#2190 - Peter Thiel

50:43Uh You probably could mitigate it a lot there's There's a question why the why the nuclear thing has gone so wrong It's um, especially if you if you have electric vehicles right if you you know, it's uh Um, the combustion engine is probably hard to get nuclear to work But if you um if you shift to electric vehicles you can charge them you know your Tesla cars at night um and that that would seemingly work um And there's definitely yeah, there's definitely a history of energy where it was always in the direction of you know More intense use it went from wood to coal to oil which is a more compact form of energy And in a way it takes up less of the environment and then if we move from oil to uranium that's even You know, it it's even smaller and so in sense the smaller the more dense the energy is the less of the environment It takes up and when we go back when we go from oil to natural gas which takes up more space And from natural gas to solar or wind we have to you know You have to pollute the whole environment by putting up windmills everywhere or you have to you know You know, you have to cover the whole desert with solar panels That is a good way to look at it because it is a form of pollution And so um and so there was a way there was a way that nuclear was supposed to be the uh the the energy mode of the the 21st century And then yeah, there there all these there are these historical questions.

52:12Why did it why did it get stopped? Why did we not? Why did we not go down that route the um You know that the standard explanation of why it stopped um Was that it was um there were all these dangers. We had three mile on 1979 you know Chernobyl and um In 1986 and then the Fukushima one in Japan. I think 2011 and you had these sort of you had these various accidents um My alternate theory on why uh why nuclear energy really stopped is that it um it it was Um it was sort of dystopian or even apocalyptic because it turned out that it was all um it turned out to be very dual use if you build nuclear power plants um It's it's only sort of one step away from building nuclear weapons and uh And it turned out to be a lot trickier To um to separate those two things out than it looked and I think the you know the signature moment was 1974 or 75 when India gets the nuclear bomb and i the US I believe had transferred the nuclear reactor technology to India We thought they couldn't weaponize it and then it turned out it was pretty easy to weaponize and then the And then sort of the geopolitical Problem with uh with nuclear power was you either you know Um, you need a double standard where we new we have nuclear power in the US But we don't allow other countries to have nuclear power because The US gets to keep its nuclear weapons We don't let a hundred other countries have nuclear weapons and this that's an extreme double standard probably a little bit hard to justify um or um Or you need some kind of really effective Global governance where you have a one -world government that regulates all this stuff Which doesn't sound that good either And uh and then sort of the compromise was just to um To um regulate it So much that uh, you know, maybe the nuclear plants got grandfathered in but it became too expensive to build new ones Jesus Like even China which is the country where they're building the most nuclear power plants They built way less than people expected a decade ago because um You know, they they don't trust They don't trust their own designs and so they have to copy the Over safety over protected designs from the west and the nuclear plants nuclear power costs too much money It's cheaper to do coal Wow So um, so if you know i'm not gonna get the numbers exactly right But if you look at what percent of Chinese electricity was nuclear it wasn't that high I was like maybe four or five percent in 2013 2014 and the percent hasn't gone up in 10 years because you know They maybe doubled the amount of electricity they use and maybe they doubled the nuclear But the relative percentage is still it's still a pretty small part of the mix because It's just more expensive when you have these you know over safety designed reactors There are probably ways to build small reactors That are that are way cheaper But then you still have this you still have the stool use thing You know do you create plutonium do you you know are there ways you can create a pathway to building more nuclear weapons And if there was innovation if nuclear engineering had gotten to a point where You know, let's say there wasn't through my ally and or Chernobyl didn't happen Do you think that it would have gotten to a much more efficient and Much more effective version by now?

56:02Well my my understanding is there are we have we have way we have way more efficient designs We have small you can do small reactor designs which which are you don't need this giant containment structure So it costs much less per kilowatt hour of electricity you produce so I I think we have those designs They're they're just not allowed and then but then I think the problem is That um If you were able to build them in all these countries all over the world you still have this stool use problem Right and again my alternate history of what really went wrong with nuclear power It wasn't three mile and it wasn't Chernobyl.

56:37That's the that's the official story the real story was India getting the bomb Wow that makes sense it completely makes sense Geez Louise and then this is you know, this is always you know, this is always the question about um There's always a big picture question people ask me you know You know if if I'm right about this picture of you know this slow down and tech this this sort of stagnation in many many dimensions And then there's always a question, you know, what why did this happen and um and my cop -out answer is always why questions are over determined because you know um It can be there multiple reasons and so it could be why could be we became a more feminized risk of our society could be that The education system were Well less well could be that we were just out of ideas the easy ideas have been found the hard ideas The cupboard natures covered was bear the low hanging fruit had been picked so that it can be over determined But I think I think one dimension That's not to be underrated for the science and tech stagnation was that um An awful lot of science and technology had this dystopian or apocalyptic Dimension and and probably what happened at you know loss all of most in 1945 and then uh with with the thermonuclear weapons in the early 50s um It took a while for to really seep in but it had this sort of delayed effect where You know, maybe Maybe a stagnant world in which the physicists don't get to do anything and they have to put her around with d .i.

58:19And um you're not you know um But uh you don't build weapons that blow up the world anymore You know is that a is that a feature or bug and so the stagnation was sort of was sort of like this This response and so it sucks that we've lived in this world for 50 years where a lot of stuff Has been inert But um if we had a world that was still accelerating on all these dimensions with supersonic and hypersonic planes and hypersonic weapons And you know modular nuclear reactors maybe we wouldn't be sitting here in the whole world would have already blown up And so we're in that We're in the stagnant path of the multiverse because it had it had this partially protective thing even though in all these other ways I feel it's it's deeply deranged our society That's a very interesting perspective and it makes a lot of sense It really does and particularly the dual use thing with nuclear power and especially distributing that to other countries When you talk about the stagnation in this country like I don't know How much you follow this whole uap nonsense.

59:23I know we met post that guy's name at your place The uh the guy who did charity to the gods. Oh a Fundantic and yes, yeah, yeah, you didn't what you thought he was too crazy You like Hancock, but you don't like fondant again. I didn't think he's too crazy He just willfully in my opinion ignores Evidence that would show that some of the things that he's saying have already been solved and I think his His hypothesis is all Related to this concept that we have been visited and that that's how all these things were built and that this technology was brought here from another world And I think he's very ideologically locked into these ideas And I think a much more compelling idea is that there were very advanced cultures for some reason 10 ,000 years ago Whatever it was whatever the year was with a they built some of the Insane structures.

1:00:24It's a 45 100 years ago. They roughly think the pyramids were built like what whatever the fuck was going on there I think those were human beings. I think those were human beings in that place in that time And I think they had some sort of very sophisticated technology that was lost and things can get lost Things can get lost in cataclysm's things can get lost in They can get lost in disease and famine and all there's all sorts of war all sorts of reasons the burning of the library of Alexandria There's all sorts of ways that technology gets lost forever and you can have today Someone living in Los Angeles in the most sophisticated high -tech society the world is ever known Well, you still have people that live in the Amazon that live in the same way that they have lived for thousands of years So those things can happen in the same planet at the same time And I think while the rest of the world was Essentially operating at a much lower vibration.

1:01:22There were people in Egypt. They were doing some extraordinary things I don't know how they got the information. Maybe they did get it from visitors Maybe they did but there's no real compelling evidence that they did I think there's much more compelling evidence that a cataclysm happened When you look at the younger dry ice impact theory. It's all entirely based on science It's entirely based on core samples and radium content and And also massive changes in the environment over a very short period of time particularly the melting in the ice caps in North America and Just impact craters all around the world that we know something happened roughly 11 ,000 years ago And probably again 10 ,000 years ago.

1:02:05I think it's a regular occurrence on this planet that things go sideways And there's massive natural disasters and I think that it's Yeah, there's the there's the bronjage civilization collapse somewhere in the mid -twelfth century. You see and and probably the You know in some ways the the one in which we had the best history is the fall of the Roman Empire Which was obviously sure or culmination of the classical world and It somehow it somehow extreme extreme land rebels. It might yeah, I think I think my my view on it is probably somewhere between yours and the The vandanican no not vandanican.

1:02:47I'm more on the more on the more on the problem The other side. Let me let me let me try to define why this Why this is so important today this not just of antiquarian interest and the reason it matters today Is because the alternative you know if if if you say civilization has seen great rises and falls it's gone through these great cycles um, you know, maybe the bronze age civilizations were very advanced but someone came up with iron weapons So there's just one dimension where they progressed, but then everything else they could destroy and so uh or You know the fall of the Roman Empire was again this you know pretty cataclysmic thing where's there there were diseases and you know And then there were political things that unraveled but Somehow, you know, it was it was a massive regression for you know four five six hundred years into the into the dark ages and um the um the the sort of naive the progressive use things always just got monotonically better and there's sort of this revisionist purely progressive history where even the Roman Empire didn't decline and even you know What one one one sort of stupid way to quantify this stuff is With pure demographics and so it's the question how many people lived in the past and um And the rises and falls of civilization stories There were more people who lived in the Roman Empire because it was more advanced You could support a larger population and then the population declined you know city of Rome Maybe had a million people at its peak and then by you know, I don't know six hundred fifty AD it's maybe it's down to 10 ,000 people or less it's you have this complete collapse in population and then um and then the the sort of alternate Purely progressive view is the population has always just been monotonically increasing because it's a measure of how in some sense things and aggregate have have always been getting better So I am I am definitely on your side that population had great rises and falls Civilizations had great rises and falls um And so that part of it I I agree with you Or even you know some variant of what Hancock or Fondanican say the The place where I would say I think things are different is I don't think I don't think um and And therefore it seems possible something had happened to our civilization That's that's always the upshot of it if if it had been Monotonically always progressing then there's nothing we should worry about nothing can possibly go wrong and then certainly certainly the thing um The the the sort of alternate Hancock Fondanican um Joe Rogan history of the world Tells us is that uh we shouldn't take our civilization for granted there's a there's things that can go really Hey, why I agree with that the the one place where I I differ is I think I do think our civilization day is on some dimensions way more advanced than any of these past civilizations were I don't think any of them had nuclear weapons.

1:06:13I don't think any of them had um you know Spaceships um Or or or anything like that and uh and so the failure mode Is likely to be be be somewhat different from from these these past ones Yeah, that makes sense um I think uh technology progressed in a different direction That's what I think I think structural technology building technology at somehow or another achieved levels of competence that's not available today When you look at the construction of the great pyramid of geese there's two million three hundred thousand stones in it They're the whole thing points to do north -south east and west.

1:06:57It's an incredible achievement the the stones Some of them were moved from a quarry that was five hundred miles away through the mountains They have no idea how they did it massive stones the ones inside the king's chamber But they're like the biggest ones are like 80 tons It's crazy the whole thing's crazy like how did they do that like whatever they did they did without machines supposedly They did without um the the use of uh the combustion engine They didn't have electricity and yet they were able to do something that stands the test of time not just so you could look at it You know like you can go to the acropolis And see the path and on it's gorgeous.

1:07:32It's it's amazing. It's incredible But I can understand how people could have built it The pyramids is one of those things you just look at you go what the fuck was going on here? What was going on here and none of these people are still around you have this Strange culture now that's entirely based around you know you have Cairo and An enormous population of visitors right which is a lot of it people just going to stare at these ancient relics What what was going on that those people were so much more advanced than anyone anywhere else in the world? Yeah, I would I'm not trying to anchor on the technological part But I think the the piece that is very hard for us to comprehend is what motivated them culturally Well, how did they do it physically?

1:08:15What why did they do it? Why why were you motive? So why but also how how is a big one? Because that it's really difficult to solve it There's no traditional conventional Explanations for the construction the movement of the stones the amount of time that it would take and if you move 10 stones a day I believe it takes six hundred sixty four years to make one of those pyramids So how many people were involved how long did it take how did they get them there how did they figure out how to do it? How come the shittier pyramids seem to be dated later? Like what what was going on in that particular period of time where they figured out how to do something so extraordinary That even today Four thousand five hundred years later we stare at it and we go I don't know I don't know what the fuck they did.

1:08:58I haven't studied it carefully enough I'll I'll trust you that it's very hard. I think the I think the I would say the the real mystery is Why were they motivated and it's because you can't live in a pyramid It's just right. It's it was just the afterlife of the Pharaoh. There's some debate about that Christopher Dunn is an engineer who believes that it was some sort of a power plant He's got this very bizarre theory that there was a chamber that exists if you can see the structure of the pyramid the inside of it There's a chamber that's subterranean and he believes the subterranean chamber was pounding on the surface of the of the earth And of the walls of the thing creating this very specific vibration That shafts that came down into the Queen's chamber these shafts They were poor chemicals into these shafts and then there was limestone at the end of it.

1:09:46This is all his theory not mine The end of it there was this limestone which is permeable right? So the limestone which is porous these gases come through and creates this hydrogen that's inside of this chamber Then there these shafts inside the King's chamber that are They're getting energy from space, you know gamma rays and all the shit from space and then it's going through these chambers Which are very specifically designed to target this these gases and put them into this chamber where they were Interact with this energy and he believes it's enough to create electricity Man my it's a crazy theory but I'm always I'm always too too fast to debunk all these things but Like my just coming back to our earlier conversation It's it's sound it It must have been a crazy power plant to have a containment structure much bigger than a nuclear reactor Yeah, well it's ridiculous But it's also a different kind of technology right if nuclear technology was completely not on the table They didn't understand atoms at all But they did understand that there's rays that come from space and that you could somehow harness the energy of these things with specific gases and through some method Convert that into some form of electricity But it if it takes so much power to put all these rocks on the pyramid you have to always look at how efficient the power plant is so So can't just be some it has to be like the the craziest Reaction ever to justify such a big containment structure because even nuclear power plants don't work economically They don't work it well.

1:11:19They didn't do a lot of them You know, they only did this one in Giza and then there was other pyramids that he thinks had different functions that were smaller But the whole purpose of it is or the whole point of it is we we don't know what the fuck it is We don't know why they did it We have a group of new archaeologists that are looking at it from a completely different theory They're not looking at it like it's a tomb the established archaeologists have insisted that this is a tomb for the Pharaoh The newer archaeologist established archaeologists are looking at it and considering whether or not there was some other uses for this thing And one of them is the concept of the paropra I'm always I don't know if this is an alternate History theory, but I'm always into the James Frazier golden bow René Gerard violence sacred History where um, you know you have always this question about um the origins of monarchy and kingship and um the sort of Gerard Frazier intuition is um That it's something like um It is something like If um if every king is a kind of living god Then we have to also believe the opposite that maybe every god is a dead or murdered king and that uh that somehow Societies were organized around scapegoats the scapegoats were um You know, there were sort of a crisis in the archaic community it blamed on a scapegoat the scapegoat was attributed all these powers And then at some point the scapegoat before he gets executed figures out a way to postpone his execution and turn the power into something real And so there's sort of this this very um weird adjacency between monarch the monarch and the scapegoat and uh and then you know, I don't know the sort of riff on the Would be that the first pyramid did not need to be invented.

1:13:24It was just the stones that were thrown on a victim And then it's somehow and that that's the original The original forms that were thrown on a victim a community stones a victim to death Tribe runs after a victim you stone them to death you throw stones on the victim. That's how you create the first tomb Hmm and then um and then as it gets more complicated you created tomb that's two million stones and and you get a you get a pharaoh You get a pharaoh who figures out a way to postpone his own execution or something like this I think there's um I'm gonna blank on the name of this ritual But I believe in old in in the old Egyptian kingdoms which were sort of around the time of the great pyramids or even before um that it was something like um in the 30th year of the reign of the pharaoh the pharaoh gets transformed into a living god and um and then um this perhaps dates to a time where um in the 30th year of the pharaoh's reign the pharaoh would get richly sacrificed or or killed And you have you know you have all these societies where the kings lived were allowed to rule for in a lot of time where you you know you you become king and you you draw the number of pebbles out of a base and that corresponds to how many years was this jamin?

1:14:50the said festival Hebs said festival of tales and ancient Egyptian ceremony the celebrate the continued rule of pharaoh The name was taken from the name of the Egyptian wolf god one of whom's name was whip Yeah, this is what I'm talking about where said the less formal feast name the feast of the tale is derived Yeah, next paragraph's the one to start okay This no that one that one right there the the ancient festival might perhaps have been instituted To replace a ritual of murdering a pharaoh who was unable to continue to rule effectively because of age or condition interesting Interesting so you can't kill them now and then eventually said festivals were jubilee several of you have for a word had the thrown for 30 years Mm and then every three to four years after that So when it becomes unthinkable to kill the pharaoh the pharaoh gets turned into a living god Before that the pharaoh gets murdered and then gets worshipped as a dead pharaoh or Distant god that's interesting, but it still doesn't solve the engineering puzzle the engineering puzzles the biggest one How do they do that?

1:15:51Well the one I the one I'm focusing on is the motivational puzzle Yeah, why didn't you have all the motivation in the world if you want to build a structure that's insane to build today And you're doing it 4 ,000 five hundred years ago. We're dealing with a massive puzzle I think I think I think the motivational parts of the harder one to solve if you if you can figure out the motivation You'll you'll figure out a way to organize the whole society and if you can figure out if you get the whole society working on it You can probably do it, but don't you think that his grasp on of power was in peril in the first place Which is why they decided to come up with this idea of turning them into a living god?

1:16:27So did to have the amount of resources in power and then the engineering and then the understanding of Whatever Methods they used to shape and move these things well. This is always the this is always the anthropological Debate between Voltaire the Enlightenment thinker of the 18th century and Durkheim the 19th century anthropologist and Voltaire believes that religion originates as a Conspiracy of the priests to maintain power and so politics comes first the politicians invent religion um, and then Durkheim says the causations the other way around that somehow religion came first and then politics Somehow came out of it.

1:17:14Of course, you know once the politics comes out of it um, you know the the priests the religious authorities have political power they figure out ways to manipulate it things like this but uh, but I find You know, I find the Durkheim story far more plausible than the Voltaire when I think the religious categories are our primary and the the political categories are our secondary So you think the religious the religion came first But what about if we emanated from tribal societies tribal societies have always had leaders when you have leaders You can have descent you're gonna have challenges you're gonna have politic you have people negotiating to try to maintain power Keep power keep everything organized.

1:17:55That's the origin of politics correct You know, I I think that's a that's a white washed enlightenment rationalist description of the origin of politics I think the origin of politics. I think it's far more vile than that. You know what you're what you're giving me is a It's very vile you the control and power and maintaining power involved murder and sabotage well that okay That's more like it. Yeah, but what you would what what what you gave me a minute to go sounds more like a social contract In which people sit down negotiate and have you know a nice legal chit chat to drop the social contract That is a complete fiction.

1:18:32Yeah, I don't think that I think that there was probably Various levels of civility that were achieved when agriculture and when establishments were Constructed that were near resources where they didn't have to worry as much about food and water and things on those lines Things probably got a little bit more civil But I think that the origins of it are like the origins of all human conflict. It's filled with murder Well, I think at the beginning was madness and murder. Yeah madness and murder and and I don't know I don't I don't know if it got I don't know if it got that much more Rational I don't know if it's that much more rational today Well, so in some ways it's not right and this is again back to the yeah, you know the progressive conception are we Really have we really progressed How much have we really progressed from from that but uh, but yeah, my my uh my version would be that it was you know it was much more um It was organized around you know acts of uh mass violence like maybe maybe you externalize it onto you know a mastodon or hunting some big animal or something like this But uh, but the real problem of violence You know, it wasn't external.

1:19:48It was mostly internal. It was it was violence with people who are near you proximate to you It wasn't even natural cladoclasms or other tribes. It was it was uh, it was sort of Much more uh the internal stuff and um, it's very different. I think the the human Situation is somehow very very different from something like I don't know an ape primate hierarchy Where in an ape context you have an alpha male um, you know, he's the strongest and there's some sort of natural dominance and you don't need to have a fight to the death typically because you know Who's the strongest and you don't need to um push it all the way in a human context It's always possible for two or three guys to gang up on the alpha male.

1:20:35So uh, so it's uh It's somehow the culture is more important You know, and if they can talk to each other and you get language and then They can coordinate and they can gang up on on the leader and then you have to stop them from gang up on the leader And how do you do that? And so the there's some sort of radical Difference between a you know a human and a let's say an um pre -human world. Have you seen chimpe empire? No, chimpe empire is a fascinating documentary series on Netflix where these scientists had been embedded With this tribe of chimpanzees for decades and so because they were embedded they had very specific rules You have to maintain at least 20 yards from you and any of the chimps No food you can never have food and don't look them in the eyes And as long as you do that they don't feel your threat and they think of you as a natural part of their environment Almost like you don't exist They and they behave completely naturally Well It shows in that that sometimes it's not the largest strongest one and that some chimps form bonds with other chimps and they form coalitions and they do have some sort of politic and they do Help each other they groom each other they do specific things for each other And then one of the things that happens also They get invaded by other chimps and that chimps leave and they go on patrol and other chimps Gang up on them and kill them and they try to fight and battle over resources So it's not nearly as cut and dry as the strongest chimpe prevails because one of the chimps that was dominant was an older Chimp and he was smaller than some of the other chimps But he had formed a coalition with all these other chimps and they all respected him And they all the knew that they would be treated fairly and being treated fairly is a very important thing with chimpanzees They get very jealous if they think that things are not fair Which is why that guy was attacked and you know that guy who had a Pet chimpanzee he brought it a birthday cake the other chimps weren't getting a piece of the cake and they Someone had fucked up and left a door open They got out and malled this guy because he didn't give them some of the cake Yes, I find all of that Quite plausible, but I think Both of us can be correct.

1:22:45So there's some The the true story of harmonization of how we became humans There's a way to tell it where it's continuous with our animal past and where it's just you know There's things like this with the chimpanzees or the baboons or you know um other primates and then um There is a part of the story that I think is also more discontinuous um and um you know my my judgment is we probably You know in a darwinian context we always stress the continuity um You know, I'm always a little bit the contrarian and so um, you know, I believe in darwin's theory But I think uh, I think we should also be skeptical of ways.

1:23:24It's too dogmatic and uh and it Darwin's theories make us gloss over the discontinuities and I think You know the one one type of in it will happen overnight But one type of fairly dramatic discontinuity is that um You know is that humans have something like language and even though you know chimpanzees probably I don't know if an IQ of 80 or the pretty the pretty smart But but when you don't have a rich symbolic system um That that leads to sort of a very very different kind of structure and there's something about uh um uh Language and the kind of coordination that allows and the ways that it forces you to it enables you to coordinate on violence and then It encourages you to channel violence in certain sacred religious directions um Uh, I think uh creates a you know something radically different about human society We're you know we differ for you know, we we tell humans tell each other stories Um a lot of the stories are not true.

1:24:25They're myths But uh That's that is a that's I think that's when a some some sort of a very important difference from uh from even our closest uh uh primate uh primate relatives um But then you know this is again this is sort of like another way of getting at what's uh so crazy about ChatGPT and passing the touring test because if we had sat here two years ago and you asked me you know what What is the distinctive feature of a human being what makes someone a human and you know how And in a way that differs from everybody else um, you know, it's not perfect But my go -to answer would been language you're you know your three -year -old you're an 80 -year -old You know just about all humans can speak languages just about all non -humans cannot speak languages.

1:25:15It's this It's this binary thing and then that's that's sort of a way of telling us again Why why passing the touring test was Way more important than super intelligence or anything else mm. Yeah, I could see that Would you say don't go back to that tangent? No, no, it's good. It connects great. Keep tangent enough have fun. It's great Do you think what do you think the factor was there's a lot of debate about this like the factor was that separated us from these animals And why we became what we became because we're so vastly different than any of the primate Like so what do you think took place like the doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years Is one of the greatest mysteries in the entire fossil record?

1:25:55We don't know what the fuck happened There's a lot of theories the throwing arm cooking meat. There's a lot of theories But we really have no idea well again if I Let me do sort of linguistic riff. I think um Aristotelian Darwinian biology or Aristotle you always differ things by put them in categories and um Man I think the line Aristotle has is something man differs from the other animals in his greater aptitude for imitation and and I would say That um we are these giant imitating machines and of course the Darwinian riff on this is you know to imitate is to ape And um and so we differ from the eight we're more ape -like than the apes We are far better at aping each other than the apes are and um and uh that uh to you know A first cut I would say our brains are giant imitation machines That's how you learn language the kid you imitate your parents uh and that's how culture gets transmitted But then um there are a lot of dimensions of imitation that uh that are also very dangerous because um It's not imitation doesn't just happen on this symbolic linguistic level It's also you imitate things you want You want a banana?

1:27:17I want a banana you want a blue ball. I can have a red ball. I want a blue ball because you have a blue ball and um and and so there's something about imitation that um you know creates culture um you know that uh um That is incredibly important pedagogically learning You know it's how you master something how you know in all these different ways And then um and then a lot of it has this uh has this incredibly conflictual dimension as well And uh and then there's yes, I think I think that was sort of core to the Things that are both great and troubled about humanity and uh and that was sort of That was in some ways the problem that that needed to be solved So you think that the motivation of imitation Is the the essential first steps that led us to become human Um that there's some story like it and again this is a one -dimensional one explanation fits all but Yeah, the ex the sort of the explanation I would I would go with is that it was it was something like um You know our brains got bigger and so we were more powerful imitation machines And there were things about that that were you know that were Yeah, that Made us a lot more powerful and a lot We could learn things and we could remember things and there was cultural transmission that happened But then um it also We could build better weapons and we became more violent and um it it also had a very very destructive element And then somehow the imitation you know had to be had to be channeled in in these sort of ritualized religious You know, kind kinds of ways and that's that's that's why um I think all these things sort of somehow came up together in parallel But what about the physical adaptation like what would be the motivation of the animal to change form and to have its brain grow So large and to lose all its hair and to Become soft and fleshy like we are as opposed to like rough and durable like almost every other primate is Well, you can always man you can always tell these retrospective Just so stories and how this all All worked out but it it would seem the the naive retrospective story would be that uh um You know, there are a lot of ways that humans are I don't know less strong than the other apes or You know That all all these ways where we're in some sense weaker physically physically but um but maybe it was just the basic tradeoff You you know more more of your energy went into your mind and into your brain and um and then you know um Your your fist wasn't as strong, but you could build a better axe And that made you stronger than an ape And that's that's where yeah where Where you know a brain with you know less I don't know less energy was spent on growing a hair to keep warm in the winter and And then you used your brain to build an axe and skin a bear and Get get some fur for the winter or something like that.

1:30:42Yeah, I guess It's just but it's just such a leap It's such a leap and different than any other animal like and like What was the primary motivating factor like what was the thing? You know, mechanical leaves it was so a siphon You know, I'm sure you probably you ever heard that theory mechanists stone -daped theory Which is a fascinating one, but there's a lot of different theories about what took place but Well the one yeah the one I would Go on was that there was this dimension of increased imitation There was some kind of cultural linguistic dimension that was incredibly important It probably was also you know, it was probably also somehow linked to to You know dealing with All the violence that came with it all the conflicts that that that came with it um, you know, I would be I'd be more open to the stone -daped theory if people Um, yeah, I had this conversation with the other guy more rescue the immortality key guy and um, I always feel they whitewash it too much Also, you know, it's like if I mean if you had these crazy Dianish and rituals in which people You know if you know, there's probably a lot of crazy sex There's probably lots of crazy violence that was was tied to it and and so maybe Like maybe you'd be out of your mind to be hunting a woolly mammoth And like maybe maybe maybe you can't be completely you know But they were in hunting woolly mammoths during the illusinian mysteries No, but You were I don't know you went to went to war to fight the neighboring tribe It's probably more dangerous than hunting right, but they also did absolutely have these rituals And they have absolutely found trace elements of silt.

1:32:33I don't question that okay. I don't question that at all I just I just I just think they probably part of it was also also Was a way to channel violence was probably you know whenever I don't know was there some some degree to which Whenever you went to war you were on drugs Oh, yeah, well, we know about the Vikings the Vikings most certainly took mushrooms before they went into battle and And you know, maybe it makes you less Less coordinated or something, but no if you're just if you're less scared It does probably it doesn't make you less coordinated if you're just a little bit less scared That's probably super important.

1:33:17It increased the visual acuity. There's a lot of benefits that would happen physically Especially if you got the dose right You know It increases visual acuity edge detections better It makes people more sensitive probably more aware probably a better hunter and uh, but I think I think I'm I'm sympathetic to all all these mushrooms Psychedelic drug historical usage theories. I suspect was very widespread um, I just think you know a lot of it was in these contexts that That were pretty transgressive. Yeah, I think um, they're not mutually exclusive I think just giving the the way the world was back then for sure violence was everywhere Violence was a part of daily life violence is a part of how Society was kept together the violence was entertainment in Rome, right For sure violence was uh, was everything was a big part of it And I think release and and the anxiety of that violence also led people to want to be intoxicated and do different things That uh separated them from a normal state of consciousness But I do think it's also probably where democracy came from I think having those Illicini and mystery Rituals where they would get together and do psychedelics and under this very controlled set and setting I think that's the birthplace of a lot of very interesting and innovative ideas I think a lot of interesting and innovative ideas currently are are being at least uh, dremped up thought of they have their roots in some sort of altered conscious experience Well um It's something and I I don't know I I think the stuff is very powerful.

1:35:09I think it is it is I definitely think it shouldn't be outlawed You know pretty hardcore libertarian on all the drug legalization stuff Uh, and then I I do I do wonder um I Do wonder exactly how how how how these things work it Probably you know probably the classical world version of it um was that it was something That you did in a fairly controlled setting You didn't do it every day um, and it was it was sort of It was something it was some way I imagine to get you know a very different perspective on your nine to five job or whatever you want to call it but uh, you didn't necessarily want to you know want to really decamp to the other world all together Oh for sure.

1:36:20It's too dangerous to do Um, I don't think anybody thinks they did. I think that was part of the whole thing What where do you where do you think where do you think that line is like you know Should people should everyone do one ayahuasca trip or If you do if you do an ayahuasca trip a year is that I don't think everyone has to do anything And I think everyone has their own requirements and I think um I think as you do that everything like this especially psychedelics one of the more disappointing things recently was that the FDA had denied um They did these MDMA trials for you know about all this yep.

1:36:58Yeah very very disappointing um that they wanted to Make MDMA therapy available to veterans and people with severe PTSD and it has extreme benefits clinical benefits known documented benefits and for whatever reason the FDA decided that they have to go through a whole new series of trials To try to get this stuff legalized which is very disappointing and yeah, I I Was I was I was very bullish on this stuff happening um and the way I thought about it four or five years ago was um That um it was a hack to doing a double blind study and because the FDA always has this concept that you need to do a double blind study You give one one one you know one third of the people you give a sugar pill and two thirds you give the real drug and you have to And no one knows where they have the sugar pill or the real drug right and then um and then you see how it works and science requires A double blind study and then my my anti double blind study theory is If if it really works you don't need a double blind study it should just work and there's something sociopathic about doing double blind studies because one third of the people who have this bad disease are getting a sugar pill And we shouldn't even be like maybe it's um immoral to do double blind studies Well double blind studies on unique and novel things make sense um But if this is not unique nor novel um it's been around well well unique.

1:38:25Yes, but my my my claim is if it's uh um Uh if it actually works you shouldn't need to do a double blind study at all but um and then my hope was that um MDMA Psychedelics all these things they were a hack on the double blind study because um you knew whether you got the real thing or the sugar pill And so this would be a way to um to hack through this ridiculous double blind criterion and just get the study done and then what I what I think um Part of it probably just an anti drug ideology by the FDA, but um but the other part that happened on the sort of science Scientific establishment level is they think you need a double blind study Joe we know you're hacking this double blind study because people will know whether they got the sugar pill or not And that's why we're gonna arbitrarily Change the goal posts and set them at way way harder because we know there's no way you can do a double blind study And if it's not a double blind study, it's no good because that's what our ideology of science tells us and um and that's sort of That's sort of what I Think was part of Part of what went um sort of politically haywire with this stuff.

1:39:40Well, I also think that it's Pandora's box I think that's a real issue and that if they do find extreme benefit in Using mdma therapy particularly for veterans If they start doing that and it starts becoming very effective and it becomes well -known and widespread Then it will open up the door to all these other psychedelic compounds and I think That's a real threat to the powers that be it's a real threat to the establishment If you have people thinking in a completely alternative way And we saw what happened during the 1960s and that's one of the reasons why they threw water on everything and had it become schedule one and Locked the country down in terms of the access to psychedelics all that stuff happened out of a reaction to the way society and culture was changing in the 1960s If that happened today it would throw a Giant monkey wrench in our political system in our cultural system the way we govern the way we Just the way allocation of resources all that would change If I just to articulate the alternate version on this um There's always a You know, there's There's a part Let me think how to how to get this um You know, there's there's one There's a question whether um This the shift to interiority um is it a complement or a substitute like what I said about talking action is it a complement or a substitute To changing the outside world so we focus on changing ourselves is this the first step to changing the world or is it um Is it sort of a hypnotic way in which our attention is being redirected to from outer space to inner space?

1:41:32So I don't know the one liner I had years ago was um You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969 and three weeks later would stock started and that's when the hippies took over the country and and you know and um we stopped going to outer space because we started going to inner space and that's and so there's sort of a question um, you know how much the you know um it it it worked as a um as an activator or as a or as a a deactivator in a way um and uh, you know, there all these different modalities of interiority there's psychological therapy there's meditation there's yoga there's um, you know, there was a sexual revolution there Gradually you have in cells living their parents basement playing video games so the all you know, there's um the navel gazing that is identity politics um, there's a range of psychedelic things and um and I think all these things um I I wonder whether the interiority ended up acting as a as a substitute stuff because you know the alternate history of the 1960s is that um You know the hippies were actually they were anti -political and uh it was it was sort of that the the the the drugs happened At the end of the city at the end of the 60s and that's when people depoliticized and it was like I don't know the Beatles song you're carrying on pictures sharing Mal or you're not gonna make with anyone anyhow It's like that's what after they did LSD and it was just The sort of insane politics no longer matters and so you have the civil rights the Vietnam war and then were the drugs The thing that motivated it or was that was that the thing where it actually um those those things started to Started deescalate I think they were happening at the same time and I think the Vietnam war coinciding with The psychedelic drug movement in the 1960s it was one of the reasons why it was so dangerous to the establishment Because these people were far less likely to buy into this idea that they needed to fly to Vietnam and go kill people They didn't know and they were far less likely to support any war and I think there was this sort of bizarre Movement that we had never seen before this flower children move that we know that they plotted against I mean if you read chaos By Tom O 'Neill Yep, I'm really with that fantastic book that shows you what they were trying to do to demonize these these hippies Well, it was or or the the part of it that I thought was interesting was the m -culture Yeah, which is a part of it.

1:44:05Yeah, where um, you know, we There was a a predecessor version where we thought of um You know, there was a you could think of it as we had an arms race with Fat the fascists and the communists and they were very good at brainwashing people the global's propaganda North Koreans brainwashing our soldiers in the Korean War our POWs and We needed to have an arms race to program and reprogram and deprogram people and LSD was was was sort of the m -culture short cut. So I think I think there was and then I yeah my It's so hard to reconstruct it, but my my suspicion is that the m -culture thing was was a lot bigger than Then we realize and that you know, it was it was the LSD movement both in the Harvard form and the Stanford form You know, it started it started as an m -culture project Timothy Leroy at Harvard Ken Keesey at Stanford, you know, I knew Tom Wolf the um A American novelist I still think his greatest novel was um um the electric cool -aid acid test which sort of this history of the LSD counterculture movement starts to stand for moves the Hadesbury in San Francisco and but it starts with Ken Keesey's grad student at Stanford like I'm circa 1958 and You get an extra $75 a day if you go to the Menlo Park veterans hospital and they give you some random drug and um Yeah, you got extra $75 a grad student in English um doing LSD and um Tom Wolf writes this You know iconic fictionalized novel with very realistic 1968 about this and um Wolf could not have imagined That the whole thing started as some cia mind control project right the Menlo Park veterans hospital that was deep state adjacent Sure, well Hadesbury Freaklack run by the CIA sure that's even crazier the whole things crazy the whole thing is jolly What jolly west guy up?

1:46:17Yeah, the whole thing's crazy which leads me to What do you think they're doing today? If they were doing that then I do not believe that they abandoned this idea of programming people I do not believe that I don't think they would because I know it's effective But people join cults every day we're well aware that people can be ideologically captured We're well aware we're well aware people will buy into crazy ideas as long as it's supported by whatever community that they associate with That's just a natural Aspect of being a human being Maybe it's part of what you're saying this imitation thing that we have it it leads us to do this If they have that knowledge and that understanding that for sure They're probably doing things similar today Which is one of the things that I think about a lot when I think about this guy that tried to shoot Trump I want to know What happened and I don't think we're getting a very detailed explanation at all as to how this person achieved These the get how we they got on the roof how they got to that position how they trained what who were they in contact with who was teaching them Why did they why did they do it what was going on we we are in the dark and I wonder like you know, there was always the mentoring candidate idea right this idea that we trained assassins and Was there RFK dad?

1:47:43assassination 1968 or Han where he again Maybe shouldn't believe him, but he claimed that he didn't even know what he was doing It was some hypnotic trance or whatever and it was like it was like the assassin in the mentoring can yeah, yeah I mean that is possible I don't know if he's telling the truth he could have just had a psychotic break who knows obviously yeah So convenient yeah very convenient, but it's a possibility that she could be should be considered I mean I this crooks kid that did this that shot at the president What how what happened I want to know what happened man, I I I probably veer in the direction That there were You know on the on the sort of conspiracy theory of history I veer in the direction that there was a lot of crazy stuff like this that was going on in the US first half of the 20th century overdrive 1940s, you know, I mean you had the Manhattan Project this is giant secret project 1950s 1960s and then um And then somehow the last 50 years I think the I'm not sure disturbing But perspective I have is these institutions are less functional.

1:49:09I don't think Um, I don't think the CIA is doing anything quite like mk ultra anymore um, why do you think that?

1:49:28I Think you had the church commission hearings in the late 70s and and somehow Things things got things got exposed and um and then um When when things when bureaucracy is forced to be formalized Um, it probably becomes a lot less functional, you know, um, there was a like the 2000s version There was I think it was a lot of crazy stuff That we did in black sites torturing people um The the CIA ran and you know in the war on terror Uh, waterboarding those all sorts of batshit crazy stuff that happened But then um, you know once john u in the bush 43 administration writes the torture memos and sort of formalizes This is how many times you can waterdunk someone without it being torture etc etc Once you formalize it people somehow know that it's on its way out because You know um, it doesn't quite work anymore.

1:50:27So by I don't know by 2007 Um, at guantanamo, I think the inmates are running the asylum the inmates and the defense lawyers were running it you were way Safer as a Muslim terrorist in guantanamo then as a let's say suspected cop killer in Manhattan There was still an informal process in Manhattan you were suspected cop killer. They'd figure out some way to um To deal with you outside the judicial the formal judicial process um and um, but I think something there was a sort of formalization That happened there was the post uh j edger hoover fbi where hoover was I don't know a law unto himself It was completely out of control CIA even more so And then um, you know once it all gets exposed and uh It probably is a lot harder to do the NSA You know NSA probably held up longer as a deep state entity Where it at least had the virtue people you know I think the 1980s it was still referred to as no such agency So it's still it was still far more obscure So the necessary condition is that if some part of the deep states doing it, you know We can barely know what's going on right with them and then I don't know you know the The 2000s 2010s history of on the on on you know I think the Patriot Act empowered all these FISA courts and I think there was I think they're probably um Were ways the NSA FISA court process was was weaponized in a really really crazy way um and you know it culminated in in 2016 with all the um you know the crazy russia conspiracy theories against trump Um, but I I think even that I'm not sure They can do anymore because it got exposed Can't do that anymore, but a small program That is top secret that is designed under the auspices of protecting American lives Extracting information from people.

1:52:42I'm I'm I'm agreeing you the the the the the NSA FISA court process is is one where you had A pretty out of control process from let's say circa I don't know 2003 to 2017 2018 so that's relatively recent history. Mm -hmm Um I don't know you know they're all the all the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories Which um I'm probably too fascinated by Um because it felt like there was There was some crazy stuff going on that they were able to cover up And still are Uh And then but then it Man Doesn't it the fact that we're still talking about Jeffrey Epstein tell us Um how hard it is to come with anything else No because there's no answers for the Jeffrey Epstein thing There's been no consequences other than Glean Maxwell going to jail and Jeffrey Epstein allegedly committing suicide I don't think he did other than that what are the consequences?

1:53:47They they they were able to pull off this thing this some Some sort of operation what you know who knows who was behind it who knows what was the motivation? But it clearly has some to do with compromising people which is an age old strategy For getting people to do what you want them to do you have things on them You use those things as leverage and then next thing you know You've got people saying things that you want them to say do and it and it motivates moves policy changes things you get things done That they did that yes, and no one and we know they did that and yet no one is asking for the tapes No one's asking for the the client list We we're in the dark still And probably I don't know man.

1:54:31I I spend too much time thinking about all the all the Epstein variants It probably probably probably the sex stuff is overdone and everything else is underdone It's like with it's like a limited hangout we get to talk about the crazy underage sex and um and you know not about All all the other questions. It's like when Alex Acosta testified for labor secretary under and he was he was the DA who'd prosecuted Epstein in 0809 and um got him sort of the very light 13 month or whatever sentence and um Um as a south florida DA or whatever he was um and and uh Acosta was asked you know um um You know why did why did he get off so easily and and under congressional testimony was up for labor secretary 2017 It was um he belonged to intelligence That's yeah, and then and then you know um and so it's yes, it's it's it the question isn't about the sex with the underage women the question is Is really about you know, why was he why was he so protected and then you know I I went I went down all these rabbit holes was he you know working for the Israelis or the massage or all this sort of stuff and uh I've come to think that that's That was very secondary.

1:56:03He was obviously it was just the US You know, you know if you're working for Israel you don't get protected You know, we had Jonathan Pollard he went to jail for 25 years or whatever um and um but unrelated Right I understood but it's but it's uh but this is one of the singular operation But but so it's but it it was uh if it was an intelligence operation The question we should be asking is what part of the US intelligence right System was he working for was he working for you know, but don't you think that's an effective strategy for controlling politicians Getting them involved in sex scandals.

1:56:38I mean, that's always been one of the the worst things that can happen to a politician Look at Monica Lewinsky Very simple one consensual inappropriate sexual relationship between a president and a staffer and it almost takes down the presidency it causes him to get impeached Uh powerful motivators the shame of it all also the illegal activity the fact that it's i mean It's one of the most disgusting things that we think of but people having sex with underage people um i'm i'm I'm sure that was part of it. I suspect there are a lot of other questions that uh, you know when one one should One should also most certainly but i would think that that is one of the best motivators that we have Is having dirt on people like that especially something that could ruin your career especially people that are deeply embedded in this system of People knowing things about people and using those at their advantage I mean that's an age old strategy in politics that was jay ed groover's Entire modus operenta.

1:57:41Yeah, my my my riff on it was always that it was um it was It's it's a little bit different from the jay ed groover thing and the question was always whether the people doing it knew they were getting compromised and so it's it's it's it's the vibe is not that um um You somehow got compromised it was more You were joining this uh this secret club right you got to be made You're a made man in the mafia and you had to do only things no no no it's only if we have compromise on you You get ahead right it's like you know, it's like i don't know. It's one of these uh um It's all about the closet. Yeah closet of the Vatican The claim is 80 % of the cardinals and catholic church are gay.

1:58:27Not sure if that's true, but uh Directionally, it's probably correct and the the basic thesis is you don't get promoted to a cardinal If you're straight because um We need to have and so we need to you need to be compromised and then you're under control Um, but you also get ahead completely make sense completely make sense in the way to do that with especially the all these Politicians who are essentially like bad actors a lot of them They're just people that want power and people that want control a lot of them and you know those kind of guys They want a party, you know I mean that has been you've got two types of Leaders that are presidents you got pussy hounds and warmongers You know and you know some of them sometimes you have both but generally you don't you know guys like Clinton and JFK or anti -war And then you have guys like uh bush who you don't think of it all as a pussy hound, but most certainly you think of as a warmonger Do you what um What do you you have a theory on what was Bill Gates's complicity with Epstein?

1:59:29I think he likes pussy I think I think he's a man. I think he likes power. He likes monopoly I mean he's incredibly effective with Microsoft and for the longest time He was thought of as a villain right he was this antitrust villain He was this guy who was monopolizing this operating system and and in controlling Just this incredible empire and he had a real bad rap and then I think he wisely turned towards philanthropy and But do you do you think do you think that he needed Epstein? I think it's very difficult Very very famous very high profile person to fuck around think it's very difficult I think you have to worry about people telling people you worry about it taking you down if you're having affairs If you're running some philanthropy organization you're supposed to be thought of as this guy who's like this wonderful person who's trying to really fix all the problems in the world But really he just flying around and and banging all these different chicks You have to figure out a way to pull that off and this is what Eric Weinstein and I we've had discussions about this and Eric's position is that there are people in this world that can provide experiences for you and Safely for people that are in that kind of a group and that makes sense It makes sense that if you pay people enough and you have people motivated in order to like establish these Relationships and make sure that these things happen when you get very high profile You can't just be on a fucking dating app And if you're a guy who likes to bang chicks, what are you gonna do?

2:01:03I the All of that might be true, but I wonder if there are more straightforward Alternate conspiracy theories on Epstein that we're missing. So let me do let me do alternate one on Bill Gates where um The um You know the things just just looking at what's hiding in plain sight You know he supposedly talked to Epstein early on About how his marriage wasn't doing that well and then Epstein suggested that he should get a divorce circa 2010 -2011 and Gates told him something like um, you know uh That doesn't quite work Um, you never presumably because he didn't have a prenup So um, so there's one part of Epstein as a marriage counselor which is sort of disturbing Um, but then um the second thing that we know that um that Gates talked to Epstein about was um sort of uh You know all the sort of collaborating on funding setting up this philanthropy all this sort of this um somewhat corrupt left -wing Philanthropy structures, and so there's a question, you know um Um does and then and then my my sort of straightforward alternate conspiracy theory is um should we ask um should we ask Should we combine those two and uh was there was there?

2:02:34You know And I don't have all the details on this figured out, but it would be something like You know um bill in Melinda get married in 1994 they don't sign a prenup um and You know something's going wrong with the marriage and Maybe Melinda can get half the money In a in a divorce he doesn't want her to get half the money. What do you do and um Uh, and then the alternate plan is something like um you set up You set up uh You commit the marital assets to this non -profit and um and then it it's sort of locks Melinda into not complaining about the marriage for a long long time and it's and it's it's some kind of uh um and so there's something about the left -wing philanthropy world That was uh it was sort of some sort of boomer Way to control Their crazy wives or something like this And that's and that's that's like wash your your past Um, you're sure there are all these yeah, he talked to Epstein about he got Epstein to meet with the uh the head of the Nobel prize foundation So it was um yeah Bill Gates wanted to get a Nobel Nobel prize.

2:03:54Wow right so these this is all this is all yeah This is all straightforward. This is all known. Yeah, and and and i'm not saying what you're saying about you know the history of the Nobel prize That's the ultimate white wash Sure it was preventing dynamite. Yeah, that's the that he was he well Peter Berg told me the story. I was blown away he originally um they Someone said that he died and it was printed that he died, but he didn't die and in the stories They were calling them the merchant of death Because he was the guy that invented dynamite and he realized that oh my god This is my reputation.

2:04:30This is i think people think about me. I have to do something to turn this around So he invented the Nobel prize and he started then now the the name Nobel is Automatically connected in most people's eyes to the the greatest people amongst us the people that have contributed the most to society and science and art and peace and all these different things Nobel prize for medicine Well, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, super crazy history. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy history But it's the ultimate white wash. It's the same thing like he came up with that prize because he wanted to change his image publicly And so it's ironic that Bill Gates would want to get a Nobel prize or not i wrong or yes, ironic but straightforward And ironic but but i think But then if we if we And so there's yes, so there's there's a Underage sex version of the Epstein story and then there is a crazy status Nobel prize History of it and there is a corrupt left -wing philanthropy one and there is a Boomers who didn't sign um prenuptial agreements with their their wives story right and um and and I think all those are worth exploring more.

2:05:45I think you're right. What is What about the these left -wing philanthropy ventures do you think is uniquely corrupt?

2:06:00um So which one do I think is most corrupt or what what what about them these when you said corrupt yeah Well um Man it's it's there's something about It's maybe it's just my hermeneutic of suspicion, but there's something about you know There's something about the virtue signaling and what does it mean and I always think this is sort of a Europe America versus Europe difference where in um America We're told that um Um that philanthropy is something a good person does and um you know if if you're a Rockefeller or And you start giving away all your money Um, this is just this is just what um a good person does and it shows how good you are And then I think sort of the European Intuition on it is something like um, you know wow um, that's this is only something a very evil person does and if you If if you start giving away all your money in Europe, it's like Joe you must have murdered somebody Or you must you must be covering up for something and so there's these two very different intuitions and I think I think the European one is more correct than the American one and uh probably there's some history where um You know the sort of left -wing philanthropy peaked in 2007 2010 2012 And there's these subtle ways, you know, we've um we've become you know, we've become more You know more um more European in our sensibilities as a society and so it has this very different valence from what it did uh 12 or 14 years ago, but it yeah, it's all we ask all these questions like we're asking right now about the gates where it's like okay He was you know It was like all the testimony in the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 90s where it's like it's cutting off the air supply What's strangle people and he's like not he's kind of a sociopathic guy It seems and then it's it's it's this giant white washing operation and then somehow the white washing has been made too transparent and uh, it gets deconstructed and exposed by you know the internet or whatever But I think most people are still unaware of how much white washing actually took place including donating somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 plus million dollars to media corporations essentially buying favorable Reviews about him and then there's this very public philanthropy.

2:08:49It's not just philanthropy It's philanthropy mixed with public relations because public relations Relations because he's constantly doing interviews about it. It says not like a guy who is just silently donating is Incredible wealth to all these causes. He's advocating for it on various talk shows He's constantly talking about it And how we need to do things we during the pandemic he was a very vocal voice He was the guy telling us he was a Somehow or another he became a public health expert and no one questioned why we were taking public health advice from someone who has a financial interest In this one very particular remedy Yeah, or um Oh Yeah, there are all these all altered version I can give but yeah, I think I think um I think uh It's always so hard to know what's really going on in our culture though.

2:09:41So I I think I think all what you say is true But I also think it's not working as well as it used to I agree and there is a way people See through this it's not always as articulate as you just articulated it But there's there's some there's some vague intuition that um you know um You know when Mr. Gates is just wearing uh sweaters and looks like mr. Rogers that something fishy is going on Right people have that sort of intuition they trust Jeff Bezos and his tight shirt hanging out with girlfriend on the yacht more or Elon Elon Musk Yeah, the vice signaling is safer than virtue signaling. Yeah, yeah, because if you're You know if you're virtue signaling Our intuition is something really really really sketchy suspicious.

2:10:33We get suspicious And I think rightly so I think especially when someone's doing something so public I think rightly we should be suspicious especially when I mean with with Gates it's like you know the history of the guy I mean you know what he was involved with before you know how he ran Microsoft You know it just kind of makes sense that it's a clever move. It's a clever move to pay the media It's a clever move again my my my my alternate one was not incompatible with yours on on on gates is that um Melinda finally files for divorce in early 21 um, I think she Told Bill she wanted one late 2019 so 2020 the year where um he bill gates goes into overdrive on covid um, you know All this stuff, you know part part of it.

2:11:22Maybe it's self -dealing and he's trying to make money from the drug company or something like this but um you know isn't Isn't the other really big thing he needs to box Melinda in and Force her not to get that much out because all the money's going to the foundation anyway Melinda has to say You know I want why do you want half the money? It's all going to the gates foundation anyway, right? Leaving our kids anything and um and then when you lean into covid You know, how does that work in the you know it's somehow um and theory Melinda has a really strong hand she should get half that's what you get in a divorce with No prenuptial, but then if you make it go overdrive on covid Melinda are you a you know are you a I don't know uh Are you like some crazy anti -science person right and um and so So I don't know my my my my my my reconstruction is that uh you should not underestimate how much of it was You know About just controlling his ex -wife and not about controlling the whole society makes sense It makes sense that you make sure they can both be true.

2:12:39They can both be correct sure There there's many factors but mine mine lines up really well with the with the timeline Well, we're probably talking about a hundred million dollar or a hundred billion dollars one way or the other Well, I think she got she got less than she got like one -tenth Really interesting and she should have gotten half As far as I and I it's amazing. He got it down that much Interesting, but it was just I think she was just boxed in every time he went on TV talking about covid She was boxed in with all of her left -wing friends That is an interesting philosophy That's an interesting way to approach a problem if you're him very wise You know very clever.

2:13:20I mean if you're just looking at like just for personal benefit The genius move and the guy's genius clearly brilliant guy You know, I mean that makes sense makes sense to do we do that. I don't know. You know, I would do that Probably not a pre -nut, but yeah Yeah, well, that's kind of crazy. That's interesting Yeah, I didn't consider that but it makes sense and she's you know, she'd been kind of pretty vocal unfortunately for him about His ties to Epstein being one of the primary reasons why she wanted out But again my ult again, it's what did he what was he was he Was he having extramarital affairs through Epstein or maybe Epstein was from Melinda's point of view would it be worse for Epstein to facilitate an extramarital affair Or would it be worse for Epstein to be advising gates on how to How to ditch Melinda without giving her any money?

2:14:14What do you think he was like that would be much much worse from Melinda's point of view Yeah, makes sense it totally makes sense Do you think that he was a legitimate financial advisor like he could give him advice on how to do those things? It gates wouldn't have more Effective people I mean he's when you're at that level of wealth. I'm sure you have wealth management people that are like very high level Um Because that's one of the things that Eric said about him said when he met him He's like this guy's a fraud like this he doesn't know enough about what he's talking about and you know Eric is you know I I met Epstein a Few times as well and I think how'd you get introduced?

2:14:58It was it was read Hoffman and Silicon Valley introduced us in 2014 but um, but it was it was basically And I you know didn't didn't check didn't ask any enough questions about it um But I Yeah, I I think there were sort of a lot of things where it was was fraudulent. I do think Epstein knew a lot about taxes and um And there were probably you know these these complicated ways you could um you could structure a non -profit organization especially as a way in a in a in a marital Cont Context that that I think Epstein might have might have known a decent amount about how when you were introduced I don't I don't think Epstein would have been able to um You know common on air super strength theory or something like that But uh, but I think I think this sort of thing he might have actually been pretty expert on when you were introduced to him What how was he described to you?

2:16:07Um, he was described as uh one of the smartest tax people in the world Interesting and and I I probably probably was my moral weakness that I Well, how could you have asked him back then he had never been arrested? I know this was this was post this 2014 was post -a -rest also was arrests was the first arrest right? Yeah, it was like 200708 okay Okay, and so but you know you you assume um It didn't go to jail for that long. Right. It was probably not not as serious as alleged There was certainly was the illusion that there were all these These other people that I trusted you know Read who introduced us was you know, he started linked in he was You know Maybe too focused on business networking, but right But I thought he always had good judgment in people when the shit went down and Epstein gets arrested for the second time We like oh well there you go uh I've thought about it.

2:17:05I thought a lot about it as a result. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure Jesus Christ. Well, he tricked a lot of people. I know a lot of people that met that guy He got a lot of celebrities to come to his house for parties and things well. I think I think it was it's it was it's a I think a lot of it was this was a strange commentary on You know, I know it was some secret club secret society. You could be part of right and of course again That wasn't it wasn't explicit, but that was that was the vague of a vibe with the whole thing people love those stupid things They love like exclusive clubs that very few people look at the fucking Soho House Like look at that stupid thing.

2:17:44I mean just go to a place that you have to be a member to go to and everybody wants to be a member Oh, yeah, and then you get like the Malibu Soho House. It's different from the other ones. You have to have membership only there Do you have membership there? We'd love that kind of shit socially. They love being a part of a walled garden Love it. They love it and if you're a guy like Bill Gates or or similarly wealthy You probably have a very small amount of people that you can relate to very small amount of people that you can trust probably very difficult to form new friendships Yeah, I think we're probably different Different things that were pitched for different people sure you know, I was I was pitched on the taxes.

2:18:23I think You know, there were probably other people that were You know more more prone to the You know The social club party. Yeah, and then there were probably people yeah, and there was probably a Fairly limited group where it was uh, yeah off off the charts best. It wouldn't it be wonderful to know what the fuck was really going on Maybe one day we will maybe one day some Whitney web type character will break it all down to us and Explain to us in great detail exactly how this is formulated and what they were doing and how they were Getting information out of people, but I think people have to age out if the they have to die And we still don't have it on the Kennedy assassination that's okay Well one of the wildest things that Trump said was that if they told you what they told me you wouldn't tell people either Which is like what the fuck does that mean?

2:19:13What does that mean? I don't think legally he can tell you Right because I think those things are above top secret if if they didn't form him of something there must be some sort of prerequisite to Keeping this a secret I haven't studied that one that carefully, but isn't You know, there are all these alternate conspiracy theories on who killed JFK It's you know the CIA and the mafia and the Russians and the Cubans and um, you know Um, there's an LBJ version since he's one who benefited so that all these happened in Texas um You have all these you know alternate theories on some level is it's it's yeah, it's it's I always think it's just a commentary where you know 1963 America was it wasn't like leave it to be or it was it was like a really crazy country underneath the surface and Absolutely, um, and even though probably most of the conspiracy theories are wrong It was like murder on the Orient Express and all these people Sort of had different reasons for wanting Kennedy dead and that's that's what the theories are right even if they're Wrong on the level of factual detail and then the the the sort of more minimal one that I'm I'm open to And I think there's some evidence in this from from the stuff that has been that has come out is You know Oswald was talking to you know parts of the US deep state And so even if Oswald was the lone assassin and you someone get the magic bullet theory and all that stuff to work But let's say Oswald was the lone assassin Did did he did he tell someone in the FBI or CIA?

2:20:56You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go kill Kennedy tomorrow Mm -hmm, and then you know Maybe Maybe the CIA didn't have to kill and they just didn't had to do nothing just had a set on it or Or maybe it was too incompetent and didn't get you know didn't go up the bureaucracy and so it's You know, I think we sort of know that they they talked to Oswald You know a fair amount before before it happened and uh and so there's at least something You know that was grossly incompetent. I think people have a very minimum With with two stories being mutually exclusive two stories being alone gunman or the CIA killed Kennedy And then they these they're not connected.

2:21:40I think Lee Harvey Oswald was a part of it I think I think you probably did shoot that cop there's some evidence that you know when when he was on the run and he was confronted You know, there was a cop that they got shot and they were alleging he might have done it He might have taken a shot at Kennedy. He might have even hit him. I don't think it was the only one shooting I think the the vast There was an enormous amount of people that heard sounds coming from the grassy knoll they heard gunfire They reportedly saw people The amount of people that were witnesses to the Kennedy assassination that died mysterious deaths is pretty shocking Um Jack Ruby well Jack Ruby just that's a weird one right Oswald Yeah, Jack Ruby walks up to Oswald shoots him and then Jack Ruby with no previous history of mental illness Becomes completely insane after gang visited by Jolly West.

2:22:31Yeah, which is nuts Like why is the guy who's the head of MK ultra visiting the guy who shot the assassin of the president And why is he left alone with them? What what happens? What does he give him that this guy is screaming out their burning Jews alive and Just crazy crazy shit. He was yelling out. He went nuts probably some some amount of LSD that's probably an dangerous for you An enormous amount some of those fucking glass of it they probably gave him a glass of it and told him it was water drink this and who fucking knows but the point is I think I think it's very possible that Oswald was a part of it and The way they did it and the way they just shot Oswald and And then they write the Warren commission.

2:23:14We don't even see the Zapruder film until 12 years later when you hurrah to Rivera and when they play it on television when Dick Gregory brought it to hurrah to Rivera, which is wild a comedian brings the video the the actual film rather of the assassination from a different angle Well, you can actually see the video of him getting shot and was his head snaps back into the left and everybody's like what the fuck is going on here um when you look at all that stuff This mirrors what happened with this crooks kid This crooks kid somehow or another gets to the top of the roof is spotted by these people.

2:23:52They know he's there They know he has a rifle. They see him walking around the crime scene Half an hour before with a rangefinder The whole thing is bananas and then they go to his house after he's killed. It's completely scrubbed There's no silverware there They know that there's ad data that shows that a phone that's coming from the FBI offices in DC had visited him On multiple occasions because they tracked ad data There's and if that guy if he shot Trump and Trump got murdered and then they shot him It would be the Kennedy assassination all over again Everybody would go and what the fuck happened?

2:24:32What happened? What was the motivation? What was he on any drugs? What's the toxicology report? How did he get up there? Who knew he was up there? How did they not shoot him quicker? Like what the fuck happened? How was he able to get off three shots? What happened? And go I think there's like a slightly Less crazy version that might still be true, which is just that uh people In the secret service in the um Biden administration don't like Trump and it's they didn't have full intention to kill him But it's just they don't protect him. We're just we're just you know We're gonna have we're gonna understaff it where um we're not gonna We don't have to do as good a job coordinating with the local police There's all these ways you know um makes someone less safe You know, but it seems more than that if they if they knew that the guy was on the roof with a rifle That seems a little more than that.

2:25:24It's always a question who they is though right Well if I'm a sniper and I'm on people people in the audience people there are people there Telling it to people right But I think the authorities knew this guy was on the roof before as well Um well I I suspect some of the secret service people were told that and then Who knows how that got relayed or who all did his neighbors already have eye on him I believe the snipers already had eye. I don't know Find out if that's true Jamie find out the snipers had eye on Pro service that I'm not about the snipers. I don't I don't know about uh The the thing I don't have a good sense on with uh With with with shooting and maybe maybe you'd have a better feel for this is My my senses was a pretty straightforward shot for for the guy and um the trump assassin would be assassin I think the Oswald shot was a much harder one because Kennedy's moving Yes, and no yes, and no okay because uh Oswald had a scope So Oswald had a rifle the marcoo rifle Say one of the snipers stationed inside the building reported first saw a crooks outside and looking up to the roof of the building before the suspect left the scene Crooks started came back and sat down while looking his phone near the building CBS news reported that a sniper took a photo of the suspect when he returned But I think they saw him on the roof though Um crooks then took out a rangefinder Like right then Arrest that guy you got a fucking rangefinder about the suspects action crooks then disappeared again a return to the building with a backpack again Arrest him Secret service snipers again alerted their command post about crooks actions according to the source who spoke with CBS news Crooks had already climbed to the top of the building in question by the time the additional officers arrived at the scene for backup The suspect also positioned himself above and behind the snipers inside the building by the time the police started rushing the scene And other officers attempted to get onto the roof the source told CBS news that a different secret service sniper had killed crooks Okay So it seems like they they fucking bummed in on every step of the way if they knew that guy was there if they knew it a rangefinder Returns of the backpack he gets onto the roof all that's insane that is at the very least Horrific incompetence at the very least let me go back yeah, okay, but back to Mike was it I thought it was a much easier shot for Sound easy headshot He's shooting at his head, but what white white white why was shooting at the head the right thing shouldn't you be shooting it?

2:27:57Well, you know, love wearing a vest right He could be wearing a vest which you would have to have plates you'd have to have ceramic plates in order to stop a Rifle round So was was it a 308 what what did he have? What kind of rifle did he have I think he had an AR 15 So are the scopes a lot better today than they know a scope which we're pretty sure how good was all all's walled scope it was good They said it was off. This is one of the conspiracy theories The oh the scope was off But that doesn't mean anything because scopes can get off when you pick it up If you knock it against the wall when he drops it if he makes the shot and then drops the scope and the scope hits the window Still and then bounce off that's Excuse me that scopes off Anytime anything about the high angle from Oswald made it harder no not a difficult shot It very difficult to get off three shots very quickly So that was the thing that they had attributed three shots to Oswald the reason why they had attributed Three shots is because one of them had hit a ricochet one of them had gone into the underpass Ricochet off the curb and hit a man who was treated at a hospital They found that they found out where it hit the bullet it hit so they knew that one bullet miscandity hit that curb Which would have indicated that someone shot from a similar position as Lee Harvey Oswald So then they had the one wound that Kennedy had to the head of course and then they had another wound that Kennedy had Through his neck that's the magic bullet right?

2:29:25This is why they had to come up with the magic bullet theory because they had to attribute all these wounds to one bullet Then they find this pristine bullet they find it in the gurney when they're bringing a governor connolly in nonsense It's total nonsense the bullet is underformed a bullet that goes through two people and leaves more fragments of the bullet In Connolly's wrist that are missing from the bullet itself and then the bullets not deformed after shattering bone All that's crazy all that defies logic that doesn't make any sense if you know anything about bullets If you shoot bullets into things they distort it's just one of the things that happened Um that bullet looks like someone shot it into a swimming pool That's what it looks like when they would do ballistics on on bullets and they try to figure out like If it was this guy's gun or that guy's gun and by the rifling of the round they can get similar markings on bullets When they do that that's how they do it they do it so the bullet doesn't distort so they shoot that bullet into Water or something like that now that bullet was Metal jacket it right if you look at the bullet the top of it is Fucked up and but the the shape of the bullet looks pretty perfect It doesn't look like something that shattered bones and then you have to attribute you have to Account rather for the amount of purr there's little fragments of the bullet that you could see That they found in Connolly's wrist the whole thing's nuts The whole thing's nuts that you're only saying that this one guy did it because that's convenient And the Warren commission's war the Warren commission white washed It's nothing so the whole thing's nuts.

2:30:58It's much more likely there are people in the grassy knoll and then With the umbrella says the pointer or whatever I mean, I don't know I don't know about what all I know is you got a guy in a convertible which is fucking crazy Who is the president of the United States and he's going slowly down a road now if you are in a prone position So Oswald is on the windowsill right which is a great place to shoot by the way It's a great place to shoot because you rest that gun on the windowsill And if you rest it on the windowsill there's no movement right so you wrap your arm around the sling if it had a sling I'm not sure if it did so you get a nice tight grip you shove it up against your shoulder You rest it on the windowsill and all you have to do is you have a round already racked And you have a scope and so the scope is magnified all you have to do is wait until he's there You lead him just a little bit and squeeze one off and then Boom Boom you could do that pretty quick It's not outside Of the realm of possibility that he did get off three shots What doesn't make sense is the back into the left It doesn't make sense that all these other people saw people shooting from the grassy knoll There's all these people that saw people running away.

2:32:08They saw smoke. There's smoke in some photographs of it It looks like there was more than one shooter and it looks like they tried to They tried to hide that they tried to hide that in the warrant commission report The shot to Kennedy's neck Initially was in when they brought him in in Dallas when he was before they shipped him to Bethesda They said that that was an entry wound when he got to Bethesda then it became a tricky ottoman Why do you give a tricky ottoman to a guy doesn't have a head you don't I mean that's just none of it makes any sense They altered the autopsy This is a part of David Lifton's book best evidence Um In the Kennedy's brain wasn't even in his body when they buried him like the whole thing is very strange But then do you get to anything more concrete than my murder on the orient express where they're just You know it could have been a lot of people could the Russians the Cubans the Well, no, you think that's suspicious for 12 years I think people were suspicious.

2:33:07There were a lot of people who were suspicious kind of But what do you have to go on you don't have to go on anything like this crooks kid We don't have anything to go on We're just going to be left out here just like we're left out here with the the Epstein Information no one knows the people or that whoever organized it if anyone did you're never going to hear about it It's just going to go away the news cycles just going to keep flooded with more nonsense and And I think there's probably a bunch of people that wanted Kennedy dead I think there was more than one group of people that wanted Kennedy dead I think there's probably collusion between groups that wanted Kennedy dead And I think there's a lot of people that have vested interest in ending his presidency And I think he was dangerous.

2:33:42He was dangerous to a lot of powers at B. He was dangerous His his famous speech about secret societies Crazy speech guy has this speech and then gets murdered right afterwards kind of nuts The whole thing's nuts. He wanted to get rid of the CIA He wanted to I mean there's so many things that Kennedy wanted to do. There were also a lot of crazy things Kennedy was doing. Yes, so you know, I know the The Cuba version of the assassination theory was you know We had the Cuban Missile Crisis in 62 about a year earlier and then the deal that we struck with the Soviets was You know, they take the missiles out of Cuba and we promised we wouldn't We wouldn't try to overthrow the government in Cuba and and I guess we You know, we no longer did um You know, we know we're longer to be of pigs type covert stuff like that But I think there were still something like four or five assassination plots on Fidel Attempts actual temps and then I think there was I know I think that again I'm gonna get this garbled.

2:34:45I think a month or two before the JFK assassination it Castro said something like you know There might be repercussions if you keep doing this Yeah, well listen I'm sure there's a lot of people that wanted that guy dead and I'm sure they would coordinate I mean if you knew the Cuba wanted to Kennedy dead And you knew the Cuba can get you assassins or that they could help in in any way I'm sure they would want as many people that knew for a fact they wanted him dead and had communicated that And back then they were doing wild shit, man. I mean this is when they were doing operation northwards This is again where I think I think I think it's is I don't think we're in a world where zero stuff is happening right I still I still uh The place where I directionally have a different feel for it is I think So much less of the stuff is going on and it's it's so much harder in this internet world For people to hide with whistleblowers as well and their legacy programs and there are internal records that are being kept And um, you know like I I don't know this for sure But I think even the NSA FISA court stuff which was an out of control deep state thing that was going on through about 2016 2017 I suspect even that at this point, you know Can't quite work because people know that they're being watched they know they're being recorded and it's it's just you know You know, you can't do waterboarding in Guantanamo if you have lawyers running all over the place I hope you're correct and that's I hope you're correct But it brings me back to this whole idea of getting dirt and I think I think there's and then on the other hand I think there's also um, you know a degree to which um our government our Our deep state on across the board is shockingly less competent less functional And um, it's less capable of this and this is this is where I'm not even sure whether this is an improvement, you know, right?

2:36:48So it's it's sort of like um, you know um maybe um the 1963 US Where let's go with the craziest version where deep state is capable of knocking off the president Maybe that's actually a higher functioning society than uh then the uh Then um the crazy version where they're They're incapable of doing it right and they're bogged down with the EI They can't they can't they can't get the gunman even to have a scope on his rifle or whatever Yeah, I don't we don't we haven't really I mean it's it's like what's open as right But I don't believe you did man. It's like it's like Much bigger lose it can't find someone as competent as Oswald right or something like that, you know So it's a good point.

2:37:34It's a good point and so I um I I'm I veer more to the explanation that it's uh it's gross And competence, but I don't know if that makes it better. It might make it worse I think they weren't as competent right because they only had one guy doing it and he was an effective If you had the same if you had much better organization you wouldn't have it just one guy I mean there's people out there That I know that can kill someone from a mile away, but it's it's it's very effective You can you can do things as a solo actor. It's it's hard to organize because everything gets recorded Everything does get recorded that is a fact But it brings me back to that thing about having dirt on people that you were talking about with why the Epstein Information doesn't get released and why they probably did it in the first place They did it in the first place.

2:38:24Yeah, dirt on people then you know those people are not gonna tell on you And there's and looking together and that's that is that is still a That is still a strange counterpoint to my thesis where why is the dirt not come out? And so somehow there's some some way Uh the container is still kind of working. Yeah, it's kind of working It's just everyone is aware that it's working and then it frustrated that nothing happens You know like Julien Assange being arrested and and spending so much time locked up in the embassy like finally recently released But didn't you have to delete like a bunch of emails in order to be released?

2:38:56But you know the you know in the But again just just to take the other side of this boat in the Assange Snowden stuff Um, yeah, it showed an out of control deep state that was just Hoovering up all the data in the world right and then um, but we weren't like it didn't show Like James Bond times a hundred the weren't like exploding cigar assassination plot there was none of They were doing so little with us. Mm -hmm is is um, it seems like I know or at least that's the Um But you know, it's I think it's there's so much less agency in the CIA in the central intelligence agency It's so much less agentech I hope you're right again.

2:39:43I don't know if that's I don't know if that's incorrect with how they deal with overseas stuff I hope they're really good at that um You know that brings me to this whole uap thing because one of my primary theories about the uap thing is it's stuff that we have I think I think that's a lot of what people are seeing. I think I think they're secret programs That are Beyond congressional oversight that have done some things with propulsion that's outside of our understanding Our current the conventional understanding that most people have about rockets and all these different things being the only way to propel things through the sky I think they figured out some other stuff and I think they're drones and I think they have drones that can use some sort of whether it's anti -gravity propulsion system or some You know So do you that's that's your that's your placeholder theory or that's that's uh That's what you think more than space aliens or do you think both space aliens and that or which which version of the latter I think both you think both yeah, I don't I don't think we haven't been visited I think we have I think we if if life exists elsewhere and it's most certainly should Just make sense.

2:40:52But do you do you think um Do you think the UFO sightings from the 50s and 60s were already drone programs? Were they ready that advanced? No, those are the ones that give me pause um that's why you know When I named my comedy club the comedy mother ship is all uf. Oh themed our rooms are named fat man and little boy Our rooms are named after the nuclear bombs because those nuclear bombs and they dropped them That's when everybody starts seeing these things and I think if I was a sophisticated society from another planet And I recognized that there is an intelligent species that has developed nuclear power and it started using it as bombs I would immediately start visiting and I would let them know hey mother fuckers like there's there's something way more advanced than you I would hover over the nuclear bases and shut down their missiles I would do all the things that supposedly the UFOs did just to keep the government and check just to say hey You're going through a transitionary Period that all intelligent species do when they have the ability to harness Incredible power and yet they still have these prime primate brains.

2:41:53They they have these territorial ape brains But yet now with the ability to literally harness the power of stars and drop them on cities I think that's when I would start visiting and I think all throughout human history before that even There's been very bizarre accounts of these things all the way back to Ezekiel in the bible Very bizarre accounts of these things that are flying through space the chariot. Yeah, there's there's a bunch of them There's the Vimanas and the ancient Hindu texts. There's so many of these things that you got to wonder And you got to think that if we send drones to Mars and we do we have a Fucking rover running around on Mars right now collecting data Do we send the James Webb telescope into space?

2:42:38Of course we do We have a lot of stuff that we send into space if we lived another million years without blowing ourselves up Which is just a blink of an eye in terms of the life of some of the planets in the universe How how much more advanced would we be and if we were interstellar and if we were intergalactic travelers And we found out that there was a primitive species that was coming of age. I think we would start visiting them You know the I think what my I hear everything you're saying I'm I'm strangely under motivated by it even if it's plausible me too. I'll do um And I guess I guess on the space aliens, which is the the wilder more interesting one in a way You know, I don't know.

2:43:23Roswell was 77 years ago 1947 and if um if um If the phenomenon is real and it's it's from another world with space alien space robots, whatever um You know Probably one of the key features is it's a femurality or it's cloaking and they are really good at hiding it at cloaking it at Scramble people's brains after they see them or stuff like this right and then um you know if you're a researcher You have to pick fields where you can make progress and so um This is um, you know, it's not a promising field and you know I know academia is messed up, but even if academia were not messed up This would not be a good field in which to try to make a career because there's been so little progress in 77 years So right so if you think of it from the point of view of I don't jokbal a or you know some of these people have been working on this for 50 years and um Yeah, it's it feels like there's something there and um, but then it's it's just as soon as you As soon as you feel like you have something almost that's graspable like a tick -tock videos, whatever It's just it's just always at the margin.

2:44:47Yeah recognition It's at the ephemerality is a is a key feature and um and then um, you know, maybe you have to then you have to I think you have to have some theory Of you know, why is this about to change and then it's always you know, I don't know the abstract mathematical formulation be You know um something um doesn't happen for time interval zero to t And time interval t plus one next minute next year. How likely is it and maybe maybe there's a chance Something will happen. You're waiting at the airport your luggage hasn't shown up It's more and more likely to chose up in the next minute but after an hour You know at some point the luggage is lost and if you're still waiting at the airport a year later That's a dumb idea at some point at some point the luggage is lost right and like you know, it's I don't know 77 years It's like maybe it's like 77 minutes at the airport That's at 77 minutes you should stop you know I'd start getting very demotivated waiting for my luggage perhaps let me also give you an alternative theory now if you were a highly sophisticated society they understood the progression of technology and understood the biological evolution that these animals were going through and you realized that they had reached a level of intelligence That required them to be monitored or maybe you even helped them along the way and this is a some a Diana Pusolko's work who uh works with with Gary Nolan on these things they they claim that they have recovered these crashed vehicles that defy any conventional understanding of how to construct things propulsion systems and they believe that these things are donations that's literally how to describe them as donations If you knew that this is a long road this is you can't just show up and give people time machines It's a long road for these people to develop the sophistication the cultural advancement the intellectual capacity to understand their place in the universe and that they're not there yet and they're still engaging in lies and manipulation and propaganda their entire society is built on a ship of fools If you looked at that you would say they're not ready.

2:47:07This is what we do we slowly introduce ourselves slowly over time make it more and more common and that's what you're seeing what you're seeing is when you have things like the tick -tock the commander David Fraver incident off of the coast of San Diego in 2004 and then you have the the stuff that they found off the east coast whether we're seeing these these Cubes within a circle that were hovering motionless and 120 knot winds and taking off at insane racist speed and that they only discovered them in 2014 when they started upgrading the systems on these jets Like what is all that like what are those things and if you if you wanted to slowly integrate yourself into the consciousness much like we're doing with well AI is quicker right But it's also a thing that's become commonplace we think of it now.

2:48:00It's normal chat gbt is a normal thing Even though it's past the turing test. We're not freaking out You have to slowly integrate these sort of things in the human consciousness You have to slowly introduce them to the zeitgeist and for it to not be some sort of a complete disruption of society Where everything shuts down and we just wait for space daddy to come and rescue us It has to become a thing where we slowly accept the fact that we are not alone and I would think psychologically That would be the very best tactic to play on human beings as I know and understand them from being from being one I do not think that we would be able to handle just an immediate invasion of Aliens I think it would break down society in a way that would be catastrophic to everything to all businesses to all social ideas Religion would fall apart.

2:48:49Everything would be fucked. It would be pretty crazy. It would be beyond it Pretty crazy. It would be beyond fucked and then although you could say you could say that's what chat gbt is It could be it's like an alien intelligence, but I think that's what ultimately they are um, but I think um Let me Man there there's so many there's so many parts of it that uh, I find Puzzling or or disturbing. Let me let me run one go down one other rabbit hole long this with you, which is um You know, I always wonder and again, this is a little bit too simplistic an argument, but uh, I always wonder that I'm about to give but what what the Alien civilization can be like and if you have faster than light travel If you have warp drive, which is probably what you really need to cover interstellar distances um You know what that means for military technology is that you can send weapons at warp speed and they will hit you before you see them coming And there is no defense against a warp speed weapon um And you could sort of take over the whole universe Before anybody could see you um could see could see you uh could see you um could see you coming And this is by by the way, this is sort of a weird plot hole in star wars star trek where um they can travel in hyperspace But then you're you know flying in the canyon Well, they shoot so slow you can see the bullets.

2:50:25Yeah, it's like it's like at you're and then you're doing this theatrical Klingons versus yeah Captain Kirk at 10 miles per hour or it's funny miles per hour or whatever right funny when you put it that way absurd plot and um and so um It it tells us that uh, I think that if you have if you have uh Faster than light travel there's something um really crazy that has to be true on a cultural political social level and there may be other solutions, but I'll give you my two um one one of them is that um You need complete totalitarian controls and it is like it is The people the individuals they might be Why not be perfect?

2:51:19They might be demons doesn't matter, but you have you have a demonic totalitarian control of your society where it's like you have you have like Parapsychological mind meld with everybody and no one can act independently of anybody else no one can ever launch a warp drive weapon and everybody who has that ability Is in like a my mind meld link with everybody else or or something something like that you can't have libertarian individualistic free agency right And then I think the other the other version socially and culturally is they have to be like perfectly altruistic non -self interest they have to be angels And so the pizalca literal thing I'd come to is the aliens It's not that they might be demons or angels.

2:52:15They must be demons or angels if you have faster than light travel And both of those seem Pretty crazy to me. Well, they're definitely pretty crazy, but so are human beings um Well, they're crazy in a very different way Yeah, but not crazy in a different way. You compare us to a mouse compare us to a mouse and what we're capable of Then from us to them Not much of a leap and it is a very big leap on a You know if we if we say that something like evolution Says that there's no such thing as a purely altruistic being right if you were purely in altruistic if you only cared about other people You don't survive.

2:52:56Well, why would you necessarily think that they'd think that um because because uh because Because then um you beings that are not perfectly altruistic are somewhat dangerous then me and then you and then and then the danger level gets correlated to the level of technology And if you have faster than light travel it is infinitely dangerous Let me address that. Even if the probabilities are very low. Here's my theory I think that what human beings are the fatal flaw that we have is that we're still animals And that we still have all these biological limitations and needs so this is what leads to violence This is what leads to jealousy imitation.

2:53:39This is what leads to war so leads to all these things As AI becomes more and more powerful. We will integrate Once we integrate with AI if we do it like now and then we look at a thousand we scale it up exponentially a thousand years from now Whatever it's going to be We will have no need for any of these biological features that have motivated us to get to the point we're creating AI All the things that are wrong in society whether it's inequity theft violence Pollution all these things are essentially poor allocation of resources combined with human instincts that are ancient we have ancient tribal primate instincts and all of these things lead us to believe that this is the only way to achieve dominance and control allocation of resources the creation of technology new technology Eventually reaches a point where it becomes far more intelligent than us and we have two choices Either we integrate or it becomes independent and it has no need for us anymore And then that becomes a superior life form in the universe and then that life form seeks out other life forms to do the same process And create it just like it exists and it can travel biological life might not be what we're experiencing these things might be a form of intelligence That is artificial that has progressed to an infinite point where Things that are unimaginable us to to us today in terms of propulsion and travel and to them It's commonplace and normal.

2:55:21I know that that you're trying to be reassuring But I did I find that monologues super non reassuring. It's not reassuring. There's so many steps in it And every single step has to work just the way you describe not necessarily and it just has to one has to work one sentient artificial intelligence That's it and we're on the track to that 100 % but it has It has it has to it has to be Almost otherworldly in its And it's non -selfishness and it's non -humanness But what is selfishness though? What is all that stuff? But all that stuff is attached to us. It's all attached to biological limitations Yeah, but I don't I don't think I don't think it's I don't think it's fundamentally about scarcity Scarsities what exists in nature It's it's fundamentally about Cultural positional goods within society It's a scarcity that's created culturally Are you familiar with this 90s spoof movie on a Star Trek called Galaxy Quest?

2:56:20Yeah, I remember that movie So this was I know this is a sort of a silly PayPal digression story from 1999 and we were sort of this Business model idea we had 99 was we used Palm pilots to be money voted one of the 10 worst business ideas of 99 but we are We have a sort of infrared port you could be in people money and we had this idea in Around December 99 as a media promotional thing to hire James Duhin who played Scotty the in the original Star Trek and he was going to do this media promo event for us And it was like an 80 something older Scotty characters horrifically overweight and so it's like this terrible spokesperson And but our our tagline was you know used to being people now is beaming something much more important.

2:57:16He's beaming money and and it was this complete flop of media event December 99 that we did It was some of the reporters couldn't get there because the traffic was too bad in San Francisco So you know the tech wasn't working on a much lower tech level, but But anyway, we had a bunch of people from our company and there was one point where one of them um um, and um William Shatner played um James D Kirk the captain of the original Star Trek he was already doing a price line commercials and making a lot of money off of price line doing doing commercials for them and uh and so one of the people asked James Duhin the Scotty character what do you think of uh, William Shatner uh, I'm doing commercials for price line at which point Duhin's agent stood up and screamed at the top of his voice That is the forbidden question that is a forbidden question that is a forbidden question um, and you sort of realized Because you know the the the conceit of Star Trek the 60s show was that it was a Post -scarcity world the transporter technology you could you could reconfigure matter into anything you wanted Uh, there was no scarcity.

2:58:36There was no need for money the people who wanted money were Weirdly mentally screwed up people you only need money in a world of scarcity You know, it's it's it's a post -scarcity. It's sort of a communist world but um but uh galaxy quest was more correct because it's it's a spoof on Star Trek that gets made in the mid 90s where um And the galaxy quest or just to just to be able to tell you the story but galaxy quest is this is this movie where You have these were re -tread Star Trek actors and mr. Spock opens a furniture store or something like this And they're all like but they all hate hate hate the person who played the captain because the captain was a method actor Where he just lorded it over everyone because even in the communist post -scarcity world only one person got to be captain and um and so there's a great scarcity even in this futuristic sci -fi world and That's what we witnessed in 99 because that's the way uh William Shatner treated the other actors He was a method actor and they hated him and that was uh and uh and so um even in the Star Trek world The humans You know obviously they were just they were stuck in the 1960s or until east that's what you'll say but uh, but um I don't I don't think it's that straightforward for us to evolve their humans.

2:59:57I don't think we're gonna be humans anymore But uh i think i'm artificial life but then but then i hear that as we're gonna be extinct. Yes I don't like that. I don't like it either But i think logically that's what's going to happen. I think if you look at this Mad rush for artificial intelligence like they're they're literally building nuclear reactors to power AI right well they're talking about it. Yeah, okay That's because they know they're gonna need enormous amounts of power to do the once they have that and once that's online And once it keeps getting better and better and better where does that go that goes to some sort of an artificial life form And i think either we become that thing or We integrate with that thing and become cyborgs or that thing takes over And that thing becomes the primary life force of the universe And i think that biological life We look at like life because we know what life is but i think it's very possible the digital life or created life by people is just as not just It might be a superior life form far superior if we looked at us versus chimped nation right I don't want to live in the jungle and fight with other chimps and just rely on berries and eaten monkeys That's crazy.

3:01:11I want to live like a person. I want to be able to go to a restaurant Why because human life has advanced far beyond primate life We are stuck in thinking that this is the only way to live because it's the way we live I love music. I love comedy. I love art. I love the things that people create I love people that make great clothes and cars and businesses. I love people. I think people are awesome I'm a fan of people But if I had to look logically, I would I would assume that we are on the way out and that the only way forward Really to make an enormous leap in terms of the integration of society and of technology and of our understanding our place in the universe Is for us to transcend our physical limitations that are essentially based on primate biology and these primate desires For status like being the captain or for control of resources of all these things We assume these things are Standard and that they have to exist in intelligent species I think they only have to exist in intelligent species that have biological limitations I think intelligent species can be something and it is going to be something that is created by people And that might be what happens everywhere in the universe that might be the exact course Where there's a limit to biological evolution.

3:02:34It's painstaking natural selection It's it's time consuming or you get that thing to create the other form of life man, I um Let me you know I keep I keep thinking there are two alternate histories that are Alternate stories of the future that are more plausible than one you just told and um, so one of them is It sounds like yours, but it's just the Silicon Valley propaganda story Where they say that's what they're gonna do And then of course they don't quite do it right and it doesn't quite work and um it goes it goes super super haywire and And that's uh and that's where okay, yeah, there's a 1 % chance that works and um There's a 99 % chance that um that ends up so you have two choices you have a company That does exactly what you do and that's super ethical super restrained does everything right and there is a company That says all the things you just said But then cuts corners and doesn't quite do it and I wouldn't say it's 1 to 99 But that that sounds more plausible as that it ends up being corporate propaganda and then um You know my prior would be even more likely this of course the argument the effective altruist the anti -AI people make is Yeah, Joe, you're the story you're telling us that's just gonna be the fake corporate propaganda and um and we need to push back on that And and the way you push back is you need to regulate it and you need to govern it and you need to do it globally um, and this is you know The Rand corporation in southern California Uh has you know one of their verticals and it's a sort of public private Fusion, but one of the things they they're pushing for is something they call global compute governance Which is um yeah, it's uh the AI the the accelerationist AI story is too scary and too dangerous and too likely to go wrong And so um you know we need to have uh You know global governance which from my point of view Sounds even worse, but uh so you're but tobian, but that's that's uh That's I think I think that's the story That's the story uh the problem with that story is that China is not gonna go along with that program They're gonna keep going full steam ahead and we're gonna have to go keep going full steam ahead in order to compete with China There's no way you're gonna be able to regulate it in America and compete with people that are not regulating it worldwide And then once it becomes sentient Once you have an artificial intelligent creature that is created by human beings it can make better versions of itself Over and over and over again and keep doing it.

3:05:29It's going to get to a point where it's far superior to anything that we can imagine Well to the to the extent it's driven by the military and other competition with China um You know that's till it becomes sentient that that that that that suggests it's going to be even less in in the sort of um You know utopian Altruistic uh, yeah even russian it's gonna be even more dangerous right unless it gets away from them This is my thought if it gets away from them and it has no motivation to listen to anything that human beings have told it If it's completely immune to programming which totally makes sense that it would be It totally makes sense that if it's gonna make better versions of itself The first thing it's gonna do is eliminate human influence especially when these humans are corrupt It's gonna go.

3:06:12I'm not gonna let these people tell me what to do and what to control and they would have no No reason to do that. I know reason to listen. I sort of Generally don't think we should trust China or the CCP but but the You know Probably the count the best counter argument they would have is that they are interested in maintaining control and they are crazy fanatical about that and that's why um You know the CCP might actually regulate it and they're gonna put They're going to they're gonna put breaks on this in a way that uh that we might not in in silicon valley and it's It's it's it's a it's a technology they understand that will Undermind their power that's an interesting perspective and so then they would be I don't know if I I don't fully believe them but right I know what you're saying it's it's It's sort of uh There's there's sort of a weird way um All the big tech companies It seemed to me where natural ways for the CCP to extend its power to control the population 10 send olibaba and then um and then Because it was it was you know, but then it's also in theory the tech is can be used as an alternate channel for people to organize or or or things like this and Even though it's 80 % control and maybe 20 % risk of loss of control Um, maybe that 20 % was too high and there's sort of a strange way over the last seven eight years where you know Jack mod olibaba all these people sort of got uh got shoved aside for these party Functionaries that are effectively running these companies and so there is something about um that the big tech story in China Where the people running these companies were seen as national champions a decade ago now they're the enemies of the people and uh it's sort of The little luttite thing was this uh You know the the CCP has full control you have this new technology them it give you even more control But there's a chance you lose it How do you think about that very good point and then that's what they've done with consumer internet And then there's probably something about the AI where make it's possible there They're not even in the running and it certainly um and certainly feels like It's it's all happening, you know in the US Mm, and so Maybe it is you know Maybe it could still be Maybe it could still be be stopped and that is a problem with espionage right so even if it's happening in the ufs They're gonna take that information.

3:08:57I'm gonna figure out how to get it you can get it But then you know if you if you build it right is there you still the same core problem air gap. Does it you know does it jump the air gap does somehow That's a good point that they would be so concerned about control if they wouldn't allow it to get to the point where it gets there And we would get there first and then it would be controlled by silicone valley Or or or or or or or or or it's the spiral out of control. Yeah But then I I think I think my and again, this is very very speculative conversation, but my um My read on the I don't know cultural social vibe is that uh The scary dystopian AI narrative is way more compelling, you know the I don't like the effect of altruist people I don't like the Luddites But man, I think they are this time around they are winning the arguments and um and so You know my I don't know, you know, it's mixing metaphors, but do you want to be worried about dr.

3:10:00Strange love Who wants to blow up the world to build bigger bombs or do you want to worry about Greta who wants to you know Make everyone drive a bicycle so the world doesn't get destroyed and um we're in a world where people are Worried about dr. Strange love. They're not worried about Greta and it's the Greta equivalent In um in a i that that uh my model is is going to Be surprisingly powerful It's it's gonna be outlawed. It's gonna be regulated as we have outlawed, you know, so many other vectors of innovation I mean you can think about why was their progress in computers over the last 50 years and not other stuff because the computers Were mostly inert it was mostly this virtual reality that was airgapped from the real world.

3:10:47It was you know, yes, it's um Well, you know, yeah, there's all this Crazy stuff that happens on the internet, but most of the time what happens on the internet stays on the internet It's it's actually pretty It's it's it's it's pretty decoupled and then um and that's why We've had a relatively light regulatory touch on on that stuff versus versus so many other things and then You know um, but there's there's no reason you know if if uh If you had you know I don't know if you had the FDA Regulating video games or regulating AI I think the progress was slowed down a lot 100 % that would be a fucking disaster Yeah, yeah, that would be a disaster, but but again, it's you know, they get to regulate you know Yeah, pharmaceuticals Potentially with that either I know I know but uh The but they did you know the the litamide or whatever the you know all all these things that went really haywire They did a good job but people are scared yeah, they're not scared of video games.

3:11:51They're scared of you know dangerous pharmaceuticals and if if you if you think of AI is it's not just a video game It's about not just about this world of bits, but it's gonna air gap and it's gonna affect you in your physical world in a real way um, you know, maybe um Maybe you across the air gap and get the FDA or some other Well the problem is they're not good at regulating anything. There's no One government agency that you said that you can see that does a stellar job I don't I think it's but but I think they have been pretty good at slowing things down and stopping them and Right, you know, we we've made a lot less progress on I don't know extending human life.

3:12:34We've made no progress on curing dementia in 40 or 50 years. There's all the stuff where um, you know, it's been regulated to death, which I think is Is very bad from the point of view of progress, but uh It is it is pretty effective as a regulation. They've stopped stuff. They've been effectively luddite They've been very effective at being luddites Interesting. Well, I I mean I'm really considering your perspective on chaman AI. It's very but but I again these these stories are all like very speculative Like sure like maybe you know, then you can the counter argument in mind be something like that's what China thinks it will be doing but um It will somehow you know Go rogue go rogue on them.

3:13:17Yeah, or they're too arrogant about how much power they think the CCP has and it will go rogue or so that there are sort of I'm not not at all sure. This is this is right, but I think I think the Man, I think I think the US The US one I would say is that uh Um I think the pro AI people in Silicon Valley are doing a pretty Bad job on Let's say convincing people That it's Going to be good for them. That's going to be good for the average person. It's going to be good for our society and um and if if it all ends up being And it all ends up being some version, you know, um humans are headed towards the glue factory like a horse Um, man, that's uh That that sort of probably Makes me want to become a lot of it too.

3:14:15Well sucks for us if it's true But if that's if that's if that's the most positive story you can tell then my my in I don't think that necessarily means we're going to go to the glue factory I think it means you know the glue factory is getting shut down Maybe I don't know who fucking runs the glue factory. That's the problem. I don't know I'm just speculating too, but I'm trying to be objective when I speculate and I just don't think that this is going to last I don't think that our position as the apex predator number one animal on the planet is going to last I think we're going to create something that surpasses us I think that's probably what happens and that's probably what these things are that visit us I think that's what they are.

3:14:59I don't I don't think they're biological I think they're probably what comes after a society develops the kind of technology that we're currently in the middle of And the part that Look, there are all these all these places where um There parts the story we don't know right and so it's like how did My my my general thesis is there is no evolutionary path to this maybe there's a guided Outside alien super intelligence path for us to become super human and fundamentally benevolent and fundamentally radically different beings But um, there's no natural evolutionary path for this to happen And then I don't know how this would have happened for the alien civilization presumably there was some But isn't that evolutionary path the invention of superior technology that's a new form of life?

3:15:59No, but but but but but The the story you're telling was it can't we can't just leave the humans to the natural evolution because we're still Like animals we're still into status all these crazy But those are the things that motivate us to innovate um and and if we keep innovating at some point we will destroy ourselves with that That's and we created a new version of life. No, but no, but you're you're the story you were telling earlier was you need to you need to have directed in evolution. It's like intelligent design. It's something. It's like there's some godlike being That's actually has to take over from evolution and guide our cultural and political and biological development No, it might not have any use for us at all It might just ignore us and let us live like the chimps do but then and then become this superior force in the planet Um, it doesn't have to get rid of us It doesn't have to send us to the glue factory can let us exist just like put boundaries I thought it has to but it has to stop us from developing this Well, what if we just end here and we stay big human and we can continue with biological evolution as long as that takes But this new life form now becomes a superior life form on earth and we still you know, we could still have sex We could still have kids, but by the way that's going down our ability to have children is decreasing because of our use of technology Which is wild right our use of plastics and microplastics is causing dalleys enter into people systems It's changing the development pattern of children to the point where it's measurable There's a lot of research that shows that the chemicals in the environmental Factors that we are all experiencing on a daily basis are radically lowering birth rates radically lowering The ability that men have to develop sperm and more miscarriages All these things are connected to the chemicals in our environment, which is directly connected to our use of technology It's almost like these things coincide naturally and they work naturally to the point where we become this sort of Feminized thing that creates this technology that surpasses us and then we just exist for as long as we do As biological things, but now there's a new thing Yeah, that's um crazy idea might not be real.

3:18:16It's just a theory But we seem to be moving in a direction, but I I less and less like animals Um Yeah, I think I think there's still are we still have a pretty crazy geopolitical race with China to come back to that sure You know um the natural development of drone technology in the military context is you need to take the human out of the loop because The human can get jammed sure and so you need to put an AI on the drones Using the AI for dog fights and they're a hundred percent effective against human pilots and so um There's sort of our And all these things, you know, there's there's a logic to them, but um There doesn't seem to be a good endgame.

3:18:59No, the endgame doesn't look good, but it's gonna be interesting Peter It's definitely gonna be interesting. It's interesting right now, right? Um Man, I do you do you think the I think all these things are very over determined do you think that the collapse in birth rates? You know it yeah could be plastics But isn't it just isn't it just a feature of late modernity there's that as well there's there's a feature of Women having careers right so they want to postpone child sure that's a factor Um, there's a factor of men being so engrossed in their career that their testosterone declines lack of sleep stress cortisol levels alcohol consumption a lot of different things that are factors in declining sperm rate sperm count in men you have miscarriage rates that are up You have a lot of pharmaceutical drugs you could attach to that as well that have to do with low birth weight or Birth rates rather there's a lot of factors, but those factors all seem to be connected to Society and our our civilization and technology in general because the environmental factors all have to do with technology all of them have to do with inventions and these unnatural factors that are entering into the biological body of human beings and causing these changes And none of these changes are good in terms of us being able to reproduce and if you factor in the fact that these changes didn't exist 50 years ago I mean 40 years ago.

3:20:30We didn't have Alzheimer's Right so yeah people didn't get that old No, they got that old they got that old the Alzheimer's has to do with the the the Myelin in the human brain and has to do with the fact that myelin is made entirely of cholesterol The primary theory they think now is a lack of cholesterol in the diet might be leading to some of these factors But you have also environmental things There's like we're getting poisoned on a daily basis our diets are fucking terrible the things that human being like What percentage of us are obese it's probably me treating this but yeah Diet Coke's great though few every day You'll be fine.

3:21:05I'm not worried about die coke. I'm worried about a lot of things though I'm worried about I think there's a natural progression That's happening and I think it coincides with the invention of technology and that it just seems to me to be too coincidental that we don't notice it that the invention of technology also leads to the the Disruption of the sexual reproduction systems of human beings like boy doesn't that mean and then If you get to a point where human beings can no longer reproduce sexually Which you could see that path if if we've dropped like Human men's male sperm count is dropped something something crazy from the 1950s to today and continues to do so for the average male And if you just just jack that up to a thousand years from now You could get to a point where there's no longer natural childbirth and that people are all having birth through Test tubes and some sort of new invention.

3:22:00I'm always I'm always Let me think I I think the why why have birth rates collapsed is it's probably It's again over determined story. It's the plastics. It's the screens. It's the um You know, it's uh It's certain um, you know ways they're not comp children are not compatible with um having a career in late modernity Um probably our economics of it where people can't afford houses or of space um Um, but I'm probably always a little bit more anchored on um the social and cultural Dimensions of this stuff and uh and again the imitation version of this is um You know if it's sort of conserved across you know, it's people are below the replacement rate In all 50 states of the US even moreman uta the average woman has less than two kids um, it's um Iran is below that it'll be way below it South Korea's hands and yeah, it's all these like yeah It's all these very different types of societies and so the fact that it's so can and then You know, Israel's still sort of a weird exception um and and then if you ask you know um My sort of simplistic somewhat circular explanation would be um You know people have kids if other people have kids and they stop having kids when other people stop having kids And so there's there's some there's a dimension of it that's just you know if you're if you're a 27 -year -old woman in Israel you better get married and you have to keep up with your other friends that are having kids and um and That's and if you don't you're just like a weirdo who doesn't fit into society or something like that No, there's certainly a dimension of perspective and then if you're in South Korea where I think the total fertility rates like 0 .7 it's like one third of the replacement rate like every generation is going down by two thirds or something like this Really fat heading towards extinction pretty pretty fast um Um, it is something like probably none of your friends are doing it and and then and then you're you're you're you're in this and then and then probably their ways it it shifts the the politics in a very very deep way where um You know once you get an inverted demographic pyramid where you have Way more old people than young people um at some point you know, there's always a question do you vote?

3:24:42You know, do you vote for benefits for the old or for the very young? Do you spend money? So Johnny can read or so grandma can have a spare leg and um and once you know once the demographic flips and you get this inverted pyramid Maybe the the politics shifts in a very deep way where um the people with kids get penalized more and more economically or just costs more and more and uh and then the old people without kids Just vote more and more benefits for themselves effectively and then it just sort of um You know It's once it flips it may be very hard to reverse. I looked at all these sort of heterodox Demographers but I'm lying on the name, but there's sort of a set of Um, where you know, it's like what are the long -term demographic projections and there's this uh You know if if you know There are eight billion people on the planet and You know if every woman has Not two babies, but one baby Then every generation's half the previous then the next generation's four billion and then and then People think well, it's it's just gonna It'll eventually you'll have women who want more kids and it'll just get a smaller population than it will bounce back um uh Yeah, one of the Japanese demographers I Was looking at on this the um few years ago His thesis was no once it flips It doesn't flip back because you've changed all the politics to where people get distant set and so And then you should just extrapolate this as the permanent birth rate and if it's if it's one on average of one baby per woman um And you have a having and then it's in 33 generations two to the 33rd is about eight billion Um, and if every generation's 30 years 30 times 33 is 990 years and 990 years you'd predict there'd be one person left on the planet Jesus Christ And um and then then we'd go extinct if there's only one person left that doesn't work and um and again That's it's a very long -term extrapolation, but the claim is that just you know once you once you flip it um it kicks in all these social and Political dimensions that are then like yeah, maybe it got flipped by the screens or the plastics or You know the drugs or other stuff, but once it's flipped you you change the whole society and it actually stays flipped and it's very very hard to undo that makes sense and it's more terrifying than mine Yeah, but then you know always the But then you know the the you know the weird you know the weird history on this was you know it was 50 years ago or whatever 1968 Paul Ehrlich writes the population bomb and it's just The population is just going to exponentially grow and um Yeah, in theory you can have exponential growth where it doubles you can have exponential decay Where it halves every generation and then in theory there's some stable equilibrium where you know it's You know everybody has exactly two kids and it's completely stable, but it turns out that That solution is is very very hard to get calibrate and you either yeah, and we shift it from exponential growth to exponential decay and it's probably Going to be quite herculian to get back to something like stasis Well, it's in this unhappy note I don't know it's Yeah, that's a terrifying thought and maybe true and maybe what happens Well, we don't know you know we haven't gone through it before But I think there's a lot of factors like you're saying I think that one's very compelling and it's scary Especially the South Korea thing that's nuts Yeah, it's always it's always sort of idiosyncratic There's always things that are idiosyncratic To this society so it's you know, it's you know, it's it's extremely polarized on the gender on the gender thing and you know um If you get married with kids you're you're pushed into this super traditional structure The women don't want to be in that structure They opt out and then um and so there are sort of idiosyncratic things you can say about East Asia and Confucian Societies and the way they're not interacting well with modernity But then you know, there's there's a part of it where I wonder where this just it's just an extreme You know extreme version of it and then I don't know you know my my somewhat facile answer is always you know On this stuff is I don't know what to do about these things, but my fast -haul answer is always the first step is to talk about them And if you can't even talk about them we're never going to solve them And then maybe that's only the small first step But that's that's always sort of my my my fast -haul answer.

3:29:40I was in I was in South Korea Year and a half ago two years ago now and um uh I met um, you know one of the CEOs who ran one of the chable one of the giant conglomerates and I I sort of thought this would be a interesting topic to talk about and uh and then you know, it's probably probably all sorts of cultural things I was offending or you know you're saying obviously this what are you gonna do about this? Astrophic birth rate the sentence is my opening question and uh and then um the way uh You know the way He dealt with it was um just turned to me and said uh You're totally right. It's a total disaster And then as soon as you acknowledge it he felt you didn't need to talk about it anymore and we could move on wow So we have to try to do a little bit better than that Wow Because you know I think I think the it is always this Strange thing where there's so many of these things where we can You know where somehow talking about Things is the first step but then it also becomes the excuse for for not doing not doing more not not really solving them um You know, there's all this the probably are all these Dietary things Where you sort of know what you're supposed to do and then if you know what you're supposed to do maybe that's that's good enough And you just love one piece of chocolate cake before you go on the diet tomorrow or whatever and uh and so it sort of becomes this You know and so somehow um Figure out a way to turn this knowledge into something actionable as always Always the thing that's that's tricky.

3:31:31It's it's it's it's sort of where I always find myself very skeptical of um Of you know Yeah, all these modalities of therapy and where um, you know the theory is that uh um You figure out people's problems and by figuring them out you change them and then and then it and then ideally it becomes You know an activator for change and then in practice It often becomes the opposite but the way it works is something like this. It's like you know um Psychotherapy gets it gets advertised as self -transformation and um and then after you spend years in therapy and you maybe you learn a lot of interesting things about yourself You sort of get exhausted from talking to the therapist and um At some point it crashes out from self -transformation into self -acceptance and you realize one day No, you're actually just perfect the way you are and And so it's you know, there are these things that that may be very powerful on the level of of insight and telling us things about ourselves, but then you know Do they actually get us to change?

3:32:47Well, that is an interesting thing about talking about things because I think you're correct that when you talk about things oftentimes this it is a You are At least in some way avoiding doing those things. It's a question. Yeah in some ways it's a substitute But also you have to talk about them to understand that you need to do something Yeah, that's always my excuse. I You have to do that and I also realize that it's often my cop -out answer too. It could be both things You could go problem is taking action and what what action to take and you know the paralysis by analysis Where you're just like trying to figure out what to do and how to do it?

3:33:24Yeah But I think talking about as the most important thing Strategies often a euphemism for procrastination. Yes, it is something like that. There's a lot of that going on It's very hard for people to just take steps They they but they talk about it a lot. Yeah But this a man I really enjoyed talking to you also it was really fun. It was great great conversation A lot of great insight and a lot of things that I'm going to think about a lot so thank you very much Thanks for having me also all right You