262 - Slavoj Žižek: Marxism, Quantum Mechanics, and Artificial Intelligence

42:10Yes, but people will awaken. And yes, people awaken. But when people awaken today, they usually awaken in an even worse populist way. What happened in England a month or a month ago? those big demonstrations, hundreds of thousands, even millions, with this pure patriotic idea.

42:39England should awaken to its Britishness, British should be back, and so on and so on. I am not ready to dismiss this as simply a neo-fascist tendency or whatever. In times like today, times of confusion, people have the right to worry about who are we, where are we moving, what is the common model we share. This is also for me, I hope we agree here, the problem with multiculturalism. I'm an old critic of multiculturalism. You know at what level? Of course, I am. Practically everybody is. This is not of any importance. Of course, I am for peaceful coexistence of cultures. But I have two key points to add.

43:39First, this peaceful coexistence never means, let's say, I am a Muslim, you are a British, you are not, doggie. British Christian, there is a Hindu Indian there. Usually, the multicultural answer is, each group has to be free to practice, leave its specific identity with certain limits prescribed by the law. First, I don't believe in this. I think that that's the illusion of multiculturalism. It's never just the law. Our actual life, as I repeat obsessively, is made of, okay, I'm even ready to say hundreds of small, unwritten rules. How do you treat me or how do I treat you when I walk on the street?

44:44What level of critical debate is still accessible? So that's my first point. This purely legal notion of the law should just prescribe a neutral network of peaceful coexistence doesn't work. But there is another reason, maybe even more important, and at least as important as this one, which is that, you know, problems with multiculturalism emerge in the interaction between different cultures. Sorry to repeat two old examples that I like to use. Some 30 years ago, in Slovenia, a gypsy Roma, sorry, I was a racist now, Roma girl fell in love with a non-Roma guy and escaped from her home. She was in her late teens high school.

45:51Then parents wanted her back because they arranged already her marriage with another of Roma. And then, of course, feminists exploded, claiming, no, she should be protected. But then the Roma guy said something, one of the leaders of the Roma community, which is quite reasonable. He said, sorry, you can play tolerance, but for us, arranged marriages are a key component of our identity. If you take arranged marriages from us, in one, maximum two generations, we disappear. You know, he was quite right to point us that multiculturalism is not as some liberals like to claim, yeah, we like their music, we like their spicy food, and so on.

46:47the test of multiculturalism is the control of women and relations of power and here here you in some sense you have to take sides I think we in our whatever remains of these western liberal societies we have to say we have to define a set of certain rules like authority after you are of you are no longer a child and we can debate is it 16 18 years 21 year after that parents don't have the right to impose their life on you if you are a woman or a man who is gay and so on family should not exert pressure on you. Okay, they do it in any case, but really brutal pressure and so on and so on. So you see my point, the way I see, now I'll say something again horrible to annoy leftists.

48:01The way I see what we should defend as part of our Western approach is not so much specific rules, but rules of interaction which should be absolutely obligatory. And that's for me the problem with Sharia law or whatever. Okay. Do whatever you want with your daughter if she is really if she really fully agrees with it. But of course, here already there is a problem because you know, even if the girl agrees to return to her family, it's a form of pressure. So there should be higher level rules about how to coordinate interaction between different cultures where one culture has to predominate, to be very brutal.

49:07One culture. Everybody is effectively doing it. Go to an Arab country, go to a Chinese country, go to India and so on. They say, yes, you can be a Christian or whatever, but there are certain basic rules and so on and so on. I think we have the right to do the same thing. And I think this will even clarify the situation. I think that even for Muslims or whoever, it will make things easier if you clearly define the rules. So again, back to Curtis Yarvin, I think the first step to do today, if you really want to be a leftist, is to seriously admit that what the order we lead in is not a democracy.

50:10in the basic sense that the one who really decides how to organize social life are the people. No, yes, you have the moment of vote and so on, but this is to such an extent manipulated, controlled by the media and so on that we live in an oligarchy. And I think that when you talk about, again, the people should awaken, I never forget that this was the big Nazi motto. Erwache, Deutschland Erwache. You know, awakening is, in this sense, a dangerous thing, because it doesn't mean awakening into reality, which is complex, confused. It means awakening it into a certain very narrow ideological vision.

51:08The last thing along these lines, when I mentioned Trump, you know what I find? But I don't mean it in a cynical way interesting. You remember the speech Trump and, how do you pronounce his name, Hexet, your, what is now, Secretary of War, no longer defense, I don't know. First, Hexet sent something in his one-hour speech, which was very interesting for me, because the way I perceive it is it was the exact opposite of what he wanted to say. He wanted to say enough of this ideological confusion, woke tolerance, and so on. Soldiers should be real, masculine, strong soldiers, and so on and so on.

52:06We know the story. You know what? I wonder if you would agree. You know what I find ridiculous here? But sorry, does the guy know where he lives? Look at Ukraine war. the big things are drones and rockets they're usually operated by nerds or even women way behind the front who are definitely not this masculine ideal and so on no exit is a nostalgic romantic he is not in touch with what how military how a modern army functions the second thing which worries me even more. And I, again, I don't know enough the situation. I just noticed something. First, you know the basic Trumpian operation. The formula was provided by Steve Manon half a year ago.

53:09Now even Hex said and Trump repeated that the United States is now in a practically civil war state and that the enemy within, which then we can debate how they define it. Usually it's a coalition of immigrants, feminists and big corporations. No, that they are the true enemy. I find this very weird and in some sense interesting. You know in what sense? Usually the formula of fascism is let's define an external enemy so that we can fight it in a war to guarantee or to fortify, to establish inner peace and unity. For example, although some friends in Iran claim I'm wrong, but my reading is that Iran got involved in anti-Israel activity because Masa Amini, the Kurdish girl who was killed, it was a mega inner tension and they needed an external enemy to pacify the inner situation and other examples, blah, blah.

54:28But, and this is also incidentally the usual formula of Marxism, no? We, to account for antisemitism or usually other forms of racism, when you have an inner antagonism, class struggle, race struggle, you need an external enemy to use this as a pretext to stabilize the situation. but my god i laughed so much you know that trump is now doing almost almost not quite the opposite he's acting like a weird marxist he in in foreign politics he now plays a big peacemaker you know maybe i don't know what will happen i know all the madness now even gaza and blah blah blah You know, he's boasting, in my 80 days or how much I stopped seven wars.

55:33I always like these numbers. Seven is a big magical number. You know, when you have something big, it's always, don't ask me why, number seven. But he says, the war we have is inside, you know, so it's almost the opposite. No, outside peace within the United States, a war. Okay, there are many things to say with this, because his peacemaking usually involves threats of total destruction, bombing, other countries. But nonetheless, the idea is, with poor, brutal, pragmatic calculation, peace can be maintained around the world. But here in the USA, we need, we are in a war. Why is this important?

56:24Because, and I would like to hear you, do you know more than me? What I find ominous in this quantico, it was a quantico, these two speeches, is that it's clear the game Trump is playing. He de facto wants to abolish, limit democracy so that he, in a good old totalitarian way, he translates or transposes political struggles into legal military struggles. Like, he doesn't say who is the California guy, Gavin Newsom or whoever. Or it shocked me, even the ex-boss of FBI, no, is now under arrest or will be. Yeah, yeah. So he does say I don't agree with their political orientation and so on. No, he formulates it as legally unacceptable and even something to be tricked, controlled in a military way.

57:36Okay, but here comes my total madness. You will not agree with it, but I like crazy ideas. And I mean it seriously. I'm here more and more convinced that our societies are so dismembered, chaotic, and so on, that the army could play a crucial, big, positive role. I remember, I'm not dreaming, wait till I finish, not too much time. Do you remember when Trump lost elections? When was this? In 2020, I think, no? Or end of 2019? You remember that he was at some point calling for, even for, in an ambiguous way, but basically he was soliciting people to protest violent rebellion and so on and so on.

58:38contesting the legitimacy of elections. Even now, his stance is that Biden was not a legitimate president. Okay. Do you remember, this was for me a very important moment, that the, I don't know which body, but top, top headquarters of your army, of United States army, gave a statement that the army will not tolerate the undermining of the constitutional legitimate order. Basically, they said, if Trumpian rebellion will go too far, we will intervene. Now, I'm not saying that the army was simply democratic. No, they took seriously with all the limitations. I know how ideological the army is, but within the US, they, it seems to me, they take seriously this idea of the army, this idea of we must guarantee the new policy.

59:55We must remain radically neutral. Our role is not to participate in political struggles, but to protect the public order and rules of the prescriber, the constitution, and so on and so on. Now, you know what was, and it was not only my dream at that point, and maybe now we are approaching the situation that, isn't this a beautiful dream for me as a leftist, that maybe you in the US will be in a situation where if Trump goes too far on and on, that only not directly America is a rich multifaceted country, but some sort of military coup can save America from Trump, from Trump dictatorship. You know, then at certain point, the army will say, As it already said, sorry, there is a limit.

1:01:00And this is how I read this terrifying speech. Because, do you agree with me? Please tell me if I'm getting something wrong. But I remember how, till now, it looked that the direct militarization mobilized by Trump, Because in legal sphere, he's already doing purges that I think if Stalin in his grave is informed by it, he has permanent orgasms. You know what he's doing? Arresting, firing people. It's the radical purge, the best Stalinist purge. Nobody did such a purge. Even after Stalin's death in the Soviet Union, you couldn't do any longer. But in a quantical speech, it looked as if Trump got it that the way he tried to militarize his power till now will not be sufficient.

1:02:10sufficient. Isn't it that now he decided that he will send National Guard to Chicago and so on, maybe other cities? So the idea is this one. Leave the army alone and just constitute your small private army, National Guard, private in the sense that Trump is now building units of National Guard, which are simply under his personal control. He can say, you go here, you go there, and so on, and so on. But that Quantico speech, that's the ominous part, makes it clear for me that Trump wants more. Isn't the point of that speech? one big direct politicization of the army itself. Here I put my hopes in the army.

1:03:11It was a very weird event. Hundreds of generals, top brass, were called from all around the world. They were just sitting there, not even applauding, if I heard it correctly. No reaction. It was not a typical Trumpian speech where, you know, he makes obscene jokes, people laugh and so on. No, it was his mega attempt to politicize the army. And here, as a leftist, don't laugh at me, I'm on the side of the army. Because I think, and I follow here my good friend Marxist, Fred Jameson, who wrote a wonderful text, American Utopia, where he thinks that in our democracy in decay, the army, precisely insofar as it remains a relatively neutral bureaucratic apparatus, can play a positive role.

1:04:14That is the crazy, crazy situation we are in today. So I see this quantico speech as don't laugh as a sign of panic, if you even want. You can say, oh, Trump wants total control. Yes, but because he discovered that National Guard alone will not do it, that he should politicize directly the army. And I think I trust much more the army then the confused politics look at democrats with this shutdown chuck schumer has one line others have other line and so on and so on army will in this set united states the greatest democracy you have to count on the army to play this role so we really as the chinese say allegedly say, you know, this Chinese saying, if you really hate someone, you say, may you live in interesting times, because interesting times are times of trouble.

1:05:21Although there is another interesting thing here. All my Chinese friends, I asked them, is this really a Chinese saying? And they say, nobody knows it. So this is again, European projection into China to know. I really think that, again, I'm back In U.S., direct Trumpian militarization or mobilization of the army itself will not succeed. Maybe the army is that ultimate barrier that will prevent Trump from going too far. I talked enough. I lived up to my saying, you ask me one question and you get one hour interview. So please go on.

1:06:35July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like, all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot. And turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Well, one of the sort of frightening consequences that I hadn't even realized happened after the speeches by Hegseth and Trump was, and you told me this a few days, was that it resulted in Russia leaving this international treaty on torture conventions.

1:07:34Yeah, but again, here I come to my old motive, I repeated it so much, of the fact that we are entering a shameless society, that oppressive regimes are doing it openly. Look, I have absolutely no illusion that practically all the states are doing torture, you know. I'm not dreaming. But I think that we should not follow the logic of some leftists. It's even better if they admit it. We at least know how they are. No. If you are openly shameless, it's an ethical catastrophe. Because you are then, we are exactly in the situation that I referred to of the beginning of Plato's Republic. You argue against torture and they don't listen to you.

1:08:30Now we can torture. Remember that Trump also said this. You remember already, I think even before he was elected the first time, they asked him about, how was that called, that soft torture, soft waterboarding, how was that called? Waterboarding. Yeah. And they asked him, what about this? He said, no, this is nothing, much more, much worse. and so on. And we are here. Everybody knows they are doing it. Israel openly admitting, openly on TV, they are doing it. And now Russia, we know what they were doing. I mean, there is vast documentation of, I always like this horrible thing, how should I call it?

1:09:19Poetic aspect, you know of torture you know you the usual torture with electricity no and this uh the how do you call it electro shocks that with electricity they torture you know and the usual painful thing is of course they connect electricity with your to your balls testicles if you are a men, no? And you know how they called this, ironically? They all have a jargon. A phone call with Putin. There was, let's give this guy a phone call with Putin, you know. They were doing it so systematically and so on, not to mention stealing children and so on. The horror is really the lack of shame. I'm here very much a traditional moralist.

1:10:14I developed already in my last books this point, how Jacques Lacan was right when after 68, he warned the students. He said, you lack shame. You act in a shameless way. In this way, you will get a new master who will be even more shameless. And he was right. Like half a century in advance, he saw this possibility of a new obscene master who is totally shameless. That's the new world. That's the reality of what Putin means when he says one state shouldn't impose on others its values. You know that each state should be allowed to live according to its own cultural tradition and so on and so on. I think we should radically reject this.

1:11:18Not in the sense that a superpower like United States should have the right to say others. But I think we are part of a struggle, a global struggle, which goes all within each country. I believe in our feminist struggle connected with Russian, with Chinese, with African feminist struggle or LGBT or whatever. I believe in forms of international solidarity. And what is happening today is precisely excluding this. Which is why, if you ask me, I am now even more pessimist than usual. We have United States who is now enjoying this role of global superpower. Okay, but much more important is what is happening with Russia, China, incidentally, now China made it open.

1:12:23You know, the saddest document that I read a couple of months ago was in Geneva even, or somewhere in Western Europe, at some meeting, Chinese foreign minister said officially that it's in China's interest that the Ukrainian war goes on. Russia shouldn't lose Because if Ukrainian war ends, then Trump will have more power to focus on China. And some undersecretary elaborated this even further. You see, this is what I call brutal, pragmatic politics. It doesn't enter into their view who is closer to justice, who was the aggressor and so on. No, you have a war and you just think how it affects me and so on.

1:13:25So what I'm saying is that the way the result of Trumpian politics will be. Incidentally, in Europe, another catastrophe took place. Did you read that in Czech elections, pro-Trumpian and pro-Putin, basically, guy won? So we have now this part of Central Europe, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, all pro-Putin and pro-Trump. I think that this BRICS axis will, with all the problems it has, will establish itself as economic superpower that will seriously limit the influence of the United States. United States is already in trouble. Look what they are doing now in Argentina. Millet is in big trouble.

1:14:35They immediately will give him 20 billions and so on, more support. I think that the result of Trumpian politics and especially the result of how, together with Putin, both Putin and Trump hate United Europe, Europe is now getting irrelevant, it will be that we will have a very limited American bloc, United States, parts of Europe, and so on, maybe here and there, South Korea, Japan, but the majority of the world will be outside the scope. And with all my critique of United States, I don't like this world because it will be this totally pragmatic world of unprincipled tolerance towards worst forms of crime.

1:15:28Like Taliban, okay, legitimate government, they can do what they want. Myanmar, ex-Burma, and so on and so on. It will be just the peaceful coexistence of horrors. I'm really a pessimist because the world is divided into two blocks, not even two blocks. You have bricks where all others stand, those who don't want to be under direct Trump domination, and you have Trumpian sphere of influence. But I think in the long term, Trump will be losing because of his very success. He succeeded in sabotaging European unity. And the result will be that European support, if some of European states will still support Trump, will not really matter.

1:16:26And I think the, you know, I quoted Lenin before, where he said, History will never forgive us that we missed this chance, no? I think a great mistake was that, with this Trumpian offensive, and also with Gaza, Israel, and so on. Not to turn anti-Semitic, but Europe should play a more autonomous role. Europe is objectively a superpower. That's why both Trump and Putin don't want a united Europe. And Europe has lost here. So I am deeply depressed. You know what? The other thing that depresses me is, did you notice how I noticed another thing when I read the result of the Czech elections? Babish or what, that billionaire pro Putin won.

1:17:27but the opposition of some centrist liberals and so on and so on there is just a little bit of a marginal left the same as in the UK and so on the left is disappearing I find this danglerous not because I still believe that this left could do anything but the world in which the choice is between new populism, Trumpian populism, and old liberal democracy is a world where Trumpians can win. There is a serious chance in Europe that Le Pen will win in France, Farage in the UK, Alternative for Germany, Meloni already won, and so on, and so on. So where are we? I think that the left should again start with serious self-criticism.

1:18:41The left is simply in Europe no longer taken as a serious political agent. You have marginal groups here and there, but they are not an agent. Even in the United States, the latest thing I heard is that black Muslim guy who wants to be the mayor of New York, Mamdami. Correct me with his name. Who is the... Mamdami? Yeah. Isn't he also now he caught into some conflicts? even there I don't think it will work. So again, let's openly confront the deep shit we are in. You know about, again, the same aspect of shamelessness about Gaza, this flotilla of ships. Don't you agree what I would have done if I were Israel?

1:19:43and I will be as open as possible. If, okay, you stop the flotilla, what would this have costed them? You check all the boats, if there are any arms in them, you take them and, okay, why not, although I am strictly opposed to it, you look if there is someone on the boat whom you have on your list as a terrorist, real terrorist. fundamentalist Muslim. If not, you said, okay, go there. It's a war zone, but it's your responsibility if you will be killed there. Why? This is for me the enigma. Why didn't they do simply this? Why, as it looks now, they even modestly beaten, a little bit tortured Greta Thunberg, and so on and so on.

1:20:38Why? They did it not secretly. Being queer, the nightmare, their minister of security, again visited the prisoners and shouted at them. It's, you know, this open shamelessness is extremely dangerous, I think. But please ask me something. Well, I've done a lot of interviews about AI lately. And I know that at the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned that we should be wary of trying to attribute really tidy, neat narratives to what's really these contingencies in history. But one of the narratives that I've been worried about is not necessarily that AI itself is going to kill us all, even though that's also a worry.

1:21:29But the worry that it's not just capitalist forces, for instance, that are promoting the development of AI. It's that AI will be used as a tool of suppression, whether through surveillance or policing or military efforts. And I am curious about how you think of AI. First, why are you talking about, I'm afraid that it will be? Isn't it that it already is as far as we know? I know. I'm not saying other countries are necessarily better. I know China is doing this to an incredible level. I know Israel is doing this. I spoke with somebody with links to Shin Bet years ago, and he said, we listen to all from conversations, not selected, all, all, all, everything.

1:22:30Now it's even more. So, and I totally agree with you that this old Marxist approach, artificial intelligence is neutral, it depends which social forces will predominate, so the struggle is still basically the anti-capitalist struggle. I don't think this. I tend to agree with, not all the way through, but mainly with Yuval Harari, who said that we should no longer look at artificial intelligence as the prolongation, the extension of our arms, tools, and so on. that it is more and more acting autonomously. And there are clear signs, not that it is thinking like human being, but there are intentions.

1:23:33You must know. Maybe there are more. I know two stories. One is that an AI machine was interacting with an agent. It was part of a test, but the machine didn't know it. And they informed the machine that it will be soon cut off, suspended. But they gave to this machine access to the email of the agent who was working with this machine. And you know what the machine did? It blackmailed. You didn't read about it. I've heard a lot of similar stories. but yeah yeah the idea it blackmailed it says first it was more gently i still want to be active then it says if you disconnect me in that case i will i plan it already now i will put on the web all the details about your love affair that you have and so on and so on and it goes even further A couple of days ago, I read a wonderful detail of how they were testing a machine, soliciting it to make some political statement.

1:24:51And, you know, the machine answered, I think this is not a serious question. You are just testing me, you know. So, I think first, that's my dogma, the machine will compel us to inquire into, but which dimension of being human is threatened? what does being human mean when people claim we will no longer be fully humans okay what defines being human to this i will not go into this now it's a long complex philosophical story my position is here more skeptical but at the same time more ominous. I think that why do we always propose human intelligence, emotions, and so on, intentional acting, the way we understand it, as a model of how machines are.

1:26:08Like, can they already do this? You know? No. My idea is they probably will not able to do this but what if I'm in contact with some researchers here who are all telling me the same thing what if machines will develop its own way of what we would refer to as spirituality intelligence which will not be simple mechanical intelligence but will also not be something that is like human spirit, human intelligence. It will be an intelligence of its own. Maybe it already exists and we are not aware of it. You know which science fiction story? Did you see the movie? I still prefer the old David Lynch movie to the new version.

1:27:09Did you see Dune? which one all also david lynch no the new ones i think i tried to watch the old ones but the effects were too bad for me really no because i like you but you know what's the basic premise of that story that it's very pessimist to you that at a certain point humanity decides to disconnect, ruin all thinking machines. And then you are in that society, which is basically, let's face it, Islamic society. They use words like jihad and so on all the time. No. So, so I agree with you that this simple formula of let's get rid of capitalism and then artificial intelligence will be good.

1:28:02No, we are. What worries me more is that it's not, it is in some sense, it is already decided. It is already happening. So I would say before we go into these plans, what to do. Let's fully analyze what is already happening and I agree with those analysts who claim that this the problem is not only that machines know what we are doing and so on. The problem is that how they can manipulate us by suggesting the choices. We know the story and so on. You know, so I think that the only immediate answer that comes to me is I don't have a simple big solution. Render it public as much as possible. I, of course, at the level of security, at the level of healthcare and so on, machines can do great things.

1:29:21But we should be, by we, I mean simply the public. We should be all the time informed in detail. How are we controlled? What is happening? And so on. do you have a more intelligent answer here? I don't. I mean, that seems like a good answer but totally unreasonable if one of the strengths of AI for people who want to use it maliciously is that we don't know about it. And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the matchday spread. He's reaching for the Buffalo wing. Perfect. Hang on, what's this? Oh, he's going for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination.

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1:30:52Tax extra. Yeah, but that's why I still believe that here capitalism enters. It's in the interest of corporations not to render public open the way we are controlled. Here maybe something can be done. And I think it's not totally utopian. Here, I think, I believe in hackers and so on, people who are ready to render it public. We need Julian Assange of Artificial Intelligence. And he was active here. You know, his most important work is not Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, I mean, all the documents. No, his key work is, didn't he publish a book on Google? where he demonstrated how tightly Google is connected with the American state security apparatus.

1:31:58That's the problem for me, you know. But I would still prefer to be very careful with this conclusion that it has intention, even if artificial intelligence can do things like what I noted, cheat, blackmail us, it can still be explained as simple machinic thinking. With the interest drive, I don't know how to define the status of this drive, with the idea of self-preservation, the idea that a program wants to reproduce itself. And it's still machining, because remember that the enormous amount of documents that IE machines have access to, of course, it's easy for them to get to the idea of blackmail and so on.

1:33:11I think that, you know what would be for me a problem? In a new text that I'm writing on this topic, I go into this. Look, machine can adopt, because it's that the limit of machine is precisely the logic of survival, self-reproduction.

1:33:37in other words it's one to multiply to go on functioning but i think what characterizes human spirituality is precisely what freud called death drive what hegel called negativity this suicidal gesture of there are things for which I'm ready to lose my life. Okay, machine can say, let's say we are a group of soldiers. A machine, we are like a machine. A machine can easily say, okay, you, by you I mean me, let's sacrifice him. And we will survive. Can a machine say, I know it sounds pathetic, but something like, I would prefer that we all die than to lose our freedom. Sorry for this pathetic thing.

1:34:40Can a machine do this? Because you really die. If you accept this logic, it's no longer the logic of survival and reproduction. You are ready to really put at risk everything. That would interest me. And I'm always asking, I don't get a clear answer. I'm always asking my friends who do this research, can a machine do this? Will it not? All that machine now is still directed towards domination, self-reproduction, control, and so on, and so on. I have problems here. And you know what shocks me? I think that even specialists, it's a little bit like quantum physics, even specialists have very diverging opinions here.

1:35:37Some things, the game is already over, we will lose. Some things, there are more, the more, there are simple solutions, like the absolutely crazy idea. I forgot which name, one of the big names of AI proposed is that we are lost. We will be dominated by AI. So as far as we still control it, we should take great care, because we still can program it up to a pole, control it, to install into it an algorithm which will make it love and care for us human beings. that... But this is, in a way, a horrible prospect. It's like the machine will become a kind of a benevolent mother, we hope, benevolent, totally controlling us.

1:36:37It still leaves open the idea controlling us in what sense? To make us happy. What is happiness? What if the machine judges in a way that it keeps us half-drucked? in a kind of pseudo-orgasmic, blissful state, that that's okay. Here, I took seriously, of course you saw it, Matrix 1 first. You know, which is for me the crucial point there, how that guy who is the only interesting figure, the guy who is in this world the direct agent of the machine. Smith. Yeah. Smith says at some point a crucial thing, which that's the correct analogy, if you remember. He says that in the first version, machine tried to create for people this artificial environment.

1:37:39They live a much happier world, full of pleasures and so on. But then it discovered that people are not ready to live in this world, that they were much more unhappy. Yeah, they rejected it.

1:38:18in 19th century. We want to create an organism-force power stronger than us. We are literally obsessed by this. So we just got what we were dreaming about it. Here is my other paranoiac suspicions that at some level don't underestimate the perversity of the human mind. At some level, maybe we are caught in this matriarchal dream. Wouldn't it be nice to live like in a matrix protected by a benevolent mother mega machine? Things are open here. I don't have simple solutions. Are you writing a book on this? A book, part of which will be this. It will be about mysticism, cognitivism, theories of mind.

1:39:20For example, I read a book, you know, I always look around. I'm by far not limited to, sorry, to limited to just Lacanian stuff. Lacanian stuff is often boring. I think I already mentioned with the name Anil Seth. Yeah. The British cognitivist who wrote a nice book, Being You. And it's in a simple, convincing way, he explains how our everyday perception is, as he calls it, a controlled hallucination. When I look at something, it's not that I see what is out there and there elaborated. Already, what I see is overdetermined by my expectations, by my survival interests, and so on and so on. My only critique of him is that, again, as I already said, self-survival is not the ultimate horizon of human experience.

1:40:28There is death drive. This is what his model doesn't account for. But nonetheless, it's a wonderful vision, which really, again, convincingly shows at this everyday level, you look out what you notice and so on. No, you don't just see things the way they are out there. It's overdetermined by your expectation, by your worries, and so on and so on. And it's this, such things interest me. You know why? Because I think they are not subjectivists. Some idiots try to draw from this the conclusion of, ah, there is no external reality. It's just how we imagine it. No, no, it's the opposite. This is true materialism because it takes into account the fact that we are not outside reality just observing it.

1:41:19Precisely because we are part of reality. We, this being part of it, influences how we perceive reality. No, no, all this interests me, but who knows what will happen. I know many people are telling me, for example, that I'm too pessimist. For example, a Palestinian guy recently wrote me, you in Europe, in the West, you are right, there is only despair for you. But for us in Palestine, we have a hope, a hope to get rid of the influence of the West and Israel, embodied for us in Israel. My answer to him is yes, but let's say by some miracle that you achieve this. Don't forget that there are at least two states in the world which achieved this.

1:42:13They are called Afghanistan and North Korea. So, you know, this is my pessimist view. You have a certain dream of liberation. Okay, let's see what happens if that liberation really happens. What will take place? What if something even worse will take place? No? Here we are. Well, Slavo, I know it's very late in Slovenia, but as always, my conversations with you are among my favorites.

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