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Carlos Farias interviews Curt Jaimungal on String Theory, Hopf Fibrations, Paradoxes
February 12, 2024
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The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze.
Culture, they analyze finance, economics, business, international affairs across every region. I'm particularly liking their new insider feature. It was just launched this month. It gives you, it gives me, a front row access to The Economist's internal editorial debates.
Where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policy makers in twice weekly long format shows. Basically an extremely high quality podcast. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, The Economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines. As a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount.
Carlos Farias has a channel called the Sigma Series, where he interviews people like Bernardo Kastrup, Terence Deakin, Michael Levin, and Donald Hoffman. Carlos recently interviewed me on work ethic, loneliness, purpose slash life's calling, jealousy, string theory, hop vibrations, and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, or as I argue, as a present deliberation, the reasonable effectiveness of mathematics. You can find his channel in the description, check it out.
I'm honored to be here, man. I'm honored to be here. Of all the people who would interview me, like, I'm glad it's you. I've had it as a personal tenant of mine, if we better understand the fundamental nature of reality.
It's not clear to me that when Newton came out with mechanics, that was a net positive for the world because it made us view ourselves as automatons. So it's not clear to me that you just
Describe more and more fundamental reality with physics, say, or something else, and then you get to a more positive ought. I don't know. I don't know why we don't just start with the ought. Like, forget about something else. Is the whole point of Toe to then discard Toe? There's a saying that you return home and you know the place for the first time. That's at the end of all the journeying. Is it that you don't answer the questions
Kurt Jaimungal is the host of Theories of Everything, a podcast which explores theoretical physics, consciousness, AI, and God in a technically rigorous manner. He has over 280,000 subscribers and, according to YouTube Analytics, his channel is the most popular amongst my viewers, like you.
Please like and subscribe and I hope you enjoy our conversation. Kurt, thanks for coming on. Hey man, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. Yes, this is long in the making and so excited to have you on. I'm sure my audience will be very excited to see you. I was looking at the YouTube analytics. I mean, ever since I've had them in the last couple of years, your channel is consistently the top one that my audience overlaps with. Oh, interesting. Not less.
Not Lex. Lex comes in and out occasionally. He's up there sometimes, but your channel is number one every time I check. I think this will be long-awaited for folks in my audience. That's an honor.
Yeah, well, you have a great podcast and for any folks that aren't familiar with your work, I'll link below in the description with some of my favorite episodes of yours. And of course, people can peruse your channel. You've got over 280,000 subscribers, which is incredible. So congratulations to you. I mean, you've just been so successful. Yeah, thanks. It doesn't feel like that, but I appreciate it. Oh yeah, it never does.
The goalposts are always moving forward. So today we'll focus on a few different topics. One, building your theory of everything. I think that'd be lovely for people to hear. You've spoken with so many brilliant minds in the past few years, so I'd love to hear how these ideas are coming together in your brain. Secondly, about the podcast a little bit. And then ending up, we'll talk about you personally, if we have time for it at the end.
So, not to start from the big question here, but if you had to right now, and this is a freely speculative zone, I want to say that you're not committed to anything in particular at this moment. I know some folks, they don't want to be taken out of turn, but if you had to construct your own theory of everything at this time, what would it be? This treacherous question, man. Tough question. Right off the bat. Okay, so if I was to construct my own
It may be, so look, there are two routes that most people take. They take, well, what's the similarities between every toe? That's like the Baha'i faith, trying to find truth in each of them. And then there's people like Carlo Rovelli who say, well, I want to find the differences between different theories or interpretations of quantum mechanics or whatever it may be. I think it's easy to do either one of them, but not easy to do both. So what I'm trying to do is to do both. What are the similarities? What are the differences?
Why is it that we have so many extremely, extremely prehensile and intelligent people disagreeing?
Even when they so people say, well, they disagree on the fundamentals, people see the world differently. Sometimes they agree on the fundamentals, and then they still disagree. They disagree on interpretation, or they disagree on the consequences, or they have some higher God that they don't want to admit is God, and they're trying to preserve that. So a metatow maybe why is it that there are so many toes
The whole project of theories of everything just so you know toe stands for theories of everything for anyone who's wondering why I keep mentioning that is in part for me in part to either put forward my own toe or for me to convince myself that someone else has a toe that is already correct. Maybe there's minor modifications that need to be made or that it's impossible for us practically to know a toe or that it doesn't exist in principle.
Yeah, it's a big project. And it's a tough thing. Obviously, it's tough. No one's figured it out yet. So no one's definitively figured this this whole thing out yet. What are some of the although when I asked that question, and when you think about, say, certain toes that have stuck out to you, maybe they're
There are folks you have interviewed and maybe they're not, but are there any ones that you think seem that you come back to? Let's say ones that keep bubbling up to the surface, let's say, or that seem to have a certain prominence that what rises to the top in your mind? There's only two broad
not broad ones, but broad frameworks of one or fields of one. So one is if whatever I'm studying currently, that's just at the forefront of my mind. Sure. And then also what I what I don't understand. So I don't understand Bach, I don't understand his consciousness as a simulated property. I think I understand it, but I don't I don't feel like I understand. And so that comes up over and over. And
I think that's it. So you want specifics. The easiest way for me to give you specifics would be if I just looked over my own channel then gave you some but right now I'm working on a iceberg, an iceberg of string theory. I'm so excited about that man. Yeah, it's been a video that's like a week, weeks and weeks and weeks in the making, maybe two months now, two months in the making more than any other total video, just going through the last 50 years of string theory and explaining the math behind it.
So that's super interesting. I'm so excited by string theory. Like, I don't believe it's correct. But I, I love it in the same way that I love chess. Like, I don't believe chess is correct. What do you mean chess is correct? Like, sure, kings actually operate like that. Queens operate like that. Some people say Queen can do whatever she wants. So in some way, yeah, sure. But but it is just intellectually so fascinating.
geometric unity as well. I'd like to do a deep dive into maybe an iceberg and whole iceberg on them. For people who are unfamiliar with the iceberg format. It's one where you explain each topic has several attributes or different subtopics within them. And then you can order them in a way that is the surface level. So it's what most people know about.
Hmm, let me give an example when it comes to theories of everything. So string theory would be their geometric unity may be there because many people have heard maybe geometric unities on a sub layer layer number two is usually about seven layers. And as you get more and more deeper, you get more and more obscure, sometimes even dark, sometimes more philosophical. And it's where the fringes of the knowledge are at layer four. So people with PhDs only know up to layer four, and then some professors know on layer five, and then layer six is just for people. You got to be
You got to be a fanatic to know layer six and seven. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to see this. I know you've been teasing that the iceberg, the string theory video, and I think it's going to be like a two-hour long epic thing. So very excited to see that when it comes out. Okay. So we have two. So Yoshibox computational universe, kind of broadly his idea.
We met up in person and he spent hours explaining it to me and I find it extremely interesting as well. Like super interesting man. Yeah.
Cool. Yeah, I have to dive in more into that. It's actually funny because the most popular video on my channel is because of Eric's work. It's on the hop vibration, which I may be familiar with. I barely even understand it. I made the snake in video and I should barely wrap my head around its actual significance. I do not really understand. He went on Joe Rogan a few years ago and said it was the most important object in the universe was his claim.
And so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to understand it myself and then trying to explain it. And still to this day, I can't really fully grok if it's legitimate, if it actually is this important, or if it's just a mere curiosity. I can't tell. Yeah. I don't agree that it's the most important. Yeah. That's if you asked me, it got into my head, I would say the same thing. I don't know. I wouldn't even put it in top five.
Yeah, me neither. Yeah, I'm sure Eric has his own reasons. Yeah, I assume so. Yeah. I mean, I just took that too far. Perhaps two, you know, in a three hour interview with with Rogan, you can say a lot of things and kind of be but it's captured the attention of a lot of people. So that's kind of interesting. So Geometric Unity and Bach got it. Can you explain to me how how is it more complicated than you have a sphere and you put bundle, you put a local product space of S1 on it?
Like how is it more complicated than that? I don't, I agree. I don't know. I don't understand its significance. I can understand generally that it's a mapping from a hypersphere onto what we'd say a traditional sphere. But beyond that, I don't know why it's important. It has applications in a number of different physics situations, but beyond that, I don't know. There really is no other literature I've seen
about its importance or significance. So yeah, I just have to trust what Eric says there on it. Uh huh. Yeah, sorry. Um, but if we make just so it has an extension. Okay. Oh, sorry. Please. Yeah. No, if you have more, this would be great if you have a context on it. Sure. Sure. So wonderful. So there's, there's, I believe S four. So this may be incomprehensible to most people, but the sphere
This regular sphere, if you take it and you just consider it as a shell hollow, otherwise, it's called a ball, technically a ball in physics or disk, if you take the circle version. So you have you have to take it as hollow. That's called s two. And then if you want to go higher dimensional, then you call it s three and lower dimensional would be s one and that's the circle. So the circle s one becomes the sphere s two becomes some higher dimensional version of a sphere s three and so on. Then there's s four. And
Yeah, so you were thinking of the hop vibration as taking a higher dimensional sphere, so S3, and then wrapping it around S2. Whereas I think of it as S2, but then it has a local product space of S1. And those are equivalent. So in bundle theory, those are equivalent. You were looking at it in terms of the, I believe it's called the homotopy. I believe it's called the homotopy.
I was thinking of in terms of the bundle interpretation. But so the easiest way for me to understand is the bundle interpretation. So it's s two. So s three goes into s two, which is the hypersphere goes into the regular sphere. But then locally, it looks like the sphere with s one, which is the circle.
You can generalize this to S4, so a hypersphere, locally looking like a product of that with S3. So another hypersphere. So that's S7 going to S4, I believe. And that has an important role in physics with, with, with what? With the anti-self-dual and self-dual Yang-Mills equations. So that's a mouthful. But that, that, there's a generalization of the hop vibration that has application of physics. As for the regular hop vibration, I don't know.
While we're in this domain here and for folks who are listening and aren't familiar with your channel, you have a background in mathematical physics. I'd love to talk about mathematics broadly and just the field. You've certainly heard this phrase, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
Do you have an intuition as to why mathematics is so unreasonably effective? I oscillate between thinking that it's so trivial, that it's obvious why it's so effective, and then also that it's a profound statement. I'm oscillating right now into it's a trivial statement. So my present deliberation is thinking of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is just as foolish as saying, I can't believe screwdrivers work. So we designed screwdrivers to work.
We have axioms. We could show us in any act. Well, there are several axiom systems that we could have chosen that we don't. And the reason is because it just doesn't have application. One of the reasons why some people may wonder, man, mathematicians are pedantic. They take 200 pages in this book. I believe it's called the Principia Mathematica to prove one plus one equals two. OK, so then the question is like, why? Why does it take 200 pages to prove something so obvious?
The answer isn't that it takes 200 pages to prove that it's obvious. It does do that. But the answer is that we want to know if the axiomatic system we have that's so abstract is correct. So it better prove one plus one equals two. It takes 200 pages to get from those axioms to one plus one equals two. But we're not trying to prove one plus one equals two. If we had well,
If we had found that it doesn't prove one plus one equals two, that would have invalidated the axiomatic system and we would have chosen a different one or keep generating. So we come up with one. Luckily, I think Russell and Whitehead Russell and Whitehead came up with that about 200, about 100 or so years ago.
If we had, there's the physical universe and then we're trying to model the physical universe and we use math to model it, but we don't use any math. We just use some parts of math. Wolfram is, by the way, trying to explore the space of all math. It's not like, so it's not like
That's interesting. I think a lot of people, myself included, probably do elevate mathematics to a certain degree in that it seems
Say more fundamental, that's probably too strong a claim, but its usage across domains seems to give it more of a greater weight, let's say. Sounds like you don't particularly elevate math beyond the other disciplines or sciences?
We could have different logical systems, some that are so trivial. So right now we say there is no law or there is a law of the excluded middle. And then we have other logical systems where we don't have the law of the excluded middle. But we could have had a logical system where it's just T, like there's just one letter T, and then all you can prove, quote unquote, prove our strings of T. And then we think, well, that's just, it's not interesting. But it's math. And so we don't question, well, what's the unreasonableness effective of T theories?
Because we don't even consider that. So when we say the unreasonableness effectiveness, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, we're already considering the subset of math that is effective. So obviously, it's effective. Right. But I guess when I think about it in comparison to it's really hard to think about it compares to other I want to say languages, other domains, let's say.
Something you study in say biology, it's really difficult to compare between math, right? But something you learn from biology, not necessarily applicable to something you learn in chemistry or physics or vice versa. Usually it's the other way around. Usually there's a bit of a hierarchy in terms of what's dependent on the other levels. But say
Something you learn from mathematics in one field you can apply across multiple fields or different domains. It's like a utility player. It seems to have all this utility across pretty much every domain you can imagine. It's interesting to hear your perspective because I wasn't expecting that response.
What you're referring to is called universality in math. So why is, why is there so much? Why can you invent something in one field and then it generalizes across several? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But it seems like we could say why is the hammer so effective? Like we invented the hammer to put in nails, but we can use it for several other in several other domains.
So to me, it sounds like a question that's just either as trivial or profound. Maybe it is an extremely profound question. Why is the hammer? So why is the knife so effective? Cut someone it can chop celery. To me, it's on the same level. And whether or not it's a it's a profound question or or one that's trivial depends on to me, it's the same as do you consider why is a knife? So why does why do knives have so much of an application?
If you think that's an interesting question, which it may be, then you could think that the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is also an interesting question. But this is my present deliberation. I oscillate. Yeah, sure. I understand. Do you think mathematics is discovered, invented, or some combination of the two, or something outside of those two entirely?
Yeah, this is this is super interesting. I find it difficult to make the case that it's invented. Discovered implies that there's something so you could say that there's a platonic world and that what we're doing is we're touching aspects of that are seeing veiled images as images of it or projections of it.
See, in our field, Carlos, our field of podcasting on these questions, there's a conflation of truth, reality, existence and fundamental. So Donald Hoffman thinks that what's not fundamental isn't real. And it's to me, that's just as silly as again, it's just as silly as saying like your iPhone isn't real, because it's made of components, or petunias aren't real, because they have stems and leaves. Like, okay, no one's saying
Petunias are doomed. Oh my gosh, isn't that blowing your mind? Petunias are doomed. Why is it that just because something's made of components, your keyboard isn't real because it's made of smaller keys? Like no one thought that before. And not that no one thought that before. But there's a difference between something being real and being fundamental. You can have the reality of a chair, even though chairs, we don't think chairs comprise the universe. Okay. So there's a conflation of reality and fundamentalities.
Then there's also a conflation of existence and real. The question that I think about is, can you have something that exists that isn't real? Now we think, well, let's just define existence as what's real, or let's just define what's real as existence. So firstly, then you have a tautology. Secondly, circular, circular reasoning. But then these are also different words with different historical roots.
I think it's extremely left-brained of us, even though I love analyticity, you and I both. It's extremely left-brained of us to keep abstracting and abstracting away until we just find commonalities and everything is an undifferentiated mess that's in this chaotic disarray state of whatever some people think the universe emerged from. But what I find interesting is also to find the delineations. What are the differences? The left brain likes abstraction and to see commonality.
That's one of the reasons why racism is associated with the left brain, with left brain thinking. I'm going to treat you just like any other member of your race. Whereas the right brain likes to see distinction and particulars and likes to see you as a person that's different than someone else, some other person. Just a moment. I'm sure.
Math in some sense is just being more and more abstract. And so the question is, is what's real, what's most abstract and what's most common? Or is what's real associated with the particular? And so as so is math actually a reflection of something real? This is what I mean by there's the difference between existence and real. When we say that it's invented or discovered, okay, if we say it's discovered, we mean that there's something there and then we pushed away some dirt and we found some core. To say that
Implies that if you have some theory like a correspondence theory of the of truth, you know, there's several different theories of truth like deflationary and so on. So embedded in this statement of is math invented or discovered is an implicit confession of one's theory of truth. I don't have a settled on theory of truth. So it's extremely difficult for me to say is math discovered or not. It's also I'm also comfortable saying that it can be a reflection of a platonic world, but the platonic world doesn't exist.
I'm comfortable with saying that. Now Penrose thinks the Platonic world exists and thus math is discovered, but I think math can be discovered while what's being uncovered doesn't exist but is true. There's a difference between truth and existence. There's four concepts here that are constantly conflated. Reality, Fundamentality, Truth and Existence. 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. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You just touched on a bunch of other things I was going to ask you about, but I feel like you made, I think, I think you made your perspective clear enough actually. Um,
I'm trying to think of where to go next here. This is more just a fun question here. Why is, oh, after, yeah. No, no, just forgive me for taking some time to answer your questions because they're consequential questions and I want to ensure that what I'm saying isn't something that is a prepared answer that is staged
It's actually one of the many things I admire about you, Kurt, is that you are so thoughtful and that you will take as much time as you need. It's usually a few seconds, a few moments to stop and contemplate and choose your words carefully.
I started off
I wish I had started this thing off a little lighter. If we could have built, it would have started us off. I wanted to make sure that we got to these questions. But a fun one, why is 157 your favorite number? Oh, man, you've done your homework. So where did you hear that?
I'm sure, I'm certain I heard it from you. I can't recall. I don't take, I take pretty diligent notes, but not necessarily where I heard it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm the same. It was probably an offhand. It's probably an offhands comment you made. It's also serious. Now the reason is quite secretive, but so I'm a secretive person just so you don't Carl. I could tell by the way you take notes, your own personal notes, your note taking system.
Yeah, it's... It's not secretive out of privacy. It's something else that I haven't put my finger on. It's not protection. Maybe it's distinctiveness. I don't know. I don't know, but the reason for that, so I have a... Well... I can tell you a bit off air about that.
Okay, sure. Yeah, I'll just get a note of it. Yeah, for sure. I'm very comfortable. Any question? And please. Okay, but there's also there's this there's also synchronicity with that number. So one of my favorite courses in university was Met 157 at the University of Toronto. So that's the first year real analysis course. It's your first like you get talk about going in without lube when you just went into this podcast with the hard questions straight away. Sorry.
Yeah, no, that that's the TOE podcast as well. And that's Matt 157 as well. You go from high school to proving that the proof of induction works. Like it's extremely theoretical. It's your first taste of actual math. That's one of my favorite courses, Matt 157. But there are several, a couple other reasons. Again, I'll talk to you about the malware. Absolutely. Sure.
I do want to touch back on something you said about truth. Funnily enough, my channel used to be called The Truth with Carlos Varias. That was the initial, for the first couple years of my channel, it's actually when I named it.
It was more of a placeholder than anything else. But after a while I found that it was just too haughty and just too bloated. And also I don't think necessarily, but I think this actually might be counted as something I heard you say on an AMA, that I'm not sure that objective truth, whatever we could say that is, is actually the highest value or is even in the tier of the highest values.
But I would love to know where your position on that is and what does truth mean to you? It's the enlightened position or the rational position to think that hey, whatever is truthful is what's most good. I think it's an implicit position.
I don't know if that's the case. So firstly, one has to define what they mean by truth. And that's not so simple as we've discussed. If you just mean you correspond to facts, cold and calculated. I don't know why truth implies some goodness. Now you may say historically, it's the case that the more we know, the more good we are. Okay, firstly, let's what is this definition of good that you refer to?
And how do you prove that the more that we know, the more good we are? How do you know that there's not something? Oh, gosh. Geez. So one of my quotes I can barely say is. This comes from. Lovecraft. And it's that one of the most merciful aspects of this world is the inability for the human mind to correlate its contents.
and that as soon as we do, this unfettered scientific investigation may reveal such terrifying vistas of reality in our frightful position therein that will either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light to the peace and safety of the darkness. Yeah, there's no guarantee that you just learn more and it's just a net good. There's no guarantee about that.
This one of the reasons that people don't want to study, I can't even say it, but politically speaking, there are certain political topics that someone could be something you could study, but people don't want to because, well, we don't want to find out the answer there. Again, I don't want to. I know. Well.
Yeah, to me, it's just not it's not clear at all. It's not clear. So something is more valued than truth or you can just say you want truth for what you can just ask someone for what they say for truth sake. What does that mean? You want truth for truth sake? Most of the time, they'll say because it's it leads to some better outcome. Okay, so why not pursue that better outcome? Okay, because the best way to pursue it is with the truth. Okay.
Is that guaranteed? What if it wasn't the case? What if someone made the case that is not okay? And I get a bit frustrated about this because see, just like there are buzzwords, there are these buzz phrases that people use, like, like, pursue truth, or I'm a truth seeker. And
There's this writer of Seinfeld named Peter Melman. He said that there are different storylines in Seinfeld.
Like the one about the car, the smelly car, the the the the bus, no, the valley, the valley who went in and funked up the car for the rest of the show. So there are different storylines. And the story is that someone in the writers room, they would always pitch Larry different stories and Larry David would say like, no, no, no, it's not good enough. And then someone was just telling them about telling him about their day.
And then he's like, that's a Seinfeld episode. That's a Seinfeld episode right there. The guy didn't even think about it like that. Peter Melman said Larry was great at picking up on what would be a great storyline. Like someone snubs you because you ordered a salad and not something more substantive at the restaurant. And so the waitress is a bit upset because of the tip. Like Larry, Larry David would pick up on it like that. And it would just go over most people.
I think that part of one's calling in life can be, you can phrase it as what is that filter that you have, that sieve that you have, that net that you have, that nothing escapes it, almost nothing escapes it, but it escapes other people. So for me, I have a similar observational bent as Larry and Larry David and Seinfeld in the sense that I'm just, I'm observing, but I'm not an observational comedian, like I'm not in comedy.
So something that stands out to me like a splinter is when people say phrases that they are saying because they're intellectually posturing or that they want to sound enlightened and deep and profound and they don't know what it means or they've heard it from somewhere else and they're copying it. It just stands out to me like that. I see it on
In written text, I see it in different interviews of people. I see it in myself when I'm being interviewed. Maybe that's why I see it because I'm I'm such a harsh critic of myself, even though I don't think I'm a harsh critic. But I think that's part of being a harsh critic. I'm I'm a critic of myself. And so I see this quality in myself, or at least I see it in my former self. And it takes took years to to minimize it.
And it becomes so blatantly obvious in other people. It just doesn't pass my filter. I see it with many, even some of the guests that I interview. More so I see it in other podcasters. Not you. Don't worry. No, it's okay. It's okay.
No, no, no, I feel like many podcasters become podcasters because they want to not because they care about the ideas, but because they want to be a thought leader. And they see this as somehow getting the credibility of the guests that they interview and that people will want to hear from them more and more and more. So. Yeah, yeah, different. Anyhow, yeah, you mentioned this kind of reminds me of something that you'd mentioned on an AMA that when you're watching
film or television, you can spot lazy dialogue very quickly. When there's just something, it's just not meaningful. It's not progressing the story. I mean, separately, we're talking about podcasts in general. I think most media, just cut it books, TV, whatever you want it, art.
99% of it is not worth consuming, in my opinion. There's so much of it. I mean, that's a very critical statement, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that my stuff is in the 1%. I'm not claiming it at all. I'm not claiming that. But I do think a sort of selective filter is a good thing, although you meant it in a slightly different way. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was, yes, when you were
I'm not sure if you're still directing any films or if you have any near-term plans to do that again, but I did want to ask you about, because I watched I'm Okay. I watched that. It was last year at some point, but I did watch it. Because you bring up, and I thought while watching it, this is some combination, or maybe I might be stealing a quote from a snippet someone said, a combination of Woody Allen and Larry Davis, something like that.
the thoughts too that was happening there. And I enjoyed it. I mean, I know we had this back and forth a little bit. You said the cringe, I think was the word you used. Yeah, geez Louise, man. Even you bringing this up right now. No, but I'm going to be read. If you don't mind, I'll link to it in the description so folks can actually watch it if they want to. Cause I know you don't talk about on the podcast that much and understand. I mean, you're talking about other things, other topics, but I wanted to talk about that experience perhaps a little bit, or what did you, uh,
What did you learn from that production? It's much harder to make a film than I thought. I remember when I was filming that, I had
I thought I knew what
It takes like 10 seconds to check your messages. I didn't even have time to check my messages unless it was directly related to work. I remember going to sleep takes me so long to fall asleep. Took me like an instant back then. I was just so exhausted filming all day waking up immediately going to work and then immediately finishing. I set myself this unfathomable goal of finishing a film in 60 days. So finishing the filming and editing of a feature film in 60 days of one that's not something
I don't have one that's not something trivial like you film in one location and it's one long shot because then that needs editing. Yeah, so that was that taught me what it's like to work extremely, extremely
Formidably another is that you shouldn't feed people pizza constantly. I was so cheap man I had this small budget night and everyone would come hoping that there's this is something on film sets, by the way. Yeah, sure sure pizza It's known it's like a joke that you're not supposed to that you're your your food on set is supposed to be substantive and I'm just giving pizza every time and they would be so disappointed because I'm I couldn't I love food but me too. Yeah, I'm like I'm on the same track as you and
That reminds me of a book I read when I was a kid. I don't know why I read it because I don't have a directing impulse or an artistic or creative. Well, I have a creative side, I guess, but it was called What They Don't Teach You in Film School. It was like 130 lessons or tips. And I remember devouring it as a child. It's really interesting, the behind the scenes. And they talk about, yes, what kind of food to feed and to actually feed your people how they expect it. Yeah.
From that book, that was a long time ago. I remember just soaking that up. You remember just random things you read as a kid that you're like, why did that thing speak to me? You weren't interested in being a filmmaker before? No, I wasn't. I wasn't after reading the book either. I don't know why I picked that book up. I think it was just at the library and it was an easy read and it was very
It was written by a link to the description as well. I have to like go and find where this book is or who wrote it. But I think I liked the, they were just, it was like kind of like startup vibe that they were just throwing things together and learning at, you know, learning a rapid pace and trying to create something. And it was very inspirational. I want to say, I remember being just, just being in awe of like, Oh, this is, I didn't realize I was probably 10 when I read it.
And I didn't realize even what a director was of like, oh, there's a president of a movie, like they get to decide, oh, okay, they're organizing the whole thing. So it opened my eyes to that frame. Now we have some exposure, I think, to a lot of people do anyways, the production process and how that goes to be.
Well, speaking of just something else I would learn. Sorry, quickly. Yes, please. Yes, specific. Yes. And is pay more for the actors because the actors carry the movie. So mine didn't have known actors or even. Well, I don't want to disparage anyone, but it's not as if acting is the strong suit of that of that film. I think the writing is not bad and the directing is not bad. But the acting, including on my own part, by the way, I was in the film. So it's not that it's not terribly great.
Yeah. No, I think I pointed out when I messaged you about it last year, it was my favorite parts. I think the script writing, yes, and the cinematography, some of the shots in particular, was really stuck out and I thought they were excellent. Speaking of projects, are you currently writing a book on paradoxes, consciousness, and free will?
How's that going? You've done your homework, man. Jeez. Yeah. Holy moly. Yeah. So people who are watching this, if you don't know who Carlos is, I'm sure you do like this guy. This guy studies, man. Yeah, I'm writing a book. It doesn't have a publisher. I'm not
It's to get my own thoughts straight. This is something that I've seen. So sometimes people come on the show or come on any show and then they're like, yeah, they're just promoting a book and then they'll call someone a grifter. I'm like, that's a phrase that needs to be eliminated from someone's vocabulary. There are a few high bounding repudiational words that just limit you that I think should be eliminated. I keep a catalog of them. Anyhow,
I used to feel that way as well, like, oh, they're just promoting their book until I start to look more into it. Number one, it turns out writing a book is one of the worst ways to make money. Oh, sure. In terms of hours per what you get back. Number two, writing is such a great way to sort your own thoughts out. One of my favorite books is Gerda Lesher Bach by Douglas. Same here. Yeah, I got it. Oh, yeah.
Right. Right. Right. I have the same one. Same always an arm's reach of this book. And that is just that to me is like the epitome of what it is to write a book where you see someone wrestling with ideas on the page and then coming to a conclusion. That to me is like it's not only book writing, it's art. It's when you don't know what you're doing and you're trying to do something and you're exploring it through the process of writing or through the process of filming or through the process of painting.
Jung would say if you knew what you're doing prior and you kept sticking to that, that was that was what he would call propaganda. So he thought propaganda was more than political propaganda. It was you just trying to convince the audience of something instead of trying to find out something yourself through the art. Anyhow, yeah, I'm writing it bit by bit. I have about seven book ideas and I'm writing them little by little here and there. Hear that sound?
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Awesome. Yeah, so it's just like a work of progress. You have a target date. Yeah, my target date keeps changing, man. So understandable. There's this guy named Leonardo da Vinci. I'm sure you've heard of him. Yeah. Yeah.
Who? So there's this guy, the Caprio. Yeah, so Leo here. Yeah, Leo, if you read his biography by Walter Isaacson, I resonate deeply with with Da Vinci. It's he firstly had ADHD mindset. Secondly, he was solitary, like he learned almost everything he learned alone. And it's a lonely, lonely life. At least my life is extremely lonely. I don't have friends, not in person. I have people I text, but
It's an intellectually lonely life. I have my wife and that satisfies every possible need, but we don't talk about anything that's academic.
And so I resonate completely with with Leonardo da Vinci something from him from his book from Walter Isaacson's book of his is that there's a refrain like and Leonardo started this but he would never finish that about he was started but never finished or or he thought like a few months and it would take him years right right right now where the books are at Hofstadter's law yeah I think that's Hofstadter's law yeah yeah it is yeah yeah
That's so interesting. And also, I mean, speaking at Girl I Should Bought, how incredible is it that that book won the Pulitzer Prize, I believe? Yeah, it won the Pulitzer Prize, but it was also like a very popular book, I think in the, I don't know how many copies it sold, but I wonder if it came out today, how well it would do. That's the goal for this book that I'm working on is I want it to be technical for someone who is at the undergraduate level or an extremely bright
and motivated high school level, but still somehow be a book that would be at the front or near the front of a bookstore. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that now. I don't know how he did it then. Yeah, I don't know. That's so tough to pull off. One of the things that reminds me of this is a complete tangent, if you don't mind, but
It's related to, and maybe it'll even help perhaps, but when you say that, the person I think of, someone whose name comes up a lot, I'm sure, but you're familiar with Joe Rogan, I'm sure. Yes. But not his podcast. When he commentates on UFC fights, and I'm not a UFC fan, I'm not a fighting fan. I like other sports, but not UFC.
I've watched though a handful of the fights that he calls and I think he does an impeccable job of explaining things to a level of detail where a total novice to the sport can appreciate it and yet there's detail and specifics to the point where I know advanced viewers will get a lot out of it.
It's a weird confluence of things. I mean, it's so strange, but I've watched a few fights and I think to myself, he's the best announcer I've ever heard in sports. Of a sport I don't care about. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, which is a very interesting kind of angle and perspective and I don't listen to his podcast too often. Occasionally I do if it's a guest I particularly want to hear from but I think he does perhaps has that kind of
I'm amazed and admire your work ethic. I wish I had an ounce of it. I wish I had just a sliver of it because I don't have the same drive that you seem to have.
Can you attribute that to anything in particular? Do you think it's just an innate quality? Do you think that's something you built up? Something I built, but it's also insecurity. I'm a deeply insecure person. And so I know that my drive for wanting to be the best at what I do, the best, the best, the best, it has to be the best, has to be the best. I know that comes from, or I believe it comes from,
If I was to psychoanalyze myself, something from when I was 17 and I was so heartbroken by a girl, so heartbroken, like you wouldn't believe and it just left this indelible wound that's still there. I'm not hung up over any woman, any woman, but, but my, my past shapes me and I know it's there.
There's another quote, by the way, from Leonardo da Vinci, this time. So, one of my favorite quotes of his. I said I resonated with him because... well, several reasons. He integrated several disparate fields, he was a generalist, but at the same time being a specialist, which is something that I aspire to do. He also had a bit of pride in him.
He rarely let it shine through. He also didn't like to speak about himself much. You get this from his writings. I don't know if people know, but I'm uncomfortable being interviewed. I just don't like being interviewed. I feel like one, I don't have much to say. I'm uninteresting. It takes so much from me. I'm honored to be here, man. I'm honored to be here.
And all the people who would interview me like I'm glad it's you. But anyway, this this there's many qualities I like from Leonardo, one of them is, as he said, one of all the notes, and I think his notebook, by the way, his is, I have his notebook somewhere here. His sketch note, his drawing notebooks, the ones of sketches is more valuable than his paintings. I'm not a fan of his paintings.
But I love his sketches in his notebooks. And one of the quotes was one of the writings he wrote was to some nebulous competitor, it's not named, and it may not even been a single person, it just may be you can cock someone as an as a as an enemy in your in your mind. He said, he was talking about why they'll never beat him. And he said, you will. He's like, constructing this, this scenario, he's like,
Where he was, whereas Leonardo was examining cadavers and he would do that because he wanted to know how did the muscles work and no other painter even thought to go there. Like, why would you open someone up? Why does that have anything to do with art? He said, you will perhaps be deterred by your stomach or you will be. Yeah, you will perhaps be deterred by your stomach. And if that doesn't get you, then you then the fear of living in close quarters with quartered corpses and flayed flesh will frightful to behold.
And if you have that, if you surpass that, then you'll lack the draftsmanship and you won't be as good with the pen. And if you have that, then you'll lack the knowledge of perspective. Remember, Leo was the first one of the first to have perspective in his paintings. And if you have that, if that were so accompanied, then you will lack the geometric methods of calculating forces on the muscle. And if you have that, then you will simply lack the patience and not be so diligent.
So in other words, something that I resonate with is like, look, you have to have the drive. You have to have the skill or the knack for this. You have to also have methods. Even if you have all of those, you're not going to outwork me. So. That's that's in me. That's just a deep insecurity of mind that that drives that maybe drives it for Leonardo. I don't know. Thank you for sharing that. I know that's that's deeply personal, so.
Would you say you have any living role models? No, I asked my wife this. And then she said, Andrew Huberman. I'm like, babe, I don't even talk about, I just talk about Andrew Huberman about the sunlight. But I talk about it so frequently because I'm like, we need to get more sunlight into your eyes. Yeah, I'm like, babe, I don't even talk about Andrew Huberman other than the sunlight, but I do it so often. She's like, maybe a second.
Yeah, no, but I found so hilarious and offensive. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, I know. I know. Yes. No, there's nothing against Andrew Huberman. I think he's like one of the best, if not the best at what he does.
I don't know.
I don't know. I think that there's a couple. Yeah, yeah. So I'm rebelling against something, Carlos. I'm rebelling against my former self, where I was so uncreative, I would just imitate I'd find a role model or two and imitate them. I think there's like, I think there's three stages of learning or three stages of life. One where you imitate. And then the second where you, you inculcate or you integrate that's that. That's another buzz phrase I don't like to use, but integrate.
And then the third is that you Individuate So the integer so first you go through this phase of imitating someone and then second then the individuation phase or the in sorry the integration phase is where you You're you can now disagree with your idols. I think that's where you can find honesty By the way, like your true feelings are when there's someone you hold with high regard and you say here's where they're wrong That's at least for me
And then the individuation phase, I've forgotten how that goes. I don't think I meant that. But anyhow, I'm rebelling against myself having models and so I don't because I find it too difficult for me to not imitate them. Right. One of the things you just mentioned about, yes, say picking out the things that you disagree with somebody and it's related to something you said earlier,
or perhaps a thought I had while you were speaking, is that from personal experience, when I, because I think we have a lot in common here. You've mentioned on AMAs that you're quite judgmental or that you once were very, very judgmental. And I think I feel the same way. That's something I'm working on, trying to get better about. But when I'm observant about
The things that I criticize in the world, mostly exterior, let's say, and this happens rarely, but when I'm able to realize that the thing I'm really criticizing is a fault I have in myself, it's like the exterior, it's like the outside world, those are symbols. It's like a side and usually I'm just scoff and go off and just say, oh no, that's wrong.
But if I take the time to analyze it, I'm saying pretty much always, I can't even think of instances where this is not the case. I realize, oh wait, I've done that. I do that all the time. And actually, because I've noticed it, it's like a reflection or a mirror of something that I need to work on. It's so prevalent and so common that
And perhaps it's just my own experience. I've talked to friends about this and they don't seem to share that. But it's something I've noted in the past couple of years that I can't shake. For me, I find 99% of my criticisms of anyone and also of the theories that they develop, so I'm also attacking those, come from jealousy.
So I'm an MLS and desirous and rivalrous person. I'm an envious person. Almost all of my criticisms of other people come from. Something that's not rational, even though I would say, well, look at all this, it's just obvious that they're wrong because of reasons A, B and C. Yeah. That's just for me, though. Yeah.
So it's total left field here, but there's a bunch of the word rationality there, so I'm going to jump on that. Something you're really, or you were interested in, Newcombe's Paradox. And I can't say I've done a deep dive into this, but I've just barely scratched the surface of it the last couple of days. I can't understand and perhaps for the audience, if you wouldn't mind,
Okay, let's suppose there's a genie and okay, let's suppose there's a magical no, I got to remove your computer because then that
Yeah, let's just say that there's a supercomputer like that. You enter this room, it scans your brain. And it knows the decisions you're going to make, particularly in particular, the decisions on this problem. There's two boxes in front of you. One of the boxes you can't see through it. So wooden box. Then another the next box is, let me just it has $1,000 and it's transparent. It's glass a glass box.
You're told, look, you can do there are two actions you can take, you can take both boxes, and you keep all the money that's inside them. So in the in the wooden box, maybe there's some money inside, maybe there's not, but at least you see the glass box. So you can choose. Do I take the wooden box only? This is the choice being given to you by the supercomputer. Do I take only the wooden box? Or do I take both boxes? You're thinking, well, why not just take both boxes? There's some amount of money in the
In the wooden one, I don't know how much but let me just take both because I'll get the amount that's in the wooden one. Plus, I'll get the glass one to 1000. Okay, the computer says, Hey, there's a cash. So firstly, what's in this wooden box is either going to be nothing. Or it's going to be a million dollars. Okay, now you're thinking, well, that's even better. Let me just take both boxes, I'll either get $1,000, or I'll get a million plus $1,000. Then the computer says, actually, there's a there's another catch. That's not it.
If you're I've scanned your brain, by the way, I've scanned your brain and I figured out if you're a greedy person, if you're the greedy person and one million doesn't satisfy you, you want one million plus one thousand. So you try to take both boxes. I've actually put nothing in the box. So I'm going to punish your greed. If you're the. Not altruistic, but less selfish person who's just going to trust and take what's inside the the wooden box, I've put in one million.
in there. So this then you're like, Well, do I trust this computer and so on? Well, you can imagine this computer has played this game across 1 billion people and it's never predicted incorrectly. If someone tried to take both boxes, by the way, as soon as you enter the room, this decision is already like this decision to put 1 million or not is made instantly. Okay. And it's always been correct. This computer has always been correct. So then the question is, what do you do?
So it sounds like there's no paradox because, well, why don't I just not be greedy and take the wooden box? Because if history is correct, then it punishes greed. I want one million, so I'm not going to even attempt to take that transparent one thousand bucks. I'm just going to take my wooden box. Now, the paradox comes in because there's two types of rationality.
There's epistemic rationality, and then there's instrumental rationality. And usually these are aligned. And that's why when someone's like, I'm a rational person, I'm like, yeah, which kind of rationality? Why do you think that one ranks supreme? What do you do in the scenarios where they conflict where they conflict? Conflict, sorry. So epistemic rationality is using logic and deduction to come to conclusions. And then that's the one that would say, well, just a moment.
The second, so let me just explain what epistemic rationality is. That's the one that tries to maximize your utility. So the one that wants to maximize your utility would say, look, the the history shows that if I was to take the wooden box, then I get one million. History also shows if I take both, I only get one thousand. So let me take the wooden box. So I'm going to maximize my utility. Then the rational one would say, yes, but that decision has already been made. It's there. It's already there.
So why can't you just decide right now to take both boxes? Whether there's one million or not in the trunk in the in the wooden box that that's there, whether whether you take both or not. There's another variation where someone else is a friend and can see in the wooden box, by the way, from the back. Right, right, right. So anyway, the question is, why don't you just take both boxes? If the decision has been made already,
Anyhow, that's it. Can I ask what would you do? I would take the the wooden box only. Just one box, the million dollar box, not both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if I lose a thousand, so what? But yeah, variation where it's like a vaccine and your wife is dying. And one has like one box has 80% of the vaccine.
It's like the trolley problem being reframed.
I think it all relies on how much you trust the supercomputer's prediction.
And it's just like that value of what percentage chance do you think or how likely it is you think that they made the prediction that goes either against your, let's say against your favor. Because if you trust it that it's right, let's say it's never been wrong a billion times, it seems quite obvious to just take one box and just trust it. I don't really see, I feel like there's
The reasoning goes, if the money is there or not already, the decision has been made, why can't you, with your own free will right now, just go and choose both?
The decisions already been made by the supercomputer, they predicted I'm going to take one or the other or both let's say.
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Even if it's predicted that you're only going to take one though and it put the one million in, why can't you just take both and get a million and a thousand? Your job is to maximize the amount of money that you get.
Yeah, I probably just don't understand it well. It just seems very straightforward to me, but I probably have this huge blind spot that I cannot understand. Because I know that you said it's an epistemic versus instrumental. I've seen it phrased as a dominance principle versus expected utility principle. There's also a frame, the first thing I thought of was
This thing from poker that I read a poker paper many years ago is about counterfactual regret minimization. So it made me think of what would minimize my regret after the fact? It's like another way of perceiving. I don't think it falls really under the envelope of this problem, but yes, if you were to try to take both and then you got nothing, that's so much worse than just taking the million.
It also leads to something we were talking about earlier a little bit in terms of it's sort of maybe it's like we're getting close to a sort of pragmatic discussion, maybe it's on truth or something, but everything is like, just don't overthink it.
If you don't maximize, if you were wrong, let's say you get, okay, maybe that should be the variation. If you were wrong, you get shot right afterwards.
If you don't get the full, if you don't get the maximum amount that you could have gotten, then you're shot right after, right outside the room at Newcombe's. Right. Yeah. Right outside of Newcombe's room. Yeah. I need to think about how to phrase that, the roulette version, the Russian roulette version. I need to think about that. But I think that would make it more clear that there's a paradox here. Yeah. I have to, I think I need to dive into it more. Maybe folks in the comments will love to explain it or
Clear up this blind spot that I clearly have. A few other questions I have for you. Have you seen The Boy and the Heron yet? No. Is it good? You're a fan of Miyazaki, right? Yeah. I'm not sure. Yes. Yeah. I know you're a fan of his. I've actually never seen another film of his. I have to watch like Spirited Away and some of these. Okay. It was my first. I did not love it. Yeah. I got to be honest. I thought it was beautiful before. I heard that. I heard that. Okay.
That's interesting. Yeah. Cause I, I went in with an open mind and the reviews were pretty great generally from critics anyway. I heard that from the user reviews that most people who are Miyazaki fans were disappointed. Okay. Good. Okay. Then that tracks. Okay. That that's fine. Yeah. I was almost left the theater, but stuck around. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I'll, I'll walk out of a movie. Yeah. Wasted another hour.
How many movies have you walked out on in your life?
Yeah, I walked out of two in my entire life. I stick with the shipment. Which one? Do you remember which one? Yeah, the Steve Jobs with Ashton Kutcher. I was like, this is just so horrible. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And then one time I was given a free ticket. This is probably why I stay because I'm an extremely frugal person. So I'm like, I've saved here. So cost is just my it's my model tattoo. There was one for
I think it was some re live action remake of Pocahontas or is heavily inspired by Pocahontas, but it wasn't. Yeah. And it was a live action one. It was years and years, like 10, 15 years ago. Oh my gosh. Oh man. Sounds terrible. The most recently I haven't, I've thought of walking out of stuff, but the first, I remember one of the first ones when I was a kid, Freddie got fingered with, um, Tom something, Tom grid.
This is awful. I can't even. What was the other one? Do you have another one? Yeah, I misremembered. It wasn't the one with the live action Pocahontas. It was King's Speech. I love that. And I know that's an Academy Award winning movie. People loved it. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't not bear it. Interesting. I liked it. Yeah, it's funny. I remember saying I don't think it deserved Best Picture that year. Social Network was my Best Picture winner personally that year.
What year was that? I want to say 2011. I'm not sure. It was within a year or two of then, I'm pretty sure. I mean, it must be a film, but have you seen anything lately that's caught your eye? No, I haven't. So I decompress now at nighttime. I used to just watch dark dramas, but now I don't. I just watch something light. So there's
But 2007 and 2008 were a great year for films for me. I loved No Country for Old Men and There Will Be More and Sweeney Todd and those all came out. Oh, yeah. Crazy. I was just a buddy of mine the other day. It's one of the best films. Yeah, a few days ago, my friend, we were talking about favorite movies of all time and No Country for Old Men is one of mine.
It's up there for sure. That parasite is another one that comes to mind. I have to think about rounding out the top five, but those two are definitely in that kind of discussion. Yeah. I want to ask you about gaming, too, because what do you have any favorite video games? You don't have time to play them now, but maybe when you were playing Baldur's Gate recently, Baldur's Gate is not bad. I don't see what the hype is about. I think it's a fantastic, like an extremely fantastic game, but I don't see it as being
For sure, game of the year. Zelda was great, the new Zelda. Though to me, it didn't provide much that was different from the first one. I was disappointed in that. Even though I love the mechanics in the new Zelda. The Breath of the Wild. Tears of the Kingdom. Then... Metal Gear is my favorite series. Love Metal Gear. I remember playing that as a kid, yeah. On the PlayStation.
I'm so sad about Metal Gear Solid 5 though. Metal Gear Solid 5 is such a disappointment to me. Was that the open world one? Yeah, it's such a disappointment. The same areas over and over. Mechanically, it's tight. So tight, the tightest of all Metal Gears. But I care about the story and I care about variety. And I know Hideo Kojima, by the way, that's like someone, my dream list person on the podcast. Kojima, yeah. I know, that's why I asked. Yeah, I didn't get into 5.
Yeah, I didn't get into I think I put 15 hours in and then I just kind of went there. I don't know. It didn't it didn't take me in the same thing with Starfield. Oh, and it's a different voice as well for Solid Snake. Like the classic David Hayter that everyone knows and love from and just one, two, three, four, four. You're going to change it for level five for number five. Yeah, sorry, which one? No, no, man. Is that what you said?
No, Starfield. I tried playing Starfield a few months ago. My goodness, I couldn't. Unplayable. I hated it. I mean, load screen after load screen. Just what is going on? The other one is taking 20 hours and yeah, it was too bad. Do you ever play Skyrim?
Oh, Skyrim love fallout fallout is it goes like metal. I just think I So you I don't listen to music but I enjoy Thoroughly enjoy 50s and 60s and 40s music Music from that era because of fallout. Yeah, I just wow Man that game I have such sweet memories of it
That's wonderful. Yeah. I want to ask you, why don't you listen to music? I just, I don't find it conducive to studying. Yeah, that's pretty simple. Yeah. If there's a new Eminem song, I'm going to check that out. Like as soon as I find out though. Gotcha. I listened to Taylor Swift's album the other day. I thought it was great.
Her new album. I never listened to any of her albums before. Her new album, the song called Snow on the Beach. I love that song. Okay. I got to check it out. Yeah. I like, I mean, I, it's funny. I never, I don't have a single song of hers in my Spotify, like, cause I just, I hear her. She's so ubiquitous. I hear her in the world enough, but I like her. I mean, it's not, no criticism to her. It's just a, say, I should go, I should go listen to maybe some more of her catalog because she is what a force she's become.
Why do I care? It's because I'm jealous of her. I don't even want to be in the stadiums. I'm not a musician, but I'm just jealous of her for no reason. It's all criticism.
Do you ever find yourself questioning reality and then you snap back to it remembering that, hey, you have nothing planned for dinner? That's hilarious, man. They should be paying for this one. They should be paying. That's HelloFresh. That's one of the sponsors. Yeah, not a sponsor. No, no, but you were talking about
the success of tow and then I said it doesn't feel that successful and that's because it's for the past year it's been such a struggle financially man like so much of a struggle like so I'm unnerved and frazzled and overtaxed and overburdened and taught and high strung because there was some issue with not sponsors not the sponsors if you see a sponsor on tow if you see a tow sponsor and you like them go check them out
But the people who bring the sponsors, they take a cut. And then I had people who were bringing me sponsors who got other people bringing them sponsors, and then a third one. So there was like a 30%. And then I was seeing almost nothing. I've still owed 1000s of dollars from something which I can't even talk about. And because like I have a contract that I'm not supposed to speak poorly about something I'm not even allowed to go find my own sponsors. Don't know. So it's just been
Yeah, but anyway, thanks for bringing up HelloFresh. I've heard that a lot. I'm just like, I want to ask him this question. I haven't gotten into dip my toes in the water sponsorships, but I have had a couple folks reach out to me directly and I've wondered because I heard a little bit about this. It sounds not pyramid scheme ask, but referral. Yeah, MLM kind of how many levels of referrals are there?
And can I just go directly to the source and get perhaps a better deal? So it's something I'm sure I hope one day to not have the same problem, but you know, I hope one day to kind of understand what you mean. Yeah, get into those waters again. Carlos, if you need any connections or tips, you let me know. We'll talk about it off air. It's something that I think something that I I guess it's it's a
Something that bothers me is that I've had no help. No help Carlos from anyone who's anywhere, anyone who's I've had no help from any other podcaster. I've had no help from any other guest who's like, I'm like, Oh, but you know, this person, can you get? Can I talk to this person? Some people are like, can't you just ask? I don't want to say names because it's uncouth. But can't you just ask if you want to speak to say,
I think I reached out to you
Before saying like, Hey, I like your podcast. And if you need some help, like I can retweet something of yours. I think I've reached out to you saying that I apologize if I haven't. But when I make a note of a smaller podcast, invariably will send them that message like, Hey, man, I'm a fellow YouTuber. If there's something I can do to help you out, let me know. And, and I'm doing that not because I'm a great
I don't have these connections. It's not like I can go out to dinner with some people.
Thank you. I so appreciate that. And actually, I feel similarly in terms of, and this is something that I have to do a better job of, or I could at least
make attempts to be better at, because it does feel like a lonely pursuit for myself as well. I don't have anyone in my social circles that does anything like this, but I also don't. I live in New York City, so perhaps this location, I can imagine there are probably a few more people that are doing something similar or they're nearby that I could reach out to, but there's an idea I had actually
I have a few channels that are similar in size to myself and also similar in topic that I'm going to reach out to soon that maybe we could do a challenge where we have like, I'm about 40,000 subscribers and these channels are as well. It's like first to 100,000 subscribers wins some prize, a handful of channels. And so that could kind of get us together in a way where we're in good nature competing with each other to grow our channels quickly.
Because at least for myself, I think it's interesting the financial pressures that exist for this. Now, I make very little in this pursuit so far. It's because of my size and all the other things I could be doing. But it's funny because the drive, the financial drive, even though I need to make money to live, isn't as strong as it should be or could be.
You know what I mean? And I think it's perhaps a question of like motivation and I'm talking in circles here a bit, but it's something that I need to do a better job of because I feel similarly in that, yeah, I don't know anybody. I'm gaining a network sort of every person I speak with. It's another potential avenue, but I don't ask and maybe I should ask folks I've had on for warm intros to
If you find success in that, let me know. I haven't. I haven't even taken the steps to do it.
I'm not even sure. Before we wrap up, I do want to ask you a more concrete question and I know we started off very hardcore and very high level and abstract in a lot of ways. I do want to ask you a question because it's something that I've had it as a personal tenant of mine that if we better understand the fundamental nature of reality, that we will better know how we should act in the world.
But then David Hume, you're familiar with, I'm sure, his is-ought problem. You cannot drive it off from an is. Where do you stand on that? Do you have an opinion about that frame? Present deliberation depends on what one means by fundamental nature. And it's not clear to me that, look, if when Newton came out with mechanics, that that was a net positive for the world because it made us view ourselves as automatons. So it's not clear to me that
You just describe more and more fundamental reality with physics, say, or something else, and then you get to a more positive thought. I don't know. I don't know why we don't just start with the art like forget about something else is is the whole point of toe to then discard toe. There's a saying that you
You return home and you know the place for the first time. That's at the end of all the journeying. Is it that you don't answer the questions but you get comfortable with leaving them unanswered? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that one, Carlos. Yeah, it's a tough one. But I love that response though. Because that speaks to me for sure. The idea of the
The hero's journey for turning back to where you came from, to where you left off, you having changed and you having brought back something you've learned from your experience in the extraordinary world, that special world. It seems to me to be the case that that's the process that we just keep on doing over and over and over again, going out, seeking, learning, coming back, sharing what we've learned.
Having a good meal, being with family and friends, and then doing it all over again. It's dangerous though. So the Hobbit in Lord of the Rings, Frodo, Frodo, Frodo subverts that because he comes back home. But while he's out, this is something that just impacted me so much.
of the whole story of Lord of the Rings that he gets stabbed with them. I think it's called a Morgul blade. It's a special type of blade and it hurts him and he has to go get healed by the elves. But then at the end of the journey, when he's home, he's there for a couple of years. He always touches here occasionally because it stings. And then he ends up having to even leave home because there are some wounds that are so great. They never leave you.
Yeah, that touches me, man. It's dangerous to go out adventuring. It's not always guaranteed. It's a net positive. Well, in that case, he did save the world, just sacrificed himself. Quick question. Whatever I do, I do it with my wife. If I was going away, I would, it would be with my wife, not leaving her.
I'll suffer through any pain. I'll suffer through ten of those blades. Anyway. It's wonderful that the love cuts that deep. It's wonderful. I tell my wife all the time, I will love you even if you're a speck. Like if there is nothing left for except this little dot that I carry around, put in my little pocket. You're my my pocket, babe. Then I'm just going to carry you and you can glare at women like you're not having him. You're not having him.
Great. Good. Stay there. That's so wonderful. That's so lovely. Thank you, Kurt, for sharing that. Well, I'm going to ask you one last question. The question I ask every guest on the show at the end, if you could go back and give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Yeah, it'd be work harder. Oh, God. Just work hard enough. An indolent, unindustrious, feckless,
Rodent scoundrel. Work harder. Yeah, for me. I know Oprah always says like, Yeah, if I had advice would be relaxed. Yeah, you can say that because you've gotten to the point where you have attained success. You have no idea if you would be at this level. If you didn't feel that drive, you have no idea how people say, Oh, my, I'm going to think about what it's like when I'm 90 and do the rocking chair test.
How, why is that perspective somehow a privileged perspective? Why do you think that perspective is not going to color? Anyway? Yeah, yeah, well, that's great. There's so much wrong. Again, those are those one when this inauthentic copied phrases that people say it's like the rocking chair test. Like, look how profound I am going to say the rocking chair test. I don't think people think about what these funny. I don't think people think some people I don't think some people think about what they say.
Can you give me 10 seconds? You can count it down for me to just browse. It would be one of the more recent ones.
Because I'm just ashamed of anything that's like three months old. Edward Frankel's was fantastic. And yeah, Edward Edward Frankel's was fantastic. And that idea was super technical one. But I love philosophy. And then there's Anna Lemke, which is more on the practical side, that was about mental health and getting over addiction and trauma. It doesn't sound like has anything to do with the toe. But like I mentioned, toe is a to at least for me, it's a it's a perilous place.
I want to keep asking you questions, Kirk. I know you got to go. Next time, man. Yeah, next time. This is so wonderful. Next time I'm in New York, we can hang out if you don't mind. Oh yeah, I'd love to see you. Yeah, that'd be great. I'm in New York City so let me know any time you're swinging by and it'd be great to meet up in person. Thank you again. This was such a wonderful conversation. I know the audience will love it.
And I want to say I want to extend the same courtesy because you did a few minutes ago. You said if I could reach out to me anytime, please, please do. I mean, if you have anything, I'm a smaller podcast than yours, but if I can help out in any way or if you're just feeling like you want to reach out to somebody who's doing kind of similar work to you in a sense, I'm there. I'll be there for you, man. Thank you. Thank you.
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▶ View Full JSON Data (Word-Level Timestamps)
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"text": " The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze."
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"text": " Culture, they analyze finance, economics, business, international affairs across every region. I'm particularly liking their new insider feature. It was just launched this month. It gives you, it gives me, a front row access to The Economist's internal editorial debates."
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"text": " Where senior editors argue through the news with world leaders and policy makers in twice weekly long format shows. Basically an extremely high quality podcast. Whether it's scientific innovation or shifting global politics, The Economist provides comprehensive coverage beyond headlines. As a toe listener, you get a special discount. Head over to economist.com slash TOE to subscribe. That's economist.com slash TOE for your discount."
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"text": " Carlos Farias has a channel called the Sigma Series, where he interviews people like Bernardo Kastrup, Terence Deakin, Michael Levin, and Donald Hoffman. Carlos recently interviewed me on work ethic, loneliness, purpose slash life's calling, jealousy, string theory, hop vibrations, and the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, or as I argue, as a present deliberation, the reasonable effectiveness of mathematics. You can find his channel in the description, check it out."
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"text": " I'm honored to be here, man. I'm honored to be here. Of all the people who would interview me, like, I'm glad it's you. I've had it as a personal tenant of mine, if we better understand the fundamental nature of reality."
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"text": " It's not clear to me that when Newton came out with mechanics, that was a net positive for the world because it made us view ourselves as automatons. So it's not clear to me that you just"
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"text": " Describe more and more fundamental reality with physics, say, or something else, and then you get to a more positive ought. I don't know. I don't know why we don't just start with the ought. Like, forget about something else. Is the whole point of Toe to then discard Toe? There's a saying that you return home and you know the place for the first time. That's at the end of all the journeying. Is it that you don't answer the questions"
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"text": " Kurt Jaimungal is the host of Theories of Everything, a podcast which explores theoretical physics, consciousness, AI, and God in a technically rigorous manner. He has over 280,000 subscribers and, according to YouTube Analytics, his channel is the most popular amongst my viewers, like you."
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"text": " Please like and subscribe and I hope you enjoy our conversation. Kurt, thanks for coming on. Hey man, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. Yes, this is long in the making and so excited to have you on. I'm sure my audience will be very excited to see you. I was looking at the YouTube analytics. I mean, ever since I've had them in the last couple of years, your channel is consistently the top one that my audience overlaps with. Oh, interesting. Not less."
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"text": " Not Lex. Lex comes in and out occasionally. He's up there sometimes, but your channel is number one every time I check. I think this will be long-awaited for folks in my audience. That's an honor."
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"text": " Yeah, well, you have a great podcast and for any folks that aren't familiar with your work, I'll link below in the description with some of my favorite episodes of yours. And of course, people can peruse your channel. You've got over 280,000 subscribers, which is incredible. So congratulations to you. I mean, you've just been so successful. Yeah, thanks. It doesn't feel like that, but I appreciate it. Oh yeah, it never does."
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"text": " The goalposts are always moving forward. So today we'll focus on a few different topics. One, building your theory of everything. I think that'd be lovely for people to hear. You've spoken with so many brilliant minds in the past few years, so I'd love to hear how these ideas are coming together in your brain. Secondly, about the podcast a little bit. And then ending up, we'll talk about you personally, if we have time for it at the end."
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"text": " So, not to start from the big question here, but if you had to right now, and this is a freely speculative zone, I want to say that you're not committed to anything in particular at this moment. I know some folks, they don't want to be taken out of turn, but if you had to construct your own theory of everything at this time, what would it be? This treacherous question, man. Tough question. Right off the bat. Okay, so if I was to construct my own"
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"text": " It may be, so look, there are two routes that most people take. They take, well, what's the similarities between every toe? That's like the Baha'i faith, trying to find truth in each of them. And then there's people like Carlo Rovelli who say, well, I want to find the differences between different theories or interpretations of quantum mechanics or whatever it may be. I think it's easy to do either one of them, but not easy to do both. So what I'm trying to do is to do both. What are the similarities? What are the differences?"
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"text": " Why is it that we have so many extremely, extremely prehensile and intelligent people disagreeing?"
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"text": " Even when they so people say, well, they disagree on the fundamentals, people see the world differently. Sometimes they agree on the fundamentals, and then they still disagree. They disagree on interpretation, or they disagree on the consequences, or they have some higher God that they don't want to admit is God, and they're trying to preserve that. So a metatow maybe why is it that there are so many toes"
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"text": " The whole project of theories of everything just so you know toe stands for theories of everything for anyone who's wondering why I keep mentioning that is in part for me in part to either put forward my own toe or for me to convince myself that someone else has a toe that is already correct. Maybe there's minor modifications that need to be made or that it's impossible for us practically to know a toe or that it doesn't exist in principle."
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"text": " Yeah, it's a big project. And it's a tough thing. Obviously, it's tough. No one's figured it out yet. So no one's definitively figured this this whole thing out yet. What are some of the although when I asked that question, and when you think about, say, certain toes that have stuck out to you, maybe they're"
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"text": " There are folks you have interviewed and maybe they're not, but are there any ones that you think seem that you come back to? Let's say ones that keep bubbling up to the surface, let's say, or that seem to have a certain prominence that what rises to the top in your mind? There's only two broad"
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"text": " not broad ones, but broad frameworks of one or fields of one. So one is if whatever I'm studying currently, that's just at the forefront of my mind. Sure. And then also what I what I don't understand. So I don't understand Bach, I don't understand his consciousness as a simulated property. I think I understand it, but I don't I don't feel like I understand. And so that comes up over and over. And"
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"text": " I think that's it. So you want specifics. The easiest way for me to give you specifics would be if I just looked over my own channel then gave you some but right now I'm working on a iceberg, an iceberg of string theory. I'm so excited about that man. Yeah, it's been a video that's like a week, weeks and weeks and weeks in the making, maybe two months now, two months in the making more than any other total video, just going through the last 50 years of string theory and explaining the math behind it."
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"text": " So that's super interesting. I'm so excited by string theory. Like, I don't believe it's correct. But I, I love it in the same way that I love chess. Like, I don't believe chess is correct. What do you mean chess is correct? Like, sure, kings actually operate like that. Queens operate like that. Some people say Queen can do whatever she wants. So in some way, yeah, sure. But but it is just intellectually so fascinating."
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"text": " geometric unity as well. I'd like to do a deep dive into maybe an iceberg and whole iceberg on them. For people who are unfamiliar with the iceberg format. It's one where you explain each topic has several attributes or different subtopics within them. And then you can order them in a way that is the surface level. So it's what most people know about."
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"text": " Hmm, let me give an example when it comes to theories of everything. So string theory would be their geometric unity may be there because many people have heard maybe geometric unities on a sub layer layer number two is usually about seven layers. And as you get more and more deeper, you get more and more obscure, sometimes even dark, sometimes more philosophical. And it's where the fringes of the knowledge are at layer four. So people with PhDs only know up to layer four, and then some professors know on layer five, and then layer six is just for people. You got to be"
},
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"text": " You got to be a fanatic to know layer six and seven. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to see this. I know you've been teasing that the iceberg, the string theory video, and I think it's going to be like a two-hour long epic thing. So very excited to see that when it comes out. Okay. So we have two. So Yoshibox computational universe, kind of broadly his idea."
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"text": " We met up in person and he spent hours explaining it to me and I find it extremely interesting as well. Like super interesting man. Yeah."
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"text": " Cool. Yeah, I have to dive in more into that. It's actually funny because the most popular video on my channel is because of Eric's work. It's on the hop vibration, which I may be familiar with. I barely even understand it. I made the snake in video and I should barely wrap my head around its actual significance. I do not really understand. He went on Joe Rogan a few years ago and said it was the most important object in the universe was his claim."
},
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"text": " And so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to understand it myself and then trying to explain it. And still to this day, I can't really fully grok if it's legitimate, if it actually is this important, or if it's just a mere curiosity. I can't tell. Yeah. I don't agree that it's the most important. Yeah. That's if you asked me, it got into my head, I would say the same thing. I don't know. I wouldn't even put it in top five."
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"text": " Yeah, me neither. Yeah, I'm sure Eric has his own reasons. Yeah, I assume so. Yeah. I mean, I just took that too far. Perhaps two, you know, in a three hour interview with with Rogan, you can say a lot of things and kind of be but it's captured the attention of a lot of people. So that's kind of interesting. So Geometric Unity and Bach got it. Can you explain to me how how is it more complicated than you have a sphere and you put bundle, you put a local product space of S1 on it?"
},
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"text": " Like how is it more complicated than that? I don't, I agree. I don't know. I don't understand its significance. I can understand generally that it's a mapping from a hypersphere onto what we'd say a traditional sphere. But beyond that, I don't know why it's important. It has applications in a number of different physics situations, but beyond that, I don't know. There really is no other literature I've seen"
},
{
"end_time": 827.193,
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"start_time": 800.452,
"text": " about its importance or significance. So yeah, I just have to trust what Eric says there on it. Uh huh. Yeah, sorry. Um, but if we make just so it has an extension. Okay. Oh, sorry. Please. Yeah. No, if you have more, this would be great if you have a context on it. Sure. Sure. So wonderful. So there's, there's, I believe S four. So this may be incomprehensible to most people, but the sphere"
},
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"text": " This regular sphere, if you take it and you just consider it as a shell hollow, otherwise, it's called a ball, technically a ball in physics or disk, if you take the circle version. So you have you have to take it as hollow. That's called s two. And then if you want to go higher dimensional, then you call it s three and lower dimensional would be s one and that's the circle. So the circle s one becomes the sphere s two becomes some higher dimensional version of a sphere s three and so on. Then there's s four. And"
},
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"text": " Yeah, so you were thinking of the hop vibration as taking a higher dimensional sphere, so S3, and then wrapping it around S2. Whereas I think of it as S2, but then it has a local product space of S1. And those are equivalent. So in bundle theory, those are equivalent. You were looking at it in terms of the, I believe it's called the homotopy. I believe it's called the homotopy."
},
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"end_time": 903.951,
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"start_time": 886.357,
"text": " I was thinking of in terms of the bundle interpretation. But so the easiest way for me to understand is the bundle interpretation. So it's s two. So s three goes into s two, which is the hypersphere goes into the regular sphere. But then locally, it looks like the sphere with s one, which is the circle."
},
{
"end_time": 934.172,
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"start_time": 904.94,
"text": " You can generalize this to S4, so a hypersphere, locally looking like a product of that with S3. So another hypersphere. So that's S7 going to S4, I believe. And that has an important role in physics with, with, with what? With the anti-self-dual and self-dual Yang-Mills equations. So that's a mouthful. But that, that, there's a generalization of the hop vibration that has application of physics. As for the regular hop vibration, I don't know."
},
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"end_time": 963.746,
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"start_time": 935.026,
"text": " While we're in this domain here and for folks who are listening and aren't familiar with your channel, you have a background in mathematical physics. I'd love to talk about mathematics broadly and just the field. You've certainly heard this phrase, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."
},
{
"end_time": 992.654,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 964.633,
"text": " Do you have an intuition as to why mathematics is so unreasonably effective? I oscillate between thinking that it's so trivial, that it's obvious why it's so effective, and then also that it's a profound statement. I'm oscillating right now into it's a trivial statement. So my present deliberation is thinking of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is just as foolish as saying, I can't believe screwdrivers work. So we designed screwdrivers to work."
},
{
"end_time": 1022.619,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 993.404,
"text": " We have axioms. We could show us in any act. Well, there are several axiom systems that we could have chosen that we don't. And the reason is because it just doesn't have application. One of the reasons why some people may wonder, man, mathematicians are pedantic. They take 200 pages in this book. I believe it's called the Principia Mathematica to prove one plus one equals two. OK, so then the question is like, why? Why does it take 200 pages to prove something so obvious?"
},
{
"end_time": 1048.558,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 1024.002,
"text": " The answer isn't that it takes 200 pages to prove that it's obvious. It does do that. But the answer is that we want to know if the axiomatic system we have that's so abstract is correct. So it better prove one plus one equals two. It takes 200 pages to get from those axioms to one plus one equals two. But we're not trying to prove one plus one equals two. If we had well,"
},
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"index": 39,
"start_time": 1049.275,
"text": " If we had found that it doesn't prove one plus one equals two, that would have invalidated the axiomatic system and we would have chosen a different one or keep generating. So we come up with one. Luckily, I think Russell and Whitehead Russell and Whitehead came up with that about 200, about 100 or so years ago."
},
{
"end_time": 1098.831,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1079.07,
"text": " If we had, there's the physical universe and then we're trying to model the physical universe and we use math to model it, but we don't use any math. We just use some parts of math. Wolfram is, by the way, trying to explore the space of all math. It's not like, so it's not like"
},
{
"end_time": 1126.271,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1100.657,
"text": " That's interesting. I think a lot of people, myself included, probably do elevate mathematics to a certain degree in that it seems"
},
{
"end_time": 1148.865,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1127.363,
"text": " Say more fundamental, that's probably too strong a claim, but its usage across domains seems to give it more of a greater weight, let's say. Sounds like you don't particularly elevate math beyond the other disciplines or sciences?"
},
{
"end_time": 1178.251,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1149.206,
"text": " We could have different logical systems, some that are so trivial. So right now we say there is no law or there is a law of the excluded middle. And then we have other logical systems where we don't have the law of the excluded middle. But we could have had a logical system where it's just T, like there's just one letter T, and then all you can prove, quote unquote, prove our strings of T. And then we think, well, that's just, it's not interesting. But it's math. And so we don't question, well, what's the unreasonableness effective of T theories?"
},
{
"end_time": 1204.292,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1179.155,
"text": " Because we don't even consider that. So when we say the unreasonableness effectiveness, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, we're already considering the subset of math that is effective. So obviously, it's effective. Right. But I guess when I think about it in comparison to it's really hard to think about it compares to other I want to say languages, other domains, let's say."
},
{
"end_time": 1229.497,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1205.964,
"text": " Something you study in say biology, it's really difficult to compare between math, right? But something you learn from biology, not necessarily applicable to something you learn in chemistry or physics or vice versa. Usually it's the other way around. Usually there's a bit of a hierarchy in terms of what's dependent on the other levels. But say"
},
{
"end_time": 1259.224,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1230.964,
"text": " Something you learn from mathematics in one field you can apply across multiple fields or different domains. It's like a utility player. It seems to have all this utility across pretty much every domain you can imagine. It's interesting to hear your perspective because I wasn't expecting that response."
},
{
"end_time": 1287.329,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1260.06,
"text": " What you're referring to is called universality in math. So why is, why is there so much? Why can you invent something in one field and then it generalizes across several? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. But it seems like we could say why is the hammer so effective? Like we invented the hammer to put in nails, but we can use it for several other in several other domains."
},
{
"end_time": 1318.541,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1288.712,
"text": " So to me, it sounds like a question that's just either as trivial or profound. Maybe it is an extremely profound question. Why is the hammer? So why is the knife so effective? Cut someone it can chop celery. To me, it's on the same level. And whether or not it's a it's a profound question or or one that's trivial depends on to me, it's the same as do you consider why is a knife? So why does why do knives have so much of an application?"
},
{
"end_time": 1345.879,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1319.514,
"text": " If you think that's an interesting question, which it may be, then you could think that the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is also an interesting question. But this is my present deliberation. I oscillate. Yeah, sure. I understand. Do you think mathematics is discovered, invented, or some combination of the two, or something outside of those two entirely?"
},
{
"end_time": 1378.729,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1350.708,
"text": " Yeah, this is this is super interesting. I find it difficult to make the case that it's invented. Discovered implies that there's something so you could say that there's a platonic world and that what we're doing is we're touching aspects of that are seeing veiled images as images of it or projections of it."
},
{
"end_time": 1413.49,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1385.623,
"text": " See, in our field, Carlos, our field of podcasting on these questions, there's a conflation of truth, reality, existence and fundamental. So Donald Hoffman thinks that what's not fundamental isn't real. And it's to me, that's just as silly as again, it's just as silly as saying like your iPhone isn't real, because it's made of components, or petunias aren't real, because they have stems and leaves. Like, okay, no one's saying"
},
{
"end_time": 1442.637,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1414.445,
"text": " Petunias are doomed. Oh my gosh, isn't that blowing your mind? Petunias are doomed. Why is it that just because something's made of components, your keyboard isn't real because it's made of smaller keys? Like no one thought that before. And not that no one thought that before. But there's a difference between something being real and being fundamental. You can have the reality of a chair, even though chairs, we don't think chairs comprise the universe. Okay. So there's a conflation of reality and fundamentalities."
},
{
"end_time": 1465.742,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1442.961,
"text": " Then there's also a conflation of existence and real. The question that I think about is, can you have something that exists that isn't real? Now we think, well, let's just define existence as what's real, or let's just define what's real as existence. So firstly, then you have a tautology. Secondly, circular, circular reasoning. But then these are also different words with different historical roots."
},
{
"end_time": 1495.52,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1466.254,
"text": " I think it's extremely left-brained of us, even though I love analyticity, you and I both. It's extremely left-brained of us to keep abstracting and abstracting away until we just find commonalities and everything is an undifferentiated mess that's in this chaotic disarray state of whatever some people think the universe emerged from. But what I find interesting is also to find the delineations. What are the differences? The left brain likes abstraction and to see commonality."
},
{
"end_time": 1524.684,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1495.879,
"text": " That's one of the reasons why racism is associated with the left brain, with left brain thinking. I'm going to treat you just like any other member of your race. Whereas the right brain likes to see distinction and particulars and likes to see you as a person that's different than someone else, some other person. Just a moment. I'm sure."
},
{
"end_time": 1560.725,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1531.135,
"text": " Math in some sense is just being more and more abstract. And so the question is, is what's real, what's most abstract and what's most common? Or is what's real associated with the particular? And so as so is math actually a reflection of something real? This is what I mean by there's the difference between existence and real. When we say that it's invented or discovered, okay, if we say it's discovered, we mean that there's something there and then we pushed away some dirt and we found some core. To say that"
},
{
"end_time": 1591.476,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1561.476,
"text": " Implies that if you have some theory like a correspondence theory of the of truth, you know, there's several different theories of truth like deflationary and so on. So embedded in this statement of is math invented or discovered is an implicit confession of one's theory of truth. I don't have a settled on theory of truth. So it's extremely difficult for me to say is math discovered or not. It's also I'm also comfortable saying that it can be a reflection of a platonic world, but the platonic world doesn't exist."
},
{
"end_time": 1613.865,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1591.971,
"text": " I'm comfortable with saying that. Now Penrose thinks the Platonic world exists and thus math is discovered, but I think math can be discovered while what's being uncovered doesn't exist but is true. There's a difference between truth and existence. There's four concepts here that are constantly conflated. Reality, Fundamentality, Truth and Existence. Hear that sound?"
},
{
"end_time": 1640.316,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1614.155,
"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": 1666.408,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1640.316,
"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": 1692.193,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1666.408,
"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": 1717.039,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1692.193,
"text": " Go to Shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in Shopify.com slash theories. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You just touched on a bunch of other things I was going to ask you about, but I feel like you made, I think, I think you made your perspective clear enough actually. Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 1745.555,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1718.899,
"text": " I'm trying to think of where to go next here. This is more just a fun question here. Why is, oh, after, yeah. No, no, just forgive me for taking some time to answer your questions because they're consequential questions and I want to ensure that what I'm saying isn't something that is a prepared answer that is staged"
},
{
"end_time": 1770.759,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1745.657,
"text": " It's actually one of the many things I admire about you, Kurt, is that you are so thoughtful and that you will take as much time as you need. It's usually a few seconds, a few moments to stop and contemplate and choose your words carefully."
},
{
"end_time": 1794.633,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1771.084,
"text": " I started off"
},
{
"end_time": 1810.145,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1794.991,
"text": " I wish I had started this thing off a little lighter. If we could have built, it would have started us off. I wanted to make sure that we got to these questions. But a fun one, why is 157 your favorite number? Oh, man, you've done your homework. So where did you hear that?"
},
{
"end_time": 1839.326,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1811.34,
"text": " I'm sure, I'm certain I heard it from you. I can't recall. I don't take, I take pretty diligent notes, but not necessarily where I heard it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm the same. It was probably an offhand. It's probably an offhands comment you made. It's also serious. Now the reason is quite secretive, but so I'm a secretive person just so you don't Carl. I could tell by the way you take notes, your own personal notes, your note taking system."
},
{
"end_time": 1868.029,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1840.435,
"text": " Yeah, it's... It's not secretive out of privacy. It's something else that I haven't put my finger on. It's not protection. Maybe it's distinctiveness. I don't know. I don't know, but the reason for that, so I have a... Well... I can tell you a bit off air about that."
},
{
"end_time": 1895.862,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1868.729,
"text": " Okay, sure. Yeah, I'll just get a note of it. Yeah, for sure. I'm very comfortable. Any question? And please. Okay, but there's also there's this there's also synchronicity with that number. So one of my favorite courses in university was Met 157 at the University of Toronto. So that's the first year real analysis course. It's your first like you get talk about going in without lube when you just went into this podcast with the hard questions straight away. Sorry."
},
{
"end_time": 1923.712,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1896.732,
"text": " Yeah, no, that that's the TOE podcast as well. And that's Matt 157 as well. You go from high school to proving that the proof of induction works. Like it's extremely theoretical. It's your first taste of actual math. That's one of my favorite courses, Matt 157. But there are several, a couple other reasons. Again, I'll talk to you about the malware. Absolutely. Sure."
},
{
"end_time": 1953.575,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1924.155,
"text": " I do want to touch back on something you said about truth. Funnily enough, my channel used to be called The Truth with Carlos Varias. That was the initial, for the first couple years of my channel, it's actually when I named it."
},
{
"end_time": 1982.108,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1954.002,
"text": " It was more of a placeholder than anything else. But after a while I found that it was just too haughty and just too bloated. And also I don't think necessarily, but I think this actually might be counted as something I heard you say on an AMA, that I'm not sure that objective truth, whatever we could say that is, is actually the highest value or is even in the tier of the highest values."
},
{
"end_time": 2004.838,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1982.705,
"text": " But I would love to know where your position on that is and what does truth mean to you? It's the enlightened position or the rational position to think that hey, whatever is truthful is what's most good. I think it's an implicit position."
},
{
"end_time": 2037.022,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 2009.326,
"text": " I don't know if that's the case. So firstly, one has to define what they mean by truth. And that's not so simple as we've discussed. If you just mean you correspond to facts, cold and calculated. I don't know why truth implies some goodness. Now you may say historically, it's the case that the more we know, the more good we are. Okay, firstly, let's what is this definition of good that you refer to?"
},
{
"end_time": 2066.442,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 2037.944,
"text": " And how do you prove that the more that we know, the more good we are? How do you know that there's not something? Oh, gosh. Geez. So one of my quotes I can barely say is. This comes from. Lovecraft. And it's that one of the most merciful aspects of this world is the inability for the human mind to correlate its contents."
},
{
"end_time": 2095.742,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2067.073,
"text": " and that as soon as we do, this unfettered scientific investigation may reveal such terrifying vistas of reality in our frightful position therein that will either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light to the peace and safety of the darkness. Yeah, there's no guarantee that you just learn more and it's just a net good. There's no guarantee about that."
},
{
"end_time": 2117.278,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2096.34,
"text": " This one of the reasons that people don't want to study, I can't even say it, but politically speaking, there are certain political topics that someone could be something you could study, but people don't want to because, well, we don't want to find out the answer there. Again, I don't want to. I know. Well."
},
{
"end_time": 2147.568,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2122.995,
"text": " Yeah, to me, it's just not it's not clear at all. It's not clear. So something is more valued than truth or you can just say you want truth for what you can just ask someone for what they say for truth sake. What does that mean? You want truth for truth sake? Most of the time, they'll say because it's it leads to some better outcome. Okay, so why not pursue that better outcome? Okay, because the best way to pursue it is with the truth. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 2171.51,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2147.927,
"text": " Is that guaranteed? What if it wasn't the case? What if someone made the case that is not okay? And I get a bit frustrated about this because see, just like there are buzzwords, there are these buzz phrases that people use, like, like, pursue truth, or I'm a truth seeker. And"
},
{
"end_time": 2193.302,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2176.544,
"text": " There's this writer of Seinfeld named Peter Melman. He said that there are different storylines in Seinfeld."
},
{
"end_time": 2220.896,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2194.889,
"text": " Like the one about the car, the smelly car, the the the the bus, no, the valley, the valley who went in and funked up the car for the rest of the show. So there are different storylines. And the story is that someone in the writers room, they would always pitch Larry different stories and Larry David would say like, no, no, no, it's not good enough. And then someone was just telling them about telling him about their day."
},
{
"end_time": 2246.135,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2221.476,
"text": " And then he's like, that's a Seinfeld episode. That's a Seinfeld episode right there. The guy didn't even think about it like that. Peter Melman said Larry was great at picking up on what would be a great storyline. Like someone snubs you because you ordered a salad and not something more substantive at the restaurant. And so the waitress is a bit upset because of the tip. Like Larry, Larry David would pick up on it like that. And it would just go over most people."
},
{
"end_time": 2278.933,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2249.087,
"text": " I think that part of one's calling in life can be, you can phrase it as what is that filter that you have, that sieve that you have, that net that you have, that nothing escapes it, almost nothing escapes it, but it escapes other people. So for me, I have a similar observational bent as Larry and Larry David and Seinfeld in the sense that I'm just, I'm observing, but I'm not an observational comedian, like I'm not in comedy."
},
{
"end_time": 2307.21,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2279.565,
"text": " So something that stands out to me like a splinter is when people say phrases that they are saying because they're intellectually posturing or that they want to sound enlightened and deep and profound and they don't know what it means or they've heard it from somewhere else and they're copying it. It just stands out to me like that. I see it on"
},
{
"end_time": 2335.52,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2307.415,
"text": " In written text, I see it in different interviews of people. I see it in myself when I'm being interviewed. Maybe that's why I see it because I'm I'm such a harsh critic of myself, even though I don't think I'm a harsh critic. But I think that's part of being a harsh critic. I'm I'm a critic of myself. And so I see this quality in myself, or at least I see it in my former self. And it takes took years to to minimize it."
},
{
"end_time": 2363.148,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2336.237,
"text": " And it becomes so blatantly obvious in other people. It just doesn't pass my filter. I see it with many, even some of the guests that I interview. More so I see it in other podcasters. Not you. Don't worry. No, it's okay. It's okay."
},
{
"end_time": 2390.691,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2363.302,
"text": " No, no, no, I feel like many podcasters become podcasters because they want to not because they care about the ideas, but because they want to be a thought leader. And they see this as somehow getting the credibility of the guests that they interview and that people will want to hear from them more and more and more. So. Yeah, yeah, different. Anyhow, yeah, you mentioned this kind of reminds me of something that you'd mentioned on an AMA that when you're watching"
},
{
"end_time": 2414.053,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2391.186,
"text": " film or television, you can spot lazy dialogue very quickly. When there's just something, it's just not meaningful. It's not progressing the story. I mean, separately, we're talking about podcasts in general. I think most media, just cut it books, TV, whatever you want it, art."
},
{
"end_time": 2443.063,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2414.343,
"text": " 99% of it is not worth consuming, in my opinion. There's so much of it. I mean, that's a very critical statement, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that my stuff is in the 1%. I'm not claiming it at all. I'm not claiming that. But I do think a sort of selective filter is a good thing, although you meant it in a slightly different way. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was, yes, when you were"
},
{
"end_time": 2472.79,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2443.746,
"text": " I'm not sure if you're still directing any films or if you have any near-term plans to do that again, but I did want to ask you about, because I watched I'm Okay. I watched that. It was last year at some point, but I did watch it. Because you bring up, and I thought while watching it, this is some combination, or maybe I might be stealing a quote from a snippet someone said, a combination of Woody Allen and Larry Davis, something like that."
},
{
"end_time": 2503.131,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2474.497,
"text": " the thoughts too that was happening there. And I enjoyed it. I mean, I know we had this back and forth a little bit. You said the cringe, I think was the word you used. Yeah, geez Louise, man. Even you bringing this up right now. No, but I'm going to be read. If you don't mind, I'll link to it in the description so folks can actually watch it if they want to. Cause I know you don't talk about on the podcast that much and understand. I mean, you're talking about other things, other topics, but I wanted to talk about that experience perhaps a little bit, or what did you, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 2528.131,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2503.439,
"text": " What did you learn from that production? It's much harder to make a film than I thought. I remember when I was filming that, I had"
},
{
"end_time": 2544.206,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2528.763,
"text": " I thought I knew what"
},
{
"end_time": 2573.507,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2545.06,
"text": " It takes like 10 seconds to check your messages. I didn't even have time to check my messages unless it was directly related to work. I remember going to sleep takes me so long to fall asleep. Took me like an instant back then. I was just so exhausted filming all day waking up immediately going to work and then immediately finishing. I set myself this unfathomable goal of finishing a film in 60 days. So finishing the filming and editing of a feature film in 60 days of one that's not something"
},
{
"end_time": 2588.558,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2575.094,
"text": " I don't have one that's not something trivial like you film in one location and it's one long shot because then that needs editing. Yeah, so that was that taught me what it's like to work extremely, extremely"
},
{
"end_time": 2620.503,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2591.596,
"text": " Formidably another is that you shouldn't feed people pizza constantly. I was so cheap man I had this small budget night and everyone would come hoping that there's this is something on film sets, by the way. Yeah, sure sure pizza It's known it's like a joke that you're not supposed to that you're your your food on set is supposed to be substantive and I'm just giving pizza every time and they would be so disappointed because I'm I couldn't I love food but me too. Yeah, I'm like I'm on the same track as you and"
},
{
"end_time": 2650.503,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2621.408,
"text": " That reminds me of a book I read when I was a kid. I don't know why I read it because I don't have a directing impulse or an artistic or creative. Well, I have a creative side, I guess, but it was called What They Don't Teach You in Film School. It was like 130 lessons or tips. And I remember devouring it as a child. It's really interesting, the behind the scenes. And they talk about, yes, what kind of food to feed and to actually feed your people how they expect it. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2672.21,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2651.101,
"text": " From that book, that was a long time ago. I remember just soaking that up. You remember just random things you read as a kid that you're like, why did that thing speak to me? You weren't interested in being a filmmaker before? No, I wasn't. I wasn't after reading the book either. I don't know why I picked that book up. I think it was just at the library and it was an easy read and it was very"
},
{
"end_time": 2700.367,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2672.892,
"text": " It was written by a link to the description as well. I have to like go and find where this book is or who wrote it. But I think I liked the, they were just, it was like kind of like startup vibe that they were just throwing things together and learning at, you know, learning a rapid pace and trying to create something. And it was very inspirational. I want to say, I remember being just, just being in awe of like, Oh, this is, I didn't realize I was probably 10 when I read it."
},
{
"end_time": 2722.585,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2700.845,
"text": " And I didn't realize even what a director was of like, oh, there's a president of a movie, like they get to decide, oh, okay, they're organizing the whole thing. So it opened my eyes to that frame. Now we have some exposure, I think, to a lot of people do anyways, the production process and how that goes to be."
},
{
"end_time": 2752.278,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2723.66,
"text": " Well, speaking of just something else I would learn. Sorry, quickly. Yes, please. Yes, specific. Yes. And is pay more for the actors because the actors carry the movie. So mine didn't have known actors or even. Well, I don't want to disparage anyone, but it's not as if acting is the strong suit of that of that film. I think the writing is not bad and the directing is not bad. But the acting, including on my own part, by the way, I was in the film. So it's not that it's not terribly great."
},
{
"end_time": 2773.592,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2753.131,
"text": " Yeah. No, I think I pointed out when I messaged you about it last year, it was my favorite parts. I think the script writing, yes, and the cinematography, some of the shots in particular, was really stuck out and I thought they were excellent. Speaking of projects, are you currently writing a book on paradoxes, consciousness, and free will?"
},
{
"end_time": 2793.763,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2774.701,
"text": " How's that going? You've done your homework, man. Jeez. Yeah. Holy moly. Yeah. So people who are watching this, if you don't know who Carlos is, I'm sure you do like this guy. This guy studies, man. Yeah, I'm writing a book. It doesn't have a publisher. I'm not"
},
{
"end_time": 2817.056,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2794.804,
"text": " It's to get my own thoughts straight. This is something that I've seen. So sometimes people come on the show or come on any show and then they're like, yeah, they're just promoting a book and then they'll call someone a grifter. I'm like, that's a phrase that needs to be eliminated from someone's vocabulary. There are a few high bounding repudiational words that just limit you that I think should be eliminated. I keep a catalog of them. Anyhow,"
},
{
"end_time": 2844.701,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2819.258,
"text": " I used to feel that way as well, like, oh, they're just promoting their book until I start to look more into it. Number one, it turns out writing a book is one of the worst ways to make money. Oh, sure. In terms of hours per what you get back. Number two, writing is such a great way to sort your own thoughts out. One of my favorite books is Gerda Lesher Bach by Douglas. Same here. Yeah, I got it. Oh, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2874.07,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2845.128,
"text": " Right. Right. Right. I have the same one. Same always an arm's reach of this book. And that is just that to me is like the epitome of what it is to write a book where you see someone wrestling with ideas on the page and then coming to a conclusion. That to me is like it's not only book writing, it's art. It's when you don't know what you're doing and you're trying to do something and you're exploring it through the process of writing or through the process of filming or through the process of painting."
},
{
"end_time": 2903.609,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2875.657,
"text": " Jung would say if you knew what you're doing prior and you kept sticking to that, that was that was what he would call propaganda. So he thought propaganda was more than political propaganda. It was you just trying to convince the audience of something instead of trying to find out something yourself through the art. Anyhow, yeah, I'm writing it bit by bit. I have about seven book ideas and I'm writing them little by little here and there. Hear that sound?"
},
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"end_time": 2930.538,
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"start_time": 2904.445,
"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": 2956.664,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2930.538,
"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": 2980.043,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2956.664,
"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"
},
{
"end_time": 3009.991,
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"text": " Awesome. Yeah, so it's just like a work of progress. You have a target date. Yeah, my target date keeps changing, man. So understandable. There's this guy named Leonardo da Vinci. I'm sure you've heard of him. Yeah. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 3036.903,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 3010.316,
"text": " Who? So there's this guy, the Caprio. Yeah, so Leo here. Yeah, Leo, if you read his biography by Walter Isaacson, I resonate deeply with with Da Vinci. It's he firstly had ADHD mindset. Secondly, he was solitary, like he learned almost everything he learned alone. And it's a lonely, lonely life. At least my life is extremely lonely. I don't have friends, not in person. I have people I text, but"
},
{
"end_time": 3048.729,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3037.807,
"text": " It's an intellectually lonely life. I have my wife and that satisfies every possible need, but we don't talk about anything that's academic."
},
{
"end_time": 3078.268,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3049.957,
"text": " And so I resonate completely with with Leonardo da Vinci something from him from his book from Walter Isaacson's book of his is that there's a refrain like and Leonardo started this but he would never finish that about he was started but never finished or or he thought like a few months and it would take him years right right right now where the books are at Hofstadter's law yeah I think that's Hofstadter's law yeah yeah it is yeah yeah"
},
{
"end_time": 3108.353,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3079.36,
"text": " That's so interesting. And also, I mean, speaking at Girl I Should Bought, how incredible is it that that book won the Pulitzer Prize, I believe? Yeah, it won the Pulitzer Prize, but it was also like a very popular book, I think in the, I don't know how many copies it sold, but I wonder if it came out today, how well it would do. That's the goal for this book that I'm working on is I want it to be technical for someone who is at the undergraduate level or an extremely bright"
},
{
"end_time": 3137.21,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3108.797,
"text": " and motivated high school level, but still somehow be a book that would be at the front or near the front of a bookstore. I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that now. I don't know how he did it then. Yeah, I don't know. That's so tough to pull off. One of the things that reminds me of this is a complete tangent, if you don't mind, but"
},
{
"end_time": 3164.189,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3137.534,
"text": " It's related to, and maybe it'll even help perhaps, but when you say that, the person I think of, someone whose name comes up a lot, I'm sure, but you're familiar with Joe Rogan, I'm sure. Yes. But not his podcast. When he commentates on UFC fights, and I'm not a UFC fan, I'm not a fighting fan. I like other sports, but not UFC."
},
{
"end_time": 3190.811,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3165.247,
"text": " I've watched though a handful of the fights that he calls and I think he does an impeccable job of explaining things to a level of detail where a total novice to the sport can appreciate it and yet there's detail and specifics to the point where I know advanced viewers will get a lot out of it."
},
{
"end_time": 3220.93,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3191.442,
"text": " It's a weird confluence of things. I mean, it's so strange, but I've watched a few fights and I think to myself, he's the best announcer I've ever heard in sports. Of a sport I don't care about. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, which is a very interesting kind of angle and perspective and I don't listen to his podcast too often. Occasionally I do if it's a guest I particularly want to hear from but I think he does perhaps has that kind of"
},
{
"end_time": 3249.36,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3221.374,
"text": " I'm amazed and admire your work ethic. I wish I had an ounce of it. I wish I had just a sliver of it because I don't have the same drive that you seem to have."
},
{
"end_time": 3273.456,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3249.684,
"text": " Can you attribute that to anything in particular? Do you think it's just an innate quality? Do you think that's something you built up? Something I built, but it's also insecurity. I'm a deeply insecure person. And so I know that my drive for wanting to be the best at what I do, the best, the best, the best, it has to be the best, has to be the best. I know that comes from, or I believe it comes from,"
},
{
"end_time": 3293.37,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3273.882,
"text": " If I was to psychoanalyze myself, something from when I was 17 and I was so heartbroken by a girl, so heartbroken, like you wouldn't believe and it just left this indelible wound that's still there. I'm not hung up over any woman, any woman, but, but my, my past shapes me and I know it's there."
},
{
"end_time": 3318.899,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3295.964,
"text": " There's another quote, by the way, from Leonardo da Vinci, this time. So, one of my favorite quotes of his. I said I resonated with him because... well, several reasons. He integrated several disparate fields, he was a generalist, but at the same time being a specialist, which is something that I aspire to do. He also had a bit of pride in him."
},
{
"end_time": 3343.592,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3319.258,
"text": " He rarely let it shine through. He also didn't like to speak about himself much. You get this from his writings. I don't know if people know, but I'm uncomfortable being interviewed. I just don't like being interviewed. I feel like one, I don't have much to say. I'm uninteresting. It takes so much from me. I'm honored to be here, man. I'm honored to be here."
},
{
"end_time": 3371.886,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3344.002,
"text": " And all the people who would interview me like I'm glad it's you. But anyway, this this there's many qualities I like from Leonardo, one of them is, as he said, one of all the notes, and I think his notebook, by the way, his is, I have his notebook somewhere here. His sketch note, his drawing notebooks, the ones of sketches is more valuable than his paintings. I'm not a fan of his paintings."
},
{
"end_time": 3399.616,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3372.688,
"text": " But I love his sketches in his notebooks. And one of the quotes was one of the writings he wrote was to some nebulous competitor, it's not named, and it may not even been a single person, it just may be you can cock someone as an as a as an enemy in your in your mind. He said, he was talking about why they'll never beat him. And he said, you will. He's like, constructing this, this scenario, he's like,"
},
{
"end_time": 3428.404,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3400.162,
"text": " Where he was, whereas Leonardo was examining cadavers and he would do that because he wanted to know how did the muscles work and no other painter even thought to go there. Like, why would you open someone up? Why does that have anything to do with art? He said, you will perhaps be deterred by your stomach or you will be. Yeah, you will perhaps be deterred by your stomach. And if that doesn't get you, then you then the fear of living in close quarters with quartered corpses and flayed flesh will frightful to behold."
},
{
"end_time": 3453.046,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3428.609,
"text": " And if you have that, if you surpass that, then you'll lack the draftsmanship and you won't be as good with the pen. And if you have that, then you'll lack the knowledge of perspective. Remember, Leo was the first one of the first to have perspective in his paintings. And if you have that, if that were so accompanied, then you will lack the geometric methods of calculating forces on the muscle. And if you have that, then you will simply lack the patience and not be so diligent."
},
{
"end_time": 3484.514,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3455.657,
"text": " So in other words, something that I resonate with is like, look, you have to have the drive. You have to have the skill or the knack for this. You have to also have methods. Even if you have all of those, you're not going to outwork me. So. That's that's in me. That's just a deep insecurity of mind that that drives that maybe drives it for Leonardo. I don't know. Thank you for sharing that. I know that's that's deeply personal, so."
},
{
"end_time": 3514.548,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3485.623,
"text": " Would you say you have any living role models? No, I asked my wife this. And then she said, Andrew Huberman. I'm like, babe, I don't even talk about, I just talk about Andrew Huberman about the sunlight. But I talk about it so frequently because I'm like, we need to get more sunlight into your eyes. Yeah, I'm like, babe, I don't even talk about Andrew Huberman other than the sunlight, but I do it so often. She's like, maybe a second."
},
{
"end_time": 3531.493,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3514.838,
"text": " Yeah, no, but I found so hilarious and offensive. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, I know. I know. Yes. No, there's nothing against Andrew Huberman. I think he's like one of the best, if not the best at what he does."
},
{
"end_time": 3561.596,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3531.732,
"text": " I don't know."
},
{
"end_time": 3590.947,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3562.278,
"text": " I don't know. I think that there's a couple. Yeah, yeah. So I'm rebelling against something, Carlos. I'm rebelling against my former self, where I was so uncreative, I would just imitate I'd find a role model or two and imitate them. I think there's like, I think there's three stages of learning or three stages of life. One where you imitate. And then the second where you, you inculcate or you integrate that's that. That's another buzz phrase I don't like to use, but integrate."
},
{
"end_time": 3618.626,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3591.783,
"text": " And then the third is that you Individuate So the integer so first you go through this phase of imitating someone and then second then the individuation phase or the in sorry the integration phase is where you You're you can now disagree with your idols. I think that's where you can find honesty By the way, like your true feelings are when there's someone you hold with high regard and you say here's where they're wrong That's at least for me"
},
{
"end_time": 3648.541,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3619.889,
"text": " And then the individuation phase, I've forgotten how that goes. I don't think I meant that. But anyhow, I'm rebelling against myself having models and so I don't because I find it too difficult for me to not imitate them. Right. One of the things you just mentioned about, yes, say picking out the things that you disagree with somebody and it's related to something you said earlier,"
},
{
"end_time": 3677.193,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3649.684,
"text": " or perhaps a thought I had while you were speaking, is that from personal experience, when I, because I think we have a lot in common here. You've mentioned on AMAs that you're quite judgmental or that you once were very, very judgmental. And I think I feel the same way. That's something I'm working on, trying to get better about. But when I'm observant about"
},
{
"end_time": 3706.578,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3677.637,
"text": " The things that I criticize in the world, mostly exterior, let's say, and this happens rarely, but when I'm able to realize that the thing I'm really criticizing is a fault I have in myself, it's like the exterior, it's like the outside world, those are symbols. It's like a side and usually I'm just scoff and go off and just say, oh no, that's wrong."
},
{
"end_time": 3735.503,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3707.125,
"text": " But if I take the time to analyze it, I'm saying pretty much always, I can't even think of instances where this is not the case. I realize, oh wait, I've done that. I do that all the time. And actually, because I've noticed it, it's like a reflection or a mirror of something that I need to work on. It's so prevalent and so common that"
},
{
"end_time": 3766.647,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3736.92,
"text": " And perhaps it's just my own experience. I've talked to friends about this and they don't seem to share that. But it's something I've noted in the past couple of years that I can't shake. For me, I find 99% of my criticisms of anyone and also of the theories that they develop, so I'm also attacking those, come from jealousy."
},
{
"end_time": 3792.722,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3767.415,
"text": " So I'm an MLS and desirous and rivalrous person. I'm an envious person. Almost all of my criticisms of other people come from. Something that's not rational, even though I would say, well, look at all this, it's just obvious that they're wrong because of reasons A, B and C. Yeah. That's just for me, though. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 3820.811,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3794.957,
"text": " So it's total left field here, but there's a bunch of the word rationality there, so I'm going to jump on that. Something you're really, or you were interested in, Newcombe's Paradox. And I can't say I've done a deep dive into this, but I've just barely scratched the surface of it the last couple of days. I can't understand and perhaps for the audience, if you wouldn't mind,"
},
{
"end_time": 3848.234,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3821.425,
"text": " Okay, let's suppose there's a genie and okay, let's suppose there's a magical no, I got to remove your computer because then that"
},
{
"end_time": 3876.954,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3848.695,
"text": " Yeah, let's just say that there's a supercomputer like that. You enter this room, it scans your brain. And it knows the decisions you're going to make, particularly in particular, the decisions on this problem. There's two boxes in front of you. One of the boxes you can't see through it. So wooden box. Then another the next box is, let me just it has $1,000 and it's transparent. It's glass a glass box."
},
{
"end_time": 3905.776,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3877.585,
"text": " You're told, look, you can do there are two actions you can take, you can take both boxes, and you keep all the money that's inside them. So in the in the wooden box, maybe there's some money inside, maybe there's not, but at least you see the glass box. So you can choose. Do I take the wooden box only? This is the choice being given to you by the supercomputer. Do I take only the wooden box? Or do I take both boxes? You're thinking, well, why not just take both boxes? There's some amount of money in the"
},
{
"end_time": 3934.633,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3905.998,
"text": " In the wooden one, I don't know how much but let me just take both because I'll get the amount that's in the wooden one. Plus, I'll get the glass one to 1000. Okay, the computer says, Hey, there's a cash. So firstly, what's in this wooden box is either going to be nothing. Or it's going to be a million dollars. Okay, now you're thinking, well, that's even better. Let me just take both boxes, I'll either get $1,000, or I'll get a million plus $1,000. Then the computer says, actually, there's a there's another catch. That's not it."
},
{
"end_time": 3965.538,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3935.93,
"text": " If you're I've scanned your brain, by the way, I've scanned your brain and I figured out if you're a greedy person, if you're the greedy person and one million doesn't satisfy you, you want one million plus one thousand. So you try to take both boxes. I've actually put nothing in the box. So I'm going to punish your greed. If you're the. Not altruistic, but less selfish person who's just going to trust and take what's inside the the wooden box, I've put in one million."
},
{
"end_time": 3994.377,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3966.118,
"text": " in there. So this then you're like, Well, do I trust this computer and so on? Well, you can imagine this computer has played this game across 1 billion people and it's never predicted incorrectly. If someone tried to take both boxes, by the way, as soon as you enter the room, this decision is already like this decision to put 1 million or not is made instantly. Okay. And it's always been correct. This computer has always been correct. So then the question is, what do you do?"
},
{
"end_time": 4022.841,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3995.06,
"text": " So it sounds like there's no paradox because, well, why don't I just not be greedy and take the wooden box? Because if history is correct, then it punishes greed. I want one million, so I'm not going to even attempt to take that transparent one thousand bucks. I'm just going to take my wooden box. Now, the paradox comes in because there's two types of rationality."
},
{
"end_time": 4048.251,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 4023.029,
"text": " There's epistemic rationality, and then there's instrumental rationality. And usually these are aligned. And that's why when someone's like, I'm a rational person, I'm like, yeah, which kind of rationality? Why do you think that one ranks supreme? What do you do in the scenarios where they conflict where they conflict? Conflict, sorry. So epistemic rationality is using logic and deduction to come to conclusions. And then that's the one that would say, well, just a moment."
},
{
"end_time": 4077.961,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 4049.087,
"text": " The second, so let me just explain what epistemic rationality is. That's the one that tries to maximize your utility. So the one that wants to maximize your utility would say, look, the the history shows that if I was to take the wooden box, then I get one million. History also shows if I take both, I only get one thousand. So let me take the wooden box. So I'm going to maximize my utility. Then the rational one would say, yes, but that decision has already been made. It's there. It's already there."
},
{
"end_time": 4104.65,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 4078.268,
"text": " So why can't you just decide right now to take both boxes? Whether there's one million or not in the trunk in the in the wooden box that that's there, whether whether you take both or not. There's another variation where someone else is a friend and can see in the wooden box, by the way, from the back. Right, right, right. So anyway, the question is, why don't you just take both boxes? If the decision has been made already,"
},
{
"end_time": 4134.377,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 4108.029,
"text": " Anyhow, that's it. Can I ask what would you do? I would take the the wooden box only. Just one box, the million dollar box, not both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if I lose a thousand, so what? But yeah, variation where it's like a vaccine and your wife is dying. And one has like one box has 80% of the vaccine."
},
{
"end_time": 4164.821,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4135.452,
"text": " It's like the trolley problem being reframed."
},
{
"end_time": 4194.121,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4165.367,
"text": " I think it all relies on how much you trust the supercomputer's prediction."
},
{
"end_time": 4223.336,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4195.282,
"text": " And it's just like that value of what percentage chance do you think or how likely it is you think that they made the prediction that goes either against your, let's say against your favor. Because if you trust it that it's right, let's say it's never been wrong a billion times, it seems quite obvious to just take one box and just trust it. I don't really see, I feel like there's"
},
{
"end_time": 4253.046,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4223.575,
"text": " The reasoning goes, if the money is there or not already, the decision has been made, why can't you, with your own free will right now, just go and choose both?"
},
{
"end_time": 4277.09,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4253.353,
"text": " The decisions already been made by the supercomputer, they predicted I'm going to take one or the other or both let's say."
},
{
"end_time": 4306.032,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4277.927,
"text": " Hear that sound? 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": 4332.108,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4306.032,
"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": 4355.486,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4332.108,
"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 Brooklyn. 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"
},
{
"end_time": 4385.486,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4355.486,
"text": " Even if it's predicted that you're only going to take one though and it put the one million in, why can't you just take both and get a million and a thousand? Your job is to maximize the amount of money that you get."
},
{
"end_time": 4412.602,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4385.811,
"text": " Yeah, I probably just don't understand it well. It just seems very straightforward to me, but I probably have this huge blind spot that I cannot understand. Because I know that you said it's an epistemic versus instrumental. I've seen it phrased as a dominance principle versus expected utility principle. There's also a frame, the first thing I thought of was"
},
{
"end_time": 4441.613,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4413.558,
"text": " This thing from poker that I read a poker paper many years ago is about counterfactual regret minimization. So it made me think of what would minimize my regret after the fact? It's like another way of perceiving. I don't think it falls really under the envelope of this problem, but yes, if you were to try to take both and then you got nothing, that's so much worse than just taking the million."
},
{
"end_time": 4455.538,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4441.937,
"text": " It also leads to something we were talking about earlier a little bit in terms of it's sort of maybe it's like we're getting close to a sort of pragmatic discussion, maybe it's on truth or something, but everything is like, just don't overthink it."
},
{
"end_time": 4482.5,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4456.323,
"text": " If you don't maximize, if you were wrong, let's say you get, okay, maybe that should be the variation. If you were wrong, you get shot right afterwards."
},
{
"end_time": 4511.937,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4482.91,
"text": " If you don't get the full, if you don't get the maximum amount that you could have gotten, then you're shot right after, right outside the room at Newcombe's. Right. Yeah. Right outside of Newcombe's room. Yeah. I need to think about how to phrase that, the roulette version, the Russian roulette version. I need to think about that. But I think that would make it more clear that there's a paradox here. Yeah. I have to, I think I need to dive into it more. Maybe folks in the comments will love to explain it or"
},
{
"end_time": 4540.486,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4512.517,
"text": " Clear up this blind spot that I clearly have. A few other questions I have for you. Have you seen The Boy and the Heron yet? No. Is it good? You're a fan of Miyazaki, right? Yeah. I'm not sure. Yes. Yeah. I know you're a fan of his. I've actually never seen another film of his. I have to watch like Spirited Away and some of these. Okay. It was my first. I did not love it. Yeah. I got to be honest. I thought it was beautiful before. I heard that. I heard that. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 4567.261,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4540.776,
"text": " That's interesting. Yeah. Cause I, I went in with an open mind and the reviews were pretty great generally from critics anyway. I heard that from the user reviews that most people who are Miyazaki fans were disappointed. Okay. Good. Okay. Then that tracks. Okay. That that's fine. Yeah. I was almost left the theater, but stuck around. Yeah, it's pretty bad. I'll, I'll walk out of a movie. Yeah. Wasted another hour."
},
{
"end_time": 4583.951,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4567.91,
"text": " How many movies have you walked out on in your life?"
},
{
"end_time": 4610.333,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4584.411,
"text": " Yeah, I walked out of two in my entire life. I stick with the shipment. Which one? Do you remember which one? Yeah, the Steve Jobs with Ashton Kutcher. I was like, this is just so horrible. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And then one time I was given a free ticket. This is probably why I stay because I'm an extremely frugal person. So I'm like, I've saved here. So cost is just my it's my model tattoo. There was one for"
},
{
"end_time": 4639.394,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4610.742,
"text": " I think it was some re live action remake of Pocahontas or is heavily inspired by Pocahontas, but it wasn't. Yeah. And it was a live action one. It was years and years, like 10, 15 years ago. Oh my gosh. Oh man. Sounds terrible. The most recently I haven't, I've thought of walking out of stuff, but the first, I remember one of the first ones when I was a kid, Freddie got fingered with, um, Tom something, Tom grid."
},
{
"end_time": 4668.763,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4639.838,
"text": " This is awful. I can't even. What was the other one? Do you have another one? Yeah, I misremembered. It wasn't the one with the live action Pocahontas. It was King's Speech. I love that. And I know that's an Academy Award winning movie. People loved it. I couldn't bear it. I couldn't not bear it. Interesting. I liked it. Yeah, it's funny. I remember saying I don't think it deserved Best Picture that year. Social Network was my Best Picture winner personally that year."
},
{
"end_time": 4693.763,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4669.172,
"text": " What year was that? I want to say 2011. I'm not sure. It was within a year or two of then, I'm pretty sure. I mean, it must be a film, but have you seen anything lately that's caught your eye? No, I haven't. So I decompress now at nighttime. I used to just watch dark dramas, but now I don't. I just watch something light. So there's"
},
{
"end_time": 4720.265,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4694.411,
"text": " But 2007 and 2008 were a great year for films for me. I loved No Country for Old Men and There Will Be More and Sweeney Todd and those all came out. Oh, yeah. Crazy. I was just a buddy of mine the other day. It's one of the best films. Yeah, a few days ago, my friend, we were talking about favorite movies of all time and No Country for Old Men is one of mine."
},
{
"end_time": 4750.657,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4720.776,
"text": " It's up there for sure. That parasite is another one that comes to mind. I have to think about rounding out the top five, but those two are definitely in that kind of discussion. Yeah. I want to ask you about gaming, too, because what do you have any favorite video games? You don't have time to play them now, but maybe when you were playing Baldur's Gate recently, Baldur's Gate is not bad. I don't see what the hype is about. I think it's a fantastic, like an extremely fantastic game, but I don't see it as being"
},
{
"end_time": 4778.166,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4751.664,
"text": " For sure, game of the year. Zelda was great, the new Zelda. Though to me, it didn't provide much that was different from the first one. I was disappointed in that. Even though I love the mechanics in the new Zelda. The Breath of the Wild. Tears of the Kingdom. Then... Metal Gear is my favorite series. Love Metal Gear. I remember playing that as a kid, yeah. On the PlayStation."
},
{
"end_time": 4806.374,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4778.831,
"text": " I'm so sad about Metal Gear Solid 5 though. Metal Gear Solid 5 is such a disappointment to me. Was that the open world one? Yeah, it's such a disappointment. The same areas over and over. Mechanically, it's tight. So tight, the tightest of all Metal Gears. But I care about the story and I care about variety. And I know Hideo Kojima, by the way, that's like someone, my dream list person on the podcast. Kojima, yeah. I know, that's why I asked. Yeah, I didn't get into 5."
},
{
"end_time": 4832.005,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4807.056,
"text": " Yeah, I didn't get into I think I put 15 hours in and then I just kind of went there. I don't know. It didn't it didn't take me in the same thing with Starfield. Oh, and it's a different voice as well for Solid Snake. Like the classic David Hayter that everyone knows and love from and just one, two, three, four, four. You're going to change it for level five for number five. Yeah, sorry, which one? No, no, man. Is that what you said?"
},
{
"end_time": 4852.295,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4832.602,
"text": " No, Starfield. I tried playing Starfield a few months ago. My goodness, I couldn't. Unplayable. I hated it. I mean, load screen after load screen. Just what is going on? The other one is taking 20 hours and yeah, it was too bad. Do you ever play Skyrim?"
},
{
"end_time": 4879.77,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4853.985,
"text": " Oh, Skyrim love fallout fallout is it goes like metal. I just think I So you I don't listen to music but I enjoy Thoroughly enjoy 50s and 60s and 40s music Music from that era because of fallout. Yeah, I just wow Man that game I have such sweet memories of it"
},
{
"end_time": 4905.333,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4880.742,
"text": " That's wonderful. Yeah. I want to ask you, why don't you listen to music? I just, I don't find it conducive to studying. Yeah, that's pretty simple. Yeah. If there's a new Eminem song, I'm going to check that out. Like as soon as I find out though. Gotcha. I listened to Taylor Swift's album the other day. I thought it was great."
},
{
"end_time": 4933.473,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4905.896,
"text": " Her new album. I never listened to any of her albums before. Her new album, the song called Snow on the Beach. I love that song. Okay. I got to check it out. Yeah. I like, I mean, I, it's funny. I never, I don't have a single song of hers in my Spotify, like, cause I just, I hear her. She's so ubiquitous. I hear her in the world enough, but I like her. I mean, it's not, no criticism to her. It's just a, say, I should go, I should go listen to maybe some more of her catalog because she is what a force she's become."
},
{
"end_time": 4956.971,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4933.831,
"text": " Why do I care? It's because I'm jealous of her. I don't even want to be in the stadiums. I'm not a musician, but I'm just jealous of her for no reason. It's all criticism."
},
{
"end_time": 4986.766,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4957.381,
"text": " Do you ever find yourself questioning reality and then you snap back to it remembering that, hey, you have nothing planned for dinner? That's hilarious, man. They should be paying for this one. They should be paying. That's HelloFresh. That's one of the sponsors. Yeah, not a sponsor. No, no, but you were talking about"
},
{
"end_time": 5015.674,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4988.114,
"text": " the success of tow and then I said it doesn't feel that successful and that's because it's for the past year it's been such a struggle financially man like so much of a struggle like so I'm unnerved and frazzled and overtaxed and overburdened and taught and high strung because there was some issue with not sponsors not the sponsors if you see a sponsor on tow if you see a tow sponsor and you like them go check them out"
},
{
"end_time": 5041.391,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 5016.049,
"text": " But the people who bring the sponsors, they take a cut. And then I had people who were bringing me sponsors who got other people bringing them sponsors, and then a third one. So there was like a 30%. And then I was seeing almost nothing. I've still owed 1000s of dollars from something which I can't even talk about. And because like I have a contract that I'm not supposed to speak poorly about something I'm not even allowed to go find my own sponsors. Don't know. So it's just been"
},
{
"end_time": 5070.452,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 5044.872,
"text": " Yeah, but anyway, thanks for bringing up HelloFresh. I've heard that a lot. I'm just like, I want to ask him this question. I haven't gotten into dip my toes in the water sponsorships, but I have had a couple folks reach out to me directly and I've wondered because I heard a little bit about this. It sounds not pyramid scheme ask, but referral. Yeah, MLM kind of how many levels of referrals are there?"
},
{
"end_time": 5098.183,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 5071.015,
"text": " And can I just go directly to the source and get perhaps a better deal? So it's something I'm sure I hope one day to not have the same problem, but you know, I hope one day to kind of understand what you mean. Yeah, get into those waters again. Carlos, if you need any connections or tips, you let me know. We'll talk about it off air. It's something that I think something that I I guess it's it's a"
},
{
"end_time": 5128.882,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 5101.681,
"text": " Something that bothers me is that I've had no help. No help Carlos from anyone who's anywhere, anyone who's I've had no help from any other podcaster. I've had no help from any other guest who's like, I'm like, Oh, but you know, this person, can you get? Can I talk to this person? Some people are like, can't you just ask? I don't want to say names because it's uncouth. But can't you just ask if you want to speak to say,"
},
{
"end_time": 5151.067,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 5130.964,
"text": " I think I reached out to you"
},
{
"end_time": 5170.299,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5151.698,
"text": " Before saying like, Hey, I like your podcast. And if you need some help, like I can retweet something of yours. I think I've reached out to you saying that I apologize if I haven't. But when I make a note of a smaller podcast, invariably will send them that message like, Hey, man, I'm a fellow YouTuber. If there's something I can do to help you out, let me know. And, and I'm doing that not because I'm a great"
},
{
"end_time": 5196.118,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5171.032,
"text": " I don't have these connections. It's not like I can go out to dinner with some people."
},
{
"end_time": 5225.845,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5196.34,
"text": " Thank you. I so appreciate that. And actually, I feel similarly in terms of, and this is something that I have to do a better job of, or I could at least"
},
{
"end_time": 5255.316,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5226.408,
"text": " make attempts to be better at, because it does feel like a lonely pursuit for myself as well. I don't have anyone in my social circles that does anything like this, but I also don't. I live in New York City, so perhaps this location, I can imagine there are probably a few more people that are doing something similar or they're nearby that I could reach out to, but there's an idea I had actually"
},
{
"end_time": 5285.93,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5256.032,
"text": " I have a few channels that are similar in size to myself and also similar in topic that I'm going to reach out to soon that maybe we could do a challenge where we have like, I'm about 40,000 subscribers and these channels are as well. It's like first to 100,000 subscribers wins some prize, a handful of channels. And so that could kind of get us together in a way where we're in good nature competing with each other to grow our channels quickly."
},
{
"end_time": 5313.49,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5286.442,
"text": " Because at least for myself, I think it's interesting the financial pressures that exist for this. Now, I make very little in this pursuit so far. It's because of my size and all the other things I could be doing. But it's funny because the drive, the financial drive, even though I need to make money to live, isn't as strong as it should be or could be."
},
{
"end_time": 5341.92,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5314.206,
"text": " You know what I mean? And I think it's perhaps a question of like motivation and I'm talking in circles here a bit, but it's something that I need to do a better job of because I feel similarly in that, yeah, I don't know anybody. I'm gaining a network sort of every person I speak with. It's another potential avenue, but I don't ask and maybe I should ask folks I've had on for warm intros to"
},
{
"end_time": 5362.927,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5342.841,
"text": " If you find success in that, let me know. I haven't. I haven't even taken the steps to do it."
},
{
"end_time": 5391.391,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5363.319,
"text": " I'm not even sure. Before we wrap up, I do want to ask you a more concrete question and I know we started off very hardcore and very high level and abstract in a lot of ways. I do want to ask you a question because it's something that I've had it as a personal tenant of mine that if we better understand the fundamental nature of reality, that we will better know how we should act in the world."
},
{
"end_time": 5420.333,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5392.278,
"text": " But then David Hume, you're familiar with, I'm sure, his is-ought problem. You cannot drive it off from an is. Where do you stand on that? Do you have an opinion about that frame? Present deliberation depends on what one means by fundamental nature. And it's not clear to me that, look, if when Newton came out with mechanics, that that was a net positive for the world because it made us view ourselves as automatons. So it's not clear to me that"
},
{
"end_time": 5444.292,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5421.408,
"text": " You just describe more and more fundamental reality with physics, say, or something else, and then you get to a more positive thought. I don't know. I don't know why we don't just start with the art like forget about something else is is the whole point of toe to then discard toe. There's a saying that you"
},
{
"end_time": 5476.647,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5447.619,
"text": " You return home and you know the place for the first time. That's at the end of all the journeying. Is it that you don't answer the questions but you get comfortable with leaving them unanswered? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that one, Carlos. Yeah, it's a tough one. But I love that response though. Because that speaks to me for sure. The idea of the"
},
{
"end_time": 5505.418,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5477.892,
"text": " The hero's journey for turning back to where you came from, to where you left off, you having changed and you having brought back something you've learned from your experience in the extraordinary world, that special world. It seems to me to be the case that that's the process that we just keep on doing over and over and over again, going out, seeking, learning, coming back, sharing what we've learned."
},
{
"end_time": 5532.466,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5507.927,
"text": " Having a good meal, being with family and friends, and then doing it all over again. It's dangerous though. So the Hobbit in Lord of the Rings, Frodo, Frodo, Frodo subverts that because he comes back home. But while he's out, this is something that just impacted me so much."
},
{
"end_time": 5559.497,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5533.353,
"text": " of the whole story of Lord of the Rings that he gets stabbed with them. I think it's called a Morgul blade. It's a special type of blade and it hurts him and he has to go get healed by the elves. But then at the end of the journey, when he's home, he's there for a couple of years. He always touches here occasionally because it stings. And then he ends up having to even leave home because there are some wounds that are so great. They never leave you."
},
{
"end_time": 5593.712,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5563.729,
"text": " Yeah, that touches me, man. It's dangerous to go out adventuring. It's not always guaranteed. It's a net positive. Well, in that case, he did save the world, just sacrificed himself. Quick question. Whatever I do, I do it with my wife. If I was going away, I would, it would be with my wife, not leaving her."
},
{
"end_time": 5624.002,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5594.377,
"text": " I'll suffer through any pain. I'll suffer through ten of those blades. Anyway. It's wonderful that the love cuts that deep. It's wonderful. I tell my wife all the time, I will love you even if you're a speck. Like if there is nothing left for except this little dot that I carry around, put in my little pocket. You're my my pocket, babe. Then I'm just going to carry you and you can glare at women like you're not having him. You're not having him."
},
{
"end_time": 5653.2,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5624.787,
"text": " Great. Good. Stay there. That's so wonderful. That's so lovely. Thank you, Kurt, for sharing that. Well, I'm going to ask you one last question. The question I ask every guest on the show at the end, if you could go back and give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Yeah, it'd be work harder. Oh, God. Just work hard enough. An indolent, unindustrious, feckless,"
},
{
"end_time": 5681.015,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5655.179,
"text": " Rodent scoundrel. Work harder. Yeah, for me. I know Oprah always says like, Yeah, if I had advice would be relaxed. Yeah, you can say that because you've gotten to the point where you have attained success. You have no idea if you would be at this level. If you didn't feel that drive, you have no idea how people say, Oh, my, I'm going to think about what it's like when I'm 90 and do the rocking chair test."
},
{
"end_time": 5709.548,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5681.357,
"text": " How, why is that perspective somehow a privileged perspective? Why do you think that perspective is not going to color? Anyway? Yeah, yeah, well, that's great. There's so much wrong. Again, those are those one when this inauthentic copied phrases that people say it's like the rocking chair test. Like, look how profound I am going to say the rocking chair test. I don't think people think about what these funny. I don't think people think some people I don't think some people think about what they say."
},
{
"end_time": 5739.514,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5711.954,
"text": " Can you give me 10 seconds? You can count it down for me to just browse. It would be one of the more recent ones."
},
{
"end_time": 5768.899,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5739.906,
"text": " Because I'm just ashamed of anything that's like three months old. Edward Frankel's was fantastic. And yeah, Edward Edward Frankel's was fantastic. And that idea was super technical one. But I love philosophy. And then there's Anna Lemke, which is more on the practical side, that was about mental health and getting over addiction and trauma. It doesn't sound like has anything to do with the toe. But like I mentioned, toe is a to at least for me, it's a it's a perilous place."
},
{
"end_time": 5798.78,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5769.326,
"text": " I want to keep asking you questions, Kirk. I know you got to go. Next time, man. Yeah, next time. This is so wonderful. Next time I'm in New York, we can hang out if you don't mind. Oh yeah, I'd love to see you. Yeah, that'd be great. I'm in New York City so let me know any time you're swinging by and it'd be great to meet up in person. Thank you again. This was such a wonderful conversation. I know the audience will love it."
},
{
"end_time": 5823.609,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5799.019,
"text": " And I want to say I want to extend the same courtesy because you did a few minutes ago. You said if I could reach out to me anytime, please, please do. I mean, if you have anything, I'm a smaller podcast than yours, but if I can help out in any way or if you're just feeling like you want to reach out to somebody who's doing kind of similar work to you in a sense, I'm there. I'll be there for you, man. Thank you. Thank you."
},
{
"end_time": 5835.879,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5823.916,
"text": " Think Verizon, the best 5G network is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal. Now what to do with your unwanted bills? Ever seen an origami version of the Miami Bull?"
},
{
"end_time": 5854.019,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5836.374,
"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.