,
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"text": " But anyhow, Weinberg said that he used to think that in order to do research, he had to know more and more and more. And once you get to a certain level for him, it was, I don't know, when he was 35 or so, he realized how much he didn't need to know. And that struck me because in some sense, the theories of everything channel is a statement of my own naivety, naivete, that I'm so immature that I think I need to know everything, theories of everything."
},
{
"end_time": 1382.295,
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"start_time": 1367.005,
"text": " And Weinberg can also be thought of as a variation on Socrates. Socrates said, I know now that I know nothing. But Weinberg is like, I know I know now that I don't need to know everything. Hear that sound."
},
{
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"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
},
{
"end_time": 1435.367,
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"start_time": 1409.241,
"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone"
},
{
"end_time": 1461.084,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1435.367,
"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklynin. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash theories, all lowercase."
},
{
"end_time": 1489.565,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1461.084,
"text": " Go to shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify.com slash theories. I'm not at that level yet. I still feel like I need to know and there's plenty of reasons. There's insecurity, there's drive, there's necessity. But yeah, I'm a sedulous Jim Raffertyles. It's all I do."
},
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"text": " starting the podcast did you have what was your go-to toe did you have one no i had the ideas of them i thought loop quantum gravity was a toe because i was so uninformed and i thought maybe string theory would be the major toe that was always the one that i wanted to build up to then there was wolf rums that just came out right at the inception of the channel"
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"text": " How did that impact your health? Because I know you're saying that at some point you tried your best to sort of tread away from the consciousness aspect of it."
},
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"end_time": 1579.377,
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"start_time": 1550.503,
"text": " As it for that very similar reason you you feel like it does it sort of also lifts you off the ground a bit too much that the tethering is almost being completely removed at that point. It's only for that reason that I've backed away from it. That's the only reason and I haven't backed away completely. I've just listened because I can only do how much I can handle which is which which for me is pretty much impossible. I mean, I've premised my entire show on this and it does. What would you say is the difference between the heart problem and the mind body problem?"
},
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"text": " I think it's more a difference of time because the hard problem, there's always been hard problems, various aspects. I mean, Newton had a hard problem, but not dealing with the actual topic of consciousness. So I think for Newton it was gravity. I can't remember exactly which part of it. But in physics philosophy back in time, hard problems were just"
},
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"end_time": 1635.776,
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"text": " Difficult problems to answer. So I do believe that framing the hard problem of consciousness and when I wrote about it, I spoke about the fact that there is technically no hard problem because the real hard problem is trying to answer all the easy problems. What is an emotion? What are thoughts? What are all these other things? I mean, we're struggling. We're trying to answer this fundamentally huge question when we still don't have the answers to all the easy problems."
},
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"text": " So a big part of mine was this obsession of trying to, and I don't really know if I hold this view anymore. This is the tough one, you see. It's trying to talk about my views on these things when I really don't really know what I think about it anymore. But when I wrote about it, I remember fundamentally saying that the explanatory gap, for example, the heart problem, these are just terms used to sort of hide our ignorance."
},
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"text": " And when we don't know how to explain something, it's very easy to give it a definition. And that's something I remember, Denit, really. I think it was in your channel where you might have said that definitions, maybe calm down on the definitions. I'm not sure. Was it in yours? Yeah. And try and hold back on that. And I love the idea of defining concepts. But I sometimes do think when we try to define certain things we don't know, we get stuck trying to figure out things that don't need to be known."
},
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"text": " And because the question was what is the mind-body problem versus the heart problem. The mind-body problem is pretty much how is it possible that the psychological system is sort of manifested or repelled from a biological system. So how are psychological phenomena linked to material phenomena. And it's important to be clear because some people think that materialism and physicalism are the same thing."
},
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"text": " than not really. Just to give you an example, one would be something like semi-field theory with a guy named John Joe McFadden. He thinks that consciousness is an electromagnetic information field. Now that is not material because he looks to matter, meat, as non-material because you can't really talk about fields as a material phenomenon."
},
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"text": " but it is physical in the sense, from the philosophical sense. Now this is where I find definitions start becoming problematic, because they both clearly mean the same thing, but we're using certain keywords and phrases to separate them, but they are the same thing. If you're talking about something physical, you are talking about something material. So to answer your question, I actually don't have an answer for it. The difference between the mind-body problem and the heart problem"
},
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"text": " It's the same thing. We're just reframing the same problem in a different way. What would you say is... Now I know that I don't want to interview you, but I do actually desperately. So let me just take this opportunity. What would you say is an insight that you've gleaned over the past six months that have not come from the channel that you'll use on the channel or you'll carry with you to the channel?"
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"index": 68,
"start_time": 1813.933,
"text": " I think being patient and taking my time. I realized how much time was left open to me. Obviously I finished work. I'm based in South Africa. All my guests, I think I've only had two South Africans on the show. All my guests are from various aspects of the world and all my interviews took place in the afternoons because I have to work full-time job during the day."
},
{
"end_time": 1866.92,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1839.462,
"text": " So I would, I would try my best to fit them in at 1 PM, 1 AM, 2 AM. Um, didn't matter the time. I would, if I wanted to nail down that guest, I would do whatever it took to, to have that conversation. But it just means you just feel like your next day is completely gone. You've wasted sort of weeks and they fly by and these last six months have felt like the longest six months ever because"
},
{
"end_time": 1897.142,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1867.261,
"text": " I was actively engaging with so many things that felt like I was less on autopilot, rather more cognitively engaged with everything around. So this time what I plan to do is just interview less people, far less often, but keep the thing going regularly. I would say that's the main takeaway from that. And so less often means how many per month? Well, I was doing weekly."
},
{
"end_time": 1926.8,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1897.432,
"text": " Right to this. I'm either thinking of going even more than, than myself prior to six months ago. I don't know how you did it. I was doing weekly. So it was new episodes weekly, every, every Friday was posting one. Um, yeah, man, it was tough. It was the, I think, um, luckily now, even right now I've got a bunch of episodes ready and I'm slowly even uploading. I uploaded one the other day just because I've decided to start doing this, but these were prerecorded last year."
},
{
"end_time": 1952.875,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1927.142,
"text": " So I even have some that are left over that I just haven't posted because I just decided I needed a break. And for the new year, let me just start this. I hate New Year's resolutions. I don't really, I don't really do that as a thing, but I figured for this year, let me just try and be mind, body problem free. Well, New Year's resolutions, despite what people say, they work. Yeah, I mean, it definitely for the first week, it clearly worked for me."
},
{
"end_time": 1979.07,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1954.787,
"text": " Six months. It's been a while. Six months is a long time. I'm usually going to open up when if you do want to ask me about that question, I'm going to open up my own because I've never really spoken about it before. But my own dissertation is there's a quote. I mean, this obviously to pay homage to Tenet. I mean, Mr. Guy, I'm going to miss him debate. What were your thoughts chatting to him, by the way?"
},
{
"end_time": 1996.852,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1982.056,
"text": " I was taken aback by that he doesn't care too much about definitions because as a philosopher, as a mathematician or a physicist, your definitions come first, generally speaking."
},
{
"end_time": 2026.698,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1997.312,
"text": " But my understanding of what he was saying was that you don't prematurely get fixated on definitions. One of the reasons would be something like imagine if your definitions are representations of reality that are that don't have truth in in and of themselves, but the reality belongs. Sorry, but the truth belongs to the reality. Like say this cup here. If you were to shine the light from the top, it's a circle from the side. It's a rectangle. OK, from another angle, it's some amorphous blob."
},
{
"end_time": 2044.804,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2027.108,
"text": " If you were to take the circle as the definition of this, well, that would be a bit premature. You wouldn't realize that the rectangle and this are the same. Perhaps you should examine what you're speaking about from multiple angles. You would say the scientific angles, speaking to different types of scientists, speaking to different types of philosophers."
},
{
"end_time": 2069.667,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2045.213,
"text": " and get an understanding of it. Maybe even an intuitive understanding because you never capture it from enough angles to accurately represent it. But you can get a gist inside you. It can motivate you at the bones at your, at your, at your system. I don't like this, this term, but sorry, system one or system two, there's one that's fast and one that's slow. It'll incorporate you at your slow level."
},
{
"end_time": 2079.667,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2072.09,
"text": " other than that i was happy to i was i was extremely interested in peering through his mind i find that illusionism is a"
},
{
"end_time": 2107.346,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2080.452,
"text": " is a misnomer every time i hear an illusion like what i thought illusionism was was someone saying consciousness does not exist but then it turns out what they're saying is consciousness is not what it appears to be and then that just becomes like a trivial statement to me like almost anyone because we all know about illusions like the necker cube or that you can make someone see you well you can take psychedelics and you can see some waviness and"
},
{
"end_time": 2136.886,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2107.346,
"text": " in the world or you can do some visual optical illusion or auditory illusion. So there's the cutaneous rabbit. I don't know if you know about that one where you have someone touch different parts of your arm at different points and at different times. And then somehow it feels like it's a continuous touching. I think that's how it goes. Or that you skip one of the dots. I forgot how that illusion goes, but it just it seems self-evident."
},
{
"end_time": 2168.439,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2139.138,
"text": " How else? Oh, yeah, okay. Well, he I'll tell you something that he told me off air, off air. But that I was looking forward to and then no longer can it happen because of his passing. Yeah. I mean, I've got a quote in front of me. Consciousness is an illusion off the brain, brain for the brain by the brain. That's what"
},
{
"end_time": 2197.039,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2168.695,
"text": " That's one that Dennis once wrote in his book. So when I started mine, I wrote it was on the illusion of consciousness. I started with the Frederic Nietzsche quote. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions. That was how I started this thesis and then went over to say the word illusion comes from old French, from Latin with the original word illudere meaning to mock or to play against."
},
{
"end_time": 2223.473,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2197.534,
"text": " In Middle English, it was translated to mean deception or deceiving. In modern psychiatry, we agree on an illusion being a misinterpretation of our sensory inputs when it does not correspond to reality. Ironically, it is within shared illusory perceptions that we seem to agree on what reality is. This irony"
},
{
"end_time": 2252.807,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2223.763,
"text": " has been thoroughly exposed by phenomena such as change blindness or inattentional blindness, for all those who don't know, where people fail to acknowledge changes in the appearances of even pronounced objects, visual objects in a scene, people's inclination to incorrectly but unknowingly confabulate reasons or recall inaccurate memories in an attempt to explain situations wherein they lack conscious awareness of the actual reason behind their decisions."
},
{
"end_time": 2279.155,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2254.616,
"text": " At some point, are you going to go over your dissertation on the channel? I was thinking about doing that at some point. It was a thought. I thought of making it maybe into some sort of a clip and"
},
{
"end_time": 2308.882,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2279.411,
"text": " Just go into what illusionism actually is from what I meant it to be, because I think there's a big misunderstanding, as you said. People tend to think that they're talking about an illusion of consciousness, but the way Frankish defines it or the way Dennett and them sort of saw it was more, there's an illusion with the actual problem that we're talking about. So the terms that the people are using and talking about, those are the problems where"
},
{
"end_time": 2336.834,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2309.275,
"text": " The illusion occurs. It's not necessarily that we're saying or that, not me anymore, but it's not necessarily that they're saying that this phenomenal experience does not exist. It's more that whatever you're calling it or how you're assessing it is the actual problem. That's where the illusion actually lies, which doesn't answer the question anyway. So we still don't, we still end up with the question of what is consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 2352.79,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2341.596,
"text": " There are two answers that people generally take when it comes to problems like this. One is that people will say, well, the problem is our language."
},
{
"end_time": 2381.51,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2353.114,
"text": " and language can never capture language diminishes what you need to do is you need to meditate or experience then there's the other prong which says yeah we've said that about many phenomenon in the past and actually what was the case was that we needed a more explicated language so that we can dexterously use it and then accurately describe something whereas prior maybe we wouldn't have seen gravity is a as a gravity as a phenomenon or or force or centripetal force or centrifugal force"
},
{
"end_time": 2400.469,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2381.51,
"text": " So where do you land on that debate?"
},
{
"end_time": 2430.469,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2403.148,
"text": " In other words, in other words, is our language delusive and needs and watered down? And so what we need to do is experience directly? Or do we need to explicate further and refine? And that's what's holding us back from this problem, like even saying, what is consciousness, as if consciousness is just one, there are several kinds of consciousness aspect aspectual, sorry, aspectual access, self consciousness, higher order,"
},
{
"end_time": 2459.002,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2430.657,
"text": " Exactly. So, adjectival, etc. Like, it's not clear to me where the problem lies. That's, I think, that's something I often say, which is, I think, linguistically, we do have a limitation to express this. And when you look at ancient cultures like Sanskrit, the number of punctuations, the number of the vocabulary, the diversity of the language in itself, provides you with more information to sort of explicator or generate a theory"
},
{
"end_time": 2488.626,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2459.923,
"text": " That would be better understood by most people. So I think there might be a limitation in what we can achieve with English, for example. I do think this limits us from fundamentally understanding the true nature of reality because, I mean, we're basically stuck with this. If this is your first language. If you look at German, I mean, you're using that word to describe what you want to do with your channel overall. It's because German actually has these words. I mean, there's words for phrases."
},
{
"end_time": 2497.841,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2489.172,
"text": " Beautiful explanations for these complex phenomenon, and I think that's a very key factor when it comes to trying to generate any theory"
},
{
"end_time": 2529.224,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2500.64,
"text": " Well, when it comes to these, when people say that there are different languages that have different concepts than we do, generally, what they mean is not that there are words that are untranslatable, but there are single words that are that don't have a single word correspondence in English, but or or whatever language language, but for for instance, even belt on show, you can just expand that into 12 words in English. I haven't found a word in another language that you couldn't express with more than"
},
{
"end_time": 2540.947,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2530.026,
"text": " what are supposed to be"
},
{
"end_time": 2564.531,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2542.432,
"text": " Untranslatable words like the feeling of the morning sun when it's Dewey out and that's awful in the language of Dubai. I don't know. I'm just making it up. But look, we were able to describe it. We just don't have a single word for that. So are you saying that there's something about English or any language, but in this case English that"
},
{
"end_time": 2596.288,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2566.51,
"text": " You can't even understand the concept from another language. I think it just renders the challenge a lot more harder. It becomes a lot more difficult and requires a lot more effort, work, and then makes it far greater of a challenge overall. How can I best explain it? I'll give you an example. Sorry, you're going to explain, please. Go ahead."
},
{
"end_time": 2625.572,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2597.363,
"text": " Okay, so you could say, look, to create the pyramids of Egypt or a skyscraper in Toronto, in this case where I am, is difficult because of the limitations of our arms and our heart rate and whatever it may be that it boils down to. However, collections of us were able to do it and it just took a certain amount of time and planning. So is it the case? Do you believe that there's something"
},
{
"end_time": 2651.817,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2626.51,
"text": " That's that we won't know because of the limitations of our language in principle, or is it? Hey, actually, we have the legos. It's just it's going to take you 50,000 years to just build up Earth from small legos. But you have the legos, you actually have the pieces currently. That's there's a there's a in physics, there's a debate"
},
{
"end_time": 2682.79,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2653.029,
"text": " where do we know do we have enough of the language of the tools to currently do we actually have the pieces it's more framed in terms of do we have the piece the mysteries the pieces of the puzzle that we just need to put them together or is there something that we're missing when it comes to data some people think that since the 70s actually ever since the the standard model was put together ever since you had su3 this is something eric weinstein says whenever you had su3 you actually had all the pieces together"
},
{
"end_time": 2713.063,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2683.985,
"text": " But other people will phrase it differently. The point is that some will say we're missing some pieces, so we require more. Some will say there's an inherent limitation. Some will say it's just difficult, like building a skyscraper on your own. Well, or even with teams of people, it's a tough endeavor, but it's achievable. It just takes organization and time. So where do you land? I think well, to bring it back to what I wrote about,"
},
{
"end_time": 2743.012,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2713.422,
"text": " Just to give you a nutshell of what I spoke about in my dissertation. I used a lot of Carl Friston's work. A lot of the free energy principles spoke about psychiatry's defense for illusionism as a theory of consciousness. The main premise and the main goal was to showcase the flaws in logic, fallacies in thought, and the issues with predictions, perception, and our own perception of reality in general. And then sort of turn that around to showcase how we will"
},
{
"end_time": 2772.449,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2743.507,
"text": " Fundamentally be unable to solve many problems the mind body problem being the main one but even it would it would have applied back when I wrote it in 2021 to two theories of everything because of these like heuristic adaptations because of these While heuristic adaptations are a big one Evolutionary limitations think about it Kurt the optical window. We can only see Roy G Biff There's this there's one fundamental fact as has a strapped only seeing this"
},
{
"end_time": 2801.254,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2772.671,
"text": " electromagnetic radiation. It's kind of disappointing. I mean, wouldn't you love to see what UV rays really look like if you had this ability to sort of absorb those rays somehow? So these biological limitations and then also poor processing power. I mean, our brains don't do, they don't do the best job at creating a structural confirmed veridical truth for us. They're always playing tricks on us. We're always consistently"
},
{
"end_time": 2829.991,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2802.09,
"text": " Creating these narratives in our head and I think it's because of these cumulative non Some pessimistic as I'll these I think it's these cumulative disappointing features within us that we will not be able to answer the most fundamental questions which is kind of sad because that's what the problem the goal of this podcast is for me and I Just love talking about it, though"
},
{
"end_time": 2853.097,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2830.179,
"text": " And I think that's what makes it selfish in that sense, is that I just want to talk about it and I don't have friends here to do it with. I know how that feels, man. Yes, I know. Similar to you, I can't chat about it to my girlfriend. She's an anesthesiologist. She's an expert with biology in that sense of anesthesiology, physiology. But if I'm talking about Michael Levin's work, it's got nothing to do with her stuff."
},
{
"end_time": 2872.756,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2854.326,
"text": " I wish I had in-person friends to speak to about these topics."
},
{
"end_time": 2893.575,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2872.961,
"text": " I have fantastic people on my WhatsApp and they inform me and then the comment section. One of the reasons why I used to heart every single comment was because I want to read every single comment because they informed me there are not only a criticisms of foolish behaviors or mannerisms of mine that I need to eliminate that I was not self aware enough or"
},
{
"end_time": 2916.032,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2893.575,
"text": " Here's an example. There was a Google AI scientist recently on the channel whose name is Hartmut Neven, and he proposes that"
},
{
"end_time": 2944.053,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2916.578,
"text": " His theory is the opposite of Penrose's. I even described it as that in my introduction, because Penrose and Hameroff would say consciousness is produced from the formation, from the collapse of a superposition down to a single possibility. Hartmut thinks it's the opposite. It's when you have two quantum systems that come together and become entangled. So a superposition forms."
},
{
"end_time": 2963.575,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2944.787,
"text": " Then someone said, firstly, I love that I just love when there's a theory that you're told that it's not only incorrect, but it's fundamentally opposite to what you had thought prior, like it's maximally incorrect. I like that. But then someone pointed out actually, Hartmut poses"
},
{
"end_time": 2992.193,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2963.916,
"text": " proposed, sorry, Hartmut says that his theory is the opposite of Hameroff's, however, Hameroff's involves gravity, because there's something to do with gravity that dictates the time that the quantum superposition collapses, and then, and consciousness is produced as a result of the quantum collapse,"
},
{
"end_time": 3020.572,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 2992.637,
"text": " Whereas in heart much heart consciousness is the same as the super. It was something akin to this. I remember thinking, okay, I like that distinction. Like, I didn't make that distinction myself. I would not have seen that because I don't. I wouldn't have reviewed the episode again, had I not read that comment. So there's several comments that then inform me. And I, yeah, that's one of the ways that there's a toe community. So there's a toe discord, there's a toe subreddit, and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 3051.22,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3021.357,
"text": " That's way more of the community than what I'm about to say. But the one that's a total community that affects me viscerally is that I can, that I take a pick and choose and I'm instilled and inculcated unconsciously by different comments. And it then moves me when I'm interviewing someone else. So it's almost as if by the community's Reddit posts and discord comments and YouTube comments that"
},
{
"end_time": 3055.111,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3051.971,
"text": " They're speaking with some of the people on the channel."
},
{
"end_time": 3084.582,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3055.828,
"text": " This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state."
},
{
"end_time": 3118.268,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3089.121,
"text": " Yeah, okay. Okay. Not the reason I said that was because I was saying that I'm, I'm alone, physically speaking, but I'm not alone when it comes to my WhatsApp groups or in the comment sections. But even though the comment section is more of a one way communication, they're just screaming at me or whispering to me. No, I feel I feel exactly the same way. I think the the comments in the community play a huge role in keeping it going. I mean, I haven't, I just I just don't have the energy to"
},
{
"end_time": 3148.848,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3119.121,
"text": " To put in the work and make those discords and do it. I think I should probably just join one of some of you guys and just at least have the opportunity to explore it. But I think that this podcast has given me that that sort of outlet and and the YouTube community, the comments. The same goes for me. I read I read all of them, try and make sure if anyone says anything important or something that's noteworthy, take it down. If someone wants me to ask someone a question for the next one, try and make sure I take that down as well."
},
{
"end_time": 3171.886,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3149.462,
"text": " I just don't think I put enough effort, probably, which I probably should do a bit more to actively grow that community, but still doesn't change the fact that I'm still sitting at home alone. Yes, yes. One of the reasons why sometimes people are like, hey, who do you want to interview who's dead? And I never had an answer to that until recently. Leonardo da Vinci."
},
{
"end_time": 3185.896,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3172.278,
"text": " And the reason is that there are so many qualities of mine that are similar to his like I'm not saying that I don't mean that with it with an ego like I'm going to paint the Mona Lisa, but I mean personality traits. So he"
},
{
"end_time": 3215.623,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3186.288,
"text": " was self-taught. He was alone almost all the time. He had someone named Salai like an assistant, so maybe that's not entirely the case, but he was solitary. He united disparate fields and was unboundly curious, prideful at the same time, didn't write much about himself, had an ADHD mindset. He wrote backwards, suffered from deep depression, had many unfinished projects, secretive, observational,"
},
{
"end_time": 3238.626,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3217.346,
"text": " And no connections as well. So that's something that I don't know about you. But there are two parts that I think about. And I lament when it comes to toe. One is that I don't have a physical person to speak to regularly. And then the other is that I see other channels who are growing"
},
{
"end_time": 3259.753,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3239.121,
"text": " rapidly and I know how it works when okay if you move to this town say Texas then you're around everyone else who's in Texas and you get invited to dinners and then when you were interviewing someone in person there's a rapport there that could then hook you up with another guest and I've"
},
{
"end_time": 3287.858,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3260.503,
"text": " not had any of these hookups, still don't have any of these connections. And so it's just like, I'm working like a dog, dog, dog, and I'm looking at other people and I'm envious. And it's, I've had to temper this quality myself, but I, if I'm being honest, it's, I feel, I feel left out. I feel like it's like, anyhow,"
},
{
"end_time": 3303.046,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3288.285,
"text": " Man, you're just echoing exactly what I feel. So the parallels are just crazy. Even the fact that I'm in South Africa for me just puts me, I feel like I'm even far away from everything."
},
{
"end_time": 3319.445,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3303.353,
"text": " yes you feel like you're at a disadvantage like you have to push up more weight yeah like you're at the gym and you see people and what counts is how many reps can you do and they're lucky they get the five pound reps and you're just there with your 50 pounds you know how can i compete but nevertheless i have to i just have to"
},
{
"end_time": 3349.172,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3320.469,
"text": " So can I tell you one of my favorite quotes? It's from Leonardo da Vinci. So he said something like, I can I don't want don't want to impose by Oh, please, please go ahead. Okay, this this episode is about you, man. So he said he was speaking to it wasn't a particular person. And I don't know, no one knows why he wrote this. Like, did he write it to? No one thinks he wrote it to someone he wrote to."
},
{
"end_time": 3379.104,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3349.582,
"text": " a fabricated enemy in his head he said something like the context was that he was drawing bodies from corpses and at the time no one dealt with that because why would you need to examine corpses in order to improve your drawing just draw but he saw it as integral because peeling back helped him understand how the muscles were connected and tendons and he would shine different lights at different he would use them to study so he said something like"
},
{
"end_time": 3408.131,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3379.377,
"text": " Like basically saying, like, if you think you're better than me, then this is what the whole rant was. He said, you will perhaps be deterred by your stomach. And if that doesn't get you, then the fear of living in close quarters with quartered corpses inflate flesh will frightful to the hold. And if that doesn't deter you, then you'll lack the good draftsmanship that such a depiction requires. And if you have that, that skill in drawing, then you'll lack the knowledge of perspective"
},
{
"end_time": 3428.029,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3408.677,
"text": " Remember, Da Vinci was one of the first that popularized perspective and perfected it. He said, and if that were so accompanied, then you'd still lack the methods of geometric demonstration, calculating the forces and constraints that muscles have. And if you have that, then you will lack the patience and not be so diligent."
},
{
"end_time": 3458.695,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3428.899,
"text": " So I just love that because he's saying like, look, your emotions will get the better of you or you'll lack the skill or you'll lack the IQ or you'll lack the methods that I've developed. Or even if you have all of that, you won't outwork me. So I feel like that's my internal monologue to my enemies who have no idea that I exist. You start to see the parallels. I mean, is they at what point in your life did you"
},
{
"end_time": 3484.872,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3459.343,
"text": " come across Da Vinci's work and think like, okay, this is a guy I think I see a lot of myself in. It was when Walter Isaacson had that book on him. And then I, I recall resonating with him at the time, especially with that quote, then I forgot about it for five years. And then I just thought about it again in the past year for some reason. And I recall the, I recall what brought me back to him."
},
{
"end_time": 3515.486,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3486.596,
"text": " You were saying that you feel similarly, can you explain? I feel completely, I feel everything you said, I feel like I could echo it and just literally just copy paste it. I often look around in South Africa, try to find similar podcasts, similar types of people, trying to do something similar and zero success, man. I look at the top"
},
{
"end_time": 3543.524,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3515.964,
"text": " Well, the most popular content down here, and I think some of it's ridiculous. Well, to me at least. But for the most part, this type of content isn't that popular. So I look at my audience and I think I told you this via email. The vast majority of my audience are from the US. So US is number one. I think UK is number two."
},
{
"end_time": 3568.592,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3544.326,
"text": " Canada's third, then Australia, then India, then South Africa. What difference does that make? I don't understand because South Africa, well, at least me growing up, I've seen, met so many scholars, so many people, and I know it's such a diverse, beautiful country. So it just confuses me. I don't really understand. Maybe it's just me not promoting the podcast well, or maybe"
},
{
"end_time": 3593.626,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3569.923,
"text": " the type of people, I don't know, I just don't, I don't have a reason to actually, to be honest. Well, what I mean to say is, again, to go back to Seinfeld, if you're treading water, it makes no difference if it's five meters versus 5,000. So for me, if they're not in person, they're all digital in a sense. No, it doesn't make for my audience. It's mostly you us. I think I was trying to touch on that aspect where you said,"
},
{
"end_time": 3620.725,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3594.258,
"text": " You can go in person and create those reports and get invites to these. That's the main thing that I think is affecting me the most about it. If you would like to set up an in-person group? I think honestly just to attend some consciousness conferences to just do the basic stuff. It's not even about the most extravagant"
},
{
"end_time": 3647.073,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3621.237,
"text": " There's a conference called MindFest, which I was fortunate enough to partner with there from Florida Atlantic University."
},
{
"end_time": 3676.237,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3647.756,
"text": " And when you're there, there's so many people going in person, lucky for me, it's a few hours away, less than four hours away. And there is such a different quality. There was even one of the sponsors of that event is this young, ambitious visionary who said, man, Kurt, like I have, he's a student, but he was also the sponsor of the of the event because he has his own ambitions of"
},
{
"end_time": 3685.452,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3676.613,
"text": " He's created an incubator, a thinkubator actually, for artists and philosophers and STEM people."
},
{
"end_time": 3713.456,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3686.323,
"text": " He said, like, man, in my class, he's a neuroscientist. I believe he said something like, like, no one speaks about this. No one speaks like this. No one speaks about these topics like this. When I went to MindFest, it's like I found my people. He felt he's just kept smiling the whole time. It's just felt so alive. So there's something about being around people in person. When I am when I'm fortunate enough to go to some conference and there's like minded people,"
},
{
"end_time": 3744.019,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3714.821,
"text": " It's so darn fun, man. So darn fun. I'm so jealous. I mean, I'm sorry. I just I don't know why I said that. It's like you're telling me about your starving. Then I'm like, like, it's exactly this fantastic KFC. I mean, we have all of that. We have good. We've got enough Burger King, KFC, McDonald's, whatever. We've got all of that. We just don't have any mindfests. I would die to go to some of those. I mean,"
},
{
"end_time": 3769.514,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3744.326,
"text": " There was a Mark Psalms is one of the professors here at UCT. And when he we were talking about how he went to Boston, he went to Mike Levin's lab, got to chill with Kevin Mitchell, all these great thinkers, all of them chilling together, just having these chats. And all I'm thinking is just I'm so jealous. Like, well, I would rather be I would from his cost to you though. Yeah, so he's he's literally UCT is about"
},
{
"end_time": 3799.974,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3770.64,
"text": " 20 kilometers away from me. So okay, so if he could do it, what's what's preventing you? Is it your job? Yeah, it's most money. It's working as a media. Exactly. You can't just quit my job and just go this. If I could fund this podcast of my own without this work, I would I would do it. I would try my best to sort of push in. I would get an editor I would get. I'd get a whole team involved. But I think it's just it's also a big step if I sort of if I make this bigger than it needs to be."
},
{
"end_time": 3830.418,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3800.725,
"text": " Then I have to say at some point decide what I really want to do. Do I want to continue to practice the medicine? And I love medicine. So, um, it's kind of like, I don't want to, I'm not sure where I want to go with it. Okay. Yeah. I can say, I was going to say something, which maybe I could talk to you about all fair, but I can tell you now, maybe you want to keep it on. You can choose to delete it if you like. I'll just delete it. Okay. Okay. So what's stopping you from saying, look,"
},
{
"end_time": 3858.575,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3833.473,
"text": " If I want to do the podcast in the way that I want to do it, hire an editor, I want to travel to go to some place and go to three conferences. Let me tally that up. Okay, that turns out to be $12,000. Okay, let me double that. That's $24,000 just to be safe, completely safe. Can I say to Are you married? Or do you have a girlfriend? girlfriend? Yeah. Can I say to my girlfriend,"
},
{
"end_time": 3887.602,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3859.445,
"text": " Would it be? What do you think if I just took twenty four thousand dollars and one month off just so that some people spend way more and way less time to do their trips of a lifetime and maybe they go back backpacking across Europe, maybe it takes a bit more time. But regardless, it's similar amounts of money in the same within the non margin of error, the same factor factor of 10. So what's preventing you from doing that?"
},
{
"end_time": 3918.951,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3889.275,
"text": " I think first reason I'm saying that is that like, I've never had a job, I've always worked for myself. So money has always been super tight. So that's my but there are also other psychological issues. But when I hear that if someone's a doctor, not that you're making bank, but especially, right. All right. I think that so it's a good question. And my answer is, yeah, I think certain"
},
{
"end_time": 3949.804,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3919.838,
"text": " Family responsibilities, my partner trying to, I mean, trying to be around, be consistent, be present would be one of them. But the main thing, I think the first mistake was I never really monetized this channel at all. So there's zero ads. I don't promote it. I don't do any sort of branding. So my first arrow would be there would be cheap alternatives to me making this better, which I could already start doing. But I just think I love doing this as a hobby so much that the moment I make this work,"
},
{
"end_time": 3977.534,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3950.589,
"text": " Like a source of income and it becomes a job, it becomes work, the less I'm going to enjoy this. And I think that's my biggest fear overall, is if this being my main source of income and my actual job, will I love it the way I do right now? And I think that fear gets me the most. Because I can't, I think... You know Cal Newport? Sorry? Do you know Cal Newport?"
},
{
"end_time": 3997.193,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3979.684,
"text": " So Cal Newport is a computer scientist who wrote a fantastic book. It's a short read called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And it's a quote, that's a quote from Steve Martin, which said, like, I'm going to be so great. They can't continue to ignore me basically."
},
{
"end_time": 4017.773,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 3997.517,
"text": " So he was saying, Alan Newport was saying that it's a myth to try and find your passion, like young people tend to feel like their passions out there and what I need to do is just keep trying different options until I eventually find one that resonates with me. He said, your passion is increased the longer that you invest mentally and cognitively. Sorry, those are the same."
},
{
"end_time": 4038.865,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4018.012,
"text": " mentally and physically and emotionally and monetarily into a job. The more you invest in it, the more that you become near the forefront of your field. And then all of a sudden, you're able to produce research and then you start to start to like it more and more. Now, obviously, that's not a sufficient condition, but it's a necessary condition."
},
{
"end_time": 4061.203,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4040.452,
"text": " So I don't know, for me, I love I absolutely love what I do. I'm upset, like super upset on the days that I can't work. Yeah, I get to spend time with my wife or family or what have you. But I love knowing that okay, today's a day that I get to take a break."
},
{
"end_time": 4071.015,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4062.466,
"text": " Because then it means tomorrow I can go at it even harder. Because I just love going at it. I love it. I never wake up like, oh my gosh, I have to work. But that's me."
},
{
"end_time": 4096.869,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4071.561,
"text": " I just happened to land on something that bangs on all cylinders, and I imagine it would be similar for you, but I'm not suggesting, and again, please take this out of the podcast if this is uncouth or forward. I'm not suggesting for you to dictate your whole life trajectory or abandonment of your doctoral obligations. It's a thought of that many times."
},
{
"end_time": 4114.889,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4097.193,
"text": " I think if I could do this full time, this would be my job. I love this. The same passion that you have, the same energy towards this."
},
{
"end_time": 4144.258,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4115.316,
"text": " these topics and trying to continuously learn how to develop your worldview. If I could do this, I think maybe the first mistake is that I have not monetized and seen sort of any gains from this mentally. Yes. Yeah. Did you not monetize because you wanted to say, look, I do this completely for you all, man. Like I am not in this for anything for myself. This is for the love of learning in and of itself, slash the audience."
},
{
"end_time": 4172.432,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4144.531,
"text": " Yes, and then I noticed that financially that affected me a lot more because then I'm paying for all this editing equipment, all these whatever, they're trying to get all these other things prepped, organizing my trips and holidays around this. My life eventually became so much about this podcast and I had invested so much time and money that I had lost a lot of money from this. And then I started thinking, was that a good idea?"
},
{
"end_time": 4195.879,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4174.07,
"text": " I think one of the worst mindsets or statements to say to someone is when someone's advertising a book on a podcast and they're like, Oh, look at this, this is a grifter. They're just there to sell their book. And I don't like that because number one, a book takes"
},
{
"end_time": 4221.323,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4196.118,
"text": " thousands of hours to write and unless you've written a book, you have no idea how little the returns are. So it turns out you're making you're making less than minimum wage. Second, even if they make some money from their book, wouldn't you want that to be something that people aspire like shouldn't that be an aspiration to make money doing what you love? And when people make statements like oh my gosh, they're just promoting their movie or what have you."
},
{
"end_time": 4239.172,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4221.544,
"text": " That's like, they loved making that movie. They loved writing that book. Why shouldn't they be renewed? Why shouldn't there be remuneration? Yeah, so a part of the the this enveloping mindset that that encircles us"
},
{
"end_time": 4268.319,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4239.77,
"text": " is, well, we have to be pure for our art. And I had that and I have that as well, because inside I'm an artist. I was speaking to someone named Samuel Andreyev, who has a YouTube channel, which I recommend you check out. I recommend the people who are listening to check out on music. And he was telling me, Kurt, I was saying like, what's holding musicians back? Because I thought it would just be unbridled creativity or they need government grants. And he was saying, no, no, no."
},
{
"end_time": 4296.152,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4269.428,
"text": " As a musician, the grant system has done more harm than good. I'm like, how can, how can that be? He said, people will say what they want to do is what Leonardo da Vinci did or what Beethoven did or Mozart did, et cetera. But all of those examples of the past, they actually were doing what they were doing for money. And when you have something where you're doing it for money, not only for money,"
},
{
"end_time": 4326.032,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4296.561,
"text": " By the way, that's there's a complete difference between only for you should never do anything only for money. That's that's that's I don't. Oh, gosh. I agree with it. You said it untethers you from the market. So you go off in this avant-garde abstract realm. Not that there's anything wrong with avant-garde art, but doesn't sell at least not doesn't make you money, doesn't make you happy, doesn't make other people happy. Maybe it makes you feel like you're doing something out of your pure creativity."
},
{
"end_time": 4353.66,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4327.193,
"text": " And I thought that was such a fascinating perspective, because I remember Leonardo da Vinci even had a note to the Medici. So he was trying to get hired by the Medici's. He said, in that note, he said, Look, what I will do for you is I will architect your cities, I could create railways and or not railways railroads, I can create roads and aqua force and I'm sorry, aqua systems, systems of water, maybe they're called aqua force."
},
{
"end_time": 4382.039,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4354.138,
"text": " weapons of war weapons of war was a large one. He had this list of maybe 20 items number number 20. And I also draw paintings or I also paint. Like that's what we know him for. But he sold that last because he needed money. Yeah. No, so I'm not saying that I agree with Sam 100% that that the grant system is has done more harm. And also I'm not saying I don't think I'm representing his views correctly. So please just watch that podcast."
},
{
"end_time": 4408.285,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4382.432,
"text": " But the sentiment behind it is one that that I agree with. There's something about being tethered to the market forces. You don't have to be completely tethered. That's a bit that's that's a going askew. But being tethered that makes you enjoy what you're doing more. It actually grounds you in the same way. That's a that's a great way of thinking about it. In the same way, Carl Jung said was asked, Why did Nietzsche go mad?"
},
{
"end_time": 4432.381,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4408.951,
"text": " He said he wasn't grounded. Like I, Carl, I'm dealing with similar thoughts, but I have my patience. I have my gardening. I have something physical that grounds me. Whereas Nietzsche didn't. I have my wife. That's what Jung said. So in some way, you can think of this as you want your creativity to be met with groundedness."
},
{
"end_time": 4461.766,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4433.012,
"text": " And part of that grounding is, well, I need other people to like it enough that they're voluntarily willing to give something from their pocket to me. I mean, this is exactly why. To come back to the podcast after six months, I wanted you to be my first guest man. I had a feeling you'd motivate me and inspire me to sort of continue this because I think I needed it, man. I was I was I was hesitant, not not super keen."
},
{
"end_time": 4490.06,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4462.261,
"text": " but I knew chatting to you would help and there's, just to sort of explain how much I love this topic, this niche, but when I finished medical, I did an M full in the Master in Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health just because I wanted to find a way to find a medical way to write about consciousness. I just slowly warped that into a way to do a master's degree in consciousness, just to write an essay on consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 4514.104,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4490.862,
"text": " Mention Daniel Dennett as many times as possible. Thank a few philosophers on the way. Just to chat to some of these people. That's also how we sort of chatted via email at some point as well. But that was so unnecessary. I spent money on university fees. I did all these things. Worked to pay off those fees just to write a bunch of essays."
},
{
"end_time": 4538.473,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4514.497,
"text": " unconsciousness, just so that it's somehow tied into my work. It was it was completely selfish. It had nothing to do with being an academic. It was more just I just want to I want to sort of write and progress these ideas with these people and be in this realm. So I think maybe you're right. Maybe it's something I should take more seriously."
},
{
"end_time": 4557.227,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4540.35,
"text": " Well, there's nothing wrong with just monetizing what what you have the worst people go through is a 30 second ad. Within five seconds, they can skip it if they like and it's like three cents to you or two cents or whatever it is, but that that accumulates. And then that's something that pays for your"
},
{
"end_time": 4586.937,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4557.875,
"text": " Hopefully that pays for your subscription software. Like it's not going to pay for rent or YouTube. Oh, and something else people don't know is that what bothers me so much is that the topics that other people talk about when they get many views, not only do the views that they get because they're speaking with famous guests, which brings them other famous guests. And that's something that I've that I've limited myself. I've been enveloped myself and said, no, I'm I'm going to stick to these"
},
{
"end_time": 4617.705,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4588.695,
"text": " Stick to my niche of physics, consciousness, UFOs, logic, philosophy, biology. I know that sounds like it. I just said it's a niche and I listed like five disparate fields. But I mean, it's not self development. It's not I'm not speaking to Andrew Huberman and whoever else is in that ilk. But if I was to that opens the door to many others and you get all these views and the health scene and the economic scene, the finance scene,"
},
{
"end_time": 4645.828,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4618.234,
"text": " the blockchain bitcoin scene the amount that you make from youtube ad revenue is like three times more than what you make in the science scene the science scene is one of the lowest and so then it bothers me because i see other people not only getting far more views for far less work i know because i've spoken to some of them and i know how little they study for instance i don't want to spoil anything but i was speaking to"
},
{
"end_time": 4676.203,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4646.681,
"text": " someone one of the big wigs millions of subscribers off air and then he was saying to me that he has some interview in about in approximately one and a half hours and then I said okay so how long have you studied for her it was a woman guest he said oh no I'm just gonna study right now I'm just gonna review some notes like make some notes right now I'm like man you're gonna study an hour before the interview for the interview and that's gonna do that's gonna get five times the numbers than if I was to interview the person yeah"
},
{
"end_time": 4706.425,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4676.561,
"text": " because I would go more in depth, etc. But also, this is just me making excuses. So I have to be honest about that. Like, partly, this is me making excuses for myself. Anyhow, then the way the manner in which this person would speak to the guests, the types of questions would not only get more views, but it would elicit more YouTube ad revenue. So it's like, it's a double whammy of desire in me to be like them, or to have some quality like them, not to be them."
},
{
"end_time": 4735.879,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4706.903,
"text": " Yeah, I think we're the same in that we're not sacrificing necessarily, because I mean, the guests, I mean, on that note, we've had so many, it's like revolving door with guests, our guests have been, yeah, parallels are crazy. I mean, Lawrence Krauss, Avi Loeb, Donald Hoffman, Michael Levin, there's so many we could go through. Did you speak to Anand Vaidya? Yeah, I did. How did you find out about Anand? It was from your channel."
},
{
"end_time": 4759.445,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4736.681,
"text": " When I saw it, I was super keen. Yeah, yeah. Anand is... The funny thing about that was... Hidden gem. The funny thing about that was you, I think you posted a lecture on him when I saw that. Yes. Then I had done an interview with him and I think you'd done an interview with him almost around the same time. Like one week. I think so because both of those episodes went up."
},
{
"end_time": 4787.142,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4760.009,
"text": " Around the same time and I was like, oh man, I hope good. I mean, I hope good doesn't feel like I just stole his guest. No, no, no. I did wonder how did you find out about him? And I was from your, you posted a lecture and I watched it and I thought this is actually quite intriguing. I would love to speak to this guy. Um, but that's the thing about this community, this community that we sort of have is that, I mean, I look to your channel for inspiration, for, for ways to make mine better, for, for ideas, creative,"
},
{
"end_time": 4814.48,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4787.381,
"text": " I don't want to copy paste it though. And I even tell some guests I say, I don't really want to cover this because you've covered it with Kurt. And I say if you want to see that, maybe check out his podcast. Oh, well, that's like something else that that tugs at my heart and not in a not in the positive sense is when I see these other larger podcasters reference toe without referencing toe, like they'll say, well, you said this on a podcast,"
},
{
"end_time": 4837.295,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4815.009,
"text": " Then I'm thinking, I know who you're speaking about, at least give me an olive branch. You have such a massive audience, it would mean everything to me. It means so much if you've referenced my name. I remember even starting one with Bernardo. I think I started by asking him about the debate he had with Susan and how awkward that sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 4866.852,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4837.756,
"text": " Because this is the community I'm in. Of course I'm going to see your podcast. This is part of my life. I'm going to watch it. So that's how we started our conversation. I think it was in around two or three. I can't remember, but one of them. And then I even said, because at some point I thought about doing what you call theolocutions. But I said, no, I'm going to leave that to Kurt. Because a couple of guests of mine asked me if we could do that. And I said,"
},
{
"end_time": 4897.244,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4867.244,
"text": " Let's keep, let's leave that for Kurt. I mean, I love the way he does that. That's something, even though we're not the same entity, we have nothing to do with each other. There's enough room for the both of us. I don't think I'd even need, I'm nowhere close to your, your level at this point, but I just like the way you do it. And I prefer watching you do that. And, and because I would love to see you do Theo locutions, man. Yeah, no, but because we have such, you should consider that for this season. Yeah, maybe we'll see, but I love the way you do it. That's the thing. It's you're a good moderator."
},
{
"end_time": 4924.565,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4898.046,
"text": " Hola, Miami! When's the last time you've been in Burlington? We've updated, organized and added fresh fashion. See for yourself Friday, November 14th to Sunday, November 16th at our Big Deal event. You can enter for a chance to win free wawa gas for a year, plus more surprises in your Burlington. Miami, that means so many ways and days to save. Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow! No purchase necessary. Visit bigdealevent.com for more details."
},
{
"end_time": 4956.63,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4929.104,
"text": " Yeah, what do you have rules for your podcast? Like, you know how there are different, there's the 10 commandments. Okay, great. And then there's the 12 rules for life. Yeah, then there's the top five things you should know about. So whatever it may be, do you have some list somewhere, maybe internally, maybe it's not formalized of your, your dos and don'ts for the podcast? I think dues,"
},
{
"end_time": 4984.974,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 4957.79,
"text": " be always to know the guests work thoroughly. Maybe if I don't clearly understand it to make sure during that conversation, the goal would be to understand it. I think I do have some rules. One rule is it's never a debate. It's never trying to pin down where they're wrong. Even if I disagree, no matter how much I disagree. In fact, the more I disagree, the better because I try my best to ask even more open questions to"
},
{
"end_time": 5008.899,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 4985.572,
"text": " Further my understanding of what they're talking about. So that's I think the biggest rule and the rule I follow the most strictly is even if they're actively saying something I disagree with to not bring it up in that moment at all, but ask a further leading question that will allow them to explain what perhaps I'm not understanding or what I think the viewer might not understand."
},
{
"end_time": 5028.848,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5010.469,
"text": " Do you"
},
{
"end_time": 5049.326,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5029.599,
"text": " push back as I'm not a journalist to understand because I'm a researcher. So some people would say that you're not asking a hard question here and there, not here and there, but over here or over there. And generally speaking, I find that the criticism of hard question"
},
{
"end_time": 5077.398,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5050.435,
"text": " comes from the perspective of you didn't ask a question that undermines the guest's credibility. And for me, a hard question probably for you is, is one that is it's difficult to answer because it's, it has some mathematical or physical implications. So the hard question would be, does the Zariski topology have an application in physics or"
},
{
"end_time": 5110.299,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5080.384,
"text": " okay well say that then someone would think okay i don't know i i need to think about if we're on well whatever the point is that it's not you said in 2002 that that you had dinner with this person but then later you actually revised that and said that it was this person and it wasn't dinner it was lunch and and how do you and where's your your contract with this because your content when i looked it up your contract said"
},
{
"end_time": 5136.51,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5110.572,
"text": " Absolutely. I think that respect for the guest and the approach that you take with them is important because that warm environment actually does allow them to express themselves even clearer. That allows me to then understand their point of view a little better."
},
{
"end_time": 5167.79,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5138.524,
"text": " And that's it's also an interrogation technique. Not that we're interrogating, but someone is willing to be more revelatory, the more they trust you, the more warm some people call this a safe space, but not that safe space means that all that the kid gloves are on. That's not what safe space means. But it means that in this example, it means that at least for me, the way that I see it is that I'm"
},
{
"end_time": 5194.753,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5169.701,
"text": " I'm not attempting to undermine them. I'm trying to see how is it? Oh, yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to understand, I'm trying to get to their worldview. So I, I feel prepared for a podcast, personally, maybe this is a rule, when I'm able to emulate what the guest will say to any question that I can pose in my head, can I have their software running in my brain, such that I can ask them a question from left field, and I can"
},
{
"end_time": 5223.183,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5196.613,
"text": " I can emulate a response and it would approximate what they would actually say. Then I feel like, okay, I can do this interview. Another rule, a subtle, well, okay. And another rule. And well, I'll tell you this off air because I I'll tell you this offer. Okay, from well, I'm more excited for the off air chat than anything else. But"
},
{
"end_time": 5251.22,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5223.473,
"text": " That's something else that I share with Leonardo da Vinci is that I'm super secretive for no reason. When you hear it, you'll be like, why didn't you just say that on air? I think we're similar in that way. I think there's a lot because I'm obviously not the one being interviewed, but I think we're very similar in that regard. And I completely understand it. And I think when you do say it, I'll probably feel like maybe I would have kept that to myself too. I don't know. But"
},
{
"end_time": 5281.271,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5251.596,
"text": " Of all the guests that you've had so far, have you had any theories of everything or conversations that stand out and really, really gripped you to your core? I know that's a tough question. No, I almost always enjoy my past three interviews more than any of the other interviews. Whenever someone says, what's your favorite interview, it's one of the past three."
},
{
"end_time": 5310.265,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5281.681,
"text": " So now I'm thinking, who did I recently interview? John Vervecki, Sam Vaknin on narcissism, which was extremely interesting. I'll tell you an insight. Narcissists and psychotics have a similar failure in that they can't distinguish between what's external and what's internal. The difference between them is that the narcissist, so the psychotic places the emphasis on the external."
},
{
"end_time": 5333.729,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5310.913,
"text": " in other words something will be generated internally like a thought and then they'll hear it as if it came from the external okay okay so they they think everything is well okay then the narcissist would take the external to the internal so an example that came up in the interview was when someone has an idea they tell it to you you say"
},
{
"end_time": 5363.422,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5333.951,
"text": " You don't like the idea. Two weeks later, you come up with the same exact idea, or you think you came up with it. I see. And you attribute all of that to you. That is super interesting. I never thought of psychotics and narcissists as being similar, nor would I have framed it in external versus internal. But have you ever heard of the dark triad? Yes. Yeah, because that's the Machiavellianism sort of psychopath slash narcissist."
},
{
"end_time": 5374.701,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5363.848,
"text": " those three features just create this deadly sort of human being."
},
{
"end_time": 5404.957,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5375.879,
"text": " Well, he was so psychopaths are different than psychotics. Yes, yes. I'm sure you know, I'm sure you know. So but also he was saying he doesn't like the term psychopath or sociopath. The reason is that he doesn't think that's a mental illness. Narcissists, he thinks is a mental illness. But sociopaths is more cultural, like they have qualities that we don't like as a culture. And when you look at them, they're just on like look at them on some some value of say, willingness to engage in thievery."
},
{
"end_time": 5432.193,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5405.35,
"text": " Okay, let's just say that there's a spectrum of people. Most people are somewhat, sometimes willing to engage. Some people are never willing to engage. Some people are as long as it gets them to their goal and they can get away with it or are going to do so. So there's a spectrum. He would say that psychotics slash sociopaths are just on the extreme end of a spectrum, but it's not as if it's a different sort. It's just of a different degree."
},
{
"end_time": 5461.578,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5432.824,
"text": " You mean psychopaths slash sociopaths, not psychotics. Yes. Okay, if I Yeah, I misspoke. So sociopaths and psych, and also he said that there's no distinction between them clinically. Oh, he said sociopaths is more of the this way he said as one of them is what's used in one of them is used clinically and the other isn't. But colloquially, they actually mean the same. Yeah, I mean,"
},
{
"end_time": 5485.657,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5461.834,
"text": " Colloquially, we often tend to think of them as similar, but in general, the psychopath tends to lack sort of insight and empathy altogether completely. He can sort of kill you, murder you, eat you right there, leave you lying on the floor. Whereas the sociopath would do it and then sort of consider what was done, think about it and still kind of get away with it and move on."
},
{
"end_time": 5515.367,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5486.015,
"text": " Actively still do it though, but we'll think about it We'll have the thought process that goes into the fact that he did something wrong or she or whoever But they have some insight into what has happened there. So that's more of the sociopathic type of behavior clinically Whereas a psychopath just does not know that they've just so he's not he does not know he's abused this person or she's abused this man, whatever the there's no sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 5545.896,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5516.118,
"text": " cognitive engagement with this. But again, I'm a psychologist, so just having a medical degree doesn't make everything I say about it. I often disclaim, that's a rule for me, is to often have these disclaimers on the podcast. This is purely for educational purposes only. This is nothing medical. Not medical advice, don't refuse it with it. Because the main thing is because I'm a doctor, I get stuck because I'm trying to have philosophical discussions and sometimes it takes us into these"
},
{
"end_time": 5575.401,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5546.203,
"text": " These weird realms. I mean, if you're talking about, let's say, Tom Campbell, we've both interviewed him. And if he's talking about something like reincarnation and love and death can mean this. Some people really can misinterpret those things. I mean, if I kill myself now, that means I could possibly link up consciously with something or someone else. I mean, I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth, but that could be mistaken for medical advice. And some patients will possibly ask,"
},
{
"end_time": 5605.282,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5576.34,
"text": " about that. So I've made it clear that this is a philosophy podcast, nothing to do with medicine, absolutely zero to do with medicine. And that's even why I try not to touch on too much practical aspects of it as well, just in case. So a rule of mine, which I can say, is if a thought occurs to me in the moment when I'm speaking to a guest, and this also carries with me in through my life. So this is not"
},
{
"end_time": 5635.794,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5605.947,
"text": " This is one of the Kurt rules for life. I have a list of Kurt rules for life that I'm not allowed to hang on to the thought so that I can then use it, not because I'm trying to be present or, or, or in the moment or what have you, but because then it's a thought that I feel like is clever and I'm trying to one one up someone. So I have to abandon that thought if it no longer applies in 10 seconds. So I can't hold onto it and be like, so"
},
{
"end_time": 5662.005,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5637.039,
"text": " five minutes ago, you said so and so, like unless that occurs to me in the moment right then and there, I'm not allowed to hold on to it, I have to abandon it. That's a pretty cool rule. And if I if I do then re bring it up, I have to then say it in different words, drastically different words than I originally thought of it. And then that one comes to my my need slash"
},
{
"end_time": 5693.285,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5663.319,
"text": " Which guests do you feel gave you the most exercise?"
},
{
"end_time": 5723.217,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5693.746,
"text": " Oh, I've given you the hardest workout if you if we're to keep it along that line. OK, is it all right if I just have a quick browse over the? Yeah, go ahead. The guest list. I mean, you've got so many at this point, it's it's incredible. How's your schedule at this point, Kurt? Do you post? Are you posting full episodes by we once a week now, once a week? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 5734.735,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5724.531,
"text": " At least once a week. So it's 1.5 times a week, because sometimes it's too consistently two per week, but then it's at least once a week. Okay, let's see."
},
{
"end_time": 5758.66,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5748.285,
"text": " Sorry, you may need to cut as I go through this. It's fine as you go through it. I mean, I noticed you've been exploring the short eclipse now. How's that been going?"
},
{
"end_time": 5789.104,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 5760.299,
"text": " It's going well. I have someone else who's in charge of that. So the clip titles and the thumbnails themselves, I don't do, I have say like if I disagree vehemently, I'll let the person know, but I try to take my hands off of it. I'm a perfectionist in many ways and I need to temper that quality. Yeah, no, I feel you. I think that's probably another reason why I haven't let someone take over to do these things. That's probably because of the same"
},
{
"end_time": 5816.988,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 5790.009,
"text": " bad habit, I would say. Funny thing. So Jonathan Gerrard would be one. Now, not because I'm trying to stay on my toes, but because it's such a the rapport was so great that it was like doing ping pong, where some guests are steam rollers. Like, that's the internal word I have for them, where you ask them one question, they'll go on for 20 minutes."
},
{
"end_time": 5839.582,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 5819.206,
"text": " in some ways we like that as podcasters it makes our lives easier the audience can't accuse you of trying to interject your own thoughts too often and it's less editing as well so i have some rules of editing like there's there's there's never a reason"
},
{
"end_time": 5852.654,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 5840.111,
"text": " You never need a reason to cut to cut to the guest, but you always need a reason to cut to yourself. So I try to show myself as as as minimum minimal as possible and not have it on"
},
{
"end_time": 5880.162,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 5853.183,
"text": " The weird thing about this is I swear legitimately today almost did that because I had"
},
{
"end_time": 5903.848,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 5880.606,
"text": " But obviously I have just one camera, but today I thought, let me just do this. And what's the view called? Let me just check this thing again. What is that view called? Speaker view. Just to get me out of it and let the guest speak. I can make clips out of that. I can do whatever I want. And I thought I was only thinking about that today, which is crazy. Yeah, plenty of parallels, man."
},
{
"end_time": 5933.797,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 5904.48,
"text": " So that's exactly what I've been thinking of doing because I also do want this this interview I've spoken the most out of all my interviews so I apologize firstly to all the audience but I'll try and edit most of my parts out because this is meant to be about you but yeah this is the most I've actually spoken in my on my podcast I think. Well I'm much more interested in asking questions than"
},
{
"end_time": 5961.186,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 5934.104,
"text": " and speaking. So if the goal of this is to get to know Kurt, then in large part, you get to know Kurt by observing Kurt ask questions and hearing what his thoughts are to them. You were saying the guess you continue. Oh, I don't recall now. Okay, that's fine. Okay, something subtle that I do is that if you were to actually examine the pixels of"
},
{
"end_time": 5989.582,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 5962.858,
"text": " I'm on the left usually and the guest is on the right. Is that my I'm a few pixels to the left. So the guest is slightly larger. And that's because I noticed that in the beginning, I was slightly larger. And so I did that unconsciously. And I knew that that was me saying, maybe I didn't, I don't know, but it could be me thinking, I'm more important than the guest. And so to counteract that,"
},
{
"end_time": 6011.937,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 5990.196,
"text": " The"
},
{
"end_time": 6032.295,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 6012.398,
"text": " That's an important point. I mean, would you do you feel that? Because I noticed you do the dual frames and then at some point you do go to single frames as well. There's so many parts of this podcast, I'm not going to know whether we should we should share or not. Should we keep this for after? Maybe we should keep this one for later, because that's something I'm curious to know just offhand anyway."
},
{
"end_time": 6059.411,
"index": 231,
"start_time": 6033.217,
"text": " Sure. Like what makes us decide when to change angles? There's a few questions, but I'll touch on that afterwards. Let's let's maybe just go on to the normal podcast conversation for now. Sure. Tell me Kurt, you've become so obsessed to toes at this point. And what what insights do you have for for people like who watch the channel people like me? What have you gathered?"
},
{
"end_time": 6089.718,
"index": 232,
"start_time": 6059.804,
"text": " So, I have my own"
},
{
"end_time": 6121.664,
"index": 233,
"start_time": 6096.493,
"text": " There are different definitions of wisdom. So apparently, back prior to the Axial Age, I believe there was something called the continuous cosmos, it may be during the Axial Age, I'm not entirely sure, but around that era. And wisdom was how do you fit into the power structures that exist? So it was about power. And apparently, we carry this carry this over with our term prudence."
},
{
"end_time": 6146.254,
"index": 234,
"start_time": 6123.933,
"text": " Afterward it became about how do you see through the illusion, so that comes around Plato. There's this world is somehow illusory, there's somehow a truer world, a two-world model. Someone said a professor of philosophy was putting forward a proposal."
},
{
"end_time": 6176.954,
"index": 235,
"start_time": 6147.056,
"text": " They said, look, there are some things, some statements that you believe and you know, and you need arguments for. So you'll believe it if there are good arguments. There are some statements you will believe if there are no good, even if there are in the absence of arguments, like you'll just believe it. Now, if there are arguments against it, then that's something different. And third, there are statements where you don't believe nor disbelieve. So you just put question marks around. I'll give you some examples."
},
{
"end_time": 6204.923,
"index": 236,
"start_time": 6180.282,
"text": " Maybe you believe that the earth goes around the sun because they're good, good arguments for it. Okay, so that's an example of one that you need good arguments for. Another would be another an example of something that you don't necessarily need good arguments for is that you exist, or other people exist. You'll just say, Okay, that's something that I can't provide a good argument for. But I will take that."
},
{
"end_time": 6233.148,
"index": 237,
"start_time": 6206.613,
"text": " Then number three is, well, there's plenty, you don't care how many rings there are of Saturn that you put question marks around. He said, wisdom is to know what statements go into each category. I thought that's super interesting. I have a tentative definition of wisdom. This goes back to earlier, we were speaking about"
},
{
"end_time": 6262.244,
"index": 238,
"start_time": 6235.179,
"text": " Us as podcasters, people as intellectuals, academics as members of the academy, they see openness as a virtue. And I critique that because I don't believe it's actual true openness. But anyhow, I think wisdom is what if scenarios exist that you used to entertain that you would no longer?"
},
{
"end_time": 6293.507,
"index": 239,
"start_time": 6266.51,
"text": " We think that in order to be truly open, truly an intellectual, truly a contender on the cognitive stage, you need to think anything is possible, any what-if scenario. I think you need to go through a period of that, so this doesn't apply to just people who are fundamentalists from birth."
},
{
"end_time": 6320.367,
"index": 240,
"start_time": 6295.23,
"text": " I think you need to go through a period of radical openness. And then the wisdom is which, which doors do you close? And so the quality of your what if scenarios that you're not willing to entertain are what determine your wisdom. Do you feel like you've been applying that to your choosing of guests for the podcast?"
},
{
"end_time": 6354.787,
"index": 241,
"start_time": 6325.026,
"text": " Or are you still open to having the discourse and showcase the research? I don't apply it at a conscious level. So my criteria for choosing guests is in large part 95%, if not 100%. Am I interested in this? No, it's 95, 90%. Am I interested in this? Now that interest is influenced by something that's unconscious, which is, which are the what if scenarios that I'm not willing to entertain that I'm unaware of? Sure."
},
{
"end_time": 6381.681,
"index": 242,
"start_time": 6355.128,
"text": " And the other 10% is just strategic. So for instance, if I want to understand something about string theory, well, then understanding conformal field theory would help. So who's a conformal field theorist that I can interview in and of themselves that would take me up to string theory, something like that. So again, I say this often that toe is like the the guest order matters for me because I'm researching."
},
{
"end_time": 6410.691,
"index": 243,
"start_time": 6382.125,
"text": " I think of where do I want to go? What are the steps along the way that are necessary preconditions or prerequisites in the university sense? With that being said, I mean, the points that you were going to tell me about after the show, I'm not super keen to hear about this. It's on my mind. I'm going to have a lot of trouble editing this podcast, I can tell you that. I apologize. This one's going to be a tough one. What do you think?"
},
{
"end_time": 6438.592,
"index": 244,
"start_time": 6411.203,
"text": " What have you noticed between the differences between between the East and the West with regards to their approach to theories of everything? Have you seen any difference? Yeah, I see what I'm told from the West about the East, which is different than what the East is. So the East and this comes from Adnan and then sorry,"
},
{
"end_time": 6467.517,
"index": 245,
"start_time": 6440.623,
"text": " I thought that the West is analytical, emphasis on logic, mathematics, reason, rationality, quote unquote, and then the East is more experiential, and airy fairy or loosey goosey, but more in touch with the present moment."
},
{
"end_time": 6492.142,
"index": 246,
"start_time": 6469.309,
"text": " adnan said no materialism is actually more prevalent in the east than idealism and i had no idea then he told me about the history that the indian prime minister made idealism the pizza of india meaning that in italy when we think of that it's we think of pizza we just well not if you're"
},
{
"end_time": 6511.459,
"index": 247,
"start_time": 6492.5,
"text": " cultured enough and erudite etc but as a stereotype you think of pizza when you think of italy like i can't wait to try the pizza there must be the best in the world and he said that's what was the indian prime minister made it an effort"
},
{
"end_time": 6540.35,
"index": 248,
"start_time": 6512.432,
"text": " A conscious effort to make to promulgate ideal idealism, not only to the West, but to make the West think of idealism when they think of the East and vice versa or India. I think that the non dualist and the. The physical is make the same error of. A left a left brained error."
},
{
"end_time": 6569.155,
"index": 249,
"start_time": 6541.698,
"text": " And the non-dualist is unaware of it. So the non-dualist believes that they're like, no, it's creativity, it's originality, it's embracing, it has a hugging quality, and that must be the right brain. But no, the left brain in Ian McGillgrist's work is what's responsible for abstraction and seeing two objects as the same."
},
{
"end_time": 6596.544,
"index": 250,
"start_time": 6570.128,
"text": " So that's what it means to abstract is you take out qualities that are similar to multiple instances and then you start to manipulate those qualities. Well, that's that's being analytical. Racism is an abstraction problem because it's saying you as a brown person are the same as some other person who's brown."
},
{
"end_time": 6610.009,
"index": 251,
"start_time": 6597.278,
"text": " So what happens when you go to non dual states? Can be seen as a pathology of the of the left brain where everything is the same. Every single thing is the same."
},
{
"end_time": 6632.073,
"index": 252,
"start_time": 6611.169,
"text": " And the beauty of the right brain is that the right brain likes to see every instance as unique. Every little point is unique. Not only is this cup different than these earphones, but the left and the right are different than it's not even the earphones. This one is different than this one. And in fact, there are multiple facets to this cup. Furthermore, it's not just that the right brain"
},
{
"end_time": 6649.787,
"index": 253,
"start_time": 6632.312,
"text": " or the right brain worldview is supposed to be what is championed, nor the left brain, the right brain had the wisdom to give the reins over to the left brain. So that's why the book is called the master and his emissary in, in Emma Gilchrist. So it's an interplay of both."
},
{
"end_time": 6682.722,
"index": 254,
"start_time": 6654.172,
"text": " In other words, what's the difference between the East and the West? I don't know. All I know is my watered down versions by people who think they're from the East, but have grown up in the West. And what they tell me about the East and also what I research about the East, which is heavily filtered. So what I've said is is meant to be. Interpreted through that lens. Is your are your ancestors from from India or?"
},
{
"end_time": 6711.903,
"index": 255,
"start_time": 6683.797,
"text": " Yeah, if you go far back enough, it would be the West Indies. Okay. It's from I'm from Trinidad. I think mine is from Tamil Nadu in India. I think that's so far. I'm not even sure. We've been in South Africa for almost almost 200 years now. Wow. Yeah, we were brought from India as indentured laborers. Well, not we but my ancestors as indentured laborers, aka slaves."
},
{
"end_time": 6738.78,
"index": 256,
"start_time": 6712.329,
"text": " to cut sugar cane in South Africa. And so I've grown up fundamentally South African, which is very much influenced by American culture and Western culture. So I also have a very, even though, because there's so many who came down from South Africa, it's a watered down version, but there's a section of South Africa that's called Durban,"
},
{
"end_time": 6753.183,
"index": 257,
"start_time": 6739.428,
"text": " If you ever Google it, you'll see it's called Durban. So there's Johannesburg. There's three main cities in South Africa. Johannesburg, Cape Town. That's where Mark Solms is and a lot of great professors. And then there's Durban, which is in KwaZulu-Natal."
},
{
"end_time": 6782.466,
"index": 258,
"start_time": 6753.695,
"text": " And it's like a mini India. So I think it's the largest city with Indians in the whole planet. Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender, juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8 only at McDonald's for limited time only prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California and for delivery outside of India. So not, not a, not country, but like city. Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 6812.961,
"index": 259,
"start_time": 6782.995,
"text": " It's the Indian population that is huge. So I was exposed because I grew up there. So I was exposed to a lot of the East in that sense as a child. And the philosophies were quite unique. And when I look back, I feel like I undermined and didn't really appreciate some of the philosophies that I was taught as a child back then since starting this podcast. Because prior to that, I was so focused on Western philosophers. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 6833.046,
"index": 260,
"start_time": 6814.036,
"text": " Something else about the East, about the Western East, is that I thought that meditation would dissolve your ego or make you less egotistical."
},
{
"end_time": 6861.186,
"index": 261,
"start_time": 6833.712,
"text": " Now there's a difference. This is when I spoke to Roy Baumeister, who is someone you should speak to. It's one of the most cited people, not just scientists, the most cited people on the planet. And he's alive. I remember I've read his read his name so often in the psychological literature. So often I thought he was dead. Because it's so rare that someone has referenced this much and they're still alive. And he's alive and well. He, he studied"
},
{
"end_time": 6885.026,
"index": 262,
"start_time": 6865.23,
"text": " I don't know if he studied it, but he told me about these studies where if you get people to meditate, and they could be Zen Buddhists, but they have to be Western Zen Buddhists, this hasn't been done on Eastern Zen Buddhists, that rather than making you more selfless, you become more selfish."
},
{
"end_time": 6913.046,
"index": 263,
"start_time": 6885.725,
"text": " And how do they measure that? Well, they look at how long are you meditating for? And then there are different criteria. Like, are you willing to tie someone else's shoe before yours? Are you willing to? Oh, let me let me bring up, let me bring up the study, please, because it's super interesting if you don't mind. I don't mind at all. That would be amazing. I'm trying to also think of other ways that could be shown. I'm trying to think one of them is"
},
{
"end_time": 6943.114,
"index": 264,
"start_time": 6913.609,
"text": " I've noticed that Western meditators tend to talk about meditation way too much, which can itself be the examples you're talking about. It's almost like now they're sort of virtue signaling the fact that they meditate. Um, yes, which really nullified become obsessed with it as well. And it goes against the non-attachment. So, okay. Zen monks who are dedicated practitioners of meditation display a higher fear of death and less willingness to give up lifesaving medicine compared to other groups."
},
{
"end_time": 6968.541,
"index": 265,
"start_time": 6943.49,
"text": " suggesting a strong attachment to self preservation, maybe even a stronger sense of the self. So how does one make sense of this? Well, meditation increases self awareness, perhaps that can lead to heightened awareness that that could lead individuals to becoming more conscious of their strengths and weaknesses, potentially resulting in a sense of superiority. Ah, yeah, there was something about superiority as well. That was a study from"
},
{
"end_time": 6999.309,
"index": 266,
"start_time": 6969.957,
"text": " Yes, from Gobber. So the study I just mentioned was Nina Strominger, and I can give you these links to put in the description if you like. Thanks. The study I'm about to say is from Gobber. Individuals who practice meditation over weeks started to perceive themselves as superior to others in their meditation group. That's why there's a difference between ego and egotism. Their ego may be minimized, but their egotism, their inflated sense of their self-importance, self-centeredness increases."
},
{
"end_time": 7029.155,
"index": 267,
"start_time": 7000.282,
"text": " No, and it sort of makes sense when you think about it. The East and West. It's so strange that it's bizarre that we even have to say that at this point, that it's become a thing in itself, which is more disappointing because when you chat to someone like Anand, who understands the history behind the content and gives you that context that you're looking for, it becomes super fascinating to see all the things we missed"
},
{
"end_time": 7053.626,
"index": 268,
"start_time": 7029.531,
"text": " So I have in this same document with notes, I have my my Kurt rules for life. If you want to hear some of them, let's do it. So these are numbered, but they're not in any order. Number one, never underestimate the jealousy in yourself. Your criticism of others is almost in every circumstance."
},
{
"end_time": 7082.756,
"index": 269,
"start_time": 7054.036,
"text": " Spawned by not spawned by some cold rationality of correctness, like a teacher grading math homework. It's far deeper. It doesn't mean the analysis you provide is wrong, but it's from a wrong place, which in the long run will make it wrong regardless. Realize how much of a cretin is insecure of avaricious egotist you are, then minimize it every time it crops up by recognizing it, though not acting on it. Number two, if people want to tarnish your reputation, let them speak kindly of them regardless."
},
{
"end_time": 7108.217,
"index": 270,
"start_time": 7083.422,
"text": " There are positive aspects to everyone, so just find those and highlight them in your enemies. Don't use high-bounding, condescending reputational words like grifter or pseudo. Keep a list of words you vow never to say. Notice which words are correlated with an embittered state and don't use those words. Consider what you're putting off. What are you avoiding? Ask yourself and"
},
{
"end_time": 7134.872,
"index": 271,
"start_time": 7108.933,
"text": " That question will bring to mind five items. Which are you avoiding most? Tackle that one. Do this daily. Number five, never say something doesn't make sense unless you can explain it in a way that the other person agrees. Senses relative to a constellation of knowledge and relations they're referencing of which you're unaware and vice versa. And some of these I'll tell you off air."
},
{
"end_time": 7157.927,
"index": 272,
"start_time": 7135.401,
"text": " Number 10 is one that I do in Toronto. If you have a $5 bill and pass a homeless person asking for it, always give it. Don't second-guess whether they should be more or less homeless or more or less addicted. That's something I used to do. If I had some pocket change, I'd be like, okay, well, they're asking for it, but they're going to spend it on alcohol. I can tell because their face is red and they're right by the liquor store."
},
{
"end_time": 7188.541,
"index": 273,
"start_time": 7158.695,
"text": " Hope isn't for the weak or foolish. It's a gift of the strong. Being hopeful and enthusiastic is difficult. Those are rare necessary qualities to make everything better. Everything for yourself and for those you interact with."
},
{
"end_time": 7216.169,
"index": 274,
"start_time": 7189.377,
"text": " Number 12. In a conversation, don't try to prove yourself as correct or try to convince your interlocutor or any onlookers. This will backfire. Even if it doesn't, you'll feel like you've been able to manipulate and that has its roots in a shadowy place that you don't want. If you have something interesting to say, hold on to it for just a minute. And if this is what I talked about earlier, if the exchange changes themes, you have to cut ties with whatever clever remark you had and move along with the discussion."
},
{
"end_time": 7246.51,
"index": 275,
"start_time": 7217.056,
"text": " Number 13 in the same vein, don't try to sound or appear clever. It won't work. It will have the opposite effect. If anything, you appear more foolish, err on the side of having others underestimate you. And I can tell you, number 15 is life is about finding a tolerable torment. The more you joyfully can answer which of your current struggles would you want to keep if you were to repeat your life, the better. What's the suffering that brings you peace? Hmm."
},
{
"end_time": 7273.985,
"index": 276,
"start_time": 7248.029,
"text": " And then 16 is just great advice that I've heard. So these I generate on my own, but this one I heard from somewhere else be interest being interested is vastly more important than being interesting. It's almost like I want to say aim into like all these things. These are should is how many are there? Good. I have 17. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 7303.814,
"index": 277,
"start_time": 7274.735,
"text": " I had a feeling this list would be a long list. Do you find writing these things down, seeing it, reading it out loud to yourself, allows you to implement this more actively? How often do you come across this, let's say in your day to day? How often do you read that? I forgot about this list until today. Why do you feel reading it?"
},
{
"end_time": 7334.531,
"index": 278,
"start_time": 7305.026,
"text": " No, right now. Well, I'm glad I didn't contradict myself. That's because I was reading it. I wasn't reading ahead. And so I'm like, Oh, shoot, did I just say something that will expose me as? Because I had forgotten what I said about that I'm not that I'm supposed to abandon a thought after 10 seconds. And I realized I said 10 seconds, but over here, I said one minute. So okay, so that was a contradiction. But it's not that's that's not drastic. It's a small time windows."
},
{
"end_time": 7364.684,
"index": 279,
"start_time": 7334.923,
"text": " is the sentiment behind it. So I feel self conscious as I read it. That's how I feel. And I just wonder if any of these will burn me. I had another one that I didn't write down. Maybe I did it and I didn't see it. But it's that I'm never allowed, never allowed to thumbs down a comment, or thumbs up my own comment. I didn't put that as a rule for life. I don't think so. But I found myself in my past, as soon as I write one comment, like this video is BS about someone, so whatever it is,"
},
{
"end_time": 7390.213,
"index": 280,
"start_time": 7365.06,
"text": " up my own comment like look other people are agreeing with me or I'll down a comment that's that's criticizing me yes I'm not allowed to do that the only time I'm allowed to downvote a comment is if it's someone saying man last week I got rich from Bitcoin and then someone else come like you could tell it's the spam yeah so I'm trying to not make the algorithm elicit the spam but or someone saying click in nudes in my bio"
},
{
"end_time": 7418.473,
"index": 281,
"start_time": 7390.725,
"text": " But other than that, I'm not allowed to thumbs down a comment. I'm only allowed to use the thumbs up button, but I can also choose to not use it. So if you just use your thumbs up everywhere, then it means nothing. So be selective, at least for me. It's strange. Do you have, have you also had that problem at some point where these random such spammy messages from like user of the one for underscore five, six, three, two, they'll give you like essays on consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 7435.418,
"index": 282,
"start_time": 7418.933,
"text": " Yeah, I had someone recently write me two paragraphs of some some criticism."
},
{
"end_time": 7456.254,
"index": 283,
"start_time": 7436.647,
"text": " and they just created that account that day, like when I looked at their bio and I'm wondering why. I wonder if it's someone that I know that was like, okay, I want to say this to Kurt, but I don't want him to tie back to me. It's crazy because some of them, I once read one that was almost like, I swear it felt like a book."
},
{
"end_time": 7485.077,
"index": 284,
"start_time": 7456.732,
"text": " This thing went on. I don't know what the limit is. So much that they had to break it up into multiple comments as replies. Yeah, I thought to myself like what this is this actually a bot or is this a person? Because this requires some some level of effort. I mean, can you see here's something new that's occurred to me in the past couple of years, the past one year. Sorry. So I encourage people to send their toes to their theories of everything, just in case people are wondering. Your toes is not. Please don't send it."
},
{
"end_time": 7509.036,
"index": 285,
"start_time": 7485.538,
"text": " It's not a footnote. Okay, I encourage people to send them. But now I get people messaging me, and they'll message over and over. And they're just copying and pasting from chat GPT. And then they'll they'll message me their entire chat history. And they'll just keep doing it. And I, I don't have the time to even read that. And it's"
},
{
"end_time": 7536.698,
"index": 286,
"start_time": 7509.582,
"text": " quite lengthy. So I don't like that. Please filter if you're going to send me a toll, please filter it. Is this them sending you their conversation about their toll with chat GPT? I don't I don't I could be sometimes it could be okay. So you haven't yet this one time that I have in mind a particular time a particular person. Do you know this person?"
},
{
"end_time": 7566.903,
"index": 287,
"start_time": 7537.005,
"text": " No, no, no, no, this person at least at the very least, that makes it a little better. How did you decide? Okay, theories of everything include AI, physics, consciousness, and then also, I know you touch on UFOs. I mean, what? How did these topics all come together? What would what would the inclusion criteria like? And why did you exclusive? Yeah, do you think?"
},
{
"end_time": 7587.142,
"index": 288,
"start_time": 7567.568,
"text": " So the inclusion criteria is the same. It's just am I interested in it? So initially, say, 2018 and prior my whole life, I was I wouldn't even say skeptical of UFOs. I completely rejected it as a possibility."
},
{
"end_time": 7616.135,
"index": 289,
"start_time": 7587.329,
"text": " Mm hmm. Just a moment. Because I'm recording the audio on my end. Okay. So then someone said someone who is an editor of mine for film said, watch so and so video and I forgot what it was. One was a drogue interview of someone I don't know of who and one was another one. And then I remember thinking, okay, this is interesting. Not like I'm buying it, but it's interesting. And then I was thinking, okay, I want to speak to someone on this subject. I have this channel. This was 2020."
},
{
"end_time": 7639.019,
"index": 290,
"start_time": 7616.578,
"text": " I have this channel and who can I speak to? Okay, there's someone named Jeremy Corbell. He's spoken to someone named Bob Lazar. I've always heard of Bob Lazar since for years, decades, two decades. So why not reach out to him because he has a filmmaking background. That's a natural segue. I interviewed Jeremy"
},
{
"end_time": 7666.578,
"index": 291,
"start_time": 7640.009,
"text": " Great. I have my problems with that interview because of me, because I interjected and I had this mannerism where I would do this and it was cringe-worthy and affected. I do that all the time. Yeah. Anyhow, I can't watch interviews of myself from six months prior. It just hurts. It physically hurts my stomach. Yeah. Apparently Woody Allen's the same. He'll look away when they're playing even the trailer to a film that he just finished. He'll look away. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 7671.903,
"index": 292,
"start_time": 7666.783,
"text": " So that interview didn't do terribly well, didn't do poor, but it didn't do well."
},
{
"end_time": 7697.961,
"index": 293,
"start_time": 7672.346,
"text": " and i wasn't thinking anything like currently the ufo videos on the toe channel are the most popular by an order of magnitude that was the word i was looking for earlier by the way an order of magnitude so at the time no change okay cool but i'm still interested so let me speak to kevin canoe that's a physicist i'm interested in physics my background is in physics how about obvi low great astronomer at harvard cool"
},
{
"end_time": 7721.988,
"index": 294,
"start_time": 7698.626,
"text": " Then six months from then, so a year from the first interview start the UFO videos views started to pick up. That's pretty cool because the algorithm I had no idea. Seinfeld also said from the fourth season, his show wasn't doing well. All of a sudden, four years later, it started to do extremely well. Sounds like that's super interesting."
},
{
"end_time": 7749.991,
"index": 295,
"start_time": 7722.398,
"text": " However, I can't compromise that any interview I do, I do has to be because I'm interested in it. So, okay. It was just a, it was a blip and in my radar of a data point to, to keep in mind, this is something that many people in the audience are interested in. Okay. Who else is in this topic that I would be interested in speaking to? I don't know. Recall who Lou Elizondo, Jacques Valade, the huge names."
},
{
"end_time": 7770.776,
"index": 296,
"start_time": 7750.589,
"text": " So I spoke to them and then somehow this, the whole, the channel, there were many polls on Reddit and Twitter about what is the best UFO channel to watch and invariably theories of everything would either win or at least be mentioned. It's like, oh my gosh, I remember sending that to a few people like, look at this poll, look at this poll."
},
{
"end_time": 7799.377,
"index": 297,
"start_time": 7771.203,
"text": " and I just just I would be bike riding with my wife and there would be a slew of comments and I would stop and I would have to show her like look at this look at this babe we had to then make a rule I'm not allowed to speak I had to make this rule by the way I'm not allowed to speak about the channels comments until Fridays only on Fridays gonna tell us I have to save up all the positive comments and the negative ones anything I want to tell her because it would just it would ruin our lives hmm so that was pretty cool"
},
{
"end_time": 7821.169,
"index": 298,
"start_time": 7800.913,
"text": " It's the same interest of like what can be more enticing than are we alone? It's one of the fundamental questions in a theory of everything. Forget about the fundamental questions that motivate us. Theory of everything is more philosophical. That's a philosophical question. Theory of everything tends to be more analytical. But in the philosophical questions that we wonder about,"
},
{
"end_time": 7844.087,
"index": 299,
"start_time": 7821.544,
"text": " Are we alone is there? And it's that same impulse that drives someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson to study science as it does for these people who are interested in UFOs to learn more about the universe, except they didn't have the luxury of going to university. And even that's a misnomer because it implies people are uneducated. I don't like all the stereotypes. Many people, some are professors. Kevin Knuth is a professor."
},
{
"end_time": 7871.886,
"index": 300,
"start_time": 7845.64,
"text": " so i made this whole 27 minute video almost recounting many of these thoughts and it was the only video that i didn't release it's just it's so enticing to go into the ufo scene it's enticing people don't realize and so i can see myself being pulled and i have to make sure that i'm doing it for the for the right reasons and so so far outside of one exception i've done it for the right reasons and i just want to"
},
{
"end_time": 7900.452,
"index": 301,
"start_time": 7874.582,
"text": " I need to make sure that that stays like that because the audience will sense it and I'll sense it. One of the reasons I think that the channel does so well is because people can sense that I'm coming from, I don't like the word authentic for various reasons, but from a place of inquisitiveness, from a genuine place of inquisitiveness."
},
{
"end_time": 7932.705,
"index": 302,
"start_time": 7903.2,
"text": " And you can sort of see it as you're trying to think through what you're trying to articulate to the listener, to the guest or to whoever you're talking to at the time, which is good because that introspection and that well thought out, framed thought process makes it clear to the person watching you or listening to you that you were thinking about this, you didn't just"
},
{
"end_time": 7959.309,
"index": 303,
"start_time": 7933.729,
"text": " Come there to ramble on. You have the ability to listen, sit back, wait, pause, process the thoughts. You even have rules for yourself. I mean, don't use the last five seconds of whatever was said. If it's no longer relevant or what a minute or whatever, then forget about it. And that's, I mean, that's a pretty cool rule. That's something that I will even try to apply myself because we often find ourselves doing something like that, trying to"
},
{
"end_time": 7986.067,
"index": 304,
"start_time": 7960.367,
"text": " Remember something specific, hold on to it, keep it there, continue the conversation, bring it back later. Sometimes you just don't need to do that. Now speaking about authenticity, I have a rule about that. So never lie. Number seven is never lie. This doesn't mean you have to disclose everything as you're entitled to privacy, but indeed never lie. Number eight, building on the last, don't think you possess brutal honesty, quote unquote."
},
{
"end_time": 8014.445,
"index": 305,
"start_time": 7986.408,
"text": " You're more likely alienating people because it's easier to be destructive than constructive. Thinking of yourself as too blunt for others to handle is virtue signaling to yourself. Stop it. Truth can always be conveyed with clemency and regard. You're not noble. Thinking of yourself as an honest person isn't a title that you give yourself. It's something earned. It's crowned by"
},
{
"end_time": 8040.35,
"index": 306,
"start_time": 8014.872,
"text": " It's crowned to you by others. And then number nine, never claim someone has it better just because they have money. Show sympathy for all your fellow humans regardless of their circumstances. The route to excusing your own behavior because of the comparative lack of funds or reprimanding someone else's because of their abundance is a dark path. Don't walk it. Don't even step a foot in it. Any people you dream of interviewing?"
},
{
"end_time": 8069.599,
"index": 307,
"start_time": 8042.346,
"text": " I'm like that you haven't had about Douglas Hofstadter, but he said no to me so often that I'm just going to respect his, his privacy. That is definitely someone I've also sent him emails. He's also told me no so far. I'll continue to, I said, what I, what I've decided is I'm going to keep like a list of emails and just every year resend it out to the same person every year. And I'll call it an annual checkup."
},
{
"end_time": 8096.357,
"index": 308,
"start_time": 8071.254,
"text": " I don't think so. I don't think there's any dream guest any longer. Who was your dream guest prior to having them perhaps? Bob Lazar was one. Any ideas why? That's the OG."
},
{
"end_time": 8120.981,
"index": 309,
"start_time": 8097.841,
"text": " When it comes to UFOs from my childhood, I knew that name. I didn't know how I knew that name, but I knew that name. So I, I would like to speak. Oh, and also because he, he claims to have some theory as to how they operate. It has to do with gravity, one version of gravity and another, he calls it gravity, a versus gravity B. And he had, he said it had to do with the strong force seemed"
},
{
"end_time": 8148.66,
"index": 310,
"start_time": 8120.981,
"text": " So I think you might have been a little bit more open-minded when it came to UFOs than I was because I think my only one on the show is with Avi Loeb. I think that's the only one where I think the episode is just titled"
},
{
"end_time": 8174.462,
"index": 311,
"start_time": 8149.787,
"text": " Where is everybody or are they aliens? Because I've reached framed the entire podcast to just be questions. So answering the big questions or the hard problems, trying to solve the problems. So I've made them all questions. I think it's where is everybody, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, the Fermi paradox, I do find fascinating. That is something I've always thought about. Have you watched the three body problem or read the books?"
},
{
"end_time": 8201.886,
"index": 312,
"start_time": 8176.8,
"text": " I know the storyline of it. It's such a fascinating. There's a show now? Yeah, so there's a Netflix series. And I must say, because I've read the books, they didn't do a bad job. It's actually quite cool. Have you watched Fallout? Yes, I've watched Fallout. Okay, so I'm watching Fallout now, man. I love the video game Fallout. I used to also love the video game. And I just thought,"
},
{
"end_time": 8232.295,
"index": 313,
"start_time": 8202.449,
"text": " I thought they would mess up the show because they mess up everything. Everything gets messed up nowadays. If it's made in the past five years, it's a horrible show. Like that's just it's also almost guaranteed. Yeah. What do you watch the first episode? I'm like, this is way, way better, way better than I thought. Yeah. And it gets and it's quite dark and twisted. Like, man, oh, man. And mysterious at times. When I was watching Fallout, the main what is the character without the nose is good. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 8262.466,
"index": 314,
"start_time": 8232.722,
"text": " He reminds me so much of the... Have you watched Westworld? Yes. There are so many similarities between... What is his name? Ed Harris. His character. And that reminded me of the way Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy make a show. Because that's what kept me hooked, I felt. Oh, are they the same creators as Westworld? They both made Westworld. It's crazy."
},
{
"end_time": 8291.954,
"index": 315,
"start_time": 8262.927,
"text": " And obviously, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan as well. So these guys, they are they're related. So Jonathan Nolan is Christopher Nolan's brother. It's crazy. He's the one who wrote many of Christopher Nolan's. Yes. Oh, my God. I want to be louder. I don't want those people. Again, this tiny apartment. So that's why it's so epic. And when I when I thought when I saw that they made it, I was like, oh, shit, I'm going to click this right now and just start watching this. Do you think humans are capable of coming up?"
},
{
"end_time": 8315.213,
"index": 316,
"start_time": 8292.125,
"text": " One of the views that I hold that's controversial, that I haven't encountered elsewhere,"
},
{
"end_time": 8331.152,
"index": 317,
"start_time": 8315.998,
"text": " Is that i don't think we can even say the word everything just quite odd for someone who has a channel called theories of everything. I don't think that that's a concept that is well founded and i don't think that what you can do is you can just contain like well."
},
{
"end_time": 8359.241,
"index": 318,
"start_time": 8331.681,
"text": " so some people would say god must be a part of this universe because if you just include god into this like if this universe is separate from god just unionize with the set union with god i don't think you can i don't think the union of two sets is always like sorry i have to be careful because as soon as you say set it conjures a certain image i don't believe you just join two entities and then you could form a larger entity"
},
{
"end_time": 8376.493,
"index": 319,
"start_time": 8359.514,
"text": " I don't think the concept of all is well defined and i i also don't think it is what it is is some people say what is what it is i don't think is it is what it is. So i think we're we're lost since aristotle."
},
{
"end_time": 8405.35,
"index": 320,
"start_time": 8377.227,
"text": " We're stuck with this classical logic in our bones. Like I mentioned, we have explicit other logics, but in our bones in the way that we think some we don't think in terms of contradictions. We don't think in terms of parrot. Well, here's another. It's not a rule of mine. It's a. It's just a thought of mine. Your intelligence is directly proportional to how. Can you so? You just directly proportional to how many"
},
{
"end_time": 8431.374,
"index": 321,
"start_time": 8405.879,
"text": " Profound thoughts do you have that are not paradoxical the reason i say that is that it's so easy to have a profound thought then you say but it's all paradox and that's why because it's the flower blooms that dies oh okay yeah and then people sit around with the pinching pinching their beards and yes it is so can you say something profound without it being paradoxical"
},
{
"end_time": 8458.507,
"index": 322,
"start_time": 8431.783,
"text": " That's this, it's not a rule for life. That's not something to guide me because it's a bit snarky. But there's that. So I'm not a believer just, well, it has to be contradictions. I think even just saying that and going back to what you said about the limitation of language, that's something else I don't believe is the case. We think of language as a hose that connects two people and you're deriding what you're saying or diminishing it"
},
{
"end_time": 8486.664,
"index": 323,
"start_time": 8458.968,
"text": " by the propagation of it and what they receive isn't always what you intend and in fact is a lesser form. I don't think that's the case. I don't know if language is to be interpreted as that. I know that's one interpretation of what language is, but language is also the fact of even sending is creative. So for instance, even in this conversation, I've learned about about my own thoughts by speaking them that I didn't know. So it's not only language isn't just the"
},
{
"end_time": 8516.783,
"index": 324,
"start_time": 8488.592,
"text": " the sending of something that's inside. It's also excavating what's underneath the waters. It's a creative process as well. So there's creation in the transfer. It's not just the transfer is sending something that has been created already. Furthermore, it's going to be diminished as it goes along. I don't think that's the case. I also don't think that I think that's almost obviously not the case because Reed Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky"
},
{
"end_time": 8543.37,
"index": 325,
"start_time": 8517.142,
"text": " That's in language and it'll evoke emotions in you that you've never had before that have never been experienced. So there's something about language that can also create. And same with while we say, well, bait, what about music? Like music is not language. Well, even to create the music, Beethoven used sheet music. You can't create that from your head. And he built on other people who use sheet music. So there was some, there's a two way process. It's like in back reaction is what they call it in physics."
},
{
"end_time": 8572.671,
"index": 326,
"start_time": 8543.916,
"text": " I don't see it as a static entity, you throw it, it gets diminished and then back and forth and oh look, let me repudiate language because of that. I don't think so. I think language is, as much as people inflate it, I think that they deflate it. So I have several views that I don't think I've ever said any of these anywhere. And there are views that I hold fairly, my views change on a weekly, well not a weekly,"
},
{
"end_time": 8596.254,
"index": 327,
"start_time": 8573.387,
"text": " bimonthly so every two months not twice a month but every two months ambiguous word bimonthly every two months basis so this is a present deliberation of mine these are present deliberations of mine yeah i don't think all is all and i think that's what leads us astray in some ways i think that's what led"
},
{
"end_time": 8618.234,
"index": 328,
"start_time": 8596.8,
"text": " That's where I differ from Chris Langan, as much as I love Chris Langan, and Chris Langan has this theory far more articulated than mine, which are just some notes here and there, and the thoughts I've relayed to you. But he's building a theory based on a super tautology, and you can think of what I'm doing as building a super antinomy, so a super contradiction. It's the opposite."
},
{
"end_time": 8648.285,
"index": 329,
"start_time": 8618.729,
"text": " Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.COM today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS."
},
{
"end_time": 8685.196,
"index": 330,
"start_time": 8655.282,
"text": " Yeah. Do you do you find solace in the fact that you're getting closer to this answer that you're possibly that you're that you're researching for? Or do you feel like you're getting? No, I know. I feel I feel solace in in that I can have a worldview finally. Thank God. Do you feel like you're getting closer? Like is it like you? Yes. Yes. Fine tuning this. Yes. Good. I feel closer than I've ever been."
},
{
"end_time": 8701.613,
"index": 331,
"start_time": 8685.862,
"text": " But it doesn't mean that the ground isn't going to be swept from underneath me. All it takes is one good theory of consciousness just to flip that whole thing upside down. Yeah, that almost happened today. I don't even want to say what it was."
},
{
"end_time": 8732.329,
"index": 332,
"start_time": 8703.285,
"text": " Sometimes I can barely say it, especially with people that I profoundly respect because I can't help but think, okay, they may be correct. Like I can't help but think. I was telling this to Verveki. Verveki thinks it's a virtue, but I don't think it's a virtue. And I think only people who haven't had their beliefs cruelly turned over, cruelly,"
},
{
"end_time": 8759.974,
"index": 333,
"start_time": 8732.978,
"text": " that they think it's a virtue. Yeah. Since starting this journey, do you feel like you've become, from a philosophical sense, let's take it back to a mind body solution approach at this point. From a philosophical sense, do you consider yourself a physicalist, idealist? Where do you stand on this? Do you feel like you have?"
},
{
"end_time": 8789.138,
"index": 334,
"start_time": 8760.708,
"text": " Now, I think they both make the same left brain error. So the idealist says all is this one entity. So it's a monist. And then the physicalist is a monist. But what the difference I see them as almost exactly the same, except one will just say what's at the bottom is consciousness, conscious experience, and then the other will say it's physical matter. But one of so one of the ways you can tell what the meaning of a word is, is in its relation to other words. So in other words,"
},
{
"end_time": 8817.363,
"index": 335,
"start_time": 8789.684,
"text": " Let's say you have a set of sentences, a set of hundred sentences that use the same word. OK, mask that word now. So put X in place of that word. Is there another word that can go there? Well, hopefully no, if it's unique. Broadly speaking, I think that a physicalist and idealist are the same, except one would say physical reality and the other would say conscious reality."
},
{
"end_time": 8847.961,
"index": 336,
"start_time": 8819.07,
"text": " Which ism do you give most credence to? Panpsychism, idealism, is there anything that you sort of, even though you might not adopt this as your viewpoint, but you find yourself swaying towards it every now and then way more than the others? It's something I call 157ism. So it's not a dualism. It's not a trialism. It's 157ism. What is it? It sounds like a joke, but"
},
{
"end_time": 8879.241,
"index": 337,
"start_time": 8851.254,
"text": " Yeah, I'm, I find it very difficult to not be. So have you heard the term mysterious? I actually I'm not even sure if I know the definition, but I think it's just those who just firmly believe that we will never figure out what consciousness is. Why do this podcast? The more I feel like I'm going towards that route, man. It's crazy. Like at this point, yeah, I have absolutely no clue."
},
{
"end_time": 8902.79,
"index": 338,
"start_time": 8879.599,
"text": " So that's what I'm curious to know with your theory of everything search if it's going according to your plan because mine is I feel I'm I'm drawn similarly. I also feel like maybe it's the case that I know and I just don't know that I know and I also feel like many of these questions. So the person who believes themselves to be open will say"
},
{
"end_time": 8930.589,
"index": 339,
"start_time": 8905.247,
"text": " Not you, by the way, but there's some there's someone in particular that I'm thinking of that happened recently would say, Well, I don't know. So for me, my my I don't know, lately has been replaced with that's not for me to say. Now, explain what that means. I was at the store, and there was someone who was there's a child misbehaving. And then I wanted to"
},
{
"end_time": 8956.852,
"index": 340,
"start_time": 8931.118,
"text": " Like a part of me wants to yell at the kid. And then I stop because I'm like, that's not for me to say. So many parts of reality or parts of questions that are asked of me, I feel like even questions about what is my opinion on so-and-so, it's not for me to say. So Jesus said something similar to this."
},
{
"end_time": 8980.282,
"index": 341,
"start_time": 8958.08,
"text": " when other people are trying to throw the stone he said that's not basically saying that's not for you to say the judge is not you the judge is somewhere else and in lord of the rings it's like i don't know if this was in the book but it was definitely in the movie and it gets me every time proto was saying"
},
{
"end_time": 9010.316,
"index": 342,
"start_time": 8980.964,
"text": " Oh man, what I was saying to Gandalf, like it's holding this ring. It's like, I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened. And then it's, it's such a heart wrenching moment because you just know, like there are many times in your life you're like, man, I wish the so-and-so never came to me. I wish, I wish so-and-so never happened. And, and Gandalf says like, so do all who live through such times, but that's not for them to say."
},
{
"end_time": 9034.684,
"index": 343,
"start_time": 9012.125,
"text": " And, or that's not for them to decide something like that. And all we have to do is just decide what we have to do with the time that we have, with the time that's given to us, something like that. That's not for them to say, that's not for you to say. That's something that I find myself relating with more and more."
},
{
"end_time": 9067.773,
"index": 344,
"start_time": 9038.677,
"text": " You've got me thinking of Lord of the Rings now. These books above me, this whole set, it's all just Lord of the Rings, it's all just Tolkien. I love Tolkien, I don't know. It's something about the way he used language and trying to incorporate that into something more and trying to write languages and then transforming that into a book in order to make language a culture. I mean that's just such an epic thing to do."
},
{
"end_time": 9096.886,
"index": 345,
"start_time": 9068.712,
"text": " I just think that any of the times, almost every single time, they use it so sparingly. They used it just the right amount of times in the in the films that Frodo just looks at someone else and he's holding. He's like, I can't do this, Sam. And you just you just your heart breaks and like, you know what that's like. You know what that's like to carry something and feel like you can't do it anymore and you need help. What would you say when you"
},
{
"end_time": 9125.316,
"index": 346,
"start_time": 9098.268,
"text": " The things you can say. Do you think they are of free will? Do you have volition in this? What are your thoughts on that topic? Where do you stand? Unless it's not for you to say. Yeah, that may not be for me to say, but I also am not terribly convinced by all the determinist arguments."
},
{
"end_time": 9156.561,
"index": 347,
"start_time": 9126.561,
"text": " I don't, I'm not convinced for a few reasons, which I've written down so they don't, they're not coming to mind currently. But there are a few reasons why I'm not convinced. I also, so I also don't think here's another unconventional thought of mine. I don't think the infinite regress is a problem. And the reason is that in math, you can have higher ordinal numbers. So you can treat an infinity as a number."
},
{
"end_time": 9181.8,
"index": 348,
"start_time": 9156.92,
"text": " So in some sense, you can just say that something happens at infinity. Maybe we have some influence to it. Like there are boundary conditions that we somehow have influence over. Maybe the the fact of, of free will is, is a question about boundary conditions. Maybe there is a relationship between boundary conditions and us. I mean, there, if you live in a deterministic world, there definitely is, because that's all that determines you is to"
},
{
"end_time": 9210.418,
"index": 349,
"start_time": 9182.244,
"text": " two facets, the machine that cranks out something, the next state and the state that goes in it, namely the input. So the input and the black box, then you get out the output and the output, which is us is inextricably tied to both. If you had a different machinery, you'd get a different output. If you had a different input, you would get a different output. Yeah. Hmm."
},
{
"end_time": 9241.988,
"index": 350,
"start_time": 9213.643,
"text": " That's something I also feel is going to become another replacement word for consciousness at some point. Foundary condition? No, free will. I think free will at some point, once people figure out certain mechanisms of the way the brain works, how consciousness works or how electromagnetic fields work, it's going to become about how certain processes get together to create this"
},
{
"end_time": 9272.534,
"index": 351,
"start_time": 9242.568,
"text": " agency and this agency is going to become the new ian vitale which became consciousness which will become free will i feel like it's going to i feel like at some point there because i've read a few theories lately one in particular because i'm prepping for an interview is is that semi-field theory i was talking about and it's different it's slightly different from penrose and hammeroff i mean they're talking about microtubules they're talking about what you spoke about earlier"
},
{
"end_time": 9301.852,
"index": 352,
"start_time": 9273.234,
"text": " but then you've got another bunch of quantum biologists who are talking about consciousness being this electromagnetic field and and it's within this field that we're experiencing what we're experiencing right now and they've studied this in certain mammals they've looked at certain patterns apparently even one of Mike Levin's papers helped support this theory it's called semi-field theory for anyone I'll put a link in the description"
},
{
"end_time": 9331.732,
"index": 353,
"start_time": 9302.312,
"text": " c e m i consciousness ah right yeah so consciousness is an electromagnetic information field it's fascinating i must say it's actually quite interesting and in a very basic way because i'm still doing the research i haven't fully gotten in depth with it but the the electromagnetic activity that they're noticing in certain regions of the brain or the way the synapses the neurons are firing the rates at which they're firing there seems to be no correlation between"
},
{
"end_time": 9359.36,
"index": 354,
"start_time": 9332.398,
"text": " Synapses firing in this particular region of the brain and a certain thought process. So the neural correlates are not there yet. Whereas the electromagnetic correlates have already been shown. So they're ahead of the neural correlates of consciousness in that sense. This theory is already sort of doing better than your average neural materialist theory of consciousness. They're showing that these patterns"
},
{
"end_time": 9387.466,
"index": 355,
"start_time": 9359.684,
"text": " very different neurons that had nothing to do with this type of thought process in one side of the brain or different area of the brain. Yes. Can produce the same sort of thought when the right electromagnetic activity is produced around that region. I don't understand. So are you saying that like one part of the brain say that's part a at the back? Yes, there is some pattern of activity activity that occurs prior to you saying that I consciously made"
},
{
"end_time": 9414.292,
"index": 356,
"start_time": 9388.217,
"text": " No, no. So what I'm saying is action. What I'm saying is, let's say certain proteins store certain memories, for example, or certain areas of the brain, you've got certain proteins storing memory. Let's use the hippocampus. Let's just say we're in the hippocampus looking at this specific area, the specific region with specific cells. What they realize is this group of cells separately, their activity doesn't really matter in a sense."
},
{
"end_time": 9443.37,
"index": 357,
"start_time": 9415.094,
"text": " If the same sort of electromagnetic activity occurred there, that if it occurred in a different region of the brain, if that same electromagnetic activity occurs in that different region of the brain, the same sort of thought process or mechanism of movement. So it's no longer about, okay, this region, this type of electrical activity that's occurring is the conscious correlate. It's now the electromagnetic field that's coming out of it, the patterns, the waves of the field,"
},
{
"end_time": 9472.978,
"index": 358,
"start_time": 9443.865,
"text": " That is the key to this theory. And then in this theory, what happens is this brings me back to what we were talking about is, is at this point, free will becomes when these fields, you know how troughs and cancel each other out if they're not, if you're not going to sort of go in sync, you're not going to you're going to either build up a word. I've lost my train of thought. But anyway, if at some point,"
},
{
"end_time": 9500.503,
"index": 359,
"start_time": 9474.104,
"text": " Everything is not in sync, or they from a physics perspective, if you're talking about waves going together, what is the what is the term? destructive or constructive interference. So if there's constructive interference, that is when you can make active choices. And that becomes what is free will at that point. Those are the most conscious moments. So it's those constructive interference patterns that they notice seem to be the most"
},
{
"end_time": 9528.166,
"index": 360,
"start_time": 9501.084,
"text": " If informative, interesting of sorting out agency and all the destructive ones are unconscious actions. So you blinking, you look perhaps taking a sip of your whatever you're drinking in that moment. All these unconscious moments are occurring when there's destructive interference. Every single constructive interference moment is a conscious free will attention awareness moment."
},
{
"end_time": 9558.114,
"index": 361,
"start_time": 9528.916,
"text": " I most likely butchered that theory completely, but no, I understand. I get the gist. Yeah. So that's now that concerns me because that means free will now has become the new consciousness in that sense. I mean, you're you're only conscious when you're making agent will like decisions and we're just pushing it a little further with with something like that. But it's very interesting. I must say, the more I'm reading it, the more I'm"
},
{
"end_time": 9589.053,
"index": 362,
"start_time": 9559.428,
"text": " I'm enjoying it. Evan, I have to get going, man. Oh, sorry. I didn't even realize what the time was. Thank you so much. I'm just glad you're staying up so late. I appreciate you doing that for me. No, man, anytime. It's been such a pleasure to chat to you. I've been looking forward to this for a while and it lived up to my expectations. You're such a great thinker. Thanks for doing the work you're doing."
},
{
"end_time": 9618.217,
"index": 363,
"start_time": 9589.889,
"text": " For someone like me watching it, I'm enjoying it. Whatever this project is, the overall goal and this research project, I'm keen to support it and be part of it in any way that you need, man. Thank you, man. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Kurt, before you go, anything you were, you need to tell me off air that you want to quickly mention before you go? Or are you that struck for time?"
},
{
"end_time": 9643.114,
"index": 364,
"start_time": 9619.428,
"text": " No, we can talk off air a bit. I just need to use the washroom and then tell my wife that she can come out. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I think that's okay. Thank you to anyone who's who continue to watch until now. Yeah. And if you like, you can watch the theories of everything channel, you can type that in."
},
{
"end_time": 9664.531,
"index": 365,
"start_time": 9643.643,
"text": " I'll definitely put all the links in the description. Thank you so much. You've been such an amazing guest. Thanks for allowing me a chance to vent a little as well. Thanks, man."
},
{
"end_time": 9696.681,
"index": 366,
"start_time": 9684.787,
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},
{
"end_time": 9714.804,
"index": 367,
"start_time": 9697.159,
"text": " Jokes aside, Verizon has the most ways to save on phones and plans where you can get a single line with everything you need. So bring in your bill to your local Miami Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal."
}
]
}No transcript available.