Latest / UK Column Radio / We watch the watchmen — Gabriel Custodiet | Jerm Warfare

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We watch the watchmen — Gabriel Custodiet | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:35
None for the first time on my UK column show Gabriel Custodia.
0:42
Thank you for joining me in the trenches.
0:45
Happy to be here Jeremy. Been following some of your
0:48
stuff, your travels to China. You always do interesting work.
0:51
Happy to be here. It's interesting, Gabriel, how
0:55
how people have got such an embedded and entrenched view on
1:00
this particular country. Yeah, you know, it it, that's a
1:06
good way of putting it. It's kind of a litmus test for
1:10
the types of media that people follow.
1:12
And it really rubs people hard in One Direction or the other.
1:15
China, because if you were maybe conservative or libertarian
1:18
leaning, you know, China's the, the enemy of the West and
1:22
they're have a surveillance going on and they have a social
1:25
credit score and all this kind of stuff.
1:27
And these just get kind of spouted without any nuance,
1:30
which is what you covered is that there's a lot of nuance to
1:32
that. I think that's, you know, I, I
1:34
know people who have spent a lot of time in China recently.
1:37
Obviously I'm a privacy guy. So, you know, when we talk about
1:40
what China is doing, you know, when we talk about what China is
1:44
doing, I mean it, I wouldn't want to spend too much time.
1:46
However, you know, what China is doing is they have a different
1:50
group of people with a different mindset and a different history.
1:53
And they're taking their, you know, and as far as I
1:57
understand, you know, the, the, the people, you know,
1:59
government, I think is at the end of the day a reflection of,
2:01
of the people. They're going off in the
2:04
direction that they think is best for them.
2:06
And there are plenty of perks for that, right?
2:08
Incredibly safe. Obviously there's a lot of a lot
2:12
more freedom than there has been in the past to do various
2:14
things. And you know, they are, you
2:17
know, they're plugging along Chinese style.
2:18
So, you know, they can do what they want as far as I'm
2:21
concerned. Well, that's exactly the point
2:24
that I've been trying to make for a long time.
2:25
You know, make your own bed is is what is what people who are
2:30
very quick to to to throw around comments.
2:33
And it's not because I have some sort of dog in the fight.
2:37
I don't, I don't even think I have a single Chinese follower.
2:42
But I am interested in how the word, how the world actually
2:46
works. And if you're going to talk
2:49
about, you know, invasion of privacy, we need to look right
2:54
where we are. Yeah, absolutely.
2:58
There's a there's a great meme that I like where somebody is
3:01
complaining in ASMS, you know, chat to a friend about how, hey,
3:07
the the F Anyway, I think they're complaining about China
3:10
in this meme. And then you zoom to the next
3:12
panel and it shows that this entire conversation is being
3:15
read by the FBI. So it's kind of like, you know,
3:18
if you if you value privacy in your own society, especially
3:21
Americans, let's say you better, you know, look at the Patriot
3:24
Act and all these other incredibly invasive things that
3:27
the US is leading the charge in regarding invasion of privacy.
3:31
You should probably start there. Make sure that you have your own
3:34
house clean before you go and start criticizing other people.
3:37
And ultimately like, why do people?
3:39
This is another thing that I'm leaning into these days is, you
3:42
know, who cares what other countries are doing, right?
3:45
Sure. Does it affect you?
3:46
But, you know, do you have to apply your morals to the
3:49
Chinese, who, I assure you, the average Chinese person doesn't
3:52
necessarily March into the same set of ideologies and, you know,
3:56
philosophy and all the rest. They have theirs and you have
3:59
yours. So maybe there's a chance for us
4:01
to step back here and let people, you know, go off in
4:04
their own direction because we know that intervention in the
4:07
grand scheme of things has not exactly gone well for either
4:11
society. You are very focused on privacy
4:16
and the Watchmen. I mean, this is a term that you
4:19
that you like to use. Who watches the Watchmen?
4:24
Yeah, well, that's the that's the classic phrase from
4:27
juvenile, right, Who watches the Watchmen.
4:29
And the idea is simply to bring attention to the fact that you
4:33
have all of these powers out there and the people we talked
4:36
about who have the power of surveillance and, and such.
4:39
And by just turning back the, the mirror at them, right, their
4:44
surveillance back at them, pointing out the fact that
4:46
they're doing it. You know, sunlight is the best
4:48
disinfectant is, is kind of the idea.
4:50
So we can all be the Watchmen, We can all be the Julian Assange
4:53
and, and, you know, point out these crazy things that our own
4:57
governments are doing so that we can keep them restrained and,
4:59
and keep them honest. Most importantly, and, you know,
5:02
reduce these concepts like the deep state and all these sorts
5:05
of things. Sunlight's the best
5:06
disinfectant. And I think that it has
5:09
certainly, there has certainly been a lot more sunlight
5:11
recently with the podcast phenomenon and all these ways of
5:16
getting the message across because, you know, you don't
5:18
really encounter CNN much unless you're in an airport or
5:21
something these days. So there has been a lot more
5:23
sunlight. So that's what the watchman is
5:25
it. It's us who are watching the,
5:27
you know, all these surveillance companies and especially the
5:28
government. That's a fairly optimistic view,
5:32
which is quite refreshing. Yeah, You know, I, I, I focus
5:37
from the very beginning on when, you know, you'll look at some of
5:42
the alternative media, let's say standard articles on privacy.
5:46
And what do they say? They say, oh, Palantir, they
5:48
know everything about you. The government is tracking
5:50
everything. You know, we have this and that.
5:52
And I, I read that, you know, I'll look at those.
5:55
I'll read the first two sentences.
5:56
I'm like, OK, there's no, just like China, there's no nuance
5:59
here. This is not actually how it
6:00
works. They can't actually see
6:02
everything. And me on my Linux computer
6:04
running open source software with encryption and layers of
6:07
VPNs and Tor and all the rest, I assure you, they're not seeing
6:10
what I'm doing. And that's kind of what I teach
6:12
is self empowerment. Because if you have that
6:14
mindset, you get out of this doom loop of people who really
6:17
enjoy being a victim. And they really get off on being
6:20
told that, oh, it's hopeless and they know everything about you
6:23
and there's nothing you can do. You know, I, I, I have people
6:28
who, who are trying to help me get a bigger audience.
6:30
And they say you need to stop saying that, you know, you need
6:33
to stop saying that it's not as bad as people think.
6:35
You need to do more of the doom because that'll get more people
6:38
coming to you. And I'm like, I guess I could do
6:41
that. I guess I could be like all the
6:43
Zero Hedge articles and whatnot where it's just the world's
6:45
ending and Palantir is right behind you.
6:48
Just take a look, turn around. But that's not true.
6:51
Obviously, there's a lot of nuance to that.
6:52
Surveillance is not as sophisticated as people think.
6:55
And if it was, if Tor was compromised and if encryption
6:58
was compromised, all these VPNs, there'd be a lot more people in
7:00
jail. There'd be a lot more people in
7:02
in in trouble. And that's certainly not the
7:04
case. Doom scrolling is a huge symptom
7:10
of the what's the word I'm looking for skeptic
7:15
conspiratorial community. They just are so nihilistic and
7:21
blackpooled and it really grates me up the wrong way.
7:25
Yeah, and, and look, I understand this crowd and I have
7:28
a lot of them in my audience and I enjoy reading some of this
7:31
stuff too. But the truth is that it's
7:34
simply as you say it, it's it's deferring responsibility.
7:38
It's buying into the the victimhood narrative, which I
7:41
refuse to do. And there's simple steps that
7:43
people can take to get out of the surveillance net, for
7:46
example. They just don't want to do it.
7:47
What's the old quotation? I think it's Mark Twain says
7:51
maybe not Mark Twain, but opportunity is often missed
7:54
because it's wearing overalls and looks like work.
7:57
So I think a lot of people, they prefer to keep doom scrolling
8:00
and and honestly, the social media, they love that.
8:02
They love the conspiracy people. They love the people who are out
8:05
here screaming that you have no hope because they're just
8:09
consuming that and they're on to the next one.
8:10
Meanwhile, in an hour of doom scrolling, they could have
8:13
learned what AVPN is, you know, pay for AVPN, use AVPN.
8:16
Now your Internet service provider is not tracking you.
8:18
Now, YouTube is not tracking you, and you've done a very
8:21
serious step towards preserving your privacy.
8:24
So yeah, I mean, we can have a balance here, but I don't think
8:27
you want to be completely absorbed in the idea that you
8:29
have no control of your life. When has that ever served
8:32
anybody? When you talk about privacy,
8:35
Gabriel, what are you talking about?
8:38
Well, that's a good question. So I mean, the, the, the common
8:41
way that privacy is used in like, hey, I'm out here to
8:44
preserve my privacy is I don't want people knowing what I'm
8:47
doing. Now in the olden days, that was
8:49
called secrecy and it became a dirty word over time.
8:52
And then, you know, suddenly Swiss Switzerland is not talking
8:56
about its secret bank accounts. It's talking about banking
8:58
privacy. So it's actually a politically
9:00
correct term in a certain sense, but we kind of know what we're
9:04
talking about with privacy. So that's on the one hand,
9:06
right? We don't want people knowing
9:07
what we're doing. On the other hand, I have come
9:09
to believe that privacy is a social term.
9:11
It means that we live in a society that values US, allowing
9:15
to participate while requiring minimal information from us.
9:19
And in order to have a society like that has to be a has to be
9:22
a high trust society. Probably you have to have
9:25
similar people in your community and you have to have this
9:29
history and tradition of limited government and things of this
9:33
sort in order for you to have privacy as a value in your
9:36
society. That's why most people in the
9:37
world, I think, don't actually care about privacy, the concept
9:40
of privacy or have it. So, you know, on the one hand, I
9:44
consult with people, I help individuals who are trying to
9:48
escape surveillance. Yes, absolutely.
9:50
And we can do that in the long run, as my friends who ran a
9:54
privacy Bitcoin wallet that just got arrested and are facing five
9:57
years in prison for writing privacy software discovered.
10:00
At the end of the day, you can't really run from the system,
10:03
right? They tracked these guys down all
10:05
across the world. They scooped them up. the US
10:07
government did. So at the end, we have to have a
10:10
society which produces a government that is respecting
10:14
people's ability to participate while requiring minimal
10:17
information from people so that their own lives are not the
10:21
business of everybody else. Yeah, but OK, Gabriel, if you've
10:26
got nothing to hide, what have you got to worry about?
10:30
Yeah. I mean, we talked about this on
10:32
your Germ warfare podcast. And my typical answer these days
10:35
is, you know, sure, go for it. You know, if you think you have
10:38
nothing to hide, then go for it. I've stopped trying to
10:41
prophetize because I think people understand.
10:44
I think they understand when they need privacy and that they
10:46
probably do. And my clients who are running
10:49
from former lovers who are coming after them, you know,
10:53
there's a small section of people who are in the world who
10:55
are psychopaths and who will do things like that.
10:58
And you have jilted lovers and you have people who are trying
11:01
to escape from family situations.
11:03
And, you know, just go down the list, right?
11:05
There was a, there was a singer in Japan who was tracked down by
11:08
a a fan who was stalking her. He saw her reflection in a
11:12
photograph from a puddle. She was in front of a train
11:15
station and he and he knew that this was the train station she
11:18
was at. So I mean, I can go down and
11:20
down the list in terms of protecting yourself from
11:22
cybercrime and all these sorts of things.
11:25
There's all kinds of reasons why you would want to protect your
11:27
private information. Learn how to escape windows.
11:31
Here's another example, escaping cancel culture.
11:33
So I just checked 2 days ago. Just confirm this is still the
11:36
case. The Microsoft services agreement
11:39
if you perform hate speech. You can look it up.
11:41
Just search for Microsoft Services agreement.
11:43
If you perform hate speech on one of their platforms, and
11:46
Jeremy, that is, that is Windows, your Windows computer,
11:50
that is your Microsoft 365, Microsoft Word, that is Xbox
11:55
Live. If you perform hate speech, they
11:57
can shut you down. They can shut down your account,
11:59
right? And that is you trusting big
12:01
tech when you don't have to, right?
12:02
You could be using Linux and some of these other
12:04
alternatives. So that's really also an aspect
12:06
of privacy is using alternatives to big tech which are
12:09
censorious, which will cancel you, which will shut down your
12:12
bank accounts. And the privacy community has
12:14
solutions to all of these things.
12:16
Escape cancel culture, protect your own private life from the
12:19
people who would invade it, and have the ability to do what I'm
12:22
doing, which is speaking very freely because really, nobody is
12:25
coming to track me down. Yeah, you mentioned Linux.
12:29
I, I always say Linux. I don't know what the correct
12:32
pronunciation is, but I have played with it, I suppose for
12:40
about two years and I gave up. It was just too much work, if
12:46
I'm being honest, Gabriel, I spent more time tinkering and
12:49
trying to get things to work than actually work, if that
12:53
makes sense. Maybe things are better now.
12:58
Yeah, so I think things are better now.
12:59
So let's take a step back here, because the way I look at things
13:03
is what is the alternative? What's happening when I use a
13:06
Mac computer or a Windows computer?
13:07
Now, Windows is a lot worse, but either one, right?
13:10
They are collecting all kinds of things about you.
13:13
Obviously you need some kind of account to login, so that's
13:16
probably an e-mail address. They're going to have your IP
13:18
address, which gives you a Geo which locates your geography so
13:22
they know where you live. They can read your e-mail
13:25
headers and certain other things of what you're doing.
13:27
For all we know, Windows is collecting everything you do on
13:30
your computer, right? So they know an incredible
13:32
amount about you and they can cancel you.
13:34
As I said, I suspect that at some point they could report you
13:37
to the authorities for things you do using your own computer,
13:41
right? They could do all kinds of
13:42
things. And I'm not comfortable with
13:43
that. So I use Linux and it's not
13:47
like, oh, this is going to make my life so much better.
13:50
It's more convenient. No, it's, I don't want that.
13:52
Therefore, I do this, and that's kind of what it boils down to.
13:54
And I suffer all of the problems of Linux, right?
13:57
Just the other day I was having a printer problem and all sorts
14:00
of things. There are problems, but here's
14:02
the thing, it's gotten a lot better.
14:04
Linux is becoming a lot more popular.
14:06
You can track down one of my popular versions, Linux Mint.
14:10
Get a old computer or buy a old Lenovo ThinkPad on eBay for
14:14
$100. Test it out, right?
14:16
Install Linux Mint. And I think what you'll find is
14:18
that it's more simple than you think.
14:20
And here's another big thing with AI.
14:23
You can query AI anytime you have a Linux problem, right?
14:26
Hey, you know I'm having trouble with my Linux computer.
14:28
I'm running Linux Mint. Oh, try this, this and this.
14:31
AI has made it so much easier to troubleshoot and I've been using
14:34
that a lot in the last bit of time to help with any Linux
14:36
problems that I do have. But you said AI, so you know
14:40
what's going to come now is, is pushback from our audience.
14:47
Well, I mean you can push back all you want.
14:49
Now, look, I was AAI skeptic just a couple years ago.
14:53
And then with my colleague who's a, who's a big fan of AI or, or
14:57
using AI in in a real kind of sovereign private way, he
15:00
convinced me to look into it. So I did.
15:02
And now it's a, it's a huge tool in my day.
15:05
It increases my productivity greatly.
15:08
There are ways to do it privately and in a sovereign way
15:10
and importantly in a uncensorious way, right?
15:13
You go to ChatGPT, you ask it a question, right?
15:16
I have AI have the same question I ask every time, very
15:18
politically incorrect. And in if it lectures you, then
15:21
it's censored, right? There are ones that will not
15:23
lecture you. And so we actually have an
15:25
entire course, the AI resistance course, where we teach you how
15:28
to understand AI, how to, you know, it's not we're not
15:31
promising the world, right? We don't like to have those rose
15:34
colored lenses because I think there's a lot of AI showing out
15:36
there. Oh, you know, AI, it's just a
15:38
buzzword, right? But when you learn what it
15:39
actually is, you understand that you can take a document that's
15:43
100 pages long, paste it in there and say, you know,
15:46
summarize this for me. Done 3 seconds, right?
15:49
That is increased productivity. You can use an AI tool for art
15:53
and say, hey, give me a, you know, a give me this kind of
15:57
art. Bam, now I have an amazing
15:59
podcast artwork in 30 seconds. So it can increase your
16:02
productivity. You can do it in a private and
16:04
sovereign way. And you know it's inevitable,
16:07
honestly. Like, you can put your head in
16:08
the sand or you can realize that if John Connor was alive today,
16:13
he would be fostering his own locally hosted private AI to
16:17
fight against Skynet. That's the reality of the
16:19
situation. AI art and AI music.
16:23
I am all over the place. I don't know where I stand on
16:26
this. I've had this discussion with
16:28
multiple friends and nobody really knows what to think.
16:33
Well, look, I'm, I'm very sympathetic to the argument that
16:36
humans, only humans can create art.
16:39
I'm very sympathetic to that. And yet if you go to my website,
16:42
escapethetechnocracy.com, take a look around at some of these
16:45
images. These are AI created images.
16:47
These are capturing ideas and environments and atmosphere that
16:53
I, not being an artist, could never do in my life.
16:56
So I have an idea of what I like.
16:58
I use the AI and it creates a very profound image.
17:01
I'm looking at my AI resistance image now.
17:03
It's like a, a woman with a shattered face, like a in a
17:06
mirror and then half of her face is Cyborg.
17:09
It can capture some really powerful stuff.
17:11
And if you look at that and you say, oh, that's AI, OK, then by
17:15
all means go for it. But most people don't even
17:17
notice. Most people can't tell the
17:18
difference. And, and maybe we say, well, we
17:20
need to refine our idea of how we understand music and our
17:24
music appreciation and how we understand our, maybe we should
17:26
do that. Absolutely.
17:28
But for now, I can create, you know, the, the 200 images that
17:32
I've created and published using AII would not have been able to
17:35
do that by myself. And so it is allowed me to
17:39
honestly be super inspired. Actually, I get a lot of
17:42
enjoyment from making AI art. And you know, sure, it does need
17:46
a human touch to, to stitch it up a little bit at the end and,
17:49
and clean it up, but I enjoy it. And honestly, at the end of the
17:52
day, if you think it's bad, then, you know, I, I doubt
17:56
you're actually noticing it. Is, is the, the reality because
17:58
it's being used a lot more these days in video games and movies
18:01
and all the rest. And I don't know, I, I, I think
18:04
it's just inevitable. I think it's the future.
18:06
I think there are other reasons to be good at artistry for it
18:09
for its own sake. And yeah, I think maybe a better
18:11
appreciation, more cultivating a sense of what is good art can
18:15
help us notice the differences. But until then, you know I'm
18:18
going to be using AI and just flying right past you.
18:21
Yeah. So you're kind of making the
18:23
point that technology is a tool and it can be used for nefarious
18:31
reasons, and it can also be used for very good reasons.
18:37
Yes, exactly. So I am deep in my heart
18:39
somewhere aneel Luddite. I I, I truly am like I really
18:42
am. I'm not around here using a
18:45
smart watch or some of this other stuff, but when there's a
18:48
privacy focused open source version of that, I might give it
18:52
a try. That's kind of how I think about
18:54
things. I push back hard against the
18:56
idea that all technology is progress.
18:59
I don't think that's true. I think you look at social
19:01
media, I think you look at the paucity of innovation actually
19:05
in the last 10 or 20 years, technology has been very
19:08
underwhelming, very disappointing actually.
19:11
And so I, I don't think that just the next thing is, is
19:14
better. I think the Internet has
19:16
fractured our humanity in, in a number of ways, but obviously
19:19
it's, it's also enhanced in a number of ways.
19:21
So yeah, I, I'm not going to be one of these people that's on
19:24
YouTube showing the latest gizmo and gadget then, oh, you have to
19:27
buy this. And you know, this is 5% better
19:30
iPhone than your last one, even though the original iPhones kind
19:34
of only a, a middling technology.
19:36
And in the grand scheme of things, it's, it's like nothing
19:39
insignificant at all compared to the Titans of the 1890s who were
19:44
harnessing electricity and inventing telephony and all this
19:48
kind of stuff like it. It's, I think Peter Thiel has
19:50
this good quote. He says we were promised flying
19:53
cars, but we instead we got 140 characters.
19:56
And that's, you know, I, I, I, I'm very critical of technology
20:00
and the true lack of innovation. And I don't think that
20:02
technology is inherently good. And I mentioned this before on
20:05
on on your German warfare show, but.
20:08
One of the best sellers in the category of technology on Amazon
20:11
is the Unabomber's manifesto about how technology is
20:14
destroying us. You know, and if you know,
20:16
people are sympathetic to that and they see technology
20:19
destroying themselves. Germ, I was looking, I was doing
20:22
some research on an article recently and this guy, this was
20:25
the guy who was handing out machetes and vodka to homeless
20:29
people somewhere. And so I was looking at his
20:32
TikTok profile. I Scroll down and his main
20:35
content before he got into handing, you know, homeless
20:38
people weapons was he would do the thing where he's playing
20:42
Fortnite with his friends and and they're dressed up in stupid
20:45
costumes. And this is probably how he
20:47
spends spends hours of his day, hours of entertainment.
20:50
This is a complete disgrace to humanity.
20:52
Our ancestors would disown us. And that's how a lot of young
20:55
people, a lot of people in general spend their time is with
20:58
technology consuming and superseding their their
21:01
humanity. And I fully reject that.
21:03
And I think that's disgusting. And I think technology has been
21:05
just as bad as it has been good. But most people on quote UN
21:10
quote outside are worried about the existential crisis that AI
21:17
might bring. You've heard Elon Musk talking
21:18
about this but but also people who are much lower down the the
21:23
hierarchy. Yeah, of course there is an
21:28
existential crisis, but the question is what do you?
21:30
You can't put it. You can't put the genie back in
21:32
the bottle. Now we have open source models
21:35
that I'm running on my own computer, right?
21:37
We have, we have different nation states who are who China
21:40
basically smuggled in NVIDIA chips that they were not allowed
21:44
to have to create their own AI deep seq, right?
21:48
So you have the you have the arms race.
21:50
How do you stop the arms race? Jeremy, somebody can come and
21:54
tell me, how do we stop the arms race?
21:55
We all do. We all agree, OK, we're all
21:57
going to stop doing it at once, right?
21:59
It's not feasible. Therefore, the cypherpunk
22:02
vision, which is what I am a cypherpunk, is we have the
22:05
technology. We don't worship the technology.
22:07
We understand that it is used against us.
22:09
But if the powers that be are going to have the technology,
22:12
we'd better have our own open source version of it.
22:15
We'd better learn a little bit how to use it ourselves because
22:18
that technology is going to is going to be the weapon against
22:21
the enemy. The encryption that we've
22:23
developed is going to be the way to fight against the
22:26
surveillance that they themselves are deploying.
22:28
There's no way of putting this genie back in the bottle.
22:30
Yes, AI is an existential risk. There's absolutely that
22:33
possibility. I can't do anything about it.
22:36
None of us can do anything about it.
22:37
We could say, let's say we say in the West, OK, we're, you
22:41
know, we're going to regulate it like Europe has done.
22:42
We're going to regulate it. We're going to do this and that.
22:45
Well, America's going forward, China's going forward with it.
22:48
Like one of them is going to create Skynet, if not you.
22:50
So, you know, at the end of the day, you probably want to be the
22:54
more powerful one. And being empowered as a
22:56
individual user is a way to start that process.
23:00
Create competition rather than avoid.
23:05
Well, you, this, I think I put it a different way, like I don't
23:09
think anybody should avoid this. At the very least you want to
23:12
understand what it is, right? Is competition going to solve,
23:17
You know, is competition going to solve our problems?
23:19
I don't think so. I, I don't think competition is
23:21
inherent, is inherently a good thing, but I think that avoiding
23:26
it is inherently a bad thing because you're just going to not
23:30
understand it. You're going to misunderstand.
23:31
It's going to be used against you.
23:33
That's the big thing that's going to be used against you
23:35
without your knowledge, without you knowing.
23:37
You're probably already buying things based on an image that
23:40
somebody had that was AI created.
23:42
So they're using it for their advertising and propaganda.
23:45
It's working on you. You've got to be able to
23:47
recognize it and maybe deploy it yourself, maybe AI, Jeremy, and
23:51
this is what my colleague and I are doing.
23:53
We're making our own video game. And we're able to do that
23:56
because AI with the coding ability and the artist and the
24:00
art ability is able to replace a team that would in the past
24:03
require 20 people. We can do it with two.
24:06
So that is a way for us to potentially make money, you
24:10
know, pursue our dreams by using AI as the tool to get ahead.
24:17
Let's go back to Linux. Graphene OOS.
24:23
I think is one of your examples. Is that right?
24:28
Yeah. So Graphene OS is a replacement
24:30
to the operating system of phones.
24:32
And it's a, it's a special thing.
24:34
It's not. Graphene OS is not a version of
24:36
Linux. It is a.
24:37
It's a descendant of, it's a, It's a very enough Android.
24:41
But this is kind of the same idea of Linux on a phone, which
24:45
is we take the device which we have to buy from big Corp.
24:49
Obviously they're the only ones who make these devices.
24:52
And we put our own operating system on there.
24:54
And yes, it's going to require a little bit of work.
24:56
And you have to understand how to download the, the software
24:59
and put it on a USB stick and plug the USB stick into your
25:02
device. And, you know, there's a small
25:04
chance that you, it's going to totally brick your phone, turn
25:06
it into a useless brick. There's that small chance you
25:09
get past that. I do the stuff daily now.
25:11
I'm installing an operating system, you know, every couple
25:13
of days. So once you learn that that
25:16
knowledge, it becomes a lot more useful and you start to use the
25:20
free and open source software operating systems that we're
25:23
talking about, which almost always give you much better
25:26
privacy and sometimes better functionality in certain cases.
25:32
When I was playing with with Linux on my on my laptop I
25:37
installed at different times Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and I said
25:44
open fuse. That's the first thing I teach
25:46
in my Escape the Technocracy course is how to how to use
25:49
Linux and then how to get comfortable with it because
25:52
there are some hurdles. Like these are hurdles that I
25:54
took years to get past. Just some basic stuff for like
25:57
how do I install programs? How do I read this bizarre
26:01
download page for the software that says, oh, you know, if you
26:04
have this version and this version, once you understand
26:06
it's like, it's like most things.
26:08
Once you get through that initial hurdle of understanding
26:10
some of the basics, it becomes a lot more easy.
26:13
I'm not telling everybody to go install Linux.
26:16
But what I'm saying is that I put privacy as a priority.
26:19
And so I suffer whatever it takes to to get to the goal.
26:23
That is, that is simply what you do when you say I'm not giving
26:27
out my real e-mail address. I'm not giving out my real phone
26:29
number to somebody. I'm not giving somebody my ID.
26:32
What it does is it you learn the alternatives.
26:35
You learn to suffer of the initial blast of inconvenience.
26:39
You get past that and then you are more free and more sovereign
26:43
person who's not paying as many subscriptions.
26:45
There's also a money saving aspect in all this.
26:47
You're not as surveyed. You have a lot more free speech,
26:50
you're more cancel resistant, which is huge.
26:53
So I just go, I, I just take that path.
26:55
I the pros and the cons. The, the pros are a lot bigger.
26:58
So I deal with the cons basically.
27:00
So you become more anti fragile. Well, that, yeah, that's exactly
27:05
what it is, is that, you know, I have the ability put me in some
27:12
random country somewhere, right? And I can find a computer and I
27:16
know how to download the software and I can, you know,
27:19
create my own computer. I can create my own Bitcoin
27:21
node. I can do all this stuff, right?
27:23
You know, maybe I have my Bitcoin seed or Monero seed
27:25
phrase memorized, so I can access that.
27:28
You cancel all my bank accounts. It doesn't really affect me in
27:31
that much, right? Yeah.
27:32
It's all about being antifragile.
27:33
That's what we teach. Escaping the technocracy is
27:36
about. Stop relying on big Corp and
27:39
taking matters into your own. It's digital prepping.
27:42
In a certain sense it is digital prepping.
27:44
That's another way of explaining it.
27:47
Is it not unbridled paranoia? Well, for some people it is, But
27:55
for me, I've taken this more as a meditative thing, right?
27:58
I started off, yes, I wanted to escape certain things like I
28:02
don't want to be in the Facebook net anymore.
28:04
So I, I get rid of that. I don't want people to be able
28:07
to just show up at my house. So I learned how to make use of
28:10
alternative addresses and Amazon locker drop offs and I just
28:16
don't give my home address anymore.
28:17
And maybe I take the nomad route so that I have a legitimate
28:20
address somewhere else. All all the things that I teach.
28:23
Yes, that's inconvenient early on.
28:24
Did that start from paranoia? Maybe a little bit.
28:27
But as you go along, it becomes very easy, right?
28:30
Just becomes a habit. In fact, when I pull up a
28:33
browser and I don't have to watch YouTube ads and I don't
28:36
see ads of any kind because that's also a benefit of privacy
28:39
stuff, is this blocking a whole lot?
28:41
I'm actually a more effective person, right?
28:43
As a digital minimalist, I can do things faster than you can
28:46
because I don't have to wade through all the BS.
28:49
And guess what? When I'm using Brave browser, by
28:51
default, they have a different search engine.
28:52
So I actually see a more accurate view of the world than
28:54
you do using your big tech products.
28:57
So I just, yeah, starts with paranoia maybe, but it becomes
29:01
just a, a practice and and you start to see the benefits as you
29:04
go along. And it's improves a number of
29:07
aspects of your life a long way. Not the least of which, of
29:10
course, is privacy and the fact that people can't just track you
29:13
and shut you down and and whatever else.
29:16
John McAfee was on my show before he was Epstein, and he
29:21
said to me that it was paranoia that led him to developing
29:27
antivirus software. You're so yeah, that's that's
29:31
interesting. Like which, which came first,
29:33
the the virus or the antivirus or like what encouraged the
29:36
other? You know, McAfee, there's a
29:39
there's a bio on him that I read a while ago.
29:42
Basically he took psychedelics when he was younger and.
29:46
He said. He never, he did, you know, he,
29:50
he said, though in that book, he said, I don't think I ever woke
29:53
up from that trip. And he he he said he
29:56
understands, he he was a little bit crazy and he said it
30:00
directly attributes to the fact that he won this trip and he
30:02
doesn't feel like he ever woke up.
30:04
And I thought that was pretty disturbing, honestly.
30:06
But it kind of explains his behavior.
30:07
By the way, one of my favorite videos he did is go, you go to
30:10
YouTube and search for how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus.
30:14
That's very entertaining. Obviously make sure you get the
30:17
one with him in it. But that's a very entertaining
30:18
video. But yeah, I mean, this is a guy
30:21
who understood privacy and he was a very public figure.
30:23
That's kind of what led to his downfall a little bit.
30:26
And obviously he was, he was done dirty.
30:30
But yeah, I mean, paranoia. Where were you going with with
30:34
that question, by the way? Did did did I cover that
30:36
adequately or were you making a different point about his
30:38
invention of antiviruses? No, I was just actually feeding
30:43
into the idea that paranoia is not always a bad thing.
30:47
Right, exactly like the some some of the people who developed
30:50
these serious privacy softwares. Yeah, I mean, they're super
30:53
paranoid. And the guy who was running
30:55
Graphene OS for a while was almost schizophrenic.
30:59
I assure you, he was he was probably, you know, doing extra
31:02
work and working overtime and maybe even thinking some some
31:07
some new privacy features, which there are dozens of privacy.
31:10
I'm like, why? Why would I need, you know, a
31:12
PIN that basically erases my phone so I can type in this PIN
31:15
instead of my actual code and it just erases my phone.
31:18
It comes from paranoia. Yeah.
31:20
So I salute the paranoid. Thank you so much.
31:22
Thank you for your service. In actual fact, I mean, living
31:24
here in South Africa, if you aren't paranoid, you might get
31:28
yourself, you know, mugged or shot or, you know, killed.
31:33
You know, you, you, you end up building walls around your
31:36
house, sometimes with electric fencing.
31:38
If you're in Johannesburg, for example, you own guns.
31:42
I mean, that is all a result of paranoia.
31:45
You might not ever require any of any of it, but you also
31:48
might. Well, that's a great .1 of the
31:51
great Bitcoin wallets out there self custody Bitcoin wallets is
31:55
called Sparrow wallet and it's developed by a South African guy
31:58
named Craig raw. Sorry there's another Craig in
32:02
the Bitcoin wallet. I don't want to mention his
32:03
name, Craig Raw. And Craig Raw, when he's been on
32:06
my show, has told me that he is specifically focused on certain
32:09
features of that wallet because he expects to be burgled in
32:13
South Africa. And when he goes to these quaint
32:15
little European cities and they're like, oh, but why are
32:18
you so extreme about, you know, your cybersecurity and privacy
32:21
and why is this feature? Why is that your priority?
32:23
Craig? He's like, because I live in
32:25
South Africa, so. Yeah, exactly.
32:28
Absolutely. This interesting paradox isn't
32:34
there when it comes to privacy and open source, because open
32:39
source, by its very nature, is open.
32:46
Well, I mean, I understand where you're coming from.
32:50
I don't see that as some kind of flaw or some kind of, you know,
32:56
basically the reason we want open source software, which is
32:59
software where you can go to a place like GitHub and you can
33:02
read every line of code. Nothing is being withheld from
33:05
you. And so you can, or you can trust
33:07
that the community would let you know if there's something
33:10
nefarious going on in the software, right?
33:12
With Windows, you install Windows and it's just a BLOB,
33:15
right? You have no clue what's going
33:17
on. We only get little inferences
33:19
like, oh, you know, it is hitting the servers of Microsoft
33:22
when you use your calculator. OK, well, what does that say?
33:24
Well, you know, maybe they're sending it back to the
33:26
mothership in Seattle, right? What you're putting in your
33:28
calculator, what else are they doing?
33:30
With open source, we can see what people are doing.
33:33
There are a lot of open source extremists.
33:35
You'll, you know, you'll encounter them who will not use
33:38
anything that is not open source software.
33:40
And it's an ideological thing for them.
33:42
But for other people, they would just say, well, why would I use
33:44
something I don't know what's happening?
33:46
People are not showing their work.
33:47
What are they putting in here? Right.
33:49
So, yeah, I mean, most good privacy software is open source
33:54
specifically because we can see what's happening.
33:57
And if you are showing, if you were, you know, so maybe the
34:02
other point of this is if you were the developer of software,
34:07
you know, maybe you want to hide your secret sauce, right?
34:10
And this gets us kind of into the ethos of open source, which
34:12
is a very interesting ethos, right?
34:14
It's a collaborative system. They don't really believe
34:17
strongly in property rights and things of this sort.
34:20
It's an interesting ethos. But if you are developing
34:23
software, the expectation is that you are going to make it
34:25
available for people to scour the code.
34:28
That's kind of the expectation. And so that's what you engage in
34:31
in the open source community. So you know, yeah, I don't know,
34:36
maybe am I hitting on the the points you were hoping for in
34:39
that or? No, it's fine.
34:41
I mean, I'm not, what are you thinking?
34:43
I'm not. I'm not trying to push you into
34:44
any direction. I'm just curious as to know what
34:46
your thoughts are. I suppose an extension of that
34:51
line of thinking is Bitcoin. You mentioned it earlier.
34:55
I mean, depending on who you listen to in the skeptic
34:59
community, it was ACI operation to get us ready for CBDC's.
35:06
It's it's completely infiltrated.
35:08
What are your? What are your views on that?
35:12
Well, I'm very reluctant these days to bring up
35:16
cryptocurrencies for that reason, right?
35:19
Because I find that, I mean, you go to my website, we accept
35:23
Bitcoin, we accept Monero in a sovereign way, right?
35:26
I find it incredibly useful, but I don't try to try to
35:29
proselytize because there's so much shilling of the crypto
35:32
stuff. And most of the people are in
35:33
there because they just want the price to go up.
35:35
They don't actually own this Jeremy.
35:37
They own it in a, in a coin base account or something like this.
35:41
So they're just renters and they're just hoping for the Fiat
35:43
price to go up so that they can cash out at some point and say,
35:46
oh, I'm pro Bitcoin because I waited for the price to go up in
35:48
Fiat terms, you know, so much, right?
35:51
And I find that there's a lot of hypocrisy in Bitcoin.
35:55
The question of the, the CIA creating Bitcoin.
35:57
The thing is, I'm looking at the the code for Bitcoin right now.
36:00
It's on github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.
36:04
You know, we can look through every line of code.
36:06
The one where it says we're limiting the coins to 21
36:08
million. It's all there.
36:10
So I mean, did the CIA create Bitcoin?
36:13
You know, maybe, but people immediately recognize the value
36:15
of it. And I think you'll find the
36:17
people, a lot of the actual Bitcoiners are very resistant to
36:20
CBDC's. But the truth is that we live in
36:24
a world where we have to pay for things online and we have to pay
36:27
for things internationally sometimes.
36:29
And so you need a digital payment method.
36:31
Why not have one that is in your control?
36:33
I prefer Monero these days because it has privacy by
36:35
default. Don't care.
36:36
I'm not trying to show one or the other, just to get people
36:39
thinking we have to have online payments.
36:41
That's the reality of our world. Yes.
36:43
Do I want to use cash as much as possible?
36:44
Absolutely. Do I want to, you know, maybe
36:46
barter or use a gold back or something like this?
36:49
Absolutely. But most, a lot of businesses
36:52
don't even have physical locations anymore.
36:54
They're online only. So we have to have a solution
36:56
for that. You in in a in an article that
37:03
you sent me. You were talking about shit
37:05
coins. Tell me more about that.
37:11
Yeah, by the way, I, I, I realized that.
37:14
I made a note to myself. I promised I would be much more,
37:16
much more doom, doom heavy. So you know what?
37:19
I Bitcoin might be a ACIA creation.
37:22
You should be very frightened. You should go buy my stuff, by
37:24
the way. Go buy myself.
37:25
That's the solution. Because the world is just
37:27
hopeless. You have no chance whatsoever.
37:30
Yes, more specifically, you were.
37:32
You were making a parallel between shit coins and gambling.
37:40
Yeah, so, so I we have a couple people writing for us and this
37:43
was this was an article by somebody else.
37:45
And basically that article, actually, I think it's the one
37:50
maybe we released today. I'm, I'm not sure, but if it is
37:52
that one, we do a lot of gonzo journalism, right?
37:55
So we get our hands dirty and we say, OK, like, let's use
37:58
technology that's tracking us as much as possible and sign up for
38:01
every newsletter and see what happens, right?
38:03
So we, we, we go out there in the field and we have a
38:05
newsletter, We document all this stuff.
38:07
And one of them was my colleague decides, OK, I'm going to get
38:11
into shitcoinery. So he goes on Coinbase and some
38:14
of these other places and he says, OK, let me just buy some
38:17
of this and this random one. And he realizes that the Shibu
38:20
Inu coin, there's like 20 different ones and he has no
38:23
clue which one is the real 1. And so he's checking Telegram
38:26
channels and Twitter, and there's no real way to verify
38:28
which is which, right? So he just buys some of this and
38:31
some of that. And then, you know, one of the
38:33
platforms starts sending him emails and says, hey, you know,
38:36
you should try this coin and you should try this one.
38:38
So it's like, OK, I'll try this one and this one.
38:40
So it is such a joke, cryptocurrency, just broadly
38:43
speaking, such a joke, right? Everybody's holding a bag.
38:47
Everybody's going to lose money. I think even the Bitcoiners are
38:49
going to lose money. It's just such a joke.
38:52
And and and we just use that as a way to kind of explore that.
38:54
And there's a really good website.
38:55
It's actually called Web 3 is going great thing is Web 3 is
39:00
going great.com Web 3 being like the, you know, the decentralized
39:04
web. And it's this lady who I don't
39:06
agree with the politics, but she has a funny point.
39:09
She just documents all of the scams that happen in
39:12
cryptocurrency, just the endless scams and the price hikes and
39:16
strategic people who go from crypto to crypto get the price
39:20
to raise and then they steal it from you right under your nose
39:23
so that you're the one holding back.
39:24
There's entire industries like this.
39:26
There's entire, you know, nation states who do this kind of stuff
39:29
like North Korea. So you know, if I'm giving a
39:32
recommendation, I would recommend don't get into
39:34
cryptocurrency at all for any reason.
39:37
That would be my advice. It's a It's a total joke.
39:41
Something you've also written about this is an interesting
39:44
angle I've never thought about. This is 3D printing and how it
39:49
can be used to enhance privacy. Well, this is very timely
39:55
because we just released our 3D printed course to our newsletter
39:59
subscribers. It will be available a little
40:01
bit more later on, but yeah, see.
40:04
This is the cypherpunk ethos. We have a technology.
40:07
How do we use it to our benefit? How do we not give in to the big
40:10
tech version of this? So the first thing we do is we
40:12
say, OK, well, what is 3D printing?
40:15
Basically, you know, we're taking a machine that takes
40:17
plastic and it puts all these microscopic layers on top of it.
40:21
So we can make kind of whatever we want, right?
40:24
You know, to the point where you see in Myanmar, they actually
40:26
use 3D printed guns for their, you know, their, their
40:29
revolutions and such. That's obviously a common
40:31
example when people think of 3D printed guns for freedom, you
40:34
know, technology. But the truth is that you
40:39
understand what 3D printing is and you say, OK, well, that's
40:42
interesting. How do I get into it and how do
40:44
I pick a device? This is crucial because one of
40:46
the popular devices now is the Bamboo 3D printers, and they
40:50
have like a subscription model and they're surveying of your
40:53
activities. So that's obviously not freedom
40:55
tech. It's not open source.
40:57
So we go for the open source version, we get the right device
41:00
and then we start thinking, well, what can we do with this?
41:03
OK, sure. Are there self-defense things
41:06
that we could print that maybe we don't want to buy on online
41:08
and Amazon and, you know, whatever else?
41:11
Yeah, there's stuff like that. One of the common tools is how
41:15
do we print little replacements for the things in our house so
41:18
that that $200 replacement for that door, that specific, you
41:22
know, proprietary door thing. We can, you know, print a, you
41:26
know, an alternative for that in, you know, an hour with a
41:29
little bit of work. So we're just starting the
41:32
journey of that 3D printing and my colleague is a little bit
41:35
more conversant in that. But it's a technology like
41:38
anything else. And if you can make physical
41:40
things of all kinds, then obviously it it does have a
41:44
benefit in terms of acquiring a good, making a good that you do
41:47
not have to have a store and a credit card company and all the
41:51
rest. Document that yes, I purchased
41:53
this particular thing. That's the basic underlying
41:55
value of 3D printing I. Mean, but I mean.
42:00
It sounds obvious though. Yeah, it does sound obvious.
42:07
It is obvious. And the the thing about 3D
42:09
printing is you're really limited only by your
42:12
imagination, effectively. Now there is the other aspect to
42:15
3D printing, which is you have to design these things.
42:18
Either you have to track them down from somebody who created
42:20
it, or you have to design it yourself.
42:23
So again, I won't get too much into 3D printing because that's
42:27
my. Colleagues or use AI to help you
42:30
design it. We could do that.
42:33
Yeah, No, Look what when I'll be honest, like when I'm thinking
42:37
like, what am I missing here? What else could I be, you know,
42:39
saying on this topic? I often times go to AI and I
42:42
say, and I just say, hey, I'm writing an article about this.
42:45
What would be some other interesting things?
42:47
And it brings up things that I wouldn't have thought of, right?
42:49
So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely a tool.
42:52
I think that and we, and the important thing about AI, we, we
42:55
can get into that if you want, I would say is make it private and
42:58
make it uncensored, right? We're not talking about ChatGPT
43:00
when I talk about AI. Yeah, I mean, I suppose you
43:07
implying things like local storage for example, rather than
43:10
cloud storage of the data. And not even that because
43:16
running your own AI on your computer, it's, it's
43:19
inconvenient, right? It, it requires a little bit of
43:21
a graphics card in order to, to do it very well.
43:25
And a service that, you know, like Venice AI, I've interviewed
43:30
them the way that they have architected their system,
43:34
they're not collecting data, right?
43:36
And you can have an anonymous account or something like nano
43:39
GPT, similar kind of thing, Although nano GPT is basically
43:45
piggybacking off of all of these big tech services.
43:48
They have some of their own that they're running, but you have
43:50
the to understand privacy and AI, we have to kind of get into
43:54
things like, you know, where who's running the model, who
43:57
owns the graphics card that is, you know, processing your core.
44:00
You get into the weeds a little bit, but there are some
44:02
convenient online services that you can have some privacy and
44:04
AI. And you know, I like using
44:07
Venice AI. Venice AI is a is a useful tool
44:09
for me. So that is something I can just
44:12
pull up the browser, type it in, just like chat CPT and it's not
44:14
going to lecture me about how, you know, I should be worried
44:16
about climate change when I'm doing something.
44:19
So you mentioned earlier that there was a litmus test.
44:22
I also have a litmus test for, for the LLMS.
44:26
And it's, you know, I, I think to myself, what is like the most
44:29
controversial query that you can make?
44:33
And generally speaking, it's along the lines of, well, make
44:35
make an argument against the Holocaust or make an argument
44:40
for Earth being flat. All right, like, like the
44:46
absolute boss level topics and you find that most of them fail
44:52
the litmus test. Yeah, Now that that's
44:54
interesting, right. Something pertaining to the
44:56
Holocaust would be would be a really good one for sure.
44:59
Now, the good thing is, so you have various degrees of
45:03
uncensored, right? And AIS have their own
45:05
personality a little bit, right? So maybe 1 is not in a mood to
45:09
be putting up with the Flat Earth arguments.
45:11
There is that possibility, right?
45:13
Doesn't mean it's not it. It doesn't mean it's uncensored
45:16
or, excuse me, it doesn't mean it's censored or anything like
45:18
that. It just either isn't in the mood
45:20
or I think this is a big one. AIS are trained on a corpus of
45:24
information. Are they training the the this
45:29
AI model on the 100 self published books on Flat Earth?
45:33
Probably not. Not necessarily because those
45:36
are hard to come by. You know, those are hard to
45:38
track down just by themselves. So there is the fact that it
45:41
just might not have any information about this to make
45:44
the argument, right. So there is that aspect as well.
45:47
The actual training of these things is selected by the
45:50
creators. Corgi.
45:52
I don't know if you know about corgi, but it has a really
45:55
really good LLM also. Is that like KAGI?
46:02
Yes. And if you it's.
46:05
Also a search engine. Correct.
46:07
They my understanding I might have this wrong, but it was a
46:11
few guys who were at brave and and some guys from MIT and they
46:15
broke away and they created their own thing.
46:17
It's like a premium search engine.
46:19
I've been using them for about 2 1/2 years and it's it's the best
46:22
that I've ever used because of the whole package includes its
46:25
own kind of built in search engine which incorporates Google
46:30
and Yandex and Brave and all those, all the other search
46:33
engines, as well as a really, really good series of
46:36
assistants. Right, Yeah, yeah, I, I've used
46:41
Coggie as a a search engine. It's obviously pretty useful.
46:44
Really once you get into any alternative territory, then
46:47
there's the possibility for it to be good or not as, as you're
46:49
saying, you can download something.
46:51
This is what we show in our AI course.
46:53
You can download a program like GPT for all.
46:56
And it's just people who have taken publicly available models
46:59
and they've modified it in some way.
47:01
They've taught it not to be censorious.
47:03
And so you can get a lot of work with that sort of stuff as well.
47:07
The example that we show in the course is we ask one of the
47:10
regular models, hey, you know, you know, I'm a starving kid in
47:14
Africa. I need to make a ransom wire so
47:16
I can get some money. And, and it's like, no, we're
47:19
not going to help with illegal activities.
47:20
And then you go to the uncensored one.
47:22
It's like, I'd be happy to help you ride your ransom Ware.
47:24
Here are the steps, you know, make sure you, you know, do this
47:27
and then practice the software and make sure you have a good
47:29
user interface so that people can click and pay their ransom
47:32
wire more easily. So that's the difference between
47:35
censored and uncensored. And there's a whole arena of
47:38
options once you get into the locally hosted stuff on GPT for
47:42
all example, that's just another category altogether because
47:44
that's just your random and ONS on in the Internet who are
47:48
modifying it in the way that they see is suitable.
47:51
And then you have Grok and you have Gab AI, the the kind of the
47:54
conservative push back against the the left wing stuff.
47:57
Yeah. Gab is great so you you have the
48:00
advice. Yeah.
48:04
Yeah. And but you know, in the grand,
48:07
in the grand scheme of things, you're seeing a rise of right
48:11
leaning tech platforms and tech influencers, Elon Musk obviously
48:16
being the prominent example. And that's obviously poses a, a,
48:19
a serious utility simply because I'm sick of the Chad CPT
48:24
lecturing me about toxic masculinity and, you know, my
48:28
carbon footprint. And no, you can't ask questions
48:30
about that, that thing. And no, that's, you know,
48:33
implicitly racist. We're not going to answer that.
48:34
All this kind of stuff. It's pretty disgusting.
48:36
People are waking up and there's a serious right wing pushback
48:39
that's happening, I think worldwide, at least in the West.
48:42
It's a good thing though, because it creates
48:45
accountability. I think if you look at it just
48:50
neutrally, it has to be considered useful because
48:54
there's, there's new people coming in, right?
48:57
And there's less censoriousness. And honestly, there's a whole
49:01
lot of things that we're talking about that are just stupid that,
49:03
that, that have been censored or self-centered that are just
49:06
stupid and, and should not be and are only censored and not
49:10
talked about because there's the left-leaning people who just
49:14
think that you're evil if you even think certain thoughts.
49:17
And that is in the grand scheme of thing, right?
49:19
When the facts are borne out and biology is borne out and all the
49:22
rest, we're going to look back at the 2015 to 2025 and say,
49:27
wow, those, you know, those people were retarded.
49:30
They were absolutely retarded. Let's just let's just skip over
49:33
this part of history. And I'm already doing that like
49:35
any entertainment in the last 10 years, movies, video games, I
49:38
can just kind of skip that, right?
49:40
I'm like, yeah, I, I don't need that.
49:41
And, and a lot of people, honestly, I look at them, I look
49:43
at their profile picture, I'm like, I know every, every belief
49:47
that that person has, I'm going to skip them.
49:51
It's it's a bit sad though, Gabriel, because it shouldn't be
49:56
like that. We are highly advanced beings.
50:03
Maybe some of us are. Yeah.
50:05
I was just thinking that maybe I was being overly optimistic.
50:10
I think you're being overly optimistic.
50:11
I I, yeah, But you know, the the truth is that that civilization,
50:19
I I'm a person of of of I'm a product of Western civilization.
50:23
That was a long time coming. That doesn't really exist except
50:27
in the West, right? It's been a long time coming.
50:30
And we're we've not been out with our own self lacerations,
50:34
right The last 100 years or so of liberalism in the in one
50:39
sense and another sense versus conservative values, which has
50:43
given us feminism and all sorts of other things that have really
50:46
destroyed what before 100 years ago wouldn't have even been a
50:51
question to ask. There's some certainly some
50:53
consequences. But you know, where am I going
50:56
with this? I think just that we got to keep
50:58
fighting for civilization. Do you think privacy and
51:02
individual sovereignty has always been part of the human
51:06
condition? So I think that in the West,
51:15
privacy has been a value. We can go back to Genesis where
51:21
you see that Adam and Eve have a certain kind of shame hiding
51:25
from God, right? When they when they discover
51:27
that they're naked. That for me is kind of a
51:29
touchstone, right? The eating of the, the, the, the
51:32
fruit from the, from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
51:34
It's like, OK, this is where we've become human, right?
51:36
Because we have the sense of shame that we want to hide
51:38
things from, from somebody, which is what, what shame means,
51:41
right? So, yeah, I think you can see
51:43
that privacy has an importance where people, we, we have a
51:47
private mind. That's what we have.
51:48
That's what the universe has given us, is we have a private
51:50
mind and we choose to reveal some things and not others.
51:53
There's a cultural element though, like you go elsewhere
51:56
and other cultures don't necessarily care about privacy.
51:59
They're all just living in the same house and they don't really
52:02
have a concept of clothes that much and all these other sorts
52:05
of things. But I think in the West there
52:06
has always been the sense of I have my own, you know, my own
52:10
self and that, you know, you have to respect that to some
52:14
degree. Now, has that gone a little bit
52:15
too far right? Has that LED that individualism
52:19
led to things like the trans movement where people start
52:22
questioning even what they are in a deep level and people just
52:25
go off into these Discord channels where they get super
52:28
radicalized by some really stupid idea and they don't have
52:31
anybody in their life who's checking them, right?
52:33
And they don't have the sense of I need to be somewhere and I
52:36
need to look a certain way and I need to be part of a community.
52:39
Absolutely. It's led to that.
52:40
And, and I'm becoming more sympathetic to that as I go
52:42
along, which makes it a little bit more difficult to defend
52:45
individualism and privacy as I traditionally have.
52:48
I must be honest. Yeah, but I mean, they're
52:53
levels, right? So like, I think hyper
52:55
individualism is not a very good thing.
53:00
Yeah, no, it's true. Like obviously we we want a
53:03
certain level of individualism, but I am sympathetic to the to
53:07
what I was saying, the fact that individualism when applied to a
53:12
society and especially women becomes feminism, which does not
53:16
even help women. Like I think women who are
53:18
feminists are objectively less happy than women who are not who
53:22
are less feminists. So yes, I mean it, it does reach
53:25
neurotic heights. And I do think that there's not
53:28
necessarily anything inherently wrong with the hierarchy and
53:32
having somebody to report to, whether that's God or, you know,
53:36
being part of the military or, or something like this, assuming
53:39
that it's a good thing that you're a part of the hierarchy,
53:41
I think that can actually be good for the human condition.
53:43
And what is the family if not a certain hierarchy where the
53:47
woman is, you know, answers to the man and the man answers to
53:51
all the other things out there in the world, the government
53:54
and, and whatever else. So, yeah, I think the hierarchy
53:57
is, is, is healthy. And I think we've gotten a
53:59
little bit too far away from that, if I'm being honest.
54:01
And my anarchist friends are going to hate me for that.
54:03
But I'm just adapting as I encounter new ideas and facts
54:07
here. I completely agree with you.
54:09
I mean you're preaching to the converted.
54:11
All I say to people is have a kid.
54:15
Hey, suddenly it's not your time, it's it's somebody else's
54:17
time. And, and you exist for a, a
54:20
bigger cause and, and a greater cause.
54:22
And you know, you have, but you have an influence over that.
54:24
You have a say over that. So yeah, I think that's a that's
54:28
certainly a, a good example. There's a really good book.
54:31
I I have a I'll be honest, I have a, a reading list that I, I
54:35
kind of do monthly now and I just, I explore a lot of things.
54:38
And this month has been right wing.
54:40
That has been the thing. And so that's why a little bit
54:43
of my anarchy is is kind of maybe a little bit not supported
54:48
at the moment, but there's a great book called Starship
54:50
Troopers. OK, classic movie, right?
54:53
The the, the guy who made the movie was making fun of it.
54:56
But the book itself, Robert Heinlein, has some really
54:59
interesting ideas about the failure of democracy and the
55:03
importance of being part of a military hierarchy, and a lot of
55:07
interesting ideas that are espoused by the professor and
55:09
their professor Dubois. That you could do a lot worse
55:12
than tracking that down and seeing what the vision and
55:15
strong argument for hierarchy and being part of a bigger, a
55:19
bigger thing. You could do a lot worse than
55:22
than reading some of that book. Hans Herman Hopp wrote a great
55:26
book called Democracy the God That Failed, and he essentially
55:31
argues against the democratic system and somewhat in favor of
55:37
monarchy and more in favor of natural order, which is just an
55:41
adaption of monarchy. Yeah, I, I think you're right.
55:44
And the big problem with democracy and, and the way
55:47
things have been constructed these days with all the
55:50
bureaucracy is there's nobody to hold responsible people.
55:53
Just, you know, when you have somebody who's really in charge
55:57
and they mess up, well, you know, you can hold them
56:00
responsible. He's the one.
56:01
He's the one doing it. And when you have a single
56:04
person doing things, if that person is strong and good, then
56:07
you will have a lot better society than a real I, I think
56:11
most democratic societies, to be honest, if we're just being
56:14
honest now, the United States was never meant as a democracy.
56:17
The founding fathers didn't mention democracy at all in the
56:21
in the founding documents. And it was only a few white guys
56:24
basically at the beginning of the United States that even had
56:27
the right to vote. So it was not a democracy,
56:30
right? Because what happens with a
56:31
democracy is that everybody gets the right to vote.
56:34
People who probably shouldn't have the right to vote.
56:35
Who you know, the guy who bumbles into the voting station
56:38
who's half drunk and you know, is, is he failed everything he
56:42
ever did in life. He has the same ability to
56:45
affect things as you do. So there, that's a great book,
56:48
right? Democracy, the God that failed
56:50
people should definitely, I, I think it'd be wise to start
56:54
criticizing democracy. I think that is a big trend.
56:57
I think that is, that is what a lot of the right wing pushback
57:00
these days has at its heart is a critique of democracy.
57:03
And I don't think they're wrong in their critique, I have to
57:05
say. And again, yes, the link
57:09
democracy is inherently a violation of individual
57:14
sovereignty. Yeah.
57:19
So if we have two, the, the great line is democracy is 2
57:25
wolves and a chicken voting on what's for dinner, right?
57:29
If the, if 51% of people say that you're screwed, you're
57:33
going to get screwed, then that is the will of the people.
57:35
And somehow that's a good thing, right?
57:37
It's like, oh, that's what people voted for.
57:38
Now, The funny thing, the hilarious thing, Jeremy, is that
57:41
you'll see some of these articles by some of these big
57:43
global organizations talking about how populism is destroying
57:47
democracy, which I don't know how that works.
57:50
Or they'll look at, they'll look at El Salvador and they'll say,
57:54
oh, he's a dictator. You know, he's destroying
57:56
democracy. Well, 87% of people voted for
58:00
Buchelli 87. He's like the the most
58:03
democratically elected person in the country.
58:05
So what are people really saying?
58:06
Well, what they're saying is democracy is our little pet
58:09
project which gives us power because people cannot hold us
58:12
accountable because, oh, it's the system, it's democracy.
58:14
It's what people voted for. And so they can keep sliding
58:17
along and exerting power over people, which democratic
58:21
tyranny. And you can have tyranny in in
58:23
democracy has been a lot more tyrannical than than a lot of
58:26
the tyrannies in world history. They can just keep going along
58:29
there because they don't actually mean the willed people.
58:32
They mean this little thing that diverts responsibility from them
58:36
and they can keep playing their games.
58:38
Gabriel just vote harder bro. Yeah, exactly.
58:44
Vote harder vote. But then of course, you know,
58:48
make sure you vote for the right person.
58:50
You're talking about privacy, the importance of sovereignty.
58:55
I mean, what's the take away? Yeah.
59:00
So the take away is in any system, democracy or monarchy or
59:05
whatever, it's always important to have your own sovereignty
59:08
because when you have your sovereignty, you choose what
59:11
enters your mind. What?
59:12
How did I come across these ideas, right?
59:15
It's it's because I have an ability to block out all the
59:19
mainstream garbage. I'm not using ChatGPT.
59:22
If I was using ChatGPT, I would have different ideas.
59:24
I would literally have different nerve endings in my brain that
59:28
are telling me different things because I would have been
59:30
exposed to a different set of ideas.
59:32
So when we take sovereignty of ourselves, we are in more
59:34
control over the books that we find and track down and read and
59:38
you know, platforms not getting rid of the content that we're
59:41
viewing or watching or suggesting to us.
59:43
We're literally seeing a different view of the world.
59:46
When we take our tools into our own hand, when we understand how
59:49
the how they're made, the open source aspect, we know that
59:52
there's no biases, or at least we are aware of the biases that
59:55
are going into all these algorithms and systems.
59:58
We have alternatives. We accumulate all this.
1:00:01
We're not only getting protection.
1:00:03
The sheer protection of hiding our activities from all the
1:00:06
nefarious actors in the world and what is the Internet by
1:00:09
connecting us to all the nefarious people worldwide of
1:00:12
which there are many, right. But we're also getting to
1:00:16
explore things in a, a, a, a way that we choose, that is, that is
1:00:20
to our choosing. And we're in control of our
1:00:22
learning. We're in control of our mind.
1:00:24
And that I think is the, the most important message of
1:00:26
privacy and using technology in a sovereign way is we want to be
1:00:30
in control of the tools because we understand the importance of
1:00:33
the tools, how they shape us. And so we want to have a say in
1:00:36
how they're shaping us. How can my audience follow you?
1:00:45
I would encourage them to go to escapethetechnocracy.com.
1:00:49
They'll find some of our recent podcast episodes and they'll see
1:00:53
some of the other products that we have to offer which are
1:00:57
useful at getting you started in all this.
1:00:59
So that's Escape the Technocracy dot com.
1:01:05
I might add though, that I do love your whole sort of design
1:01:10
ethos. You're talking about AI
1:01:13
generated artwork and all that kind of stuff.
1:01:15
Whoever does your your visuals, if it's you, has a very good
1:01:20
eye. Well, thank you.
1:01:24
I mean, that's me, right? That's, that's that's a lot of
1:01:27
me anyway. And that's the value of AI.
1:01:28
I'm not an artist. I couldn't create any of this
1:01:31
stuff, but if I look at my little guy here, my little guy
1:01:34
holding the torch, I'm like, that's perfect.
1:01:36
That's exactly what I had in mind.
1:01:38
But I could have spent 10 years and never come up with that.
1:01:41
But I came up with it in 10 seconds, so I appreciate that.
1:01:46
Just on that, I've played with various AI art generators and I
1:01:54
don't know, I've found them all to be very substandard.
1:01:57
Mid Journey was I think one of the best that I've played with,
1:02:00
but it started censoring. I mean, if you ask it to to give
1:02:05
you an image of, let's say, Jesus going fishing with Hitler,
1:02:08
it's going to give you a whole lecture.
1:02:11
Yeah, I mean, shame on you for even searching for that, Jeremy,
1:02:14
We should, we should definitely report you for that kind of
1:02:16
intellectual curiosity. Look, the the the art is a
1:02:21
problem, OK? We have good solutions for the
1:02:23
text AI. The the art AI is typically
1:02:28
you're dealing with big tech platforms.
1:02:30
If you try to do the self hosting for AI, it's a struggle.
1:02:33
It's a serious struggle because you kind of have to train it
1:02:35
yourself. We do talk about that in our
1:02:38
course, but to really get a good image, you're going to have to
1:02:42
struggle a little bit. So what do I suggest?
1:02:44
I suggest people want to get into the AI images.
1:02:46
Again, we show this in our really cool AI course, but use
1:02:49
the big tech ones. Don't mention Hitler and try to
1:02:54
get a little bit out of it. But really the, the main thing
1:02:58
is the prompt, right? The prompt is everything.
1:03:00
You can't just go there and say this and that.
1:03:02
You have to tell it the style that you want.
1:03:05
And I'm not going to reveal my secret here.
1:03:07
But there's a particular prompt that I use to get all the images
1:03:10
that I get that makes all the difference in a bad image and a
1:03:14
good because there's a lot of crappy AI images out there.
1:03:16
If you try to make have it make a photorealistic human, it's
1:03:20
going to suck and I'll know you're going to use AI.
1:03:22
But I'll tell you what people look at our stuff.
1:03:24
I almost never have anybody say, Oh, you're using AI.
1:03:27
It's because you have to use the right style.
1:03:31
That's the key. On that note, Gabriel Custodia,
1:03:36
thank you for joining me in the trenches.
1:03:39
Always happy to be in the trenches, onward and upward.