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Jesse Michels: UFOs, David Grusch, Venture Capital
October 19, 2023
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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.
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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.
What's up, Kurt and Theories of Everything podcast. I hope you enjoy this conversation with me and Kurt Jaimungal. Kurt is a big inspiration for me. I love his show. I am a religious watcher of it. And I think he goes deeper than just about anybody else with some of the top thinkers in the world. And so it was an honor for me to interview him. This was supposed to come out actually on American Alchemy.
Kurt Jaimungal, thank you for coming. This has been a long time coming because I'm a huge fan of your show and the way I like to describe your show to friends of mine is basically I think you are a
Deeper, smarter version of Lex Friedman. I love Lex. No offense to him. I think he's awesome. But in many ways, he's got the Larry King audience surrogate thing going on where he doesn't have any context going into the interview. He has super basic questions and then sort of parapetitically gains context through the interview. You come in
Knowing everything about the person's ideas and you ask insanely good questions that like surprise the guests often at the level of depth. And so yeah, it's a blast. That's extremely, extremely kind. Thank you so much. Of course. Yeah. The goal is if you've watched every interview with this guest and you watch it on toe, I want toe to be the best
one of all the interviews or the deepest one, deepest and most technical. Yeah, you do you ask super technical. It's it's it's fantastic. If you want to get to the core of the person's work, I think it's it's probably the best like initial primer you could ever ask what's like that or like some super dense research paper. And like, I would start with that. Yeah, it's it's flattering. I forget who it was. But there's some other guests who said that when they want to learn about one of the guests on the
The Toe
I'd rather do that than chat GPT. What do you think about chat GPT? Overhyped? Underhyped? I think it's overhyped. I think we're at 97-98% turn passable NLP AI a few years ago and I think now we're at 100% and the difference between 100% and 97-98%
is is dramatic in its public reception but is not represent any sort of stepwise back-end change and like how the thing works and and i think about like you know winnegrad schemas or like things that like break ai traditionally where like you know ai doesn't understand still in my opinion semantic context and like i think the pattern matching just got better where like it
now seems like it understands. It's like as if semantic context understanding, but I don't think it understands semantic context. And then I think about all the hype around like we can have material science breakthroughs with this stuff. It's like, no, you can't get out of here. That's like so far off, like all this sort of multimodal stuff, you know,
I think
is educated, I'm going to put that in quotations, then they'll under-hype it. I don't know why, but anyway, I see it much like electricity, where in the beginning, Faraday was just playing around with electricity and people were like, that's a magic trick, like they didn't even see the potential of what it could be and even when Edison put these through lines, they're like, oh, now we can light our homes and like, now we can light our homes, that's it? That's all you think about? Yeah.
So I think it's completely underhyped and mid-journey, like not just chat GPT, but mid-journey and not just chat GPT, but there's GPT-3 and there's integrating it with
the web, which is Bing and it constantly gets underpowered, underpowered. And by the way, if you speak to some of the people who worked on, who used chat GPT in its beta days, as well as the early days when it was released, they say it was vastly, vastly more powerful. Like the code would work almost every single time. And then because they're worried about safety issues and also scalability, maybe they had to reduce the amount of power that each user was given. Then it becomes less and less accurate. So
The technology is there. The technology is there. It's only growing and it's just, I love the CEO of Microsoft. Yeah. Like there was the computer era. Yeah. There was the internet era and now we're at the AI era. Yep. And I think last year we hit this inflection point. We're at the AI era. Interesting. Okay. I think it's going to displace a lot of white collar work. So I think like
legal, accounting, things where you're sort of running loops online. Yeah, and data entry and data entry. For instance, being on the Microsoft presentation, the Microsoft presentation, fascinating. They're like, okay, look at this PDF, which is, I don't know, the company guests, let's say guests, the jeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're like, okay, let's
Ask it can you summarize this document for me and then it does it in terms of the the projections of the financial statements and so on that they had in the PDF and then so that's already fascinating.
and then they're like can you compare this to lululemons and then it does a chart and then you're like yeah about how much work that would have taken so if i wanted to do that would get someone on fiverr that would take a few back and forths and then they wouldn't do it properly and it would take a couple days and it would cost money totally and now i can do it in just like 45 seconds yep oh my gosh so i use i've used mid journey for
not just for art for the toe channel, but for idea generation. So for instance, I have this idea for one year. I've had this idea of a poster, like a beautiful metal painted poster that's fairly large. That's like a tree of life and it has different toes, like symbols of toes and how they're related. So this one's a subset of this one. This one is like SU2 is integrated into SU4 or goes into spin 10 and so on. The Petite Salon models and so on and the nodes and the graphs and sorry, the edges in the nodes.
And I've looked online for months and months and not not dedicating my entire time, but just
Intermittently looking online for months and months like oh do it. Do I like this artist? Do I like this one? Okay, let me take that Yeah, that's not quite it. Not quite it soon as mid-journey came out. Here's what I'm looking for and then it generates what is exceeds my expectations and then I'm like, oh I never thought that it came up with some variation like yeah I never thought that it could be on the root of the tree below. Okay, let me play. That's cool And then I also had this idea for a video game for quite some time maybe like ten years now Yeah
Just in the back of my mind.
I never even thought about exploring a town at night. Oh, maybe rain can be a mechanic or maybe nighttime in the haze can be a mechanic. Okay, let me play around with that then. Oh, I see that. So I use it as like a person you would spitball off of. Ah, yeah. And same with chat GPT. And so it's just like an extended mind. Yeah. But it's also super dangerous. Yeah. So for instance, I ask it, can you explain this concept to me? Yeah, then it just does. And then I'm like, can you explain it in a different way? And then it does.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's like making the first iteration so it'll be horrible for the next generation is already just making like human interaction vestigial or you could say it's making the informational aspect the informational transfer aspects of interrelations sort of vestigial and in fact
the energy you know of people's relationships like will matter more in some ways because maybe there's some human ineffable kind of aspect that you can't get from chat gpt now or maybe even ever so john vervecke do you know john vervecke i know who he is yeah he talks about meaning structure right yeah that there's these four p's of knowledge or four p's of truth yeah so one is
Propositional that's what chat GPT is that's what it is when you're working with the computers explicit statements propositional then there's other forms like perspectival what it's like to have a certain perspective and then participatory like we're participating in a dialogue and it's almost like a dance.
And then there's procedural, so movement. So when you drive a car, there's a knowledge to it. Grabbing a ball, there's a knowledge to it. But it's not explicitly stated. It's in your muscles. It's embodied. So he's saying that what's happened in the meaning or lack of meaning in our culture is that we started to overvalue the propositional.
and undervalue these and it started since like the year since thousands of years ago and different developments like Peterson's answer to the meaning crisis has to do with Jung and the fall of Adam and Eve and so on and and John Verbeckis like oh actually it's because the invention of vowels and spaces I was like well how the heck does that have anything to do with the meaning crisis he's like because now you can read quicker you then think information is power and then you start to overvalue this
Oh, that's so fascinating. Because before it took it took quite some time and they didn't even standardize left to right. Right. So that itself was an invention. Right. Revolutionary invention. Right. This is going to get into weird trippy territory. But I think about like, Sanskrit or Greek scholars, I know. Yeah. And they often seem to think that like within the language is like embedded some sort of like
Energy transfer like there's like a hermetic like gnosis would be the Greek sort of word for knowledge where the knowledge transfer is almost sublinguistic and like the energy state with which something's written or that you're in when reading the thing is Deterministic of the actual information that you might get and what you resonate with and it does feel like language has become more sort of like
The information is just the thing itself. I have to get deeper into Verbeke stuff. He seems like just a genius. Yeah, he's one of the titans of our era. Interesting. Okay, so you hold that much respect for him. That's cool. Okay. The four P's, just knowing the four P's is extremely interesting. And just knowing that there are different forms of truth. So we think of truth like mathematical, like these timeless truths that you just grab and they're explicit statements.
He's saying, no, there are other forms of truth and there's a truth to meditating. What does that mean? We don't even have the language for that anymore. We don't think like that. It's true. Yeah. I think we just think in terms of like the raw information and we don't think enough of that. And fortunately, I think the stuff that
Like the energy state stuff is relegated to like woo-woo self-help. And then I think there's something there to that woo-woo self-help. And there was kind of like a movement in the early 20th century called New Thought, which was, you know, it's similar to panpsychism, which you explore a lot on the show, where like everything is sort of a thought form. Everything is somewhat conscious. And I tend to believe in that. But yeah, I think the current thinkers that are sort of vitalists
and or animists are unfortunately like lowbrow self-helpy people. So there's been sort of a bifurcation. I think we live in the age of kind of disenchantment. And so that's probably the case with words too, right? Like there's some of these low quality people. I don't want to call anybody out. Okay, fine. And this is recording the audios recording like everything's good because last the last two times you can include this if you want to.
I was in New York and so I was on Coleman's show. And the reason why I'm not on Coleman's show is because we recorded in a studio where they paid for people to come and actually record it. The guy stepped out and it was fine. I've stepped out during shoots. And then he comes back in two hours later after this great conversation is like, oh, we only shoot the only the first 30 minutes were recorded.
And I'm just, I'm so upset. That's so frustrating. Yeah, because you can't recreate that. I know, I've had that too. And I flew down. That's the worst. And I prepped for that because even with you asking me like I'm super flattered and I say no to almost every single interview. Oh, I'm honored. Because it's so stressful. Thank you. Yeah. I'm filled with consternation and trepidation. You're doing great, man. You're like very, also like sometimes I don't think I'm a great interviewee. I think I'm a good interviewer. Uh-huh.
Anyhow, I have to prep because my answer to most every single question is I don't know.
tangent that like is orthogonally related to the question but doesn't directly answer it. Yeah, well that's a great way. I don't know if it's a great way. Yeah, yeah, that's something that I wish like I need to there's certain skills to answering questions that I never thought about before. Right. I don't think like that. Yeah. I see it now. Now that I'm prepping for an interview, I can see it in other people. Oh, that was a great way to take that question and develop it. Right. Even if they don't know the answer. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Because I here's my my default mode of thought is
What do you think consciousness is? Yeah, so this is what I do. I think for like 25 seconds when I come back and say,
I'm not sure, what do you think? Several ideas are competing in my head. Children just fighting and then I see, okay, you, what are your pros and cons? Okay, yeah, but then it's almost like whack-a-mole. Physics right now is in a state of whack-a-mole where they propose different theories because there are several, there are 45 different problems in physics. Like what is quantum gravity? Why are there three generations of matter and what baryony symmetry and
The Copernican and there's some data that suggests that we're not we're in a privileged place in the universe. Yeah, which it goes against what we thought before. Yeah. So why is that? And why is the CNB the way that it is? And did inflation occur and so on? Yeah. Or not did inflation occur? But why do we see the CNB in the way that the cosmic microwave background? So you propose some answers, but then new problems pop up and you're like, okay, I solved two, but five more come up. Yeah. Okay. So in order to then retain these two, I could
propose an addendum which will solve three but then that increases this one and is this one more of a problem than that one okay what if I get rid of this which one's the sacred cow the goal is can we just whack all of these down but that seems like insurmountable to anyone but anyway the same is occurring in my head when anyone asks me a question about anything that's even passively not surface level so let's say what is consciousness is very definitely not surface level that's like deep deep deep that's maybe as deep as you can get
According to some
If consciousness is the orchestrated objective reduction Penrose thing, then the mind is a quantum sensor. You go through a whole bunch of links in a chain. Here's a guess, here's a guess. What would they say to that? Okay, what would that person say? What would that person say? And then also what do I think? I don't even think consciously about this. I think implicitly about this and these ideas form connections.
I think it's almost like, I think it's a mistake for people to get their PhDs when they're in their 20s. Because if you ask Ed Witten, if you ask virtually any scientist of a claim,
What is it you believe and then they let's say five statements in their field and then you ask them did you do your PhD believing those they're like yeah generally yeah so you crystallize this point of view when you're at your most creative yeah so you have someone who's in their 20s like their IQ is at their potency i think when you're 25 it peaks that's interesting and then it's just a slow slow drop off but regardless creativity you're super creative you're young then you get someone they pick you when you're like 23 and say you get an advisor and then they tell you
okay here's you don't even want to they tell you don't tackle huge problems because you can't get grant money for that you got to tackle solvable problems yeah and then there's this mantra like that the the best researchers know which types of problems to tackle the ones that are solvable and that are interesting and then so they're automatically like culling the type of problems away from the most interesting ones that you probably got interested in when you went to school for a bachelor's or master's totally so it's like i don't know of an alternate model but
I admire people who are 50 and then they get their PhD.
Z is like the 26th and I'm saying there's 10,000 but rather choosing door or looking through as you get older you see blurry outlines of doors because you're not you can you're not paid to investigate each like a PhD student who can only investigate five because they have time and they investigate it deeply. But when you're older like what you do what what we do at toe and what people who watch
You're just watching you're getting a survey of the landscape like a bird flying above. Yeah, and then or a buffet. It's better to think of like so you get to choose. Yes. Yeah, this is sitting down having a cordon bleu one huge meal, which which is the way that it works in academia right now. Hey, make this one meal and make this cuisine this one. That's fascinating. That's fascinating. Yeah, it's like I think you can only optimize for productivity or creativity, but the two are often inverse. And what you're saying is like,
When you're in your 20s, you should be going really wide, have a super wide filter, which your show does, by the way. It's like a, it's like a, it's, it's like a great pre PhD or something. Cause you can like sample from all the theories and then you should go, you should dive really deep, which maybe is, it's a bit of a refutation on academia too, right? Cause it's like, why do you have to round out the edges of some preexisting theory? Why can't you have a bold new theory? Like I look at a lot of people you entertain on your podcast and like,
Some of them are like really well credentialed and like in high places in academia. Others are not and they should be in my model of academia because they're brilliant. They just didn't like fit in correctly. Yeah. So yeah. So the question is like, well, what's the alternative? Because can you pay for someone? It's almost like saying I'll pay you to just study for 30 years without producing, which is what I'm saying should quote unquote happen. But it should is such a
Foolish word cuz should have so many implications in it like when someone says oh, you know what you should do for your channel You should do so-and-so. Yeah in the comment section or privately. Yeah, you're like, yeah, but you don't know my goals like this someone's like Yeah, you shouldn't appear as much or you should appear more or you should Investigate the or you shouldn't talk about this and you don't know my goals though Like someone's saying right and the iPhone should do so-and-so like yeah, but you you have no idea. What are they balancing? What are their pros and cons? What are they what are they?
What are they sacrificing in order for this and what are they are they maximizing for this? You don't know what this should that you're imposing on them So one thing that I do like that's a natural effect of the show and I don't know whether this is one of your goals But I think it's it's happened is you have you're marrying very serious rigorous physics with an attempt to look at consciousness acquire inquiring to consciousness and you even go into things like UFOs and
And to me, you're harkening back to a time in academia that was far more open when you do stuff like that, and I like that. I think that's great. Because to me, anomalies can be harbingers of the next academic paradigm. Exactly. And you are bringing rigorous thought to current anomalies that a lot of people laugh at inside the beltway in academia, but in the future could become part of the established thought.
Yeah, so what is a disadvantage to the majority of people in ufology, which is that these crafts seem unrepeatable and or unfalsifiable to the academia and so on. It's difficult to get
Reliable data on it. Mm-hmm. So it sounds like a con I see that as a pro because virtually anytime in physics or Maybe in any field in science, but in physics in particular when there's this huge problem You develop new tools and then those new tools create some huge breakthrough Yeah, so quantum mechanics started like this but then even post quantum mechanics like well, you can't observe this directly you can't observe the
the wave the particle directly but you want to get information about the wave function so you come up with weak measurement there's something called weak measurement where you don't actually collapse it you observe it weakly through multiple perspectives it's like it's like barely it's like barely touching so it's like so you're not jolted out of your your your dream state
And then that triangulate measurement. Right, right. So that has implications in quantum computing. And then what else is a dark dark matter is not directly observed. But and so now we have to come up with theories about that. But I think much more broadly, like, OK, if we can't directly observe these crafted, generally speaking, or we get blurry videos and it's anecdotal, what does that mean for science? Can science incorporate experiential, unrepeatable
one-offs, like outliers, which are normally discarded. So I think in terms of, well, what is science evolving to? And you mentioned Gnosis. I have this word called Abhij Gnosis. Abhij is like the Eastern way of knowing and the Gnosis is the Western. So I think that a science 2.0, considering science was nascent before and then developed to its current form, then you think, well, is it done? I don't think so. I think it's going to mature to something else. So with Toe,
One project I'm working on at the back of my mind is, well, what is this science 2.0? What is this? Well, I also think I'm a big fan of this Austrian philosopher named Rudolf Steiner and he created this thing called Anthroposophy, which is kind of an offshoot of theosophy, which is a little bit
Trippier and I think kind of more huckstery to be totally honest. He Steiner was a real guy He actually created a lot of the modern organic farming methods in the early 19th century. So he's like a decently rigorous scientist but Anthroposophy is all about the study of kind of the spirit world or psychology but like applying very rigorous kind of science to those things and it almost feels like the average person today is
discards their everyday epistemology for scientific dogma, for like an accepted framework. And so if you were to pull 10 people on the street, have you had like a one-off weird paranormal experience? They would say yes. Like eight out of 10 or nine out of 10 would say yes. And yet none of those people incorporate that into their kind of materialist worldview.
and so i think looking at those things rigorously is important because we are the observer we man is the measure of all things we are the observers of the universe and then you have all this sort of quantum
Spookiness stuff that we just haven't figured out. So maybe we can marry the two. I don't know. Bernardo says that we let the mind to be the bouncer of the heart, meaning that we should allow ourselves to front load our hearts, our intuition and our experience. But we, but our mind gets in the way and says, nope, nope, nope. Oh, that's so cool. That's Bernardo Castro. That's awesome. I love that phrase.
The mind is the bouncer
Values the implicit and maybe the perspectival or procedural like verveky but then publicly we feel like we have to value the propositional the more explicit because otherwise that's not scientific and then we're irrational and we want to make sure that we're rational and we're not considered pseudo intellectuals and so on right so and then we have this internal clash so I'm not it's not clear to me that we do allow the mind to be the bouncer of the heart
because maybe there are multiple selves and the core of ourself is the one that you know what this feels right I'm gonna go with this but then we have another self that said no no no that it's just doubting yeah it's like at one level the mind is the bouncer but then at another it's not and we have this dissonance right right and interesting yeah and and it's important to try to reconcile those things yeah maybe I don't know is maybe that's what well anyway what were you gonna say I was gonna say maybe that
That is in part what union integration is, is making sure these are all lined up properly. There's no contradiction between them. And that's why it's a lifelong. You can never get there. You can only increase. Interesting. Do you have any favorite thinkers that were kind of inspirations for toe or for wanting to get into this or Donald Hoffman was the reason the theories of everything channel started because he was being interviewed and is still interviewed on platforms where they just ask him about
the same questions over
And then the second one is, he says, space time is doomed. I'm like, okay, come on, Donald. Like, is there any? I said this joke that I love Donald Hoffman because he's constantly saying new things. And by new things, I mean, he finds 50 different ways of saying space time is doomed. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm thinking, okay, given that he's predicating all this in the papers, which are math based,
Why is no one asking him about the math? I can go through that as my background. Yeah. So let me read the PDFs and then ask him about that. Yeah. What the heck does it mean that this set is consciousness or this this Markov chain? One of these is a conscious experience. What does that mean? Why does that necessarily translate over to how we work evolutionarily or perception? And does that also give rise to quantum mechanics, like he said? So I had all these questions and I can look through and then I interviewed him fairly technically.
And people seem to that seem to take off. And so I was like, wow, this is banging on all cylinders because I've always been interested in theories of everything. Yes, I was since I I learned about them and I like puzzles and math. And then I went into filmmaking. But now I'm like, OK, I can use filmmaking, meaning it's like video and I can use these these analytical skills that I have these proclivities that I have. And it's like in the domain that I absolutely love. Oh, my gosh. And
I wouldn't say Donald is a favorite thinker of mine, but he's responsible for the channel. That's super cool. Yeah. Well, I would love to actually get a little deeper into his stuff because I intuitively I sort of think that physics is more the interface between biology and like the inanimate world or something than
Most hardcore physicists would like admit that would be my bias And so I've been fascinated and I'm sort of like a fan of Plato and I think we see Shadow play at the end of the day, but that's also kind of an intuitive gestalt feel on my part So I didn't realize he so he's fairly technical like he will sort of technically back up this this theory Yeah him and his co-authors one is named I believe Shatar Shatar or Shakar
Anyway, he's a mathematician, that co-author, and Donald knows way more math than he should for a cognitive scientist. So Donald actually has the chops that he's saying, much more than most people know.
Interesting. I want to go through his stuff. Salvatore Pius as my favorite guest, he would be one of my favorite guests. Okay, interesting. So do you think after having interviewed Pius once or twice now? Twice. Do you think that these Navy patents are legit? I reserve judgment. And so I don't even think in terms of that. That would be a question that I would think for like 20 seconds to say, I don't know. So I'm trying to do that right now. Yeah.
Do you think he's, after having spoken to him, do you think he's, I mean it sounds like you do think he's a rigorous thinker. Oh yeah, I think he's an extremely honest and heartfelt person. Cool. What I like about him more than his patents is when I was interviewing him, I asked him, I said, so how put off an Eric Davis and I think Jack Sarfatti said,
not terribly nice words about your patents. So what do you think? What do you make of their criticism? And he just sat there and he's like, you know, I think their ideas are worthwhile. I don't know why they don't think mine are, but people should investigate theirs. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like,
One of the greatest stories from the Bible to me is when Peter, so Jesus was being taken away to be killed. So this is like not even nonviolence, like the opposite of nonviolence, like way more nonviolent than nonviolent. Peter cut off the ear of the person who's taking
Jesus to kill him. And then Jesus like don't do that. And then he not only said don't do that, he took the ear and healed it on the on the person who's taking Jesus away to kill him. So Jesus is like, No, no, you love your enemy. Like you feed your you feed your family and your enemy before you even feed yourself. Wow. And you wash like on the night that Jesus was going to die. Yeah, in the stories. Yeah.
He's washing the feet of his disciples, like doing the most lowliest of tasks. The night before and he knew like in the stories that he knows that he's going to die the next day. He's like, No, this is still important. You humble yourself. Nothing is beneath you. Wow. And that's just like gets gets me man. Like, if I think about that too much, I just start to, to, well, to
I was just speaking of Jesus. This is a total tangent.
In the last week and a half. I just spent some time with Randall Carlson Who works with Graham Hancock? He's a sort of geologist esotericist and then Brian Murescu who wrote this book called the immortality key which is all about these like ancient mystery rituals these elucidian mystery rituals that took place in Greece and Socrates Pythagoras Aristotle Plato they all went through these things and both of them
agree. This is kind of a heretical belief. They think that Jesus never died and that if you read the text, Pilate, who was the governor of Rome or of that little contingency of Rome at the time, poked Jesus's flesh with a spear and it was to see whether he was dead or not, but they think maybe Jesus was given a sedative and it was sort of either a mystery ritual or he like faked his own death.
and then he was put in a shroud of like resuscitating herbs by this guy Joseph of Arimathea and then he survived and maybe even had a bloodline like and like into today or something which is really fascinating i don't know it's definitely heretical yeah it's heretical right yeah um yeah so i don't i don't know but who knows who knows yeah do you are you interested at all in the bible or i'm super interested yes yes in the bible but
Not just the Bible. I don't discount religion. I used to be this inexorable, uncompromising atheist from eight years old up until a few years ago. I used to be a fan of the four horsemen, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens. Who was the fourth in the fourth horseman?
And then I started to realize, I don't know, I just think there's so much weirdness that we can't explain to the world.
Even through a physics lens, like I'm interested in the anthropic principle and sort of the Goldilocks environment that we live in. And to me that signals possible intelligent design and anomalies in evolution as well. And so I don't know whether that's God. God to me is sort of a placeholder term, but something mystical and intelligent. Have you heard of Demsci? No. So Demsci, I would like to look through this. And by the way,
Me saying that I'm no longer this inexorable atheist doesn't mean that I'm now this devout religious person. It just means I don't deride the religious and I investigate and take it seriously. Dempsey has an argument based in math, which I would like to go through much like Donald Hoffman's, which Stephen Meyer, who's a proponent of intelligent design uses, which says, I think it says something like the search space of DNA or of
The search space of evolution is too vast to have outputted this complexity this fast, something like that. Totally. But he uses something called the no free lunch theorem or no free lunch theorems. And that is by David Walport, who was a guest on top. And David Walport has this whole article saying like Demsci misused my arguments. And he also used them in words. And he's like, you need to make it mathematically precise. And there are two types of arguments, one where it's like art and literature and
and no-go theorems.
but they're extremely powerful because they're precise. And he's like, his is in the just words arguments, which means you can't tell if it's true or not true. I can't even make a decision. Right. That's what Walpart says. So I want to get Walpart to talk with Demsci on the channel. Oh, interesting. Interesting. So yeah, true. Just words. It's like not even wrong or something. Yeah, interesting. What do you what do you make it? You've talked to a lot of the same people as me on the UFO front. What do you make of that world? And then
Why don't I get even more concrete? Do you have a specific theory there? Because there is so much smoke and mirrors in that world. Yeah. And it is hard to get to the bottom of that haystack. Yeah. So why do you think, why do you think there is so much disinformation? Like is that itself a clue? This is something, by the way, I was talking to Ryan Graves about, which on another podcast recorded for 39 minutes of a two hour podcast.
They flew me to Boston for this. Yeah, I remember I I have such a hard time sleeping Insomnia. Yeah, and it's it's a crippling crippling. Oh now it's melatonin doesn't help it sometimes sometimes helps, but I don't like to take it too frequently because I'm extremely Cautious about being addicted or building tolerance. Sure. Sure. You're clearly like caffeine like a drink and make sure I note which days I drink coffee That's awesome. Yeah, but anyhow, so that was frustrating
But I was speaking with him with Ryan Graves about, about, ah, yes, yes, yes. But some, the way that I look at this is in terms of clues, but yes, rather in terms of clues. So some people say, yeah, where's the proof? Well, firstly, in science, there is no proof of anything. There's no proof. You don't even think in terms of proof. You think in terms of evidence and plausible arguments and models and so on. Yes.
But I think for here, the best way for me to conceptualize this is like Sherlock Holmes and then there's clues. Yes. So the Sherlock Holmes doesn't discount something because only one person said it. Instead, he takes it extremely seriously. He almost, I don't think he's ever said, yeah, but I'm not going to listen to that person because of so and so and so. Yes. And then not only that, so he incorporates, then he puts together, he prunes this tree, this, this like a rain most tree that a conjectural tree down to one solution by considering what is
Well, he even said once you I think what's that phrase the the removal of the impossible what remains is only what what is or something like I've never heard. That's cool. Something like if you if you remove all that is impossible, then what remains has to be what is or what is possible something like that. And he even
sees non-evidence as evidence. So one of the famous stories is there was a dog that didn't bark in some robbery or so. I forget what it was. And we just, if that was me, I would just not think much about that. Firstly, I wouldn't notice that a dog didn't bark. How do you notice the absence of something? Let alone take that and be like, that's important. So it came into play later in the story because he's like, that dog always barks. Why didn't it bark? Because it must have known the intruder. Otherwise it would have barked. So then he whittled down who the possible suspects could be.
So anyway, now I'm wondering, well, well, given that there's so much disinformation, is that itself a clue? Given that there's a lack of information, is that itself a clue? To what? I don't know. That's a great question. I mean, I honestly oscillate back and forth. It feels like maybe by design. What do you hope it is? My hope is that there's some ontological truth around like beings that are benevolent, that we could like ascend into their sort of state.
And then my my intuition is that there's a combination of those beings and bad ones and that that were sort of in the midst of a cosmic war and were low level instantiations or ponds in that cosmic war, which sounds insane. I realize. Yeah. Have you heard of the dark forest? No. What's the dark body problem? Oh, yeah. OK. Have you? So you've read it? I know I haven't. I've started the first one, but no, I don't. Can you tell me about it?
I know he has sort of like an infant like well it's like the the aliens sort of stagnate the physics so we don't blow ourselves up or whatever. So as far as I know it's it's something it's like so here's something that that I think about frequently is that if you're exploring any topic and you're or if you're doing research on any topic I think you should explore the boundaries and have an answer to the question of
What could the answer possibly be that would make me burn my hands for and not investigate this? So meaning like, for instance, AI, I have a feeling that the people developing people at OpenAI and Google, Google Brain and Microsoft, whatever their research is, that they could be creating the tools of civilizations demise. Yeah, and they need to be thinking about that deeply. Yeah. And same with Richard Feynman said this about the bomb. They weren't thinking about the they were just
so fascinated by the physics. It was just fun to do research. They weren't thinking about how many millions of lives would be destroyed, how horrific and how the world would change forever. And Einstein said that he would burn his hands. How do you know? He would never signed off saying, like, you should build the bomb based on E equals MC squared and so on. He said after the bombs had dropped, he's like, I would have burned my hands. I would not have done that. And Oppenheimer's, you know, I am Shiva, destroyer of worlds or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
So then the then I wonder about the UFO scene. So some people, they're like, I want disclosure. Well, firstly, like that presumes the government has. Well, I think the government has more information. Almost everyone can can agree on that. I think so. Yeah. But well, full disclosure, whether that comes from the government or we actually find out what this is like, do you want to know? Do you truly want to investigate this? Do you know? I think that there's something about there is something to say about Pandora's box. There are truths that make you just want to recoil in horror. 100 percent.
unless you want to say that truth is by nature good in which case that's like a religious statement and that's a deep one and i hope that's true yeah if you truly believe that well what's your evidence speaking about evidence people want to say well yeah yeah yeah but anyhow so the dark forest story is where i think we're 200 years in the future and there's this tiny scientist and she's finds a way to contact
other civilizations, if they're out there, by shooting some message to the sun and it broadcasts it intergalactically. So she does that and she says like, we're here, please help us, we're humans that are on this earth and so on. She gets a message back and it says, we heard you, if you know what's good for you, you will not send another message. Stop. Do not send any more messages. Wow. And she doesn't know where it's from. Maybe she knows where it's from, like some galaxy over there. And she's like, she thinks about it and she says,
I'm sorry, Earth is too barbaric, we're at war, people dislike each other, there's racism, etc. Please, we're a primitive civilization, you're far more advanced than us, come save us. It turns out that initial message came from some galaxy, I've forgotten the galaxy, but it comes from a civilization called the Tri-Solarians. Tri-Solarians, like three suns. Tri-Solarians.
They have this civil... They're monitoring the skies, like looking for people who are going to talk to them. Why? Well, you get the answer, but you'll get the answer soon. They go and they find the other scientists who sent that other message that replied that said, don't send any more replies. They find them, they execute that person because you're supposed to be listening and tell your higher-ups like, look, we found another civilization. And it's because Earth has a resource and we didn't know that we had this resource.
So we think of our resources as like uranium or silver deposits or water or the Goldilocks zone, but it's so much more fundamental than that. The resource that we have is stability. The fact that we can even formulate laws of physics is like what Wolfram would call a pocket of of reducible complexity. We live in a place that we can even say F equals MA or E equals MC squared and then we look at look out at the universe and we see anomalies and we think oh that's because
We don't have the right laws and it's no, it's because the laws just don't work the way that you think they work. You're in a pocket of great stability. Yeah. So this is something that other civilizations desperately want because they live in chaos. And so as soon as they hear this, the tricell arms, they then start to come to earth and they tell the earthlings that we're coming. And some of the earthlings like today, they're like half their split. They're like, no, these are gods coming to save us. They're actually good. Let's communicate back with them.
and you hear this today today and then the other half is like no these are demons which is another rhetoric you hear yeah stay away so anyway the that's fascinating it's but it's almost like a roar shock for the person or something it's like what's their orientation and that defines whether they think it's angels or demons or aliens or so you're touching on something fascinating because i do think
We seem to emphasize, I'm saying it trips me out. Yeah. Like these are tough subjects. They are. And, and if you like intuitively, I sometimes get the sense that we emphasize sort of nuts and bolts and crafts and ets and science exploration and all that seems fun. And actually that's somewhat of a distraction. And there's some sort of core ontological truth that is jarring if a person were to understand it.
And that's maybe the hidden thing. Or convince themselves of it. Because there are some truths that are extremely, extremely convincing. It's so difficult to unconvince yourself of. And it could be false. Yeah, I don't know. It's so tricky. And there's some truths that are so damaging.
I think if someone hasn't thought deeply enough, sorry, if someone doesn't think so, then you definitely have not thought deeply enough about it. Do you know anything? Yeah. Yeah. It's just truly, truly think, think, like, think yourself. Oh, my gosh. I can I can barely compose the words to talk about some of. Well, yeah. Well, do you think that certain heterodox scientists in the past
Let's frame this differently because clearly in the distant past, heterodox scientists have been persecuted. Galileo or Giordano Bruno or people like that, that would make me think maybe in the recent past, there are scientists who have been persecuted for having heterodox ideas, like in the 20th century.
Do you think that any of that is true? Like there are obviously all the conspiracies around Tesla and his work. I mean, do you think that these are just sort of crazy fringe conspiracies or? So here's one story that I don't know what to make of it and I haven't heard an explanation. Edward Lee Scotland. Have you heard of him? No. Edward Lee Scotland is this
five foot two person super skinny because all he ate was sardines apparently and crackers and was a recluse just alone. I don't think he had a wife but even if it doesn't make a difference to the story he didn't have friends and he built what I believe is called Coral Mountain so you can overlay whatever this is correctly. Oh Coral Gables. I don't know. Yes. Yeah. So it's these massive stone structures that are precise to the millimeter that to this day
You would need teams and huge machinery to get even close, and it's still not as precise. But the point is that he said, Edward Lee Scotland said he understood the laws of electricity and magnetism, and he understood how the pyramids were made. But he would never tell anyone. And sometimes children would peer through and try and see like, how are you making it? And then he would just stop doing what so I'm so curious for why why if you had the secrets, and how did you do it?
There's apparently this infamous story of like a gate at Coral... Gardens? Gables? Gables. There's this gate that it's two tons, however many, it's extremely heavy. And it's on a divot or a rivet where pushing it is like so smooth. But then afterwards there's some storm or some issue happened and then it became stuck. So then they had to re-put it in place, like man, now.
and they took many people and plenty of machinery and now it's nowhere near as smooth even though we have so much machinery. He just did it by himself. That's as far as we can tell. Yeah and there's like all sorts of megalithic architecture from you know thousands of years ago when we didn't have anywhere close to the civil engineering that we have today and we couldn't even recreate those things now with our current civil engineering.
I do have, I do think it's valid to inquire into that and ask questions there and I guess the Tesla thing I was sort of getting at, maybe this is BS, was like I think he was doing zero point experiments. Like that was always the holy grail for him in Westinghouse in Long Island and it was like funded by JP Morgan and then the funding was pulled and the question is like
The government did, this is not a conspiracy, the government did like lock up his files and actually the person who went through the files is John Trump, who's Trump's uncle, who is a very prominent scientist at the Rad Lab at MIT. He's a radar expert and he worked with Vannevar Bush and all the top scientists of that day and
The question is always like, did Tesla discover something fundamentally new that was hidden, or is that just... What is your intuition? I don't know. You're undecided on that. Undecided? I'd say pretty probably didn't, would be my guess, but I find it interesting. What you bring up is extremely important, meaning that, namely, that scientists, the heterodox meaning, like they have some different point of view or different belief, they get
Scorned and disparaged for talking about it publicly and then the question is well then they'll say the objection is there is no evidence for what you're saying and Most of these scientists would say you're right. So can we look for it? Yeah, how do we find the evidence without inquiring about it? Are we not allowed to even question? so part like one of the reasons why I I Love your channel
Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, firstly, you do a great job with editing. Thank you. Great. Appreciate it. Yeah. And it's like there's someone else who does a great job and you had him on as well. The red panic wall. Oh, he's awesome. Yeah. This stuff makes you want to weep. Like how much research it goes Ken Burns of UFOs. Yeah. Fascinating. He's great. Yeah. You know, a lot of your podcast is is dedicated to the guests and their ideas.
After having interviewed some of the top scientists in the US and the world, do you think there are overlooked areas of science where maybe if you weren't working on tow, you'd investigate these sort of areas?
So algorithmic information theory, that's David Walpart's with the limiting theorems like no free lunch theorems. David Walpart said the largest philosophical results are in algorithmic information theory. So that's an intersection of computation and information and it has to do with complexity. Like you've heard this term Kalmagorov complexity, have you heard of it? No. Okay, so the Kalmagorov complexity of something is how much information is needed to specify it.
So for instance, you think pi, the digits are infinite. So maybe you need an infinite amount of digits, sorry, infinite amount of information to specify it. No, because there's a formula. So how much information goes into that formula? Oh, okay. Another way of thinking of it is like, you have some out, okay, a program gives you an output, like on your phone, there's some output or on your computer, then you wonder, well, how much information was in the program needed to generate that output?
So you can look at the output, you can think, well, it's extremely complex, like a fractal. Actually, a fractal is like three terms, the Z equals so and so. So that's Kalamogorov complexity. Turns out calculating the Kalamogorov complexity is itself uncomputable in general, meaning that there is no algorithm to compute the Kalamogorov complexity. Girdles and completeness theorem isn't exactly
algorithmic information theory, but it's tangent to it. So that's an interesting result. So that's something that I would study category theory. So something I interviewed so many people on their different toes and people often ask, well, what's your favorite toe? And I see them as as like as if they're different toes. But I'm thinking like they're often reflections of something deeper and they're imprecise. And there's often mud and dirt that needs to be wiped off. So it's not completely I'm touching the trunk. I'm touching the leg. You're touching the tail. It's not completely that.
But it's more like, imagine you can expand that where some people like, I smell the grass. Oh, I feel like I'm being bathed. And then that's still part of the elephant because the elephant smells like grass in its best case. And then the and then you're being rained on because the trunk is out putting water. So more like experiential claims as well, not just all feeling other senses. So I get that that they're reflections of something. And what I'm attempting to do and doing just unconsciously is like this metaphysical Rosetta stone.
where there are different concepts being talked about different with different words and different so Chris Langen may say this is a syntactic covering of so-and-so then you're like what's a syntactic covering and this person may call it something else and you realize oh they're talking about the same so what I am attempting to do is a metaphysical Rosetta Stone and then there's this branch of mathematics called category theory which itself is a Rosetta Stone of math so there are these different
sections of math so physics is can be considered a section of math where you have physical systems so like this could be a physical system and then you do something to it so you transform it you light it on fire and then it becomes another physical system or even this and then you leave it there or like this that was a transformation of this system so you have a system transformation goes to another system okay in math you have axioms
And then you do something, which is the proof or deduction, to come up with another statement. So you have statements, which is the deduction statements. Physics, you have systems, transformation, physical transformation, another system. Computer science, you have data types, you do something to it, which is the program, and you come up with another data type or something else. So it turns out that between math, which is the axioms, proof.
Another set of statements and computer science, which is types, data types, and then you do something to the program and you come up with some output. There's an analogy, an exact analogy, and that's called the Curry Howard correspondence. That's like from the 1970s. That alone blows my mind. Then it turns out that there's a correspondence between the way that the systems in physics work, which transform into another system and the way that math works and the way that computer science works. And that's encapsulated with category theory. And it's the same as just
As logic and logical deductions and I forgot the I forgot the third the fourth one
Regardless, category theory is a Rosetta stone of mathematics, of logical thinking. So I'm curious if category theory can be used to help me come up with this Rosetta stone of toes. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, if toes are based on something analytical, which I don't think they are, and it may be the case that even conceiving of toe is partially analytic, maybe diminishing and completely misleading, that may be the case. But either way, I'm willing to explore it in the same way that some scientists I think should be willing to explore, but there is no evidence for.
Yes, that's a so interesting. So category theory is to, I guess it's dependent on, it's dependent on it being math based. I think the fourth one was category theory itself. Sorry. Okay. Category theory and is you have what are called objects and then morphisms to another object. So it's like a point. Then you have an edge to another point.
And so the question is can you do a similar Rosetta Stone mapping of toes which would be fascinating. That's one of the reasons I wanted to make that artistic piece because that would help me. It wouldn't be precise because it's not like David Wolpert would say those are just words in a sense. But it gives me an intuition and that's what I build off of. That's what any scientist builds off of, a researcher builds off of. That would be fascinating to just build a true map. What would the
map sort of look like like would it look like a database or like a like a relational database sort of thing or one of the easiest answers is to just take theoretical physics which is already relegating reality to just what physics is and then relegating that to theoretical physics and then take okay what are the contenders for toes in theories of everything in in the physical sense the theoretical physics physical sense so string theory loop quantum gravity perhaps geometric unity wolf from here at least shape dynamics
Causal dynamic triangulation song. Okay, so you take maybe 10 and then you you put them on the x-axis and then you say okay What are the unresolved problems in physics and you put that on the y-axis? So there's
Well, I can give you some later if you're going to include this. So there's about 20 unsolved problems in physics that are considered like these are major problems. Whether or not they are, even that's a bit somewhat controversial, but regardless. So it would be like quantum gravity. Can you quantize gravity or geometrize the quantum? Like unify them in some way.
and why are why oh neutrinos do neutrinos have mass or neutrino oscillation there's some other problems CP violation so and so so whatever whatever and then check marks does this which theories solve which one so that's one way of at least showing diagrammatically a relationship between them but then they're not subsets of one another they're not that's like a ranking of the toes rather than a relationship but that's something that I'm working on with a mathematician friend of mine named
Carlos Zapata and he works for the Wolfram Institute, but I told him he's not allowed to be biased against them. Well, I think why that would be so interesting is it goes back to your answer to the question of like why you're not good at answering a question if you don't know the answer. You usually just say I don't know and you go down this sort of like database of your own knowledge or whatever. Just having a map of like
Quantum gravity solves this, but it creates this problem. Literally just seeing that with like the 20 most credible toes I think would be really cool. And then you can sort of play whack-a-mole and like maybe mix and match in certain places and then try to reconcile theory instead of it, you know, the holy grail always being quantum field theory and you know, relativity or whatever.
Maybe it could be like two new toes that are like derivatives of like they're attempting to solve that but like maybe those two new toes actually are compatible based on the pros and cons or something. I often think we we think that the problem or we've been told that the problem is quantum gravity. Weinstein says like that's this huge distraction because there are other problems but I also think rather than trying to combine
quantum field theory in general relativity or the standard model in general relativity. We think that it's like a jigsaw puzzle. We just have to find the right angle. How do you know that there's just these two pieces? What if there's 12 other pieces or 25 other pieces and these two don't directly connect this connects to this which connects to this which connects to this which connects that maybe it's not even 2d maybe it's 3d totally they're not supposed to connect yeah
That's a great point. Then your mind just explodes and then you're just left in a pool looking at the sun and wondering about your existence. Yeah, we're not good at multivariant systems.
Concatenize everything into like something super coherent. Yeah, it's like I know the answer but yeah Yeah, and and also I think of that as something demeaning But I also wonder how much of that if there's something loving about that like there's some we often think loving is like the connections and the Union and you become one with mmm Jonathan Pagel said that Jonathan Pagel, you know, I don't so Jonathan Pagel is like a Symbolist he studies symbols. Okay a Christian icon or a Christian iconographer cool. Yeah, I
He says that the Christian way to salvation is different than the non-dualist way. And this is something Wolfgang Smith who, the reason I came to LA also echoes.
We have this perennial view that all religions have some aspect of truth and I tend to have that because I'm just like a liberal person and I want that to be the case. So I tend to always try to find well what's the commonality between them? What's the truth between them? He was saying that started actually in the early 1900s by a few people who corrupted this and said like almost every religion has something credible to it. I'm not saying I believe their ideas when I'm just saying this is what they say.
and that's called
There is just two real religions and one is the Vedic traditions. It's not even Buddhism, because Vedic has some contradictions with Buddhism, namely about gods and what you should do, what you're sacrificing and so on, rituals and so on. And Buddhism is like non-theistic and just focuses on the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. So the Vedic tradition and then the Christian tradition and then
Often we in our spiritual circles, the ones that we run in, we hear and we also, at least for myself, tend to think, you know, the Eastern one is the one that's more encompassing. Right. And the Eastern one encompasses the West. And so the Western is like so literal and so so prosaic. But actually, this is something I've come to think about for the past few months, independent of them. I was wondering, you know,
Is it the
The East has just been so influenced by the West in the past 100 years or so that they're able to comprehend it in the same way. But we look at the West, we look at the East, sorry, in the West, we look at the East as being colorful and being so open and creative, like, wow, there's so many ideas, there's spirits and reincarnation and so on. But they look at that in the same way we look at Christianity is like, that's just so prosaic and bromidic and flatlined. And when they hear about Christianity for the first time, they're like, oh, oh, right. Right. It turns out that that is the case.
So Jonathan Pagel says the Christian way of salvation is
Is unity with God, but it's retaining your multiplicity and actually becoming more multiple, which is something that we can't do. We don't even have the words for or the comps on concepts for like we think unity means same as. But there's a phrase that Jonathan Peugeot said.
quoting someone, maybe C.S. Lewis, that the blades of grass in heaven are sharper, are too sharp for man. Meaning that somehow, heaven, rather than this being illusory, which is what the Vedic traditions tend to emphasize, the Western tradition tends to emphasize, no, no, no, this is real, and it will only become more real. The blades of grass are so sharp, you can't handle them right now. You're going to, like he says, Jonathan Pagel says, Saint Paul will be more saint-like, rather than being more god-like and just in a sea of nothingness.
So that's extremely, extremely interesting to think about. That's fascinating. I love that. Imagine that's what sacrifice is, is somehow you love it so much that you give it an element of God because that needs to be there, but you retain your multiplicity, much like there's something loving and naming all the animals. I asked my dad when I was doing it, like, why?
And I love the idea of systematically trying to not pre-crystallize knowledge and just
thinking of truth almost instead of it being like a clear end state is almost like a dialectic process which is kind of like what you're engaging it like I think of Plato's symposium it's like you're just dwelling on the virtues and then you're sort of talking about it parapetetically with these other really intelligent people and I think about your show and it's kind of like that you know you're sort of best case like hopefully thank you yeah no I mean it it is yeah sometimes I wonder
I get intimations of the more monastic types, which would say, you know, don't even talk about it by talking about it, you're distracting and diminishing your
It's wild that you're saying that because this is something I'm thinking a lot about right now and I was just gonna say something very similar which is like
There's a part of the setup of reality itself that is so sacred where I'm sure you relate to me on this. Like I'm so in my head about like, you know, I got to find the truth. I got to figure this out. What's underneath the fabric of reality? And you can drive yourself a little crazy, you know. That's an understatement, man. Yeah, you can go on these like weird wild goose chases and end up in all sorts of places. And sometimes I think about it and I'm like,
You know, I'm not feeling well today. Maybe I should have just taken care of myself and not or like maybe some banal Not banal sacred human connection that I'm considering banal that I'm overlooking so I can read this book because I'm like so curious about this one bizarro theory That it's maybe the connection thing that like I'm really kind of it's feeling like I should I should indulge That's the more important sacred thing. Yes, and that will bring you to
Some sort of theory of everything where it'll bring out innate knowledge and you've in the future that like where you perceive things at a higher level or something and I'm sure you struggle with this the the tension between the intellectual curiosity and then the
I just have to live my life every day and like do what I feel like doing like that. That's so hard for me. It doesn't come naturally to me. My wife saved my life like saves my life every day. She saves my life in many many ways. One of them is just
She doesn't think about any of these topics. She doesn't care about these. She doesn't understand them. She yawns if I bring up a three syllable word. And it's like so insulting. But it brings you down to size, cuts you down to size. Carl Jung said what separates Nietzsche from him is that or what happens is that it's easy to
Is it that?
Verveki had the four P's. Is it just propositional? Is there something true about simply living, like somehow living and being loving and being good? If you're experiencing anxiety or disquietude or consternation, then there's something that's
false. There's a false exactly that true and false don't just apply to statements like Pythagorean theorem is true or false. It's not just that. It can also be modes of action can be true or false. Yes. And the theory of a theory of everything can not only have a propositional component, but many others process components and perhaps one is primary. Maybe the process is perhaps maybe it's just just live your life and somehow that's true.
And help yourself and take some time off or go and be with your spouse and get a spouse.
or it's hard because it's your family whenever i've done that for periods of time and i'll feel amazing yes and then there's some like i'd call it like a spirit uh primordial wound or something that pops up when i'm i'm good and i'm like i'm feeling great yes and then i'm like
Now I've got to achieve, I've got to accomplish, I've got to get back to work. I have an insecurity. Mine comes from insecurity. I cannot be lazy. I feel like someone else is working or I have so much potential or I could be doing something and I'm wasting it here. I'm just wasting it, wasting it, wasting it.
You shouldn't conceptualize it like a transaction. There's something left brain and false about that. Not that the left brain is only false.
yes but anyhow yeah that's that's in me as well also something that's in me is anytime i'm extremely happy there's a doubt a thought that comes in like an intrusive thought like it's actually ocd like not ocd most people think is germophobia that's obsessive compulsive personality that's different ocd is like intrusive thoughts
so i have if something is going extremely well i'll think like oh yeah but but didn't you what what if this happens and what if that happens yes and or what if that what if this is not even the case like it's not even real yeah i'm like jeez but luckily i can manage that but it just occurs yeah even when i was watching dame cook when i was 18 yeah i'm like
I remember, I'm not supposed to find him funny because I'm studying comedy and comedians supposedly don't like Dane Cook. And I'm like, no, he's funny. I'm like, oh, I don't think that's an interesting thought. Why do I find him funny? You're not supposed to find him funny. I'm sitting there judging him, but I'm like, isn't he funny? Yeah. Oh, you find him funny. You're not in that high quality of a comedian. Yeah, yeah. Geez, it's so low. People I know who are brainy and more heads in vats or whatever, people, which I am and I think you might be too, we often get
There's like an intelligence below the mind below the analytical mind where there's actually a book I'm reading called power versus force by a guy named David Hawkins And it's a little woo, but it's kind of like, you know, the field all the books a lot are yeah Yeah, you know, yeah, it's either that or like pop physics like I'll read some Carl Over Valley, but like yeah like Helga land or whatever but like so it talks about how the the body you know, like reflexology this idea that like
like you can muscle test, which is somewhat of a woo idea. You might be able to connect it to somebody like Michael Levin's work that like, you know, there's something about it. Amazing. And I want to get into that because he's my favorite. And he's not even a theoretical physicist. And I have a crazy prediction actually with with Michael Levin, which is that
of all the people on your show, he's going to actually come up with a toe that like integrates possibly physics. And the reason I think that is because I follow him on Twitter and like other channels and he'll post, he's clearly interested in like interdisciplinary stuff. He's not just a biologist to like read about consciousness. And he's even talked about it. I mean, you had him on with Yoshua Bach and he's clearly like a very deep thinker. And I think, I think he doesn't talk
Openly about
Theorists it's just so hard. It's like maybe it is falsifiable on some level But it's like n of one or two who can like do actually peer review it or whatever And so I would go if I were like, you know putting my venture hat on that on any of the toe guests That would be it would be him. Yeah. Yeah, I would I would as well but go is totally circuitous but going back to our power versus force power versus force I think that there is
I think the body is way more intelligent than we realize. And if you feel like doing something, that is insanely valuable. And if you don't feel like doing something, and there's something about modern society that is so wildly normative.
You could get dissociated from your instincts. It's such a young, you know, we like even like the schooling model It's like based on the Hessian system or whatever where you have a bell that goes off because like you were supposed to you know Hit the farms or whatever and it messes with your circadian rhythm as a kid because the teachers have to get home to their kids and it's just like bizarre and then you're sitting there in this desk and it's like if you were just doing what you felt like as a kid, you wouldn't be doing that and so there's something about that
Ripping away of your kind of intellectual mind from like your core Instincts on what you feel like doing that I think is very maladaptive for the average person and it's specifically people like us where it's like there you get lost in your head and I'm always like I can't miss out on this opportunity or I can't have to talk to this person or whatever this from in my case like just I have to be working have to be working have to be working totally and and and then
Often I'm like sometimes I'll be like, you know what I I actually feel like missing this thing and the analytical mind is like it makes no sense to miss this thing you can't miss this thing and I want to say 95% of the time the like visceral feel state thing is like right and it has this bizarre intelligence that's Thinking on like a quant it's thinking on a level that it far surpasses the analytical thing
Where it's like, you know, the analytical thing has like three factors. It's sort of, you know, considering and the body thing is clearly thinking on some level that the analytical mind can't even catch up to. And I realize this is, you can, you know, make this sort of a trite, you know, Malcolm Gladwell blink point or whatever, that there's something about the gut that is somehow more intelligent. But, uh, but I think it's true. And I think it's specifically like for people like us.
The easy things can be hard for people like us or whatever. It's like the everyday living is hard and the super abstract is like that's our escape or something. So firstly, I'm overemphasizing, I'm over exaggerating how much I say inside, like I have to work, I have to work. I actually do love working. It's like a compulsion. I just, I love to do it. It's almost like an itch, like I have to. So maybe that's what I mean when I say I have to, like I love to. That's awesome. I want to.
In the same way that there's a meal in front and you just want to gorge. For me, by the way, that's I'm abstemious, like I'm great with self-restraint. Yes. Except for food. I will fast for days because I know I want to overeat at some point. Yeah. I know a buffet is coming up, so I'm going to fast. That's cool. Anyhow, you mentioned you mentioned the okay. So for me, the I found that there was a couple of times where
You know, I'm just I'm just tired and I'll be like, No, but you have to work you have to. And there was like two times only in the past like six months that I was like, you know, let me just
Take the day off. I'll just relax at home. Be with my wife. Yeah, it was fantastic. Yeah, but the opportunities where you say like, no, you should do this. You should for me the ones that are correct are almost always ones that involve someone else. So for instance, remember today I was like, oh, should I even come? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then my wife's like, go do it, babe. Stop like because she knows I cancel all the time because of my sleep. Like my sleep won't work in the way I have to call it. Frantically call someone say I can't do this podcast. Like I can't even think of this. Can we do that? Yeah.
but every single time invariably when I do a podcast or I don't cancel or go to the dinner with the person or go out to that
meeting that social gathering that conference or whatever it may be yeah invariably it's it's positive that's awesome so mine is like the same way privately if there's something that i like i feel like oh i should be studying and i feel like i shouldn't then i shouldn't okay but if it's public like i feel like i don't think i should meet this person because no go meet yeah go out yes you will not regret it i love that's the way it works for me there's like two classes yeah i i think i'm similar i'm a hermit i am too i'm a reckless i'm a i'm
That's why one of the other guests on the channel I love is Richard Borchards. He's a mathematician because our personalities are so aligned. He's self-deprecating, self-doubting, isolating. He's working on some of the grandest problems. I'm thinking, why don't you collaborate? He just doesn't jive well with other people for whatever reason. I'm like, I'm the same way. Why don't I collaborate? Because it's difficult for me too. I just feel like we don't communicate in the same way or they don't share the same ideas or I'm selfish.
So anyway, I'm isolated like that. Well, it's funny. I think geniuses throughout history, and I don't know if either of us are geniuses, but you can't never be a self-proclaimed genius. I'm just umbratic. But smart, well, I think you're incredibly smart, but maybe genius, but I'm definitely not. But I think traditionally they're sort of on an individual selection level.
Often they're, they're kind of anti-social or they're, they're not, they don't have, you know, they're not super selected for it. Like they're often asexual, they're recluses. And then on a group of, uh, uh, selection level, they're there, they are selected for. And so this is actually, I was talking to this sort of interesting, like, uh, evolutionary biologist and he was saying in times of conflict where group evolutionary pressures are high.
uh geniuses are often more selected for uh because maybe they'll you know come up with some theory that helps their group in wartime or whatever and so i i don't know it's random theory but like i think it was like tagliari was this like a italian uh sort of proto physicist who
figured out the trajectory of the cannonball and helped his like, this was pre Italian unification, so pre 19th century and helped his little fiefdom or whatever win. And he was like this, just this crazy kind of eccentric. So I don't know, I find that fascinating. Some of the smartest people I know are socially maladapted in some ways. And then even if it, like I would say for like me or you,
It doesn't doesn't meet the eye or something, but then there's like there's like something underneath. I'm like a little off. And I take pride in it. It doesn't mean when you say socially unadaptive, it doesn't mean that you don't have social skills like that's completely. Yeah, yeah. You just you're introverted. You don't enjoy. Yeah, you don't seek out. Totally. You're not gregarious. You're not temperamentally seeking out the company and enjoying the company of others. Yeah, totally. Exactly. Or you can like run
Social skills and emulation. I don't know what it is, but when you said about the school system in the hell, so this to me reminded reminded me of why I think AI is or the effect of AI. The impact of AI is underhyped. Yes. So think about overnight like chat GPT just came out. Yeah, firstly, it's adoption. Like, OK, it's like 100 million users and so on. So whatever it is, that's that's already cool. But then essays in school.
People can now write essays. The whole category, which is like 50% of what you do at school, the whole category of writing essays, now the teachers have to think, how do we even tell, can we reevaluate this? And the school system is extremely slow moving because the government is extremely slow moving, so public institutions are slow moving. I don't know why, I don't know if it's inherent, but they are slow moving.
What's what I think a sonic boom happens because something else can move so much quicker than the other than what's around it.
And that's like creates a shockwave. Yeah. So AI will just only increase increase and the regulations for it either either to close down in certain areas like restrict Google restrict or restrict a certain section of AI for whatever maybe and then opening up maybe there's somewhere you need to open up that is so slow and AI will just out compete in like one week already it just decimated decimated is also like a false word
Decimated means to make 90% because it means only remove 110. Okay, so decimators like decimate, decimate, decimate the whole essay system, which is like 50% of the school in one week. And that's and that's just edits. And that's just now. So what the heck will it be six months from now? What will it be three years from now? I think that because there's this slow moving institution that we're in, which is this public institution, and then there's the fast moving AI, it will be so much more disruptive as I don't like that word. So let's say so much more
So much more groundbreaking, so much more, much more effective and impactful because it's moving so quick relative to how quick the public institutions can move. Do you think there's something fundamentally, maybe ineffable, but unique about human art? Or do you think that's just the total fallacy? No, I do. You do? Yeah, yeah. So this is something I only this a present deliberation. All of these are present deliberations. It's just my current thinking. Yeah, sure.
I used to go to the museums and then you'd see on the wall you see like that and then there'd be card next to it and it would say the person's life story. I don't care about that. I just want to look at the Mona Lisa or look at that or look at that. I don't care. I don't want to know about the artist at all. Now I've come to think that that's the most important part of the art piece.
The fact that the history that went into it, the emotions that went into it, the reasons that went into it. This person was persecuted and came up with this. This person was the first to do so and so in the context of a society that did so and so.
Whereas AI art, it's objectively can be objectively better when you just look at it like a proposition. But in terms of the history that goes into it in physics, there's a notion called path dependence, meaning it actually doesn't. We tend to think like, OK, it's here X and Y and and it's momentum and its position is so and so. But in physics, its state can be different depending on if it came to there from this path versus if it came to here from this path or if it made too many curves and so on.
So the history of what produced the art to me is a part of the art. And the AI art is like, it just appears. There's no path. You can't even know what the AI... If, by the way, the AI gets to the point where it can say, I made the decision to do so and so because of this, and I waited the choices because of this, and I thought of this, and I weighed this pro and con, I would appreciate that art far more. Yeah, so there's something about the, it's like the Cervantes quote,
Meaning lies in the journey and not at the end at the end of the road or something. There's something about the process, right? Right. And I keep getting to that over and over the process in the state. And by the way, in in math and graph theory, you have nodes. So these are nodes like vertices, like points. And you have edges. Yes. What connects them? There's a one to one duality between the edge and the nodes. You can flip them and you can look at it from a different perspective. So you can look at it in terms of the states or you can look at it in terms of the process.
Do you think that the mind is a classical computer? Do you think it's a quantum computer? Do you think it's a hybrid classical quantum computer? Or do you think it is none of the above? Something fundamentally different? Present deliberation is we were trying to. We are so young with our words like I think that some of these questions that me and you ask and we ponder over, we just are so.
inarticulate and rudimentary with the tools that we have it would be like a kid who who is four years old and is asking but where does chocolate come from and where do babies come from and what is money and how does that work and it's just stressing itself out and you're like as an adult like relax like you cannot
Those aren't even important questions, first of all. If you think, why are we here? Existence and so on are the most important. Maybe it's so trivial from like some other perspective. And we think like all we think some of the Bernardo Castro and the idealist and so on. All that is is consciousness. I remember thinking, man, the physicalist side is so close minded and they're so uncreative. Let me go to the spiritualist side. And I find that, man, the mystics like are not mystical enough. All their major answer tends to uncreatively come down to its consciousness.
What if consciousness is first thing, well, what the heck is it? But what if there's 12 other elements? Like it's not even a dualist. It's like a 12-list or 157-list. I like the number 157. Why? There's various reasons. That's interesting. Can we get into any of them or no? Okay, okay. So cool. Anyhow, so from our level, I wonder if it's like we think existence and why are we here and what is consciousness and the heart problem of consciousness.
We think that these are the deepest, most profound, most inexplicable problems or, or most, yes, most profound problems, but made it so trivial, like as an adult to a kid, like chocolate, like you don't even need to concern yourself with that. Just relax, like live your life.
Yeah, I often wonder that. So I have this phrase that I say internally, which is like, the mystics aren't mystical enough. Mystics just come down to the same exact answer of all of them. And so I'm so almost all the time I'm terribly disappointed when I investigate a toe. It's like go in with high hopes thinking like it's going to be the answer. And then I'm like, is that what you're saying? Is that all that you're saying? Yeah, I thought that it was going to be much more vast and be mind blowing. Yeah, it's like all the same sort of my if it's mind blowing, it's mind blowing in the exact same way. Yeah. Well,
First off, I fully agree with you in terms of larger kind of epistemology. And yes, it always gets, it's like the thinking itself is fascinating up until the conclusion and then that sort of makes it more banal or something. I will say, I think a lot of the early quantum field theorists felt more mystical than a lot of the current scientists today. And I think about our epistemology,
And there is something I don't necessarily believe the Penrose kind of orchestrated objective reduction thing. But that's creative, by the way. It is. I love him for that, for the fact that he's willing to go out on a limb and connect, firstly, consciousness to something quantum mechanical, then to something gravidical, like something gravity. Absolutely. And he was super criticized. He was kind of cast out at that point from the physics community. And I do find it interesting, something in that realm of like,
The mind creates the classical kind of perception that we see and we use sort of relativity to explain like cosmology or something. But maybe there's more ontological truth, maybe quantum, the quantum stuff is
isn't just shut up and calculate in a set of mathematical formalisms, but is a descriptor of reality. And then you get into all sorts of weird philosophical questions because then it's like, okay, so time doesn't work the way we think it does and all sorts of issues like that.
But to me, that's such an exciting inroad. And then you read about Niels Bohr or you read about Heisenberg. I'm reading Rovelli's Helgeland and I read Beyond Physics, which is sort of Heisenberg's own account of some of his work, but the more philosophical thinking behind it.
And it's like, these guys were trippy philosophers, you know, like they weren't like these, like, you know, I have the answer. Like they were like sort of, there's this like constant inquiry process and they were really touching at like, you know, what, what is, what is reality? And even, even Einstein who he got in all these debates with the Copenhagen school, he was like, God, God doesn't play dice, you know, and they were thinking about like, what is the truth and what is reality? It wasn't just straight to like,
You know,
They don't teach you quantum theory in school. Like when you go to a class on quantum theory, second year or third, even in your graduate school, graduate studies, it's not quantum theory, it's quantum mechanics, quantum field theory. Theory not only gives you the math, but tells you what is it describing. So Tim would say,
Every time you went to the lectures for any of the physics classes, the best lecture would be the first one because they would give you this. They would sell you on the course. And then after that, then you then they abandon that. They're like, OK, here's Green's functions and here's a Hilbert. Here's a self-adjoint operator. And then you wonder, OK, well, well, what is that representing and what does that mean? And he said that you would ask you put his hands up and the professor would say, well, for that, you'd have to go to the philosophy department. He said, I thought physics was about what is you're not you're not telling me what we're doing.
So yes, yeah, that is something that's lost. And also, physicists are making metaphysical assumptions without knowing. So there's a concept that I bring up frequently called enthememes, meaning that there are statements with assumptions that are so, so hidden, we don't realize we're making them. Okay, classic example is the fish that doesn't understand us in water. Yes. And then David Foster, well, yeah, and Wittgenstein had comments that of
Something called clarificatory remarks, which is those aspects of the world that are so simple and familiar that they remain hidden. It's fascinating. So Ed Witten had a theorem with Weinberg that said, essentially it says that in three plus one quantum field theory, so three space one time, three plus one quantum field theory,
there can be no Graviton essentially says that so it sounds like well what's the hope then you can never integrate gravity with quantum field theory and then the Anthememe the hidden assumption that even was so subtle Witten didn't make it explicit didn't realize he was making it is that
You're assuming the graviton is within the same space time. So what if there's another space time associated with it? That's where you get the idea of holography. Yeah. So that there's a quantum field theory happening on the boundary. Yeah. But in a different space time on the interior, there's gravity. You know, you're making me think is that like it's maybe it's just super valuable to like work on your own fundamental epistemology. And that helps you create that they're like, I think about Eric Weinstein's like,
you know you have the observers and then you have like 14 dimensions sort of above that and gravity sort of is the tether between the two and it's like i can say that theoretically i don't really know what that means
Is there a way to access those 14 dimensions and maybe is there a way to change your state to like understand these things and that would be like an eastern sort of mystical thing but like I don't know. When it comes to questioning your epistemology or one's epistemology to get to something true I also wonder like you said maybe our bodies are so much more intelligent and our bodies know and we're trying to analyze like this like the monkey atop the elephant and we think we're in charge. Ian McGilchrist talks about that in the Master and his Emissary.
And and I also take that analogy a bit further. I think one of the and this is a present deliberation. So like I something that I've only been thinking about for a couple of weeks. I think it's extreme. One of the worst. Philosophies of our time is like that book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving Enough. You shouldn't care what other people think. Yeah, I think other people are way smarter than you. I put I put a huge, huge emphasis on other people, much like if you trust your body is smarter.
And so I was thinking someone was saying I was speaking with someone in the internal toe team and he was saying. Oh boy, he was saying they oh yeah, but you should people should.
the world shouldn't be like that something like that like the world shouldn't be like that then i'm like you think you have an ideal in your head like you think your ideal is better than what is like i often i almost always think that but then if i think deeply enough like i'm like why do we even shake hands why do we bow why do we do we have to have niceties maybe a world without that would be way worse like you think you're smarter than the entire calculation of the world yeah
yeah right right right like take into account what other people think yeah people are not liking what you're doing yeah modify it doesn't mean supplicate totally i mean be be weak and indecisive yeah it just means like listen to what other people are saying incorporate even the fact that we're not like this
Yeah, what's up? Yeah, we just know because now like you would convention is there for a reason or maybe you'd be closer but It would just be so subtle and our bodies do it because we care and I think the people totally don't care about what other people think maybe you I think you should care more than anyone else like if you're thinking that Yes, I think your family would say I think John I think you should be caring a little bit more about what we think and yeah, well that that that is
kind of
Western civilization which religion is kind of an endemic part of we can reconstruct through rationality now and to me that leads to like effective altruism Utilitarian thought which are predicated on this idea that like people are sort of interoperable cogs and this sort of you can you know systems thought can sort of like design are you use design principles and and
You know, we'll figure it out and like that feels wrong to me, you know, like I'm much more of a fan of like Lindy, you know this idea that like Things have survived in civilization like formalities convention tradition Because it's every generation's job to kill off bad ideas and so the Lindy ideas that basically the the current age of something actually predicts its future expected age and the value of it and I just think that's like a beautiful sort of principle and
Yeah so in probability we say like there's no such thing as a hot hand or like if you flip a coin if it's tails five times in a row doesn't mean it's going to be heads but this is the opposite this is saying like look if it's tails the fact that it's historically been tails or historically been successful means it's more likely to be successful than something else that's new. I think so. Yeah again present deliberation I've also been thinking about effective altruism and I don't I when I hear I remember hearing that the the five the eight the
28 year old Kurt up until 28 year old Kurt let's say yeah would completely be like yeah effective altruism and utilitarianism and rational morality right and now I just see so many problems like how do you solve this how do you solve that how do you solve this this this this this effective I don't believe when someone's like I'm an effective altruist I just don't believe you I don't either leave that you if you believe yourself to be a good person I just don't believe you I'm sorry I agree that I totally you have to be I think
And this is part of Christianity. Piece of ish. You are a piece of ish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you are so motivated by trying to seem good and you're egocentric. And I'm narcissistic and I'm insecure. Yes, I am. I'm selfish and right. I'm just rotten. And it's obviously you can get self-flagellating about it. And I look at movies where someone people like self-flagellating and most people are like, oh, that's the it's wrong. I'm like, that's like what we all should be doing. Like if you have you taken yourself seriously?
Yeah, no, but acknowledging your own depravity is a very powerful thing. And I think about a lot of, not to bash baby boomers, but I think about like the baby boomer mentality and a lot of it just felt like virtue signal, like utilitarianism is wildly effective in the political sense. It's super charismatic. Like you think about like Bill Gates,
I go back and forth on what his deal is, but I think he's more sort of ruthless than meets the eye, would be my guess. It's a guise to attain power in a different sense because political power is much more of a weight than the dollar or per unit time or effort. Yes, totally. It's like its own will to power and it's the most charismatic will to power.
Yeah, and it could be totally unconscious. But yeah, like the Sam Bankman Fried, Freed FTX thing or whatever, where, you know, it's like, you have to be the most moral person, like you're the only way to be hyper capitalist is to be hyper idealistic, hyper hyper philanthropist and hyper, you have to be somehow Gandhi and
You know, uh, uh, John D Rockefeller at the same time. It's this bizarre thing. And so like the only way to be that ruthless is to like hide it in this sort of, and I think, I think about that sort of with respect to Marxism and stuff. Like Stalin is like, I think about this, like Stalin's, we think of Hitler is still the private proverbial, like worst person in the world. Stalin is definitely
a
like the most dangerous ideas in the name of like sort of nominal equality. Yeah. So I think like you said, being suspect of anybody that doesn't acknowledge their own depravity. Yeah. I think. Yeah. So for instance, I was years ago. I remember when I started to have this practice of any time I find myself saying, I'm like, Oh, I love myself. I'm doing such a good thing for this person.
I question myself. I'm like, how is this from laziness? How is this from selfishness or or deceit in some way? Yeah, or malice. OK, so I was washing the dishes and then I was like, because my sister came along and started washing the dishes. I'm like, yeah, yeah, because because you know why I'm doing this? Because I don't want her to come home to a dirty home and I want it. And then I realized, no, I'm washing the dishes because I want her to see that I do chores so that she can do the majority of these other chores. Like I just analyze myself like, oh,
Peace of ish like you and then other reasons like so I'm pouring water for someone else first. Yes Why because like oh, no, I'm such a gracious host. There was something else there Forgotten the reason but it's like I want to appear gracious or yeah, I wanted I thought there was like a bit of lint in it So I'm like giving it to you. I forgot what it was. I totally oftenly and I have this list I catalog any time I got with them one just so that I could remind myself late I love not think that you're benevolent
Most of the time. I love that. That's awesome, man. That's really cool. I wish I could bring it. I don't have the list, but I have this list of of personal sins. Then I have a list of confabulations where I think that I well, we can talk about that. Yeah, no, you can flay. I do this all the time. It's like I'm doing something that's nominally like looks really good. Like I'm a super moral person, but it's like, why are you really doing that? Here's something interesting. Yeah. OK, here's the here's a this is a thought that present deliberation again. Yeah, just mine. OK, mind blows.
The greatest gift-giving is anonymous. It doesn't seem self-evident, but it seems plausible. Almost all the religions tend to agree on that. You know how there are proofs of God and then there are problems. I think you can probably prove God to yourself personally.
But I think the reason there doesn't exist a proof of God is that existence itself is such a gift. This is a gift. Talking to you is a gift. This is a gift. Just breathing is a gift. Somehow even suffering is a gift, which is so controversial. Someone said that God wouldn't sentence the devil to die
For eternity because that's a gift even even being alive and suffering is more of a gift than not existing I love that somehow existence itself is a gift and the greatest gift of all is given anonymously So God by nature has designed this such that you cannot prove he did it because if you prove he did it That's like finding out you donate it. You're like I did it anonymously, but you find the receipt somehow so by its nature you have to come to the conclusion because it's such a gift and
It's the greatest gift I give to you anonymously. You don't even, you can curse my name and I will still give you life. That's amazing. I will still give Sam Harris the best life. I was just thinking that when he said that. Even if he curses me and gets many people riled up and causes suffering, I'm sorry, you're still given existence. And I will not have, I will not come down from the clouds and say, and announce myself. And even that you can doubt. So no matter what, I will give you the gift of a doubting, of doubting too.
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And this is getting into more mystical thought, but like kind of the Alan Watts. This was not mystical already. I love this because it's, I think also you get into some of this stuff in the show, but I like, I think it'll show parts of you where, you know, yeah. But Alan Watts, like, is there something about, are we sort of fractals of a larger universe? Sort of, are we a way for God to observe
There are so many words that echo that.
like the eye that that we see through is the way that God sees us or the same eyes. Meister Eckhart said that cool. And then Schopenhauer said that we're all eyes of the same tree that are just branched off. And I tend to think I used to like those ideas and I still like them. They're fun. But now I see that the I'm so countercultural and I formulate opinions based on
being the devil's advocate. Yeah. So I see it now as a fad to think so mystically. Yeah. And I'm like, wow, it's come to the point where the realist position is, is the controversial one. Yeah. And then I wonder, this is something I brought up to Wolfgang. So we tend to think in terms of a hierarchy, like there's too much of a literal interpretation of the Bible and religious stories and so on. And then you can get a bit esoteric and then much more mystical.
And we tend to think the bottom is the literal, but I wonder how much more can you go down? Maybe it's not that we need to go up or maybe it's both. But is there something that's more literal than the literal? Is there something that's more real than the real? And this is where Jonathan Pascioli gave me an insight where he said that the blades of grass in heaven are too sharp for man. I just thought, oh man, like I can think about that for, well, I will be thinking about that for months and months. That's interesting because the way that I'm, I don't,
I'm so influenced by the Eastern thought, the Vedic tradition, which says that this is somehow illusory. People love, and I think the tendency for us to love illusoriness is actually a self-loathing. I don't think that it's a search for knowledge. I also don't think I'm a truth seeker. I'm not a truth seeker. I think I'm a selfish person who's just curious and just can't help himself here and there, and I'm craven and I'm ugly and I'm
not courageous and I'm an invertebrate and gutless like like I'm a coward. I am because I know what I'm afraid of. There's some truths that that are frightening and I know that I think the fact that you recognize that shows that it's your fate that you are gonna not be that like you're working against it because most people never recognize there is like a year the past year or so where there was so much like this
Speaking about these subjects. Yeah would provoke so much anxiety in me. Would it be so tough to do? I had to back off from the UFO subject for the same UFO subject Yeah, yeah, geez geez like if you think about the possibilities like truly truly truly think about them. Uh-huh. It can It can put you into some dark dark places that seems inescapable you can put yourself into a place that's
I don't think that's true, but you can convince yourself temporarily that you're in a place that's inescapable. I do think that there's something like God is always with you. And I say this as someone who's like, I'm not even a believer. I'm like someone who's entertains believing or hopes to believe, but also hopes to not believe. Like if I pray, like it's praying for faith, but also not faith. I'm afraid of God. I'm extremely afraid of what it means that God exists. I'm extremely afraid of what it means that God doesn't exist. I'm like, I'm fearful of both ends.
Anyhow, so I don't think God ever if so these are all if there's a God but by the way, even that statement is like, that's a controversial statement. I can get to why but well anyway.
that god will never leave you like you you can see some sometimes we have these stories we listen to songs like i'm alone and so on and so i don't think you're ever ever alone i think there's always hope there's always hope either ask for it like especially for psychological like for being physically tortured and so on or you don't have enough money and you pray and then you say well god doesn't help because i'm not any richer or any less in torment and so on that's different than psychological torment i think for cycle for
I think psychologically prayer is super, super helpful, at least for a large subset of people. You agree. And God answers or God listens and you can even pray for God if you're helping. Can you show me how you're helping? Like help me recognize that you're helping. Yes. Yes. And I think about the myth of Pandora's box and we got all these sort of
horrible maladies that plague the earth. There you go, Pandora's box. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Yes. But the one thing that we have is we always have hope. You know, that was the thing in the box. Man. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. That's interesting. Yes. Roseanne, the comedian, she's like, I hate hope.
Oh my gosh, I didn't know so many I used to be like that too. Like, I would never give someone hope because you're disappointed. I'd say rather get extremely use callous yourself to the disappointment. Hope is wonderful. It's great to look forward and be excited. I I love the thrill of looking up to something more than I dislike getting disappointed by that. Yes.
Yes so that is put out your hand and trust even if you're gonna get hurt yes and just didn't just feel like okay you know what it's better to put my hand out and trust even if i've been hurt before and be like please please please don't hurt me please don't hurt me i'm gonna actually that's another there's a there's a concept called collective illusions
That thing is so integral to the whole stigma of ufo's collective allusions are behaviors that we engage in publicly contradict our private sorry the contradict our privately held beliefs because we think you think the same for it said another way. We act in a certain way in public because i think that you.
agree with that behavior or believe that same belief, but we actually all have some other shared belief privately. So for instance, in the 1960s, most southerners were against segregation, but they thought their neighbors were for it. So they're like, I'm for it. And then everyone just became for it. So it's like this collective illusion. Yes. And then another one is the trustworthiness of society. We think of ourselves as untrustworthy. We think society is untrustworthy, but it turns out there are tests. Most people are fairly trustworthy, something like
40-60% of people give deception. So 40% of people are honest, something like that. And some tests where you put money down, or like a wallet, and you see if they return it and so on. And another collective illusion, maybe the stigma. We think there's a stigma. This is why I contend the idea that we have a stigma in ufology. I don't think we have a stigma problem, I think we have a cowardice problem. Because the profession, many math and physics professors come to me after,
a show about math and physics. And we'll be like, okay, now that we've talked about that, like, what do you think is going on with UFO? Like, these are like, I don't want to give but I don't want to give it away because these are people who've give who have trust in you trust and awards and so on. These aren't just sure, sure, sure. People from the periphery. Yep. And additionally, the 2017 article on UFOs that was
People were like i want to know more i want to know more we think there's a stigma so we don't talk about it but actually privately everyone wants to talk about it so it's a collective illusion that there's a stigma another collective illusion is that we think is that wealth and wealth and status is what matters most so we think that to other people wealth and status matter most but it turns out when you
Ask people in surveys, private surveys and you can check for honesty and also look at how they behave. They value family and safety and security and so on and we all tend to agree on this privately. And then this research by this guy named Todd Rose said collective illusions are so
Deleterious to society not just in their current generation But mainly to the next because the lies of this generation become the truths of the next So now kids here. Oh what people value is wealth and status So now they're on Instagram and that's what they see even though it's based on this sand pillars of sand Yeah, they they really beget their own reality. And yeah, yeah, I
And I think, yeah, like this Timur Koran, like preference falsification, where you, you know... That's exactly, that's another way of saying it. Where you sort of say you want something out of virtue or out of pure mimesis of the people you're sort of around, and then underneath it, you definitely don't. And I agree, either that becomes this cargo cult belief system for the next generation, or because it is sort of somewhat illusory and kind of inauthentic on an individual level, at least, and concealed,
It sort of comes crashing down quickly and it and it sort of reverses and I wonder if that's the case with the UFO thing where I mean that's news to me and incredible to hear that they're like top academics who are like privately interested in this. And maybe if reality on some level is sort of a collective illusion and we are sort of beginning a lot of what we see you know with with our belief systems.
There's this cult concept of the egregore, and it's a self-manifesting thought. I think of the UFO
as like a possible self-manifest like it's like collectively it feels like we are we are just moving in that in that sort of direction and Jung would say that it represents I was about to say that the the mandala the the Sanskrit cycle of a symbol of psychic completeness and so maybe there's a way in which and I think about this is going to get in a really trippy weird territory but I think about
our UFO experiences. And if you if you read a lot of them from the Edgar Mitchell Foundation, they have like 5000 abduction cases. It's they occur in sort of like a dreamlike state. And I think it's possibly like a there's there's definitely connection there with like remote viewing, which also is obviously very contested. But maybe you are maybe the brain is somewhat like a quantum system.
which there is, you know, a temporal non-locality and maybe quantum systems can send information back in time. And maybe you are actually accessing a future memory state and it's sort of pre-memory and sort of people maybe with strength in Caudate and Potamans or whatever in their basal ganglia who are, you know, have an affinity for remote viewing can do this and you are witnessing a thing
That has a proto architecture to it that is fundamentally impossible to sort of understand and you are applying kind of the closest low level meme based on media and sort of the collective onto the thing.
And it the thing is affecting you in a way that causes the thing to actually manifest and and closed loop. It's a it's a it's exactly a time loop and like the Carl Jung an example of a time loop is Carl Jung had this patient who is super inaccessible hyper rationalist as you know Carl Jung was not rationalist at all. She has a dream.
of a scarab beetle that is this this golden scarab beetle that is gifted to her this is necklace and it sort of is this beautiful her heart opens up and it's sort of this epiphany and she doesn't know why it represents this in the dream but she goes to you know therapy with with young and she says you know I don't know what this dream means you know this this is all sort of gobbledygook this doesn't make any sense and as she's saying this
He sees a scarab beetle on the window, like a live scarab beetle come down on the window sill. He sees the scarab beetle and he takes the scarab beetle and he gives it to her as a gift. That to me is a causal loop because she had a pre-memory of something that would happen to her.
that pre-memory required the thing to self-manifest because it changed her attentional pattern and his attentional pattern in a way that caused the thing to actually happen and so I think there might be something around that with the alien thing.
where it could be this this future really transformative exciting thing you could be ascending to to another sort of level at some point mean through your intention you can make the ufos not appear so for instance if you're like i don't think these are good like the dark forest idea and you're like you know what let me place my attention elsewhere does that mean that it won't manifest or
If sufficient and if there's a sufficient amount of people who believe in it then it will occur for everyone. I think so, yeah. That would be my heretical and somewhat scientifically baseless belief is that collectively we have much more kind of thought power in terms of manifesting things than people sort of realize. And I'm not a sort of Cartesian duelist. I do think that at some point
In the future, I think of the whole field of parapsychology, right? And it's this it's full of, you know, snake oil salesman and and you know, not super rigorous thought or whatever. But think about how much money has been spent on it. Thirty million dollars, forty million dollars. How much do we spend on a particle accelerator? You know, so it's like that's something else that I think about is you get people who condemn other scientists and be and and be snide and so on when
They'll say, yeah, there's no evidence for so-and-so. And I'll ask them, have you seen the work of Rupert Sheldrake? They'll be like, no. Or I heard of it. Have you seen the Bigelow Institute's work? No. Have you seen Dean Radin's? Have you seen seen Julie Beschel's or Daryl Bam's? And then they're like, no. And I'm like,
Oh my gosh, this is the same feeling I have when I ask someone about a toe and I'm like, why do you think your toe is supreme? Have you seen? Have you looked into Chris Lang is? Yeah. Have you looked into Eric Weinstein's or have you looked into leases or whites? I was speaking to Brian Green. He's a string theorist, presumably working on physics. This is something that I would love to talk about. And he I asked him like,
Okay, have you looked into Wolfram's theory? He's like, No, I don't like it's been out for a couple of years. They're papers. It's like, No, you know, I have I'm like, I don't buy that you don't have the time, man. I buy that you don't have the interest. That's what I that's what I think it is. You're not interested in it, because you think you have the answer. But don't pretend you're searching for physics when we're starving for alternatives. And you won't look in the same way that people are like, No, no, no, I'm this hyper rationalist. And I've researched the evidence. And it's clear there is no such thing as paracychology.
Yeah.
I would contact the
It's exactly. It's your carrying card in a certain social milieu. Yeah, they don't want to lose that card of their membership of the enlightened intelligentsia. That's what they care about. Exactly. I have a good friend who helped run the Princeton parapsychology lab called Pair. He has an experiment that I always present to skeptics.
Where and I'll say it right now and if you can and I think there's there's a lot of evidence here and if you can find something that debunks this then I would I would love to hear it like I always say that like like please like debunk this like that would be fantastic and it's this idea of a random event generator.
Right, right. So you have a basically a binary computer. So it's super simple. Computer just creates ones and zeros. You have a graphical interface that shows, you know, one, zero, one, zero. So it's like basically like a transistor level, like what's happening. And you are tethering that to call it like radioactive isotope decay or like a photon bouncing around a little like something that's sort of provably thought of as random and quantum mechanics.
and over a long enough time scale that should be like flipping a coin right like you should get over a long enough time scale and you know large enough sample size you should get with some expected standard deviation you should get basically the same amount of ones as you do zeros and
He finds that in a statistically significant way, people sort of, you know, z score distribution belies probability based on their intention going in in terms of, you know, if you say you go into the thing and you say, I want more ones to show up on the graphical interface than zeros that that over a long time scale in a statistically significant way beyond the standard deviation will will occur. And so I think that's fascinating. Like to me, if that if that is real,
And Dean Radin has actually a lot of evidence around this and a data set around it. That's hard to argue with. And then at that point, yeah, like maybe that's like a weak interaction, right? That's not like manifesting a UFO on this table, but that should break your model of reality or at least should make you ask questions about the sort of dualist materialist worldview. So I don't know.
I don't think the materialist worldview is dualist, by the way. I think it's just it's a monist of material. I think there's material. That's a way better. That's funny. Whenever I say that there's some cognitive dissonance and you are saying it way better now. It's a monist of material. Your mind is material. Exactly. Yes, like the Cartesian dualism would be like
Actually a bifurcation where God and the mind exists separately and then there's material and material monism is the mind is just material That's right. Sorry. Well, thank you for updating me. Yeah, no problem There's another study that I heard about and I like to look into and by the way, I'm not saying that
That's what my my diatribe was about. Okay, so there's forgotten my place.
Yes, there's another random number generator study where they place random number generators across the earth in different places. It's like, okay, well, why are you measuring earthquakes? I don't know what they're measuring at the time, but in different key locations across the earth. I think it's randomly generated to the random the places that they put them in. Yeah. And it turns out that before major events like the World Cup, or even horrible events like 9-11, just a few minutes prior or a few hours prior, it then statistically deviates from randomness.
I've seen this project. What is it called? It's called the Global Consciousness Project. And the reason I think it's bullshit is I think it incidentally proves parapsychology, but they also they did the World Cup, they did 9-11, they did things like that. And then they also did like the death of Bob John, who ran the Paralab, the Princeton Parapsychology Lab, and that showed this crazy z-score. And so to me, that shows it's a classic experimenter effect.
which is
at the level of the world cup for them like he's more important to them than the world cup so like the z-score for bob john is gonna be like this you know off the charts thing or whatever and it's almost impossible to deconflate those things and so if you get a skeptic like michael schermer or james randy present at one of these random event generator experiments
it's going to affect the experiment. So the skepticism, science is a priori skepticism like Francis Bacon. And if you come into this experiment skeptical, it might actually affect the results. So the whole issue with parapsychology kind of a priori and studying it scientifically is it kind of requires a priori buy-in or belief, which is a bizarre, that's an epistemological paradigm shift. That's not a scientific paradigm shift. That's tough.
That's tough to investigate scientifically. That's really tough to investigate scientifically. I was speaking with Leslie Keen about this who studies near-death experiences and also paranormal experiences. Yeah. And she was saying that she's been to some seance, I don't know what it's called, some place where there's a table and you speak to the dead and there's physical mediumship, I believe she called it. Uh-huh. And she said that you can't have someone who's skeptical in there, it won't work, and that at one point someone was
she said that yes fascinating yeah yeah yeah yeah but but then i also the the skeptical here side is like how convenient they're totally right but so can you not film it right is it is that the the act of the camera was the presence of the camera considered a skeptical totally totally well i i believe i mean yeah again again i'm on that side but it like you read um this anthropologist 19th century guy named j.g. frazier and he wrote a book called the golden bow
And he talks about how their sort of primitive aboriginal societies would constantly use two forms of magic homeopathic and sympathetic magic. So one is sort of using the likeness of some person to affect them. So it's like voodoo stuff or whatever. Don't try any of this at home, please. And then the other is like like like hair, teeth and nail like like that's I think sympathetic magic or whatever is like you use actually like
Something from the person and you can affect them, right?
And he would talk about how like these people would be introduced to sort of enlightenment thought and the rituals would systematically lose their power. And then I think about and Jack Parsons read this book and he uses a fascinating quote to me. He goes, I think this book convinced me that science is a form of magic and magic is not a form of science. And so the proto layer is actually belief based and science based and there's actually a French
author named Bruno Latour who talks about the belief consensus in the scientific laboratory affecting the experiments that are actually done. And so it's this question of like, is science like an act of creation or is it an act of discovery? Are you, are you, you know, are you Michelangelo sort of
out of the marble you are you are creating David or whatever you're you're excising David rather but the David is already there pre excision or are you engaging in a godly act of creation and I would say the latter but I think that's a little heretical and interesting today's time interesting yeah okay real quick because I know you got to go soon the weird aerial objects do you have any theory
Michael Levin, his work fascinates me.
What fascinates me about it is that traditionally we've sort of been like DNA reductionists and it's just the DNA that dictates morphology and it's this idea, tell me if I'm botching this, but that gap junctions or intracellular communications and voltage-gated ion channels
are somehow the software and the DNA is kind of the hardware. And so to me that's fascinating because there's this like orthogonal or other layer to like our morphology that like what's creating that? What's dictating that to form the human body in the first place? Because I think about like if it's not encoded in our DNA, if you can change the voltage gates of like a tadpole, a severed arm of a tadpole and create like a chimeric two-headed tadpole,
then what's dictating the initial form of the tadpole? Isn't that an important question? Is it the EM field of the earth? Are we living in a supercomputer? I see, I see. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That feels like a super important kind of metaphysical question that his work makes you ask. Yeah, I don't know. As far as I know,
It's like there's a DNA template and then there's an electrical template that goes along. So if you modify the heads, then the future generations will develop those heads as well. So it's like they carry that. It's like they carry DNA, some DNA information and some electrical information. That's what it seems like to me. So if you modify one, then it starts to get the modified version of one, but not the other. Would he say though that
The epigenetic changes that are happening locally presumably from the like electrical changes that that accounts for the inheritance or would he say the electrical inheritance is like a different inheritance. I don't I don't know. I see it as the electricals different. Okay, so I read that the same way and then it's like to me that's like it's almost an update on like Sheldrakes morphic fields because
to me Morphic fields is like awesome in terms of like the empirical rigor that he would you know I think the experiments were real where there are learned traits between generations that aren't necessarily due to natural selection but like he never came up with the mechanism was always unclear where the things being stored where's the information being stored and so
I guess the question to me would be like, how is it? How is electricity sort of? Yeah. How did the offspring sort of learn the electricity? I know. And is there more than just electricity? Like right now we have a few forces. Is there more than just the three or the four? And how is why is the form created in the first place? Like why? Why are we hominid forms? You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Hi, Wolfgang. This is Kurt. Oh, yeah.
What time do you think you can be ready for dinner? I can be there at 6 50. So Wolfgang would say that this world is real. Yeah, the corporeal world. It's real rather than it being illusory. So when you feel and when you're in your body, this is real corporeal. This is real. The solidity of this is real and it's not illusory because there's space between the atoms and so on. Then he says physics. What physics does is it takes an object. Let's call this object X.
and creates a different object called S X and studies that. So it studies a different sort of object and then it confuses S X or S sub X with X. And then he says, so there's a corporeal world and he doesn't like to put, yes, he likes to make diagrams. So let's call that the corporeal world where you have space and time. And then there's another world called the
Intermediate world where it's just subject to time but not space so when you go in your dreams If you wake someone up, they still have this they still share the same timeline But they went in space in some illusory sense and some hallucinate hallucination. So it's not the same space. Uh-huh So they're a part of the intermediate realm and then he said there's some yogis like super traditional super religious people and
Enlightened people and so on who can access the av eternal realm av eternal which hearkens back to I believe a coin Aquinas, but I'm not sure why he doesn't call it eternal doesn't matter the av eternal realm time which is timeless and spaceless and he says that's where I don't even think God starts there, but God creates that which creates the rest and so those are some states you can get into and he was saying that I
He even said like, look, when I was studying with the yogis, the sadhus, sorry, the sadhus in the 1940s and 1950s or 60s, before there was heavy Western influence. We think in the West that there are certain people called enlightened people and so on. He's like,
You have to be a part of the bloodline.
You have to have celibacy. As soon as you have sex, you cut it cut off interest. And that's, that's what's interesting to me is that I was speaking to someone who's like, there are some people who like, they don't like commitment of any sort. And they're the types of people who like to travel. They're like desultory, they don't like to be in one place, and they don't like commitment. And
To me I haven't found a case of that when I talk to the person one-on-one that doesn't come from some deep-seated insecurity rather than some Some openness that just loves everything and I'm a free spirit when someone says I'm a free spirit. I'm so skeptical now I think no you're hurt you're so hurt that you cannot put your hand out to trust because you're afraid of being hurt again Yes, so anyway
Yeah. Someone was saying, yeah, like I just want to keep my doors open. Yeah. This is a case where by keeping your doors open, like being polyamorous and sleeping around, you closed some doors. Totally. So interesting. Is it the case that that keeping doors open closes other doors? Like, is it the case that closing some doors opens other doors? It's not so simple. Like, let me just keep my doors open, my options open with jobs or with women or what or spouses or with whatever it may be. Yeah. Maybe closing some significant
That feels like a millennial malady of the illusion of omnipossibility. Just this idea that we can have our cake and eat it too, and hard choices don't have to be made, commitment doesn't matter. And I do think it leads you sort of towards consumerism and chronic dissatisfaction, like this bottomless soup of trying to sort of fill the void and replace kind of introspection and hard self-discovery with
I see this insistence in the religious circles for being celibate before you get married and we see that as like that's so backward.
I think so much of our insecurities come from, at least for me, come from women from my past, like wanting them, them not wanting me, and so much hurt, so much of every single thing. Maybe even my drive to work is because inside I'm like, I want to be, I'm married. Why do I want that? Is that sinful? Am I, I'm not sure. I have similar stuff and I dive into the psychology of, you know, as you know, I do, you know, sort of venture as my
the former day job that I still do.
And it's like, this girl rejected me and I've been trying to... I need to make my mark. And that's real. It's the whole Zuckerberg social network thing. That's a real thing. Weinstein's actually told me he thinks sexual selection is a major driver of human accomplishment and of course it is. Yeah.
Yeah, I think we're so unaware of our own emotions, sorry, motivations. We're unaware of our own motivations. It is. And how do you, I mean, I feel like you're amazing in that you have- Be ruthless. That's how- With yourself. Yeah, just assume the worst. Just assume the worst. And rather than trying to do good, I don't believe people anymore, or believe the larger people with money who say they're trying to do good. I'm sorry, I just don't believe you. I don't either. It's not to say that
There's an element of that or there's an element of not being aware of their own motivations and there's also an element of me projecting. So there's also an element of me being jealous because they have the capability of doing such a good and I don't so I want them to not be good so I have to also wait for them to take that into account. But anyway, I tend to not believe them.
I think that it's much more helpful instead of saying, look at all the good I'm doing to think to say, look at all the bad that I'm minimizing. Yeah. Like, and especially locally, like, like, I'm so good with my that's why I love like, my wife is out there, the cameras aren't on her. But my wife is my my rock in so many ways. Yeah. And she I make her I try hopefully make her happy. And and everything that I get, like when she's happy, I'm super happy. It's not that my happiness is tight, like I'm
Man, Toe is probably similar for you. You're like, look, I live in a sick house. I live in a sick house. You live, you get to go in your cold planet. Like a ridiculous...
Who are you? And then you get to do these and talk to interesting people and film it and get this cool guy behind the camera here. Yeah, Jack's awesome. Jack just listens and Jack is like a philosopher there. Yeah. And you're just like, man, I'm so lucky. So I feel like the same way. I'm just like every cylinder is being banged on with toe. I'm just to say this often, I'm just a gym rat for toes. Yeah, that's what I am. I'm not someone who is
Interested in music. I'm not someone who does carpentry on the side. I am a gym rat for tolls Anything about tolls and math and physics, especially I just want to know I want to know every theory I just want to know that's all I do. Yeah, I love it. But anyway, I think about I want to make sure I minimize the harm that I do I
And again, there's something self-congratulatory in me saying that, so I need to be careful. But the point is that I find that much more powerful than saying, let me look at all the good I can do. Yes. Yeah. Well, right. It's also harder. You're making the purview of what you're doing very humble. It's like I'm showing up and doing a job. And especially with what we're doing,
it's easy to get lofty and be like, you know, we're talking to all these cool people, but it's like, no, you're just, you're doing a service and we're service workers, like sort of dressed up and like these, you know, and then like speaking in these super high brow, but it's like, it's all.
We're servers in a sense. We're just washing dishes and doing waitstaff. And some people say like, oh man, you're a truth seeker. Like I like them. I'm not a truth seeker. I'm a coward. I'm just I'm a curious person. So I study a bit and I'm interested in this and that. And I dabble. But I'm definitely if like there are some truths I don't want to know if they're the case. I'm not a truth seeker. The truth is horrible. Truth can be. It can be viscerating.
I love that you're saying that because you're sort of a role model to me in some ways and I have trouble. It's funny, we were talking about these super successful people and how we view them or whatever and I definitely have two sides of me.
only truth, only truth. And like if somebody's lying, like I sort of like, I know what they're lying. And then, and then there's this other side that's like kind of commercial and it's just like, I just want to like lead a good life. And those two things are not always in harmony and it's hard to have them in harmony. In fact, I think one can often lead to persecution historically and like not riches and family and you know, a normal life.
And then the other seems to at least nominally in the real world lead to like, you know, a pretty good place and then the question is maybe the truth gets you something in the afterlife and then but then it's that sort of bad motivation if it's you're doing it to get something in the afterlife should just be its own
I don't know. Maybe there's something good about that. Just act good. Whatever it takes to do, act good. And do what's right. And you'll start to feel good because of it. And don't worry too much about, well, I don't know. I struggle with that as well. It's an interesting question. Yeah, I do believe it's interesting. We didn't even get to these, oh man, I wanted to do that to show you some of these paradoxes. So that's something else I'm interested in, these paradoxes.
So I'll give you a couple of paradoxes now. Yes. So let's see. There's the there's there's a paradox that says if you believe yourself to be consistent and accurate, like a rational person, you automatically become inconsistent. So there's Smolians. I want to show you doxastic logic. Super interesting. I have three minutes. We'll do it in turn. Yeah, we'll do. Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do another time. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kurt. Yeah, man. That's a long time. There's like so much more we could have talked about. I know. I know. We can go forever.
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"text": " 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."
},
{
"end_time": 90.589,
"index": 3,
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"text": " What's up, Kurt and Theories of Everything podcast. I hope you enjoy this conversation with me and Kurt Jaimungal. Kurt is a big inspiration for me. I love his show. I am a religious watcher of it. And I think he goes deeper than just about anybody else with some of the top thinkers in the world. And so it was an honor for me to interview him. This was supposed to come out actually on American Alchemy."
},
{
"end_time": 119.804,
"index": 4,
"start_time": 90.589,
"text": " Kurt Jaimungal, thank you for coming. This has been a long time coming because I'm a huge fan of your show and the way I like to describe your show to friends of mine is basically I think you are a"
},
{
"end_time": 143.387,
"index": 5,
"start_time": 120.452,
"text": " Deeper, smarter version of Lex Friedman. I love Lex. No offense to him. I think he's awesome. But in many ways, he's got the Larry King audience surrogate thing going on where he doesn't have any context going into the interview. He has super basic questions and then sort of parapetitically gains context through the interview. You come in"
},
{
"end_time": 166.442,
"index": 6,
"start_time": 143.643,
"text": " Knowing everything about the person's ideas and you ask insanely good questions that like surprise the guests often at the level of depth. And so yeah, it's a blast. That's extremely, extremely kind. Thank you so much. Of course. Yeah. The goal is if you've watched every interview with this guest and you watch it on toe, I want toe to be the best"
},
{
"end_time": 195.981,
"index": 7,
"start_time": 166.92,
"text": " one of all the interviews or the deepest one, deepest and most technical. Yeah, you do you ask super technical. It's it's it's fantastic. If you want to get to the core of the person's work, I think it's it's probably the best like initial primer you could ever ask what's like that or like some super dense research paper. And like, I would start with that. Yeah, it's it's flattering. I forget who it was. But there's some other guests who said that when they want to learn about one of the guests on the"
},
{
"end_time": 217.466,
"index": 8,
"start_time": 196.237,
"text": " The Toe"
},
{
"end_time": 239.377,
"index": 9,
"start_time": 217.875,
"text": " I'd rather do that than chat GPT. What do you think about chat GPT? Overhyped? Underhyped? I think it's overhyped. I think we're at 97-98% turn passable NLP AI a few years ago and I think now we're at 100% and the difference between 100% and 97-98%"
},
{
"end_time": 265.572,
"index": 10,
"start_time": 240.52,
"text": " is is dramatic in its public reception but is not represent any sort of stepwise back-end change and like how the thing works and and i think about like you know winnegrad schemas or like things that like break ai traditionally where like you know ai doesn't understand still in my opinion semantic context and like i think the pattern matching just got better where like it"
},
{
"end_time": 284.718,
"index": 11,
"start_time": 266.049,
"text": " now seems like it understands. It's like as if semantic context understanding, but I don't think it understands semantic context. And then I think about all the hype around like we can have material science breakthroughs with this stuff. It's like, no, you can't get out of here. That's like so far off, like all this sort of multimodal stuff, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 307.619,
"index": 12,
"start_time": 285.213,
"text": " I think"
},
{
"end_time": 332.637,
"index": 13,
"start_time": 308.422,
"text": " is educated, I'm going to put that in quotations, then they'll under-hype it. I don't know why, but anyway, I see it much like electricity, where in the beginning, Faraday was just playing around with electricity and people were like, that's a magic trick, like they didn't even see the potential of what it could be and even when Edison put these through lines, they're like, oh, now we can light our homes and like, now we can light our homes, that's it? That's all you think about? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 342.756,
"index": 14,
"start_time": 333.439,
"text": " So I think it's completely underhyped and mid-journey, like not just chat GPT, but mid-journey and not just chat GPT, but there's GPT-3 and there's integrating it with"
},
{
"end_time": 371.237,
"index": 15,
"start_time": 343.302,
"text": " the web, which is Bing and it constantly gets underpowered, underpowered. And by the way, if you speak to some of the people who worked on, who used chat GPT in its beta days, as well as the early days when it was released, they say it was vastly, vastly more powerful. Like the code would work almost every single time. And then because they're worried about safety issues and also scalability, maybe they had to reduce the amount of power that each user was given. Then it becomes less and less accurate. So"
},
{
"end_time": 394.428,
"index": 16,
"start_time": 372.056,
"text": " The technology is there. The technology is there. It's only growing and it's just, I love the CEO of Microsoft. Yeah. Like there was the computer era. Yeah. There was the internet era and now we're at the AI era. Yep. And I think last year we hit this inflection point. We're at the AI era. Interesting. Okay. I think it's going to displace a lot of white collar work. So I think like"
},
{
"end_time": 417.944,
"index": 17,
"start_time": 394.991,
"text": " legal, accounting, things where you're sort of running loops online. Yeah, and data entry and data entry. For instance, being on the Microsoft presentation, the Microsoft presentation, fascinating. They're like, okay, look at this PDF, which is, I don't know, the company guests, let's say guests, the jeans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're like, okay, let's"
},
{
"end_time": 430.401,
"index": 18,
"start_time": 418.592,
"text": " Ask it can you summarize this document for me and then it does it in terms of the the projections of the financial statements and so on that they had in the PDF and then so that's already fascinating."
},
{
"end_time": 454.65,
"index": 19,
"start_time": 430.811,
"text": " and then they're like can you compare this to lululemons and then it does a chart and then you're like yeah about how much work that would have taken so if i wanted to do that would get someone on fiverr that would take a few back and forths and then they wouldn't do it properly and it would take a couple days and it would cost money totally and now i can do it in just like 45 seconds yep oh my gosh so i use i've used mid journey for"
},
{
"end_time": 484.36,
"index": 20,
"start_time": 455.128,
"text": " not just for art for the toe channel, but for idea generation. So for instance, I have this idea for one year. I've had this idea of a poster, like a beautiful metal painted poster that's fairly large. That's like a tree of life and it has different toes, like symbols of toes and how they're related. So this one's a subset of this one. This one is like SU2 is integrated into SU4 or goes into spin 10 and so on. The Petite Salon models and so on and the nodes and the graphs and sorry, the edges in the nodes."
},
{
"end_time": 490.674,
"index": 21,
"start_time": 484.838,
"text": " And I've looked online for months and months and not not dedicating my entire time, but just"
},
{
"end_time": 517.637,
"index": 22,
"start_time": 491.544,
"text": " Intermittently looking online for months and months like oh do it. Do I like this artist? Do I like this one? Okay, let me take that Yeah, that's not quite it. Not quite it soon as mid-journey came out. Here's what I'm looking for and then it generates what is exceeds my expectations and then I'm like, oh I never thought that it came up with some variation like yeah I never thought that it could be on the root of the tree below. Okay, let me play. That's cool And then I also had this idea for a video game for quite some time maybe like ten years now Yeah"
},
{
"end_time": 530.896,
"index": 23,
"start_time": 517.637,
"text": " Just in the back of my mind."
},
{
"end_time": 557.79,
"index": 24,
"start_time": 531.305,
"text": " I never even thought about exploring a town at night. Oh, maybe rain can be a mechanic or maybe nighttime in the haze can be a mechanic. Okay, let me play around with that then. Oh, I see that. So I use it as like a person you would spitball off of. Ah, yeah. And same with chat GPT. And so it's just like an extended mind. Yeah. But it's also super dangerous. Yeah. So for instance, I ask it, can you explain this concept to me? Yeah, then it just does. And then I'm like, can you explain it in a different way? And then it does."
},
{
"end_time": 574.565,
"index": 25,
"start_time": 557.79,
"text": " Yeah, yeah, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 592.056,
"index": 26,
"start_time": 574.565,
"text": " Yeah, it's like making the first iteration so it'll be horrible for the next generation is already just making like human interaction vestigial or you could say it's making the informational aspect the informational transfer aspects of interrelations sort of vestigial and in fact"
},
{
"end_time": 615.913,
"index": 27,
"start_time": 592.602,
"text": " the energy you know of people's relationships like will matter more in some ways because maybe there's some human ineffable kind of aspect that you can't get from chat gpt now or maybe even ever so john vervecke do you know john vervecke i know who he is yeah he talks about meaning structure right yeah that there's these four p's of knowledge or four p's of truth yeah so one is"
},
{
"end_time": 631.698,
"index": 28,
"start_time": 615.913,
"text": " Propositional that's what chat GPT is that's what it is when you're working with the computers explicit statements propositional then there's other forms like perspectival what it's like to have a certain perspective and then participatory like we're participating in a dialogue and it's almost like a dance."
},
{
"end_time": 648.643,
"index": 29,
"start_time": 631.698,
"text": " And then there's procedural, so movement. So when you drive a car, there's a knowledge to it. Grabbing a ball, there's a knowledge to it. But it's not explicitly stated. It's in your muscles. It's embodied. So he's saying that what's happened in the meaning or lack of meaning in our culture is that we started to overvalue the propositional."
},
{
"end_time": 672.79,
"index": 30,
"start_time": 649.087,
"text": " and undervalue these and it started since like the year since thousands of years ago and different developments like Peterson's answer to the meaning crisis has to do with Jung and the fall of Adam and Eve and so on and and John Verbeckis like oh actually it's because the invention of vowels and spaces I was like well how the heck does that have anything to do with the meaning crisis he's like because now you can read quicker you then think information is power and then you start to overvalue this"
},
{
"end_time": 697.466,
"index": 31,
"start_time": 673.166,
"text": " Oh, that's so fascinating. Because before it took it took quite some time and they didn't even standardize left to right. Right. So that itself was an invention. Right. Revolutionary invention. Right. This is going to get into weird trippy territory. But I think about like, Sanskrit or Greek scholars, I know. Yeah. And they often seem to think that like within the language is like embedded some sort of like"
},
{
"end_time": 724.855,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 698.268,
"text": " Energy transfer like there's like a hermetic like gnosis would be the Greek sort of word for knowledge where the knowledge transfer is almost sublinguistic and like the energy state with which something's written or that you're in when reading the thing is Deterministic of the actual information that you might get and what you resonate with and it does feel like language has become more sort of like"
},
{
"end_time": 750.52,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 725.418,
"text": " The information is just the thing itself. I have to get deeper into Verbeke stuff. He seems like just a genius. Yeah, he's one of the titans of our era. Interesting. Okay, so you hold that much respect for him. That's cool. Okay. The four P's, just knowing the four P's is extremely interesting. And just knowing that there are different forms of truth. So we think of truth like mathematical, like these timeless truths that you just grab and they're explicit statements."
},
{
"end_time": 770.23,
"index": 34,
"start_time": 751.169,
"text": " He's saying, no, there are other forms of truth and there's a truth to meditating. What does that mean? We don't even have the language for that anymore. We don't think like that. It's true. Yeah. I think we just think in terms of like the raw information and we don't think enough of that. And fortunately, I think the stuff that"
},
{
"end_time": 799.565,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 771.186,
"text": " Like the energy state stuff is relegated to like woo-woo self-help. And then I think there's something there to that woo-woo self-help. And there was kind of like a movement in the early 20th century called New Thought, which was, you know, it's similar to panpsychism, which you explore a lot on the show, where like everything is sort of a thought form. Everything is somewhat conscious. And I tend to believe in that. But yeah, I think the current thinkers that are sort of vitalists"
},
{
"end_time": 827.449,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 799.889,
"text": " and or animists are unfortunately like lowbrow self-helpy people. So there's been sort of a bifurcation. I think we live in the age of kind of disenchantment. And so that's probably the case with words too, right? Like there's some of these low quality people. I don't want to call anybody out. Okay, fine. And this is recording the audios recording like everything's good because last the last two times you can include this if you want to."
},
{
"end_time": 848.916,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 828.148,
"text": " I was in New York and so I was on Coleman's show. And the reason why I'm not on Coleman's show is because we recorded in a studio where they paid for people to come and actually record it. The guy stepped out and it was fine. I've stepped out during shoots. And then he comes back in two hours later after this great conversation is like, oh, we only shoot the only the first 30 minutes were recorded."
},
{
"end_time": 878.012,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 848.916,
"text": " And I'm just, I'm so upset. That's so frustrating. Yeah, because you can't recreate that. I know, I've had that too. And I flew down. That's the worst. And I prepped for that because even with you asking me like I'm super flattered and I say no to almost every single interview. Oh, I'm honored. Because it's so stressful. Thank you. Yeah. I'm filled with consternation and trepidation. You're doing great, man. You're like very, also like sometimes I don't think I'm a great interviewee. I think I'm a good interviewer. Uh-huh."
},
{
"end_time": 898.473,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 878.285,
"text": " Anyhow, I have to prep because my answer to most every single question is I don't know."
},
{
"end_time": 927.585,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 899.189,
"text": " tangent that like is orthogonally related to the question but doesn't directly answer it. Yeah, well that's a great way. I don't know if it's a great way. Yeah, yeah, that's something that I wish like I need to there's certain skills to answering questions that I never thought about before. Right. I don't think like that. Yeah. I see it now. Now that I'm prepping for an interview, I can see it in other people. Oh, that was a great way to take that question and develop it. Right. Even if they don't know the answer. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. Because I here's my my default mode of thought is"
},
{
"end_time": 945.913,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 927.91,
"text": " What do you think consciousness is? Yeah, so this is what I do. I think for like 25 seconds when I come back and say,"
},
{
"end_time": 971.459,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 946.22,
"text": " I'm not sure, what do you think? Several ideas are competing in my head. Children just fighting and then I see, okay, you, what are your pros and cons? Okay, yeah, but then it's almost like whack-a-mole. Physics right now is in a state of whack-a-mole where they propose different theories because there are several, there are 45 different problems in physics. Like what is quantum gravity? Why are there three generations of matter and what baryony symmetry and"
},
{
"end_time": 999.94,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 971.459,
"text": " The Copernican and there's some data that suggests that we're not we're in a privileged place in the universe. Yeah, which it goes against what we thought before. Yeah. So why is that? And why is the CNB the way that it is? And did inflation occur and so on? Yeah. Or not did inflation occur? But why do we see the CNB in the way that the cosmic microwave background? So you propose some answers, but then new problems pop up and you're like, okay, I solved two, but five more come up. Yeah. Okay. So in order to then retain these two, I could"
},
{
"end_time": 1028.285,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1000.657,
"text": " propose an addendum which will solve three but then that increases this one and is this one more of a problem than that one okay what if I get rid of this which one's the sacred cow the goal is can we just whack all of these down but that seems like insurmountable to anyone but anyway the same is occurring in my head when anyone asks me a question about anything that's even passively not surface level so let's say what is consciousness is very definitely not surface level that's like deep deep deep that's maybe as deep as you can get"
},
{
"end_time": 1037.039,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1028.968,
"text": " According to some"
},
{
"end_time": 1064.206,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1037.637,
"text": " If consciousness is the orchestrated objective reduction Penrose thing, then the mind is a quantum sensor. You go through a whole bunch of links in a chain. Here's a guess, here's a guess. What would they say to that? Okay, what would that person say? What would that person say? And then also what do I think? I don't even think consciously about this. I think implicitly about this and these ideas form connections."
},
{
"end_time": 1074.616,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1064.206,
"text": " I think it's almost like, I think it's a mistake for people to get their PhDs when they're in their 20s. Because if you ask Ed Witten, if you ask virtually any scientist of a claim,"
},
{
"end_time": 1101.578,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1075.316,
"text": " What is it you believe and then they let's say five statements in their field and then you ask them did you do your PhD believing those they're like yeah generally yeah so you crystallize this point of view when you're at your most creative yeah so you have someone who's in their 20s like their IQ is at their potency i think when you're 25 it peaks that's interesting and then it's just a slow slow drop off but regardless creativity you're super creative you're young then you get someone they pick you when you're like 23 and say you get an advisor and then they tell you"
},
{
"end_time": 1131.596,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1101.954,
"text": " okay here's you don't even want to they tell you don't tackle huge problems because you can't get grant money for that you got to tackle solvable problems yeah and then there's this mantra like that the the best researchers know which types of problems to tackle the ones that are solvable and that are interesting and then so they're automatically like culling the type of problems away from the most interesting ones that you probably got interested in when you went to school for a bachelor's or master's totally so it's like i don't know of an alternate model but"
},
{
"end_time": 1145.316,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1132.483,
"text": " I admire people who are 50 and then they get their PhD."
},
{
"end_time": 1166.271,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1146.032,
"text": " Z is like the 26th and I'm saying there's 10,000 but rather choosing door or looking through as you get older you see blurry outlines of doors because you're not you can you're not paid to investigate each like a PhD student who can only investigate five because they have time and they investigate it deeply. But when you're older like what you do what what we do at toe and what people who watch"
},
{
"end_time": 1194.172,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1166.271,
"text": " You're just watching you're getting a survey of the landscape like a bird flying above. Yeah, and then or a buffet. It's better to think of like so you get to choose. Yes. Yeah, this is sitting down having a cordon bleu one huge meal, which which is the way that it works in academia right now. Hey, make this one meal and make this cuisine this one. That's fascinating. That's fascinating. Yeah, it's like I think you can only optimize for productivity or creativity, but the two are often inverse. And what you're saying is like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1223.592,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1194.701,
"text": " When you're in your 20s, you should be going really wide, have a super wide filter, which your show does, by the way. It's like a, it's like a, it's, it's like a great pre PhD or something. Cause you can like sample from all the theories and then you should go, you should dive really deep, which maybe is, it's a bit of a refutation on academia too, right? Cause it's like, why do you have to round out the edges of some preexisting theory? Why can't you have a bold new theory? Like I look at a lot of people you entertain on your podcast and like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1250.794,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1223.865,
"text": " Some of them are like really well credentialed and like in high places in academia. Others are not and they should be in my model of academia because they're brilliant. They just didn't like fit in correctly. Yeah. So yeah. So the question is like, well, what's the alternative? Because can you pay for someone? It's almost like saying I'll pay you to just study for 30 years without producing, which is what I'm saying should quote unquote happen. But it should is such a"
},
{
"end_time": 1277.5,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1250.794,
"text": " Foolish word cuz should have so many implications in it like when someone says oh, you know what you should do for your channel You should do so-and-so. Yeah in the comment section or privately. Yeah, you're like, yeah, but you don't know my goals like this someone's like Yeah, you shouldn't appear as much or you should appear more or you should Investigate the or you shouldn't talk about this and you don't know my goals though Like someone's saying right and the iPhone should do so-and-so like yeah, but you you have no idea. What are they balancing? What are their pros and cons? What are they what are they?"
},
{
"end_time": 1306.254,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1278.114,
"text": " What are they sacrificing in order for this and what are they are they maximizing for this? You don't know what this should that you're imposing on them So one thing that I do like that's a natural effect of the show and I don't know whether this is one of your goals But I think it's it's happened is you have you're marrying very serious rigorous physics with an attempt to look at consciousness acquire inquiring to consciousness and you even go into things like UFOs and"
},
{
"end_time": 1334.343,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1306.681,
"text": " And to me, you're harkening back to a time in academia that was far more open when you do stuff like that, and I like that. I think that's great. Because to me, anomalies can be harbingers of the next academic paradigm. Exactly. And you are bringing rigorous thought to current anomalies that a lot of people laugh at inside the beltway in academia, but in the future could become part of the established thought."
},
{
"end_time": 1347.278,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1335.401,
"text": " Yeah, so what is a disadvantage to the majority of people in ufology, which is that these crafts seem unrepeatable and or unfalsifiable to the academia and so on. It's difficult to get"
},
{
"end_time": 1370.111,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1348.234,
"text": " Reliable data on it. Mm-hmm. So it sounds like a con I see that as a pro because virtually anytime in physics or Maybe in any field in science, but in physics in particular when there's this huge problem You develop new tools and then those new tools create some huge breakthrough Yeah, so quantum mechanics started like this but then even post quantum mechanics like well, you can't observe this directly you can't observe the"
},
{
"end_time": 1390.026,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1370.503,
"text": " the wave the particle directly but you want to get information about the wave function so you come up with weak measurement there's something called weak measurement where you don't actually collapse it you observe it weakly through multiple perspectives it's like it's like barely it's like barely touching so it's like so you're not jolted out of your your your dream state"
},
{
"end_time": 1416.049,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1390.674,
"text": " And then that triangulate measurement. Right, right. So that has implications in quantum computing. And then what else is a dark dark matter is not directly observed. But and so now we have to come up with theories about that. But I think much more broadly, like, OK, if we can't directly observe these crafted, generally speaking, or we get blurry videos and it's anecdotal, what does that mean for science? Can science incorporate experiential, unrepeatable"
},
{
"end_time": 1442.585,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1416.63,
"text": " one-offs, like outliers, which are normally discarded. So I think in terms of, well, what is science evolving to? And you mentioned Gnosis. I have this word called Abhij Gnosis. Abhij is like the Eastern way of knowing and the Gnosis is the Western. So I think that a science 2.0, considering science was nascent before and then developed to its current form, then you think, well, is it done? I don't think so. I think it's going to mature to something else. So with Toe,"
},
{
"end_time": 1461.305,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1442.944,
"text": " One project I'm working on at the back of my mind is, well, what is this science 2.0? What is this? Well, I also think I'm a big fan of this Austrian philosopher named Rudolf Steiner and he created this thing called Anthroposophy, which is kind of an offshoot of theosophy, which is a little bit"
},
{
"end_time": 1487.875,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1461.903,
"text": " Trippier and I think kind of more huckstery to be totally honest. He Steiner was a real guy He actually created a lot of the modern organic farming methods in the early 19th century. So he's like a decently rigorous scientist but Anthroposophy is all about the study of kind of the spirit world or psychology but like applying very rigorous kind of science to those things and it almost feels like the average person today is"
},
{
"end_time": 1514.701,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1488.302,
"text": " discards their everyday epistemology for scientific dogma, for like an accepted framework. And so if you were to pull 10 people on the street, have you had like a one-off weird paranormal experience? They would say yes. Like eight out of 10 or nine out of 10 would say yes. And yet none of those people incorporate that into their kind of materialist worldview."
},
{
"end_time": 1525.503,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1515.009,
"text": " and so i think looking at those things rigorously is important because we are the observer we man is the measure of all things we are the observers of the universe and then you have all this sort of quantum"
},
{
"end_time": 1547.466,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1525.742,
"text": " Spookiness stuff that we just haven't figured out. So maybe we can marry the two. I don't know. Bernardo says that we let the mind to be the bouncer of the heart, meaning that we should allow ourselves to front load our hearts, our intuition and our experience. But we, but our mind gets in the way and says, nope, nope, nope. Oh, that's so cool. That's Bernardo Castro. That's awesome. I love that phrase."
},
{
"end_time": 1569.019,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1547.892,
"text": " The mind is the bouncer"
},
{
"end_time": 1595.299,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1569.514,
"text": " Values the implicit and maybe the perspectival or procedural like verveky but then publicly we feel like we have to value the propositional the more explicit because otherwise that's not scientific and then we're irrational and we want to make sure that we're rational and we're not considered pseudo intellectuals and so on right so and then we have this internal clash so I'm not it's not clear to me that we do allow the mind to be the bouncer of the heart"
},
{
"end_time": 1625.435,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1596.561,
"text": " because maybe there are multiple selves and the core of ourself is the one that you know what this feels right I'm gonna go with this but then we have another self that said no no no that it's just doubting yeah it's like at one level the mind is the bouncer but then at another it's not and we have this dissonance right right and interesting yeah and and it's important to try to reconcile those things yeah maybe I don't know is maybe that's what well anyway what were you gonna say I was gonna say maybe that"
},
{
"end_time": 1654.002,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1626.067,
"text": " That is in part what union integration is, is making sure these are all lined up properly. There's no contradiction between them. And that's why it's a lifelong. You can never get there. You can only increase. Interesting. Do you have any favorite thinkers that were kind of inspirations for toe or for wanting to get into this or Donald Hoffman was the reason the theories of everything channel started because he was being interviewed and is still interviewed on platforms where they just ask him about"
},
{
"end_time": 1676.425,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1654.36,
"text": " the same questions over"
},
{
"end_time": 1697.892,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1677.295,
"text": " And then the second one is, he says, space time is doomed. I'm like, okay, come on, Donald. Like, is there any? I said this joke that I love Donald Hoffman because he's constantly saying new things. And by new things, I mean, he finds 50 different ways of saying space time is doomed. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm thinking, okay, given that he's predicating all this in the papers, which are math based,"
},
{
"end_time": 1726.869,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1698.08,
"text": " Why is no one asking him about the math? I can go through that as my background. Yeah. So let me read the PDFs and then ask him about that. Yeah. What the heck does it mean that this set is consciousness or this this Markov chain? One of these is a conscious experience. What does that mean? Why does that necessarily translate over to how we work evolutionarily or perception? And does that also give rise to quantum mechanics, like he said? So I had all these questions and I can look through and then I interviewed him fairly technically."
},
{
"end_time": 1756.971,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 1727.773,
"text": " And people seem to that seem to take off. And so I was like, wow, this is banging on all cylinders because I've always been interested in theories of everything. Yes, I was since I I learned about them and I like puzzles and math. And then I went into filmmaking. But now I'm like, OK, I can use filmmaking, meaning it's like video and I can use these these analytical skills that I have these proclivities that I have. And it's like in the domain that I absolutely love. Oh, my gosh. And"
},
{
"end_time": 1778.439,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 1757.415,
"text": " I wouldn't say Donald is a favorite thinker of mine, but he's responsible for the channel. That's super cool. Yeah. Well, I would love to actually get a little deeper into his stuff because I intuitively I sort of think that physics is more the interface between biology and like the inanimate world or something than"
},
{
"end_time": 1808.763,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 1778.899,
"text": " Most hardcore physicists would like admit that would be my bias And so I've been fascinated and I'm sort of like a fan of Plato and I think we see Shadow play at the end of the day, but that's also kind of an intuitive gestalt feel on my part So I didn't realize he so he's fairly technical like he will sort of technically back up this this theory Yeah him and his co-authors one is named I believe Shatar Shatar or Shakar"
},
{
"end_time": 1827.261,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 1809.428,
"text": " Anyway, he's a mathematician, that co-author, and Donald knows way more math than he should for a cognitive scientist. So Donald actually has the chops that he's saying, much more than most people know."
},
{
"end_time": 1856.101,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 1828.046,
"text": " Interesting. I want to go through his stuff. Salvatore Pius as my favorite guest, he would be one of my favorite guests. Okay, interesting. So do you think after having interviewed Pius once or twice now? Twice. Do you think that these Navy patents are legit? I reserve judgment. And so I don't even think in terms of that. That would be a question that I would think for like 20 seconds to say, I don't know. So I'm trying to do that right now. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 1879.292,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 1857.363,
"text": " Do you think he's, after having spoken to him, do you think he's, I mean it sounds like you do think he's a rigorous thinker. Oh yeah, I think he's an extremely honest and heartfelt person. Cool. What I like about him more than his patents is when I was interviewing him, I asked him, I said, so how put off an Eric Davis and I think Jack Sarfatti said,"
},
{
"end_time": 1901.732,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 1880.196,
"text": " not terribly nice words about your patents. So what do you think? What do you make of their criticism? And he just sat there and he's like, you know, I think their ideas are worthwhile. I don't know why they don't think mine are, but people should investigate theirs. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1918.848,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 1902.21,
"text": " One of the greatest stories from the Bible to me is when Peter, so Jesus was being taken away to be killed. So this is like not even nonviolence, like the opposite of nonviolence, like way more nonviolent than nonviolent. Peter cut off the ear of the person who's taking"
},
{
"end_time": 1942.363,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 1919.275,
"text": " Jesus to kill him. And then Jesus like don't do that. And then he not only said don't do that, he took the ear and healed it on the on the person who's taking Jesus away to kill him. So Jesus is like, No, no, you love your enemy. Like you feed your you feed your family and your enemy before you even feed yourself. Wow. And you wash like on the night that Jesus was going to die. Yeah, in the stories. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 1965.572,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 1943.2,
"text": " He's washing the feet of his disciples, like doing the most lowliest of tasks. The night before and he knew like in the stories that he knows that he's going to die the next day. He's like, No, this is still important. You humble yourself. Nothing is beneath you. Wow. And that's just like gets gets me man. Like, if I think about that too much, I just start to, to, well, to"
},
{
"end_time": 1986.084,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 1965.862,
"text": " I was just speaking of Jesus. This is a total tangent."
},
{
"end_time": 2011.305,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 1986.715,
"text": " In the last week and a half. I just spent some time with Randall Carlson Who works with Graham Hancock? He's a sort of geologist esotericist and then Brian Murescu who wrote this book called the immortality key which is all about these like ancient mystery rituals these elucidian mystery rituals that took place in Greece and Socrates Pythagoras Aristotle Plato they all went through these things and both of them"
},
{
"end_time": 2037.841,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2011.578,
"text": " agree. This is kind of a heretical belief. They think that Jesus never died and that if you read the text, Pilate, who was the governor of Rome or of that little contingency of Rome at the time, poked Jesus's flesh with a spear and it was to see whether he was dead or not, but they think maybe Jesus was given a sedative and it was sort of either a mystery ritual or he like faked his own death."
},
{
"end_time": 2066.749,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2037.978,
"text": " and then he was put in a shroud of like resuscitating herbs by this guy Joseph of Arimathea and then he survived and maybe even had a bloodline like and like into today or something which is really fascinating i don't know it's definitely heretical yeah it's heretical right yeah um yeah so i don't i don't know but who knows who knows yeah do you are you interested at all in the bible or i'm super interested yes yes in the bible but"
},
{
"end_time": 2091.817,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2067.466,
"text": " Not just the Bible. I don't discount religion. I used to be this inexorable, uncompromising atheist from eight years old up until a few years ago. I used to be a fan of the four horsemen, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens. Who was the fourth in the fourth horseman?"
},
{
"end_time": 2112.398,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2092.21,
"text": " And then I started to realize, I don't know, I just think there's so much weirdness that we can't explain to the world."
},
{
"end_time": 2138.251,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2113.131,
"text": " Even through a physics lens, like I'm interested in the anthropic principle and sort of the Goldilocks environment that we live in. And to me that signals possible intelligent design and anomalies in evolution as well. And so I don't know whether that's God. God to me is sort of a placeholder term, but something mystical and intelligent. Have you heard of Demsci? No. So Demsci, I would like to look through this. And by the way,"
},
{
"end_time": 2166.8,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2138.831,
"text": " Me saying that I'm no longer this inexorable atheist doesn't mean that I'm now this devout religious person. It just means I don't deride the religious and I investigate and take it seriously. Dempsey has an argument based in math, which I would like to go through much like Donald Hoffman's, which Stephen Meyer, who's a proponent of intelligent design uses, which says, I think it says something like the search space of DNA or of"
},
{
"end_time": 2196.288,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2168.729,
"text": " The search space of evolution is too vast to have outputted this complexity this fast, something like that. Totally. But he uses something called the no free lunch theorem or no free lunch theorems. And that is by David Walport, who was a guest on top. And David Walport has this whole article saying like Demsci misused my arguments. And he also used them in words. And he's like, you need to make it mathematically precise. And there are two types of arguments, one where it's like art and literature and"
},
{
"end_time": 2214.855,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2196.852,
"text": " and no-go theorems."
},
{
"end_time": 2244.957,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2215.794,
"text": " but they're extremely powerful because they're precise. And he's like, his is in the just words arguments, which means you can't tell if it's true or not true. I can't even make a decision. Right. That's what Walpart says. So I want to get Walpart to talk with Demsci on the channel. Oh, interesting. Interesting. So yeah, true. Just words. It's like not even wrong or something. Yeah, interesting. What do you what do you make it? You've talked to a lot of the same people as me on the UFO front. What do you make of that world? And then"
},
{
"end_time": 2270.162,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2245.196,
"text": " Why don't I get even more concrete? Do you have a specific theory there? Because there is so much smoke and mirrors in that world. Yeah. And it is hard to get to the bottom of that haystack. Yeah. So why do you think, why do you think there is so much disinformation? Like is that itself a clue? This is something, by the way, I was talking to Ryan Graves about, which on another podcast recorded for 39 minutes of a two hour podcast."
},
{
"end_time": 2300.162,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2270.589,
"text": " They flew me to Boston for this. Yeah, I remember I I have such a hard time sleeping Insomnia. Yeah, and it's it's a crippling crippling. Oh now it's melatonin doesn't help it sometimes sometimes helps, but I don't like to take it too frequently because I'm extremely Cautious about being addicted or building tolerance. Sure. Sure. You're clearly like caffeine like a drink and make sure I note which days I drink coffee That's awesome. Yeah, but anyhow, so that was frustrating"
},
{
"end_time": 2325.094,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2300.64,
"text": " But I was speaking with him with Ryan Graves about, about, ah, yes, yes, yes. But some, the way that I look at this is in terms of clues, but yes, rather in terms of clues. So some people say, yeah, where's the proof? Well, firstly, in science, there is no proof of anything. There's no proof. You don't even think in terms of proof. You think in terms of evidence and plausible arguments and models and so on. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 2354.309,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2325.776,
"text": " But I think for here, the best way for me to conceptualize this is like Sherlock Holmes and then there's clues. Yes. So the Sherlock Holmes doesn't discount something because only one person said it. Instead, he takes it extremely seriously. He almost, I don't think he's ever said, yeah, but I'm not going to listen to that person because of so and so and so. Yes. And then not only that, so he incorporates, then he puts together, he prunes this tree, this, this like a rain most tree that a conjectural tree down to one solution by considering what is"
},
{
"end_time": 2372.5,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2355.503,
"text": " Well, he even said once you I think what's that phrase the the removal of the impossible what remains is only what what is or something like I've never heard. That's cool. Something like if you if you remove all that is impossible, then what remains has to be what is or what is possible something like that. And he even"
},
{
"end_time": 2401.8,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2373.063,
"text": " sees non-evidence as evidence. So one of the famous stories is there was a dog that didn't bark in some robbery or so. I forget what it was. And we just, if that was me, I would just not think much about that. Firstly, I wouldn't notice that a dog didn't bark. How do you notice the absence of something? Let alone take that and be like, that's important. So it came into play later in the story because he's like, that dog always barks. Why didn't it bark? Because it must have known the intruder. Otherwise it would have barked. So then he whittled down who the possible suspects could be."
},
{
"end_time": 2431.783,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2402.244,
"text": " So anyway, now I'm wondering, well, well, given that there's so much disinformation, is that itself a clue? Given that there's a lack of information, is that itself a clue? To what? I don't know. That's a great question. I mean, I honestly oscillate back and forth. It feels like maybe by design. What do you hope it is? My hope is that there's some ontological truth around like beings that are benevolent, that we could like ascend into their sort of state."
},
{
"end_time": 2459.48,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2432.295,
"text": " And then my my intuition is that there's a combination of those beings and bad ones and that that were sort of in the midst of a cosmic war and were low level instantiations or ponds in that cosmic war, which sounds insane. I realize. Yeah. Have you heard of the dark forest? No. What's the dark body problem? Oh, yeah. OK. Have you? So you've read it? I know I haven't. I've started the first one, but no, I don't. Can you tell me about it?"
},
{
"end_time": 2483.66,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2460.06,
"text": " I know he has sort of like an infant like well it's like the the aliens sort of stagnate the physics so we don't blow ourselves up or whatever. So as far as I know it's it's something it's like so here's something that that I think about frequently is that if you're exploring any topic and you're or if you're doing research on any topic I think you should explore the boundaries and have an answer to the question of"
},
{
"end_time": 2512.159,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2484.787,
"text": " What could the answer possibly be that would make me burn my hands for and not investigate this? So meaning like, for instance, AI, I have a feeling that the people developing people at OpenAI and Google, Google Brain and Microsoft, whatever their research is, that they could be creating the tools of civilizations demise. Yeah, and they need to be thinking about that deeply. Yeah. And same with Richard Feynman said this about the bomb. They weren't thinking about the they were just"
},
{
"end_time": 2539.667,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2512.602,
"text": " so fascinated by the physics. It was just fun to do research. They weren't thinking about how many millions of lives would be destroyed, how horrific and how the world would change forever. And Einstein said that he would burn his hands. How do you know? He would never signed off saying, like, you should build the bomb based on E equals MC squared and so on. He said after the bombs had dropped, he's like, I would have burned my hands. I would not have done that. And Oppenheimer's, you know, I am Shiva, destroyer of worlds or whatever. Yeah. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2568.746,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2540.213,
"text": " So then the then I wonder about the UFO scene. So some people, they're like, I want disclosure. Well, firstly, like that presumes the government has. Well, I think the government has more information. Almost everyone can can agree on that. I think so. Yeah. But well, full disclosure, whether that comes from the government or we actually find out what this is like, do you want to know? Do you truly want to investigate this? Do you know? I think that there's something about there is something to say about Pandora's box. There are truths that make you just want to recoil in horror. 100 percent."
},
{
"end_time": 2592.073,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2569.155,
"text": " unless you want to say that truth is by nature good in which case that's like a religious statement and that's a deep one and i hope that's true yeah if you truly believe that well what's your evidence speaking about evidence people want to say well yeah yeah yeah but anyhow so the dark forest story is where i think we're 200 years in the future and there's this tiny scientist and she's finds a way to contact"
},
{
"end_time": 2620.589,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2592.585,
"text": " other civilizations, if they're out there, by shooting some message to the sun and it broadcasts it intergalactically. So she does that and she says like, we're here, please help us, we're humans that are on this earth and so on. She gets a message back and it says, we heard you, if you know what's good for you, you will not send another message. Stop. Do not send any more messages. Wow. And she doesn't know where it's from. Maybe she knows where it's from, like some galaxy over there. And she's like, she thinks about it and she says,"
},
{
"end_time": 2645.043,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2621.732,
"text": " I'm sorry, Earth is too barbaric, we're at war, people dislike each other, there's racism, etc. Please, we're a primitive civilization, you're far more advanced than us, come save us. It turns out that initial message came from some galaxy, I've forgotten the galaxy, but it comes from a civilization called the Tri-Solarians. Tri-Solarians, like three suns. Tri-Solarians."
},
{
"end_time": 2672.005,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2645.708,
"text": " They have this civil... They're monitoring the skies, like looking for people who are going to talk to them. Why? Well, you get the answer, but you'll get the answer soon. They go and they find the other scientists who sent that other message that replied that said, don't send any more replies. They find them, they execute that person because you're supposed to be listening and tell your higher-ups like, look, we found another civilization. And it's because Earth has a resource and we didn't know that we had this resource."
},
{
"end_time": 2699.462,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2672.346,
"text": " So we think of our resources as like uranium or silver deposits or water or the Goldilocks zone, but it's so much more fundamental than that. The resource that we have is stability. The fact that we can even formulate laws of physics is like what Wolfram would call a pocket of of reducible complexity. We live in a place that we can even say F equals MA or E equals MC squared and then we look at look out at the universe and we see anomalies and we think oh that's because"
},
{
"end_time": 2727.619,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 2699.838,
"text": " We don't have the right laws and it's no, it's because the laws just don't work the way that you think they work. You're in a pocket of great stability. Yeah. So this is something that other civilizations desperately want because they live in chaos. And so as soon as they hear this, the tricell arms, they then start to come to earth and they tell the earthlings that we're coming. And some of the earthlings like today, they're like half their split. They're like, no, these are gods coming to save us. They're actually good. Let's communicate back with them."
},
{
"end_time": 2751.954,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 2728.063,
"text": " and you hear this today today and then the other half is like no these are demons which is another rhetoric you hear yeah stay away so anyway the that's fascinating it's but it's almost like a roar shock for the person or something it's like what's their orientation and that defines whether they think it's angels or demons or aliens or so you're touching on something fascinating because i do think"
},
{
"end_time": 2782.551,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 2753.507,
"text": " We seem to emphasize, I'm saying it trips me out. Yeah. Like these are tough subjects. They are. And, and if you like intuitively, I sometimes get the sense that we emphasize sort of nuts and bolts and crafts and ets and science exploration and all that seems fun. And actually that's somewhat of a distraction. And there's some sort of core ontological truth that is jarring if a person were to understand it."
},
{
"end_time": 2804.394,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 2783.012,
"text": " And that's maybe the hidden thing. Or convince themselves of it. Because there are some truths that are extremely, extremely convincing. It's so difficult to unconvince yourself of. And it could be false. Yeah, I don't know. It's so tricky. And there's some truths that are so damaging."
},
{
"end_time": 2831.305,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 2804.394,
"text": " I think if someone hasn't thought deeply enough, sorry, if someone doesn't think so, then you definitely have not thought deeply enough about it. Do you know anything? Yeah. Yeah. It's just truly, truly think, think, like, think yourself. Oh, my gosh. I can I can barely compose the words to talk about some of. Well, yeah. Well, do you think that certain heterodox scientists in the past"
},
{
"end_time": 2854.65,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 2832.381,
"text": " Let's frame this differently because clearly in the distant past, heterodox scientists have been persecuted. Galileo or Giordano Bruno or people like that, that would make me think maybe in the recent past, there are scientists who have been persecuted for having heterodox ideas, like in the 20th century."
},
{
"end_time": 2872.295,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 2855.333,
"text": " Do you think that any of that is true? Like there are obviously all the conspiracies around Tesla and his work. I mean, do you think that these are just sort of crazy fringe conspiracies or? So here's one story that I don't know what to make of it and I haven't heard an explanation. Edward Lee Scotland. Have you heard of him? No. Edward Lee Scotland is this"
},
{
"end_time": 2899.923,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 2872.824,
"text": " five foot two person super skinny because all he ate was sardines apparently and crackers and was a recluse just alone. I don't think he had a wife but even if it doesn't make a difference to the story he didn't have friends and he built what I believe is called Coral Mountain so you can overlay whatever this is correctly. Oh Coral Gables. I don't know. Yes. Yeah. So it's these massive stone structures that are precise to the millimeter that to this day"
},
{
"end_time": 2927.039,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 2900.623,
"text": " You would need teams and huge machinery to get even close, and it's still not as precise. But the point is that he said, Edward Lee Scotland said he understood the laws of electricity and magnetism, and he understood how the pyramids were made. But he would never tell anyone. And sometimes children would peer through and try and see like, how are you making it? And then he would just stop doing what so I'm so curious for why why if you had the secrets, and how did you do it?"
},
{
"end_time": 2955.162,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 2927.602,
"text": " There's apparently this infamous story of like a gate at Coral... Gardens? Gables? Gables. There's this gate that it's two tons, however many, it's extremely heavy. And it's on a divot or a rivet where pushing it is like so smooth. But then afterwards there's some storm or some issue happened and then it became stuck. So then they had to re-put it in place, like man, now."
},
{
"end_time": 2978.302,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 2955.384,
"text": " and they took many people and plenty of machinery and now it's nowhere near as smooth even though we have so much machinery. He just did it by himself. That's as far as we can tell. Yeah and there's like all sorts of megalithic architecture from you know thousands of years ago when we didn't have anywhere close to the civil engineering that we have today and we couldn't even recreate those things now with our current civil engineering."
},
{
"end_time": 2999.599,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 2978.302,
"text": " I do have, I do think it's valid to inquire into that and ask questions there and I guess the Tesla thing I was sort of getting at, maybe this is BS, was like I think he was doing zero point experiments. Like that was always the holy grail for him in Westinghouse in Long Island and it was like funded by JP Morgan and then the funding was pulled and the question is like"
},
{
"end_time": 3021.903,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3000.128,
"text": " The government did, this is not a conspiracy, the government did like lock up his files and actually the person who went through the files is John Trump, who's Trump's uncle, who is a very prominent scientist at the Rad Lab at MIT. He's a radar expert and he worked with Vannevar Bush and all the top scientists of that day and"
},
{
"end_time": 3052.5,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3022.5,
"text": " The question is always like, did Tesla discover something fundamentally new that was hidden, or is that just... What is your intuition? I don't know. You're undecided on that. Undecided? I'd say pretty probably didn't, would be my guess, but I find it interesting. What you bring up is extremely important, meaning that, namely, that scientists, the heterodox meaning, like they have some different point of view or different belief, they get"
},
{
"end_time": 3077.005,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3053.097,
"text": " Scorned and disparaged for talking about it publicly and then the question is well then they'll say the objection is there is no evidence for what you're saying and Most of these scientists would say you're right. So can we look for it? Yeah, how do we find the evidence without inquiring about it? Are we not allowed to even question? so part like one of the reasons why I I Love your channel"
},
{
"end_time": 3103.899,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3077.176,
"text": " Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, firstly, you do a great job with editing. Thank you. Great. Appreciate it. Yeah. And it's like there's someone else who does a great job and you had him on as well. The red panic wall. Oh, he's awesome. Yeah. This stuff makes you want to weep. Like how much research it goes Ken Burns of UFOs. Yeah. Fascinating. He's great. Yeah. You know, a lot of your podcast is is dedicated to the guests and their ideas."
},
{
"end_time": 3117.91,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3104.292,
"text": " After having interviewed some of the top scientists in the US and the world, do you think there are overlooked areas of science where maybe if you weren't working on tow, you'd investigate these sort of areas?"
},
{
"end_time": 3144.087,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3119.872,
"text": " So algorithmic information theory, that's David Walpart's with the limiting theorems like no free lunch theorems. David Walpart said the largest philosophical results are in algorithmic information theory. So that's an intersection of computation and information and it has to do with complexity. Like you've heard this term Kalmagorov complexity, have you heard of it? No. Okay, so the Kalmagorov complexity of something is how much information is needed to specify it."
},
{
"end_time": 3169.582,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3144.087,
"text": " So for instance, you think pi, the digits are infinite. So maybe you need an infinite amount of digits, sorry, infinite amount of information to specify it. No, because there's a formula. So how much information goes into that formula? Oh, okay. Another way of thinking of it is like, you have some out, okay, a program gives you an output, like on your phone, there's some output or on your computer, then you wonder, well, how much information was in the program needed to generate that output?"
},
{
"end_time": 3194.804,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3170.009,
"text": " So you can look at the output, you can think, well, it's extremely complex, like a fractal. Actually, a fractal is like three terms, the Z equals so and so. So that's Kalamogorov complexity. Turns out calculating the Kalamogorov complexity is itself uncomputable in general, meaning that there is no algorithm to compute the Kalamogorov complexity. Girdles and completeness theorem isn't exactly"
},
{
"end_time": 3225.043,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3195.401,
"text": " algorithmic information theory, but it's tangent to it. So that's an interesting result. So that's something that I would study category theory. So something I interviewed so many people on their different toes and people often ask, well, what's your favorite toe? And I see them as as like as if they're different toes. But I'm thinking like they're often reflections of something deeper and they're imprecise. And there's often mud and dirt that needs to be wiped off. So it's not completely I'm touching the trunk. I'm touching the leg. You're touching the tail. It's not completely that."
},
{
"end_time": 3254.394,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3225.862,
"text": " But it's more like, imagine you can expand that where some people like, I smell the grass. Oh, I feel like I'm being bathed. And then that's still part of the elephant because the elephant smells like grass in its best case. And then the and then you're being rained on because the trunk is out putting water. So more like experiential claims as well, not just all feeling other senses. So I get that that they're reflections of something. And what I'm attempting to do and doing just unconsciously is like this metaphysical Rosetta stone."
},
{
"end_time": 3280.52,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3254.684,
"text": " where there are different concepts being talked about different with different words and different so Chris Langen may say this is a syntactic covering of so-and-so then you're like what's a syntactic covering and this person may call it something else and you realize oh they're talking about the same so what I am attempting to do is a metaphysical Rosetta Stone and then there's this branch of mathematics called category theory which itself is a Rosetta Stone of math so there are these different"
},
{
"end_time": 3307.21,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3281.903,
"text": " sections of math so physics is can be considered a section of math where you have physical systems so like this could be a physical system and then you do something to it so you transform it you light it on fire and then it becomes another physical system or even this and then you leave it there or like this that was a transformation of this system so you have a system transformation goes to another system okay in math you have axioms"
},
{
"end_time": 3336.988,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3307.807,
"text": " And then you do something, which is the proof or deduction, to come up with another statement. So you have statements, which is the deduction statements. Physics, you have systems, transformation, physical transformation, another system. Computer science, you have data types, you do something to it, which is the program, and you come up with another data type or something else. So it turns out that between math, which is the axioms, proof."
},
{
"end_time": 3366.664,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3337.295,
"text": " Another set of statements and computer science, which is types, data types, and then you do something to the program and you come up with some output. There's an analogy, an exact analogy, and that's called the Curry Howard correspondence. That's like from the 1970s. That alone blows my mind. Then it turns out that there's a correspondence between the way that the systems in physics work, which transform into another system and the way that math works and the way that computer science works. And that's encapsulated with category theory. And it's the same as just"
},
{
"end_time": 3372.329,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3367.005,
"text": " As logic and logical deductions and I forgot the I forgot the third the fourth one"
},
{
"end_time": 3402.363,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3372.585,
"text": " Regardless, category theory is a Rosetta stone of mathematics, of logical thinking. So I'm curious if category theory can be used to help me come up with this Rosetta stone of toes. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, if toes are based on something analytical, which I don't think they are, and it may be the case that even conceiving of toe is partially analytic, maybe diminishing and completely misleading, that may be the case. But either way, I'm willing to explore it in the same way that some scientists I think should be willing to explore, but there is no evidence for."
},
{
"end_time": 3432.125,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3402.363,
"text": " Yes, that's a so interesting. So category theory is to, I guess it's dependent on, it's dependent on it being math based. I think the fourth one was category theory itself. Sorry. Okay. Category theory and is you have what are called objects and then morphisms to another object. So it's like a point. Then you have an edge to another point."
},
{
"end_time": 3459.121,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3432.91,
"text": " And so the question is can you do a similar Rosetta Stone mapping of toes which would be fascinating. That's one of the reasons I wanted to make that artistic piece because that would help me. It wouldn't be precise because it's not like David Wolpert would say those are just words in a sense. But it gives me an intuition and that's what I build off of. That's what any scientist builds off of, a researcher builds off of. That would be fascinating to just build a true map. What would the"
},
{
"end_time": 3487.671,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3459.616,
"text": " map sort of look like like would it look like a database or like a like a relational database sort of thing or one of the easiest answers is to just take theoretical physics which is already relegating reality to just what physics is and then relegating that to theoretical physics and then take okay what are the contenders for toes in theories of everything in in the physical sense the theoretical physics physical sense so string theory loop quantum gravity perhaps geometric unity wolf from here at least shape dynamics"
},
{
"end_time": 3500.486,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3488.063,
"text": " Causal dynamic triangulation song. Okay, so you take maybe 10 and then you you put them on the x-axis and then you say okay What are the unresolved problems in physics and you put that on the y-axis? So there's"
},
{
"end_time": 3524.002,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3502.039,
"text": " Well, I can give you some later if you're going to include this. So there's about 20 unsolved problems in physics that are considered like these are major problems. Whether or not they are, even that's a bit somewhat controversial, but regardless. So it would be like quantum gravity. Can you quantize gravity or geometrize the quantum? Like unify them in some way."
},
{
"end_time": 3553.575,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3525.145,
"text": " and why are why oh neutrinos do neutrinos have mass or neutrino oscillation there's some other problems CP violation so and so so whatever whatever and then check marks does this which theories solve which one so that's one way of at least showing diagrammatically a relationship between them but then they're not subsets of one another they're not that's like a ranking of the toes rather than a relationship but that's something that I'm working on with a mathematician friend of mine named"
},
{
"end_time": 3580.247,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3553.951,
"text": " Carlos Zapata and he works for the Wolfram Institute, but I told him he's not allowed to be biased against them. Well, I think why that would be so interesting is it goes back to your answer to the question of like why you're not good at answering a question if you don't know the answer. You usually just say I don't know and you go down this sort of like database of your own knowledge or whatever. Just having a map of like"
},
{
"end_time": 3603.558,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3580.589,
"text": " Quantum gravity solves this, but it creates this problem. Literally just seeing that with like the 20 most credible toes I think would be really cool. And then you can sort of play whack-a-mole and like maybe mix and match in certain places and then try to reconcile theory instead of it, you know, the holy grail always being quantum field theory and you know, relativity or whatever."
},
{
"end_time": 3625.93,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3604.189,
"text": " Maybe it could be like two new toes that are like derivatives of like they're attempting to solve that but like maybe those two new toes actually are compatible based on the pros and cons or something. I often think we we think that the problem or we've been told that the problem is quantum gravity. Weinstein says like that's this huge distraction because there are other problems but I also think rather than trying to combine"
},
{
"end_time": 3648.234,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3626.613,
"text": " quantum field theory in general relativity or the standard model in general relativity. We think that it's like a jigsaw puzzle. We just have to find the right angle. How do you know that there's just these two pieces? What if there's 12 other pieces or 25 other pieces and these two don't directly connect this connects to this which connects to this which connects to this which connects that maybe it's not even 2d maybe it's 3d totally they're not supposed to connect yeah"
},
{
"end_time": 3663.439,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 3648.558,
"text": " That's a great point. Then your mind just explodes and then you're just left in a pool looking at the sun and wondering about your existence. Yeah, we're not good at multivariant systems."
},
{
"end_time": 3692.346,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 3663.78,
"text": " Concatenize everything into like something super coherent. Yeah, it's like I know the answer but yeah Yeah, and and also I think of that as something demeaning But I also wonder how much of that if there's something loving about that like there's some we often think loving is like the connections and the Union and you become one with mmm Jonathan Pagel said that Jonathan Pagel, you know, I don't so Jonathan Pagel is like a Symbolist he studies symbols. Okay a Christian icon or a Christian iconographer cool. Yeah, I"
},
{
"end_time": 3704.667,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 3692.756,
"text": " He says that the Christian way to salvation is different than the non-dualist way. And this is something Wolfgang Smith who, the reason I came to LA also echoes."
},
{
"end_time": 3728.507,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 3705.282,
"text": " We have this perennial view that all religions have some aspect of truth and I tend to have that because I'm just like a liberal person and I want that to be the case. So I tend to always try to find well what's the commonality between them? What's the truth between them? He was saying that started actually in the early 1900s by a few people who corrupted this and said like almost every religion has something credible to it. I'm not saying I believe their ideas when I'm just saying this is what they say."
},
{
"end_time": 3749.377,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 3729.616,
"text": " and that's called"
},
{
"end_time": 3773.49,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 3750.162,
"text": " There is just two real religions and one is the Vedic traditions. It's not even Buddhism, because Vedic has some contradictions with Buddhism, namely about gods and what you should do, what you're sacrificing and so on, rituals and so on. And Buddhism is like non-theistic and just focuses on the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. So the Vedic tradition and then the Christian tradition and then"
},
{
"end_time": 3800.026,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 3774.121,
"text": " Often we in our spiritual circles, the ones that we run in, we hear and we also, at least for myself, tend to think, you know, the Eastern one is the one that's more encompassing. Right. And the Eastern one encompasses the West. And so the Western is like so literal and so so prosaic. But actually, this is something I've come to think about for the past few months, independent of them. I was wondering, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 3817.159,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 3800.486,
"text": " Is it the"
},
{
"end_time": 3845.742,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 3817.654,
"text": " The East has just been so influenced by the West in the past 100 years or so that they're able to comprehend it in the same way. But we look at the West, we look at the East, sorry, in the West, we look at the East as being colorful and being so open and creative, like, wow, there's so many ideas, there's spirits and reincarnation and so on. But they look at that in the same way we look at Christianity is like, that's just so prosaic and bromidic and flatlined. And when they hear about Christianity for the first time, they're like, oh, oh, right. Right. It turns out that that is the case."
},
{
"end_time": 3870.469,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 3845.981,
"text": " So Jonathan Pagel says the Christian way of salvation is"
},
{
"end_time": 3888.302,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 3870.947,
"text": " Is unity with God, but it's retaining your multiplicity and actually becoming more multiple, which is something that we can't do. We don't even have the words for or the comps on concepts for like we think unity means same as. But there's a phrase that Jonathan Peugeot said."
},
{
"end_time": 3917.91,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 3888.729,
"text": " quoting someone, maybe C.S. Lewis, that the blades of grass in heaven are sharper, are too sharp for man. Meaning that somehow, heaven, rather than this being illusory, which is what the Vedic traditions tend to emphasize, the Western tradition tends to emphasize, no, no, no, this is real, and it will only become more real. The blades of grass are so sharp, you can't handle them right now. You're going to, like he says, Jonathan Pagel says, Saint Paul will be more saint-like, rather than being more god-like and just in a sea of nothingness."
},
{
"end_time": 3939.991,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 3918.968,
"text": " So that's extremely, extremely interesting to think about. That's fascinating. I love that. Imagine that's what sacrifice is, is somehow you love it so much that you give it an element of God because that needs to be there, but you retain your multiplicity, much like there's something loving and naming all the animals. I asked my dad when I was doing it, like, why?"
},
{
"end_time": 3968.985,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 3939.991,
"text": " And I love the idea of systematically trying to not pre-crystallize knowledge and just"
},
{
"end_time": 3995.384,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 3969.258,
"text": " thinking of truth almost instead of it being like a clear end state is almost like a dialectic process which is kind of like what you're engaging it like I think of Plato's symposium it's like you're just dwelling on the virtues and then you're sort of talking about it parapetetically with these other really intelligent people and I think about your show and it's kind of like that you know you're sort of best case like hopefully thank you yeah no I mean it it is yeah sometimes I wonder"
},
{
"end_time": 4006.425,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 3995.794,
"text": " I get intimations of the more monastic types, which would say, you know, don't even talk about it by talking about it, you're distracting and diminishing your"
},
{
"end_time": 4032.432,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4007.585,
"text": " It's wild that you're saying that because this is something I'm thinking a lot about right now and I was just gonna say something very similar which is like"
},
{
"end_time": 4063.166,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4033.763,
"text": " There's a part of the setup of reality itself that is so sacred where I'm sure you relate to me on this. Like I'm so in my head about like, you know, I got to find the truth. I got to figure this out. What's underneath the fabric of reality? And you can drive yourself a little crazy, you know. That's an understatement, man. Yeah, you can go on these like weird wild goose chases and end up in all sorts of places. And sometimes I think about it and I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 4091.886,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4063.951,
"text": " You know, I'm not feeling well today. Maybe I should have just taken care of myself and not or like maybe some banal Not banal sacred human connection that I'm considering banal that I'm overlooking so I can read this book because I'm like so curious about this one bizarro theory That it's maybe the connection thing that like I'm really kind of it's feeling like I should I should indulge That's the more important sacred thing. Yes, and that will bring you to"
},
{
"end_time": 4109.582,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4092.312,
"text": " Some sort of theory of everything where it'll bring out innate knowledge and you've in the future that like where you perceive things at a higher level or something and I'm sure you struggle with this the the tension between the intellectual curiosity and then the"
},
{
"end_time": 4124.701,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4110.128,
"text": " I just have to live my life every day and like do what I feel like doing like that. That's so hard for me. It doesn't come naturally to me. My wife saved my life like saves my life every day. She saves my life in many many ways. One of them is just"
},
{
"end_time": 4144.974,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4126.22,
"text": " She doesn't think about any of these topics. She doesn't care about these. She doesn't understand them. She yawns if I bring up a three syllable word. And it's like so insulting. But it brings you down to size, cuts you down to size. Carl Jung said what separates Nietzsche from him is that or what happens is that it's easy to"
},
{
"end_time": 4167.654,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4145.486,
"text": " Is it that?"
},
{
"end_time": 4182.637,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4168.012,
"text": " Verveki had the four P's. Is it just propositional? Is there something true about simply living, like somehow living and being loving and being good? If you're experiencing anxiety or disquietude or consternation, then there's something that's"
},
{
"end_time": 4205.282,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4183.131,
"text": " false. There's a false exactly that true and false don't just apply to statements like Pythagorean theorem is true or false. It's not just that. It can also be modes of action can be true or false. Yes. And the theory of a theory of everything can not only have a propositional component, but many others process components and perhaps one is primary. Maybe the process is perhaps maybe it's just just live your life and somehow that's true."
},
{
"end_time": 4224.104,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4205.282,
"text": " And help yourself and take some time off or go and be with your spouse and get a spouse."
},
{
"end_time": 4242.039,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4224.394,
"text": " or it's hard because it's your family whenever i've done that for periods of time and i'll feel amazing yes and then there's some like i'd call it like a spirit uh primordial wound or something that pops up when i'm i'm good and i'm like i'm feeling great yes and then i'm like"
},
{
"end_time": 4262.688,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4242.961,
"text": " Now I've got to achieve, I've got to accomplish, I've got to get back to work. I have an insecurity. Mine comes from insecurity. I cannot be lazy. I feel like someone else is working or I have so much potential or I could be doing something and I'm wasting it here. I'm just wasting it, wasting it, wasting it."
},
{
"end_time": 4284.94,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4262.688,
"text": " You shouldn't conceptualize it like a transaction. There's something left brain and false about that. Not that the left brain is only false."
},
{
"end_time": 4303.677,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4285.572,
"text": " yes but anyhow yeah that's that's in me as well also something that's in me is anytime i'm extremely happy there's a doubt a thought that comes in like an intrusive thought like it's actually ocd like not ocd most people think is germophobia that's obsessive compulsive personality that's different ocd is like intrusive thoughts"
},
{
"end_time": 4322.278,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4303.848,
"text": " so i have if something is going extremely well i'll think like oh yeah but but didn't you what what if this happens and what if that happens yes and or what if that what if this is not even the case like it's not even real yeah i'm like jeez but luckily i can manage that but it just occurs yeah even when i was watching dame cook when i was 18 yeah i'm like"
},
{
"end_time": 4351.34,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4322.278,
"text": " I remember, I'm not supposed to find him funny because I'm studying comedy and comedians supposedly don't like Dane Cook. And I'm like, no, he's funny. I'm like, oh, I don't think that's an interesting thought. Why do I find him funny? You're not supposed to find him funny. I'm sitting there judging him, but I'm like, isn't he funny? Yeah. Oh, you find him funny. You're not in that high quality of a comedian. Yeah, yeah. Geez, it's so low. People I know who are brainy and more heads in vats or whatever, people, which I am and I think you might be too, we often get"
},
{
"end_time": 4379.445,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4352.398,
"text": " There's like an intelligence below the mind below the analytical mind where there's actually a book I'm reading called power versus force by a guy named David Hawkins And it's a little woo, but it's kind of like, you know, the field all the books a lot are yeah Yeah, you know, yeah, it's either that or like pop physics like I'll read some Carl Over Valley, but like yeah like Helga land or whatever but like so it talks about how the the body you know, like reflexology this idea that like"
},
{
"end_time": 4399.565,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4380.094,
"text": " like you can muscle test, which is somewhat of a woo idea. You might be able to connect it to somebody like Michael Levin's work that like, you know, there's something about it. Amazing. And I want to get into that because he's my favorite. And he's not even a theoretical physicist. And I have a crazy prediction actually with with Michael Levin, which is that"
},
{
"end_time": 4427.193,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4400.367,
"text": " of all the people on your show, he's going to actually come up with a toe that like integrates possibly physics. And the reason I think that is because I follow him on Twitter and like other channels and he'll post, he's clearly interested in like interdisciplinary stuff. He's not just a biologist to like read about consciousness. And he's even talked about it. I mean, you had him on with Yoshua Bach and he's clearly like a very deep thinker. And I think, I think he doesn't talk"
},
{
"end_time": 4439.872,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4427.637,
"text": " Openly about"
},
{
"end_time": 4465.981,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4440.35,
"text": " Theorists it's just so hard. It's like maybe it is falsifiable on some level But it's like n of one or two who can like do actually peer review it or whatever And so I would go if I were like, you know putting my venture hat on that on any of the toe guests That would be it would be him. Yeah. Yeah, I would I would as well but go is totally circuitous but going back to our power versus force power versus force I think that there is"
},
{
"end_time": 4482.637,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 4466.732,
"text": " I think the body is way more intelligent than we realize. And if you feel like doing something, that is insanely valuable. And if you don't feel like doing something, and there's something about modern society that is so wildly normative."
},
{
"end_time": 4512.483,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 4483.473,
"text": " You could get dissociated from your instincts. It's such a young, you know, we like even like the schooling model It's like based on the Hessian system or whatever where you have a bell that goes off because like you were supposed to you know Hit the farms or whatever and it messes with your circadian rhythm as a kid because the teachers have to get home to their kids and it's just like bizarre and then you're sitting there in this desk and it's like if you were just doing what you felt like as a kid, you wouldn't be doing that and so there's something about that"
},
{
"end_time": 4541.254,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 4512.91,
"text": " Ripping away of your kind of intellectual mind from like your core Instincts on what you feel like doing that I think is very maladaptive for the average person and it's specifically people like us where it's like there you get lost in your head and I'm always like I can't miss out on this opportunity or I can't have to talk to this person or whatever this from in my case like just I have to be working have to be working have to be working totally and and and then"
},
{
"end_time": 4567.688,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 4541.613,
"text": " Often I'm like sometimes I'll be like, you know what I I actually feel like missing this thing and the analytical mind is like it makes no sense to miss this thing you can't miss this thing and I want to say 95% of the time the like visceral feel state thing is like right and it has this bizarre intelligence that's Thinking on like a quant it's thinking on a level that it far surpasses the analytical thing"
},
{
"end_time": 4595.418,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 4567.944,
"text": " Where it's like, you know, the analytical thing has like three factors. It's sort of, you know, considering and the body thing is clearly thinking on some level that the analytical mind can't even catch up to. And I realize this is, you can, you know, make this sort of a trite, you know, Malcolm Gladwell blink point or whatever, that there's something about the gut that is somehow more intelligent. But, uh, but I think it's true. And I think it's specifically like for people like us."
},
{
"end_time": 4623.319,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 4596.084,
"text": " The easy things can be hard for people like us or whatever. It's like the everyday living is hard and the super abstract is like that's our escape or something. So firstly, I'm overemphasizing, I'm over exaggerating how much I say inside, like I have to work, I have to work. I actually do love working. It's like a compulsion. I just, I love to do it. It's almost like an itch, like I have to. So maybe that's what I mean when I say I have to, like I love to. That's awesome. I want to."
},
{
"end_time": 4649.258,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 4623.814,
"text": " In the same way that there's a meal in front and you just want to gorge. For me, by the way, that's I'm abstemious, like I'm great with self-restraint. Yes. Except for food. I will fast for days because I know I want to overeat at some point. Yeah. I know a buffet is coming up, so I'm going to fast. That's cool. Anyhow, you mentioned you mentioned the okay. So for me, the I found that there was a couple of times where"
},
{
"end_time": 4657.892,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 4649.957,
"text": " You know, I'm just I'm just tired and I'll be like, No, but you have to work you have to. And there was like two times only in the past like six months that I was like, you know, let me just"
},
{
"end_time": 4686.357,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 4658.234,
"text": " Take the day off. I'll just relax at home. Be with my wife. Yeah, it was fantastic. Yeah, but the opportunities where you say like, no, you should do this. You should for me the ones that are correct are almost always ones that involve someone else. So for instance, remember today I was like, oh, should I even come? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then my wife's like, go do it, babe. Stop like because she knows I cancel all the time because of my sleep. Like my sleep won't work in the way I have to call it. Frantically call someone say I can't do this podcast. Like I can't even think of this. Can we do that? Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 4695.111,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 4686.544,
"text": " but every single time invariably when I do a podcast or I don't cancel or go to the dinner with the person or go out to that"
},
{
"end_time": 4725.299,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 4695.657,
"text": " meeting that social gathering that conference or whatever it may be yeah invariably it's it's positive that's awesome so mine is like the same way privately if there's something that i like i feel like oh i should be studying and i feel like i shouldn't then i shouldn't okay but if it's public like i feel like i don't think i should meet this person because no go meet yeah go out yes you will not regret it i love that's the way it works for me there's like two classes yeah i i think i'm similar i'm a hermit i am too i'm a reckless i'm a i'm"
},
{
"end_time": 4754.633,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 4725.299,
"text": " That's why one of the other guests on the channel I love is Richard Borchards. He's a mathematician because our personalities are so aligned. He's self-deprecating, self-doubting, isolating. He's working on some of the grandest problems. I'm thinking, why don't you collaborate? He just doesn't jive well with other people for whatever reason. I'm like, I'm the same way. Why don't I collaborate? Because it's difficult for me too. I just feel like we don't communicate in the same way or they don't share the same ideas or I'm selfish."
},
{
"end_time": 4780.094,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 4755.282,
"text": " So anyway, I'm isolated like that. Well, it's funny. I think geniuses throughout history, and I don't know if either of us are geniuses, but you can't never be a self-proclaimed genius. I'm just umbratic. But smart, well, I think you're incredibly smart, but maybe genius, but I'm definitely not. But I think traditionally they're sort of on an individual selection level."
},
{
"end_time": 4806.886,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 4781.015,
"text": " Often they're, they're kind of anti-social or they're, they're not, they don't have, you know, they're not super selected for it. Like they're often asexual, they're recluses. And then on a group of, uh, uh, selection level, they're there, they are selected for. And so this is actually, I was talking to this sort of interesting, like, uh, evolutionary biologist and he was saying in times of conflict where group evolutionary pressures are high."
},
{
"end_time": 4828.814,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 4807.449,
"text": " uh geniuses are often more selected for uh because maybe they'll you know come up with some theory that helps their group in wartime or whatever and so i i don't know it's random theory but like i think it was like tagliari was this like a italian uh sort of proto physicist who"
},
{
"end_time": 4858.643,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 4829.428,
"text": " figured out the trajectory of the cannonball and helped his like, this was pre Italian unification, so pre 19th century and helped his little fiefdom or whatever win. And he was like this, just this crazy kind of eccentric. So I don't know, I find that fascinating. Some of the smartest people I know are socially maladapted in some ways. And then even if it, like I would say for like me or you,"
},
{
"end_time": 4886.834,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 4859.104,
"text": " It doesn't doesn't meet the eye or something, but then there's like there's like something underneath. I'm like a little off. And I take pride in it. It doesn't mean when you say socially unadaptive, it doesn't mean that you don't have social skills like that's completely. Yeah, yeah. You just you're introverted. You don't enjoy. Yeah, you don't seek out. Totally. You're not gregarious. You're not temperamentally seeking out the company and enjoying the company of others. Yeah, totally. Exactly. Or you can like run"
},
{
"end_time": 4916.664,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 4887.483,
"text": " Social skills and emulation. I don't know what it is, but when you said about the school system in the hell, so this to me reminded reminded me of why I think AI is or the effect of AI. The impact of AI is underhyped. Yes. So think about overnight like chat GPT just came out. Yeah, firstly, it's adoption. Like, OK, it's like 100 million users and so on. So whatever it is, that's that's already cool. But then essays in school."
},
{
"end_time": 4943.729,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 4916.954,
"text": " People can now write essays. The whole category, which is like 50% of what you do at school, the whole category of writing essays, now the teachers have to think, how do we even tell, can we reevaluate this? And the school system is extremely slow moving because the government is extremely slow moving, so public institutions are slow moving. I don't know why, I don't know if it's inherent, but they are slow moving."
},
{
"end_time": 4953.08,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 4944.189,
"text": " What's what I think a sonic boom happens because something else can move so much quicker than the other than what's around it."
},
{
"end_time": 4978.097,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 4953.507,
"text": " And that's like creates a shockwave. Yeah. So AI will just only increase increase and the regulations for it either either to close down in certain areas like restrict Google restrict or restrict a certain section of AI for whatever maybe and then opening up maybe there's somewhere you need to open up that is so slow and AI will just out compete in like one week already it just decimated decimated is also like a false word"
},
{
"end_time": 5006.783,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 4978.626,
"text": " Decimated means to make 90% because it means only remove 110. Okay, so decimators like decimate, decimate, decimate the whole essay system, which is like 50% of the school in one week. And that's and that's just edits. And that's just now. So what the heck will it be six months from now? What will it be three years from now? I think that because there's this slow moving institution that we're in, which is this public institution, and then there's the fast moving AI, it will be so much more disruptive as I don't like that word. So let's say so much more"
},
{
"end_time": 5035.725,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5007.619,
"text": " So much more groundbreaking, so much more, much more effective and impactful because it's moving so quick relative to how quick the public institutions can move. Do you think there's something fundamentally, maybe ineffable, but unique about human art? Or do you think that's just the total fallacy? No, I do. You do? Yeah, yeah. So this is something I only this a present deliberation. All of these are present deliberations. It's just my current thinking. Yeah, sure."
},
{
"end_time": 5055.862,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5036.8,
"text": " I used to go to the museums and then you'd see on the wall you see like that and then there'd be card next to it and it would say the person's life story. I don't care about that. I just want to look at the Mona Lisa or look at that or look at that. I don't care. I don't want to know about the artist at all. Now I've come to think that that's the most important part of the art piece."
},
{
"end_time": 5068.063,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5056.101,
"text": " The fact that the history that went into it, the emotions that went into it, the reasons that went into it. This person was persecuted and came up with this. This person was the first to do so and so in the context of a society that did so and so."
},
{
"end_time": 5098.268,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5068.968,
"text": " Whereas AI art, it's objectively can be objectively better when you just look at it like a proposition. But in terms of the history that goes into it in physics, there's a notion called path dependence, meaning it actually doesn't. We tend to think like, OK, it's here X and Y and and it's momentum and its position is so and so. But in physics, its state can be different depending on if it came to there from this path versus if it came to here from this path or if it made too many curves and so on."
},
{
"end_time": 5124.548,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5098.712,
"text": " So the history of what produced the art to me is a part of the art. And the AI art is like, it just appears. There's no path. You can't even know what the AI... If, by the way, the AI gets to the point where it can say, I made the decision to do so and so because of this, and I waited the choices because of this, and I thought of this, and I weighed this pro and con, I would appreciate that art far more. Yeah, so there's something about the, it's like the Cervantes quote,"
},
{
"end_time": 5154.548,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5125.06,
"text": " Meaning lies in the journey and not at the end at the end of the road or something. There's something about the process, right? Right. And I keep getting to that over and over the process in the state. And by the way, in in math and graph theory, you have nodes. So these are nodes like vertices, like points. And you have edges. Yes. What connects them? There's a one to one duality between the edge and the nodes. You can flip them and you can look at it from a different perspective. So you can look at it in terms of the states or you can look at it in terms of the process."
},
{
"end_time": 5181.152,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5154.787,
"text": " Do you think that the mind is a classical computer? Do you think it's a quantum computer? Do you think it's a hybrid classical quantum computer? Or do you think it is none of the above? Something fundamentally different? Present deliberation is we were trying to. We are so young with our words like I think that some of these questions that me and you ask and we ponder over, we just are so."
},
{
"end_time": 5202.773,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5182.278,
"text": " inarticulate and rudimentary with the tools that we have it would be like a kid who who is four years old and is asking but where does chocolate come from and where do babies come from and what is money and how does that work and it's just stressing itself out and you're like as an adult like relax like you cannot"
},
{
"end_time": 5231.886,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5203.114,
"text": " Those aren't even important questions, first of all. If you think, why are we here? Existence and so on are the most important. Maybe it's so trivial from like some other perspective. And we think like all we think some of the Bernardo Castro and the idealist and so on. All that is is consciousness. I remember thinking, man, the physicalist side is so close minded and they're so uncreative. Let me go to the spiritualist side. And I find that, man, the mystics like are not mystical enough. All their major answer tends to uncreatively come down to its consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 5261.34,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5231.886,
"text": " What if consciousness is first thing, well, what the heck is it? But what if there's 12 other elements? Like it's not even a dualist. It's like a 12-list or 157-list. I like the number 157. Why? There's various reasons. That's interesting. Can we get into any of them or no? Okay, okay. So cool. Anyhow, so from our level, I wonder if it's like we think existence and why are we here and what is consciousness and the heart problem of consciousness."
},
{
"end_time": 5278.404,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 5261.613,
"text": " We think that these are the deepest, most profound, most inexplicable problems or, or most, yes, most profound problems, but made it so trivial, like as an adult to a kid, like chocolate, like you don't even need to concern yourself with that. Just relax, like live your life."
},
{
"end_time": 5308.882,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 5279.258,
"text": " Yeah, I often wonder that. So I have this phrase that I say internally, which is like, the mystics aren't mystical enough. Mystics just come down to the same exact answer of all of them. And so I'm so almost all the time I'm terribly disappointed when I investigate a toe. It's like go in with high hopes thinking like it's going to be the answer. And then I'm like, is that what you're saying? Is that all that you're saying? Yeah, I thought that it was going to be much more vast and be mind blowing. Yeah, it's like all the same sort of my if it's mind blowing, it's mind blowing in the exact same way. Yeah. Well,"
},
{
"end_time": 5334.974,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 5309.684,
"text": " First off, I fully agree with you in terms of larger kind of epistemology. And yes, it always gets, it's like the thinking itself is fascinating up until the conclusion and then that sort of makes it more banal or something. I will say, I think a lot of the early quantum field theorists felt more mystical than a lot of the current scientists today. And I think about our epistemology,"
},
{
"end_time": 5362.312,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 5335.435,
"text": " And there is something I don't necessarily believe the Penrose kind of orchestrated objective reduction thing. But that's creative, by the way. It is. I love him for that, for the fact that he's willing to go out on a limb and connect, firstly, consciousness to something quantum mechanical, then to something gravidical, like something gravity. Absolutely. And he was super criticized. He was kind of cast out at that point from the physics community. And I do find it interesting, something in that realm of like,"
},
{
"end_time": 5380.077,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 5362.91,
"text": " The mind creates the classical kind of perception that we see and we use sort of relativity to explain like cosmology or something. But maybe there's more ontological truth, maybe quantum, the quantum stuff is"
},
{
"end_time": 5395.845,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 5380.742,
"text": " isn't just shut up and calculate in a set of mathematical formalisms, but is a descriptor of reality. And then you get into all sorts of weird philosophical questions because then it's like, okay, so time doesn't work the way we think it does and all sorts of issues like that."
},
{
"end_time": 5416.63,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 5396.664,
"text": " But to me, that's such an exciting inroad. And then you read about Niels Bohr or you read about Heisenberg. I'm reading Rovelli's Helgeland and I read Beyond Physics, which is sort of Heisenberg's own account of some of his work, but the more philosophical thinking behind it."
},
{
"end_time": 5445.179,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 5417.244,
"text": " And it's like, these guys were trippy philosophers, you know, like they weren't like these, like, you know, I have the answer. Like they were like sort of, there's this like constant inquiry process and they were really touching at like, you know, what, what is, what is reality? And even, even Einstein who he got in all these debates with the Copenhagen school, he was like, God, God doesn't play dice, you know, and they were thinking about like, what is the truth and what is reality? It wasn't just straight to like,"
},
{
"end_time": 5464.65,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 5445.469,
"text": " You know,"
},
{
"end_time": 5482.312,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 5465.009,
"text": " They don't teach you quantum theory in school. Like when you go to a class on quantum theory, second year or third, even in your graduate school, graduate studies, it's not quantum theory, it's quantum mechanics, quantum field theory. Theory not only gives you the math, but tells you what is it describing. So Tim would say,"
},
{
"end_time": 5512.398,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 5482.654,
"text": " Every time you went to the lectures for any of the physics classes, the best lecture would be the first one because they would give you this. They would sell you on the course. And then after that, then you then they abandon that. They're like, OK, here's Green's functions and here's a Hilbert. Here's a self-adjoint operator. And then you wonder, OK, well, well, what is that representing and what does that mean? And he said that you would ask you put his hands up and the professor would say, well, for that, you'd have to go to the philosophy department. He said, I thought physics was about what is you're not you're not telling me what we're doing."
},
{
"end_time": 5541.34,
"index": 231,
"start_time": 5512.773,
"text": " So yes, yeah, that is something that's lost. And also, physicists are making metaphysical assumptions without knowing. So there's a concept that I bring up frequently called enthememes, meaning that there are statements with assumptions that are so, so hidden, we don't realize we're making them. Okay, classic example is the fish that doesn't understand us in water. Yes. And then David Foster, well, yeah, and Wittgenstein had comments that of"
},
{
"end_time": 5563.404,
"index": 232,
"start_time": 5541.732,
"text": " Something called clarificatory remarks, which is those aspects of the world that are so simple and familiar that they remain hidden. It's fascinating. So Ed Witten had a theorem with Weinberg that said, essentially it says that in three plus one quantum field theory, so three space one time, three plus one quantum field theory,"
},
{
"end_time": 5579.957,
"index": 233,
"start_time": 5563.66,
"text": " there can be no Graviton essentially says that so it sounds like well what's the hope then you can never integrate gravity with quantum field theory and then the Anthememe the hidden assumption that even was so subtle Witten didn't make it explicit didn't realize he was making it is that"
},
{
"end_time": 5607.142,
"index": 234,
"start_time": 5580.435,
"text": " You're assuming the graviton is within the same space time. So what if there's another space time associated with it? That's where you get the idea of holography. Yeah. So that there's a quantum field theory happening on the boundary. Yeah. But in a different space time on the interior, there's gravity. You know, you're making me think is that like it's maybe it's just super valuable to like work on your own fundamental epistemology. And that helps you create that they're like, I think about Eric Weinstein's like,"
},
{
"end_time": 5620.299,
"index": 235,
"start_time": 5607.995,
"text": " you know you have the observers and then you have like 14 dimensions sort of above that and gravity sort of is the tether between the two and it's like i can say that theoretically i don't really know what that means"
},
{
"end_time": 5651.203,
"index": 236,
"start_time": 5621.271,
"text": " Is there a way to access those 14 dimensions and maybe is there a way to change your state to like understand these things and that would be like an eastern sort of mystical thing but like I don't know. When it comes to questioning your epistemology or one's epistemology to get to something true I also wonder like you said maybe our bodies are so much more intelligent and our bodies know and we're trying to analyze like this like the monkey atop the elephant and we think we're in charge. Ian McGilchrist talks about that in the Master and his Emissary."
},
{
"end_time": 5680.538,
"index": 237,
"start_time": 5651.561,
"text": " And and I also take that analogy a bit further. I think one of the and this is a present deliberation. So like I something that I've only been thinking about for a couple of weeks. I think it's extreme. One of the worst. Philosophies of our time is like that book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving Enough. You shouldn't care what other people think. Yeah, I think other people are way smarter than you. I put I put a huge, huge emphasis on other people, much like if you trust your body is smarter."
},
{
"end_time": 5692.739,
"index": 238,
"start_time": 5680.794,
"text": " And so I was thinking someone was saying I was speaking with someone in the internal toe team and he was saying. Oh boy, he was saying they oh yeah, but you should people should."
},
{
"end_time": 5715.691,
"index": 239,
"start_time": 5693.217,
"text": " the world shouldn't be like that something like that like the world shouldn't be like that then i'm like you think you have an ideal in your head like you think your ideal is better than what is like i often i almost always think that but then if i think deeply enough like i'm like why do we even shake hands why do we bow why do we do we have to have niceties maybe a world without that would be way worse like you think you're smarter than the entire calculation of the world yeah"
},
{
"end_time": 5731.988,
"index": 240,
"start_time": 5716.237,
"text": " yeah right right right like take into account what other people think yeah people are not liking what you're doing yeah modify it doesn't mean supplicate totally i mean be be weak and indecisive yeah it just means like listen to what other people are saying incorporate even the fact that we're not like this"
},
{
"end_time": 5759.94,
"index": 241,
"start_time": 5731.988,
"text": " Yeah, what's up? Yeah, we just know because now like you would convention is there for a reason or maybe you'd be closer but It would just be so subtle and our bodies do it because we care and I think the people totally don't care about what other people think maybe you I think you should care more than anyone else like if you're thinking that Yes, I think your family would say I think John I think you should be caring a little bit more about what we think and yeah, well that that that is"
},
{
"end_time": 5771.8,
"index": 242,
"start_time": 5760.384,
"text": " kind of"
},
{
"end_time": 5797.056,
"index": 243,
"start_time": 5772.227,
"text": " Western civilization which religion is kind of an endemic part of we can reconstruct through rationality now and to me that leads to like effective altruism Utilitarian thought which are predicated on this idea that like people are sort of interoperable cogs and this sort of you can you know systems thought can sort of like design are you use design principles and and"
},
{
"end_time": 5826.8,
"index": 244,
"start_time": 5797.056,
"text": " You know, we'll figure it out and like that feels wrong to me, you know, like I'm much more of a fan of like Lindy, you know this idea that like Things have survived in civilization like formalities convention tradition Because it's every generation's job to kill off bad ideas and so the Lindy ideas that basically the the current age of something actually predicts its future expected age and the value of it and I just think that's like a beautiful sort of principle and"
},
{
"end_time": 5855.794,
"index": 245,
"start_time": 5827.073,
"text": " Yeah so in probability we say like there's no such thing as a hot hand or like if you flip a coin if it's tails five times in a row doesn't mean it's going to be heads but this is the opposite this is saying like look if it's tails the fact that it's historically been tails or historically been successful means it's more likely to be successful than something else that's new. I think so. Yeah again present deliberation I've also been thinking about effective altruism and I don't I when I hear I remember hearing that the the five the eight the"
},
{
"end_time": 5884.036,
"index": 246,
"start_time": 5856.015,
"text": " 28 year old Kurt up until 28 year old Kurt let's say yeah would completely be like yeah effective altruism and utilitarianism and rational morality right and now I just see so many problems like how do you solve this how do you solve that how do you solve this this this this this effective I don't believe when someone's like I'm an effective altruist I just don't believe you I don't either leave that you if you believe yourself to be a good person I just don't believe you I'm sorry I agree that I totally you have to be I think"
},
{
"end_time": 5913.131,
"index": 247,
"start_time": 5884.411,
"text": " And this is part of Christianity. Piece of ish. You are a piece of ish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you are so motivated by trying to seem good and you're egocentric. And I'm narcissistic and I'm insecure. Yes, I am. I'm selfish and right. I'm just rotten. And it's obviously you can get self-flagellating about it. And I look at movies where someone people like self-flagellating and most people are like, oh, that's the it's wrong. I'm like, that's like what we all should be doing. Like if you have you taken yourself seriously?"
},
{
"end_time": 5936.561,
"index": 248,
"start_time": 5913.831,
"text": " Yeah, no, but acknowledging your own depravity is a very powerful thing. And I think about a lot of, not to bash baby boomers, but I think about like the baby boomer mentality and a lot of it just felt like virtue signal, like utilitarianism is wildly effective in the political sense. It's super charismatic. Like you think about like Bill Gates,"
},
{
"end_time": 5963.217,
"index": 249,
"start_time": 5937.5,
"text": " I go back and forth on what his deal is, but I think he's more sort of ruthless than meets the eye, would be my guess. It's a guise to attain power in a different sense because political power is much more of a weight than the dollar or per unit time or effort. Yes, totally. It's like its own will to power and it's the most charismatic will to power."
},
{
"end_time": 5985.52,
"index": 250,
"start_time": 5963.609,
"text": " Yeah, and it could be totally unconscious. But yeah, like the Sam Bankman Fried, Freed FTX thing or whatever, where, you know, it's like, you have to be the most moral person, like you're the only way to be hyper capitalist is to be hyper idealistic, hyper hyper philanthropist and hyper, you have to be somehow Gandhi and"
},
{
"end_time": 6012.483,
"index": 251,
"start_time": 5985.708,
"text": " You know, uh, uh, John D Rockefeller at the same time. It's this bizarre thing. And so like the only way to be that ruthless is to like hide it in this sort of, and I think, I think about that sort of with respect to Marxism and stuff. Like Stalin is like, I think about this, like Stalin's, we think of Hitler is still the private proverbial, like worst person in the world. Stalin is definitely"
},
{
"end_time": 6029.48,
"index": 252,
"start_time": 6012.841,
"text": " a"
},
{
"end_time": 6052.346,
"index": 253,
"start_time": 6029.974,
"text": " like the most dangerous ideas in the name of like sort of nominal equality. Yeah. So I think like you said, being suspect of anybody that doesn't acknowledge their own depravity. Yeah. I think. Yeah. So for instance, I was years ago. I remember when I started to have this practice of any time I find myself saying, I'm like, Oh, I love myself. I'm doing such a good thing for this person."
},
{
"end_time": 6081.613,
"index": 254,
"start_time": 6052.688,
"text": " I question myself. I'm like, how is this from laziness? How is this from selfishness or or deceit in some way? Yeah, or malice. OK, so I was washing the dishes and then I was like, because my sister came along and started washing the dishes. I'm like, yeah, yeah, because because you know why I'm doing this? Because I don't want her to come home to a dirty home and I want it. And then I realized, no, I'm washing the dishes because I want her to see that I do chores so that she can do the majority of these other chores. Like I just analyze myself like, oh,"
},
{
"end_time": 6107.91,
"index": 255,
"start_time": 6082.534,
"text": " Peace of ish like you and then other reasons like so I'm pouring water for someone else first. Yes Why because like oh, no, I'm such a gracious host. There was something else there Forgotten the reason but it's like I want to appear gracious or yeah, I wanted I thought there was like a bit of lint in it So I'm like giving it to you. I forgot what it was. I totally oftenly and I have this list I catalog any time I got with them one just so that I could remind myself late I love not think that you're benevolent"
},
{
"end_time": 6137.961,
"index": 256,
"start_time": 6108.473,
"text": " Most of the time. I love that. That's awesome, man. That's really cool. I wish I could bring it. I don't have the list, but I have this list of of personal sins. Then I have a list of confabulations where I think that I well, we can talk about that. Yeah, no, you can flay. I do this all the time. It's like I'm doing something that's nominally like looks really good. Like I'm a super moral person, but it's like, why are you really doing that? Here's something interesting. Yeah. OK, here's the here's a this is a thought that present deliberation again. Yeah, just mine. OK, mind blows."
},
{
"end_time": 6159.258,
"index": 257,
"start_time": 6138.507,
"text": " The greatest gift-giving is anonymous. It doesn't seem self-evident, but it seems plausible. Almost all the religions tend to agree on that. You know how there are proofs of God and then there are problems. I think you can probably prove God to yourself personally."
},
{
"end_time": 6180.538,
"index": 258,
"start_time": 6160.077,
"text": " But I think the reason there doesn't exist a proof of God is that existence itself is such a gift. This is a gift. Talking to you is a gift. This is a gift. Just breathing is a gift. Somehow even suffering is a gift, which is so controversial. Someone said that God wouldn't sentence the devil to die"
},
{
"end_time": 6208.353,
"index": 259,
"start_time": 6181.51,
"text": " For eternity because that's a gift even even being alive and suffering is more of a gift than not existing I love that somehow existence itself is a gift and the greatest gift of all is given anonymously So God by nature has designed this such that you cannot prove he did it because if you prove he did it That's like finding out you donate it. You're like I did it anonymously, but you find the receipt somehow so by its nature you have to come to the conclusion because it's such a gift and"
},
{
"end_time": 6236.271,
"index": 260,
"start_time": 6208.353,
"text": " It's the greatest gift I give to you anonymously. You don't even, you can curse my name and I will still give you life. That's amazing. I will still give Sam Harris the best life. I was just thinking that when he said that. Even if he curses me and gets many people riled up and causes suffering, I'm sorry, you're still given existence. And I will not have, I will not come down from the clouds and say, and announce myself. And even that you can doubt. So no matter what, I will give you the gift of a doubting, of doubting too."
},
{
"end_time": 6263.66,
"index": 261,
"start_time": 6237.159,
"text": " Think Verizon, the best 5G network is expensive? Think again. Bring in your AT&T or T-Mobile bill to a Verizon"
},
{
"end_time": 6288.097,
"index": 262,
"start_time": 6267.978,
"text": " . . . . ."
},
{
"end_time": 6315.691,
"index": 263,
"start_time": 6289.019,
"text": " And this is getting into more mystical thought, but like kind of the Alan Watts. This was not mystical already. I love this because it's, I think also you get into some of this stuff in the show, but I like, I think it'll show parts of you where, you know, yeah. But Alan Watts, like, is there something about, are we sort of fractals of a larger universe? Sort of, are we a way for God to observe"
},
{
"end_time": 6337.944,
"index": 264,
"start_time": 6316.937,
"text": " There are so many words that echo that."
},
{
"end_time": 6362.705,
"index": 265,
"start_time": 6338.643,
"text": " like the eye that that we see through is the way that God sees us or the same eyes. Meister Eckhart said that cool. And then Schopenhauer said that we're all eyes of the same tree that are just branched off. And I tend to think I used to like those ideas and I still like them. They're fun. But now I see that the I'm so countercultural and I formulate opinions based on"
},
{
"end_time": 6386.834,
"index": 266,
"start_time": 6363.575,
"text": " being the devil's advocate. Yeah. So I see it now as a fad to think so mystically. Yeah. And I'm like, wow, it's come to the point where the realist position is, is the controversial one. Yeah. And then I wonder, this is something I brought up to Wolfgang. So we tend to think in terms of a hierarchy, like there's too much of a literal interpretation of the Bible and religious stories and so on. And then you can get a bit esoteric and then much more mystical."
},
{
"end_time": 6416.118,
"index": 267,
"start_time": 6387.5,
"text": " And we tend to think the bottom is the literal, but I wonder how much more can you go down? Maybe it's not that we need to go up or maybe it's both. But is there something that's more literal than the literal? Is there something that's more real than the real? And this is where Jonathan Pascioli gave me an insight where he said that the blades of grass in heaven are too sharp for man. I just thought, oh man, like I can think about that for, well, I will be thinking about that for months and months. That's interesting because the way that I'm, I don't,"
},
{
"end_time": 6444.002,
"index": 268,
"start_time": 6416.425,
"text": " I'm so influenced by the Eastern thought, the Vedic tradition, which says that this is somehow illusory. People love, and I think the tendency for us to love illusoriness is actually a self-loathing. I don't think that it's a search for knowledge. I also don't think I'm a truth seeker. I'm not a truth seeker. I think I'm a selfish person who's just curious and just can't help himself here and there, and I'm craven and I'm ugly and I'm"
},
{
"end_time": 6468.882,
"index": 269,
"start_time": 6444.411,
"text": " not courageous and I'm an invertebrate and gutless like like I'm a coward. I am because I know what I'm afraid of. There's some truths that that are frightening and I know that I think the fact that you recognize that shows that it's your fate that you are gonna not be that like you're working against it because most people never recognize there is like a year the past year or so where there was so much like this"
},
{
"end_time": 6492.517,
"index": 270,
"start_time": 6469.36,
"text": " Speaking about these subjects. Yeah would provoke so much anxiety in me. Would it be so tough to do? I had to back off from the UFO subject for the same UFO subject Yeah, yeah, geez geez like if you think about the possibilities like truly truly truly think about them. Uh-huh. It can It can put you into some dark dark places that seems inescapable you can put yourself into a place that's"
},
{
"end_time": 6522.398,
"index": 271,
"start_time": 6493.183,
"text": " I don't think that's true, but you can convince yourself temporarily that you're in a place that's inescapable. I do think that there's something like God is always with you. And I say this as someone who's like, I'm not even a believer. I'm like someone who's entertains believing or hopes to believe, but also hopes to not believe. Like if I pray, like it's praying for faith, but also not faith. I'm afraid of God. I'm extremely afraid of what it means that God exists. I'm extremely afraid of what it means that God doesn't exist. I'm like, I'm fearful of both ends."
},
{
"end_time": 6536.527,
"index": 272,
"start_time": 6522.995,
"text": " Anyhow, so I don't think God ever if so these are all if there's a God but by the way, even that statement is like, that's a controversial statement. I can get to why but well anyway."
},
{
"end_time": 6566.22,
"index": 273,
"start_time": 6537.483,
"text": " that god will never leave you like you you can see some sometimes we have these stories we listen to songs like i'm alone and so on and so i don't think you're ever ever alone i think there's always hope there's always hope either ask for it like especially for psychological like for being physically tortured and so on or you don't have enough money and you pray and then you say well god doesn't help because i'm not any richer or any less in torment and so on that's different than psychological torment i think for cycle for"
},
{
"end_time": 6587.517,
"index": 274,
"start_time": 6566.715,
"text": " I think psychologically prayer is super, super helpful, at least for a large subset of people. You agree. And God answers or God listens and you can even pray for God if you're helping. Can you show me how you're helping? Like help me recognize that you're helping. Yes. Yes. And I think about the myth of Pandora's box and we got all these sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 6606.34,
"index": 275,
"start_time": 6587.91,
"text": " horrible maladies that plague the earth. There you go, Pandora's box. Yeah, that's what it feels like. Yes. But the one thing that we have is we always have hope. You know, that was the thing in the box. Man. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. That's interesting. Yes. Roseanne, the comedian, she's like, I hate hope."
},
{
"end_time": 6626.834,
"index": 276,
"start_time": 6606.971,
"text": " Oh my gosh, I didn't know so many I used to be like that too. Like, I would never give someone hope because you're disappointed. I'd say rather get extremely use callous yourself to the disappointment. Hope is wonderful. It's great to look forward and be excited. I I love the thrill of looking up to something more than I dislike getting disappointed by that. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 6644.445,
"index": 277,
"start_time": 6626.834,
"text": " Yes so that is put out your hand and trust even if you're gonna get hurt yes and just didn't just feel like okay you know what it's better to put my hand out and trust even if i've been hurt before and be like please please please don't hurt me please don't hurt me i'm gonna actually that's another there's a there's a concept called collective illusions"
},
{
"end_time": 6662.79,
"index": 278,
"start_time": 6644.445,
"text": " That thing is so integral to the whole stigma of ufo's collective allusions are behaviors that we engage in publicly contradict our private sorry the contradict our privately held beliefs because we think you think the same for it said another way. We act in a certain way in public because i think that you."
},
{
"end_time": 6692.995,
"index": 279,
"start_time": 6663.422,
"text": " agree with that behavior or believe that same belief, but we actually all have some other shared belief privately. So for instance, in the 1960s, most southerners were against segregation, but they thought their neighbors were for it. So they're like, I'm for it. And then everyone just became for it. So it's like this collective illusion. Yes. And then another one is the trustworthiness of society. We think of ourselves as untrustworthy. We think society is untrustworthy, but it turns out there are tests. Most people are fairly trustworthy, something like"
},
{
"end_time": 6720.555,
"index": 280,
"start_time": 6693.729,
"text": " 40-60% of people give deception. So 40% of people are honest, something like that. And some tests where you put money down, or like a wallet, and you see if they return it and so on. And another collective illusion, maybe the stigma. We think there's a stigma. This is why I contend the idea that we have a stigma in ufology. I don't think we have a stigma problem, I think we have a cowardice problem. Because the profession, many math and physics professors come to me after,"
},
{
"end_time": 6741.988,
"index": 281,
"start_time": 6721.254,
"text": " a show about math and physics. And we'll be like, okay, now that we've talked about that, like, what do you think is going on with UFO? Like, these are like, I don't want to give but I don't want to give it away because these are people who've give who have trust in you trust and awards and so on. These aren't just sure, sure, sure. People from the periphery. Yep. And additionally, the 2017 article on UFOs that was"
},
{
"end_time": 6763.831,
"index": 282,
"start_time": 6742.346,
"text": " People were like i want to know more i want to know more we think there's a stigma so we don't talk about it but actually privately everyone wants to talk about it so it's a collective illusion that there's a stigma another collective illusion is that we think is that wealth and wealth and status is what matters most so we think that to other people wealth and status matter most but it turns out when you"
},
{
"end_time": 6778.848,
"index": 283,
"start_time": 6764.258,
"text": " Ask people in surveys, private surveys and you can check for honesty and also look at how they behave. They value family and safety and security and so on and we all tend to agree on this privately. And then this research by this guy named Todd Rose said collective illusions are so"
},
{
"end_time": 6802.892,
"index": 284,
"start_time": 6780.674,
"text": " Deleterious to society not just in their current generation But mainly to the next because the lies of this generation become the truths of the next So now kids here. Oh what people value is wealth and status So now they're on Instagram and that's what they see even though it's based on this sand pillars of sand Yeah, they they really beget their own reality. And yeah, yeah, I"
},
{
"end_time": 6830.623,
"index": 285,
"start_time": 6802.961,
"text": " And I think, yeah, like this Timur Koran, like preference falsification, where you, you know... That's exactly, that's another way of saying it. Where you sort of say you want something out of virtue or out of pure mimesis of the people you're sort of around, and then underneath it, you definitely don't. And I agree, either that becomes this cargo cult belief system for the next generation, or because it is sort of somewhat illusory and kind of inauthentic on an individual level, at least, and concealed,"
},
{
"end_time": 6854.889,
"index": 286,
"start_time": 6830.913,
"text": " It sort of comes crashing down quickly and it and it sort of reverses and I wonder if that's the case with the UFO thing where I mean that's news to me and incredible to hear that they're like top academics who are like privately interested in this. And maybe if reality on some level is sort of a collective illusion and we are sort of beginning a lot of what we see you know with with our belief systems."
},
{
"end_time": 6865.265,
"index": 287,
"start_time": 6855.691,
"text": " There's this cult concept of the egregore, and it's a self-manifesting thought. I think of the UFO"
},
{
"end_time": 6892.125,
"index": 288,
"start_time": 6865.623,
"text": " as like a possible self-manifest like it's like collectively it feels like we are we are just moving in that in that sort of direction and Jung would say that it represents I was about to say that the the mandala the the Sanskrit cycle of a symbol of psychic completeness and so maybe there's a way in which and I think about this is going to get in a really trippy weird territory but I think about"
},
{
"end_time": 6916.886,
"index": 289,
"start_time": 6892.602,
"text": " our UFO experiences. And if you if you read a lot of them from the Edgar Mitchell Foundation, they have like 5000 abduction cases. It's they occur in sort of like a dreamlike state. And I think it's possibly like a there's there's definitely connection there with like remote viewing, which also is obviously very contested. But maybe you are maybe the brain is somewhat like a quantum system."
},
{
"end_time": 6943.968,
"index": 290,
"start_time": 6917.056,
"text": " which there is, you know, a temporal non-locality and maybe quantum systems can send information back in time. And maybe you are actually accessing a future memory state and it's sort of pre-memory and sort of people maybe with strength in Caudate and Potamans or whatever in their basal ganglia who are, you know, have an affinity for remote viewing can do this and you are witnessing a thing"
},
{
"end_time": 6957.892,
"index": 291,
"start_time": 6944.343,
"text": " That has a proto architecture to it that is fundamentally impossible to sort of understand and you are applying kind of the closest low level meme based on media and sort of the collective onto the thing."
},
{
"end_time": 6981.459,
"index": 292,
"start_time": 6958.302,
"text": " And it the thing is affecting you in a way that causes the thing to actually manifest and and closed loop. It's a it's a it's exactly a time loop and like the Carl Jung an example of a time loop is Carl Jung had this patient who is super inaccessible hyper rationalist as you know Carl Jung was not rationalist at all. She has a dream."
},
{
"end_time": 7010.418,
"index": 293,
"start_time": 6981.903,
"text": " of a scarab beetle that is this this golden scarab beetle that is gifted to her this is necklace and it sort of is this beautiful her heart opens up and it's sort of this epiphany and she doesn't know why it represents this in the dream but she goes to you know therapy with with young and she says you know I don't know what this dream means you know this this is all sort of gobbledygook this doesn't make any sense and as she's saying this"
},
{
"end_time": 7033.063,
"index": 294,
"start_time": 7010.828,
"text": " He sees a scarab beetle on the window, like a live scarab beetle come down on the window sill. He sees the scarab beetle and he takes the scarab beetle and he gives it to her as a gift. That to me is a causal loop because she had a pre-memory of something that would happen to her."
},
{
"end_time": 7048.78,
"index": 295,
"start_time": 7033.524,
"text": " that pre-memory required the thing to self-manifest because it changed her attentional pattern and his attentional pattern in a way that caused the thing to actually happen and so I think there might be something around that with the alien thing."
},
{
"end_time": 7068.404,
"index": 296,
"start_time": 7048.78,
"text": " where it could be this this future really transformative exciting thing you could be ascending to to another sort of level at some point mean through your intention you can make the ufos not appear so for instance if you're like i don't think these are good like the dark forest idea and you're like you know what let me place my attention elsewhere does that mean that it won't manifest or"
},
{
"end_time": 7095.998,
"index": 297,
"start_time": 7068.404,
"text": " If sufficient and if there's a sufficient amount of people who believe in it then it will occur for everyone. I think so, yeah. That would be my heretical and somewhat scientifically baseless belief is that collectively we have much more kind of thought power in terms of manifesting things than people sort of realize. And I'm not a sort of Cartesian duelist. I do think that at some point"
},
{
"end_time": 7126.152,
"index": 298,
"start_time": 7096.408,
"text": " In the future, I think of the whole field of parapsychology, right? And it's this it's full of, you know, snake oil salesman and and you know, not super rigorous thought or whatever. But think about how much money has been spent on it. Thirty million dollars, forty million dollars. How much do we spend on a particle accelerator? You know, so it's like that's something else that I think about is you get people who condemn other scientists and be and and be snide and so on when"
},
{
"end_time": 7146.101,
"index": 299,
"start_time": 7127.841,
"text": " They'll say, yeah, there's no evidence for so-and-so. And I'll ask them, have you seen the work of Rupert Sheldrake? They'll be like, no. Or I heard of it. Have you seen the Bigelow Institute's work? No. Have you seen Dean Radin's? Have you seen seen Julie Beschel's or Daryl Bam's? And then they're like, no. And I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 7169.343,
"index": 300,
"start_time": 7146.101,
"text": " Oh my gosh, this is the same feeling I have when I ask someone about a toe and I'm like, why do you think your toe is supreme? Have you seen? Have you looked into Chris Lang is? Yeah. Have you looked into Eric Weinstein's or have you looked into leases or whites? I was speaking to Brian Green. He's a string theorist, presumably working on physics. This is something that I would love to talk about. And he I asked him like,"
},
{
"end_time": 7200.162,
"index": 301,
"start_time": 7170.401,
"text": " Okay, have you looked into Wolfram's theory? He's like, No, I don't like it's been out for a couple of years. They're papers. It's like, No, you know, I have I'm like, I don't buy that you don't have the time, man. I buy that you don't have the interest. That's what I that's what I think it is. You're not interested in it, because you think you have the answer. But don't pretend you're searching for physics when we're starving for alternatives. And you won't look in the same way that people are like, No, no, no, I'm this hyper rationalist. And I've researched the evidence. And it's clear there is no such thing as paracychology."
},
{
"end_time": 7213.865,
"index": 302,
"start_time": 7200.162,
"text": " Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 7233.831,
"index": 303,
"start_time": 7214.377,
"text": " I would contact the"
},
{
"end_time": 7256.749,
"index": 304,
"start_time": 7233.831,
"text": " It's exactly. It's your carrying card in a certain social milieu. Yeah, they don't want to lose that card of their membership of the enlightened intelligentsia. That's what they care about. Exactly. I have a good friend who helped run the Princeton parapsychology lab called Pair. He has an experiment that I always present to skeptics."
},
{
"end_time": 7273.763,
"index": 305,
"start_time": 7257.176,
"text": " Where and I'll say it right now and if you can and I think there's there's a lot of evidence here and if you can find something that debunks this then I would I would love to hear it like I always say that like like please like debunk this like that would be fantastic and it's this idea of a random event generator."
},
{
"end_time": 7301.357,
"index": 306,
"start_time": 7274.206,
"text": " Right, right. So you have a basically a binary computer. So it's super simple. Computer just creates ones and zeros. You have a graphical interface that shows, you know, one, zero, one, zero. So it's like basically like a transistor level, like what's happening. And you are tethering that to call it like radioactive isotope decay or like a photon bouncing around a little like something that's sort of provably thought of as random and quantum mechanics."
},
{
"end_time": 7316.152,
"index": 307,
"start_time": 7302.005,
"text": " and over a long enough time scale that should be like flipping a coin right like you should get over a long enough time scale and you know large enough sample size you should get with some expected standard deviation you should get basically the same amount of ones as you do zeros and"
},
{
"end_time": 7346.544,
"index": 308,
"start_time": 7316.613,
"text": " He finds that in a statistically significant way, people sort of, you know, z score distribution belies probability based on their intention going in in terms of, you know, if you say you go into the thing and you say, I want more ones to show up on the graphical interface than zeros that that over a long time scale in a statistically significant way beyond the standard deviation will will occur. And so I think that's fascinating. Like to me, if that if that is real,"
},
{
"end_time": 7369.633,
"index": 309,
"start_time": 7346.92,
"text": " And Dean Radin has actually a lot of evidence around this and a data set around it. That's hard to argue with. And then at that point, yeah, like maybe that's like a weak interaction, right? That's not like manifesting a UFO on this table, but that should break your model of reality or at least should make you ask questions about the sort of dualist materialist worldview. So I don't know."
},
{
"end_time": 7389.804,
"index": 310,
"start_time": 7370.026,
"text": " I don't think the materialist worldview is dualist, by the way. I think it's just it's a monist of material. I think there's material. That's a way better. That's funny. Whenever I say that there's some cognitive dissonance and you are saying it way better now. It's a monist of material. Your mind is material. Exactly. Yes, like the Cartesian dualism would be like"
},
{
"end_time": 7406.732,
"index": 311,
"start_time": 7390.247,
"text": " Actually a bifurcation where God and the mind exists separately and then there's material and material monism is the mind is just material That's right. Sorry. Well, thank you for updating me. Yeah, no problem There's another study that I heard about and I like to look into and by the way, I'm not saying that"
},
{
"end_time": 7428.063,
"index": 312,
"start_time": 7407.073,
"text": " That's what my my diatribe was about. Okay, so there's forgotten my place."
},
{
"end_time": 7456.715,
"index": 313,
"start_time": 7428.217,
"text": " Yes, there's another random number generator study where they place random number generators across the earth in different places. It's like, okay, well, why are you measuring earthquakes? I don't know what they're measuring at the time, but in different key locations across the earth. I think it's randomly generated to the random the places that they put them in. Yeah. And it turns out that before major events like the World Cup, or even horrible events like 9-11, just a few minutes prior or a few hours prior, it then statistically deviates from randomness."
},
{
"end_time": 7482.073,
"index": 314,
"start_time": 7456.715,
"text": " I've seen this project. What is it called? It's called the Global Consciousness Project. And the reason I think it's bullshit is I think it incidentally proves parapsychology, but they also they did the World Cup, they did 9-11, they did things like that. And then they also did like the death of Bob John, who ran the Paralab, the Princeton Parapsychology Lab, and that showed this crazy z-score. And so to me, that shows it's a classic experimenter effect."
},
{
"end_time": 7499.821,
"index": 315,
"start_time": 7482.346,
"text": " which is"
},
{
"end_time": 7519.275,
"index": 316,
"start_time": 7499.821,
"text": " at the level of the world cup for them like he's more important to them than the world cup so like the z-score for bob john is gonna be like this you know off the charts thing or whatever and it's almost impossible to deconflate those things and so if you get a skeptic like michael schermer or james randy present at one of these random event generator experiments"
},
{
"end_time": 7545.094,
"index": 317,
"start_time": 7519.48,
"text": " it's going to affect the experiment. So the skepticism, science is a priori skepticism like Francis Bacon. And if you come into this experiment skeptical, it might actually affect the results. So the whole issue with parapsychology kind of a priori and studying it scientifically is it kind of requires a priori buy-in or belief, which is a bizarre, that's an epistemological paradigm shift. That's not a scientific paradigm shift. That's tough."
},
{
"end_time": 7568.865,
"index": 318,
"start_time": 7545.794,
"text": " That's tough to investigate scientifically. That's really tough to investigate scientifically. I was speaking with Leslie Keen about this who studies near-death experiences and also paranormal experiences. Yeah. And she was saying that she's been to some seance, I don't know what it's called, some place where there's a table and you speak to the dead and there's physical mediumship, I believe she called it. Uh-huh. And she said that you can't have someone who's skeptical in there, it won't work, and that at one point someone was"
},
{
"end_time": 7598.712,
"index": 319,
"start_time": 7569.923,
"text": " she said that yes fascinating yeah yeah yeah yeah but but then i also the the skeptical here side is like how convenient they're totally right but so can you not film it right is it is that the the act of the camera was the presence of the camera considered a skeptical totally totally well i i believe i mean yeah again again i'm on that side but it like you read um this anthropologist 19th century guy named j.g. frazier and he wrote a book called the golden bow"
},
{
"end_time": 7628.302,
"index": 320,
"start_time": 7598.712,
"text": " And he talks about how their sort of primitive aboriginal societies would constantly use two forms of magic homeopathic and sympathetic magic. So one is sort of using the likeness of some person to affect them. So it's like voodoo stuff or whatever. Don't try any of this at home, please. And then the other is like like like hair, teeth and nail like like that's I think sympathetic magic or whatever is like you use actually like"
},
{
"end_time": 7632.483,
"index": 321,
"start_time": 7629.241,
"text": " Something from the person and you can affect them, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 7662.244,
"index": 322,
"start_time": 7632.927,
"text": " And he would talk about how like these people would be introduced to sort of enlightenment thought and the rituals would systematically lose their power. And then I think about and Jack Parsons read this book and he uses a fascinating quote to me. He goes, I think this book convinced me that science is a form of magic and magic is not a form of science. And so the proto layer is actually belief based and science based and there's actually a French"
},
{
"end_time": 7682.142,
"index": 323,
"start_time": 7662.79,
"text": " author named Bruno Latour who talks about the belief consensus in the scientific laboratory affecting the experiments that are actually done. And so it's this question of like, is science like an act of creation or is it an act of discovery? Are you, are you, you know, are you Michelangelo sort of"
},
{
"end_time": 7710.606,
"index": 324,
"start_time": 7682.756,
"text": " out of the marble you are you are creating David or whatever you're you're excising David rather but the David is already there pre excision or are you engaging in a godly act of creation and I would say the latter but I think that's a little heretical and interesting today's time interesting yeah okay real quick because I know you got to go soon the weird aerial objects do you have any theory"
},
{
"end_time": 7726.852,
"index": 325,
"start_time": 7711.783,
"text": " Michael Levin, his work fascinates me."
},
{
"end_time": 7749.889,
"index": 326,
"start_time": 7727.927,
"text": " What fascinates me about it is that traditionally we've sort of been like DNA reductionists and it's just the DNA that dictates morphology and it's this idea, tell me if I'm botching this, but that gap junctions or intracellular communications and voltage-gated ion channels"
},
{
"end_time": 7779.974,
"index": 327,
"start_time": 7750.316,
"text": " are somehow the software and the DNA is kind of the hardware. And so to me that's fascinating because there's this like orthogonal or other layer to like our morphology that like what's creating that? What's dictating that to form the human body in the first place? Because I think about like if it's not encoded in our DNA, if you can change the voltage gates of like a tadpole, a severed arm of a tadpole and create like a chimeric two-headed tadpole,"
},
{
"end_time": 7802.841,
"index": 328,
"start_time": 7780.179,
"text": " then what's dictating the initial form of the tadpole? Isn't that an important question? Is it the EM field of the earth? Are we living in a supercomputer? I see, I see. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That feels like a super important kind of metaphysical question that his work makes you ask. Yeah, I don't know. As far as I know,"
},
{
"end_time": 7827.619,
"index": 329,
"start_time": 7803.268,
"text": " It's like there's a DNA template and then there's an electrical template that goes along. So if you modify the heads, then the future generations will develop those heads as well. So it's like they carry that. It's like they carry DNA, some DNA information and some electrical information. That's what it seems like to me. So if you modify one, then it starts to get the modified version of one, but not the other. Would he say though that"
},
{
"end_time": 7852.944,
"index": 330,
"start_time": 7827.619,
"text": " The epigenetic changes that are happening locally presumably from the like electrical changes that that accounts for the inheritance or would he say the electrical inheritance is like a different inheritance. I don't I don't know. I see it as the electricals different. Okay, so I read that the same way and then it's like to me that's like it's almost an update on like Sheldrakes morphic fields because"
},
{
"end_time": 7873.695,
"index": 331,
"start_time": 7853.302,
"text": " to me Morphic fields is like awesome in terms of like the empirical rigor that he would you know I think the experiments were real where there are learned traits between generations that aren't necessarily due to natural selection but like he never came up with the mechanism was always unclear where the things being stored where's the information being stored and so"
},
{
"end_time": 7902.995,
"index": 332,
"start_time": 7874.002,
"text": " I guess the question to me would be like, how is it? How is electricity sort of? Yeah. How did the offspring sort of learn the electricity? I know. And is there more than just electricity? Like right now we have a few forces. Is there more than just the three or the four? And how is why is the form created in the first place? Like why? Why are we hominid forms? You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Hi, Wolfgang. This is Kurt. Oh, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 7932.159,
"index": 333,
"start_time": 7903.609,
"text": " What time do you think you can be ready for dinner? I can be there at 6 50. So Wolfgang would say that this world is real. Yeah, the corporeal world. It's real rather than it being illusory. So when you feel and when you're in your body, this is real corporeal. This is real. The solidity of this is real and it's not illusory because there's space between the atoms and so on. Then he says physics. What physics does is it takes an object. Let's call this object X."
},
{
"end_time": 7956.237,
"index": 334,
"start_time": 7933.251,
"text": " and creates a different object called S X and studies that. So it studies a different sort of object and then it confuses S X or S sub X with X. And then he says, so there's a corporeal world and he doesn't like to put, yes, he likes to make diagrams. So let's call that the corporeal world where you have space and time. And then there's another world called the"
},
{
"end_time": 7979.735,
"index": 335,
"start_time": 7957.841,
"text": " Intermediate world where it's just subject to time but not space so when you go in your dreams If you wake someone up, they still have this they still share the same timeline But they went in space in some illusory sense and some hallucinate hallucination. So it's not the same space. Uh-huh So they're a part of the intermediate realm and then he said there's some yogis like super traditional super religious people and"
},
{
"end_time": 8004.309,
"index": 336,
"start_time": 7980.606,
"text": " Enlightened people and so on who can access the av eternal realm av eternal which hearkens back to I believe a coin Aquinas, but I'm not sure why he doesn't call it eternal doesn't matter the av eternal realm time which is timeless and spaceless and he says that's where I don't even think God starts there, but God creates that which creates the rest and so those are some states you can get into and he was saying that I"
},
{
"end_time": 8017.688,
"index": 337,
"start_time": 8004.735,
"text": " He even said like, look, when I was studying with the yogis, the sadhus, sorry, the sadhus in the 1940s and 1950s or 60s, before there was heavy Western influence. We think in the West that there are certain people called enlightened people and so on. He's like,"
},
{
"end_time": 8041.084,
"index": 338,
"start_time": 8018.148,
"text": " You have to be a part of the bloodline."
},
{
"end_time": 8064.07,
"index": 339,
"start_time": 8041.596,
"text": " You have to have celibacy. As soon as you have sex, you cut it cut off interest. And that's, that's what's interesting to me is that I was speaking to someone who's like, there are some people who like, they don't like commitment of any sort. And they're the types of people who like to travel. They're like desultory, they don't like to be in one place, and they don't like commitment. And"
},
{
"end_time": 8088.951,
"index": 340,
"start_time": 8064.377,
"text": " To me I haven't found a case of that when I talk to the person one-on-one that doesn't come from some deep-seated insecurity rather than some Some openness that just loves everything and I'm a free spirit when someone says I'm a free spirit. I'm so skeptical now I think no you're hurt you're so hurt that you cannot put your hand out to trust because you're afraid of being hurt again Yes, so anyway"
},
{
"end_time": 8114.821,
"index": 341,
"start_time": 8089.172,
"text": " Yeah. Someone was saying, yeah, like I just want to keep my doors open. Yeah. This is a case where by keeping your doors open, like being polyamorous and sleeping around, you closed some doors. Totally. So interesting. Is it the case that that keeping doors open closes other doors? Like, is it the case that closing some doors opens other doors? It's not so simple. Like, let me just keep my doors open, my options open with jobs or with women or what or spouses or with whatever it may be. Yeah. Maybe closing some significant"
},
{
"end_time": 8142.944,
"index": 342,
"start_time": 8114.821,
"text": " That feels like a millennial malady of the illusion of omnipossibility. Just this idea that we can have our cake and eat it too, and hard choices don't have to be made, commitment doesn't matter. And I do think it leads you sort of towards consumerism and chronic dissatisfaction, like this bottomless soup of trying to sort of fill the void and replace kind of introspection and hard self-discovery with"
},
{
"end_time": 8163.882,
"index": 343,
"start_time": 8143.609,
"text": " I see this insistence in the religious circles for being celibate before you get married and we see that as like that's so backward."
},
{
"end_time": 8192.637,
"index": 344,
"start_time": 8164.292,
"text": " I think so much of our insecurities come from, at least for me, come from women from my past, like wanting them, them not wanting me, and so much hurt, so much of every single thing. Maybe even my drive to work is because inside I'm like, I want to be, I'm married. Why do I want that? Is that sinful? Am I, I'm not sure. I have similar stuff and I dive into the psychology of, you know, as you know, I do, you know, sort of venture as my"
},
{
"end_time": 8212.841,
"index": 345,
"start_time": 8193.097,
"text": " the former day job that I still do."
},
{
"end_time": 8234.889,
"index": 346,
"start_time": 8212.927,
"text": " And it's like, this girl rejected me and I've been trying to... I need to make my mark. And that's real. It's the whole Zuckerberg social network thing. That's a real thing. Weinstein's actually told me he thinks sexual selection is a major driver of human accomplishment and of course it is. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 8260.998,
"index": 347,
"start_time": 8234.889,
"text": " Yeah, I think we're so unaware of our own emotions, sorry, motivations. We're unaware of our own motivations. It is. And how do you, I mean, I feel like you're amazing in that you have- Be ruthless. That's how- With yourself. Yeah, just assume the worst. Just assume the worst. And rather than trying to do good, I don't believe people anymore, or believe the larger people with money who say they're trying to do good. I'm sorry, I just don't believe you. I don't either. It's not to say that"
},
{
"end_time": 8286.357,
"index": 348,
"start_time": 8261.357,
"text": " There's an element of that or there's an element of not being aware of their own motivations and there's also an element of me projecting. So there's also an element of me being jealous because they have the capability of doing such a good and I don't so I want them to not be good so I have to also wait for them to take that into account. But anyway, I tend to not believe them."
},
{
"end_time": 8315.418,
"index": 349,
"start_time": 8287.056,
"text": " I think that it's much more helpful instead of saying, look at all the good I'm doing to think to say, look at all the bad that I'm minimizing. Yeah. Like, and especially locally, like, like, I'm so good with my that's why I love like, my wife is out there, the cameras aren't on her. But my wife is my my rock in so many ways. Yeah. And she I make her I try hopefully make her happy. And and everything that I get, like when she's happy, I'm super happy. It's not that my happiness is tight, like I'm"
},
{
"end_time": 8326.988,
"index": 350,
"start_time": 8315.879,
"text": " Man, Toe is probably similar for you. You're like, look, I live in a sick house. I live in a sick house. You live, you get to go in your cold planet. Like a ridiculous..."
},
{
"end_time": 8352.159,
"index": 351,
"start_time": 8327.637,
"text": " Who are you? And then you get to do these and talk to interesting people and film it and get this cool guy behind the camera here. Yeah, Jack's awesome. Jack just listens and Jack is like a philosopher there. Yeah. And you're just like, man, I'm so lucky. So I feel like the same way. I'm just like every cylinder is being banged on with toe. I'm just to say this often, I'm just a gym rat for toes. Yeah, that's what I am. I'm not someone who is"
},
{
"end_time": 8369.838,
"index": 352,
"start_time": 8352.654,
"text": " Interested in music. I'm not someone who does carpentry on the side. I am a gym rat for tolls Anything about tolls and math and physics, especially I just want to know I want to know every theory I just want to know that's all I do. Yeah, I love it. But anyway, I think about I want to make sure I minimize the harm that I do I"
},
{
"end_time": 8394.462,
"index": 353,
"start_time": 8370.077,
"text": " And again, there's something self-congratulatory in me saying that, so I need to be careful. But the point is that I find that much more powerful than saying, let me look at all the good I can do. Yes. Yeah. Well, right. It's also harder. You're making the purview of what you're doing very humble. It's like I'm showing up and doing a job. And especially with what we're doing,"
},
{
"end_time": 8414.002,
"index": 354,
"start_time": 8394.974,
"text": " it's easy to get lofty and be like, you know, we're talking to all these cool people, but it's like, no, you're just, you're doing a service and we're service workers, like sort of dressed up and like these, you know, and then like speaking in these super high brow, but it's like, it's all."
},
{
"end_time": 8443.797,
"index": 355,
"start_time": 8414.326,
"text": " We're servers in a sense. We're just washing dishes and doing waitstaff. And some people say like, oh man, you're a truth seeker. Like I like them. I'm not a truth seeker. I'm a coward. I'm just I'm a curious person. So I study a bit and I'm interested in this and that. And I dabble. But I'm definitely if like there are some truths I don't want to know if they're the case. I'm not a truth seeker. The truth is horrible. Truth can be. It can be viscerating."
},
{
"end_time": 8463.234,
"index": 356,
"start_time": 8443.797,
"text": " I love that you're saying that because you're sort of a role model to me in some ways and I have trouble. It's funny, we were talking about these super successful people and how we view them or whatever and I definitely have two sides of me."
},
{
"end_time": 8490.776,
"index": 357,
"start_time": 8463.746,
"text": " only truth, only truth. And like if somebody's lying, like I sort of like, I know what they're lying. And then, and then there's this other side that's like kind of commercial and it's just like, I just want to like lead a good life. And those two things are not always in harmony and it's hard to have them in harmony. In fact, I think one can often lead to persecution historically and like not riches and family and you know, a normal life."
},
{
"end_time": 8508.302,
"index": 358,
"start_time": 8491.203,
"text": " And then the other seems to at least nominally in the real world lead to like, you know, a pretty good place and then the question is maybe the truth gets you something in the afterlife and then but then it's that sort of bad motivation if it's you're doing it to get something in the afterlife should just be its own"
},
{
"end_time": 8535.725,
"index": 359,
"start_time": 8508.831,
"text": " I don't know. Maybe there's something good about that. Just act good. Whatever it takes to do, act good. And do what's right. And you'll start to feel good because of it. And don't worry too much about, well, I don't know. I struggle with that as well. It's an interesting question. Yeah, I do believe it's interesting. We didn't even get to these, oh man, I wanted to do that to show you some of these paradoxes. So that's something else I'm interested in, these paradoxes."
},
{
"end_time": 8560.435,
"index": 360,
"start_time": 8536.101,
"text": " So I'll give you a couple of paradoxes now. Yes. So let's see. There's the there's there's a paradox that says if you believe yourself to be consistent and accurate, like a rational person, you automatically become inconsistent. So there's Smolians. I want to show you doxastic logic. Super interesting. I have three minutes. We'll do it in turn. Yeah, we'll do. Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do another time. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 8569.121,
"index": 361,
"start_time": 8560.896,
"text": " Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kurt. Yeah, man. That's a long time. There's like so much more we could have talked about. I know. I know. We can go forever."
},
{
"end_time": 8593.695,
"index": 362,
"start_time": 8569.667,
"text": " The podcast is now concluded. Thank you for watching. If you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now would be a great time to do so as each subscribe and like helps YouTube push this content to more people. You should also know that there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything where people explicate toes, disagree respectfully about theories, and build as a community our own toes."
},
{
"end_time": 8611.596,
"index": 363,
"start_time": 8593.695,
"text": " Links to both are in the description. Also, I recently found out that external links count plenty toward the algorithm, which means that when you share on Twitter, on Facebook, on Reddit, etc., it shows YouTube that people are talking about this outside of YouTube, which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube as well."
},
{
"end_time": 8636.903,
"index": 364,
"start_time": 8611.869,
"text": " Last but not least, you should know that this podcast is on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on every one of the audio platforms. Just type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Often I gain from re-watching lectures and podcasts and I read that in the comments, hey, toll listeners also gain from replaying. So how about instead re-listening on those platforms? iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whichever podcast catcher you use."
},
{
"end_time": 8661.766,
"index": 365,
"start_time": 8636.903,
"text": " If you'd like to support more conversations like this, then do consider visiting patreon.com slash curtjymungle and donating with whatever you like. Again, it's support from the sponsors and you that allow me to work on Toe full-time. You get early access to ad-free audio episodes there as well. For instance, this episode was released a few days earlier. Every dollar helps far more than you think. Either way, your viewership is generosity enough."
}
]
}No transcript available.