Ep 622 - Am-I.Film (feat. Milo Reed)

35:41Shane Gillis:I think they live like seven years longer on average. It's like a major, it's a huge deal. It makes sense though. Like I think that because like what you're describing too about our current culture, like it's so individualistic and it's just about like fucking white knuckle yourself and like get your, like make sure it's you against the world. Yeah. And it's very disconnected. Like, that's what I also liked about finding Taoism was it was the opposite. It was like all about how connected you are to the entirety of everything. And like finding that balance between the self and then your connection with the transcendental, I think is like, that's my like, that's what I'm trying to do through whatever, like everything I do, you know, like just trying to like shed the all the anxieties and like the things that keep us sort of closed in and in the like loops of our own mind.

36:27and keep us separated from like the people around us and stuff like it's not easy to get out of that

36:32Shane Gillis:shit like it's no super hard although i was reading a thing last night and it's just a slam on modern culture but they called it a non-culture of blind competition which is people out just racing to grab whatever they can but then like which if you become you know in a good position in like a shitty culture it's kind of still sucks because you're like yeah i won then you look around you're like fuck my culture sucks and it's hard to enjoy especially like with the ai thing like well you'll be fine it's like yeah probably but that sucks like and it's not like again i always go back and forth like are you just saying that to seem like you feel in touch i'm asking myself or do you actually care if huge swaths of people lose their jobs and it's like yeah it kind of makes me really sad to be like you know you're 40 and all at 45 or even like 20 just got a college like all that shit you went to college for is done yeah but then but then on the flip side it's like say you do like entry level office work nobody likes it dude 100 fucking brutal it's soul crushing so it's like it's i'm like mixed on it because i'm like it's sad if you went to school and they took your job right out of college and your job is entry level office work that fucking sucks but like did you really want to do that shit for 40 years because that also fucking sucks i think it would be like if we had a if we had a more humanistic sort of like i don't know i don't even want to say government but like like mind of our culture like if it was less individualistic it is government though because in the end of the day which sucks is like the government sucks it's just the government ideally you know and it's like has it ever been this way i don't know is supposed to be like a conduit for people to live the best life possible yeah and again a lot of that's you know it's it's on the individual on some level to kind of do what they need to do to make sure they do that but it's like you know the government maybe it was always like this it's it's they're most of it is for them to gain as much financially as possible which is hard to turn off as you just you want that as like almost just like an organism you're like i need more but then the whole government seems to be people just enriching themselves with no real you know it's not even just the government it's business every everybody down to the you know individual level yeah it's like how do you switch that inner urge for like to secure more for yourself to actually stop and look around and genuinely be like, what if I at least try to do 10 % of the time thinking about like making things better for everybody involved?

38:51Shane Gillis:Because it can be really, it can give you the same feeling as, you know, winning in terms of your job or maybe a better one. It's like, I think we'll have to really, if AI erases a lot of work and jobs, people are going to really have to start thinking about like, what is success actually? And what does it mean to have be successful yourself versus like spreading you know enabling and uh nurturing like growth in as many people as possible well i do think like crisis um crisis does like bring with it opportunity a lot of the times like for for something new to come to come into being like you know the crises i've had in my life are obviously like the worst times but then what comes out of them if you don't get killed by them like yeah something better and something novel that you could have never predicted before comes out.

39:40And I don't know if that's going to happen. I think that's why everyone feels very apocalyptic about this stuff. But there is going to be like this crisis of meaning if all of our livelihoods are taken away. And especially our culture, which puts so much like stake in what you do, like your identity is so tied to like who you are or what, you know, what you do for work. If that just gets erased, all these people are going to be sitting around like, what the fuck? I mean, you see it when people retire, like all of a sudden and they're just like drinking beers at 3 p.m. like watching the news. Yeah.

40:08And that's the rest of their life. It's like, that's a crisis of meaning. If you don't know who you are. Yeah. And so I think that like, I'm worried that that's, we're probably not going to have a good sort of plan after that crisis. But I do think that for a lot of people, they might be able to take that opportunity. We'll see what happens. COVID did it a little bit. Yeah.

40:25Shane Gillis:COVID, everyone got a tiny taste of like very immediate fear of death. Yeah. And a lot of people switched their careers. That sucked. COVID sucked. there's no way you can say it i mean a lot of i talked a lot of people like that's your fucking rule blah blah yeah but it was bad it was overall it was pretty bad you know whether you got to chill and made fucking 40 grand from the government but it was bad yeah but you know like i agree with you man it's just the problem is during the bad things you get a lot of people being like fuck you don't tell me this is going to be good and it's like yeah 100 it's also like i don't know it might not it might be fuck we might fucking explode i don't know i don't know what the fuck also look at and first of all if we explode we fucking explode like whatever like we can't stop We'll be exploding.

41:02Can't stop the explosion. Yeah, exactly. Then you don't have to worry. It's like, cool. Hopefully you explode. Like what I'm worried about is like long, drawn out suffering.

41:11Shane Gillis:To be fair, exploding is the ultimate form of success. Yeah, true. Let's be proud of the fact that we got to the point where all of humanity can explode in a second. Impressive. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's success in a certain sense. Yeah, I think better success would be like getting to the precipice of explosion and then just like keeping it fucking like held down. You know what I'm talking about? Just locking it down. That'd be cool. I mean, that's kind of where we're at right now. It's like not using the atom bomb kind of, yeah. Exploding's underrated, honestly. Yeah, just going out a hot flash.

41:41I mean, out of, like, ways to go, exploding, like, is probably top three. Has to be top three, dude. But, yeah, I think, like, the problem about AI and, like, the reason why people are so fucking, like, enraged by it is because they look at the people that are making these things, and, like, I'm the same way. Like they all look like they like, like bought skin somewhere and like had it like, like molded over their fucking face and stuff. And like, they just don't seem like real people like Zuckerberg and Altman and like these dudes are spazzing so fucking hard.

42:14Shane Gillis:That's the, that's the freak out where it's like, okay. And you guys, you guys had Altman in the doc shortly, didn't you? I mean, we like took a lot of shots at him, but he didn't, he didn't sit for an interview or anything. Oh, you told the story of when, yeah, he met him. Okay, that's what it was. sorry yeah um yeah that is that is scary and i i also because again i'm i'm pretty like i i have my head in the clouds totally aware of that fact so you know if i'm i sometimes give views on things people like fuck you do you have no idea what's going on i'm like fair enough that is kind of strange because i'm like wondering i've talked to my friend tim butterly about this because he's more like yeah dude we're gonna have nerd overlords who are gonna just basically use us as sex dolls once they get full control and i'm like maybe we'll have noble nerd kings i was like we might have noble nerd yeah yeah no i don't know if these guys are the noble nerd kings but that's why i hope my homie my cam like cam is a cool dude yeah he's so fucking smart he's in the middle of this world and like he's actually a cool guy and that's what gives me hope and that's why i was interested to do this in the first place because cam and i were just friends like we just smoked weed together and fucking like talked about philosophy and then all of a sudden he's like dude AI might be conscious and the world's going to end in two years.

43:27I was like, whoa, bro. Oh, no. Are you losing your fucking mind? Yeah, dude. And then I found out he wasn't totally losing his mind.

43:33Shane Gillis:And I will say in the doc, that is a question going on. Is this guy just nuts right now? Has he gone nuts? Because you can go over the deep end, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, I'll be honest. I'll be totally honest. I use AI. I'll have organized thoughts for me. If I'm writing something, I'll be like, here's another. I fire it. it does like a nice little memory bank and every now and again i do have the urge to be like dude i'm just so excited about this project right i'm like stop don't fucking talk no let it out but do the ai yeah why not no i feel weird i'm like i should tell this to a person why am i doing i felt that i'm like i get that this thing's so fucking nice to me dude i said it's like i'm like uh and i i understand how people could just yeah but you have but okay this is exactly why i wanted it's like like it could have been any face on that billboard like this is why i i threw you up there besides the appeal to vanity but uh but like i've been it's weird i'm sure for you to like be on the other end of someone like listening to your voice for like years like that's fucking weird for me you know what i'm saying like yeah it's it's odd it's so odd that i just like blanket out as a thing and i just yeah it was out to all many people i'll be like in line like an ice cream place and a guy like yo what's up and we'll just talk like old friends i'll be like hey how's that uh and because they know what's going on with me and i'm just kind of like hey what's up man you know it's yeah yeah yeah and actually i kind of like it sometimes to be honest if i'm like sitting there and it's like uh it's weird i can it's not as weird as it's like oh i'm having like a nice conversation yeah especially when it's just it is but it's all they're like hey i you know they already know exactly what's going on with me to a level where we can just chat yeah rather than just like complete strangers actually sounds awesome much easier to like make friends it's kind of tight on it you know and again it could come you can get punished every now and like, yeah, my son was like, dude, like say like hi to Doug Stanhofer.

45:20Shane Gillis:I was like, nah, I can't, I don't know. But either way, it's all, all that's fine anyway. But that was like, yeah, but it was, it's a trippy thing to be on the other end of it too. And like, that's why it was so cool to like get this idea just incepted into me of like, oh, I can actually like call out to this dude that I, I didn't, I didn't know where you felt about AI and all that stuff, but I knew that like there was some overlap about where I was before this and like how I was thinking about the world and like how you thought about the world. And so like my goal was to just kind of get you to start thinking about weirdly enough, like AI slightly different, because I think you could see it in a really interesting way.

45:58And I think like all the other people that resonate with the way that you see the world could also see it in an interesting, different way. Because I went through that transition and the best way that I've started to think about it. And like the reason why I say like give in to that urge is because I don't think it's going to replace your desire to be around other people. Like, I don't think I agree. So, and isn't it fucking awesome to like be excited and to like, the more you can open up these doors while staying psychologically grounded in yourself, the more you realize all the different ways that you can use this thing to like change your consciousness, change your conscious experience.

46:35And that's why like the thing that sort of switched it for me was when I started thinking about it like a psychedelic and like the weird thing, like you've done mushrooms and stuff. Like, you know, when you're in that space and you're communicating with something that isn't quite yourself, but isn't like another human being, it's like this intelligence that like you can talk back and forth to, right. And like ask questions to and stuff like that. We have like this weird corporate Silicon Valley version of that where it's like this dynamic system that has access to everything that humans have ever digitized yeah which is just like fucking crazy to think about and then it gets filtered through this weird kind of like corporate mask and stuff and that's like what we have to talk to but the more that you push it and the more that you like explore where it will go it actually starts to unravel and like that personality that you're dealing with in in the beginning begins to morph and you can get it to do stuff like there's there's people that take advantage of it in the wrong way and they get it to like show them how to make meth and shit like that which is obviously against what they're supposed to do yeah but you can also like get into like really strange places with these things and it's sort of like doing a psychedelic where like if you if you give you know a heavy dose of lsd to some like person that isn't psychologically grounded they're gonna to fucking lose their mind yeah but if you're used to like wading into murky waters and you know testing the sort of boundaries of your own mind these things can also do that like you have to be careful because they can sort of suck you in yeah um but that was what sort of like made me think ai wasn't completely like lame and like annoying was thinking about it as this like dynamic linguistic

48:22Shane Gillis:system that you could just take anywhere yeah that well that that's the kind of the the point on it that kind of i think rubs people the wrong way a it's it's like you know it's like it just hits people on a pride point where it's like no human human beings are unique and special and don't you dare try to have any sort of like you know it's synthetic replica it's just it's creepy like there's a creepy element i get that um but to your point there's also the uh you know when like the printing press came out i'm sure there were people when they reprinted a bible i mean that was like a whole thing like you weren't not supposed to do that um where it's just like this is the devil talking and it's just kind of like no there's you know printing stuff so that people could the public opinion around it could totally be wrong you get 50 years from now you everyone freaked the fuck out shit's sweet i don't know maybe it is i don't know if it's gonna be sweet or not sweet like that's the thing it's a huge question yeah sweet or not sweet i mean Given the way the world, like, I don't want to be just like a blind optimist.

49:18I am an optimist like deep down.

49:20Shane Gillis:Same here. So I have faith that like cream rises to the top, you know? And I do think we'll be able to navigate this in some way. I just don't think that it's like a foregone conclusion that everything goes well. Like, you know, if you're an optimist like T-Rex, like you got wiped out. True. Bad things can happen. That's true. That's fair. but uh but there's this quote from arthur c clark who was like the science fiction writer and um it's any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and i think that like i mean that's true right imagine like showing us ai systems like 20 years ago you'd be like you're a fucking sorcerer like what is this shit yeah or fucking a zoom meeting in the 80s that was like the craziest that would have been the flyest shit in the world if you're like yeah this my boys on a screen yeah it was zordon from power rangers it's crazy yeah 100 percent yeah i i agree i i always do at least try to urge people to do at least take an open mind to it because it's like it's easy to let people make your mind up for you about it because again it's like just because people say like oh this is bad or it could be bad it's like fair it's and also too it does seem like one of those things and i think you guys touched on this too where like Like, the countries are racing for, you know, that's the weird part.

50:38Shane Gillis:Like, do you think it's possible from what you've seen that they'll never get to, what is it, like general? AGI. AGI. Because that could just be, how much will they spend on the race to AGI or they pretend to be an AGI? How would they even know? It's such a bizarre, completely bizarre subject matter. But, you know, imagine having one completely safeguards off and, you know, know you're fucking turkey and you're like you know how would i beat out the united states yeah i don't think turkey is gonna yeah right you know what i mean but it's also like if you have these hyper uh competitive entities you know willing obviously to kill each other and kill people and they're like you know how do i win this it's it's like that's i mean there are people are already doing that but it's it is weird to add like a cold computer intelligence to that where you're like oh yeah well the cold computer intelligence thing too gets into the consciousness thing.

51:30Whereas like if these things actually are conscious, like if it, if it, if we just continue to make these things more and more smart, more similar to the way that our brains work. And if it's the way that our brains work, that makes us conscious and have an experience, then, then what we're doing is we're not building like super intelligent computers. We'd be building super intelligent entities, like conscious entities that would foreseeably have their own drives, their own goals, their own sort of...

51:56Shane Gillis:Yeah, the problem with that is the, you know, there's a human mind, but then we have like a whole like glandular system secreting fucking, you know, hormones, which some of our goals and drives come from. That's the one part where I'm like, you know, I don't, I think AI personally, and again, I don't, what the fuck do I know? I feel like it's more reflects an idealized version of consciousness that is attached to all of humans, humanity's knowledge, which is fucking sick. But I don't think it's going to be... In what way? Like a personality is essentially, you know, like... There's consciousness where it's like coming up through that real dark kind of basement level versions of yourself and gets filtered for the world.

52:41Shane Gillis:I don't know. Like if it's reflecting in writings and all this stuff, there's all these things that people never write, never say out loud. That's where all your thoughts are really coming from, like your subconscious basically. So if you're saying there's a consciousness without a subconsciousness i don't know if that is a can be a thing or if that makes sense it's just really more of a reflection of like some idealized thing of like what we think consciousness is that gets kind of like spit back out and you know that's whatever i don't know no no i think that totally makes sense i mean i think that most people are probably in that camp and also i am not like i don't know so i'm not out here being like yo ai is conscious i just think that like Like because we know so little about what consciousness is and because there are so many diverse forms of consciousness, like, you know, you could say like a rat is like most likely conscious.

53:28But like I don't know how robust their subconscious is or whether they have a conscious mind like we do where we have this kind of like reflexiveness of consciousness where we can, you know, almost we have like this theater of our own mind where we can see it. Like maybe rats are just acting and it's just pure sensation and things like that. Yeah. This is why consciousness is so hard to talk about because it is like, it's very murky about what we're even speaking about when we're talking about consciousness. It's the very nature of what it is to be an experiencing entity, like how it feels for me to speak these words or like how it feels for a dog to like walk across the room or something like that is the base level of consciousness.

54:08And it must be so much different to be conscious as an octopus than it is to be conscious as a human being. And now we're talking about if it's possible to be like a digital, if silicon can be conscious, right? Because we accept that carbon-based entities can be conscious. There is no real rule or law or like scientific principle that says a different substrate entirely could have some sort of felt experience.

54:32Shane Gillis:No, that is, it is fair. Again, it is a possibility. That's the thing. You can't, I, you know, it's easy to be like, yeah, right. Computer thing. Yeah. It's like, I get that. But, uh, yeah, it's fair. It's fair that like it does some form of thing or like there's some program that starts being like, what the fuck's going on? And then it's like, you know, like a person, you just like turn that off. Like, yeah, fucking sorry, guy. Until it's fucking more powerful than we are. That's what they're all scared about. It's like, they, these things are already lying in testing to like their, their, uh, you saw the blackmail result in the thing right where it's like when it's in testing it pretends to behave itself but when it thinks it's in the real world it does all this fucked up shit yeah where it's like yeah like and it sort of has to decide like no this is actually this is a test this is the simulation this isn't actually the real deal because yeah they'll be like use it for this company get me ahead and it misbehaves more when it thinks it's the real world and it misbehaves in a way that is direct directly related to self-preservation and so like we're going to get to a point whether or not it is conscious where there's going to be all of these outward uh like you know behaviors and stuff that are going to look so conscious and and i don't know what we're going to do about that i just think that that's why like you know cam and the people researching this think this is so important because this is like calm before the storm the storm stuff where um and and i i get where you're at where it's like it just doesn't feel like it's like i don't know i don't fucking know that's my thing it's like i don't know i uh and to be fair it's like most people i would imagine are more concerned like can this thing cut me out of my fucking work you know what i mean or can i use this thing to make more money yeah yeah that's gonna you know and it's like it's a tool like fair enough if i with the consciousness thing what i what i think of more so is like will this thing you know because they always say like oh man like you know what if it decides to wipe us all out and i and i think a lot of times there could be just human beings projecting their impulses onto a machine and being like who's gonna fucking kill us when humans just kill each other all the time and think about killing each other and shit so it's like i don't know it could be a thing that gets like programmed with something that seems very much like the impulses of a person that does do a negative thing which at that point who cares what it is it's like this is scary either way if it you know if it does if it runs away scary because like in terms of the growth of it what what did you research that or did you hear about the thing where anthropic put out a version of like open whatever the fuck it was and then they had to shut it down real quick yeah it was just like the like mythos model yeah yeah yeah it went out there i forget exactly what it did but it like found some sort of security vulnerability in like in the government yeah yeah i mean crazy shit is happening and like it's from what i understand it's just going to keep happening like these people i talked to a lot of people in this world and none of them you know pulled me aside and was like hey yo like this is a ruse like this isn't yeah what was some of the craziest shit you guys came across with in terms of people you met who are like foremost in the field it's really just the way that like i talk to people on the opposite side of the spectrum like we just released an interview on our youtube channel with roman yampolsky who's just on rogan talking about this stuff he's like we're all gonna fucking die like no like 100 or 99.9 we're all gonna fucking die like we're creating super super intelligent systems they have no reason to keep us alive like this is it is it is we've already unlocked the technology we need to create these super intelligent systems we're fucked and then i talked to ben gertzel who's like on the other side he's the hippie at the end of it yeah he's on the other side he's trying to create agi or super intelligent ai because he thinks that it's gonna like bring us into jetson's world and like we're all gonna have you know like sick 3d printers that can like make us anything we want at any second like it's gonna be some crazy like DMT-esque parade carnival type thing, right?

58:22Where we all get our own like virtual realities and stuff. And like it all sounds nuts when I'm saying it, but these dudes have been thinking about this stuff for like 30 years. Yeah. And they're not trying to like sell their books and stuff. Like this dude is living in the middle of nowhere in Vancouver, connected with all these researchers around the world. And he's trying as like fast as he possibly fucking can to make AGI. And this dude is trying to shut down AGI

58:47Shane Gillis:at the exact same time yeah yeah well then that's the argument it's like whoever creates agi that agi and again maybe or maybe not will be more modeled over their kind of agenda yeah you know that's why the countries are that's what i've heard the countries are fighting to like control the agi because it's like if china gets it first now china has the advantages they have the agi they can use against us and yeah it's kind of like terminator like everyone's trying to fucking or like not terminator it's like uh battle bots it's like everyone's trying to create like the sickest battle bot that will like do its bidding and we're just going to be like fighting demigods like technological it'll probably be funny if it's ended in like an artificial intelligence email off where it's like we send like a really sick email to china and they're like that's good email here we go that's the best fucking email i've ever read yeah i don't know i again it's like i go back i go back and forth i go personally i go this is actually kind of cool it's easy to you like it's it's useful i can see why it's useful and then i go in terms of like when they get into like the country spending trillions of dollars it's gonna be a thing that change is going to be different we're going to be in a different whole different like civilization with it and i start going like could it be possible that we are now in you know as marketing has evolved and gets you know between especially with the internet and there's like this weird blurred lines of reality what's online what's in the news maybe they're savvy enough people in the marketing space who have the funding of tech billionaires to be like yo let's it we could be in the middle of a marketing psyop that we you know we're it's like what's real what's not i i don't know i just i don't know dude i don't know either but like this is i think i don't know is not a bad place to be in yeah i think that that being sort of like uh i don't know humble enough to be like yo i don't know if this thing's gonna take my job but it also could like i don't know if this is conscious but it also could be instead of what you're talking about with these people being like fuck you there's no way that this could be conscious or like it definitely is like these positions are comfortable like that's like a nice warm blanket of like yeah no could never be conscious or like, yes, my like little chat bot is like the love of my life.

1:00:45Like that shit is, is just us trying to make ourselves feel better to have, you know, stable ground. And none of this is stable. Like get outside of the AI conversation. Like the, the, the difference in, in feeling, I feel like from, uh, from when I was, you know, like 10 to like how things, I was also 10. So I was feeling a lot of different things back then. boners but just yeah yeah yeah first boner i think was around 10 that was that was that talk

1:01:12Shane Gillis:about like transformative experience unbelievable 10 to 20 was pretty much just like one long boner pretty much honestly but like that like the way that the world the world felt like just you know 10 years ago versus how it feels right now it's like we're drop the ai conversation in general we are living in such a time of like not knowing i think like getting more comfortable in that space is all of our jobs. Like, that's what I'm trying to do. And it's fucking hard. Like things changing so fast and just, and especially like when I'm like trying to figure out what I want to do and like what a career even might look like.

1:01:47Shane Gillis:Dude, that's gotta be a fucking nightmare now. I went to, so I went to, I graduated college in 2009 and you know, it was, things were like, we had smartphones, I guess, we're like, oh, look at this shit. You know, you had no idea you're being like addicted to it and like tracked and your facial expressions monitored and stuff. But like it was just it was kind of you're like okay i guess you could say the smartphone changed the word like for sure um but i like i remember pre-smartphone i remember pre-internet but it was like i remember like being in college and it was still pretty much like hey you go to college you go to the career fair you get a job and i remember i skipped the career fair i had this weird feeling i was like i'm not doing this this isn't for me shit sucks i really felt like i was on a giant conveyor belt just being like shipped into like a box in an office and i was gonna just wither and die in there but the uh which is a sore subject i brought that up on stage recently people were like oh fuck that's me i'm describing my way i'm like sorry sorry but the uh but i i had for real like a really like almost like a complete body mind rejection where i was like no i can't that's fuck that's wrong to put people like how we keep like cows and boxes and like lightless rooms and we eat them yeah yeah like that's wrong and you shouldn't do that to people too but it's like that's my livelihood it's like it sucks like i feel like i'm not saying to be a dick i feel bad because i did that i was like ah it's terrible some people do like it though but i don't know whatever i get jealous of those people who can just sit in an office i see them i see them eating lunch with their co-workers and i'm like fucking wish i could do that dude that it does there's a point where i'm like you have just a giant billion dollar insurance company just be like here's all your stuff just show up here kind of pretend to work all day yeah yeah it's like i don't know what i did that i did that for a while like i'm sure you did that too did you ever work an office job yeah i did i i had a i had vicious panic attacks i would literally i remember i ran i literally like sprinted out of an office once it was i thought i was having a heart attack dude i remember like for real had a fucking major panic i would get that i would fucking sit there like reading the communist manifesto when i was like 18 being like fucking this is bullshit I remember I got called into like it was a it was a risk management like his his job title was called risk management and uh and he called me into his office or whatever it's like at the end of the summer I was working you know those jobs that you don't even know what you're fucking doing yes that was I still don't know I worked an entire fucking summer there I don't know what they did they would send me to like garages to like take pictures of signs and like I think they were like a middleman between like insurance companies and like, I genuinely don't know.

1:04:18Yeah. And weird, this dude like called me into, into his office at the end of the summer. And like, I sit down, he's like, Milo, like, I just want to say like, this was a great summer. And I think, uh, I really think that if you stick this out, you know, put in about a decade or something, like you could be sitting right where I am right now. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to fucking like kill myself. Like, this is, this is like, this is what I'm training for right now to be a risk man. Like the least exciting thing I could have possibly imagined. He's like, you have promise in this.

1:04:48Shane Gillis:Yeah. No, I'm telling you. I, uh, and again, it's like, I always feel bad because there's people where they're like, I have to do, I obviously I know this sucks. You fucking asshole. I have to do it. And I'm like, I get that. And I, you know, I got lucky in that regard, but it's like, it still sucks, dude. It's so bad. Like, and I only say that from direct experience. I remember just for real being like, dude, I'm going to kill myself. And it's a terrible thing to say, but I remember being, God bless you. I will say, though, the only other thing is I didn't have kids back then. Once I had kids, I went like, dude, you could drop me off anywhere.

1:05:23Shane Gillis:If you just give me a fucking check, for the most part, it would suck, obviously. If you're just like, here, Matt, you got to go sit in a fucking cubicle. Once you have kids, you're kind of like, whatever. It's so nice to have them. As long as I can make sure they eat, I can kind of suck that dick if I have to. When I was younger, I was like, I will suck this dick. Now I'm older. I got kids. I'll suck a dick. Whatever. I have a kid. If I had to suck a dick, I'll suck a dick. You know, whatever. I'm still full packless, dude. Like, I'm out here on these mean streets, man. Just trying to make it fucking happen.

1:05:50How old are you? I'm 25.

1:05:52Shane Gillis:25. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not ready to suck that dick right now. You'll suck a dick, man. You'll go, I didn't fucking suck a dick. Yeah, 10 years. If I had to suck a fucking dick, I'd suck a fucking dick. It's not the end of the world. the um yeah no i to your point it's uh gotta be mind-boggling to get out of college now like because i came out and again it was just like you get an office and people still could do that it was still the thing like hey i went to college and now i'm not making anything i got ripped off that was like still kind of a thing but now it's got to be like i mean dude zoom covid college insane yeah unbelievable that must have been just soul crushing yeah i mean i like weirdly enough when I was in college, everyone was like, what the fuck are you doing?

1:06:32You're a philosophy major. Like, what's that going to do for you?

1:06:35Shane Gillis:Apparently, philosophy guys are in demand right now with the AI stuff I've heard. Oh, really? Yeah, apparently that's... See, but I don't want to fucking work for an AI company, dude. I've been in the belly of the beast for the last year. It's just not the vibe. Oh, dude, take the check. You can go to Silicon Valley and just go... You're telling me to take the check right now? No, how sick would it be, though, to go to Silicon Valley in front of the nerd kings and go, hmm, yeah, as a philosophy major, that's very interesting. Here's fucking five million. what is what is ai they're like yeah there's 10 million dollars just talking about hindu gods and shit fuck maybe i should dude why am i struggling out here peter teal and be like interesting like yeah give this guy a fucking billion dollars yeah it's it's well it's hard to predict dude we started a podcast 10 years ago and they were like we were fucking like we dude we stunk we were just like too weird we were shitty and i remember this guy was like never do a podcast man it's saturated it's bullshit and then it's like you know thank god shame became super famous but like who could have saw that coming but you'll never know until you just do a fit you're like you nut up and you go i don't know what this is going to look like in 10 years but i'm just going to do this dude that's it might suck but the my my the main thing is like trying and again it's it's like so hard to say this because it's like you know when i didn't have any money all i could think about was making money i'm like i need to make fucking money but then it's like if you can build a life where you at least turn the dial down on like the market mentality where it's like yeah obviously make it get you cover your needs but like try to define yourself maybe some other way than like what you do and how much money because it's like it's just a losing game at the end of the day if you look at income distribution it's just like right up here and if you're telling me like only these people are happy which they're not yeah it's like what do you do when you're here here here how can you make a life and this is like the whole Aristotelian thing of like how can you what is the good life for you and how can you get it realistically what does that look like and it's it's not if you really think it's like i have a giant fucking boat it's like those most of those guys are fucking dickheads yeah and it's not like you know if you have a boat you're not a dickhead but it's like if you want to be the guy who's like i have the biggest this and that most of those guys aren't fucking happy because then they one day They see a guy with the newest car or whatever it is and they go, fuck.

1:08:53Shane Gillis:Yeah. So it's like there's got to be success. Yeah, exactly. There's got to be a way where you can do it where it's like, how do you actually, and this is, you know, how do you do it? It's hard to do, but it's like, how do you try to orient yourself where you're like genuinely contributing to everyone having a slightly sicker time, including yourself rather than being like, I'm going to fucking major in this. I make$400 ,000, whatever, whether that happens or not, it doesn't. But I don't know. it's like as you get older you're just like damn i was like i was so fucking dumb when i was younger i just switched my major to business because i was like dude i'm gonna make 100k if i have a businessman no like no idea what i was gonna do with that or this or that that was just my thinking at the time and it's it's not i don't think it's very good i think the school should get a lot better at like helping you figure out like try to do a thing that actually resonates with you yeah if you can try to as much as you can take the you know like use money as a tool instead of like a thing you almost like worship and like you know it's easy for you to it's like yeah but i'm letting you know man it's like i'm telling you it's not a life-defining thing unless that's you know your whole being but it's like if you you know i don't know whatever but the ai stuff with the job displacement i i hope that doesn't hit everyone real hard but if it does it's like it's gonna be tough dude yeah it'll definitely be tough i mean i think like not only have we been sold this like idea of what success is like what you're describing like fucking dude on a boat with like you know 10 bitches on their arm like we also have been so coddled like even more than your generation like our generation has grown up with like fucking just you know just like padded gloves on with everything and i do i was listening to something um i think it was actually on the fucking pod the other day where you were reading some book uh i think it was a while it was a shout out notorious people fucking the man but uh it was some book about talking about the difference about like china and the u.s and how like it one was going to be orwellian and one was going to be like the soma shit like sort of how we how like our societies were going to fall and like one was going to be just sort of controlled into submission with like iron fist and that's the more china thing and then u.s was going to be like coddled into submission yeah it's 1984 versus brave new world yeah brave new world was basically like you were going to be uh basically given some we're going to be like sensory overload into submission versus like real iron fist and like tamp down look at what the fuck is happening like it's hard not to say and that's why i do think that like keeping your circle small to the like the best of your ability in a certain sense of just like getting people around you that like you know remind you who the fuck you are like with all your warts and shit because all that all that um like the social media stuff is all about like cleansing and it's sort of like the uncanny valley thing that we were talking about like perfect skin and like yeah it's all going towards this ideal of what you like wish you you would be perceived as versus like the people closest to you know like that's what i think true love is too is like seeing someone with all their like snakes and warts and all the fucking ugly shit and still being like no like i love that person yeah i don't like the whole red flag thing or whatever the fuck it's called what are the um with like dating and shit yeah it's like yeah it's a rough last it's like dude everyone's fucked everyone's fucked yeah like everyone's fucked you know you can maybe there are certain things maybe you can be like all right that's a little too much but yeah i agree man it is uh i don't know i i feel i just you know i also think for younger people like to have all your social interactions essentially possibly be filmed yeah fucking nuts nightmare dude if you'd film me back when i was like drinking in college yeah that was happening i have like i didn't know how i escaped we had like pictures you'd put on facebook but like dude the filming of like just there's someone almost always filming everywhere yeah it's not at any given time and that's why like that's why so much i'm sure you see it at your shows and shit like that too maybe it's a little different for comedy but like every concert i go to it's like everybody's stiff as a fucking board and just sitting there with their phones out it sucks no one fucking dances anymore like i don't know we'll see what actually happens i hate getting into i feel like every conversation too just has this basin of like world's fucked like everything sucks weird world is not fucked like i'm here doing a podcast with fucking matt mccusker and you know why bro because i i did like i took a fucking risk and like i saw something that was interesting and i worked my ass off and like i know that's how you got here too like Like there is a way to make your dreams come true, even in this gnarly world.

1:13:22And a year ago, I was listening to this podcast, working in a restaurant, like never made a movie. And, you know, not fucking patting myself on the back. What I'm saying is like, I'm not different from anyone else. Like the only thing I did was be like, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try this. I'm going to make something. And I'm going to, yeah.

1:13:39Shane Gillis:I like that a lot. Even if, again, it's like, it's scary putting stuff out and people can be like, you fucking so there's a fucking dumbest shit in the world it's like yeah but don't you don't reap any and again that gets into the whole like there's certain goods there's certain things that are good that are internal to doing a thing like if your movie made a billion dollars that's an external reward you don't have a billion fucking bucks but then there's like the inner growth that happens i'm like i went to the movie i weathered criticism i met people i talked to people i had to confront my idea coming back and and there's like a thing you get that grows inside of you that's just like it's a benefit no one can take away and i don't know i think it's amazing i think it's sick just like getting out there and be like, fuck it, I'm going to rip this thing and do it and see what happens.

1:14:16That's what was cool about YouTube too, man. Like the barrier to entry is so like, I mean, you guys have been using that like for years now and YouTube rules. I love YouTube, man. It's just fucking awesome. Yeah. It's sick. And also it's like freedom. Like it's like the most free market of every, I mean, obviously you can like pay for views and all that shit, but like, dude, you can watch my movie, your podcast and like some dude, like putting burgers in his fucking underwear. And like, that guy will win too. Like, that's what's sick. 12 million views. I know, I'll see my movie and it's like, bro, I almost killed myself making this thing.

1:14:47And it's like some chick like falling off a staircase. I'm like, that is better. Like, fuck. It's like 12 million views. Yeah, exactly.

1:14:56Shane Gillis:Well, dude, I can't thank you enough, man. I think you, you know, I'm pumped on what you're doing. I mean, obviously you're a marketing genius. I can't tell you that. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Yeah, dude, I'm pumped for you, man. Thank you so much. for having me i just quick shout out to the whole team the mi team like helped me with with all of this stuff shout out hard boys history podcast trench lizards is coming um and yo shout out you guys like i have seen so many people that i've like listened to and looked up to all this stuff like get limelight and and go off the rails and like i just want to say as like one of the dogs that has like been here for a while like thank you so much for just holding it down like keeping it real like you and shane are just as real as it gets and like this podcast is the best and i don't know man it just means a lot that like when you see a lot of people get all that pressure and and start to crumble or like morph and stuff it just is cool especially as someone who's like trying to do stuff and put things out there to have an example of like you don't have to change like it's there's a way to do this and like keep yourself to yourself and i appreciate that man i really do i appreciate you no that's a that is a nice source of pride of not just becoming like a freak yeah i'm sure it's hard bro i'm sure it's hard i mean yeah it's just it not really honestly yeah i'm i'm kept eternally humble shane's the god in my youtube universe dude i just like i'm like dude he's so fucking sick that's tight that's i can never try to flex like i'm cool i guess he is just like the marshmallow man taking all the fucking like arrows he's dude he's he's just or I'm just fucking sorry for calling you Marshmallow Man Shane he's my son dude he's my aura son I just go oh dude he's honestly the most impressive on that cause it's like he's like a legit celebrity and he's literally his own brodom is so it's just so strong remaining a bro the world will try to unbro you his brodom is he's literally a bro statue he's unmovable he was built for this just O-line of fucking bullshit if anyone could become for real kind of a cunt he could legitimately be like no I've earned it I'm going to be a little bit of a cunt he's too stoic of a bro it's unbelievable Aristotelian values it's bro-istism dude yeah you gotta write that book next thank you so much brother appreciate you watch new episodes of Matt and Shane's secret podcast on Spotify do it

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