Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #12: Utopia Is Possible — If We Get This One Thing Right: Byron Reese on the Age of AI

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#12: Utopia Is Possible — If We Get This One Thing Right: Byron Reese on the Age of AI · Love Conquers Fear

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I read a quote by Gene Roddenberry and he said in the
0:02
future there'll be no hunger and there'll be no greed and all the
0:05
children will know how to read. I didn't know if I believe that
0:08
or not. And so all of my books for the
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most part are about things I don't know anything about.
0:12
So I wrote a philosophy book about AI because I wondered why
0:15
there were these people in the world who we're afraid of it.
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And I wondered why there were these people in the world who
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embraced it. What did they think that was
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different? And really, it's a book about
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what are people are people machines?
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A single neuron may actually be more powerful in the
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supercomputer, and it may operate at the plank level.
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And so to think, well, yeah, we could make that is, again, an
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act of faith. And I don't have that much
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faith. You said we don't know 1% of 1%
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of anything. You know, you have to approach
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it with such humility. If I had my dream to take the
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top 2000 humans and get them to help us guide this technology to
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be the most beneficial outcome for humanities.
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We are all the descendants of the ones that scampered off
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saying it's a better, it's a better run.
1:00
And generation after generation of us just running away means
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that's who we are. We are those timid creatures who
1:06
see this shape and are like let's run, but put no heavier
1:09
burden on yourself and to be as kind as you can be and everyday
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try to be a slightly better person than you were yesterday.
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That really is all it takes to build Utopia.
1:22
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Love Conquers Fear podcast.
1:26
I am really excited to have this episode today with one of my
1:30
best friends, one of the most amazing authors, and I'm going
1:33
to get into his background in a moment.
1:35
But first of all, I just want to say that today I'm recording
1:39
this on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
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And on the first day, I didn't know exactly when it was going
1:46
to come out on Amazon because I did direct publishing.
1:51
My book The Lattice came out, and this is a science fiction
1:55
novella. It's a positive story on how
1:58
humanity could ultimately make it to the age of abundance for
2:02
all covers of the years 2030 through 2085, and it's informed
2:08
by the reading that I discussed on episode 1.
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So I did use AI as my Co creator with it, but I spent a
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tremendous amount of time on prompting, editing, really
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guiding and it felt like a real Co creation between me and AI,
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divinely guided by all of the reading that I've done.
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And some of that has come to me through my journeys, as I
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mentioned before. So I've also been doing a lot of
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other reading. I just finished a book which is
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a great one for skeptics called Why Buddhism is True.
2:53
This is a great one for people who get triggered by me saying
2:58
the word God. And as I mentioned on many
3:02
episodes now, when I say that word in your mind, just replace
3:07
it with something you feel comfortable with.
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If it's consciousness, that's fine.
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If it's the universe, that's fine.
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Whatever, Whatever you think this reality is.
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And why ever you personally think that that reality is one
3:22
that's rooted in love? Because that's what I mean when
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I talk about God again, the materialist says, grant me the
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miracle of The Big Bang and I'll explain everything to you.
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But there's a lot of things in science that are postulates that
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frankly haven't been proven. And that's not to diss science
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at all. Like I am very much a product of
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science. I care a lot about science.
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There are so many scientific discoveries that have led to the
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abundance of the world has today.
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If you go back in time 50, a hundred, 200 years ago, we are
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living in the best time in so many ways, but there are real
4:01
problems that humanity has to transcend.
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But anyways, getting back to that book, Why Buddhism is True,
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it's a great book from a science based perspective because it
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really covers how the brain has evolved and why did natural
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selection lead to the brain evolving in that way.
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And it ties back to early Buddhism and what they were
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trying to grasp at the nature of things like the self through
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meditation. And it's written by a guy,
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Robert Wright, who is a deep meditator, but is not what I
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would call deeply religious by by any sense.
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But he spends a lot of time meditating and trying to grasp
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at what a reality is. And it's an interesting journey
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through the book because it goes through all of the science that
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we have today about what we understand about the brain,
4:57
which we know very little about the brain.
5:00
Actually, there's a lot of things that haven't been
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discovered. Like, for example, you get 200
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researchers in top of their field that are studying
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consciousness. They will have very different
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opinions. You know, we talked about Anika
5:14
Harris's book Lights On and how many different opinions there
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are when it comes to what consciousness actually is.
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But one of the things I really appreciated about why Buddhism
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is true is that he ends the book and this is not a spoiler alert.
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It's not like a a thriller, but he ends the book with that
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whatever our reality is. And he says, look, I don't know
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what consciousness is. I have no idea.
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So don't ask me. I don't know, is what Robert
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Wright is saying, but he says whatever it is and whatever this
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reality is that we're in, let's all be thankful that when we do
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things like meditate and we have that sense of oneness and unity
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with the rest of humanity, that it's rooted in love, he said.
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You know, what if the reality was one where the more we
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meditated, the more we saw very dark things.
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We saw things that made us think that our reality is not rooted
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in love at all. And I think that that's a really
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fascinating way for him to end the book because he goes through
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natural selection and his deep belief and evolution, natural
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selection and how our brains evolved, but ends with beauty
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and love, which is another way to grasp at all of the ancient
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spiritual texts. So I really appreciated that.
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I am a very spiritual person, as you well know from watching this
6:45
podcast now, but I love the skeptic view as well and I
6:51
embrace the skeptic view also. So I really enjoyed that book.
6:56
I also believe I mentioned this already, but Project Hail Mary,
7:01
great, great book is recommended to me by Josh Baer, who's been
7:06
on this podcast. The founder of Capital Factory,
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one of my best friends, has done a lot for Austin, a lot for
7:13
technology in general. And it's written by Andy Weir,
7:16
who is the guy that wrote The Martian, which was also made
7:20
into a movie. Project Hail Mary is being made
7:22
into a movie right now. I think it comes out in March of
7:25
next year. And I wanted to just give this
7:28
PSA, do not watch the trailer. OK, I watched the trailer and I
7:34
had already read the book. I refused to watch the trailer
7:37
until I read the book and Oh my gosh, I'm so happy that I did
7:41
that because that trailer not only would spoil the movie for
7:46
me, but it actually would have spoiled the entire book.
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There are things that you find out 2/3 of the way into the book
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that really makes sense of what why what happened in the
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beginning happened the way it did.
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It's exposed in the trailer and I'm like, you just gave the
8:01
biggest reveals in the entire book in the trailer.
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So just stay away from it. It doesn't spoil the whole book,
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but it spoils probably a lot of it.
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I mean like 7080%. So unfortunately, that's one
8:14
where my PSA is don't watch the trailer if you have any interest
8:19
in reading the book. And the book is actually really
8:21
worthwhile on Audible. The voice character is extremely
8:27
talented and it has lots of really cool sound effects.
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So it's kind of a shout out to when the Hitchhikers got to the
8:34
Galaxy was originally broadcast on BBC.
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It kind of reminded me of that in in some ways, which I I
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really loved and appreciated. One of the best book series of
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all time. So here we are.
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We've been, we've been going at this for a while and I'm having
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a lot of fun with this podcast. And this guest, Byron Reese is
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someone that I have really, really been looking forward to
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having on. He truly is one of my best
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friends. We have amazing dinners together
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talking about the future and how humanity is ultimately going to
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make it to this age of abundance for all.
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And he's the author of five books, so I'm just going to show
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you his books here. He started out with Infinite
9:22
Progress and the subtitle here is How the Internet and
9:27
Technology Will End. Ignorance, Disease, Poverty,
9:30
Hunger, and War Sounds like something that we would all
9:34
love. The Fourth Age, which is about
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smart robots, conscious computers, and the future of
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humanity. This is a book that my good
9:46
friend John Mackey really recommended.
9:50
As a matter of fact, his recommendations right here on
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the back of the jacket. John is one of my best friends,
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the founder of Whole Foods and wrote the forward to my book.
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My first book entrepreneurs essentials wasted.
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I actually read this book on a train in Alaska, seeing some of
10:09
the most beautiful scenery of all time.
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And this book for me triggered actually a thought.
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I don't know if I've ever told Byron this, but but it triggered
10:19
a thought where I ultimately was there seeing this beautiful
10:24
landscape in the middle of nowhere.
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The only way you can even get to these places and in Alaska is by
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train. And I thought everything here is
10:32
going to be quantified. Literally everything I'm looking
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at all, all the animals, everything is going to be
10:37
quantified and that'll be a better world.
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And there was something I read in this book that triggered that
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for me. But the subtitle here is How We
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Squander Time, Money and Natural Resources and What We Can Do
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about it. His fourth book, stories, dice
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and rocks that think Byron was one of our presenters at at a
11:00
dated out world conference and we talked about this book
11:02
together and it's called the subtitle here is how humans
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learn to see the future and shape it.
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We really unpacked this book at data dot world and then his most
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recent book, but he's writing to others right now is called We
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are Agora. And this is about how humanity
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functions as a single super Organism that shapes our world
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and our future. So I, I, I think it's safe to
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say that out of all of my friends in technology and Byron
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is an amazing entrepreneur as well as a amazing author and
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human being, is that he's probably my most optimistic
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friend actually. So this is going to be
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interesting to really dive into. Why are you so optimistic and,
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and why, why write these five books?
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Like what's that journey all about?
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Well, thank you for that. I'll stand up by saying I'm not
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really a writer. I I write from 6:00 AM to 8:00
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AM every morning and I've always had a day job where where I do.
12:08
But the first book I wrote, I read a quote by Gene
12:12
Roddenderry, who started, you know, the Star Trek.
12:14
And he said, in the future, there'll be no hunger and
12:18
there'll be no greed, and all the children will know how to
12:20
read. And he said that a long time
12:22
ago. And I thought to myself, is that
12:24
true, you know, or does it just rhyme?
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And, and so I decided I didn't know if I believe that or not.
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And so all of my books, for the most part, are about things I
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don't know anything about. And that sounds like a line, but
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my books are my journeys on them.
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And so that was a book called Infinite Progress, where
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obviously I concluded that I do think in the future there'll be
12:45
no hunger and there'll be no greed, and all the children will
12:47
know how to read. And that was the book that made
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me what is known as a techno optimist, somebody who believes
12:52
the technology has the ability to help humans who are innately
12:56
good become even better. And then after that, people
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said, well, all that's really good, but what about artificial
13:03
intelligence? Isn't that really something
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different? Isn't that going to change it?
13:06
So I wrote a philosophy book about AI because I wondered why
13:10
there were these people in the world who were afraid of it.
13:13
And I wondered why there were these people in the world who
13:14
embraced it. And they were smart.
13:16
Both of them were really smart and they had the same
13:18
information. What did they think that was
13:20
different? And so I, I'm not supposed to
13:22
say it's a philosophy book because that does not
13:24
supercharge sales, but that's what it is.
13:26
And really it's a book about what are what are people
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fundamentally? What are people?
13:30
Are people machines wasted was is a pure science book and I got
13:35
interested when I when you return things, what happens to
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them and our land feels really bad and should you, you know,
13:41
wipe up the the spill with paper towel or cloth thing.
13:44
And I got into all of that stories nice and not should
13:47
think was a book that I wanted to know why people are different
13:49
than animals. That was my question.
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Why do we have all of this? And dolphins, no matter how
13:54
smart you think they are, don't really have squat.
13:57
Like, they don't even have Morse code, right?
13:58
They don't even have the Telegraph.
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What makes people different? I really struggled with that.
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That's why I wrote that book. And it's basically our ability
14:05
to perceive time. And then finally, as a
14:09
beekeeper, I learned that bees, a group of bees, actually forms
14:14
a new Organism. Not a metaphor, but an actual
14:16
new animal. A beehive is I.
14:18
Learned this through you and. Book and the and the Hive is a
14:22
has a long lifespan. It lives 100 years.
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It reproduces at the hive level. It has A1 blooded animal body
14:28
temperature is 97° even though bees are cold blooded.
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And I wondered if the same was true with people or people
14:33
biologically. It's pure biology.
14:35
Do people come together and form another Organism that we can't
14:38
perceive but exists and, and, and lives on a cosmic scale?
14:44
That was that was the those five.
14:47
And then the next one, the one I'm working on is the most fun
14:49
of any book I've ever. Had Yeah, I, I, I love talking
14:52
with you about it. It's funny because you were so
14:54
against it when I first. Pitched, I know.
14:56
I know. And you said you were at, like a
14:57
different place in your life. I know.
14:59
And it was really discouraging to me when you said, like, don't
15:01
waste your time. Yeah.
15:02
Yeah, I apologize for. That no, no, I you were telling
15:06
me what you felt. Well, but, but it actually, it
15:09
actually was rooted in fear. It really was.
15:13
It was rooted in fear because because I care about you a lot.
15:17
And I just thought people are going to write him off and I
15:21
don't want him to, I don't want people to write him off because
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he's such an amazing, amazing guy.
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And and it was, it was. I don't, I don't like that I did
15:33
that. I just, I'm, I'm just being
15:34
honest. I.
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Appreciate it. Yeah, it didn't deter me.
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It discouraged me, but I kept writing it.
15:39
And so the book, if you're curious, it's called the Open
15:42
minded Skeptic, because I think there's a big middle of people
15:47
who when they hear I saw a ghost or I saw an alien or I saw a
15:52
Bigfoot or I, I believe in astrology and all of that.
15:55
There's people who just believe in hook line and sinker and
15:58
there's people who are against it all.
16:00
And then there's a big thing in the middle of people who are
16:02
like, I don't know, it could very well be, I just don't know.
16:06
And so I asked the question, is it possible that that a lot of
16:11
these phenomenon that we regard as supernatural are actually
16:14
natural phenomenon that we just don't understand?
16:17
And really what gave me the idea about it was I read that until
16:20
18 O 4, nobody knew where meteorites came from.
16:24
And, you know, they find these hunks of metal and people said,
16:29
where, where, where do these come from?
16:30
And some people said they must blow out of volcanoes, which
16:32
isn't a bad theory. It turns out to be wrong.
16:35
But it's. But the idea that they fell out
16:37
of the sky that was considered kooky.
16:39
Nobody believed rocks could fall out of the sky.
16:42
I mean, if you just think about it, it even sounds silly.
16:44
President Jefferson thought it was ridiculous.
16:46
And then one day in 1804, there was this big meteor shower in
16:51
France and this meteor broke up and rained all these meteorites
16:54
down. And all these people saw it.
16:56
And the French Academy came out and picked them all up and
16:58
talked to everybody. And it's like, Dang it, rocks do
17:00
fall out of the sky. We now live in a world where
17:02
rocks fall out of the sky. So I've been traveling all over
17:04
the world meeting people who have claimed to have had
17:12
experiences which you would regard as supernatural.
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And I, I start by believing them that what they say they believe
17:20
and, and then ask how, how could that be?
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How can that be true? And so that's taken me to
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Morocco, to Malta, to Sardinia, to Ireland, to, I mean, Italy,
17:36
Ciuta, there's all these Gibraltar to meet these people
17:41
and talk to them. And what I'm really interested
17:44
in my, my thing I'm really interested in are people who
17:51
usually have science degrees, interestingly, who have had one
17:55
experience. I say they saw a ghost, they
17:58
have one experience and they don't want to tell me about it
18:02
and they never will let me use it.
18:06
But then at some point they're like, all right, I, I do have
18:09
this one thing and then they tell me the story.
18:13
And you see, with anybody who says I saw a ghost as an
18:16
example, one of three things is true always.
18:19
Either they're lying to you or they believe it, but they're
18:22
wrong, or they did see a ghost or whatever it happens to be.
18:27
These people aren't lying because I know that because they
18:30
don't even want to talk to me about it and they won't let me
18:32
use it. And they aren't probably aren't
18:38
fooling themselves because they're doing everything they
18:40
can to explain it away and they can't.
18:43
And so if there's anybody who has really had these
18:45
experiences, it's these folks. And I have so many stories that
18:53
are just inexplicable. You would not believe them.
18:56
I actually, I would. You know what, let me tell you,
18:59
Let me tell you a story quickly. So good friend of mine, just
19:04
recently, she and I, I, I'm not going to mention her name here,
19:10
but because, because she hasn't given me permission to share
19:14
this. And so this could be anybody,
19:16
but she was telling me the story about someone that was deceased
19:24
in her family who had a really, really tough existence and how
19:32
she went into an area that they used to live.
19:37
And she felt this an immense force and the inexplicably, like
19:45
she, she literally, she said that the way she would describe
19:48
it is it felt like her molecules were like moving around in her
19:52
body and she could feel it like she just felt like she stepped
19:56
through this, this, this force. I've, I've never felt that.
20:00
But this is, this is what she's telling me.
20:03
And she said that there was a, there was a, there's a, I'm
20:08
pointing to this table right here.
20:10
But there was something like that that just inexplicably
20:13
opened. And all these bottles fell out.
20:15
And the person she was with saw it too.
20:17
And he was like, let's get out of here right now because he
20:20
felt this. He felt this force too.
20:23
And as she's telling me this story, the lights flickered.
20:29
And she said, and we all felt it.
20:33
And she said that's never happened before.
20:37
And I was like, that was unusual because it's literally at the
20:41
exact moment. And that night was a little bit
20:47
different for me because, because I felt like I had just
20:50
experienced the four she was talking about with her as she's
20:56
recounting A childhood story. And and so I'm I'm actually very
21:02
open minded to this. I think there's a lot of things
21:05
we don't know and, and some of the books that I've read, like
21:08
Signs by Laurel and Jackson and or Journey of Souls by Michael
21:12
Newton, one of the ways that they describe soul ascension is
21:19
that there are there are there are souls that refuse to ascend
21:25
to heaven. Source.
21:26
Whatever you want to call it, because they feel like there's
21:30
something they still need to accomplish here.
21:32
Could be? What's that?
21:34
Plato even thought that I have unfinished business, Plato of
21:37
all people, like, you know, not, not a loony, right, Right.
21:42
Right. So keep going.
21:42
I'm sorry. Yeah, so, so it was just it was
21:44
just such a surreal experience because I felt what she was
21:49
talking about in that moment and and I felt I felt my body light
21:54
up when that happened. And JD Messenger, who's a really
21:58
good friend of mine who's going to be on in a future episode.
22:01
And it's written 11 days in May, which I've read now twice.
22:05
He calls those truth bumps like where, Yeah, your soul, your
22:10
soul like lights up. And and I just felt it right.
22:13
It's actually I'm feeling it right now.
22:15
But it, but it was it was it was a really profound experience.
22:19
And it was one of those things where you would have had to be
22:21
there to feel it, but it was, it was, it was very real.
22:27
Unfortunate because I haven't ever had a direct encounter.
22:30
Well, I didn't see anything. Right.
22:32
But I'm just saying I'm not going in this with something,
22:35
you know, you, you in your introduction, you're talking
22:37
about science. And I and, and, and like I, I
22:40
call myself a science writer. And science is a very specific
22:43
thing. It is the study of things that
22:45
can be measured. That's what it is.
22:47
And on things that cannot be measured, it should be agnostic.
22:54
It should say I don't know. Most often it is dismissive.
22:58
I don't believe it, which is very different.
23:01
Now, you might think that scientific truths are the only
23:04
truths that we can know because they're the only ones you can
23:07
measure, but that isn't true. Scientific truths are the only
23:11
things you can prove, which is very different than knowing.
23:15
In fact, most of the things that you know, you cannot prove.
23:18
There used to be a plaque hanging at the Chicago Tribune.
23:21
I don't know if it's still there, but it says the
23:24
newspaper, it says if your mother says she loves you, check
23:26
it out. And the joke is obviously that
23:31
you can't check it out, but you can know that your mother loves
23:33
you. And most things in life you
23:35
cannot know. I mean, the most things in life
23:38
you cannot measure, you cannot prove, but you can know many
23:41
things. And I want to pick that part of
23:44
science back that that says all these things could very well be
23:49
real. The, the range of things you can
23:51
measure is actually quite small. And so I spend a good amount of
23:54
time in the book talking about historical figures.
23:56
I mean, everybody you would admire in history, you know,
23:59
from Galileo to Copernicus to, you know, they did astrology for
24:05
people. They, they ran astrological
24:06
church. They had theories on all of
24:08
these things. Not to say they were right.
24:10
Like I said, Plato said ghosts are beings with unfinished
24:13
business. They're most often associated
24:16
seen at night in old buildings, often in white animals can see
24:21
them, but people can't. And all these things that are
24:24
very similar to what we have today and and all of those
24:28
things you can't measure. And so science I wish would just
24:31
be like, I don't know. But science says doesn't doesn't
24:34
exist. If you can't prove it, it
24:36
doesn't exist. Not if you can't prove it.
24:38
I have no opinion on it. I mean, Einstein was trying to
24:41
constantly disprove that quantum entanglement was real.
24:45
He was proving it through mathematics, but he didn't have
24:48
the scientific instrumentation to prove it.
24:51
And then later after he passed away it was proven and quantum
24:54
computing doesn't work without it.
24:56
There's a huge list of those of all these things that were
24:59
dismissed as pseudoscience, continental Dre.
25:02
I mean, I have a big list of my rattle through in the book.
25:06
And what happens is it starts with one person who does believe
25:10
it and and they're a kook. They're always a kook.
25:14
I mean, they're always regarded as a kook.
25:16
You know, one of the things that that we didn't talk about with
25:19
your background, I want to come back to to your current book
25:24
that you're writing because I find it fascinating.
25:26
I want to ask you different stories that you're learning.
25:29
But we had a we had a dinner here at the house, which
25:33
unfortunately, I don't think you can make this one.
25:38
And it's about whether or not AI could be conscious.
25:43
And Mark Gober was there. He was, you know, here on this
25:47
podcast for episode 2. And it was a really vigorous
25:51
discussion. I mean, really, really vigorous.
25:54
And one of the things that one of the very accomplished, you
25:59
know, AI entrepreneurs at this dinner said that really hurt my
26:05
heart. I literally felt the pain in my
26:08
heart when when he said this, he said, well, I've seen the job
26:15
that humanity's done. And I just thought, wow, you've
26:18
lost your love for humanity. And I know that you spent a lot
26:25
of time when you bought Giga Ohm.
26:27
I mean, that's an inexplicable story in and of itself, how you
26:30
literally bought Giga Ohm out of bankruptcy and turned it around,
26:33
turned it into research organization, etcetera.
26:36
And I was lucky enough to to be one of your investors in that.
26:40
But you spent a lot of time at Gigom on this voice is an AI
26:45
podcast and you talked with how many episodes were there A. 111.
26:50
111 and you would always ask them, do you think that AI will
26:56
ever be conscious like us? That's true, and I want to ask
26:59
you that question because you explore it in your books.
27:02
But do you know that? My answer to that I.
27:04
Already know what it is, but they don't.
27:06
OK, but you do know? I do.
27:08
OK, I have to, I have to give. I could answer that question
27:13
with two letters, but what does that tell you?
27:16
So I'm, I apologize, it's a long answer.
27:20
I love doing voices and AI. It's the most boring podcast
27:24
ever because it was me running down all these like giants.
27:30
And I was trying to document a moment and it reminded me of the
27:33
Lincoln Douglas debates when there's this moment where
27:36
something big is happening in the world and it gets distilled
27:39
down in this these these debates.
27:41
And so I wanted. Something really big was about
27:43
to happen. This is pre jet GBT launch.
27:46
This was what? What year was that again that
27:48
you started? That would have been call it.
27:51
I ran that from 2015 to 2020. OK, OK.
27:55
And, and, you know, you could feel the moment and all the
28:00
people were still alive who were a lot of pioneers in it.
28:04
And I wanted to gather them and get their thoughts and document
28:08
them. That's why we had all the
28:09
episodes very faithfully transcribed, because I think I
28:12
wanted them to be part of a record that episodes were
28:14
published in a book and all these different things.
28:17
And so it was important to me to ask them all the same basic set
28:21
of questions. And so the first question is,
28:27
well, can AI become conscious? And I have 111 guests.
28:35
All but four said yes. One of the four that said no was
28:42
Esther Dyson, who said no, computers don't have souls.
28:46
One of the four was, I believe, Nova Spivic in any case.
28:54
And if so, the next question is why do you believe that?
29:00
And they would say always machines can be conscious
29:05
because people are machines and people are conscious.
29:08
Now, if that logic is true, it's very simple.
29:12
I wrote that in the Fourth Age and my editor wrote, come on,
29:16
nobody really thinks people are just machines.
29:19
And that is the big disconnect. That is the big disconnect.
29:21
Right. The 97 of the, I'm sorry, not
29:23
97107 of the people you interviewed thought that.
29:27
Correct. And those are those are Silicon
29:30
Valley types. And for the most part, I think
29:34
they're trying to build a God because they use relation, they
29:38
use words that are religious. What they tell you is this, this
29:41
God is going to give them eternal life, is going to let
29:44
them upload themselves, which is a very religious thing.
29:47
The God knows everything and is going to tell them all the
29:49
answers to everything. And it's going to tell them how
29:51
to get free energy and it's going to usher in this state
29:55
like Eden. And I think they.
29:56
They're trying to create heaven. I think so.
29:59
I think they had these, this big void in their life and they're
30:02
desperately trying to build a God.
30:06
I'm one of the four. I would be the fifth one.
30:09
And, and, and the thing that may surprise you is you don't have
30:12
to appeal to the soul to hold that position.
30:16
And I, I say it this way, if I were to ask you a math problem
30:24
27 * 14 or something and I ask you to figure it out.
30:29
And then after you told me the answer, I said, where do you
30:32
think you thought of that? You would say, I think I felt it
30:36
in my head. And, and the fascinating thing
30:38
is that isn't that is a cultural feeling, not a biological
30:42
feeling, because for most of human history, people didn't
30:45
think it was in their head. The Egyptians who saved all the
30:48
important body parts threw the brain away because they thought
30:50
it was just for cooling the blood.
30:51
Right. I also learned that through you.
30:54
And so some people thought it was in the heart and they would
30:58
have felt that math problem in the heart.
30:59
And that's why you learn things by heart or, you know, things in
31:01
your gut. Interestingly, when you have
31:03
butterflies in your stomach, that is not a biological
31:07
feeling. That is, I mean, I'm sorry, that
31:09
is not a cultural feeling. That is a biological feeling.
31:12
You have as many neurons in your stomach as as rats have neurons
31:16
in their brains. And and that's a creature that
31:18
probably berates you for eating spicy food or something.
31:22
And that you that's a real thing.
31:24
So we have these brains that we don't understand, and to say we
31:28
don't understand them is not an exaggeration.
31:33
If I were to ask you what color was your first bicycle or who
31:36
was your third grade teacher or anything like that, even if you
31:39
haven't thought about it in a long time, you can come up with
31:42
the answer. And science does not know how we
31:44
do that little miracle. There isn't a teacher part of
31:47
the brain where they're all stored.
31:49
There isn't a bicycle part of the brain where all the colors
31:52
are stored. We don't know how a single
31:54
memory is encoded, which I find fascinating.
31:57
So you have these brains. We don't understand how they
32:00
work. I was just last week at Argonne
32:04
National Labs, which is 1 of 17 national laboratories in the
32:08
United States and I went and saw an exoscale computer and, and
32:11
they said how many watts does this use?
32:13
And they said 25,000,025 megawatts.
32:17
And the the the brain uses a millionth of that 25 watts and
32:21
and does more than that thing can.
32:23
So to think you right now state-of-the-art is it takes US
32:26
25,000,000 watts of power to to do something that that is like a
32:33
calling the brain a computer actually isn't even a very good
32:36
metaphor for it. It does.
32:37
It's not what it is. It's it's more of a pattern
32:40
recognizer anyway. So anyway.
32:42
By the way, as we're recording this, this is right when Open AI
32:46
and NVIDIA announced their partnership for 10 gigawatts.
32:50
You saw that? No, I didn't see that.
32:51
Yeah. So it's a it's $100 billion
32:55
investment. Sound of a guy.
32:57
Yeah, 10:10. I ask them like, how do you get
33:00
power for that? And they plug it into the grid.
33:02
I'm like, you actually get an electric bill.
33:04
And they're like, yeah, we get an electric bill every month
33:06
from the utility company for over $1,000,000.
33:09
It's also really funny, but well, never mind.
33:11
I digress. It's, it's, it's enough.
33:13
I mean, just to give you the scale of that, it's, it's, it's
33:17
Nvidia's entire shipment globally for a year.
33:22
Wow, yes, that they've committed to through this kind of mutual
33:27
exchange. It's an interesting time where
33:29
Open AI and NVIDIA are essentially creating a mutual
33:32
exchange where they invest and then open AI gets access to four
33:38
and a half million NVIDIA chips. And it's yeah, it's 10
33:43
gigawatts, 10 gigawatts. That's a lot of power.
33:47
Yeah. I mean, makes 25 megawatts sound
33:51
like, right? Or the 25.
33:54
Watts, right, Or the 25 watts in your brain, you know, your whole
33:57
body only uses 100 watts and 25 of them, it's funny.
34:00
Babies only use about 40 watts and 25 of them are their brains.
34:04
So when you're born, you're just really a brain.
34:06
It's just a little bit around you to keep you alive.
34:08
All right, right. So we have these brains we don't
34:12
understand. Now here's what's cool is they
34:14
give rise to minds that we don't understand.
34:17
Now what is a mind? A mind is everything that the
34:20
brain can do. That doesn't seem like something
34:22
an organ can do. For instance, you have a sense
34:24
of humor, but your heart doesn't have a sense of humor.
34:30
You wouldn't ever think that. Or your stomach doesn't have a
34:32
sense of humor. So where does that come from?
34:33
What is that? Even so the brain can.
34:36
The brain does all these things and we call it the mind.
34:39
Where does creativity come from and all these things?
34:41
We just don't know. And it might not actually even
34:43
be centered in the brain. I don't know if you have
34:45
opinions on that. If the mind is, we know that the
34:48
body has memory throughout right?
34:50
Like the immune system is a distributed memory of pathogens.
34:55
We also know the brain doesn't really direct function any case.
35:00
So you have these and the. Theory I have on that is I
35:03
believe. The mind is outside of the body.
35:05
Well, I believe that consciousness is fundamental and
35:08
the brain is a filter and, and antenna for it.
35:11
If, if we if we were able to constantly get the stream of
35:16
consciousness that you get through a Transcendental
35:19
Meditation experience or psychedelics, it would be too
35:22
much. It would just be too much.
35:23
And so the ego actually protects us by filtering a lot of
35:29
consciousness. And you know, our human eyes in
35:34
the world of material form, which is 4% of the universe,
35:38
right as matter, our human eyes only see 15%.
35:41
Even in the world of form, like animals do see a lot more than
35:45
us depending on what the animal is like ultraviolet light, the
35:48
magnetic energy, etcetera. So that we, we just, we just
35:52
don't, we just don't see that much even of reality.
35:56
And that's if we're really paying attention, right?
35:58
There's a lot of reality that a lot of times just passes us by.
36:02
I mean, you can have something very profound happening right in
36:05
front of you, but you're, but you're, you're thinking of
36:08
something totally different and miss it, right?
36:10
There could be a huge, huge sign right in front of you, right?
36:14
That's true. Pay attention to.
36:17
So you have these minds we don't understand and then there's
36:19
consciousness. And I'll be brief with that
36:21
because you've talked about it a lot.
36:22
The consciousness has been called the the last great
36:25
scientific problem. We don't even know how to ask
36:28
scientifically. We don't know how you answer it
36:30
scientifically. We don't know what the answer
36:32
looks like scientifically. And so we have brains we don't
36:35
understand that perhaps give rise to mice.
36:37
We don't understand that somehow perhaps cause consciousness.
36:41
And yet 107 people said, oh, we can make that a fab in Palo
36:46
Alto. Exactly.
36:47
And you see, that's why I knew it was an act of faith on their
36:49
part, right? That's what I knew.
36:51
It was an act of faith, I think, and I could be wrong.
36:54
I think it was Nova Spivak who said a single neuron may
36:57
actually be more powerful in the supercomputer and it may operate
37:02
at the Planck level, which is the fundamental resolution of
37:05
the universe and. Tiniest known measurement.
37:09
Is there something you can't cut in half?
37:11
Yeah. And and it may be a quantum,
37:14
which is what Penrose believes. And so to think, well, yeah, we
37:20
could make that. Oh, we can make that.
37:22
That is again an act of faith. And I don't have that much
37:24
faith. So I, I would first return the
37:27
question around and say, why do you believe we can manufacture
37:30
that if you don't know anything about it?
37:33
But I and so that's why I'm saying you don't have to appeal
37:38
to the soul, but I would be more inclined, you know, to to agree
37:42
with Yoda. You know, Yoda's like luminous
37:44
beings or we look not this crude matter.
37:47
And then I use Sir. If that's true, if Yoda's right,
37:49
then you sure can't make it. Well, at our, at our root, I
37:52
mean everything at the quantum level is light and energy and we
37:56
know that. Luminous beings are, we are.
37:58
We are well, well, actually we, we already know that.
38:00
We we know that it's all light and energy at the base level.
38:04
Did you see that when I just read this yesterday when and I
38:06
just saved the article? When people die, they give off a
38:08
flash of light. I haven't read that.
38:11
OK. That was just yesterday.
38:12
I read that it's a wonderful universe.
38:17
I mean, and to think we know it so well.
38:22
Who was it? It was I think Ford who said we
38:25
don't know 1% of 1% of anything. You know, you have to approach
38:29
it with such humility. I'm sorry.
38:31
Go ahead. Yeah, I, I, I agree.
38:33
And, and you know, I find it fascinating that I don't know if
38:37
you've been following this or not, but Mustafa Suleiman, who's
38:40
the Co founder of DeepMind, in charge of everything AI,
38:43
Microsoft is, is constantly sounding the alarm.
38:48
He's done it now almost every day to say, hey, these are not
38:54
sentient beings, these being AI and they fake consciousness, but
39:02
we have to be super, super intentional and deliberate at
39:06
giving them the rights of human beings because they're not
39:10
conscious. He's like, look, I'm telling you
39:11
at Microsoft and we know AI and they're not, they're not
39:15
conscious. But more, there's a movement
39:18
where more and more people, I had a kneel on here, which I
39:20
don't know if you know a kneel, but really, really smart
39:24
scientist. And there's a movement where he
39:27
said, I think 8 or 9 nonprofits now have been set up solely with
39:31
the goal to give AI rights as a conscious entity, as a conscious
39:36
being. We sure would have to say, and
39:38
we don't. Even know what consciousness is.
39:40
We agree on that. Yes, we would still have to say,
39:43
I hope you would agree that if there's any chance it's
39:46
conscious, it has to have rights because human history is too
39:51
long of us saying I I I'm not sure this is one of my books and
39:55
nobody believes this, but you can Google it.
39:57
It's well documented that veterinarians in the United
40:01
States until 1995 were taught animals don't feel pain and they
40:05
would that they just mimic it. And so they wouldn't anesthetize
40:11
dogs when they would operate on, they did open heart surgery on
40:13
babies and up until the 90's, the 1990s, because they believed
40:18
they couldn't actually feel pain.
40:20
We even operated on babies. I did open heart surgery on
40:22
babies up until the 90s. And it's too easy to say
40:26
something. But I mean, again, there's no
40:28
inkling of it. The problem is we give them
40:31
names. We give these AI's names and we
40:34
code them to represent themselves as beings.
40:37
So when you ask ChatGPT something, it says I have not
40:42
been trained on that. So it represents itself as a
40:44
being not well, any a number of ways to do it.
40:48
We name things Alexa, we name things Siri.
40:52
And I, I put in one of my books about how when people's Roomba
40:55
breaks, you know, the Roomba, the vacuum cleaner, sure they
40:58
don't want it. They don't want it replaced.
41:00
They want their Roomba back because they have a grown
41:03
attached to it. And and if that's the case, just
41:07
imagine when grandpa has a caregiver who's vaguely Android
41:12
in shape, who smiles and laughs and tells jokes and listens to
41:16
grandpa's jokes and all of that. And it's going to be very
41:19
confusing. And then it is just going to be
41:22
1's, the zeros. You know, in the end, you have
41:24
to realize Chaji Beti's coated with Python, And that means it's
41:28
just math. Every query you ask, it could be
41:32
just a math equation on a wall. And a math equation is not
41:35
alive. There's nothing alive about
41:37
that. And that math equation on that
41:39
wall is not conscious. I just think people are more
41:43
than that. When, when, when you rewind in
41:46
time to the launch of ChatGPT November 30th of 2022.
41:53
And as we're recording this, it hasn't even hit the three-year
41:55
mark. And I think you would agree that
41:59
humanities never prioritized anything with this much money,
42:02
time, energy as as this moment. I mean, you know, I talked about
42:07
the fact that when President Trump announced Stargate on
42:11
January 21st at 500 billion of funding alongside Larry Ellison,
42:14
my UC son Sam Altman, that is more funding inflation adjusted
42:19
than we spent on the Manhattan Project.
42:21
It's more than we spent on the space race versus the Russians,
42:24
inflation adjusted, right? We're so far beyond that at this
42:27
point. I mean, we're in the trillions
42:28
and trillions of dollars pledge from the UAE, etcetera, all over
42:32
the world. And you know, it was four months
42:36
after the launch of ChatGPT where there was the moratorium
42:40
call. It was March of 2023.
42:44
I'm just curious, I should remember this because I know we
42:47
talked about it at the time, but I thought it was completely
42:50
ridiculous. And I went on a podcast with
42:53
Worley on the Austin Next podcast, which you and I have
42:55
been on. Shout out to Jason Scharf and
42:57
his team there. And I just thought this is so
43:01
ridiculous. This is like, you know, Byron's
43:06
tribe back in the prehistoric days, discovering fire and
43:10
saying, Brett, your tribe's not going to have fire.
43:13
And and it's just, it's just a kind of a ludicrous concept
43:16
because I really view what is happening here with AI like
43:21
electricity. I mean, it's going to affect
43:22
every single business, some businesses much more than
43:26
others. But eventually, when it gets
43:28
embodied with robotics, it'll affect pretty much everything
43:33
and our way of life. And I'm just curious what was
43:35
going on in your brain, you know, when the moratorium call
43:38
happened? So the first thing I did months
43:40
after the first thing I did, is when I looked at the list of
43:42
people who signed it. Yeah, it was a loud.
43:44
List, yeah, 30 thousand 30,000 people.
43:47
And I thought, well, I'm sure they're just nobody from
43:49
nowhere. And then I started looking at
43:51
the list and it's like, no, these are real, real impressive.
43:54
Must sign the list. And and then you would think to
43:56
yourself, all of these people are worried.
43:58
We all should be. Then I looked into it deeper and
44:01
I read their letter and I think here's what I think happened
44:05
when it happened. You have to.
44:08
I'm sure you remember it was a shocker.
44:10
NN was a shocker, right? Like the first time I used it.
44:14
It's really funny. I had all these sample questions
44:16
I would test these things on and nothing would ever pass them.
44:19
And it passed them with fine colors.
44:21
And I'm like, well they just trained it on my stuff cuz I've
44:23
written about this. And it used to be when I would
44:25
write articles about the kinds of questions these chat bots
44:28
can't answer, they would fix them within like an hour of my
44:30
article coming out so that they did work on those.
44:35
Like they just did that. And then I started asking really
44:37
nuanced and hard questions and it just aced them all.
44:40
And then I would get on the phone with all these people and
44:42
I would be like, Oh my God, all these AI people.
44:45
We'd be like, did you see this coming?
44:46
No. And I remember Pablos Holman
44:49
said something to me. He said, he said, Byron, we've
44:52
spent all of our careers talking to people about exponential
44:55
curves and about how, and he said we just got hit by an
44:58
exponential curve and all this us telling people, oh, no, you
45:02
know, you should prepare, you know, exponential curves and all
45:04
that. We just got hit by 1.
45:06
So what, what changed my mind about it?
45:09
What, what really? When you read the letter,
45:13
there's something called a pull quote.
45:14
And that's what they put in the middle of the letter in big
45:16
letters. That's the conclusion of the
45:18
letter. This isn't me pulling some fine
45:20
print. It's the middle of the letter,
45:21
the pull quote. It says powerful AI.
45:23
I'm paraphrasing a powerful AI. Systems should not be built
45:27
until we are confident that they will be beneficial and that
45:31
their threats can be managed. And there's not a technology
45:37
we've ever created that could pass that test.
45:39
Think about that before it's created.
45:43
Could you have said that about the, the, the printing press?
45:46
I'm confident that the results would be positive and the risk
45:49
would manage. And it's no, I mean, it was
45:52
like, 'cause the Protestant Reformation, it caused all these
45:54
things. I don't even know if that
45:56
sentence is true about the Internet 30 years in.
45:58
I don't know if today I'm confident that that if the
46:03
results are going to be beneficial and that the risks
46:05
can all be managed. And so the idea that before you
46:08
ever use the technology, you have to know that is, is a
46:11
standard, no technology is ever in the history of the world been
46:15
able to muster. And so you say, OK, then what is
46:18
that? That is a a statement of fear.
46:21
And I think what happened is as much as ChatGPT surprised me and
46:25
Pavlos and all the other people, it surprised the people who made
46:28
it. They were shocked at how bad it
46:30
was. And they were like, they built a
46:32
machine and they turned that machine on and and they don't
46:36
know what it's going to do. And they were just like,
46:39
everybody just stop. Everybody just stop.
46:42
And I remember I tell people this story that when we were
46:45
timid little primates Youngs ago, we would be playing on a
46:50
rock one morning, one foggy morning or whatever.
46:53
And off in the distance you'd see a shape.
46:56
And as a little foggy And everybody's, all of them are
46:59
looking at it. And, and some of them start
47:02
yelling, it's a bear ride ride. And some of them are like, it's
47:06
just a big rock, don't worry about it.
47:08
And most of them would scamper off because he thought it was a
47:10
bear. And it was almost always a rock.
47:13
But every now and then it was a bear.
47:15
And when it was a bear, it was those optimist that got eaten
47:19
and they were the ones taken out.
47:21
And we are all the descendants of the ones that scampered off
47:24
saying it's a bear, it's a bear run.
47:27
And generation after generation of us just running away, saying
47:30
it's a bear run, run means that's who we are.
47:33
We are those timid creatures who see the shape and they're like,
47:38
let's run away. And that's what I think it is.
47:43
That's, that's a, that's a really interesting way to put
47:47
it. And you know, how do you think
47:49
we got from that moment, March of 2023 to this moment where we
47:55
are so far past the GPT 4 moment?
47:58
You know, that was when GP24 came out and that was the one
48:01
where people are like shut it down, pause, you know, 6 month
48:05
moratorium. We got to figure out what's
48:07
going on. I think I've never come across a
48:12
technology that I still don't know how to use.
48:17
I still don't know everything I can do with it.
48:20
Somebody gives you a pocket knife, You're like, oh, you got
48:22
4 blades. I know what to do with these.
48:23
Even the Internet, our early metaphors of the Internet, where
48:25
it's a library, it's a store, it's a, it's a, it's a phone
48:29
directory, it's a discussion group, it's a bulletin board.
48:33
We had all these things we could anchor it to, I believe.
48:41
Had I ever told you my whole there used to be one place to
48:44
store data, DNA, and then story? Have I told you that narrative?
48:50
Well, it's in, it's in your books.
48:51
OK. Yeah, we heard clinically, but
48:54
but a lot of people haven't heard it.
48:55
Well, all stories begin at The Big Bang and that's 12 billion
49:01
years ago. And there was a sun where a star
49:03
where our sun was and it came and went and then another one
49:06
came and went and our star is a third generation star.
49:09
So there's been a lot of history before I sold a system when we
49:12
got here 4 billion years ago. The Earth is created and it
49:15
starts to cool and immediately life forms.
49:18
And that's a big mystery for two reasons.
49:20
It's a mystery when why it happened so quickly and why it
49:24
only ever happened once, and we know it only happened once or it
49:27
only survived once because all life is related to each other.
49:31
You put in the introduction just now that all humans are 99%
49:37
their DNA matches each other. 99.9%.
49:39
Correct. With chimps is 99%, with bananas
49:43
it's still 60%. So you share 60% of your DNA
49:46
with a banana. There's one kind of life on this
49:48
planet that actually. Explains a lot.
49:51
Yeah, exactly. And, and, and that life is DNA,
49:54
life and DNA is not alive. It is, it is exactly like a
49:58
flash drive. It, it stores data in binary.
50:00
Interestingly, it looks like it's 4 characters, but they're
50:04
mirrored, so it's only two different characters.
50:06
And it holds 600 megabytes of data.
50:09
And so for three million years, nothing happened.
50:12
We just had that one place to store data, which was DNA.
50:16
Then the Cambrian explosion happened.
50:17
There was a second place to store data called brains.
50:21
And then 440,000 years ago, speech came along and we could
50:25
exchange data with each other. And what that meant is that it
50:29
might take a creature 100,000 years to learn not to eat some
50:32
purple Berry, to evolve an aversion to some poisonous
50:35
purple Berry. But I can say to you, hey,
50:37
Brett, don't eat that Berry. It'll kill you.
50:39
And now you know that. And it's just like a mutation in
50:42
your DNA. Think about that.
50:43
It took an animal 100,000 years to learn that and it took you
50:48
one second. And that's why we did this.
50:51
That's I just saved you 1495 of buying stories, dice and rocks
50:55
to think because that's what happened to us.
50:57
We learned how to evolve every minute by exchanging information
51:01
with each other. So then we then just 4000 years
51:05
ago, we got a third place to store information, which was
51:08
writing and we could externalize thoughts for the first time in
51:11
in data. But it was real expensive.
51:13
So we only saved a few things like Plato.
51:16
And then 400 years ago Gutenberg comes along and we get a cheap
51:24
storage of data all we want. And 40 years ago, so 4 billion
51:28
years ago, the earth, 400 million years ago, brains,
51:30
400,000 years ago we came along. 40,000 years ago we got speech.
51:34
4000 years ago we got writing. 400 years ago we got Gutenberg.
51:38
40 years ago we started digitizing our knowledge.
51:41
And four years ago, we got chatty fatigue and you see, up
51:44
until. Not even 4, not even 4.
51:46
Now you did all of it would be. I understand.
51:49
So, but by the time you're hearing this, dear, dear
51:51
listener, So what that meant is have you, have you thought of
51:56
the ridiculousness of when you do a Google search and you ask
52:00
Google a question, what is the difference between a cold and
52:03
the flu? Google's like I got 31 million
52:05
answers for that. Here's the 1st 10.
52:07
Right? Just how ridiculous that is that
52:09
they would brag that all human knowledge is fragmented in the
52:12
31 million different sites? Exactly.
52:15
And So what, ChatGPT? Is and it returned it in like
52:18
you know .0000. But but it's to our shame that
52:22
all of that knowledge is still scattered and ChatGPT and these
52:26
LLMS are the first time we've ever consolidated all human
52:29
knowledge into one knowledge base.
52:31
I gave a speech on how to teach science just last week, and I
52:36
said for the first time ever, you can have a conversation with
52:42
the accumulated knowledge of the universe as far as we know it.
52:46
And there are people who don't want to let students use that.
52:51
Yeah, in in every language. Yeah, across languages.
52:54
You can talk to the knowledge base of all humans.
52:57
Yeah, but you can talk to all of Japanese content in English, you
53:02
know, and get the results translated back for you in real
53:07
time. You know, I gave a very simple
53:09
example on this podcast a couple of episodes ago, being in Japan
53:14
and having a vegetarian diet because I've been vegetarian now
53:17
for around 15 years and saying, OK, I'm considering these 10
53:22
restaurants, but I really want to know the Japanese insider
53:26
view around these. So I only want the reviews in
53:29
Japanese on these 10 restaurants and I want to see which ones
53:33
would be best suited for this type of diet.
53:36
Here are the types of things we like.
53:38
And it gives me back the report. And it's such a simple example,
53:42
but I mean, just think about what's happening there.
53:44
Like, I don't know Japanese, you know, I would have been limited
53:48
to the American reviews if I was on Google because I would the
53:52
English reviews because it would need to understand it.
53:56
And so I, it would be biased. It would not be native language
53:59
Japanese speakers that are having a Japanese diet on a
54:03
regular basis. And so I got the authentic
54:06
information back in English, you know, and it's such a simple
54:10
example, but just think about all the things that have to
54:12
happen for that to happen. You know, I wrote that
54:17
philosophy book on AI, and if I went back to revise it today, I
54:23
wouldn't change anything except one page where I was
54:25
spectacularly wrong. Just spectacularly wrong.
54:30
In theory. Something like ChatGPT, which
54:33
doesn't understand the world, right?
54:36
It's probabilistic, the associations of words.
54:40
I put something like, if there were 100 planets that had an
54:44
Internet for 1000 years, you could probably build that
54:48
system. We have one planet and the
54:50
internet's brand spanking you, right?
54:52
Like the shrink wrap still on that thing.
54:54
It's 30 years old for all intents and purposes.
54:58
And I said there's no way there's enough knowledge on it
55:02
to do that. And I was so wrong.
55:05
I remember actually the moment when when I think I was on the
55:09
phone with you the day after you found that out, that that page
55:14
in your book was spectacularly. Wrong.
55:16
I love it. I love it because I remember
55:22
Penn Jillette, the magician, he says.
55:24
Magicians love to be tricked and fooled, and I love to be wrong
55:28
to have some optimistic prediction of mine be exceeded
55:35
beyond what I could even imagine.
55:38
Me a professional imaginer. I love it.
55:41
And so that's why I think, you know, humanity is sort of
55:46
started to like had this collective, aha, like this is a
55:51
big deal. And that's why you have to tell
55:53
the story. Starting 4 billion years ago,
55:55
there was one place to store data, then two, then three, and
55:57
now there's 4th and it's an LLM. It's the aggregated distilled,
56:03
consolidated human. And then like I said, someday in
56:08
six months, they're going to put it in a a robot and just going
56:12
to have servos and soft feeling skin and it's going to smile
56:18
when you tell it a joke and all that.
56:19
It's going to be a terrible day for me because all the people
56:22
are going to call me and say, well, now it's alive.
56:24
It's a creature, isn't it? And it's like, no.
56:27
Yeah, yeah, there's a, there's a lot to to unpack with that.
56:34
I mean, you know, one thing that I think is important to discuss
56:40
for people watching this is a lot of people are watching this
56:43
that aren't yet that proficient at even using an LOL.
56:49
Like as much as Chachi PT or Claude or Jim and I has had an
56:54
impact for me or for you, There's a lot of people who've
56:59
almost never used it. I think that the the average
57:04
weekly users as of right now for ChatGPT is 200 million a week.
57:09
OK, That's that means they use it at least once a week, 200
57:13
million people out of 8.2 billion.
57:17
So what would you say to the people watching this who
57:22
literally A have never used ChatGPT, B have used it once and
57:28
like, I don't know what to really do with this.
57:31
And C are saying I need to understand what they're talking
57:36
about and why they're talking about it in such in in these
57:39
such excited ways. Like I need to prepare myself
57:42
for that future. Like what would you say?
57:45
What should they do today? Like.
57:47
Well, first, should they? Then do the next.
57:49
Day, I would say don't worry. First of all, you're not behind,
57:54
and I want to actually answer this question in a slightly
57:57
different way. So right before we started, I
57:59
asked you, what was your goal with this podcast and what did
58:03
you say? I said that if I had my dream
58:07
with it, it would be to take the top 2000 humans that influence
58:16
the 8.2 billion and get them to have a heart shift so that they
58:24
help us guide this technology to be the most beneficial outcome
58:32
for humanity so that we can manifest that age of abundance
58:35
for all. Because I'm actually very techno
58:38
optimist about it. My biggest fear.
58:42
And I am operating from a place of love and in putting this out
58:45
there because I believe I'm 95% certain that we're going to make
58:50
it to this age of abundance for all.
58:52
But my biggest fear and the 5% chance that we don't is that if
59:00
we don't get over that fear based scarcity, 0 sum mindset,
59:06
that a leader that's in charge of a really big amount of
59:11
people, let's say Putin for example, uses it in a way to
59:17
create more oppression. And that if they don't have this
59:23
heart shift. While I I believe what's
59:26
happening right now spiritually is that this is God's final exam
59:30
for humanity. And the reason I believe that is
59:35
that all of the things you just laid out, you know, the Earth,
59:39
actually, I think the actual math is 4.54 billion years old
59:43
and life started 4 billion years ago.
59:47
And hominids started 4,000,000 years ago and Homo sapiens
59:50
started 250,000 years ago. And it was you that actually
59:53
educated me on this. And I was like, wow, I've never
59:57
heard that. And I've asked people this a lot
59:59
and I've talked about it on the podcast now a number of times
1:00:01
and always giving you credit for it, that it was 50 to 70,000
1:00:05
years ago that were in the Ice Age and there was a super
1:00:08
volcano event and it blocked out the skies and we got down to
1:00:13
somewhere between 800 and several thousand Homo sapiens.
1:00:17
And if our core nature was evil, it would have been all over
1:00:20
them. And there's a lot of things I've
1:00:23
laid out in this podcast already on why I think we're going to
1:00:26
make it, and largely influenced by my friendship with you, You
1:00:30
know, that we made it with smallpox, that today we've made
1:00:33
it with nuclear weapons. I mean, I think it's really
1:00:36
shocking that that we have 13,000 nuclear weapons today and
1:00:43
the math is just 2%, 2% of what we have today. 150th would
1:00:50
destroy all the cities and send the world into a nuclear winter
1:00:57
for a decade and wipe out billions of humans and untold
1:01:01
numbers of animals. Just 2%.
1:01:04
And we're still producing them, right?
1:01:06
And the acronym for this is MAD, Mutually assured Destruction.
1:01:11
And, and so I think that God is working through us in this final
1:01:16
exam. And if we pass, which I think we
1:01:21
will, then we get access to the rest of the universe, which as
1:01:26
far as we know is infinite. We don't, we don't think it has
1:01:29
any borders. And we just, we just continue to
1:01:32
find out that it's more and more infinite than we can even
1:01:34
imagine. I'm in the vastness here is
1:01:37
unfathomable. Just how many galaxies there
1:01:39
are, you know, how many planets? And it's just mind boggling
1:01:43
math, you know, when you really think about it.
1:01:46
And I think that us making it, we have a very Star Trek like
1:01:50
future where we're only bound by the laws of physics of which we
1:01:54
don't really understand today. And I, I want us to make it.
1:01:58
And that's why I'm doing this project.
1:02:00
But it starts with the people that are in control of the most
1:02:06
of us having a heart shift. And I think that God is forcing
1:02:10
them to make that decision. Do they want to choose A world
1:02:14
of abundance for all or do they want to cling on to the power
1:02:19
and control and the world of form where, you know, it's all
1:02:24
about how much they have. And I really think that there's
1:02:29
a lot of people that measure themselves that way.
1:02:31
I mean, I, I believe that I see it.
1:02:34
I see it all the time. I may see some, you know, mega
1:02:37
billionaire like Jeff Bezos, for example, who I look up to Jeff
1:02:43
Bezos in many ways as an innovator.
1:02:45
But you know, you could say $600 million yacht, you know, his new
1:02:50
bride, he literally you can't make this stuff up.
1:02:53
He puts a bronze statue of his bride as a mermaid on the front
1:02:59
of the $600 million yacht as like a token, you know, to to
1:03:05
her. And, you know, that's a lot of
1:03:08
money, $600 million is a lot of money.
1:03:11
And you know, that's a that's a yacht of unfathomable
1:03:17
proportion. They cost around $60 million a
1:03:20
year to maintain. And I'm a capitalist like I I
1:03:23
have no, no problem with capitalism.
1:03:26
I think capitalism. I'm with John Mackey on that.
1:03:28
You and I have him as a mutual friend that it's lifted billions
1:03:32
of us out of starvation and poverty.
1:03:35
But if we continue to just measure ourselves on how much we
1:03:41
can accumulate, which there's no spiritual text or any meditative
1:03:47
text or any, you know, text about how to live a wholesome
1:03:52
good life, that shows that that's the way that you lead to
1:03:56
a path of happiness. It only starts with with an
1:04:00
inner journey that transforms you.
1:04:03
And you know, in Christianity, it's the Kingdom of God is found
1:04:05
within you. And I think that that people are
1:04:10
trying to grasp at our reality and that deep yearning that you
1:04:15
talked about earlier in the podcast, that deep, deep
1:04:18
yearning of what is it that makes us most human.
1:04:22
And I think we're being tested now because because what we're
1:04:24
talking about is an acceleration of technology and a prioritize
1:04:29
prioritization of technology where I think I think that I
1:04:33
think the vast majority of humanity is going to have access
1:04:36
to artificial superintelligence in 10 years.
1:04:39
And that's amazing in so many ways, right?
1:04:41
We can create billions of products and services that are
1:04:45
personalized that we can't imagine today and just have
1:04:49
unfathomable abundance even for places like Chad.
1:04:53
But the biggest risk to that is people using the technology to
1:04:59
do the competitive form game, like create this oppressive
1:05:05
environment. And in a way, there already are
1:05:09
very dystopian things that we have to deal with today.
1:05:12
I mean, I think you would agree that we're being algorithmically
1:05:15
programmed right now and hijacked with our amygdala by
1:05:20
the news constantly pushing us fear If we just sit there and
1:05:25
receive it, that's what's going to come to me on my phone.
1:05:28
I've got to go seek out and break out of the Matrix to
1:05:31
ultimately find positive news with social media.
1:05:36
It's trying to hijack our amygdala to constantly keep us
1:05:39
in a stress state and keep us constantly being pushed.
1:05:44
You know, the latest salacious thing.
1:05:46
So engagement. And you know the the engagement
1:05:50
equals enragement algorithm. Meta made $45 billion in free
1:05:56
cash flow last quarter. Like Mark Zuckerberg was just at
1:06:00
that dinner with President Trump and pledged $600 billion towards
1:06:05
AI and is building a Manhattan size data center, like literally
1:06:11
the size of Manhattan. The interesting thing about that
1:06:16
is that he also is doing open source with Meta with the llama
1:06:21
model. So that's good, you know, but
1:06:25
it's, but it's, yeah, I've got all these.
1:06:26
Well. I'm trying to unpack.
1:06:28
That I mean, you know, in. My own mind you.
1:06:30
Know, I think I get the sense from you, you say the 95%
1:06:34
number, but I don't know that you really believe it.
1:06:36
I do believe it. OK, I really do.
1:06:37
Because you always like but 5. Percent, 5% It to me is a scary
1:06:44
risk because because 5% literally means in my mind it's.
1:06:48
The way you say these things almost seem insurmountable.
1:06:52
You list them all. You got the rage machine and you
1:06:54
have the power people and you have all these things and all
1:06:57
these things. I get the sense that 95% is the
1:06:59
number you hope it is and the number you.
1:07:01
Want I I really? No, I really think it is 90. 5%
1:07:04
say address a bunch of what you said I agree with much of.
1:07:06
What? I'm just laying out the wrist to
1:07:08
really unpack the 5%. OK, I would say this, you know,
1:07:12
first of all, I agree with much of what you said.
1:07:14
You're talking to a guy who started a website
1:07:16
calledhappynews.com who wanted to report positive, upbeat news.
1:07:19
And it was super popular. I mean, I and, and and they had
1:07:23
millions people a month. I didn't make any money.
1:07:24
Everybody's like, you can't make money off happy news.
1:07:26
And they were all right to turn down, right?
1:07:28
I remember when my friend Zachary Carabel with the
1:07:31
Progress Network hit 50,000 subscribers.
1:07:33
He does this as a nonprofit. He was a Advisory Board member
1:07:37
at Data dot World, a very good friend, fellow author.
1:07:41
And I was like, Oh my gosh, I think it took you 4 years to hit
1:07:47
50,000. I didn't say that, but that was
1:07:49
what I was thinking. I was like, are you serious?
1:07:51
Like 4 years to hit 50,000 subscribers Cost of news.
1:07:55
I agree with you that it would be wonderful if people had a
1:07:58
change of heart. I agree with you that people's
1:08:00
values are bent. There are people I'm close to
1:08:04
who when they talk about somebody else's wealth, they say
1:08:08
they are worth $500 million, which also implies if somebody
1:08:13
has no money, they are worthless to to say somebody's worth is
1:08:17
the money they have. That's a very good point, yeah,
1:08:19
language matters, yeah. Correct.
1:08:23
And I would love those 2000 people to have a change of
1:08:27
heart, but I would, I would where where I think we part
1:08:30
company is. If that's true, then the 99%
1:08:35
don't matter, doesn't matter what they do.
1:08:38
And I think history is just the opposite.
1:08:40
And I would go to you to. Actually, by the way, I actually
1:08:43
disagree with that. The the part of the way that the
1:08:49
2000 change is through upward pressure as well.
1:08:53
Like Gandhi was a great example of through numbers, you can
1:08:57
transform an entire country and he did it in a non violent way,
1:09:03
right? And Mandela is another example
1:09:05
of that. And so so there are these
1:09:07
historical examples of the numbers overwhelm.
1:09:11
And I do think that the heart shift is not like necessarily
1:09:16
them doing something like psychedelics or meditation.
1:09:19
It's them being able to see over the horizon and say, wow, like
1:09:25
that could be our future. And maybe I need to choose that
1:09:31
because that sounds better than where we're living right now.
1:09:36
Yeah, So I don't think, I don't think that's how history works.
1:09:39
And I will go to Jewish story, which is a lot, and the
1:09:44
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
1:09:46
And the Angel comes and you correct me because this is your
1:09:50
your I'm not Jewish, but you correct me where I'm wrong.
1:09:53
And the Angel comes to Law and Law's like, what are you going
1:09:55
to do? And he says, I'm going to go
1:09:57
destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And, And he's like, really?
1:10:01
And he's like, what if there are 30 good people in the city?
1:10:04
Would you still destroy it? And he's like, all right, fine,
1:10:06
if there's 30 good people in there, I won't destroy it.
1:10:08
And he's like, OK, well, I wonder if there are 20 good
1:10:10
people. What if there are 10 good
1:10:11
people, Right. Do you think those 10 people
1:10:15
that could save the city are the powerful people?
1:10:19
Yeah, no. No, they are the good people.
1:10:23
The power people, I think have very little.
1:10:25
They, we see them in the headline and we give them
1:10:27
outsourced influence. But if I look back across my
1:10:32
life, you often tell the story of your upbringing and how
1:10:37
important your mother was and all of that.
1:10:39
All that's very true. But also, I bet you there have
1:10:43
been two or three things that have happened to you in your
1:10:47
life. These moments that if they had
1:10:50
dawn the other way, you would have been off it on a different
1:10:52
path. Oh, of course, I can think of
1:10:54
very specific ones where by the skin of my teeth I had this
1:10:58
strange thing happen and my life would be completely different.
1:11:01
Absolutely. There's so many times.
1:11:03
Correct. Now those things are not.
1:11:05
Remember many of them. Correct.
1:11:07
And those are not the power people.
1:11:08
Those are people in your life that you interact with who do
1:11:13
something for you. I tell the story in the Agora
1:11:17
book, Which the story of this guy, Doctor Jerome Motto, who
1:11:22
he, he studied suicide in 1947 and he was at Stanford and he
1:11:27
heard about a suicide. Somebody jumped off the Golden
1:11:29
Gate Bridge in San Francisco and he decided to go up there and
1:11:36
investigate. And he went to the guy's
1:11:38
apartment and he lived alone. He had no problems, nothing was
1:11:41
wrong. But he and and he left a note, a
1:11:44
suicide note not addressed to anybody.
1:11:47
And he said, I'm going to walk to the bridge.
1:11:49
Now. If one person smiles at me along
1:11:51
the way, I will not jump. And that's that.
1:11:54
Story from your book really well and that that that story.
1:11:58
Yeah, that changes the world. And so I wouldn't put on 8.3
1:12:06
billion people out there go study AI and learn how to use
1:12:09
ChatGPT. Otherwise you're irrelevant.
1:12:11
I would put that, that it's that it's you doing kind deeds in
1:12:17
your everyday life. That is what transforms the
1:12:20
world that, that you just that the world isn't changed by a few
1:12:30
people doing big dramatic things.
1:12:34
And, and when we live in a world where 93% of people are, are
1:12:38
good. And I I love saying that number
1:12:40
because it's oddly specific, but the way I use it I remember.
1:12:43
Well, I remember you. I wasn't there live for it, but
1:12:47
I got the recording staying at our synagogue.
1:12:51
And so I actually know, I actually know this.
1:12:54
It's the turtle story. Well, it's a turtle story.
1:12:56
The way the way I remember you telling it is that there was a
1:13:02
test where they put a fake turtle in the road and it was
1:13:07
something like a six or 7% of drivers would literally swerve
1:13:12
out to crush the turtle. But most people would would
1:13:17
would try to avoid hitting the turtle.
1:13:19
So you so made you conclude that there was just, you know, 6 or
1:13:23
7% of humanity which really is is is is bad natured.
1:13:29
Right. And that that to your earlier.
1:13:31
We do have to be kind of a jerk to.
1:13:33
It's a harmless. Turtle to want to walk on the
1:13:35
road and like step and smash a turtle into.
1:13:38
He's harmless, he's that poisonous.
1:13:39
He's very venerous turtle. There's no turtle that's not
1:13:42
going to drop out of your. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty
1:13:46
extreme on this. I'm I'm, I'm happy to admit it,
1:13:49
but but like I literally, if I'm walking down a sidewalk, I will
1:13:53
not step on a bug. Like I will literally walk
1:13:56
around and over the bug and make sure not to step on.
1:14:01
It it's a basic respect for all life You you mentioned the
1:14:07
bottle that the great population bottleneck where huge humans got
1:14:10
down to a few 100 baiting bears. That that I learned.
1:14:14
From that's right. And the way we know that by the
1:14:16
way, is how similar all of our DNA is because cheetahs got down
1:14:20
to 40 and they are all clones of each other basically.
1:14:22
So you can tell kind of where the bottleneck was.
1:14:24
But what we know even more significant is when you look at
1:14:27
remains from those times, you say, well, those 800 people that
1:14:31
was a dog eat dog world and they had to do everything to survive.
1:14:35
And, and we don't, what we know from that time is that you found
1:14:37
people who had broken limbs that had mended that we know they had
1:14:42
to be cared for and fed. You had old people who were
1:14:46
hunched over and all of that probably couldn't help at all.
1:14:49
They were taken care of. You had people with various
1:14:52
disabilities that you find them. They didn't die at three.
1:14:56
They lived lives and they had to be provided for.
1:14:59
And so we, we survived because everybody watched out for
1:15:03
everybody else. And so it's it, I wish it were
1:15:07
as easy as changing the hearts of 2000 people, but it is, it is
1:15:12
a it is, it is everybody not what happens is the minute you
1:15:20
think everybody else around you is out to get you, you get out
1:15:25
to get them. That, that, that toxicity, that
1:15:28
is what can spread. It is what would happen.
1:15:32
The power people don't have any say, I don't think any ultimate
1:15:35
control over what happens. It is, it is there's a great
1:15:39
groundswell of people. So to answer your question, if
1:15:42
if you are hearing about this AI world and it doesn't interest
1:15:47
you or you don't care about it or you don't think you need to
1:15:49
use it, that's great. It's a powerful tool and people
1:15:52
are going to use it to do all these wonderful things and find
1:15:55
cures for things that we don't have and solve all of these
1:15:57
problems and bring together all this human knowledge.
1:16:00
And if you ever want to talk to it, it's there for you to talk
1:16:02
to too. But the, the future doesn't
1:16:04
depend on on you mastering that technology.
1:16:06
Your future doesn't either. You are wondrously greatly
1:16:10
wrought humans. No machine can do what a what a
1:16:14
person can do. And this idea that some of the
1:16:16
machines are going to replace people is just, it's just fear
1:16:20
mongering. So, So what do you, what do you
1:16:23
say to those people that are reading these headlines that
1:16:28
are, that are keeping them locked in fear about the latest,
1:16:32
you know, big layoff at Salesforce, you know, let go of
1:16:35
4000 people in customer service because they're like, we can
1:16:39
just do that with. AII have an answer for that.
1:16:41
What do you show? In fact, it's more than an
1:16:44
answer. An answer says it sounds like
1:16:45
it's my there are very few absolute statements are true.
1:16:50
I'm going to make one, which are tools that increase human
1:16:53
productivity are always good for humans.
1:16:56
So I want you to imagine an alternate case.
1:16:59
Imagine somebody passed the law that made everybody work with
1:17:03
one arm tied behind their back. Everybody has to work with one
1:17:05
arm tied behind their back. What did that do to jobs?
1:17:09
You just created an enormous number of jobs, right?
1:17:12
You need two people to trim your hedges.
1:17:13
Now you need more people to do anything.
1:17:16
But you just killed wages because everybody's perfectivity
1:17:20
just went to the pot. Now, what if there was a, a
1:17:23
magical spell that like gave everybody 1/3 arm?
1:17:26
Is that bad for anybody that they can now do more?
1:17:30
It isn't the reason those headlines look so, so bad.
1:17:37
It took me a while to figure this out, by the way.
1:17:39
I remember 1995 when I first got on the Internet and everybody so
1:17:43
like this Internet is going to be a big thing and everybody
1:17:46
said this thing's going to eat jobs and they here's what they
1:17:49
said. It's going to destroy all the
1:17:50
stockbrokers, all the travel agents.
1:17:53
The Yellow Pages are going away, the shopping malls are going
1:17:56
away. The newspapers are going to take
1:17:58
it on the chin. The post office is going to go
1:18:00
out of business because people have sent e-mail instead.
1:18:02
And you know what? They were right about every
1:18:03
single thing, everything they were right about.
1:18:06
But there was no article that said there's going to be eBay
1:18:09
and Etsy and Airbnb and Spotify and YouTube and, and then so
1:18:14
that's the, the, the answer is, I can rattle you off a list of
1:18:18
all the jobs that AI is going to take and, but I don't have the
1:18:22
imagination to tell you the ones it's going to create.
1:18:24
What you have to hold on to is there's the knowledge that it's
1:18:27
a productivity tool. And those are always good for
1:18:30
people. I have spent an enormous amount
1:18:32
of time trying to figure out what I call the half life of a
1:18:35
job. And I think it's 50 years.
1:18:38
And what that means is that in in the United States, every 50
1:18:42
years we lose half of all the jobs.
1:18:45
And and that should pass the stiff test.
1:18:48
You go back from today to 1975, you believe it, right?
1:18:50
We lost a lot of manufacturing jobs since then and all of that.
1:18:52
You go 1975 back to 1925 and you're like, yeah, we lost a lot
1:18:56
of farm jobs in that time. People came into the factories
1:18:58
and, and all of that. And so for 250 years we've been
1:19:02
doing that. Every 50 years we lose half of
1:19:04
the jobs. And yet this country has
1:19:07
maintained full employment and rising wages all the time.
1:19:11
And you say, well, how can that be?
1:19:13
If if every 50 years we're losing half the jobs, why isn't
1:19:16
there all this unemployment? And you say it's because the
1:19:19
technology creates all this new opportunity at high tech, high
1:19:24
skill and destroys it at the bottom.
1:19:26
And we all get to ride that up. And this is no different.
1:19:29
If anything, my fear is it's not destroying jobs fast enough.
1:19:34
I know that sounds impersonal, but tell me one one job.
1:19:38
That's one job that's been eliminated in the last five
1:19:40
years. You see a million jobs out
1:19:47
there, Maybe one. The thing is, is that I never a.
1:19:50
Lot in the last five years that were eliminated from the
1:19:54
pandemic, but it was a temporal thing and then.
1:19:56
I had this deep belief, a core belief, which is if there's a
1:20:00
job out there that a machine can do, imagine that a job a machine
1:20:05
can do if you make a person do that job.
1:20:07
The word for that is dehumanizing.
1:20:10
Because once you just told that person is like, hey, the machine
1:20:13
can do this job. I don't own the machine.
1:20:15
So what I need you to do is do the job.
1:20:17
And I want you to act like a machine, not a human being.
1:20:20
Because if a machine can do it, all I need you to do is be a
1:20:22
machine. And to tell human beings the
1:20:24
most exquisite thing in the universe that we know of, that
1:20:28
they have to be a machine is is a huge waste of humans.
1:20:34
I mean, this is this, this, this kind of intersects back to what
1:20:37
we were talking about earlier in that these AI experts that you
1:20:42
had on your podcast think that we're nothing but machines,
1:20:45
correct? So I that's why they worry that
1:20:49
right? So you're.
1:20:52
Right. And, and again, if you just
1:20:54
assume we're nothing but machines, it would sync with
1:20:59
their thought of that. Eventually we'll just be
1:21:04
replaced by machines. Not just our consciousness, but
1:21:07
our jobs do. I have two things that I think
1:21:11
prove that to me. So ask a normal person.
1:21:13
I'll just ask you, let's say I'm a robot that could do anything a
1:21:17
human could do. Was it smart and versatile in
1:21:20
everything? And let's say it it it only cost
1:21:23
70 cents, 70% as much as a human and a company starts making a
1:21:28
million of those a year for 40 years.
1:21:32
Would that cause any unemployment?
1:21:37
We know the answer to this empirically, yeah.
1:21:39
Do you know my punchline on this one?
1:21:41
I don't know your punchline. So my punchline on the business.
1:21:44
Intersects with industrial revolution.
1:21:45
No, from 1940, at the beginning of World War 2, a million women
1:21:51
entered the workforce every year. 1940 to 1980, a million
1:21:55
women every year who were paid $0.70 on the dollar.
1:21:59
I'm not. I mean to, to our shame, they
1:22:02
were just as good as the people they were replacing.
1:22:04
The unemployment between 1940 and 1980 never went out.
1:22:07
You had a million new people every year in this country
1:22:10
coming on the job market at lower wages and yet we still had
1:22:13
rising wages. If I were to show you we had
1:22:16
these revolutionary times when we got electricity and we in
1:22:20
seven years, we converted all steam to electricity in, in, in
1:22:25
20 years. We took all animal power and
1:22:27
converted to steam before that. And we, we eliminated millions
1:22:31
of Teamster jobs, all these jobs.
1:22:33
If I graft United States unemployment rate on a wall and
1:22:37
said find me electricity, find me steam.
1:22:40
You can't. It never even budged a tiny bit.
1:22:45
Do we have unemployment right now?
1:22:46
I mean, it's supposed to be happening around us right now.
1:22:48
But the problem and we don't because technology is creating
1:22:52
all the more opportunities than we have people for.
1:22:54
So we got this huge shortage of people.
1:22:57
And so just always remember these are Productivity Tools.
1:22:59
They're good for people, always good for people.
1:23:03
So you may be you are you are challenging if I am 95% certain
1:23:12
and I know from our discussions that you're even more certain
1:23:18
than that, what would you say your probability that we make it
1:23:21
to this age of abundance for all is?
1:23:27
I think it is inevitable. I think that is if you look at
1:23:31
the arc of history, it's inevitable.
1:23:34
Nothing can go wrong. Except of course, you always
1:23:37
have to qualify things that if if a stray comet comes and hits
1:23:40
the planet, you know, something that just happens.
1:23:43
But aside from that, there is no, there's no chance that it
1:23:47
won't because when you look at history as as a long story, it's
1:23:54
so easy to get caught up in the election cycle, in the news
1:23:57
cycle and to think that. But when you look at it long,
1:24:01
people used to be savages. We were savages.
1:24:05
And you don't have to go back that far until you find, I mean,
1:24:09
I don't even want to say the things and put the images in
1:24:11
people's heads, but just a we, we did cruelty to humans is is
1:24:15
popular entertainment. We tortured people for
1:24:17
entertainment and all these horrible things.
1:24:20
And yet we, in an era where we had nothing, we had there wasn't
1:24:25
enough for everybody, we managed in that world where there were
1:24:29
just as many bad people and just as many selfish people and all
1:24:34
of that, we managed to claw our way to the notion of human
1:24:38
rights and and habeas corpus and liberty and justice for all and
1:24:42
all imperfect. We haven't delivered all of it,
1:24:44
but the arc of it is that, and that is in a world where there
1:24:47
never was enough, that all of human history is there never was
1:24:51
enough food quite for everybody, not enough medicine, not enough
1:24:54
leisure time for everybody. So few people get it.
1:24:56
A few people don't. And yet we've made progress all
1:24:59
through that. And so somehow tell me that now
1:25:02
we get Productivity Tools that make us powerful.
1:25:05
We we have access to the knowledge of the ages and that
1:25:09
now for some reason, we're going to drop the ball in our in our
1:25:13
weakest that are evilest, that are coarsest.
1:25:18
We always manage to make things better.
1:25:21
There is the last quote I'll say is there's never this isn't
1:25:27
mine, but somebody said there, there, there isn't enough.
1:25:37
I wish there were more love in the world, but there is enough.
1:25:43
And that's, that's what I would say that there's no chance that
1:25:47
now on the eve of of of of the world we're about to enter on
1:25:51
for us to well, what it's all just you and I looking and
1:25:53
saying it's a better run, run. You know, we we've written a
1:25:57
couple of articles together. The one about no, we don't live
1:26:00
in a simulation. They may remember that I
1:26:03
inserted the line from The Beatles.
1:26:05
Love Is All you need I. Don't remember that that is that
1:26:08
is good. You made major improvements to
1:26:10
that piece. I had like.
1:26:12
So what would you say? So I, you know, I'm, I'm
1:26:16
envisioning that what you just said, let's say Eliza Dukowski
1:26:21
is watching this podcast and he's just falls out of this
1:26:25
chair, you know, because because you, I, I can genuinely say and,
1:26:29
and by the way, one of the things that I absolutely love
1:26:32
about you as a friend is always walk away from those
1:26:36
discussions, the dinners we have, etcetera, more optimistic.
1:26:39
And I, I, I am by nature an optimist that is deep in me.
1:26:45
And I think that I think that comes from from from a lot of a
1:26:49
lot of. Things not.
1:26:51
By the way, in my life, I think it comes from, you know, my mom
1:26:55
giving me such unconditional love.
1:26:57
I think it comes from the, you know, the way that
1:27:03
entrepreneurial ventures have worked out for me, etcetera.
1:27:07
But it also comes from just me being very objective about the
1:27:12
standard of living that that just the every average day
1:27:17
American has right now compared to when I was a kid.
1:27:21
I mean, things are so much better in so many ways from when
1:27:24
I was a kid, from a technology perspective, from a food
1:27:27
abundance perspective, from the amount of experiences you can
1:27:32
have. I mean, I've seen Austin
1:27:34
transform in front of my eyes. You know, when I was born,
1:27:37
Austin was 170,000 people. It was, there wasn't a lot going
1:27:42
on here. I mean, it was, it was really a
1:27:43
great place to grow up. It always had a strong soul.
1:27:47
You know, my first concert was Willie Nelson and always had
1:27:50
kind of those roots. But you know, if you compare
1:27:53
Austin now to Austin back then, this is the best time Austin's
1:27:56
ever been. People need to stop comparing
1:27:58
Austin to Silicon Valley. Compare Silicon Valley to
1:28:00
Silicon Valley in the past, compare Austin to Austin in the
1:28:04
past, right. 10 years from now, I'm confident Austin will be
1:28:07
better than it is today. But you know, someone like Eliza
1:28:12
Rydkowski, who is the complete polar opposite of you, you know,
1:28:16
literally is just, we're all going to die.
1:28:18
There is almost no hope. You know, he would probably say
1:28:22
if he's on here, then you wrote a book.
1:28:24
I haven't read it, but it's a, it's a new book on this subject.
1:28:28
But I I saw him speak at Ted and he was essentially certain that
1:28:36
we were going to wipe ourselves out because of AI.
1:28:39
And what would you say to someone like that?
1:28:42
Like. Like Go.
1:28:43
Right. What do you think's going on
1:28:47
inside of them that makes them that that that wires them that
1:28:52
way? Well, what I'm starting to say
1:28:54
is my optimism is not. I'm not an optimist.
1:28:58
First of all, I hope people who hear me know this isn't my
1:29:00
shtick, my optimism on trial every day and, and I'm willing
1:29:06
for it to to, to I, I'm overwhelmed by the by the arc of
1:29:11
history that's argue with me anything out of history, because
1:29:17
that's the only, only thing we have that tells us what actual
1:29:22
humans do in different situations.
1:29:24
That's all the information we have.
1:29:27
So I put mine on trial and then I, I.
1:29:29
Mean, actually, shout out to Steven Pinker, right?
1:29:31
Enlightenment. Now you know, John Mackey was
1:29:33
the one that turned me on to that part.
1:29:34
He is. He is an amazing figure.
1:29:38
An amazing figure, but those those books really give you that
1:29:42
arc of history and the actual data to go.
1:29:44
Along with that, somehow that's a real contribution.
1:29:47
He I have pretty words, but he has pretty words and good
1:29:52
numbers. And also, I'm so impressed by
1:29:55
the young generation I am too. People's generation is the best
1:29:59
we've ever had. I do too.
1:30:01
And people want to be down on them, that they have short
1:30:03
attention spans and all of that. And maybe, I don't know, maybe
1:30:05
all this stuff's true, but what does?
1:30:08
It doesn't matter what any individual person can do.
1:30:10
It's what humanity as a whole can do.
1:30:12
That's what makes progress happen.
1:30:15
And I know that every young person I talk to has a deep
1:30:18
sense of right and wrong. They have a deep moral
1:30:20
convictions. You may not agree with them, but
1:30:24
they believe in things. And they have like a 'cause they
1:30:26
cared. I don't remember that from the
1:30:28
80s when I was in high school. We, we didn't have that.
1:30:31
They are entrepreneurial by nature.
1:30:33
They I think they're much more accepting.
1:30:38
Of all peoples, too, yeah. I mean, they, they really they.
1:30:41
They, in a way, there's all this programming that they're
1:30:47
receiving, but in a way they're deprogrammed versus our
1:30:51
generation in terms of how unified they are and caring
1:30:55
about their fellow humans. Yeah, and you know, my children
1:31:01
are actually really good at critical thinking.
1:31:04
They anyway I can, I won't go into that.
1:31:07
People say all these things about social media is doing all
1:31:09
these things, but it's like social media is 15 years old.
1:31:16
There's no reason it would be good now the we haven't learned
1:31:19
how to use it. And so 2050, a hundred years,
1:31:23
it'll, it'll be better. Just like the printing press.
1:31:26
It's like these things come along and they're highly
1:31:28
disruptive, but that doesn't mean they're bad.
1:31:31
I don't know how to explain. First of all, I don't know his
1:31:36
thinking. I don't know why people would.
1:31:40
If you, if you do believe people are, look, that is true.
1:31:43
If you believe people are machines, then it is true.
1:31:46
One day we will build a mechanical human.
1:31:49
And according to Gordon Moore, according to Moore's law, two
1:31:52
years later, it'll be twice as good.
1:31:53
Two years later, it'll be twice as good.
1:31:54
Two years later it'll be twice as good.
1:31:55
And someday its values may diverge from ours.
1:31:59
There's a lot of ifs in that, and I don't believe most of
1:32:02
them. But that would be true if if you
1:32:04
could make a mechanical person. But I don't know how to explain
1:32:09
it. I don't know the evidence.
1:32:12
And pessimism. And if it's possible to make a
1:32:15
mechanical person, then the only way I could even envision it
1:32:21
happening would be that we have a immense understanding of
1:32:26
quantum physics that we don't have today.
1:32:29
Like that's the only way I could even explain it because I think
1:32:31
consciousness is somewhere in the quantum field.
1:32:35
Could a machine access it? I mean, I don't know, you know,
1:32:38
it like I, I've, I've gone back and forth on this, you know, I
1:32:43
think, I think that I've got to be humble in the sense of I
1:32:47
don't understand, you know, the people that are experts at
1:32:51
quantum physics today are all over the map.
1:32:54
I mean, like, you know, there's Robert Lanza who has this theory
1:32:58
of biocentrism. His books are, are really
1:33:01
interesting. You know, I talked about the
1:33:03
novel he wrote as well with Nancy Kress, which is a great
1:33:07
book. I actually like that book even
1:33:09
better than Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
1:33:13
That's a book that should be made into a movie, but it
1:33:16
basically takes that observer effect and quantum physics to
1:33:21
the NTH degree in the mini world's theory that Everett came
1:33:25
up with of all the quantum branching.
1:33:29
But my, my theory of where consciousness resides is in
1:33:33
quantum. But I can't prove that to you
1:33:37
because nobody can. And you know, I've, I've seen,
1:33:43
I've seen glimpses at it. I mean, one of the one of the
1:33:46
things that I thought was just kind of mind blowing is being at
1:33:50
Ted last year and seeing Harmett Nevin on stage with a stable
1:33:57
quantum computing calculation. And he sat on the Ted stage.
1:34:03
He said the only way we can figure out how this is working
1:34:08
is it must be computing in a different dimension.
1:34:11
And he's saying this on the Ted stage.
1:34:12
I know you've been to Ted many more times than I have.
1:34:14
I think you were going in the oil.
1:34:16
I always have this picture that there's a, there's some other
1:34:19
dimension. They're like our compute is
1:34:21
being sucked off by somebody. We should.
1:34:25
But it's just, it's just a, it's just AI mean, you know, if, if
1:34:29
it's possible, it'll happen because of our understanding of
1:34:35
what consciousness is. And my my theory is that if we
1:34:40
ever crack the code on that, it it's it happens in the quantum
1:34:44
realm. I would say this.
1:34:46
And and and and. Part of the reason I have that
1:34:49
theory is I believe consciousness is fundamental and
1:34:51
the reason I believe consciousness is fundamental is
1:34:54
there's all these inexplicable things that break the material
1:34:58
paradigm to the point where I think it's irreparable.
1:35:03
I think, I think, I think it there's there's just an
1:35:06
irreparable nature of a strong 100% material view again, of
1:35:13
grant me the miracle of The Big Bang and I'll explain everything
1:35:16
to you. That, that just there's just,
1:35:20
there's just too many things that that fall outside of that,
1:35:22
like a near death experience, like the fact that since I've
1:35:26
read Proof of Heaven by Evan Alexander, I have now had six
1:35:30
friends who have had near death experiences.
1:35:33
Never told me about them. And I was like, you know, you
1:35:37
know, I'm a nice person, like, you know, why would you not tell
1:35:39
me? And they're like, I thought
1:35:40
you'd, I thought you'd write me off as woo.
1:35:42
It's kind of like we should come back actually to the book you're
1:35:45
writing now, because it's the same thing that people are
1:35:47
telling you when you interview them for this book.
1:35:50
They're like Byron, I'll tell you the story, but I can't
1:35:53
attribute it to my name because it'll get me cancelled as a
1:35:56
scientist, right, Because it rates the materialist paradigm.
1:35:59
Yeah, the stories I could tell you, I will wrap up the rest
1:36:04
with that, with that appeal directly to the to the listener
1:36:07
to say some people worry about asymmetry.
1:36:10
That would be something people say like now one person could do
1:36:12
just so much more. And, and asymmetry also used to
1:36:16
be a thing like anybody in a small town in the Middle Ages or
1:36:21
in the 1800s or anytime could take a dead goat and by by night
1:36:26
drop it in the well and poison the well and kill everybody in
1:36:29
the town, make everybody sick. It would kill the town.
1:36:32
And, and so the idea that there wasn't a symmetry, one person
1:36:36
couldn't do all this, There always has been.
1:36:39
And but I think people try to scare you into thinking that
1:36:42
there are these evil people in great numbers who who want to go
1:36:46
poison wells or build bio weapons.
1:36:48
Or drive over the turtle on the road.
1:36:50
Yeah, there's a difference between that which is just a bad
1:36:53
person and somebody who's hell bent to destroy humanity.
1:36:57
That's true. That's that's.
1:36:58
True. And so I want to just say yes.
1:37:02
If you've ever felt like you aren't living up to your
1:37:04
potential or that you should be doing more with your life, I
1:37:07
suggest you move past all that. Remember that no part of super
1:37:11
Organism can contemplate the whole, so put no heavier burden
1:37:15
on yourself then to be as kind as you can be and everyday try
1:37:19
to be a slightly better person than you were yesterday.
1:37:22
That really is all it takes to build utopia.
1:37:26
That is all it takes to build Utopia.
1:37:27
Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah.
1:37:29
And, and by the way, that's, that is the root of all
1:37:32
spirituality is to constantly transform yourself from the
1:37:38
inside so that you manifest more love in the world that every
1:37:42
spiritual tradition. It starts with that at the root,
1:37:45
the transformation, the embodiment of your soul
1:37:49
realizing that a reality is rooted in love.
1:37:52
And then you live that, you know, you walk, you walk the way
1:37:55
in the of the Dao or you know, if you're a Christian, you walk
1:37:59
the path, you know, the path of Jesus, or if you're a Jew, you
1:38:04
manifest to Kunolam to repair the world.
1:38:08
So with with the current book you're writing, I promised that
1:38:11
we'd come back to this. So I just want to, I want to
1:38:14
close with this. What what are some of the
1:38:17
stories that you're hearing that really have made you kind of
1:38:21
fall out of your chair and say, like really, that is
1:38:24
inexplicable? And are they willing to go on
1:38:27
record? Very few, so I'll start by
1:38:30
saying. And and remind remind us of the.
1:38:33
Child is called the open minded skeptic and it it it says that
1:38:38
there these things they all may be real and just because they're
1:38:42
not measurable doesn't mean they're not scientific.
1:38:45
And so I go around and basically try to believe people and try to
1:38:50
think about how what they're telling me could be true and I
1:38:52
have a bias towards people that don't really want to tell me
1:38:55
their stories. So anytime I'm in a crowd I
1:38:57
always mention this book. Nobody says anything.
1:39:00
But afterwards people come up to me one at a time and they're
1:39:04
like, you know, I don't want to say anything, but and then they
1:39:08
tell me their stories. And I will start by saying that
1:39:12
many of the people I see when I travel are frauds.
1:39:15
They really are frauds. And I can tell those usually I
1:39:20
think it can. And then there's also something
1:39:24
known as dead eyes, a shut eyes. I'm sorry.
1:39:30
There's something known as being a shut eye.
1:39:32
And being a shut eye, I find it fascinating.
1:39:35
It is the occupational hazard of like fake psychics.
1:39:38
And the idea is that if you're a brand new concierge at a hotel,
1:39:42
it's two people come up and they're like, we would like a
1:39:45
nice restaurant. You'll like look them over and
1:39:47
size them up and try to think about what they mean when you've
1:39:51
been concierge for 20 years, they come up, hey, we want a
1:39:53
nice restaurant. You don't have to think about
1:39:54
it. You can recommend it.
1:39:56
What happens with some psychics is that somebody will walk in
1:40:02
and they'll be like I just since you just lost a family member.
1:40:05
And they'll be like, yeah, I did just lose my spouse.
1:40:08
And they have just, they're just reading a lot of a lot of cues.
1:40:12
And but they don't know that anymore.
1:40:14
They actually do believe that they are have these powers.
1:40:17
And I have a lot of sympathy for those folks.
1:40:19
So some people are fraudulent. They're doing cold readings and
1:40:21
I can spot them a mile away. And they're like, you have a you
1:40:24
have a, you have a scar on your knee.
1:40:26
Do you have a scar on your knee? I do not.
1:40:28
Have OK, so I would deflect the way you have.
1:40:31
Some scars on my on my seat. And then I would be like, Oh
1:40:34
yes. And then you go off on that and
1:40:36
and they're so odd. That you don't know where it's
1:40:37
from though. I do know where that's from.
1:40:39
OK, because I've already yes. Hawaii, you don't I.
1:40:43
Already told you that. See, I would I would be a great
1:40:45
psychic. I had a sense you were with
1:40:47
somebody you love, Yes, and so fun.
1:40:51
But then they're always. It was my it was my infamous
1:40:54
Kawaii kayak trip with Deborah. Yes.
1:40:58
Then there are all these other people that come up to me and
1:41:01
tell me these amazing things. One of them, I mean, just to
1:41:05
rattle a bunch off, 1 was a a professional sports figure who's
1:41:10
now podcaster says he lived in this house and all these weird
1:41:14
things happened. And one night he saw a ghost of
1:41:18
a baby crawl across the ceiling dripping ectoplasm and he didn't
1:41:24
know what it was. He called a friend of his who he
1:41:26
thought it was spiritualist and his his friend said, how'd your
1:41:29
wife take a pregnancy test? And he said that's how we found
1:41:31
out we were expecting our first child.
1:41:33
Another person said he was in a taxi cab.
1:41:37
No, he was getting into a taxi cab and he saw his father get
1:41:39
out on the other side. But his father was in New Jersey
1:41:42
and he was in New York. And he's like, they couldn't
1:41:44
have been my father. How could that be?
1:41:46
And it turned out later that day, he found out his father
1:41:48
died at that exact moment. Another person had a look out a
1:41:53
window and instead of seeing what was out there, saw what
1:41:56
looked like a screen, but it was all in black and white so you
1:41:59
can see out there. And his father, who had just
1:42:01
passed away, rode by on a bicycle and waved to him.
1:42:04
Now what makes these stories suggestive to me is these are
1:42:09
science minded people who will not let me repeat them.
1:42:12
And you know, I've had to like, make them vague even to tell
1:42:15
them. And they won't let you put them.
1:42:17
On the card now, I will tell you one though that is on record
1:42:19
because it's a friend of mine. So I have a friend who's a PhD
1:42:23
in a hard science. He's a brilliant guy, University
1:42:26
of Chicago trained guy. I, I think he's not religious as
1:42:32
far as I know. And I told him about this book
1:42:36
and I've known him for 40 years. I've known him since high
1:42:37
school. And I said, and he goes, did I
1:42:41
ever tell you my ghost story? I'm like, no, you never tell me.
1:42:43
I didn't know you had a ghost story.
1:42:44
And he goes, yeah, I have one happened 20 years ago.
1:42:46
So this is a guy I knew for 20 years and he didn't have a good
1:42:49
story for 20 years. And so his job is.
1:42:52
And he had never told you that until now, correct?
1:42:54
It's kind of like my friend's not telling.
1:42:56
Me although he agreed this is recorded and so he agreed to do
1:42:59
this one and he said well I got this I got this.
1:43:06
I was doing this project to get my PhD where I had to go around
1:43:09
and count dragonfly larvae and like and off in the in in West
1:43:16
Virginia and along the Appalachian Trail, there was a
1:43:19
government big government reserve and you could reserve
1:43:23
space there. And he said how all these lakes
1:43:27
and I reserve time and I went to it and they somebody met me and
1:43:31
I drove in and he said I didn't see another soul the whole time.
1:43:35
And he said when I finally got to the facility, I got out and 5
1:43:39
minutes later a bear came and was like sniffing my car.
1:43:41
He said I did notice though, across the street from the
1:43:43
facility was a falling down house that was an old house.
1:43:48
And he said the facility where it was a lab on the like a
1:43:51
presentation area on the 1st floor and it was a living
1:43:53
quarters on the up floor and outside it were steps.
1:43:57
And he said that he had not seen a soul.
1:44:02
And he said in the evening he heard music and likes people
1:44:05
playing music and he went out to look for it and he couldn't find
1:44:08
it. And everywhere he went he heard
1:44:09
the music in a different direction.
1:44:11
OK, so far, maybe sound carried the music and it was far away or
1:44:15
it was the radio or who knows. And then he said he went back
1:44:18
and he went to bed and he was laying in bed reading and he
1:44:22
heard somebody start to walk up the stairs.
1:44:25
And, and he, he was like, oh, it must be like the, the people
1:44:29
coming to the people who run the facility.
1:44:32
And he went and he opened the door and there was nobody there.
1:44:35
And he said he got back into bed and then he heard somebody else
1:44:38
distinctly coming up the stairs. And again and again it happened.
1:44:42
And every time it it didn't happen.
1:44:44
And so the next morning, the researcher picked him up and he
1:44:48
said, is there anything I should know about this place?
1:44:51
And she's like, oh, no, what did you see?
1:44:55
And and he told her and he, she says, yeah, that pretty much
1:44:59
happens to everybody. She says, you know that house
1:45:02
across the street, there's a Wikipedia entry on it, a big
1:45:05
long Wikipedia entry on that house, because it was on the, IT
1:45:09
was a hotel and it was on the Appalachian Trail.
1:45:13
And the guy was caught who ran it.
1:45:15
The guy was caught slaughtering guests and turning him into food
1:45:19
and eating them. And they walked in on him and he
1:45:22
was gutting somebody and eating them.
1:45:24
And that was that house across the street.
1:45:28
That was horrible. That was that.
1:45:30
It would be that kind of energy that would still be unable to.
1:45:34
To ascend to heaven. Exactly.
1:45:36
And so again, PhD never had another thing happen not give a
1:45:40
defense. He would rather explain it away
1:45:42
than believe it never told me. I'd finally told you because
1:45:46
you're writing. And then the other person said,
1:45:49
oh, this happens all the time. This house, he noticed the only
1:45:52
thing around. There is not another person in
1:45:54
20 miles in any direction as far as he knows.
1:45:59
And when you hear a hundred of those back-to-back, you start to
1:46:02
think. And the really the the thing
1:46:05
that's really interesting to me is the number of people who just
1:46:08
take them for granted. Oh, yes, that that's just part
1:46:10
of our culture, that the that the living and dead coexist a
1:46:15
lot. And when I hear just so many of
1:46:18
them, I think obviously they're not lying and they may be wrong,
1:46:24
but it would be a bad scientist not to just start off by saying,
1:46:28
OK, maybe it's true. Yeah.
1:46:30
What would be a good explanation for that?
1:46:31
Do. You do you have a do you have a
1:46:33
strong sense of why after writing these these these books,
1:46:41
you're writing this one? Like what?
1:46:43
What was it that was the inspiration for you to be like?
1:46:49
It's got to because, you know. I think my books for me are
1:46:51
Progression and The Last. One and and you said you write
1:46:54
them as a means to learn, right, Too right.
1:46:56
Yeah. Correct, I wrote.
1:46:58
I'm writing this one as a person who has not had any of these
1:47:01
experiences. Like so the last book I wrote
1:47:04
is, is We Are Agora. And as much as I try to tell
1:47:07
people it's just a biology book, I posit the existence of this
1:47:10
creature we cannot see that we are cells of.
1:47:14
And I think it's real and I think I can prove it.
1:47:16
And it's just biology is no more mystical than a beehive, but I
1:47:20
think it has implications on how we should live.
1:47:24
And then, so now I've written books about what I think about
1:47:27
the future, what I think about the whole of humanity, but I
1:47:29
haven't ever written anything outside of that.
1:47:32
So almost nothing I have written, it all matters, but
1:47:37
none of it is answering the big question.
1:47:39
I, I think, I know, I think an optimistic future is inevitable.
1:47:43
I think all of these wonderful things.
1:47:45
I think we are different because we perceive time.
1:47:48
I think the mass of humans can do more than any person can do
1:47:52
because we operate as a single entity.
1:47:54
But the big question, I mean, what is the big question?
1:47:57
We all want to know, why are we here?
1:47:59
Is there more than than this? I've not ever tackled that in a
1:48:03
book. And this was the way I wanted to
1:48:05
do it because those feel like touch points between what we can
1:48:11
see and what we what we can't see.
1:48:13
And these are people who seem to have a foot in two worlds and,
1:48:18
and I want to to talk to them and, and listen to them really.
1:48:24
I mean, I'll give, I'll give you my interpretation of it as a
1:48:27
friend and you could, you know, dismiss this or or not and that,
1:48:31
you know, I don't have any attachment to this, but but my
1:48:35
sense of it is that you're at the beginning of your own soul
1:48:38
quest that you're it's, it's, it's, it's your soul wanting you
1:48:45
to start to grasp what's in the beyond.
1:48:48
That's my guess. That could very well be true.
1:48:50
That might very well be true. I've been really inspired by
1:48:53
your narrative of yours because I know you're not a whimsical,
1:48:57
fanciful guy. You're very and you talk about
1:49:00
when it began and you talk about your journey and how for you.
1:49:02
I've been very science based my my whole life.
1:49:04
I mean, I have, I have prayed though my whole life.
1:49:09
But yeah, I mean, the soul quest for me really began in earnest
1:49:18
in December in Kerala, India, in a very spiritual place.
1:49:22
And Cochin, actually, Cochin is where the oldest synagogue in
1:49:26
India resides. And it was in part, you know,
1:49:32
watching that documentary Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds and, and,
1:49:37
and also reading Proof of Heaven and realizing that what I had
1:49:42
experienced through psychedelic journeys really seemed with
1:49:46
that. And that was a big opener for
1:49:50
me. And then, and then I just on a
1:49:52
reading tear ever since. I mean, probably this, this this
1:49:56
year, you know, read 45 books, thousands of articles, you know,
1:50:03
lots of different podcast. And, and I feel more alive right
1:50:07
now than than I've ever felt. And that doesn't mean I have a
1:50:10
great life before I really did. I mean, I was raised with a lot
1:50:13
of blood, but I feel more energized than I ever have in my
1:50:19
life, more embodied and more aware of my purpose and more in
1:50:24
alignment with my purpose because I really think I was
1:50:26
born with the purpose to change the world for the better through
1:50:30
technology and help us transcend into this age and not.
1:50:35
And you know, I've been very clear that I don't view myself
1:50:37
as some world savior. That's not a savior complex.
1:50:40
But I knowing my purpose, I do need to be in alignment with
1:50:45
being part of the light to help us and put it out there all on
1:50:49
the field. By practice, I'm a practicing
1:50:52
Christian, I pray multiple times a day.
1:50:55
But if I had to critique my own spiritual journey it like a lot
1:51:01
of people, it's my art. For me, it is probably been too
1:51:05
intellectual and I studied, I majored in religion in college
1:51:10
and and I've studied it. And this is so you could very
1:51:14
well be right. This is, I would say, that
1:51:15
getting to more of an experiential, yeah, part of it
1:51:18
than an intellectual part of it. My, my, my ideal book for you is
1:51:25
11 Days in May JD Messenger is going to be on the podcast.
1:51:28
I'm actually hosting a dinner at the home.
1:51:30
You're very much invited to that.
1:51:33
But he has a very strong engineering background, a very
1:51:36
strong science brain. And he realized through that
1:51:41
book that he had over intellectualized things and he
1:51:47
had a shift. And the shift for him was
1:51:49
profound and changed the rest of his life.
1:51:51
And I don't want to, I don't want to reveal anything else in
1:51:54
the book, but it's a great, great book for someone who has a
1:51:59
very science oriented brain. Well, if I can make it, I will.
1:52:03
And I will read the book before I come.
1:52:05
Awesome. Hey, man, I really, really
1:52:07
appreciate our friendship and I love your books and I really I
1:52:12
just really appreciate all the all the love that you put into
1:52:16
the world. And I also believe in Agora like
1:52:21
I do believe that we are part of a functioning Organism.
1:52:25
A lot of people in shamanic tradition would say that that's
1:52:30
mother Gaia, that there actually is an entity like that.
1:52:34
So we're going to get very avatar very quickly with that.
1:52:38
But I just love all the light you put in the world and I love
1:52:40
your heart and I know you're I know at least one of your your
1:52:44
children. He worked at dated out world and
1:52:46
he's an amazing, amazing human being And, and I know how much
1:52:50
love you have for your family. And I love the fact that you put
1:52:54
out that annual distillation of all the things you you did that
1:52:59
year and all the amazing things that happened in your family's
1:53:03
life. I, I don't have another friend
1:53:05
who puts that much time into celebrating the journey with
1:53:10
their family. You literally are at the top of
1:53:12
my list and doing that and you influenced me.
1:53:14
You know, I, I, I want to give you thanks to, for the fact that
1:53:19
we put out an annual letter. I think for the last 7-8 years,
1:53:23
it was influenced by you. Well, thank you.
1:53:25
I mean, that's why I did it actually.
1:53:26
It was, it was you. It was, it was you.
1:53:28
And, and it's, and it's really giving me a great gift because
1:53:32
it forces me at the end of every year to reflect on all the
1:53:35
things that have happened. And I look back at prior years
1:53:37
and that's such, that's so joyous.
1:53:39
I, I can't even believe, like when I look back at prior years,
1:53:42
I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe everything that happened
1:53:45
this year and comparing it. So it really does give you a
1:53:50
much more of a sense of marking, you know, progression in your
1:53:54
life and your children's life and that came that came from
1:53:57
you. So I appreciate.
1:53:57
It well, thank you so much. That means more to me than you
1:54:00
can know. I've been doing it for 30 years
1:54:02
and on it, you know, they run over 200 pages a year and they
1:54:07
have 30,000 words and about 1000 photos.
1:54:10
And I do every, every stitch of it myself.
1:54:13
And I tell people that every page of every one of those is a
1:54:15
love letter to my children. Do you know anybody else that
1:54:19
does that? No, I don't.
1:54:20
I went to a friend in LDS in Mormon because they are big and
1:54:27
and he's like and he gets it. He goes, no, I've never been a
1:54:30
woman who did this. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
1:54:32
It's amazing. I do it because I think I'm
1:54:35
going to. I, I write in one of them.
1:54:37
I say that that time robs us of our memories and by I by burying
1:54:44
them off to the undying land, the token phrase.
1:54:47
Someday I will have forgotten all these things, but I but I
1:54:50
will be able to read those again and and I will fall in love with
1:54:55
my family again time and time again.
1:54:58
Yeah, and I mean, it's, it's they're, they're lucky to have
1:55:02
you. Your, your beautiful soul.
1:55:05
We should wrap it up here. Everybody.
1:55:08
Thank you so much for tuning in to Love Conquers Fear.
1:55:13
Stay tuned. Many, many amazing gifts to
1:55:16
come. Amazing philosopher, scientist,
1:55:19
spiritual teachers, entrepreneurs and investors.
1:55:23
I've got some trips coming up to New York City as well as San
1:55:28
Francisco where I'll be attending Ted AI and it's
1:55:32
incredible who's going to be on the podcast.
1:55:34
So definitely stay tuned. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
1:55:38
You can see why Byron is one of my best friends and you know,
1:55:42
definitely tune into his books. They will transform you, they
1:55:47
will fill you with lots and lots of facts, but you will also have
1:55:51
a heart shift in reading them. Thanks again, see you next time.