Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - The Future of Technology with James Poulos | The TRUTH Podcast #29

00:00:02.000 I often describe the great divide in American political and cultural life today.

00:00:29.000 As not being so much between the right and left, whatever those terms mean right now anyway, between Republicans and Democrats.

00:00:38.000 but between the rise of a new managerial class and the everyday citizen.

00:00:45.000 And I think that this is a an age old debate, an age old power struggle that surfaces every so often.

00:00:54.000 The American Revolution was fought on the question of whether citizens could be trusted to govern themselves in a constitutional republic.

00:01:03.000 The old world vision was that they could not, that it would be a mistake to entrust citizens to sort out the most important questions that they faced.

00:01:14.000 And, you know, we on this side of the Atlantic said that, no, for better or worse, we will trust the everyday citizens to make those decisions for themselves and to own the consequences of making those decisions through a democratic process codified in a constitutional republic.

00:01:29.000 And so we thought we settled that.

00:01:31.000 And yet here we are, 250 years later, now Effectively sorting that question out again, debating that question again, through the rise of stakeholder capitalism, through the rise of the great reset, through the rise of a new vision that calls for dissolving the boundaries between the public and private sector,

00:01:50.000 between nations, increasingly between the online and offline world, to again, settle questions that we may not be comfortable We're good to go.

00:02:21.000 So anyway, this is what I think is really going on beneath the surface and explains, I think, a lot of the otherwise inexplicable fissures between within the Republican Party, within the Democrat Party, for that matter.

00:02:34.000 And I think a lot more of it makes sense when you start seeing the actual socio-political cultural divide in terms of The managerial class and the everyday citizen, the great reset and the great uprising, than through the, I think, increasingly boring tropes of modern partisan politics.

00:02:53.000 So anyway, with that, I'm joined today by somebody who I think is, you know, thinks deeply about This and related issues.

00:03:02.000 And we're going to have a good conversation with today, James Polis.

00:03:05.000 I hope I'm saying your last name right, from the Claremont Institute and the editor of The American Mind.

00:03:13.000 And I just want to welcome you to the podcast and looking forward to our conversation.

00:03:17.000 Thanks, Vivek.

00:03:18.000 You're spot on.

00:03:18.000 It is Polis.

00:03:19.000 You get a gold star.

00:03:20.000 It's a great way to start a podcast.

00:03:22.000 Yeah, that's good.

00:03:23.000 I can empathize on the gratification of someone saying your last name correctly.

00:03:30.000 I get it from my first name correctly too.

00:03:32.000 But regardless, I gave a little bit of a stream of consciousness to kick us off there.

00:03:41.000 I don't know if you wanted to react to that, but I know you have been thinking about The world in, you know, broadly, at least through similar prisms, and I wanted to give you a chance to respond to my little reflection there, and then we'll get into a discussion that'll probably be far-reaching from AI to the future of currency to the future of the Distinctions between the online and offline world.

00:04:05.000 But let me hear your reaction.

00:04:07.000 Sure.

00:04:08.000 I'm looking forward to, of course, diving into all that stuff.

00:04:10.000 But as you intimated, it all starts with this kind of foundation of trust among citizens.

00:04:18.000 Citizens who commit to one another to apply their habits and Their mores, really, you know, the habits of the heart, as the great Tocqueville scholar and sociologist Robert Bell called them, to the task of self-government.

00:04:36.000 When that trust is gone, and this, you know, this comes out of Tocqueville, but it's all over the place too, you know, friendly critics and hostile critics of democracy recognize that when that trust erodes, when the sort of spiritual basis, the basis of the heart erodes when it comes to that trust, Then we can fall,

00:04:52.000 you know, very quickly into structures of governance, ways of life that are just fundamentally inimical to America from its birth right up, I think, to the present day, worse than all.

00:05:07.000 And so, you know, that's been a core part of what the Claremont Institute has been all about since 1979 when it was founded, understanding in the sense of political philosophy how to maintain the structures that we've inherited in a way that doesn't steamroll or sideline that kind of citizen trust and in fact relies on it to deliver outcomes that are still, you know, the envy of at least a huge portion of the world.

00:05:31.000 There's another publication called Return.

00:05:33.000 It's at return.life.

00:05:34.000 I'm the founder there.

00:05:36.000 And we like to say that return is where tech aligns.

00:05:38.000 I know alignment has become sort of a crazy word right now that's being contested in tech spaces.

00:05:44.000 But alignment, you know, really for us means alignment in the sense that you're describing.

00:05:47.000 Aligns the long-standing habits and mores of the American people.

00:05:50.000 That have been put to the test and have been proven out to be a true sound guarantor, a bridge between that kind of spiritual robustness that I described and the kind of, you know, just good government outcomes that we all are hurting for these days.

00:06:06.000 Talk a bit more about that.

00:06:07.000 I'm actually interested in alignment there.

00:06:10.000 I think that's where the action is.

00:06:13.000 Say what you more mean by that.

00:06:15.000 Yeah, that is where the action is.

00:06:17.000 What you're hearing out of a lot of Silicon Valley, you know, there are a couple of sort of cults vying for people's attention or allegiance right now.

00:06:25.000 You got effective altruists, I guess, you know, SBF kind of blew up some of that a little bit.

00:06:31.000 You got the AI safety people, a lot of talk about AI ethics.

00:06:36.000 And really, I think what these different factions all have in common is they're seeking to apply what kind of masquerades as a rational approach to controlling and containing and channeling technological development.

00:06:52.000 But when you look under the surface, what you see is that it's really more of like a worship instinct, what Norbert Wiener, the godfather of cybernetics, called gadget worshiping.

00:07:04.000 This idea that there's something so wrong with human beings that we tried monarchy and that didn't work.

00:07:10.000 We tried aristocracy and that didn't work either.

00:07:12.000 So we tried oligarchy, just like big business being charged.

00:07:15.000 No, that was also a failure.

00:07:17.000 Well, okay.

00:07:17.000 So how about democracy?

00:07:18.000 Like, oh, no, you can't trust the people.

00:07:20.000 Okay.

00:07:20.000 And then we even tried social media for a minute there and that gave us Donald Trump.

00:07:24.000 So that's gotta be bad.

00:07:25.000 So what are you falling back on?

00:07:27.000 What are you trying to reestablish sovereign authority on what basis?

00:07:32.000 And, you know, there's this kind of wokeness that has bubbled up to that level where people say, like, well, you know, as long as we have the right kind of, you know, almost secular priests telling the machines who not to offend today and sort of who deserves more respect today than someone else...

00:07:53.000 Then that'll be fine.

00:07:54.000 You have some other folks in tech who are like, well, maybe we don't want full-blown wokeness, but as long as we are in control of advancing the technology, then probably some amount of wokeness is fine.

00:08:04.000 Those two things, I think, converge onto the same destination.

00:08:08.000 Wokeness ultimately can't really function right unless it has a woke supercomputer to do real-time calculations about social justice and social credit and handing out almost like Micropayments instead of microaggressions for every time someone does the right thing or the wrong thing.

00:08:24.000 And then on the tech side, you know, a willingness to kind of give in to a very, very irrational sort of worship of technology.

00:08:31.000 Oh, it'll transform us, you know, it'll solve all of our human problems.

00:08:35.000 Politics, you know, we try politics, that doesn't work.

00:08:38.000 And I think both of those instincts, you know, underlie a vision of the world, a vision of our humanity, and ultimately a vision of the cosmos that is just out of step.

00:08:47.000 Even in 2023, out of step with most Americans, out of step with our spiritual heritage.

00:08:54.000 And one that, you know, technology advances.

00:08:57.000 Our fortunes go up and down.

00:08:58.000 But we've been here before.

00:09:00.000 We've been at a place where people say like, well, it's the factory that's going to save us.

00:09:03.000 Or like, Well, it's electricity that's going to save us.

00:09:05.000 Or no, no, no, no, no.

00:09:06.000 If you just become an expert at reading books, you know, literacy, print is going to save us.

00:09:11.000 These are all media.

00:09:12.000 Marshall McLuhan ran through this.

00:09:13.000 Media change over time.

00:09:14.000 One replaces the next.

00:09:15.000 Some rise, some fall.

00:09:16.000 Some become obsolete.

00:09:17.000 And yes, technology can become this concentrated force that seems really alien and frightened to us.

00:09:23.000 But at the end of the day, it's human pride.

00:09:25.000 It's human arrogance.

00:09:26.000 It's the pride that comes before a fall.

00:09:28.000 And when we try to offload or outsource all of our very human challenges onto Rude Goldberg machines, we know that it's not going to work.

00:09:38.000 We've had thousands of years to try that experiment out.

00:09:41.000 This time, even though digital is wild and crazy and strikes people as something fundamentally new, which it is to a degree, it's still going to have the same outcomes.

00:09:49.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:09:53.000 I think we're going to get along more than I expected.

00:09:54.000 I think that you have like a deep skepticism of the techno-utopianism that sort of pervades Silicon Valley culture.

00:10:05.000 Fair to say.

00:10:06.000 Well, sure.

00:10:06.000 Yeah, I'm deeply skeptic of all utopias.

00:10:09.000 You know, they're called nowhere for a reason.

00:10:11.000 Well, I mean, like, where are you on God?

00:10:14.000 Definitely, definitely pro.

00:10:15.000 You know, I think that Christianity...

00:10:17.000 I mean, like, it just seems like everything we're saying is like circling around the real thing, like, right?

00:10:21.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:10:22.000 So, I mean, what is sovereign, right?

00:10:24.000 I mean, like, we can go to the ultimate sovereign, but let's pause on the around the rim, right?

00:10:31.000 We don't need to go right to the bottom of the hoop yet, because I think that's right over the target.

00:10:37.000 But, you know, while we're still circling the target...

00:10:42.000 Do you remember this guy put out this tweet, Sam Altman, a few days ago?

00:10:47.000 Did you read this?

00:10:48.000 Everyone was going nuts over it.

00:10:50.000 Let me just pull it up here.

00:10:52.000 Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:10:53.000 Yeah, I know who he is.

00:10:54.000 Some people are obsessed with AI safety.

00:10:56.000 I'm sort of obsessed with making myself safe from Sam Altman, so I may not have read the tweet that's in question.

00:11:02.000 No, no, no.

00:11:03.000 It was...

00:11:04.000 Yeah, I'll read it to you.

00:11:06.000 There was something about it that, like, Annoyed the heck out of me.

00:11:11.000 But on the face of it, there's nothing that's objectionable about it, right?

00:11:17.000 So here's how it goes.

00:11:19.000 Okay.

00:11:20.000 This is in the form of a tweet.

00:11:21.000 And it has like, like to capture the ethos of it, like it's the way it starts is the first letter is not a capitalized letter.

00:11:29.000 So it's just starting mid, it's got a certain vibe to it.

00:11:35.000 Here is an alternative path for society.

00:11:37.000 Ignore the culture war.

00:11:39.000 Ignore the attention war.

00:11:41.000 Make safe AGI. Make fusion.

00:11:46.000 Make people smarter and healthier.

00:11:48.000 Make 20 other things of that magnitude.

00:11:52.000 Start radical growth, inclusivity, and optimism.

00:11:57.000 Expand throughout the universe.

00:12:00.000 And then like, you know, other like, you know, like anti-woke Silicon Valley types or like sort of, you know, negatively disposed to woke Silicon Valley types, like type in little replies to that and like not in complete sentences without punctuation or capitalization, but we'll say things like, this is the way.

00:12:19.000 And it's like, you know, sort of a...

00:12:24.000 Sort of a religiosity behind this pro-growth vision.

00:12:28.000 Like, can't we all just agree on things like fusion and AI and inclusivity and optimism and growth and expansion through the universe?

00:12:38.000 I think a little bit of the go to Mars cult.

00:12:41.000 I'm actually pro going to Mars.

00:12:43.000 I think it's like an underappreciated opportunity, but sort of the religiosity around it.

00:12:49.000 It irks me in a way that I suspect might irk you too, based on what you've said so far.

00:12:55.000 But like, what's your reaction to that?

00:12:57.000 Actually, this is a useful conversation to sort of get to the bottom of what was annoying me about that tweet.

00:13:01.000 Yeah, you know, my reaction is anathema.

00:13:05.000 You know, this is that all religions are not created equal. 1.00

00:13:08.000 And this is a religion that really jumps off from Stuart Brand saying we are as gods and we better get used to it or better get good at it.

00:13:13.000 We are not as gods.

00:13:14.000 And there's no shortcut to approaching the divine, nor can you engineer something that's going to get you there instead of doing the hard spiritual labor, which oftentimes characteristically takes a lifetime of ups and downs and having to have real beginner's mind and thinking of yourself as the first among sinners in order to be sufficiently humble to even begin to approach God.

00:13:40.000 So there's that at a first cut.

00:13:41.000 I mean, for a guy like this to say, hey, let's avoid the culture war.

00:13:44.000 As far as I know, last time I checked, he's an investor in one of these biomed companies.

00:13:50.000 I think it's called Conception, where the idea is you won't need a female human being in order to... 0.76

00:13:56.000 Create a living human person.

00:13:58.000 So that's, you know, that is a nuclear option in the culture war right off the bat.

00:14:04.000 So he has no credibility on that front.

00:14:06.000 And then this other stuff, you know, you're right.

00:14:08.000 These are liturgical utterances on the level of trying to, you know, ape God of like, let there be light.

00:14:15.000 Let consciousness fill the universe.

00:14:17.000 Let us create new forms of energy.

00:14:19.000 Is there anything wrong with fusion energy?

00:14:22.000 Not necessarily.

00:14:23.000 You know, I mean, a lot of people have this kind of fearful, worshipful attitude toward technology.

00:14:28.000 And in a certain sense, you know, these things are just lamps.

00:14:31.000 They emit light or heat.

00:14:32.000 They've got power source...

00:14:33.000 You know, so you wouldn't worship a lamp, would you?

00:14:36.000 And, you know, and then you go back to...

00:14:37.000 Or maybe you would.

00:14:38.000 Well, this is the thing, right?

00:14:39.000 This is the thing is you go back to, you know, when it first became possible to illuminate cities at night.

00:14:45.000 It was a tremendous transformation of everyday life with massive...

00:14:51.000 And guess what?

00:14:53.000 Americans are a little bit soft and have taken the upside of technological advancement a little bit for granted. 0.97

00:15:00.000 Electricity coming to America?

00:15:02.000 On balance, a pretty good thing.

00:15:03.000 And electricity coming to Europe, that was the beginning of the total suicide of European civilization.

00:15:09.000 Don't shoot the messenger here.

00:15:12.000 Europe isn't quite dead, but it is uncanny how Paris got lights at night.

00:15:16.000 And from there, it was like a speed run to apocalypse.

00:15:20.000 Why was that?

00:15:21.000 Actually, I'm not familiar with what you're describing.

00:15:23.000 I'm intrigued.

00:15:24.000 Yeah, well, I mean, look at, you know, what happens in the late 19th and 20th centuries in the US versus what happened in Europe.

00:15:33.000 And those, the same level, same speed of technological advancement, two totally different outcomes, right?

00:15:40.000 Right.

00:15:40.000 One was America rises as this globe straddling power where there's unprecedented prosperity and I got that and unity.

00:15:48.000 Right.

00:15:48.000 And then you look at the same period of time with the same kind of technological advancement in Europe.

00:15:53.000 And what you get is the first and second Balkan Wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, all the sort of crazy civil wars that spin out of that Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War.

00:16:06.000 Communism almost overthrowing the German government in the 1920s.

00:16:11.000 And then you just segue right into World War II. You've got all the sort of sub-civil wars that spring out of that.

00:16:18.000 Civil strife in France and the Balkans.

00:16:20.000 In Russia, again, partisan warfare.

00:16:23.000 Obviously, the Holocaust. 0.83

00:16:26.000 A total mess.

00:16:27.000 And the Europeans come out of this transformative experience of electricity, radio, television, really feeling like if we don't clamp down on this stuff, then we might just go right back to that horrible experience.

00:16:44.000 And so I think you look at the EU today with regard to technology, and their attitude generally is, we might not be the best innovators in the world, but gosh darn it, we're going to be the very best regulators in the world.

00:16:55.000 We're going to beat everyone to market with the full dress regulations. 0.82

00:17:00.000 We're going to find people not shying away from any of that stuff.

00:17:03.000 And I think talking about religion, the Vatican trying to position itself as a major player in understanding how AI should be regulated and used in Europe.

00:17:13.000 Until recently, that has not really been the tenor of the conversation in the US. It's interesting to see, as you described, whether it's Altman, who's...

00:17:24.000 Is it today or tomorrow that he's testifying before Congress?

00:17:28.000 These guys are already coming out, open AI, with like, hey, we should have this regulatory framework and want to make sure that...

00:17:34.000 It's the same kind of regulatory capture that we've seen take place in other sectors, other industries.

00:17:39.000 They're moving in the same direction.

00:17:40.000 And you've got the Wilkies, who are ready to welcome the craziest...

00:17:45.000 Most post-human technology imaginable, so long as they are the sort of cyborg priests of it all.

00:17:51.000 So things are changing fast, but the trajectories are impressive.

00:17:55.000 Let's talk about, you were alluding to conception there, right?

00:17:57.000 In that last, you know, wokiest of...

00:18:00.000 Let's talk about that for a second.

00:18:04.000 So it's the startup that this guy, Altman or whatever, is involved in, you know, investor or otherwise, that...

00:18:14.000 Wants to conceive, create human conception without the involvement of a female human being at all. 0.97

00:18:22.000 So it's just like an incubation of like the womb.

00:18:28.000 The external incubation.

00:18:29.000 Is that what they're doing?

00:18:31.000 So I think it's a little bit more different than just the exo-wombs, which are making the rounds, at least the photos of them.

00:18:39.000 A pod to be born, a pod to die, and a pod to live, and in between.

00:18:43.000 But these guys, they have the money, they have the motive, and this is not just a sort of matter of, well, logic says for them.

00:18:52.000 There is a spiritual component to it that's very powerful, and it is a desire to become gods.

00:18:59.000 So what would be the way they go about doing this?

00:19:02.000 Well, look, I mean, we have news coming out of the UK right now where the first baby with DNA from three individual people has been born.

00:19:11.000 And the way that you get in is you say, like...

00:19:13.000 Well, this is a rare disease, and you've got to give this child a chance at living a normal life, and nobody wants to have a child who comes out all messed up.

00:19:22.000 And so, if the mom has a problem with their mitochondrial DNA, then maybe you find a donor, and you just kind of stick that into the egg as it's It's fertilizing, and this isn't the island of Dr. Moreau here, people.

00:19:36.000 This is to help the downtrodden and reduce suffering.

00:19:40.000 It's very utilitarian, and it feels good.

00:19:43.000 It's sentimental.

00:19:44.000 And yet, a child with the DNA of three parents.

00:19:49.000 What does this open the door to?

00:19:51.000 I think we all know what it opens the door to.

00:19:53.000 Pull on that string.

00:19:54.000 Yeah, you pull on the string.

00:19:56.000 I mean, look, given the posture of a very fast-growing share of our society right now, and it's not just in the US, it's You know, I drove past a billboard in LA. Your feelings are your superpowers.

00:20:22.000 You know, this is the mentality.

00:20:24.000 And when that is the mentality, then what you end up with is there is no legitimate basis.

00:20:33.000 There's no authority to prevent people From radically altering, disfiguring, transforming, mutating their bodies.

00:20:48.000 This is a mindset in which the body is not sacred.

00:20:53.000 The given human form is not sacred.

00:20:55.000 It is a seriously flawed pile of You know, Mary Harrington, who has a great book out now, Feminism Against Progress. 0.83

00:21:06.000 She calls it like the meat Lego mindset where your body is just a sort of agglomeration of parts.

00:21:12.000 And so, you know, in this world, you can't say like, well, you don't have, you know, we're not going to let you.

00:21:18.000 You do not have a right to...

00:21:22.000 To surgically remove your genitals and sculpt some sort of artificial substitute. 0.97

00:21:29.000 You do not have a right to have offspring with five different people's DNA. You do not have a right to re-engineer your body so that you're like a cat girl. 0.96

00:21:44.000 So you have the little ears and the tail and I mean, you know, you do not have the right to multiple limbs.

00:21:49.000 You do not have the right to...

00:21:50.000 On and on and on it goes.

00:21:52.000 Once you breach that dam, all kinds of, you know, as the meme goes, man-made horrors beyond your comprehension will flood it.

00:22:01.000 And if there is no spiritual backstop that sort of stomps on those temptations before they coil around our hearts, all the law in the world, you know, is not going to be enough.

00:22:15.000 It's...

00:22:17.000 It is tempting to say, well, the answer to this is to just really crack down on these things legally.

00:22:23.000 And would that it were so simple?

00:22:25.000 Really, I think this is a matter of the human heart, and it's the matter of our shared spirituality and spiritualism.

00:22:31.000 And if we do not see the human body as an ensouled, created gift, which is sacred, a temple, Uh, then really all bets are off.

00:22:41.000 And so, uh, I think if we're not talking those terms, then we're, we're just going to be posting a lot of L's as the, uh, the, the, the trans and post-humanists, uh, continue to gather power. 0.86

00:22:51.000 So the conventional wisdom would, would go that if you have a, uh, whatever Blaise Pascal said it well too, right?

00:22:58.000 Hold the size of God in your heart.

00:23:00.000 God doesn't fill it.

00:23:00.000 Something else will instead.

00:23:04.000 To you, does that make the case for just avoiding law or policymaking as a mechanism here, or do you view that as a necessary but insufficient step?

00:23:13.000 I think you could make the argument either way, actually.

00:23:16.000 I'm curious for where you land on that.

00:23:18.000 Well, I think that there's, you know, if we're trying to run away from law and policy altogether, then we're going to have to run all the way to the monasteries.

00:23:25.000 You know, not that there's anything wrong with that.

00:23:28.000 I think, in fact, you know, pairing monasteries with a technology like Bitcoin will yield incredibly grounding and salvific things in this world as so many institutions exist.

00:23:40.000 Gotta say, you know, things are crumbling.

00:23:42.000 People know it.

00:23:43.000 They see the financial figures.

00:23:46.000 They see the rot.

00:23:47.000 They see the incompetence.

00:23:48.000 They see the corruption.

00:23:49.000 People are looking for a place to seek shelter.

00:23:52.000 And that's important.

00:23:53.000 And that should not be underestimated.

00:23:56.000 At the same time, We do still have the opportunity and perhaps even the duty to try to get the...

00:24:06.000 You know, people talk about runaway technology.

00:24:08.000 We have a certain kind of runaway legalism in this country as well.

00:24:11.000 And there's a chance to get it under control now.

00:24:13.000 And here's what I'm talking about.

00:24:15.000 Really, it's almost, you know, a third rail, as they used to say, you know, the sort of electrical railing in America is the Civil Rights Act.

00:24:25.000 Nobody wants to talk about how the Civil Rights Act is bad.

00:24:28.000 Nobody wants to talk about how some civil rights are different from others.

00:24:31.000 There's real pressure to not touch that.

00:24:32.000 I don't think you've heard me very much then.

00:24:34.000 Well, you know, I mean, I'm painting with a broad brush here.

00:24:38.000 And, you know, you and others are starting to break the seal.

00:24:40.000 And that's important.

00:24:42.000 But it's going to be a lift.

00:24:43.000 And so how do you sort of, you know, how do you reign that back in to the point where it's not, you know, well, I feel aggrieved.

00:24:50.000 I hate you.

00:24:52.000 I want more power for myself.

00:24:54.000 I'm going to assert that I fit within this unfolding progressive understanding of civil rights.

00:25:00.000 And so you're going to give me power and control over your children, perhaps, and yourself, and how you live and breathe and act and speak, all in the name of civil rights. 0.50

00:25:11.000 How do you sort of make sure that that doesn't come to eat our Constitution, what's left of it?

00:25:16.000 And I think, you know, when it comes to technology, which is a big test for this, you know, there are going to be efforts to say, well, you know, I identify as a cyborg and I demand my civil rights.

00:25:27.000 I've produced 10 billion nanobots and these are robots of my creation and they're sentient and you can interact with them.

00:25:34.000 So they have civil rights.

00:25:36.000 They have personhood.

00:25:37.000 How do you prevent that from blowing up in that way and really eating our system?

00:25:41.000 Well, I think what is needed is a digital rights amendment.

00:25:45.000 If you can't get it at the federal level right now, we can do it at the state level.

00:25:49.000 Legislators are beginning to understand that there's a fork in the road here.

00:25:53.000 Down one path makes EU regulations seem like child's play.

00:26:00.000 It's going to be Americans can't have high-powered GPUs.

00:26:03.000 Americans can't mine Bitcoin.

00:26:05.000 Americans can't use cryptocurrencies.

00:26:07.000 Americans have to use CBDCs. 0.58

00:26:09.000 There are no parental rights for preventing your children from being trans by doctors or regulators or just busy bodies.

00:26:17.000 Just down the line, government will decide how much technology is going to be integrated into your life.

00:26:23.000 It's going to be a lot, but you're not going to be able to control any of it.

00:26:26.000 There isn't going to be any independence to how you put technology to use in ways that actually strengthen our humanity, strengthen what's left to our foreign government, strengthen our way of life.

00:26:35.000 Down the other road is actually trusting, going back to citizen trust, trusting the American people to use fundamental technologies to build those good things, those fruitful things on a digital foundation.

00:26:48.000 If they're not able to do that, look, Americans used to be very confident, very comfortable with their technology.

00:26:54.000 They felt masterful.

00:26:55.000 They felt competent.

00:26:56.000 They weren't afraid to roll their sleeves up, put their hands directly on their tech and put it to good use, to fruitful use, to healthy use.

00:27:01.000 That has started to fall apart.

00:27:03.000 We are now in an era where many Americans look at technology either as an escape, a place to numb out and escape what's happening to the world, or as this kind of threatening alien presence that they don't understand and feel like they have no ability to command.

00:27:20.000 Both of those things are incredibly dangerous.

00:27:22.000 Both of them are a fundamental break, I think, with American civilization and how it has understood and approached technology.

00:27:28.000 And the reality is that, you know, all of these high-tech things, whether they're entertainment or tools, they are dual-use technologies.

00:27:36.000 They are weapons of war at this point.

00:27:39.000 We know from the Internet that there is, you know, there's psychological warfare going on, propaganda war going on.

00:27:46.000 Clandestine conflicts, financial conflicts, there is a digital world war going on right now.

00:27:50.000 And we don't always get to see what's going on under that surface.

00:27:53.000 Sometimes it's nefarious, sometimes it's not.

00:27:55.000 Evil people appear at all levels of society.

00:27:57.000 It shouldn't be surprising to see them in government, just like you shouldn't be surprised to see them in your neighborhood.

00:28:01.000 But the point is, if we do not protect and enshrine the ability of ordinary Americans To, you know, just language straight out of the Second Amendment, to keep and bear fundamental digital technologies, things that they need in order to protect and defend their families, their way of life, their form of government, their citizen trust.

00:28:23.000 Then they're going to be reduced to slaves.

00:28:24.000 We are going to be the slaves of the technology that we created thinking that it would make us masters of the world.

00:28:29.000 That is an outcome that would be a catastrophe, not just for America, but for the human race.

00:28:34.000 There's time to avoid it.

00:28:35.000 Yes, there is risk.

00:28:36.000 There's always going to be some risk.

00:28:38.000 But let's face it.

00:28:39.000 This is implicit in the First and Second Amendments.

00:28:41.000 We have a freedom of association.

00:28:43.000 We have a freedom of speech.

00:28:44.000 We have a freedom to use fundamental weapons for our own protection.

00:28:49.000 Those things need to be extended into the digital realm.

00:28:52.000 If America isn't America on the internet, then it's not going to be America in real life for very much longer.

00:29:00.000 So what would be your proposed digital rights amendment as you would have it?

00:29:07.000 Yeah, well, I mean, I take the language directly.

00:29:10.000 It should be the same kind of broad and general language that has served us so well in the Bill of Rights, especially the First and Second Amendments.

00:29:19.000 I think we do not want to get into the business of government picking winners and losers, as they say.

00:29:24.000 There's already too much patronage, too much corruption, too much just sort of, you know, really mafioso-style politics happening under the surface and sometimes bursting out into plain view as, you know, the Biden family's dealings.

00:29:36.000 He's certainly not the only one, but, you know, he's an example.

00:29:39.000 So we want to keep that language broad.

00:29:41.000 You know, the right of Americans to keep and bear, fill in the blank with certain technologies shall not be infringed.

00:29:49.000 And I think the big ones here are high powered GPUs, just raw compute.

00:29:56.000 Bitcoin, you know, other cryptocurrencies, fine.

00:29:59.000 Bitcoin is especially important because proof of work is really important.

00:30:02.000 The ability to establish that kind of citizen trust on the internet in digital space.

00:30:07.000 Proof of work is the way to get there, in my opinion, but I'm certainly not alone on that.

00:30:11.000 And now we've got AI coming into view.

00:30:14.000 Keeping AI bottled up in the hands of a few secretive and super powerful post-humans and their government cronies, this is definitely not...

00:30:25.000 This is going to not be America. 0.76

00:30:28.000 It's not going to be recognizable as America.

00:30:29.000 It's going to be projected over our space.

00:30:32.000 But it's really also going to be a lot of virtual space.

00:30:35.000 We've got to get away from that.

00:30:36.000 And in order to get away from it, we just...

00:30:38.000 Yes, these things are risky.

00:30:40.000 Yes, weapons in the hands of spiritually corrupt...

00:30:44.000 And delusional people, yeah, bad things happen, but the same as it ever was.

00:30:50.000 This is just buy the ticket, take the ride, you're a human being, get used to it.

00:30:55.000 We have to take those risks and we have to honor the American people.

00:30:58.000 We have to honor the fact that so much of what people have taken for granted as America is Has been taken away from them, especially since the pandemic, since the lockdowns, since the craziness with Russiagate, which, you know, has just proven to be just basically CIA and State Department, just trying to punish the guy they didn't like for being president.

00:31:16.000 We got to get beyond all that.

00:31:18.000 We got to fix that.

00:31:18.000 We've got to restore trust in government and restore the ability of Americans as citizens to trust themselves.

00:31:25.000 If they can't put their hands on fundamental technologies and use them to build things that strengthen their way of life, strengthen their humanity, and strengthen our form of government, then you can just kiss this grand experiment.

00:31:34.000 Fine.

00:31:35.000 "I'm not going to be a problem." You want to close with your last, you kind of teased me earlier with your pairing monasteries with Bitcoin.

00:31:42.000 Why don't we wrap with that, which is paint your vision there.

00:31:45.000 I think that those are two things that you don't historically and traditionally think about going together.

00:31:51.000 And the reason I am curious about it is I actually do worry in any new realm, just like you see, you're talking about Sam Altman or anyone else earlier, you could substitute, fill in the blank, That you filled with AI, put Bitcoin at the end of it and you could observe a similar religiosity.

00:32:10.000 So I'm curious for where you're coming from on that illusion you made before we wrap.

00:32:15.000 Well, yeah, that's right.

00:32:16.000 I mean, look, you can worship anything.

00:32:17.000 Technology gives you lots of, you know, bites at the apple if you want to use that loaded language.

00:32:21.000 And there are some people out there, Bitcoin Maxis, and they're like, we are people of the coin in the way that, you know, some self-styled Judeo-Christians would say, we are people of the book.

00:32:29.000 And it's like, easy there, tiger, you know, sitting on the mountaintop and waiting to achieve nirvana because number went up.

00:32:35.000 You know, that's not the kind of spiritual fortitude that we need.

00:32:38.000 That's trying to check out of life and hoping that the numbers will save you.

00:32:42.000 Over my shoulder, you'll see this book right here, Human Forever.

00:32:46.000 The subtitle of that book of mine is The Digital Politics of Spiritual War.

00:32:50.000 And look, we're in the midst of a spiritual war.

00:32:52.000 People know it.

00:32:53.000 We talk about it.

00:32:54.000 This is why things are so acrimonious on social media.

00:32:58.000 Because there is a spiritual war.

00:32:59.000 Technology has advanced to a point where it raises fundamental questions, inescapable questions about who we are and why we are who we are.

00:33:07.000 Those kinds of questions are theological.

00:33:09.000 They elicit theological responses.

00:33:11.000 And people are having different kinds of theological responses.

00:33:14.000 And that's what all the fuss is about.

00:33:16.000 So amidst this conflict, a lot of people are feeling like they are destined to lose.

00:33:21.000 Basically, they're damned that things have gotten to a point where being human sucks, that they don't have the juice to get even like a last few drops of satisfaction wrung out of their bodies.

00:33:33.000 Suicide is going up. 0.90

00:33:35.000 Depression is going up.

00:33:36.000 Drug addiction is going up.

00:33:37.000 Family formation, down.

00:33:39.000 Child birth, down.

00:33:40.000 Child rearing, down.

00:33:42.000 Loneliness, way up.

00:33:43.000 Isolation, way up.

00:33:44.000 Lots of recluses.

00:33:45.000 It's not just South Korea.

00:33:47.000 It's spreading throughout the West.

00:33:48.000 And a lot of this was seen by some of our darkest philosophers.

00:33:53.000 There's a Scandinavian philosopher by the name of Zapf.

00:33:57.000 He was writing in the 30s, a very depressive guy.

00:34:01.000 He said he predicted the coming of what he called the last messiah and the sacrament of the last messiah would be human beings now think too much.

00:34:09.000 We're driving ourselves crazy with our big brains.

00:34:12.000 The only solution is for us to hear the voice and silence of stop having children, do not be fruitful, do not multiply.

00:34:21.000 Once the human race dies out, then all of our problems go away. 0.99

00:34:24.000 And, you know, that seems very like overdramatic and very Scandinavian. 1.00

00:34:27.000 But the fact is, like these sentiments are really sinking in.

00:34:30.000 They're getting spiritual grip on the hearts of the people.

00:34:32.000 And so people are recognizing that all these things that we've been fussing and fighting over and trying to strive for have really not come to fruition.

00:34:40.000 They have made lots of big promises by sort of peak America.

00:34:43.000 Follow your dream.

00:34:44.000 Follow your passion.

00:34:45.000 If you can dream it, you can do it.

00:34:46.000 All those kinds of power, positive thinking.

00:34:49.000 And it just didn't pan out for a lot of people and they feel like they were sold a bill of goods and in a way that they were.

00:34:54.000 So what do you do when you have so many millions of people across the West and the U.S., Who really just feel like, you know, check please.

00:35:01.000 Give me the suicide pod.

00:35:02.000 Let me go out in a blaze of glory or even just disappear silently. 0.86

00:35:07.000 You know, as Frederick Nietzsche predicted some of this stuff, you know, his kind of cruelly ironic joke was a little poison that makes for a good life and a lot of poison at the end that makes for a good death.

00:35:19.000 These sentiments are real.

00:35:21.000 They're sinking in.

00:35:21.000 How do you counteract them?

00:35:23.000 What can you offer people? 0.99

00:35:24.000 A way of backing out of the madness and the self-destruction of the world without just putting a bullet through their head.

00:35:31.000 Well, historically, that's what monasteries were very good at doing.

00:35:35.000 And they're still very good at doing that right now.

00:35:37.000 I agree with you on the monastery side.

00:35:38.000 I was curious about the Bitcoin side.

00:35:40.000 Yeah, sure.

00:35:41.000 So, you know, in a digital age, what is the kind of labor of centuries that people who want to withdraw from the world and painstakingly spiritually approach God, what kind of labors can they do fruitfully in a digital age?

00:35:54.000 Well, I think you look at something like Bitcoin, where it is a powerful protocol.

00:35:58.000 It is something that does allow you to build trust, but also to build trust.

00:36:04.000 Institutions, to build algorithmic markets, to build a way of ordinary people to exchange goods and services.

00:36:10.000 I released this book here on Bitcoin, published it onto Chain, sold it for Bitcoin, a site called Canonic, canonic.xyz.

00:36:17.000 That's where you can find the book.

00:36:18.000 And, you know, it's an example.

00:36:20.000 It's an illustration.

00:36:21.000 I thought, you know, let's make the medium be the message here.

00:36:23.000 It could be a book.

00:36:24.000 It could be other stuff too.

00:36:25.000 The technology has reached a level of maturity where ordinary people, you know, you can just put in a little work, take on a little risk.

00:36:32.000 You can do this, too.

00:36:34.000 You don't need a blue check.

00:36:35.000 You don't need a PhD.

00:36:36.000 You don't need to be a Silicon Valley denizen.

00:36:38.000 You don't need to be a post-human.

00:36:39.000 And so I see these two forces, you know, converging in a way, where people who are looking to, you know, walk away from our crumbling and corrupt institutional sort of vibarium that they're building around us, and also at the same time looking for spiritual uplift rather than, you know, an untimely death.

00:36:56.000 We're out of time, so we've got to wrap.

00:36:58.000 I'm enjoying this too much, but...

00:37:02.000 Wait, you could have just done it with the monasteries.

00:37:04.000 I love Bitcoin actually as much as the next guy, but I'm wondering whether you're shoehorning a little bit of that in there when actually most of what you described was the work was already done, actually.

00:37:13.000 Well, I just say that real quickly.

00:37:15.000 Pure and simple monasteries, they never go out of style.

00:37:18.000 I expect them to be around for a long time, God willing.

00:37:22.000 The big question is, you know, who is going to be the spiritual authority that leads people to use technology in a way that keeps our human beings sacred?

00:37:34.000 That's a big question.

00:37:35.000 And if you look to, you know, businessmen, probably not going to be the ones to do it.

00:37:40.000 Politicians, probably not going to be the ones to do it.

00:37:43.000 Woke ethicists who want to fundamentally transform down to our intimate being, you know, who we are, not the ones who are going to do it.

00:37:51.000 So where do you look?

00:37:52.000 You know, historically, you know, you look to the church, you look to the priests, you look to the monks, you look to holy men.

00:37:59.000 And I think that's not going to change either.

00:38:01.000 I appreciate you, man.

00:38:02.000 You've made me think.

00:38:04.000 And something tells me we're going to be continuing this conversation for some time to come.

00:38:09.000 I appreciate you.

00:38:10.000 Thank you for that.

00:38:11.000 I love that.

00:38:11.000 Likewise.

00:38:12.000 And this is good.

00:38:13.000 I think you've made a lot of people think.

00:38:15.000 I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president, and I approve this message.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - May 30, 2023

The Future of Technology with James Poulos | The TRUTH Podcast #29

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