#1035 - Mark Rober - How to Engineer a Life You Love

29:37If you cut a hole in the shirt, duct tape your phone to the back of the shirt, it looks like you have this like animated t-shirt that looked wild and it that was pretty successful so i did that like nights and weekends grinding made this free app made the t-shirts and it went well enough that like a year later i sold the whole thing to these guys in the uk who make morph suits halloween costumes and then i worked for them for two years and so that was like it was more of like an entrepreneurial opportunity and people were like how could you leave nasa for that but like it was you know it's one of those things that in the moment it made a lot of sense it was the rovers on mars yeah what are you gonna do okay then you do apple i went and looked at all of the patents that you've got registered online it's not a small number there's quite a few you go well there's one that i was like lead author on which is actually a funny story because someone at apple was like hey you have all these cool ideas for youtube where's your banger idea for apple and literally like a week and a half later i'm in the meeting about some stupid software tool.

30:37And then I had this idea of like, what happens when you combine a virtual reality with a self-driving car? Like what are the implications of that? And I literally started shaking because I was like, whoa, there's so much here. Essentially like a car is the world's greatest motion simulator. So if you go to an amusement park and you have motion simulators to simulate moving forward, they just tilt you back like this. But then your butt's like, wait, but now there's no pressure on my butt. That doesn't feel quite right. But in a car, you could actually simulate moving forward by moving the car. So it's like, there's a lot of entertainment and just ways not to get motion sick, right?

31:13Because like 40 % of people struggle for motion sickness. We're going to be in self-driving cars, but we're having all this time, but you can't use it if you still have to stare out the window. So is there a way with virtual reality that you can actually be way less motion sick and actually watch movies or work on your computer? And there's a lot in the patent and we got like everything we asked for, which means we're sort of the first ones to really look at this and i i still think that's coming down the pipeline um could you do something like because it's typically the back of cars not the front right that people have with motion sickness yeah but that's only because you can't see what's going on so my point being i wonder if you could somehow make the windows project the whatever you need in order to be able to help people feel better as opposed to having to wear i'm trying to work out how you integrate it into the car itself Yeah, but I mean, imagine though virtual reality in augmented, they're going to get to a point where it's essentially wearing sunglasses.

32:07So it's not this big luggy thing. And as long as then, you know, as long as you have things in your visual field showing the motion of the car and where it's going to go, you can solve a lot of motion sickness. Right. And so then you can have your computer screen there and be working on it as long as you're getting the inputs. But you can also do like gaming stuff where it's like you pull up, you know, you're leaving your house, but it's like a Grand Theft Auto insane where it's like you put this on suddenly your buddy just robbed the bank they're coming down the steps they're like go go go and you're accelerating in real life and feeling that but in the game you're actually like feeling that's actually happening because it knows your destination right and so when in the game you're coming up in the alley and it's like oh there's nowhere to turn you're hosed but at the last second it's like oh you make a right in reality that was just a right turn but in the game it was like this insane thing also you have all these other cars out you know where all the potholes are if you close your eyes i've done this test if you go over a pot or a speed bump it feels a lot like running over a zombie but in the game right there's actually you where the potholes are driving for this because there's going to be some people that are really not for no no this is it's autonomous driving this is virtual reality combined with autonomous driving and what is the implication i was just thinking about if somebody was to do this whilst trying to drive normally yes that's bad guy you're not allowed to do that so okay what's your perspective given that you've done a lot of work in the ar vr space you've thought about it a good bit what's your perspective on kind of how it's delivered because i think i had a xxx girlfriend got me an oculus go which was the all-in-one fuck eight years ago something like that and uh i remember thinking wow i mean this is like pretty not bad it's a bit pixely but this is not bad surely surely no time at all this is going to come yeah apple vision pro we'd like to think as many people returned them as bought them yeah um which for apple is like oh and maybe it's the v1 and it's going to be expensive and the trickle down it's three grand but then it's only going to be 500 in a few years time and so on and so forth how do you think the world of ar and vr technology has sort of delivered on the promises that we assumed and what's gone on what's the journey there they just don't have the killer app right like it's everyone who puts it on is like this is the most craziest thing i've ever experienced and they love it and then they put it on the shelf and never take it off the shelf myself included i've had a go a rift and a apple vision pro and i never use them and it's like i wish they just had the killer app like i would want what's the killer i don't know being like courtside at a basketball game, right?

34:45Give you access to like, I want to watch the basketball game real time, like I'm courtside or even better in a seat you can't even get, put it on the crossbar at a, at a soccer match, right? You can't sit there, but now I get to watch everything. I have messy's coming down and it goes in. Right. I don't understand why they haven't just attacked that aspect of it, but like live sports seems like a great first place to start. I'm very non-conspiratorial. That's my tendency. I tend to believe the mainstream to a degree, skeptical of most people. Okay, so what is your opinion on conspiracy theorists?

35:24Why do they exist? My opinion on conspiracy theorists, I think that they're exciting. The theories are exciting. A much more exciting way to think about the world. A big part of it is this idea called compensatory control. So if you get people to imagine an uncertain medical diagnosis, they're more likely to see patterns in random meaningless static. The same thing happened, I think, during COVID. Before there was enough evidence to know that the lab leak was legitimate, uh a lot of people hooked into that because it's way easier to think that this global pandemic is because of some malign scientist than the chance mutation of some silly little microbe if it's up to chance what control do i have over this but if i can personify it so it's myth it's archetype right it's mythology it's like a personification of this there's good and there's bad and there's evil and oh i could have i think a lot of it is to do with control so like having a reason a desire if the illuminati exists and is running everything it's a nice it's a nice model that just explains everything absolutely yeah yeah i mean it's not everything there's i'm sure there's a million reasons i've had some really great guys on um that that do uh uh conspirituality uh derek bearers from that uh podcast was real interesting they know they wrote a book about the psychology of of conspiracism.

37:00But I'm kind of fascinated by it, even though I'm not, I get to watch it. It's like, I don't know, someone else loving a sport and you not being a fan of it. It's kind of interesting to watch this. What do you think? What's your perspective on conspiracy theorists? I think similar. I think as humans, we're just hardwired to recognize patterns. Like that's probably evolutionarily like been good and helped us survive. If you, you know, every time those bushes moved, you know, four to five times a tiger came out, I'm going to make a pattern that that's what's happening, right?

37:31I think I think I have empathy for them really like when people even like flat earthers and stuff and they're like you idiot like you know they're not willing to look at evidence that goes counter to what they believe because they're incentivized to keep those beliefs they have a community they have friends they belong and guess what like pretty much everyone listening to this myself included all have some beliefs just want that well and we have those right where it's like if you can't tell me five things that you agreed with with charlie kirk or take it the opposite way that you agree with with like aoc if you really think everything like you've never actually listened to what they say you just know they're the bad person on the other side you're in the same camp like you haven't investigated truly what someone on the other side thinks, right?

38:26You know, I think there's an argument made for religions, right? Where it's like, if you have your religious belief, are there, you know, you're really incentivized to keep those beliefs. It works for you, and that's great. But you can't be making fun of flat earthers and say they're morons and idiots because they're not willing to look at the truth. We all have elements like this in our life that serve us, and we're not incentivized to look at, like, how true they are. a quick aside you've probably heard experts like dr ronda patrick talk about the benefits of omega threes they reduce hello omega threes there they are they reduce brain function no they don't they support brain function maybe i should take more they support brain function reduce inflammation improve heart health and are backed by hundreds of studies but here's the thing all omega threes are not made the same most brands cut corners they use cheap fish oil skip purity testing throw in fillers and call it a day.

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39:58That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. You know one of the ones that I've seen recently which I thought was really cool? You know what the fundamental attribution error is? Yeah, what is... Yeah, so somebody cuts you off in traffic because they're a dick. you put somebody off in traffic it's because you were late this sort of a attribution to motive right and um like an inner sense as opposed to for us our shortcomings because of situation circumstance um something that i noticed was an equivalent but around people's parents called it the parental attribution error which is it's kind of a rite of passage in pop psychology to blame your parents for your anxious attachment style or your hypervigilance or your obsession or your depression or whatever it might be.

40:51But unless you're prepared to lay at the feet of your parents your strengths as well, you can't lay at the feet of your parents. That's great. Wow, that's great. I think that calls out a lot of people that you want to be able to own your wins but hand off your losses. And let's not forget that sometimes your wins and losses are just two sides of the same coin. So yeah, you're hypervigilant, but that's your obsession to detail, which has allowed you to become a fantastic musician. Yeah, perhaps you are overly concerned about upsetting other people, but that's made you a really great friend, which means that people really care about you a lot.

41:28Yeah, and if you have constant need for approval, like actually has motivated you to accomplish a lot in your life. Absolutely. Your feeling that nobody supports you has made you isolate yourself, which makes you a little bit lonely, but it's also meant that you're very self-sufficient so that you can work in solitude and you went and started a business. Like, you know, just keep on rolling. That's one version of this, which is where the coin is the same. But at other times, you've just been given a bit of a mixed bag. I mean, like this coin is kind of dark on both sides, but in the same bag as some that are light.

42:00You know, your parents taught you something else as well. And yeah, sure, some people's bags are a bit lighter or a bit darker than others. But for the most part, But if you're going to say my shortcomings are because of my parents, you have to say your strengths are too. And it's okay. I don't mind if people go, no, everything is self-authored by me. I think it kind of denies behavioral genetics, which is a bit of a shame. But everything is self-authored by me and nobody gets to tell me what I did. Okay, that's fine. But you have to own your weaknesses too. That means that your hypervigilance and anxious attachment and athlete's foot and daddy issues are your fault.

42:32Yeah. As are your strengths. Yeah. Or the inverse, which is everything is laid at the feet of the parents. So yeah, parental attribution error. I love that. I think that's great. On the attribution here, it's interesting if someone cuts you off in traffic. If someone does that in real life, stands in front of you, like in line, we're so much more willing to like forgive them or I guess give them grace and stuff. What is that? You think you're just, you lose the anonymity and you like, you see the human in front of you. Oh, that's a good point. Do you know what I mean? Like if someone cuts you off and you're waiting in a queue and you're like, oh, excuse me.

43:02Oh, it's okay. Like you're a lot more patient than in a car. You're like, I'm going to kill your family. Yeah. I'll fucking shoot you. Well, a few things there. First off, humans still have not fully gotten used to being in a three-ton missile that moves at multiples of the speed that we ever have before. Sure. I'm a very comfortable driver. I'm sure you are too. We're still very maladapted to doing that at that speed. Yeah. And when you're in a car, you're kind of in a bubble. And it feels like nothing. You're standing still. Yeah. And the rest of the world's moving past you. Yeah, relative. And then when something happens, you're kind of reminded of the precariousness.

43:41So that's one part of it. I think another part of it is the reason that we have anger, the reason that it's adaptive is that before laws, I needed to have a way to say to you, you've crossed a line. You have encroached on some sort of boundary that you shouldn't do. And my response to you is going to shock you into not doing it again. Right. The externality of somebody cutting in front of you in line is not great, but usually not life and death. The difference, kinetically, it's way more dangerous. The final thing is that when somebody cuts in front of you in line, if they turn around and notice and they see you, almost nobody has an issue.

44:22You have to be a real dick for somebody to cut in front of you, not knowing you were there or making some sort of a mistake. I didn't realize you were waiting. And for you to still have a problem after they've said sorry and then stood behind you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the same isn't true when driving. Yeah. If someone flashes the hazards, you're still pissed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It helps. I mean, if someone does this, you're like, okay, but still, you, you suck, you know? Exactly. There's a little bit of you in the back of your mind that's like, oh, I'm going to keep an eye on that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

44:49Yeah, I think that's probably right. There's something about the disconnection, the anonymity. Because you see this online, too, where there isn't the danger of driving a kinetic missile. where we're a lot quicker to make judgments if it's just some anonymous name and you're commenting anonymously. Well, there's no collateral damage, right? You can say whatever you want. Like there's no repercussion. Jordan Peterson says the problem with the internet is that the proximate price of being a prick has fallen to zero. Yeah, yeah. Whereas in real life, yeah. You might get punched in the face. Exactly, I like that.

45:21Yeah, I think, yeah, there is something too about like, I mean, you said anger where you, there's something about like if someone cuts in line let's say 20 paces in front of you isn't that funny how like your your sense of justice is just like that is not what we do and that has to be evolutionary because it's like we have rules in this tribe we have rules in this tribe and if we don't all enforce them then bad things happen but it's so funny how some people just like we were at the airport recently and we had to make this flight actually to come back and film for a Sesame Street thing. And there was, there was lines that was like quadruple what they were.

45:57Cause there's like a new policy and we literally had to cut to the front of the line. Look at my partner's like, she's very good at talking to people. I was like, Oh gosh, it's like, that's the worst thing for me. I'm a real problem. Yeah. But other people were cutting not as good as us. Cause we didn't get booed and they were just like booing and yelling. And like, it was chaos. It was primal because everyone's in this stressful situation, but like you could just here like it was just it just like deteriorated to like base human emotion watching somebody sprint through the airport is a special type of pain because we've all been there we've all been there the connection got delayed and the next thing they're holding the gate but you're at 72 and it's 24 yeah yeah i think that's why traveling is so stressful is the cost for mistakes are so high right it's like i'll all i mean this is a life hack whenever booking something that's got connections.

46:48If it's under 90 minutes, I know that the airport says that you can make it, but the increase in stress is just not worth it. For me, the risk, anything less than 90 minutes I won't do as a connection. I'll always have a 90-minute connection at an airport. Is it too much? Yeah. But the price is I maybe have to walk around and get a coffee. Always though? If it's like if there's 10 flights in a day, it has to be a function of that, right? I'll think about that a little bit more, but typically I'm doing stuff that's a little bit more of a quirky route. Yeah. I'm doing international. Exactly. Yeah.

47:21But then, yeah, we were on a flight the other day coming back from tour and it had been super delayed and it was real annoying and it was late and there were loads of people and it would have been the last flight out. And we did that thing where everybody stood to one side and you just saw this stream of people. Oh, let me give you this one. The poverty parade on planes. So there is a nine time increase in passenger violence on planes where economy has to walk past first. Really? Nine times increase. Really? Yeah, it's huge. That's fascinating. Past those assholes just on their laptops. What are you reminded of?

47:56You're reminded of your place in the hierarchy. This is status, right? You're reminded of the status. This is from Michael Easter's second book. And yeah, the poverty parade, nine times increase in passenger violence. And it's just on planes. That's what he calls it, the poverty parade. That's what I called it. Yeah, yeah. And is it the violence is from the folks who are sitting in the back? Yep. but the ones in the front at least it's like nine times less probably they're like fucking peasants behind me yeah exactly i've made it yeah um lots of excitement around ai and stuff at the moment one area that i again ar vr i don't mean to shit talk on the engineers i'm sure they're trying hard but i've been disappointed like i'm a bit sad i wanted super cool glasses i haven't got super cool glasses yet ar's coming though like ar's getting there i think that's the future for sure and what will that look like something that can project up into a space so we could watch something 3d in front is this like tony stark style stuff uh no like and i mean google's and meta's latest or have you tried those on uh no little bulky sterile but getting there where it's like it will you know illuminate the path you're getting directions it's pretty functional i mean there's that's the one with the little band that you can do that you yeah yeah yeah but like a little it gives you pretty good like i'm going somewhere walking directions okay turn here it's like actually mapping it onto your real world it's decent i mean getting there also like real-time translations for like if you're traveling um you know there's an argument there's a lot of if you didn't have to pull your phone at and you want to like hey show me a restaurant around here you know or even talking to someone there's a lot of like where reminding the name of the people you're looking at right like at a party or something yeah the best assistant researcher ever yeah like yeah like there's a lot of use cases where i think it would be really people would find it very useful whether or not that's good for society that's a different conversation but like i think there that is that makes more sense to me than vr at this point well certainly the meta glasses i've got i've got two pairs in the house i bought uh two pairs as gifts this year as well including the oakley's ones that wrap around one yeah and um being able to take a photo without having to get your phone out yeah being able to track what you're doing just to press a button and it hold and it do the thing yeah is oh my gosh it is so wonderful i went to a gig in uh la the other night at the roxy i saw president play 500 people real small real intimate and the stages three feet high yeah yeah it's not high at all and um there was a girl woman in front of me 30s or something and the entire show she watched through her phone and this is so trite for me to say there's that famous uh was it the Champs -Élysées in Paris on New Year's Eve a couple of years ago and it's just this single shot from the back and it's just a sea of phones yeah which is it is what it is but people want to take memories.

50:58They want to be able to recall this thing. How much better would it be if you didn't have to sacrifice? And I think that's the best use case. I don't like the meta. Hey, meta, tell me what I'm looking at. Like, I know what I'm fucking looking at. I don't need you to do that for me. But at the moment, those Ray-Bans being able to take a photo, being able to press and hold and take a video up to three minutes now, they're really cool. Yeah, that is cool. I know. Like for me, I've kind of had my own moment with this. Like how many times have I ever gone back and looked at my you know fireworks on the fourth of july videos right and yet every year you'd be like no way right or like concerts are a great example like you never go back and look at those you just need one i think from those sorts of situations 100 where was i remind me what it felt like i can fill the rest in that's right you just need one that's 100 so anyway arvr like maybe it's getting there whatever whatever robotics yeah i think when you compare with ai robotics is a promise that everybody had expected there's this new home bot thing with the fucking knitted jumper as a it's got like your jumper on as a home assistant and somebody put a video of it trying to close the dishwasher and said it looks like a guy on ketamine at an after party what's going on in the world of robotics this is much closer to your yeah that's right I mean, look, AI still needs humans right now to like push buttons, especially when you say like AGI.

52:23Like once you have robotics, there's an argument that like now humans are truly redundant as like it makes sense that we're going into robotics. I think it pairs naturally with AI. I don't know what it means. I don't know how great it is for our species. I was I'll tell you this. I don't want to say a name here, but I was talking to someone who's like. You know, in Silicon Valley, he said he was at a dinner at his house with like 10 other people who are like leaders in Silicon Valley with AI. You would know half the names very well. They had a vote that said, by the year 2050, what's the chance our sun is covered in a Dyson sphere?

53:06Meaning a Dyson sphere. Type 2 Kaddyshev. That's right. It's a type basically, it's basically a solar panel that goes all around the sun. So you capture all the energy. and then you could use that energy then to populate the solar system in the universe ostensibly and of this group of folks eight of ten said greater than 50 chance by 2050 our sun is really fucking do it on calci dude put it on polymarket put your money where your mouth is don't give me a bullshit around the i i don't understand but no but the point is to get there you need robotics yeah okay like this is my point right right right right right because you need robotics to if you can make a million workers in you know 20 days and then those workers make factories that make more that's when you truly go crazy exponential so like the only way to get to that is a robotics revolution so that does seem to be on the cusp at least for some people yeah even if it's not get it up do the dyson sphere kardashev 2 thing the point is is that again going back like society is at a pretty fundamental changing point if you can have you know the thinking machines and the doing machines who are going to be more specialized than us humans who have all this like vestigial traits of millions of years of evolution that just aren't necessary for today's world yeah you know walking around with appendixes and yeah and stuff like and like yeah coccyx and yeah we do toenails yeah yeah stupid idea uh it'll be interesting man if we can get to the stage where ai programs robotics that's when we're this is my point right and then robotics builds more robotics right so you turning the wrenches is now bro i had eliezer on the show and he was telling me about how one of the ways that a super intelligent general ai would be able to accumulate compute power without taking it away from servers that people would realize is it could reprogram the leaves of trees.

55:06Whoa. It's like bio trans computation or something. And he had this series of books behind him on the biology of trees. It's like, oh, well, it's a relatively simple process. If you were to, you do this and then you do this and then you reprogram to this thing and then you reprogram this thing and then all of the trees are doing your compute for you. And you're just using the trunks and the roots and you just draw up all of this power and that would be the way and it would just slowly seep its way into the biosphere and before you know it, the shrub in your back garden is working out how to kill you.

55:42I do feel like anthropomorphizing robots. I get the argument for making robots that looks like humans because the world is basically built for humans. But I think it's like a first cut like trying to make that where you, I think it makes a lot more sense to make like factory robots, like robots who you could sell to a car manufacturer. They can move around their factory that could in one year save them the cost of 12 of your fleets of robots you're selling. Like, I feel like the winner of the robotics revolution will be the one who goes after manufacturing businesses first, not homes for people who could afford it.

56:16Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a good, that's a great point because Because how many people want, need, and can afford? And those who can afford it already have a staff of people who do it. It's a person. Yeah, because it's not that cheap. No. I think that thing was maybe 500 bucks a month. No. That's right. And it doesn't do it that well. Like, what's a cleaner? Like, to get a maid to come around is maybe, even for a good-sized home, 200 bucks? Okay, so you can get them every other week. Yeah. and you still have a hundred bucks to save on this robot academy yeah the addressable marketing is very small versus hey I'm going to make a robot that can wheel around your factory floor it is by the way it's torso can stretch eight feet to screw in that thing and then come down like make a specialized robot for that factory still kind of probably looks like a human but give it six arms because it's all it's job is to drill in the six bolts on the bottom right and then make those robots like that immediately will have a massive roa for a company that has money to pay for it right i saw a new type of warehouse robot so um instead of warehouses being built upward yeah this begins the warehouse high and builds it low so all of these things run over the top of like tubules that come down so imagine you've got your warehouse and you don't stack shit from the bottom up you have the robots running over the top and they get stuff bring it up to the top and then they run around here with like a little grid formation and below each grid so not only does it restock stuff it also then goes and pulls it out and um it was i can't it's some absurd space saving efficiency this this warehouse is eight times denser than a normal one because everything is just packed side by side you don't need any space to run between yeah the stock because the stock is the floor the whole floor It's just stock.

58:09Oh, wild. I see. Yeah, I think the winner of the robotics, the first big winner takes all. The NVIDIA of the robotics will be ones who address like factories first. And then there'll be knock-on effects. They'll bootstrap it from there. Then how do you perfect that for the home? Not the other way. I'm surprised we're starting with the home. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now because it is the simplest way I found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition. And that is why I partnered with them. Just one scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in a single drink.

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59:21And for a limited time, US customers also get a sample of AGZ and a bottle of omega-3s. Just go to the link in the description below or head to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. I guess it's just a sexy idea. It's a cool, it's attention grabbing, but yeah, total addressable market is just, it's not, it's not there. Okay. For anyone who hasn't seen your Glitterbom series. please explain that. Well, like a lot of my ideas, people are like, where do you come up with your ideas? and it's like, I don't know. Like my brain's just always on in the sense of like thinking of like, oh, that's a good idea, right?

1:00:04And so someone sold a package for my porch and I felt really sad. Have you had a package stolen for a porch? No. Well, actually maybe, but I haven't known. It's very, it's an American thing apparently. Apparently this doesn't happen a lot in other countries. But you do really feel violated. And this was like a$3, I don't even know what it was, something from Amazon. It doesn't matter. Right. And at first I was, the police obviously won't do anything about it, but then I was like, you know what? Like I don't build a Mars rover for heaven's sakes. Like I could probably do something about this. So I designed a bait package basically that had four phones in it that could, I could track the phone.

1:00:43So I knew where the package went, but they were also recording. So it could upload that footage to the cloud. So even if they destroyed the package, I would have footage of the theft, but more importantly, when you lift it off the lid. It had a cup that uses centrifugal force to spray like a pound of the world's finest glitter. And then to make sure we got the package back after like two minutes, it sprayed just an uncharitable amount of fart spray. So they were incentivized. And then I played fake police chatter, like package, you know, we have a report of like, you know, and so we always got the packages back sometimes in better shape than others.

1:01:18And I don't know. I think it was, it just really struck a chord for a lot of people who have had the same thing to make a viral video you just have to evoke a visceral response like that is the key to making that is that is the key like if you want to know how to that's it so you have to feel vindicated it has to make you feel you know it has to be funny has to make you feel angry that's a trick that's used a lot these days and making people angry to get them to share and so this one just it checked a lot of those visceral response buttons and yeah i went and so i did it for like each year i would improve and go eventually we had drones that came out and sprayed the glitter in the house you know when they opened the lid each year i would like as an engineering challenge how can i take this to the next level and i did it for like i think six or seven years eventually went to san francisco i had like fake luggage that because cars get stolen from there all the time and i would i I would work with the police, you know, anytime I got footage, I would, I would, if the police wanted it, I'd give it to them.

1:02:18And also, this is a crazy fact, probably about half the people's faces are blurred. Half of them aren't. And people will be like, well, how do you make that decision? If you're not blurred, you signed a release, which means they were willing to let me put their face on. Who signed a release? Every single criminal whose face isn't blurred in the glitter bomb. Where did the release form go to? I gave it to them because I would like know the houses, right? They took it to their house. So we would knock on the door and be like, okay, we got you. Are you cool if we show you in a YouTube video? And you might be like, well, why would they agree to this?

1:02:53And you just have to offer them the correct compensation, which in most cases was like a Starbucks gift card. You're kidding. No. You got people to admit to having their face on one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world as a criminal by offering them a Starbucks gift card. By the way, like a$10 Starbucks gift card. This wasn't like$200. Wowee. But what you'd find is just like, we value our reputation a lot. And you think other people have the same frameworks and think like you. But some of them are like, hell yeah. Like, let's do this. Well, I mean, you thought that you were going to get a parcel.

1:03:35You didn't. You got sprayed in fart spray. Now you go to Starbucks. you know yeah it's kind of aim for the stars land in the clouds land in Starbucks yeah I mean that's one of my favorite series that you've done I thought it was so great and I another one your like scam phone call yeah a broad taking advantage of old people thing the relationship that you have with technology you're obviously very pro technology it's something that is your love it's something that you're working on you're trying to encourage other people to do their own And have you got, when you see things like that, when you see phone centers that are trying to scam old people out of money, does that become conflicted for what technology sort of enables for you?

1:04:19I mean, at the end of the day, I think technology is amoral and it can be used for tremendous good. It could be used for tremendous bad. And, oh, you hope the good outweighs the bad. And my job, you know, is to use some of the good to try and outweigh the bad. And in that case, literally that video was born. I was making one of the glitter bombs and I got one of those like Microsoft scam calls, you know, or like your car warranties expired. I'm like, who's behind these things? So eventually I worked with another YouTuber, Jim Browning. We hacked into some of these scam centers in Kolkata, India.

1:04:51So we got access to their system. How did you access the security system? So their trick is that when they come to take over your computer, so you pretend you're an old, you know, some, I don't know what's going on. and they're like, okay, ma 'am, let me help you with your computer. Well, that's a two-way connection. So when that happens, if you know what you're doing, you can remote into their computers. So that's what Jim Browning does is he's very good at computers. And you don't just get access to their CTV. You get access to, like, their mainframe. So we know exactly. It's kind of a normal business, by the way.

1:05:21It's kind of boring. They have, like, scam training. They have, like, HR, right? They have, like, goals of how many scams you're going to do a month, like pizza parties. I was going to say, you know what's happening for lunch that week? Yeah, exactly. It's kind of hilarious. But we'd see how much, you know, they're making, I think, like$30 million a year, running three shifts, 24 hours a day. They'd been doing it for a decade, three of these. So we went there with, you know, our glitter bombs. First of all, I hired like eight people to work undercover for eight months just to learn, just to like find out what the week would make.

1:05:54To work there? At a scam center, yeah. I wanted to learn their weaknesses. And one of them, it turns out, is you can bring lunch boxes out onto the floor. You can't bring phones. You can't bring anything else. But they let you bring your lunch and like a water bottle. So we designed like a lunch box that we put like 100 cockroaches in. But then it had a ball screw and a remote timer on a trigger. So the wall would move forward. So basically these cockroaches would start getting squished and then a door opened. So all the cockroaches would run out at once. We had a smoke bomb in there. Of course, we sent them a glitter bomb.

1:06:28And then we filmed it all in these CCTV footage. And it's hilarious footage. And, you know, my thing is like, I could have made a PSA on what these scams are and how to avoid them. That wouldn't have evoked a visceral response. That would have got 100 views. But if I can wrap this in a story and entertain you and make you feel a lot of things, well, now you're going to share that video. And Sunshine is a great disinfectant. And effectively, that's what happened. We released this video. It has like hundreds of millions of views. now and because what was happening is you had a few bad apple police officers in these cities who were being paid off they didn't have that spotlight on them but now it made it impossible to defend them because the times of india is covering it all these people are up in arms and like protesting and all three of those scam centers got shut down the top i think there was like 18 officials arrested from this there's real real world impact this is from a stupid youtube video do you know the greek god hephastus you heard of that no so he was the god of uh craftsmanship and fire working and stuff he's kind of the archetype of the tinkerer your way hephastus yeah or hephastus and um he's the only greek god that was crippled so he's like a chubby guy and sort of needed crutches and he needed a wheelchair and i think he was he was um betrothed or maybe even married to one of the most beautiful of the gods and the super chad god was sleeping with his wife behind his back and he knew that this thing was happening and he discovered them he was heartbroken and it's kind of a tale as old as time that the nerdy tinkerer has his good-looking girls stolen by the sort of Chad bully.

1:08:16So he gets back at her and him, and he designs this unbelievably strong cage. Glitter bomb? Ah, it could have been. Cockroaches. This really strong cage that is positioned over the bed, and he waits until they get down into bed, and then this thing drops, and he invites all of the other gods, and all of the other gods come in and laugh at them. And it kind of reminds me of your story, that there's this sort of tinkerer who uses innovation and ingenuity to sort of righteously even the scales. Yeah. I love that. That's great. That's a cool story. Yeah, it's like, I don't know. That was so lovely to see because it's kind of like this, what can I do?

1:08:58Like if I would have, if we would have got that information from the scan centers and given it to the police, nothing would have happened, right? But if I make a story that makes you feel something and evokes an emotion, now suddenly, right, now suddenly something happens. And I think, I don't know, it's like a powerful example of like agency. It's like, what can you do in your spot, in your position, you know, to affect the world? Best question about agency. You're stuck in a third world jail and you've got 24 hours to get out and only one phone call. Who'd you ring? Probably Jimmy Kimmel. That's a good one.

1:09:36Like he is, we're good friends. like we vacation together he saw one of my videos i went on his show and since then we've just had a friendship and he's so loyal but also connected that it would be jimmy who do you call i got some friends that are ex-special forces tim kennedy would probably be pretty fun uh evan hafer from black rifle coffee would be and handy stump would also be interesting like dudes that are, you know, 40s and 50s that would really probably revel in it. They'd have a lot of, they'd really enjoy it. Yeah, it's a challenge. But it's just, you know, this person doesn't need permission.

1:10:17They can think on their own feet. They'll be able to - Oh, is this like them coming in actively rescuing you or just like pulling the strings to make it happen? I guess both. Okay. In a way, I mean, Jimmy's got to be involved. He's going to have to project manage. Yeah, yeah. Unless he hands it off to an assistant, in which case ring the assistant. But yeah, it's just who's the highest agency person. ah i see so it's a way to identify who the highest agency person i love it that's great yeah maybe it's jimmy yeah that's funny because you're probably somebody's and i'm probably people's in my life as well i think i would be unfortunately i'm too busy sorry um that's right uh but yeah there's there's two groups there's one group that is if you want somebody to break you out of the third world prison who is it and then there's another one which i've got at least a few in my life i think everybody needs somebody like this as well which is if you want to go into business with your captors.

1:11:05Like if you want to not only have you be gotten out, but before you know it, somehow you now own the jail and you've actually turned the jail into a really wonderful amusement park. And you need a couple of people like that that can kind of... That's Jimmy Donaldson for me, Mr. Beast. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's between the two Jimmies. Yeah. If you want to launch a YouTube channel with your captors, go with Jimmy. Okay. So your engineering brain, you're looking to apply engineering logic to some human problems as well what are the thinking tools or heuristics that you try and apply when it comes to to looking at human problems like uh um tolerances or failure budgets or like iterative testing or something is there something that you realize huh in my daily life i can apply this engineering principle here and it works out pretty well

1:12:04I think the engineering design process is something that's just so applicable for real life problems, which is just like you start with an objective. I want to get a rover to Mars, right? I want to build a glitter bomb that these will take. That is your end goal. Again, it kind of comes down to life gamification. and I know I'm not going to get it right. I know there's a lot of questions I need answered. I mean, step one is really just breaking it down. If that's the end goal, here are the main four chunks that need to happen to accomplish that, right? I need to do some research. I need to do initial prototype.

1:12:39I need to have a feedback loop and iterate a bunch. I need to do the final thing. And I think that's how you launch a business. That's how you make a microphone like this. This is how you build a garden in your backyard, right? It all, it starts with that, it's that same process and it helps make things feel not daunting, right? Because at the end of the day, if you're going to climb Mount Everest, it's just literally one step at a time and people get overwhelmed. It's just like, how do I get up there? That's so far. And so the engineering design process allows you to break it down into those bite-sized pieces.

1:13:12And then as failure comes, quote unquote failure, you know that's part of the process. And it's almost exciting. It's more flavorful, right? Okay. What about the reverse? What about emotional intelligence skills like frustration tolerance or kindness or humor or collaboration? How important are they when it comes to doing the engineering thing? Because I think a lot of people really love the idea of raw talent, innovation being able to be enough. But I certainly know from hearing you speak about your time at Apple being kind of a shock to the system of how important communication and collaboration is.

1:13:49yeah um unfortunately even engineering doesn't occur inside of a sterile box yeah it's not just input process output there's human psychology in here so no for sure i mean that's what makes our species and different than every species on the planet is our ability to collaborate at large scales and have shared goals and that happens through stories that usually are fictional but That's part of, you know, you share a vision. And if you can, and that is, you know, at Apple, I did find people were not only smart, maybe not quite as smart as NASA, but they were better communicators across the board.

1:14:29And that is almost, that's equally important. Because if you actually want to accomplish something meaningful, it can't be just by yourself. Like you need a team. and if everyone's pushing in the same direction, incredible things happen. How do you get everyone to push in the same direction? They have to believe in a shared vision. And that ability to convince someone of something to understand your vision is a superpower. And you want to know how you do that? It's the same way you make a viral video. You have to evoke a visceral response. Sharing the facts and being like, well, if we build this, it'll be 20 % faster in the processing speed, right?

1:15:08Nobody cares. But if it's like, hey, if we build this, like that's going to connect people. And, you know, currently with Crunch Labs, like that is our mission. We want to reach as many brains as possible and infect them with this passion for learning and curiosity. And we have 100 employees now and we are mission driven. And we get up and we're just like so stoked about what we're building and what we're creating. And yeah, they're toys, which makes a great last minute Christmas gift, by the way. Crunchlabs.com. Crunchlabs.com. but it's like you're learning and they're so fun first of all they're so fun but we hide the vegetables and before you know it you're learning all these really cool things but you have this emotional connection to it right it's it's that same we you have to attach the learning to some emotion and some feeling in other news you've probably heard me talk about element before and that's because i am frankly dependent on it uh and it's how i've started my day every single morning This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market.

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1:17:14Maybe 20, maybe 30 hours? And history in school for me wasn't that fun because of the way it was taught. so the same topic displayed in two different ways yeah made all the difference yeah and that's actually what we're doing this is something i'm only starting now to talk about we haven't talked a lot publicly but it's like releasing making a full school curriculum third to eighth grade it covers all this all the tricks i've learned on how they have vegetables on youtube we're making like really exciting cool science it's got me all your favorite youtuber we just cristiano rinaldo's in it it's it's it adheres the standards and it's going to cost us about 50 million dollars to make and then we're going to make it free for all teachers forever and i feel like it's the most important work i'll do my whole life so basically crunch labs is you productizing curiosity in a way that's what you've tried to do you've tried to make a monthly box of curiosity you don't know what it's going to be on the other side and then you try to instill that into kids afterward by getting them to go through these experiments yeah because i can't teach you my youtube videos aren't going to teach you everything you possibly know but like what i can be is a fire starter in your brain especially for young kids because the clay isn't hardened okay so if what you're doing is trying to kickstart the curiosity what have you learned from watching kids interact with the experiments that you've done that schools don't understand?

1:18:45Like, what do you wish that schools understood that you know? Like, every teacher will tell you, like, I can't teach you if I don't have your attention. And I think they do a very bad job of getting kids' attention. So, for example, this cool thing, class crunchlops, we're calling it, is when we're talking about electricity and magnetism, I'm in front of an MRI machine, I put a watermelon in there, I'm holding a 10-pound hammer, flip on the MRI machine, it just rips it from my hand and just obliterates this watermelon. And that, those eyes right there, I love that. And guess what? I have your attention now.

1:19:24And you're like, what the hell was that? It's like, oh, well, there's these invisible fields called magnetic fields that are around us all the time. And now let me tell you about them, right? Versus like, here's a diagram of the earth's magnetic field and a compass aligns with it, right? and like the curriculum writers, bless their heart, except not because they charge for it for these poor teachers who don't have the money to buy it and it's really, really bad. They never had to have a YouTube channel where they had to earn the attention of adults and kids. They were able to sort of dictate the attention.

1:19:54You will listen to me. That's right. And if you don't, the class goes on anyway. The class goes on. Like the kids can get up and walk out like they switch off the YouTube video. That's right. And so it's... Attention. Attention. So I would say like... yeah like attention and the toys too just they're first and foremost they are fun like i'm not gonna make a boring if it's fun now we'll figure out how to attach the learning on to that so start with the attention and a lot of times that comes with fun and the same thing getting a visceral response like i'll make a video about a 15 ton jello pool which is really hard to do by the way why why because you've never made jello before you gotta heat it up you gotta heat it up where it's almost and then you have to cool it down.

1:20:35And so to do that at scale, we're like, how are we going to do that? There's not a... Couldn't you just make lots of little ones? It'd have to be an insane amount of little ones. Yeah, but then it's not contiguous. Then it's not like, you want a belly flop on it, right? Understood. So what I did to find a refrigerator, I just found the right place in the country at the right time that I wanted to film this that got to almost refrigeration temperatures at night, but not cold enough to freeze, which happened to be where my brother lived in like Mapleton, Utah. So we dug out a hole and then we had six 55-gallon drums that we boiled all of the gelatin in and then piped it through potential energy into the pool with layers over seven days.

1:21:12And then finally we got it and we got that shot of a kid belly flopping on it. But the point is, is that video says 15-ton jello pool. That is clickbait. You want to click on it and then pretty soon I'm teaching about the scientific method in chemistry. So hiding those vegetables, sneaking in the learning once you're like stoked about the story. It's sick, man. What's this? What have we got? This is Creativity Kit. So this is just one of the things that we offer. It's the newest one. So we, you know, we had the BuildBox. That was the original one. Then we had Hack Pack and that's kind of robotics.

1:21:43Right. And then this one starts at age like six where it really teaches the ideas of creativity. What's the state of like kids toys at the moment? Because I remember Meccano. Do you have Meccano over here? No. So Meccano was like metal Lego, I guess. but uh much more involved way more complex yeah and that was i found that fascinating you'd make trucks and cars out of there would be um braces and bolts and it was really it was sick um but is that still are you guys kind of really breaking through with it you and lego is that it for when it comes to constructing shit i mean this is like we are currently the we sell these as a which you you know direct to consumers but i will say we are launching in like with retail products and stores like target and walmart in the stem aisle the stem aisle sucks what's the stem like stem is like of course what is in every target walmart has either four or eight feet dedicated to like stem type toys and it's like the baking soda volcano or like um geo make grow a crystal it's been the stuff that's been the same for decades 30 years it's just ripe for being disrupted and we have some we have like some really really cool stuff that is completely going to disrupt that aisle i'm really happy to hear that okay what about grown-ups who feel like the curiosity has been pruned out of them well i mean it's going to be harder for them to get the crunch lab subscription and and feel that you know excitement i don't know if that's true though because we have again it's now it's ages six to 106 where like hack pack is for it's kind of robot even if you've never coded before you can put it together it's a really fun build and then we encourage you to like hack it and swap the it's arduino based what's that arduino is like a microprocessor like it's um like a raspberry pi or oh yeah i know yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's a simple form of like a raspberry pi uh so it's like the first one's a desktop robot that's, you know, you could control with a little remote, but then we encourage people to go in and like tweak the code and make it really easy.

1:23:51You don't have to, it'll work out of the box, but we want to like, just make the next step that much easier. So if you've always wanted to learn to code, but never have, we'll hold your hand with Hackback. It's going to be super fun and you're going to, you're going to grow and learn. And then hopefully you take that and do that to other parts in your life. Yeah, that is cool. I think certainly one of the things that I've seen is people's times got squeezed more. We don't have much time to play or tinker because all of the additional hours of boredom that would have allowed you to do something a bit slower, a bit smaller, a little bit more quiet has been squeezed out because there's a very attractive, well, there's YouTube videos and podcasts, you know, games and social media and stuff.

1:24:32Which is all inputs, right? I feel like we are drowning inputs and sort of starved for outputs. right actually doing something with our own hands that time is now just like passively feed my brain and you can only learn so much constructed anything on the other side even the biggest youtube channel in the world had it not have been for the fact that you did physical experiments like show me where your youtube channel is show me it what have you built yeah well kind of kind of nothing there's code and there's you know numbers on the screen and i think they kind of correlate to real humans that pressed a button but no i uh i think that the opportunity to do something slow one of my friends had a professional coach who was trying to teach him a little bit of humility and to be able to chill out and his uh his task for a month was to start doing something new but he wasn't allowed to try and get better at it so he was told that he had to try and he decided to take up watercoloring.

1:25:33He's always wanted to paint. And after he did it once or a couple of times and he really enjoyed it, he found that he wanted to go on YouTube and look up watercolor tutorials. And then he was going to go and research what the best Reddit thread said about the specific brush he needed. Nope, nope, nope. I can't do that. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to allow myself to do it. And I thought that was so interesting. It was the first time I'd ever heard of anybody saying, I have this thing that I'm trying to do and I'm actively not trying to get better at it. I did one version of that where it's like, I love chess and I found I wasn't playing chess because going back to internalizing failure, I felt like if I lost, that means something about me.

1:26:14So I made a goal of like, I am going to play chess, but my goal, I'm going to try and win, but my real goal is to lose 10 times. right and i'm not going to feel like i checked that box until i've lost 10 games and it really flipped it for me and then normalizing i acclimated to losing and it was like oh wait i'm back to loving this and i don't attach these negative feelings to it because i won because i lost 10 times have you looked at rejection therapy uh no but it's basically this thing right 100 days of rejection uh 100 days of rejection my goal is to desensitize myself from the pain of rejection and overcome my fear.

1:26:52Three criteria I set for myself. One, ethical. Two, legal. Three, doesn't deny the laws of physics. Rejection one, borrow$100 from a stranger. Number two, request a burger refill.

1:27:10Number 15, be a live mannequin at Abercrombie. Number 32, get my own free room at a hotel. So the idea is he did all of these. number 36 trim my hair at a pet smart um hug a walmart greeter bike race at toys r us um my only day at a new jobs trying to job for a day um buy a quarter of shrimp name my own price at dollar tree uh change a coffee shop's wi-fi password uh try and fix a pc at the apple store and um what was this what was day 100 interview president obama um or try and i just thought like what a cool such a cool idea that's so good rejection therapy but like going back to just like making stuff like i would imagine we've evolved to be digging in the dirt and to be building and to be working with our hands right and i do feel like there's probably some part of that you know this is me being an armchair expert here but like are the record levels of depression may have to do with just like all these inputs that are so attractive that just lit us sitting in a chair as opposed to like building doing stuff with our own hands and getting out and moving dirt around the pace that you're forced to uh operate at the pace that your brain is supposed to operate out is really really really aggressive and um i certainly know the times when And I've been able to, and even think about what meditation is.

1:28:42Meditation is kind of like, it's great and I love it and I've done it an awful lot, but it's a really unnatural way to try and achieve what we're doing. It's the same way as our lives have become so convenient that we have to build a building where there's heavy things with special handles that you go into and pick up and put down in exactly the same place because your entire life is now bereft of you having to lift anything difficult. You know, even as an Amazon driver, you're probably lifting less than our ancestors would have done. And your job is to lift things. So we build this building that has stuff that you purposefully lift in very specific ways so that you then put them down again.

1:29:21And meditation is kind of like going to the gym for slowing down. Because your life is so intense most of the time, you need to have this weird holiday from that. That's a portion of your day that is you doing something else. That makes sense. Yeah. And it's also like, it's crazy how hard it is to not think thoughts. Like, you know, in meditation, I've dabbled in a little bit. My partner's like really big in it and I've been doing it more, but it's amazing how much I suck at it. You know, just like going to the gym for the first time. It's like, wow, I'm not conditioned to do this. It's wild how hard it is to not think and to clear your mind.

1:29:59Right. And just like focus on the breathing. I find it incredibly difficult and it's certainly a muscle you have to build. and a muscle that feels worth building once I try and do it and see the benefits. Have you not, you know, if you've been tinkering with some glitter bomb for hours and hours, is there not a crossover toward a mindfulness practice with regards to that? I mean, there's something about like hitting flow state, especially for writing. I still write all my own videos and it's really hard until it's not. And then it just all pours out really quickly, right? right um but no i think the opposite is true where it's like if i'm writing a thing or trying to solve a problem it's like it's always on repeat and just in the back of my brain like we could be having this conversation and i could have like not a breakthrough but it's like oh i'm gonna try that as soon as i get you know what i mean yeah you are right i mean certainly stuff that captures the front of your brain while the back of it's still thinking lovely i love doing the washing up.

1:31:00It sounds like such a dumb thing, but doing the dishes for me is so great. I have an unusually high volume of good ideas while I'm doing the dishes. It's my favorite chore. Yep. Yeah. And well, it's just driving. Another one. I fucking love driving. Happy to drive. So do you listen to stuff? Are you listening to your podcast? Sometimes. Sometimes I'll be listening to stuff. But other times, if I'm just thinking, it's a great place to... Yeah, but I guess that's my point. Do you say, hey, I'm not going to turn on the radio because... When I'm being good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a period where for about six months, when I first started the podcast, I always put my phone in the trunk of the car.

1:31:41So I couldn't listen to anything. There was no AirPods, no nothing. And even if I was going to the gym and it was only 20 minutes away. Yeah. It sounds... I mean, what a revolution. You don't listen to something or even try and use your phone while you're driving. And you have this wonderful mini break. from the world um well it's like the case for boredom right like i feel like raising kids it's like i would want i want to get like two presents for christmas and like the goal is to be bored every day like that's where the creativity i think that's a whole movement towards that now right when again it's just it's the opposite to all of these inputs like cut those off and then what happens have you noted i certainly have i'm not an avid ai user but chat gpt gets a good bit of daily use between 10 and 20 times a day, something like that probably.

1:32:31For you, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Like, I need to sort this thing out. How do I do this thing? One of the things I have noticed is now I'm beginning to get an aversion to having to overcome questions myself because I can just go to ChatGPT and work out exactly what it is. I haven't done this, but similar stuff. if I had to write a difficult email. I'm trying to say this to this person, and as opposed to wrestling with the problem, it's kind of like having a team of staff on hand. Instead of having to do the dishes, you just get the dishwasher or the maid to do it. Instead of having to put your clothes away, your assistant does it.

1:33:17Yeah, I mean, I think this is the argument that we are becoming cyborgs. The fact, like, how many phone numbers do you have memorized now? three right and and and 15 years you know 30 years ago growing up we had everyone's memorized like we don't need to because the information's there and obviously that was the case with google and i think this is just one more step in that direction and yeah these are an extension of our brain in some sense right as we learn to use them and work with them and adapt to them being part of reduced friction by such a huge margin now i think even with google you had for sure you had to do the reading for sure i mean look at us talking about searching on google like it was fucking foraging for berries like that's friction yeah i i i resonate with this so much you're completely right like even i needed to find like the right christmas lights the other day and i found myself googling i hate this i was like wait why am i not using an llm for this i gave it exactly what i wanted sure enough i had four websites i was like oh and now guess what i'm never searching for anything now i've now learned that behavior yep and now it's like oh now when i need to find something difficult this is what i'm with use uh what'll come next will be gemini integrated into chrome yeah atlas already exists for chat gpt so this will just become one form yeah isn't you must know about this I might need to bleep this out you must know what the open AI products are do you?

1:34:43I have like probably a tiny bit more of a view than the average person but I don't fully know but I think it's my guess is he brought what his face on right? the dude that did Johnny Ive Johnny Ive yeah yeah and they said they're releasing three products by the end of the year this year? or by the something maybe it can't be the end of this year it can't be but at some point and they said that one of them has never been seen before and doesn't exist. Somebody asked, is it a pin? And they said no. My guess is it's just like a camera that can see the world and hear the world, but it's very minimal, however that is, whether it's a ring or it's a...

1:35:21And then if it's capturing all the information and visually could see stuff, it's like the world's greatest assistant, right? Because it remembers this conversation. It remembers every conversation you have. It helps you follow up. And then if, like, do you have a personal assistant or someone like that? ish. What an unlock that was when you got one of those. And so now everyone gets this of like, now when I want to buy those Christmas lights, to your point, it going agentic, I just have to say, Hey, I'm looking for these kinds of lights. And then two minutes later, it's like, okay, here's, they'll be at your porch tomorrow morning at 8am.

1:35:53Right. Whereas I have an assistant. I can tell that to the assistant and give them that problem. And they do the same thing. Now imagine, but you still have the assistant with you everywhere. So getting the context of your life, my guess is that's and i have like a one or two slight clues that that's true that aren't in the public domain but that would be my guess wow wow what do you like what do you think it would be i was i was gonna guess glasses because that would have made so much sense um some kind of badge type thing or yeah yeah just on your wrist almost like a watch but it's it's a camera and a microphone yeah and it's just tracking everything at all times and you set it down it charges at night yeah so but you need a way for it to communicate back to you which means it would need a screen or it's going to have to be audio and audio just like an assistant you know you just talk to them and then it's going to have to have bluetooth you're going to have to have headphones so it's going to have to link them to some headphones or it could just be through your phone right it could just be the sensors the eyes and the ears and then you talk to the phone but it has all the info yeah i think how do you feel about the future because everyone that i speak to, whether it's like a Toby Ord, Nick Bostrom, Elliot Jukowski, Tristan Harris, you know, whoever it is that I speak to from that side of the fence, they have vague despondency.

1:37:12They're like apocalyptic, but in a kind of a ephemeral way. Want to know what I think like the best case scenario is? Yes. Have you heard the idea of like, if you had 10 dogs in a house, if you have like 10 dogs in a house and there's a pile of food, those dogs, and they're just on their own. They're going to fight over that scarce resource, which is the food. There's going to be one big dog who's going to be the number one, but constantly fighting. They're, you know, wounded. Some are dying. And that's not a great situation, but they are eating because there's a big pile of food. Just some eat better than others.

1:37:51Now, if a human goes into that house and be like, okay, hey guys, I bought you 10 cages. You're all going to be in the cages, but I'm going to give you food every day and all the water you need. You're going to be able to go to the vet. We're going to go on walks every day. And they'll basically helps distribute those resources. Those dogs objectively, even the top dog are happier because the resources are being allocated in a way because there's someone who can kind of map the whole situation. Our best hope is for like a benevolent overlord in this sense, someone who comes to the house and can help us balance the scarce resources or just create enough resources that they aren't even scarce.

1:38:29But incentive, like, and the reason we do that for dogs is we think they're cute and we think they have value and we just have to hope the AI overlords. Some sort of a value. Oh, they're cute dogs. Like, let's look after them. Value in our species. Well, you know Bostrom's idea of the urn and you pull out different technologies and sometimes it's white and it's good. The black ball, yeah. Sometimes it's gray and it's kind of bad. and then every so often there's a black ball and the black ball is a true existential risk and it kills humanity. Like if you could, if putting sand in your microwave was an A-bomb.

1:38:59Correct, exactly. We'd be done. We've read the same stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I kind of think about the same, but instead of it being an urn where you're bringing out different technologies, it's a balls where you're bringing out alignments, but it's inverted and there's only a very, very small number of ways for it to be benevolent. Yeah. But there's a really, really small number of ways that you could align and they wouldn't all be the same there's not only one alignment that would make for a great world it's definitely not an infinite number either there are way more ways to break something than to fix something or make it better yeah that means that even if you just go by fucking proportion like the likelihood that you don't get it right is pretty high and yeah according to these guys that are way smarter than me and even you uh they they seem to think that it's on route.

1:39:50What's the best estimate that you've heard for advent of AGI? I mean, the truth is nobody really knows. So, but I don't know. I don't know. I can't really answer that. I will say, oh, hold on. I just wanted to make a point. You cut this out while I'm thinking of this because I wanted to make a follow-up point of that, which is, oh yeah. So I will say those who are the most optimistic about it are the ones who kind of have the most to gain. Like you look at Sam Altman and he's like, oh, it's going to be a perfect world. You know, everything, Agai is going to be so great because like he's so heavily incentivized.

1:40:28Maybe some motivated reasoning. Yeah. Because like, even if it's a 1 % chance, it is that amazing utopian case in the new world. He's a God. Right. And in the, in the 99 % chance, unless if I'm just assigning values to it, that bad things happen, whether he does it or not, Someone else is going to do it and the bad thing's going to happen. So like, of course, he's - Might as well roll the dice to be the guy. Might as well roll the dice. What's that line about it's very difficult to make a man disbelieve something that his wage relies on him believing? Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? He's incentivized to have this Pollyanna attitude.

1:41:04Now, look, a very good friend of mine is Sam's coach and is the head of human culture at OpenAI. and I trust him implicitly. It's Joe Hudson who's been on the show a ton. He is as fucking legit as they come, Joe. And he's such a good judge of character and he works with Sam and I've heard a couple of things from Sam with regards to his meditation practice and what he's done. I'm like, I'm trying to square this circle where there definitely are some like really scary potential externalities coming from this thing. And there's just this bit of me where a few people that I really know and trust. so i have i have glimmers i'm usually work for sam uh he did but he had this way fake check realized i don't even know what's really even it maybe fuck yeah i'll use my own rule against maybe look i i'm trying to find a silver lining in the the stream of shit here um but yeah i the one the one thing i think we both agree on probably is is like whether it doesn't matter what i think about it it's going to happen there's like a small set of the humans that are driving this forward and you can't unring that bell.

1:42:13So it's like, I'm not, I don't stay up at night because of it. You know what I mean? Like I don't let it, I'm still just, you're on the rollercoaster, right? We're all on the rollercoaster. Yeah. You can try and do the Eliezer thing and ring the bell sufficiently loudly. But the only way that this works is if you're able to somehow put a global moratorium on all AI development. and I just think that's not that's not going to happen which creates this weird like inverse arms race where everybody thinks well I'll do it but I'll do it right and if I get there first so yeah if you do have this sort of Pollyanna uh god complex attitude well no no no we can do we got the engineer and the alignment and then what did and you think well fucking what dude yeah I had a weird thought the other day we were hiking I live in Silicon Valley we were hiking up we could see all the way to San Francisco and then all the way down to Silicon Valley.

1:43:05It's about a 50-mile stretch. And I was like, what's crazy is like this 50-mile stretch of land is sort of going to determine the future of humanity and our space. And then my next thought was like, if I'm a government that's on the other side of this, where do I want to put that A-bomb? I mean, it's also probably one of the closest places to China, right? I didn't love that thought. and I'm like, oh, right. Even if it just buys you four months, that could be the difference of being the first to hit AGI and then that's everything. Bro, there was a guy who I brought on the show. I can't remember his name.

1:43:42I wish that I could. And he told me this story. He wrote a really successful tech book a decade and a half ago and then he wrote another one. The opening story of this book is him being invited by a bunch of these tech leaders, billionaires, pre-CHPTs, maybe 2019, 2020, something like that. And they sat down at this dinner and it's sort of a weird atmosphere. It feels like there's kind of a holding pattern going on in the conversation. He doesn't really know why. And then sort of the whole room changes a little bit and they say, right, New Zealand or Greenland? He's like, what? New Zealand or Greenland?

1:44:20What do you mean? For the bunker? What are you talking about? Oh, the post-apocalyptic war bunker. is it more effective for us to have them in New Zealand or is it in Greenland yeah and what do you think about how we control the marines that work for us because what we're thinking is that we'll use shock collars and that we'll pay them in crypto but that the ledger will be associated with biometrics and if they betray us if they try to do that then we can just kill them with the and he was like it's this sounds like a absolute movie scene yeah and um maybe he was making it up but it sounded yeah i'm kind of like at that point and i've heard this like at new zealand because like they have everything you need to self-produce and there's all these reasons why it makes sense but it's like if like if that's what things have devolved to it's like i'm good like i had we had a great run like you know hands up and put some more fucking crunch lab stuff together yeah well just like if we're in a world where just like everyone is like killing each other and it's just like total apocalypse like do you what are you looking to survive for like you come out of that bunker that was exactly why i mean that was the exact reason that he gave which was what do you think they're going to do with all that bitcoin yeah what are they spending it on right you have access to the food yeah what is that what is that that's left yeah and it's almost See how precarious human civilization is when you start to think about this, eh?

1:45:50Right. Well, it's also like even with the AI, where for the first time in human history, like generally the more money you made, it equated to the more employees you have, right? As you made more money, you would hire more people so you could do more stuff. And now for the first time, not only are they decoupled, but there's almost an inverse relationship where you could save a ton of money if you lay off all these people and now your profit's going to go way up. and the question then becomes are these ceos and i've been in circles where people have told me about this where they're like this is awesome we're going to do all this but then quickly they realize like but who's going to buy our thing because no one's going to have money because no one's going to be employed right yeah well then you got into ubi and there was a couple of studies done on ubi test cases yeah you get to look at these yeah it seems like mixed results right yeah not not super positive um and yeah man we may be this is this is the fear i think the fundamental fear that everybody has always had this is what cassandras are that they're seeing some future apocalypse and that nobody's listening and at each generation uh reading is going to ruin the youth television is going to ruin the youth and the hope the car will destroy the horse and so on and so forth.

1:47:06And at each level, we felt like it's apocalyptic what's coming next, that it's going to be something that's really, really worth us saying you shouldn't do this. But dude, this is a step function difference. This is not a difference of degree. It's a difference of kind. It is an entirely different world that we are moving toward. And even if it isn't that one, it's the one that that enables. And it really does feel like sort of the musical chairs and the music is slowing down to come to a stop now maybe the song on the other side of it is way better but it's definitely a different fucking song i think well this is i think one of the most plausible you know are you familiar with fermi's paradox so it's like of all the nine reasons there could be the one i've always kind of and feels more and more plausible is just like by the time you develop the energy to to use and the technology to go to other solar systems, you've developed that, you've harnessed a lot of energy that then you could use against yourself or other people.

1:48:05You have to assume life is always going to be competitive if it's evolving in other spots. So there's going to be competition built in and it's just a glass ceiling in civilizations. And as things get closer and closer, you realize like, oh, maybe there is a glass ceiling effect and that's what we're approaching. There's a book, I tried to bring this guy on, Stephen Webb. If the universe is teaming with aliens, where are they all? And he's got 50 solutions to the Fermi paradox. And I should still try and bring him on. That's like one of my favorite, just like you're camping, you're looking at the stars and just like, just to make your brain go like, ah, it's crazy.

1:48:46Where is all the life? Yeah, well, what's that question? There's two answers to where are they? And they're both equally terrifying. Yeah. Either there's nobody else out there or there is. Yeah. And then, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we are like one of NASA's projects we're working on is like going to one of the moons that's, you know, Enceladus. And the core is lava. What's that? It's like a moon around, I think, Jupiter or Saturn. But it has geysers of fresh water coming out the top. So the top is obviously it's really far away. So it's frozen. It's cold. The core is molten. and so at some point between that icy surface and the core, there's like a 70-degree ocean.

1:49:27And life, we know, formed in water here on this planet and we've never found life exists that doesn't need water. So we're basically building something. We're going to go out there. We're going to drill into the ice, send a submarine down there and see what eats it. And if there's life in that nice ocean out there, it's fascinating and almost terrifying. You know David Kipping from the Cool Worlds Lab? You've seen Cool Worlds on YouTube? Bro, you would fucking love it. Oh, really? You know Brian Cox. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So imagine Brian Cox, 15 years younger, big like Chad jaw, like young dude, and he got 72 hours on the James Webb telescope.

1:50:10No way. Yeah, it gets allocated to different projects. Obviously, it's like a shared resource. and he looks for exoplanets. He looks for exoplanets and he's got this amazing YouTube channel, a Sunday cheats. Fucking sick. And this is the sort of stuff that he talks about a lot on his channel. Oh, really? It's really, really, really cool. Well, this is the point though because if life exists twice in our own solar system. But then you get onto Robin Hanson's Great Filter hypothesis. Have you heard that one? Which is, I mean, it's one of the glass ceiling, the Great Filter. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. This is one of the nine examples or Fermi Paradox explanations.

1:50:44Okay, yes. Filter of civilization. There's something. But what you actually don't want to find is life in our solar system. That's a very bad sign. Agreed. Because it suggests that the filter is in front of us, not behind us. Yes. And so the filter could be our own doing. That's the glass ceiling. The filter could also be potentially, if this is what you're referring to, they are aware of us. Dark forest. But we're just, yeah, right. We're just not enough of a threat. But as soon as we figure one or two things more out, they're like, all right. Yeah, is it nuclear energy? Is it type 2 Kardashev?

1:51:18Is it into... Is it AI? Yeah. Right? Fuck, that would be lame. Imagine if... That would be lame. Totally. What destroys us isn't AI itself, but the fact that we developed... Fuck chat GPT. Holy shit. Then the aliens come for us. There's SETI, but there's also METI, right? Messaging extraterrestrial. And I had a dude on that wrote an entire book about that, but the history of it too. And there's been, since the beginning of time, a concern about how much bleed have we got from radio signals yeah and what's the this uh they're tracking the sphere of the first ever radio signals moving through space to go remember the movie contact do you remember that movie i didn't watch it oh it's great it's like from that we just i just re-watched it but the first signal they get back from the aliens is nazi uh it's it's and it's because the the olympics from germany was the first like broadcast television signal that had gone out so it was their way of saying like hey we hear you we're repeating this back to you and it's hitler fuck so yeah well what an apocalyptic way to finish yeah yeah dude i normally don't talk like this no you rule um i'm so happy for everything you've got going on the Netflix, the Sesame Street, the Crunch Labs.

1:52:38Tell people what they should check out. I mean, go to crunchlabs.com or just checking out the YouTube channel. If you're curious and you like to learn without feeling like you're learning, then we've got a lot of content there. You're great, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting, but there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own.

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