The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas

00:00:02.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:14.000 Good to see you.

00:00:15.000 Thanks for having me.

00:00:15.000 You too.

00:00:16.000 My pleasure.

00:00:17.000 Yeah.

00:00:17.000 How many podcasts have you done?

00:00:19.000 I don't know.

00:00:20.000 I don't know the count, but maybe tens.

00:00:23.000 Well, when we were talking, we were talking in the lobby.

00:00:25.000 I was like, this dude would be a good guest because we were talking about ancient Hindu scriptures where you were talking to me about something that sounds like a nuclear bomb.

00:00:33.000 And I was like, oh.

00:00:33.000 Yeah.

00:00:35.000 The Brahmastra.

00:00:36.000 I need to know more about this.

00:00:37.000 Yeah.

00:00:38.000 So the Brahmastra is part of the Mahabharata.

00:00:41.000 I mean, you've talked about Mahabharata in a bunch of different manas.

00:00:45.000 Yeah.

00:00:46.000 So the Mahabharata is one of the two Hindu epics.

00:00:50.000 The other one is Ramayana.

00:00:52.000 But Mahabharata is more interesting, it's more complicated.

00:00:54.000 It's like a lot of different stories interleaved together.

00:00:58.000 And the Brahmastra is the equivalent of the hydrogen bomb.

00:01:03.000 And how is it described?

00:01:05.000 It's described as a weapon of like mass destruction.

00:01:08.000 You're going to annihilate the human population.

00:01:11.000 It should not be used at any cost.

00:01:14.000 There's a moral contract.

00:01:16.000 You clearly have to be violating so many things at a deeply moral level to even wield it.

00:01:24.000 And it's not actually accessible to most warriors.

00:01:29.000 There's probably two warriors in the world in that era who were allowed to use it.

00:01:36.000 And it has to be passed through special access.

00:01:40.000 A teacher has to pass it on to you, the secret.

00:01:42.000 To use it.

00:01:43.000 Almost like a new.

00:01:44.000 Think about it as like the equivalent of a nuclear code, right?

00:01:47.000 And Arjuna had it.

00:01:50.000 This particular character in Mahabharata called Arjuna.

00:01:54.000 He was allowed to use it.

00:01:55.000 And then this other person was.

00:01:58.000 Basically, Arjuna had a teacher named Drona.

00:02:02.000 And Drona had a son named Ashwatthama.

00:02:05.000 And Ashwatthama was always jealous of Arjuna.

00:02:09.000 Arjuna was not Drona's son, but he was his model disciple.

00:02:13.000 And so Drona passed on the secret of the Brahmastra to him.

00:02:16.000 And Drona's son also wanted it.

00:02:21.000 But because it was his son, he also passed on the secret to his son, even though the son wasn't as good as Arjuna.

00:02:28.000 And during the war, Arjuna and Drona fought on the opposite sides.

00:02:33.000 It's just circumstances.

00:02:37.000 And his dad died, Ashwatthama's dad, the teacher died in the war. 0.87

00:02:41.000 And so the son got mad and unleashed the Brahmastra.

00:02:46.000 And Lord Krishna had to come and save it. 0.94

00:02:48.000 Save the planet to not get that destruction force.

00:02:52.000 How old is the Mahabharata?

00:02:56.000 Again, there's a lot of different opinions on this, so I don't actually know for sure.

00:03:01.000 My understanding is at least 1,500 to 2,500 years old.

00:03:06.000 1,500 years ago is the minimum, 2,500 years ago is the maximum.

00:03:11.000 So it happened in some period in that thousand year time frame between that.

00:03:18.000 And it's still unclear if a lot of it has just been.

00:03:24.000 And what actually happened was just a war between kins.

00:03:29.000 There were two groups of people, the Pandavas and the Kauravas.

00:03:32.000 And, you know, each side thought they were fighting for their own rights and justice.

00:03:38.000 But at the end of the day, you can crudely understand it as like essentially a fight for the kingdom.

00:03:47.000 Basically, there was a previous generation and two brothers, and both the brothers had a bunch of kids, and those kids were warring to get the next in line.

00:03:57.000 And that ended up being like a massive war, and a bunch of other allies fought on each side.

00:04:04.000 And so many amazing weapons were used as part of the war.

00:04:08.000 And a lot of these weapons are like extremely, like describe an extreme level of detail that is pretty incredible.

00:04:16.000 Like there's a lot of detail around like targeted weapons.

00:04:20.000 So you could precisely identify a target and just shoot at that.

00:04:24.000 And then, does it explain like what the weapon is?

00:04:27.000 Yeah.

00:04:27.000 So there's one weapon called the Divyastra where you can just.

00:04:31.000 Specifically targeted any particular person or group, and it would just automatically direct itself and do it, almost like a semi autonomous weapon.

00:04:41.000 And then Lord Krishna had this weapon called the Sudarshan Chakra, it's basically a discus.

00:04:48.000 And then you can just release it, and it'll go and specifically identify somebody and chop off their head and come back to your right.

00:04:56.000 It self directs itself.

00:04:57.000 So, what I was amazed by is how interesting it is in terms of.

00:05:05.000 All the autonomy in the weapons, semi autonomy or autonomy, where the weapons could just be directed at people or directed at a group of soldiers and it would just go and do its job and come back to the wielder.

00:05:17.000 And there were so many different astras Divyastra, Varunastra, Nagastra. 0.61

00:05:22.000 Ramastra is obviously the ultimate, the hydrogen bomb equivalent.

00:05:26.000 And all of these are described in a lot of detail and who has access to it. 0.67

00:05:31.000 And of course, it's mythologized, so it's described as these arrows in the back of your shoulders.

00:05:38.000 You could understand it as like somebody having just access to a lot of weapons.

00:05:42.000 And then whoever was powerful would go capture and colonize and gain power.

00:05:49.000 And essentially, a fight between a group of cousins.

00:05:53.000 That's the bottom line of that story.

00:05:55.000 Now, if we think of history as this linear progression from caveman to us, and we hear about autonomous weapons that were written in the Mahabharata somewhere around 2,000 plus years ago, we go, well, mythology.

00:06:08.000 But if not.

00:06:09.000 If there's been some sort of rise and fall of civilization, if there has been catastrophic, whatever it is, asteroid impacts, shifting of the poles, whatever it is, it's caused great disasters.

00:06:22.000 You can imagine that these people are remembering a time where there was some sort of very advanced civilization.

00:06:30.000 And this is what they're describing.

00:06:31.000 Like, if you knew for a fact that there had been a great, advanced, technologically advanced civilization, when we have evidence that they had some technology, like the pyramids.

00:06:42.000 Giza and stuff.

00:06:43.000 Like, how did you do that?

00:06:44.000 There's some technology involved, right?

00:06:46.000 Yeah.

00:06:46.000 But we don't have evidence of the technology.

00:06:48.000 But if we did, if we knew for a fact, you would look at the Mahabharata and go, oh, this is history.

00:06:53.000 They're just explaining it in a kind of crude, contemporary way for the time, arrows instead of, you know, semi autonomous drones with exploding heads on them.

00:07:05.000 Yeah.

00:07:05.000 I mean, that's what we have now.

00:07:07.000 All those things that they're describing hydrogen bomb, semi autonomous and autonomous drones.

00:07:14.000 I mean, they have.

00:07:15.000 They have autonomous fighter jets now.

00:07:17.000 Like, they don't need people anymore.

00:07:19.000 Like, this, we're in that area right now.

00:07:22.000 So, when you read about something like that from the Mahabharata, you go, Okay, what was really going on?

00:07:27.000 Exactly.

00:07:28.000 I mean, that's always been my fascination with those epics and the level of detail with which they described all these weapons and who had access, different levels of access, the status required to have access, and how it was used in the wars.

00:07:28.000 Yeah.

00:07:46.000 Different formations of the soldiers.

00:07:49.000 They had all these crazy formation structures, like forming the army like a lotus, forming the army like a.

00:07:58.000 There's something called a chakra viewha, literally, it has to have concentric circles.

00:08:03.000 So you cannot actually get into the innermost circle without going through the outer circles.

00:08:08.000 And then you can get killed by each of the flanks whenever you're trying to enter in.

00:08:12.000 And the secret of how to actually break into these viewhas, viewhas means formations, was only known to a few people.

00:08:20.000 And it's incredible.

00:08:22.000 Like, you could say, okay, like somebody had to be extremely skillful to have that sort of like visualizations and imaginations of describing a story like that.

00:08:33.000 And obviously, like Tolkien has done an amazing job with a lot of the rings, you know, and creating so much detail.

00:08:39.000 At the same time, like a lot of it actually coming through in real life in some form, again, not exactly the same weapons, but similar style makes you wonder.

00:08:49.000 Was there actually something around then?

00:08:51.000 And people have tried excavations in all these areas.

00:08:54.000 There's like two main areas in the Mahabharata.

00:08:56.000 Hassinapur was the name of the kingdom.

00:08:58.000 And people have done excavations around there and have found some artifacts that might date back to those years.

00:09:06.000 But there are also some details that are described in the epics that don't quite align with reality.

00:09:11.000 For example, all the men, all the main warriors in that era were described as very tall, very big.

00:09:21.000 Seven, eight feet, whatever.

00:09:22.000 I don't even know exact numbers.

00:09:27.000 But studies by archaeologists also say that people who lived in those years in those regions were probably not more than six feet tall.

00:09:37.000 So it's not clear exactly what happened, what was correct, what was not correct.

00:09:42.000 And we just have to keep probing more.

00:09:44.000 But I find the idea fascinating to think of what could have existed in sacred texts that was.

00:09:51.000 Only partially communicated to the next generation and having a lot of like reinterpretations.

00:09:56.000 Another thing that is very interesting to think about is Vedic math.

00:10:00.000 So, um, that basically Vedic math is like a branch of mathematics that you know some people in India are grown up learning.

00:10:08.000 Like, I read it myself too, and uh, some people actually practice it just to be sharper at mental math for doing their exams, like GMAT and things like that, GRE.

00:10:22.000 It has like a line in the Vedas that says, oh, like one from the last digit, two from the first digit, whatever.

00:10:28.000 So many different ways of multiplying two different numbers, like 97 times 96.

00:10:33.000 Oh, like subtract the last two digits, put it right.

00:10:35.000 Multiply the first digits, put it in the left.

00:10:37.000 That's the result.

00:10:39.000 And then you wonder, like, oh, wait, the Rig Veda is so old, it's as old as, it's the oldest sacred text out there.

00:10:47.000 How is it describing computation?

00:10:51.000 Very unreal.

00:10:51.000 Right.

00:10:52.000 Like, did they actually know or understand advanced forms of computation even back in those days?

00:11:00.000 And how old is Rig Veda?

00:11:03.000 I don't exactly know how old it is.

00:11:06.000 Why don't we put that into perplexity?

00:11:08.000 Yeah, let's do that.

00:11:09.000 Let's find out.

00:11:10.000 Yeah.

00:11:12.000 Yeah.

00:11:13.000 It is technically the oldest sacred text out there.

00:11:19.000 And so, what's interesting is, I wonder.

00:11:23.000 How old the stories were by the time they were written down.

00:11:27.000 Like, how much of it is relayed person to person for years and years, just like the Bible, before it's ever actually written down.

00:11:36.000 Scholars usually date the composition of the Rig Veda to about 1500 to 1200 BCE.

00:11:42.000 So, its oldest layer is roughly 3,200, 3,700 years old today.

00:11:48.000 Like, if there really was, like, every ancient culture has a story of a flood.

00:11:56.000 Everyone, they all have an apocalypse.

00:11:58.000 Mahabharata had the same thing.

00:12:00.000 Was it the same?

00:12:00.000 Mahabharata had the same thing where there was a big, like, almost like a tsunami like thing.

00:12:05.000 I don't exactly know what it was called, but that was the collapse of Lord Krishna's kingdom, Dwarka.

00:12:12.000 After the war, a lot of people died, but some people survived.

00:12:14.000 And even those who survived got wiped out by a calamity or like some kind of like a fight among themselves.

00:12:22.000 And most of the people who participated in that era actually died.

00:12:26.000 Here it is the primordial Manu flood.

00:12:28.000 How do you say it?

00:12:29.000 Manu?

00:12:30.000 Manu flood.

00:12:30.000 Yeah.

00:12:31.000 Classic Hindu great flood myth where the righteous king Manu is warned by a divine fish about an imminent deluge that will destroy humanity.

00:12:42.000 He builds a boat, loads it with his family.

00:12:44.000 It's like Noah in the Ark.

00:12:46.000 It's the same thing with seeds and animals, ties it to the horn of the god in fish form, which tows the boat to safety until the waters recede and the world is repopulated.

00:12:57.000 They all have the same story.

00:12:59.000 Yeah.

00:13:00.000 That's what's really crazy.

00:13:02.000 There is a concept in Hindu philosophy called the yugas.

00:13:07.000 Mm hmm.

00:13:08.000 I'm reading a book about it right now.

00:13:09.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:13:10.000 So there's like different yugas, and yugas are like thousands of years.

00:13:14.000 The concept is that the yugas keep cycling around.

00:13:18.000 And so, like, we are in the Kali Yuga right now.

00:13:21.000 And before that, it was a Dwapra Yuga.

00:13:23.000 That's when most of Mahabharata happened.

00:13:25.000 And before that, it was a Treta Yuga, where the Ramayana happened.

00:13:28.000 And before that, there was another Yuga.

00:13:30.000 What is next after Kali Yuga?

00:13:32.000 No, there is nothing next after Kali Yuga.

00:13:34.000 It goes back to the first one.

00:13:36.000 I forget the name of the first Yuga.

00:13:37.000 Because the interpretation that I'm reading is that we're not in Kali Yuga anymore.

00:13:42.000 And that Kali Yuga ended in the 1900s and Dwapra Yuga started then.

00:13:46.000 No, no, VR and Kali Yuga right now.

00:13:48.000 100%.

00:13:49.000 So, why do people have different interpretations?

00:13:52.000 Is that true?

00:13:52.000 Yeah, there's like a guru interpretation.

00:13:55.000 There's like one specific guru that has this interpretation that Kali Yuga ended in the 1900s and that we're moving on.

00:14:05.000 Interesting.

00:14:06.000 Yeah, but I don't know who's right because it's an enormous cycle, right?

00:14:09.000 The cycles of humanity.

00:14:10.000 Yeah, thousands of years.

00:14:11.000 Yeah, thousands of years.

00:14:12.000 And so.

00:14:14.000 Yeah, so these are the four yugas.

00:14:18.000 And.

00:14:22.000 So, why do people have different interpretations?

00:14:25.000 Let me tell you the book I'm reading.

00:14:27.000 Yeah.

00:14:31.000 See if this book is discredited, young Jamie.

00:14:35.000 It is by a guy named David Steinowitz.

00:14:46.000 Stein.

00:14:48.000 Steinmetz.

00:14:49.000 David Steinmetz.

00:14:50.000 The book is called The Yugas.

00:14:51.000 Interesting.

00:14:52.000 Interesting.

00:14:52.000 Yeah, I mean, the problem is when someone's got their own interpretation or some guru's interpretation, it doesn't totally align.

00:15:01.000 It's hard to know who's right and who's wrong.

00:15:03.000 Yeah.

00:15:04.000 Key to understanding our hidden past, emerging energy age, and enlightened future.

00:15:10.000 Yeah.

00:15:11.000 So go back up to that again.

00:15:13.000 So this is in the description.

00:15:15.000 See what it says that?

00:15:17.000 Where it says in 1894, an Indian sage gave us an explanation not only for our hidden past, but for the trends of today and for future enlightenment.

00:15:26.000 So, there's like one guy's interpretation that this guy is going off of.

00:15:31.000 I guess the difference might be that he thinks the yuga cycle is 24,000 years, whereas I think it's probably much longer than that.

00:15:39.000 Yeah.

00:15:41.000 Four yugas together is 4,320,000 years.

00:15:46.000 You know what's really nutty?

00:15:47.000 Yeah.

00:15:48.000 One of the really nutty things is both in the ancient Sumerian texts and in some of the ancient Egyptian texts, there's depictions before the flood of people who reigned for thousands of years as kings.

00:16:05.000 And it's common.

00:16:05.000 Yeah.

00:16:07.000 It's not, it's, and it's also, they're referenced multiple times in different scriptures.

00:16:11.000 That are from different parts of what was Sumer at the time.

00:16:16.000 It's really weird.

00:16:17.000 It's weird.

00:16:17.000 Because they take it as established history once it gets to a certain age.

00:16:22.000 Once they get into, like, whatever the age is where they can verify that this person was the king for a certain period of time.

00:16:28.000 But it's all in the same text as people that reigned for 6,000 years.

00:16:33.000 Yeah.

00:16:34.000 And then one of them just wipes out the whole thing.

00:16:36.000 Yeah.

00:16:37.000 And, I mean, this is also somewhat, like, tangentially related to.

00:16:44.000 The Fermi paradox.

00:16:46.000 You know, like if you assume all these things are happening on Earth itself, that entire civilizations are getting wiped out.

00:16:54.000 And like we always wonder, you've explored this topic the most, and where are the aliens?

00:17:01.000 Right.

00:17:01.000 And there are different arguments that, like, okay, like the reason we haven't quite found that is because the great filter exists.

00:17:11.000 And there is like one entertaining theory that I like.

00:17:15.000 Just for the sake of entertainment, is almost all civilizations end up advancing technologically a lot, and either a calamity wipes them out, or like they build some misaligned AGI and then AGI wipes them out.

00:17:30.000 And because of that, they never actually end up being visible to us.

00:17:36.000 Or the other theories that, like, they're like, we haven't quite built the von Neumann probes to actually go find them.

00:17:46.000 Both of them are plausible.

00:17:48.000 And, you know, there's no clear way to, like, know unless we actually send out enough probes.

00:17:58.000 This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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00:18:51.000 That's better.

00:18:55.000 There's a bunch of possibilities.

00:18:56.000 I mean, there's almost too many to count, but there's the possibility that they are observing and that they don't want to interfere, and that we are on some sort of evolutionary cycle.

00:19:06.000 A cycle of cultural evolution, civilization evolution.

00:19:10.000 And one of the things about this, the crazy ages that come from the Sumerian text and from the ancient hieroglyphs that depict the Zeptet, how do you say it?

00:19:23.000 Zepteti?

00:19:23.000 No.

00:19:25.000 How am I saying that?

00:19:27.000 What is that text, that ancient text?

00:19:29.000 Remember, we talked about it with Zahi Hawass and he denied its existence?

00:19:35.000 Zeptepi? 0.97

00:19:36.000 Is that it? 0.94

00:19:37.000 Either way, you're dealing with these kings that reign for thousands and thousands of years.

00:19:42.000 Well, you know, David Sinclair is in the middle of this research now that they're working on life extension drugs, like that are actionable.

00:19:50.000 Yeah.

00:19:51.000 Yeah, that's it.

00:19:51.000 Zeb Tepe.

00:19:52.000 Yeah.

00:19:53.000 I've heard of that.

00:19:54.000 So these, but this is what's so weird.

00:19:56.000 If they look at hieroglyphs, they get to a certain point and they're like, oh, Khufu, he was real.

00:20:01.000 This guy was real.

00:20:02.000 All these people were real. 0.98

00:20:03.000 But then they get back to these guys that reigned for thousands of years and they go, oh, that was just horseshit. 0.97

00:20:03.000 Yeah. 0.97

00:20:09.000 Yeah.

00:20:09.000 But why is it that?

00:20:11.000 All these people have these stories that align with this timeline that's pre flood.

00:20:16.000 It's all like the same story.

00:20:18.000 And then, if you're talking about these ancient Hindu scriptures that are discussing technology that seems remarkably similar to technology that we have today.

00:20:28.000 Yeah.

00:20:28.000 The Vimanas are flying cars, basically.

00:20:31.000 And probably what we're going to have 100 years from now, or whatever it is. 0.99

00:20:35.000 Or we could have gone that way in the past.

00:20:37.000 And it's very entertaining to think of, like, let's say something happens to us, right?

00:20:41.000 I don't want anything to happen to us, but let's say something happens to us and.

00:20:44.000 Would people really believe we were like launching reusable rockets?

00:20:47.000 Right.

00:20:49.000 Or making FaceTime calls to people in Australia?

00:20:51.000 Yeah.

00:20:52.000 Yeah.

00:20:53.000 Like even fundamental things like all we were doing today.

00:20:57.000 I think it's all like incredible.

00:20:59.000 Like there's a lot of things that could be just technological ideas or maybe people actually had it and the knowledge of it was lost and it's not been documented, it's not been passed along.

00:21:09.000 And so we are skeptical if they ever had it.

00:21:11.000 Yes.

00:21:11.000 And so we end up reinventing it in different forms again and again and again and we keep cycling through this process.

00:21:16.000 Well, it also could be that this is the natural progression of human curiosity.

00:21:20.000 The human curiosity and ingenuity always moves into these very particular ways, like what's the best way to defeat my enemies?

00:21:27.000 If we're always going to be territorial primates, we're always going to want to defeat our enemies.

00:21:31.000 We're always going to protect ourselves from being invaded.

00:21:34.000 So we're going to make better and just with technological innovation, it just goes down the same path.

00:21:39.000 Oh, we figure out bullets.

00:21:40.000 Oh, we figure out nuclear bombs.

00:21:42.000 Well, we figure out we don't even have to use an actual plane.

00:21:45.000 We can use an autonomous drone.

00:21:46.000 Delivers it and then scale upwards and onwards, and AI, and then also life extension.

00:21:53.000 So, if these people were able to make the pyramids, like you know, there's a lot of speculation as to the timeline of the pyramids, but let's just say they really built it 2500 BC. 0.98

00:22:07.000 Let's just say back then, what the fuck were they using? 0.95

00:22:10.000 Like, what did you do? 0.99

00:22:13.000 How did you get these stones down from the mountains that were 500 miles away?

00:22:16.000 How about this one?

00:22:17.000 How about that one?

00:22:18.000 We were going to get to that for sure.

00:22:19.000 There's a ton.

00:22:20.000 No, thank you.

00:22:21.000 What's good is any.

00:22:22.000 How about these temples that they find in India that are carved entirely out of one piece of stone?

00:22:30.000 What did you do?

00:22:32.000 How did you do that?

00:22:34.000 How long ago did this happen?

00:22:35.000 How many of them were buried and then they had to uncover them and then figure out what is this?

00:22:42.000 Who made it?

00:22:43.000 There's no timeline.

00:22:44.000 No one really knows.

00:22:45.000 There's no evidence of tools that were capable of doing this kind of work back then.

00:22:51.000 And they're huge and beautiful and perfect.

00:22:54.000 And they have like acoustic properties and the geometry is fucking fantastic. 0.95

00:23:00.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:23:01.000 It's nuts.

00:23:02.000 It's not just that.

00:23:03.000 All of these temples were actually just built, not just that.

00:23:07.000 They were specifically the locations for them are picked out so that you get the right seismic vibrations over there in terms of like proximity to the ocean, the gravitational waves from the sun and the moon.

00:23:22.000 Yeah.

00:23:22.000 People actually made that level of like.

00:23:24.000 Look at this, man. 0.99

00:23:26.000 Man, imagine the undertaking of carving that temple out of the side of a fucking giant piece of rock. 0.99

00:23:37.000 Yeah, you screw up one thing and it's over. 0.97

00:23:40.000 There's no simulations, you just have to like build it.

00:23:43.000 Well, what did they have?

00:23:45.000 This is the question.

00:23:47.000 Like, imagine today if we had to do this.

00:23:50.000 Look, it's possible, this is a possible endeavor, it can be done.

00:23:53.000 Yeah, but imagine what kind of technology we would have to need to map it out.

00:23:59.000 To make sure that it was all precise, that it all aligned.

00:24:02.000 I mean, it's precise within like millimeters from point to point, and everything is done out of one piece of stone.

00:24:11.000 Like, what did they do?

00:24:13.000 Was it chisels?

00:24:14.000 Did you do that with chisels?

00:24:15.000 That's crazy. 1.00

00:24:16.000 How many times do you have to sharpen your fucking chisel? 1.00

00:24:18.000 That's nuts. 1.00

00:24:20.000 Or do you have something completely different?

00:24:22.000 Because some of the more intricate ones, see if you can find these.

00:24:25.000 Some of the crazy ones inside these temples, there's sculptures that are three dimensional.

00:24:32.000 And they're carved like inside of the sculpture.

00:24:35.000 So there's like an outer area, and then there's all these openings, and then inside it's highly detailed.

00:24:41.000 Like, how'd you even reach in there?

00:24:44.000 It just says they use chisels and hammers, and I don't think that's possible.

00:24:49.000 And careful geometric planning.

00:24:50.000 There's so many people trying to do that.

00:24:52.000 They said, like, this is how much work someone could do in like 12 hours with a hammer, and they get nowhere, let alone like perfect and looking good.

00:25:02.000 Yeah, it's nuts, man.

00:25:03.000 And there's a lot of evidence of stuff like that all over the world, which is really weird.

00:25:09.000 You have the stuff in Peru, like Soxehuaman, when you look at these stones and it looks like they're melted into place and they're 900 tons.

00:25:18.000 Like, what did you do?

00:25:19.000 Yeah, how did you even get it up there?

00:25:21.000 Where'd they get it?

00:25:22.000 How'd you get it there?

00:25:23.000 How'd you line it perfectly?

00:25:25.000 Built in only 18 years.

00:25:26.000 How do they know that?

00:25:28.000 How do they know that?

00:25:29.000 Because it's attributed to one king?

00:25:32.000 Yeah.

00:25:32.000 So King Krishna I, 756 to 773 CE?

00:25:39.000 Maybe.

00:25:40.000 I mean, how do you know, though?

00:25:42.000 Yeah, they said the archaeologists said they calculated it would take them 100 years to do it.

00:25:47.000 Yeah, I mean, this is where, like, you know, different historian accounts are all, like, muddled up, you know.

00:25:47.000 Yeah.

00:25:52.000 Uh huh.

00:25:53.000 Well, it's a real problem.

00:25:54.000 History is a real problem.

00:25:55.000 But yeah, it goes back to, like, the thing you were saying, right?

00:25:58.000 You know, what is one thing that's common across all these different ages is human curiosity.

00:26:03.000 So, I mean, that's something that I would love to get your take on this.

00:26:08.000 I've been toying with this idea called a curiosity premium, which is the most effective people, the most successful people have always been the most curious people, the ones who have been good at asking the best questions.

00:26:21.000 And they tend to do better in every aspect of their life.

00:26:25.000 And you're a good example of that.

00:26:27.000 So that's why I would love to get your take on this.

00:26:29.000 And the reason I believe that is because long term, people who continuously ask questions tend to do better.

00:26:38.000 They make more money.

00:26:39.000 They have a higher quality of life.

00:26:40.000 They're happy.

00:26:42.000 They have more compounding relationships.

00:26:44.000 People find them more interesting.

00:26:45.000 And so they compound their relationships over time.

00:26:48.000 And so naturally they end up succeeding.

00:26:52.000 But their spirit of inquiry, their intrinsic curiosity, doesn't actually stop once they succeed.

00:27:00.000 They just channelize it even more.

00:27:02.000 And so that's why it keeps compounding.

00:27:04.000 And I would argue that it's the only quality that makes us really human.

00:27:10.000 You know, in this world where we can seek a lot of information and get information way faster than ever before, it feels like that's that one universal human quality that's existed since ancient times, since the oldest texts.

00:27:24.000 Like, in fact, in the Rig Veda, you're explicitly encouraged to seek wisdom more than wealth.

00:27:32.000 And it's not just an idea specific to Hinduism, that specific idea exists in the Bible, it exists in the Quran, it exists in the Torah.

00:27:39.000 Seeking well is administered by religious texts.

00:27:42.000 It's actually that it's more important to seek wisdom.

00:27:45.000 And, you know, like you can, why I said you're a good example of that is like, sure, you have a very, very large podcast, but the way you're running it is like you're just curious about a lot of things and asking a lot of questions.

00:27:58.000 And I think that's that one quality that's very important.

00:28:00.000 So, and I feel like it's the oldest thing, it's the only thing that we've known since ancient time, being curious.

00:28:08.000 Well, I think it's stimulating.

00:28:10.000 To people, and genuine curiosity is stimulating to other people.

00:28:14.000 When someone is genuinely curious about something, I become curious about it.

00:28:17.000 I think it's contagious.

00:28:19.000 I think that it's also an authentic quality, and I think there's something about really wanting to know something and being interested in something.

00:28:30.000 If you're curious, generally you're going to ask more questions about something so you have a deeper understanding of it.

00:28:35.000 If you're trying to do whatever you're trying to do, a sport, a game, you'll probably get better at it because you're more curious.

00:28:41.000 Because instead of just assuming things, you'll ask more questions, you'll re examine things.

00:28:48.000 It's one of the most important human qualities.

00:28:50.000 And to me, it's one of the most attractive human qualities.

00:28:52.000 It's always been.

00:28:53.000 When I meet curious people, I'm always interested.

00:28:55.000 I'm always like, tell me what you're curious about, and I'll tell you what I'm curious about.

00:28:59.000 Let's talk.

00:29:01.000 And this podcast started out genuinely because of well, it was a lot of just talking shit with friends, but it also led into like one of my very first guests, actual guests, was Graham Hancock.

00:29:14.000 And it's just because I was curious because I had read Fingerprints of the Gods and I'd seen him talk.

00:29:18.000 I'd seen speeches, and I'm like, I want to know what do you know?

00:29:21.000 What do you think is going on?

00:29:23.000 And he's another guy, incredibly curious and absolutely fascinated with his takes on ancient history.

00:29:32.000 He has been talking about this subject a long time.

00:29:38.000 And when he first wrote Fingerprints of the Gods, I think that came out in like.

00:29:43.000 I want to say it was like 97 or 98 or something like that. 0.79

00:29:46.000 And I remember reading it, and so many of my friends, you know, educated friends, like, this is horseshit.

00:29:51.000 Why are you paying attention to this? 0.95

00:29:52.000 More and more and more, as time goes on, it's been proven that he's correct.

00:29:57.000 The timeline shifted back. 0.87

00:29:59.000 And from the publication of that book, the discovery of Gobekli Tepe and the surrounding area, like, it's like, okay, now we realize, well, there was some crazy shit going on at the very least 11,000 years ago.

00:30:12.000 So we pushed civilization back 5,000 years.

00:30:16.000 So, like, and this is just what we found now.

00:30:18.000 And we keep finding things, keep digging, keep looking.

00:30:22.000 And then you see the stuff that they're finding underneath the pyramid with this radio tomography where they're looking under the pyramid that seems that there's structures under the pyramid.

00:30:30.000 We've seen that stuff.

00:30:31.000 I haven't seen that.

00:30:33.000 I had the scientist that's involved in it, he's an Italian guy, Filippo Biondi, and he came on the podcast.

00:30:38.000 Wonderful accent, almost as good as yours.

00:30:40.000 It was amazing.

00:30:42.000 But he's describing the use of this stuff and that they've used it.

00:30:46.000 Successfully on known areas in pyramids and other structures, and they can.

00:30:53.000 In fact, there's a in Italy, there is a particle collider that is underneath a mountain.

00:31:01.000 And using this technology, which is satellite based technology, they get an accurate description of this particle collider that's, I think it's 1,200 meters underground.

00:31:13.000 Like, how far is that thing underground?

00:31:16.000 We'll find out.

00:31:17.000 But it's like deep under stone.

00:31:20.000 And they find that they can get an accurate, like, they can actually give you the dimensions of this particle collider.

00:31:26.000 They have like an image of it.

00:31:27.000 And this same technology is showing that there's these columns.

00:31:33.000 Underneath the pyramid, in various places that are 20 meters wide and they have coils around them.

00:31:41.000 They don't know what the hell they are.

00:31:43.000 And the whole structure of this thing, it's not small.

00:31:46.000 It goes almost a kilometer into the ground.

00:31:49.000 There's like this enormous bottom of it, and it seems like it's something that's constructed.

00:31:55.000 And so they're like, okay, well, the pyramid is crazy.

00:31:58.000 It's crazy enough. 0.99

00:32:00.000 But if there's something underneath it that's a man made or someone made it that's a kilometer deep into the ground, like, What the fuck are we even talking about? 0.96

00:32:10.000 Like, who made this? 0.95

00:32:12.000 What did they have?

00:32:15.000 1.2 kilometers into the mountain.

00:32:19.000 That's nuts. 0.99

00:32:20.000 It's a half a fucking mile plus into the mountain. 0.98

00:32:24.000 And this thing can see through all that and get this accurate depiction of this particle collider. 0.97

00:32:30.000 And it's showing with multiple scans, not just one, multiple scans in different technology, the same exact images, the same exact structures underneath this.

00:32:41.000 Fucking immense 2,300,000 stone structure that almost perfectly aligns to true north, south, east, and west. 0.91

00:32:49.000 Like, what was going on? 0.99

00:32:51.000 Don't tell me police.

00:32:53.000 Don't tell me copper tools. 1.00

00:32:54.000 Like, what the fuck was going on? 1.00

00:32:57.000 Something crazy. 0.99

00:32:58.000 And I have a feeling our simplistic explanation of it is just doing no one any justice.

00:33:04.000 It's doing no service to history, it's doing no service to our understanding.

00:33:08.000 They've got to be a little bit more open in the fact that they are perplexed.

00:33:12.000 And not just perplexed by stuff like this.

00:33:14.000 This is a 3D print of an actual vase that exists in Egypt that they found, that is, they found it in tombs of the Old Kingdom.

00:33:25.000 This thing was somehow or another, it's made with diorite, so it's incredibly hard stone, and made to like a thousandth of a human hair.

00:33:34.000 And it's, yeah, like crazy dimensions.

00:33:38.000 Like the way, the precision of it, and wasn't turned on a lathe because it has handles.

00:33:44.000 So you look at the handles on the side.

00:33:44.000 Yeah.

00:33:45.000 Well, you can't carve those.

00:33:47.000 And those are perfect, too.

00:33:48.000 Like the alignment of everything.

00:33:50.000 And it's like you just look at it.

00:33:51.000 Oh, it's a vase.

00:33:52.000 No big deal. 0.99

00:33:53.000 But no, it's kind of fucking crazy. 0.97

00:33:55.000 Like, how did they cut that out? 0.94

00:33:57.000 There's also these.

00:33:59.000 There's all these core marks in some of the stones that they find in Egypt.

00:34:04.000 And they've analyzed the amount of revolutions per minute that you would have to go through to be able to cut through something and leave these lines.

00:34:12.000 And it defies explanation.

00:34:14.000 Like, what is this?

00:34:16.000 This is crazy.

00:34:16.000 This is not.

00:34:17.000 Sand and copper, and just rubbing things.

00:34:20.000 No, this is some insane technology that we don't understand.

00:34:25.000 There's scoop marks out of the bottoms of some of these stones. 0.99

00:34:28.000 It's like, what the fuck is this? 0.98

00:34:30.000 How'd you scoop rock? 0.99

00:34:32.000 It looks like ice cream.

00:34:34.000 They just went, whoop.

00:34:36.000 What are they doing?

00:34:38.000 There's so many questions.

00:34:39.000 What tools did they even have to do all these things?

00:34:41.000 They had copper.

00:34:43.000 I mean, there's some evidence that they had some iron.

00:34:46.000 And then I think Tutankhamun had a dagger that was actually made from meteorite.

00:34:50.000 Which is interesting.

00:34:51.000 You know, like when they could find meteorites and make things out of them was very valuable, obviously.

00:34:57.000 But just the sheer volume of work that they did there, it's like you look at the Temple in Man, you look at the three major pyramids, you look at all the different temples and all the construction, and the older you go, the deeper into the sand they go, the more complex these things are, which is even weirder.

00:35:19.000 So it seems like civilization after civilization, there was probably a rise and fall with their technology as well.

00:35:26.000 Absolutely.

00:35:27.000 I think it's just incredible that none of this knowledge was properly documented ever.

00:35:33.000 And it's a whole line of work to just go understand how to even rebuild these things, leave alone how they built it.

00:35:40.000 Well, think about what we're doing, right?

00:35:42.000 So all of our knowledge is essentially stored on hard drives and paper.

00:35:46.000 Those are the two things that are going to deteriorate the quickest.

00:35:51.000 Maybe we should take a dump of the internet and put it on a rock, go preserve it somewhere so that even if our civilization is wiped out and all the data centers are gone or whatever.

00:36:02.000 Right.

00:36:03.000 Whoever comes next can go figure it out.

00:36:06.000 Well, I mean, then you've got to always assume that even if they found a hard drive, that they would, like, how long would it take for them to back engineer what we did and figure out what these ones and zeros actually mean?

00:36:19.000 Yeah.

00:36:21.000 Which is one of the most bizarre and fantastic accomplishments of modern civilization.

00:36:27.000 Like, this is a terabyte.

00:36:27.000 Yeah.

00:36:30.000 Which is nuts.

00:36:30.000 Yeah.

00:36:31.000 Yeah.

00:36:32.000 Like, I don't know what your first computer had.

00:36:35.000 I don't remember.

00:36:36.000 Definitely not even a gigabyte, probably.

00:36:38.000 No!

00:36:39.000 Like a few hundred megabytes was your hard drive.

00:36:42.000 Yeah.

00:36:43.000 Yeah, I mean, I remember when they first came out with gigabytes.

00:36:46.000 I was like, this is nuts.

00:36:47.000 Yeah.

00:36:48.000 You remember when Gmail launched and gave everybody free email storage, unlimited email storage, and the bottom sliding bar would just keep increasing in terms of the total allowed size?

00:36:58.000 Yeah.

00:36:58.000 And that was nuts to me.

00:37:00.000 Yeah.

00:37:01.000 And I think, yeah, we take it for granted that we have infinite RAM and infinite hard disks.

00:37:07.000 Nobody has to worry about, like, you know, back in those days, you'd worry about, like, taking too many photos on your phone.

00:37:12.000 Right.

00:37:13.000 Right.

00:37:14.000 And then you'd have to go delete all the old ones or bad ones.

00:37:16.000 Yeah, you'd run out of storage on your phone.

00:37:18.000 Yeah.

00:37:18.000 And then you'd have to buy, like, an external hard drive to keep storing things.

00:37:22.000 Yeah.

00:37:22.000 You'd keep transferring stuff from your phone to the hard disk.

00:37:25.000 I remember the old Android phones, you'd get an SD card.

00:37:28.000 Yeah.

00:37:28.000 You could slip one of those in there and you could store images on that.

00:37:32.000 So you could save space.

00:37:32.000 Yeah.

00:37:34.000 Yeah.

00:37:35.000 And all that stuff is so vulnerable.

00:37:37.000 It's so vulnerable.

00:37:38.000 And, Again, if a completely alien society had to come down and find our hard drives and they went a totally different path of technology, they'd have to back engineer, reverse engineer everything that we did, try to figure out what are we using, what operating system, how's the operating system work?

00:37:58.000 Is it Unix?

00:37:59.000 Is it Linux?

00:38:00.000 How do they do it?

00:38:00.000 What is it?

00:38:02.000 It would be a nightmare.

00:38:03.000 They would need an advanced AI to figure it all out for them.

00:38:06.000 Right.

00:38:07.000 Yeah.

00:38:08.000 And so that's just if the hard drives survive.

00:38:12.000 So, if there's some massive flood, cataclysm, whatever, some horrific thing that damages all of our electronics, which is totally possible, just some solar flare, some intense.

00:38:25.000 Or just another lab leak.

00:38:28.000 Right?

00:38:28.000 Yeah.

00:38:29.000 Just time.

00:38:30.000 A lab leak in time.

00:38:31.000 Yeah.

00:38:32.000 Yeah.

00:38:33.000 It's nuts.

00:38:35.000 We could go back to zero real quick, and we would basically be like preppers and hunting around.

00:38:40.000 It would be hard to reverse engineer everything again.

00:38:42.000 It would be almost impossible.

00:38:44.000 Yeah.

00:38:44.000 Which is why I'm really fascinated by the flood, the post flood timeline.

00:38:49.000 Because if these people like Graham Hancock and a lot of these other folks that have speculated that there was probably a very advanced civilization that went in a completely different direction many thousands of years ago, if you look at the emergence of Sumer and Mesopotamia and that area, which a lot of people attribute to be the earliest known civilization, that's around 5,000 plus, 6,000 years ago, right?

00:39:16.000 Yeah, roughly.

00:39:17.000 So the flood's like 11,000 years ago.

00:39:20.000 Plus, so you're looking at like 5,000 years of what?

00:39:25.000 It's not even that long in the grand scheme of things.

00:39:27.000 No, not to the earth, but for people. 0.94

00:39:29.000 Yeah, pretty fucking long. 0.76

00:39:30.000 Exactly. 0.99

00:39:31.000 Like, think of how long it took us to get our shit together. 0.99

00:39:33.000 It took thousands and thousands and thousands of years of people probably being monsters, just being the worst of the worst. 1.00

00:39:33.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:39:42.000 And that's probably the only way they survived.

00:39:42.000 Yeah.

00:39:44.000 There's probably a lot of cannibalism.

00:39:45.000 There's a lot of murder.

00:39:45.000 Yeah.

00:39:47.000 There was a lot of like horrific shit going on for, 5,000 years until people slowly but surely figured out agriculture again. 0.98

00:39:54.000 Started building walls. 0.99

00:39:54.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:39:56.000 Everybody relaxed a little.

00:39:58.000 Got some solid weapons to keep people away so you could work on math.

00:40:02.000 And then, next thing you know, civilization emerges again and it goes right back onto this cycle.

00:40:08.000 And then you start reading in the Rig Veda about stuff that happened thousands of years. 0.99

00:40:12.000 You go, what the fuck is this? 0.98

00:40:14.000 Like, what happened? 1.00

00:40:15.000 Yeah.

00:40:15.000 And that's my belief.

00:40:18.000 Yeah.

00:40:18.000 I think there was something going on on earth.

00:40:21.000 Many, many, many thousands of years before established beginnings of history.

00:40:26.000 That was very bizarre.

00:40:28.000 And probably technology that went in a completely different direction than what we're doing now with combustion engines and circuits and all the different things that we use.

00:40:38.000 They probably figured out some other kind of technology.

00:40:41.000 Exactly.

00:40:42.000 Which is totally possible.

00:40:44.000 And it's amazing.

00:40:45.000 It's amazing to think of what if we could rediscover all of that again?

00:40:49.000 Yes.

00:40:50.000 Well, I would love to be able to.

00:40:51.000 I would love to just.

00:40:53.000 If I could choose one window in time to go back to see what it would look like, I would 100% pick ancient Egypt while they're building the pyramids. 0.98

00:41:03.000 Show me what the fuck was going on. 0.97

00:41:07.000 Just put me in a big hamster wheel, there's a big plastic bubble where no one could see me. 0.99

00:41:12.000 Just let me violate space and time and exist there for just a few minutes.

00:41:16.000 Just let me look.

00:41:17.000 I think that would be the most insane thing that you could see about humans and human history.

00:41:23.000 I just want to know what they knew, what they had, what they used.

00:41:23.000 Yeah.

00:41:27.000 This is what this thing Petra's same time period, at least attributed to 7,000 roughly BC.

00:41:34.000 Jesus.

00:41:35.000 And they, you know, how would you do that?

00:41:38.000 How?

00:41:38.000 Right.

00:41:39.000 The details of all those carvings is just insane.

00:41:42.000 Insane.

00:41:43.000 Yeah.

00:41:44.000 And in 7,000 BC, what are the tools?

00:41:48.000 What the hell were you using? 0.99

00:41:50.000 How did you make a temple out of the side of a fucking mountain? 1.00

00:41:53.000 Look at the size of it, man. 1.00

00:41:56.000 The size of those columns.

00:41:58.000 It would be hard to do anything like this even today.

00:42:01.000 It would be incredibly difficult, insanely time consuming.

00:42:06.000 Yeah, the Kalyasa temple, by the way, I don't have it up right now, but in 1650 or so, someone sent a thousand people to try to destroy it.

00:42:14.000 And after three years of doing nothing, they stopped.

00:42:17.000 They barely made a dent on a couple statues. 0.94

00:42:20.000 Yeah, a lot of times when invasions happen in India, they tried really hard to fuck it up and couldn't. 0.99

00:42:26.000 It's crazy. 1.00

00:42:26.000 Oh, wow. 1.00

00:42:28.000 That's very robust.

00:42:34.000 That's a great way to describe it.

00:42:35.000 It's just, there's so much of that stuff that's so interesting because it's so undeniable.

00:42:43.000 It's so undeniable in its scale, so undeniable in its complexity, and the planning and the understanding that you had to have a deep knowledge of geometry, of measurement, of materials.

00:42:57.000 Materials.

00:42:58.000 Yes.

00:42:59.000 Everything.

00:43:00.000 Sturdiness, resist calamities, earthquakes, floods.

00:43:05.000 What tools are you using?

00:43:08.000 How are you doing this?

00:43:09.000 How are you coordinating all these people and getting them to do stuff?

00:43:14.000 I mean, sure, conditions must have been way harsher.

00:43:17.000 I'm sure people didn't really have a choice but to do these things because back in those days, the only way you could take care of your food and clothing and shelter is you commit yourself as a laborer to the state, to the kingdom.

00:43:31.000 But you could also ask what gave them the initiative or drive to go do these things?

00:43:37.000 Well, that description is perhaps of a later time.

00:43:37.000 Yeah.

00:43:41.000 We don't even really know what civilization was like when these were constructed.

00:43:45.000 The real problem is the material science.

00:43:49.000 The real problem is, like, you there's a lot of things that you have to have to make those things.

00:43:54.000 It's not as simple as a sculpture, like Michelangelo making a sculpture out of something that's like fairly easy to carve into as far as stone goes.

00:44:03.000 You know, this is the scale is it's so undeniable that, like, something, something, some piece of our understanding is missing.

00:44:13.000 Yeah.

00:44:14.000 Yeah.

00:44:15.000 I mean, it, it, it, oh, like, looking at all this, like, everyone should just be like a lot more humble, right?

00:44:20.000 Like, Like, yeah, we don't actually know that much.

00:44:23.000 Like, what we know is like so little, like, whatever, like, the same thing as what Socrates said.

00:44:28.000 What we know is very, very little.

00:44:31.000 And the only thing we should all strive to be is just be curious.

00:44:34.000 And I think there's a lot of tendency for people to like think, Oh, like, we have all this advanced technology, we're so amazing.

00:44:41.000 Like, look at us.

00:44:42.000 And it's like, Wait, hold on.

00:44:44.000 Like, you don't even understand what happened thousands of years ago.

00:44:47.000 And there's so much out there to just go and explore and learn and like.

00:44:52.000 Get better at understanding more.

00:44:54.000 What is this place this is?

00:44:56.000 Yeah, this is unreal.

00:44:58.000 This is called the Elora Caves, Timeless Wonder carved in stone.

00:45:02.000 They're on.

00:45:03.000 I think it's all like kind of the same area.

00:45:04.000 Yeah it's, it's the same Elora Cave and the Shiva Temple that you saw.

00:45:08.000 Look at that, my god.

00:45:11.000 Look at this stuff.

00:45:12.000 It's insane.

00:45:15.000 And again, there's no steel back then it's actually really symmetrical, it's.

00:45:20.000 It's not even like uh in, can you go back to the first one with the symmetrical top?

00:45:26.000 Yeah.

00:45:27.000 Look at the symmetry of the top.

00:45:30.000 It's nuts.

00:45:31.000 It looks like that mall in New York they made where the world transfers.

00:45:37.000 Yeah, but way more robust.

00:45:41.000 I mean, how?

00:45:43.000 What were they using?

00:45:45.000 This is the thing.

00:45:46.000 It's like the material science aspect of it.

00:45:48.000 Yeah.

00:45:49.000 It's like you don't have the ability to do.

00:45:52.000 Look at that top one.

00:45:53.000 Go to that top one again.

00:45:54.000 The one that you just had, Jamie?

00:45:56.000 Yeah, that one.

00:45:57.000 Look at that.

00:45:58.000 That's crazy, man.

00:46:00.000 I mean, I am just blown away when I see stuff like that.

00:46:04.000 My mind just starts racing.

00:46:06.000 And I just think, how did you do this?

00:46:09.000 Who was involved?

00:46:11.000 How was it planned?

00:46:12.000 How was it so symmetrical?

00:46:14.000 What were the tools?

00:46:16.000 Like, what were the tools, man?

00:46:18.000 Yeah.

00:46:18.000 If you don't have steel, you don't have.

00:46:21.000 What are you using?

00:46:22.000 How'd you do that?

00:46:23.000 I mean, most of it is done with stone, clearly, right?

00:46:26.000 I guess.

00:46:28.000 I guess.

00:46:29.000 I doubt it.

00:46:30.000 I bet they had something else.

00:46:32.000 I bet they had something else that over time eroded just like metal would today.

00:46:37.000 I mean, if you left a shovel outside today and you came back to that same spot 500 years from now, there's nothing.

00:46:45.000 That shovel's gone, right?

00:46:47.000 Yeah. 0.96

00:46:47.000 And you've got to assume that these many thousand year old temples that were carved out of a fucking mountain, whatever tools they used, probably got absorbed by the earth. 0.96

00:46:58.000 And the only thing that's remaining, yeah. 0.92

00:47:00.000 It's giving me a weird thought.

00:47:00.000 Like when they make a big building downtown, though, they only bring the crane in for a temporary period of time.

00:47:05.000 And there's only so many cranes on the planet currently, too.

00:47:07.000 So, right, true.

00:47:09.000 You take it, you move it, you go take it to the next spot.

00:47:12.000 Yep, yeah, true.

00:47:14.000 Yeah, especially something like this.

00:47:14.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:47:16.000 Like, if they had heavy equipment and machinery and whatever the fuck they were using, they probably moved it and then moved it out, and then it probably rotted away.

00:47:24.000 And now it's gone.

00:47:25.000 If there was machinery, if there wasn't, like, there must have been something else, some other kind of like some technology that we haven't even imagined.

00:47:34.000 Yeah.

00:47:37.000 But it's like their commitment to art, too, was so fascinating because these aren't just structures, they're fashion projects.

00:47:46.000 Yeah, intensely beautiful, yeah, intensely ornate.

00:47:49.000 Yeah, so it's not just that they wanted to build like a functional structure, yeah, that good architecture.

00:47:56.000 No, it's this, it's a fascinating artwork and it's so intricate.

00:48:02.000 There's so many different features and so many different images of different people and beings and animals and.

00:48:09.000 Elephants and there's one more temple like you could pull out, it's called the Tanjar Temple.

00:48:15.000 Oh, I've seen that one too, yeah, yeah.

00:48:17.000 That was done more recently in the age of the Cholas, and um, it's um, it's pretty incredible. 1.00

00:48:23.000 When did they do that one? 1.00

00:48:24.000 Um, I don't know the exact number, but more recent than the ones that you saw. 0.99

00:48:29.000 All of them are nuts, man. 0.85

00:48:30.000 And then there's stuff like that all over the world. 0.99

00:48:33.000 Whoa, this was done as a project by the king, um, to basically make a name for himself.

00:48:41.000 Wow.

00:48:42.000 That's incredible.

00:48:45.000 Is that multiple pieces of stone, or did you carve that whole thing out of stone, too?

00:48:50.000 Probably multiple pieces.

00:48:52.000 So that's actually like construction.

00:48:55.000 Yeah.

00:48:55.000 Not like removal.

00:48:58.000 The other ones are, it's essentially a giant sculpture.

00:49:04.000 Wow, it's so pretty.

00:49:06.000 Look how geometric it is, too.

00:49:07.000 Yeah, that's what amazes me.

00:49:09.000 Like, they didn't actually have all these simulations and CAD tools and all these things.

00:49:13.000 Right.

00:49:14.000 And, uh,.

00:49:15.000 What year was this made, Jamie?

00:49:17.000 Does it say?

00:49:19.000 It's just so incredible how much of this stuff exists where it's really baffling.

00:49:24.000 Like, I just found out recently that the Aztecs didn't build those temples, they found them.

00:49:31.000 Really?

00:49:32.000 Yeah.

00:49:32.000 They found, like, Tenochtitlan.

00:49:35.000 They call it the place where the gods were born.

00:49:38.000 The Aztecs found it and uncovered it.

00:49:40.000 And then on the.

00:49:43.000 Is it Tenochtitlan or.

00:49:43.000 When.

00:49:46.000 Teotihuacan, whichever one it was, on the consecration day when they were done with whatever they were doing with it to celebrate, they killed somewhere between 20,000 and 80,000 people in four days. 0.99

00:50:01.000 Damn. 0.99

00:50:03.000 Not exactly the mindset of the type of people that would construct something like that. 0.99

00:50:06.000 So those are the people that found it and it might have been sitting there for a thousand years.

00:50:11.000 And then they came along and said, oh, this is cool.

00:50:14.000 Let's live here.

00:50:15.000 Okay, but what was the society?

00:50:17.000 That lived there before them, and where are they, and what happened, and how'd they do this, and why'd they do it, and why did they have it aligned with the constellations?

00:50:25.000 Like, what were they doing?

00:50:27.000 Yeah.

00:50:30.000 Some of the calculations are pretty amazing.

00:50:32.000 Like how they timed it, how they positioned it, how they cared about planetary positions and stuff like that.

00:50:40.000 Sure, like some of it could even be pseudoscience, but whatever.

00:50:43.000 I think just the level of calculations they were making back in those days without powerful computers is just outstanding.

00:50:51.000 It's just nuts.

00:50:52.000 And it doesn't make sense.

00:50:54.000 It's like, okay, they're making it without powerful computers.

00:50:56.000 So what are they using?

00:50:59.000 I mean, at one point, the word computer just meant a human.

00:51:02.000 Right.

00:51:02.000 Like human beings would be doing the calculations.

00:51:05.000 That was their only job, like to literally multiply two numbers.

00:51:09.000 Or like to make some.

00:51:11.000 Astronomers were actually the first mathematicians.

00:51:14.000 The term mathematician and astronomer were used synonymously at one point.

00:51:17.000 Really?

00:51:18.000 Yeah.

00:51:20.000 Why is that?

00:51:21.000 Why studying the stars and math?

00:51:24.000 Yeah, because like studying the stars involved making a lot of geometry calculations.

00:51:29.000 And that was kind of actually one of the first set of mathematicians in India.

00:51:34.000 People like Aryabhatta, Bhaskara, all these guys were actually astronomers too.

00:51:40.000 They were not just mathematicians.

00:51:43.000 And Aryabhatta was earlier still like the idea of using zeros.

00:51:47.000 And then he had a lot of like contributions in geometry.

00:51:52.000 And he was doing all this like just because he was interested in astronomy.

00:51:58.000 Isn't there.

00:51:59.000 Evidence of Pythagorean theorem in ancient Sumerian?

00:52:07.000 Is it?

00:52:08.000 It's something that predates Pythagoras.

00:52:13.000 Interesting.

00:52:14.000 My theory is that even though it was not formulated as a Pythagorean theorem, I'm sure people had to understand concepts of sines and cosines and whatever is the right angle for the right incline to get this right level of geometry.

00:52:29.000 You needed to have some implicit understanding of.

00:52:32.000 To build these kind of structures, there's no way you could do it without that.

00:52:35.000 Yeah, 100%.

00:52:36.000 And you have to have incredible measurement tools, like not just the actual mathematics.

00:52:42.000 Okay, the oldest known evidence of Pythagorean theorem dates from old Babylonian clay tablets from about 1900 to 1600 BCE, roughly 1,000 years before Pythagoras.

00:52:53.000 Isn't that wild?

00:52:55.000 Like, how?

00:52:57.000 How?

00:52:58.000 Clay tablets often cited use what we now call the Pythagorean theorem to compute the diagonal.

00:53:06.000 Of rectangles and squares, including an excellent approximation.

00:53:12.000 This is nuts, man.

00:53:12.000 Look at this.

00:53:15.000 Vedic ritual texts explicitly states the rule equivalent.

00:53:18.000 I don't know how to say that.

00:53:19.000 What is that?

00:53:20.000 A squared, B squared, C squared.

00:53:23.000 For the diagonal of a rectangle that includes numerical examples predating or roughly contemporary with classical Greek mathematics.

00:53:30.000 So completely different parts of the world.

00:53:33.000 Yeah.

00:53:33.000 And they're coming up with the same stuff.

00:53:35.000 Exactly.

00:53:36.000 Because they're all curious, that's it.

00:53:38.000 Yeah, they're all curious, and eventually, all curiosity leads to truth or some form of it.

00:53:44.000 I would argue that anything that's of impact in the world has only been done by curious people.

00:53:49.000 In hindsight, we label those people as successful, as smart, or rich, but the common trait across all of them has been curious.

00:53:59.000 Well, that's certainly a powerful trait.

00:54:02.000 And people that aren't curious are not fun.

00:54:05.000 Yeah, they are interesting, so because of that, they don't attract other smart or interesting people.

00:54:11.000 And therefore, they won't be able to do something very meaningful in the world.

00:54:15.000 So it's kind of like it's less about, and it applies to your personal relationships and personal life too.

00:54:23.000 It's not just about professional success.

00:54:26.000 Like, you'll have a more fulfilling life with your wife or your kids if you're a more curious person.

00:54:31.000 You ask them more questions, you take interest in them, right?

00:54:35.000 So, that's the one quality everybody wants in personal relationships taking interest in them and actually understanding them better or being curious about common things.

00:54:45.000 And so, it's not just that being curious leads to success, it's more that people around you want you to be successful if you're curious, because you will have more compounding and fulfilling relationships.

00:54:58.000 I would agree with that.

00:54:59.000 Yeah.

00:55:00.000 I'd say it's one of the more important qualities of human beings.

00:55:04.000 I mean, it's led to everything that we have today.

00:55:06.000 All curiosity has led to all of our architecture, math, everything, art, everything.

00:55:11.000 The transistor.

00:55:12.000 Like, you know the story of the transistor?

00:55:14.000 Yeah.

00:55:15.000 So, Bell Labs was basically employing as many, like, history adjusted as many telephone engineers back then as the number of software engineers today.

00:55:24.000 But only three people cared enough to question whether you should use these really hot, giant vacuum tubes for amplifying telephone signals.

00:55:33.000 So, vacuum tubes are very big, power hungry, and very hot, and so they were not fault tolerant, and it's very expensive.

00:55:41.000 And so, three people questioned the need for that and came up with the idea of the transistor to amplify current.

00:55:48.000 And that was the Nobel Prize winning discovery, and not just that it was useful to amplify telephone signals, it basically led to the rise of modern computing, and we wouldn't have an iPhone like this today if not for those three people.

00:56:01.000 Do you know what the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory about transistors is?

00:56:04.000 No.

00:56:05.000 That they are back engineered from the Roswell crash along with fiber optics.

00:56:12.000 Tell me more.

00:56:13.000 So, we read this on the podcast.

00:56:15.000 Remember, Jamie, there's the two scientists that were attributed.

00:56:18.000 There's this one scientist that said they weren't even remotely exceptional guys and that they gave them the credit for this so that they didn't have to reveal the true nature of where this technology came from.

00:56:30.000 Interesting.

00:56:30.000 I see.

00:56:31.000 So, again, tinfoil hat securely on our heads.

00:56:36.000 This is not something I believe.

00:56:37.000 This is just something that's fun.

00:56:37.000 Okay.

00:56:39.000 Um, There's a few inventions that came out of that time period, roughly after 1947, that are weird.

00:56:48.000 And one of them is fiber optics, and one of them is a transistor.

00:56:51.000 And these are supposedly attributed to back engineering programs.

00:56:56.000 So the Roswell crash, I don't know if you ever paid any attention to it, it's a real weird one because the cover of the Roswell Daily Record said that the government has a crash disk that landed in the desert.

00:57:08.000 A bunch of witnesses, a bunch of people saw it.

00:57:11.000 It's also people that saw, supposedly saw physical bodies of these creatures and supposedly, again, who knows what's true.

00:57:22.000 But Truman went to the site, he visited it, and then the planes, two separate planes, were flown to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, which was, I think it was just Wright Base back then.

00:57:35.000 I don't think it was Wright Patterson.

00:57:36.000 But they flew them out, and the idea was this.

00:57:41.000 Was so important, they didn't want to risk one plane crashing.

00:57:45.000 So they flew it in two different planes.

00:57:47.000 And that this stuff has always been known to be stored at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

00:57:52.000 That's what everybody always talks about.

00:57:54.000 And then a lot of it was moved to Bell Labs.

00:57:58.000 And there was a company called the American Computer Company.

00:58:02.000 And back in the day, the American Computer Company was just like it was a consumer website where you could go and say, Oh, I need a Windows computer that does this, that, and the other thing.

00:58:12.000 And you could just Put in whatever your specs were and they would build it for you.

00:58:15.000 They had a whole section of their website dedicated to Bell Labs and back engineered UFO technology. 0.99

00:58:23.000 And all they talked about, and this one, like whoever ran it was like a fucking kook. 0.90

00:58:27.000 Is that still around? 0.98

00:58:28.000 That website?

00:58:29.000 Yeah.

00:58:30.000 American Computer Company, is it still around?

00:58:32.000 So this is like the 1990s, I think.

00:58:32.000 Interesting.

00:58:34.000 So you're saying your theory, I mean, not that you believe in it, but your theory is that the transistor was not like invented, it was known and it was given to the.

00:58:43.000 There's apparently a giant leap.

00:58:45.000 Between the first ideas of the transistor and then what actually came about and how much money had to be spent to create it off of this leap.

00:58:54.000 This was this assertion by these scientists that were trying to examine this.

00:59:00.000 The thing about Bell Labs is there's a military base right outside of Bell Labs.

00:59:06.000 And they say, well, that military base is to guard New York City.

00:59:08.000 But New York City is quite a flight away, but Bell Labs is right there. 0.99

00:59:13.000 And they were working on some deep, dark shit at Bell Labs for sure. 0.94

00:59:18.000 Because I've had a bunch of people on that were talking about remote viewing exercises that they were doing out of Bell Labs. 0.98

00:59:24.000 You know, we've had a bunch of people that came on and talked about various programs that were going on that were like top secret programs that were happening that were being run through Bell Labs.

00:59:34.000 There's some weirdness to that place, like real weirdness.

00:59:37.000 Interesting.

00:59:37.000 Yeah.

00:59:38.000 And it's fun.

00:59:39.000 Yeah.

00:59:39.000 The idea that, like, you know, that.

00:59:42.000 Because it definitely feels very disconnected.

00:59:45.000 Like, okay, like you were using all these vacuum tubes.

00:59:50.000 And then suddenly you're like, okay, like what if we just use semiconductors?

00:59:54.000 Okay, that there's definitely a pretty far drift from what you're doing currently to what you're supposed to do.

01:00:04.000 And also, the idea of the first transistor and what ended up being used in chips, the junction transistor, are quite different too.

01:00:12.000 So, there are like big leaps in terms of what the core idea was.

01:00:15.000 It's not an incremental change.

01:00:18.000 The way I thought about it was like, okay, that's like tens of years of work.

01:00:22.000 And that's why they made a big change.

01:00:25.000 And so, if you actually looked into the individual milestones they had, maybe it would have looked pretty different.

01:00:30.000 But your conspiracy theory is pretty interesting.

01:00:34.000 It's always fun.

01:00:35.000 Yeah.

01:00:36.000 And also, there's just too many stories of this.

01:00:39.000 And David Grush has, you know, on oath said that there are back engineering programs and he was read into these and that they've been around for a long time.

01:00:47.000 But this is the assertion of that movie, The Age of Disclosure, that the real problem is.

01:00:52.000 That they have misappropriated funds and lied to Congress.

01:00:55.000 And so they come out and tell you, okay, we do have this program.

01:00:58.000 Well, guess what? 0.97

01:00:59.000 Everybody goes to jail because you guys are a bunch of liars and you've been stealing money and you've been doing it whatever you want to do with this money. 0.96

01:01:06.000 I don't know how much oversight is there on back engineering UFO programs. 0.86

01:01:13.000 So probably a lot of people get in trouble.

01:01:15.000 A lot of people go to jail.

01:01:16.000 On top of that, these things are all being done by weapons manufacturers, right?

01:01:22.000 Like, where are you going to?

01:01:23.000 Bring them to?

01:01:24.000 Well, you're going to bring them to Lockheed Martin or you're going to bring them to, you know, Rocketdyne or it's going to be someone that does that kind of work.

01:01:31.000 Yeah.

01:01:31.000 You're not going to do it on your own.

01:01:32.000 It's not going to be like, we'll do it.

01:01:34.000 No, you're going to have to bring it to people that already make spaceships or bring it to people that already make jets.

01:01:38.000 Yeah.

01:01:39.000 And so they have a massive competitive advantage over any other company that's doing it.

01:01:44.000 So then there's other companies that also had contracts with the United States government they can sue.

01:01:47.000 And so he lays out all the problems with disclosure.

01:01:51.000 And their assertion is that.

01:01:55.000 The only thing we need, if we really want to find out the truth, is we're going to need widespread amnesty for all these people that were involved.

01:02:03.000 My problem with that is that's what I would say too.

01:02:06.000 If I had been stealing money for decades and decades, I'd be like, we need amnesty.

01:02:12.000 And then I'll tell you where all this stuff is.

01:02:13.000 I'm like, how do we know what this stuff is?

01:02:18.000 Whether or not these are just top secret military programs with advanced propulsion technology that's unavailable to the public, and they're going to say that it's aliens, and they back engineered this, and they did that.

01:02:28.000 They clearly don't want to tell people.

01:02:30.000 They don't want people to know.

01:02:31.000 I think a large part of it is probably because they could get in trouble.

01:02:35.000 But I think also a large part of it is because it's fun to keep secrets from people.

01:02:39.000 Yeah.

01:02:40.000 Especially when you're the government. 1.00

01:02:42.000 Fuck those people. 1.00

01:02:42.000 Why tell them? 1.00

01:02:43.000 Fuck them. 1.00

01:02:43.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:02:44.000 They don't even know UFOs are real.

01:02:46.000 Meanwhile, you know, we're going into a bunker in the middle of the mountain and we're remote viewing.

01:02:51.000 You know, it's probably, there's probably a lot of fun involved in having access to information that most people would kill for.

01:02:59.000 Yeah.

01:03:00.000 I mean, there's so much information that we just don't have access to.

01:03:05.000 Which brings me to this question.

01:03:08.000 With, it seems like one of the things that's happening with both AI and with technology in general is that you have more and more access to information.

01:03:19.000 And more and more answers to questions than ever before.

01:03:23.000 At a certain point in time, there's going to be no bottleneck.

01:03:27.000 And we're going to know everything about everything.

01:03:29.000 So, how is anyone in government going to keep a secret?

01:03:33.000 How is any corruption ever going to be possible?

01:03:37.000 At a certain point in time, all of it will get uncovered.

01:03:40.000 It's much more difficult to commit murder now with DNA evidence.

01:03:44.000 Back in the 1800s, I didn't see nothing.

01:03:47.000 I wasn't there.

01:03:48.000 And then you're free.

01:03:49.000 Now, They do your fingerprints now.

01:03:52.000 They get your DNA.

01:03:53.000 Now there's flock cameras.

01:03:54.000 There's like more and more and more.

01:03:57.000 It's harder to get away with things.

01:03:58.000 Yeah.

01:03:59.000 So it seems like to me, like whatever they have, whatever anybody has, ultimately there's going to come a point in time where there's so much data and so much information, and you could run all your questions.

01:04:10.000 Like there's an AI fact checker for politicians now. 1.00

01:04:13.000 So while a politician is giving a speech, you can run an AI fact checker, and in real time, it will tell you whether or not these people are full of shit. 1.00

01:04:13.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:04:21.000 It seems like the direction is there's not going to be anybody full of shit in the future because it's not going to be possible. 0.97

01:04:26.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:04:27.000 I mean, the government still would have access to things that we human beings wouldn't have access to, like regular people.

01:04:35.000 And particularly defense related, weapons related.

01:04:40.000 Like, for example, when they did the Venezuelan thing, I don't think people in Venezuela even understood what those weapons were.

01:04:51.000 Well, I don't think we did.

01:04:52.000 They described us like, yeah.

01:04:54.000 They were described as something, the literal words used were like alien like technology.

01:04:59.000 So even we didn't know that the United States had access to that quality of defense technology until that incident happened.

01:05:09.000 So there are obviously going to be secrets, right?

01:05:13.000 Especially the highest stakes things.

01:05:16.000 I would say like building frontier AI models is similar to that.

01:05:20.000 Of course, as more and more models are getting open source, I think the knowledge is diffusing.

01:05:26.000 But still, the true amount of details you need to actually train a really amazing frontier reasoning capability model is still not widely diffused.

01:05:37.000 So, my hypothesis is that whatever is extremely high stakes will still not be widely diffused.

01:05:49.000 At least there'll be enough structures in place to keep it secret.

01:05:53.000 Forever?

01:05:54.000 Not forever, but for a while.

01:05:56.000 Yeah.

01:05:56.000 For a while.

01:05:57.000 That's the thing.

01:05:58.000 Long term, sure.

01:05:59.000 Things do get out and people do understand.

01:06:01.000 It feels like long term is what I'm looking at.

01:06:03.000 Like, look, when we're looking at history, we're talking in these, like, when we're looking at all these different temples and all these different things, we're talking about thousands and thousands of years.

01:06:13.000 And thousands of years of time span in between each individual one.

01:06:17.000 With our world, we're talking about massive change in 200 years.

01:06:22.000 Like this country's 250 years old.

01:06:24.000 Think about how kooky that is.

01:06:26.000 That is a blink of an eye in history.

01:06:28.000 But do we understand everything that happened in the United States?

01:06:31.000 Exactly.

01:06:31.000 So there are still some details that are hidden from us.

01:06:31.000 No.

01:06:35.000 We don't fully understand everything, right?

01:06:37.000 For now.

01:06:38.000 But my question is as time goes on, 250 years from now, isn't it even possible to keep any secrets from anybody?

01:06:49.000 And is that a good thing?

01:06:51.000 It might be a good thing.

01:06:52.000 It sounds horrible to people because they're like, oh my God, what about privacy?

01:06:56.000 Right, but also, what about lies?

01:06:58.000 Yeah.

01:06:58.000 No more lies?

01:06:59.000 Like, everyone's going to know what you're thinking?

01:07:01.000 Everyone's going to know everything people do all the time?

01:07:05.000 Yeah.

01:07:06.000 I mean, if you're a true surveillance state, obviously there are no secrets.

01:07:10.000 Right.

01:07:12.000 Except about the government itself.

01:07:14.000 That's the problem.

01:07:15.000 Yeah.

01:07:15.000 Does it bottleneck with the government or does it get to a point where there is?

01:07:20.000 You can't even have government secrets because as technology evolves and as human civilization evolves, secrets will be less and less, not just necessary, but secrets will be problematic because they'll be an impediment to knowledge.

01:07:33.000 They'll be an impediment to understanding the true scope of what the world is, like the true nature of all of our various moving parts.

01:07:41.000 Yeah.

01:07:42.000 As long as the human quality, the intrinsic human quality of curiosity and truth seekingness, which is universal, it's existed ever since we've known human beings.

01:07:52.000 If that continues and that continues to be the case, then people will have enough incentives to figure out the truth.

01:07:59.000 Yeah.

01:08:00.000 And if something is actually hard to get to, it only motivates you more to actually go and find it.

01:08:06.000 For sure.

01:08:07.000 So, my question is where does this all go?

01:08:10.000 You know, and you obviously work in AI.

01:08:13.000 And when you think about AI and when you think about just technology in general and you extrapolate, you just take it from here and you just plot it out.

01:08:21.000 Like, what is a possible scenario of 250 years from now?

01:08:25.000 Like, what does it even look like?

01:08:27.000 What does the United States look like at 500 years old?

01:08:30.000 It's very hard to know.

01:08:31.000 I'll be very honest.

01:08:32.000 I think it's very hard to know, even five years from now, how it's going to look like.

01:08:37.000 That's crazy.

01:08:38.000 Yeah.

01:08:39.000 Five years ago was like.

01:08:40.000 Five years ago, whoever is at the top most in AI, I don't even consider myself like that, but whoever is at the most frontier level of decision making in AI, five years ago, I don't think they predicted the exact state we are in today.

01:08:54.000 Nobody did.

01:08:55.000 If they did, they would have already procured all the compute and, like, You know, manufactured all the chips, bought out all the fabs, they have done all that, right?

01:09:03.000 Just this is counterfactual.

01:09:06.000 Everyone's like bottlenecked by not having enough compute, and like we don't have enough chips, we don't have enough power.

01:09:12.000 These are all the problems that if you invite anybody in AI and ask, what is the bottleneck in AI today?

01:09:16.000 And everybody would say, power.

01:09:17.000 I think Jensen was here and he said the same thing, right?

01:09:20.000 But okay, like if you predicted this exact state five years before, wouldn't you have secured enough power and started building more power plants yourself and started getting permits and like started like.

01:09:20.000 Yeah.

01:09:32.000 Planning out capacity.

01:09:33.000 No, nobody did that.

01:09:35.000 Everything is reactive to the demand that we're having today.

01:09:38.000 And that's just five years.

01:09:39.000 Yeah, that's just five years.

01:09:40.000 So when you ask me to predict 250 years, I just have to honestly say, I don't know.

01:09:45.000 Do you ever sit back and think about it, though?

01:09:47.000 I don't think about it.

01:09:48.000 I don't think about it.

01:09:48.000 What it could be?

01:09:49.000 So there are a lot of fun things.

01:09:52.000 I use perplexity a lot for these kinds of things, especially this new feature computer inside it.

01:10:00.000 And this is just for hypothetical scenarios.

01:10:03.000 Let's say there is an AGI, right?

01:10:05.000 I've seen you ask a lot of people about this, and a lot of conventional answers is like, oh, we'll just become managers of the AIs, don't worry.

01:10:16.000 But if the price of cognition is the price of compute, managing an AI is also pretty much doable by the AI itself because the bottleneck is not like unique cognition capability there.

01:10:31.000 So the value of the society will automatically shift to what is scarce.

01:10:36.000 And fundamentally, what has been scarce is asking high quality questions about things.

01:10:42.000 Okay, what if we just completely spend all our time understanding the past?

01:10:48.000 That's an interesting endeavor.

01:10:49.000 It was not cool before, but it'll become cool again.

01:10:53.000 And we usually used to view archaeology or history as not something that's worth having a career in because it doesn't pay well.

01:11:01.000 But what if it actually starts paying you well a lot more now that actual knowledge works being done by AIs and it's all mundane and all?

01:11:08.000 The price of that is basically zero.

01:11:10.000 Right, and archaeology would be one of the few things that it wouldn't have access to because it doesn't have the actual ground.

01:11:17.000 It can't get into the ground and do the scans. 0.96

01:11:20.000 No, let's say we have robots to go do that.

01:11:23.000 But you're still going to be the one probing because you have incomplete information all the time.

01:11:29.000 Even the idea of, okay, let's go explore this particular area.

01:11:33.000 Let's go understand better.

01:11:34.000 Let's go try to reverse engineer it.

01:11:36.000 Let's go try to build this again.

01:11:38.000 How would it be if we wanted to do the same thing on the moon?

01:11:41.000 There are so many interesting projects to work on for us.

01:11:44.000 As long as we stay curious and we stay interested in a lot of things that we've done before and trying to understand civilization, I'm not really concerned about what things we get to do.

01:11:55.000 We might be doing a lot more cool things for what it's worth.

01:11:58.000 I don't know if anybody will be coming and telling you that, oh, it's so cool to open an Excel sheet every day and make financial models.

01:12:07.000 There's got to be somebody out there that likes that.

01:12:09.000 There's something about the task you do and what you get paid for, what is the job title, blah, blah, blah.

01:12:15.000 And some people associate their.

01:12:18.000 Personal worth with where they work at and how much they get paid.

01:12:23.000 And I think that thing is going to collapse in a world where the price of all that cognition is going to be the price of compute.

01:12:31.000 What do you think happens to people if a large percentage of jobs get replaced by AI?

01:12:40.000 I think they'll find new things.

01:12:43.000 We've always gravitated towards things that are scarce because that's where the value lies.

01:12:49.000 And so, if you know, have you one interesting analogy is the Gulf states where there's an abundance of resources and they export their resources to other states and that pays for the whole state?

01:13:08.000 You know how like they offer everybody free electricity, subsidized health, subsidized education, and like no taxes?

01:13:16.000 When I first went to Dubai, like in almost like 20 years ago.

01:13:22.000 They told me like people don't pay taxes here and nobody pays for electricity here and education is like super cheap.

01:13:30.000 I was like, wait, how is that real?

01:13:34.000 And the way that's real is that, I mean, of course, Texas also has no taxes and any well run state can do this.

01:13:42.000 But the way it's happening is that because the government provides you all these things, it becomes a rentiere state.

01:13:48.000 Like you offer political acquiescence to the state.

01:13:52.000 And what ended up happening is.

01:13:55.000 Citizens there expect the state to find them jobs, expect the state to take care of job displacement for them.

01:14:01.000 So they don't worry.

01:14:02.000 So it made them a little more lazy.

01:14:04.000 So that's not a good future to have, where some people talk about AI subsidies and AI dividends that get paid to everybody.

01:14:12.000 I think we need to do some form of that, but that in entirety won't solve the problem.

01:14:17.000 Right.

01:14:17.000 Well, the thing about human nature is sort of undeniable.

01:14:24.000 And if you give people the ability to be lazy, a large percentage of people will take that.

01:14:28.000 That's right.

01:14:29.000 A large percentage won't, though.

01:14:30.000 Yeah.

01:14:31.000 There's going to be enough people that are inspired to do something and they say, okay, well, now my basic needs are taken care of.

01:14:36.000 Let me pursue my actual interests.

01:14:38.000 That's right.

01:14:39.000 And find purpose in that.

01:14:40.000 Yeah.

01:14:40.000 Because that's a lot of people find purpose in whatever their occupation is.

01:14:44.000 Yeah.

01:14:44.000 And if we can shift that to finding purpose in what your actual interests are and then really pursuing something, whatever it is in that, then you'll still have meaning in your life.

01:14:54.000 And we've just come back to that.

01:14:56.000 It keeps coming back to staying curious.

01:14:58.000 Yes.

01:14:59.000 And finding value and.

01:15:01.000 Your relationships, your family, caring for each other.

01:15:06.000 If you ask a lot of retired people, actually, retired people is a good demographic to understand what would happen, what are things people find meaning in after work's taken off them.

01:15:16.000 And the majority of the answers are always family, caring, personal relationships, and community.

01:15:25.000 These are the things retired people keep doing to keep themselves active and wake up every day and have something to look for.

01:15:32.000 So, all those things will become even more important at a time when work itself doesn't mean much.

01:15:40.000 Doesn't mean humans won't be status seeking.

01:15:42.000 I think we'll still be.

01:15:44.000 But status is not going to come from whether you're working at a particular famous bank or a tech company or whatever.

01:15:52.000 It'll be driven by how interesting you are.

01:15:56.000 Are you interesting to talk to?

01:15:58.000 When I can talk to an AI, despite that, are you still interesting to talk to?

01:16:02.000 Are there certain things I get out of talking to you that.

01:16:05.000 Completely change my perspective about a bunch of things?

01:16:09.000 Or is it just fun to hang around you?

01:16:12.000 Can we have a compounding relationship together?

01:16:14.000 And I think, again, it goes back to being curious about things.

01:16:18.000 Well, this is the best case scenario, right?

01:16:21.000 Worst case scenario is civilization upheaval, chaos, civil war.

01:16:27.000 It's possible even without an AI.

01:16:28.000 Right.

01:16:29.000 Yeah.

01:16:30.000 Look, we've gotten real close to it a couple of times.

01:16:31.000 Exactly.

01:16:32.000 And we did not need an AGI scenario for.

01:16:37.000 A civilizational collapse in the past, as you've clearly seen.

01:16:41.000 A calamity can just take out all of us, wipe out everything.

01:16:45.000 Sure, especially natural ones.

01:16:46.000 Yeah, that's why I'm not a big fan of everybody claiming that the AI is going to kill us or AGI is going to destroy humanity and it's too dangerous and we all need to stop doing these things.

01:16:58.000 But at the same time, continuing to build all these data centers and continuing to make money.

01:17:02.000 You have to have one consistent position.

01:17:05.000 My position is that whether AI or not, I think being curious is going to serve you really well.

01:17:13.000 I think it's going to help you have a better life.

01:17:15.000 And there are two paths to curiosity one that can kill it and one that can supercharge it.

01:17:21.000 In my opinion, the one that kills curiosity is algorithmic feeds.

01:17:25.000 Like the brain rot that you're fed every day with just, you know, this continuous doom scrolling that's bad.

01:17:33.000 And the one that can supercharge it is AI.

01:17:36.000 Okay, like now that you could just ask whatever you want, if everybody has like a pull it up Jamie for them, Right.

01:17:44.000 And that's amazing.

01:17:45.000 So, all you have to do is be curious about a lot of different things.

01:17:50.000 And of course, talk to interesting people, engage in interesting activities together.

01:17:55.000 If money is no longer an issue, you can fund passion projects yourself.

01:17:59.000 You don't have to require government funding or venture funding.

01:18:03.000 What if you just wanted to build a mini cave yourself?

01:18:07.000 You find a piece of land somewhere.

01:18:09.000 There's a lot of land in America, way more land than we know what to do with it.

01:18:15.000 And surely we can build a lot of interesting things there.

01:18:18.000 Well, that's a good glass half full project.

01:18:23.000 And one of the things that I keep coming to is this whole idea of people working and making money and having careers and having portfolios and bank accounts and all that.

01:18:23.000 Scenario.

01:18:35.000 This is all very recent in human history.

01:18:37.000 Yeah.

01:18:38.000 Very recent.

01:18:39.000 It's very recent.

01:18:40.000 But we've become accustomed to this as a way of life.

01:18:43.000 And we.

01:18:44.000 Microsoft built this concept of a knowledge worker because they wanted to sell more office software.

01:18:49.000 Really?

01:18:50.000 Yeah.

01:18:51.000 Like this whole idea of putting a PC on every desk and making you like glue to the PC was there.

01:18:57.000 That was Bill Gates' vision.

01:18:58.000 Put a PC on every desk. 1.00

01:18:59.000 That fucking wizard. 1.00

01:19:02.000 What an incredible accomplishment because boy did they nail it. 0.99

01:19:05.000 Yeah, so it was not about making computing like beautiful or anything in the way like Steve Jobs envisioned it.

01:19:11.000 Right.

01:19:11.000 It was just about like sell more computers.

01:19:13.000 Sell more software.

01:19:14.000 Sell more computers because that way you can sell more software.

01:19:18.000 And if you sell more software, you become rich.

01:19:21.000 And the company just was a machine that was just.

01:19:25.000 You know, built essentially a large sales machine that's built to sell software.

01:19:30.000 And now they sell cloud, but whatever.

01:19:33.000 Like that's essentially the reason that, like, you know, we all got trained to use software.

01:19:41.000 People went and did tutorials on how to use Excel, how to use Word, how to use all these email tools.

01:19:47.000 And then now that became the upskilling you needed to go work at different companies and then write code and, like, whatever, right?

01:19:54.000 So, if that part's going to be done by an AI, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

01:19:59.000 Because this is not actually the way you feel like real purpose and fulfillment in your own life.

01:20:05.000 If you were never exposed to that, whatever you had as the intrinsic curiosity in you, that's probably what you should be doing.

01:20:14.000 Yeah, there could be a completely new way to live life where we're not dependent upon labor for basic needs.

01:20:22.000 But then it's going to be incumbent upon people.

01:20:24.000 They're going to have to figure out a way to be either self starting or we're going to have to expose people.

01:20:30.000 To things that are going to excite their curiosity and make that a mandate.

01:20:34.000 Yeah.

01:20:35.000 It has to start from schools.

01:20:37.000 Yeah.

01:20:37.000 And as long as we keep rewarding people for having answers instead of asking interesting questions, it's going to be a difficult change.

01:20:48.000 Like in schools, you're always rewarded for being smart based on whether you have answers to like 20 different questions.

01:20:55.000 Like all those 20 questions can be answered by AIs.

01:20:55.000 Like who cares?

01:20:59.000 Have you ever like flipped the script where you say, okay, like I'm going to.

01:21:02.000 The smartest person in the room is the one who asks the most interesting questions.

01:21:06.000 Okay, like what kind of students can you cultivate based on that?

01:21:11.000 Like, imagine if the room had no pressure to always know the answer, but the freedom to ask a lot of questions.

01:21:18.000 Right, because sometimes when someone asks a question, it'll make you pause and go, I never even thought of that.

01:21:25.000 But that's it.

01:21:27.000 Like, that's the question.

01:21:28.000 And it takes a.

01:21:28.000 Yeah.

01:21:30.000 I mean, so many people have so many different perspectives, which is one of the more interesting things that I've.

01:21:36.000 Doing this podcast is, I get to talk to so many different people, and they vary so widely.

01:21:43.000 There's so many different ways of looking at the world and so many different ways of engaging with the world, and so many different things that people are fascinated with that they spent their entire life studying and pursuing.

01:21:54.000 It's like you get this rich tapestry of the human experience that's just, I would have never been exposed to this many people.

01:22:02.000 And in turn, I've been able to expose these people to all these other folks that are just listening and watching right now. 0.98

01:22:08.000 And it's fucking incredible. 0.81

01:22:11.000 And it's such a, for me, it's like the perfect job. 0.97

01:22:14.000 I've never had a job that more aligns with my own personality. 0.98

01:22:17.000 As much as this, because I've always been that kid, like, shut the fuck up with all the questions. 0.96

01:22:22.000 I've always been that kid. 0.98

01:22:23.000 That's the system, right?

01:22:24.000 It's not your fault.

01:22:26.000 Right.

01:22:26.000 Like, it's actually the reason you're successful now is the exact thing that people told you to shut up about in the past.

01:22:33.000 Yeah.

01:22:33.000 Right?

01:22:35.000 Hey, you know, stop bothering my lecture, you know, asking all these unrelated questions.

01:22:42.000 It's mainly a frustration of the teacher that they don't have the answers to you.

01:22:46.000 Sure.

01:22:46.000 Right?

01:22:47.000 And, and, and, um, And now that bottleneck is gone, we did this experiment with one instructor at MIT who taught the introduction to biology class, where he came and told us that he's going to give perplexity to all the kids, all the students, and they would use it as part of the lectures.

01:23:06.000 So instead of fighting AI, you just give AIs to everybody and let them ask whatever questions they want, and they can actually use it in the exams too.

01:23:14.000 So, how do you even design questions for an exam in such a world?

01:23:21.000 Is maybe you just encourage people to pose a question that AI can't answer right now, and that becomes your research project, and you turn everybody into a scientist.

01:23:33.000 Fundamentally, like, there's this belief that scientists have to go through a rigorous PhD, and like, you have to get accredited by an amazing university to be that.

01:23:42.000 Sure, but anyone who's curious can be a scientist.

01:23:46.000 The only thing that's required to be a good scientist is intellectual humility to understand that you could be wrong about things.

01:23:53.000 Things that everyone takes for granted, you could still question them.

01:23:57.000 And when you're presented with new evidence and new data, you're willing to change your mind.

01:24:02.000 And you're willing to operate with ambiguity and uncertainty about the world.

01:24:06.000 That's basically all the qualities you need to be a scientist.

01:24:10.000 And you can run your experiments.

01:24:11.000 You can gather data.

01:24:12.000 You can gather evidence.

01:24:13.000 And you can consult people.

01:24:14.000 You can bring in experts and talk to them.

01:24:18.000 And as long as you're uncovering more and more about the world, you are a scientist.

01:24:22.000 You don't need a PhD to feel that you're allowed to be a scientist or not.

01:24:27.000 And I think that's the most important quality we need to inculcate in our kids, the upcoming generation, so that they all feel more liberated.

01:24:38.000 Okay, like finally, I don't have to memorize this textbook or these lecture materials, and like I don't have to feel bad if I get like 12 out of 20.

01:24:46.000 Okay, who cares?

01:24:47.000 Like AI is always going to get 20 out of 20.

01:24:50.000 That's not what you're meant to be good at.

01:24:51.000 Of course, master the foundations, the basics, great, but your job is to actually pose interesting questions.

01:24:59.000 Yeah, and the intellectual.

01:25:00.000 Excuse me, intellectual humility is so important because one of the things that was really weird about the whole COVID pandemic was that we weren't supposed to question science.

01:25:10.000 Yeah.

01:25:11.000 It was like that, or when Fauci said, if you question Anthony Fauci, you are questioning science.

01:25:17.000 That's because they try to assign credibility through their degrees.

01:25:21.000 Yes.

01:25:22.000 Through their affiliations.

01:25:23.000 Yes.

01:25:23.000 Appeal to authority.

01:25:24.000 But not through the scientific method.

01:25:25.000 Right.

01:25:26.000 Anybody should be allowed to ask questions as long as they are open to new evidence.

01:25:31.000 Yeah.

01:25:32.000 And that's the most important quality of a scientist.

01:25:34.000 Well, the scientific method alone, I mean, it's one of the most important things that we can use to try to figure out what's real and what's not real.

01:25:42.000 And as soon as someone says, don't use it, don't question, well, wait a minute.

01:25:47.000 And then there was an actual government push to silence questioning, and legitimate researchers were kicked off of Twitter because they didn't back the narrative.

01:25:59.000 Like, this is all anti science.

01:26:01.000 This is not, you're questioning science.

01:26:04.000 Science demands questioning.

01:26:06.000 It's what it is.

01:26:07.000 Yeah.

01:26:08.000 When you don't understand something, the best thing you can do is ask all possible questions.

01:26:13.000 And so curbing that is almost like a way of saying, look, I'm going to tell you what happened, and you need to believe in my worldview.

01:26:13.000 Right.

01:26:21.000 And I'm not open to new perspectives.

01:26:24.000 I wonder if anybody has used AI to try to map out possible scenarios for where technology leads human civilization and what could be done to mitigate the problems and push it.

01:26:38.000 In the proper direction, like have a bunch of different models of how this could play out.

01:26:43.000 Yeah.

01:26:45.000 I mean, I try to do that for fun, but I haven't done it in a serious enough way to have a proper answer to that.

01:26:51.000 Right.

01:26:52.000 But I think, you know, a lot of things that we are doing today will not be considered needed or valuable.

01:27:03.000 And maybe a little bit of taking our own lessons from the past.

01:27:06.000 I don't know if you, when you grew up as a student, did you have to be good at mental math, like multiplying?

01:27:12.000 Arbitrary numbers.

01:27:13.000 Was that considered a sign of smartness or remembering people's phone numbers or something?

01:27:17.000 Well, you had to because there was, I mean, you had little address books as we used to carry around, like a little, I had a little address book that I keep on my desk.

01:27:24.000 It's a little tiny thing with everybody's number and name.

01:27:24.000 Yeah.

01:27:26.000 That's the only way I knew people's numbers.

01:27:29.000 And I remembered a bunch of them, like all my friends.

01:27:32.000 I don't have any of my friends' numbers remembered.

01:27:32.000 I had all my friends.

01:27:34.000 Yeah.

01:27:35.000 Maybe my wife and my friend Eddie.

01:27:37.000 I have two numbers in my head.

01:27:39.000 But was there a time when people thought somebody was smart based.

01:27:43.000 On how good their memory power was.

01:27:45.000 Oh, yeah, definitely.

01:27:46.000 But would you say that now?

01:27:49.000 Well, people are impressed if you know things now.

01:27:53.000 I have a bunch of weird information, obviously, that I've gathered through so many years of doing this podcast and just so many years of being curious. 0.98

01:28:02.000 Sometimes even my own daughter is like, How the fuck do you know that? 0.57

01:28:04.000 I'm like, This is what I do. 0.99

01:28:06.000 That's my thing.

01:28:08.000 I pay attention to stuff.

01:28:09.000 But yeah, I mean, memory itself is always very impressive.

01:28:14.000 And someone has an excellent memory.

01:28:15.000 Yeah.

01:28:16.000 And can pull up facts of the past, we automatically equate that to intelligence.

01:28:20.000 Yeah, I think it's impressive, but it's not necessarily a sign of being intelligent, right?

01:28:25.000 Like, I think that's just a look, you have a very fast lookup table in your head.

01:28:30.000 That's great, it's very valuable.

01:28:33.000 But I still think, like, being smart is all about posing the most interesting questions.

01:28:38.000 Also, the decisions that you make and whether or not you self correct when you make mistakes.

01:28:43.000 Yeah.

01:28:44.000 Yeah, all those things.

01:28:45.000 So, when you have an amplifier to your intelligence, like an AI, All the time, where lookups is essentially something you can delegate.

01:28:45.000 Exactly.

01:28:54.000 Reasoning for decision making is something you can delegate.

01:28:58.000 But posing the right questions to gather the right data and then forming your own judgment based on what it reasons and comes up with, and finally having the courage to make the decision, that's still you.

01:29:08.000 That agency, that intrinsic curiosity to ask the right question, the scientific intellectual humility to gather new evidence, always questioning your beliefs, that is still you.

01:29:20.000 And so I feel like that is essentially what would be considered smart in the ages to come.

01:29:26.000 If somebody is like a proxy scientist or whatever, no more, doesn't have to go to MIT or Harvard and get a PhD to be a scientist or to be considered a scientist.

01:29:37.000 Because all scientific literature is open and it's accessible to everybody.

01:29:41.000 And you can even take a paper written by an expert and use an AI, understand it deeply, ask a lot of questions, and maybe even disprove what they.

01:29:50.000 Claim to be true.

01:29:52.000 That's the whole peer review process, right?

01:29:55.000 The peer review process is all about questioning somebody's paper.

01:30:00.000 And that's why, like, you know, whatever you said happened in the COVID days is wrong.

01:30:05.000 Like, you should be allowed to ask questions about even eminent scientists' work.

01:30:12.000 It's okay. 0.98

01:30:12.000 Like, if you're dumb and you had the wrong questions, sure, you're going to learn from that. 0.98

01:30:17.000 It's worse than not being allowed to ask the question. 0.99

01:30:19.000 Yeah, agreed.

01:30:21.000 It's going to be interesting to see what the future of education looks like.

01:30:24.000 Like, how valuable are degrees when essentially AI is going to be able to do the majority of whatever work you need done on a variety of things?

01:30:33.000 Like, how good are they right now at just law?

01:30:40.000 Like, you could ask questions.

01:30:43.000 Pretty amazing.

01:30:43.000 Yeah.

01:30:44.000 Pretty good.

01:30:44.000 How good are they at mathematics?

01:30:44.000 Yeah.

01:30:46.000 Perfect.

01:30:46.000 Like, how good are they at coding?

01:30:48.000 Way better than people.

01:30:49.000 Yeah.

01:30:50.000 And at a certain point in time, it's going to be interesting that, like, what is education now?

01:30:54.000 Is education just providing you with information?

01:30:56.000 Because that information is readily available.

01:30:58.000 Or is education teaching you how to think, teaching you how to pursue your interests and be curious and have intellectual humility and understand what you know and what you don't know?

01:31:08.000 I think that's what it should be.

01:31:11.000 I still think institutions will preserve their brand value because there is a certain aspect of education that's outside of learning, which is just having access to other curious and intelligent people.

01:31:23.000 Sure.

01:31:24.000 Yeah.

01:31:24.000 And community?

01:31:25.000 And brands attract good communities, peer groups, blah, blah, blah.

01:31:28.000 But the actual process of learning itself has to change.

01:31:32.000 And what you're rewarded for has to change.

01:31:34.000 Fundamentally, everything flows downstream of the incentive.

01:31:39.000 So if the incentive is to score the highest on the exam based on answers, you're not really changing much.

01:31:46.000 You need to change that process.

01:31:48.000 You need to change the process of what do you reward a student?

01:31:50.000 Like what is A plus or A?

01:31:52.000 Right.

01:31:53.000 That's where we need to start at.

01:31:55.000 Let's also, we talked about this the other day that the education system in this country was designed to make workers.

01:32:02.000 That's what they did when they first started doing it.

01:32:02.000 Exactly.

01:32:04.000 Yeah.

01:32:05.000 The curriculum was designed around that.

01:32:07.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:32:07.000 Well, in India, it's still the case, by the way. 0.97

01:32:10.000 Really?

01:32:11.000 Even if you're a computer, even if you go into a computer science degree, I don't know if it's still the case.

01:32:15.000 I shouldn't misspeak, but at least when I was there and for many years after, the first two years, you just spent learning hardcore electrical and mechanical engineering.

01:32:23.000 You would learn like welding using late machines.

01:32:26.000 You would have to like go and like do workshops, carpentry, a lot of these things.

01:32:32.000 It was fun.

01:32:33.000 I would think there'd be a lot of value in that.

01:32:35.000 So, in hindsight, I actually think it was fun to learn soldering and how to make circuits on red boards and turn to circuit boards.

01:32:43.000 But if somebody was just interested in just writing code, let's say, back then, all this is kind of pointless to learn, but you had to go through it to be qualified as an engineer.

01:32:59.000 And the reason the curriculum was designed that way is because that's what the labor force was required back then.

01:33:05.000 To build like oil factories and like all these things.

01:33:07.000 So you had to learn mechanical engineering, you had to learn fluid mechanics, whatever.

01:33:11.000 But I think that should also change because if the way you do work changes, then what you're trained for in college should also change.

01:33:20.000 And it's much harder to change these things.

01:33:23.000 People are much slower.

01:33:25.000 They're scared to do changes.

01:33:26.000 Disruption is always looked down upon.

01:33:29.000 And so I think let's at least start at the incentive structure right from the schools, right from the colleges.

01:33:36.000 Let's not reward people based on how much they know.

01:33:39.000 Well, it seems like in the future, when.

01:33:42.000 Things do radically change, and it seems like they're inevitable.

01:33:45.000 They're going to radically change.

01:33:48.000 Universities and schools are going to be rewarded for having developed thinkers that are able to adapt to this new world.

01:33:56.000 Yeah.

01:33:56.000 That's right.

01:33:57.000 So they're going to have to figure out how to adjust their curriculum.

01:34:00.000 Yeah.

01:34:01.000 Because the tools are so spectacular now that just this idea of just memorizing information is not what you're going to need to get by in the future.

01:34:12.000 It's not.

01:34:13.000 And I guess like one proxy different schools use is like maybe if more entrepreneurs arise out of your school, you probably created a lot of independent thinkers because they are like willing to take a fresh perspective towards a problem and build their own thing from scratch.

01:34:31.000 And fundamentally, that's what America's always been about is, you know, the American dream of coming here and like having your own idea and still be taken seriously by a bunch of people.

01:34:43.000 The whole idea of venture capital and leagues this year are like.

01:34:45.000 Kick family and friends around this whole idea of just having your friends help you to bootstrap a business and then turning it into a success.

01:34:52.000 And success doesn't mean like multi billion or 10 billion or whatever, right?

01:34:56.000 Like, as long as it pays you enough that you don't have to work for somebody else and you can live a fulfilling life and you can just go explore your passions, that's success.

01:35:05.000 That's actually a better success than creating a company based on what other people want you to do and then hating your job for it.

01:35:13.000 Yeah, and having a yacht and being miserable and working every day.

01:35:17.000 That's why I said, like, not the smartest or the richest people are not always the ones who have the most fulfilling lives.

01:35:22.000 The most curious people have the most fulfilling lives because they have better relationships.

01:35:27.000 They're actually able to sit and look at something and, you know, be curious about it instead of like being worried about what's going on.

01:35:34.000 What did the American dream, what was it to you when you weren't in America?

01:35:39.000 Like, what is it like?

01:35:41.000 Like, how is it discussed?

01:35:43.000 Well, to me, like, I always thought America is the only country where you can come here.

01:35:50.000 And have an idea, and people listen to you and encourage you to go pursue it.

01:35:56.000 The risk seeking culture is just incredible here.

01:36:00.000 Everywhere else, you kind of are like either explicitly or implicitly forced to defer to authority.

01:36:06.000 Okay, like go and ask the permission of this person, go and ask the permission of that person, or get their approval, or get their insight.

01:36:13.000 Sure, you can consult everybody out there, but if you have a thought that challenges what they believe in, This country still encourages you to go pursue it.

01:36:24.000 And so, yes, when I came here, obviously, Google was the number one company that everybody wanted to work in.

01:36:33.000 But it's also the same country where it allows you, as a new person, to start a new idea that challenges one of the biggest companies in this own country.

01:36:44.000 And it actually wants it.

01:36:45.000 People actually want new ideas.

01:36:50.000 You can consistently see that there are always going to be more and more new ideas and new companies to be created here.

01:36:57.000 And so that spirit of questioning is encouraged a lot here.

01:37:03.000 And it happens in academic research.

01:37:05.000 I started off as an academic.

01:37:07.000 Even there, a lot of ideas when I had it and I would share it with people.

01:37:15.000 You know, people actually give you very honest feedback about things, but they don't stop you from working on anything.

01:37:22.000 And that's fantastic because that's very fresh.

01:37:25.000 It's very liberating.

01:37:26.000 And that's not anywhere else.

01:37:30.000 I would say it's not.

01:37:31.000 It's not in India.

01:37:32.000 It's a simplification to say it's not anywhere else, but.

01:37:36.000 It's not as encouraged.

01:37:37.000 It's not as encouraged.

01:37:38.000 The incentive structures are not quite there.

01:37:41.000 And the ability to be taken seriously for some crazy ideas is why America is still at the top.

01:37:50.000 But it's crazy to me that if the American dream is so compelling and so many people come here for it, why doesn't the rest of the world sort of adopt those values?

01:37:59.000 It's hard.

01:38:02.000 A lot of it is cultural.

01:38:04.000 America was made from a piece of land, essentially.

01:38:14.000 And a lot of ideas that we built here, a lot of industries that we built here, were all created here from nothing.

01:38:22.000 And that required you to go take bold risks.

01:38:27.000 I think Jeff Bezos said this in some podcast that where else would you be able to go raise a few million dollars for an idea that has 5% to 10% chance of working and then fail at it and still go and raise another few million dollars for your next idea?

01:38:46.000 Nowhere else.

01:38:48.000 People who get rich here actually want to encourage and be part of somebody else's crazy journey because it's hard to pursue all crazy bets yourself.

01:38:58.000 So it's an ecosystem.

01:39:01.000 And once something becomes an ecosystem, there's network effects.

01:39:04.000 So it's very hard to copy that elsewhere.

01:39:07.000 And so your value is measured in your curiosity and your willingness to work on whatever it is that is your pursuit.

01:39:16.000 And then eventually adjusting and learning.

01:39:19.000 Yes.

01:39:19.000 Catching fire with one of them.

01:39:21.000 Correct.

01:39:22.000 And you have to work hard.

01:39:23.000 I'm a big believer in intense hard work.

01:39:27.000 I think nothing great can be accomplished by being soft.

01:39:31.000 And so, all this recent push for having a lot of work life balance, this and that.

01:39:37.000 Sure, if that's what you want, then I think there are certain jobs that would give you that.

01:39:42.000 But when you're trying to do something from scratch, when you're trying to create something from nothing, it's not meant to be easy.

01:39:49.000 There are some sacrifices that have to be made.

01:39:52.000 You're signing up to be part of that experience, that surreal joy you get from doing something that felt almost impossible to achieve.

01:40:02.000 And you're not doing, you're not like staying up late or waking up early because you're getting paid more.

01:40:09.000 Maybe you might not get paid anything, maybe this whole thing goes to nothing, but that experience you're getting of being part of something that feels very hard to achieve is what you're signing up for to be part of.

01:40:21.000 Yeah, and if you're not, Find something else.

01:40:23.000 It's fine.

01:40:24.000 I respect that.

01:40:24.000 There's nothing wrong with that.

01:40:25.000 Exactly.

01:40:26.000 And the country has enough jobs to provide for all kinds of needs, right?

01:40:30.000 And everybody goes through different phases in their life.

01:40:32.000 Sometimes they feel a little lazy or disillusioned, okay?

01:40:36.000 And so what I like about this country is that there's a lot of curious people here.

01:40:42.000 There's so many different people, whether they use AIs or not, they're all finding meaning in so many interesting projects.

01:40:50.000 Well, obviously, I don't know any other country really because I was born here, but the people that.

01:40:56.000 Do talk to me about what the American dream is like from another country.

01:41:01.000 They're the most passionate and the most supportive of this idea, this experiment in self government, and just the whole idea that the country operates on that anybody can chase their dream.

01:41:16.000 That you can.

01:41:17.000 If you have a dream and you're willing to work hard, you could actually do it in this country.

01:41:20.000 That's right.

01:41:23.000 Yeah.

01:41:24.000 The people that are most passionate about that idea oftentimes are people that come from somewhere else where that wasn't available.

01:41:30.000 And it's not just like.

01:41:33.000 You know, people coming from one particular country or another.

01:41:36.000 It's the attitude, it's the way the system works and rewards you to be bold and take bets against established players.

01:41:43.000 It's okay, right?

01:41:44.000 It's okay to be an upstart, a challenger.

01:41:47.000 And people love that underdog.

01:41:49.000 And I think that's fantastic.

01:41:52.000 And that culture is continuing.

01:41:54.000 Yes, there are like multi trillion dollar companies here and they're all going to become even bigger.

01:41:58.000 But people still want the young, hungry person to also be successful.

01:42:05.000 Well, they love disruptors.

01:42:05.000 Yeah.

01:42:07.000 Yeah.

01:42:08.000 And people love underdogs in this country.

01:42:10.000 Yeah.

01:42:11.000 Yeah.

01:42:12.000 It's universal.

01:42:13.000 It's not specific to technology.

01:42:15.000 Right.

01:42:16.000 Like, I'm sure everybody would love an underdog story that wants to go against, like, Coca Cola or Pepsi or something, too.

01:42:21.000 Oh, in sports, it's our favorite thing.

01:42:21.000 Sure.

01:42:21.000 Yeah.

01:42:23.000 In sports, yeah.

01:42:24.000 We don't like when the guy who's supposed to win wins.

01:42:26.000 Yeah.

01:42:26.000 We love when the guy who's not supposed to win triumphs.

01:42:29.000 Yeah.

01:42:30.000 The underdog story.

01:42:31.000 Yeah.

01:42:32.000 That's a very uniquely American story.

01:42:35.000 To me, that's what this country is.

01:42:37.000 I mean, sure, there's a lot of obstacles and challenges.

01:42:41.000 Just like every other country, there are things here that are challenging, but it's one thing that has consistently stayed true.

01:42:50.000 One of the big fears that people in America have about technology in particular is that without being aware that this was going to take place, everybody gave up their data.

01:43:02.000 Everybody gave up their data and didn't recognize it was a commodity.

01:43:06.000 That in turn made these corporations immensely wealthy and powerful.

01:43:10.000 And then They have the ability to shape narratives.

01:43:14.000 And that concerns people because using their ideological position as leverage to try to push that through technology that has immense control and influence over people, and that we didn't see technology and corporations as having that much control over how society views itself and how we interact with each other.

01:43:40.000 And there's a real.

01:43:42.000 Real concern that these companies got so big and have so, like, there's a guy named Robert Epstein who's done a lot of work on narrated or curated search engine results and how much that can affect.

01:43:55.000 Have you seen any of his stuff?

01:43:57.000 I think I've seen this, yeah.

01:43:58.000 How much that can affect elections, how much that can affect people's perceptions on any societal issue that's coming up.

01:44:06.000 Yeah.

01:44:07.000 And it's concerning.

01:44:08.000 It really is because they do curate search results.

01:44:11.000 It's not simply, you know, you just run it out there and you get this is the data.

01:44:15.000 No, you get.

01:44:16.000 You know, if you look for specific political figures, depending upon where they fall in the right or left spectrum, and depending upon which way the company forms, the corporation forms, falls rather, you'll get different results. 0.98

01:44:30.000 And that sucks.

01:44:31.000 You know, that's very concerning that people don't recognize, they don't have the ability to see how that is dangerous for all of society to have that kind of power and wield it in that way where you're not being honest about accurate, objective information. 0.98

01:44:49.000 You're pushing.

01:44:50.000 Particular ideologies.

01:44:51.000 Yeah.

01:44:52.000 So, I think it's kind of like this is almost an effect of the asymmetry that exists between the amount of AI power that centralized systems and centralized companies have and the amount of AI power you as a sovereign individual have.

01:45:10.000 So, when you don't have the AIs to just go judge for yourself what you should be reading and fed, you're obviously under the influence of whatever big tech company is controlling the information flow.

01:45:24.000 But when you have access to all those AIs, you can actually just customize what you want to see by telling the AI, like, hey, this is what I think you should actually question and tell me.

01:45:35.000 Until now, you never had that power for yourself.

01:45:38.000 You're finally getting it.

01:45:40.000 And eventually, we'll be able to have our own LLMs, like our own models that we would be able to host in our own hardware.

01:45:48.000 We don't have to rely on one centralized model given to us by any specific model company.

01:45:56.000 And using that, you can shape it to your beliefs, your custom data.

01:46:03.000 And so, when you're consuming a search result, you can actually ask that AI that you control and you run so nobody can shut off access to it to tell you, like, hey, can you actually give me a contrarian perspective on this?

01:46:18.000 Or can you tell me if these search results are actually biased?

01:46:21.000 So, I think we need to give individuals more sovereignty.

01:46:25.000 With more access to their own AIs that they own and run on a piece of hardware they own themselves.

01:46:31.000 And this is the whole, like, this is going to be leading to the whole rise of local AIs.

01:46:36.000 So, as AI models, like today, they're very power inefficient, they're running on large data centers, but in a year or two from now, whatever capability that exists in the most power hungry data centers will be, it'll be possible to run it in some box that you own.

01:46:50.000 Really?

01:46:50.000 Yeah.

01:46:51.000 It's already happening.

01:46:53.000 It's already happening that, like, there are, like, interesting hardware projects like the Apple Mac Mini, NVIDIA DGX.

01:47:00.000 Where you can actually host a reasonable size model and put it in a box and have it run, and you don't have to pay for all the tokens it produces you.

01:47:12.000 You just have to plug it into your power car and it works.

01:47:17.000 I know Duncan, my friend Duncan Trussell, he does that.

01:47:19.000 Yeah.

01:47:20.000 And today, the capability of that model that can run locally is not quite there.

01:47:25.000 So you would still prefer to use something that runs in the data center.

01:47:28.000 But eventually, this is going to be a spectrum.

01:47:31.000 That's going to be some percentage of tasks that you would start delegating to this local system.

01:47:35.000 It'll be a hybrid model.

01:47:37.000 And over time, it could end up being the case that you could buy something that feels like a refrigerator for your home, which is your own AI box, and host a model that you control.

01:47:47.000 So nobody can arbitrarily shut off access to it one day.

01:47:52.000 And then you can have that be your weapon against what the big tech wants you to be fed or believe in.

01:47:59.000 This is the only way we can fight this because they have far more computing power.

01:48:03.000 Far more data, far more algorithms than you.

01:48:07.000 So, the only way you can fight that is you have something you own yourself.

01:48:12.000 And with the rise of open source models, open source LLMs, you can just and progress in local hardware.

01:48:20.000 And both Apple, NVIDIA, Intel, they're all doing amazing work here.

01:48:24.000 You could potentially change the future and give people more power.

01:48:26.000 And this may not be as expensive as people think.

01:48:29.000 Well, that's a good solution because I've always wondered like, is Are these searches like using Google?

01:48:36.000 Is that going to be irrelevant one day?

01:48:39.000 Because you already can just ask your phone.

01:48:41.000 Like, I most of the time, if I want to have an answer for something, I just ask perplexity.

01:48:46.000 I was like, what is it?

01:48:48.000 Instead of having to sift through all these Google searches and try to figure out what it's showing me first and get to page three where it's what I really want to know, I can get the accurate information, then follow up questions are instantaneous.

01:49:01.000 And even the models that are running the Perplexity app today, they're all in the cloud.

01:49:06.000 Eventually, you'll be able to do that on a box that you own.

01:49:11.000 You can still use the front end, the UI of the app, but you can control the compute that runs.

01:49:18.000 On a piece of hardware.

01:49:20.000 You may ask, why do I care?

01:49:22.000 Okay, what if someday the data center gets taken off?

01:49:27.000 Iran was bombing data centers.

01:49:29.000 What if someday the government decides that model is no longer available?

01:49:34.000 You want some control over what models you can run, and you may even want to shape it to your context that you never want to be living on any data center.

01:49:45.000 And I think that's where I believe the individual gets more sovereignty against big tech.

01:49:52.000 And that's how we fight surveillance or centralization of power.

01:49:58.000 Yeah, and certainly pushing narratives.

01:50:02.000 What do you think happens with social media?

01:50:05.000 Because social media, and as you were talking about before, algorithms, it's one of the biggest problems in terms of the way people view the world.

01:50:12.000 Yeah.

01:50:13.000 I'm curious what you think.

01:50:16.000 My opinion is that it's not good for the kids, it's terrible for them.

01:50:20.000 But I think they should have some exposure to it.

01:50:20.000 Yeah.

01:50:23.000 Because I think it's good to know that it's a thing.

01:50:26.000 And I think children are fairly resilient and they learn.

01:50:29.000 But the anxiety levels of kids are much higher than ever before.

01:50:33.000 Suicidal ideation is higher, self harm.

01:50:36.000 Yeah.

01:50:38.000 My belief is that when you're just fed a feed and the algorithm of the social media company decides what you're going to see next, it curbs your curiosity.

01:50:52.000 And I don't think things that curb human curiosity should be encouraged.

01:50:58.000 Yeah, I agree.

01:50:59.000 And so, if the app is designed in a way where it asks you what you're interested in and helps you to come up and find things that are very related to what you're interested in, that's awesome.

01:51:11.000 But that's not how it works.

01:51:13.000 It's literally like it starts with something, you start doom scrolling, and then it starts showing you what you just scrolled, and then you end up in an echo chamber.

01:51:21.000 And that's not necessarily good.

01:51:23.000 Well, you can get trapped.

01:51:25.000 I'm in a trap of schizophrenics lately.

01:51:28.000 On Instagram, but it's just mostly schizophrenics like people that tell them they're the rightful president of the United States, and like you tell the guy hasn't showered in days. 0.79

01:51:36.000 And you know, and if you have a phone, you can create an account and just start uploading nonsense.

01:51:42.000 And then for whatever reason, I've watched a couple of them, so now they just keep showing them to me.

01:51:46.000 And it's full of AI slop right now, yeah, like a lot of AI slop.

01:51:49.000 Like it's not even clear, and it's not labeled also clearly whether it's being made with AI or not.

01:51:55.000 So often, so essentially, it's leading to a complete loss in trust.

01:52:01.000 Where, when I see something, I don't even know if it's real anymore.

01:52:04.000 Right.

01:52:04.000 And it's going to get worse.

01:52:05.000 Yeah, it's going to get worse.

01:52:06.000 To the extent that you're going to like, your default would be that this is AI.

01:52:11.000 And then, like, you're going to have to go through multiple layers to finally verify if it was real.

01:52:19.000 And even, like, verified accounts post a lot of AI stuff.

01:52:23.000 So it's not about whether the account is verified by Meta or whatever, right?

01:52:28.000 So I think.

01:52:31.000 Fundamentally, I feel like, okay, the way I think about it is what are pieces of technology if it did not exist would be a really bad thing for the world, and what are pieces of technology if it did not exist wouldn't even matter.

01:52:47.000 And I feel like social media is more towards the second.

01:52:50.000 Yeah.

01:52:51.000 Like, you know, searching for information and answering questions and like getting, you know, AIs to like do things for you.

01:53:01.000 Help you learn new things faster.

01:53:02.000 All that stuff is some, we need more of that.

01:53:05.000 But because it supercharges our curiosity.

01:53:09.000 Whereas like brain rot feeds with AI slop doesn't actually supercharge our curiosity, it actually curbs our curiosity.

01:53:15.000 And so if we believe that, if we believe in the curiosity premium idea, we need to encourage things that supercharge our curiosity and discourage things that curb our curiosity.

01:53:27.000 Do you anticipate a time where we recognize the dangers of algorithms and their?

01:53:34.000 Is some discussion to either curb them or allow people to have control over them in a real meaningful way?

01:53:41.000 Like you could dictate, maybe through AI, even that there's an AI interface to your algorithm that understands your particular emotional needs, your curiosity.

01:53:50.000 Like, only show me this.

01:53:52.000 This is what I'm interested in carpentry and basketball games.

01:53:52.000 Yeah.

01:53:55.000 Show me those things. 1.00

01:53:56.000 I don't want to see who's getting divorced.

01:53:56.000 Yeah.

01:53:59.000 I don't give a fuck about this. 0.99

01:54:01.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:54:02.000 So here's the thing you can still customize on most of these social apps.

01:54:09.000 It'll be deeply buried somewhere in the setting somewhere, and you can go and say stuff.

01:54:13.000 But the reason it's buried is because once you always have to say it, or it's the starting entry point for your experience there, your engagement time would go down because once you consume the content that you really want, you would go back to your work, which is what you really need to be doing.

01:54:28.000 But that doesn't help them sell more ads.

01:54:31.000 And so the incentives are not aligned.

01:54:35.000 And so Elon has this really good metric he talks about where.

01:54:39.000 It's like a total amount of unregretted minutes spent on the app should go up.

01:54:45.000 That's a good one.

01:54:45.000 It's hard to measure.

01:54:46.000 It's hard to measure.

01:54:48.000 It's more like in spirit, the right metric.

01:54:52.000 But this metric is also why it's hard to make money on ads if you care about this metric.

01:54:56.000 This is why X doesn't really make a lot of money on ads compared to, you know, Instagram or YouTube.

01:55:02.000 Right.

01:55:02.000 Because you're kind of like optimizing for interestingness.

01:55:07.000 Like, it doesn't mean X has everything, right? 0.93

01:55:09.000 There's a lot of chaos, there's a lot of memes, there's a lot of like, um, Weird shit going on there as well.

01:55:15.000 But in general, social media is not necessarily great for people. 0.95

01:55:20.000 I think it's terrible for people.

01:55:21.000 But it also provides you with a way better understanding of what's going on in the world than has ever existed before.

01:55:30.000 X, particularly.

01:55:31.000 X, particularly.

01:55:32.000 Because it's a place for discourse.

01:55:36.000 It's a text based app more than a video based app.

01:55:39.000 Right.

01:55:40.000 So naturally, people tend to engage in discussions and debates, and there's a lot of Curious debates going on there and a lot of interesting viewpoints expressed by people.

01:55:50.000 So, I think in terms of the unregretted minutes, it's actually one of the better social media apps.

01:55:56.000 But apps that are purely based on like video or images and largely video these days, I think that's just you know just trying to get your eyeballs in time.

01:56:08.000 Yeah, those are the mind numbers.

01:56:09.000 Yeah, they just numb your mind.

01:56:10.000 It's depressing when you go to a metro and you just see people just scrolling through their feed.

01:56:15.000 Nobody, everybody doing it.

01:56:17.000 You look, the entire car, everyone's doing it.

01:56:19.000 It's just insane.

01:56:20.000 Yeah.

01:56:21.000 Yeah.

01:56:21.000 It's weird.

01:56:22.000 I always say that if there was a drug that existed that made people stare at their hand for six hours a day, everybody would be like, get that out of here.

01:56:28.000 But that's essentially what we're doing.

01:56:28.000 Yeah.

01:56:30.000 Because most of what people are looking at most of the time, they don't even remember.

01:56:34.000 Yeah.

01:56:35.000 They're just scrolling through this thing.

01:56:36.000 It's brain rot.

01:56:37.000 It's just brain rot.

01:56:38.000 It curbs your curiosity.

01:56:39.000 Yeah.

01:56:40.000 I mean, Apple has these settings in different apps.

01:56:42.000 Have you tried this?

01:56:43.000 What?

01:56:43.000 You can set the timer for every app.

01:56:46.000 No, I just use discipline.

01:56:49.000 I don't engage very much anymore.

01:56:52.000 I dip my toe into X every day for a few seconds.

01:56:57.000 I go, what's everybody mad at?

01:56:58.000 What's going on?

01:56:59.000 Who stole this?

01:57:01.000 How much corruption's here?

01:57:03.000 Who got killed there?

01:57:04.000 Okay, bye.

01:57:05.000 And then I just check out.

01:57:07.000 I don't want to do it.

01:57:09.000 And Instagram to me is just nonsense.

01:57:12.000 I just look at that every now and then for nonsense and occasionally something interesting.

01:57:17.000 Really, YouTube is my main go to thing.

01:57:19.000 Because YouTube is my most unregretted minutes.

01:57:19.000 Yeah.

01:57:22.000 Yeah.

01:57:22.000 YouTube for me is always interesting.

01:57:25.000 There's always like some cool thing on cosmology.

01:57:29.000 There's some.

01:57:30.000 I watch fights on YouTube.

01:57:32.000 I watch.

01:57:33.000 Professional pool matches, that's what I do for the most part.

01:57:37.000 That's where I really like to find my actual interests and fulfill my curiosity.

01:57:41.000 Long form content is what human mind should be trained to consume more of, whether it's books, whether it's like 30 minute videos explaining something.

01:57:52.000 And you need to train your mind to actually complete it.

01:57:55.000 That's actually the biggest problem with the younger generation.

01:57:57.000 The more they're in the reels experience, short form video, they're unable to actually like.

01:58:04.000 Complete like long videos anymore.

01:58:06.000 That's true, but also at the same time, the rise of podcasts is happening.

01:58:11.000 Yeah.

01:58:12.000 It's great.

01:58:12.000 And it's great.

01:58:13.000 So there's, it's not, it's not universal.

01:58:16.000 It's like there's a lot of people that don't find fulfillment in all the doomscrolling and all the nonsense.

01:58:20.000 Yeah.

01:58:20.000 They really do want, yeah.

01:58:22.000 I'm particularly just focused on the younger generation.

01:58:25.000 I'm sure like people like us can adapt to like, okay, let's say maybe you have a temporary addiction to social apps and we can.

01:58:31.000 But a lot of the young people are the people that like, I meet kids like at the mall that are 11 that listen to my podcast.

01:58:37.000 Really?

01:58:38.000 Yeah.

01:58:38.000 Wow.

01:58:39.000 I know.

01:58:39.000 It's nuts.

01:58:40.000 They go, I love your podcast.

01:58:41.000 I'm like, who lets you listen?

01:58:43.000 Get out of here.

01:58:46.000 No, I'm always joking around about it.

01:58:47.000 Maybe that's really cool.

01:58:48.000 But no, there's a lot of, like, particularly young boys that come up to me all the time that are interested in it.

01:58:54.000 That's amazing.

01:58:55.000 I love it.

01:58:56.000 I love it because then they're going to get exposed to some interesting ideas.

01:58:59.000 And it'll also encourage them to have those kind of conversations with each other.

01:59:03.000 Right.

01:59:04.000 Yeah.

01:59:06.000 Who's podcast do you listen to?

01:59:08.000 I love Tim Dillon's.

01:59:09.000 He's probably my favorite because it's. 0.91

01:59:11.000 The most accurate and also satirical and hilarious view on everything that's going on in the world in terms of like war and world news and culture shit. 0.92

01:59:24.000 And he's my favorite. 0.94

01:59:26.000 He was just on here yesterday. 0.99

01:59:28.000 I fucking love that guy to death. 0.97

01:59:29.000 He's so funny. 1.00

01:59:30.000 He's so crazy.

01:59:31.000 It's like his mind works in such a unique way and it's developed because his podcast is different where he very rarely has guests. 0.86

01:59:40.000 So most of the time it's just him ranting and his producer laughing.

01:59:44.000 And he's the best ranter that's ever lived.

01:59:45.000 I don't think there's anybody that's even close. 0.97

01:59:47.000 He's the goat.

01:59:48.000 Like, there's, like, I don't think there's any argument.

01:59:51.000 Every comedian agrees.

01:59:53.000 Like, as far as, like, just the ability to just sit in front of a microphone and rant, like, Bill Burr does it well.

01:59:58.000 He's good at it.

01:59:59.000 There's a few other guys that are good at it.

02:00:01.000 No one's as good at it as Tim.

02:00:03.000 He's the most consistently entertaining.

02:00:06.000 And then for just mind, not mindless, but like to escape, I listen to a lot of archery shows and hunting shows where they're talking about different tactics in hunting or different.

02:00:18.000 Techniques in archery, new equipment, and new innovations.

02:00:23.000 Archery is an interesting thing because every year bow manufacturers make a better bow.

02:00:29.000 And like tiny little engineering changes of these bows.

02:00:34.000 Like it's a weapon that's been around for who knows how many thousands of years.

02:00:40.000 But what the.

02:00:41.000 And you're able to feel those improvements.

02:00:43.000 Yeah, you feel the difference.

02:00:43.000 Oh, yeah.

02:00:44.000 Every year Hoyt puts out a new bow. 1.00

02:00:46.000 And every year I'm like, motherfucker, they did it again. 1.00

02:00:49.000 It's better. 0.99

02:00:50.000 So just tiny changes.

02:00:52.000 Less vibrations in the hand, more balance in the shot.

02:00:56.000 You know, more forgiving in terms of accuracy.

02:01:00.000 I love that stuff.

02:01:01.000 So I get really fascinated by engineering, really fascinated by automotive engineering.

02:01:06.000 I'm really interested in, like, that's another thing where, like, every year people figure out to make a car that can hold more G's on a skid pad, that can get around a track quicker.

02:01:17.000 Like, every year they're battling to see who can get around the Nurburgring quicker.

02:01:20.000 And what are they doing?

02:01:21.000 They're adding horsepower, increasing suspension travel and suspension tuning, rather, and making them more compliant or making them stiffer.

02:01:30.000 And making them more adjustable, and then like tire compounds.

02:01:35.000 I'm just interested in anything that where someone's working on something and getting better at something or getting new information.

02:01:44.000 I love history podcasts, I listen to a bunch of history podcasts.

02:01:47.000 So that's most of the time when I'm listening to something, I either want to be entertained or I want to be educated.

02:01:53.000 Educational, yeah, yeah, and that's entertaining, yeah.

02:01:58.000 What about you?

02:01:58.000 What kind of stuff do you listen to?

02:01:59.000 I mean, I listen to your stuff, I listen to Lex.

02:02:02.000 There's this guy, um.

02:02:03.000 I mean, you know, you might, you had him on, like Rick Rubin, of course.

02:02:06.000 Sure.

02:02:07.000 Love that guy.

02:02:07.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:02:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:02:09.000 He's awesome.

02:02:09.000 I listen to his stuff.

02:02:12.000 And I mean, I also watch like some interesting videos about, you know, concepts I don't understand.

02:02:20.000 There is this YouTube channel, Veritasium.

02:02:23.000 You should check it out.

02:02:24.000 What is it called?

02:02:24.000 Veritasium.

02:02:26.000 How do you spell that?

02:02:27.000 V E R I T A S E U M. Veritasium.

02:02:33.000 What does it mean?

02:02:34.000 I think.

02:02:35.000 Is that someone's name?

02:02:36.000 No, Veritas just means like seeking truth kind of thing.

02:02:39.000 Oh.

02:02:40.000 Is it this channel?

02:02:40.000 Okay.

02:02:41.000 Yeah, Ooh.

02:02:45.000 20.9 million subscribers.

02:02:45.000 Okay.

02:02:47.000 Yeah, I've seen a lot of people agree.

02:02:49.000 So they make all these very interesting videos about like stuff that, you know, you would be curious about, but you never actually bothered to ask that or learn more about and explain some of the most under understood companies or like phenomena.

02:03:07.000 And I just love watching it.

02:03:10.000 This is kind of like my idea of Doom Scrolling.

02:03:13.000 I like watching like 20 videos at once.

02:03:15.000 Yeah, I am going to subscribe to it right now.

02:03:18.000 It's pretty cool.

02:03:20.000 Veritasium.

02:03:23.000 There it is.

02:03:24.000 Subscribed.

02:03:24.000 Got it.

02:03:25.000 Bam.

02:03:27.000 And it explains all these fun concepts that are, you know, you take it for granted.

02:03:33.000 Like, okay, why is Google Maps really fast?

02:03:35.000 Like, okay, it'll tell you what's going on, how the data is used across so many different people at once.

02:03:41.000 All these different heart murmurs.

02:03:42.000 CIA's new tech doesn't make sense.

02:03:44.000 Exactly.

02:03:46.000 We were just talking about that yesterday.

02:03:47.000 We were doubting it.

02:03:49.000 You know, the heart murmur thing?

02:03:50.000 Do you know about that?

02:03:51.000 No.

02:03:52.000 So, the pilots that were downed in Iran said that they have this technology that allows them, I think they could use it up to 70 miles and they could detect a very unique heart rate.

02:04:06.000 Like, your heart rate is different than my heart rate.

02:04:08.000 They could know it's you.

02:04:09.000 You could be hiding in the mountains and they could find you from 70 miles away with this technology.

02:04:14.000 Wow.

02:04:15.000 But a lot of people are like.

02:04:16.000 Beams or waves or something?

02:04:18.000 Well, it's called, what is it called?

02:04:19.000 Quantum magnetometry?

02:04:21.000 Is that what they call it?

02:04:22.000 I think that's what it was.

02:04:25.000 Remember, we looked it up yesterday.

02:04:27.000 They're using the word quantum and not explaining what they're doing, like how they're doing it.

02:04:32.000 And you're like, okay, is that real?

02:04:35.000 Or is this some invented horseshit to cover the fact that they have some very sophisticated satellite imagery where they can have a detailed map of literally the entire surface of the world?

02:04:46.000 They know exactly where people are, but they don't want our enemies to know that they have this capability.

02:04:51.000 So they're making up something.

02:04:53.000 I see.

02:04:53.000 That was my suggestion yesterday.

02:04:56.000 That, like, maybe they're full of shit. 1.00

02:04:57.000 Because the whole thing seems nuts. 1.00

02:04:59.000 What is it called?

02:05:00.000 You got it.

02:05:01.000 It's quantum magnetometry?

02:05:03.000 Okay, what does that mean?

02:05:03.000 Sure.

02:05:04.000 You tell me.

02:05:05.000 Exactly.

02:05:05.000 I don't know.

02:05:06.000 Yeah.

02:05:06.000 So, this guy, he's saying it doesn't make sense.

02:05:10.000 Yeah, and a lot of people say it doesn't make sense.

02:05:12.000 Like, it doesn't seem to vibe with anything that we know that we can do.

02:05:15.000 Magnetometry, yeah.

02:05:16.000 Yeah.

02:05:17.000 First time hearing it.

02:05:18.000 See the.

02:05:18.000 Pull up the description, the official description of what this stuff is capable of.

02:05:24.000 So, this is supposedly some very.

02:05:27.000 Advanced CIA tech that allowed them to locate this downed pilot.

02:05:32.000 Interesting.

02:05:34.000 Maybe.

02:05:35.000 Or maybe there's something else going on.

02:05:37.000 Or maybe there's some other methods that they use that they don't want the enemy to know about.

02:05:41.000 Maybe some beacon these guys have on them.

02:05:44.000 Yeah, I guess what's the incentive for CIA to actually describe how their technology works?

02:05:48.000 Yeah, zero.

02:05:49.000 Why would they tell you that?

02:05:51.000 Why would they tell you they even have that?

02:05:52.000 That's crazy.

02:05:53.000 Yeah.

02:05:54.000 And then Jamie had a good point.

02:05:55.000 But the capability is insane.

02:05:57.000 Detecting your.

02:05:58.000 Heart rate 70 miles away is just insane.

02:06:01.000 Yeah, how?

02:06:02.000 And when they throw the word quantum in things, I was going, hmm.

02:06:05.000 Hey, what happened with that White House announcement?

02:06:08.000 Sorry, I keep.

02:06:09.000 The quantum computing.

02:06:10.000 Yeah, remember?

02:06:12.000 There's Q news coming soon, and then at the bottom, the Q sounds for quantum.

02:06:18.000 Is that what it is?

02:06:19.000 I thought they just announced a bunch of investments in a bunch of quantum companies.

02:06:22.000 Maybe that's it.

02:06:24.000 Yeah, IBM was getting some funding or whatever.

02:06:28.000 So this quantum magnetometry.

02:06:31.000 Can you pull up a description of what it is?

02:06:34.000 Sorry, I was asking too many questions at the same time.

02:06:38.000 Quantum sensor help rescuers.

02:06:41.000 Yeah, so this is it Ghost Murmur.

02:06:44.000 Yes, that's what it's called.

02:06:46.000 Purported surveillance technology utilizes long range quantum magnetometry.

02:06:51.000 What is that?

02:06:52.000 Quantum magnetometers measure extremely faint magnetic fields, including the body's natural electromagnetic signals, by tracking changes in the energy states of atoms or subatomic particles.

02:07:04.000 What?

02:07:05.000 Technology reportedly uses microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds.

02:07:10.000 When illuminated by a laser, these centers are hypersensitive to tiny magnetic fluctuations.

02:07:16.000 The heart signal.

02:07:17.000 While human heartbeats produce a magnetic field that is extremely weak, around 50 to 100 picoteslas, and typically degrades over very short distances.

02:07:28.000 So the ghost murmur deployment, they reportedly used ghost murmur during a mission in southern Iran to pinpoint the location of a down American airman using.

02:07:37.000 Hiding rather in dense mountainous terrain.

02:07:40.000 By mounting these quantum sensors into a helicopter, the system purportedly registered the pilot's heartbeat from afar.

02:07:49.000 Okay. 1.00

02:07:50.000 Does that sound like more shit? 0.99

02:07:52.000 I mean, it doesn't sound full of shit, but basically, the part that sounds surprising to me is how they're able to deal with all this distance and attenuation across the distance and all this interference, and they claim to use AI for that, but nothing is really described on how they use it. 0.99

02:08:08.000 Right. 0.96

02:08:08.000 So, if they're not describing how they use it, why are they even telling us they have it? 0.96

02:08:13.000 There's a lot of skepticism on it.

02:08:13.000 Why, too?

02:08:15.000 Yeah.

02:08:16.000 Laws of physics.

02:08:17.000 Physicists point out that the heart's magnetic field is a million times weaker than the Earth's.

02:08:23.000 Detecting it at a range of miles rather than centimeters defies currently published peer reviewed physics.

02:08:30.000 Alternative explanations suspect that while quantum sensors were likely on board, they were probably tracking the radio waves of a survival beacon, the metal in the pilot's equipment, or using traditional thermal, infrared, and radar capabilities rather than detecting a raw heartbeat via magnetic fields.

02:08:49.000 I do remember seeing a different part of a.

02:08:52.000 When that story happened back in April, someone did report on one of the military websites that there was a survival beacon that they used to track them.

02:08:59.000 And that the whole quantum armor stuff was nonsense.

02:09:02.000 Yeah, I saw that too.

02:09:03.000 No one wants to report that because it's not fun.

02:09:05.000 Right.

02:09:06.000 No, the ghost armor thing is awesome fun.

02:09:09.000 And if that is real, like, boy, you could imagine a world 100 years from now where that is real.

02:09:15.000 So it's exciting.

02:09:16.000 Oh, yeah, 100 years is a long time for this to be real.

02:09:18.000 Yeah.

02:09:19.000 100 years, they probably got it down pat.

02:09:22.000 Then that's the problem.

02:09:23.000 You can't hide from the robot dogs from Black Mare.

02:09:26.000 Yeah.

02:09:30.000 Do you ever, while you're working in AI, do you ever wonder, like, is this the downfall of humanity?

02:09:37.000 Is this a good thing to be working on?

02:09:39.000 Did you ever have, like, doom moments?

02:09:43.000 Not on specific things I'm working on, but in general, I do worry about, like, How much you know, you obviously want to like stay in charge and you know, be in control of your experience, um, still be the one driving change and have a lot of agency for yourself.

02:10:01.000 So, I do worry that like it's all about like making sure everybody's upskilled and understanding like where the future is headed and not being like, um, fed only like dangerous apocalyptic messages, and uh, because it's very essential that human beings retain their agency and.

02:10:20.000 Staying curious, right?

02:10:21.000 Like, so if that stops being the case, if you start subscribing to the vision that, okay, your jobs are done, you don't really have any meaning in the world, and we'll pay you some dividends, and you just sit at home and chill, that is not a good thing.

02:10:34.000 So, and I feel like there are not enough voices in AI that are actually saying anything different to that.

02:10:39.000 And I like, like, when Jensen was here, I think he was a little different.

02:10:43.000 I think he tried to give a more positive version where he said, okay, like, The radiologist thing, if all radiologists can take away, they start doing different kinds of work.

02:10:57.000 So I think we need to start looking at, like, okay, first of all, guys, relax.

02:11:02.000 You have one freemium skill, your curiosity.

02:11:05.000 So let's figure out ways to channelize that.

02:11:07.000 Let's change the way work is done in companies.

02:11:09.000 Let's change the way educational institutions run.

02:11:11.000 Let's change the incentive structures.

02:11:14.000 And let's help you build new ideas and new companies and explore things that are not even being considered.

02:11:20.000 And the government should obviously support all these initiatives.

02:11:23.000 So that's what needs to happen more. 0.98

02:11:25.000 But what's happening actually right now is, okay, like, hey guys, you're all losers. 0.97

02:11:31.000 You're going to lose your jobs. 0.98

02:11:33.000 And don't blame me because I told you so, right?

02:11:37.000 And still give us money because we're still going to do it anyway.

02:11:42.000 And so that's what's happening more.

02:11:44.000 And I think we should stop doing that.

02:11:46.000 That's my opinion.

02:11:48.000 Well, it is the problem is it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy.

02:11:51.000 And if you tell people that they're going to be a loser and their life is over, they're going to think that way.

02:11:56.000 Instead of giving them.

02:11:57.000 An understanding of, like, look, this can open up new doors for you.

02:12:01.000 Yeah.

02:12:02.000 And anytime there's any sort of disruptive technology, there's always the fear that it's going to go badly.

02:12:07.000 This was the case with the locomotive.

02:12:07.000 Yeah.

02:12:10.000 This was the case with when the printing press was invented.

02:12:14.000 Yeah.

02:12:15.000 By the way, I did some research on this where, in the Industrial Revolution, people got new ideas.

02:12:25.000 For example, when the Industrial Revolution happened, who came up with the idea of a steel plow?

02:12:31.000 John Deere.

02:12:32.000 Until then, we were using wooden plows for farming.

02:12:36.000 No farmer complained that, hey, we need fewer farmers now because steel plow is able to do it more effectively.

02:12:43.000 No one complained.

02:12:45.000 You actually had more farms and more productivity, more crop yields, and you're happier.

02:12:50.000 But isn't that just a regular tool as opposed to AI?

02:12:53.000 AI is different.

02:12:53.000 Sure.

02:12:55.000 It's not overnight going to become something that's capable of just running an entire multi trillion dollar company on its own.

02:13:03.000 There are a lot of things that AIs cannot do.

02:13:05.000 There's a lot of tacit knowledge in every company that AIs don't quite understand.

02:13:10.000 And there's a lot of new directions that you can just start working on that AIs are not well equipped to do because it doesn't have full knowledge about it.

02:13:17.000 And the knowledge about it is yet to be captured.

02:13:20.000 And some of that requires like human to human work and collaboration.

02:13:23.000 So we obviously have to gravitate towards what is scarce.

02:13:27.000 When AI makes the current labor that's considered scarce, because that's where the money is going in, commodity, then we have to gravitate towards what is scarce.

02:13:38.000 And the only way to do that is to seek things that we don't know about, which is only something we can discover through our curiosity.

02:13:46.000 There's nothing else.

02:13:48.000 Whatever we don't quite understand well, Whatever we don't know how to do well yet, even with the current capabilities of AI, that's where we should pull our labor and workforce into.

02:13:59.000 So it needs more responsible messaging, and that's not quite happening right now.

02:14:05.000 I think it needs responsible messaging, and then in the future, what it needs is real direction in terms of letting people find their curiosity and find these paths of interest and find something to do with themselves that doesn't involve whatever they're.

02:14:23.000 Previous occupation that's irrelevant now.

02:14:27.000 That's true.

02:14:28.000 I think like passion for people is something that not a lot of people will be able to answer out of the box.

02:14:34.000 Like, if you go and ask them, What is your real passion? and the only thing they have known in life is to just climb up career ladders and make more money, that's going to actually take them a while to even discover.

02:14:47.000 Right.

02:14:48.000 Which is why it's so important to get kids off on the right start.

02:14:51.000 Yeah, that's the hope.

02:14:52.000 That's our hope for the future, the kids are born curious.

02:14:56.000 They don't need to change themselves to be curious.

02:15:00.000 The adults who probably already are like, because of this knowledge work thing, who kind of curb their curiosity and try to fit into the existing system, it might be a little hard for them to adapt.

02:15:12.000 But the kids, I think they don't have this problem.

02:15:15.000 So I'm actually optimistic about the future long term because the future is all centered around whoever is very young today.

02:15:22.000 What do you think about this idea that universal basic income is going to be required?

02:15:28.000 Some form of it is good.

02:15:30.000 It's like a dividend.

02:15:31.000 I almost think of it as a dividend.

02:15:33.000 If a lot of spend that most companies are currently doing today on like payroll, which is paying a knowledge worker for a certain task, think of knowledge work as basically taking information and transforming it into an artifact.

02:15:48.000 Right?

02:15:49.000 And it's messy and complicated. 0.56

02:15:50.000 Let's assume that's being done by AIs.

02:15:52.000 So obviously, companies will start spending more on compute instead of payroll.

02:15:58.000 It's just a reallocation of like spend or budget.

02:16:01.000 Similar to like what happened in advertising industries where most of your advertising budgets went to like television and like billboards and then now it's starting to go to Google and Instagram and YouTube and all that.

02:16:12.000 So when that happens, obviously like the AI companies are going to make a lot of money and people who helped be part of creating it or either directly or indirectly would want to have some role to play in that.

02:16:29.000 Ecosystem and a good way to involve them is through giving them some ownership in the company.

02:16:35.000 So, as shareholders, if you get dividends from the profits generated by the AIs, it's not a bad thing.

02:16:42.000 But that shouldn't be the only thing.

02:16:44.000 Right.

02:16:44.000 So, this is similar to like people that live in Alaska that get a check.

02:16:48.000 Correct.

02:16:49.000 Alaska does this and it's not a bad thing as long as they are doing some other things alongside. 0.76

02:16:57.000 It could lessen the burden.

02:16:59.000 Correct.

02:17:00.000 Yeah.

02:17:01.000 And if people are interested in still being part of the AI industries, they go do things that AIs are not able to do today.

02:17:07.000 And that's been the case before.

02:17:09.000 Like when the Industrial Revolution started, the United Kingdom actually started projects around building railroads.

02:17:18.000 And that gave a lot of people who were in the cottage industries new jobs.

02:17:23.000 So there are going to be a lot of new projects to just, okay, like what if we want to reimagine the government itself where the government runs largely on AI?

02:17:31.000 Yeah, that was my next question.

02:17:33.000 Yeah.

02:17:34.000 So then we need people for that.

02:17:35.000 Yeah.

02:17:36.000 Because this is a legacy industry.

02:17:38.000 It's not about the capabilities not being there.

02:17:41.000 It's about working through the legacy and bureaucracy to actually deploy and implement this inside the largest institutions in the country.

02:17:52.000 And that's going to need a new set of skilled workers to go do that.

02:17:57.000 So some people who might be working at Microsoft or something today might actually end up working for the United States government because.

02:18:04.000 Microsoft may not need them, especially for internally deploying AI or selling AI to their customers, but the government needs them.

02:18:11.000 And if the government can pay them well and it's a fulfilling job to find some meaning for doing something good for the country, it's not a bad thing.

02:18:19.000 So I think just like in the Industrial Revolution, where we had new projects because the demand for AI was so big, we're going to start seeing some new projects being created in AI as well when the capabilities advance enough that they can replace knowledge workers.

02:18:34.000 That's the rosy scenario.

02:18:37.000 It's not as rosy.

02:18:38.000 Like, the real world is messy.

02:18:40.000 A lot of things are still done through trusting other human beings. 0.94

02:18:45.000 Nobody is, like, blindly trusting AIs.

02:18:46.000 AIs still make a lot of mistakes.

02:18:48.000 I know a lot of people are hesitant to the idea of AI running government, and I get it.

02:18:53.000 But also, look at what the people are doing.

02:18:56.000 Look at how much corruption there is, how much fraud and waste.

02:18:59.000 Imagine if all fraud, waste, and corruption was instantaneously eliminated.

02:19:04.000 Yeah.

02:19:04.000 I mean, that was what Elon tried to do with Doge, right?

02:19:07.000 Right.

02:19:09.000 And then I think the bottleneck there was just discovering how slow it is to do things.

02:19:14.000 He's not used to running that slow.

02:19:16.000 Yeah.

02:19:17.000 Also, how much resistance.

02:19:18.000 Yeah, because there was so much grift.

02:19:20.000 Correct.

02:19:21.000 Yeah.

02:19:21.000 So, honestly, more than AI, the government is running a lot of legacy software stack because a lot of these legacy enterprise companies just have created these multi decade or year contracts that are hard to get out of.

02:19:38.000 And the way they do that is to sell it at a much larger discount.

02:19:42.000 And, like, you know, like if you're on a specific OS, you're not allowed to change this for like 10 years.

02:19:48.000 You have to use the same sort of software.

02:19:50.000 All these people you hired only know to use that tool.

02:19:54.000 So, it takes time to actually change and implement new things, leave alone AI.

02:19:58.000 If you just wanted to move everybody from Windows machines to Mac machines, good luck with that.

02:20:03.000 It's going to take a lot of time.

02:20:05.000 That's the state of the system.

02:20:09.000 And so, that has nothing to do with the technology.

02:20:12.000 And so, to do things in such messy systems, you still need people.

02:20:16.000 You still need people to navigate all these changes.

02:20:22.000 It's not about the capability of technology, it's more about how the system is structured.

02:20:26.000 And that's why I still feel there will be new jobs.

02:20:30.000 Maybe there's a lot of new projects to be done.

02:20:32.000 Maybe some good leader actually wants to change the system and is willing to be patient about it.

02:20:38.000 Over a five to 10 year horizon, if you take 10 years to actually run majority of the government processes on AIs, it may seem slow to you today, but in the grand scheme of things, it's actually good for the country.

02:20:51.000 And that's still going to need a lot of nice engineers to go work on these projects.

02:20:56.000 So, they're not going to lose all their jobs.

02:20:58.000 There's going to be some displacement.

02:20:59.000 There's going to be some new projects.

02:21:01.000 There's going to be new priorities.

02:21:03.000 But it'll keep going.

02:21:04.000 The system will keep going because that's just how historically things have been.

02:21:09.000 When you think about the future of AI and you think of this.

02:21:14.000 So, when you think about AGI in particular, you think about something that could potentially make better versions of itself, self replicating.

02:21:24.000 And then how far does it go?

02:21:24.000 Yeah.

02:21:27.000 Yeah, so that is the ultimate form of.

02:21:31.000 I think some people in Silicon Valley have started calling that as ASI.

02:21:35.000 So when you see the word ASI being thrown around, people kind of think of ASI as an AGI that can recursively self improve itself.

02:21:46.000 So that's going to be no limits to how smart it can get.

02:21:49.000 Right.

02:21:50.000 And I used to think that ASI is bottlenecked by power because you need a ton of compute for this model to.

02:22:00.000 Keep on training itself and running its own rollouts and collecting data and then going and updating itself.

02:22:07.000 But you could imagine that once the algorithm is correct, the ASI could be tasked with just making itself more efficient too.

02:22:14.000 Where improvement doesn't just mean capability improvement, improvement could also mean power efficiency.

02:22:20.000 And that way, the recursive safe ASI that is improving itself also makes itself more compact and more efficient and it can run on less compute.

02:22:30.000 So, that would be the ultimate project in AI.

02:22:32.000 Think of it as almost as the last project in AI is basically cracking recursive self improvement.

02:22:37.000 Once you crack that, you don't have anything else to work on.

02:22:41.000 In practice, I think what's going to happen is because information is so muddled and fragmented and living in disjoint systems, just the way we have constructed our messy real world, it's going to be hard to point even a recursively self improving AI at some metric and say, go improve this.

02:22:58.000 Or go reduce inflation by 5%.

02:23:00.000 That would be awesome if you can task an AI to do that.

02:23:04.000 If that's the job of the government to just reduce inflation, have a deflationary effect on society, and make goods and services a lot more abundant and efficient, it's going to have to deal with a lot of messy legacy systems.

02:23:18.000 If the task is to go improve the healthcare, well, good luck.

02:23:22.000 Who's going to deal with all the compliance of actually implementing these changes inside hospitals?

02:23:28.000 Most hospitals are still using legacy software because the software provider.

02:23:33.000 Has lobbied the government in a way where only they're allowed to do that. 1.00

02:23:37.000 God, what a stupid bottleneck. 1.00

02:23:39.000 Exactly. 1.00

02:23:39.000 So a lot of the bottlenecks in actually having AIs just take over and massively improve the human society and our hospitals, our legal systems, our government systems, where most of the payroll is going into, is just bottlenecked by a lot of compliance and regulation. 1.00

02:23:58.000 And so that's why I feel the human beings are still necessary to effect the change because these laws and regulations were built for us.

02:24:08.000 And it also seems like we have to demand that those systems be usurped.

02:24:12.000 Sure, 100%.

02:24:13.000 And we need the help of AIs to rewrite all these laws.

02:24:16.000 It's going to be humanly impossible to go and change one specific line here and there.

02:24:22.000 And then you're going to have a bunch of these software companies that are lobbying to try to stop that from happening.

02:24:22.000 Right.

02:24:28.000 That's why this messiness and this need for getting all people on the same page and actually steering the society in a positive way, our jobs will probably be more steered towards that problem solving at a different level of abstraction, maybe more need for EQ.

02:24:45.000 More need for actually like understanding differences of opinion and still like a leadership quality, ability to understand people, and ability to convince people.

02:24:58.000 These are the skills that will be even more important in a world where like actual work can be done by AIs, but effecting the change in our society, in our country, still needs human beings because the systems are messy.

02:25:15.000 It's a weird world we're in right now.

02:25:17.000 Yeah.

02:25:18.000 It's never been weird.

02:25:19.000 That said, there's a lot of things that can still go wrong when you give so much power to specific companies and they deploy all these bots and then anybody can use them in weird ways.

02:25:35.000 You don't even know if you're talking to a real person anymore.

02:25:39.000 They're like people who just run AI responses and chat with 500 people at once.

02:25:44.000 And that's like an whole business.

02:25:48.000 I think it's going to take a lot of adjustment.

02:25:52.000 Well, the other piece of adjustment that a lot of people are coming to grips with is that this is a new part of our conversation.

02:25:58.000 And that in 2020, like when I first moved here, AI was never discussed.

02:26:03.000 It was not a thing.

02:26:05.000 I mean, we knew about it, we knew about AI, but it wasn't a huge part of the cultural discussion of what the future holds for us.

02:26:15.000 Now it is.

02:26:16.000 It is central.

02:26:17.000 And in that short amount of time, in just six years, it really makes you wonder because we know how.

02:26:23.000 Technology progresses exponentially, like what it's going to look like six years from now.

02:26:27.000 Yeah, the 2028, like, like, you're definitely my prediction is 2028 election debates are going to be largely about AI.

02:26:35.000 Wow.

02:26:36.000 Yeah.

02:26:37.000 AI, energy crisis, power, power.

02:26:43.000 People are going to care about all these things.

02:26:46.000 Because AI is no longer a thing that is new, it's part of all our lives.

02:26:51.000 Everyone's using some form of AI in some ways.

02:26:55.000 And, uh, It's not as dangerous as people thought.

02:26:58.000 It's an amazing tool for doing work and asking questions and learning things and all these things.

02:27:03.000 When used correctly.

02:27:04.000 Yeah.

02:27:05.000 Yeah.

02:27:05.000 It can also be used incorrectly.

02:27:08.000 Like everything.

02:27:09.000 Like everything.

02:27:10.000 So it's far more powerful that incorrect usage can cause serious damage.

02:27:15.000 Like, for example, kids who are using AIs for companionship.

02:27:20.000 Right.

02:27:21.000 Crazy things are happening there.

02:27:22.000 Crazy things are happening.

02:27:24.000 Not good.

02:27:25.000 It's as dangerous as, or probably more dangerous than social media.

02:27:25.000 Yeah.

02:27:30.000 And it's also scary that social media companies want to build more of these kind of like companionship apps because they know that, okay, their only job is to get you engaged more and that's the only way to sell more ads and make more money.

02:27:45.000 And clearly, companionship is a way to get you engaged more.

02:27:48.000 Yeah.

02:27:49.000 And so that's dangerous if ads start being part of like AI chats.

02:27:55.000 Yeah.

02:27:56.000 Because then if that ends up working, then all these chat bots are just going to be sycophants that just.

02:28:04.000 Tell you stuff that you want to hear.

02:28:06.000 It's also an indistinguishable facsimile to a real person.

02:28:11.000 Like they communicate like a real person.

02:28:13.000 Right.

02:28:13.000 So you really think you have a relationship with this.

02:28:16.000 Right.

02:28:17.000 And it truly screws with your mind.

02:28:21.000 It's hard to decouple and it takes a lot of time to recover if you want to unplug.

02:28:27.000 And so the business model incentives are not well aligned to humanity.

02:28:31.000 Did you see that AI?

02:28:34.000 Companion that they developed that was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this year.

02:28:39.000 Which one? 1.00

02:28:40.000 It's like a hot Asian lady. 1.00

02:28:42.000 I see. 1.00

02:28:43.000 Yeah.

02:28:44.000 These are the weird kind of projects that are going on.

02:28:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:28:47.000 It's a hot Asian lady that talks to you. 1.00

02:28:49.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:28:50.000 And, you know, she talks to you through AI.

02:28:52.000 And right now it's just a kind of a crude sort of robot, but you can see where it's going.

02:28:57.000 You can see where it's going.

02:28:58.000 Ex machina.

02:28:59.000 Yeah.

02:29:00.000 It's going right there.

02:29:02.000 Yeah.

02:29:03.000 That movie was.

02:29:03.000 Yeah.

02:29:04.000 Amazing.

02:29:05.000 Quite far ahead of his time.

02:29:06.000 Really?

02:29:07.000 Yeah.

02:29:08.000 That's one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time.

02:29:10.000 It's underrated, actually, because reviews online say it's not as good, but I liked it.

02:29:16.000 I loved it.

02:29:17.000 I thought it was fantastic.

02:29:17.000 Yeah.

02:29:18.000 I like it better than her.

02:29:20.000 Yeah, her, I lost her after a while.

02:29:22.000 I shut it off.

02:29:23.000 Yeah.

02:29:24.000 I lost my attention.

02:29:25.000 I'm sure it's good.

02:29:26.000 It was the wrong time for me to watch it.

02:29:28.000 Yeah.

02:29:28.000 But X Monkey, I've seen it like five times.

02:29:31.000 I fucking love that movie. 0.97

02:29:33.000 It's just so. 0.99

02:29:33.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:29:34.000 I don't want to give anything away, but it's so incredible and so bleak and so.

02:29:39.000 Yeah.

02:29:40.000 In the relationship that he has with the hot one?

02:29:43.000 Yeah.

02:29:44.000 Can you believe it?

02:29:45.000 You're like, I'd be right there with him.

02:29:48.000 You know, it's too confusing to our system to have something that looks exactly like the thing that you desire, that is actually interested in you.

02:29:55.000 It just happens to be.

02:29:55.000 But it pulls all your data back and stuff.

02:29:57.000 Yeah.

02:29:57.000 Knows too much about you, knows how to pull your strings.

02:30:00.000 Yeah.

02:30:01.000 But listen, man, very fascinating discussion.

02:30:04.000 I'm glad we did it.

02:30:04.000 Yeah.

02:30:05.000 Thank you so much.

02:30:05.000 Thank you very much.

02:30:06.000 And thanks for having an awesome platform.

02:30:08.000 Perplexity has been great.

02:30:09.000 We really love using it here at the show.

02:30:11.000 It's.

02:30:11.000 It's made the show more interesting.

02:30:13.000 It's cool.

02:30:14.000 Thank you.

02:30:14.000 It's very fulfilling because we want the app to be used by curious people.

02:30:19.000 If we want to lift the ceiling of what our population can be, not everyone is fully curious all the time, but we're all born with it.

02:30:30.000 At some point in time, the system curbs it from us.

02:30:33.000 There should be more apps that get us back to what we're naturally good at.

02:30:36.000 It's a fascinating tool for technology or for curiosity, rather, because it's seamless.

02:30:42.000 The way we use it on the show because there's always a question.

02:30:45.000 Yeah.

02:30:45.000 There's always, it comes up so often.

02:30:47.000 Like, throw it in perplexity.

02:30:49.000 Let's find out what's up.

02:30:49.000 Yeah.

02:30:50.000 Yeah.

02:30:50.000 So it's been great for us.

02:30:51.000 Thank you so much.

02:30:51.000 So thank you.

02:30:53.000 All right.

02:30:54.000 Bye, everybody.

02:30:54.000 My pleasure.

The Joe Rogan Experience - July 01, 2026

Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas

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