back to indexTim Urban: Elon Musk, Neuralink, AI, Aliens, and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #264
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If you read a half hour a night,
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the calculation I came to is that you can read
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a thousand books in 50 years.
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All of the components are there
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to engineer intimate experiences.
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Extraterrestrial life is a true mystery,
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the most tantalizing mystery of all.
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How many humans need to disappear
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for us to be completely lost?
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The following is a conversation with Tim Urban,
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author and illustrator of the amazing blog
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called Wait, But Why?
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Tim Urban.
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You wrote a Wait, But Why blog post
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about the big and the small,
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from the observable universe to the atom.
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What world do you find most mysterious or beautiful,
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the very big or the very small?
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The very small seems a lot more mysterious.
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And I mean, the very big I feel like we kind of understand.
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I mean, not the very, very big.
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Not the multiverse, if there is a multiverse,
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not anything outside of the observable universe.
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But the very small,
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I think we really have no idea what's going on,
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or very much less idea.
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so I think the small is more mysterious,
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but I think the big is sexier.
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I just cannot get enough of the bigness of space
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and the farness of stars.
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And it just continually blows my mind.
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the vastness of the observable universe
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has the mystery that we don't know what's out there.
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We know how it works, perhaps.
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Like, general relativity can tell us
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how the movement of bodies works,
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how they're born, all that kind of things.
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But like, how many civilizations are out there?
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How many, like, what are the weird things that are out there?
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Well, extraterrestrial life is a true mystery.
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The most tantalizing mystery of all.
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But that's like our size.
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So that's maybe it's that the actual,
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the big and the small are really cool,
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but it's actually the things that are potentially our size
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that are the most tantalizing.
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Potentially our size is probably the key word.
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I wonder how small intelligent life could get.
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Probably not that small.
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And I assume that there's a limit that you're not gonna,
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I mean, you might have like a whale,
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blue whale size intelligent being,
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that would be kind of cool.
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But I feel like we're in the range of order of magnitude
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smaller and bigger than us for life.
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Maybe you could have some giant life form.
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Just seems like, I don't know,
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there's gotta be some reason that anything intelligent
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between kind of like a little tiny rodent
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or finger monkey up to a blue whale on this planet.
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Maybe when you change the gravity and other things.
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Well, you could think of life
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as a thing of self assembling organisms
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and they just get bigger and bigger and bigger.
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Like there's no such thing as a human being.
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A human being is made up of a bunch of tiny organisms
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And we somehow envision that as one entity
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because it has consciousness.
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But maybe it's just organisms on top of organisms.
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Organisms all the way down, turtles all the way down.
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So like earth can be seen as an organism
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for people, for alien species that's very different.
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Like why is the human the fundamental entity
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that is living and then everything else
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is just either a collection of humans
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or components of humans?
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I think if it kind of is, if you think about,
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I think of like an emergence elevator.
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And so you've got an ant is on one floor
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and then the ant colony is a floor above.
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Or maybe there's even units within the colony
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that's one floor above and the full colony
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is two floors above.
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And to me, I think that it's the colony
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that is closest to being the animal.
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It's like the individual thing that competes with others
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while the individual ants are like cells
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in the animal's body.
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We are more like a colony in that regard.
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But the humans are weird because we kind of,
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I think of it, if emergence happens in an emergence tower,
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where you've got kind of, as I said,
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cells and then humans and communities and societies.
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Ants are very specific.
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The individual ants are always cooperating
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with each other for the sake of the colony.
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So the colony is this unit that is the competitive unit.
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Humans can kind of go,
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we take the elevator up and down
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emergence tower psychologically.
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Sometimes we are individuals
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that are competing with other individuals
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and that's where our mindset is.
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And then other times we get in this crazy zone,
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you know, a protest or a sporting event
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and you're just chanting and screaming
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and doing the same hand motions
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with all these other people and you feel like one.
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You feel like one, you know, and you'd sacrifice yourself.
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And now that's what, you know, soldiers.
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And so our brains can kind of psychologically
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go up and down this elevator in an interesting way.
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Yeah, I wonder how much of that
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is just the narrative we tell ourselves.
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Maybe we are just like an ant colony.
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We're just collaborating always,
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even in our stories of individualism,
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of like the freedom of the individual,
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like this kind of isolation,
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lone man on an island kind of thing.
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We're actually all part of this giant network
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of maybe one of the things that makes humans who we are
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is probably deeply social,
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the ability to maintain
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not just the single human intelligence,
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but like a collective intelligence.
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And so this feeling like individual
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is just because we woke up at this level of the hierarchy.
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So we make it special,
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but we very well could be just part of the ant colony.
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This whole conversation,
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I'm either going to be doing a Shakespearean analysis
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of your Twitter, your writing,
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or very specific statements that you've made.
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So you've written answers to a mailbag of questions.
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The questions were amazing, the ones you've chosen,
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and your answers were amazing.
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So on this topic of the big and the small,
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somebody asked, are we bigger than we are small?
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Or smaller than we are big?
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Who's asking these questions?
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This is really good.
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You have amazing fans.
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Okay, so where do we sit at this level
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of the very small to the very big?
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So are we bigger or are we small?
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Are we bigger than we are small?
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I think it depends on what we're asking here.
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So if we're talking about the biggest thing
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that we kind of can talk about without just imagining
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is the observable universe, the Hubble sphere.
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And that's about 10 to the 26th meters in diameter.
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The smallest thing we talk about is a plank length,
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but you could argue that that's kind of an imaginary thing.
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But that's 10 to the negative 35.
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Now we're about, conveniently, about 10 to the one.
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Not quite, 10 to the zero.
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We're about 10 to the zero meters long.
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So it's easy because you can just look and say,
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okay, well, for example, atoms are like 10
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to the negative 15th or 10 to the negative 16th meters
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If you go 10 to the 15th or 10 to the 16th,
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which is right, that's now.
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So an atom to us is us to this.
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You get to like nebulas, smaller than a galaxy
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and bigger than the biggest star.
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So we're right in between nebula and an atom.
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Now, if you wanna go down to quark level,
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you might be able to get up to galaxy level.
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When you go up to the observable universe,
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you're getting down on the small side
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to things that we, I think, are mostly theoretically
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imagining are there and hypothesizing are there.
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So I think as far as real world objects
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that we really know a lot about,
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I would say we are smaller than we are big.
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But if you wanna go down to the Planck length,
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we're very quickly, we're bigger than we are small.
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If you think about strings.
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Yeah, strings, exactly, string theory and so on.
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That's interesting.
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But I think like you answered,
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no matter what, we're kind of middleish.
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Yeah, I mean, here's something cool.
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If a human is a neutrino, and again, neutrino,
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the size doesn't really make sense.
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It's not really a size.
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But when we talk about some of these neutrinos,
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I mean, if a neutrino is a human, a proton is the sun.
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So that's like, I mean, a proton is real small,
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like really small.
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And so, yeah, the small gets like crazy small very quickly.
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Let's talk about aliens.
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We already mentioned it.
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Let's start just by with the basic,
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what's your intuition as of today?
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This is a thing that could change day by day.
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But how many alien civilizations out there?
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Is it almost endless, like the observable universe
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or the universe is teeming with life?
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If I had gun to my head, I have to take a guess.
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I would say it's teeming with life.
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I would say there is.
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I think running a Monte Carlo simulation,
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this paper by Andrew Sandberg and Drexler
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and a few others a couple of years ago,
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I think you probably know about it.
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running through randomized rake equation multiplication,
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you're ended up with 27 million as the mean
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of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy,
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in the Milky Way alone.
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And so then if you go outside the Milky Way,
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that would turn into trillions.
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Now, what's interesting is that there's a long tail
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because they believe some of these multipliers
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in the Drake equation.
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So for example, the probability that life starts
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in the first place,
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they think that the kind of range that we use
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is for that variable or is way too small.
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And that's constraining our possibilities.
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And if you actually extend it to some crazy number
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of orders of magnitude, like 200,
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they think that that variable should be,
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you get this long tail where,
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I forget the exact number,
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but it's like a third or a quarter
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of the total outcomes have us alone.
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I think it's a sizable percentage has us
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as the only intelligent life in the galaxy,
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but you can keep going.
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And I think there's like a non zero,
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like legitimate amount of outcomes there
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that have us as the only life
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in the observable universe at all is on earth.
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I mean, it seems incredibly counterintuitive.
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It seems like, you mentioned that people think
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you must be an idiot because if you picked up one grain
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of sand on a beach and examined it
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and you found all these little things on it,
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it's like saying, well, maybe this is the only one
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And it's like, probably not.
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They're probably most of the sand probably
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or a lot of the sand, right?
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So, and then the other hand, we don't see anything.
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We don't see any evidence, which of course,
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people would say that the people who stuff scoff
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at the concept that we're potentially alone,
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they say, well, of course, there's lots of reasons
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we wouldn't have seen anything.
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And they can go list them and they're very compelling,
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but we don't know.
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And the truth is if there were,
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if this were a freak thing, I mean, we don't,
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if this were a completely freak thing that happened here,
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whether it's life at all or just getting
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to this level of intelligence,
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that species, whoever it was, would think
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there must be lots of us out there and they'd be wrong.
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So just being, again, using the same intuition
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that most people would use, I'd say there's probably lots
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of other things out there.
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Yeah, and you wrote a great blog post about it.
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But to me, the two interesting reasons
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that we haven't been in contact, I too have an intuition
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that the universe is teeming with life.
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So one interesting is around the great filter.
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So we either, the great filter's either behind us
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or in front of us.
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So the reason that's interesting is you get to think
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about what kind of things ensure
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or ensure the survival of an intelligent civilization
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or lead to the destruction of intelligent civilization.
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That's a very pragmatic, very important question
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to always be asking.
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And we'll talk about some of those.
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And then the other one is I'm saddened by the possibility
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that there could be aliens communicating
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with us all the time.
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In fact, they may have visited.
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And we're just too dumb to hear it, to see it.
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Like the idea that the kind of life that can evolve
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is just the range of life that can evolve is so large
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that our narrow view of what is life
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and what is intelligent life is preventing us
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from having communication with them.
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But then they don't seem very smart
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because if they were trying to communicate with us,
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they would surely, if they were super intelligent,
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they would be very, I'm sure if there's lots of life,
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we're not that rare, we're not some crazy weird species
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that hears and has different kinds of ways
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of perceiving signals.
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So they would probably be able to,
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if you really wanted to communicate
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with an earth like species, with a human like species,
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you would send out all kinds of things.
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You'd send out radio waves and you send out gravity waves
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and lots of things.
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So if they're communicating in a way,
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they're trying to communicate with us
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and it's just we're too dumb to perceive the signals,
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it's like, well, they're not doing a great job
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of considering the primitive species we might be.
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So I don't know, I think if a super intelligent species
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wanted to get in touch with us and had the capability of,
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I think probably they would.
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Well, they may be getting in touch with us,
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they're just getting in touch with the thing
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that we humans are not understanding
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that they're getting in touch with us with.
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I guess that's what I was trying to say is
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there could be something about earth
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that's much more special than us humans.
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Like the nature of the intelligence that's on earth
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or the thing that's of value and that's curious
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and that's complicated and fascinating and beautiful
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might be something that's not just like tweets, okay?
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Like English language that's interpretable
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or any kind of language or any kind of signal,
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whether it's gravity or radio signal
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that humans seem to appreciate.
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Why not the actual, it could be the process
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of evolution itself.
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There could be something about the way
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that earth is breathing essentially
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through the creation of life
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and this complex growth of life.
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There's like, it's a whole different way
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to view organisms and view life
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that could be getting communicated with.
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And we humans are just a tiny fingertip
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on top of that intelligence.
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And the communication is happening
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with the main mothership of earth
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versus us humans that seem to treat ourselves
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as super important and we're missing the big picture.
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I mean, it sounds crazy, but our understanding
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of what is intelligent, of what is life,
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what is consciousness is very limited.
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And it seems to be, and just being very suspicious,
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it seems to be awfully human centric.
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Like this story, it seems like the progress of science
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is constantly putting humans down on the importance,
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humans down on the cosmic importance,
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the ranking of how big we are, how important we are.
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That seems to be the more we discover
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that's what's happening.
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And I think science is very young.
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And so I think eventually we might figure out
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that there's something much, much bigger going on,
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that humans are just a curious little side effect
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of the much bigger thing.
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That's what, I mean, that, as I'm saying,
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it just sounds insane, but.
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Well, it just, it sounds a little like religious.
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It sounds like a spiritual, it gets to that realm
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where there's something that more than meets the eye.
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Well, yeah, but not, so religious and spiritual,
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often have this kind of whoo whoo characteristic,
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like when people write books about them,
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then go to wars over whatever the heck
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is written in those books.
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I mean, more like it's possible that collective intelligence
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is more important than individual intelligence, right?
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It's the ant colony.
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What's the primal organism?
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Is it the ant colony or is it the ant?
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Yeah, I mean, humans, just like any individual ant
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can't do shit, but the colony can do,
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make this incredible structures and has this intelligence.
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And we're exactly the same.
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I mean, you know the famous thing that no one,
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no human knows how to make a pencil.
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Have you heard this?
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No. Basically, I mean.
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There's not, a single human out there
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has absolutely no idea how to make a pencil.
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So you have to think about, you have to get the wood,
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the paint, the different chemicals
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that make up the yellow paint.
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The eraser is a whole other thing.
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The metal has to be mined from somewhere
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and then the graphite, whatever that is.
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And there's not one person on earth
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who knows how to kind of collect all those materials
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and create a pencil, but together,
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that's one of the, that's child's play.
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It's just one of the easiest things.
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So, you know, the other thing I like to think about,
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I actually put this as a question on the blog once.
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There's a thought experiment
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and I actually wanna hear what you think.
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So if a witch, kind of a dickish witch comes around
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and she says, I'm gonna cast a spell on all of humanity
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and all material things that you've invented
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are gonna disappear all at once.
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So suddenly we're all standing there naked.
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There's no buildings.
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There's no cars and boats and ships and no mines,
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It's just the stone age earth and a bunch of naked humans,
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but we're all the same, we have the same brain.
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So we're all know what's going on.
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And we all got a note from her, so we understand the deal.
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And she says, she communicated to every human,
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here's the deal, you lost all your stuff.
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You guys need to make one working iPhone 13
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and you make one working iPhone 13
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that could pass in the Apple store today,
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you know, in your previous world
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for an iPhone 13, then I will restore everything.
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How long do you think?
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And so everyone knows this is the mission.
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We're all aware of the mission, everyone, all humans.
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How long would it take us?
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That's a really interesting question.
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So obviously if you do a random selection
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of 100 or a thousand humans within the population,
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I think you're screwed to make that iPhone.
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I tend to believe that there's fascinating specialization
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among the human civilization.
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Like there's a few hackers out there
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that can like solo build an iPhone.
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But with what materials?
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So no materials whatsoever.
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It has to, I mean, it's virtually, I mean, okay.
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You have to build factories.
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I mean, to fabricate.
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And how are you gonna mine them?
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You know, you gotta mine the materials
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where you don't have any cranes.
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You don't have any, you know.
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Okay, you 100% have to have the, everybody's naked.
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Everyone's naked and everyone's where they are.
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So you and I would currently be naked.
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It's on the ground in what used to be Manhattan.
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No, grassy island.
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So you need a naked Elon Musk type character
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to then start building a company.
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You have to have a large company then.
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He doesn't even know where he, you know,
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where is everyone?
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You know, oh shit, how am I gonna find
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other people I need to talk to?
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But we have all the knowledge of.
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Yeah, everyone has the knowledge
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that's in their current brains.
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I've met some legit engineers.
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Crazy polymath people.
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Yeah, but the actual labor of,
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cause you said, cause like the original Mac,
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like the Apple II, that can be built.
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Even that, you know.
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Even that's gonna be tough.
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Well, I think part of it is a communication problem.
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If you could suddenly have, you know, someone,
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if everyone had a walkie talkie
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and there was, you know, a couple, you know,
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10 really smart people were designated the leaders,
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they could say, okay, I want, you know,
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everyone who can do this to walk west, you know,
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until you get to this little hub and everyone else,
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you know, and they could actually coordinate,
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but we don't have that.
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So it's like people just, you know,
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and then what I think about is,
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so you've got some people that are like trying to organize
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and you'll have a little community
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where a couple hundred people have come together
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and maybe a couple thousand have organized
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and they designated one person, you know, as the leader
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and then they have sub leaders and okay,
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we have a start here.
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We have some organization.
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You're also gonna have some people that say, good,
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humans were scourged upon the earth and this is good.
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And they're gonna try to sabotage.
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They're gonna try to murder the people with the,
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and who know what they're talking about.
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The elite that possessed the knowledge.
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Well, and so everyone, maybe everyone's hopeful
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for the, you know, we're all civilized and hopeful
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for the first 30 days or something.
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And then things start to fall off.
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They, you know, people get, start to lose hope
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and there's new kinds of, you know,
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new kinds of governments popping up, you know,
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new kinds of societies and they're, you know,
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and they don't play nicely with the other ones.
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And I think very quickly,
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I think a lot of people would just give up and say,
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you know what, this is it.
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We're back in the stone age.
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Let's just create, you know, agrarian.
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We don't also don't know how to farm.
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No one knows how to farm.
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There's like, even the farmers, you know,
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a lot of them are relying on their machines.
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And so we also, you know, mass starvation.
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And that, you know, when you're trying to organize,
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a lot of people are, you know, coming in with, you know,
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spears they've fashioned and trying to murder everyone
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That's an interesting question.
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Given today's society, how much violence would that be?
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We've gotten softer, less violent.
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And we don't have weapons.
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So that's something. We don't have weapons.
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We have really primitive weapons now.
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But we have, and also we have a kind of ethics
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where murder is bad.
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We used to be less, like human life was less valued
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So murder was more okay, like ethically.
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But in the past, they also were really good
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at figuring out how to have sustenance.
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They knew how to get food and water because they,
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so we have no idea.
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Like the ancient hunter gatherer societies would laugh
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at what's going on here.
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They'd say, you guys, you don't know what you're,
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none of you know what you're doing.
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And also the amount of people feeding this amount of people
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in a very, in a stone age, you know, civilization,
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that's not gonna happen.
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So New York and San Francisco are screwed.
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Well, whoever's not near water is really screwed.
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So that's, you're near a river or freshwater river.
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And you know, anyway, it's a very interesting question.
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And what it does, this and the pencil,
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it makes me feel so grateful and like excited about like,
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man, our civilization is so cool.
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And this is, talk about collective intelligence.
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Humans did not build any of this.
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It's collective human super,
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collective humans is a super intelligent,
link |
you know, being that is, that can do absolutely,
link |
especially over a long period of time,
link |
can do such magical things.
link |
And we just get to be born, when I go out,
link |
when I'm working and I'm hungry,
link |
I just go click, click, click, and like a salad's coming.
link |
The salad arrives.
link |
If you think about the incredible infrastructure
link |
that's in place for that, for that quickly,
link |
or just the internet to, you know, the electricity,
link |
first of all, that's just powering the things, you know,
link |
how the, where the, the amount of structures
link |
that have to be created and for that electricity to be there.
link |
And then you've got the, you've of course the internet,
link |
and then you have this system where delivery drivers
link |
and they have, they're riding bikes
link |
that were made by someone else.
link |
And they're going to get the salad
link |
and all those ingredients came from all over the place.
link |
I mean, it's just, so I think it's like,
link |
I like thinking about these things
link |
because it makes me feel like just so grateful.
link |
I'm like, man, it would be so awful if we didn't have this.
link |
And people who didn't have it would think
link |
this was such magic we live in and we do.
link |
And like, cool, that's fun.
link |
Yeah, one of the most amazing things when I showed up,
link |
I came here at 13 from the Soviet Union
link |
and the supermarket was, people don't really realize that,
link |
but the abundance of food, it's not even,
link |
so bananas was the thing I was obsessed about.
link |
I just ate bananas every day for many, many months
link |
because they haven't had bananas in Russia.
link |
And the fact that you can have as many bananas as you want,
link |
plus they were like somewhat inexpensive
link |
relative to the other food.
link |
The fact that you can somehow have a system
link |
that brings bananas to you without having to wait
link |
in a long line, all of those things,
link |
I mean, also imagine, so first of all,
link |
the ancient hunter gatherers,
link |
you picture the mother gathering and eating
link |
for all this fresh food, no.
link |
So do you know what an avocado used to look like?
link |
It was a little like a sphere and the fruit of it,
link |
the actual avocado part was like a little tiny layer
link |
around this big pit that took up almost the whole volume.
link |
We've made crazy robot avocados today
link |
that have nothing to do with like what they,
link |
so same with bananas, these big, sweet, you know,
link |
and not infested with bugs and, you know,
link |
they used to eat the shittiest food
link |
and they're eating uncooked meat
link |
or maybe they cook it and they're just, it's gross
link |
and it's things rot.
link |
So you go to the supermarket and it's just,
link |
A, it's like crazy super engineered cartoon food,
link |
And then it's all this processed food,
link |
which, you know, we complain about in our setting.
link |
Oh, you know, we complain about, you know,
link |
we need too much process.
link |
That's a, this is a good problem.
link |
I mean, if you imagine what they would think,
link |
oh my God, a cracker.
link |
You know how delicious a cracker would taste to them?
link |
You know, candy, you know, pasta and spaghetti.
link |
They never had anything like this.
link |
And then you have from all over the world,
link |
I mean, things that are grown all over the place,
link |
all here in nice little racks organized
link |
and on a middle class salary,
link |
you can afford anything you want.
link |
I mean, it's again, just like incredible gratitude.
link |
And the question is how resilient is this whole thing?
link |
I mean, this is another darker version of your question is
link |
if we keep all the material possessions we have,
link |
but we start knocking out some percent of the population,
link |
how resilient is the system that we built up
link |
where we rely on other humans
link |
and the knowledge that built up on the past,
link |
the distributed nature of knowledge,
link |
how much does it take?
link |
How many humans need to disappear
link |
for us to be completely lost?
link |
Well, I'm trying to go off one thing,
link |
which is Elon Musk says that he has this number,
link |
a million in mind as the order of magnitude of people
link |
you need to be on Mars to truly be multi planetary.
link |
Multi planetary doesn't mean, you know,
link |
like when Neil Armstrong, you know, goes to the moon,
link |
they call it a great leap for mankind.
link |
It's not a great leap for anything.
link |
It is a great achievement for mankind.
link |
And I always like think about if the first fish
link |
to kind of go on land just kind of went up
link |
and gave the shore a high five
link |
and goes back into the water,
link |
that's not a great leap for life.
link |
That's a great achievement for that fish.
link |
And there should be a little statue of that fish
link |
and it's, you know, in the water
link |
and everyone should celebrate the fish.
link |
But it's, but when we talk about a great leap for life,
link |
It's something that now from now on, this is how things are.
link |
So this is part of why I get so excited about Mars,
link |
by the way, is because you can count on one hand,
link |
like the number of great leaps that we've had,
link |
you know, like no life to life and single cell
link |
or simple cell to complex cell
link |
and single cell organisms to animals to come,
link |
you know, multi cell animals and then ocean to land
link |
and then one planet to two planets, anyway, diversion.
link |
But the point is that we are officially that leap
link |
for all of life, you know, has happened
link |
once the ships could stop coming from Earth
link |
because there's some horrible catastrophic World War III
link |
and everyone dies on Earth and they're fine
link |
and they can turn that certain X number of people
link |
into 7 billion, you know, population
link |
that's thriving just like Earth.
link |
They can build ships, they can come back
link |
and recolonize Earth
link |
because now we are officially multi planetary
link |
where it's a self sustaining.
link |
He says a million people is about what he thinks.
link |
Now that might be a specialized group.
link |
That's a very specifically, you know,
link |
selected million that has very, very skilled million people,
link |
not just maybe the average million on Earth,
link |
but I think it depends what you're talking about.
link |
But I don't think, you know, so one million is one 7,000th,
link |
one 8,000th of the current population.
link |
I think you need a very, very, very small fraction
link |
of humans on Earth to get by.
link |
Obviously you're not gonna have
link |
the same thriving civilization
link |
if you get to a too small a number,
link |
but it depends who you're killing off, I guess,
link |
is part of the question.
link |
Yeah, if you killed off half of the people
link |
just randomly right now, I think we'd be fine.
link |
It would be obviously a great awful tragedy.
link |
I think if you killed off three quarters
link |
of all people randomly,
link |
just three out of every four people drops dead.
link |
I think we'd have, obviously the stock market would crash.
link |
We'd have a rough patch,
link |
but I almost can assure you that the species would be fine.
link |
Well, cause the million number,
link |
like you said, it is specialized.
link |
So I think, cause you have to do this,
link |
you have to basically do the iPhone experiment.
link |
Like literally you have to be able to manufacture computers.
link |
If you're gonna have the self sustaining means
link |
you can, any major important skill,
link |
any important piece of kind of infrastructure on earth
link |
can be built there just as well.
link |
It'd be interesting to list out
link |
what are the important things,
link |
what are the important skills?
link |
Yeah, I mean, if you have to feed everyone,
link |
so mass farming, things like that,
link |
you have to, you have to, you have mining,
link |
these questions, it's like the materials might be,
link |
I don't know, five mile, two miles underground,
link |
I don't know what the actual, but like,
link |
it's amazing to me just that these things
link |
got built in the first place.
link |
And they never got, no one built the first,
link |
the mine that we're getting stuff for the iPhone for
link |
probably wasn't built for the iPhone.
link |
Or in general, early mining was for,
link |
I think obviously I assume the industrial revolution
link |
when we realized, oh, fossil fuels,
link |
we wanna extract this magical energy source.
link |
I assume that like mining took a huge leap
link |
without knowing very much about this.
link |
I think you're gonna need mining,
link |
you're gonna need like a lot of electrical engineers.
link |
If you're gonna have a civilization like ours,
link |
and of course you could have oil and lanterns,
link |
we could go way back,
link |
but if you're trying to build our today thing,
link |
you're gonna need energy and electricity
link |
and then mines that can bring materials,
link |
and then you're gonna need a ton of plumbing
link |
and everything that entails.
link |
And like you said, food, but also the manufacturer,
link |
so like turning raw materials into something useful,
link |
that whole thing, like factories,
link |
some supply chain, transportation.
link |
Right, I mean, you think about,
link |
when we talk about like world hunger,
link |
one of the major problems is,
link |
there's plenty of food and by the time it arrives,
link |
most of it's gone bad in the truck,
link |
in a kind of an impoverished place.
link |
So it's like, again, we take it so for granted,
link |
all the food in the supermarket is fresh, it's all there.
link |
And which always stresses me,
link |
if I were running a supermarket,
link |
I would always be so like miserable
link |
about like things going bad on the shelves,
link |
or if you don't have enough, that's not good,
link |
but if you have too much, it goes bad anyway.
link |
Of course, there'll be entertainers too.
link |
Like somebody would have a YouTube channel
link |
that's running on Mars.
link |
There is something different about a civilization on Mars
link |
and Earth existing versus like a civilization
link |
in the United States versus Russia and China.
link |
Like that's a different,
link |
fundamentally different distance, like philosophically.
link |
Will it be like fuzzy?
link |
We know there'll be like a reality show on Mars
link |
that everyone on Earth is obsessed with.
link |
And I think if people are going back and forth enough,
link |
then it becomes fuzzy.
link |
It becomes like, oh, our friends on Mars.
link |
And there's like this Mars versus Earth,
link |
and it become like fun tribalism.
link |
I think if people don't rarely go back and forth
link |
and it really, they're there for,
link |
I think if you get kind of like, oh, we hate,
link |
a lot of like us versus them stuff going on.
link |
There could be also war in space for territory.
link |
As a first colony happens, China, Russia,
link |
or whoever the European, different European nations,
link |
Switzerland finally gets their act together
link |
and starts wars as opposed to staying out of all of them.
link |
Yeah, there's all kinds of crazy geopolitical things
link |
that like we have not even,
link |
no one's really even thought about too much yet
link |
that like, it could get weird.
link |
Think about the 1500s when it was suddenly like a race
link |
to like colonize or capture land
link |
or discover new land that hasn't been,
link |
so it was like this new frontiers.
link |
There's not really, the land is not,
link |
the thing about Crimea was like this huge thing
link |
because this tiny peninsula switched.
link |
That's how like optimized everything has become.
link |
Everything is just like really stuck.
link |
Mars is a whole new world of like,
link |
territory, naming things and you know,
link |
and it's a chance for new kind of governments maybe,
link |
or maybe it's just the colonies of these governments
link |
so we don't get that opportunity.
link |
I think it'd be cool if there's new countries
link |
being totally new experiments.
link |
And that's fascinating because Elon talks exactly
link |
about that and I believe that very much.
link |
Like that should be, like from the start,
link |
they should determine their own sovereignty.
link |
Like they should determine their own thing.
link |
There was one modern democracy in late 1700s, the US.
link |
I mean, it was the only modern democracy.
link |
And now of course, there's hundreds or dozen, many dozens.
link |
But I think part of the reason that was able to start,
link |
I mean, it's not that people didn't have the idea,
link |
people had the idea, it was that they had a clean slate,
link |
new place, and they suddenly were,
link |
so I think it would be a great opportunity to have,
link |
there's a lot of people who have done that,
link |
oh, if I had my own government on an island,
link |
my own country, what would I do?
link |
And the US founders actually had the opportunity,
link |
that fantasy, they were like, we can do it.
link |
Let's make, okay, what's the perfect country?
link |
And they tried to make something.
link |
Sometimes progress is, it's not held up by our imagination.
link |
It's held up by just, there's no blank canvas
link |
to try something on.
link |
Yeah, it's an opportunity for a fresh start.
link |
The funny thing about the conversation we're having
link |
is not often had, I mean, even by Elon,
link |
he's so focused on Starship
link |
and actually putting the first human on Mars.
link |
I think thinking about this kind of stuff is inspiring.
link |
It makes us dream, it makes us hope for the future.
link |
And it makes us somehow thinking about civilization on Mars
link |
is helping us think about the civilization here on Earth.
link |
Yeah, totally. And how we should run it.
link |
Well, what do you think are, like in our lifetime,
link |
are we gonna, I think any effort that goes to Mars,
link |
the goal is in this decade.
link |
Do you think that's actually gonna be achieved?
link |
I have a big bet, $10,000 with a friend
link |
when I was drunk in an argument.
link |
That the Neil Armstrong of Mars,
link |
whoever he or she may be, will set foot by the end of 2030.
link |
Now, this was probably in 2018 when I had this argument.
link |
So, like what if it?
link |
So, a human has to touch Mars by the end of 2030.
link |
Oh, by the year 30.
link |
Yeah, by January 1st, 2031.
link |
Did you agree on the time zone or what?
link |
If it's coming on that exact day,
link |
that's gonna be really stressful.
link |
But anyway, I think that there will be.
link |
I was more confident then.
link |
I think it's gonna be around this time.
link |
I mean, I still won the general bet
link |
because his point was, you are crazy.
link |
This is not gonna happen in our lifetimes.
link |
I've been offered many, many decades.
link |
And I said, you're wrong.
link |
You don't know what's going on in SpaceX.
link |
I think if the world depended on it,
link |
I think probably SpaceX could probably.
link |
I mean, I don't know this,
link |
but I think the tech is almost there.
link |
Like, I don't think, of course,
link |
it's delayed many years by safety.
link |
So, they first wanna send a ship around Mars
link |
and they wanna land a cargo ship on Mars.
link |
And there's the moon on the way to.
link |
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot.
link |
But I think the moon, a decade before,
link |
seemed like magical tech that humans didn't have.
link |
This is like, no, we can,
link |
it's totally conceivable that this,
link |
you've seen Starship,
link |
like it is a interplanetary colonial
link |
or interplanetary transport like system.
link |
That's what they used to call it.
link |
The SpaceX, the way they do it is,
link |
every time they do a launch,
link |
something fails usually, when they're testing
link |
and they learn a thousand things.
link |
The amount of data they get and they improve so,
link |
each one has, it's like they've moved up
link |
like eight generations in each one.
link |
Anyway, so it's not inconceivable that pretty soon
link |
they could send a Starship to Mars and land it.
link |
There's just no good reason
link |
I don't think that they couldn't do that.
link |
And so, if they could do that,
link |
they could in theory send a person to Mars pretty soon.
link |
Now, taking off from Mars and coming back,
link |
again, I think, I don't think anyone want
link |
to be on that voyage today because there's just,
link |
you know, they're still in,
link |
it's still amateur hour here and getting that perfect.
link |
I don't think we're too far away now.
link |
The question is, so every 26 months,
link |
Earth laps Mars, right?
link |
It's like a sinusoidal, soil orbit
link |
or whatever it's called, the period, 26 months.
link |
So it's right now, like in the evens,
link |
like 2022 is gonna have one of these, late 2024.
link |
So people could, this was the earliest estimate I heard.
link |
Elon said, maybe we can send people to Mars in 2024,
link |
you know, to land in early 2025.
link |
That is not gonna happen because that included 2022
link |
sending a cargo ship to Mars, maybe even a one in 2020.
link |
And so I think they're not quite on that schedule,
link |
but to win my bet, 2027, I have a chance
link |
and 2029, I have another chance.
link |
We're not very good at like backing up
link |
and seeing the big picture.
link |
We're very distracted by what's going on today
link |
and what we can believe
link |
because it's happening in front of our face.
link |
There's no way that humans gonna be landing on Mars
link |
and it's not gonna be the only thing
link |
everyone is talking about, right?
link |
I mean, it's gonna be the moon landing,
link |
but even bigger deal, going to another planet, right?
link |
And for it to start a colony,
link |
not just to, again, high five and come back.
link |
So this is like the 2020s, maybe the 2030s
link |
is gonna be the new 1960s.
link |
We're gonna have a space decade.
link |
I'm so excited about it.
link |
And again, it's one of the great leaps for all of life
link |
happening in our lifetimes, like that's wild.
link |
To paint a slightly cynical possibility,
link |
which I don't see happening,
link |
but I just wanna put sort of value into leadership.
link |
I think it wasn't obvious that the moon landing
link |
would be so exciting for all of human civilization.
link |
Some of that have to do with the right speeches,
link |
with the space race.
link |
Like space, depending on how it's presented,
link |
I don't think it's been that so far, but I've actually.
link |
I think space is quite boring right now.
link |
No, SpaceX is super, but like 10 years ago, space.
link |
Some writer, I forget who wrote,
link |
it's like the best magic trick in the show
link |
happened at the beginning.
link |
And now they're starting to do this like easy hazard.
link |
It's like, you can't go in that direction.
link |
And the line that this writer said is like,
link |
watching astronauts go up to the space station
link |
after watching the moon is like
link |
watching Columbus sail to Ibiza.
link |
It's just like, everything is so practical.
link |
You're going up to the space station, not to explore,
link |
but to do science experiments in microgravity.
link |
And you're sending rockets up,
link |
mostly here and there there's a probe,
link |
but mostly you're sending them up to put satellites
link |
for DirecTV or whatever it is.
link |
It's kind of like lame earth industry usage.
link |
So I agree with you, space is boring there.
link |
The first human setting foot on Mars,
link |
that's gotta be a crazy global event.
link |
I can't imagine it not being.
link |
Maybe you're right.
link |
Maybe I'm taking for granted the speeches
link |
and the space race and that.
link |
I think the value of, I guess what I'm pushing
link |
is the value of people like Elon Musk
link |
and potentially other leaders that hopefully step up
link |
is extremely important here.
link |
Like I would argue without the publicity of SpaceX,
link |
it's not just the ingenuity of SpaceX,
link |
but like what they've done publicly
link |
by having a figure that tweets
link |
and all that kind of stuff like that,
link |
that's a source of inspiration.
link |
NASA wasn't able to quite pull off with a shuttle.
link |
That's one of his two reasons for doing this.
link |
SpaceX exists for two reasons.
link |
One, life insurance for the species.
link |
I always think about this way.
link |
If you're an alien on some far away planet
link |
and you're rooting against humanity
link |
and you win the bet if humanity goes extinct,
link |
you do not like SpaceX.
link |
You do not want them to have their eggs
link |
in two baskets now.
link |
Sure, it's like obviously you could have something
link |
that kills everyone on both planets,
link |
some AI war or something.
link |
But the point is obviously it's good for our chances,
link |
our longterm chances to be having
link |
two self sustaining civilizations going on.
link |
The second reason, he values this I think just as high
link |
is it's the greatest adventure in history
link |
going multi planetary and that people need some reason
link |
to wake up in the morning
link |
and it'll just be this hopefully great uniting event too.
link |
I mean, today's nasty, awful political environment,
link |
which is like a whirlpool that sucks everything into it.
link |
So you name a thing and it's become a nasty political topic.
link |
So I hope that space can,
link |
Mars can just bring everyone together,
link |
but it could become this hideous thing
link |
where it's a billionaire,
link |
some annoying storyline gets built.
link |
So half the people think that anyone who's excited about Mars
link |
is an evil something.
link |
Anyway, I hope it is super exciting.
link |
So far space has been a uniting, inspiring thing.
link |
And in fact, especially during this time of a pandemic
link |
has been just a commercial entity
link |
putting out humans into space for the first time
link |
was just one of the only big sources of hope.
link |
Totally in awe, just like watching this huge skyscraper
link |
go up in the air, flip over, go back down and land.
link |
I mean, it just makes everyone just wanna sit back
link |
and clap and kinda like,
link |
the way I look at something like SpaceX
link |
is it makes me proud to be a human.
link |
And I think it makes a lot of people feel that way.
link |
It's like good for our self esteem.
link |
It's like, you know what?
link |
We're pretty, we have a lot of problems,
link |
but like we're kind of awesome.
link |
And if we can put people on Mars,
link |
sticking up an earth flag on Mars,
link |
like damn, we should be so proud
link |
of our like little family here.
link |
Like we did something cool.
link |
And by the way, I've made it clear to SpaceX people,
link |
including Elon, many times,
link |
and it's like once a year reminder
link |
that if they want to make this more exciting,
link |
they send the writer to Mars on the thing.
link |
And I'll blog about it.
link |
So I'm just continuing to throw this out there.
link |
I'm trying to get them to send me to Mars.
link |
No, I understand that.
link |
So I just wanna clarify
link |
on which trip does the writer wanna go?
link |
I think my dream one, to be honest,
link |
would be like the Apollo eight,
link |
where they just looped around the moon and came back.
link |
Cause landing on Mars.
link |
Give you a lot of good content to write about.
link |
Great content, right?
link |
I mean, the amount of kind of high minded,
link |
and so I would go into the thing
link |
and I would blog about it and I'd be in microgravity.
link |
So I'd be bouncing around my little space.
link |
I get a little, they can just send me in a dragon.
link |
They don't need to do a whole starship.
link |
And I would bounce around and I would get to,
link |
I've always had a dream of going
link |
to like one of those nice jails for a year.
link |
Because I just have nothing to do besides like read books
link |
and no responsibilities and no social plans.
link |
So this is the ultimate version of that.
link |
Anyway, it's a side topic, but I think it would be.
link |
But also if you, I mean, to be honest,
link |
if you land on Mars, it's epic.
link |
And then if you die there of like finishing your writing,
link |
it will be just even that much more powerful
link |
Yeah, but then I'm gone.
link |
And I don't even get to like experience the publication
link |
of it, which is the whole point of some of the greatest
link |
writers in history didn't get a chance to experience
link |
the publication of their.
link |
I know, I don't really think that I think like,
link |
I think back to Jesus and I'm like, oh man,
link |
that guy really like crushed it, you know?
link |
But then if you think about it,
link |
it doesn't like you could literally die today
link |
and then become the next Jesus, like 2000 years from now
link |
in this civilization that's like, there are, you know,
link |
they're like in magical in the clouds
link |
and they're worshiping you, they're worshiping Lex.
link |
And like, that sounds like your ego probably would be like,
link |
wow, that's pretty cool, except irrelevant to you
link |
because you never even knew it happened.
link |
This feels like a Rick and Morty episode.
link |
Okay, you've talked to Elon quite a bit,
link |
you've written about him quite a bit.
link |
Just, it'd be cool to hear you talk about
link |
what are your ideas of what, you know,
link |
the magic sauces you've written about with Elon.
link |
What makes him so successful?
link |
His style of thinking, his ambition, his dreams,
link |
his, the people he connects with,
link |
the kind of problems he tackles.
link |
Is there a kind of comments you can make
link |
about what makes him special?
link |
I think that obviously there's a lot of things
link |
that he's very good at.
link |
He has, he's obviously super intelligent.
link |
His heart is very much in like, I think the right place.
link |
Like, you know, I really, really believe that like,
link |
and I think people can sense that, you know,
link |
he just doesn't seem like a grifter of any kind.
link |
He's truly trying to do these big things
link |
for the right reasons.
link |
And he's obviously crazy ambitious and hardworking, right?
link |
Some people are as talented and have cool visions,
link |
but they just don't wanna spend their life that way.
link |
So, but that's, none of those alone
link |
is what makes Elon, Elon.
link |
I mean, if it were, there'd be more of him
link |
because there's a lot of people that are very smart
link |
and smart enough to accumulate a lot of money and influence
link |
and they have great ambition and they have, you know,
link |
their hearts in the right place.
link |
To me, it is the very unusual quality he has
link |
is that he's sane in a way
link |
that almost every human is crazy.
link |
What I mean by that is we are programmed
link |
to trust conventional wisdom over our own reasoning
link |
If you go back 50,000 years and conventional wisdom says,
link |
you know, don't eat that berry, you know,
link |
or this is the way you tie a spearhead to a spear.
link |
And you're thinking, I'm smarter than that.
link |
You know, that comes from the accumulation
link |
of life experience, accumulation of observation
link |
and experience over many generations.
link |
And that's a little mini version
link |
of the collective super intelligence.
link |
It's like, you know, it's equivalent
link |
of like making a pencil today.
link |
Like people back then, like the conventional wisdom,
link |
like had this super, this knowledge
link |
that no human could ever accumulate.
link |
So we're very wired to trust it.
link |
Plus the secondary thing is that the people who, you know,
link |
just say that they believe the mountain is,
link |
they worship the mountain as their God, right?
link |
And the mountain determines their fate.
link |
That's not true, right?
link |
And the conventional wisdom is wrong there,
link |
but believing it was helpful to survival
link |
because you were part of the crowd
link |
and you stayed in the tribe.
link |
And if you started to, you know, insult the mountain God
link |
and say, that's just a mountain, it's not, you know,
link |
you didn't fare very well, right?
link |
So for a lot of reasons, it was a great survival trait
link |
to just trust what other people said and believe it.
link |
And truly, you know, obviously, you know,
link |
the more you really believed it, the better.
link |
Today, conventional wisdom in a rapidly changing world
link |
and a huge giant society,
link |
our brains are not built to understand that.
link |
They have a few settings, you know,
link |
and none of them is, you know,
link |
300 million person society.
link |
So your brain is basically,
link |
is treating a lot of things like a small tribe,
link |
even though they're not,
link |
and they're treating conventional wisdom as, you know,
link |
very wise in a way that it's not.
link |
If you think about it this way, it's like, picture a,
link |
like a bucket that's not moving very much,
link |
moving like a millimeter a year.
link |
And so it has time to collect a lot of water in it.
link |
That's like conventional wisdom in the old days
link |
when very few things changed.
link |
Like your 10, you know, great, great, great grandmother
link |
probably lived a similar life to you,
link |
maybe on the same piece of land.
link |
And so old people really knew what they were talking about.
link |
Today, the bucket's moving really quickly.
link |
And so, you know, the wisdom doesn't accumulate,
link |
but we think it does because our brain settings
link |
doesn't have the, oh, move, you know,
link |
quickly moving bucket setting on it.
link |
So my grandmother gives me advice all the time,
link |
and I have to decide, is this,
link |
so there are certain things that are not changing,
link |
like relationships and love and loyalty
link |
and things like this.
link |
Her advice on those things, I'll listen to it all day.
link |
She's one of the people who said,
link |
you've got to live near your people you love,
link |
live near your family, right?
link |
I think that is like tremendous wisdom, right?
link |
That is wisdom, because that's happens to be something
link |
that hasn't, doesn't change from generation to generation.
link |
Right, she all, right, for now.
link |
She's also telling, right, so I'll be the idiot
link |
telling my brain that they'll actually be in the,
link |
it's a metaverse, like being like, it doesn't matter.
link |
And I'm like, you have to, it's not the same
link |
when you're not in person.
link |
They're gonna say, it's exactly the same, grandpa.
link |
And they'll also be thinking to me with their near link,
link |
and I'm gonna be like, slow down.
link |
I don't understand what you're saying.
link |
You just talk like a normal person.
link |
Anyway, so my grandmother then, but then she says,
link |
you know, you're, I don't know about this writing
link |
you're doing, you should go to law school,
link |
and you know, you want to be secure.
link |
And that's not good advice for me.
link |
You know, given the world I'm in,
link |
and what I like to do, and what I'm good at,
link |
that's not the right advice.
link |
But because the world is totally,
link |
she's in a different world.
link |
So she became wise for a world that's no longer here, right?
link |
Now, if you think about that,
link |
so then when we think about conventional wisdom,
link |
it's a little like my grandmother,
link |
and there's a lot of, no, it's not maybe, you know,
link |
60 years outdated like her software.
link |
It's maybe 10 years outdated conventional wisdom,
link |
So anyway, I think that we all continually
link |
don't have the confidence in our own reasoning
link |
when it conflicts with what everyone else thinks,
link |
when with what seems right.
link |
We don't have the guts to act on that reasoning
link |
for that reason, right?
link |
You know, we, and so there's so many Elon examples.
link |
I mean, just from the beginning,
link |
building Zip2 was his first company.
link |
And it was internet advertising at the time
link |
when people said, you know, this internet was brand new,
link |
like kind of thinking of like the metaverse,
link |
VR metaverse today.
link |
And people would be like, oh, we, you know,
link |
we facilitate internet advertising.
link |
People were saying, yeah, people are gonna advertise
link |
on the internet, yeah, right.
link |
Actually, it wasn't that he's magical and saw the future,
link |
it's that he looked at the present,
link |
looked at what the internet was,
link |
thought about, you know, the obvious
link |
like advertising opportunity this was gonna be.
link |
It wasn't rocket science.
link |
It wasn't genius, I don't believe.
link |
I think it was just seeing the truth.
link |
And when everyone else is laughing,
link |
saying, well, you're wrong.
link |
I mean, I did the math and here it is, right?
link |
Next company, you know, x.com,
link |
which became eventually PayPal.
link |
People said, oh yeah, people are gonna put
link |
their financial information on the internet.
link |
To us, it seems so obvious.
link |
If you went back then, you would probably feel the same.
link |
You'd think this is, that is a fake company that no,
link |
it's just obviously not a good idea.
link |
He looked around and said, you know, I see where this is.
link |
And so again, he could see where it was going
link |
because he could see what it was that day
link |
and not what it, you know, not people, conventional wisdom
link |
was still a bunch of years earlier.
link |
SpaceX is the ultimate example.
link |
A friend of his apparently bought,
link |
actually compiled a montage, video montage
link |
of rockets blowing up to show him this is not a good idea.
link |
And if, but just even the bigger picture,
link |
the amount of billionaires who have like thought
link |
this was, I'm gonna start launching rockets
link |
and you know, the amount that failed.
link |
I mean, it's not, conventional wisdom said
link |
this isn't a bad endeavor.
link |
He was putting all of his money into it.
link |
Yeah, landing rockets was another thing.
link |
You know, well, if you know,
link |
here's the classic kind of way we reason,
link |
which is if this could be done,
link |
NASA would have done it a long time ago
link |
because of the money it would save.
link |
This could be done, the Soviet Union
link |
would have done it back in the sixties.
link |
It's obviously something that can't be done.
link |
And the math on his envelope said,
link |
well, I think it can be done.
link |
And so he just did it.
link |
So in each of these cases, I think actually in some ways,
link |
Elon gets too much credit as, you know,
link |
people think it's that he's, you know,
link |
it's that his Einstein intelligence
link |
or he can see the future.
link |
He has incredible, he has incredible guts.
link |
He's so, you know, courageous.
link |
I think if you actually are looking at reality
link |
and you're just assessing probabilities
link |
and you're ignoring all the noise, which is wrong,
link |
And you just, then you just have to be, you know,
link |
pretty smart and pretty courageous.
link |
And you have to have this magical ability to be seen
link |
and trust your reasoning over conventional wisdom
link |
because your individual reasoning, you know,
link |
part of it is that we see that we can't build a pencil.
link |
We can't build, you know,
link |
this civilization on our own, right?
link |
So we kind of count, you know,
link |
count to the collective for good reasons.
link |
But this is different when it comes to kind of
link |
what's possible, you know,
link |
the Beatles were doing their kind of Motowny chord patterns
link |
in the early sixties.
link |
And they were doing what was normal.
link |
They were doing what was clearly this kind of sound is a hit.
link |
Then they started getting weird
link |
because they were so popular.
link |
They had this confidence to say,
link |
let's just, we're gonna start just experimenting.
link |
And it turns out that like,
link |
if you just, all these people are in this,
link |
like one groove together doing music,
link |
and it's just like, there's a lot of land over there.
link |
And it seems like, you know,
link |
I'm sure the managers would say,
link |
and that the, all the record execs would say,
link |
no, you have to be here.
link |
This is what sells.
link |
And it's just not true.
link |
So I think that Elon is why,
link |
that's why the term for this
link |
that actually Elon likes to use
link |
is reasoning from first principles, the physics term.
link |
First principles are your axioms.
link |
And physicists, they don't say, well, what's,
link |
you know, what do people think?
link |
No, they say, what are the axioms?
link |
Those are the puzzle pieces.
link |
Let's use those to build a conclusion.
link |
That's our hypothesis.
link |
Now let's test it, right?
link |
And they come up with all kinds of new things
link |
constantly by doing that.
link |
If Einstein was assuming conventional wisdom was right,
link |
he never would have even tried to create something
link |
that really disproved Newton's laws.
link |
And the other way to reason is reasoning by analogy,
link |
which is a great shortcut.
link |
It's when we look at other people's reasoning
link |
and we kind of photocopy it into our head, we steal it.
link |
So reasoning by analogy, we do all the time.
link |
And it's usually a good thing.
link |
I mean, we don't, it takes a lot of mental energy and time
link |
to reason from first principles.
link |
It's actually, you know,
link |
you don't wanna reinvent the wheel every time, right?
link |
You want to often copy other people's reasoning
link |
And I, you know, most of us do it most of the time
link |
and that's good, but there's certain moments
link |
when you're, forget just for a second,
link |
like succeeding in like the world of like Elon,
link |
just who you're gonna marry,
link |
where are you gonna settle down?
link |
How are you gonna raise your kids?
link |
How are you gonna educate your kids?
link |
How you should educate yourself?
link |
What kind of career paths in terms,
link |
these moments, this is what on your death bed,
link |
like you look back on and that's what,
link |
these are the few number of choices
link |
that really define your life.
link |
Those should not be reasoned by analogy.
link |
You should absolutely try to reason from first principles.
link |
And Elon, not just by the way in his work,
link |
but in his personal life.
link |
I mean, if you just look at the way he's on Twitter,
link |
he's not, it's not how you're supposed to be
link |
when you're a super famous, you know, industry titan.
link |
You're not supposed to just be silly on Twitter
link |
and do memes and getting little quibbles with you.
link |
He just does things his own way,
link |
regardless of what you're supposed to do,
link |
which sometimes serves him and sometimes doesn't,
link |
but I think it has taken him where it has taken him.
link |
Yeah, I mean, I probably wouldn't describe
link |
his approach to Twitter as first principles,
link |
but I guess it has the same element.
link |
Well, first of all, I will say that a lot of tweets,
link |
people think, oh, like he's gonna be done after that.
link |
He's fine, he's just one man, time man of the year.
link |
Like it's something, it's not sinking him,
link |
and I think, you know, it's not that I think
link |
this is like super reasoned out.
link |
I think that, you know, Twitter is his silly side,
link |
but I think that he saw,
link |
his reasoning did not feel like there was a giant risk
link |
in just being his silly self on Twitter,
link |
when a lot of billionaires would say,
link |
well, no one else is doing that.
link |
So it must be a good reason, right?
link |
Well, I gotta say that he inspires me to,
link |
that's okay to be silly.
link |
Totally. On Twitter.
link |
And, but yeah, you're right.
link |
The big inspiration is the willingness to do that
link |
when nobody else is doing it.
link |
Yeah, and I think about all the great artists,
link |
you know, all the great inventors and entrepreneurs,
link |
almost all of them,
link |
they had a moment when they trusted their reasoning.
link |
I mean, Airbnb was over 60 with VCs.
link |
A lot of people would say,
link |
obviously they know something we don't, right?
link |
But they didn't, they said, eh, I think they're all wrong.
link |
I mean, that's, that takes some kind of different wiring
link |
And then that's both for big picture
link |
and detailed like engineering problems.
link |
It's fun to talk to him.
link |
It's fun to talk to Jim Keller,
link |
who's a good example of this kind of thinking
link |
about like manufacturing, how to get costs down.
link |
They always talk about like,
link |
they talk about SpaceX rockets this way.
link |
They talk about manufacturing this way,
link |
like cost per pound or per ton to get to orbit
link |
or something like that.
link |
This is all the reason we need to get the cost down.
link |
It's a very kind of raw materials.
link |
Like just very basic way of thinking.
link |
It's really, yeah.
link |
And the first principles of a rocket
link |
are like the price of raw materials
link |
and gravity, you know, and wind.
link |
I mean, these are your first principles and fuel.
link |
Henry Ford, you know, what made Henry Ford blow up
link |
as an entrepreneur?
link |
The assembly line, right?
link |
I mean, he thought for a second and said,
link |
this isn't how manufacturing is normally done this way,
link |
but I think this is a different kind of product.
link |
And that's what changed it.
link |
And then what happened is when someone reasons
link |
from first principles, they often fail.
link |
You know, you're going out into the fog
link |
with no conventional wisdom to guide you.
link |
But when you succeed, what you notice is that
link |
everyone else turns and says, wait, what, what?
link |
What are they doing?
link |
And they all, they flock over.
link |
Look at the iPhone.
link |
iPhone, you know, Steve Jobs was obviously famously good
link |
at reasoning from first principles
link |
because that guy had crazy self confidence.
link |
He just said, you know, if I think this is right,
link |
like everyone, and that, I mean, I don't know how,
link |
I don't know how he does that.
link |
And I don't think Apple can do that anymore.
link |
I mean, they lost that.
link |
That one brain, his ability to do that was made
link |
that in a totally different company,
link |
even though there's tens of thousands of people there.
link |
He said, he didn't say, and I'm giving a lot of credit
link |
to Steve Jobs, but of course it was a team at Apple
link |
who said they didn't look at the flip phones and say,
link |
okay, well kind of, you know, let's make a keyboard
link |
that's like clicky and, you know, really cool Apple.
link |
A keyboard, they said, what should a mobile device be?
link |
You know, what the axioms, what are the axioms here?
link |
And none of them involved a keyboard necessarily.
link |
And by the time they piece it up, there was no keyboards.
link |
It didn't make sense.
link |
Everyone suddenly is going, wait, what, what are they doing?
link |
And now every phone looks like the iPhone.
link |
I mean, that's, that's how it goes.
link |
You tweeted, what's something you've changed your mind about?
link |
That's the question you've tweeted.
link |
Elon replied, brain transplants,
link |
Sam Harris responded, nuclear power.
link |
There's a bunch of people with cool responses there.
link |
In general, what are your thoughts
link |
about some of the responses
link |
and what have you changed your mind about big or small,
link |
perhaps in doing the research for some of your writing?
link |
So I'm writing right now, just finishing a book
link |
on kind of why our society is such a shit place at the moment
link |
And, you know, we have all these gifts
link |
like we're talking about, just the supermarket, you know,
link |
we have these, it's exploding technology.
link |
Fewer and fewer people are in poverty.
link |
You know, it's, Louis CK, you know, likes to say,
link |
you know, everything's amazing and no one's happy, right?
link |
But it's really extreme moment right now
link |
where it's like, hate is on the rise,
link |
like crazy things, right?
link |
If I could interrupt briefly,
link |
you did tweet that you just wrote the last word.
link |
And then there's some hilarious asshole who said,
link |
now you just have to work on all the ones in the middle.
link |
Yeah, I've heard that.
link |
I mean, when you, when you earned a reputation
link |
as a tried and true procrastinator,
link |
you're just gonna get shit forever.
link |
I accept my fate there.
link |
So do you mind sharing a little bit more
link |
about the details of what you're writing?
link |
So you're, how do you approach this question
link |
about the state of society?
link |
I wanted to figure out what was going on
link |
because what I noticed was a bad trend.
link |
It's not that, you know, things are bad.
link |
It's that things are getting worse in certain ways.
link |
Look at Max Roser's stuff, you know,
link |
he comes up with all these amazing graphs.
link |
This is what's weird is that things are getting better
link |
in almost every important metric you can think of,
link |
except the amount of people who hate other people
link |
in their own country.
link |
And the amount of people that hate their own country,
link |
the amount of Americans that hate America's on the rise,
link |
right, the amount of Americans
link |
that hate other Americans is on the rise.
link |
The amount of Americans that hate the president
link |
is on the rise, all these things,
link |
like on a very steep rise.
link |
Like there's something causing that.
link |
It's not that, you know, a bunch of new people were born
link |
who were just dicks.
link |
It's that something is going on.
link |
So I think of it as a very simple,
link |
oversimplified equation, human behavior.
link |
And it's the output.
link |
That I think the two inputs are human nature
link |
and environment, right?
link |
And this is basic, you know,
link |
super kindergarten level like, you know, animal behavior.
link |
But I think it's worth thinking about.
link |
You've got human nature,
link |
which is not changing very much, right?
link |
And then you got, you throw that nature
link |
into a certain environment
link |
and it reacts to the environment, right?
link |
It's shaped by the environment.
link |
And then eventually what comes out is behavior, right?
link |
Human nature is not changing very much,
link |
but suddenly we're behaving differently, right?
link |
We are, again, you know, look at the polls.
link |
Like it used to be that the president, you know,
link |
was liked by, I don't remember the exact numbers,
link |
but, you know, 80% or 70% of their own party
link |
and, you know, 50% of the other party.
link |
And now it's like 40% of their own party
link |
and 10% of the other party, you know?
link |
It's, and it's not that the presidents are getting worse.
link |
Maybe some people would argue that they are,
link |
but more so, and there's a lot of, you know,
link |
idiot presidents throughout the,
link |
what's going on is something in the environment is changing.
link |
And that's, you're seeing is a change in behavior.
link |
A easy example here is that, you know,
link |
by a lot of metrics,
link |
racism is getting, is becoming less and less of a problem.
link |
You know, it's hard to measure, but there's metrics like,
link |
you know, how upset would you be
link |
if your kid married someone of another race?
link |
And that number is plummeting,
link |
but racial grievance is skyrocketing, right?
link |
There's a lot of examples like this.
link |
So I wanted to look around and say,
link |
and the reason I took it on,
link |
the reason I don't think this is just an unfortunate trend,
link |
unpleasant trend that hopefully we come out of,
link |
is that all this other stuff I like to write about,
link |
all this future stuff, right?
link |
And it's this magical, I always think of this,
link |
like I'm very optimistic in a lot of ways.
link |
And I think that our world would be a utopia,
link |
would seem like actual heaven.
link |
Like whatever Thomas Jefferson was picturing as heaven,
link |
other than maybe the eternal life aspect,
link |
I think that if he came to 2021 US, it would be better.
link |
It's cooler than heaven.
link |
But we live in a place that's cooler than 1700s heaven.
link |
Again, other than the fact that we still die.
link |
Now, I think the future world
link |
actually probably would have, quote, eternal life.
link |
I don't think anyone wants eternal life actually,
link |
if people think they do.
link |
Eternal is a long time.
link |
But I think the choice to die when you want,
link |
maybe we're uploaded, maybe we can refresh our bodies.
link |
I don't know what it is.
link |
But the point is, I think about that utopia.
link |
And I do believe that like, if we don't botch this,
link |
we'd be heading towards somewhere
link |
that would seem like heaven, maybe in our lifetimes.
link |
Of course, if things go wrong,
link |
now think about the trends here.
link |
Just like the 20th century would seem like
link |
some magical utopia to someone from the 16th century.
link |
But the bad things in the 20th century
link |
were kind of the worst things ever
link |
in terms of just absolute magnitude.
link |
World War II, the biggest genocides ever.
link |
You've got maybe climate change,
link |
if it is the existential threat that many people think it is.
link |
We never had an existential threat on that level before.
link |
So the good is getting better and the bad is getting worse.
link |
And so what I think about the future,
link |
I think of us as some kind of big, long canoe as a species.
link |
5 million mile long canoe, each of us sitting in a row.
link |
And we each have one oar,
link |
and we can paddle on the left side or the right side.
link |
And what we know is there's a fork up there somewhere.
link |
And the river forks, and there's a utopia on one side
link |
and a dystopia on the other side.
link |
And I really believe that that's,
link |
we're probably not headed for just an okay future.
link |
It's just the way tech is exploding,
link |
like it's probably gonna be really good or really bad.
link |
The question is which side should we be rowing on?
link |
We can't see up there, right?
link |
But it really matters.
link |
So I'm writing about all this future stuff
link |
and I'm saying none of this matters
link |
if we're squabbling our way into kind of like
link |
a civil war right now.
link |
So what's going on?
link |
So it's a really important problem to solve.
link |
What are your sources of hope in this?
link |
So like how do you steer the canoe?
link |
One of my big sources of hope,
link |
and this is I think my answer to what I changed my mind on,
link |
is I think I always knew this, but it's easy to forget it.
link |
Our primitive brain does not remember this fact,
link |
which is that I don't think there are very many bad people.
link |
Now, you say bad, are there selfish people?
link |
Most of us, I think that if you think of people,
link |
there's digital languages, ones and zeros.
link |
And our primitive brain very quickly can get into the land
link |
where everyone's a one or a zero.
link |
Our tribe, we're all ones, we're perfect.
link |
I'm perfect, my family is that other family,
link |
it's that other tribe.
link |
There are zeros and then you dehumanize them, right?
link |
These people are awful.
link |
So zero is not a human place.
link |
No one's a zero and no one's a one.
link |
You're dehumanizing yourself.
link |
So when we get into this land,
link |
I call it political Disney world,
link |
because the Disney movies have good guys.
link |
Scar is totally bad and Mufasa is totally good, right?
link |
You don't see Mufasa's character flaws.
link |
You don't see Scar's upbringing that made him like that,
link |
that humanizes him.
link |
No, lionizes him, whatever.
link |
Mufasa's a one and Scar's a zero, very simple.
link |
So political Disney world is a place,
link |
it's a psychological place that all of us have been in.
link |
And it can be religious Disney world,
link |
it can be national Disney world and the war, whatever it is,
link |
but it's a place where we fall into this delusion
link |
that there are protagonists and antagonists
link |
and that's it, right?
link |
We are all 0.5s or maybe 0.6s to 0.4s in that.
link |
We are also, on one hand,
link |
I don't think there's that many really great people,
link |
frankly, I think if you get into it,
link |
people are kind of, a lot of people,
link |
most of us have, if you get really
link |
into our most shameful memories,
link |
the things we've done that are worse,
link |
the most shameful thoughts,
link |
the deep selfishness that some of us have
link |
in areas we wouldn't want to admit, right?
link |
Most of us have a lot of unadmirable stuff, right?
link |
On the other hand, if you actually got into,
link |
really got into someone else's brain
link |
and you looked at their upbringing,
link |
you looked at the trauma that they've experienced
link |
and then you looked at the insecurities they have
link |
and you look at all their,
link |
if you assemble the highlight reel of your worst moments,
link |
the meanest things you've ever done,
link |
the worst, the most selfish,
link |
the times you stole something, whatever,
link |
and you just, people are like,
link |
wow, Lex is an awful person.
link |
If you highlighted your,
link |
if you did a montage of your best moments,
link |
people would say, oh, he's a god, right?
link |
But of course, we all have both of those.
link |
So, I've started to really try to remind myself
link |
that everyone's a 0.5, right?
link |
And 0.5s are all worthy of criticism
link |
and we're all worthy of compassion.
link |
And the thing that makes me hopeful
link |
is that I really think that there's a bunch of 0.5s
link |
and 0.5s are good enough
link |
that we should be able to create a good society together.
link |
There's a lot of love in every human.
link |
And I think there's more love in humans than hate.
link |
I always remember this moment,
link |
this is a weird anecdote,
link |
but I'm a Red Sox fan, Boston Red Sox baseball,
link |
and Derek Jeter is who we hate the most.
link |
He's on the Yankees.
link |
He was his last game in Fenway, he's retiring.
link |
And he got this rousing standing ovation
link |
and I almost cried.
link |
And it was like, what is going on?
link |
but actually there's so much love in all humans.
link |
It felt so good to just give a huge cheer
link |
to this guy we hate because it's like this moment
link |
of like a little fist pound being like,
link |
of course we all actually love each other.
link |
And I think there's so much of that.
link |
And so the thing that I think I've come around on
link |
is I think that we are in an environment
link |
that's bringing out really bad stuff.
link |
I don't think it's, if I thought it was the people,
link |
I would be more hopeful.
link |
Like if I thought it was human nature,
link |
I'd be more upset.
link |
It's the two independent variables here,
link |
or that there's a fixed variable.
link |
There's a constant, which is human nature.
link |
And there's the independent variable environment
link |
and that it behaviors the dependent variable.
link |
I like that the thing that I think is bad
link |
is the independent variable, the environment,
link |
which means I think we can,
link |
the environment can get better.
link |
And there's a lot of things I can go into
link |
about why the environment I think is bad,
link |
but I have hope because I think the thing that's bad for us
link |
is something that can change.
link |
The first principles idea here is that most people
link |
have the capacity to be a 0.7 to 0.9.
link |
If the environment is properly calibrated
link |
with the right incentives.
link |
I think that, well, I think that maybe if we're all,
link |
yeah, if we're all 0.5s,
link |
I think that environments can bring out our good side.
link |
Yeah, so maybe we're all on some kind of distribution
link |
and the right environment can, yes,
link |
can bring out our higher sides.
link |
And I think a lot of, in a lot of ways you could say it has.
link |
I mean, the U.S. environment,
link |
we take for granted how the liberal laws
link |
and liberal environment that we live in.
link |
I mean, like in New York City, right?
link |
If you walk down the street and you like assault someone,
link |
hey, if anyone sees you, they're probably gonna yell at you.
link |
You might get your ass kicked by someone for doing that.
link |
You also might end up in jail, you know,
link |
if it's security cameras and there's just norms,
link |
you know, we're all trained.
link |
That's what awful people do, right?
link |
So there's, it's not the human nature
link |
doesn't have it in it to be like that.
link |
It's that this environment we're in has made that a much,
link |
much, much smaller experience for people.
link |
There's so many examples like that where it's like,
link |
man, you don't realize how much of the worst human nature
link |
is contained by our environment.
link |
And, but I think that, you know,
link |
rapidly changing environment,
link |
which is what we have right now, social media starts.
link |
I mean, what a seismic change to the environment.
link |
There's a lot of examples like that,
link |
rapidly changing environment
link |
can create rapidly changing behavior
link |
and wisdom sometimes can't keep up.
link |
And so we, you know, we can really kind of lose our grip
link |
on some of the good behavior.
link |
Were you surprised by Elon's answer about brain transplants
link |
or Sam's about nuclear power or anything else?
link |
Sam's I think is, I have a friend,
link |
Isabel Boumeke who has a,
link |
who's a nuclear power, you know, influencer.
link |
I've become very convinced
link |
and I've not done my deep dive on this.
link |
But here's, in this case, this is,
link |
this is reasoning by analogy here.
link |
The amount of really smart people I respect
link |
who all, who seem to have dug in,
link |
who all say nuclear power is clearly a good option.
link |
It's obviously emission free, but you know,
link |
the concerns about meltdowns and waste,
link |
they see that they're completely overblown.
link |
So judging from those people, secondary knowledge here,
link |
I will say I'm a strong advocate.
link |
I haven't done my own deep dive yet,
link |
but it does seem like a little bit odd
link |
that you've got people
link |
who are so concerned about climate change,
link |
who have, it seems like it's kind of an ideology
link |
where nuclear power doesn't fit
link |
rather than rational, you know, fear of climate change
link |
that somehow is anti nuclear power.
link |
I personally am uncomfortably reasoning by analogy
link |
with climate change.
link |
I've actually have not done a deep dive myself.
link |
Me neither, because it's so,
link |
man, it seems like a deep dive.
link |
And my reasoning by analogy there
link |
currently has me thinking it's a truly existential thing,
link |
but feeling hopeful.
link |
So let me, this is me speaking
link |
and this is speaking from a person
link |
who's not done the deep dive.
link |
I'm a little suspicious
link |
of the amount of fear mongering going on.
link |
Especially over the past couple of years,
link |
I've gotten uncomfortable with fear mongering
link |
in all walks of life.
link |
There's way too many people interested
link |
in manipulating the populace with fear.
link |
And so I don't like it.
link |
I should probably do a deep dive
link |
because to me it's, well, the big problem
link |
with the opposition to climate change
link |
or whatever the fear mongering is
link |
that it also grows the skepticism in science broadly.
link |
It's like, and that,
link |
so I need to make sure I do that deep dive.
link |
I have listened to a few folks
link |
who kind of criticize the fear mongering
link |
and all those kinds of things,
link |
but they're few and far between.
link |
And so it's like, all right, what is the truth here?
link |
And it feels lazy, but it also feels like
link |
it's hard to get to the,
link |
like there's a lot of kind of activists talking about idea,
link |
versus like sources of objective,
link |
like calm first principles type reasoning.
link |
Like one of the things,
link |
I know it's supposed to be a very big problem,
link |
but when people talk about catastrophic effects
link |
of climate change,
link |
I haven't been able to like see really great deep analysis
link |
of what that looks like in 10, 20, 30 years,
link |
raising rising sea levels.
link |
What are the models of how that changes human behavior,
link |
society, what are the things that happen?
link |
There's going to be constraints on the resources
link |
and people are gonna have to move around.
link |
This is happening gradually.
link |
Are we gonna be able to respond to this?
link |
How would we respond to this?
link |
What are the best,
link |
like, what are the best models
link |
for how everything goes wrong?
link |
Again, I was, this is a question I keep starting
link |
to ask myself without doing any research,
link |
like motivating myself to get up to this deep dive
link |
that I feel is deep,
link |
just watching people not do a great job
link |
with that kind of modeling with the pandemic
link |
and sort of being caught off guard and wondering,
link |
okay, if we're not good with this pandemic,
link |
how are we going to respond to other kinds of tragedies?
link |
Well, this is part of why I wrote the book.
link |
Cause I said, we're going to have more and more of these,
link |
like big collective, what should we do here situations?
link |
Whether it's, how about when, you know,
link |
we're probably not that far away
link |
from people being able to go and decide the IQ of their kid
link |
or like, you know, make a bunch of embryos
link |
and actually pick the highest IQ.
link |
Can possibly go wrong.
link |
And also like, imagine the political sides of that
link |
and like something that only wealthy people can afford at
link |
first and just the nightmare, right?
link |
We need to be able to have our wits about us as a species
link |
where we can actually get into a topic like that
link |
and come up with where the collective brain can be smart.
link |
I think that there are certain topics
link |
where I think of this and this is again,
link |
another simplistic model, but I think it works
link |
is that there's a higher mind and a primitive mind, right?
link |
You can, you know, in your head
link |
and these team up with others.
link |
So when the higher minds are in a higher mind
link |
is more rational and puts out ideas
link |
that it's not attached to.
link |
And so it can change its mind easily
link |
cause it's just an idea and the higher mind
link |
can get criticized.
link |
Their ideas can get criticized and it's no big deal.
link |
And so when the higher minds team up,
link |
it's like all these people in the room,
link |
like throwing out ideas and kicking them
link |
and one idea goes out and everyone criticizes it,
link |
which is like, you know, shooting bows and arrows at it.
link |
And the truth, the true idea is, you know,
link |
the bow, the arrows bounce off and it's so, okay,
link |
it rises up and the other ones get shot down.
link |
So it's this incredible system.
link |
This is what, you know,
link |
this is what good science institution is,
link |
is, you know, someone puts out a thing,
link |
criticism arrows come at it and, you know,
link |
most of them fall and the needle is in the haystack
link |
end up rising up, right?
link |
Incredible mechanism.
link |
So what that's happening is a bunch of people,
link |
a bunch of flawed medium scientists
link |
are creating super intelligence.
link |
Then there's the primitive mind,
link |
which, you know, is the more limbic system part of our brain.
link |
It's the part of us that is very much not living in 2021.
link |
It's living many tens of thousands of years ago.
link |
And it does not treat ideas like this separate thing.
link |
It identifies with its ideas.
link |
It only gets involved when it finds an idea sacred.
link |
It starts holding an idea sacred and it starts identifying.
link |
So what happens is they team up too.
link |
And so when you have a topic that a bunch of primitive,
link |
that really rouses a bunch of primitive minds,
link |
it quickly, the primitive minds team up
link |
and they create an echo chamber
link |
where suddenly no one can criticize this.
link |
And in fact, if it's powerful enough,
link |
people outside the community, you can,
link |
no one can criticize it.
link |
We will get your paper retracted.
link |
We will get you fired, right?
link |
That's not higher mind behavior.
link |
That is crazy primitive mind.
link |
And so now what happens is the collective
link |
becomes dumber than an individual,
link |
a dumber than a reason, a single reasoning individual.
link |
You have this collective is suddenly attached
link |
to this sacred scripture with the idea
link |
and they will not change their mind
link |
and they get dumber and dumber.
link |
And so climate change, what's worrisome
link |
is that climate change has in many ways
link |
become a sacred topic,
link |
where if you come up with a nuanced thing,
link |
you might get called branded a denier.
link |
So there goes the super intelligence,
link |
all the arrows, no arrows can be fired.
link |
But if you get called a denier,
link |
that's a social penalty for firing an arrow
link |
at a certain orthodoxy, right?
link |
And so what's happening is the big brain
link |
gets like frozen, right?
link |
And it becomes very stupid.
link |
Now, you can also say that
link |
about a lot of other topics right now.
link |
You just mentioned another one, I forget what it was,
link |
but that's also kind of like this.
link |
The world of vaccine.
link |
Yeah, yeah, COVID, okay.
link |
And here's my point earlier is that
link |
what I see is that the political divide
link |
has like a whirlpool that's pulling everything into it.
link |
And in that whirlpool, thinking is done
link |
with the primitive mind tribes.
link |
And so I get, okay, obviously something like race,
link |
that makes sense, that also right now,
link |
the topic of race, for example, or gender,
link |
these things are in the whirlpool.
link |
But that at least is like, okay,
link |
that's something that the primitive mind
link |
would always get really worked up about.
link |
It taps into like our deepest kind of like primal selves.
link |
COVID, maybe it's COVID in a way too,
link |
but climate change, that should just be something
link |
that our rational brains are like,
link |
let's solve this complex problem.
link |
But the problem is that it's all gotten sucked
link |
into the red versus blue whirlpool.
link |
And once that happens,
link |
it's in the hands of the primitive minds.
link |
And we're losing our ability to be wise together,
link |
to make decisions.
link |
It's like the big species brain is like,
link |
or the big American brain is like,
link |
drunk at the wheel right now.
link |
And we're about to go into our future
link |
with more and more big technologies,
link |
scary things, we have to make big right decisions.
link |
And not, we're getting dumber as a collective.
link |
And that's part of this environmental problem.
link |
So within the space of technologists
link |
and the space of scientists, we should allow the arrows.
link |
That's one of the saddest things to me about,
link |
is like the scientists, like I've seen arrogance.
link |
There's a lot of mechanisms that maintain the tribe.
link |
It's the arrogance, it's how you built up this mechanism
link |
that defends, this wall that defends against the arrows.
link |
It's arrogance, credentialism,
link |
like just ego, really.
link |
And then just, it protects you
link |
from actually challenging your own ideas.
link |
This ideal of science that makes science beautiful.
link |
In a time of fear, and in a time of division
link |
created by perhaps politicians that leverage the fear,
link |
it, like you said, makes the whole system dumber.
link |
The science system dumber,
link |
the tech developer system dumber,
link |
if they don't allow the challenging of ideas.
link |
What's really bad is that like,
link |
in a normal environment,
link |
you're always gonna have echo chambers.
link |
So what's the opposite of an echo chamber?
link |
I created a term for it, because I think we need it,
link |
which is called an idea lab, an idea lab, right?
link |
It's like people treat, it's like people act like scientists,
link |
even if they're not doing science,
link |
they just treat their ideas like science experiments
link |
and they toss them out there and everyone disagrees.
link |
And disagreement is like the game.
link |
Everyone likes to disagree.
link |
Certain texts thread where everyone is just saying,
link |
it's almost like someone throws something out
link |
and just it's an impulse for the rest of the group to say,
link |
I think you're being like overly general there.
link |
Or I think like, aren't you kind of being,
link |
I think that's like your bias showing.
link |
And it's like, no one's getting offended
link |
because it's like, we're all just messing,
link |
we all of course respect each other, obviously.
link |
We're just, you know, trashing each other's ideas
link |
and that the whole group becomes smarter.
link |
You're always gonna have idea labs and echo chambers,
link |
right, in different communities.
link |
And most of us participate in both of them.
link |
You know, maybe in your marriage is a great idea lab,
link |
you love to disagree with your spouse and maybe in,
link |
but this group of friends or your family at home,
link |
you know, in front of that sister,
link |
you do not bring up politics
link |
because she's now enforced when that happens,
link |
her bullying is forcing the whole room
link |
to be an echo chamber to appease her.
link |
Now, what scares me is that usually have these things
link |
existing kind of in bubbles.
link |
And usually there's like an age
link |
have their natural defenses against each other.
link |
So an echo chamber person stays in their echo chamber.
link |
They don't like, they will cut you out.
link |
They don't like to be friends with people
link |
who disagree with them.
link |
You notice that they will cut you out.
link |
They'll cut out their parents
link |
if they voted for Trump or whatever, right?
link |
So that's how they do it.
link |
They will say, I'm going to stay inside
link |
of an echo chamber safely.
link |
So my ideas, which I identify with
link |
because my primitive mind is doing the thinking
link |
are not going to ever have to get challenged
link |
because it feels so scary and awful for that to happen.
link |
But if they leave and they go into an idea lab environment,
link |
they're going to, people are going to say, what?
link |
No, they're going to disagree.
link |
And they're going to say,
link |
and the person's going to try to bully them.
link |
They're going to say, that's really offensive.
link |
And people are going to say, no, it's not.
link |
And they're going to immediately say
link |
these people are assholes, right?
link |
So the echo chamber person,
link |
it doesn't have much power once they leave the echo chamber.
link |
Likewise, the idea lab person,
link |
they have this great environment,
link |
but if they go into an echo chamber
link |
where everyone else is, and they do that,
link |
they will get kicked out of the group.
link |
They will get branded as something,
link |
a denier, a racist, a right winger, a radical,
link |
these nasty words.
link |
The thing that I don't like right now
link |
is that the echo chambers have found ways
link |
to forcefully expand into places
link |
that normally have a pretty good immune system
link |
against echo chambers, like universities,
link |
like science journals,
link |
places where usually it's like,
link |
there's a strong idea lab culture there, veritas.
link |
You know, that's an idea lab slogan.
link |
You have is that these people have found a way to,
link |
a lot of people have found a way
link |
to actually go out of their thing
link |
and keep their echo chamber
link |
by making sure that everyone is scared
link |
because they can punish anyone,
link |
whether you're in their community or not.
link |
So that's all brilliantly put.
link |
When's the book coming out?
link |
June, July, we're not quite sure yet.
link |
Okay, I can't wait.
link |
Thanks. It's awesome.
link |
Do you have a title yet or you can't talk about that?
link |
Still working on it.
link |
If it's okay, just a couple of questions from Mailbag.
link |
I just love these.
link |
I would love to hear you riff on these.
link |
So one is about film and music.
link |
Why do we prefer to watch, the question goes,
link |
why do we prefer to watch a film
link |
we haven't watched before,
link |
but we want to listen to songs
link |
that we have heard hundreds of times?
link |
This question and your answer
link |
really started to make me think like,
link |
yeah, that's true.
link |
That's really interesting.
link |
Like we draw that line somehow.
link |
So what's the answer?
link |
So I think, let's use these two minds again.
link |
I think that when your higher mind
link |
is the one who's taking something in
link |
and they're really interested in,
link |
what are the lyrics or I'm gonna learn something
link |
or reading a book or whatever.
link |
And the higher mind is trying to get information.
link |
And once it has it,
link |
there's no point in listening to it again.
link |
It has the information.
link |
Your rational brain is like, I got it.
link |
But when you eat a good meal or have sex or whatever,
link |
that's something you can do again and again,
link |
because it actually, your primitive brain loves it.
link |
And it never gets bored of things that it loves.
link |
So I think music is a very primal thing.
link |
I think music goes right into our primitive brain.
link |
A lot, I think it's of course, it's a collaboration.
link |
Your rational brain is absorbing the actual message.
link |
But I think it's all about emotions
link |
and even more than emotions,
link |
it literally like the music taps into like some very,
link |
very deep, primal part of us.
link |
And so when you hear a song once,
link |
even some of your favorite songs,
link |
the first time you heard it,
link |
you were like, I guess that's kind of catchy.
link |
And then you end up loving it on the 10th listen.
link |
But sometimes you even don't even like a song.
link |
You're like, oh, this song sucks.
link |
But suddenly you find yourself on the 40th time
link |
because it's on the radio all the time,
link |
just kind of being like, oh, I love this song.
link |
And you're like, wait, I hated the song.
link |
And what's happening is that the sound is actually,
link |
the music's actually carving a pathway in your brain
link |
And when your brain knows what's coming,
link |
it can dance, it knows the steps.
link |
So your brain is your internal kind of,
link |
your brain is actually dancing with the music
link |
and it knows the steps and it can anticipate.
link |
And so there's something about knowing,
link |
having memorized the song
link |
that makes it incredibly enjoyable to us.
link |
But when we hear it for the first time,
link |
we don't know where it's gonna go.
link |
We're like an awkward dancer.
link |
We don't know the steps and your primitive brain
link |
can't really have that much fun yet.
link |
That's how I feel.
link |
And in the movies, that's less primitive.
link |
That's the story you're taking in.
link |
But a really good movie that we really love,
link |
often we will watch it like 12 times.
link |
It's still like it, not that many,
link |
but versus if you're watching a talk show, right?
link |
If you're listening to one of your podcasts,
link |
as a perfect example,
link |
there's not many people that will listen
link |
to one of your podcasts,
link |
no matter how good it is, 12 times.
link |
Because once you've got it, you've got it.
link |
It's a form of information that's very higher mind focused.
link |
That's how I read it.
link |
Well, the funny thing is there is people
link |
that listen to a podcast episode many, many times.
link |
And often I think the reason for that
link |
is not because of the information, is the chemistry,
link |
is the music of the conversation.
link |
So it's not the actual.
link |
It's the art of it they like.
link |
Yeah, they'll fall in love with some kind of person,
link |
some weird personality, and they'll just be listening to,
link |
they'll be captivated by the beat of that kind of person.
link |
Or like a standup comic.
link |
I've watched like certain things,
link |
like episodes like 20 times, even though I, you know.
link |
I have to ask you about the wizard hat.
link |
You had a blog about Neuralink.
link |
I got a chance to visit Neuralink a couple of times,
link |
hanging out with those folks, that was one of the pieces
link |
of writing you did that like changes culture
link |
and changes the way people think about a thing.
link |
The ridiculousness of your stick figure drawings
link |
are somehow, it's like calling the origin
link |
of the universe the Big Bang.
link |
It's a silly title, but it somehow sticks
link |
to be the representative of that.
link |
And the same way the wizard hat for the Neuralink
link |
is somehow it was a really powerful way to explain that.
link |
You actually proposed that the man of the year
link |
cover of Time should be.
link |
One of my drawings.
link |
One of your drawings.
link |
It's an outrage that it wasn't.
link |
Okay, so what are your thoughts about like all those years
link |
later about Neuralink?
link |
Do you find this idea, like what excites you about it?
link |
Is it the big long term philosophical things?
link |
Is it the practical things?
link |
Do you think it's super difficult to do
link |
on the neurosurgery side
link |
and the material engineering, the robotics side?
link |
Or do you think the machine learning side
link |
for the brain computer interfaces
link |
where they get to learn about each other,
link |
all that kind of stuff.
link |
I would just love to get your thoughts
link |
because you're one of the people
link |
that really considered this problem,
link |
really studied it, brain computer interfaces.
link |
I mean, I'm super excited about it.
link |
It's a, I really think it's actually
link |
Elon's most ambitious thing.
link |
More than colonizing Mars
link |
because that's just a bunch of people going somewhere,
link |
even though it's somewhere far.
link |
Neuralink is changing what a person is eventually.
link |
Now, I think that Neuralink engineers and Elon himself
link |
would all be the first to admit that it is a maybe
link |
that whether they can do their goals here.
link |
I mean, it is so crazy ambitious to try to,
link |
even their eventual goals are,
link |
of course in the interim,
link |
they have a higher probability
link |
of accomplishing smaller things,
link |
which are still huge, like basically solving paralysis,
link |
strokes, Parkinson, things like that.
link |
I mean, it can be unbelievable.
link |
And anyone who doesn't have one of these things,
link |
like we might, everyone should be very happy
link |
about this kind of helping with different disabilities.
link |
But the thing that is like,
link |
so the grand goal is this augmentation
link |
where you take someone who's totally healthy
link |
and you put a brain machine interface in any way
link |
to give them superpowers.
link |
It's the possibilities if they can do this,
link |
if they can really,
link |
so they've already shown that they are for real,
link |
but they've created this robot.
link |
Elon talks about like, it should be like LASIK,
link |
it shouldn't be something that needs a surgeon.
link |
This shouldn't just be for rich people
link |
who have waited in line for six months.
link |
It should be for anyone who can afford LASIK
link |
and eventually, hopefully something that isn't covered by
link |
insurance or something that anyone can do.
link |
Something this big a deal should be something
link |
that anyone can afford eventually.
link |
And when we have this, again,
link |
I'm talking about a very advanced phase down the road.
link |
So maybe a less advanced phase,
link |
just maybe right now,
link |
if you think about when you listen to a song,
link |
what's happening, is you actually hear the sound?
link |
It's that the sound is coming out of the speaker.
link |
The speaker is vibrating.
link |
It's vibrating air molecules.
link |
Those air molecules, you know,
link |
get vibrated all the way to your head pressure wave.
link |
And then it vibrates your eardrum.
link |
Your eardrum is really the speaker now in your head
link |
that then vibrates bones and fluid,
link |
which then stimulates neurons in your auditory cortex,
link |
which give you the perception that you're hearing sound.
link |
Now, if you think about that,
link |
do we really need to have a speaker to do that?
link |
You could just somehow,
link |
if you had a little tiny thing
link |
that could vibrate eardrums,
link |
you could do it that way.
link |
That seems very hard.
link |
But really what you need,
link |
if you go to the very end
link |
with a thing that really needs to happen,
link |
is your auditory cortex neurons
link |
need to be stimulated in a certain way.
link |
If you have a ton of Neuralink things in there,
link |
Neuralink electrodes,
link |
and they get really good at stimulating things,
link |
you could play a song in your head
link |
that you hear that is not playing anywhere.
link |
There's no sound in the room,
link |
but you hear and no one else could.
link |
It's not like they can get close to your head and hear it.
link |
They could not hear anything,
link |
but you hear sound.
link |
So you open your phone,
link |
you have the Neuralink app.
link |
You open the Neuralink app,
link |
and or just Neuralink.
link |
So basically you can open your Spotify
link |
and you can play to your speaker,
link |
you can play to your computer,
link |
you can play right out of your phone to your headphones,
link |
or you can have a new one.
link |
You can play into your brain.
link |
And this is one of the earlier things.
link |
This is something that seems like really doable.
link |
So no more headphones.
link |
I always think it's so annoying
link |
because I can leave the house with just my phone
link |
or even just an Apple watch.
link |
But there's always this one thing,
link |
I'm like, and headphones.
link |
You do need your headphones, right?
link |
So I feel like that'll be the end of that.
link |
But there's so many things that you,
link |
and you keep going,
link |
the ability to think together.
link |
You can talk about like super brains.
link |
I mean, one of the examples Elon uses
link |
is that the low bandwidth of speech.
link |
If I go to a movie and I come out of a scary movie
link |
and you say, how was it?
link |
I said, oh, it was terrifying.
link |
Well, what did I just do?
link |
I had five buckets I could have given you.
link |
One was horrifying, terrifying, scary, eerie, creepy,
link |
And I had a much more nuanced experience than that.
link |
And all I have is these words, right?
link |
And so instead I just hand you the bucket.
link |
I put the stuff in the bucket and give it to you,
link |
but all you have is the bucket.
link |
You just have to guess what I put into that bucket.
link |
All you can do is look at the label of the bucket and say,
link |
when I say terrifying, here's what I mean.
link |
So the point is it's very lossy.
link |
I had all this nuanced information
link |
of what I thought of the movie.
link |
And I'm sending you a very low res package
link |
that you're gonna now guess
link |
what the high res thing looked like.
link |
That's language in general.
link |
Our thoughts are much more nuanced.
link |
We can think to each other.
link |
We can do amazing things.
link |
We could A, have a brainstorm that doesn't feel like,
link |
oh, we're not talking in each other's heads.
link |
Not just that I hear your voice.
link |
No, no, no, we are just thinking.
link |
No words are being said internally or externally.
link |
The two brains are literally collaborating.
link |
It's something, it's a skill.
link |
I'm sure we'd have to get good at it.
link |
I'm sure young kids will be great at it
link |
and old people will be bad.
link |
But you think together and together you're like,
link |
oh, had the joint epiphany.
link |
And now how about eight people in a room doing it, right?
link |
So it gets, you know, there's other examples.
link |
How about when you're a dress designer or a bridge designer
link |
and you want to show people what your dress looks like.
link |
Well, right now you gotta sketch it for a long time.
link |
Here, just beam it onto the screen from your head.
link |
So you can picture it.
link |
If, you know, if you can picture a tree in your head,
link |
well, you can just suddenly,
link |
whatever's in your head, you can be pictured.
link |
So we'll have to get very good at it, right?
link |
And take a skill, right?
link |
You know, you're gonna have to,
link |
but the possibilities, my God.
link |
Talk about like, I feel like if that works,
link |
if we really do have that as something,
link |
I think it'll almost be like a new ADBC line.
link |
It's such a big change that the idea of like anyone living
link |
before everyone had brain machine interfaces
link |
is living in like before the common era.
link |
It's that level of like big change if it can work.
link |
Yeah, and like a replay of memories,
link |
just replaying stuff in your head.
link |
And copying, you know, you can hopefully copy memories
link |
onto other things and you don't have to just rely on your,
link |
you know, your wet circuitry.
link |
It does make me sad because you're right.
link |
The brain is incredibly neuroplastic
link |
and so it can adjust, it can learn how to do this.
link |
I think it'll be a skill.
link |
Or probably you and I will be too old to truly learn.
link |
Well, maybe we can get, there'll be great trainings.
link |
You know, I'm spending the next three months
link |
in like a, you know, one of the Neuralink trainings.
link |
But it'll still be a bit of like grandpa, I can't.
link |
This is, you know, I was thinking,
link |
how am I gonna be old?
link |
I'm like, no, I'm gonna be great at the new phones.
link |
It's like, how can it be the phones?
link |
It's gonna be that, you know,
link |
the kid's gonna be thinking to me.
link |
I'm gonna be like, I just, can you just talk please?
link |
And they're gonna be like, okay, I'll just talk.
link |
And they're gonna, so that'll be the equivalent of,
link |
you know, yelling to your grandparents today.
link |
I really suspect, I don't know what your thoughts are,
link |
but I grew up in a time when physical contact interaction
link |
I just feel like that's going to go the way
link |
that's gonna disappear.
link |
I mean, is there anything more intimate
link |
than thinking with each other?
link |
I mean, that's, you talk about, you know,
link |
once we were all doing that, it might feel like, man,
link |
everyone was so isolated from each other so far.
link |
So I didn't say that intimacy disappears.
link |
I just meant physical, having to be in the same,
link |
having to touch each other.
link |
If people like that, if it is important,
link |
won't there be whole waves of people start to say,
link |
you know, there's all these articles that come out
link |
about how, you know, in our metaverse,
link |
we've lost something important and then now there's a huge,
link |
all first the hippies start doing it
link |
and then eventually it becomes this big wave
link |
and now everyone, won't, you know,
link |
if something truly is lost, won't we recover it?
link |
Well, I think from first principles,
link |
all of the components are there to engineer
link |
intimate experiences in the metaverse or in the cyberspace.
link |
And so to me, I don't see anything profoundly unique
link |
to the physical experience.
link |
Like I don't understand.
link |
But then why are you saying there's a loss there?
link |
No, I'm just sad because I won't,
link |
oh, it's a loss for me personally, because the world.
link |
So then you do think there's something unique
link |
in the physical experience.
link |
For me, because I was raised with it.
link |
So whatever, so anything you're raised with,
link |
you fall in love with.
link |
Like people in this country came up with baseball.
link |
I was raised in the Soviet Union.
link |
I don't understand baseball.
link |
I get, I like it, but I don't love it
link |
the way Americans love it.
link |
Because a lot of times they went to baseball games
link |
with their father and then there's that family connection.
link |
There's a young kid dreaming about, I don't know,
link |
becoming an MLB player himself.
link |
I don't know, something like that.
link |
But that's what you're raised with,
link |
obviously is really important.
link |
But I mean, fundamentally to the human experience,
link |
listen, we're doing this podcast in person.
link |
So clearly I still value it, but.
link |
If this were, obviously through a screen,
link |
we all agree that's not the same.
link |
Yeah, it's not the same.
link |
But if this were some, we had contact lenses on
link |
and maybe Neuralink, maybe again, forget,
link |
again, this is all the devices,
link |
even if it's just cool as a contact lens,
link |
that's all old school.
link |
Once you have the brain machine interface,
link |
it'll just be projection of,
link |
it'll take over my visual cortex.
link |
My visual cortex will get put into a virtual room
link |
and so will yours.
link |
So we will see, we will hear, really hear and see
link |
as if where you won't have any masks, no VR mask needed.
link |
And at that point, it really will feel like you'll forget.
link |
You'll say, will we together and physically or not?
link |
it'd be so unimportant you won't even remember.
link |
This is one of those shifts in society
link |
that changes everything.
link |
Romantically, people still need to be together.
link |
There's a whole set of like physical things
link |
with a relationship that are needed.
link |
Sex, but also just like there's pheromones.
link |
Like there's the physical touch is such a,
link |
that's like music.
link |
It goes to such a deeply primitive part of us
link |
that what physical touch with a romantic partner does,
link |
that I think that,
link |
so I'm sure there'll be a whole wave of people who,
link |
their new thing is that, you know,
link |
you're romantically involved people
link |
you never actually are in person with,
link |
but, and I'm sure there'll be things
link |
where you can actually smell what's in the room
link |
Yeah, but I think that'll be one of the last things to go.
link |
I think there'll be, there's something,
link |
that to me seems like something that'll be a while
link |
before people feel like there's nothing lost
link |
by not being in the same.
link |
It's very difficult to replicate the human interaction.
link |
Although sex also, again,
link |
you could not to get too like weird,
link |
but you could have a thing where you,
link |
you're basically, you know, or, you know,
link |
let's just do a massage because it's less like awkward,
link |
but like someone, you know,
link |
everyone is still imagining sex.
link |
A masseuse could massage a fake body
link |
and you could feel whatever's happening, right?
link |
So you're lying down in your apartment alone,
link |
but you're feeling a full.
link |
There'll be the new like YouTube or like streaming
link |
where it's one masseuse massaging one body,
link |
but like a thousand people are experiencing.
link |
Exactly right now.
link |
Think about it right now.
link |
You know what, Taylor Swift doesn't play for one person
link |
and has to go around and every one of her fans
link |
she has to go play for or a book, right?
link |
You do it and it goes everywhere.
link |
So it'll be the same idea.
link |
You've written and thought a lot about AI.
link |
So AI safety specifically,
link |
you've mentioned you're actually starting a podcast,
link |
You're so good at talking, so good at thinking,
link |
so good at being weird in the most beautiful of ways,
link |
but you've been thinking about this AI safety question.
link |
Where today does your concern lie
link |
for the near future, for the longterm future?
link |
Like quite a bit of stuff happened,
link |
including with Elon's work with Tesla Autopilot.
link |
There's a bunch of amazing robots with Boston Dynamics
link |
and everyone's favorite vacuum robot, iRobot, Roomba.
link |
And then there's obviously the applications
link |
of machine learning for recommender systems
link |
in Twitter, Facebook, and so on.
link |
And face recognition for surveillance,
link |
all these kinds of things are happening.
link |
Just a lot of incredible use of not the face recognition,
link |
but the incredible use of deep learning,
link |
machine learning to capture information about people
link |
and try to recommend to them what they wanna consume next.
link |
Some of that can be abused,
link |
some of that can be used for good,
link |
like for Netflix or something like that.
link |
What are your thoughts about all this?
link |
Yeah, I mean, I really don't think humans are very smart,
link |
all things considered, I think we're like limited.
link |
And we're dumb enough that we're very easily manipulable.
link |
Not just like, oh, like our emotions,
link |
people can, our emotions can be pulled like puppet strings.
link |
I mean, again, I look at like,
link |
I do look at what's going on in political polarization now
link |
and I see a lot of puppet string emotions happening.
link |
So yeah, there's a lot to be scared of for sure,
link |
like very scared of.
link |
I get excited about a lot of very specific things.
link |
Like one of the things I get excited about is I like,
link |
so the future of wearables, right?
link |
Again, I think that it would be like,
link |
oh, the wrist, the Fitbit around my wrist
link |
is gonna seem, you know, the whoop
link |
is gonna seem really hilariously old school in 20 years.
link |
Back with Neuralink.
link |
Like a big bracelet, right?
link |
It's gonna turn into little sensors in our blood probably,
link |
or, you know, even, you know, infrared,
link |
we're, you know, just things that are gonna be,
link |
it's gonna be collecting a hundred times more data
link |
than it collects now, more nuanced data,
link |
more specific to our body.
link |
And it's going to be, you know, super reliable,
link |
but that's the hardware side.
link |
And then the software is gonna be,
link |
this is, I've not done my deep dive.
link |
This is all speculation,
link |
but the software is gonna get really good.
link |
And this is the AI component.
link |
And so I get excited about specific things like that.
link |
Like think about if hardware were able to collect,
link |
first of all, the hardware knows your whole genome
link |
and we know a lot more about what a genome sequence means.
link |
Cause you can collect your genome now
link |
and we just don't know much.
link |
We, okay, we don't have much to do with that information.
link |
As AI gets, so now you have your genome,
link |
you've got what's in your blood at any given moment,
link |
all the levels of everything, right?
link |
You have the exact width of your heart arteries
link |
at any given moment, you've got.
link |
All the, all the virons,
link |
all the viruses that ever visited your body
link |
cause there's a trace of it.
link |
So you have all the pathogens,
link |
all the things that like,
link |
you should be concerned about health wise
link |
and might have threatened you,
link |
you might be immune from all of that kind of stuff.
link |
They also, of course it knows
link |
how fast your heart is beating
link |
and it knows how much you know,
link |
exactly the amount of exercise,
link |
knows your muscle mass and your weight and all that,
link |
but it also maybe can even know your emotions.
link |
I mean, make, if emotions, you know, what are they,
link |
you know, where do they come from?
link |
Probably pretty obvious chemicals once we get in there.
link |
So again, Neuralink can be involved here maybe
link |
in collecting information, you know,
link |
cause right now you have to do the thing,
link |
what's your mood right now?
link |
And it's hard to even assess, you know,
link |
and you're in a bad mood, it's hard to even, but.
link |
By the way, just as a shout out,
link |
Lisa Feldman Barrett, who's a neuroscientist
link |
at Northeastern just wrote a,
link |
I mean, not just, like a few years ago,
link |
wrote a whole book saying our expression of emotions
link |
has nothing to do with the experience of emotions.
link |
So you really actually want to be measuring.
link |
That, that's exactly.
link |
I, you can tell because one of these apps pops up
link |
and says, you know, what, how do you feel right now?
link |
I'm like, I don't know.
link |
Like I feel bad right now because the thing popping up
link |
reminded me that I'm procrastinating.
link |
So I was on my phone, I should have been more,
link |
you know, I'm like, that's not my, you know.
link |
So I think it will probably be able to very,
link |
get all this info, right?
link |
Now the AI can go to town.
link |
Think about when the AI gets really good at this
link |
and it knows your genome and it knows it can just,
link |
I want the AI to just tell me what to do when it turns up.
link |
Okay, so how about this?
link |
Now imagine attaching that to a meal service, right?
link |
And the meal service has everything, you know,
link |
all the million ingredients and supplements and vitamins
link |
And I give the, I tell the AI my broad goals.
link |
I want to gain muscle or I want to, you know,
link |
maintain my weight, but I want to have more energy
link |
or whatever, I just want, or I want to, you know,
link |
I just want to be very healthy and I want to,
link |
obviously everyone wants the same, like 10 basic things.
link |
Like you want to avoid cancer, you want to, you know,
link |
various things, you want to age slower.
link |
So now the AI has my goals and a drone comes at,
link |
you know, a little thing pops up and it says like,
link |
you know, beep, beep, like, you know, 15 minutes,
link |
you're going to eat because it knows that's a great,
link |
that's the right time for my body to eat.
link |
15 minutes later, a little slot opens in my wall
link |
where a drone has come from the factory,
link |
the eating, the food factory and dropped the perfect meal
link |
for my, that moment for me, for my mood, for my genome,
link |
for my blood contents.
link |
And it's, it's because it knows my goals.
link |
So, you know, it knows I want to feel energy at this time
link |
and then I want to wind down here.
link |
So those things you have to tell it.
link |
Well, plus the pleasure thing, like it knows what kind
link |
of components of a meal you've enjoyed in the past
link |
so you can assemble the perfect meal.
link |
Exactly, it knows you way better than you know yourself,
link |
better than any human could ever know you.
link |
And a little thing pops up,
link |
you still have some choice, right?
link |
Still, it pops up and it says like, you know, coffee,
link |
because it knows that, you know, my cutoff,
link |
they says, you know, I can have coffee
link |
for the next 15 minutes only because at that point
link |
it knows how long it stays in my system.
link |
It knows what my sleep is like when I have it too late.
link |
It knows I have to wake up at this time tomorrow
link |
because that was my calendar.
link |
And so I think a lot of people's, this is,
link |
I think something that humans are wrong about
link |
is that most people will hear this and be like,
link |
that sounds awful, that sounds dystopian.
link |
No, it doesn't, it sounds incredible.
link |
And if we all had this, we would not look back and be like,
link |
I wish I was like making awful choices every day
link |
like I was in the past.
link |
And then this isn't, these aren't important decisions.
link |
Your important decision making energy,
link |
your important focus and your attention can go
link |
onto your kids and on your work and on, you know,
link |
helping other people and things that matter.
link |
And so I think AI, when I think about like personal
link |
lifestyle and stuff like that, I really love,
link |
like I love thinking about that.
link |
I think it's gonna be very, and I think we'll all be
link |
so much healthier that when we look back today,
link |
one of the things that's gonna look so primitive
link |
is the one size fits all thing,
link |
getting like reading advice about keto.
link |
Each genome is gonna have very specific,
link |
one, you know, unique advice coming from AI.
link |
Yeah, the customization that's enabled by collection
link |
of data and the use of AI, a lot of people think
link |
what's the, like they think of the worst case scenario
link |
that data being used by authoritarian governments
link |
to control you, all that kind of stuff.
link |
They don't think about most likely,
link |
especially in a capitalist society,
link |
it's most likely going to be used as part of a competition
link |
to get you the most delicious and healthy meal possible
link |
as fast as possible.
link |
Yeah, so the world will definitely be much better
link |
with the integration of data.
link |
But of course, you wanna be able to be transparent
link |
and honest about how that data is misused.
link |
And that's why it's important to have free speech
link |
and people to speak out, like when some bullshit
link |
is being done by companies.
link |
That we need to have our wits about us as a society.
link |
Like this is free speech is the mechanism
link |
by which the big brain can think, can think for itself,
link |
can think straight, can see straight.
link |
When you take away free speech, when you start saying
link |
that in every topic, when any topic's political,
link |
it becomes treacherous to talk about.
link |
So forget the government taking away free speech.
link |
If the culture penalizes nuanced conversation
link |
about any topic that's political
link |
and the politics is so all consuming
link |
and it's such a incredible market to polarize people,
link |
for media to polarize people and to bring any topic it can
link |
into that and get people hooked on it as a political topic,
link |
we become a very dumb society.
link |
So free speech goes away as far as it matters.
link |
People say, oh, people like to say outside,
link |
you don't even know what free speech is.
link |
Free speech is, your free speech is not being violated.
link |
It's like, no, you're right.
link |
My first amendment rights are not being violated.
link |
But the culture of free speech,
link |
which is the second ingredient of two,
link |
you need the first amendment
link |
and you need the culture of free speech.
link |
And now you have free speech
link |
and the culture is much more specific.
link |
You obviously can have a culture that believes people
link |
right now take any topic again, that has to do with like,
link |
some very sensitive topics, police shootings,
link |
or what's going on in K through 12 schools
link |
or even climate change, take any of these.
link |
And the first amendment's still there.
link |
You're not gonna get arrested no matter what you say.
link |
The culture of free speech is gone
link |
because you will be destroyed.
link |
Your life can be over as far as it matters
link |
if you say the wrong thing.
link |
But a really vigorous culture of free speech,
link |
you get no penalty at all
link |
for even saying something super dumb.
link |
People will say, like, people will laugh and be like,
link |
well, that was like kind of hilariously offensive
link |
and like, not at all correct.
link |
Like, you know, you're wrong and here's why.
link |
But no one's like mad at you.
link |
Now the brain is thinking at its best.
link |
The IQ of the big brain is like,
link |
as high as it can be in that culture.
link |
And the culture where, and you say something wrong
link |
and people say, oh, wow, you've changed.
link |
Oh, wow, like, look, this is his real colors.
link |
He knows the big brain is dumb.
link |
You still have mutual respect for each other.
link |
So like, you don't think lesser of others
link |
when they say a bunch of dumb things.
link |
You know it's just the play of ideas.
link |
But you still have respect, you still have love for them.
link |
Because I think the worst case is
link |
when you have a complete free like anarchy of ideas
link |
where it's like everybody lost hope
link |
that something like a truth can even be converged towards.
link |
Like, everybody has their own truth.
link |
Then it's just chaos.
link |
Like, if you have mutual respect
link |
and a mutual goal of arriving at the truth
link |
and the humility that you want to listen
link |
to other people's ideas,
link |
and a forgiveness that other people's ideas
link |
might be dumb as hell,
link |
that doesn't mean they're lesser beings,
link |
all that kind of stuff.
link |
But that's like a weird balance to strike.
link |
Right now people are being trained, little kids,
link |
college students, being trained
link |
to think the exact opposite way.
link |
To think that there's no such thing as objective truth,
link |
which is, you know, the objective truth
link |
is the end on the compass for every thinker.
link |
Doesn't mean we're necessarily on our way or we're finding,
link |
but we're all aiming in the same direction.
link |
We all believe that there's a place
link |
we can eventually get closer to.
link |
Not objective truth, you know,
link |
teaching them that disagreement is bad, violence.
link |
You know, it's, you know,
link |
it's like, you know, you quickly sound like
link |
you're just going on like a political rant with this topic,
link |
but like, it's really bad.
link |
It's like genuinely the worst.
link |
If I had my own country,
link |
I mean, it's like I would teach kids
link |
some very specific things
link |
that this is doing the exact opposite of,
link |
and it sucks, it sucks.
link |
Speaking of a way to escape this,
link |
you've tweeted 30 minutes of reading a day equals,
link |
yeah, this whole video,
link |
and it's cool to think about reading,
link |
like as a habit and something that accumulates.
link |
You said 30 minutes of reading a day
link |
equals 1000 books in 50 years.
link |
I love like thinking about this,
link |
like chipping away at the mountain.
link |
Can you expand on that sort of the habit of reading?
link |
How do you recommend people read?
link |
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's incredible.
link |
If you do something, a little of something every day,
link |
it compiles, it compiles.
link |
You know, I always think about like the people
link |
who achieve these incredible things in life,
link |
these great, like famous, legendary people,
link |
they have the same number of days that you do,
link |
and it's not like they were doing magical days.
link |
They just, they got a little done every day,
link |
and that adds up to a monument,
link |
they're putting one brick in a day,
link |
eventually they have this building,
link |
this legendary building.
link |
So you can take writing,
link |
someone who, you know, there's two aspiring writers,
link |
and one doesn't ever write,
link |
doesn't, you know, manages to never zero write,
link |
and the other one manages to do two pages a week, right?
link |
The other one does zero pages a week,
link |
two pages a week, 98% of both of their time is the same.
link |
The other person, just 2%, they're doing one other thing.
link |
One year later, they have written,
link |
they write two books a year.
link |
This prolific person, you know, in 20 years,
link |
they've written 40 books,
link |
they're one of the most prolific writers of all time.
link |
They write two pages a week.
link |
Sorry, that's not true.
link |
That was two pages a day.
link |
Okay, two pages a week,
link |
you're still writing about a book every two years.
link |
So in 20 years, you've still written 10 books,
link |
also prolific writer, right?
link |
Huge, massive writing career.
link |
You write two pages every Sunday morning.
link |
The other person has the same exact week,
link |
and they don't do that Sunday morning thing.
link |
They are a wannabe writer.
link |
They always said they could write.
link |
They talk about how they used to be,
link |
and nothing happens, right?
link |
So it's inspiring, I think,
link |
for a lot of people who feel frustrated
link |
and they're not doing anything.
link |
So reading is another example
link |
where someone who reads very, you know, doesn't read,
link |
and someone who's a prolific reader,
link |
you know, I always think about like the Tyler Cowen types.
link |
I'm like, how the hell do you read so much?
link |
It's infuriating, you know?
link |
Or like James Clear puts out his like,
link |
his 10 favorite books of the year,
link |
his 20 favorite books of the year.
link |
I'm like, your 20 favorites?
link |
Like I'm trying to just read 20 books,
link |
like that would be an amazing year.
link |
So, but the thing is,
link |
they're not doing something crazy and magical.
link |
They're just reading a half hour a night, you know?
link |
If you read a half hour a night,
link |
the calculation I came to is that
link |
you can read a thousand books in 50 years.
link |
So as someone who's 80 and they've read a thousand books,
link |
you know, between 30 and 80,
link |
they are extremely well read.
link |
They can delve deep into many nonfiction areas.
link |
They can be, you know, an amazing fiction reader,
link |
avid fiction reader.
link |
And again, that's a half hour a day.
link |
Some people can do an hour,
link |
a half hour in the morning audio book,
link |
half hour at night in bed.
link |
Now they've read 2000 books.
link |
So I think it's motivating.
link |
And you realize that a lot of times you think
link |
that the people who are doing amazing things
link |
and you're not, you think that there's a bigger gap
link |
between you and them than there really is.
link |
I, on the reading front, I'm a very slow reader,
link |
which is just a very frustrating fact about me,
link |
but I'm faster with audio books.
link |
And also I just, you know, I'll just,
link |
it's just hard to get myself to read,
link |
but I've started doing audio books
link |
and I'll wake up, throw it on, do it in the shower,
link |
brushing my teeth, you know, making breakfast,
link |
dealing with the dogs, things like that, whatever,
link |
And that's, I can read, I can read a book a week,
link |
a book every 10 days at that clip.
link |
And suddenly I'm this big reader
link |
because I'm just, while doing my morning stuff,
link |
I have it on and also it's this fun,
link |
it makes the morning so fun.
link |
I'm like having a great time the whole morning.
link |
So I'm like, oh, I'm so into this book.
link |
So I think that, you know, audio books
link |
is another amazing gift to people
link |
who have a hard time reading.
link |
I find that that's actually an interesting skill.
link |
I do audio books quite a bit.
link |
Like it's a skill to maintain, at least for me,
link |
probably the kind of books I read,
link |
which is often like history or like,
link |
there's a lot of content.
link |
And if you miss parts of it, you miss out on stuff.
link |
And so it's a skill to maintain focus.
link |
Well, the 10 second back button is very valuable.
link |
So I just, if I get lost,
link |
sometimes the book is so good
link |
that I'm thinking about what the person just said.
link |
And I just get, the skill for me is just remembering to pause.
link |
And if I don't, no problem, just back, back, back, back.
link |
Just three quick backs.
link |
So of course it's not that efficient,
link |
but it's, I do the same thing when I'm reading.
link |
I'll read a whole paragraph
link |
and realize I was tuning out.
link |
You know, I haven't actually even considered to try that.
link |
I've been so hard on myself maintaining focus
link |
because you do get lost in thought.
link |
Maybe I should try that.
link |
Yeah, and when you get lost in thought, by the way,
link |
you're processing the book.
link |
That's not wasted time.
link |
That's your brain really categorizing
link |
and cataloging what you just read and like.
link |
Well, there's several kinds of thoughts, right?
link |
There's thoughts related to the book
link |
and there's a thought that it could take you elsewhere.
link |
Well, I find that if I am continually thinking
link |
about something else, I just say, I'm not,
link |
I just pause the book.
link |
Yeah, especially in the shower or something
link |
when like, that's sometimes
link |
when really great thoughts come up.
link |
If I'm having all these thoughts about other stuff,
link |
I'm saying clearly my mind wants to work on something else.
link |
So I'll just pause it.
link |
Yeah, quiet, Dan Carlin.
link |
I'm thinking about something else right now.
link |
Also you can, things like you have to head out to the store.
link |
Like I'm gonna read 20 pages on that trip.
link |
Just walking back and forth, going to the airport.
link |
I mean, flights, you know, the Uber,
link |
and then you're walking to the,
link |
walking through the airport,
link |
you're sharing the security line.
link |
I'm reading the whole time, like,
link |
I know this is not groundbreaking.
link |
People know what audio books are,
link |
but I think that more people
link |
should probably get into them than do.
link |
Cause I know a lot of people,
link |
they have this stubborn kind of things.
link |
I don't like, I like to have the paper book and sure,
link |
but like, it's pretty fun to be able to read.
link |
I still, I listen to a huge number of audio books
link |
and podcasts, but I still,
link |
the most impactful experiences for me are still reading.
link |
And I read very, very slow.
link |
And it's very frustrating when like,
link |
you go to these websites like that estimate
link |
how long a book takes on average,
link |
that those are always annoying.
link |
They do like a page a minute when I read like best,
link |
a page every two minutes, at best.
link |
At best, when you're like really like,
link |
actually not pausing.
link |
I just, my ADD, it's like, I just,
link |
it's hard to keep focusing.
link |
And I also like to really absorb.
link |
So on the other side of things,
link |
when I finish a book, 10 years later, I'll be like,
link |
you know that scene when this happens
link |
and another friend read it,
link |
I'll be like, what?
link |
I don't remember any like details.
link |
I'm like, oh, I can tell you like the entire.
link |
So I absorbed the shit out of it,
link |
but I don't think it's worth it to like have to read
link |
so less, so much less in my life.
link |
I actually, so in terms of going to the airport,
link |
you know, in these like filler moments of life,
link |
I do a lot of, it's an app called Anki.
link |
I don't know if you know about it.
link |
It's a space repetition app.
link |
So there's all of these facts I have when I read,
link |
I write it down if I want to remember it.
link |
And it's these, you review it.
link |
And the one, the things you remember,
link |
it takes longer and longer to bring back up.
link |
It's like flashcards, but a digital app.
link |
I recommend it to a lot of people.
link |
There's a huge community of people
link |
that are just like obsessed with it.
link |
So this is extremely well known app and idea,
link |
like among students who are like medical students,
link |
like people that really have to study.
link |
Like this is not like fun stuff.
link |
They really have to memorize a lot of things.
link |
They have to remember them well.
link |
They have to be able to integrate them
link |
with a bunch of ideas.
link |
And I find it to be really useful for like,
link |
when you read history,
link |
if you think this particular factoid,
link |
they'd probably be extremely useful for you.
link |
Cause you're, that'd be interesting actually thought.
link |
Cause you're doing, you talked about like opening up
link |
a trillion tabs and reading things.
link |
You know, you probably want to remember some facts
link |
you read along the way.
link |
Like you might remember, okay,
link |
this thing I can't directly put into the writing,
link |
but it's a cool little factoid.
link |
Store that in there.
link |
And that's why I go Anki, drop it in.
link |
Oh, you can just drop it in.
link |
You drop it in a line of a podcast or like a video?
link |
I guess I can type it though.
link |
So Anki, there's a bunch of,
link |
it's called Space Repetitions.
link |
There's a bunch of apps that are much nicer than Anki.
link |
Anki is the ghetto, like Craigslist version,
link |
but it has a giant community because people are like,
link |
we don't want features.
link |
We want a text box.
link |
Like it's very basic, very stripped down.
link |
So you can drop in stuff.
link |
That sounds really,
link |
I can't believe I have not come across this.
link |
You actually, once you look into it,
link |
you'll realize that how have I not come,
link |
you are the person,
link |
I guarantee you'll probably write a blog about it.
link |
I can't believe you actually have it.
link |
Well, it's also just like.
link |
It's your people too.
link |
And my people say, what do you write about?
link |
Literally anything I find interesting.
link |
And so for me, once you start a blog,
link |
like your entire worldview becomes,
link |
would this be a good blog post?
link |
Would this be, I mean, that's the lens
link |
I see everything through,
link |
but I constantly coming across something
link |
or just a tweet, something that I'm like,
link |
ooh, I need to like share this with my readers.
link |
My readers to me are like my friends who I'm like,
link |
I'm gonna, oh, I need to show,
link |
I need to tell them about this.
link |
And so I feel like just a place to,
link |
I mean, I collect things in a document right now,
link |
if it's like really good,
link |
but it's the little factoids and stuff like that.
link |
I think, especially if I'm learning something,
link |
So the problem is when you say stuff,
link |
when you look at it, like tweet and all that kind of stuff
link |
is you also need to couple that with a system for review.
link |
Cause what Anki does is like literally,
link |
it determines for me, I don't have to do anything.
link |
There's this giant pile of things I've saved
link |
and it brings up to me, okay, here's, I don't know.
link |
When Churchill did something, right?
link |
I'm reading about World War II a lot now,
link |
like a particular event, here's that.
link |
Do you remember when, what year that happened?
link |
And you say yes or no, or like you get to pick,
link |
you get to see the answer and you get to self evaluate
link |
how well you remember that fact.
link |
And if you remember well,
link |
it'll be another month before you see it again.
link |
If you don't remember, it'll bring it up again.
link |
That's a way to review tweets, to review concepts.
link |
And it offloads the kind of,
link |
the process of selecting which parts
link |
you're supposed to review or not.
link |
And you can grow that library.
link |
I mean, obviously medical students use it
link |
for like tens of thousands of facts and it's.
link |
It just gamifies it too.
link |
It's like you can passively sit back and just,
link |
and the thing will like make sure
link |
you eventually learn it all.
link |
This is, you know, you don't have to be the executive
link |
calling that like the program,
link |
the memorization program someone else is handling.
link |
I would love to hear about like you trying it out
link |
or space repetition as an idea.
link |
There's a few other apps, but Anki's the big master.
link |
I totally want to try.
link |
You've written and spoken quite a bit about procrastination.
link |
I like you suffer from procrastination
link |
like many other people, suffering quotes.
link |
How do we avoid procrastination?
link |
I don't think the suffer is in quotes.
link |
I think that's a huge part of the problem
link |
is that it's treated like a silly problem.
link |
People don't take it seriously as a dire problem,
link |
It can ruin your life.
link |
There's like, we talked about the compiling concept
link |
with, you know, if you read a little,
link |
you know, if you write, if you write two pages a week,
link |
you write a book every two years,
link |
you're a prolific writer, right?
link |
And the difference between, you know,
link |
again, it's not that that person's working so hard.
link |
It's that they have the ability to,
link |
when they commit to something like on Sunday mornings,
link |
I'm gonna write two pages.
link |
They respect, they have enough,
link |
they respect the part of them that made that decision
link |
is a respected character in their brain.
link |
And they say, well, that's, I decided it,
link |
so I'm gonna do it.
link |
The procrastinator won't do those two pages.
link |
That's just exactly the kind of thing
link |
the procrastinator will keep on their list
link |
and they will not do.
link |
But that doesn't mean they're any less talented
link |
than the writer who does the two pages.
link |
Doesn't mean they want it any less.
link |
Maybe they want it even more.
link |
And it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be just as happy
link |
having done it as the writer who does it.
link |
So what they're missing out on,
link |
picture a writer who writes 10 books, you know,
link |
bestsellers, and they go on these book tours
link |
and, you know, they, and they just are so gratified
link |
with their career and, you know,
link |
and they think about what the other person is missing
link |
who does none of that, right?
link |
So that is a massive loss, a massive loss.
link |
And it's because the internal mechanism in their brain
link |
is not doing what the other person's is.
link |
So they don't have the respect for the part of them
link |
that made the choice.
link |
They feel like it's someone they can disregard.
link |
And so to me, it's in the same boat
link |
as someone who is obese because their eating habits
link |
make them obese over time or their exercise habits.
link |
So that, you know, that's a huge loss for that person.
link |
That person is, you know, the health problems
link |
and it's just probably making them miserable.
link |
And it's self inflicted, right?
link |
It's self defeating, but that doesn't make an easy problem
link |
to fix just because you're doing it to yourself.
link |
So to me, procrastination is another one of these
link |
where you are the only person in your own way.
link |
You are, you know, you are failing at something
link |
or not doing something that you really want to do.
link |
You know, it doesn't have to be work.
link |
Maybe you're, you want to get out of that marriage
link |
that you know, you realize it hits you.
link |
You shouldn't be in this marriage.
link |
You should get divorced and you wait 20 extra years
link |
before you do it or you don't do it at all.
link |
That is, you know, you're not living the life
link |
that you know you should be living, right?
link |
And so I think it's fascinating.
link |
Now, the problem is it's also a funny problem
link |
because there's short term procrastination,
link |
which I talk about as, you know,
link |
the kind that has a deadline.
link |
Now, some people, you know,
link |
this is when I bring in, there's different characters.
link |
There's the panic monster comes in the room
link |
and that's when you actually, you know,
link |
the procrastinator can, there's different levels.
link |
There's the kind that even when there's a deadline,
link |
they stop panicking.
link |
They just, they've given up
link |
and they really have a problem.
link |
Then there's the kind that when there's a deadline,
link |
they'll do it, but they'll wait till the last second.
link |
Both of those people, I think have a huge problem
link |
once there's no deadline because,
link |
and most of the important things in life,
link |
there's no deadline, which is, you know,
link |
changing your career, you know,
link |
becoming a writer when you never have been before,
link |
getting out of your relationship,
link |
you know, be doing whatever you need to,
link |
the changes you need to make
link |
in order to get into a relation.
link |
There's a thing after it.
link |
Launching a startup.
link |
Launching a startup, right?
link |
Or once you've launched a startup,
link |
firing is the right, someone that needs to be fired, right?
link |
I mean, going out for fundraising
link |
instead of just trying to, you know,
link |
there's so many moments when the big change
link |
that you know you should be making
link |
that would completely change your life
link |
if you just did it has no deadline.
link |
It just has to be coming from yourself.
link |
And I think that a ton of people have a problem
link |
where they will, they think this delusion
link |
that, you know, I'm gonna do that.
link |
I'm definitely gonna do that, you know,
link |
but not this week, not this month,
link |
not today, because whatever.
link |
And they make this excuse again and again,
link |
and it just sits there on their list collecting dust.
link |
And so, yeah, to me, it is a very real suffering.
link |
And the fix isn't fixing the habits.
link |
Just like not working on the fix, first of all.
link |
So there's, okay, there is,
link |
there's, just that you have a boat that sucks
link |
and it's leaking and it's gonna sink.
link |
You can fix it with duct tape for a couple of,
link |
you know, for one ride or whatever.
link |
That's not really fixing the boat,
link |
but you can get you by.
link |
So there's duct tape solutions.
link |
To me, so the panic monster is the character
link |
that rushes into the room once the deadline gets too close
link |
or once there's some scary external pressure,
link |
not just from yourself.
link |
And that's a huge aid to a lot of procrastinators.
link |
Again, there's a lot of people who won't,
link |
you know, do that thing.
link |
They've been writing that book they wanted to write,
link |
but there's way fewer people
link |
who will not show up to the exam.
link |
You know, most people show up to the exam.
link |
So that's because the panic monster
link |
is gonna freak out if they don't.
link |
So you can create a panic monster.
link |
If you wanna, you know, you really wanna write music,
link |
you really wanna become a singer, songwriter,
link |
well, book a venue, tell 40 people about it
link |
and say, hey, on, you know, this day, two months from now,
link |
come and see, I'm gonna play you some of my songs.
link |
You now have a panic monster, you're gonna write songs.
link |
You're gonna have to, right?
link |
So there's duct tape things.
link |
You know, you can do things, you know, people do,
link |
I've done a lot of this with a friend and I say,
link |
if I don't get X done by a week from now,
link |
I have to donate a lot of money
link |
somewhere I don't wanna donate.
link |
And that's, you would put that
link |
in the category of duct tape solutions.
link |
Yeah, because it's not, why do I need that, right?
link |
If I really had solved this,
link |
this is something I want to do for me, it's selfish.
link |
This is, I just literally just want to be selfish here
link |
and do the work I need to do
link |
to get the goals I wanna get, right?
link |
There's a much, all the incentives
link |
should be in the right place.
link |
And yet, if I don't say that,
link |
it'll be a week from now and I won't have done it.
link |
Something weird is going on, there's some resistance,
link |
there's some force that is prevent,
link |
that is in my own way, right?
link |
And so doing something where I have to pay all this money,
link |
okay, now I'll panic and I'll do it.
link |
So that's duct tape.
link |
Fixing the boat is something where I don't have to do that.
link |
I just will do the things that I,
link |
again, it's not, I'm talking about super crazy work ethic.
link |
Just like, for example, okay, I have a lot of examples
link |
because I have a serious problem that I've been working on.
link |
And in some ways I've gotten really successful
link |
at solving it and in other ways I'm still floundering.
link |
Yeah, the world's greatest duct taper.
link |
Yes, well, I'm pretty good at duct taping.
link |
I probably could be even better and I'm like, and I'm.
link |
You're procrastinating and becoming a better duct taper.
link |
Literally, like, yes, there's nothing, I won't.
link |
So here's what I know what I should do as a writer, right?
link |
It's very obvious to me is that I should wake up.
link |
Doesn't have to be crazy,
link |
I don't wanna 6 a.m. or anything insane
link |
or I'm not gonna be one of those crazy people at 5.30 jogs.
link |
I'm gonna wake up at whatever, you know, 7.30, 8, 8.30
link |
and I should have a block, like, just say nine to noon
link |
where I get up and I just really quick make some coffee
link |
It's obvious because all the great writers in history
link |
did exactly that, some.
link |
Some of them have done that, that's common.
link |
There's some that I like these writers,
link |
they do the late night sessions,
link |
but most of them they do wake up.
link |
But there's a session, but there's a session that's.
link |
Most writers write in the morning and there's a reason.
link |
I don't think I'm different than those people.
link |
It's a great time to write, you're fresh, right?
link |
Your ideas from dreaming have kind of collected,
link |
you have all, you know, new answers
link |
that you didn't have yesterday and you can just go.
link |
But more importantly, if I just had a routine
link |
where I wrote from nine to noon, weekdays.
link |
Every week would have a minimum of 15 focused hours
link |
of writing, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot.
link |
A 15, 15, no, this is no joke.
link |
This is, you know, you're not, your phone's away,
link |
you're not talking to anyone, you're not opening your email,
link |
you are focused writing for three hours, five.
link |
That's a big week for most writers, right?
link |
So now what's happening is that every weekday
link |
is a minimum of a B, I'll give myself.
link |
You know, an A might be, you know, wow,
link |
I really just got into a flow and wrote for six hours
link |
and had, you know, great.
link |
But it's a minimum of a B, I can keep going if I want.
link |
And every week is a minimum of a B with those 15 hours.
link |
Right, and if I just had, talk about compiling,
link |
if I, this is the two pages a week.
link |
If I just did that every week,
link |
I'd achieve all my writing goals in my life.
link |
And yet I wake up and most days I just,
link |
either I'll revenge procrastination late at night
link |
and go to bed way too late and then wake up later
link |
and get on a bad schedule and I just fall
link |
into these bad schedules.
link |
Or I'll wake up and there's just, you know,
link |
I'll say I was gonna do a few emails and I'll open it up
link |
and I'm suddenly on text and I'm texting.
link |
Or I'll just go and, you know, I'll make a phone call
link |
and I'll be on phone calls for three hours.
link |
It's always something.
link |
Or I'll start writing and then I hit a little bit of a wall,
link |
but because there's no sacred,
link |
this is a sacred writing block,
link |
I'll just hit the wall and say, well, this is icky
link |
and I'll go do something else.
link |
So duct tape, what I've done is,
link |
White But Why has one employee, Alisha.
link |
She's the manager of lots of things.
link |
She truly does lots of things.
link |
And one of the things we started doing is,
link |
either she comes over and sits next to me
link |
where she can see my screen from nine to noon.
link |
That's all it takes.
link |
The thing about procrastination is there's usually,
link |
they're not kicking and screaming.
link |
I don't want to do this.
link |
It's the feeling of, you know, in the old days
link |
when you had to go to class,
link |
you know, your lunch block is over and it's like,
link |
oh, shit, I have class in five minutes.
link |
Or it's Monday morning, you go, oh.
link |
But you said, you know what?
link |
But you go, you say, okay.
link |
And then you get to class and it's not that bad
link |
once you're there, right?
link |
You know, you have a trainer and he says, okay, next set.
link |
And you go, oh, okay.
link |
It's someone, some external thing being like,
link |
okay, I have to do this.
link |
And then you have that moment of like, it sucks,
link |
but I guess I'll do it.
link |
If no one's there though, the problem with the procrastinator
link |
is they don't have that person in their head.
link |
Other people I think were raised with a sense of shame
link |
if they don't do stuff.
link |
And that stick in their head is hugely helpful.
link |
I don't really have that.
link |
And so anyway, Alicia is sitting there next to me.
link |
So she's doing her own work, but she can see my screen
link |
and she of all people knows exactly what I should be doing,
link |
what I shouldn't be doing.
link |
That's all it takes.
link |
The shame of just having her see me
link |
while she's sitting there not working
link |
would just be too, it's too weird and too embarrassing.
link |
So I get it done and it's amazing.
link |
It's a game changer for me.
link |
So duct tape can solve, sometimes duct tape is enough,
link |
but I'm curious to, I'm still trying to, what is going on?
link |
I think part of it is that we are actually wired.
link |
I think I'm being very sane human actually
link |
is what's happening.
link |
Or not sane is not the right word.
link |
I'm being like, I'm being a natural human
link |
that we are not programmed to sit there and do homework
link |
of a certain kind that we get the results like
link |
Like that is not, so we're supposed to conserve energy
link |
and fulfill our needs as we need them
link |
and do immediate things.
link |
And we're overriding our natural ways
link |
when we wake up and get to it.
link |
And I think sometimes it's because the pain,
link |
I think a lot of times we're just avoiding suffering
link |
and for a lot of people, the pain of not doing it
link |
is actually worse because they feel shame.
link |
So if they don't get up and take a jog
link |
and get up early and get to work,
link |
I'll feel like a bad person.
link |
And that is worse than doing those things.
link |
And then it becomes a habit eventually
link |
and it becomes just easy automatic.
link |
It becomes I do it because that's what I do.
link |
But I think that if you don't have a lot of shame
link |
necessarily, the pain of doing those things
link |
is worse in the immediate moment than not doing it.
link |
But I think that there's this feeling
link |
that you capture with your body language
link |
and so on, like I don't want to do another set.
link |
That feeling, the people I've seen that are good
link |
at not procrastinating are the ones
link |
that have trained themselves to like the moment
link |
they would be having that feeling.
link |
They just, it's like Zen, like Sam Harris style Zen.
link |
You don't experience that feeling.
link |
You just march forward.
link |
Like I talked to Elon about this a lot actually offline.
link |
It's like, he doesn't have this.
link |
It's the way I think, at least he talks about it
link |
and the way I think about it is it's like
link |
you just pretend you're like a machine running an algorithm.
link |
Like you know this, you should be doing this.
link |
Not because somebody told you so on.
link |
This is probably the thing you want to do.
link |
Like look at the big picture of your life
link |
and just run the algorithm.
link |
Like ignore your feelings, just run as if.
link |
But it's framing, frame it differently.
link |
You know, yeah, you can frame it as like,
link |
it can feel like homework or it can feel like
link |
you're like, you're living your best life
link |
or something when you're doing your work.
link |
Yeah, and maybe reframe it.
link |
But I think ultimately is whatever reframing
link |
you need to do, you just need to do it for a few weeks.
link |
And that's how the habit is formed and you stick with it.
link |
Like I'm now on a kick where I exercise every day.
link |
It doesn't matter what that exercise is.
link |
It could be 200 pushups, but it's the thing that like
link |
I make sure I exercise every day
link |
and it's become way, way easier because of the habit.
link |
And I just, and I don't like, at least with exercise
link |
because it's easier to replicate that feeling.
link |
I don't allow myself to go like,
link |
I don't feel like doing this.
link |
Well, I think about that, even just like little things,
link |
like I brush my teeth before I go to bed
link |
and it's just a habit.
link |
Like if it were something else, I would be like,
link |
oh, I'm gonna go to the bathroom and go do that.
link |
And I just want to like, I'm just gonna lie down right now.
link |
But it doesn't even cross my mind.
link |
It's just like that I just robotically go and do it.
link |
And it almost has become like a nice routine.
link |
It's like, oh, this part of the night, you know,
link |
it's like a morning routine for me stuff is like,
link |
you know, that stuff is kind of just like automated.
link |
Yeah, it's funny because you don't like go,
link |
like I don't think I've skipped many days.
link |
I don't think I skipped any days brushing my teeth.
link |
Like unless I didn't have a toothbrush,
link |
like I was in the woods or something.
link |
Because it's annoying.
link |
Well, so to me, there is,
link |
so the character that makes me procrastinate
link |
is the instant gratification monkey.
link |
That's what I've labeled him, right?
link |
And there's the rational decision maker
link |
and the instant gratification monkey
link |
and these battle with each other.
link |
But for procrastinator, the monkey wins.
link |
I don't think the monkey is, you know,
link |
you read about this kind of stuff.
link |
I think that this kind of more primitive brain
link |
is always winning.
link |
And in the non procrastinators,
link |
that primitive brain is on board for some reason
link |
and isn't resisting.
link |
So, but when I think about brushing my teeth,
link |
it's like the monkey doesn't even think
link |
there's an option to not do it.
link |
So it doesn't even like get, there's no hope.
link |
Monkey has no hope there.
link |
So it doesn't even like get involved.
link |
And it's just like, yeah, you know, we have to,
link |
just like kind of like robotically, just like, you know,
link |
it was kind of like Stockholm syndrome,
link |
just like, oh no, no, I have to do this.
link |
It doesn't even like wake up.
link |
It's like, yeah, we're doing this now.
link |
For other things, the monkey's like, ooh, no, no, no.
link |
Most days I can win this one.
link |
And so the monkey puts up that like fierce resistance
link |
and it's like, it's a lot of it's like
link |
the initial transition.
link |
So I think of it as like jumping in a cold pool
link |
where it's like, I will spend the whole day
link |
pacing around the side of the pool in my bathing suit,
link |
just being like, I don't want to have that one second
link |
when you first jump in and it sucks.
link |
And then once you're, once I'm in,
link |
once I jump in, I'm usually, you know,
link |
once I start writing, I'm suddenly I'm like,
link |
oh, this isn't so bad.
link |
Okay, I'm kind of into it.
link |
And then I, then sometimes you can't tear me away.
link |
You know, then I suddenly I'm like, I get into a flow.
link |
So it's like, once I get into cold water, I don't mind it,
link |
but I will spend hours standing around the side of the pool.
link |
And by the way, I do this in a more literal sense.
link |
When I go to the gym with a trainer in 45 minutes,
link |
I do a full full ass workout.
link |
And it's not because I'm having a good time,
link |
but it's because it's that,
link |
oh, okay, I have to go to class feeling, right?
link |
But when I go to the gym alone,
link |
I will literally do a set and then dick around my phone
link |
for 10 minutes before the next set.
link |
And I'll spend an over an hour there and do way less.
link |
So it is the transition.
link |
Once I'm actually doing the set,
link |
I'm never like, I don't want to stop in the middle.
link |
Now it's just like, I'm going to do this.
link |
And I felt happy, I just did it.
link |
So it's something,
link |
there's something about transitions that is very,
link |
that's why procrastinators are late a lot of places.
link |
It's, I will procrastinate getting ready
link |
to go to the airport,
link |
even though I know I should leave at three,
link |
so I can not be stressed.
link |
I'll leave at 3.36 and I'll be super stressed.
link |
Once I'm on the way to the airport,
link |
immediately I'm like, why didn't I do this earlier?
link |
Now I'm back on my phone doing what I was doing.
link |
I just had to get in the damn car or whatever.
link |
So yeah, there's some very, very odd irrational.
link |
Yeah, like I was waiting for you to come
link |
and you said that you're running a few minutes late.
link |
And I was like, I was like, I'll go get you a coffee
link |
because I can't possibly be the one who's early.
link |
I can't, I don't understand.
link |
I'm always late to stuff.
link |
And I know it's disrespectful
link |
in the eyes of a lot of people.
link |
I can't help, you know what I'm doing ahead of it?
link |
It's not like I don't care about the people.
link |
I'm often like, you know, for like this conversation,
link |
I'd be preparing more.
link |
It's like, I obviously care about the person,
link |
Yeah, it's misinterpreted as like,
link |
there are some people that like show up late
link |
because they kind of like that quality in themselves.
link |
That's a dick, right?
link |
There's a lot of those people,
link |
but more often it's someone who shows up frazzled
link |
and they feel awful and they're furious at themselves.
link |
They're so regretful.
link |
I mean, that's me.
link |
And I mean, all you have to do is look at those people alone
link |
running through the airport, right?
link |
They're not being disrespectful to anyone there.
link |
They just inflicted this on themselves.
link |
This is hilarious.
link |
You tweeted a quote by James Baldwin saying, quote,
link |
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates
link |
so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone,
link |
they will be forced to deal with the pain.
link |
What has been a painful but formative experience
link |
Or what's the flavor, the shape of your pain
link |
I mean, honestly, the first thing that jumped to mind
link |
is my own like battles against myself to get my work done
link |
because it affects everything.
link |
When I, I just took five years in this book
link |
and granted it's a beast.
link |
Like I probably would have taken two or three years,
link |
but it didn't need to take five.
link |
And that was a lot of, not just, you know,
link |
not just that I'm not working,
link |
it's that I'm over researching.
link |
I'm making it, I'm adding in things I shouldn't
link |
because I'm perfectionist, you know,
link |
being a perfectionist about like, oh, well I learned that.
link |
Now I want to get it in there.
link |
I know I'm going to end up cutting it later.
link |
Just, you know, or I over outline, you know,
link |
something until, you know, trying to get it perfect
link |
when I know that's not possible.
link |
So making a lot of immature kind of,
link |
like, I'm not actually that much of a writing amateur.
link |
I've written, including my old blog,
link |
I've been a writer for 15 years.
link |
I know what I'm doing.
link |
I could advise other writers really well.
link |
And yet I do a bunch of amateur things
link |
that I know while I'm doing them is an,
link |
I know I'm being an amateur.
link |
So that A, it hurts the actual product.
link |
It makes, you know, B, it's waste your precious time.
link |
C, when you're mad at yourself,
link |
when you're in a negative, you know,
link |
self defeating spiral, it almost inevitably will,
link |
you'll be less good to others.
link |
Like, you know, I'll just, just, I used to, you know,
link |
early on in my now marriage,
link |
one of the things we always used to do
link |
is I used to plan mystery dates.
link |
You know, New York city, great, great place for this.
link |
I'd find some weird little adventure for us.
link |
You know, it could be anything.
link |
And I wouldn't tell her what it was.
link |
I said, I reserving you for Thursday night,
link |
you know, at seven, okay?
link |
And it was such a fun part of our relationship.
link |
Started writing this book and got into a really bad,
link |
you know, personal space where I was like, in my head,
link |
I was like, I can't do anything until this is done.
link |
You know, like, no.
link |
And I just stopped like ever valuing,
link |
like, like joy of any kind.
link |
Like I was like, no, any, no, that's when I'm done.
link |
And that's a trap or very quickly, you know,
link |
cause I always think, you know,
link |
I think it's going to be a six months away,
link |
but actually five years later, I'm like, wow,
link |
I really wasn't living fully.
link |
And for five years is not, we don't live very long.
link |
Like talking about your prime decades,
link |
like that's like a sixth of my prime years.
link |
Like, wow, like that's a huge loss.
link |
So to me, that was excruciating.
link |
And, you know, and it was a bad pattern,
link |
a very unproductive, unhelpful pattern for me,
link |
which is I'd wake up in the morning in this great mood,
link |
great mood every morning, wake up thrilled to be awake.
link |
I have the whole day ahead of me.
link |
I'm going to get so much work done today.
link |
And, but you know, first I'm going to do all these other
link |
things and it's all going to be great.
link |
And then I ended up kind of failing for the day
link |
with those goals, sometimes miserably,
link |
sometimes only partially.
link |
And then I get in bed probably a couple hours later
link |
And that's when all of the real reality hits me.
link |
Suddenly so much regret, so much anxiety,
link |
furious at myself, wishing I could take a time machine back
link |
three months, six months a year,
link |
or just even to the beginning of that day.
link |
And just tossing and turning now.
link |
I mean, this is a very bad place.
link |
This is what I said, suffering,
link |
procrastinators suffer in a very serious way.
link |
So look, I, you know,
link |
I know this probably sounds like a lot of like first world
link |
problems and it is, but it's real suffering as well.
link |
Like it's, so to me, it's like,
link |
it's painful because you're not being,
link |
you're not being as good a friend or a spouse or whatever,
link |
You're also not treating yourself very well.
link |
You're usually not being very healthy in these moments.
link |
You know, you're often, and you're not being,
link |
I'm not being good to my readers.
link |
So it's just a lot of this.
link |
And it's like, it feels like it's one small tweak away.
link |
Sometimes it's like, that's what I said.
link |
It's like, you just suddenly are just doing that nine to 12
link |
and you get in that habit.
link |
Everything else falls into place.
link |
All of this reverses.
link |
So I feel hopeful, but it's like, it is a,
link |
I have not figured, I haven't fixed the boat yet.
link |
I have some good duct tape though.
link |
And you also don't want to romanticize it
link |
because it is true that some of the greats in history,
link |
especially writers suffer from all the same stuff.
link |
Like they weren't quite able.
link |
I mean, you might only write for two or three hours a day,
link |
but the rest of the day is often spent kind of tortured.
link |
This is the irrational thing is if I,
link |
and this goes for a lot of people's jobs,
link |
people especially who work for themselves,
link |
you'd be shocked how much you could wake up at nine
link |
or eight or seven or whatever.
link |
Get to work and stop at one,
link |
but you're really focused in those hours.
link |
One or two and do 25 really focused hours of stuff,
link |
product stuff a week, and then there's 112 waking hours
link |
in the week, right?
link |
So we're talking about 80 something hours of free time.
link |
You can live, you know, if you're just really focused
link |
in your, you know, yin and yang of your time,
link |
and that's what, that's my goal is black and white time.
link |
I really focused time and then totally like
link |
clean conscience free time.
link |
Right now I have neither, it's a lot of gray.
link |
It's a lot of, I should be working, but I'm not.
link |
Oh, I'm wasting this time.
link |
And that's just as massive.
link |
So if you can just get really good at the black
link |
and the white, so you just wake up
link |
and it's just like full work.
link |
And then I think a lot of people could have
link |
like all this free time,
link |
but instead I'll do those same three hours.
link |
It's like you said, I'll do them really late at night
link |
or whatever after having tortured myself the whole day
link |
and not had any fun.
link |
It's not like I'm having fun.
link |
I call it the dark playground, by the way,
link |
which is where you are when you know you should be working,
link |
but you're doing something else.
link |
You're doing something fun on paper,
link |
but it's never, it feels awful.
link |
And so, yeah, I spend a lot of time in the dark.
link |
And you know you shouldn't be doing it
link |
and you still do it and yeah.
link |
It's not clean conscience fun.
link |
It's bad, it's toxic.
link |
And I think that it's, there's something about,
link |
you know, you're draining yourself all the time.
link |
And if you just did your focused hours
link |
and then if you actually have good, clean fun,
link |
fun can be anything.
link |
Reading a book can be hanging out with someone
link |
who can be really fun.
link |
You can go and do something cool in the city.
link |
You know, that is critical.
link |
You're recharging some part of your psyche there.
link |
And I think it makes it easier
link |
to actually work the next day.
link |
And I say this from the experiences
link |
when I have had good stretches.
link |
It's like, you know what it is?
link |
It's like, you feel like you're fist pounding.
link |
One part of your brain is fist pounding the other part.
link |
Like, you're like, we got this.
link |
Like, we treat ourselves well.
link |
Like, this is how you internally feel.
link |
Like, I treat myself.
link |
And it's like, yeah, no, it's work time.
link |
And then later you're like, now it's play time.
link |
And it's like, okay, back to work.
link |
And you're in this very healthy,
link |
like parent child relationship in your head
link |
versus like this constant conflict.
link |
And like the kid doesn't respect the parent
link |
and the parent hates the kid.
link |
It always feels like it's like one fix away.
link |
So that there's hope.
link |
I mean, I guess, I mean,
link |
so much of what you said just rings so true.
link |
I guess I have the same kind of hope.
link |
But you know, this podcast is very regular.
link |
I mean, I'm impressed.
link |
Like, and I think partially what,
link |
there is a bit of a duct tape solution here,
link |
which is you just, the,
link |
cause it's always easy to schedule stuff
link |
for the future for myself, right?
link |
Because that's future Tim
link |
and future Tim is not my problem.
link |
So I'll schedule all kinds of shit for future Tim.
link |
And I will then not do it.
link |
you can schedule podcasts and you have to show up.
link |
Yeah, you have to show up.
link |
Right, it seems like a good medium for procrastinating.
link |
This is not my, this is what I do for fun.
link |
I know, but at least this is the kind of thing,
link |
especially if it's not your main thing.
link |
Especially if it's not your main thing,
link |
it's the kind of thing that you would dream of doing
link |
and want to do and never do.
link |
And I feel like your regular production here
link |
is a sign that something is working,
link |
at least in this regard.
link |
Yeah, in this regard.
link |
I'm just, I'm sure you have this same kind of thing
link |
In fact, because you're going to be doing the podcast,
link |
as possible, the podcast becomes what the podcast is for me.
link |
This is you procrastinating.
link |
If you think about being 80
link |
and if you can get into that person's head
link |
and look back and be like, and just deep regret,
link |
you just, you know, yearning,
link |
you could do anything to just go back
link |
and have done this differently.
link |
That is desperation.
link |
It's just, you don't feel it yet.
link |
It's not in you yet.
link |
The other thing you could do is if you have a partner,
link |
if you want to partner with someone,
link |
now you could say, we meet.
link |
These 15 hours every week.
link |
And that point you're going to get it done.
link |
So working with someone can help.
link |
Yeah, that's why they say like a co founder
link |
is really powerful for many reasons,
link |
but that's kind of one of them.
link |
Because to actually, for the startup case,
link |
you, unlike writing perhaps,
link |
it's really like a hundred hour plus thing.
link |
Like once you really launch, you go all in.
link |
Like everything else just disappears.
link |
Like you can't even have a hope of a balanced life
link |
So, and there co founder really helps.
link |
When you, you're one of the most interesting people
link |
So as a writer, you look out into the future.
link |
Do you dream about certain things you want to still create?
link |
Is there projects that you want to write?
link |
Is there movies you want to write or direct or?
link |
So it's just endless sea of ideas.
link |
No, there's specific list of things that really excite me,
link |
but it's a big list that I know
link |
I'll never get through them all.
link |
And that's part of why the last five years really like,
link |
when I feel like I'm not moving as quickly as I could,
link |
it bothers me because I have so much genuine excitement
link |
to try so many different things.
link |
And I get so much joy from finishing things.
link |
I don't like doing things, but a lot of writers are like that.
link |
Publishing something is hugely joyful
link |
and makes it all worth it.
link |
Or just finishing something you're proud of,
link |
putting it out there and have people appreciate it.
link |
It's like the best thing in the world, right?
link |
Every kid makes some little bargain with themselves,
link |
has a little, a dream or something.
link |
And I feel like when I do something that I make something
link |
in this, for me, it's been mostly writing
link |
and I feel proud of it and I put it out there.
link |
I feel like I like, again,
link |
I'm like fist pounding my seven year old self.
link |
Like there's a little, like I owe it to myself
link |
to do certain things.
link |
And I just did one of the things I owe.
link |
I just paid off some debt to myself.
link |
I owed it and I paid it and it feels great.
link |
It feels like very like you just feel very,
link |
a lot of inner peace when you do it.
link |
So the more things I can do,
link |
and I just have fun doing it, right?
link |
And so I just, for me that includes a lot more writing.
link |
I just, short blog posts, I write very long blog posts,
link |
but basically short writing
link |
in the form of long blog posts is a great,
link |
I love that medium.
link |
I wanna do a lot more of that.
link |
Books yet to be seen, I'm gonna do this
link |
and I'm gonna have another book I'm gonna do right after.
link |
And we'll see if I like those two.
link |
And if I do, I'll do more, otherwise I won't.
link |
But I also wanna try other mediums.
link |
I wanna make more videos.
link |
I want to, I did a little travel series once.
link |
I love doing that.
link |
I wanna do more of that.
link |
Almost like a vlog.
link |
No, it was, I let readers in a survey
link |
pick five countries they wanted me to go to.
link |
And they picked, they sent me to weird places.
link |
They sent me, I went to Siberia, I went to Japan.
link |
I went from there to, this is all in a row,
link |
into Nigeria, from there to Iraq.
link |
And from there to Greenland.
link |
And then I went back to New York,
link |
like two weeks in each place.
link |
And I got to, each one I got to have some weird experiences.
link |
I tried to like really dig in
link |
and have like some interesting experiences.
link |
And then I wrote about it.
link |
And I taught readers a little bit
link |
about the history of these places.
link |
And it was just, I love doing that.
link |
I love, so, and I'm like, oh man,
link |
like I haven't done one of those in so long.
link |
And then I have a big like desire to do fictional stuff.
link |
Like I want to write a sci fi at some point.
link |
And I would love to write a musical.
link |
That's actually what I was doing before Wait But Why.
link |
I was with a partner, Ryan Langer.
link |
We were halfway through a musical
link |
and he got tied up with his other musical
link |
and Wait But Why started taking off.
link |
And we just haven't gotten back to it.
link |
But it's such a fun medium.
link |
So it's such a silly medium, but it's so fun.
link |
So you think about all of these mediums
link |
on which you can be creative and create something
link |
and you like the variety of it.
link |
Yeah, it's just that if there's a chance on a new medium,
link |
I could do something good.
link |
It sounds like so gratifying and so fun.
link |
I think it's fun to just watch you actually sample these.
link |
So I can't wait for your podcast.
link |
I'll be listening to all of them.
link |
I mean, that's a cool medium to see like where it goes.
link |
The cool thing about podcasting and making videos,
link |
especially with a super creative mind like yours,
link |
you don't really know what you're going to make of it
link |
Yeah, podcasts I'm really excited about,
link |
but I'm like, I like going on other people's podcasts.
link |
And I never try to have my own.
link |
So with every medium,
link |
there's the challenges of how the sausage is made.
link |
So like the challenges of action.
link |
Yeah, but it's also, I like to like,
link |
I'll go on like, as you know, long ass monologues
link |
and you can't do that.
link |
If you're the interviewer,
link |
like you're not supposed to do that as much.
link |
So I have to like rein it in and that might be hard,
link |
You could also do solo type stuff.
link |
Yeah, maybe I'll do a little of each.
link |
You know what's funny?
link |
I mean, some of my favorite is more like solo,
link |
but there's like a sidekick.
link |
So you're having a conversation, but you're like friends,
link |
but it's really you ranting,
link |
which I think you'd be extremely good at.
link |
That's funny, yeah.
link |
Or even if it's 50 50, that's fine.
link |
Like if it's just a friend who I want to like really riff
link |
with, I just don't like interviewing someone,
link |
which I won't, that's not what the podcast will be,
link |
I've tried moderating panels before
link |
and I cannot help myself.
link |
I have to get involved and no one likes a moderator
link |
who's too involved.
link |
It's very unappealing.
link |
So I, you know, interviewing someone and I'm like,
link |
I can't, I don't even, I don't, I just, it's not my,
link |
I can grill someone, but that's different.
link |
That's my curiosity being like, wait, how about this?
link |
And I interrupt them and I'm trying to.
link |
I see the way your brain works.
link |
It's like lights up with fire and excitement.
link |
Yeah, I actually, I love listening.
link |
I like watching people, I like listening to people.
link |
So this is like me right now,
link |
having just listening to a podcast.
link |
This is me listening to your podcast right now.
link |
I love listening to a podcast
link |
because then it's not even like,
link |
but once I'm in the room, I suddenly can't help myself.
link |
Big last ridiculous question.
link |
What is the meaning of life?
link |
The meaning of like an individual life?
link |
Your existence here on earth,
link |
or maybe broadly this whole thing we've got going on,
link |
descendants of apes,
link |
Yeah, well there's, yeah.
link |
For me, I feel like I want to be around as long as I can.
link |
If I can, if I can do some kind of crazy life extension
link |
or upload myself, I'm gonna,
link |
because who doesn't want to see how cool
link |
You did say mortality was not appealing.
link |
No, it's not appealing at all to me.
link |
Now, it's ultimately appealing.
link |
As I said, no one wants eternal life, I believe,
link |
if they understood what eternity really was.
link |
And I did Graham's number as a post,
link |
and I was like, okay, no one wants to live that many years.
link |
But I'd like to choose.
link |
I'd like to say, you know what?
link |
I'm truly over it now, and I'm going to have,
link |
you know, at that point we'd have,
link |
our whole society would have like,
link |
we'd have a ceremony.
link |
We'd have a whole process of someone signing off,
link |
and you know, it would be beautiful,
link |
and it wouldn't be sad.
link |
Well, I think you'd be super depressed by that point.
link |
Like, who's gonna sign off when they're doing pretty good?
link |
Maybe, maybe, yes.
link |
Okay, maybe it's dark.
link |
But at least, but the point is,
link |
if I'm happy, I can stay around for five, you know.
link |
I'm thinking 50 century sounds great.
link |
Like, I don't know if I want more than that.
link |
50 sounds like a right number.
link |
And so if you're thinking, if you would sign up for 50,
link |
if you had a choice, one is what I get, that is bullshit.
link |
Like, if you're somebody who wants 50,
link |
one is a hideous number, right?
link |
So for me personally, I want to be around as long as I can.
link |
And then honestly, the reason I love writing,
link |
the thing that I love most is like,
link |
is like a warm fuzzy connection with other people, right?
link |
And that can be my friends, and it can be readers.
link |
And that's why I would never want to be like a journalist
link |
where their personality is like hidden behind the writing,
link |
or like even a biographer, you know.
link |
There's a lot of people who are great writers,
link |
but it's, I like to personally connect.
link |
And if I can take something that's in my head
link |
and other people can say, oh my God, I think that too,
link |
and this made me feel so much better,
link |
it made me feel seen, like that feels amazing.
link |
And I just feel like we're all having
link |
such a weird common experience on this one little rock,
link |
in this one little moment of time,
link |
where this weird, these weird four limb beings,
link |
and we're all the same.
link |
And it's like, we're all, we all, the human experience,
link |
so I feel like so many of us suffer in the same ways,
link |
and we're all going through a lot of the same things.
link |
And to me, it is very, if I lived,
link |
if I was on my deathbed and I feel like I had,
link |
like I had a ton of human connection,
link |
and like shared a lot of common experience,
link |
and made a lot of other people feel like,
link |
Do you feel that as a writer?
link |
Do you like hear and feel like the inspiration,
link |
like all the people that you make smile,
link |
and all the people you inspire?
link |
Honestly, not, sometimes, you know,
link |
when we did an in person event,
link |
and I, you know, meet a bunch of people,
link |
and it's incredibly gratifying,
link |
or, you know, you just, you know, you get emails,
link |
but I think it is easy to forget that how many people,
link |
sometimes you're just sitting there alone,
link |
typing, dealing with your procrastination.
link |
But that's why publishing is so gratifying,
link |
because that's the moment when all this connection happens.
link |
And especially if I had to put my finger on it,
link |
it's like, it's having a bunch of people who feel lonely,
link |
and their like existence is all realized,
link |
like all, you know, connect, right?
link |
So that, if I do a lot of that,
link |
and that includes, of course, my actual spending,
link |
you know, a lot of really high quality time
link |
with friends and family, and like,
link |
and making the whole thing as heartbreaking
link |
as like mortality and life can be,
link |
make the whole thing like fun,
link |
and at least we can like laugh at ourselves together
link |
while going through it.
link |
And that to me is the, yeah.
link |
And then your last blog post will be written from Mars
link |
as you get the bad news that you're not able to return
link |
because of the malfunction in the rocket.
link |
Yeah, I would like to go to Mars,
link |
and like go there for a week,
link |
and be like, yeah, here we are, and then come back.
link |
No, I know that's what you want.
link |
Staying there, yeah.
link |
And that's fine, by the way.
link |
If I, yeah, if, so you think,
link |
you're picturing me alone on Mars as the first person there,
link |
and then it malfunctions.
link |
Right, no, you were supposed to return,
link |
but it malfunctions, and then there's this,
link |
so it's both the hope, the awe that you experience,
link |
which is how the blog starts,
link |
and then it's the overwhelming,
link |
like feeling of existential dread,
link |
but then it returns to like the love of humanity.
link |
Well, that's the thing, is if I could be writing,
link |
and actually like writing something
link |
that people would read back on Earth,
link |
it would make it feel so much better.
link |
You know, if I were just alone,
link |
and no one was gonna realize what happened.
link |
No, no, no, you get to write.
link |
Yeah, no, no, it's perfectly safe.
link |
Also, that would bring out great writing.
link |
If you don't have your deathbed on Mars alone.
link |
Well, that's exactly the future I hope for you, Tim.
link |
All right, this was an incredible conversation.
link |
You're a really special human being, Tim.
link |
Thank you so much for spending
link |
your really valuable time with me.
link |
I can't wait to hear your podcast.
link |
I can't wait to read your next blog post,
link |
which you said in a Twitter reply.
link |
Yeah, soon enough, I'll be back.
link |
After the book, which add that to the long list of ideas
link |
to procrastinate about.
link |
Tim, thanks so much for talking to me, man.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tim Urban.
link |
To support this podcast,
link |
please check out our sponsors in the description.
link |
And now, let me leave you with some words
link |
from Tim Urban himself.
link |
Be humbler about what you know,
link |
more confident about what's possible,
link |
and less afraid of things that don't matter.
link |
Thanks for listening, and hope to see you next time.