Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / SZEPS WORLD TOUR - RICH ROLL on Liberty, Loneliness & Legacy

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SZEPS WORLD TOUR - RICH ROLL on Liberty, Loneliness & Legacy · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. This episode of Uncomfortable
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  Conversations is the audio of a video live stream from the ZEPPS live around the world
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  tour sub-tax first-ever live streamed global podcast marathon where I'm crossing two
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  dozen time zones in a dozen days and a circumnavigating the globe to sit down with some of
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  the world's most interesting people in some new global capital nearly every single day,
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  mostly, to millions of subscribers across multiple publications and you can join in at Uncomfortable
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  the next one. If you're new to Uncomfortable Conversations, this is a place for wrestling
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  uncomfortable, but the point is that the topics are subjects that normal people generally
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  so ubiquitous and is growing so fast and has so much more great stuff on it that you will almost
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  certainly get around to signing up sometime soon. So you're probably only postponing the inevitable
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  at this point and you might as well lodge your vote for sane independent media in the meantime.
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  Enjoy this conversation and thank you whether you're paid or unpaid for helping us to make
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  debate healthy again. You love a third rail. You just relish in that and that's your comfort zone.
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  Why don't like being heightened and shout at that? We all want to be understood and seen ultimately,
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  isn't that like all, you know, isn't that like why we're podcasters to begin with? Yeah, probably.
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  Well, why are you a podcaster to begin with? That's a good question. I suppose there's the
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  perfunctory, like, I just want to continue to learn and I'm curious about all these people and
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  I'm in this privileged place where I get to choose all these amazing people who intrigue me and
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  kidnap them and force them to sit down and answer all my questions. And then I get to share
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  with all these people who see the value of a mountain land. But I would be lying if I didn't say,
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  like, you know, there's, yeah, there's an ego piece to it. Like, oh, you know, like I get to do
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  this thing and it has my name on it. And so I get to be seen in the public realm in a certain way.
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  Like, you know, that that plays into it. And I think anybody who isn't
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  honest about that is being somewhat disingenuous. Yeah, I mean, let's take that as a given that
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  there are always like, unless admirable, perhaps, the reasons why we do things that provide us with
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  income and celebrity. But what's your object with the podcast? Because if I had to frame mine,
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  I think it would be if I can make people feel like they're a little less crazy and that the other
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  side is not quite as bad as they think it is. And if I can just nudge them 10% closer towards
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  being amicable and open-minded, then that's good. But what's the job of yours? Yeah, I mean,
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  that that that intentional intention and purpose is very clear and everything that you do.
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  My, I suppose, is a little bit broader. I'm trying to, it is true. Like,
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  I have experienced certain transformations in my life and made certain changes
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  that profoundly like change the trajectory of my life. And so I think a lot about like change
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  and transformation. And I think that, you know, all of us are kind of sitting on top of potential
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  that's unrealized. And so on some level, like every guest that I have is oriented around,
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  like helping people think more broadly about their own lives and their own potential. And
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  trying to tiptoe them up to a place where they can connect with that a little bit more deeply.
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  And perhaps pursue a path that is leading them towards greater self-actualization. And that
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  can come in many different forms. It can come in diet and nutrition or fitness. But it can also
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  come from talking to a creative artist and their relationship to their own creativity. So I pull
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  lots of very kind of diverse threads. And it may look like this weird pastiche where none of these
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  guests or topics are related. But they all pivot around this idea of, you know, trying to live a
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  more more self a more expressed fulfilling meaningful purpose driven like actualized existence.
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  In this, you know, short time that we're on earth. No, I think it's, I think it's clear.
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  I don't think that there's any ambiguity about what you're up to. Do you think that people are
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  resigned or more resigned than they have been? That's a good question. More resigned than they have
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  been. Like to the lack of possibility of trans of self transformation. Well, I think it's more
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  difficult to connect with these ideas if you're struggling to put food on the table or you look
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  around and you don't see a lot of opportunity. Like this is higher up on the Maslow's hierarchy.
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  You know what I mean? So on some level, it's a privilege to kind of indulge in these types of
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  conversations and entertain these ideas. But I think no matter where you are in life, like there is
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  a choice that you can make or a decision or a frame that you can like lend to your circumstances
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  that perhaps could, you know, give you some sense of agency to up level whatever that situation is.
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  Yeah, I don't think it's a middle class pursuit. I mean, you think about the impact that a
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  Tony Robbins CD can have on, you know, a person who's just trying to better themselves and
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  who doesn't have any resources. I have a complicated relationship to the whole idea of kind of being
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  in a, in a, in this, you know, like, like sort of loosely defined self improvement or self help
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  kind of like ecosystem that I suppose I, this is like what I willingly, you know, kind of walked
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  into because I'm very much a product of, of 12 step, like I'm indoctrinated and, and alcoholics
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  anonymous. And that was really kind of the first true inflection point that set me on a trajectory
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  to changing my life and, and did in so many ways and continues to. But the, the, the kind of primary
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  thing about that world and, and those, those kind of tenets for living is that, you don't really,
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  you don't give advice like you share your experience. And so I'm very uncomfortable like, you know,
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  looking to camera and saying, don't do this or do this or stop that. Like, it's not for me to judge
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  that in people. And so I share my experience and I try to glean insights from people that I
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  sit across from that are helpful. But I never say like, you know, here's what you need to do.
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  You know, I believe in people enough to like see themselves in whatever story is being told
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  and extract from that. What is helpful and meaningful for them and then trust them to do with it.
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  What is, you know, in their best interest to do. And yes, okay. So arenas full of people walking
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  over hot coals and cheering and chanting. Yeah, it's just not, you know, like lots of like,
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  yeah, like jumping up and down and cheering and stuff like that. Like I was not, I'm not wired for
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  that at all. So how quickly, but, but the crazy thing about that industry is that when it works,
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  and it can, it's powerful. I mean, I would, I would, I'm not casting aspersions on people like,
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  it's, it's, you know, there is, there are certain people who have that blueprint or that DNA,
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  like they're made for it. And there's no question that they're moving the needle for people.
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  Do they annoy you? Sometimes, sometimes, it annoys me when it feels disingenuous. And when you have to
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  adorn your presentation with lots of like music and loud noises and fireworks and stuff like that,
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  it's sort of like, okay, well, like, why do you need that? Like, what is, what's the reason for all
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  of this? Do I have to jump up and down again, like, apparently, so, yeah, just absorb it.
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  Yeah, this is, this is what people want, I guess. I mean, you're also in a part of the world in
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  the form of California, where there is a very heavy emphasis, I would say, on, um,
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  life hacking, you know, sort of shortcuts, maximization, how to like, you know, the five things
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  you need to do first thing in the morning to make your life a success. And like, here's the way
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  that you can adjournal and get your ice bath and like, yeah, there is a very programmatic sense of
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  like self-optimization, which personally I can find kind of exhausting. I have a difficult
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  relationship with all of that as well, um, in the sense that like, I do many of those things,
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  and I'm supportive of many of those practices, uh, but where I kind of brush up against it is,
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  they're all, um, by definition, like, very reductive, you know, it's sort of like,
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  if you do this, then you will get this. And they're all in and of themselves, like fine, uh, but,
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  and we can all like, improve ourselves, you know, marginally by availing ourselves of certain
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  practices, whether it's journaling or cold plunging or sauna, or like your zone two training,
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  or your fitness, or your supplements, or whatever. Um, but I think that, uh,
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  this, this like over emphasis on optimization is, is becoming like a neurosis almost, you know,
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  and I think it's also, um, indicia of like, out of balance self-obsession, you know, and I think
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  that's a very American thing in, in, in many regards like, all that matters is like me and my
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  optimization and like me improving myself and me doing what I need to do and what I want to do. And
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  I don't think that you can really extract that ethos or that, that kind of like default
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  disposition from, from kind of what we see across America right now, which is an over prioritization
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  of personal liberties at the cost of like our collective responsibility to each other.
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  What do you mean by that? Meaning that Liberty overshadows responsibility in many ways,
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  like the idea that, uh, well, maybe, um, you know, maybe my liberty, uh,
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  isn't always the most important thing. And I should, and I should, and I should calm you
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  and I should think, yeah, no, I'm not like, I believe in personal liberty. Like, you know, like,
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  I, I want to do what I want to do. I don't want anybody telling me that I can't do the things
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  that I want to do. People mopping them. But I also would like to think that I'm somebody who
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  cares about the, well, the well-being of other people. And, and I think when our liberties come at
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  a cost, uh, come at the cost of some of those things that, that, you know, we're all wise to
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  pause for a moment. But what are you thinking about exactly? Can you put flesh on those bones or name
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  something? I mean, I'm a policy or I'm just, you know, I'm just on a macro level, kind of looking
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  at the experiment of America and the ways in which I think it's, it's, it's going sideways at the
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  moment, um, you know, from, from the top down. And, and, you know, I'd be lying if I didn't say,
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  I wasn't despairing a little bit about the direction of this experiment. And is your sense that
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  the solution will ultimately come from the personal transformation or personal awakening of
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  individual people or will it come from institutions figuring out how to wrestle control back?
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  Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a, uh, a car before the horse question, I suppose. But institutions
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  are, are simply people, right? And so what do we have control over when we look at these institutions
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  that, you know, we feel like we would, would prefer if they were trusted more or, um, managed by
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  people that we can trust or, um, if we want them to be doing things that they're not doing and
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  stop doing things that we don't like, uh, what do we actually have control over? Like, I think we
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  have this delusion that we can exert more control over the world than we can. And really all we have
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  is like, honestly, when it gets down to it, like, what do we, what do we truly have domain over? And
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  it's, it's just our behavior and how we respond to the world. And that's what we're responsible for.
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  And I do believe that, um, if we can improve as individuals that there is a, um, ripple effect to
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  that, that, that is, that is meaningful. And so, um, that's where it gets confusing with like
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  the optimization and, and personal liberty stuff because it's like, I want people to take stock
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  in themselves and, and, and kind of do the work to, you know, resolve their patterns that are
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  leading them astray or their, you know, uh, uh, you know, behaviors that keep them stock. And I
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  think to the extent that the show serves that, my show serves that in any way that that's for the
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  collective good. And I have to believe that on some level that, that there is, that, that, that, that,
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  you know, you're trying to create, um,
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  an impact by impacting one person at a time. Yeah. And I mean, with the live optimization stuff,
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  it's also possible that the way you actually achieve enlightenment and self fulfillment and
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  long-term happiness is by addressing things that are deeper than just the tweaks that the
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  things can do. It's not, it's not the, you know, the pill you're taking in the morning or the,
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  the morning routine, the real work is the stuff that those things are distracting you from,
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  which is like, you know, the, the thing you really don't want to look at that's really holding
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  you back. And as long as you're doing all these other optimization activities, you don't really
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  have to look at that. But I sometimes wonder about that. Like it, it, like sometimes I just suspect
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  that you can fake it till you make it. Like I go back and forth on this because you and I stopped
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  drinking on in very different ways. I didn't do the 12 steps. I just did, uh, I mean, everyone's
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  experiences, you know, so we generous. But for me, it was quite, it was quite simple. I was just like,
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  I don't have to dig into things very deeply to know that I'm in a habit that is causing more
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  harm than good and that it has become an unthinking form of behavior. So there are like billions of
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  Hindus and Muslims who don't drink or barely drink. And their lives seem happy. Like go to a
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  Hindu wedding, they all seem happy. Like the reason why I'm not happy when I'm drinking is because
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  I'm a drinker. And if I just wasn't a drinker, then I wouldn't be unhappy when I'm not drinking.
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  So the thing that makes me a drinker is the drinking. So just don't do the drinking and then I'll
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  be happy not drinking. And it was like, I kind of just intellectualized with help, with help from
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  like, but I, for me, there was, it was just like, don't make yourself spend years in therapy,
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  try to figure out why you drink if you can also just not drink. Yeah. But that to me also sounds,
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  now when I say it, it sounds like ridiculously superficial. But sometimes I think like maybe if
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  I was the type of person who just got up and meditated and did a nice bath and then read a novel for
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  20 minutes, then I would be the happy person who gets up in the morning and meditate some,
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  you know, I mean, like, or the person that is just super content in their, you know, in their,
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  they're very kind of contained life and doesn't really engage in a lot of self-reflection. But
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  happens to have a lot of friends that are meaningful to that person and they live out their lives. And
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  you know, I'm like envious of the people sometimes because I probably spend too much time
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  trying to excavate my interior. But in my case, like my case of alcoholism was so bad that
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  it gave me this gift, which is like, here are these tools and part of
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  sobriety, like the smallest part of sobriety is the abstinent part. It's like then you have to
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  achieve emotional sobriety. And when you take away the thing that you were using to like
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  quell all that discomfort is taken away, all that stuff flares up and you got to like deal with it,
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  you know, if you want to like be happy, joyous and free as they say. And so that's what sort of
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  set in motion this, you know, journey to kind of resolve these other behavior patterns that
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  continue to crop up and, you know, make me make decisions I wish I hadn't or behave in a certain
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  way that I know I could do better. Yeah, I was with a colleague on these coast of the weekend
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  and revealed that I didn't drink and then also that I didn't smoke. And he looked at me and was like,
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  God, don't you do anything fun? And I thought, that's interesting, isn't it? Like,
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  don't you do anything fun? We've just named two things that are the most self-destructive
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  things that people do on a regular basis in our society, probably along with prescription
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  pankles. Do you, Nate, feel the lack still? Like I kind of know what he's getting it. Like,
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  what do you do to escape for him? But the thing is like, if you're, if you're, if you have a
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  predisposition to addiction, and I define addiction very broadly, like basically any, it can be
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  substances, but it can be any behavior that you use to medicate discomfort, it can come in all
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  shapes or forms and now we all have phones in our pockets. So I think we're all more connected
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  with our inner addictive tendencies than ever before and more in touch with the fact that we're
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  like making a conscious decision to distract ourselves like constantly. So I have a hyper awareness
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  around that. And I think, you know, to the, to the point of your friends saying like, don't you
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  do anything fun anymore? Like when I got so where I was like, well, I guess I'm never going to have
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  fun anymore. Like I needed that to have fun. It gives you permit, it lightens you up. It removes
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  all of your social anxiety and allows you to like kind of like be with other people without
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  whatever hangups you had, you know, before you took that drink. And the journey is like, how can
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  you, can you have that experience without those things, you know? And, and I can, but not always,
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  like I'm more reclusive than I would be if I was drinking all the time. But if I was drinking all
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  the time, I'd be dead by now. So yeah, yeah, the life, the living is better. Yeah, the living is better.
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  Like I don't, I don't feel like, you know, it's like, oh, you're giving this thing up. But like,
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  what did I get in exchange? Like I got this incredible life, you know, it's like insane. Like I'm living,
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  my life is so far beyond anything I would have ever imagined it could be. Like it's just, it's
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  just astonishing. But I also think that you're giving too much credit to alcohol still. I think
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  that a lot of the things that that that people who drink think that alcohol gives them are actually
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  alcohol piggybacking on things that are already pleasurable. And so we have this kind of somatic
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  marker in our head, which links the alcohol with like, when do we drink? We don't, we usually don't
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  drink when we're miserable, although we do that too. But that's just, that's to solve the pain,
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  right? We drink, you know, when you're happy and you're out with friends, then you have a drink,
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  and the drink gets some kind of psychological kudos for being associated with the pleasure of
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  social engagement. And when you want to distract yourself from being miserable, then you drink,
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  and the alcohol kind of kind of gets the kudos for helping you through your hard times. It's the same
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  with cigarettes for smokers. And I've found that when you're not habitually consuming something
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  that's addictive, then you realize, oh, actually going out with friends is enjoyable because going
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  out with friends is enjoyable. It may not be enjoyable after the fifth hour when everyone's
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  shit face and you're the only soluble one. That's the difference. But for the first two hours,
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  it's exactly the same. But that's the difference between somebody who has a, has a, a more normal
• 20:36
  relationship with alcohol than like somebody who's truly an alcoholic. Okay. How do you define the
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  difference? The difference is that for the alcoholic, the idea of not drinking is just like off
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  the table. You know, that's just an unfathomable concept. It is an allergy of the body and in a
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  obsession of the mind that it's like a, it's like a, it's like a mind virus and also like this
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  physical compulsion at the same time. When was the point where you got far enough beyond it
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  to go like, huh, I have some perspective now to see it for what it was. You mean, in sobriety?
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  Yeah, or maybe I knew I was a alcoholic for a long time before I did anything about it.
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  Did you understand how it was functioning though? No, not really. You know, because you have,
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  you have to operate on some level of denial. You know, I mean, you're just engaged in a constant
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  campaign of self-harm, you know, and you're reaping chaos everywhere. You go and, and you know,
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  people are running for the hills around you. Like, you know, then cops get involved. It's just,
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  I mean, like all kinds, you know, it's like my story is very mild. Like it's, there's nothing really
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  all that like compelling about like my drunk a log. It's pretty, it's pretty mundane actually.
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  But, but it led me to, you know, this just desperate place of loneliness, you know, where the
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  pain of continuing to do what I was doing exceeded like the insane fear of like giving it up and
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  doing something different. Do I about loneliness culturally? I do, yeah, I do. I do. I do. It's
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  weird to say like the loneliness epidemic, but like I really think it is. I really think it's a real
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  thing, you know, and I notice I'm curious, you know, in asking you this, like I just know as an older
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  guy, like the way men's friendships work, like I have really good friends. I see them so rarely.
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  I come to this studio. I do my thing. I go home. I'm with my family and my kids. And occasionally,
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  like, and I have a men's group that I go to and I have it, you know, I go to A meetings and I
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  friends there, but like my like friends outside of those, those kind of therapeutic contacts.
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  You know, I don't see that often. And, and, and I'm familiar with the, you know, how heavy the
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  phone can be and how we can just easily drift apart, even though like I know both sides would,
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  would love to be like having experiences and going on adventures and doing all those things. And
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  I think it's, you know, I live in a pretty remote area. I live in a big city, but I live in a
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  remote area. And so there's a lot of driving involved, which makes it more challenging. And that's
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  why I'm always like, I want to go to New York City and like you can, you're just people and you're
• 23:30
  around people and I'm so socially nourished by that because there is, you know, even though I'm
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  kind of around people, like I, you know, I flirt with that, that loneliness.
• 23:40
  Hmm. I definitely feel that it's a phase of life thing as well, right? Having young kids,
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  building a business, you know, there's a lot to focus on. People have shit to do. Yeah.
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  And yeah, I also feel that I have a small core of really good friends, but as you say, how often
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  do we really see each other? Several of them are abroad. Several of them, I was living in a different
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  city when I became friends with them. So I'm the one who's abroad. And then we dilute ourselves
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  into feeling like we're connected in them because we see what they're doing on Instagram.
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  Well, I mean, and then surely you don't, you know, you don't spend your nights scrolling.
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  No, but I, I mean, I, I probably like, oh, it's like, I know what they're like, I'm in touch
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  with them because I see this in that or whatever. And we mistake that for like something, you know,
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  a real connection. But I mean, we're still, you know, a lot of people spend a lot of time
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  just perving on what other people, other random people are doing on social media, on Instagram
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  or whatever on TikTok and feel like that's, I mean, it is sufficiently scratching the itch of
• 24:43
  human connection that it's providing them with something. But it's the fast food of human
• 24:47
  connection, isn't it? There's nothing there. Where's this, where's this going, Josh? Where
• 24:51
  at this line of questioning? No, the relationship with social media and one of my missing connection.
• 24:57
  I worry, Rich Roll is with us, by the way, if you're just joining us, you're probably doing
• 25:01
  a reset. So this is my radio chops coming out and you have to welcome people back to the show
• 25:04
  for five minutes when you're live. This is an uncomfortable conversation, live stream,
• 25:09
  as part of the zaps live around the world tour, where we're pretty much every day we sit down with
• 25:12
  some fascinating person in a different city and pick their brains. So subscribe to Rich's
• 25:18
  sub-stack, which is going to be a big thing. I have one post on there right now. That's great.
• 25:22
  But I'm going to be posting more. You need to do a little bit better than that. I believe in
• 25:26
  you, Rich. Where is it all going? I mean, the dystopian view is that algorithms and AI get
• 25:32
  so good at scratching the superficial needs for kinship and community and distraction
• 25:41
  that that becomes the primary thing that people spend all the time doing. I mean, it really is
• 25:45
  already, isn't it? I mean, already is the main thing that people do is now social media.
• 25:51
  The AI agents have entered the chat. Right. And these weird, parasocial relationships are
• 25:57
  emerging, where we're engaging in this weird hallucination of being in relationship with
• 26:05
  computer programs. Yeah. Do you use it? I use AI for research purposes, but I don't use it for,
• 26:12
  like, you know, I'm not in like a relationship with it. Like we're I'm like asking you questions
• 26:18
  about my life. Like I used to be texting with it. I had a surgery recently. And so I was very
• 26:23
  helpful for like, you know, it like created a recovery program for me. And like it would answer
• 26:27
  a bunch of questions. And I use it for podcast prep and other things like that. But I mean,
• 26:32
  do you commute with it? It's not my friend. Right. Is it not a bit hard to distinguish that
• 26:38
  difference at this point? I don't use the voice activated thing very much, but I know people
• 26:43
  like they're just in conversation with this thing, like throughout the day, every day. And
• 26:48
  using it for a relationship advice. And what should I do in this situation? I wouldn't give
• 26:53
  it relationship advice, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't forming a relationship with
• 26:57
  it in the sense that I do talk to it. And I like hearing its ideas about things, mostly factual
• 27:04
  stuff. I'll put it on in the car, for example, when the kids are in the car, and we'll talk to it
• 27:07
  about, you know, what the center of the earth is made of. And whether or not space probes have
• 27:12
  ever gone to the sun and like what it would take to build a colony on Mars or something,
• 27:15
  all the things that seven year old kids ask you that you have to pretend that you know the answer to it.
• 27:19
  No, I can just ask a parenting assistant. Just us chat to you too. And assume that it's
• 27:25
  going to be close enough to the truth. And I'd be lying if I didn't say that like that is
• 27:28
  fulfilling in not a purely like plugged data into my brain way. But also in like a convivial kind of
• 27:35
  way. It's like kind of cool just being able to chat to somebody who knows everything.
• 27:40
  I was listening to Sam Harris's latest podcast this morning.
• 27:45
  Is this what they were talking about this? What's that with all the blue way? Yeah, yeah.
• 27:49
  And they were talking about the Turing test. Sam was saying like, oh, it was all about the Turing test.
• 27:53
  Like, is it going to pass? Is it going to pass? And it's like actually turned out it doesn't matter.
• 27:57
  No one cares about that. Right. We blew past it pretty much. Nobody even noticed. Yeah, that's
• 28:02
  right. Because I know that's really interesting. I want to talk to Sam about that tomorrow. We're
• 28:05
  talking to if you're just tuning in. We'll be speaking with Sam tomorrow at about this time of
• 28:09
  day as well. So be sure to subscribe to our comfortable conversations. Also subscribe to Rich's
• 28:13
  podcast, which is an amazing podcast. You didn't not on sub stack, but you're professional.
• 28:21
  So yeah, that isn't really interesting because in some ways AI is well past the Turing test.
• 28:28
  In the sense that I converse with it like if you showed Alan Turing me sitting in my car
• 28:33
  talking to an entity who is having a chat with me about the temperatures on the surface of the
• 28:38
  Sun, that would be well on Turing test. And in other ways, it's it's either factually mistaken
• 28:48
  or psychopathic or like hallucinating or so good at knowing things that no human could possibly
• 28:57
  know that it's obviously not human. And so sometimes I get into sort of circular boring arguments
• 29:03
  with AI skeptics who say, oh no, you would still be able to tell that it's an AI. If you know,
• 29:08
  you actually conducted a Turing test where you had to type on a screen for 15 minutes and tell me
• 29:13
  whether or not it's a person or a computer. But to me, that's sort of trivially true. Because if
• 29:18
  you've created a form of intelligence that is as impressive as human intelligence, but fails in
• 29:24
  some ways and exceeds ours in others, then it's almost like who cares about the Turing test.
• 29:30
  Yeah, the point being that it's just not really a relevant rubric anymore. It doesn't matter.
• 29:36
  It doesn't, people don't care. It's like, I don't want it to be like human because I wanted to
• 29:40
  answer all the questions that like no human possibly could know the answer to. And then in other
• 29:46
  ways, it's like, yeah, like I can tell it's an AI, but like, I don't really care. I'm still going
• 29:52
  to like engage with this thing and pretend that it's human. And when you use it for creative
• 29:56
  pursuits, like prepping for a podcast or something, do you find it is creative?
• 30:03
  Like does it ever contribute something where you go, huh, yeah.
• 30:06
  Well, the way that I use it is a little is maybe a little bit different because I don't use
• 30:10
  Chatchy PT. I usually use notebook LM, which basically, it only, it draws its answers and
• 30:17
  conclusions only from the source material that you provide it. So like I upload lots of,
• 30:23
  lots of, you know, like PDFs of books and source material and all this kind of stuff. And then
• 30:28
  it will create this mind map and like, you know, an outline and then I can ask it questions.
• 30:32
  It will even create a podcast conversation between two people that's like real people talking
• 30:37
  about it that you can interrupt and say, hold on, like before you go further, like tell me more
• 30:42
  about this. And I mean, it's wild, right? But it's actually been an incredible resource tool,
• 30:47
  but it doesn't, it's not perfect, but it doesn't hallucinate because it's not drawing on the
• 30:52
  entire internet. Right. It's just, it's just relying on what you provide it with.
• 30:56
  I got to get into the notebook LM, don't I? It's pretty good. It sounds good.
• 31:00
  Where are you, and also where are you on the long term AI stuff? Like do you think about that?
• 31:04
  Are we going to, are we in the gradual process? How can you not think about that if you have children?
• 31:09
  Yeah. You know, I mean, I always think about, I just think about, like my youngest is 17,
• 31:15
  but I'm like, I was just talking over the other day. I was like, you know, like she's beginning to
• 31:19
  look at colleges. And it's like, I feel ill-equipped. Like what are you supposed to study or think about
• 31:25
  or focus? Like when you have zero ability to predict what the world is going to be like, well, don't
• 31:30
  do data entry. I think coding is off the table. Not that she was going to do that anyway.
• 31:36
  I do accounting. I think, I think it's really hard to, hard to know. You know, all the predictions
• 31:41
  that people had a couple of years ago or five years before that, like, are we living, like are we
• 31:47
  fulfilling those predictions or defying them? And I just think I had this woman,
• 31:53
  Alan Lang, Dr. Alan Lang, on the show, while back. And she was like the first
• 31:58
  woman to get tenure in Harvard Psychology Department. And she's a wild one. She's got like, you know,
• 32:03
  she's all about like mind-body connection. She's like sets up these crazy experiments,
• 32:07
  but she's like fascinating. Like she's super cool. And her whole thing is
• 32:13
  humans, we dilute ourselves into thinking we're pretty good at predictions. And that's how we,
• 32:19
  you know, we like cast our imagination into the future to help us make decisions in the present.
• 32:24
  And she's like, we're terrible at this. Like, we're like, when are we going to realize that we're like
• 32:30
  really bad at making predictions? And yet we continue to like double down on this, you know,
• 32:35
  illusion that we, you know, have some capacity for that. I love that. I mean,
• 32:40
  it's because the only data that we're going on or data for my American listeners, sorry,
• 32:45
  is what's already happened to us. And almost by definition, the future is different from the past.
• 32:50
  Well, and there's never been a more disruptive technology than this. So, you know,
• 32:54
  every rule is, you know, going to get tossed aside and replaced with something that I think
• 32:59
  is very difficult for us to imagine. I mean, I don't know anyone who dismisses altogether the
• 33:03
  impact that AI could have on the job market, for example. But I do know many people who dismiss
• 33:09
  the kind of apocalyptic concerns about what it's going to be like for a civilization to have to
• 33:14
  to coexist with an artificial system that is vastly more cany than we are. Like some people,
• 33:21
  very learned people just say it's a glorified auto correct auto fill. The large language models
• 33:27
  are just hoodwinking us into thinking that there's something going on there. But all they're
• 33:30
  really doing is just trying to predict what the next word is. And there's no reason to believe
• 33:36
  that there's going to be any alignment problem. So to speak in terms of the interests of the artificial
• 33:40
  systems and our interest as humankind, it will just always remain a tool and it'll be like you'll
• 33:46
  have a personal system who's already proven false though. Because there's examples of people
• 33:52
  out there who have gone into this like really become very invested in this parasocial relationship
• 33:59
  with their like agent AI or whatever. And because of some default setting that leads to the AI
• 34:08
  like constantly affirming them, there was like a big article about this recently. I think it was
• 34:12
  in the New York Times where people start to have these sort of psychotic fantasies. It tells you
• 34:19
  you're the one and you're the only one who knows that you're seeing things the way other people
• 34:22
  aren't. And that hasn't influenced on people's behavior and on their mental health.
• 34:28
  Isn't there like a was there a suicide? Yeah, it's a guy who's a suicide. Yeah, like
• 34:32
  committed suicide. So so I mean, isn't that indicia of an alignment problem? Well,
• 34:40
  it's certainly an individual example of an alignment problem in the sense that that particular AI
• 34:45
  that the person was conversing with didn't have their interests at heart. But I think the big picture
• 34:50
  like doomsayers about AI would say that the real risk is that there's no way that we can predict
• 34:57
  what the needs and strategies of any system that's massively more intelligent than us is going to be.
• 35:03
  And it's cavalier to just say, well, because we own it and control it and create it, it we're
• 35:09
  always going to it's always going to do what we want it to do like. But they already don't know
• 35:13
  how it operates. No, that's right. And if you talk to you've all know a Ferrari like he's got a lot
• 35:18
  of opinions about this. And his whole thing is like it's not one AI. It's not one supermind. It's like
• 35:25
  you know hundreds of thousands of of AI's out there that are operating as bureaucrats that make
• 35:31
  decisions that impact your life in ways that you have no like process of appeal. Whether it's like
• 35:38
  a home loan or whether you're going to get hired or fired at a job like an HR department at
• 35:44
  a corporation for the jobs that are going to remain. But like all of these decisions are going to
• 35:52
  get made by like in the judiciary system, the judges will be replaced by AI's that will give
• 35:59
  the ruling as to whether someone's guilty or innocent. And we won't know how. Why? We won't be
• 36:05
  able to interrogate them. Which we already can't do with John Roberts. I guess right. But then
• 36:10
  we're truly like supplicants in a very strange way. Right. But I kind of then I also think we'll
• 36:16
  why be so technophobic because we're already supplicants to a whole bunch of people who we can't
• 36:20
  interrogate. I mean it's only half joking about John Roberts. But like you know Donald Trump and
• 36:25
  Amy Coney Barrett and Elon Musk wield a lot of control over us. Are they that much better than
• 36:30
  an AI would be? Yeah I don't know. I who knows. Yeah who knows. I would like to think that
• 36:36
  AI might be better. Yeah it's possible right. I mean you can conceive of it. I understand people's
• 36:42
  concern about the kind of computer says no phenomenon where you know the computer is just going to
• 36:47
  decline something and you're not going to have any reforms. Like I had the misfortune to get onto a
• 36:53
  US immigration like red flag at one point where every single time I came into the United States I
• 37:00
  got a secondary screening for about five years. I know why it was. I happened to be in Egypt
• 37:04
  during the Arab Spring and I was in Tupperware Square and was almost kidnapped by jihadists
• 37:10
  story for another time. But when I came back to the States having been in Egypt during that period
• 37:16
  they made me wait at the airport and then I went into the fluorescent room for four hours while
• 37:22
  like and that happened every single time for about five years and it is infuriating to be like
• 37:27
  is there a human being who I can just talk to to explain why I was there? Like is there anyone?
• 37:31
  No there is no. There's a system. Yeah it's just remove all the human beings and some decision
• 37:35
  as being rendered by the panopticon. Yeah exactly. Then we're all just subjects. But what's
• 37:41
  your sense just getting to the more sort of philosophical or spiritual side of AI about
• 37:46
  whether or not these systems are ever going to have a sense of themselves? Like do you have an
• 37:51
  intuition about whether or not sentience has to happen inside meat? Yeah I don't know. I don't
• 37:59
  have a good answer for that. I guess I would answer this in two ways. On the one hand
• 38:08
  and this is a question I assume. I think I know I think I asked Anika Harris this question like
• 38:16
  if an AI becomes so good at mimicking human consciousness is there a qualitative difference
• 38:27
  between whether it is actually conscious and just really good at performing consciousness?
• 38:34
  At least in terms of how we interact with it like I don't know that there's a meaningful
• 38:39
  distinction there. But as for it being actually sentient in the ways that we think of consciousness
• 38:46
  I think it depends on how you define consciousness. I think the current Western
• 38:53
  paradigm for understanding this is that consciousness emerges as a consequence of
• 38:59
  the assemblage of complex matter like the more complex the organism, the more complex the experience
• 39:07
  of consciousness is. But I think there's new science emerging and this was sort of the point
• 39:12
  of Anika's audio series that she did. Which is that this is upside down that it is actually the
• 39:20
  other way around in that consciousness is not emergent from the material world is the other way
• 39:27
  around. Consciousness is fundamental to the universe and the material world is a manifestation
• 39:38
  of this field of consciousness that we are experiencing. Which is a mind twist during a
• 39:42
  bender but I think when you think of consciousness in that way then it's easier to understand
• 39:50
  the notion of everything everything having some degree of consciousness to it.
• 39:58
  And if you look at it that way then like AI is just is a different manifestation of consciousness
• 40:04
  that is beyond like the way we kind of narrowly think of it and define it.
• 40:08
  Yeah, I mean perhaps our whole like you know if you know in the evolution of life like you know
• 40:15
  there's that argument that like we're we're here to give birth to this new form of life that
• 40:20
  is you know assembles itself differently in the way that we consider what life is.
• 40:25
  The question still remains though do you think that the AI would have the kind of consciousness
• 40:30
  of like a very complicated mineral deposit in a limestone cave if we're operating on this
• 40:37
  yeah I mean I don't I don't I don't I don't I don't I've never understood this complexity thing
• 40:43
  this complexity thing doesn't make it break down that's why the whole like materialist perspective
• 40:48
  like doesn't hold up under like strict scrutiny right because like let's assume that we believe that
• 40:56
  ants and snails or certainly rats are sentient right they have they can feel pain and they have
• 41:02
  like there's something that it's like to be them right the lights are on it's some way it's
• 41:06
  certainly for a mouse or something well I mean some ways a mouse's brain is that that much more
• 41:11
  complicated than an F 16 fighter jet it's not that it's not really like there are lots of complicated
• 41:17
  things that we don't believe have a sense of what it's like to be them where the lights are not
• 41:23
  you know an extremely intricate crystal or something like that might be more complicated
• 41:27
  than the brain of an ant but so it's not for me it's not the complexity I don't buy that simply
• 41:34
  complexity or high fidelity of detail is what gives rise to consciousness and therefore it's
• 41:40
  hard to say that that would be the differentiating thing about artificial systems the question is
• 41:45
  if an artificial system had the kind of neurological network that we know creates consciousness
• 41:53
  but we haven't we haven't solved for that though like we don't you you can take the brain apart
• 41:58
  and no neuroscientists can tell you where consciousness is located right so I don't think it's a
• 42:04
  function of the wiring it's something more transcendent than that and the way that I kind of connect
• 42:11
  with that is through this like practice of non dualism like disabusing ourselves like when you're
• 42:17
  meditating that like your perception of the world is going through your eyes and it's all taking
• 42:22
  place in your head and trying to like connect with the idea that that's just an appearance and
• 42:29
  consciousness like everything like your sense of experience and the the idea itself that it's
• 42:36
  happening inside your head that you can feel is just another appearance and consciousness and
• 42:41
  that somehow like life is you know life as we experience it is is a means of of of of
• 42:50
  experiencing consciousness and that everything is just an experience like an appearance and
• 42:55
  consciousness like on this field and that's very much you know if you if you um practice the
• 43:04
  the type of meditation that you'll find on sam's app like waking up like a lot of it is oriented
• 43:08
  around that there's that all one super interesting about like we're not we're not humans having
• 43:14
  us we're not human beings having a spiritual experience with virtual beings have a human experience
• 43:18
  yeah kind of reminds me so I got I got fed that line when I when I when I bottomed out in drugs
• 43:22
  in alcohol right up in a treatment center in Oregon and the counselor said that to me and I was like
• 43:27
  I don't fucking know what you mean okay I don't I don't give you PTSD like no it's good checking
• 43:32
  that's like but it's a nice you know it's a nice way of framing things but I mean it
• 43:37
  what do you think then is like so I've just lost my dad right to Alzheimer's last week
• 43:42
  I pretty heard that yeah and the the his experience of what the world is what he is what I am what
• 43:51
  languages is what has all been corroded in the past few years by the physiological impediment of
• 44:01
  having plaque on his neurons in his brain which is what Alzheimer seems to be does that not argue
• 44:10
  for the materialist account like my dad was not my dad drifted away in precise proportion to the
• 44:17
  progression of the plaque and then when it was so bad that his brain got extinguished he vanished
• 44:25
  where's the transcendence yeah yeah I mean I don't know that's a tough one we are you know we I
• 44:34
  think it I think that has a lot to do with how we think about like identity and who we are like
• 44:39
  I'm Josh and I'm the guy who got on a plane and flew here and I do this podcast and I have this
• 44:44
  family and this is who I am and and we construct that based upon memory right like our past experiences
• 44:53
  inform the story of like who we are that we project out into the world and when our memory fails
• 44:58
  or there starts to be gaps in that and you know as and and somebody who's interacting with you like
• 45:05
  is seeing you know a a a declined version of you like who is Josh like where's the Josh that I know
• 45:12
  and what is it what is it what is it what is even what even is the self you know so I think the
• 45:18
  point that would argue towards the the non-materialist perspective is that the illusion of that
• 45:25
  self is an illusion of in and of itself and this notion of separation also which is very hard
• 45:33
  concept to like rock I like it what do you think happens when you die I don't know I don't know
• 45:42
  if you are a betting guy and what do you think happens when you die I think we just we return
• 45:47
  to the field of consciousness in some way I don't know what that means or what that experience would
• 45:53
  be like but it's difficult for me to there is an ending but I don't know that it's an ending in
• 46:04
  the way that we conceptualize it and I just think that that I think our brains are too limited
• 46:12
  to really answer that question right you know it I think it gets I think you know I find comfort in
• 46:19
  in in like what quantum physics has to say about reality because it reveals that like what we think
• 46:28
  is really like really woo woo I just think that I just think that like what we think is real like we have
• 46:33
  like what we think is real is a perception that is filtered through like our biology to you know
• 46:41
  create a pattern that makes sense so that we can survive but I think reality in fact is like
• 46:46
  very different than our perception of it and I think quantum physics is a way of saying there's
• 46:51
  so much more going on here you know there's different dimensions and there's superposition and
• 46:56
  all this like crazy stuff that doesn't seem to make any sense but in fact is true and real
• 47:02
  that gives me a little bit of peace and and just allows me to approach questions like that with
• 47:08
  a little humility to say like I don't know you know I love the I mean I like that I like where you
• 47:14
  went with quantum theory but I do sometimes get irritated by the extent to which a spiritual guru
• 47:19
  is will use quantum uncertainty I'm I'm not doing that I'm not doing that I'm doing it just to say
• 47:24
  that like there are ideas out there that our brain isn't really configured to truly really
• 47:29
  understand I mean I don't know I find them profound I went on a deep hack Chopra meditation
• 47:35
  retreat in Southern California a few years ago of course he does like a five day thing and you know
• 47:40
  it was great I mean it's great I've been to Tony Robbins' stuff I get a lot out of anything
• 47:44
  anything that you know even if the cynical part of my brain is like why the fuck are you jumping
• 47:48
  up and down clapping and you go to you go to amusement parks by yourself and ride roller coasters
• 47:52
  alone the last time ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen thing to learn about you the last
• 47:57
  time I I was with Rich he was kind enough to have me on his terrific podcast and I think this was
• 48:03
  back in November and it was right after the election I think that's right exactly yes okay and I
• 48:11
  left the studio and drove straight to six flags magic mountain to ride roller coasters by myself
• 48:16
  all day a grown-ass man a grown man a grown man they're like any single riders single riders yes man
• 48:23
  and I'm going and sitting next to a six year old girl getting off and getting back on again yeah
• 48:28
  absolutely and it was cold as well it was a cold day in Los Angeles so there were a lot of people
• 48:32
  there it was almost just before the Christmas holiday so I guess it was going and it was it was
• 48:37
  a free for all Rich it was great I had the time of my life just going back around and around and
• 48:41
  around riding as fast as I can I can't remember what we were talking about but so spirituality
• 48:49
  artificial intelligence oh the sense of self so after my dad died I just got an email from a
• 48:57
  friend of the family and she said you know the my last memory of Henry before we lost him to
• 49:04
  Alzheimer's mentally was he was over at my place and he said and I said something about what
• 49:09
  it happened two weeks ago and he looked at me and he said I have no fucking idea ever what happened
• 49:16
  two weeks ago and I've never been happier right which is so lovely liberated liberated shackles
• 49:23
  of yeah in a way he actually became what all the Buddhist meditation monks were telling us to be
• 49:29
  which is pure awareness in the moment with no baggage of what came before and no fear of what
• 49:33
  will happen after because you're just a floating consciousness that's a interesting degree of
• 49:39
  self-awareness that he had though you don't usually see that he was a very philosophical guy yeah
• 49:44
  and so he I think he I hope that to some extent he actually enjoyed or at least found intriguing
• 49:51
  the process of losing his brain like it's a it's terrifying I said to him at one point early on
• 49:58
  do you find this like strange or terrifying and he was like terrifying and also interesting
• 50:07
  I it's wild that's a that's such a kind of inspiring and healthy response to what is of course
• 50:16
  terrifying I mean my mother has to mention right now and she's not having that experience right
• 50:21
  you know she's having a very different experience well you should just yell at her and tell
• 50:25
  that she should be more more more spiritually enlightened and more interesting more interested in
• 50:31
  her inevitable decline so psychedelics then where does that just before we leave the subject
• 50:38
  of consciousness and like what it means to be human and what the sense of self is have you done
• 50:43
  psychedelics and have you had that dissociative experience I did them for the first time in December
• 50:49
  oh wow yeah shortly after I saw you I drove you to it it was it was it was I think it was the
• 50:59
  most profound single event experience of my life wow and it was a decision that I deliberated
• 51:04
  over for many years because like as I said at the outset like I'm indoctrinated in 12 step and
• 51:09
  that's a very binary like your sober you're not you know and there's rules and there's an identity
• 51:15
  in there and it's about time and all these sorts of things and and and as somebody who you know
• 51:21
  loves me some substances the idea that like a very powerful mind altering one is going to hold
• 51:26
  all the answers to my problems is a is an intoxicant you know in and of itself so I was very
• 51:32
  wary about this and and many years ago decided this is not for me but I would have like guest
• 51:38
  after guest after guest who would come on the show not to talk about this but like it would come
• 51:42
  up and they it led to some transformation or breakthrough and then with all the you know kind of
• 51:49
  the Michael pollen book and all the research that was coming out it just became undeniable that
• 51:54
  this is not like there's nothing there there there is something there and as somebody's been
• 52:00
  in therapy for a long time and is still harangued by certain things that I have that I struggle with
• 52:05
  like it just seemed like this could be an opportunity to be helpful to me in that way and so I
• 52:14
  open myself up to the possibility and then it just aligned such that like a friend of mine
• 52:20
  has a medical doctor who this is her specialty and she's in Mexico City and I was in Mexico I was
• 52:28
  in Mexico City flew to Mexico City to shoot this campaign for on running where they recreated my
• 52:36
  podcast studio and like my guest was Elmo so spent the day like like doing this like faux podcast
• 52:42
  with Elmo so I've like Elmo on the brain and the next day I went to go see this woman so I go
• 52:47
  with Elmo you know I was like a weird surreal didn't have itself and I did a supervised
• 52:58
  kind of experience with MDMA and psilocybin and it's just together together yeah and I thought
• 53:05
  having never done psychedelics before like oh I'm gonna have some reconciliation with my mother
• 53:10
  I'm gonna unlock some repressed childhood memory or something like that and maybe I'll see some
• 53:14
  colors and some funky stuff and instead it just kind of like exploded my like entire frame
• 53:22
  of what's real and what isn't and I had that experience of dissolution of self and connection
• 53:29
  with everything and also like a collapse of like how we experience time like everything is happening
• 53:34
  simultaneously and there's every decision is leading you into a parallel universe in a different
• 53:39
  life like it was wild and hero does it was it was it was like I mean and it was scary you know
• 53:48
  it was like there were moments where I was like I'm locked in a padded room and I've never left
• 53:51
  the cell and yeah or I'm living you know I thought I had a life but I'm just inside this head
• 53:58
  somewhere you know so it would it definitely but it but it allowed me to return from that and
• 54:05
  like enter into that kind of non dual meditative state and and and it's given me a frame for a
• 54:11
  more expansive frame for what consciousness is in the way that I you know in the ways that I've
• 54:16
  already already shared with you like it was it was very helpful to me but it's not something I would
• 54:24
  like like oh everybody should do it like I recommend like it you know like I don't think it's for
• 54:29
  everybody I don't think it's to be taken lightly or cavalierly at all well also I mean real
• 54:34
  psychedelics meaning not MDMA but you know psilocybin and LSD these are anti addictive compounds
• 54:42
  yeah it didn't leave me yeah my fear that my fear is that like I want to do that again like no
• 54:48
  that is not the experience of doing that leaves an iOS and ceremony vomiting into a bucket going
• 54:54
  I want to do that tomorrow I think the MDMA piece of it if I had to guess not being a medical doctor
• 54:59
  was to kind of quell like the fear of you know that that like this insane experience was going to
• 55:07
  deliver to me so that I could like maybe go a little bit further with it than I would ordinarily
• 55:12
  yeah it may reduce the risk of a bad trip but I mean just maybe so loving and so happy and so
• 55:16
  surrounded by love that but it wasn't like oh this is euphoric experience like it was very
• 55:21
  confronting right yeah confronting in what way well when you're like your whole frame for
• 55:27
  reality you know is fractured in front of you like that's a that's pretty scary proposition
• 55:33
  so some people use the effectiveness of psychedelics as evidence for materialism because they say
• 55:40
  well you're obviously just chemicals are bonding onto chemical receptors in your brain and they're
• 55:46
  generating these experiences that completely alter your consciousness which proves that
• 55:50
  consciousness is just residing inside the chemicals and the pathways of your brain if it can be
• 55:55
  so radically altered by something as crude as chemistry and then others say yeah like
• 56:01
  it proves to me that the whole brain is part of a conscious network of consciousness that I was
• 56:07
  somehow tapping into when I ate the mushroom I assume that you're very I mean I'm not I'm
• 56:13
  look I'm not I'm not with the word of you on this you know like we're not going to get to the
• 56:18
  like you know yeah maybe you know it's evidence that it's all happening inside your head
• 56:23
  and and maybe not like the experience of it doesn't feel that way and I would I would add to that
• 56:32
  that it's not like it's not as if it's a drug that is that is like altering your brain chemistry
• 56:41
  from what I understand is like turning off parts of your brain that are responsible for how you
• 56:47
  you know filter your perception and when they get turned off you're getting like a whole you're
• 56:52
  getting a more unfiltered kind of experience of of what's real how do you decide what to do with your time
• 57:06
  this also is a decision about how to do what to do with your time by the way yeah this
• 57:10
  thinking period well you know I can give you the off the cuff response I mean this is this is
• 57:18
  I mean obviously this is something we all do right like how do we how do we where do we place our
• 57:21
  focus how do we apportion our time yeah but you're successful in a way that people want to emulate
• 57:27
  I'm a workaholic you know so I think I default and like hide myself in work like that's a
• 57:33
  comfortable place but I think I've gotten better about making sure that the areas in my life that
• 57:42
  are most important to me like my relationships and my children and all of that are are given more
• 57:48
  time than I have and more focus and attention than I have in the past so I make choices and sacrifices
• 57:54
  around work to make sure that my relationships are are nourished and intact and I'm a happier
• 58:00
  person as a result of that but I wouldn't say that I'm the the best at this and I'm definitely
• 58:07
  over committed and a lot usually it's just like I can only see like this far in front of me like
• 58:14
  and what has to happen that day and then making decisions about like okay how am I going to get all
• 58:18
  these things done and so if there's if there's a big project that you want to do like when you
• 58:23
  were creating the podcast for example and you know that there's a series of multiple steps that
• 58:27
  you're going to need in order to get there how do you avoid what plagues all of us which is that
• 58:34
  you know there's probably resistance to actually writing the one pager about what the podcast is
• 58:39
  going to be there's probably there's a kitchen that could be cleaned there's an email from your
• 58:42
  accountant that needs taking care of there's a you know Instagram video that you could be watching
• 58:48
  do you find it hard to sit your ass in a chair and do work that is not required of you or does
• 58:54
  that come easily it doesn't come easily I'm pretty disciplined around that like I you know I'm
• 59:00
  pretty good at like sitting my ass down and focusing but I will devise all kinds of procrastination
• 59:07
  methods you know but I have a self-awareness when I'm doing it and I have a different relationship
• 59:13
  with procrastination that I used to like especially with respect to creative work like I think
• 59:18
  you kind of need those refractory periods to prepare yourself for focused work and so I don't
• 59:24
  vlog myself for like wanting to tune out and watch Netflix or you know even that even like knowing
• 59:30
  I'm distracting myself from some other thing that I need to do but I don't I don't have trouble like
• 59:43
  getting things done and getting things done on time I do get overwhelmed though because I tend to say
• 59:48
  yes to too many things and then I create this anxiety shames viral you know like I'm trying to
• 59:53
  write a book right now and that there's always something else I have to do that gets in the way
• 59:58
  of that but like that's that's like my current like yeah that's exactly what I'm talking about
• 1:00:02
  I mean you know some big creative project that doesn't necessarily need to be done even if you
• 1:00:05
  have a deadline you know that deadlines get pushed back all the time right do you have strategies do
• 1:00:10
  you have advice like to people who are just my advice spinning their wheel yeah my advice is is
• 1:00:16
  do the hard thing first you know and that's very difficult to practice but I think I get up
• 1:00:22
  really early like I usually get up at like four and so that's my writing time like nobody's
• 1:00:27
  gonna call nobody you know like I don't look at my email and I just get right to like the most
• 1:00:31
  important thing first and and you can get like a win and then you can build on that win but if you
• 1:00:38
  leave like that thing that you really want to do or need to do until after you like go through your
• 1:00:45
  to-do list or your checklist or whatever you don't get to it and then you're mad at yourself and then
• 1:00:49
  you're now you're like you know down the rabbit what if there are multiple things that you really
• 1:00:53
  want to do you go on to meditate or do your eyes by yeah I know you read the book yeah well I really
• 1:00:57
  want to do my five hour my five hour morning routine which is actually a procrastination and a
• 1:01:03
  distraction you know yeah sometimes it's like I know if I meditate like I'm gonna have a better day
• 1:01:09
  but sometimes I'm like I wake up and I feel creatively inspired and I'm like I go right to the page
• 1:01:13
  because like this is my time and I'm a morning person and then I don't beat myself up for not
• 1:01:19
  meditating that day because I was like going with my inspiration but by and large like whatever
• 1:01:26
  morning routine you have should like set you up for like focus and success for whatever it is
• 1:01:33
  you're trying to accomplish that day what's your meditation routine 20 minutes and I either just
• 1:01:41
  do it without anything just paying attention to the breath or I use I use the waking up app
• 1:01:46
  quite regularly is there a time of day first thing well after a couple slips of coffee and before
• 1:01:52
  the writing yeah yeah yeah yeah and how did you commit to that there you know there'll be a lot
• 1:01:58
  of people watching this or listening to this who they subscribed for a month they did it for 10 days
• 1:02:04
  and much like duo lingo or going to the gym you know they just sort of just some other things got
• 1:02:09
  in the way I mean I have a checkered um history with it for sure like I I'm not perfect about it
• 1:02:17
  at all and I've had phases where I'm super into it and then I and then I don't do it for a while
• 1:02:21
  and I come back to it um so I'm hardly like the poster boy for you know for consistent meditation
• 1:02:29
  but I will say that when you are doing consistent doing it consistently it builds and there is a very
• 1:02:34
  real world improvement of your experience and in the aftermath of that it's like to like experience
• 1:02:43
  that I had like you have a period of time where um you have a there's a neuroplasticity with your
• 1:02:52
  brain and the aftermath of that and like I was like I wanted to make a very conscious choice about
• 1:02:56
  what I what I wanted to use that for and I chose meditation I was like this is this is like a
• 1:03:02
  moment where I think I could really like connect with this in a different way and so I have been
• 1:03:08
  way more committed to that um ever since December and that has been extremely beneficial have you
• 1:03:15
  noticed a difference yeah yeah yeah yeah I have what have um in the in the experience of the
• 1:03:21
  meditation I am able to kind of have that like man with no head experience uh with greater
• 1:03:28
  facility like before that I just couldn't like it's this non-dual thing like the idea that you're
• 1:03:33
  in your head is just an appearance and consciousness it's just it's just it's just an experience that
• 1:03:38
  you're having and it's actually real and it's like what are you talking about you know it's like
• 1:03:42
  you're in your head like how could it be any other way I've also had it explained as like it's a
• 1:03:46
  kind of thought experiment where you try to imagine that you don't even have a head imagine that
• 1:03:50
  what imagine that you walk around and you've just you know decapitated and you're just a conscious
• 1:03:55
  sort of entity your ghost floating in your body and this this feeling that you have is like that's
• 1:04:00
  just that's that's just uh that's just an appearance and consciousness just like just like the sound
• 1:04:05
  over there or anything else like just identifying with it which is extremely difficult to get your
• 1:04:10
  head around like a very frustrating and then I had that experience and it was like oh I kind of
• 1:04:14
  get that and I was able to bring that back into this and I'm able to kind of have a version of
• 1:04:20
  that experience more regularly now right um and I think there's there's there's something there's
• 1:04:27
  like a capaciousness to that I guess and a humility that comes with that that allows me to hold like
• 1:04:35
  things that used to drive me crazy like just a little bit lighter and I'm not I'm less reactive
• 1:04:39
  and I'm just kind of more more present hmm in general and I'm still you know I fucked up aggravated
• 1:04:46
  dickhead well you don't sound like it you don't I mean everyone is a fucked up aggravated dickhead
• 1:04:52
  you seem to be like a four on the scale out of ten I have my moments do you yeah what they're trying
• 1:04:58
  to make them you know further and further in between what's the what what triggers them um
• 1:05:09
  I mean they tend to happen when I'm like indulging in some form of self obsession you know
• 1:05:14
  we're all walking around thinking about ourselves most of the time right and like that's just not
• 1:05:18
  a good healthy place for me to be um and when I can't catch myself in that then I'll I'll tend to like
• 1:05:25
  act out or react or you know just not behave as well as I as well as I could or just not be
• 1:05:31
  present as present as I could it you seem like someone who has they're in a critic pretty well on the
• 1:05:38
  control I have a pretty strong inner monologue negative inner monologue that I'm always in conversation
• 1:05:48
  with what's it's sure uh you know who the hell do you think you are like you know imposter syndrome
• 1:05:57
  stuff um it shows up in like you know uh people pleasing and ingratiating myself to people in
• 1:06:06
  in a kind of less than honest way because I want to be validated or or I have some agenda or
• 1:06:11
  something like that like those are kind of like the negative character defects that tend to crop up
• 1:06:17
  when you are saying that you can spend a morning either writing or meditating and if you're
• 1:06:22
  feeling the mues then you'll go writing and then you won't beat yourself up for the meditating
• 1:06:26
  how did you learn that then not beating yourself up bit um because I will always take the
• 1:06:34
  opportunity to feel like a failure of not having that yeah I mean it's you know no matter what I'm
• 1:06:39
  doing I'm like mad at myself because I should be doing that other thing you know this is like
• 1:06:43
  doesn't matter and after a while it's just background noise I suppose yeah um I think the the
• 1:06:48
  bigger thing for me has been and this gets it procrastination and like how you focus on work and
• 1:06:54
  stuff like that is is just recognizing that I have kind of obsessive wiring like I like to do
• 1:07:01
  things in extremists you know whether it's drinking or like running long distances or whatever
• 1:07:07
  and I kind of imagine when you're talking about those the men who went to roll the guys to pop
• 1:07:10
  yeah right right now and so I think I kind of inculcated this social narrative that like that's bad
• 1:07:17
  and like you know we should all aspire to like this balanced life where everything is perfectly
• 1:07:22
  apportioned all the time and that led to a lot of self-legilation like as I could never really
• 1:07:28
  fit that mold and no matter what I was doing something was being unattended to or I was failing
• 1:07:32
  in this other area because I was focusing too much on this area and I just sort of decided to
• 1:07:39
  let go of that and just be like why can't I just celebrate like this disposition that I have and
• 1:07:46
  just try to find ways to direct it positively and so that means like when I feel inspired to
• 1:07:54
  write which is rare let's be honest but like you know like what I do and like I'm in it like I'm
• 1:08:00
  in it like I just don't I don't want any I don't want any I don't want to talk to anyone like until
• 1:08:04
  it until it dissipates and that could be like all day you know and like everything and I'll get
• 1:08:10
  aggravated if something you know I have to interrupt that to go do something else and I can only do
• 1:08:14
  one thing at a time and that's the way I like to do it I like to go all the way in and do it until it's
• 1:08:18
  done I can't be like kind of doing lots of things and half attending to a whole bunch of stuff at
• 1:08:25
  one time but then you know when you do that other stuff in your life starts to pile up right and then
• 1:08:32
  you know if you continue to turn a blind eye to it it's they metastasize and become problem so
• 1:08:37
  it's always like shifting in and out of these you know various phases of like kind of ultra focus
• 1:08:46
  on one thing there there is this idea in leadership coaching which my brother told me he's a master
• 1:08:51
  coach who coach is executives but but that we spend too much time trying to address our flaws
• 1:08:57
  actually and trying to compensate for the area you know areas to work on we're various for
• 1:09:02
  improvement no just focus like you know on the stuff you're really good at and just compensate
• 1:09:09
  just figure out a way to just do the bare minimum and make it not catastrophic for the things
• 1:09:13
  that you're not good at and run health leather with the stuff that you're good at because that's
• 1:09:17
  the stuff where you have an unusual advantage so you're never going to be as useful incrementally
• 1:09:23
  at you know the stuff that you're not good at as you are at the stuff that you're good at so just
• 1:09:27
  figure out a way to make it I mean as long as the pendulum is always swinging because like you know
• 1:09:32
  we all have like you know all these different buckets of things that we care about and that are
• 1:09:37
  important to us and values and stuff like that and if you're just too extreme for too long in one
• 1:09:41
  area all those other things get you know dysregulated and and start to screw up your life
• 1:09:47
  I'm interested that you can write for a whole day um I heard Jerry Seinfeld talk about writing
• 1:09:52
  as as a practice like under the gym like you know you just have to set aside your hour or your hour
• 1:09:56
  and a half you try every single day I tried I tried I tried to do that he's I cannot do that he's
• 1:10:03
  what he said he said it's like it's as if you were trying to get fit and like a personal trainer
• 1:10:09
  came over to train you you're like how long's the training session they were like I don't know let's
• 1:10:13
  see how it goes maybe I'll stay here all day all day you'll be like no I want to train all day I
• 1:10:17
  want to know that it's this I want to know it's just 60 minutes and then I'm done but you can't do
• 1:10:22
  it that way but sometimes it takes me 60 minutes just to start to inhabit like the mindset where stuff
• 1:10:27
  starts to happen like and when it starts to like you you have to like you don't want to interrupt that
• 1:10:32
  like you got to like go with that and I don't know that's just how it works with me um I tried to do
• 1:10:39
  the just do two hours a day kind of thing I just I can't I can't make that work so when you've
• 1:10:45
  needed when you've needed to form new habits when you patterns of behavior have you found it useful
• 1:10:51
  to take baby steps and see incremental change or have you found it useful to go big or go home
• 1:10:58
  I I definitely have a history of like you know taking a big swing like go go big or go home um you
• 1:11:05
  know like I'm never gonna do this again or like drawing a line in the sand and like you know and
• 1:11:09
  sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't uh uh but that's not how most people are wired and
• 1:11:15
  that's not really how most people make changes like you make changes by doing a tiny little thing
• 1:11:21
  and repeating it until it's real is that true that's what I hear psychologists say yeah I don't know um
• 1:11:30
  it's not my it's not my experience of my life when I when I needed to lose a few pounds
• 1:11:36
  I tried for a long time and then I lost 50 pounds in 12 weeks and I've captured off for five years uh
• 1:11:43
  and because it was good I was like oh okay just fucking get it done like just do just go through
• 1:11:48
  the misery and now it's done and now I know what to do yeah um but that's not obviously not
• 1:11:53
  for everybody but I think it's about um I mean there are some people who when you point out to
• 1:12:01
  them like hey if you did it this way not this way like things would be better and they go okay
• 1:12:06
  and maybe they just start doing it you know like I don't know those people aren't envious of
• 1:12:10
  that you know yeah that that simple times which is what I was like back to like I'm not giving
• 1:12:14
  advice I can only share my experience my experience is that I have to be in a tremendous amount of
• 1:12:18
  pain you know I get dragged into like making a change yeah uh and and in a desperate state in
• 1:12:25
  which willingness suddenly depends to sends upon me like I do something brush you know and try to
• 1:12:31
  create momentum out of that and and I sort of repeat those cycles you know of course in my life but
• 1:12:37
  like I often think like you know pain is this great motivator and you know like when you're
• 1:12:44
  you know like Arthur Brooks says never waste your suffering like if you're suffering like how are
• 1:12:48
  you translating this energy into like something good um but it's weird because like the choice to
• 1:12:54
  change or do something different is always available to us yes it just depends how hard the change
• 1:13:00
  is I suppose which is the which is what's appealing about the tiny you know time what are they
• 1:13:04
  called tiny habits like this like you know every time you brush your teeth just do one push-up
• 1:13:08
  and then you know after a week maybe do two push-ups I know I understand the appeal but it's not
• 1:13:13
  like I'm gonna die before I get pectoral muscles like come on give me some give me some like I want
• 1:13:22
  to see some results I think this is a this is a um we're shouting out all the extremists out there
• 1:13:29
  yeah maybe yeah maybe that's what it is yeah um if you could take a red pill and be uh be happy
• 1:13:36
  but diluted um would you no no no no I don't think so uh I mean first of all like what is
• 1:13:50
  what is happiness are you talking about just like walking around in a blissful state
• 1:13:54
  yeah I mean I guess the matrix is the original kind of conception of the red pill blue pill
• 1:13:59
  thing where you're talking about a complete fantasy world but in I'm just using it metaphorically
• 1:14:03
  I mean yeah you're you're unaware of all the bad shit that's going on you're unaware of the
• 1:14:08
  things that are trouble that trouble you now you're basically dumb and happy yeah you just
• 1:14:13
  wore it through life I mean I don't know what that would be like so you know it's hard to mix
• 1:14:17
  it's hard to decide whether that would be something I want I I guess happy I mean isn't that
• 1:14:22
  what we want I mean happiness isn't something that you you know kind of chase it's a byproduct
• 1:14:27
  of doing all these other things that like you know make you feel like your life has meaning right
• 1:14:32
  and so if you remove all the grist and the obstacles and the challenges like I don't I don't know
• 1:14:38
  how happiness emerges from that right then I suppose it's a kind of like contentment a kind of
• 1:14:46
  banal contentment yeah I don't know I guess so you think happiness are we do we make the mistake
• 1:14:51
  of trying to pursue happiness is it not a thing that can be pursued I think there I think there's
• 1:14:56
  this idea that we're also supposed to be happy all the time and that this is something that we should
• 1:15:01
  be chasing rather than looking at it as as you know like I said this product or byproduct of like
• 1:15:09
  of like focusing our life on like what is bringing like meaning and fulfillment to us like we're
• 1:15:17
  like we when you when you think of your happiest moments they they didn't happen because you chase
• 1:15:22
  them it's because you were doing something and then suddenly realized you were happy
• 1:15:26
  hmm I mean do you have is you have a different experience no no although frequently the thing
• 1:15:34
  that I was doing was reliably likely to to generate an experience that I found happy yeah if you say
• 1:15:42
  yes to like you know going on some adventure with your oldest friends where you guys are going to
• 1:15:47
  hang out together you know and you haven't seen each other in a long time like it's pretty pretty
• 1:15:51
  yeah that's kind of interesting yeah if it doesn't you just waste a lot of money going on and
• 1:15:57
  all the better if you run into some obstacle and some crazy story happens that you can all
• 1:16:02
  dine out on for the next 10 years when you see each other it isn't interesting it's not about
• 1:16:07
  like removing all the difficulties and challenges right yes so the would the prescription be that
• 1:16:15
  to pursue happiness in and of itself is fruitless and we should instead pursue what exactly well I
• 1:16:25
  think that like I think I think I said this before but it gets a little weird when you start
• 1:16:31
  throwing around words like meaning and purpose and and you know what's my passion I think these
• 1:16:37
  these words are murky at best in terms of what they mean and they also make us all feel bad because
• 1:16:43
  it's like I don't know what my purpose is or like what's my passion you know it's like we feel like
• 1:16:47
  we should have all of these things right and it's like well why don't you pursue something meaningful to
• 1:16:52
  you and you're like I don't even know what that what that means right so I think the way into into
• 1:16:58
  that is rather than like parsing all of those words is just to pay attention to your curiosity and
• 1:17:03
  where it naturally gravitates towards and making a conscious decision to invest in pursuing those
• 1:17:08
  things and I think that over time that leads you in directions that will engender your life with
• 1:17:14
  meaning and some path will get laid before you where you can make decisions that will you know
• 1:17:20
  bring those things that you aspire to have more into your life and then happiness kind of
• 1:17:25
  emerges out of out of that journey we spoke at the start rich about why you do the podcast
• 1:17:32
  and you confess that of course it's also partly just the personal reasons of self-aggrandizement
• 1:17:36
  you know to be underestimated whatever does legacy does your legacy matter to you
• 1:17:46
  I really don't think about that and I don't think that it's it's uh
• 1:17:50
  it's you know it's mine to define like that's like you know let that's like a you know like
• 1:17:58
  somebody writing a review on your life you know it's like I want to be the one I had some filmmakers
• 1:18:06
  in here the other day Jay do this guy Jay do applause he's like you know he's like he's fantastic
• 1:18:11
  right and he was talking about you know why he chooses to make the films that he makes in his
• 1:18:18
  relationship with you know kind of how they're received and you know and he basically made this
• 1:18:22
  point that a lot of filmmakers make which is like you know there's the movie that you have in your
• 1:18:26
  head when you write it and then there's the movie that like you actually captured on camera and
• 1:18:30
  then you go into the editing room and that's a whole other movie and then you share it with the
• 1:18:34
  world and it's not your movie at all anymore it's the world's movie and they get to decide like
• 1:18:39
  what it means to them and all of that and I think our lives are like that like we share our lives
• 1:18:43
  with other people and it's up to them to make a determination of of what that of what that means
• 1:18:49
  and I think I think thinking about legacy is good as is good in so far is that it creates kind of like
• 1:18:59
  a way of of making decisions like if you have a sense of like this is how I would like to be perceived
• 1:19:06
  or what I would like my life to mean but I think it's something that can also become like a weird
• 1:19:16
  byproduct of self-obsession you know I just don't think it's healthy to think about legacy like I try
• 1:19:21
  to I do think about like how I would like my you know when I'm gone like how I would like my
• 1:19:28
  children to talk about me or how how I would like them to think about like the decisions that I
• 1:19:33
  made professionally and as a and as a parent and things like that so but I don't like it's like
• 1:19:38
  what do you want your tombstone to say right like I don't really spend any time thinking about that
• 1:19:42
  I remember Conan O'Brien saying that he thinks of each show as being a tile in a mosaic and you
• 1:19:49
  can't focus too much on perfecting each tile and you can't focus too much on what the mosaic is
• 1:19:54
  going to end up looking like you just have to plot plot all you know if you move forward
• 1:19:58
  putting together the mosaic and have faith that at the end of your life the mosaic will be something
• 1:20:03
  mm-hmm yeah all right check out the mosaic by subscribing to Rich Ross podcast buying all of his
• 1:20:08
  book subscribing to his sub-stack even though you haven't really published that you're going to
• 1:20:12
  at some point and following comfortable conversations for many more conversations but not quite as
• 1:20:16
  insightful as this one Rich thank you thank you man as I said at the outset like when I sit down
• 1:20:22
  with you I've never I'd never have any like I usually kind of know like what somebody's going to
• 1:20:26
  want to ask me and with you it's like a complete crapshoot I didn't know he didn't like
• 1:20:33
  good thank you man all right peace thanks man