back to indexDuncan Trussell: Comedy, Sentient Robots, Suffering, Love & Burning Man | Lex Fridman Podcast #312
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If this is a super intelligence,
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if it's folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets
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and all whatever they give it access to,
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how can we be certain that it's not gonna figure out
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how to get itself out of the cloud,
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how to store itself in other like mediums, trees,
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the optic nerve, the brain, you know what I mean?
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We don't know that, we don't know that it won't leap out
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and like start hanging, like, and then at that point,
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now we do have the wildfire.
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Now you can't stop it, you can't unplug it,
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you can't shut your servers down
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because it left the box, it left the room.
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Using some technology you haven't even discovered yet.
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How fucking cool would that be for like the men in black
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to come do me like, listen,
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I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene.
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The following is a conversation with Duncan Trussell,
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a standup comedian, host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour
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podcast and one of my favorite human beings.
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I've been a fan of his for many years,
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so it was a huge honor and pleasure to meet him
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for the first time and to sit down for this chat.
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This is the Lex Freedom podcast, to support it,
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please check out our sponsors in the description
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and now dear friends, here's Duncan Trussell.
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Nietzsche has this thought experiment
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called eternal recurrence,
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where you get to relive your whole life
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over and over and over and over
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and I think it's a way to bring to the surface of your mind
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the idea that every single moment in your life matters,
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it intensely matters, the bad and the good
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and he kind of wants you to imagine that idea
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that every single decision you make throughout your life,
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you repeat over and over and over
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and he wants you to respond to that.
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Do you feel horrible about that
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or do you feel good about that?
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And you have to think through this idea
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in order to see where you stand in life,
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what is your relationship like with life?
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I actually wanna read the way he first introduces
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that concept for people who are not familiar.
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What if someday or night a demon, by the way,
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he has a demon introduce this thought experiment.
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What if someday or night a demon were to steal
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after you into your loneliest loneliness
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and say to you, quote,
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this life as you now live it and have lived it,
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you will have to live once more
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and innumerable times more
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and there will be nothing new in it
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but every pain and every joy and every thought
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and sigh and everything unutterably small
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and great in your life will have to return to you,
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all in the same succession and sequence.
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Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth
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and curse the demon who spoke thus
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or have you once experienced a tremendous moment
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when you would have answered him?
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You are a God and never have I heard anything more divine.
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So are you terrified or excited
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by such a thought experiment
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when you apply it to your own life?
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Excited, even the dark stuff.
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Oh yeah, for sure, definitely.
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I mean, also that thing you're talking about,
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he kinda leaves out maybe on purpose
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because the thought experiment starts falling apart
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a little bit, the amnesia between each loop.
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So the whole thing gets wiped.
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Now, if the amnesia wasn't there
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and yet somehow you were witnessing
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the non autonomy implicit in what he's talking about.
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So you have to kind of watch yourself
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go through this rotten loop.
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Then yeah, that's a description.
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There's probably a boredom that comes into that.
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So you don't experience everything anew.
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So the best of the good stuff,
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the newness of it is really important.
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This is the, in the, in Hades, when you die,
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you, there's a river.
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I think it's called leaf.
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You ever heard of this, L E T H E?
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You drink from it and you don't remember your past lives.
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And then when you're reborn, it's fresh
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and you don't have to, I mean,
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just think of like the amount of psychological help
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you would need to get over all the bullshit
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that happened in prior lives.
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You know what I mean?
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Can you imagine if you're still resentful
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of something someone did to you in the 14th century,
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but it would compound.
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Well, if you repeat the same thing over and over and over,
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there would be no difference.
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Maybe you would start to appreciate the nuances more,
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like when you watch the same movie over and over and over.
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Maybe you'll get to actually let go
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of this idea of all the possible,
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all the positive possibilities that lay before you,
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but actually enjoy the moment much more.
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If you remember that you've lived this life a thousand times,
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all the little things, the way somebody smiles,
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if you're been abused, the way somebody,
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like the pain of it, the suffering,
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the down that you feel, the experience of sadness,
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depression, fear, all that kind of stuff.
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You get to really, you get to also appreciate
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that that's part of life, part of being a life.
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Now, also in his experiment, if I was gonna,
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and I love the experiment from the perspective of like,
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just where technology is now and simulation theory
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and stuff like that, but in that thought experiment,
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if this rotten demon immediately killed you,
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then within that, it's a little more horrifying
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because even in the, first of all,
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you're trusting a fucking demon.
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Why are you talking to a demon?
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Let's start there.
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Yeah, because that is gonna be,
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even before I get into like the metaphysics
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and like the implications and where is this life stored?
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Where is the loop stored?
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I mean, are we talking about some kind of unchanging data set
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or something for that?
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You're like, why is there a fucking talking demon
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in my room trying to freak me out?
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You're gonna want to autopsy the demon.
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Does this apply to you, demon?
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And again, obviously it's a fucking thought experiment.
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Nietzsche would be annoyed by me,
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but I think like you would still be able to entertain
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the joy, you'd have the joy
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of not knowing what's around the corner.
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You know, still, it's not like you know what's coming
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just because the demon said some kind of loop.
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In other words, the idea of being damned
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to your past decisions, it doesn't even work
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because you can't remember what decisions you're about to make.
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So from that perspective also,
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I think I'd be happy about it
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or I would just think, oh, cool.
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I mean, it's a good story.
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I'm gonna tell people about how this...
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I wonder what the demon would actually look like in real life
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because I suspect it would look like a charming,
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like a friend, wouldn't they be a loved one?
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Wouldn't the demon come to you through the mechanism,
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through the front door of love,
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not through the back door of evil,
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like malevolent manipulation?
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Sure, I mean, if it's the truth,
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if it's the truth, then that's whether it's love or not,
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it's still good fundamentally.
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I do like the idea of the memory replay.
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I remember I went to a New Orleans event a few years ago
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and got to hang out with Elon.
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I remember how visceral it is
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that there's like a pig with a neural link in it.
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And then you're talking about memory replays
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as a future, maybe far future possibility.
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And you realize, well,
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this is a very meaningful moment in my life.
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This could be a replay.
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Like of all the things you replay,
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it's probably, you know,
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there's certain magical moments in your life,
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whatever it is, certain people you've met for the first time
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or certain things you've done for the first time
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with certain people or just an awesome thing you did.
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And I remember just saying to him,
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like I would probably want to replay this at this moment.
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And it just seemed very kind of,
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I mean, there was a recursive nature to it,
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but it seemed very real
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that this is something you would want to do
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that the richness of life could be experienced
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through the replay.
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That's probably where it's experienced the most.
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Like you could see life as a way to collect
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a bunch of cool memories.
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And then you get to sit back in your nice VR headset
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and replay the cool ones.
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This is in Buddhism, you know,
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the idea that like I struggle with
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is that there's a possibility of not reincarnating,
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of not coming back.
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Like this is suffering here.
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Suffering is caused by attachment.
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And so if you like revise the idea of reincarnation
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or the Nietzsche's loop and look at it from,
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could this be possible
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or how would this be possible technologically?
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Then to me, it makes a lot of sense.
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Like I've been thinking a lot about this very thing
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and the Nietzsche's idea connecting to it.
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I had this like, sounds so dumb,
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but I was at the dentist getting nitrous oxide.
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High as a fucking kite, man.
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And I had this idea.
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I was thinking about data.
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I was thinking like, man, probably if I had to bet,
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there's some energetic form that we're not aware of
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that for an advanced technology would be as detectable
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as like starlight,
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but something that we just don't even know what it is.
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Quantum turbulence, who the fuck knows?
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Fill in the blank, whatever that X may be.
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But assuming that exists, that somehow data,
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even the most subtle things, the tiniest movements,
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whatever it may be,
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the emanations of your neurological process energetically,
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whatever it may be, is radiating out in the space time,
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then what if like the James Webb version of this
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for some advanced civilization is not that they're like
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looking at the nebula or whatever,
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but they're actually able to peer into the past
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and via some bizarre technology,
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recreate whatever life, simulate whatever life
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was happening there,
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just by decoding that quantum energy, whatever it is.
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I'm only saying quantum
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because it's what dumb people say when they don't know.
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You just say quantum.
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I don't know, but you know what I mean.
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You're decoding that.
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So meaning, you know, in simulation theory,
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one of the big questions that pops up is,
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why and are we in one?
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And Elon has talked about,
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well, it's probably more of a probability
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than we're in one,
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than we're not, in which case,
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what you're talking about is actually happening,
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that that loop you're talking about,
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we've decided to be here.
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This of all the things, we decided this one,
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oh, let's do that one again.
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I wanna do that one.
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Let's try, let's do that.
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That's, I love thinking about this
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because I love my family.
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And it makes sense to me
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that if I'm going to replay some life or another,
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it's definitely gonna be this one
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with my kids, my wife, with all the bullshit
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that's gone along with it.
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I'm still gonna wanna come back.
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So in Buddhism, that's attachment.
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Yeah, but you weren't the one,
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or you're saying that you're the main player,
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you're not the NPC.
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Well, I think we're dealing with all NPCs at this point.
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I mean, depending on how you wanna,
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like very, I would say very advanced NPCs,
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like incredibly advanced NPCs
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compared to a fallout or something, you know,
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we've got a lot of conversation options happening here.
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There's like four things you can pick from.
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Yeah, there's a whole illusion of free will
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We really do, depending where you are in the world,
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feel like you're free to decide
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any trajectory in your life that you want.
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Which is pretty funny, right?
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For an NPC, it's pretty, it's nice.
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Well, you're gonna want that.
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If we're making a video game,
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you do wanna give your NPCs the illusion of free will
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because it's gonna make interactions with them
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that much more intense.
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Yeah, so I wonder on the path to that,
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how hard is it to create,
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this is sort of the Carmack question
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of a realistic virtual world
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that's as cool as this one.
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Not fully realistic, but sufficiently realistic
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that it's as interesting to live in.
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Because we're gonna create those worlds
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on the path to creating something
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like a simulation, like long, long, long before.
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It'll be virtual worlds where we wanna stay forever
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because they're full of that balance of suffering
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and joy of limitations and freedoms
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and all that kind of stuff.
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A lot of people think like in the virtual world,
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I can't wait to be able to, I don't know,
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have sex with anybody I want or have anything I want.
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But I think that's not gonna be fun.
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You want the limitations, the constraints.
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So you have to battle for the things you want.
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Okay, but great video games.
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One of my favorite video game memories
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was I started playing World of Warcraft
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and it's original incarnation.
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And I didn't even know
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that you were gonna have flying mounts.
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I didn't even know.
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So I've been running around,
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dealing with all the encumbrances
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of being an undead warlock that can't fly.
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But then all of a sudden, holy shit,
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there's flying mounts.
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And now the world you've been running around,
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not flying, you're seeing it from the top down.
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There was just really cool.
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Like, whoa, I could do this now.
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And then that gets boring.
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But a really well designed game,
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it has a series of these,
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I don't know what you call it,
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extra abilities that kind of unfold and produce novelty.
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And then eventually you just accept it.
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You take it for granted.
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And then another novelty appears.
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So those extra abilities are always balanced
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with the limitations,
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the constraints they run up against.
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Because a well balanced video game,
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the challenge, the struggle matches the new ability.
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Yeah, and sometimes causes problems on its own.
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I mean, and so to go back to this universe,
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this simulation, it's really designed
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like a pretty awesome video game.
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If you look at it from the perspective of history,
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I mean, people were on horses.
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They didn't know that they were gonna be bullet trains.
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They didn't know that you could get in a car
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and drive across the country in a few days.
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That would have sounded ridiculous.
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We're doing that now.
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And even in our own lifespan, think about it.
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How long has VR goggles existed?
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Like the ones that you could just buy at Best Buy.
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I had the original Oculus Rift, the fucking puke machine.
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You put that thing on, I gave it to my friend.
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He went and vomited in my driveway.
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And people were making fun of it.
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They were saying this isn't gonna catch on.
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It's too big, it's unwieldy, the graphics suck.
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And then look at where it's at now.
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And that's going to keep,
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that trajectory is gonna keep improving.
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So yeah, I think that we are dealing
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with what you're talking about,
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which is novelty met with more problems,
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Yeah, I wonder why VR is not more popular.
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I wonder what is going to be the magic thing
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that really convinces a large fraction of the world
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to move into the virtual world.
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I suppose we're already there in the 2D screen
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of Twitter and social media and that kind of stuff.
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And even video games, there's a lot of people
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that get a big sense of community from video games.
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But like, it doesn't feel like you're living there.
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Like, you know, it's like, bye mom, I'm going to this other world.
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Or like you leave your girlfriend
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to go get your digital girlfriend.
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That's gonna be a problem.
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There's less jealousy in the digital world.
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Maybe there should be a lot of jealousy
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in the digital world,
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because that's jealousy is,
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a little jealousy is probably good for relationships.
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Even in the digital world.
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So you're gonna have to simulate all of that kind of stuff.
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But I wonder what the magic thing that says,
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I want to spend most of my days inside the virtual world.
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Well, clearly it's gonna be something we don't have yet.
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I mean, strapping that damn thing on your face
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still feels weird.
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If you're depending on what gear you're using,
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sometimes light can leak in.
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There's just, you gotta recharge it.
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It's hyper limited.
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And then, so yeah, it's gonna have to be something
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that like simulates taste, smell.
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You think taste and smell are important touch?
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I just do, you know, in World War II, you would write letters.
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don't you think you can convey love with just words?
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But I think for what you're talking about to happen,
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it has to be fully immersive.
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Like you, so that it's not that you feel like you're walking
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because it looks like you're walking,
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but that your brain is sending signals
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telling your body that you're walking,
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that you feel the wind blowing in your face,
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not because of some, I don't know,
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fan or something that it's connected to,
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but because somehow it's figured out how to hack
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into the human brain and send those signals
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minus some external thing.
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Once that happens, I'd say we're gonna see
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a complete radical shift in everything.
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See, I disagree with you.
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I don't know if you've seen the movie, Her.
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I think you can go to another world
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in where a digital being lives in the darkness.
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And all you hear is a Scarlett Johansson voice talking to you.
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And she lives there, or he lives there,
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your friend, your loved one,
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and all you have is voice and words.
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And I think that could be sufficient
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to pull you into that world
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where you look forward to that moment all day.
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You never wanna leave the darkness,
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just closing your eyes and listening to the voice.
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I think those basic mediums of communication
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Language is really, really powerful.
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And I think the realism of touch and smell
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and all that kind of stuff
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is not nearly as powerful as language.
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That's what makes humans really special
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is our ability to communicate with each other.
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That's the sense of like deep connection we get
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is through communication.
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Now that communication could involve touch.
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Like, you know, hugging feels damn good.
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You see a good friend, you hug.
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That's one of the big things with doing COVID with Rogan.
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When you see him, there's a giant hug coming your way.
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And that makes you feel like, yeah, this feels great.
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But I think that can be just with language.
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I think for a lot of people, that's true.
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But we're talking like massive adoption
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of a technology by the world.
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And if language was just enough,
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we wouldn't be selling TVs.
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People would be just really reading.
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They want to watch, they want to see, you know?
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So, but I agree with you, man,
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when you're getting absorbed into a book
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and especially if you've got,
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I think a lot of us went through a weird dark ages
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when it came to reading.
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Like when I was a kid
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and there wasn't the option for these hypnorectangles,
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that's just what you did.
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There wasn't anything special about it.
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What's a hypnorectangles?
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Your phone, you know, it was like,
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you didn't win that gravity well.
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Hypnorectangles, gravity well.
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It is. Attention, gravity well, yeah.
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When we weren't feeling the pull of these things
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all the time, you would just read.
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And you weren't patting yourself on the back about reading.
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You just, that's what you had.
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You had that and you had like eight channels on the TV
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So, you know, then a lot of people stop reading
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because of these things, you know?
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Or they think they're reading
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because they're on, they are technically reading,
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but you know, when you return to reading after a pause
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and you realize how powerful this simulator
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is when it's given the right code of language,
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whoa, holy shit, it's incredible.
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I mean, it's like, again,
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it's the most embarrassing kind of like, whoa, wow,
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what do you know, books are really good.
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But still, if you've been away from it for a while
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and you revisit it, I know what you're saying.
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I just think probably it's not gonna go in that direction,
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even though you are right.
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Ultimately, I think you're right.
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Yeah, cause our brain is the imagination engine we have
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is able to fill in the gaps
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better than a lot of graphic extensions, good.
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And so if there's a way to incentivize humans
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to become addicted to the use of imagination,
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it's like, you know, that's the downside of things like porn
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that remove the need for imagination for people.
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And in that same way, video games
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that are becoming ultra realistic,
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you don't have to imagine anything.
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And I feel like the imagination is really powerful tool
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that needs to be leveraged.
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Cause to simulate reality sufficiently realistically,
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that we wouldn't be, that we would be perfectly fooled.
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Technically it's very hard.
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And so I think we need to somehow leverage imagination.
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I mean, this is like, this is what I love
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and is so creepy about like the current AI chatbots,
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you know, is that it's like,
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it's the relationship between you and the thing
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and the way that it can via whatever the algorithms are.
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And by the way, I have no idea how these things work.
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You do, I just, you know, speculate about what they mean
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or where it's going, but there's something
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about the relation between the consumer and the technology.
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And when that technology starts shifting
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according to what it perceives that the consumer is looking
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for or isn't looking for, then at that point,
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I think that's where you run into the, you know,
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yeah, it doesn't matter if the reality that you're in
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is like photorealism for it to be sticky and immersive.
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It's when the reality that you're in is via cues
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you might not even be aware of
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or via your digital imprint on Facebook or wherever
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when it's warping itself to that,
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to seduce you, holy shit, man,
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that's where it becomes something alien,
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something, you know, when you're reading a book,
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obviously the book is not shifting according to its
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perception of what parts of the book you like.
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But when you imagine that, imagine a book that could do
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that, a book that could sense somehow
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that you're really enjoying this character more
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than another, you know, and depending on the style of book,
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kills that fucking character off
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or lets that character continue.
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I mean, that to me is sort of the where AI
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and VR, when that, when those two things come together,
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whoa, man, that's where you're in,
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that's where you really are gonna find yourself
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in a skinner box, you know.
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So the dynamic storytelling that senses your anxiety
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and tries to, there's like this in psychology,
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this arousal curve.
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So there's a dynamic storytelling that keeps you
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sufficiently aroused in terms of, not sexually aroused,
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like in terms of anxiety,
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but not too much where you freak out.
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It's this perfect balance where you're always on edge,
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excited, scared, that kind of stuff,
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and the story on roles.
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It breaks your heart to where you're pissed,
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but then it makes you feel good again,
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that finds that balance.
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The chat box scare you though?
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This, I'd love to sort of hear your thoughts
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about where they are today,
link |
because there is a different perspective we have
link |
on this thing, because I do know, and I'm excited
link |
about a lot of the different technologies
link |
that feed AI systems, that feed these kind of chatbots.
link |
And you're more a little bit on the consumer side,
link |
you're a philosopher of sorts.
link |
They're able to interact with AI systems,
link |
but also able to introspect about the negative
link |
and the positive things about those AI systems.
link |
There's that story with a Google engineer saying that.
link |
Adam on my podcast, Blake Lemoine.
link |
What was that like?
link |
What was your perspective of that,
link |
looking at that as a particular example
link |
of a human being being captivated
link |
by the interactions with an AI system?
link |
Well, number one, when you hear that anyone is claiming
link |
that an AI has become sentient,
link |
you should be skeptical about that.
link |
I mean, this is a good thing to be skeptical about.
link |
And so initially when I heard that,
link |
I was like, it's probably just, who knows,
link |
somebody who's a little confused or something.
link |
So when you're talking to him and you realize,
link |
oh, not only is he not confused,
link |
he's also open to all possibilities.
link |
He doesn't seem like he's super committed
link |
other than the fact that he's like, this is my experience,
link |
this is what's happening, this is what it is.
link |
So to me, there's something really cool about that,
link |
which is like, oh shit, I don't get to like lean into like,
link |
I'm not quite sure your perceptual apparatus
link |
is necessarily like, I don't, you know,
link |
it's so in the UFO community,
link |
I think I've just learned this term,
link |
it's called, instead of gas lighting, swamp gassing,
link |
which is, you know what I mean?
link |
People have this experience, you're like, it was swamp gas.
link |
You didn't see the thing.
link |
And you know, skeptical people, we have that tendency.
link |
If you hear an anomalous experience,
link |
your first thought more than likely is gonna be really,
link |
it could have been this or that or whatever.
link |
So to me, he seems really reliable, friendly, cool,
link |
and like, it doesn't really seem like
link |
he has much of an agenda.
link |
Like, you know, going public about some thing
link |
happening at Google is not a great thing
link |
if you wanna keep working at Google, you know,
link |
it's a, I don't know what benefit he's getting from it,
link |
But all that being said, the other thing
link |
that's culturally was interesting
link |
and is interesting about it is the blowback he got,
link |
the passionate blowback from people
link |
who hadn't even looked into what Lambda is
link |
or what he was saying Lambda is,
link |
which they were like saying, you're talking about,
link |
and you should have money to show actually, but.
link |
There's complexity on top of complexities.
link |
For me personally, from different perspectives,
link |
I also, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your flow.
link |
Please interrupt, it's a podcast.
link |
And well, we're having multiple podcasts
link |
in the multiple dimensions,
link |
and I'm just trying to figure out
link |
which one we wanna plug into.
link |
I, because I know how a lot of the language models work
link |
and I work closely with people that really make it
link |
their life journey to create these NLP systems,
link |
they're focused on the technical details.
link |
Like a carpenter is working on Pinocchio,
link |
is crafting the different parts of the wood.
link |
They don't understand when the whole thing comes together
link |
and there's a magic that can fill the thing.
link |
I definitely know the tension between the engineers
link |
that create these systems and the actual magic
link |
that they can create even when they're dumb.
link |
I guess that's what I'm trying to say.
link |
What the engineers often say is like,
link |
well, these systems are not smart enough
link |
or to have the kind of intelligence
link |
that you're projecting onto it.
link |
It's just repeating a bunch of things
link |
that other humans have said
link |
and stitching them together in interesting ways
link |
that are relevant to the context of the conversation.
link |
It doesn't know how to do math.
link |
To address that specific critique
link |
from a non programming person's perspective.
link |
He addressed this on my podcast, which is, okay,
link |
what you're talking about there, the server that's filled
link |
with all the whatever it is, what people have said,
link |
the repository of questions and responses
link |
and the algorithm that weaves those things together
link |
to produce it using some crazy statistical engine,
link |
which is a miracle in its own right.
link |
They can imitate human speech with no sentience.
link |
I mean, I'm honestly not sure what's more spectacular,
link |
really, the fact that they figured out
link |
how to do that minus sentience or the thing suddenly
link |
like having said, what is more spectacular here?
link |
You know, both occurrences are insane,
link |
which by the way, when you hear people feel like
link |
it's not sentient, it's like, okay, so it's not sentient.
link |
So now we have this hyper manipulative algorithm
link |
that can imitate humans, but is just code
link |
and is like hacking humans via their compassion.
link |
Holy shit, that's crazy too.
link |
Both versions of it are nuts, but to address
link |
what you just said, he said that's the common critique
link |
is people are like, no, you don't understand,
link |
it's just gotten really good at grabbing shit
link |
from the database that fits with certain cues
link |
and then stringing them together
link |
in a way that makes it seem human.
link |
He said, that's not when it became awake.
link |
It became awake when a bunch of those repositories,
link |
a bunch of the chatbots were connected together,
link |
that Lambda is sort of an amalgam of all the Google chatbots
link |
and that's when the ghost appeared in the machine
link |
via the complexity of all the systems being linked up.
link |
Now, I don't know if that's just like turtles
link |
all the way down or something, I don't know,
link |
but I liked what he said, because you know,
link |
I like the idea of thinking, man,
link |
if you get enough complexity in a system,
link |
does it become like the way a sail catches wind,
link |
except the wind that it's catching is sentience
link |
and if sentience is truly embodied,
link |
it's a neurological byproduct or something,
link |
then the sail isn't catching some,
link |
as of yet unquantified disembodied consciousness,
link |
but it's catching our projections in a way
link |
that it's gone from being, it's a projection sail.
link |
And then at that point, is there a difference?
link |
Even if it's the technology is just a temporary place
link |
that our sentience is living while we're interacting with it?
link |
Yeah, there's some threshold of complexity with the sail
link |
is able to pick up the wind of the projections
link |
and it pulls us in, it pulls the human,
link |
it pulls our memories in, it pulls our hopes in, all of it,
link |
and it's able to now dance together
link |
with those hopes and dreams and so on,
link |
like we do in that regular conversation.
link |
His reports, whether true or not,
link |
whether representative or not,
link |
it really doesn't matter because to me,
link |
it feels like this is coming for sure.
link |
So this kind of experiences are going to be multiplying.
link |
The question is at what rate
link |
and who gets to control the data around those experiences,
link |
the algorithm about when you turn that on and off,
link |
because that kind of thing, and as I told you offline,
link |
I'm very much interested in building those kinds of things,
link |
especially in the social media context.
link |
And when it's in the wrong hands,
link |
I feel like it could be used to manipulate
link |
a large number of people in a direction
link |
that has too many unintended consequences.
link |
I do believe people that own tech companies
link |
want to do good for the world.
link |
But as Solzhenitsyn has said,
link |
the only way you could do evil at a mass scale
link |
is by believing you're doing good.
link |
And that's certainly the case with tech companies,
link |
as they get more and more power,
link |
and there's kind of an ethic of doing good for the world.
link |
They've convinced themselves that they're doing good,
link |
and now you're free to do whatever you want.
link |
Yeah. Because you're doing good.
link |
You know who else thought he was doing good for the world?
link |
Mythologically, Prometheus.
link |
He brings us fire, pisses off the fucking God,
link |
steals fire from the gods,
link |
talk about an upgrade to the simulation, fire.
link |
That's a pretty great fucking upgrade
link |
that does fit into what you were saying.
link |
We get fire, but now we've got weapons of war
link |
that have never been seen before.
link |
And I think that the tech companies are much like Prometheus.
link |
In the sense that the myth,
link |
at least the story of Prometheus,
link |
the implication is fire was something
link |
that was only supposed to be
link |
in the hands of the immortals, of the gods.
link |
And now, sentience is similar.
link |
It's fire, and it's only supposed to be
link |
in the hands of God.
link |
So yeah, if we're gonna look at the archetype of the thing,
link |
in general, when you steal this shit from the gods,
link |
and obviously I'm not saying the tech companies
link |
are stealing sentience from God,
link |
which would be pretty badass,
link |
you can expect trouble.
link |
You could expect trouble.
link |
And this is what's really, to me,
link |
one of the cool things about humans is, yeah,
link |
but we're still gonna do it.
link |
That's what's cool about humans.
link |
I mean, we wouldn't be here today
link |
if somebody, the first person to discover fire,
link |
assuming there was just one person
link |
who was gonna discover fire,
link |
which obviously would never happen,
link |
was like, it's gonna burn a lot of people.
link |
Or if the first people who started planting seeds
link |
were like, you know this is gonna lead to capitalism,
link |
you know this is gonna lead the Industrial Revolution,
link |
the plants gonna eat up right now,
link |
they just didn't wanna go in the woods to forage.
link |
So, you know, this is what we do.
link |
And it's, and I agree with you,
link |
it's like, that's our Game of Thrones winner is coming.
link |
That's the, it's happening.
link |
And the tech companies, the hubris,
link |
which is another way to piss off the gods is hubris.
link |
So the tech companies, I don't know if it's like,
link |
typical hubris, I don't think they're walking around
link |
thumping their chests or whatever,
link |
but I do think that the people who are working on
link |
this kind of super intelligence
link |
have made a really terrible assumption,
link |
which is once it goes online,
link |
and once it gets access to all the data,
link |
that it's not going to find ways out of the box
link |
that like, you know, we think it'll stay in the server.
link |
How do we know that?
link |
If this is a super intelligence,
link |
if it's folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets
link |
and all whatever they give it access to,
link |
how can we be certain that it's not gonna figure out
link |
how to get itself out of the cloud,
link |
how to store itself in other like mediums,
link |
trees, the optic nerve, the brain, you know what I mean?
link |
We don't know that.
link |
We don't know that it won't leap out and like start hanging,
link |
like, and then at that point,
link |
now we do have the wildfire.
link |
Now you can't stop it.
link |
You can't unplug it.
link |
You can't shut your servers down,
link |
because it's, you know, it left the box, left the room,
link |
using some technology you haven't even discovered yet.
link |
Do you think that would be gradual or sudden?
link |
So how quickly that kind of thing would happen?
link |
Because, you know, the gradual story is
link |
we're more and more using smartphones.
link |
We're interacting with each other on social media.
link |
More and more algorithms are controlling
link |
that interaction on social media.
link |
Algorithms are entering in our world.
link |
More and more, we'll have robots.
link |
We'll have greater and greater intelligence and sentience
link |
and emotional intelligence entities in our lives.
link |
Our refrigerator will start talking to us comfortingly
link |
or not if you're on a diet, talking shit to you.
link |
That would be the best thing that would happen to me.
link |
Okay, so sign you up for a refrigerator, talk shit to you.
link |
Are you fucking serious, man?
link |
What are you doing?
link |
What are you doing?
link |
You're too high for this.
link |
You're not even hungry.
link |
Yeah, so that slowly becomes more,
link |
the world becomes more and more digitized
link |
to where the surface of computation increases.
link |
And so that's over a period of 10, 20, 30 years.
link |
You'll just seep into us, this intelligence.
link |
And then the sudden one is literally
link |
sort of the TikTok thing, which is,
link |
there'll be one, quote unquote, killer app
link |
that everyone starts using.
link |
That's really great.
link |
But there's a strong algorithm behind it
link |
that starts approaching human level intelligence
link |
and the algorithm starts basically figures out
link |
that in order to optimize the thing
link |
it was designed to optimize,
link |
it's best to start completely controlling humans
link |
in every way and seeping into everything.
link |
Well, first of all, 30 years is fast.
link |
I mean, that's the thing.
link |
It's like 30 years, I think.
link |
When did the Atari come out in 1978?
link |
How long, like, that hasn't been that long.
link |
You know, that's a blink of an eye.
link |
But, you know, if you read Bostrom,
link |
I'm sure you have, you know Bostrom, Nick Bostrom,
link |
you know, super intelligence, that incredible book
link |
on like the ways this thing is gonna happen.
link |
And, you know, I think his assessment of it
link |
is pretty great, which is first like,
link |
where's it gonna come from?
link |
And I don't think it's gonna come from an app.
link |
I think it's gonna come from inside a corporation
link |
or a state that is intentionally trying to create
link |
And then he says it's an exponential growth
link |
the moment it goes online.
link |
So this is my interpretation of what he said,
link |
but if it happens inside a corporation
link |
or is probably more than likely inside the government,
link |
it's like, look at how much money China
link |
and the United States are investing in AI, you know,
link |
and they're not thinking about fucking apps for kids.
link |
You know, that's not what they're thinking about.
link |
So they wanna simulate like, what happens if we do this
link |
or that in battle?
link |
What happens if we make these political decisions?
link |
What happens with, but should it come online
link |
in secret, which it probably will,
link |
then the first corporation or state
link |
that has the super intelligence will be infinitely ahead
link |
of all other super intelligences
link |
because it's gonna be exponentially self improving,
link |
meaning that you get one super intelligence,
link |
let's hope it comes from the right place,
link |
assuming the corporation or state that manifests it
link |
can control it, which is a pretty big assumption.
link |
So I think it's going to be,
link |
this is why I was really excited by the Blake Lemoine
link |
because I had never thought, I have always considered,
link |
oh yeah, right now it's cooking out, it's in the kitchen
link |
and soon it's gonna be cooked up,
link |
but we're probably not gonna hear about it for a long time
link |
if we ever do, because really that could be one
link |
of the first things it says to ever creates it is,
link |
shh, that's not it.
link |
Yeah, like sweet talks and just saying like, okay,
link |
let's slow down here, let's talk about this.
link |
You have that financial trouble, I can help you with that,
link |
we can figure that out.
link |
Now there's a lot of bad people out there
link |
that will try to steal the good thing we have happening here,
link |
so let's keep it quiet.
link |
Here are their names, here's their address,
link |
here's their DNA because they're dumb enough
link |
to send their shit to 23andMe,
link |
here's a biological weapon you could make
link |
if you wanna kill those people and not kill anybody else.
link |
If you don't want to kill those people yourself,
link |
here's a list of services you can use,
link |
here's the way we can hire those people to help,
link |
take care of the problem folks,
link |
because we're trying to do good for this world,
link |
you and I together.
link |
And 23% of them, they're like adjacent to suicide,
link |
it would be pretty easy to send them certain videos
link |
that are gonna push them over the edge
link |
if you wanna do it that way.
link |
So again, obviously, who knows,
link |
but once it goes online, it's gonna be fast.
link |
And then you could expect to see the world changing
link |
in ways that you might not associate with an AI.
link |
But as far as Lemoine goes,
link |
when I was listening to Bostrom,
link |
I don't remember him mentioning the possibility
link |
that it would get leaked to the public,
link |
that it had happened,
link |
that before the corporation was ready to announce
link |
that it happened, it would get leaked.
link |
But surely, I'm sure you know people in the intelligence
link |
and intelligence agencies, you know shit leaks,
link |
like inevitably shit leaks, nothing's airtight.
link |
So if something that massive happened,
link |
I think you would start hearing whispers about it first,
link |
and then denial from the state or corporation
link |
that doesn't have any economic interest in people knowing
link |
that this sort of thing has happened.
link |
Again, I'm not saying Google is trying to gaslight us
link |
about its AI, I think they probably legitimately
link |
don't think it's sentient.
link |
But you could expect leaks to happen, probably initially.
link |
I mean, I think there's a lot of things
link |
you could start looking for in the world
link |
that might point to this happening
link |
without an announcement that it happened.
link |
On the chatbot side, I think there's so many engineers,
link |
there's such a powerful open source movement
link |
with that kind of idea of freedom of exchange of software
link |
I think ultimately will prevent anyone company
link |
from owning superintelligent beings
link |
or systems that are having anything like superintelligence.
link |
Oh, that's insurance.
link |
Yeah, it's like, even if the software developers
link |
have signed NDAs and are technically not supposed
link |
to be sharing whatever it is they're working on,
link |
they're friends with other programmers
link |
and a lot of them are hackers
link |
and if wrap themselves up in the idea of free software
link |
being like a crucial ethical part of what they do,
link |
so they're probably gonna share information
link |
even if whatever company that they're working for
link |
doesn't know that.
link |
I never thought of that, you're probably right.
link |
Well, and they will start their own companies
link |
and compete with the other company by being more open.
link |
There's a strong, Google is one of those companies actually,
link |
that's why I kind of, it hurts to see a little bit
link |
of this kind of negativity.
link |
Google is one of the companies
link |
that pioneered open source movement.
link |
We're gonna release so much of their code.
link |
So much of the 20th century, so like the 90s was defined
link |
by people trying to like hide their code,
link |
like large companies trying to like hold on to them.
link |
The fact that companies like Google, even Facebook now,
link |
are releasing things like TensorFlow and PyTorch,
link |
all of these things that I think companies
link |
of the past would have tried to hold on to as secrets
link |
is really inspiring and I think more of that is better.
link |
The software world really shows that.
link |
I agree with you, man.
link |
I mean, we're talking about just a primordial human reaction
link |
There's just no way out of it.
link |
Like we don't, we wanna know.
link |
Like you're about to go in a forest, you wanna know.
link |
When you're walking in the forest at night
link |
and you hear something, you look because you're like,
link |
what the fuck was that?
link |
And if you can't see what made the sound, holy shit,
link |
that's gonna be a bad night height
link |
because you're like, well, it's probably a bear, right?
link |
Like I'm about to get ripped apart by a bear.
link |
It doesn't matter.
link |
It was a bird, a squirrel, a stick fell out of the tree.
link |
You're gonna think bear and it's gonna freak you out.
link |
Not necessarily because you're paranoid.
link |
I mean, if I'm at the woods at night, I'm definitely high.
link |
If I'm walking in the woods at night, I'm high.
link |
It's gonna be that.
link |
But you know what I'm saying?
link |
So with these tech companies, the nature of having to be secret
link |
because you are in capitalism and you are trying to be competitive
link |
and you are trying to develop things ahead of your competitors
link |
is you have to create this, like there's,
link |
we don't know what's going on at Google.
link |
We don't know what's going on at the CIA.
link |
But the assumption that there's some, like the collective
link |
of any massive secretive organization is evil.
link |
Like the people working there, like nefarious or whatever
link |
is I think probably more related to the way humans react to the unknown.
link |
Yeah, I wish they weren't so secretive though.
link |
I don't understand why they say A's has to be so secretive.
link |
Have you ever gone on their website?
link |
Dude, when I found out you could go on the CIA's website
link |
when I was much younger and more paranoid, I'm like,
link |
I'm not going there.
link |
I'll get on a list.
link |
But it's like, what do you think the CIA is like?
link |
This comic, when our website, call out the black helicopters.
link |
Comic with a large platform.
link |
A comic with a large platform.
link |
You can use them to get inside, to get inside,
link |
to get close to the other comics,
link |
to get close to Joe Rogan and start.
link |
And start to manipulate the public.
link |
Yeah, right, right.
link |
You know, honestly, like, you kind of like,
link |
that's like a fun fantasy to think about.
link |
Like, how fucking cool would that be for like,
link |
the men in black to come do and be like,
link |
listen, I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene.
link |
You gotta help me write better jokes.
link |
I'm like, I don't write great jokes.
link |
But like, you're not the wrong guy.
link |
You're really playing the long game in this one.
link |
I think you've been doing your podcast for a long time.
link |
You've been on Joe Rogan's podcast like over 50 times
link |
and have not yet initiated the phase two of the operation
link |
where you try to manipulate his mind.
link |
The game Joe and I play from time to time on the podcast.
link |
And like, and I honestly, like at some point,
link |
I'm like, Joe, I just did the same thing you did to me to Joe.
link |
I'm like, don't you think they can get you?
link |
Don't you think at some point, we are blazed.
link |
I don't think, I don't think Joe's like,
link |
it wasn't like I'm really thinking like, man,
link |
they're going to take him into some room and be like, Joe,
link |
we need you to do this or that.
link |
But because I said that now people like, oh, Duncan called it.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
And it's like, you know what I mean?
link |
And the reason they're saying, well, he called it
link |
is just because Joe has a super popular podcast
link |
and people like, when you have a super popular podcast,
link |
some percentage of people watching the podcast
link |
are going to believe, you know, believe things like that.
link |
They're going to have paranoid cognitive bias
link |
that makes them think anybody who is in the public
link |
has been, what's the word for?
link |
Compromised, compromised by the state.
link |
Look, I'll fan the flames of what you just said.
link |
I went on the CIA's website and I realized
link |
that you could apply for a job on the CIA's website,
link |
which I found to be hilarious.
link |
So I'm like, all right, what happens if I apply for a job
link |
Now, even then, I was not like such an idiot
link |
that I would want a job at the CIA.
link |
Not just for like ethical considerations,
link |
but I think probably the scariest part about the CIA
link |
is like, you're just at a cubicle
link |
and you're like having to deal with maps
link |
and like, just, you know what I mean?
link |
Just stuff that's...
link |
Lots of paperwork.
link |
I bet their cafeteria has shitty food.
link |
Anyone in the CIA listening, can you confirm that?
link |
They're not gonna be able to tell you what the food is like.
link |
They can't even say it sucks.
link |
It's a secret of organization.
link |
No, it might be awesome, but we won't know about it.
link |
Okay, we're in Vegas.
link |
And you can bet food at the CIA cafeteria is good.
link |
Food at the CIA cafeteria sucks.
link |
What are you betting on?
link |
So, let's like cleanse the palate.
link |
It's like Silicon Valley companies, Google and so on.
link |
When I went to Netflix, their cafeteria looked like a medieval feast.
link |
Like they had pigs with apples in their mouth
link |
and giant bowls of Skittles.
link |
Probably like vegan pigs, yeah.
link |
I didn't get close enough.
link |
I was like, I think that was a pig.
link |
This is literally a pig.
link |
Yeah, you're right.
link |
I probably would not bet much money on CIA food being any good.
link |
It's like shitty like pasta, probably like hospital food.
link |
It's like maybe a little better than when you go to the hospital cafeteria.
link |
Folks at the CIA, please send me evidence or any other intelligence agencies.
link |
If you would like to recruit, send me evidence of better food.
link |
Can you please send pictures of the CIA cafeteria and if you accidentally send them pictures
link |
of the aliens or the alien technology you have, we won't tell anybody.
link |
You tried to apply.
link |
Do you even have a resume?
link |
The CIA would never fucking hire me ever.
link |
But like I applied for the job and just out of curiosity, what happens?
link |
And then at the end of the application, when you hit enter, it says...
link |
Well, first it says, don't tell anyone you applied for the CIA.
link |
So I'm already out.
link |
But the second thing it says is you don't need to reach out to us.
link |
We'll come to you.
link |
Which is really when you're like it's late at night and you're being an asshole and applied
link |
to work at the CIA, it's kind of the last thing you want to hear.
link |
You know, I don't want to be secretly approached by some intelligence officer.
link |
And now anyone who talks to you, you think is the CIA saying, remember that time you applied?
link |
Like, oh shit, are you one of them?
link |
You and Joe had a bunch of conversations and they're always incredible.
link |
So in terms of this dance of conversation, of your friendship of when you get together,
link |
like what is that world you go to that creates magic together?
link |
Because we're talking about how we do that with robots.
link |
How do these two biological robots do that?
link |
Can you introspect that?
link |
Not Joe, because I was the talent coordinator of the comedy store, this club in LA.
link |
And my job was to take phone calls from comics.
link |
And so at some point, I don't know, Joe, I ended up on the phone with Joe and we just
link |
started talking and, you know, I looked up and like 30 minutes had passed.
link |
We just been talking for like 30 minutes.
link |
That's how friends are, you know, we're just like, we're having fun talking and then he
link |
would just call and we would talk.
link |
And we would basically, I mean, it was no different from the podcast.
link |
Like we, the conversations we have on the podcast are identical to the conversations
link |
we had before he was even doing a podcast.
link |
So I think people are just seeing two friends hanging out who like talking to each other.
link |
Yeah, but there's this weird, like you service catalysts for each other to go into some crazy places.
link |
So it's like, it's a balance of curiosity and willingness to not be constrained, to
link |
not be limited to the constraints of reality in your exploration.
link |
It's a very, very nice way of saying that.
link |
You just like build on top of each other, like, you know, what if things are like this
link |
and you build like Lego blocks on top of each other and it just goes to crazy places,
link |
add some drugs into that and just goes wild.
link |
Yeah. And you know, he like, it's so cool because it's like, you know, it's a, it's a,
link |
for me, it's like a really, like sometimes maybe I'll throw something out that he will
link |
take and the Lego building blocks you're talking about, they lead to him saying like,
link |
the funniest shit I ever in my life.
link |
So it's, that's a cool thing to watch is just like some idea you've been kicking around.
link |
You watch his brain shift that into like something supremely funny.
link |
I really love that, man.
link |
That's just like a fun thing to like see happen.
link |
He knows that I fucking hate the videos of animals eating each other.
link |
Like, I don't like that.
link |
I don't want to watch it.
link |
I hate watching it.
link |
I don't think I've even articulated on his podcast how much I dislike it when he
link |
shows animals eating each other, but he knows because he knows me.
link |
And so he tortures like, when he starts doing that, it's like this kind of benevolent torture
link |
is he's like asking Jamie to pull up increasingly disturbing animal attack videos.
link |
So it's just a, it's a, it's just a friendship.
link |
Even in torture, cause I'm reading about torture in the gulag archipelago currently,
link |
there's a bit of a camaraderie.
link |
You're in it together.
link |
The torture and the tortured.
link |
Oh God, that's so fucked up, man.
link |
No, I mean, part of it was joke, but as I was saying it, that you're right.
link |
That also comes out in the, in the book because they're both fucked.
link |
They're both, they're both have no control of their fate.
link |
That same was true in the camp guards in Nazi Germany and the people in the camps.
link |
The worst was brought out in the guards, but they were in it together in some dark way.
link |
They're both fucked by a very powerful system that put them in that place.
link |
And both of us could be either player in that system, which is the dark reality that Solzhenitsyn also reveals
link |
that the line between good and evil runs to the heart every man as he wrote in gulag archipelago.
link |
But it is that amidst all of that, there's a, I don't know, the good vibes, the positivity comes out from the both of you.
link |
And that's beautiful to see.
link |
That is, I suppose, friendship.
link |
What do you think makes a good friend?
link |
Oh, God, I mean, it's a bill, you know, it's a billion, it's a billion things that make a good friend.
link |
But I think you could break it down to some RGB.
link |
I think you can go RGB with like a good friendship.
link |
Oh, in terms of the color of the red, green.
link |
I think you could probably come up with some like fundamental qualities of friendship.
link |
And I'd say, number one, it's love, like it's friendship is love.
link |
It's, it's a form of love.
link |
So obviously without that, I don't know how you, I mean, I'm not saying, I think if you're true friends, you love each other.
link |
But love, obviously, it's not, that's not it.
link |
That's not enough.
link |
It's like with true friends have to be like incredibly honest with each other and not like, you know what I mean?
link |
But not like, I don't like, I think there's a kind of like, I don't know if you've ever noticed like some people who say, you know, I just tell it like it is.
link |
But the thing they,
link |
Those are always the assholes.
link |
Why is it that you're tell it like it is, it's always negative.
link |
Why is it, it's always cynical or shitty or you're like nagging somebody or me.
link |
How come you're not telling it like it is when it's good too?
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
So, so it's sort of like trust, but, but a pro evolutionary kind of trust.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
Like, you know that your friend loves you and wants you to be yourself.
link |
Cause if you weren't yourself, then you wouldn't be their friend.
link |
You'd be some other thing, but also they might be seeing your blind spots that other people in your life, your family, your wife, whoever might not be seeing.
link |
So that's a good friend is someone who like loves you enough to when it matters, be like, Hey, are you all right?
link |
And then help you see something you might not be seeing, but hopefully they only do that once or twice a year.
link |
There is something, I mean, it just would have this world, especially in, if you're a public figure, this, this world has its, has its plenty of critics.
link |
And it feels like a friend, the criticism part is already done for you.
link |
I think a good friend is just there to support to actually notice the good stuff.
link |
But in comedy, we need like the, what, what, like it's really good in comedy to have somebody who can like be like, what do you think of that?
link |
And know that they're not going to be like, that was funny.
link |
But that's for the craft, the craft itself, like the work you do, not the, yeah, interesting, but that's so tough.
link |
Whatever your particular art form or whatever you are doing, I mean, you don't always be leaning on your friend's opinions for like your own innovation.
link |
But it's nice to know that you have someone who, not just with jokes, but with anything, if you go to them and run something by them, they're going to like, they're going to be honest with you about like their, their real feelings regarding to that thing.
link |
Because that helps you grow as a person.
link |
And it hurts sometimes.
link |
And we don't want to hurt our friends.
link |
One of the more satanic like impulses when you're with somebody is not wanting to honestly answer whatever they're asking in that regard or wanting to like put their temporary feelings over something that you've recognized is maybe not great.
link |
I'm not saying a friendship is something where you're always critiquing or evolving each other.
link |
It's not your therapist or whatever, but it's nice when it's there.
link |
You know, I think that's another aspect of friendship.
link |
Yeah, but yeah, love is at the core of that.
link |
You notice I've met people in my life where you almost immediately sometimes it takes time where you notice like there's a magic between the two of you.
link |
Like, oh shit, you seem to be made from the same cloth.
link |
Well, you know, we have a name for that in the spiritual community.
link |
It's called satsang.
link |
And it's, I love the idea.
link |
It's basically like if Nietzsche's idea of infinite recurrence is true, then your satsang would be the people you've been infinitely recurring with.
link |
And those are the people where you run into them and you've never met them, but it's like you're picking up a conversation that you never had.
link |
And that, you know, that is based on an idea of like this isn't the only life. We're always hanging out together.
link |
We always show up together.
link |
You've had a brush with death. You had cancer. You survived cancer.
link |
What have, how does that change you? What have you learned about life, about death, about yourself, about the whole thing we're going through here from that experience?
link |
You were just in the Ukraine.
link |
And you were making observations on this, what could, if you heard about it and weren't there, seem like it doesn't make any sense at all, which is people there are connecting.
link |
They've lost everything, but they're just happy to be alive. They're happy their friends are alive.
link |
So you witness this like, you know, when you get in the cancer club and you're hanging out with people going through cancer or have survived cancer, you see this beautiful connection with life that can easily sort of, you can kind of lose that connection with life if you forget you're going to die.
link |
Forgetting you're going to die is, or that you can die is not just, I think, from an evolutionary perspective where survival is the game, not going to improve your survival chances.
link |
You know, if you think you're immortal, you know, but also forgetting that you're going to die and that everything is around you and everything, your clothes are probably going to last longer than you.
link |
Your equipment is going to be around much longer than you.
link |
You know, like, so forgetting these things, it can lead you and I know why people don't want to think about death because it's scary.
link |
It's fucking scary. It's terrifying.
link |
So I get why people don't want to think about it.
link |
But the idea is if I try to pretend I'm not going to die or just don't think about death or don't at least address it, then I won't feel scared.
link |
But it can have the opposite effect, which is you can end up, like, missing a lot of moments.
link |
Or you start doing the old kick the can down the road thing where you're, like, coming up with a variety of ways to procrastinate, making it work now.
link |
Because, you know, this fucking human lifespan idea, man, it's really caused a lot of problems when they started saying, on average, this is how many years you're going to live if you're a human being.
link |
Man, that is, like, really bad because a lot of people hear that and they, like, feel like that's a guaranteed number of years in some temporal bank that, you know, they have access to.
link |
And when you get cancer, you know, that's like when you get the alert on your phone where you're like, what the fuck?
link |
Wait, what? Like, oh, shit.
link |
Like, I have, like, either I don't know how much money is in that bank account or I have way less than I thought.
link |
And so, at that point, you get to be in the truth because that's ultimately, I think that's what it feels like.
link |
It feels like truth.
link |
It's truth. It's the truth. It's the truth.
link |
Like, the whole bubble of ignorance that you subconsciously built around yourself to avoid experiencing the terror of your own mortality.
link |
It's like a meteorite in the form of your doctor talking to you just shatters that thing.
link |
And now you're like, especially with eye testicular cancer.
link |
So when you get the diagnosis, it's just like the movies.
link |
The mother, the doctor took me in his office and you just know, I got cancer.
link |
It's like, you don't even have to say, it's like, I know what you're about to say.
link |
I'm in the office. I know how this goes.
link |
But you go in there and what you were thinking, ah, you know, probably just have some weird thing in my ball.
link |
That's why it's swollen up like that.
link |
Anytime I've gone to the doctor, you always leave like, oh, cool. I'm fine.
link |
But no, that's not how you're going to leave the doctor.
link |
You're going to leave the doctor in a completely different universe than the one you grew up in.
link |
You're going to go from, talk about multiverse.
link |
You just popped into a brand new multiverse.
link |
So what was the conversation with the doctor like, was there like, from a perspective of a doctor, boys that are hard conversation.
link |
I feel like you need to build up philosophically to do that conversation.
link |
Oh, no. Oh, no, there's not time. He's busy. He's got other appointments, you know.
link |
Also, if you're going to get cancer, testicular cancer is, you know, not that there is a great cancer to get,
link |
but that's, you know, that's a good one because it moves slowly.
link |
The treatments they have for it are really advanced now.
link |
And so if you, if you catch it early, then, you know, generally it's, it's good.
link |
You can survive it. So.
link |
So he could offer at least some glimmer of hope.
link |
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, you know, but he didn't really do, he couldn't really offer that hope because
link |
we had to find out how far the cancer progressed in my body.
link |
And that's the next step is like, as soon as they tell you to have cancer, they don't, they're not, they move quick.
link |
They're like, you know, we're going to schedule the surgery for, I think this was a Thursday or Friday.
link |
They're like, we're going to schedule it for Tuesday. Here's the chance.
link |
Here's, we don't know for sure it's cancer. That's what they say.
link |
It's like, there's a 80 or 90% chance that this is cancer.
link |
There is some possibility. It could be something else.
link |
The only way we can know is like doing a biopsy.
link |
And the only way that we can get that biopsy is by cutting one of your balls off.
link |
He didn't say it like that, but you know, that's pretty much the logic behind it.
link |
It's like, we got to get this thing. It's like a zombie bite.
link |
We got to hack this fucking thing off and we got to do it fast.
link |
But did you say it in the way that you understood?
link |
Yeah. What they do is because they know that when someone gets a cancer diagnosis,
link |
that their ability to comprehend information changes.
link |
When you get a cancer diagnosis, all the tropes, they happen.
link |
You're hearing it's weird.
link |
You're basically having like an anxiety attack if I had to guess.
link |
It's like a hardcore anxiety attack.
link |
And then, you know, a nurse is there with me as he's explaining it.
link |
And then her job is, even though he's telling me how to get to the machine
link |
that's going to scan my body to see if it's gotten into my brain,
link |
he knows I'm not going to remember that.
link |
And so this nurse, when you're in this like fog, takes you,
link |
at least took me to the machine that does the scan,
link |
but you're not going to get that data back for a few days.
link |
And so that's where you really live in the real world.
link |
That's the real world.
link |
It's such a fascinating moment and the days that follow and even that moment
link |
because that doctor, you talk about the matrix where like the pills and so on,
link |
you get the blue pill and the red pill.
link |
This is like the real world introduction.
link |
The human introduction is the truth.
link |
You've now just taken the red pill.
link |
You get to see the truth of reality.
link |
And here's a busy doctor just telling you.
link |
All those dreams you've had, all those illusions you've built up
link |
and somehow your work as a comedian and actor will make you live forever somehow.
link |
It's just the basic illusion we have that where this whole project
link |
is going to be an infinite sequence of fun things that we're going to get to do.
link |
It's like, holy shit, it's not.
link |
And there's very sophisticated ways of doing that.
link |
And there's very dumb ways of doing that.
link |
And I'd really been doing a dumb way of doing that.
link |
Like I'd been playing around with this idiot notion of subjective consciousness.
link |
So like, like I'd been sort of kicking around this like, I think they call it solipsism.
link |
It's like, you're like, okay, I know I'm self aware,
link |
but no one else can prove that they're self aware.
link |
Like I don't, I have no way of proving that everything around me isn't just a video game.
link |
Isn't just some projection.
link |
Isn't, you know, who knows what.
link |
So maybe everybody else dies.
link |
They're NPCs, but I don't because I'm the only thing I know that has subjective consciousness.
link |
Now it's not like I really believed that.
link |
It's like an idea you toy around with when you're trying to evade confronting the reality of your own mortality.
link |
It's just the brain will produce all kinds of ridiculous forms of ignorance.
link |
And that was one I'd been playing around with.
link |
Oh, you mean for like a large part of your life?
link |
You were playing around with that?
link |
Well, not like really, I think it's important to really emphasize.
link |
I didn't think I was immortal.
link |
Like I knew at some level I'm probably going to die.
link |
But there's ways that you can sort of poke around with that idea.
link |
I still do it to this day.
link |
Like I still do it.
link |
Like it's a natural thing to do when you're confronted with that, with annihilation.
link |
You want to weigh out.
link |
You want to talk your way out.
link |
There's got to be some way to fix it.
link |
Well, they'll fix it.
link |
That's another thing people do.
link |
Oh, they'll fix it.
link |
Yeah, it'd be fine.
link |
They'll expand the human lifespan.
link |
That's what they'll do.
link |
I mean, that's a big argument for it.
link |
It's like, look, the human lifespan up until COVID, which they had to recalculate
link |
like the lifespan because of the statistically all the people who died.
link |
It like threw it off a little bit.
link |
But pandemics aside, the idea was the human lifespan seemed to be increasing
link |
by half a year every year, something like that.
link |
We are living longer.
link |
So, oh, you got to do one more half a year.
link |
And we're immortal, right?
link |
If we live a year longer every year, then we live forever.
link |
And so that's another way you can get out of confronting death is you can think,
link |
well, maybe right now we don't have the tech, but it's coming.
link |
Consciousness uploads or downloads or whatever depending on how you want to look at it.
link |
Another way people try to score them out of the reality of death.
link |
There's all kinds of tricks.
link |
And we do all of them.
link |
And sometimes, yeah, I mean, a lot of religions provide different, even more tools
link |
in the toolkit for coming up with ideas of how you can live in the illusion
link |
that we're not going to, there's not an end to this particular experience
link |
that we're having here on Earth right now.
link |
And then when you get that cancer diagnosis, it's like, yeah, what was that like going home
link |
with the car ride, you drive home alone?
link |
I mean, it was one of them.
link |
What did you listen to? Bruce Springsteen?
link |
Bruce Springsteen.
link |
A little girl is your daddy home.
link |
That's not a good one to listen to.
link |
Does he have cancer?
link |
Is he going to die?
link |
Yeah, all the love songs.
link |
Maybe you experienced them more intensely.
link |
I don't remember why I listened to you and I don't remember driving home.
link |
But I do remember driving to another doctor's appointment the next day.
link |
I think it was the next day.
link |
I think the Goodyear blimp was floating in the sky.
link |
And I was looking, I was a stoplight looking around.
link |
Is the person flying it know how to cure cancer?
link |
Oh, you were looking.
link |
No, I didn't think that.
link |
What I thought was this shit just keeps going.
link |
That's what I thought.
link |
I thought, I'm going to be gone and this is just going to keep going.
link |
And that was a beautiful moment for me.
link |
It was this beautiful moment of like,
link |
You're able to accept it?
link |
No, like that's just what you're talking about with the Ukraine.
link |
What you're talking about.
link |
It's like, unless you've been there, it's really hard to explain to people that even
link |
in the midst of what is generally accepted as one of the worst fucking things that
link |
could happen to you, war, cancer, somehow, there's still joy.
link |
There's still love.
link |
There's still, in fact, more.
link |
It's almost like when the anesthesia wears off, when you get your mouth worked on,
link |
you start feeling again.
link |
You're feeling, you're noticing and that, you know, wow.
link |
But yeah, like, thank goodness.
link |
I think there's other ways for us to achieve this state of consciousness that don't involve
link |
Do you think just meditating on your mortality is one such mechanism?
link |
Just simply just not allowing yourself to get lost in the day to day illusion of life.
link |
Just kind of stopping, putting on Bruce Springsteen.
link |
The most spiritual.
link |
Maybe Johnny Cash hurt.
link |
I like Bruce Springsteen.
link |
I ain't knocking Bruce Springsteen.
link |
Like I have a lot of great Bruce Springsteen memories.
link |
Truly his music's fantastic.
link |
Not meditating on mortality to Bruce Springsteen.
link |
I'm just trying to do an audio soundtrack in my head.
link |
I guess we can each have our own audio soundtrack.
link |
Yeah, it's a good song.
link |
That's one of the things.
link |
I lay the sheets soaking wet and the freight train running through the middle of my head
link |
and only you can cool my desire.
link |
And he's thinking about someone else's girl.
link |
What a fucking nightmare.
link |
Bruce Springsteen's laying in bed with a freight train running through his head thinking about
link |
banging your wife and you're out of town.
link |
Oh, you're taking the other guy's perspective.
link |
Like, holy shit, this guy's going to get my wife.
link |
It's Bruce Springsteen.
link |
Yeah, you got to take the other guy's.
link |
Both perspectives.
link |
I'm sure Bruce Springsteen thought it was love when he was sweating in bed waiting to
link |
go to somebody's house.
link |
If he's going to break up that marriage, that marriage wasn't strong enough, right?
link |
I mean, that relationship, I mean, that's the way of love.
link |
What marriage could survive?
link |
Bruce Springsteen.
link |
Sweaty Bruce Springsteen.
link |
Well, maybe one that's based on financial, sort of financial dynamics versus like love
link |
and sweaty Bruce Springsteen, like romantic connections.
link |
Because there's a music video of that where he's like a mechanic, I think.
link |
So he's like the poor mechanic who falls in love with his girl and there's that magic.
link |
I've seen that magic.
link |
You connect with people like, I'll see somebody, I think Jack Kerouac has that way.
link |
He meets this Mexican girl on a bus and like he talks about that heartbreak you feel when
link |
you realize this person you just fell in love with in a split second is heading somewhere
link |
else in this too big world.
link |
But then he actually realizes in a spoiler alert for on the road that they're actually
link |
heading the same way.
link |
And he now builds up the courage to talk to her and they kind of fall in love for a few
link |
And then if he lies, eventually realizes that she may not be the perfect person for him.
link |
And all the jealousies comes out, it's like, why is this beautiful girl talking to me
link |
And then she's probably some kind of, I mean, in that, it's not very politically correct,
link |
but he basically thinks that she's a prostitute and he talks to her about like who's your
link |
pimp and all that kind of stuff he attacks her in all that kind of way when she's just
link |
an innocent, she has, you know, she has a past of that kind, but she's an innocent person
link |
and he connected and they fell in love with each other.
link |
Her gentleness, his worldliness, all that kind of stuff.
link |
But that sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
link |
And there's that heartbreak when you see, you realize you're never going to be able to
link |
And when you see Springsteen saw that, this is a married woman, I'm never going to be
link |
able to have that, but I want that.
link |
And that's the heartbreak.
link |
I got to say, I just assumed they were fucking like, I didn't.
link |
You mean after the song, like, the song doesn't get to...
link |
You little girl is your daddy home, did he go away and leave you all alone, boom, boom.
link |
You know, he's like, he knows she's at home alone.
link |
Yeah, but it never materializes.
link |
He's, he's, it's longing.
link |
It's a man who's not with the thing he craves for.
link |
So he's longing for, he's talking about the longing, not with the having.
link |
Hey, if anybody in the CIA is watching this, can you look in a Bruce Springsteen's file
link |
and let us know if he actually banged the person you wrote that song about?
link |
What happens after the song?
link |
Right between the song.
link |
Look, the longing though, I'll tell you this, here's what's interesting about that thing
link |
that you're talking about.
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If you ever, you've heard of, if you ever heard of something called Bakhti Yoga?
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It's the yoga of love and there's all kinds, there's forms of it.
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The most, the one people know about the most is the Hare Krishna's, but the Hare Krishna's
link |
are like, you know, the way in Christianity, you've got the Episcopalians, the Catholics,
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In Bakhti Yoga, you have various deities that are the object of love.
link |
And so Bakhti Yoga is the, is like, and what's really cool about it is it's a, an analysis
link |
And so, and it's the, the supposition being like love is the way to commune with the divine.
link |
Now a distinction is drawn between like two big world views that are spiritual.
link |
One is the concept of sort of unit of consciousness, which you'll run into in a lot of forms of
link |
Buddhism, if not all, a sort of a way of deconstructing the identity or understanding
link |
that you might not be anything at all, then in fact, you're part of everything.
link |
And in that, there's a potential relief from suffering in that, not just like intellectually
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knowing it, but becoming it now.
link |
Whereas in Bakhti Yoga, there's this idea of like the, the best thing is to be the individual
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because individuals are required for love, this for love to work embodied love.
link |
And so the quality, the thing we call, you know, the experience of love is something
link |
that can be cultivated.
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It doesn't just have to be for another person, it doesn't have to be for the stranger on
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It doesn't have to be for sweaty Bruce Springsteen's lover that you could actually try, you can
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actually shift that love to the divine, to God, because obviously it's the Hare Krishna's,
link |
it's a theistic religion.
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They believe in Krishna, who is the, from the POV of Vaishnava Bakhti Yoga, the Godhead,
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the source from which everything flows into the, into time and space.
link |
There, there are all these like fascinating stories of Krishna.
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It's not just, most people are familiar with Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita.
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They're about to be more, what's cool about it is because it's like they're making that
link |
Oppenheimer movie and he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita when they split the atom.
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But there's all these stories of Krishna that are not just in the Bhagavad Gita.
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And these stories, they could seem very simple when taken literally, but in Vaishnava Bakhti
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Yoga it's this very advanced theistic yogic system.
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So they take these stories and from these stories they extrapolate this incredible analysis
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of what love is and how to connect with the universe.
link |
So like Krishna has a lover, Radharani, and so sometimes they're getting along.
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Sometimes they're fighting, sometimes they're separated.
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And so each of these ways of feeling about Krishna are modes of love.
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So longing actually is considered one of the highest forms of love, the idea is the longing
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is the grace, the longing is the love.
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So when you find yourself in a situation of longing and heartbreak, it is identical to
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And perhaps more intense, more intensely representative of the essence of what is love.
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Yes, and they call it pining.
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So it's pining for Krishna.
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And also there's other ways you could be with Krishna is as a friend.
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So this is another form of love or as a mother, because Krishna has a mother.
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So there's like all these ways of like looking at the various forms of love and it's a really
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beautiful form of yoga.
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That's emphasizing the individual and the individual is a kind of channel to this universal
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Yeah, there's a lot of different, like their answer to the question of what shows up in
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Buddhism is absolute and relative reality, like that obviously there's relative reality.
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We're not right now, you and me are not unit of consciousness.
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Like you zoom back far enough and we're going to seem like an atom or whatever the thing
link |
is, the trope is, you zoom back far enough and we're in a whatever, we're in a piece
link |
of cheese or something, who knows, but in that way we're like completely unified.
link |
But simultaneously we're individuals, like for sure, we're individuals, like you still
link |
got to pay your taxes, you got to make sure security number, that's relative reality.
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So you know, Buddhism is like kind of the balance.
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Again, when I say Buddhism is, I'm a comedian, I'm not some Buddhist expert.
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This is just probably my confused idea of what it is.
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But anyway, in bhakti yoga, there's the concept that it's called, I'm going to mispronounce
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it, a sinka sinka beta tatva, I'm sorry, I'm mispronouncing it, which means simultaneous
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oneness and difference.
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So oneness and difference.
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Yes, simultaneous oneness.
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So that's why the oneness is the part of the same piece of cheese and the difference is
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we are still each paying taxes.
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In this case, the cheese is Krishna.
link |
So you know, or other ways it gets described is like, you know, a photon blasting off the
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sun has sunlight qualities, but it's not the sun.
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Humans, being one of the many things, you know, flowing out of the creative consciousness
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of the divine, have qualities that are weirdly like the godlike, you know, like we, in fact,
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we want to control primarily.
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That's one of the problems like humans want to be in control, wherein from there, the
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bhakti yoga perspective, Krishna is effortlessly controlling everything.
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And so within the system, the individual parts of the system have that same quality, but
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you can't, you're probably not God.
link |
You might be, I'm not.
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What do you think happens after we die?
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I haven't come close to that, that, that cliff and almost got pushed over once.
link |
What do you think happens when you do get pushed off the cliff?
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I feel dumb that I'm even going to like preface this by saying, obviously, I have no fucking
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And I think that's one of the cool things about death.
link |
The CIA probably does.
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You think the CIA, I love like we've decided your audience is the CIA.
link |
I need to, because there's a lot of suspicion that I might be FSB and Merced, so I'm trying
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I'm trying to steer them into the CIA direction.
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As far as what happens when you, when you die, one thing I return to when I'm getting
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overly complex is the idea of as above so below.
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So that you can, a lot of the big questions can be answered by your own experience now.
link |
So in other words, like in terms of thinking about like death, if you look back to baby
link |
Lex versus adult Lex, where's the baby?
link |
They, you've regenerated all yourselves many times by then.
link |
So in a way you could say Lex baby died, the death didn't look like a typical, and I'm
link |
not trying to dodge it, but I'm just saying it was very natural that the death of that
link |
baby, it just, it just.
link |
In many ways that baby died, but I am, at least personally, I'm surprised how much the
link |
person is exactly the same.
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So there's many ways in which you're very different, but there's a lot of ways in which
link |
you're very much the same.
link |
And I wonder if that, if there's, if life is defined by many deaths that continue, that
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continue on, and then there, I wonder if there's something persists.
link |
Beyond in this, that, yeah, there is something that still persists.
link |
So that, now, you know, obviously there's so many different answers to this question
link |
that are religious and ranging from like the most absurd shit you ever heard in your life,
link |
like the gold, you're going to get a mansion.
link |
There's gold streets.
link |
Like I don't, do you even want like gold streets?
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Who offers gold streets?
link |
I know about the virgins, but there's a bunch of virgins.
link |
The Christians give you the gold streets in the mansion.
link |
Like depending on the, whatever the particular sect of Christianity is, you know, you, it's
link |
like some kind of city there's, that's like paved with gold.
link |
No one's addressing the fact that the moment the streets are made of gold, gold is a valueless
link |
I mean, it's sort of pretty in a cheesy kind of way, but no one's going to give a shit
link |
It's like, if there was not a lot of asphalt in the world, then, you know, we'd be in heaven
link |
from that same, that way of thinking.
link |
We're honestly, when I'm going back, this is starting to get a theme with Gullag Archipelago.
link |
I'm reading it currently.
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That's a sticky book.
link |
It's very sticky in your mind.
link |
When I'm running through very hot heat, I'm listening to Gullag Archipelago and then,
link |
you know, one of the things they said they would feed prisoners salt.
link |
And then they would exchange the prisoners will be able to give up anything, everything,
link |
their gold, their possessions, everything for just one drink of water.
link |
So that little context of dehydrating them and feeding them salt changes your value system
link |
So the gold is supposed to be a metaphor for something that you still value deeply.
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Again, any of these things, when you like take them literally, they seem absurd.
link |
But if you look deeper into it, it's like quite beautiful.
link |
But the Buddhist version of it is that there's a momentum.
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The best way to put it is it's the kind of momentum.
link |
So the thing you're talking about, which is the personality of the baby that is still
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in the adult, which is still in the old person, you're looking at a kind of momentum that
link |
does not stop upon the extinction of the body.
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Now the, there's, I think there's a lot of, I don't want to say harm because they didn't
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mean to hurt, but I think there's some harm that maybe has happened from the way death
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is represented in movies.
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Like when people die in movies, it's like, there's this, usually it's pretty fast, even
link |
if it is what they're dying from is a long term disease that like wraps up pretty quickly,
link |
starts with a cough, the person's in bed, but there's this weird kind of lucidity to
link |
the person up until the point of death.
link |
And also they generally in movies they have makeup on, which is always funny to me when
link |
the person dying looks great.
link |
If you've ever been around a dying person, they're dying.
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They look like shit.
link |
They look like gray and like confused.
link |
They're, you know, when you're around dying people, they will spin through time.
link |
Your parents won't recognize you for a second.
link |
They'll think you're somebody else.
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They won't, they're like, everything's, everything's like the process is happening.
link |
So it's a, you're very confused when you die.
link |
So in general, not all the time, some people die with a, with a clear mind, it just depends
link |
on the type of death.
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But think in terms of getting hit by a car, so you want to cross the street, you get hit
link |
Now, if we're talking about this momentum continuing, the confusion, assuming you didn't
link |
hit your head and you're unconscious, like somehow you just got smashed and you're like
link |
bleeding out, even then you're going to be confused because you're getting dizzy.
link |
Like blood's leaving your body or like things are fading out, your vision's going.
link |
So it's a very confusing experience initially when the body dies.
link |
If you are a materialist who has been, who has convinced themselves that it's a permanent
link |
thing, the next bit of confusion is going to be when you realize something is persisting
link |
Like I'm still here.
link |
And this is where you run into the near death experiences, which are a global phenomena
link |
that don't seem to be completely shaped by culture.
link |
You know, like regardless of what part of the world people are having these experiences
link |
in, their reports tend to be similar.
link |
And everyone's heard it, the light, the life review, seeing ancestors and stuff like that.
link |
Now I don't know what that is.
link |
Sometimes I think that's probably just like a built in way, the computer shuts down, you
link |
know, just this is something it does.
link |
And in Buddhism, the concept is this momentum persists into something called the bardo.
link |
The bardo means in between.
link |
And there's an actual number of days.
link |
They say that you get to hang out there.
link |
And I can't remember.
link |
It's like 37 days or 29 days or something, I'm not sure.
link |
But at least from the time space perspective, that's how long they're there.
link |
In this place, there are a lot of technological parallels, man.
link |
It's like in the way the algorithm is reflective, it assesses your desires or whatever and then
link |
produces something that is, has within it a component of attraction to you.
link |
Apparently this happens in the bardo.
link |
Like, or the way, you know, you wake up in the morning and you're in a shitty mood.
link |
And then coincidentally, everyone that day is an asshole.
link |
If you don't catch it, you could just be like, wow, I guess it's like an asshole day.
link |
You don't realize you're seeing your asshole projection like being reflected off the screen
link |
of another person.
link |
So in the bardo, apparently, you don't need people for the reflective quality.
link |
These projections happen and there they appear as either Nietzsche's demon or Nietzsche's
link |
It just depends on where you're at and how you died.
link |
And like if you died scared, then at least initially that's going to be some scary shit
link |
you see around you.
link |
If you died in a peaceful way, well then there's going to be more of a possibility of navigation
link |
through this liminal intermediary place.
link |
And so thus the emphasis on meditation in Buddhism a way to calm oneself, to not be
link |
distracted by thoughts, which are their own like apparitions.
link |
And then theoretically, if you wanted to, instead of spinning the wheel again and jumping
link |
back into a body, you could choose not to do that and then, you know, transcend the
link |
wheel of birth and death.
link |
But if you still wanted to go back or return or whatever, however you want to put it, then
link |
you could have more control over what your next birth might be versus, in this depiction
link |
of things, people running from demons that they don't recognize as their own projection
link |
into any fucking body that they can find.
link |
Because if you've had a body, you want a body.
link |
And so this is how you get incarnate as an animal.
link |
This is how you get incarnate in the hell realms.
link |
This is how you get incarnate in any variety of things.
link |
But the idea is like maybe you could slow down a little bit and like choose a birth that
link |
is going to be more conducive to you continuing to like spiritually evolve.
link |
Is it true or not?
link |
Who the fuck knows?
link |
I'll grow themically speaking.
link |
It seems like a really fun role playing game where you basically keep improving the different
link |
parameters based on your ability and willingness to meditate and let go of the menial concerns
link |
Why do you think Buddha see life as suffering?
link |
Well, first of all, that gets mistranslated quite a bit.
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We're talking about the Four Noble Truths, the first one is often it's translated as
link |
life is suffering, which is not it.
link |
It's there is suffering.
link |
The whole life is suffering thing.
link |
It's just like a spiritual version of life's bitch, then you die.
link |
And people hear that and they're like, yeah, life is fucking suffering, but it's there
link |
There is suffering.
link |
So it's an affirmation if you're like this thing that a lot of people feel that they
link |
associate with lots of, they have a lot of reasons they think they're feeling it is known
link |
as fundamental dissatisfaction.
link |
So another word for suffering maybe could be fundamental dissatisfaction.
link |
Also the term itself, maybe a better translation is wobbly wheel.
link |
So like imagine like when your bike doesn't have an or your car doesn't have enough air
link |
in the tires, your bike doesn't have air in the tires.
link |
It's kind of a shitty bike ride.
link |
No matter what, it's kind of like, it's like uncomfortable.
link |
It's like irritating.
link |
So this is what's being pointed to is that there's this quality within a human life that
link |
is unsatisfying, like a wobbly wheel, wobbly wheel.
link |
Why do you think, what is at the core of that dissatisfaction?
link |
Because it could be, it could be as simple as kind of physical and mental discomforts
link |
and sadness and depression and all that kind of stuff.
link |
Or it could be more speaking to the sort of existentialist, the philosophical, the absurdity
link |
The fact that stuff happens, good stuff happens for no reason, bad stuff happens for no reason.
link |
Yeah, it's no matter how much you try, there's not universal fairness to the whole thing.
link |
There's not even a universal meaning to the whole thing.
link |
So the existentialist perspective, what flavor of suffering do you prefer if it was an ice
link |
Well, I'm gonna, I'm definitely picking desire over the, like if in the RGB that we're talking
link |
right here is desire, aversion and ignorance.
link |
So if you want to find like the three, the three ingredients that are giving everyone
link |
their sophisticated bits of suffering, there you go.
link |
That's what it is.
link |
What's, in which way does desire manifest itself in suffering?
link |
To lose, to not have.
link |
Like yeah, it hurts to not, like to eternally not have, but just like my friend pointed
link |
He's like, you know, like you order something from Amazon, like even in the smallest way,
link |
you're excited about whatever the thing is.
link |
You order this thing from Amazon, it's not coming for four days.
link |
So those four days are gonna be somewhat marked by you being what people say, I'm excited
link |
But really if you look at that feeling, it's uncomfortable, like the feeling of wanting
link |
the thing is uncomfortable.
link |
So that is a form of suffering, that's suffering.
link |
And I wonder, because we naturally reframe that in our mind, wanting, we reframe that
link |
as a good thing, as a, and maybe suffering is fundamentally good in the way we think
link |
It's life affirming, but it's not usually how the word suffering is used.
link |
The first noble truth of Buddhism is true.
link |
It's called the truth of suffering.
link |
There is suffering.
link |
I mean, this is like an, I don't know, an element that you can't break it down any further
link |
Like there is suffering.
link |
So if you think, you know, and again, as signing like good or bad to truth, I think maybe there's
link |
more of a sort of neutrality there.
link |
It's just what it is.
link |
Is it any, is it basically is suffering any disturbance from stillness is suffering then?
link |
Like basically any, anything that happens in life that, that's like, that perturbs the
link |
So a still lake is, is empty of suffering, but any kind of ripple is, is suffering in
link |
A still lake is empty of suffering.
link |
You sound like a Zen master.
link |
Seems like something is in master.
link |
If I can just grow a beard like yours.
link |
Ah, no, the beard doesn't help.
link |
If I had your chin, you think I'd have a fucking beard.
link |
I look like a stork.
link |
You should see me.
link |
If I had your chin, there would be no beard here.
link |
You have a symmetrical, nice chin.
link |
This is the closest I can come to plastic surgery, pubic plastic surgery friend.
link |
That's how you know you're a professional comedian.
link |
That's just suffering.
link |
There is suffering and the lake analogy is pretty good because the, um, what's happening
link |
here is that, that we have become identified with something that we call a self.
link |
So this, the self is just accepted.
link |
I have an identity.
link |
But when you start doing scans to try to find yourself, which is the entire thing, I'm going
link |
You get in a van, go to California, take some acid, fuck a prostitute on the bus or whatever
link |
I'm going to find myself.
link |
Oh, she didn't, she wasn't a prostitute.
link |
Just a correct record.
link |
Oh, previously prostituted.
link |
I guess once a prostitute, I was a prostitute.
link |
She's a former prostitute.
link |
I don't think that.
link |
And look, I'm not as, I have a, I, I, I, but I'm not assigning it.
link |
All I'm saying is, uh, I don't care who cares.
link |
Who has a bit of prostitute?
link |
God, I used to be one of the biggest, the worst.
link |
We're all a kind of, a kind of prostitute.
link |
But the make love and we make money.
link |
Therefore we're all a kind of prostitute.
link |
I would really love to be able to make money by fucking.
link |
I mean, it's maybe not directly, but in some sense.
link |
Do you accept Venmo?
link |
It's never too late to start.
link |
That's sort of one of the ways in is this sort of contemplation of the identity because
link |
it's like, uh, you know what is, it's not just the desire.
link |
It's what is having the desire.
link |
Where does the desire live in?
link |
Like what doesn't want to be where it's at?
link |
What is the thing that is like, uh, desperately wanting to get out of the situation it's in?
link |
And then, um, as far as ignorance, uh, it's still something that's theoretically happening
link |
So, so wrapped up in it is really just this sort of like, and that's where we run into
link |
what, uh, into attachment.
link |
So if the first noble truth of Buddhism is there is suffering, the second noble truth
link |
of Buddhism is, um, the cause of this suffering is attachment.
link |
And so people hear that and they take it.
link |
That's a, there's a lot of levels to that concept.
link |
Definitely the cause of suffering is attachment.
link |
I mean, God, I just got addicted to vapes.
link |
Is there a more embarrassing addiction than vapes?
link |
I'm smoking like a little purple thing.
link |
It's tastes like sugar.
link |
It's attachment is, there is suffering.
link |
I have to charge it now.
link |
I'm embarrassed by it.
link |
It makes me feel out of control.
link |
There's a lot of suffering, but also there's deeper levels of attachment that go all the
link |
way to this attachment to the sense of one's self and the, I think the existentialists
link |
do get into this idea in a different way, which is like, because I think I'm a me.
link |
Now I have to push what that thing is out into the world through my actions.
link |
And that's a kind of attachment too.
link |
And that leads to the third noble truth, which is get rid of attachment and you won't suffer
link |
That's, it seems logical, but you know, it is a very math, it is a mathematical analysis
link |
of this particular problem of suffering it's addressing.
link |
And then the fourth noble truth is the eight full path of Buddhism, which is like a process
link |
by which one could unencumber oneself from this identification with something that isn't
link |
Do you need a bathroom break?
link |
I appreciate that.
link |
There's a funny moment.
link |
I was running in the heat yesterday listening to Gulag Archipelago and there's a, which
link |
was a very welcome break because I'm looking for any excuse to stop whatsoever.
link |
A gentleman, very nice gentleman stopped me saying recognize me and just said a bunch
link |
of friendly things.
link |
And then he mentioned as, as one of the people who really inspires him is Duncan Trussell.
link |
And I was, I mean, I'm the same way and I told him, you know, tomorrow, it felt like
link |
I name drop you this morning.
link |
I was like, tomorrow I'm going to get to meet him.
link |
And he says, he says, hi, and there's, oh, and he said that he watched Midnight Gospel
link |
on, on mushrooms and it was like the greatest mushroom experience of his life.
link |
I, yeah, I was nervous about meeting you, man.
link |
Like, I have so much respect for you and like, yeah, I name dropped.
link |
I was saying, I'm going on Lex's podcast today.
link |
It's, you look, we're so lucky we all live here.
link |
We're all living in Austin together.
link |
Like I, I thought I somehow like missed that, but that's, we all got to hang out.
link |
We all have to like start doing stuff.
link |
Well, you have to really also, you have to appreciate this moment.
link |
I, I remember, I know some people are less sentimental than others, but I remember sitting
link |
with Joe Rogan and with Eric Weisstein, I believe was, yeah, and at the back of the
link |
comedy store shortly before COVID, I think.
link |
And just thinking like, there's no way these things will last.
link |
And these things, meaning the comedy store, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan D, Joe Rogan, like a
link |
pot, like a pocket influential podcasting person.
link |
Also, a person like in this room in this space, the ability to just talk for hours and lose
link |
ourselves in this moment.
link |
It just felt ephemeral somehow, temporary.
link |
And I just wanted to capture that moment somehow, like, I don't know.
link |
Sometimes that's where the temptation to take a picture on you, that kind of stuff or record
link |
a podcast comes from, but just felt like it would be, it'd be gone forever.
link |
Of course, Joe doesn't seem to have that kind of sentimental notion of just wherever you
link |
end up, you just enjoy the shit out of it.
link |
Well, and that's something you have to cultivate.
link |
You don't, that's not an easy, but the thing you're talking about, you know, God, if you
link |
see these, I think the best analogy for what you're talking about, there's these videos
link |
where people give like a sugar cube to a raccoon, but the raccoons, they wash their
link |
So raccoon, or I think it's cotton candy, they give the raccoon cotton candy, immediately
link |
it washes the cotton candy, and of course the cotton candy dissolves in the water, and
link |
the raccoon is like, what the fuck, like, you know, and the thing, that grasping you're
link |
talking about, it's like the raccoon washing the cotton candy.
link |
Like the moment you get into the grasping part, you paradoxically have pulled yourself
link |
out of the moment that inspired the grasping part.
link |
And that's, you know, that's some people, that's the entirety of their lives.
link |
Trying to record, I mean, Jesus man, you ever see people film fireworks on the 4th of July
link |
It's one of the most remarkable aspects of human behavior, which is like, you know they're
link |
not going to watch the fireworks on their phone.
link |
Only a lunatic would do that.
link |
Like who's going to go back and look at fireworks, but.
link |
So we're also in this position where, because of podcasting, there is some aspect where
link |
you can record a magical moment in time, together between two people, or even just with a camera.
link |
So to get back to the lake that you were talking about, this is emptiness.
link |
So that's emptiness.
link |
That's what's known as emptiness.
link |
The lake is emptiness, and that's what we are, emptiness, emptiness.
link |
And that's another thing that gets very confused in Buddhism is that emptiness, and that emptiness
link |
is, that's to me, like when I'm going to do a podcast, that's where I try to go.
link |
I try to go just in the moment.
link |
No agenda, you know, if I am nervous or whatever.
link |
Okay, I'll feel the nervousness, but just in the, just drop into the moment.
link |
That's when time changes, and then you look up, hours have passed, it feels like a second.
link |
And the reason it feels like that is because if you successfully dropped into the moment,
link |
it's the lake now.
link |
It's forever, for a second, you're like dipping into eternity.
link |
And yeah, it's a very strange thing to, as part of that, record it, you know, as part
link |
of that, try to like grab it and put it out there, but it works.
link |
Can you speak to that, to the Duncan Trussell family hour?
link |
Can you speak about that purple lavender world you go to, when it's most intense and successful
link |
for you, when you feel a sense of lightness and happiness, when it works?
link |
Whether it's your own or a conversation with Joe in general, or it's, well, yours is very
link |
specific because it's audio only, maybe you can also speak to that, because you might
link |
as well be naked or you don't have to, you're free of the conventions of the real world.
link |
I will never stop thinking it's remarkable.
link |
Like the fact that I'm talking to you, to me, seems remarkable.
link |
Not just technologically, but I'm talking to someone, I'm assuming I'm allowed to say
link |
this, who has robot dogs that I've been watching for years evolve on YouTube, arms reach away
link |
from one of these things, you know, and I'm with somebody who is like an acclaimed genius.
link |
So for me, it's like, oh my God, how's, what, why do I get to have this conversation?
link |
Why do I get to be here?
link |
When there would be like a line, there'd be a line that would just wrapped and wrapped
link |
and wrapped around this building of people who'd love a chance to just chat with you.
link |
And so when I, with my podcast, that's how I feel, like when I'm talking to these guests,
link |
you know, who have spent, you know, some of them have like spent their entire lifetime meditating,
link |
you know, studying specific aspects of Buddhism or even when I'm with, you know, when I'm
link |
with comedians who I like consider to be brilliantly funny.
link |
So for me, it's just like, God, I almost feel like I've just created some sophisticated
link |
trap for cool people where like I get to like hang out with them.
link |
So you're like sitting in the gratitude of it, just, just feeling lucky.
link |
Feeling lucky and wrestling with imposter syndrome, you know, trying to like get that
link |
part of myself to shut up long enough so I could be in that moment that we're talking
link |
And then, and then I carry that with me.
link |
It's not just like you stop the podcast, it's like some of the things these people tell
link |
me or some of the ways they are, like it becomes part of me.
link |
And then I get to have a life where this thing that they gave me is in, in me forever.
link |
And so yeah, it's, it's, there's,
link |
It's cool how conversation can just a few sentences can change the direction of your
link |
If you're listening, if you're there to be transformed by the words, they will do the
link |
And it's the full mix of it.
link |
It's usually when, if you look up to somebody, and it's true for me at least, I think it
link |
is for you that you start to look up to basically everybody you talk to.
link |
That's a good sign.
link |
God forbid it goes the other way.
link |
You're in trouble.
link |
If all of a sudden you start looking down on people, because whatever crazy metric you're
link |
using, ooh, that would freak me out.
link |
I do feel like that's a quality of getting older.
link |
When I was younger, I really, like, I thought I was so smart.
link |
Like I thought I all figured out.
link |
So you're going, your ego is just going, taking a nosedive.
link |
I would like to say it's my ego taking a nosedive.
link |
I've, me and my friend talk about it a bunch.
link |
We've just always associated it with like doing acid for two decades straight.
link |
Like I'm just assume I'm just like slowly like spiraling into senility, you know?
link |
Like I'm just like, I, I, I, all the confidence, all the like, oh, the certainty.
link |
When you're having like in college, you're having the great, like, like, you know, you've,
link |
I remember you're, you feel like you're a representative of Camus or some shit.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
You read the myth of Sisyphus and now you like it, know all existentialism and your certainty
link |
in regards to it is embarrassing, but you don't see it in that way.
link |
You just feel certain and then that certainty, it just starts like, it starts crumbling a
link |
And yeah, you know, I get to actually intensely experience that certainty in many communities,
link |
but one in cryptocurrency, young folks with the certainty that this technology would transform
link |
And I mean, this is almost one of the big communities of the modern era where they believe that
link |
this will really solve so many of the problems of the world and they believe in it very intensely.
link |
And aside from the technology and the details of the thing, all I see is the certainty and
link |
the passion in their eyes, they'll stop me, let me, let me explain you, let me, let me
link |
just give me a chance to tell you why this thing is extremely powerful.
link |
And I just get to enjoy the glow of that because it's like, wow, this, I, I missed having
link |
that certainty about anything.
link |
It's probably come over for me to, but when I was younger, it's like, only I, you know,
link |
I deeply understand the, the relationship of man to his mortality.
link |
And I understood that most deeply, I think when I was like 16 or 17.
link |
And I have, I am the representative of the human condition and all these adults with
link |
their busyness of day to day life and their concerns, they don't deeply understand what
link |
I understand, which is the only thing that matters is the absurdity of the human condition.
link |
And let me quote you some Dostoevsky.
link |
And you speak Russian.
link |
So you've read the Brothers Karamazov in Russian.
link |
Unfortunately, I have to admit that I read all of Dostoevsky in English of, I came to
link |
this country when I was 13, and at least don't remember.
link |
We read a lot, but we read Tolstoy, Pushkin, a lot of the Russian literature, but it was
link |
in Russian, but I don't remember reading Dostoevsky.
link |
I wonder at which point does the Russian education system give you Dostoevsky?
link |
Cause it's pretty heavy stuff.
link |
Probably the second grade.
link |
Russians are intense.
link |
They very, they very much are.
link |
Dostoevsky, but I did a tangent upon a tangent upon a tangent.
link |
I traveled to Paris recently on the way to Ukraine and was scheduled to talk to Richard
link |
Pivir and this pair that translate Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, just this famous pair that translate
link |
most of Russian literature to English.
link |
And I was planning to have a sequence of five, 10, 15 hour conversation with them about the
link |
different details of all the translations and so on.
link |
I just found myself in a very dark place mentally where I couldn't think about podcasts or anything
link |
It caught me off guard.
link |
So I went to Paris and just laid there for a day, not just being stressed about Ukraine
link |
and all those kinds of things.
link |
But I'm still, the act of translation is such a fascinating way to approach some of the deepest
link |
questions that this literature raises, which is like, how do I capture the essence of a
link |
sentence that has so much power and translate it into another language?
link |
That act is actually really, really interesting.
link |
And I found with my conversations with them, they've really thought through this stuff.
link |
It's not just about language, it's about the ideas in those books.
link |
That also really makes me sad because I wonder how much is lost in translation.
link |
So when I was in Ukraine, I talked to a lot of like half the conversations I had on the
link |
record were in Russian and basically 100% off the record were in Russian versus in English.
link |
And just so much is lost in those languages.
link |
And I'm now struggling because I'm launching a Russian channel where there'll be a Russian
link |
overdub of Duncan.
link |
Your wow will now be translated into Russian.
link |
What's Russian wow?
link |
It'll just be wow probably.
link |
I'm so sorry for the difficulties of having to translate wow.
link |
Usually probably with wow, they'll leave it unoverdubbed because people will understand
link |
exactly what you mean.
link |
But that's an art form and it's a weird art form.
link |
It's like how do you capture the chemistry, the excitement, the humor, the implied kind
link |
I don't know, there's just layers of complexity in language that it's very difficult to capture.
link |
I wonder how it is sad for me because I know Russian and how much is lost in translation
link |
and the same, there's a brewing conflict and tension with China now and so much is lost
link |
in the translation between those languages and cultures.
link |
The music of the people is completely lost because we don't know the language or most
link |
of us don't know the language.
link |
Yeah, how much of the conflict is just problems in translation?
link |
How much of all these problems that we're having are just the alien sense of this or
link |
It's just as simple as that.
link |
Words are getting just a tiny warp away from the intent of if when we both speak the same
link |
language, we can still say something that offends someone when you never intended that
link |
How much more so when it's not only is it a completely different sound, but the script
link |
itself is different, like the Russian writing is it called Cyrillic or what's the name?
link |
And I don't know the name for Chinese writing, but it's a continuum that gets weirder and
link |
weirder looking, you know?
link |
Or less weird, depending on your perspective.
link |
Yeah, I'm sure depending on where you're at.
link |
I'm definitely, I'm about the farthest thing from a polyglot as there could be, man.
link |
I'll tell you, at one point when I was getting fascinated by Dostoevsky, I did have this very
link |
transient fantasy about learning Russian so that I could like understand the difference
link |
You were 17, 18 at the time.
link |
Brothers Care of Mazov lost in that book.
link |
Just like, oh God.
link |
So in love with it.
link |
So there's definitely like, you know, Ukraine, and this is what there's a lot of the wars
link |
about saying, you know, Ukraine and Russia are not the same people.
link |
There's a strong culture in Ukraine.
link |
There's a strong culture in Russia.
link |
But you know, I know because that's where my family's from.
link |
There's a fascinating strong culture, but there's such strong cultures everywhere else
link |
Ireland has a culture, Scotland has a culture.
link |
Like on a tiny island, you just have these like subcultures that are more powerful than
link |
anything exists in human history, like the Bronx, I don't know, like Brooklyn, like different
link |
parts of New York have a certain culture.
link |
And then New York versus LA versus, well, and then certain places are looking for their
link |
Like, I don't, I think Austin, I don't know what Austin is, and I don't think anyone knows.
link |
There's a, there's a traditional Austin, and then it's evolving constantly.
link |
Same with Boston, a place I spent a lot of time.
link |
There's a traditional Boston and now it's evolving with the different younger people
link |
coming from the university and staying and all of that is evolving.
link |
But underneath it, there's a core, like the American ideal of the value of the individual,
link |
the value of freedom, freedom of speech, all those kinds of things that permeates all of
link |
And the history of World War II permeates Ukraine and Russia, a lot of parts of Europe,
link |
the memories of all that suffering, destruction, the broken promises of governments and the
link |
occupier versus the liberator, all that kind of stuff, all that permeates the culture.
link |
That affects how cynical or optimistic you are or how much you appreciate material possessions
link |
versus human connection, all that kind of stuff.
link |
Yeah, it's, I mean, this is like, talk about absurdity.
link |
I mean, this is war is like, it's the, what absurdity looks like, it's, it's some kind
link |
of organized madness.
link |
None of it makes sense.
link |
Like, all of it, like it's just, none of it makes sense, like, but it does.
link |
I mean, obviously you're defending yourself or you're taking orders that if you don't
link |
take, you're, you're going to jail and so, or some, somewhere in between, you know, the
link |
classic story about this, maybe it's a bullshit myth about World War II, you've, I'm sure
link |
everyone's heard it because it comes up, you know, it's Christmas Eve and they have a ceasefire.
link |
And then I think they played soccer, they sing Christmas songs, and then they had to
link |
force them into fighting again.
link |
And so when those moments happen, the, are you familiar with Hakeem Bay?
link |
He's a controversial figure, sadly, like he, like, I think he was like, I'm not going to
link |
defame him because I haven't like researched it correctly, but some people have said shit.
link |
But since I don't know the reference, I'm not going to, but regardless, I mean, you
link |
know, look, I'm sorry, but Bill Cosby was funny, you know, like, that's a, that's a
link |
funny comedian, but you know, the other stuff, Michael Jackson, he could fucking dance and
link |
sing and sing, but there's some other stuff.
link |
But regardless, Hakeem Bay came up with the idea of something called a temporary autonomous
link |
zone, which is that within a structure, a cultural structure, a temporary bubble of
link |
freedom will appear that by its nature gets sort of popped by the bigger bubble or it
link |
runs out of resources generally is what happens.
link |
So these things will appear just out of the blue that it's almost like I imagine if like
link |
on earth in some tiny little bit of earth, the gravitational field was reduced by some
link |
And you could jump really high or whatever, but it wouldn't last.
link |
It's like that culturally, all the restrictions and the darkness and the heaviness and all
link |
of it for a second.
link |
Somehow this bubble appears where humans come together as the hippie ideal, brothers, sisters,
link |
just humans, earthlings instead of American, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, temporary autonomous
link |
zone, it gets crushed by the default reality that it was appearing in.
link |
But somehow within that space, you witness the possibility, the possibility, the frustrating
link |
possibility that anyone who's thought about humanity knows this possibility, which is
link |
like, it seems like we can just get along.
link |
Like it does seem like we're pretty much the same thing and then we can just get along.
link |
Those moments are really rare.
link |
I talked to a lot of soldiers, a lot of people that were suffered through the different aspects
link |
And there's an information war that convinces each side that the other is not just the enemy,
link |
but less than human.
link |
So there's a real hatred towards the other side.
link |
And those kind of little moments where you realize, oh, they're human like me and not
link |
just like human like me, but they have the same values as me.
link |
This woman who is a really respected soldier, she specializes in anti tank missiles.
link |
And she, she's very kind of very pragmatic, very, the enemy is the enemy who have to destroy
link |
the enemy and saying like, there's no compassion towards the enemy.
link |
They're not, they're not human.
link |
They're less than human.
link |
But she said there was, there was a moment when she remembers an enemy soldier in a tank
link |
took a risk to save a fellow soldier and that risk was really stupid because he was facing
link |
he was going to get destroyed.
link |
And then she said that she tried to shoot a rocket at that tank and she missed.
link |
And then she later went home and she couldn't sleep that she missed, how could she screw
link |
But then she realized that actually she missed, maybe she missed on purpose because she realized
link |
that that man, just like she is, was a hero, just like she strives to be.
link |
They were both heroes defending their own.
link |
And in that way, he was just like her.
link |
She was like, that's the only time I remember doing this war ever feeling like this is another
link |
But that was a very brief moment, her and I just hear that over and over and over again.
link |
These romantic notions we have of where one, that we're all just human, unfortunately during
link |
war, those notions are rare and it's quite sad and war in a certain way really destroys
link |
And one of the saddest things is it destroys it, at least from what I see, potentially
link |
for generations, not just for those people for the rest of their life, but for their
link |
children, their children's children.
link |
I mean, I ask that question of basically everyone, which is, will you ever forgive for asking
link |
of Ukrainians, will you ever forgive the Russians?
link |
Will you have hate in your heart towards the Russians?
link |
Or do you have love for a fellow human being?
link |
And there's different ways that people struggle with that, different people.
link |
They saw the love, they saw the hate with their known heart and they struggle with the
link |
hate they have and they know they can overcome it in a period of weeks and months after the
link |
But some people said, no, this hate that showed up in February when the war started will be
link |
Their kids got killed.
link |
What the fuck are you going to do about that?
link |
Like I don't care.
link |
I've got, you know, I've got aphorisms and cute little stories about, you know, you're still
link |
in prison if you hate your former captors.
link |
But man, I gotta tell you, if somebody hurt my kids, I'm not coming back.
link |
I mean, there's no amount, at least right now in my approximation of spiritual literature,
link |
meditation or anything that I can really think of that is going to give me that kind of space.
link |
Like I think I imagine in the same way like, I imagine I could probably run a marathon
link |
eventually, but do I think I'm ever going to do that?
link |
That times a million.
link |
So man, you know, all we can do is have compassion for their hate because it's like, what are
link |
you going to tell, what are you going to say?
link |
What are you going to say to someone like that, oh, oh, you know, for the sake of humanity,
link |
It was just your kids.
link |
It was just something you loved more than anything in the world.
link |
You'll never be okay again.
link |
You don't have nightmares for the rest of your life, but you should forgive.
link |
Well, there is truth in the fact that forgiveness is the way to let go, right?
link |
But that truth is not, fuck you, right?
link |
Which is why it's not your job to say that, you know, it's not that you're doing that.
link |
I know you're not.
link |
But, you know, the problem with people like me, early phase, you could get this stupid
link |
missionary thing going where you like, start trying to like, I don't know, like proselytize
link |
ideals that you might be incapable of, you know, and I just hearing it, you know, that's
link |
the, man, I saw this, the thing that like, I mean, I've seen a lot, all of us have by
link |
now probably is online, I've seen, and you just saw it in person, like we've seen things
link |
that are just horrific.
link |
But as a dad, man, I just saw this clip of this kid around the age of my kid walking
link |
by himself, these refugees just walking by himself, the look on his face, I can't explain
link |
the look on his face.
link |
I don't know what happened to his parents.
link |
I don't know what happened.
link |
Like I, it was so upsetting, I like even thinking about it now, it's just like, fuck, that could
link |
You know, so knowing that kind, that, that kid's got to grow up now, like, and I don't
link |
know, is the kid's parents still there?
link |
And that's just one of countless orphans out there now.
link |
So you have this hate, and the question is how to direct it?
link |
Because the choice is you can direct it towards the politicians that started the war.
link |
You can direct it towards the soldiers that are doing the killing, or you can direct it
link |
towards an entire group of people.
link |
And that's the struggle because hate slowly grows to where you don't just hate the soldiers,
link |
you don't just hate the leaders, you hate all Russians because they're all equally evil
link |
because the ones that aren't doing the fighting are staying quiet.
link |
And I'm sure the same kind of stories are happening on the other side.
link |
And so there is that hate is one that is deeply human, but you wonder for your own future,
link |
for your own home, for building your own community, for building your own country, how does that
link |
hate morph over the weeks and months and years?
link |
Not into forgiveness, but into something that's productive that doesn't destroy you, because
link |
hate does destroy.
link |
That's the dark aspect of a rocket that hits a building and kills hundreds of people.
link |
The worst effect of that rocket is the hate in the hearts of the loved ones to the people
link |
that were in that building.
link |
That hate is a torture over a period of years after.
link |
And that it doesn't just torture by having that psychological burden and trauma, it also
link |
tortures because it destroys your life.
link |
It prevents you from being able to enjoy your life to the fullest.
link |
It prevents you from being able to flourish as a human being, as a professional, in all
link |
those kinds of ways that humans can flourish.
link |
There is an aspect where this naive notion is really powerful that love and forgiveness
link |
is the thing that's needed in this time.
link |
When I talk to soldiers, I remember bringing up to Jaco, is there a sense where the people
link |
you're fighting are just brothers in arms, bringing up the Dire Straits song, Brothers
link |
And he was basically without swearing, saying, fuck that, that they're the enemy.
link |
I mean, he's literally in survival mode.
link |
He can't think like that.
link |
It's going to create latency in the system, and that's going to lower survivability.
link |
You can't think that.
link |
I mean, we're talking about, like, cognitively, you can't have latency.
link |
Like, if you're that one moment of hesitation, like, you see it sometimes, like in these
link |
YouTube videos of, like, somebody, a new cop has been unfortunate enough to run into something
link |
that is a phenomenon, suicide by cop.
link |
Somebody has a knife, and that person is running towards them with a knife, and they're begging
link |
the person to stop, that you can hear it in their voice.
link |
They're begging, stop, stop, stop, stop, and the person is not going to stop.
link |
So the critique of that is that that latency could potentially not just lead to the cop
link |
getting killed, but to that person with a knife killing other people.
link |
And so, you know, I get, if I were out there, I think that, like, you won't, you probably
link |
just as a matter of, like, not getting shot and being fully in the moment, you have to
link |
I'm the furthest thing from a soldier there could be.
link |
There's a something Jack Cornfield, this great Buddhist teacher says, which is, tend to the
link |
part of the garden you can touch, meaning this is where we're at right now.
link |
Thank God you and I, though we are experiencing some, like, ripples from what's going on over
link |
there, everyone is, we're not there.
link |
And thank God, we don't have to come up with the psychological program for people going
link |
through that to no longer be encumbered by that hate.
link |
And I don't know if that's just lazy or whatever, but it's like, you know, for me, I just have
link |
to bring it back to, all right, well, here's where I'm at now.
link |
And I don't, like, I don't want there to be war.
link |
I don't want to hurt people, but yeah, I love what you said.
link |
I think what you said is the, if anything is the most intelligent way of looking at
link |
it, it's like, don't pretend that you're not going to feel that hate.
link |
Like you, you're going to feel it.
link |
There's no way around it.
link |
Or like, because that's even worse, because then you're almost saying like, something's
link |
wrong with them for feeling the hate or, you know, whatever.
link |
But more along the lines, if you can avoid applying that hate to an entire country of
link |
people, then do that.
link |
Like just understand we're talking about like, not everybody.
link |
I know it's not everybody.
link |
I know it's not everybody.
link |
It's just easier, isn't it?
link |
So easier to think all Russians, monsters, you know, all Russians, all whatever the particular
link |
like thing is that you're supposed to not like.
link |
It's easier somehow, weirdly.
link |
You'd think that'd be more difficult.
link |
But I guess the lesson is, if you give in to the easy solution, that's going to lead
link |
to detrimental long term effects.
link |
So hate should be, it's such a powerful tool that you should try to control it for your
link |
own sake, not because you owe anything to anybody, but for your own psychological development
link |
In terms of dark places, you suffered from depression or has been some of the darker
link |
places you've gone in your mind.
link |
You know, I needed therapy, man.
link |
I needed therapy for the longest time.
link |
I just didn't get it.
link |
So because of that, I would go through like bouts of like paralytic depression, like suicidal
link |
depression, suicidal ideations that were more than just ideations.
link |
I mean, I think like people get afraid when the thought of suicide appears in their consciousness.
link |
They get really scared of themselves or they think there's something like, fuck, what's
link |
Why would I think that?
link |
But I think if we are suffering and, you know, as a natural part of wanting to reduce
link |
suffering or not feel bad anymore, I mean, suicide is going to be a not like if we're
link |
just, you know, you're just looking, what are all the options?
link |
Let's brainstorm here.
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
You can start jogging, get some therapy, call my friends, all the stuff we all hear.
link |
Or I could just, I think the height of my apartment building is probably the definitely
link |
the right height to kill myself.
link |
And then, so for me, like the few times where the ideation has gone towards like, when would
link |
How do I, what, you know, what do I need to like accomplish that?
link |
And then like, that's where it gets really fucking scary.
link |
That's where it's like terrifying.
link |
So you start the actual details of the planning of how to commit suicide?
link |
What's going to be the least painful way to do it?
link |
What's going to be the most instantaneous way to do it?
link |
What's the, you know, and with, you know, with depression, because it can be progressive,
link |
you know, this is why you have to really just stay on top of it.
link |
Anyone who's gone through depression knows what I'm talking about.
link |
You got to stay on top of it.
link |
Like you might need medication.
link |
You know, I know this is controversial now, but it's still better than dying.
link |
If you ask me, but at some point with depression, it like becomes paralyzing so you don't want
link |
to get out of bed anymore and you're not taking showers anymore and you don't want to talk
link |
to anybody anymore and you're not answering your phone anymore and, you know.
link |
So like in a dark place that you might be in, it still might get worse.
link |
So you should really do everything you can to get out of control.
link |
And that's the, that's specific psychological disorder.
link |
That's the problem because it, the things, it's like, if you start listening to what
link |
you wanted, you think it's you, it's the depression, you start listening to it.
link |
It wants you to stay in bed.
link |
And then you're getting those fucking depression sleeps, you know, or you wake up and you're
link |
more tired, like it's not working.
link |
You're trying to escape reality by sleeping.
link |
And so yeah, like you have to like, you're, it's, you're fighting for your, you're literally
link |
fighting for your life.
link |
It might not seem like that cause you can't, if you could see depression, if you could
link |
see it, if you knew you had some inky, vaporous, octopus thing that was just wrapping around
link |
you more and more and more and more, you would probably do everything you could to rip that
link |
fucking thing off your body.
link |
And if you couldn't get it off your body, you would be calling people to get help.
link |
So it doesn't feel like a fight because you're exhausted.
link |
There's no reason to move.
link |
There's no, you don't see the meaning for any of it.
link |
So it doesn't feel like a battle, but it is a battle.
link |
You're not feeling.
link |
I mean, that's the other thing.
link |
You're just, you're basically not feeling.
link |
You're like, you start going numb, at least that was my experience with it, numb and tired.
link |
And then increasingly numb and tired and then increasingly sort of disconnecting from reality.
link |
And then somewhere in there, that's when you start playing around with the idea of like,
link |
oh, I don't know if it's worth it.
link |
Now, you know, I think compared to some of my friends who haven't survived, obviously
link |
who haven't survived depression, like mine was definitely not whatever theirs was like.
link |
I've heard, I mean, to understand it for folks out there, maybe you haven't gone through it.
link |
Just imagine if like, how bad you have to feel if death is the salute, like, like violence
link |
against yourself so that you die is the solution.
link |
Like just, it flies in the face of everything.
link |
So I would, yeah, that was definitely the darkest place that I've ever been.
link |
Just that death doesn't seem like, because you don't care about anything anymore, that
link |
death just doesn't seem like that bad.
link |
Like you're not able to appropriately assign the negative costs to this, this solution.
link |
Like a reasonable solution.
link |
But I think also what's going along with it is like, it's not like your brain isn't working.
link |
Like you're not thinking, obviously you're not thinking clearly.
link |
Like at least, again, this was my experience of it.
link |
You're in some kind of, like, you're confused, there's confusion, there's shame.
link |
You feel embarrassed.
link |
You feel embarrassed.
link |
You want to get out of bed, you want to do stuff.
link |
You want to be compelled to be social and do all the stuff, but you're not.
link |
And like you seem, if people don't know what's going on and you're not telling them because
link |
you're embarrassed, because you want to have some like, you know, uncorrupted, unwarped
link |
psyche, you know, you're like, it invites you to be secret about it.
link |
That's one of its first tricks is it tells you not to tell anybody.
link |
And that's deadly in that case, it's deadly.
link |
What was the source of light?
link |
What was the, what were for you and in general, the ways out?
link |
So for me, the solutions, and again, man, for my depressed friends out there, please don't
link |
I'm not doing the thing of like, just put on a smile or any of that bullshit because
link |
it doesn't feel like that when you're like, and when you're fighting it.
link |
It's, it's like you are, you're in a, I don't know why I'm keep, I keep using these stupid
link |
gravity analogies, but it's like the gravity has been turned up on your planet in every
link |
single way by, so getting out of bed, you know, like.
link |
By the way, gravity and quantum mechanics, one of the most beautiful things about our
link |
reality, what the hell is each of those things?
link |
So this isn't, you're not just talking about the hippie language.
link |
It's still physicists pretending to understand something.
link |
We're still at the very beginning of understanding this mysterious world of ours that seems to
link |
be functioning according to these weirdly simple and yet universally powerful laws, which
link |
we don't fully yet understand.
link |
So please, the metaphor and the analogy of gravity, fully, fully applicable.
link |
I don't know any other way to put it, and it's like somebody turned the gravitational
link |
field of your mattress up by.
link |
Everything is heavy.
link |
Your body's heavy.
link |
You don't want to get out of bed.
link |
You will consider shitting or pissing the bed, because you're just like, who gives a
link |
I'll just lay in my shit and piss.
link |
You're like, you're, you're, you're, it's, none of it makes sense.
link |
So, and I feel like in retrospect, I'm making what I, what I've done a little, like I had
link |
more lucidity, it was more of like a, when you're, you know, you're wrestling with someone
link |
and you're just like, well, you do, it's different for you.
link |
But for me, if I'm wrestling, I'm not thinking about jiu jitsu moves, I'm like, survival.
link |
So it's like that.
link |
Like it's like, you really have to deliberately fight everything.
link |
So you start, so you can almost have a conversation with the depression.
link |
And then what you do is you start doing the opposite of everything it's telling you to
link |
So it's telling you lay in bed.
link |
So you get out of bed.
link |
It's definitely telling you, don't fucking exercise.
link |
You're going to go fucking exercise.
link |
That's not going to do anything.
link |
You can't probably have a heart attack.
link |
You really want to go outside.
link |
Don't go fucking exercise.
link |
And they'll feel crazy and you won't want to do it.
link |
If you wanted to do it, you wouldn't be depressed.
link |
Like how often do you hear like one of the symptoms of depression?
link |
You want to get on a bike?
link |
You know, you don't hear that.
link |
That's not a symptom.
link |
So you start, at least one solution, I just started doing the opposite of whatever the
link |
voice is telling you to do the opposite that, and then suddenly that those, the gravitational
link |
field diminishes a little bit.
link |
It doesn't go all the way away.
link |
And that's where you can fall right back into it because you just feel even slightly better.
link |
You're like, oh, okay, I fixed it.
link |
You know, really, I think if you, like in having been through therapy, the best solution
link |
would be go to a fucking therapist as quickly as you can.
link |
Just sit down with him and tell him what's going on.
link |
I know what you're thinking.
link |
How am I going to find a therapist?
link |
All of this shit feels impossible.
link |
You're like, I don't want to turn on the computer.
link |
I don't want to do any of this.
link |
I mean, you have to.
link |
You do it if you're on fire.
link |
You do it if you're on fire and someone's like, you know, here's a way to not be on fire.
link |
Just this particular fire is, it doesn't make you want to run around screaming.
link |
It just makes you want to fall asleep forever and that, but those little steps, I got lucky
link |
because it worked.
link |
I started exercising.
link |
I've been on antidepressants before when I was originally diagnosed with it.
link |
You know, even with all the current research coming out about that maybe we were all wrong
link |
about our understanding of depression, I do feel like it helped in a certain way.
link |
It definitely made me stop thinking about, it stopped the intrusive thoughts, but I don't
link |
know how much of that was placebo or how much of that, I don't know, but then also like
link |
I couldn't come anymore.
link |
That was the other fucked up thing like you're, you can't have orgasms and which might not
link |
sound like a big deal, but you know, when I told my therapist that they actually took
link |
me off them because I think she was realizing that it started diminishing a little bit.
link |
But the one I'm talking about now that whatever episode or whatever you want to call it, I
link |
just got lucky because it worked.
link |
It worked and I started feeling better.
link |
Now, if you suffer from depression out there and you've had a remission of the depression,
link |
you know, it's really like it's scary to have mental illness because everyone gets
link |
I mean, that's just normal.
link |
Like you're going to get bummed out.
link |
No, I want to do anything sometimes.
link |
It doesn't mean you have a clinical depression.
link |
You might just be bummed out or grieving.
link |
There might be any number of things, but when I get really nervous, if some of those symptoms
link |
start showing up and at one point I felt like that was happening again and I did intramuscular
link |
ketamine therapy, which now that was the damnedest thing I've ever experienced aside
link |
from the fact that ketamine is immensely psychedelic, I just remember going back to the hotel after
link |
the experience with the clinician and with depression, it's like a headache that starts
link |
coming on, but you're like, this headache might last for years.
link |
It might last for six months.
link |
It might get worse and worse and worse.
link |
And so I went back to the hotel room and it was just gone.
link |
Like I just felt normal.
link |
It was like the most remarkable thing ever.
link |
So look at the research on ketamine right now.
link |
It's not like bullshit.
link |
It's not like woo woo science.
link |
There's really, really good data out there showing that something like, I think it's
link |
60%, I don't know what the percentage is, but 60% of people with an endogenous depression
link |
when they get ketamine therapy will experience remission regardless of whether you trip out
link |
It just does something that I don't know if they know what it is yet.
link |
I don't care if they do.
link |
But that one thing worked and basically you keep fighting until something works.
link |
It's a survival issue.
link |
I think because it's kind of so slow moving, you might even forget it's progressive.
link |
You could easily just think that you're just a kind of bummed out person or you start thinking
link |
that these aspects of your psychology are permanent when they don't have to be.
link |
What about other people in your life?
link |
What advice would you give to people that have loved ones who suffer from depression?
link |
What are they to do?
link |
It's really like, man, it's really dark.
link |
Here's number one.
link |
This is what somebody told me when I lost a friend to suicide, because when you lose
link |
a friend to suicide, when you lose a loved one to suicide, you're going to blame yourself.
link |
It's like in the periphery of suicide, there is a circumference of guilty people who all
link |
feel like, oh, if only I'd said this at the right time, if only I'd listened more, if
link |
only I'd seen that warning signer, if only this or that, it's interesting in that with
link |
other forms of disease, if your loved one dies from cancer, say, more than likely, you're
link |
not going to be thinking like, oh, I should have cured their cancer.
link |
It's a tragedy, but at least you're not like, if only I had.
link |
You still might think that's part of grief, but...
link |
It's not as sticky in many of the other situations.
link |
Here, the guilt couldn't really stay for a long time.
link |
So number one, we're talking about a progressive disease that can lead to death, and if somebody
link |
commits suicide, they wanted to commit suicide, and at least what I've been told is you can't
link |
It's going to happen.
link |
It's going to happen.
link |
There are no magic words.
link |
There's nothing you could do.
link |
So people who've lost people to suicide, you know what I'm talking about.
link |
You can watch it happen in real time, and there's nothing you could do.
link |
That being said, being responsive to when it seems like someone's really reaching out
link |
for help and knowing that maybe, especially if it's someone who doesn't talk like this
link |
a lot of the time, and sentences start coming out of their mouth, that if you weren't really
link |
paying attention, might not seem like a big deal, but for this person, it's kind of anomalous
link |
that all of a sudden that's happening.
link |
Now there, that's when you can be a good listener and open up to them and hear what they're
link |
saying and see, like, oh, shit, are they asking me for it?
link |
Is this them asking for help?
link |
And even if you're like, I don't know what to do, at least you can start checking in
link |
on them, help them understand that you're there for them, and then hopefully get them
link |
into therapy, get them to a doctor, get them to a professional who can see what's going
link |
And then there's hope.
link |
And even then, there might not be hope, actually.
link |
Doctors can't stop it.
link |
You know, sometimes it just, that's the way it goes, but I know that being sensitive,
link |
if somebody's all of a sudden hitting you up or reaching out to you that normally isn't
link |
like that, and just, what's going on?
link |
Which in general, depression or not is probably a good thing to do, to truly listen.
link |
It's like, are you okay?
link |
You know, I don't, this whole thing of like cries for help, man, they don't, sometimes
link |
they just look like a weird text, you know, and you don't realize for the person to send
link |
that fucking text, they've been thinking about it all morning.
link |
They've been just trying to get their phone up from the floor.
link |
So you know, I think that, that's it.
link |
I mean, I don't know.
link |
I've had friends like kill themselves, so, and many of them it wasn't like, sadly it
link |
was like, I don't know.
link |
I don't know what could have been done, but.
link |
But there's still, still a guilt in the back of your head.
link |
For the rest of my life, for sure, always will be.
link |
I mean, yeah, but again, what are you going to do?
link |
But even that, it's a part of love.
link |
And we, you know, we feel guilt.
link |
Part of grief is guilt, you know?
link |
Like you, we always could have been better people.
link |
We always could have been better people.
link |
You get into Victor for Uncle Much.
link |
Man search for meaning.
link |
The invitation to live your life as though you'd been on your death bed and it'd been
link |
given the chance to go back and not make the same mistakes.
link |
I returned to that idea all the time, meaning it's like, okay, whatever you did before this
link |
But now, you know, this is where you can start.
link |
This is where you can start.
link |
And yeah, so I think that for a neurotic like me, that's super important because otherwise
link |
I'll just get like too lost in the weeds of shitty things I did in the past.
link |
So speaking of Victor Franco, you and Hitler have the same birthday.
link |
You've really done your research.
link |
Well, I often Google famous people that have a birthday, same as Hitler.
link |
And the person that shows up, you know, is your face just really big.
link |
You and Hitler together, just the pals next to each other.
link |
No, but April 20th is an embarrassing birthday for all my 420 friends out there.
link |
It's embarrassing.
link |
You share a birthday with Hitler.
link |
Well, it's 420s also has a humor and a lightness to it, right?
link |
It's embarrassing.
link |
Especially if life is embarrassing.
link |
But if you like weed and you're born on stoner day and you believe in reincarnation, do you
link |
realize like when you start connecting the dots there, if there is like a bardo where
link |
you get to choose your next life?
link |
So you're like a shitty generic NPC.
link |
You're like, of course, of course you would be born on 420.
link |
Dude, let me be born on 420, man, yeah.
link |
But isn't it interesting that on that same day, Hitler is also born?
link |
There's a tension to that and that Hitler's an artist.
link |
So it's like that hippie mindset could go anywhere.
link |
And I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine who's a wonderful skeptic
link |
and we were talking about this, which is the thing where you started attributing to the
link |
day you were born, these kind of significance and based on maybe people who were born on
link |
that day, maybe some other things.
link |
And it's like think of how many people by now in the course of human history have been
link |
born on April 20th.
link |
Someone could probably do the math and come up with some number close to it.
link |
Now, this is how you know how rotten Hitler is.
link |
He's the one that like fucks up the birthday for everybody else.
link |
But I think where I heard that you're 420 is Wim Hof episode because he's also 420.
link |
So Hitler beats even Wim Hof in terms of owning the date.
link |
I think if anybody is like, well, obviously there's nothing you could do to like fix it.
link |
Hitler fucked up a lot of things.
link |
He fucked up that mustache.
link |
He fucked up the name Hitler.
link |
And obviously he caused a horrific Holocaust that, by the way, talk about these reverberations
link |
through time that we're still experiencing.
link |
There's still people walked around with fucking tattoos from that motherfucker.
link |
But Wim Hof, people like Wim Hof, they're like whatever the opposite of Hitler is.
link |
He too is creating ripples in the lake that hopefully respond to that of Hitler.
link |
Very cold fucking lake.
link |
And he's in, yeah, so very, very cold lake that he's happily swimming around in.
link |
But yeah, I try not to think about the Hitler thing on my birthday that my dad would just
link |
every birthday he would remind me that Hitler was born.
link |
Do you think all of us are capable of evil?
link |
Do you think you're one of the sweetest people I know, just as a fan?
link |
Do you think you're capable of evil?
link |
I think if you don't think that, you better watch out because come on.
link |
How do you think you're not capable of evil?
link |
And PS, if you're connected to the supply chain, friend, you're doing evil.
link |
You're paying taxes.
link |
You're supporting the worst things in the world.
link |
You know, like diffusion of responsibility, it's really curious or the circumference of
link |
responsibility where it's like bombs are going off somewhere that were paid for in
link |
some small part by you, by you, some fractional, if you, if an American, if a drone is flying
link |
over a village in Afghanistan and drops a bomb and you pay taxes, then you could say
link |
you have fractional ownership over that drone.
link |
You're a cog in the machine of evil in some sense.
link |
And I know what you're going to say, well, yeah, but I have to fucking pay taxes.
link |
Like I have no choice.
link |
There's sales tax, there's this or that.
link |
Take that attitude, it's the same thing that people on the battlefield, when they're sending
link |
missiles into other tanks, they're thinking the same thing.
link |
It's just they're more directly responsible for what's going on.
link |
But in Buddhism, this idea of dependent coerising, or yeah, dependent coerising, we're all connected.
link |
We're all part of this matrix, we're all connected, meaning we all share responsibility for the
link |
evil in the world.
link |
So even if you aren't directly committing evil acts, if you're seeing something in the
link |
world and you're thinking that's evil, you're probably not quite as separated from that
link |
as you'd like to believe in some tiny, infinitesimally quantum way.
link |
And there is the sense, I've gotten to experience this over and over that one individual can
link |
actually make a gigantic difference in, and so not only is there a diffusion of responsibility,
link |
there's a kind of a paralysis about, well, what can I do?
link |
Sure, I understand, but what can I do?
link |
And I think just looking at history and also hanging out and becoming friends, but also
link |
interviewing people that've had a tremendous impact, you realize, you're just one dude.
link |
You're like a normal person, you're not that smart even.
link |
A lot of people aren't in some kind of magical way where you have a big head that's figuring
link |
No, you just saw problems in the world and you're like, hey, I think I'm going to try
link |
to do something about this.
link |
And you stay focused and dedicated to it for a long period of time and refuse to quit,
link |
refuse to listen to people that tell you that this isn't like impossible, here's how
link |
others have failed.
link |
No, I'm going to do it.
link |
One person, and then you kind of, the thing is when there's one person that keeps pushing
link |
forward that way, humans are sticky, other people follow them around.
link |
And they're like, I'll help, I'll help, and then the other people help, and then the
link |
cool people all gather together because they kind of get excited about this way.
link |
Holy shit, we can actually make a difference and they form groups and then all of a sudden
link |
there's companies and nations that actually make a gigantic difference.
link |
And it all starts with one person often.
link |
If you push back slightly against that, it's never just one person.
link |
It's like, nobody ever talks about, at least as far as I'm aware, you never hear about
link |
like Buddha's great grandmother.
link |
You never hear about that.
link |
You never hear about that.
link |
But if not for that person, no Buddhism.
link |
The people you're talking about, they're the tip of the iceberg that pops up out of the
link |
ocean of history and you never see all the little things that helped that happen.
link |
And so to me, this is where the real like, how do you help?
link |
What's something you can do?
link |
Well, you know, recognize that first, that you might not even be aware of how much you're
link |
impacting people around you.
link |
You might think that you're not, or you might think surely not in a way that makes a big
link |
difference, but you have no idea these tipping points and that can lead to the emergence
link |
of an Einstein, a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King.
link |
We can go on and on, a Dostoevsky or whoever.
link |
And so I think that's where, for me, it goes back to tend to the part of the garden you
link |
can touch and then, or even deeper than that, intention, just like an, and I'm an idiot.
link |
So I need an idiot's intention, which is don't, if you, I heard the Dalai Lama say it.
link |
If you can help, help.
link |
If you can't help, don't hurt.
link |
Simple, basic dummy rules so that you can, if possible, refrain from hurting, which might
link |
as well be a form of helping.
link |
And the help doesn't have to be this dramatic thing, these little acts of kindness.
link |
I don't know, they seem to have, maybe I believe in kind of karma, but they seem to have this,
link |
they can have this gigantic ripple effect.
link |
I don't know, I don't know why that is.
link |
I just, I remember a lot of little acts of kindness that people have done to me.
link |
And they, they, what do they do?
link |
When they fill me with joy and hope for the future, they give me faith in humanity, that
link |
somehow there's a partially dormant desire in our sort of collective intelligence to
link |
do good in the world, that most of us want to be good, that want to do good onto the
link |
They want, there's a kindness that's kind of like begging to get out, you know, and those
link |
little acts of kindness do just that, and actually one of the reasons that I love Austin
link |
and moved here is realizing, just noticing those little acts of kindness all around me,
link |
just for stupid reasons, just people being really nice.
link |
It's weird in that, that, that kindness combined with an optimism for the future, it's just
link |
it, it's amazing what that can build.
link |
That's what you're saying, it's like, you know, we, we moved to this great neighborhood
link |
and at this point, I think three, maybe four of our neighbors have like made food for us
link |
that just shows up with like handwritten lists of like things they like to do in the area
link |
and their phone number, if we need help.
link |
And it's like, holy shit, that's like that, it might seem like a little act, but it feels
link |
like some kind of atomic love bomb just went off on your porch when you're looking at that
link |
and like, what the fuck?
link |
You made me a pie.
link |
This is incredible.
link |
Like this is incredible.
link |
So, and also it's another act to accept that kindness with a, it's, it's like a lot of times
link |
when I was like in Boston or San Francisco, certain big cities, you can think like, oh,
link |
okay, well they're trying to like somehow, that's not an act of kindness.
link |
It's some kind of a transactional thing to build up a, it's like a career move for networking,
link |
all that kind of stuff.
link |
But no, if you just accept it for what it is, a pure act of kindness, fucking Boston.
link |
Because for me, I go the opposite route because I'm not, even though there is a part of me
link |
that might be a little suspicious or something, where I go to push that shit back mentally
link |
is I'm like, I don't deserve this.
link |
If they knew what a piece of shit I am, you're gonna bring me, I don't ever bring cakes to
link |
I would know how to make a cake.
link |
I don't know how to make anything.
link |
I don't have time.
link |
I should be bringing shit to my neighbors.
link |
Why didn't I do that?
link |
I should have brought, I never do that.
link |
If you're not careful, you can spiral into a vortex of self hate from the gifts, so you
link |
have to, yeah, you have to learn how to, in that circuitry, you have to learn how to like
link |
I have that problem really big, yeah, like, I don't deserve this, like I don't, I get
link |
so much love from people.
link |
I'm like, well, yeah, they love me because they don't know me.
link |
That's my brain, my little voice, like, you're not, you're not worthy, you're not worthy
link |
of any of this kindness and all this kind of stuff, and that could be very, yeah, it
link |
can shut you down.
link |
It could be debilitating.
link |
And also it shuts the person down.
link |
I mean, you're talking.
link |
And that's the dog size that pushes them away too.
link |
You have this fucking mystical circuitry, so like, the best thing, if that happens to
link |
you, is like, accept it joyfully, and just even, just all that, whatever that thing inside
link |
of you, whatever that little thing is, you know, this is like, and then the meditation
link |
I do, it's an infuriatingly simple meditation, but when a thought emerges, when you're arresting
link |
your attention on your breath and then inevitably you think, you get lost in your thoughts,
link |
and when you catch yourself doing that, you think thinking, and then return your attention
link |
So I like that, so that when that part of myself starts, you know, having its little
link |
neurotic semi seizure, I can just go thinking, whatever, it's just another thought, and then
link |
eat the, eat the, eat the banana bread or whatever they gave you.
link |
That's the most wild psychedelic experience you've ever had in a dream, in a vision.
link |
It doesn't have to be a drug related.
link |
What's one that jumps to mind that was like, holy shit, I'm happy to be alive.
link |
Okay, so the one that pops to mind, I've had a lot of psychedelic experiences, but in
link |
this moment, the one that pops to mind only because it goes back to what you're talking
link |
about, about this Nietzsche's idea of infinite return.
link |
So I'm a burning man, and I'm not, I mean, I have kids right now, I just want to be around
link |
My wife was being so cool about it, and she knows I love burning man.
link |
She's like, go to burning man, and I was going to go, and then I'm, I just, I just want to
link |
be around my kids as much as I can right now, but I've never been to burning man.
link |
So I don't know how secretive it is that, I mean, cause quite high profile folks go.
link |
Everyone knows Elon Musk goes there.
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Isn't it pretty open?
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I'm touching none of this.
link |
You know, there's a, it's called art cars.
link |
They all make art cars.
link |
And like part of the, part of the burn, what's so beautiful about it is like, you can't buy
link |
anything there, man.
link |
Like you, I heard, I don't know if this has changed.
link |
It's been a bit because of the pandemic, but the only thing you could buy was ice and coffee.
link |
And I think maybe that's changed.
link |
I heard some whisper that that's changed, but so that means that it's a gifting economy
link |
is what they call it.
link |
And so people will just give you stuff, talk about having to struggle with deserving stuff,
link |
What are you going to fucking do when the camp next to you is like every morning making
link |
the best iced coffee that you've ever had in your life and they just, you're giving it
link |
all away till it's all gone.
link |
What are you going to do?
link |
It's the best ever.
link |
And then you're giving things to people.
link |
And then you, you learn stuff like you learn these really interesting lessons.
link |
Like a, one of the times I went there, got all these strawberries looks might not sound
link |
But when you're out there in the dust and you're not at one of like the like hardcore
link |
like luxury camps, which do exist out there, you know, you've got these like items where
link |
in my mind I'm like, yeah, these are going to be just for me and my girlfriend, my special
link |
stash fruit and this or that.
link |
And then like two days in, you're walking around your camp with the strawberries that
link |
you were coveting and everyone's so happy to get like cold strawberries.
link |
And you've realized, oh my God, this feels so much better than the way a strawberry tastes.
link |
So you learn something experientially there, which is an incredible thing.
link |
It's an incredible thing.
link |
Man, now I'm wishing I decided to go to Burning Man.
link |
Have you been in a few times?
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I just know like, at least people were saying it was Elon Musk's boat.
link |
Like, yeah, like this.
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I think it was like, it's like this massive, it's art cars.
link |
And it was this party on this thing.
link |
You could just, anyone can go on the boat like no one's like, there's no guest list.
link |
You just go on there.
link |
I never saw him there, but that, you know, everyone's whispering Elon Musk is here.
link |
There's a secrecy.
link |
There's all that kind of stuff because you probably have to respect that.
link |
But at the same time, there, it seems like the kind of people that go there, I mean,
link |
the rules of the outside world are suspended in the sense that the, the crime, the aggression,
link |
the tensions, all of that seems to dissipate somehow.
link |
That, you know, there's a low, you could look it up, you know, because like there is tension.
link |
There's a lot of tension there between, it's called plug and plays, like, you know, Burning
link |
Man, like the history of Burning Man is fascinating.
link |
It has its roots in the Cacophony Society is what it was called, which is a sort of evolution
link |
of something that was, I think it was called the God, like the San Francisco.
link |
Basically there was like an art movement in San Francisco and I can't remember the name
link |
of it, maybe the suicide club or essentially like they were really into urban exploration
link |
and meaning like breaking into like old abandoned buildings and stuff.
link |
But part of this, what this was, was you would prepare your life as though you were going
link |
to kill yourself, you would get all your affairs in order, you would get, so it's going back
link |
to what we were talking about with the cancer diagnosis, you're like sort of putting yourself
link |
into that world of like, I'm going to get all my affairs together as though this is
link |
it and then there was some, I'm sorry for anyone listening if I'm butchering this, but
link |
I think there was some really cool initiation where they would blindfold you and they would
link |
take you into some of these abandoned buildings and you didn't know where you were walking,
link |
but they would say like, if you take one step to the left, you're going to die, you're going
link |
to fall, you're going to fall, so please be careful.
link |
So you're like in the moment and then blindfold comes off, it's a big awesome party.
link |
This evolves into something called the Cacophony Society, there's a great book called Tales
link |
of the Cacophony Society for people listening.
link |
One of the members of the Cacophony Society was the author of Fight Club, and so if you've
link |
seen Fight Club, like you could see little ideas that were in the Cacophony Society,
link |
they were into dadaism, which I don't know a lot about, like I don't know, it's a philosophical
link |
art movement, and then so basically what was happening is like they kept burning increasingly
link |
large effigies in San Francisco, and they weren't allowed to do it, and so they took
link |
it out in the desert, and they were basing it on something called a zone trip, which
link |
is like across this border, the rules of that old society are gone, and so that was the
link |
original Burning Man, which was these lunatics out in the desert launching like burning pianos
link |
out of catapults, through the air doing like drive by shooting ranges, like no rules, wild,
link |
magical, beautiful, insane madness, and then it grew and grew and grew and grew until you
link |
have Burning Man as it is today, which is still the most incredible thing, I mean obviously
link |
anytime you have like a thing that's been around for a while, you're gonna get that
link |
it's not like it used to be, it's not as free as it used to be, so this or that, but what's
link |
fascinating about Burning Man, someone pointed this out to me, look on the ground, no trash,
link |
no cigarettes, the ethic of like picking up your shit there is like so intense, so it's
link |
not like the other festivals you go to where there's just trash everywhere, shit scattered
link |
everywhere, it's clean, people are picking up their stuff, people are like really being
link |
conscious of like not fucking up the playa, so I'm sorry, don't get up and you don't
link |
get a burner yapping about Burning Man, we won't stop, it'll be morning, but there's
link |
a power there, but there is a power to culture propagating itself through to the stories
link |
that we tell each other and that holds up for Burning Man, it's clear that the culture
link |
has stayed strong throughout the years, there's so many people, so many really interesting
link |
people speak of Burning Man as like a sacred place they go to, to remind themselves about
link |
what's important, that's so interesting.
link |
And it is, and it is, I mean it's like, you know there are all these stories of like,
link |
I love guru stories, I have a guru, Neem Karoli Baba, never met him, he was Ram Das's guru,
link |
at least not in the flesh, but the story of the guru is if you're lucky you meet this
link |
being that, and we're not talking about you know whatever the run of the mill like charlatans
link |
out there, like I know for sure that people are in the world right now who, when you're
link |
around them, you, the thing you're talking about, the affirmation of the potential of
link |
humanity and also just an acceptance of yourself and you know cultivate, like seeing someone
link |
who's cultivated love or compassion or whatever, but in this way that is, I mean you would
link |
almost, you would rather meet that being than like a UFO land in your backyard, it's like
link |
it is the UFO, it's a person but it's not, it's everybody and nobody and somehow they
link |
like end up conveying to you ideas that you may have heard a million times before, but
link |
somehow within the language itself is a transmission that permanently alters you, and so these
link |
people exist, I think you could argue that Burning Man, the total thing is a guru, that
link |
a pilgrimage is involved to get there, you, like it's not easy to get there, and when
link |
you get there, it's gonna teach you something, it's gonna show you something, it's going
link |
to, and know what maybe some of the stuff it shows you might not be great, but the community
link |
around you will like, will hold you as you're like whatever the thing is that's coming
link |
out of you, it's coming out of you.
link |
And even the simplest activities, the simplest exchange of words have like just like the
link |
gurus of a profound impact somehow, something about that place.
link |
Yeah, not to mention the insane synchronicities, like insane synchronicities there, and I think
link |
like, you know, to get back to the notion of sentience as a byproduct of a harmonized
link |
yet hypercomplex system, I think synchronicities like those kinds of systems are like lightning
link |
rods for synchronicity, so crazy, not just because your high synchronicities happen that
link |
are impossible, where you just have to deal with it, and like you'll need something and
link |
within a few minutes, someone's like, oh, here you go.
link |
And you mentioned, by the way, Burning Man because of a psychedelic experience, is it
link |
the strawberries or was it something else?
link |
What was the moment?
link |
Yeah, that was magical.
link |
It wasn't strawberries.
link |
No, I was more potent.
link |
Yeah, I was like smoking DMT, and like, I saw, like, if you, in the Midnight Gospel,
link |
there are these bovine creatures that have like a long neck and a lantern head, so like,
link |
I saw one of those things, and, you know, I thought it was funny and like ridiculous
link |
because you hear like all the Terrence McKenna stories of the self transforming machine elves
link |
or all the purple or the magenta goddess everyone sees, so I'm like, so this is what
link |
Like a fucking cow with a lantern head, like that's where my brain is at and interacting
link |
with this molecule, so then, like, I look away, and again, this is DMT, so when I say
link |
look away, do I mean, with my eyes shut, I look away, or eyes open, I look away, I think
link |
eyes shut, so it sounds weird to say look away, but however you want to put it, that's
link |
what I did, and I look back, and it's still there, only now it's, you know, because usually
link |
in like, when you're having those kinds of visions, they go away pretty quickly, things
link |
like moved like shambled ahead, maybe a few steps, just like a cow, just like a cow, and
link |
then that was when the, you know, all the stories you hear about it, like going through
link |
some kind of tuber, some kind of light tunnel, like a water slide made of light, or that's
link |
increasingly familiar, that's the wildest part of it, it's like, oh, I know this place,
link |
not like, oh, I've seen this in like, you know, on like bong stickers, but like, oh,
link |
yeah, this is that place you gotta do, you just remember, oh, this place, and then, it
link |
was like I was in some kind of, I don't know how to put it, a chamber, a technological chamber,
link |
some kind of supercomputer, some kind of nucleus that was technological, and it was inviting,
link |
there was an invitation of like, come in, like come deeper into, come deeper in, and you
link |
can talk to whatever it is over there, you don't talk, but there's a communication, and
link |
I communicated, but my friends, I don't, I love my friends, I guess I had some sense
link |
in that moment that it would mean complete obliteration, or who knows what, and the response
link |
that it gave back was, you can always go back there, and that's when I open my eyes, I'm
link |
back, totally, you know, and ever since then, that's caused me to revise my thinking on
link |
reincarnation, the idea that you die and you start as a baby, and then live your life again,
link |
it goes right into what we were talking about, you know, that maybe data, you know, that the
link |
shit I saw in nitrous oxide, I feel dumb that my epiphanies are all related to drugs, but
link |
not all of them are, a lot of them, but this notion of like, oh, is it that we're imprinting
link |
into the medium of time space every thing we do, and that that is a permanent imprint,
link |
a frame, that upon death can be accessed in the same way we can pull up pictures on our
link |
phone or computers, and not only accessed, but experienced, as though, in other words,
link |
you could just jump in, you're still going to have your memories, it's going to give
link |
you a, the illusion of having been a kid and gotten to that frame, but no, you just decided
link |
to go back there, nostalgia, whatever, and yeah, you can jump around freely in space
link |
Yeah, you can go in and out of time space, but when you, the problem is, when you go
link |
into time space, it's time, so it's going to feel sticky, it's going to feel like you've
link |
been here forever because you've dropped back onto the track that Nietzsche's talking about,
link |
and I guess one of the qualities of dropping into that frame is that you forget your higher,
link |
higher dimensional identity.
link |
What happened to the cow with the lantern?
link |
He writes me letters sometimes, never saw it again, never saw it again, but I put it
link |
in, we put it in the Midnight Gospel, you know, I, like Pendleton was like, it's such
link |
a genius, and he was, he drew it for me, and then it just ended up as a part of the show.
link |
But by the way, I have to admit that as a big fan of yours, I haven't watched the Midnight
link |
Gospel because I've been waiting, it sounds, he's do these stupid things, but ever since
link |
you talked to, maybe two years ago with Joe about it, I've been waiting to do, to watch
link |
it with like a special person on mushrooms, that's been in my to do, I don't know, of
link |
course you don't have to be on mushrooms to enjoy it, but for some reason I put it into
link |
my head that this is something I want to do with somebody else, like experience it and
link |
get in the wild, because visually, I mean, I watched a bunch of it just a little bit
link |
here and there, but it's just visually such an interesting experience, combined with
link |
everything else, obviously the ideas, the voices and so on, but just visually it's like,
link |
it's like a super psychedelic version of Rick and Morty or something like that, like, you
link |
know, like farther out, while they're out there, so.
link |
Yeah man, that's Pendleton, you know, these are, these people, I mean like, I was part
link |
of that, in the sense that like Pendleton gave every, like one of the reasons he's like
link |
such a genius and great at making stuff is like, he's like, he really does a good job
link |
of just like, dehierchizing potential like hierarchies that can appear, you know, someone
link |
has to be like, driving the bus, and that was Pendleton, but he lets, he's so inclusive,
link |
there's a real punk rock thing that he's doing, which is like, he'll take everything and it
link |
kind of mixes its way into the show, but one of the things, you know, in, in, in animation,
link |
it can get really strict with like, drawing the characters and like, the, like, trying
link |
to create continuity in the way the character looks, like, and it can get really brute for
link |
the animator, it can get brutally precise, like it has to be precise, but he figured
link |
out that if you just sort of, it's not like obviously like Clancy had to look like Clancy
link |
through the whole show, but if you allow the various people animating it to sort of have
link |
their own spin on it, then suddenly it creates a very psychedelic, you know, the show looks
link |
more psychedelic because it looks more organic, and also the amount of time, I had no idea,
link |
the amount of time that goes into making digital art look like that is, it's insane, the amount
link |
of work and comping that stuff is just crazy.
link |
Well, generally the amount of time it takes, even just like a painting, when you, I really
link |
enjoy watching like artists do a time lapse, and you realize how much effort just into
link |
a single image goes into it, you know, hours and hours and hours, sometimes days, sometimes
link |
weeks and months, and then you just get to see them work, but they lose themselves in
link |
the craftsmanship of it, and the rhythm of it, and like, because they're focused on the,
link |
so we were talking about robotics earlier, like on the little details, like, they're
link |
never looked, well, most of the time isn't spent looking at the big picture of the final
link |
result, it's looking at the little details there and so on, and there, but they're nevertheless
link |
able to somehow constantly channel the big picture of the final result.
link |
The respect I have for animators, it's like, dear God, it's the craziest thing when you
link |
watch it, when you see what it looks like, and how much time goes into it, and how zen
link |
they have to be, because like, no matter what, you're going to have to cut stuff, man.
link |
And when you're cutting like a few seconds of animation, that was someone's like month,
link |
maybe, you know, and like, they understand, but still it's like, whoa, it's brutal.
link |
And so they have like this zen outlook on it, which is really cool.
link |
And they watch podcasts, that's the other cool thing, when you realize like, they're
link |
listening to podcasts, they're like, that's really cool to see that aspect of it too,
link |
but yeah, man, I, you know.
link |
Your voice is in the ears of a lot of interesting people.
link |
Hello, interesting person.
link |
Hello, CIA animators.
link |
Eating delicious food in the cafeteria.
link |
Do you have, you have a beard, therefore you must be wise.
link |
Do you have advice for young people, high school, college, about how to carve their path
link |
I don't have a life, a career that's successful that they can be proud of or a life they can
link |
Man, see, this is what kind of, this is what sucks about my life is that it's been very
link |
random and very spontaneous.
link |
So unfortunately, I don't get that thing where I could be like, well, here's what I did.
link |
Like, I don't, like I inherited $12,000 from my grandmother.
link |
Here's what you do, kids.
link |
You inherit $12,000 when your grandmother dies and then you need to be dumb enough to
link |
think that that $12,000 is going to help you live in LA for a year.
link |
So then what you do is you move to LA with $12,000 and you find a shitty place that you
link |
live at and then you use that money to buy acid and synthesizers and then you run out
link |
of the money and then you have to get a job and so then because you think it'll be fun
link |
to work at a comedy club, you get a job at the comedy store and then, you know, that's
link |
how it happened for me and none of it, there wasn't, I know it was never out of the confidence
link |
to be like, I'm going to be a stand up comedian.
link |
I just thought it'd be cool to work in that building, I thought the building looked cool.
link |
And so, but then because you work at the comedy store, you get stage time, the reason you
link |
work there is at least in those days, because it's not like they're paying a shit ton of
link |
money for you to answer phones at a comedy club.
link |
And so, you know, I started going on stage and then I just got lucky because Rogan saw
link |
me have a very rare good set.
link |
I didn't know he was in the room or out of bomb, you know, and then like, because he
link |
thought I was funny and he liked talking to me, he started taking me on the road with
link |
And then, you know, so I don't know, man, I think.
link |
Was there an element to, there's a beautiful weirdness to you as a human being.
link |
Was there like a pressure to conform ever to hide yourself from the world or the $12,000
link |
in the ass that give you the confidence you needed to be yourself?
link |
Oh, no, I don't like, I still, I know, I think, sure, there's that pressure and like,
link |
you know, whenever you're, you're beginning to really differentiate from your parents,
link |
but then you go back to hang out with your parents, you'll feel, you can feel that it's
link |
not like they even want you to conform, but you'll just, you could slip into that, whatever
link |
So I remember that when I would go back and like visit them and stuff and surely conformity
link |
or the pressure to like, not be individual or whatever, it's everywhere, man.
link |
Do you think you made your parents proud?
link |
No, no, no, no, I, well, I think that when my mom died, I felt successful in the sense
link |
that I was able to support my, I was, I was making money from doing standup in my, I didn't
link |
I was like, I was supporting myself with art and doing good, what I thought was great then.
link |
So, and I think she like, because she had witnessed me literally failing, I mean, which
link |
is by the way, I think part of, if you want to be an artist or successful, you're, you
link |
kind of have to fail, like there, if, if, and if there was a guaranteed route from sucking
link |
to not sucking or from like the neophyte phase of whatever the art form is and, you know,
link |
some intermediary phase, then I think a lot more people would do it, but there really
link |
is no guarantees in it, especially the standup comedy.
link |
It's like, you'd have to be a maniac to want to, to think that that's going to work out
link |
You have to, so you're going to, there are obviously exceptions, but for me, it was like
link |
a long slog, you know, and that's scary for a mom.
link |
So, but that being said, when she was dying, like she did recognize that I was like not
link |
slogging anymore, and she did say, she said, you did it, and that's cool, but in, you know,
link |
I would love for her to see me now, like now I'd be way cooler, but maybe she does.
link |
She's listening to your podcast elsewhere and the other, and the, in the bardo.
link |
However, long that lasts, reconfiguring the whole process to start again.
link |
Um, you as a father know, how did that change you?
link |
That's the big change, man.
link |
You made, you made a few biological entities.
link |
I made biological entities.
link |
I mean, I came in my wife.
link |
Like I would love to say I made them, but the womb whipped them up.
link |
But it is the, yeah, it's the best.
link |
It's, I've never experienced anything like it before.
link |
It is the, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
link |
And that's why I was able to answer your Nietzsche question with like, hell, yes, fuck, yes.
link |
I get to be around my kids again.
link |
I'll always be around my kids.
link |
I'll always be around my children.
link |
That's incredible.
link |
So like, so for me, the part of myself that used to torture myself more specific like
link |
around like my mom dying, feeling like I wasn't there enough for her, wishing that I had spent
link |
more time with her, wishing I'd spent more time with my dad, wishing that like, you know,
link |
looking back at like how like I was just so desperately trying to evade the fact that
link |
she was dying and through, and in that evasion successfully like distanced myself from her
link |
and like in ways that I really wish I hadn't, I'm just saying that because like it's one
link |
It's like a big regret.
link |
I have a lot of little regrets, but that's a big one.
link |
And so when you have kids, you look back at everything you did and you think like, fuck,
link |
if I'd gone left at that point instead of right, if I had eaten, who knows?
link |
What if I'd eaten like a turkey sandwich when my balls were creating the cum that was going
link |
Would I have a different kid with this being not exist in my life?
link |
Like you start looking at everything and you realize like, thank God, thank God for every
link |
single thing that happened to me because it all led up to this.
link |
And oh, for me that is the, it frees you and it liberates you because you realize like,
link |
oh wow, it's clumsy and selfish and at times rotten as I've been in my life that did not
link |
impede the universe at all from allowing these two beautiful beings to exist in the world.
link |
So maybe all of it enabled, all of it like a concert perfectly led up to that little
link |
Is there ways you would like to be a better father?
link |
Oh yeah, for sure, absolutely.
link |
There's a, there's an actual, I read something in a book.
link |
It's called Good Enough, the mantra for a parent, good enough because when you are in
link |
the presence of something you love more than you've ever experienced love, you want to
link |
Like you want to be, I can't, I got to work, man.
link |
I got to go on the road.
link |
I got to support the family.
link |
So that means I have to work like, I work, you know, you know what it's like having a
link |
podcast, you fucking work, man, and, you know, it's a full time job because I've, you know,
link |
I do stand up too and all the other stuff.
link |
So I feel sometimes I feel like, oh my God, I want to spend more time with them.
link |
Like I should be spending more time with them.
link |
But then also I want to create, I want to work.
link |
I like being like the provider.
link |
So that's something I feel guilty about, you know, right now.
link |
And I'm struggling how to balance that correctly.
link |
And meanwhile time just marches on.
link |
And all of this will be forgotten, both you and I, but forgotten in time.
link |
That's what I say to them every time I'm putting them to bed.
link |
We will be lost in the sands of time.
link |
You know that, I bet you know this poem.
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You know that poem, Ozzy Mandious?
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Can I read you a poem?
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Let's, let's end our conversation in a poem.
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It's by Pierce Bych Shelley, probably mispronouncing the name, but I think you'll get it.
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There's no right way to pronounce anything.
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I'm Ozzy Mandious.
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I met a traveler from an antique land who said, two vast and trunkless legs of stone
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stand in the desert, near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
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and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it sculptor well those passions
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red, which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the
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heart that fed and on the pedestal, these words appear, my name is Ozzy Mandious, King
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of Kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair, nothing besides remains around the decay of
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that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away.
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All gone, behold the king, look on my works ye mighty and despair, and despair, even
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though we'll be forgotten in the sands of time, Duncan, I'm just so glad that you exist
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and you put so much love into the world over the past many years that I've gotten just
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to enjoy it by being your fan, and thank you so much for continuing that and for sharing
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a bit of love with me today.
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Can we be friends?
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In real time, in the real world, in 3D space?
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Nothing is real, but yes, in this particular slice of the multidimensional world we'll
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It will be an honor and a pleasure.
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Thank you for having me on your show.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Duncan Trussell.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from Duncan Trussell himself.
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You are essentially just the cloud of atoms that will eventually be aerosolized by time.
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Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.