First, some posts on X.
Fix immigration and voting, punish lawfare and censorship, wipe out the bureaucracy.
Everything else is downstream.
Don’t look for “smart,” look for “clear thinker.”
When the only strategy to understand the universe is truth-seeking, you build a truth-seeking machine
_____
The interview with Scott:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTRcs5ZsSJE
Excerpt:
11:51 the level of re-engineering that can be brought to the country is breathtakingly exciting to me it feels like 1776 and it feels like here's something I always wondered how was it that the 8 or 12, 12 people who started the revolution which was crazy I mean it was crazy that that they were just going to get killed but somehow they made it work and then somehow just when we needed it when you know the country sort of falling off the rails the characters who had exactly the right skills and historically so you know like Elon is Ben Franklin it almost seems like reincarnation or something does that seem like a coincidence to you?
12:31 I mean you're you're inspiring me because I wasn't sure how much work I wanted to put into politics but now you're inspiring me. If it's that kind of moment then yeah that'll pull us everyone off the benches.
You know, we're all to serve. Here's the way I look at it. Of course I'm biased for American greatness but if you know some of that's hyperbole Etc patriotism, but I do think that Americans have one superpower which is we will can absolutely do anything and capitalism works because it makes you fire your best friend right? If you can't fire your best friend, if you can't tear the entire structure down, if you can't cannibalize your last product to put on your new iPhone, you're going nowhere.
All the successful systems take feedback from free markets or nature...
_____
43:50 So in this Administration I think you have some very intelligent people working with Trump hopefully they will figure out how to navigate the bureaucracy and the Intel apparatus before they get blown up, right?
Because the Intel apparatus and the bureaucracy are not going to give up. I have a theory that over a long enough period of time the people with the guns are always in charge, right? So if you look at Roman history at the end all the Emperors came from the Victorian guard which was guarding the emperor. Now they were suddenly in charge.
If you look at what happened in Russia, you know, the FSB the KGB the secret police the people who were guarding the premier they took over, right? So that's Putin and his crew. So on a long enough cycle the pretorian guard is eventually in charge.
The people with the guns always end up in charge. And that's happened kind of everywhere in the world where the Intel operators has Intel. Intel for example has their secret courts and their secret laws and their gag orders so why hasn't it fully happened in the US?
It's the only place in the world and it's because of the Second Amendment because the people with the guns are in charge because the people have the guns, right?
Well but the possibility is that they just use the media so that they could get around the gun holders.
Correct. Correct so the power actually goes to the best organized and armed intolerant minority, right? To win revolutions and wars and even to have the soft power that revolutions and wars have never fought against you in the first place, you need the organized group and I think as a society we've lost fact of the, we've lost sight of the where voting comes from.
Voting developed as a way for people who had won Wars to divide up the spoils amongst themselves and not fight each other and it became a right that was granted to you if you fought for the Empire. If you had a sword and shield and you had some land and you went when you were called by the king or the emperor of the Senate, you went to war for them and so power gave you the right to vote because the other guys didn't want to fight you. They didn't want a civil war so like let's just divide up the vote amongst us.
Like if you're in a pirate ship and 10 people are armed and 90 aren't you crash in some Island who's going to end up voting? It's going to be the 10 with the with the weapons. The 90 without the weapons will not get a vote especially if the 10 are organized.
Especially if they have a common culture race religion nationalism philosophy whatever that's binding them together. So it's that power gives you the right to vote and now we've gotten upside down where the right to vote gives you power, where it doesn't matter if you're capable of exercising power or not, you get the right to vote but how long is that going to work?
You know if the 51% that's unarmed and not powerful is voting to stamp, to stomp a Jack boot you know on the 49% that's armed eventually that 49% will organize unless as you say the media keeps them disorganized and off balance and doesn't give them a chance to organize, right?
46:36 That's why I like the... Anyone who's in charge is really good at breaking up crime, breaking up rings organization, right? They don't want the opponents to organize. So it's the organized resistance that can win disorganized they don't, right?
Like if if there's Jack booted thugs coming in kicking down doors if we all fight them at once they always lose. North Korea would be free if everyone in that giant open air Gulag could organize in one action in one moment but they can't coordinate so they get picked off one by one like dissidents.
The same way like Twitter can. You know, the old Twitter before Elon took over kicked off people one by one but they couldn't all leave in a huff to another side at the same time. They couldn't organize because Twitter is the organization mechanism.
So the single most consequential thing that freed this country is Elon bought X.
And the best tweet I saw on this was from Greg fodo. He had this great tweet. He said I can't believe that he noticed that the the 80% uh completed Imperial death star and just bought it.
They'd basically been building this Death Star to control all of news media forever and they were using it left and right and it was 80% done and he just bought it.
And there's a real irony. There's many ironic sub stories in there but one of my favorites is that when he went to buy it he offered the 44 billion, right? I think it was 42 because he loves that number, right?
He's just living in the simulation so he's a Troll, he's trolling the simulation and...
You're right, he's the guy who takes a simulation seriously and so are you right and so you guys live your lives, you YOLO it, you truly YOLO It.
Anyway, you YOLO it with some faith that there's some wind out there at your back which by the way might be called a religious belief nevertheless. So uh you know they they built this Death Star and he goes in to buy it and he offers 44 billion, I don't remember, 42, and it gets to 44 through some accounting stuff but I don't know if you remember but the market crashed hard right then. That was when the market fell off a cliff and he then he realized he was way overpaying.
The bankers all tried to back out. Nobody wanted to invest. He was in over his head. The stock he put up his collateral had come down and he didn't want to buy it anymore.
He didn't want to buy it and he was like well you know there are too many Bots here and they're like well that's not good enough you can't back out.
So they dragged him to court in front of a Delaware judge and they made him buy it. [Laughter]
That's the best and he freed us all.
_____
0:00
we're live with Naval Ravikant and if the indication from the post on X is any
0:07
indication at all there's going to be a lot of people here today because I've never seen people so excited about
0:12
anything I was doing and apparently has to do with you so I think you've been
0:18
doing a few of them this is you know I go for the scarcity bit if there's anybody who doesn't know who nval is uh
0:25
let's say entrepreneur investor philosopher Mentor uh you we run out of
0:30
rooms there there's there's not enough names for you what do you what do you call yourself if like when if you had to
0:37
introduce yourself do you just get clever and say say like the joke version or what do you do you know it's hilar
0:43
it's funny you say that because I used to uh you know when I was really young I had the oh I'm an entrepreneur I had
0:48
this company I'm the founder of this right as a resume speak uh midwit resume speak if you will and then as I got
0:54
older then I did these self-deprecating you know false humble brag like ha haa
1:00
you know and then say something ludicrously low like gas station attendant or whatever non but now of course they say h no all
1:09
that's it you know and if you know who I am great and if you don't that's great too because I don't I don't believe in
1:15
this whole um you know it's a form of identity politics to have like your history behind you uh you you should
1:21
have to prove yourself in every instance so if what I say is true then that stands on its own and if it doesn't it doesn't so it doesn't matter yeah you're
1:27
the you're the most famous famous person I know meaning that the number of people
1:33
who will privately bring up your name just you know independent of knowing whether I know you or not uh is really
1:40
phenomenal but but I can just pick somebody out and say have you heard of and they won't you know not that's H the
1:45
household name but uh influencers right it's more uh it's more efficient
1:52
actually I realized this when I was first in the Tim Ferris podcast um and after the Tim Ferris podcast like every
1:58
podcast in the world reached out out after and is because Tim Ferris influences the influencers right and I
2:04
think you're one of those two you influence the influencers you can look at X right formerly Twitter even when it
2:10
had a much smaller audience it was so influential to the influencers because the journalists and the politicians were
2:16
on there so it punched out of its way and when whenever somebody like in a huff deletes their X account and storms
2:23
off they just fade into irrelevance like Sam Harris where is he now I think Yan
2:29
Lun is the latest casualty of that right and sometimes they slink back on tail between their legs and sometimes they
2:34
don't but if you influence the influencers just like the left realized if you control the institutions and the
2:40
elites you can just punch out of your weight so so you bring up one of the points I wanted to point I want to talk
2:47
to you about you know it seems like during the political process as you learn the names of the people who are
2:52
connected to what you know especially on on the left you say oh it's that it's that person is always whenever there's
2:59
like a ho folks you see the the same group of people emerge it's like they've got the designated Liars but then they
3:06
little they little maybe uh I don't know gangs within the Democrats and then you
3:12
learn you know who's got the connection who's married to whom you know who whose husbands in the top of the CIA and stuff
3:18
right but but what happened on the right was that there was this sort of organic
3:24
growth of connection and persuasion that is invisible to the left
3:31
so the right as as kind of you know we've now figured out the entire network on the left but the left is blinded
3:39
because they see well I think it's podcasters has something to do with Joe Rogan and they can't go deeper than that
3:45
well the right doesn't even know what the network is because the right is not a coherent entity you know the left is a
3:50
set of people who hate Market outcomes whether in the free market of evolution in genetics and nature or in the free
3:57
market of capitalism right so because they don't want in equality it's an equality religion right like formerly
4:03
Christianity now elements of it mixed up with Marxism and identity and race politics and you get this thing where
4:10
they basically want everyone to have equal outcomes no matter what and then on the right you know you have the
4:16
people who just want to be left alone they're like hey just leave me alone it's basically a collection of people who don't like the left and it's a
4:22
ragtag collection and if you had to divide them up broadly there are at least three groups they're sort of the
4:27
fiscal free market you know classic conservatives they're sort of the people
4:32
who are bound by race and ethnicity and you know Common culture and then they're the people who are religious and you
4:38
know like raising families and God-fearing and so on and sort of these three categories together that when you
4:44
kind of get them together you get the right but it's inherently disorganized um so they don't form institutions they
4:50
don't form networks they're busy with their jobs they're not like running out and creating noos and institutions uh so
4:56
and they're not as ideological so I don't think even the right can identify that right if you had two different
5:01
right-wing people list the top figures you know in the industry or in the group it would break down after five people
5:08
they would just be different sets it's almost like the right is a set of nodes
5:13
and and then there's all these memes and reframes that that are flying through like if we go back to 2015 some of
5:20
people will remember this um when people thought Trump was a clown and he was just a clown that's all he was so I
5:26
wrote a blog post someone remember it it was called clown genius so I reframed
5:31
him as somebody who was a showan and that he could use those talents in a
5:37
productive way and You' better watch out because he's not GNA just change politics I said he's going to change the
5:43
nature of reality itself in 2015 now that one yeah you you were leading back
5:49
then and then you were pacing for a while now leading again so so then January 6 comes and you know and his
5:56
reputation goes down and I think that's when was important that the Silicon Valley the smartest people kind of came
6:04
in and said okay he's not crazy he's not dumb a lot of this stuff makes sense you don't have to love the personality
6:10
that's not what we're voting for and I think Elon was the biggest you know most prominent of that but you must have seen
6:18
a lot of that behind the scenes were were were you seeing dominoes falling like sort of private I definitely I
6:25
definitely heard heard a lot of people basically privately say oh my God you know this Biden administration's been a
6:31
disaster cumo looks even worse these are like full-on socialists you know they want to seize the means of production
6:38
price caps and you know race politics and gender politics like this it's just idiocy and we you know a lot of us are
6:45
in California and we've seen how much California suffered by being a one party State and then when you have just
6:53
enormous amounts of illegal immigration combined with the push for amnesty Birthright citizenship path to
6:58
citizenship Etc these are all code for flipping votes voters um and so it the
7:04
thing that I think the thing that really got me off the sidelines was the lawfare just the lawfare and then the Warfare
7:10
right lawfare graduated to Warfare with outright bullets being fired obviously that's more incitement related than you
7:16
know planned but uh the lawfare was crossing the line for me and I think for
7:23
a lot of people sorry go ahead can I put you uh on the spot do you remember your
7:29
post about changing the rules uh vaguely uh you know there are two posts I'm proud of in this whole in
7:37
this whole thing and one of them is about change the rules and there I was I didn't word it the perfect way I could
7:42
have word it a little better sometimes when Wordsmith so I know it wasn't quite perfect I almost didn't put it out for that reason but
7:50
um the post was basically that you don't you don't you know leaders come and
7:55
leaders go but you don't want to change the rules of the game right and uh lawfare is changing the rules of the
8:01
game censorship is changing the rules of the game importing voters is changing the rules of the game right these are
8:07
structural changes you're making to put get us into one party rule that'll never come back from and the ending of that
8:13
was like let's change out the rulers the change out the people who are changing the rules of the game right now there is
8:19
only one valid comeback to that by the way which was made by some commentators which is well Jan 6 was an attempt to
8:24
change the rules of game and I would argue no because you know I can go through all that evidence why but it's
8:30
like yeah a bunch of unarmed people taking over a building and nobody actually dying in the attack like that's not how you take over a country this
8:36
size you don't just seiz a building right we'll trespass until you surrender exactly and that was so exag I mean yeah
8:43
it was a bad thing to storm you know into the capital but it was so exaggerated after the fact by the left and so hoaxed that then they just lost
8:50
all credibility on it but regardless that was the only like slight comeback you could have to it but it's very clear
8:55
there's one side that keeps talking about changing the rules packing the Supreme Court adding States destroying the electoral college right these are
9:01
all attempts to change the rules of the game because they don't like losing um and it was is a one-way slope that we've
9:07
been on for a while um you know no ID voting that's another you know uh mail and ballot voting mandatory voting
9:14
non-secret voting right uh felon not being able to run for office right let's make him a felon okay we call you a
9:20
felon now you can't run for office so all of these are attempts to hack the system and I I like democracies because
9:26
you can vote people out of power because if you can't vote them out of power then you got to shoot your way out and that's not good for anybody you know especially
9:32
the unarmed 60% of the country so but what do what do you think realistically
9:38
once you look at the history of say Kennedy on have we really been picking
9:44
presidents I mean I was watching I was watching an old documentary about I don't want to get conspiratorial but
9:49
yeah Kennedy was shot and they still haven't released the files which is absurd they still haven't released the fil 60 years later uh Nixon you know the
9:56
whole Watergate thing now we know how the media works so was that all about um yeah it's you know but even the
10:04
exceptions look kind of weird right because you get okay Reagan um you know he was he was just All-American but he
10:10
was going to spend a whole lot on the military yeah yeah I mean these are all pro military candidates look I I also
10:16
tweeted that I think the the First Act that uh Trump should take is the Patriot Act needs to go and the FIS of Courts
10:23
and the fight of surveillance that that goes with it because that's been weaponized and turn domestic the as
10:29
excuse all they have to do is accuse you of foreign collusion and then they can treat you like a non-citizen all your
10:34
Fourth Amendment rights go out the window and now they're surveilling you and coming after you and as we know the
10:39
Federal Register is so large you know show me the men I'll show you the crime or what was it Rich's line like six
10:46
sentences written by an honest man I will have him hanged right the the every
10:51
word you said I I just love to hear it because once Silicon Valley types of
10:57
thinkers are set loose on the government you know Elon of course looks like he's going to be the the biggest one RFK Jr
11:04
Etc they're they're systems thinkers as you are yeah I actually volunteered for
11:10
public service I never thought I'd do it you know it would be pretty limited public service and I don't know what
11:15
they have that would match up but I just put the word out I said hey if you want me to do something in this government
11:20
I'm happy to do it because I want to protect the American dream for my kids well where I see your greatest value is
11:27
just what you're talking about which is your you're seeing how things are connected and I don't know that the
11:32
Democrats are good at that I don't know that the standard Republicans are good at it I don't think Trump's you know as
11:38
good at it as as like you would be or Elon would be or jie V will be so the
11:43
the level of re-engineering that can be brought to the country is breathtakingly exciting
11:51
to me it feels like 1776 and it feels like here's something I always wondered how was it that the8
11:58
or 12 12 people who started the revolution which was crazy I mean it was
12:06
crazy that that they were just going to get killed but somehow they made it work and then somehow just when we needed it
12:13
when you know the country sort of falling off the rails the the characters who had exactly the right skills and
12:20
historically so you know like Elon is Ben Franklin it almost seems like
12:26
reincarnation or something does that seem like a coincidence to you or am I I
12:31
mean you're you're inspiring me because I wasn't sure how much work I wanted to put into politics but now you're inspiring me if it's that kind of moment
12:37
then yeah that'll pull us everyone off the benches you know we're all to serve here's the way I look at it um of course
12:44
I'm biased for American greatness but if you know some of that's hyperbole Etc
12:50
patriotism but I do think that Americans have one superpower which is we will
12:55
can absolutely anything and and and and capitalism works because it
13:02
makes you fire your best friend right if if you can't fire your best friend if
13:07
you can't tear the entire structure down if you can't cannibalize your last product to put on your new iPhone you're
13:14
going nowhere yeah all the successful systems take feedback from free markets or nature and it's it's when you're you
13:22
know when you're a president and you say I'm not going to listen to what the Market's telling me I know what's right that's what when you're going to fail
13:27
economically um you know if you say uh no we don't need you know Tesla or we don't need electric cars we don't need
13:34
to go to space you're setting us back centuries as Humanity right you're you're not taking feedback from nature and we could we could just be wiped out
13:40
on this Earth uh so having a forward-looking PE person like Elon
13:45
actually executing I think that's what separates that's one of the many things but that's probably the largest thing in my mind that separates 2024 from 2016
13:53
instead of having a bunch of Republican party apparat chics and neocons running the administration
13:59
he actually has incredibly competent people available if he will take advantage of them you know the one thing
14:05
that Trump doesn't get enough credit for is that he has his ear to the the uh
14:10
public like like nobody else and he listens to lots of suggestions from lots
14:16
of people and uh so it's not a top- down situation I think Democrats are kind of a top- Down machine and the Republicans
14:24
are a bottomup machine well yeah the the Democrats are better organized you know they're they're Collective s by Nature
14:30
they're better organized that's what they do what they have though is they have worse leadership because uh the
14:35
great men tend to be more on the right so to speak right the great man theory of History you're just more likely to be
14:40
on the right because they're more individualistic so the left tends to win elections when they have a charismatic
14:46
male leader right you have Barack Obama or Bill Clinton right you win an election um and that's why also in a lot
14:52
of countries the first elected female prime ministers or presidents are conservative you know the Maggie
14:57
thatchers the Indira IES of the world the benis yourb they're actually warmongers all of them right um so you
15:04
you kind of have to uh the the left is better organized but they tend to have
15:09
worse leadership overall and I think that's a pattern you see across the board with them well at the moment their
15:15
their affinity for identity over competence somewhat forecast what was
15:21
going to happen you know not necessarily this election but there was somewhat of a guarantee that if they didn't go for
15:28
merit uh that eventually the wheels were going to fall off the whole machine I think that's what happened this year
15:34
yeah you know historically in a democracy I would be um a little more
15:39
pessimistic just because if you look at what the left does well is it gets all the have knots together and over time
15:45
the have knots sort of you know outnumber the halves uh and leverage and Technology leverage has been making that
15:51
worse you know the yes everybody's better off but the Delta between Elon Musk and the lowest paid workers is much
15:56
larger than historically however technology also gives leverage to the
16:02
winners right so you have a microphone now I have Twitter uh you know Elon has his Empire of companies behind him and
16:09
people who trust him and work with him so the amount of Leverage that's available to the really high functioning
16:14
individual societ is much higher and so that helps them fight back essentially we can't help but mention Elon and most conversations he's become the the universal reference to almost everything but I wanted to bring him up because if you look at Elon musk's life I'm trying to reconcile the coincidence that he believes were a simulation with the fact that he lives like he's in a simulation
he does live like he's in a simulation yes he must broke every time he's like
16:45
well what would be the most impossible thing I could do now ah change the government go to Mars build electric
16:53
car change one of the you know I I called out in 2022 I put out a tweet
16:58
saying Elon Musk is the new leader of the center right and then I did a troll poll like you know who's the leader of
17:04
the Free World and it was like is it Elon Musk Joe or who's the leader of the world it's uh Elon Musk Joe Biden uh Xi
17:11
Jinping and Vladimir Putin and of course Elon won right and obviously my follower
17:17
base is self- selected but uh you know I kind of knew that he he's the real deal
17:22
and I don't know him that well I mean I just exchange occasional once in a blue moon I get a message through him so I don't claim to know him at all um but
17:30
uh there was a story that I read about him that really affected me which was when he was talking to Bill Gates and
17:36
Bill Gates had just taken out some huge short on Tesla it like a billion dollar short or something and uh you know and
17:43
Elan was like why would you do that why would you short Tesla and Bill goes well you know I talked to my financial
17:49
advisers and I looked at the math and there's no way it's overvalued and so I'm going to make money on the short and
17:55
Elon goes what what do you care about making money I thought you were into electric cars and clim change and saving the world what are you doing like trying
18:01
to save a few bucks and betting against like and he just walked away in disgust and I think he never talked to Bill Gates after that and that's when I
18:07
realized like elon's a purist you know he means what he says like the money is a tool for him to get what he he's trying to do and so I take him at face
18:14
value which is the crazy thing because there a lot of people who set these audition go audacious goals to inspire people but you kind of know they don't
18:21
really mean it you want to take it face value so I really do think he intends to get to Mars I don't think he's joking
18:27
about that and I think he meant get he means to get there within a defined window of time and I I don't think it's just like an inspirational farway goal I
18:34
think he's very very concretely going to do whatever it takes because Elon
18:39
doesn't want to go down in history as the electric car guy or even the guy who saved America guy yeah he wants to go
18:46
down as a guy who got Humanity to the Stars yeah think again I'll give him
18:51
more credit than that I don't even think he wants to go down as the I got Humanity the Stars guy he's just like I
18:57
want to get to the stars and I have to make it happen in this lifetime the only way that I get to experience the science
19:03
fiction World in my head is if I get to the stars and so that's so inspirational
19:09
I think that drives everything so I think the government was just a thing that got in his way well get out of the
19:15
way so he can get TOS idea is even simpler uh he has to go to Mars because he already conquered the
19:23
planet a new planet he conquers the planet as a side effect you know if you
19:28
get Mars you also have the most powerful rockets and missiles in the world you've conquered Earth as a side effect if you
19:34
get to Mars you can already mine Asteroids for gold and resources you've got all the economics you just won Earth
19:39
as a side effect so just just getting two Mars as a side effect conquers everything because it's the most
19:46
audacious goal by far he's got to launch thousands of these rockets at a Cadence of every few hours to build a Mars
19:53
colony the St I mean they don't have air they literally don't have air it's a terraform a planet
19:59
but but it gets better because he's GNA I assume that the the base on Mars will be built by his own robots yeah he has
20:07
to build the robots to build the bases he has to have the AI to you know pilot those robots and control them and the
20:13
vehicles to drive themselves and yeah there's no gasoline on Mars it's all kind of electric vehicles right he's
20:19
he's thought a lot of this through the two pieces I I see him not having done yet although I'm sure he thought about them a lot our terraform formation like
20:25
how to terraform Mars properly um and you could even start by terraforming parts of Earth you could take deserts
20:31
and Earth and turn them into Mediterranean paradises um and the other piece that he has to do is drones like
20:36
he doesn't have a drone company yet and you know the future yeah I've been wondering about that it just seems so
20:42
obviously missing from the portfolio doesn't it well I mean we we sort of make it look like it's effortless like
20:48
oh yeah Elon you've done it before spin up another company but before Steve Jobs and Elon Musk came along the
20:53
conventional wisdom and and Jack dorsy too the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is you can't run more than one company that a time and you would never
21:00
invest in somebody who was trying to run two companies at a time so spinning these up does take effort and you know he's been busy Conquering the United
21:06
States so give him a breather give him another three three months on that one but yeah I I expect if I had to guess
21:13
just looking from afar he'll eventually want a drone company but you know in the meantime there's andural Palmer luy's
21:18
company guy who started Oculus and then was I think he was tossed out for bad reasons um but he was an early early
21:26
rightwing troll um and now he's doing andil which is like probably the most important new company in defense on the
21:33
planet yeah he's got some good good toys there every time I see one of his little ads I think oh I wouldn't want to be on
21:39
the other end of that but see that's another example of the over regulated uh world that we live in that I know elon's
21:46
not a fan of is um drone the US is way behind in drone development Andel is
21:51
like the one bright spot that's out there but the Chinese have such an advantage in drones because DJI is the
21:57
world's leading commercial manufacturer and here in the US we got hamstrung a lot by the FAA um a lot of drone
22:04
companies and drone entrepreneurs had to Pivot or went out of business because the FAA was too restrictive and DJI has
22:10
just taken over the entire drone business so if the Chinese actually do get drone Supremacy above us and I don't
22:16
think they're that far off that's like a form of it's that's like the same tier as nuclear Supremacy like in terms of
22:22
you can win entire Wars entire countries because the next war is not going to be fought with humans it's going to be fought with robots like the the lesson
22:28
of the Ukraine Russia Wars if you can see it you kill it right the first one to spot the other one wins it's
22:34
literally that's the whole game right and because drones are guided bullets and so they're the end state of all
22:39
Weaponry is drones there's one exception I can get into but essentially all the sub the submarines and the warships will
22:46
turn to drone ships uh all the you know bullets individual bullets will be flying drones they'll turn Corners
22:51
they'll have face wreck right so in that world the Infantry men is completely obsolete it's like a mounted Knight
22:57
against a mus here um so we we need to get drone Supremacy back pretty quickly or Taiwan is gone for sure which we
23:05
means we're basically at the old Star Trek uh episode where where I think they
23:10
did a computer simulation to see who would win the war that's right if you're a loser you 600,000 have to go into the
23:17
yeah you get over there and you die but that that's exactly what would happen because it would be like hey our drone Army beats your drone Army now there is
23:23
one of our drones circling every one of your citizens heads you know and we're going to execute 10% because you lost
23:29
right or because you didn't surrender in the first place I mean this is dystopian but but but do you do you think we maybe have reached a point you know every
23:36
probably every year in Civilization they said that where the big war doesn't make sense and it so doesn't make sense that
23:43
you couldn't even get their accidentally because it would just take too many accidents to yeah the big word doesn't
23:48
make sense for any sufficiently advanced Society because any sufficiently advanced Society is just short on
23:54
technology and ideas it's not short on resources it's not short on you know it's not fighting for food um but we we're living in this weird
24:01
world where you have 21st century societies like the United States or parts of the United States and Japan and
24:06
then you have countries that are literally 150 years back in terms of their moral cultural intellectual
24:13
technological development and so to them the idea of like conquering somebody still makes sense right beating up their
24:18
neighbor to get a piece of land or to lose something sort of still makes sense uh and it's absurd obviously but the
24:25
problem is the technology developed in the Neolithic country kind of filters into the Paleolithic
24:31
countries who can then use that same technology 10 years later and 10 years is not enough for them to have developed
24:36
their moral and cultural institutions to know how to deal with it to realize hey there's more life than blowing each
24:42
other up that's why I think the the top you know five powers should just say why
24:48
don't we just stay the top five powers forever and just make sure the little guys don't kill any of us well that's
24:54
what happened with the UN right after the after the nuclear weapon was in to
24:59
but too the top seven basically said we're going to hang on to the nukes thank you very much and then South
25:04
Africa and Israel and Pakistan and North Korea snuck in and India um but originally it this A Security Council
25:10
right Security Council was it Russia China England France us had nukes and that's it nobody and nobody else gets to
25:17
say um but drones will leak out more than that and and drones aren't like as apocalyptic as nukes right away it's not
25:24
like a zero to one you go from non-nuclear to nuclear but the drones just get better and better and you can see that Iran and turkey uh and these
25:32
countries like they punch out of their weight above their weight just because they're advanced in drone development you know turkey with the tb2 drones that
25:39
Ukraine has been using and uh you know um Iran making the Shah head drones for Russia and of course China with
25:47
DJI would you get a robot would you would you get a home robot yeah I'm on
25:52
the list for Optimus Prime um or Optimus whatever it's called Optimus Prime as a Transformer Optimus the the Tesla robot
26:00
I think I'm pretty far in front of the in the front of the list I hope but look I don't expect it to be that great at
26:05
the beginning it's probably gonna suck okay but you have to both support the future unlike Bill Gates right uh and
26:13
you have to um you have to try the future like if you live in the future you're just so much better off than than
26:20
not living in the future I I buy every random technology Gadget that looks halfway interesting but I don't have any
26:26
quals about throwing it out either I do for learning because judgment is everything we live in a very highly
26:31
leveraged age one of the biggest mistakes I made was I talked myself out of a Tesla years ago so I got a Tesla
26:36
later than I should have because if I gotten it earlier I would have bought the stock I would have made many Teslas worth the money right and I would have
26:43
understood what where electric cars are going what the future of Automotive looks like and I would have understood what self-driving can do and what it
26:49
couldn't earlier so just for purely judgment reasons to improve your judgment you know you should be Pro Tech
26:56
um so yeah I'm going to buy an Optimus I can afford obviously so that makes it easy for for other people okay yeah you
27:01
can wait until it's a more finished product but do do you think the llm AI
27:06
is ever going to be able to drive a robot because I don't think it is yeah I don't know I mean the Transformer
27:12
breakthrough so so what happen was this break through this thing called the Transformer which was really designed for translation between languages and
27:18
but it also works well for transcription for some self-driving and art generation so on that breakthrough has generalized
27:25
quite a bit more than just language is because it does art right it does like video and art um but yeah I don't think
27:32
it generalizes forever and I think with these robots they're going to have to give them a lot more real world data and
27:38
feedback but the whole AI boom has now brought a lot more money and a lot more research and a lot more development into
27:44
AI so just people are taking it a lot more seriously and I will say what the
27:50
Optimus robot can already do on a machine learn model is actually already more than I think they were able to do
27:56
Under the old rules based systems where they were like coding it by hand so I would say I'm cautiously optimistic and
28:03
uh one thing Elon has taught us is just you know stay at it throw the best people at it throw a lot of resources at
28:09
it it's worth it and eventually you'll get it to work yeah it does have the feel of we're it's definitely the thing
28:15
and there's no way to avoid AI but we don't know what it looks like so it's hard it's hard to know what to what to
28:21
do to get ready for that well I I don't I don't think one should fear AI uh I my
28:27
current read on it is is that it's the dawn of natural language Computing you can basically speak in natural language
28:33
to computer and it can go through huge unstructured data sets make sense out of them and speak back to you in natural
28:39
language so that alone is a huge breakthrough and then I think for highly bounded tasks like driving a car which
28:46
is actually pretty bounded because there are rules of the road and you have a lot of data um or translation transcription
28:52
uh image generation classification there's just a few of them I think it's really good um and quite worthwhile but
28:58
I think in terms of like AGI and you're having a conversation with it and it's creating new science like I know that's
29:03
the hope I don't see the road to that just now I also think it's a tool like you become more effective and more
29:09
efficient like any other tool so just learn how to use it and you be more productive you be more valuable so I
29:14
don't know if I mentioned this to you years ago but for over 30 years I've had a plan that uh I would replace myself
29:22
with a robot before I go you know so I just needed the right level of AI and
29:27
then the AI now believe it or not doesn't allow me to just teach it who I am so I could reproduce it like there's
29:34
a company doing that uh it just they came in my inbox the other day and I passed without meeting it but it's a
29:40
good company and they have good product and good technology and they're basically making AI clones of famous people that you can then rent by the
29:46
hour right who is it what's the company do you remember I I do I don't know if I should be advertising or not advertising
29:52
it because I'm not investing so you know does it start does it start with a D yes
29:57
oh I I think I tried that one yeah exactly the Oracle right the hint on the name um but
30:05
yeah the thing is I just think that's inauthentic I don't think like these AI these AIS are mimics right they're
30:11
Patchwork plagiarists they can grab little sentences and translate them and combine them but it doesn't make sense
30:16
underneath but when I tried it it couldn't remember accurately even things I put in a file and say remember this
30:23
about me and okay but that's in practice I'm talking about even in theory we don't have any approaching AGI we don't
30:29
know how creativity works so it's going to be fake it's going to be a fake parrot it's it's like if it's literally
30:35
a a stochastic parrot like a random number generator parrot is one way to think about it another way is like I
30:41
call it a patchwork plagiarist right it's plagiarizing your past work and sort of stitching it together but it's
30:46
like a Franken San output it's not alive so I'm in the process of uh building out
30:53
a some kind of a state trust uh structure so that I can fund my
30:58
permanent robot that can be upgraded as the AI improves so so it'll be its own
31:03
little trust entity well we could work the other way so there's two other
31:09
you're talking about one way to bring you back or keep is to keep you around as a robot uh another way is we could
31:15
just like stick a chip in your brain record everything that's going on and then when you die like you know or even
31:21
while you're alive flip it flip you to the chip turn the brain off and flip you to the chip so that's another route a
31:26
third one is we could just simulate you we could just you know record you well enough and create a simulated version if it's a good enough simulation why isn't
31:32
that alive right there's a lot of ways through this Rabbit Hole well it's also G to be interesting
31:39
because if if I say that the robot is me and who gets to say it doesn't I mean
31:46
it would have to have some kind of rights that are managed by a human being yeah but if I say that's a continuation
31:53
of me right who's to say otherwise there's a great sci-fi short story called l
31:58
uh and it's about the first human to get his brain virtualized you know like virtually copied and then basically he
32:05
realize it like it's it becomes it goes open source and so everybody starts using for everything and then you know
32:11
400 years later it's powering washing machines and robot slaves and so on and it's always the same guy and he's waking
32:17
up and he's like oh my God I'm a I'm a robot slave you know it's like for the rest of Eternity he's suffering in all
32:23
these menial roles it's a fun story but this goes back to the question of which
32:28
one is real right like in the Multiverse which copy of me is real I have an answer to that by the way we can come
32:34
back to that but um in the you know in if I make copies of myself with a transporter accident Star Trek or if I
32:40
make robot duplicates which one is real there's a Calvin and Hobs uh strip which I'm sure you've seen it went for a while
32:47
where Calvin has this box this cardboard box you know all kids always have the cardboard box
32:53
game something like that he opens it and another Calvin comes out so he can create Calvin copy a cloner and so he's
33:00
showing Hobs like okay this one's going to do the chores that one's going to do the homework this one's gonna go you know do that and I'm just going to relax
33:06
but pretty soon they're all bums they're all fighting over the food there's not enough clothes they're all trashing the place nobody wants to clean up because
33:12
they're all Calvin right right so it doesn't actually solve any problems uh it just creates
33:17
duplicates but uh yeah I mean at the end of the day the the way to test that is like uh you wouldn't pull the plug on
33:24
yourself right like if if you really believe that to you then you're ready to pull the plug in this copy of you and
33:30
nobody ever is um that's that's the real test on it there's a there's a Sci-Fi short story called The Jewel and I'm
33:37
going to blow the punch line so if somebody doesn't want to know it just skip ahead but basically it's about a future society in which they put a chip
33:44
in your brain when you're born and the chip records every action every sensation every feeling of your
33:50
development and then when you hit a certain point in maturity you go in for an operation where they scrape your
33:55
brain out and replace it with a warm spongy material that'll survive forever and they turn the The Jewel on and
34:01
you're now the jewel so your brain's been uploaded into the secure chip that you control and the rest of the body is
34:06
all replaceable it's only the brain that the mind that they couldn't replace the software so this is how they do it and
34:11
so our protagonist has like a week coming up until his brain is going to be scraped out and he's going to be you
34:17
know flipped on as a jewel and after a while he's like no no I don't want to do this right and and then he goes and then
34:23
runs off and joins some secret society of underground lunatics who refuse to have their brains replaced place because they're now very much in the minority
34:29
and they're mortal so they're going to die they age and die everybody else gets to live forever so they're kind of crazy
34:34
um and then he find and then when he goes into the secret site and he sort of escaped he finds out actually they
34:41
turned the Jewel on two weeks ago so your brain is still there but you're not listening to it you are the jewel now do
34:47
you want to go through with it or not and then he goes yeah so then he goes in for the operation the script the brain out that's the end so so so what you
34:54
would have so but even that doesn't quite solve it right because like if I
34:59
flipped you to robot you then robot you would say yeah get rid of meat Meats suit you know Scott he's not necessary
35:06
anymore but meit Scott would say get rid of robot Scott so you you actually independently exist it's a clone it's
35:13
not you but it solves itself because me Scott goes his me Scott way and the
35:18
robot goes on forever that's true that's true uh it's
35:24
it's like creating a clone by the way you can already clone yourself you know rich people are already cloning dogs and cats I hate to say it not me but I know
35:32
people who have literally cloned their dead animal and they have a clone of it running around uh and and and you ask
35:38
the kids you're like hey how's the Clone and they're like oh same behavior you know I can't tell it apart from the old dog so for a dog it's the problem solved
35:45
and you can already clone yourself there are companies that are doing uh you know embryos stuff like they have the ability
35:51
to do clones the I I'll bet you the Chinese Communist Party the top people have some clones on Ice that is so so cool to think about
35:58
that they could just break one out isn't that like the what is the Sci-Fi Foundation yeah oh yeah there's altered
36:06
carbon I think and or Rick and Morty has some stuff on this but yeah it's uh you
36:12
know the future is here it's just unevenly distributed right so so so let
36:17
me let me ask you some more questions about the future what do think these feature of the
36:24
family yeah so I think the Catholic church was right and the contraception killed the you know the family it it
36:31
sort of killed Catholicism actually killed religion for sure uh contraception was a groundbreaking
36:37
technology right it changed the nature of the family and now we're in this situation
36:43
where you and and you kind of had enforced monogamy in society before
36:48
right uh like and and if you had sex you had a child you needed two people to
36:53
raise a child you know you didn't have washing machines you didn't have cars or whatever Etc so you're kind of forced
36:59
into the family unit and now through a combination of uh robotics technology
37:05
automation contraception um sex and marriage and childbearing all these things have
37:11
become highly decoupled right and so a lot of people are playing Choose Your Own Adventure um but those bundles were
37:19
there for a reason right were biologically hardwired for those bundles so I would say like the happiest
37:24
situation is if you have a happy family if you're happily married and you got your kids and everyone loves each other
37:30
that's the best of all possible worlds but that's so rare most people you know either fail trying to get to that or
37:37
they don't even want to take the risk because if you try for it and you fail there's so much downside that they sort
37:44
of are opting into all these alternative models um the weirdest one that I heard this is a Los Angeles story um I I don't
37:52
know if I want to out him it's up to him but this guy's having a uh he has a son
37:58
with a woman they got they were married they had a child then they didn't get along they got divorced okay they're
38:03
still friends they're obviously raising the son you know as divorced um father and mother but he decided he wants to
38:09
have another kid and who would he be best situated to have a kid with he's already got all the
38:15
child support worked out he knows they're genetically compatible they still get along they're already raising a child together so he's having a kid
38:21
with his exwife and payer uh I think that he's basically
38:28
it's like a divorce like he's paying her enough to you know it's like the alimony thing but you add for the ex kid right
38:34
you use the same rules that you have with the existing kid so in that sense it's probably probably worked out but if
38:40
you tell people like oh I'm gonna have another kid with my ex-wife like that triggers them right that breaks their
38:47
mind in so many ways and I think it's weird like it's it's fine it's probably better than having a kid with someone
38:53
you don't know or don't love or having a kid without a mom you know I know that happens too so so it's probably fine but
38:59
it's weird it's definitely weird and people are getting pretty mad at him about it mad enough I think he's gonna
39:05
write a book on the topic and become famous for it he's already famous but he's even more famous right but um my
39:12
advice to him was I was like just tell him you're gay right just tell him you went gay because then it's suddenly okay it's
39:19
weird how these rules work exact same thing is happening and the child is born being raised the same way but because
39:25
you say you're gay it's suddenly okay you get jail I've been holding that card in case I need it someday it's like well
39:32
you know I wasn't going to mention it but now that you bring it up right put on a wig yeah so yeah I think the whole family
39:40
thing is going to go into um permutations that we're not used to I
39:46
think you're going to see what didn't I don't know if this is a fake news or not wasn't Elon talking about having all of
39:52
his uh the mothers of his kids in one one building yeah h i mean it's that's
39:59
um that's yeah yeah it's like Mormon style right um I mean there are people a
40:06
lot of people are opting out of the gene pool they're not even having kids can't be bothered right or it's too difficult
40:12
um I think I think that's a mistake I think if you can have kids you should have kids it kind of answers the meaning of life question right but it's my my
40:19
rule on that is you either got to have kids or you gotta find God like pick one of the two and I know what's that well
40:27
I've read God I've read God's debris I I've I've I I've read your simulation stuff I know the game you're
40:33
playing you're playing the God game uh and you're just playing it in your own way with your own words so you have more
40:39
conviction which makes sense right it's not some white bearded dude who lived 2,000 years ago has certain Commandments
40:44
you're thinking it through for yourself and you're stitching it together in your own framework your own models your own language and so it's solid within you
40:52
you have you have your own I wouldn't call it Faith because it's there through reason but you you have your own deep
40:59
spirituality although you don't use that language or those words um and I think youd have to otherwise you wouldn't be
41:05
happy right now because then you''ll be just self-obsessed and looking for pleasure in the next pill or the next thing or the next activity and that
41:10
doesn't you have to have a mission if you don't larger than yourself something that you truly
41:17
believe in more than yourself and kids are the easiest one right and one of the great ones I I I'm finding Politics as
41:24
my uh as my Escape you know because if I anything that helps people like you know
41:29
I've had a job where people contact me all the time and say oh you help me lose weight or get a new job or something and
41:37
that just feeds me that's just like oh my God that's that's the nourishment I need it's like I helped you wow well I I
41:44
think especially like if you're a traditional male you get a lot of value like self- value out of uh taking care
41:51
of your tribe doing your duty towards your tribe and you get to Define your tribe and the more capable you are the
41:56
broad of that tribe the more people you should take care of and that's why people like Elon are so impressive because he's basically saying humanity
42:03
is my tribe right I'm going to I'm going to push us all forward now to that point
42:08
my my hypothesis is that the reason that Trump prevailed is that the danger to
42:14
society to America got to the point where male um just male biology kicked
42:20
in and people who otherwise would have said you take care of it I'm sure it'll be fine just said oh no there's a l at
42:27
my door and I'm the guy with the gun and I got I got to kill the lion so this you
42:32
mentioned one tweet of mine before the change the people who are trying to change the system right but the other tweet that I was really proud of this
42:38
cycle right was it's I almost want to pin this to my profile but it's a it's
42:44
the battle of the masculine men and The Feminine women against the Fe against the masculine women and The Feminine men
42:51
right and that one was written in such a way that like it's it's lyrical it's poetic it flows but it's also true and
42:57
once you see it you can't unsee it and I think that one influenced more people than any tweet I put out because they
43:04
saw it and they they they immediately knew whether they're masculine man or feminine woman and then they immediately
43:09
thought on the other side like oh yeah they're all men are feminine all the women are masculine right and it
43:14
immediately sorted you it's it properly sorted you into your bucket and it did it with actually ironically identity
43:21
politics politics but it it works um it does work and so I think like what you
43:28
have is you have very capable people now who decided that you know the nonsense
43:35
has to stop the identity politics has to stop the the gaslighting has to stop the law fair has to stop the censorship has
43:41
to stop um and uh hacking the system has to stop and and we got to put our foots
43:47
down so you have some so in this Administration I think you have some very intelligent people working with Trump hopefully they will figure out how
43:54
to navigate the bureaucracy and the Intel apparatus before they get blown up right because the Intel apparatus and
44:01
the bureaucracy are not going to give up I have a theory that over a long enough period of time the people with the guns are always in charge right so if you if
44:09
you look at Roman history at the end all the Emperors came from the Victorian guard which was guarding the emperor now
44:14
they were suddenly in charge if you look at what happened in Russia you know the FSB the KGB the secret police the people
44:20
who were guarding the premier they took over right so that's Putin and his crew so on a long enough cycle the pror guard
44:27
is eventually in charge the people with the guns always end up in charge so and that's happened kind of everywhere in the world where the Intel operators has
44:34
Intel operat for example has their secret courts and their secret laws and their gag orders so why hasn't it fully
44:39
happened in the US it's the only place in the world and because of the SEC Second Amendment because the people with
44:45
the guns are in charge because the people have the guns right well but the
44:50
possibility is that they just use the media so that they could get around the gun holders correct correct so the power
44:58
actually goes to the best organized and armed intolerant minority right to win
45:05
revolutions and wars and even to have the soft power that revolutions and Wars have never fought against you in the first place you need the organized group
45:13
and I think as a society we've lost fact of the we've lost side of the where voting comes from voting developed as a
45:20
way for people who had won Wars to divide up the spoils amongst themselves and not fight each other and it became a
45:27
right that was granted to you if you fought for the Empire if you had a sword and shield and you had some land and you
45:32
call you went when you were called by the king or the emperor of the Senate you went to war for them and so power
45:39
gave you the right to vote because the other guys didn't want to fight you they didn't want a civil war so like let's
45:44
just divide up the vote amongst us like if you're in a pirate ship and 10 people are armed and 90 aren't you crash in
45:49
some Island who's going to end up voting it's going to be the 10 with the with the weapons the 90 without the weapons will not get a vote especially if the 10
45:56
are organized especially if they have a common culture race religion nationalism philosophy whatever that's binding them
46:02
together so it's that power gives you the right to vote and now we've gotten upside down where the right to vote
46:07
gives you power where it doesn't matter if you're capable of exercising power or not you get the right to vote but how
46:13
long is that going to work you know if the 51% that's unarmed and not powerful
46:18
is voting to stamp a to stomp a Jack boot you know on the 49% that's armed
46:24
eventually that 49% will organize unless as you say the media keeps them
46:30
disorganized off balance and doesn't give them a chance to organize right that's why I like the anyone who's in
46:36
charge is really good at breaking up crime breaking up rings organization
46:41
right they don't want the opponents to organize so it's the organized resistance that can win disorganized
46:47
they don't right like if if there's Jack booted thugs coming in kicking down doors if we all fight them at once they
46:52
always lose North Korea would be free if everyone in that giant open air Gulag
46:57
could organize in one action in one moment but they can't coordinate so they get picked off one by one like
47:03
dissidents the same way like Twitter can you know the old Twitter before Elon took over kick off people one by one but
47:09
they couldn't all leave in a huff to another side at the same time they couldn't organize because Twitter is the organization mechanism so the single
47:16
most consequential thing that freed this country is Elon bought X and the best
47:22
tweet I saw on this was from Greg fodo he this great tweet he said I can't
47:27
believe that he noticed that the the 80% uh completed Imperial death star and
47:35
just bought it they' basically been building this
47:41
Death Star to control all of news media forever and they were using it left and
47:47
right and 80% done and he just bought it and there's a really iron there's many
47:54
ironic sub stories in there but one of my favorites is that when he went to buy it he offered the 44 billion right I
48:00
think it was 42 because he loves that number right he's just L's he's Liv in the simulation so he's he's a Troll he's
48:06
trolling the simulation and um you're right he's the guy who takes a simulation seriously and so are you
48:13
right and so you guys live your lives you you YOLO it you truly YOLO It Anyway You Yol it with some faith that there's
48:20
some wind out there at your back which by the way might be called a religious belief nevertheless um so uh you know
48:27
they they they built this Deb star and he he he goes in to buy it and he offers
48:33
44 billion I don't remember I don't 42 and it gets to 44 through some accounting stuff but I don't know if you
48:38
remember but the market crashed hard right then that was when the market fell
48:43
off a cliff and the and he then he realized he was way overpaying the
48:49
bankers all tried to back out nobody wanted to invest he was in over his head the stock he put up his collateral had
48:55
come down and he didn't want to buy it anymore he didn't want to buy it and he was like well you know there are too
49:01
many Bots here and they're like well that's not good enough you can't back out so they dragged him to court in
49:07
front of a Delaware judge and they made him buy [Laughter]
49:14
it that's the best and he freed us all yeah no I I so here's here's my cynical
49:22
question can any modern country survive with free speech if their news is
49:29
real because you think they'll just fracture they'll fall apart they'll realize there's been too much Shenanigans in the past and they'll be I
49:36
I think if if we saw all the warts of our government yeah and there wasn't a
49:41
counter thing that was you know hid saying oh that's not true uh I don't know if any government could survive
49:48
long enough to do anything good but that's the nice thing about democracy it gives us a way to have peaceful
49:53
revolutions right so if all of that came out the people people if they truly understood it which I'm a little
50:00
skeptical on I mean the reality is I think most people are single issue voters and the parties are collections of single issue voters and most people
50:06
have one thing they really care about and understand they don't really pay attention to everything else so there's only a small percentage of people who
50:12
care if Kennedy was killed by the CIA or not you know it might be enough to tip the vote on the margin um but I don't I
50:19
I just don't think enough people care or that Nixon was framed you know like okay half the country will believe it the
50:24
other half won't you know exactly how this will work out right true or false
50:29
if it has a political component to it half the country will believe it and half the country won't I I feel I'm only
50:35
curious like I'm not bought bought into the answer at all I'm not either I'm not either for the record I don't think the
50:41
CIA killed him but I'll bet one of their ex people was you know probably went rogue well yeah something along those
50:47
lines yeah their fingerprints are somewhere but not directly on the gun all right I I don't think I've asked
50:53
you about UFOs yet have I I've never talked about UFOs am I I don't think you might have I'm I'm a UFO skeptic like I
51:00
don't so am I so do do you think there so the fact that the government
51:07
keeps telling us that somebody else to seen a spacecraft and we can't tell we can't
51:13
tell you where it is or what it looks like right right there's too many camera phones there's too many people there's
51:19
too many blabber mounts there's too many want to be heroes you know that information will be out already plus why
51:24
would the aliens even hide it and would the UFOs get captured and how do they even make it here so far wouldn't we see
51:30
some evidence like electromagnetic radiation from their transmission there's just so many problems with the UFO thing it's kind of H you you know
51:38
it's okay so when you're trying to figure when you're trying to figure out how how to navigate this world full of dueling memes that are trying to occupy
51:43
your brain what you really need is good epistemology epistemology is just theory of knowledge fancy word for theory of
51:49
knowledge you need to know how to tell what's true from what's false and that's becoming one of the most important if
51:54
not the most important survival trait in Society the other one might be like can you resist eating sugar although I think
51:59
OIC will solve that so uh it's really about how do you tell what's true from what's false and too many people are
52:07
lazy they don't have the foundation to figure out what's true what's false and they just like assume one thing then
52:13
next thing you and you're in this giant edifice of like men can give birth right or UFOs are real or I'm embarrassed you
52:20
know for the people who are into this but it's like you know the pyramid was like giant battery or something you know
52:26
that that one seems to be in Vogue right now but there's always a b bunch of these Lunatic Fringe theories that go
52:31
through um and I just think they like if you have any kind of understanding of
52:36
physics politics people numbers you know numeracy you would understand that no
52:42
the government's not hiding a bunch of UFOs somewhere so so here's my my favorite recreational belief about UFOs
52:49
this is not a real belief it's a recreational belief that apparently our moon has so many Oddities to it compared
52:56
to other moons that we can we can see that it's almost like it doesn't seem like a real moon and then some people
53:02
say it's a hollow spaceship that that been there but my
53:08
but I've added to it that on the Dark Side of the Moon there's this enormous crater impact that you can't see from
53:14
our side but uh so my theory is that the the aliens were using their giant ship
53:20
that didn't look like it was covered with dirt when it first got there maybe it was just a big big ball and uh they
53:26
were sort of trying to geoform the Earth for later you know that maybe they gave us a little DNA and stuff like that and
53:32
they're watching it and maybe even maybe even they uh thought they would block an asteroid or something from destroying
53:39
the good work they've done maybe they moved the moon in front of it and took the hit so my theory is that the
53:45
inhabitants of the Moon space vehicle all died but it's automated and that
53:51
what we see as UFOs uh that do that weird thing where you can see them and they show up on radar but they seem to
53:57
be able to change directions like faster than an object that they're Holograms from the Moon in other words the the
54:05
there is something there but it's just a intersection of of electromag magnetic
54:10
waves so maybe you maybe you could pick it up on radar and maybe you could see it but if you put your hand on it it
54:17
wouldn't be there and yet yet it yet it could operate like uh sonar or radar
54:23
which is if you send out any kind of signal into the world you can you can get a ping back and it's just a way of I
54:30
just think eyewitness evidence is worthless and people are very gullible so I don't waste neurons and thinking
54:35
about UFOs um like like I there there's there are zillions of near you know
54:41
probably nearly infinite kep planets in the universe or in the Multiverse so yeah there is life out there somewhere
54:47
um it's probably just you don't think so well I'm still caught on we're a
54:53
simulation and if we are there doesn't need to be life anywhere else I don't think I don't think your simulation okay
54:59
let's go into the simulation thing because I'm going to take you up on it I don't think it explains anything useful
55:05
um okay here's what the simulation hypothesis basically does it just kicks the whole God problem up one level right
55:11
it's an axiomatic kind of thing saying well we're just in a simulation it can't be falsified you can always just say
55:16
well that's just a simulation you can cherry pick like with horoscopes you can cherry pick outcomes and say well that
55:22
would only happen in the simulation and you could ignore all the ones that followed regularity um it doesn't actually explain anything
55:28
it doesn't make any risky and narrow predictions um it's not falsifiable so it's not scientific it's purely a belief
55:35
it's a faith oriented belief uh and you can replace the word simulation with God
55:40
you can replace it with computer program VR reality chemical scum vat brain in the vat and the whole thing still holds
55:47
it's a very easy to VAR Theory um but what about the what about the statistical likelihood if we know that
55:54
one is created there will be there are two places where the simulation Theory uh differs from uh just a pure madeup
56:02
God Theory okay one of those is that the statistical argument which is like on a long enough time scale your computers
56:08
get strong enough that you can do this right the the second problem uh sorry the second thing that it kind of
56:14
addresses is it kind of says that and that's why reality is quantum underneath zeros and ones right it's a system that
56:19
we're used to so let's forget the second one let's go with the first one for a sec so you're basically saying that it's
56:25
just it's just likely to happen right this so you just wait long enough the computers get good enough well okay what
56:31
would happen okay they're they're already good enough but go ah okay well what happens is anytime you're simulating something it is much much
56:39
much lower resolution and much less real than the base reality that you're simulating out of right computer to
56:47
render that to guide that Photon over there so you lose massive amounts of res
56:52
uh resolution so the only way the simulation is going to be better is if
56:57
you can control it right if you can basically say uh otherwise you're going to stay in your real reality the reason
57:04
you play video games in your real reality because video games you can win easily you can control it that's what
57:09
affirmations are okay yeah so okay I'm I'm going along with you so the only reason you go into a simulation is you
57:15
can control it but if you can control it too easily then it's not fun there's no
57:20
surprise so to make it fun and surprising you want to have it either be
57:26
multiplayer or convincingly multiplayer where there are other actors who can do things you don't expect and it's
57:31
adversarial right right so you would end up with something that looks a lot like what we have today right so what so the
57:38
only reason you would do it is because base reality wasn't giving you that feedback and entertainment right if base
57:45
reality was giving you that same level of multiplayer game you would rather stay in Bas reality because it's like
57:50
billions of times higher resolution in fact this reality would be so unsatisfyingly low res you would have to
57:56
nuke your memory and probably nuke your body to not understand what's going on no here here here's where I I must
58:02
disagree with you okay please so uh if you're playing tennis and you see the tennis ball Zip by and it hits the line
58:09
and you say hey that's out and everybody else says no that's in uh you can play it back in the on the video and you can
58:15
find out for sure what it was but the person who saw it out and the person who saw it in have a perfect memory except
58:22
one of them didn't happen and what we know is that our brains create the resolution or imagine
58:29
the resolution and so I'm talking to you right now surrounded by detail that is
58:34
completely being invisible to me and I don't even know if it's really there unless I look at it right so our actual
58:40
experience of life is that we're imagining resolution that isn't there and that's easily provable what's the
58:47
difference between imagining resolution and having resolution how can I imagine it if it doesn't like it would take the same compute power for me to imagine it
58:54
as it would for it to exist although you could argue the Unseen universe doesn't need to exist exactly now it's an
59:00
argument for Consciousness because exactly it's not if it's not conscious why bother rendering it right which
59:07
leads me to a different place so so my to everything is conscious rather than
59:12
to the unconscious stuff isn't rendered I don't know that point but let me ask let me ask this so my belief is
59:20
if we're a simulation then if I were to go in the backyard and dig a hole where nobody no human or any entity had ever
59:28
dug a hole that the stuff that I dig to doesn't exist until I'm digging to it
59:33
because it doesn't need to and never did need to so everything that's not directly observed doesn't have to exist
59:40
and that's how you save all your compute time why do you need to save compute time because the universe is massively
59:48
big and you couldn't build a computer that be big enough to replicate in detail like you
59:54
say say in the simulation you need to uh you need to consider compute time but from what we see of our universe it is
1:00:00
so massive it's potentially a Multiverse it has so many you know black holes and
1:00:06
capable of computing power has so much compute power like why why would you need to leave this reality
1:00:13
like even steing back okay it's a simulation let's go with that for a second what doesn't mean you left it
1:00:20
though okay what does that explain that was unexplained before
1:00:26
oh I don't know first of all I don't accept your assumption that that's a necessity for it to be true well I I
1:00:33
think the set of potential falsehoods is infinite and Truth is a very rare thing
1:00:39
so to pluck truth out of the falsehood you have to have certain rules for what is true and what is not that's my op
1:00:44
what about statistical arguments though statistical arguments only H it's let
1:00:51
let me give you one I'll give you one so you can here's the problem with the statistical argument the problem is I can give you an equally infinite number
1:00:58
of scenarios in which we choose not to do a simulation just because base reality is already so good the problem
1:01:05
with the simulation argument another problem is like like you can't you can never break
1:01:11
out of the simulation or if you do then how do you know you're not another simulation right it's like it
1:01:16
doesn't it's it's doing the God thing it's basically hiding everything behind a layer where you're not allowed to look
1:01:23
and so it's adding complexity without EXP explaining anything new it violates aam's razor in that sense because you've
1:01:29
added a new explanation in this case the simulation but that new explanation doesn't give you anything it doesn't
1:01:35
allow you to do anything more it doesn't explain anything that you see or observe and so therefore you've just added
1:01:41
unnecessary entities in the explanation and just an aam's Razer you don't want to do that well so let let me let me
1:01:47
test that okay so my belief is that if we're a simulation it wouldn't necessarily be for entertainment that
1:01:54
that could be one that that would be in the top three but in my uh my audience
1:01:59
knows that I have a long history of having massive water related problems uh
1:02:05
just probably 12 of them this year in my house alone my out sored irrigation and
1:02:11
it's on all my homes and it doesn't matter where I'm living doesn't matter who the contractor was doesn't matter
1:02:16
and to me it's becoming obvious that I'm an AI training tool and and that I'm
1:02:23
training how to deal with infant water related problems everyone different and
1:02:28
everyone you know I attack like it's a brand new problem so if you could download my knowledge of fixing water
1:02:35
related problems you you could populate like a a plumber robot in the higher
1:02:40
Universe now you watch hold on now you said there there's no prediction right
1:02:47
so I I don't know if you can see the comments but if I asked my locals people
1:02:52
uh have I predicted that I will have ongoing incredibly coincidental water problems
1:02:58
and have they watched it for three years in a row and and every time like here's another one and and it doesn't match any
1:03:05
experience that they have and I can but I could also see because you believe this you look for water related problems
1:03:10
that other people would let it
1:03:16
slide more than usual but like I I think I have water related problems in my place I just you know somebody else
1:03:21
takes care of it like I don't think about it you know I don't add it to my list of water related problems
1:03:28
but did did you have 12 SE separate occasions where there were like water
1:03:34
problem is enough that I'm not going to take your streak of water problems as evidence that we live in a simulation
1:03:39
like by that you be you could you could be saying it's because I'm Capricorn right and now all of a sudden we have to
1:03:44
believe astrology a theory that's very easy to vary where you can change the components without changing the outcome
1:03:51
is a bad Theory but but I'm making a prediction I'm making a prediction that next year like all the years before
1:03:58
because because you're arbitrating that one you're the one who's coming back and saying you water now if you made a prediction about me if you said hey Nal
1:04:05
you're gonna have a dozen water related problems next year then I'm gonna keep an eye you know that's better still not
1:04:11
TR scientific we should get a whole bunch of people no well well neither of them are the scientific process but
1:04:16
would you agree that if I made an unusual prediction and let's say I could
1:04:21
keep making this unusual prediction time after time again would that that convince you or would you just think
1:04:27
there's some reason I could make a prediction and you don't know why I I would I would First Look for the non-s
1:04:32
supernatural explanation I would first try to figure out like is it what are the statistical odds of this and did we
1:04:37
you know set properly that's no fair calling is Supernatural you're trying to win by a word you can't win no it is
1:04:44
super it is a supernatural because it it appeals to something outside of our current physics that's what I mean by
1:04:49
Supernatural but it would but this would be well within our current physics we're just we're just a video we're just
1:04:56
once no no that that's not our current physics that's not our current laws of
1:05:01
physics it's not our current understanding of physics that's not our current you know Theory physics that we we're definitely running on some
1:05:07
Computing substrate right no but there there's nothing inconsistent with saying that we're in a video game that was
1:05:13
designed nothing inconsistent is back to unfalsifiable and there's infinite number of those theories you know we
1:05:19
we're in we're brain you're a brain floating in a vat go falsify that you can't right so but but are you saying in
1:05:25
general that if something is does uncanny predictions that it still
1:05:31
doesn't tell you something useful it no I'm not saying that it depends on what predictions it's making how
1:05:36
statistically likely or unlikely they are how well they're tested for error who's corroborating them what that
1:05:42
mechanism was and and also then the claim how does that evidence match up to
1:05:47
the claim so the more extraordinary the claim the more extraordinary the evidence that it requires of course so I
1:05:52
agree with all that I think my I think my experience with my my audience has been pretty extraordinary because they
1:05:58
they're I try not to go too much in the Supernatural but I'll be honest there are times when I've
1:06:03
prayed so H nobody's perfect yeah exactly
1:06:09
Pascal's wager right just in case yeah i' I've got a version of this I don't know if I've ever said this out loud
1:06:14
before but every now and then I just talk to the creators of the simulator simulation that are watching me because
1:06:21
it might be me yeah yeah exactly no I completely agree yeah
1:06:26
simulation hypothesis is true then you know God or Creator or Pro Master programmer has your best interest at
1:06:32
heart I say things like you know is this the plan I mean you really get to do this exactly exactly no yeah like don't
1:06:40
take me out of the game too fast like give me some resource if you want me to be effective right or like I'm not job
1:06:45
don't try me I'll fail let's not go through let's not take that route let's try a different yeah I
1:06:51
me think I think everybody does that because at the end of the day existence itself is an unexplained Miracle right
1:06:58
like how do we get here why am I here why am I a monkey why am I threedimensional why am I male why am I talking to you right now what does it
1:07:03
even mean to talk right the whole thing is so surreal that there is an instantaneous and overarching Miracle of
1:07:10
just Consciousness like why even be conscious why not just be like zombies or robots talking to each other going through the same actions why even be
1:07:16
aware so there's so much here that you just have to take axiomatically and that
1:07:21
is spirituality and I think your spirituality your current religion is a simulation hypothesis perfectly valid
1:07:27
you know mine is probably closer to the Dao and you know other people's Christianity or whatever but somehow you
1:07:33
have to explain this miracle of existence and you and everyone has to do it in their own frame but the rest is
1:07:40
science right the rest is all follows the rules of Science and so what I don't like is when like someone says this one
1:07:48
I'm correct it's scientific you should believe it because of these following arguments and then I'm like okay well
1:07:53
what are the implications how do we test it if you want it if you want me to believe in the real world it has to be
1:07:58
scientific which means it has to be testable there's a third category that I will accept which is direct experience
1:08:04
but that's only valid for you so if you have a direct experience of something you can hold it but your ability to
1:08:10
convey it is zero because everybody has their own experience and you can't take anybody else's experience at Value uh
1:08:16
I'll give you that I'm going to give you that my personal experience is so
1:08:22
bizarre that I mean it's not I don't think it's quite Elon Musk level but I mean you you've got your own life that's
1:08:29
kind of doesn't matter yeah very surreal yeah I mean how do the three of us exist
1:08:35
is this really like like there's so many things in my life that happen and I'm sure you have the same feeling where you
1:08:41
just say how is this real I mean just how is this real if you want to talk
1:08:46
absolute truth and nothing else the only statement that you can make that is
1:08:51
absolutely true is that what's that go ahead let's I know where this is going
1:08:56
sorry what's yours it's so we exist to ask the question that's the only thing
1:09:02
you know it's actually even worse than that so I used to say it was I exist and
1:09:08
then a very smart friend of mine corrected me he said no awareness exists you don't even know that you exist your
1:09:15
thought like yes your current thought exists and you're aware of that current thought but what is the you that is
1:09:20
having that thought that's the whole Buddhist question the whole Enlightenment question is there a persistence self identity other than
1:09:27
just thoughts that are referring to each other like when you look for yourself you're not actually there there's an awareness the awareness exists but the
1:09:34
you separate from that awareness does that even exist where where are you on the question of whether your mind is one
1:09:40
you or you were several people in your head several I think it's several yeah I
1:09:46
think well so there's two questions in there there's one implicit one explicit the explicit is do you believe in the
1:09:52
agent theory of the brain where it's all different agents you know battling it out or do you think it's one unified thing and I think that one yeah it's the
1:09:59
agent theory of the brain is more correct but then the other question is like is that you are your thoughts you
1:10:04
and that's a deeper question and that when I go back and forth on are your thoughts you well your thoughts are are
1:10:11
you mean are your thoughts coming from the youu what is this you that's having the thoughts like you know we we we very
1:10:18
casually refer to this you this self this eye but like is it the thoughts
1:10:23
refer to but when you're not thinking where did you go you're still there and then if you can observe the thoughts
1:10:29
well you can dispassionately observe your own thoughts it's possible that's what meditation is all about so is that
1:10:35
you if you can observe it and if you're the thoughts that are talking then who's the one that's listening so the you or I
1:10:41
that we refer to is this very amorphous entity it's like a you know it's Alan Watts compared to like a whirling stick
1:10:48
it looks like a fire but when you pause and look at any element of it there's actually nothing there do you have a
1:10:54
voice in your head yeah everyone does right ex no you don't have one no I I do
1:11:00
have one but appar apparently there was a thing in the news recently I believe again it's eyewitness evidence it's some
1:11:06
person trying to be famous you know there were a lot of people who wa wait in and said they also actually you
1:11:12
know what I I take it back I I retract my earlier statement you're right I've seen a Twitter thread where some appreciably large number of people will
1:11:19
say they don't have a voice in their head but I would say they still have a persistent self identity and it may be
1:11:26
events through they think visually um you know they think in feelings um
1:11:31
they're not necessarily thinking verbally but they still have a strong sense of self and I the classic people
1:11:37
in history who don't have that strong sense of self are the Buddhas right like if you're the Buddha or Jesus or you're
1:11:43
like a spiritual figure the you know I don't know St Augustine or pick your enlightened person right
1:11:50
supposedly what they have found is they've seen through the illusion of the separate self the RAM and mares of the
1:11:56
world right and so they don't take themselves as seriously because they know they're not separate from anything
1:12:02
that's happening every they think and All That Remains for them is awareness and Consciousness that's what they see
1:12:08
themselves as you know I I've Define consciousness my best take at it and I think we could give it to AI is
1:12:16
prediction of everything that's going to happen next like you know right around you around your body then there's the
1:12:24
action and then is your reaction to how close your prediction was to the reality
1:12:29
such and and my argument is that if everything happened exactly as you knew it was going to happen you would lose
1:12:35
all your five senses eventually because they wouldn't have any purpose so so conscious is is the
1:12:43
lag between what you think is happening and what's happening it allows you to
1:12:49
delay in there yeah so then you can say well why do only um seems like humans
1:12:54
have the the most of it but it wouldn't be any surprise that it's such a superpower that you can imagine what
1:13:01
you're going to do before you do it and then you can make an adjustment after that that would make you the king of all the animals and let me let me let me I'm
1:13:08
not sure I fully understood your definition can you go through it again I really want understand that the definition would be a continuous process
1:13:16
where you predict what's going to happen next so I pick up the pen and I'm going to drop it and I predict it will exactly
1:13:22
like I thought but a little off mhm a little off so it's the little off that's the Consciousness because then I say did
1:13:29
that matter do I need to do it differently next time and it's only the difference between everything else
1:13:35
doesn't matter so so Consciousness is only to solve that one thing the difference between the prediction than
1:13:41
the actual and then what do you do about it it exists to solve that exists to
1:13:47
solve that and that and that would be why humans went to the top of the the mountain because when when I observe my
1:13:53
dog she doesn't seem to be thinking about what happens next she she I think normally when people talk about
1:14:00
Consciousness or awareness they they tend to use the term synonymously although maybe they shouldn't but they're more referring to just like I'm
1:14:06
aware of something like I feel it I I have this feeling of being here and I I
1:14:11
I can you know I have this feeling of experiencing these things I know what's
1:14:16
going on around me so so if I give my if I give my robot the sense of touch or
1:14:21
smell is does it have awareness I mean that's the unanswerable zillion dollar
1:14:26
question we're going to have to answer that with AGI I mean if an AGI says hey I'm conscious and it's truly an AGI it
1:14:33
passes the toring test and all that not the fake one that people do on Twitter with real one um you know then you would
1:14:40
have to take it as face value you would have to say sure okay you're conscious so so today I find a programmer let's
1:14:45
say and I say build me a artificial person who's going to live in this video
1:14:50
game they will imagine that they see things in great resolution but they won't they will imagine that they have
1:14:57
Consciousness but they don't they will believe that they're special but they're not and in every way they will react as
1:15:03
though they were human beings now put them on there and let's talk to them and you tell me if they're conscious and the
1:15:08
answer is trapped take you about five seconds
1:15:15
before you say I don't know the difference between you and this guy who sitting next to me yeah I mean if that thing uh you know
1:15:23
it would have it would have to pass the touring test first before I would take its claims for Consciousness seriously
1:15:30
and I have a high bar for the touring test by touring you got to convince me you're alive and creative but if you
1:15:35
could convince me it's alive and creative and it said I'm conscious and i' be like yeah I guess you're conscious yeah yeah we're we're nowhere close to
1:15:41
the touring test I mean the easiest one is can can you tell me a joke but don't
1:15:47
make it word play and we're done yeah exactly or I I test it on poetry because there isn't much poetry stuff to crawl
1:15:53
on the web it's terrible it's terrible at understanding poetry and parsing the meter and verse and rhyme um but um
1:16:02
where was I going to go with this uh you were talking about the little simulation guy yeah I forget it's fine we kill him
1:16:10
um well I I I I don't want to take you
1:16:15
forever no I enjoy talking to you you know it's funny because I get invited into a lot of podcasts but they all ask
1:16:20
the same boring questions um and you make yourself scarce at least on these 10 onone so it's good so I want to talk
1:16:26
to you um but we should do another one uh you know it's funny because I I want to I I literally after Periscope we used
1:16:34
to have fun in Periscope I remember that right you and I were probably the two biggest periscopers for a long time I
1:16:39
was number one for a little bit then you were number one I was number two and then I dropped off um and then uh when
1:16:45
Clubhouse launched I was big on clubhouse trying to get that same feeling back and I even did my own company air chat trying to get that same feeling back but I think every smart
1:16:53
person is star for ation with other smart people um and so the internet is
1:16:58
great for that it helps connect us but still like this kind of a setup is fantastic I can get to talk to you
1:17:03
there's like 20 people I want to talk to and that's it and you're on that list so when something newsbreaking happens you
1:17:09
know it's it's fun to get online and talk it's better than going to a podcast and they ask you the same interview questions you know then you answer and
1:17:15
they check off like number 1309 check nval you're one of the reasons I
1:17:22
think I live in a simulation because if I do I think there are player characters and NPCs and from the first moment I met
1:17:29
you like okay you're a player but beyond that I've always felt connected to you
1:17:35
no matter where you were or what you were doing huh you know what's funny is when I was in college I I I I don't
1:17:42
remember many books and I don't remember many t-shirts but weirdly like I have uh
1:17:49
you know I have memories and photos and and people even bring it up to me how it would all have all the Dilbert books and
1:17:54
I would always be like making jokes out of them and I used to wear this t-shirt that my girlfriend at the time gave me
1:18:00
because I was ignoring her and it basically had Dilbert at night and he was on his computer and it said while
1:18:06
you are sleeping I am working on world domination right that's what I do I be up on my computer all night like working
1:18:11
on figuring out how to make money and be successful and so they got me that t-shirt so I've always felt a deep
1:18:17
connection uh it's weird I mean yes maybe the simulation brought us together and um it's good I knew I knew I could
1:18:24
flip you you just gotta flatter me just appeal to my ego that's that's right right go that
1:18:31
way persuasion is right all right F and women right so we'll definitely do this
1:18:38
again uh but uh I love this this just it's awesome anytime great talking to
1:18:44
you Scott thanks everybody all right bye bye
