Tim Urban: Elon Musk, Neuralink, AI, Aliens, and the Future of Humanity

00:00:00.000 | If you read a half hour a night,

00:00:01.640 | the calculation I came to is that you can read

00:00:03.520 | a thousand books in 50 years.

00:00:05.200 | - All of the components are there

00:00:07.160 | to engineer intimate experiences.

00:00:09.480 | - Extraterrestrial life is a true mystery,

00:00:11.540 | the most tantalizing mystery of all.

00:00:13.360 | - How many humans need to disappear

00:00:15.880 | for us to be completely lost?

00:00:17.660 | The following is a conversation with Tim Urban,

00:00:22.320 | author and illustrator of the amazing blog

00:00:25.480 | called "Wait, But Why?"

00:00:28.040 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:30.080 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:00:32.200 | in the description.

00:00:33.320 | And now, dear friends, here's Tim Urban.

00:00:37.260 | You wrote a "Wait, But Why?" blog post

00:00:41.160 | about the big and the small,

00:00:42.720 | from the observable universe to the atom.

00:00:45.640 | What world do you find most mysterious or beautiful,

00:00:48.480 | the very big or the very small?

00:00:50.660 | - The very small seems a lot more mysterious.

00:00:54.080 | And the very big, I feel like we kind of understand.

00:00:56.600 | I mean, not the very, very big, not the multiverse,

00:01:00.120 | if there is a multiverse,

00:01:01.760 | not anything outside of the observable universe.

00:01:04.160 | But the very small, I think we really have no idea

00:01:08.180 | what's going on, or very, you know, much less idea.

00:01:11.280 | But I find that, so I think the small is more mysterious,

00:01:13.680 | but I think the big is sexier.

00:01:16.240 | I just cannot get enough of the bigness of space

00:01:22.360 | and the farness of stars.

00:01:26.320 | And it just continually blows my mind.

00:01:29.240 | - I mean, we still, the vastness of the observable universe

00:01:33.480 | has the mystery that we don't know what's out there.

00:01:35.820 | We know how it works, perhaps.

00:01:38.260 | Like, general relativity can tell us

00:01:40.920 | how the movement of bodies works,

00:01:42.800 | how they're born, all that kind of things.

00:01:45.400 | But like, how many civilizations are out there?

00:01:49.280 | How many, like, what are the weird things that are out there?

00:01:51.480 | - Oh yeah, life, well, extraterrestrial life

00:01:53.640 | is a true mystery,

00:01:54.720 | the most tantalizing mystery of all.

00:01:56.720 | But that's like our size.

00:02:00.080 | So that's maybe it's that the actual,

00:02:02.660 | the big and the small are really cool,

00:02:04.080 | but it's actually the things that are potentially our size

00:02:06.440 | that are the most tantalizing.

00:02:07.760 | - Potentially our size is probably the key word.

00:02:10.120 | - Yeah, I mean, I wonder how small intelligent life

00:02:12.560 | could get, probably not that small.

00:02:15.400 | And I assume that there's a limit that you're not gonna,

00:02:18.360 | I mean, you might have like a whale,

00:02:19.920 | blue whale-sized intelligent being,

00:02:21.840 | that would be kind of cool.

00:02:23.320 | But I feel like we're in the range

00:02:26.080 | of order of magnitude smaller and bigger than us for life.

00:02:28.720 | But maybe not, maybe you could have some giant life form.

00:02:32.200 | Just seems like, I don't know,

00:02:34.000 | there's gotta be some reason that anything intelligent

00:02:36.640 | between kind of like a little tiny rodent or finger monkey

00:02:40.680 | up to a blue whale on this planet.

00:02:43.640 | I don't know, maybe when you change the gravity

00:02:46.440 | and other things.

00:02:47.720 | - Well, you could think of life

00:02:49.120 | as a thing of self-assembling organisms

00:02:52.520 | and they just get bigger and bigger and bigger.

00:02:54.000 | Like there's no such thing as a human being.

00:02:55.920 | A human being is made up of a bunch of tiny organisms

00:02:58.880 | that are working together.

00:03:00.120 | And we somehow envision that as one entity

00:03:03.040 | 'cause it has consciousness.

00:03:04.560 | But maybe it's just organisms on top of organisms.

00:03:08.080 | Organisms all the way down, turtles all the way down.

00:03:10.600 | So like Earth can be seen as an organism

00:03:13.320 | for people, for alien species that's very different.

00:03:17.400 | Like why is the human the fundamental entity

00:03:21.520 | that is living and then everything else

00:03:25.000 | is just either a collection of humans

00:03:26.760 | or components of humans?

00:03:28.600 | - I think of it kind of as if you think about,

00:03:30.400 | I think of like an emergence elevator.

00:03:32.680 | And so you've got an ant is on one floor

00:03:36.800 | and then the ant colony is a floor above.

00:03:39.480 | Or maybe there's even units within the colony

00:03:41.320 | that's one floor above and the full colony

00:03:42.880 | is two floors above.

00:03:44.680 | And to me, I think that it's the colony

00:03:47.000 | that is closest to being the animal.

00:03:49.440 | It's like the individual thing that competes with others

00:03:53.920 | while the individual ants are like cells

00:03:57.680 | in the animal's body.

00:03:59.080 | We are more like a colony in that regard.

00:04:01.360 | But the humans are weird because we kind of,

00:04:04.680 | I think of it if emergence happens in an emergence tower,

00:04:08.280 | where you've got kind of, as I said, cells

00:04:10.000 | and then humans and communities and societies.

00:04:13.360 | Ants are very specific.

00:04:15.080 | The individual ants are always cooperating

00:04:16.960 | with each other for the sake of the colony.

00:04:19.280 | So the colony is this unit that is the competitive unit.

00:04:22.760 | Humans can kind of go, we take the elevator up and down

00:04:25.880 | emergence tower psychologically.

00:04:27.280 | Sometimes we are individuals that are competing

00:04:30.960 | with other individuals and that's where our mindset is.

00:04:33.160 | And then other times we get in this crazy zone,

00:04:35.920 | a protest or a sporting event,

00:04:37.960 | and you're just chanting and screaming

00:04:40.160 | and doing the same hand motions with all these other people

00:04:42.720 | and you feel like one.

00:04:43.840 | You feel like one and you'd sacrifice yourself.

00:04:45.760 | And now that's with soldiers.

00:04:46.960 | And so our brains can kind of psychologically

00:04:50.480 | go up and down this elevator in an interesting way.

00:04:53.600 | - Yeah, I wonder how much of that is just the narrative

00:04:56.120 | we tell ourselves.

00:04:57.080 | Maybe we are just like an ant colony.

00:04:59.040 | We're just collaborating always.

00:05:00.560 | Even in our stories of individualism,

00:05:04.160 | of like the freedom of the individual,

00:05:05.840 | like this kind of isolation,

00:05:09.040 | lone man on an island kind of thing.

00:05:11.400 | We're actually all part of this giant network

00:05:14.160 | of maybe one of the things that makes humans who we are

00:05:17.560 | is probably deeply social.

00:05:21.120 | The ability to maintain not just a single human intelligence

00:05:24.480 | but like a collective intelligence.

00:05:26.560 | And so this feeling like individual is just

00:05:29.840 | 'cause we woke up at this level of the hierarchy.

00:05:33.080 | So we make it special,

00:05:34.600 | but we very well could be just part of the ant colony.

00:05:39.600 | This whole conversation,

00:05:40.840 | I'm either going to be doing a Shakespearean analysis

00:05:44.000 | of your Twitter, your writing,

00:05:46.480 | or very specific statements that you've made.

00:05:49.560 | So you've written answers to a mailbag of questions.

00:05:54.560 | The questions are amazing, the ones you've chosen,

00:05:57.080 | and your answers are amazing.

00:05:58.640 | So on this topic of the big and the small,

00:06:00.200 | somebody asked, "Are we bigger than we are small

00:06:03.400 | "or smaller than we are big?"

00:06:05.000 | Who's asking these questions?

00:06:06.400 | This is really good.

00:06:08.000 | You have amazing fans.

00:06:09.120 | Okay, so where do we sit

00:06:13.600 | at this level of the very small to the very big?

00:06:18.480 | - So are we bigger or are we small?

00:06:20.040 | Are we bigger than we are small?

00:06:21.560 | I think it depends on what we're asking here.

00:06:23.840 | So if we're talking about the biggest thing

00:06:26.800 | that we kind of can talk about without just imagining

00:06:31.800 | is the observable universe, the Hubble sphere.

00:06:35.660 | And that's about 10 to the 26th meters in diameter.

00:06:40.660 | The smallest thing we talk about is a Planck length.

00:06:44.460 | But you could argue that that's kind of an imaginary thing.

00:06:47.220 | But that's 10 to the negative 35.

00:06:49.460 | Now we're about, conveniently, about 10 to the one.

00:06:52.540 | Not quite, 10 to the zero.

00:06:53.820 | We're about 10 to the zero meters long.

00:06:56.920 | So it's easy because you can just look and say,

00:06:59.100 | okay, well, for example,

00:07:01.300 | atoms are like 10 to the negative 15th

00:07:04.700 | or 10 to the negative 16th meters across, right?

00:07:08.540 | If you go 10 to the 15th or 10 to the 16th,

00:07:10.580 | which is right, that's now,

00:07:11.980 | so an atom to us is us to this.

00:07:13.860 | You get to like nebulas.

00:07:15.420 | Smaller than a galaxy and bigger than the biggest star.

00:07:18.500 | So we're right in between nebula and an atom.

00:07:22.740 | Now, if you want to go down to quark level,

00:07:24.100 | you might be able to get up to galaxy level.

00:07:26.260 | When you go up to the observable universe,

00:07:29.260 | you're getting down on the small side

00:07:31.460 | to things that we, I think,

00:07:33.100 | are mostly theoretically imagining are there

00:07:36.580 | and hypothesizing are there.

00:07:39.760 | So I think as far as real world objects

00:07:43.380 | that we really know a lot about,

00:07:45.280 | I would say we are smaller than we are big.

00:07:48.820 | But if you want to go down to the Planck length,

00:07:50.340 | we're very quickly, we're bigger than we are small.

00:07:52.380 | If you think about strings.

00:07:54.060 | - Yeah, strings, exactly, string theory and so on.

00:07:57.580 | That's interesting.

00:07:58.580 | But I think like you answered,

00:08:00.140 | no matter what, we're kind of middle-ish.

00:08:02.020 | - Yeah, I mean, here's something cool.

00:08:04.340 | If a human is a neutrino, and again,

00:08:06.380 | neutrino, the size doesn't really make sense.

00:08:08.580 | It's not really a size.

00:08:09.640 | But when we talk about some of these neutrinos,

00:08:11.660 | I mean, if a neutrino is a human, a proton is the sun.

00:08:15.500 | So that's like, I mean, a proton's real small,

00:08:18.660 | like really small.

00:08:19.740 | And so, yeah, the small gets like crazy small very quickly.

00:08:25.660 | - Let's talk about aliens.

00:08:30.420 | We already mentioned it.

00:08:31.660 | Let's start just by with the basic,

00:08:34.220 | what's your intuition as of today?

00:08:36.020 | This is a thing that could change day by day.

00:08:38.380 | But how many alien civilizations out there?

00:08:40.900 | Is it zero?

00:08:42.340 | Is it a handful?

00:08:45.180 | Is it almost endless?

00:08:46.540 | Like the observable universe,

00:08:50.260 | or the universe is teeming with life?

00:08:52.220 | - If I had a gun to my head, I'd have to take a guess.

00:08:56.340 | I would say it's teeming with life.

00:08:57.940 | I would say there is.

00:08:59.180 | I think running a Monte Carlo simulation,

00:09:02.340 | this paper by Anders Sandberg and Drexler

00:09:05.580 | and a few others a couple years ago,

00:09:07.300 | I think you probably know about it.

00:09:08.800 | I think the mean,

00:09:11.900 | you know, using different,

00:09:15.100 | using different, you know,

00:09:17.780 | running through a randomized rate equation multiplication,

00:09:21.780 | you ended up with 27 million as the mean

00:09:25.060 | of intelligent civilizations in the galaxy,

00:09:27.660 | in the Milky Way alone.

00:09:29.060 | And so then if you go outside the Milky Way,

00:09:31.860 | that would turn into trillions.

00:09:33.420 | That's the mean.

00:09:35.500 | Now what's interesting is that there's a long tail

00:09:38.220 | because they believe some of these multipliers

00:09:41.220 | in the Drake equation.

00:09:42.060 | So for example, the probability that life starts

00:09:46.860 | in the first place,

00:09:48.180 | they think that the kind of range that we use

00:09:52.700 | is for that variable or is way too small.

00:09:55.460 | And that's constraining our possibilities.

00:09:58.660 | And if you actually extend it to, you know,

00:10:00.700 | some crazy number of orders of magnitude,

00:10:03.340 | like 200, they think that that variable should be,

00:10:06.480 | you get this long tail where,

00:10:09.620 | I forget the exact number,

00:10:10.700 | but it's like a third or a quarter

00:10:12.540 | of the total outcomes have us alone.

00:10:15.740 | Like, you know, I think it's like,

00:10:17.140 | I think it's a sizable percentage has us

00:10:19.900 | as the only intelligent life in the galaxy,

00:10:23.100 | but you can keep going.

00:10:23.940 | And I think there's like, you know,

00:10:25.580 | a non-zero like legitimate amount of outcomes there

00:10:29.060 | that have us as the only life in the observable universe

00:10:32.460 | at all is on earth.

00:10:33.500 | I mean, it seems incredibly counterintuitive.

00:10:36.260 | It seems like, you know,

00:10:37.100 | when you mentioned that people think you're, you know,

00:10:39.340 | you must be an idiot because, you know,

00:10:41.580 | if you picked up one grain of sand on a beach

00:10:43.260 | and examined it and you found all these little things on it,

00:10:45.980 | it's like saying, well,

00:10:46.820 | maybe this is the only one that has that.

00:10:48.580 | And it's like, probably not.

00:10:50.020 | They're probably, most of the sand probably,

00:10:51.860 | or a lot of the sand, right?

00:10:53.420 | So, and then the other hand, we don't see anything.

00:10:55.700 | We don't see any evidence, you know,

00:10:57.020 | which of course people would say that the people

00:10:59.260 | who scoff at the concept that we're potentially alone,

00:11:03.000 | they say, well, of course,

00:11:05.860 | there's lots of reasons we wouldn't have seen anything

00:11:07.820 | and they can go list them and they're very compelling,

00:11:11.220 | but we don't know.

00:11:13.060 | And the truth is if this were a freak thing,

00:11:15.340 | I mean, we don't,

00:11:16.180 | if this were a completely freak thing that happened here,

00:11:18.900 | whether it's life at all

00:11:20.060 | or just getting to this level intelligence,

00:11:23.060 | that species, whoever it was,

00:11:25.940 | would think there must be lots of us out there

00:11:28.100 | and they'd be wrong.

00:11:29.380 | So, just being, again,

00:11:30.900 | using the same intuition that most people would use,

00:11:32.820 | I'd say there's probably lots of other things out there.

00:11:35.480 | - Yeah, and you wrote a great blog post about it,

00:11:37.660 | but to me, the two interesting reasons

00:11:41.580 | that we haven't been in contact,

00:11:43.380 | I too have an intuition that the universe

00:11:46.180 | is teeming with life.

00:11:47.580 | So one interesting is around the great filter.

00:11:50.700 | So we either, the great filter's either behind us

00:11:54.100 | or in front of us.

00:11:55.220 | So the reason that's interesting

00:11:57.460 | is you get to think about what kind of things

00:12:00.260 | ensure the survival of an intelligent civilization

00:12:05.260 | or lead to the destruction of intelligent civilization.

00:12:08.480 | That's a very pragmatic, very important question

00:12:10.540 | to always be asking.

00:12:11.860 | And we'll talk about some of those.

00:12:13.380 | And then the other one is I'm saddened by the possibility

00:12:18.380 | that there could be aliens communicating with us

00:12:20.620 | all the time.

00:12:21.660 | In fact, they may have visited.

00:12:23.700 | And we're just too dumb to hear it, to see it.

00:12:29.620 | Like the idea that the kind of life that can evolve

00:12:34.540 | is just the range of life that can evolve is so large

00:12:38.140 | that our narrow view of what is life

00:12:40.660 | and what is intelligent life

00:12:42.860 | is preventing us from having communication with them.

00:12:45.780 | - But then they don't seem very smart

00:12:47.740 | because if they were trying to communicate with us,

00:12:50.380 | they would surely, if they were super intelligent,

00:12:53.420 | they would be very, I'm sure if there's lots of life,

00:12:56.420 | we're not that rare, we're not some crazy weird species

00:12:59.340 | that hears and has different kinds of ways

00:13:01.940 | of perceiving signals.

00:13:04.660 | So they would probably be able to,

00:13:06.980 | if you really wanted to communicate

00:13:08.140 | with an Earth-like species, with a human-like species,

00:13:11.220 | you would send out all kinds of things.

00:13:14.120 | You'd send out radio waves and you send out gravity waves.

00:13:19.340 | And lots of things.

00:13:20.700 | So if they're communicating in a way,

00:13:22.160 | they're trying to communicate with us

00:13:23.900 | and it's just we're too dumb to perceive the signals,

00:13:25.980 | it's like, well, they're not doing a great job

00:13:28.380 | of considering the primitive species we might be.

00:13:32.820 | So I don't know.

00:13:33.660 | I think if a super intelligent species

00:13:35.860 | wanted to get in touch with us and had the capability of,

00:13:40.860 | I think probably they would.

00:13:43.580 | - Well, they may be getting in touch with us.

00:13:48.640 | They're just getting in touch with the thing

00:13:50.100 | that we humans are not understanding

00:13:52.260 | that they're getting in touch with us with.

00:13:53.780 | I guess that's what I was trying to say is

00:13:55.980 | there could be something about Earth

00:13:57.540 | that's much more special than us humans.

00:14:00.240 | Like the nature of the intelligence that's on Earth

00:14:03.500 | or the thing that's of value and that's curious

00:14:07.580 | and that's complicated and fascinating and beautiful

00:14:10.620 | might be something that's not just like tweets, okay?

00:14:15.260 | Like English language that's interpretable

00:14:17.180 | or any kind of language or any kind of signal,

00:14:19.700 | whether it's gravity or radio signal

00:14:22.340 | that humans seem to appreciate.

00:14:24.520 | Why not the actual, it could be the process

00:14:28.500 | of evolution itself.

00:14:29.540 | There could be something about the way

00:14:31.100 | that Earth is breathing essentially

00:14:33.300 | through the creation of life

00:14:34.660 | and this complex growth of life.

00:14:37.380 | It's a whole different way to view organisms

00:14:41.740 | and view life that could be getting communicated with

00:14:44.940 | and we humans are just a tiny fingertip

00:14:47.140 | on top of that intelligence

00:14:48.980 | and the communication is happening

00:14:50.540 | with the main mothership of Earth

00:14:54.380 | versus us humans that seem to treat ourselves

00:14:56.860 | as super important and we're missing the big picture.

00:15:00.500 | I mean, it sounds crazy,

00:15:02.100 | but our understanding of what is intelligence,

00:15:04.660 | of what is life, what is consciousness is very limited

00:15:08.020 | and it seems to be, and just being very suspicious,

00:15:11.820 | it seems to be awfully human-centric.

00:15:14.380 | Like this story, it seems like the progress of science

00:15:17.860 | is constantly putting humans down on the importance,

00:15:22.860 | like on the cosmic importance,

00:15:28.220 | the ranking of how big we are, how important we are.

00:15:32.060 | That seems to be, the more we discover,

00:15:33.940 | that's what's happening and I think science is very young.

00:15:37.300 | And so I think eventually we might figure out

00:15:39.820 | that there's something much, much bigger going on,

00:15:41.880 | that humans are just a curious little side effect

00:15:45.060 | of the much bigger thing.

00:15:46.420 | That's what, I mean, as I'm saying, it just sounds insane.

00:15:50.620 | - Well, it sounds a little like religious.

00:15:54.220 | It sounds like a spiritual.

00:15:55.660 | It gets to that realm where there's something

00:15:59.940 | that more than meets the eye.

00:16:01.960 | - Well, yeah, but not, so religious and spiritual

00:16:06.960 | often have this kind of woo-woo characteristic,

00:16:11.060 | like when people write books about them

00:16:12.900 | and then go to wars over whatever the heck

00:16:14.580 | is written in those books.

00:16:16.140 | I mean more like it's possible that collective intelligence

00:16:19.820 | is more important than individual intelligence, right?

00:16:22.300 | It's the ant colony, what's the primal organism?

00:16:24.780 | Is it the ant colony or is it the ant?

00:16:26.900 | - Yeah, I mean, humans, just like any individual ant

00:16:29.580 | can't do shit, but the colony can do,

00:16:32.060 | make these incredible structures and has this intelligence.

00:16:35.380 | And we're exactly the same.

00:16:36.780 | I mean, you know the famous thing that no human

00:16:40.860 | knows how to make a pencil.

00:16:42.460 | You heard this?

00:16:44.660 | - No. - Basically, I mean.

00:16:45.780 | - This is great.

00:16:47.380 | - There's not a, a single human out there

00:16:49.660 | has absolutely no idea how to make a pencil.

00:16:51.660 | So you have to think about, you have to get the wood,

00:16:54.020 | the paint, the different chemicals

00:16:56.160 | that make up the yellow paint.

00:16:57.660 | The eraser is a whole other thing.

00:16:59.460 | The metal has to be mined from somewhere

00:17:01.420 | and then the graphite, whatever that is.

00:17:04.660 | And there's not one person on earth

00:17:06.140 | who knows how to kind of collect all those materials

00:17:10.060 | and create a pencil.

00:17:11.180 | But together, that's child's play.

00:17:14.140 | It's just one of the easiest things.

00:17:15.300 | So, you know, the other thing I like to think about,

00:17:18.540 | I actually put this as a question on the blog once.

00:17:21.100 | There's a thought experiment

00:17:23.740 | and I actually wanna hear what you think.

00:17:25.980 | So if a witch, kind of a dickish witch comes around

00:17:30.780 | and she says, "I'm gonna cast a spell on all of humanity

00:17:34.980 | "and all material things that you've invented

00:17:39.300 | "are gonna disappear all at once."

00:17:41.380 | So suddenly we're all standing there naked.

00:17:42.960 | There's no buildings, there's no cars and boats and ships

00:17:47.400 | and no mines, nothing, right?

00:17:49.900 | It's just the stone age earth and a bunch of naked humans,

00:17:52.960 | but we're all the same, we have the same brain.

00:17:54.420 | So we all know what's going on.

00:17:55.900 | And we all got a note from her.

00:17:57.100 | So we understand the deal.

00:17:57.940 | And she says, she communicated to every human,

00:18:00.460 | "Here's the deal.

00:18:01.540 | "You lost all your stuff.

00:18:02.900 | "You guys need to make one working iPhone 13.

00:18:07.240 | "And you make one working iPhone 13

00:18:09.420 | "that could pass in the Apple store today,

00:18:12.060 | "in your previous world for an iPhone 13,

00:18:14.800 | "then I will restore everything."

00:18:16.400 | How long do you think?

00:18:17.340 | And so everyone knows, this is the mission.

00:18:19.060 | We're all aware of the mission, all humans.

00:18:21.460 | How long would it take us?

00:18:23.780 | - That's a really interesting question.

00:18:25.220 | So obviously if you do a random selection

00:18:28.000 | of 100 or 1,000 humans within the population,

00:18:31.260 | I think you're screwed to make that iPhone.

00:18:34.740 | I tend to believe that there's fascinating specialization

00:18:39.520 | among the human civilization.

00:18:40.840 | Like there's a few hackers out there

00:18:43.160 | that can like solo build an iPhone.

00:18:46.480 | - But with what materials?

00:18:48.520 | - So no materials whatsoever.

00:18:50.340 | It has to, I mean, it's virtually, I mean, okay.

00:18:54.920 | You have to build factories.

00:18:56.560 | I mean, to fabricate.

00:18:59.100 | Okay.

00:19:01.800 | - And how are you gonna mine them?

00:19:03.360 | You know, you gotta mine the materials

00:19:04.440 | or you don't have any cranes.

00:19:05.500 | You don't have any, you know.

00:19:06.740 | - Okay, you 100% have to have the, everybody's naked.

00:19:10.820 | - Everyone's naked and everyone's where they are.

00:19:12.320 | So you and I would currently be naked.

00:19:14.000 | It's on the ground in what used to be Manhattan.

00:19:16.360 | - So no buildings.

00:19:17.200 | - No, Grassy Island.

00:19:18.560 | - Yeah.

00:19:19.400 | So you need a naked Elon Musk type character

00:19:22.120 | to then start building a company.

00:19:23.840 | You have to have a large company then.

00:19:25.600 | - Right.

00:19:26.440 | He doesn't even know where he, you know, where is everyone?

00:19:28.200 | You know, oh shit, how am I gonna find other people

00:19:30.080 | I need to talk to?

00:19:30.920 | - But we have all the knowledge of.

00:19:32.000 | - Yeah, everyone has the knowledge

00:19:33.000 | that's in their current brains.

00:19:34.080 | - Yeah.

00:19:34.920 | I've met some legit engineers.

00:19:38.080 | - Crazy polymath people.

00:19:39.760 | - Yeah, but the actual labor of,

00:19:42.840 | 'cause you said, it's like the original Mac,

00:19:47.200 | like the Apple II, that can be built.

00:19:50.520 | But.

00:19:51.520 | - Even that, you know.

00:19:52.360 | - Even that's gonna be tough.

00:19:53.200 | - Well, I think part of it is a communication problem.

00:19:55.280 | If you could suddenly have, you know,

00:19:56.600 | if everyone had a walkie talkie

00:19:58.200 | and there was, you know, a couple, you know,

00:19:59.620 | 10 really smart people were designated the leaders,

00:20:01.920 | they could say, okay, I want, you know,

00:20:02.980 | everyone who can do this to walk West, you know,

00:20:05.960 | until you get to this little hub and everyone else,

00:20:08.240 | you know, and they could actually coordinate,

00:20:10.180 | but we don't have that.

00:20:11.080 | So it's like people just, you know,

00:20:12.200 | and then what I think about is,

00:20:14.040 | so you've got some people that are like trying to organize

00:20:15.920 | and you'll have a little community

00:20:17.080 | where a couple hundred people have come together

00:20:18.600 | and maybe a couple thousand have organized

00:20:20.080 | and they designated one person, you know, as the leader,

00:20:22.280 | and then they have sub leaders and okay,

00:20:24.320 | we have a start here, we have some organization.

00:20:26.280 | You're also gonna have some people that say, good,

00:20:28.840 | humans were a scourge upon the earth and this is good.

00:20:31.540 | And they're gonna try to sabotage.

00:20:32.520 | They're gonna try to murder the people

00:20:34.160 | who know what they're talking about.

00:20:35.960 | - The elite that possess the knowledge.

00:20:40.880 | - Well, and so maybe everyone's hopeful for the,

00:20:42.920 | you know, we're all civilized and hopeful

00:20:44.320 | for the first 30 days or something.

00:20:45.720 | And then things start to fall off.

00:20:47.120 | They, you know, people get, start to lose hope

00:20:48.800 | and there's new kinds of, you know,

00:20:50.280 | new kinds of governments popping up, you know,

00:20:52.200 | new kinds of societies and they're, you know,

00:20:56.000 | they don't play nicely with the other ones.

00:20:57.720 | And I think very quickly,

00:20:59.200 | I think a lot of people will just give up and say,

00:21:00.480 | you know what, this is it, we're back in the stone age.

00:21:02.040 | Let's just create, you know, agrarian,

00:21:03.800 | we also don't know how to farm.

00:21:05.040 | No one knows how to farm.

00:21:06.080 | There's like, even the farmers, you know,

00:21:08.520 | a lot of them are relying on their machines.

00:21:11.040 | And so we also, there's gonna be a lot of mass starvation.

00:21:14.680 | And that, you know, when you're trying to organize,

00:21:16.420 | a lot of people are, you know, coming in with, you know,

00:21:18.760 | Spears they fashioned and trying to murder everyone

00:21:21.880 | who has food.

00:21:22.720 | - That's an interesting question.

00:21:23.540 | Given today's society, how much violence would that be?

00:21:25.640 | We've gotten softer, less violent.

00:21:28.000 | - And we don't have weapons.

00:21:29.040 | So that's something. - We don't have weapons.

00:21:29.880 | - We have really primitive weapons now.

00:21:31.720 | - But we have, and also we have a kind of ethics

00:21:33.960 | where murder is bad.

00:21:35.680 | We used to be less, like human life was less valued.

00:21:38.960 | In the past, so murder was more okay, like ethically.

00:21:41.920 | - But in the past, they also were really good

00:21:44.340 | at figuring out how to have sustenance.

00:21:46.340 | They knew how to get food and water because they,

00:21:48.680 | so we have no idea.

00:21:49.840 | Like the ancient hunter-gatherer societies would laugh

00:21:52.020 | at what's going on here.

00:21:52.880 | They'd say, you guys, you don't know what you're,

00:21:54.320 | none of you know what you're doing.

00:21:55.840 | And also the amount of people,

00:21:57.360 | feeding this amount of people in a very, in a stone age,

00:22:01.120 | you know, civilization, that's not gonna happen.

00:22:03.840 | - So New York and San Francisco are screwed.

00:22:06.000 | - Well, whoever's not near water is really screwed.

00:22:07.880 | So that's funny. - That's true.

00:22:08.720 | - You're near a river, a freshwater river, and you know.

00:22:11.060 | Anyways, it's a very interesting question.

00:22:12.440 | And what it does, this and the pencil,

00:22:14.480 | it makes me feel so grateful and like excited about like,

00:22:19.240 | man, our civilization is so cool.

00:22:21.560 | And this is, talk about collective intelligence.

00:22:24.480 | Humans did not build any of this.

00:22:28.040 | It's collective human super,

00:22:30.480 | collective humans is a super intelligent, you know,

00:22:33.900 | being that is, that can do absolutely,

00:22:37.280 | especially over long periods of time,

00:22:38.640 | can do such magical things.

00:22:39.720 | And we just get to be born.

00:22:41.360 | When I go out, when I'm working and I'm hungry,

00:22:43.020 | I just go click, click, click, and like a salad's coming.

00:22:46.400 | The salad arrives.

00:22:47.240 | If you think about the incredible infrastructure

00:22:50.100 | that's in place for that quickly,

00:22:52.120 | it just the internet to, you know, the electricity,

00:22:54.440 | first of all, that's just powering the things, you know,

00:22:56.040 | how the, where the, the amount of structures

00:22:58.040 | that have to be created and for that electricity

00:23:00.360 | to be there.

00:23:01.200 | And then you've got the, of course the internet.

00:23:02.640 | And then you have this system where delivery drivers

00:23:05.640 | and they have, they're riding bikes

00:23:06.680 | that were made by someone else.

00:23:07.720 | And they're going to get the salad

00:23:09.200 | and all those ingredients came from all over the place.

00:23:11.560 | I mean, it's just, so I think it's like,

00:23:13.640 | I like thinking about these things because it,

00:23:16.800 | it makes me feel like just so grateful.

00:23:19.280 | I'm like, man, it would be so awful if we didn't have this.

00:23:21.360 | And people, people who didn't have it would think

00:23:22.800 | this was such magic we live in and we do.

00:23:25.240 | And like, cool, that's fun.

00:23:27.600 | - Yeah, one of the most amazing things when I showed up,

00:23:29.720 | I came here at 13 from the Soviet Union

00:23:32.200 | and the supermarket was, people don't really realize that,

00:23:36.560 | but the abundance of food, it's not even,

00:23:39.960 | so bananas was the thing I was obsessed about.

00:23:43.440 | I just ate bananas every day for many, many months

00:23:45.760 | 'cause I haven't had bananas in Russia.

00:23:47.720 | And the fact that you can have as many bananas as you want,

00:23:49.800 | plus there were like somewhat inexpensive

00:23:53.320 | relative to the other food.

00:23:54.600 | And the fact that you can somehow have a system

00:23:58.080 | that brings bananas to you without having to wait

00:24:00.200 | in a long line, all of those things, it's magic.

00:24:03.240 | - I mean, also imagine, so first of all,

00:24:06.000 | the ancient hunter-gatherers, you know,

00:24:07.600 | you picture the mother gathering and eating

00:24:08.960 | for all this fresh fruit.

00:24:09.800 | No, so do you know what an avocado used to look like?

00:24:11.960 | It was a little, like a sphere.

00:24:14.480 | And the fruit of it, the actual avocado part

00:24:17.080 | was like a little tiny layer around this big pit

00:24:19.120 | that took up almost the whole volume.

00:24:21.440 | We've made a crazy, like robot avocados today

00:24:25.840 | that have nothing to do with like what they,

00:24:28.320 | so same with bananas, these big, sweet, you know,

00:24:33.320 | not infested with bugs and, you know,

00:24:35.800 | they used to eat the shittiest food.

00:24:38.680 | And they're eating, you know, uncooked meat

00:24:40.880 | or maybe they cook it and they're just,

00:24:42.240 | it's gross and things rot.

00:24:44.720 | So you go to the supermarket and it's just,

00:24:46.720 | it's just A, it's like crazy, super engineered cartoon food,

00:24:50.000 | fruit and food.

00:24:51.400 | And then it's all this processed food,

00:24:52.520 | which, you know, we complain about.

00:24:53.680 | In our society, oh, you know, we complain about,

00:24:55.080 | you know, we need too much process.

00:24:56.760 | That's a, this is a good problem.

00:24:58.320 | I mean, if you imagine what they would think,

00:25:00.400 | oh my God, a cracker, you know how delicious

00:25:02.240 | a cracker would taste to them?

00:25:04.320 | You know, candy, you know, pasta and spaghetti.

00:25:08.160 | They never had anything like this.

00:25:09.400 | And then you have from all over the world,

00:25:11.480 | I mean, things that are grown all over the place,

00:25:13.960 | all here in nice little racks organized

00:25:16.080 | and on a middle-class salary,

00:25:17.960 | you can afford anything you want.

00:25:20.080 | I mean, it's, again, just like incredible gratitude.

00:25:23.240 | Like, ah, yeah.

00:25:25.160 | - And the question is how resilient is this whole thing?

00:25:27.440 | I mean, this is another darker version of your question

00:25:30.880 | is if we keep all the material possessions we have,

00:25:35.240 | but we start knocking out some percent of the population,

00:25:39.560 | how resilient is the system that we built up?

00:25:42.080 | Or if we rely on other humans and the knowledge

00:25:44.960 | of built up on the past,

00:25:45.960 | the distributed nature of knowledge,

00:25:48.920 | how much does it take?

00:25:52.980 | How many humans need to disappear

00:25:55.520 | for us to be completely lost?

00:25:57.880 | - Well, I'm trying to go off one thing,

00:25:59.200 | which is Elon Musk says that he has this number,

00:26:02.520 | a million, in mind.

00:26:03.720 | As the order of magnitude of people,

00:26:05.960 | you need to be on Mars to truly be multi-planetary.

00:26:10.960 | Multi-planetary doesn't mean, you know,

00:26:13.760 | like when Neil Armstrong goes to the moon,

00:26:19.520 | they call it a great leap for mankind.

00:26:21.960 | It's not a great leap for anything.

00:26:23.780 | It is a great achievement for mankind.

00:26:26.740 | And I always like think about if the first fish

00:26:29.460 | to kind of go on land just kind of went up

00:26:31.940 | and gave the shore a high five

00:26:33.340 | and goes back into the water,

00:26:34.220 | that's not a great leap for life.

00:26:36.060 | That's a great achievement for that fish.

00:26:37.260 | And there should be a little statue of that fish

00:26:38.540 | and it's, you know, in the water

00:26:39.660 | and everyone should celebrate the fish.

00:26:41.380 | But it's, but when we talk about a great leap for life,

00:26:44.860 | it's permanent.

00:26:45.740 | It's something that now, from now on,

00:26:47.740 | this is how things are.

00:26:48.660 | So this is part of why I get so excited about Mars,

00:26:51.080 | by the way, is because you can count on one hand,

00:26:53.820 | like the number of great leaps that we've had,

00:26:57.140 | you know, like no life to life and single cell

00:27:00.860 | or simple cell to complex cell

00:27:02.680 | and single cell organisms to animals,

00:27:05.620 | to, you know, multi-cell animals,

00:27:07.940 | and then ocean to land,

00:27:09.220 | and then one planet to two planets.

00:27:11.860 | Anyway, diversion.

00:27:12.700 | But the point is that we are officially,

00:27:16.540 | that leap for all of life, you know,

00:27:18.680 | has happened once the ships could stop coming from Earth

00:27:22.740 | because there's some horrible catastrophic World War III

00:27:24.780 | and everyone dies on Earth and they're fine

00:27:26.280 | and they can turn that certain X number of people

00:27:29.220 | into 7 billion, you know, population

00:27:31.740 | that's thriving just like Earth.

00:27:33.060 | They can build ships,

00:27:33.900 | they can come back and recolonize Earth

00:27:35.220 | 'cause now we are officially multi-planetary

00:27:37.180 | where it's a self-sustaining.

00:27:38.860 | He says a million people is about what he thinks.

00:27:40.860 | Now that might be a specialized group.

00:27:42.580 | That's a very specifically, you know,

00:27:44.620 | selected million that has very, very skilled million people,

00:27:49.280 | not just maybe the average million on Earth.

00:27:51.600 | But I think it depends what you're talking about.

00:27:53.180 | But I don't think, you know,

00:27:54.200 | so one million is 1/7000, 1/8000 of the current population.

00:27:58.480 | I think you need a very, very, very small fraction

00:28:02.160 | of humans on Earth to get by.

00:28:04.480 | Obviously, you're not gonna have

00:28:05.320 | the same thriving civilization

00:28:06.960 | if you get to a too small a number,

00:28:08.480 | but it depends who you're killing off, I guess,

00:28:10.680 | is part of the question.

00:28:11.960 | Yeah.

00:28:12.920 | If you killed off half of the people

00:28:14.320 | just randomly right now, I think we'd be fine.

00:28:15.720 | It would be obviously a great, awful tragedy.

00:28:18.740 | I think if you killed off 3/4 of all people randomly,

00:28:20.740 | just three out of every four people drops dead,

00:28:22.420 | I think we'd have, obviously, the stock market would crash.

00:28:24.820 | We'd have a rough patch,

00:28:27.020 | but I almost can assure you that the species would be fine.

00:28:30.540 | - Well, 'cause the million number,

00:28:31.780 | like you said, it is specialized.

00:28:33.780 | So I think, 'cause you have to do this,

00:28:38.780 | you have to basically do the iPhone experiment.

00:28:41.660 | Like, literally, you have to be able

00:28:43.000 | to manufacture computers.

00:28:46.120 | - Yeah, everything.

00:28:46.960 | If you're gonna have the self-sustaining,

00:28:48.240 | it means you can, any major important skill,

00:28:50.800 | any important piece of infrastructure on Earth

00:28:53.560 | can be built there just as well.

00:28:56.560 | - It'd be interesting to list out

00:29:00.160 | what are the important things,

00:29:01.920 | what are the important skills.

00:29:03.360 | - Yeah, I mean, you have to feed everyone.

00:29:05.960 | So mass farming, things like that.

00:29:08.840 | You have mining, these questions.

00:29:12.560 | It's like, the materials might be,

00:29:15.280 | I don't know, five miles, two miles underground,

00:29:17.640 | I don't know the actual, but like,

00:29:19.340 | it's amazing to me just that these things

00:29:22.040 | got built in the first place.

00:29:23.040 | And they never got, no one built the first,

00:29:25.280 | the mine that we're getting stuff for the iPhone for

00:29:28.160 | probably wasn't built for the iPhone.

00:29:30.680 | Or in general, early mining was for,

00:29:33.260 | I think, obviously, I assume the Industrial Revolution

00:29:35.480 | when we realized, oh, fossil fuels,

00:29:37.000 | we want to extract this magical energy source,

00:29:40.040 | I assume that mining took a huge leap.

00:29:42.200 | Without knowing very much about this,

00:29:43.360 | I think you're gonna need mining,

00:29:45.740 | you're gonna need a lot of electrical engineers.

00:29:48.480 | If you're gonna have a civilization like ours,

00:29:50.040 | now, of course, you could have oil and lanterns,

00:29:51.960 | we could go way back,

00:29:53.200 | but if you're trying to build our today thing,

00:29:55.280 | you're gonna need energy and electricity

00:29:58.360 | and mines that can bring materials,

00:30:00.600 | and then you're gonna need a ton of plumbing

00:30:03.360 | and everything that entails.

00:30:04.560 | - Yeah, and like you said, food,

00:30:06.300 | but also the manufacturers,

00:30:07.720 | so like turning raw materials into something useful,

00:30:10.800 | that whole thing, like factories,

00:30:13.040 | some supply chain, transportation.

00:30:15.560 | - Right, I mean, you think about,

00:30:17.480 | when we talk about the world hunger,

00:30:18.460 | one of the major problems is there's plenty of food,

00:30:21.800 | and by the time it arrives,

00:30:22.760 | most of it's gone bad in the truck,

00:30:24.720 | in kind of an impoverished place.

00:30:26.920 | So it's like, again, we take it so for granted,

00:30:29.640 | all the food in the supermarket is fresh,

00:30:32.760 | it's all there, and, which always stresses me out,

00:30:35.480 | if I were running a supermarket,

00:30:36.460 | I would always be so miserable

00:30:37.940 | about things going bad on the shelves,

00:30:41.660 | or if you don't have enough, that's not good,

00:30:43.100 | but if you have too much, it goes bad anyway.

00:30:44.380 | - Of course, there would be entertainers too.

00:30:46.900 | Like somebody would have a YouTube channel

00:30:48.980 | that's running on Mars.

00:30:50.860 | There is something different

00:30:53.180 | about a civilization on Mars and Earth existing

00:30:57.860 | versus a civilization in the United States

00:31:00.020 | versus Russia and China.

00:31:01.420 | Like that's a different,

00:31:03.260 | fundamentally different distance.

00:31:05.180 | Like philosophically.

00:31:07.040 | - Will it be like fuzzy?

00:31:08.160 | We know there'll be like a reality show on Mars

00:31:09.920 | that everyone on Earth is obsessed with.

00:31:11.400 | And I think if people are going back and forth enough,

00:31:15.160 | then it becomes fuzzy, it becomes like,

00:31:16.640 | oh, our friends on Mars,

00:31:17.600 | and there's like this Mars versus Earth,

00:31:20.360 | and it become like fun tribalism.

00:31:22.640 | I think if people don't really go back and forth,

00:31:25.240 | and it really, they're there for,

00:31:26.240 | I think if you get kind of like,

00:31:27.480 | oh, we hate a lot of like us versus them stuff going on.

00:31:30.360 | - There could be also war in space for territory.

00:31:33.520 | As first colony happens, China, Russia,

00:31:38.460 | or whoever, the European, different European nations,

00:31:41.700 | Switzerland finally gets their act together

00:31:43.580 | and starts wars.

00:31:44.780 | This is supposed to, staying out of all of them.

00:31:47.260 | - All kinds of crazy geopolitical things

00:31:49.060 | that like we have not even,

00:31:50.980 | no one's really even thought about too much yet

00:31:52.740 | that like, that could get weird.

00:31:54.420 | Think about the 1500s,

00:31:56.220 | when it was suddenly like a race to like,

00:31:58.540 | you know, colonize or capture land

00:32:00.380 | or discover new land that hasn't been,

00:32:02.140 | you know, so it was like this new frontiers.

00:32:04.200 | And there's not really, you know,

00:32:05.600 | the land is not, you know,

00:32:06.840 | the thing about Crimea was like,

00:32:08.480 | this huge thing, 'cause this tiny peninsula switched.

00:32:11.280 | That's how like optimized everything has become.

00:32:14.000 | Everything is just like really stuck.

00:32:16.400 | Mars is a whole new world of like,

00:32:18.080 | but you know, territory, naming things,

00:32:20.600 | and you know, and it's a chance

00:32:23.640 | for new kind of governments maybe,

00:32:24.960 | or maybe it's just the colonies of these governments,

00:32:27.440 | so we don't get that opportunity.

00:32:28.680 | I think it'd be cool if there's new countries being,

00:32:30.440 | you know, totally new experiments.

00:32:31.760 | - Yeah, and that's fascinating,

00:32:33.280 | 'cause Elon talks exactly about that,

00:32:35.200 | and I believe that very much.

00:32:36.600 | Like, that should be, like, from the start,

00:32:40.440 | they should determine their own sovereignty.

00:32:43.280 | Like, they should determine their own thing.

00:32:46.360 | - There was one modern democracy in late 1700s, the US.

00:32:50.920 | I mean, it was the only modern democracy,

00:32:53.360 | and now, of course, there's hundreds,

00:32:56.120 | or dozen, many dozens.

00:32:57.640 | But I think part of the reason that was able to start,

00:32:59.760 | I mean, it's not that people didn't have the idea.

00:33:01.080 | People had the idea.

00:33:02.000 | It was that they had a clean slate, new place,

00:33:05.600 | you know, and they suddenly were,

00:33:06.760 | so I think it would be a great opportunity to have,

00:33:10.240 | 'cause a lot of people have done that, you know,

00:33:11.720 | oh, if I had my own government on an island,

00:33:13.920 | my own country, what would I do?

00:33:15.560 | And it's, the US founders actually had the opportunity,

00:33:20.120 | that fantasy, they were like, we can do it.

00:33:21.640 | Let's make, okay, what's the perfect country?

00:33:23.880 | And they tried to make something.

00:33:25.360 | Sometimes progress is, it's not held up by our imagination.

00:33:29.480 | It's held up by just, there's no, you know,

00:33:32.600 | blank canvas to try something on.

00:33:34.400 | - Yeah, it's an opportunity for a fresh start.

00:33:37.200 | You know, the funny thing about the conversation

00:33:39.000 | we're having is it's not often had.

00:33:41.320 | I mean, even by Elon, he's so focused on starship

00:33:43.760 | and actually putting the first human on Mars.

00:33:46.160 | I think thinking about this kind of stuff is inspiring.

00:33:51.160 | It makes us dream.

00:33:52.960 | It makes us hope for the future.

00:33:54.280 | So, and it makes us, somehow, like,

00:33:56.960 | thinking about civilization on Mars is helping us

00:34:00.960 | think about the civilization here on Earth.

00:34:03.260 | - Yeah, totally. - And how we should run it.

00:34:05.080 | What do you think are, like, in our lifetime?

00:34:07.640 | Are we gonna, I think any effort that goes to Mars,

00:34:11.220 | the goal is in this decade.

00:34:13.320 | Do you think that's actually gonna be achieved?

00:34:15.440 | - I have a big bet, $10,000, with a friend

00:34:18.880 | when I was drunk in an argument.

00:34:21.520 | - This is great.

00:34:22.360 | - That the Neil Armstrong of Mars,

00:34:24.000 | whoever he or she may be, will set foot

00:34:26.800 | by the end of 2030.

00:34:28.680 | Now, this was probably in 2018 when I had this argument.

00:34:30.960 | - So, like, what if-- - So, a human has to touch Mars

00:34:33.320 | by the end of 2030. - '39.

00:34:35.560 | Oh, by the year '39. - Yeah, by January 1st, 2031.

00:34:39.600 | - Yeah.

00:34:40.440 | - So-- - Did you agree

00:34:42.400 | on the time zone, or what?

00:34:44.080 | - No, no, yeah, if it's coming on that exact day,

00:34:46.080 | that's gonna be really stressful.

00:34:47.080 | But anyway, 'cause I think that there will be.

00:34:52.080 | That was 2018.

00:34:53.240 | I was more confident then.

00:34:54.920 | I think it's gonna be around this time.

00:34:56.240 | I mean, I still won the general bet,

00:34:58.280 | 'cause his point was, "You are crazy.

00:34:59.640 | "This is not gonna happen in our lifetime.

00:35:01.040 | "They're not for many, many decades."

00:35:02.640 | And I said, "You're wrong.

00:35:03.460 | "You don't know what's going on in SpaceX."

00:35:05.520 | I think if the world depended on it,

00:35:08.200 | I think probably SpaceX could probably,

00:35:10.480 | I mean, I don't know this,

00:35:11.520 | but I think the tech is almost there.

00:35:14.440 | Like, I don't think, of course,

00:35:16.160 | it's delayed many years by safety,

00:35:18.160 | so they first wanna send a ship around Mars,

00:35:20.360 | and they wanna land a cargo ship on Mars.

00:35:22.080 | - And there's the moon on the way, too.

00:35:23.320 | - Yeah, yeah, there's a lot.

00:35:24.560 | I think the moon, a decade before,

00:35:27.000 | seemed like magical tech that humans didn't have.

00:35:30.640 | This is like, no.

00:35:31.680 | It's totally conceivable that this,

00:35:35.600 | you've seen Starship,

00:35:36.760 | like it is a interplanetary transport system.

00:35:41.760 | That's what they used to call it.

00:35:45.920 | SpaceX, the way they do it is,

00:35:47.520 | every time they do a launch,

00:35:49.000 | something fails, usually, when they're testing,

00:35:52.120 | and they learn a thousand things.

00:35:54.280 | The amount of data they get,

00:35:55.640 | and they improve, each one has,

00:35:58.520 | it's like they've moved up eight generations in each one.

00:36:01.560 | Anyway, so it's not inconceivable that pretty soon,

00:36:04.480 | they could send a Starship to Mars and land it.

00:36:07.600 | There's just no good reason,

00:36:08.520 | I don't think that they couldn't do that.

00:36:09.800 | And so if they could do that,

00:36:10.840 | they could, in theory, send a person to Mars pretty soon.

00:36:13.880 | Now, taking off from Mars and coming back,

00:36:15.720 | again, I don't think anyone would want

00:36:17.920 | to be on that voyage today,

00:36:19.200 | because there's just,

00:36:21.160 | it's still amateur hour here,

00:36:22.920 | getting that perfect.

00:36:24.640 | I don't think we're too far away now,

00:36:25.920 | the question is,

00:36:26.760 | so every 26 months, Earth laps Mars, right?

00:36:31.680 | It's like the sinusoidal orbit,

00:36:34.240 | or whatever it's called, the period, 26 months.

00:36:37.200 | So it's right now, in the evens,

00:36:39.280 | 2022 is gonna have one of these,

00:36:42.000 | late 2024, so people could,

00:36:43.800 | this was the earliest estimate I heard.

00:36:45.200 | Elon said, maybe we can send people to Mars in 2024,

00:36:49.120 | to land in early 2025.

00:36:51.680 | That is not gonna happen,

00:36:52.680 | because that included 2022,

00:36:54.320 | sending a cargo ship to Mars,

00:36:56.520 | maybe even one in 2020,

00:36:58.480 | and so I think they're not quite on that schedule,

00:37:00.080 | but to win my bet,

00:37:01.840 | 2027, I have a chance,

00:37:03.360 | and 2029, I have another chance.

00:37:04.960 | - Nice.

00:37:05.800 | - We're not very good at backing up

00:37:06.880 | and seeing the big picture,

00:37:07.720 | we're very distracted by what's going on today,

00:37:09.280 | and what we can believe,

00:37:10.800 | 'cause it's happening in front of our face.

00:37:12.440 | There's no way that a human's gonna be landing on Mars,

00:37:15.400 | and it's not gonna be the only thing

00:37:17.480 | everyone is talking about, right?

00:37:18.840 | I mean, it's gonna be the moon landing,

00:37:20.480 | an even bigger deal, going to another planet, right?

00:37:23.000 | And for it to start a colony,

00:37:24.600 | not just to, again, high five and come back.

00:37:27.080 | So this is like, the 2020s, maybe the 2030s,

00:37:31.760 | is gonna be the new 1960s,

00:37:33.160 | we're gonna have a space decade,

00:37:34.280 | I'm so excited about it.

00:37:36.000 | And again, it's one of the great leaps for all of life

00:37:38.080 | happening in our lifetimes, like that's wild.

00:37:40.500 | - To paint a slightly cynical possibility,

00:37:43.720 | which I don't see happening,

00:37:46.080 | but I just wanna put sort of value into leadership.

00:37:49.280 | I think it wasn't obvious that the moon landing

00:37:52.560 | would be so exciting for all of human civilization.

00:37:55.000 | Some of that had to do with the right speeches,

00:37:56.920 | with the space race.

00:37:58.880 | Like, space, depending on how it's presented,

00:38:01.720 | can be boring.

00:38:02.560 | I don't think it's been that so far, but I've actually--

00:38:07.160 | - I agree, I think space is quite boring right now.

00:38:10.200 | Not, you know, SpaceX is super,

00:38:11.880 | but like 10 years ago, space.

00:38:13.840 | Some writer, I forget who, wrote,

00:38:15.840 | it's like, the best magic trick in the show

00:38:17.680 | happened at the beginning,

00:38:18.560 | and now they're starting to do this easy magic.

00:38:20.440 | You know, it's like, you can't go in that direction.

00:38:21.720 | And the line that this writer said is like,

00:38:23.600 | watching astronauts go up to the space station

00:38:28.440 | after watching, the moon is like

00:38:29.760 | watching Columbus sail to Ibiza.

00:38:31.800 | It's just like, you know, everything is so impractical.

00:38:34.880 | You're going up to the space station not to explore,

00:38:36.720 | but to do science experiments in microgravity.

00:38:38.600 | And you're sending rockets up, you know,

00:38:41.520 | mostly here and there there's a probe,

00:38:43.080 | but mostly you're sending them up to put satellites

00:38:44.960 | for DirecTV, you know, or whatever it is.

00:38:48.520 | It's kind of like lame earth industry, you know, usage.

00:38:51.840 | So I agree with you, space is boring there.

00:38:55.560 | The first human setting foot on Mars,

00:38:59.760 | that's gotta be a crazy global event.

00:39:01.680 | I can't imagine it not being.

00:39:02.880 | Maybe you're right, maybe I'm taking for granted

00:39:04.680 | the speeches and the space race and the--

00:39:06.480 | - I think the value of, I guess what I'm pushing

00:39:09.920 | is the value of people like Elon Musk

00:39:12.080 | and potentially other leaders that hopefully step up

00:39:14.480 | is extremely important here.

00:39:16.160 | Like I would argue without the publicity of SpaceX,

00:39:19.240 | it's not just the ingenuity of SpaceX,

00:39:21.360 | but like what they've done publicly

00:39:23.400 | by having a figure that tweets

00:39:25.720 | and all that kind of stuff like that,

00:39:27.640 | that's a source of inspiration.

00:39:29.560 | - Totally.

00:39:30.400 | - NASA wasn't able to quite pull off with the shuttle.

00:39:32.680 | - That's one of his two reasons for doing this.

00:39:35.000 | SpaceX exists for two reasons.

00:39:37.240 | One, life insurance for the species.

00:39:40.040 | If we're on, you know, if you're,

00:39:41.640 | I always think about it this way,

00:39:42.560 | if you're an alien on some faraway planet

00:39:44.440 | and you're rooting against humanity

00:39:46.720 | and you win the bet if humanity goes extinct,

00:39:49.600 | you do not like SpaceX.

00:39:51.560 | You do not want them to have their eggs in two baskets now.

00:39:54.200 | - Yeah.

00:39:55.040 | (laughing)

00:39:55.880 | - You know, sure, it's like obviously this,

00:39:57.880 | you know, you could have some, you know,

00:39:59.160 | something that kills everyone on both planets,

00:40:00.640 | some AI war or something,

00:40:02.120 | but the point is obviously it's good for our chances,

00:40:06.880 | our long-term chances to be having, you know,

00:40:08.600 | choose a self-sustaining civilization is going on.

00:40:11.360 | The second reason, he values this,

00:40:14.200 | I think just as high is it's the greatest adventure

00:40:16.400 | in history, you know, going multi-planetary

00:40:18.920 | and that, you know, it's, you know,

00:40:20.160 | people need some reason to wake up in the morning

00:40:21.840 | and it'll just be this hopefully great uniting event too.

00:40:26.240 | I mean, I'm sure in today's nasty,

00:40:27.920 | awful political environment,

00:40:29.560 | which is like a whirlpool of,

00:40:31.720 | that sucks everything into it.

00:40:34.120 | So it doesn't mean, you name a thing

00:40:35.640 | and it's become a nasty political topic.

00:40:38.000 | So I hope, I hope that space can, you know,

00:40:42.720 | Mars can just bring everyone together, but you know,

00:40:45.440 | it could become this hideous thing where it's, you know,

00:40:47.560 | oh, you know, billionaire,

00:40:48.640 | some annoying storyline gets built.

00:40:50.720 | So half the people think that anyone who's excited

00:40:52.680 | about Mars is an evil, you know, something.

00:40:55.280 | - Yeah.

00:40:56.120 | - Anyway, I hope it is super exciting.

00:40:57.920 | - So far space has been a uniting, inspiring thing.

00:41:02.920 | And in fact, especially during this time of a pandemic

00:41:06.000 | has been just a commercial entity

00:41:08.960 | putting out humans into space for the first time

00:41:12.080 | was just one of the only big sources of hope.

00:41:15.280 | - Totally, and awe, just like watching this huge skyscraper

00:41:19.000 | go up in the air, flip over, come back down and land.

00:41:21.480 | I mean, it just makes everyone just want to sit back

00:41:23.200 | and clap and kind of like, you know,

00:41:25.000 | the way I look at something like SpaceX is

00:41:27.360 | it makes me proud to be a human.

00:41:30.280 | And I think it makes a lot of people feel that way.

00:41:31.520 | It's like good for our self-esteem.

00:41:33.280 | It's like, you know what, we're pretty, you know,

00:41:34.320 | we have a lot of problems, but like, we're kind of awesome.

00:41:36.960 | - Yeah, we're awesome.

00:41:37.800 | - And if we can put people on Mars, you know,

00:41:39.000 | sticking an Earth flag on Mars, like, damn, you know,

00:41:42.640 | we should be so proud of our like little family here.

00:41:45.400 | Like we did something cool.

00:41:46.480 | And by the way, I've made it clear to SpaceX people,

00:41:51.160 | including Elon, many times,

00:41:52.560 | and it's like once a year reminder

00:41:54.040 | that if they want to make this more exciting,

00:41:56.920 | they send the writer to Mars on, you know,

00:42:00.280 | I was on the thing and I'll blog about it.

00:42:02.360 | So I'm just, you know, continuing to throw this out there.

00:42:04.960 | - On which trip?

00:42:05.800 | - I'm trying to get them to send me to Mars.

00:42:07.480 | - I understand that.

00:42:08.880 | So I just want to clarify,

00:42:10.280 | on which trip does the writer want to go?

00:42:12.400 | - I think my dream one, to be honest,

00:42:14.120 | would be like the, you know, like the Apollo 8,

00:42:16.960 | where they just looped around the moon and came back.

00:42:19.680 | 'Cause landing on Mars--

00:42:21.800 | - Give you a lot of good content to write about.

00:42:24.840 | - Great content, right?

00:42:26.200 | I mean, the amount of kind of high-minded, you know,

00:42:28.640 | and so I would go into the thing and I would blog about it.

00:42:32.200 | And I'd be in microgravity,

00:42:34.080 | so I'd be bouncing around my little space.

00:42:35.480 | I get a little, they can just send me in a dragon.

00:42:37.040 | They don't need to do a whole starship.

00:42:38.520 | And I would bounce around and I would get to,

00:42:41.200 | and I've always had a dream of going to like

00:42:43.960 | one of those nice jails for a year.

00:42:47.280 | Because I just have nothing to do besides like read books

00:42:49.600 | and no responsibilities and no social plans.

00:42:51.560 | So this is the ultimate version of that.

00:42:53.560 | Anyway, it's a side topic, but I think it would be--

00:42:55.320 | - But also if you, I mean, to be honest,

00:42:57.280 | if you land on Mars, it's epic.

00:43:00.040 | And then if you die there, like finishing your writing,

00:43:04.080 | it will be just even that much more powerful

00:43:06.600 | for the impact and the performance.

00:43:08.960 | - But then I'm gone and I don't even get to like

00:43:10.800 | experience the publication of it,

00:43:12.360 | which is the whole point of this.

00:43:13.200 | - Well, some of the greatest writers in history

00:43:15.240 | didn't get a chance to experience

00:43:16.920 | the publication of their great--

00:43:18.080 | - I know, I don't really think that.

00:43:19.360 | I think like, I think back to Jesus and I'm like,

00:43:20.920 | oh man, that guy really like crushed it, you know?

00:43:23.200 | But then if you think about it, it doesn't like,

00:43:26.680 | you could literally die today

00:43:28.360 | and then become the next Jesus like 2000 years from now

00:43:31.280 | in this civilization that's like,

00:43:32.840 | they're like magical in the clouds

00:43:35.840 | and they're worshiping you.

00:43:37.280 | They're worshiping Lex.

00:43:38.760 | And like, that sounds like your ego probably would be like,

00:43:40.640 | wow, that's pretty cool, except irrelevant to you

00:43:43.080 | 'cause you never even knew it happened.

00:43:44.240 | - This feels like a Rick and Morty episode.

00:43:46.440 | - It does, it does.

00:43:47.920 | - Okay, you've talked to Elon quite a bit.

00:43:51.720 | You've written about him quite a bit.

00:43:53.840 | Just, it'd be cool to hear you talk about

00:43:58.280 | what are your ideas of what, you know,

00:44:00.160 | the magic sauce is you've written about with Elon.

00:44:02.920 | What makes him so successful?

00:44:06.040 | His style of thinking, his ambition, his dreams,

00:44:09.000 | his, the people he connects with,

00:44:11.760 | the kind of problems he tackles.

00:44:13.080 | Is there a kind of comments you can make

00:44:14.720 | about what makes him special?

00:44:16.200 | - I think that obviously there's a lot of things

00:44:18.440 | that he's very good at.

00:44:19.360 | He has, he's obviously super intelligent.

00:44:23.200 | His heart is very much in like, I think the right place.

00:44:25.880 | Like, you know, I really, really believe that.

00:44:27.760 | Like, and I think people can sense that, you know,

00:44:30.080 | he just doesn't seem like a grifter of any kind.

00:44:32.800 | He's truly trying to do these big things

00:44:34.560 | for the right reasons.

00:44:36.080 | And he's obviously crazy ambitious and hardworking, right?

00:44:38.360 | Not everyone is.

00:44:39.200 | Some people are as talented and have cool visions,

00:44:40.880 | but they just don't wanna spend their life that way.

00:44:43.800 | So, but that's, none of those alone is what makes Elon.

00:44:47.800 | Elon, I mean, if it were, there'd be more of him

00:44:49.840 | because there's a lot of people that are very smart

00:44:51.480 | and smart enough to accumulate a lot of money and influence

00:44:53.920 | and they have great ambition and they have, you know,

00:44:56.920 | their heart's in the right place.

00:44:58.800 | To me, it is the very unusual quality he has

00:45:01.960 | is that he's sane in a way that almost every human is crazy.

00:45:06.360 | What I mean by that is we are programmed

00:45:08.800 | to trust conventional wisdom over our own reasoning

00:45:15.480 | for good reason.

00:45:19.120 | If you go back 50,000 years and conventional wisdom says,

00:45:22.840 | you know, don't eat that berry, you know,

00:45:26.000 | or this is the way you tie a spearhead to a spear,

00:45:29.000 | and you're thinking, I'm smarter than that.

00:45:31.680 | Like, you're not.

00:45:32.640 | You know, that comes from the accumulation

00:45:35.080 | of life experience, accumulation of observation

00:45:37.000 | and experience over many generations.

00:45:39.600 | And that's a little mini version

00:45:41.760 | of the collective super intelligence.

00:45:43.360 | It's like, you know, it's equivalent

00:45:45.320 | of like making a pencil today.

00:45:46.640 | Like people back then, like the conventional wisdom

00:45:51.640 | like had this super, this knowledge

00:45:54.160 | that no human could ever accumulate.

00:45:56.080 | So we're very wired to trust it.

00:45:57.720 | Plus the secondary thing is that the people who, you know,

00:46:00.800 | just say that they believe the mountain is,

00:46:02.680 | they worship the mountain as their God, right?

00:46:04.360 | And the mountain determines their faith.

00:46:06.080 | That's not true, right?

00:46:07.320 | And the conventional wisdom's wrong there,

00:46:08.560 | but believing it was helpful to survival

00:46:12.720 | because you were part of the crowd

00:46:15.240 | and you stayed in the tribe.

00:46:16.080 | And if you started to, you know,

00:46:18.240 | insult the mountain God and say, that's just a mountain,

00:46:21.240 | it's not, you know, you didn't fare very well, right?

00:46:23.300 | So for a lot of reasons, it was a great survival trait

00:46:25.840 | to just trust what other people said and believe it.

00:46:29.360 | And truly, you know, obviously, you know,

00:46:30.680 | the more you really believed it, the better.

00:46:32.940 | Today, conventional wisdom in a rapidly changing world

00:46:37.940 | and a huge, giant society,

00:46:42.360 | our brains are not built to understand that.

00:46:44.120 | They have a few settings, you know,

00:46:45.640 | and none of them is, you know,

00:46:47.720 | 300 million person society.

00:46:49.520 | So your brain is basically,

00:46:52.460 | is treating a lot of things like a small tribe,

00:46:57.700 | even though they're not.

00:46:58.540 | And they're treating conventional wisdom as, you know,

00:47:01.640 | very wise in a way that it's not.

00:47:03.680 | If you think about it this way,

00:47:04.520 | it's like picture a, like a bucket

00:47:06.400 | that's not moving very much,

00:47:08.200 | moving like a millimeter a year.

00:47:09.520 | And so it has time to collect a lot of water in it.

00:47:11.240 | That's like conventional wisdom in the old days

00:47:12.680 | when very few things changed.

00:47:13.680 | Like your 10, you know, great, great, great grandmother

00:47:15.940 | probably lived a similar life to you,

00:47:17.080 | maybe on the same piece of land.

00:47:19.300 | And so old people really knew what they were talking about.

00:47:21.180 | Today, the bucket's moving really quickly.

00:47:23.380 | And so, you know, the wisdom doesn't accumulate,

00:47:25.200 | but we think it does.

00:47:26.400 | 'Cause our brain settings doesn't have the,

00:47:27.880 | oh, move, you know, quickly moving bucket setting on it.

00:47:31.520 | So my grandmother gives me advice all the time.

00:47:35.680 | And I have to decide, is this,

00:47:38.480 | so there are certain things that are not changing,

00:47:40.240 | like relationships and love and loyalty

00:47:42.800 | and things like this.

00:47:44.060 | Her advice on those things, I'll listen to it all day.

00:47:45.760 | She's one of the people who said,

00:47:46.880 | you've got to live near your people you love,

00:47:48.560 | live near your family, right?

00:47:50.040 | I think that is like tremendous wisdom, right?

00:47:52.880 | That is wisdom.

00:47:53.720 | 'Cause that happens to be something that hasn't,

00:47:54.960 | doesn't change from generation to generation.

00:47:56.720 | - For now.

00:47:57.560 | - For now.

00:47:58.400 | She, all right, for now.

00:47:59.680 | She's also telling, right, so I'll be the idiot

00:48:01.600 | telling my grandkids that,

00:48:02.600 | and they'll actually be in some metaverse,

00:48:04.080 | like being like, it doesn't matter.

00:48:05.800 | And I'm like, it's not the same when you're not in person.

00:48:08.200 | They're gonna say, it's exactly the same, grandpa.

00:48:10.480 | And they'll also be thinking to me with their near link,

00:48:12.560 | and I'm gonna be like, slow down.

00:48:13.960 | I don't understand what you're,

00:48:14.800 | can you just talk like a normal person?

00:48:16.640 | Anyway, so my grandmother then, but then she says,

00:48:19.560 | you know, you're, I don't know about this writing

00:48:21.360 | you're doing, you should go to law school.

00:48:23.140 | And you know, you wanna be secure.

00:48:25.120 | And that's not good advice for me, you know,

00:48:27.120 | given the world I'm in and what I like to do

00:48:29.360 | and what I'm good at, that's not the right advice.

00:48:31.840 | But because the world is totally,

00:48:34.000 | she's in a different world.

00:48:34.840 | So she became wise for a world that's no longer here, right?

00:48:37.520 | Now, if you think about that,

00:48:38.840 | so then when we think about conventional wisdom,

00:48:40.680 | it's a little like my grandmother.

00:48:41.860 | And there's a lot of, no, it's not maybe, you know,

00:48:45.120 | 60 years outdated, like her software.

00:48:47.200 | It's maybe 10 years outdated,

00:48:49.640 | it's conventional wisdom, sometimes 20.

00:48:51.560 | So anyway, I think that we all continually

00:48:55.560 | don't have the confidence in our own reasoning

00:48:58.580 | when it conflicts with what everyone else thinks,

00:49:00.800 | when with what seems right.

00:49:02.840 | We don't have the guts to act on that reasoning

00:49:06.180 | for that reason, right?

00:49:07.120 | You know, we, and so there's so many Elon examples.

00:49:11.060 | I mean, just from the beginning,

00:49:12.240 | building Zip2 was the first company.

00:49:14.760 | And it was internet advertising at the time

00:49:19.440 | when people said, you know, this internet was brand new,

00:49:22.120 | like kind of like kind of thinking of like the metaverse,

00:49:24.000 | VR metaverse today.

00:49:24.840 | And people have been like, oh, we're saying, you know,

00:49:26.080 | we, you know, we facilitate internet advertising.

00:49:29.120 | People are saying, yeah, people are gonna advertise

00:49:30.720 | on the internet, yeah, right.

00:49:32.000 | Actually, it wasn't that he's magical and saw the future,

00:49:34.720 | is that he looked at the present,

00:49:36.260 | looked at what the internet was,

00:49:38.480 | thought about, you know,

00:49:40.000 | the obvious like advertising opportunity

00:49:42.440 | this was gonna be.

00:49:43.960 | It wasn't rocket science, it wasn't genius, I don't believe.

00:49:46.760 | I think it was just seeing the truth.

00:49:48.800 | And when everyone else is laughing, saying,

00:49:50.440 | well, you're wrong, I mean, I did the math

00:49:53.740 | and here it is, right?

00:49:54.760 | Next company, you know, x.com,

00:49:56.720 | which became eventually PayPal.

00:49:58.540 | People said, oh yeah, people are gonna put

00:50:00.720 | their financial information on the internet.

00:50:02.760 | No way.

00:50:03.600 | To us, it seems so obvious.

00:50:06.200 | If you went back then, you would probably feel the same

00:50:08.040 | where you'd think this is, that is a fake company.

00:50:10.600 | That no, it's just obviously not a good idea.

00:50:12.880 | He looked around and said, you know, I see where this is.

00:50:14.400 | And so again, he could see where it was going

00:50:15.720 | 'cause he could see what it was that day

00:50:17.240 | and not what it, you know, not people,

00:50:18.560 | conventional wisdom was still a bunch of years earlier.

00:50:21.680 | SpaceX is the ultimate example.

00:50:23.520 | A friend of his apparently bought,

00:50:25.040 | actually compiled a montage, video montage

00:50:28.360 | of rockets blowing up to show him this is not a good idea.

00:50:32.120 | And if, but just even the bigger picture,

00:50:34.480 | the amount of billionaires who have like thought

00:50:36.240 | this was, I'm gonna start launching rockets

00:50:38.800 | and you know, the amount that failed.

00:50:40.380 | I mean, it's not, conventional wisdom said

00:50:43.560 | this isn't a bad endeavor.

00:50:44.640 | He was putting all of his money into it.

00:50:45.960 | - Yeah.

00:50:47.280 | - Landing rockets was another thing, you know.

00:50:49.440 | Well, if, you know, here's the classic kind of way

00:50:52.040 | we reason, which is, if this could be done,

00:50:55.480 | NASA would have done it a long time ago

00:50:57.280 | 'cause of the money it would save.

00:50:58.640 | This could be done, the Soviet Union would have done it

00:51:00.200 | back in the 60s.

00:51:01.680 | It's obviously something that can't be done.

00:51:03.480 | And the math on his envelope said,

00:51:06.280 | well, I think it can be done.

00:51:07.240 | And so he just did it.

00:51:08.140 | So in each of these cases, I think actually,

00:51:10.080 | in some ways, Elon gets too much credit as, you know,

00:51:12.280 | people think it's that he's, you know,

00:51:13.960 | it's that his Einstein intelligence

00:51:15.400 | or he can see the future.

00:51:16.680 | He has incredible, he has incredible guts.

00:51:19.560 | He's so, you know, courageous.

00:51:20.820 | I think if you actually are looking at reality,

00:51:23.580 | you're just assessing probabilities

00:51:26.680 | and you're ignoring all the noise, which is wrong,

00:51:29.160 | so wrong, right?

00:51:30.280 | And you just, then you just have to be, you know,

00:51:33.040 | pretty smart and, you know, pretty courageous.

00:51:36.440 | And you have to have this magical ability to be sane

00:51:39.720 | and trust your reasoning over conventional wisdom

00:51:42.240 | because your individual reasoning, you know,

00:51:44.560 | part of it is that we see that we can't build a pencil.

00:51:46.780 | We can't build, you know, the civilization on our own,

00:51:49.320 | right?

00:51:50.160 | We kind of tout, you know, tout to the collective

00:51:55.160 | because for good reason, but this is different

00:51:57.060 | when it comes to kind of what's possible.

00:51:59.040 | You know, the Beatles were doing their kind of Motown-y

00:52:02.020 | chord patterns in the early '60s

00:52:03.760 | and they were doing what was normal.

00:52:05.560 | They were doing what was clearly this kind of sound

00:52:07.800 | is a hit.

00:52:08.920 | Then they started getting weird

00:52:10.060 | because they were so popular,

00:52:11.480 | they had this confidence to say,

00:52:12.600 | let's just, we're gonna start just experimenting.

00:52:15.120 | And it turns out that like, if you just,

00:52:17.600 | all these people are in this like one groove together

00:52:19.660 | doing music and it's just like,

00:52:20.840 | there's a lot of land over there.

00:52:22.880 | And it seems like, you know,

00:52:24.440 | I'm sure the managers would say,

00:52:25.760 | and all the record execs would say,

00:52:28.000 | no, you have to be here.

00:52:28.960 | This is what sells.

00:52:30.400 | And it's just not true.

00:52:31.900 | So I think that Elon is,

00:52:33.040 | so the term for this that actually Elon likes to use

00:52:36.880 | is reasoning from first principles, the physics term.

00:52:39.920 | First principles are your axioms.

00:52:41.680 | And physicists, they don't say, well, what's, you know,

00:52:43.600 | what do people think?

00:52:44.920 | No, they say, what are the axioms?

00:52:46.300 | Those are the puzzle pieces.

00:52:47.280 | Let's use those to build a conclusion.

00:52:49.300 | That's our hypothesis.

00:52:50.200 | Now let's test it, right?

00:52:51.040 | And they come up with all kinds of new things constantly

00:52:53.800 | by doing that.

00:52:55.040 | If Einstein was assuming conventional wisdom was right,

00:52:57.440 | he never would have even tried to create something

00:52:59.360 | that really disproved Newton's laws.

00:53:02.080 | And the other way to reason is reasoning by analogy,

00:53:05.440 | which is a great shortcut.

00:53:08.120 | It's when we look at other people's reasoning

00:53:10.460 | and we kind of photocopy it into our head, we steal it.

00:53:13.240 | So reasoning by analogy, we do all the time.

00:53:15.920 | And it's usually a good thing.

00:53:17.000 | I mean, we don't, if you,

00:53:17.840 | it takes a lot of mental energy and time

00:53:19.620 | to reason from first principles.

00:53:20.600 | It's actually, you know,

00:53:21.500 | you don't want to reinvent the wheel every time, right?

00:53:23.320 | You want to often copy other people's reasoning

00:53:26.400 | most of the time.

00:53:27.240 | And I, you know, most of us do it most of the time

00:53:28.740 | and that's good, but there's certain moments

00:53:29.980 | when you're, forget just for a second,

00:53:31.520 | like succeeding in like the world of like Elon,

00:53:34.500 | just who you're going to marry,

00:53:35.600 | where are you going to settle down?

00:53:36.600 | How are you going to raise your kids?

00:53:38.820 | How are you going to educate your kids?

00:53:40.880 | How you should educate yourself?

00:53:42.240 | What kind of career paths in terms, these moments,

00:53:44.520 | this is what on your deathbed, like you look back on,

00:53:46.480 | and that's what, these are the few number of choices

00:53:49.280 | that really define your life.

00:53:50.480 | Those should not be reasoned by analogy.

00:53:52.280 | You should absolutely try to reason from first principles.

00:53:55.280 | And Elon, not just by the way in his work,

00:53:58.320 | but in his personal life.

00:53:59.360 | I mean, if you just look at the way he is on Twitter,

00:54:01.440 | it's not how you're supposed to be

00:54:03.400 | when you're a super famous, you know, industry titan.

00:54:07.280 | You're not supposed to just be silly on Twitter

00:54:08.840 | and do memes and get in little quibbles.

00:54:11.800 | He just does things his own way,

00:54:14.300 | regardless of what you're supposed to do,

00:54:15.880 | which sometimes serves him and sometimes doesn't.

00:54:17.640 | But I think it has taken him where it has taken him.

00:54:21.520 | - Yeah, I mean, I probably wouldn't describe

00:54:23.400 | his approach to Twitter as first principles,

00:54:26.000 | but I guess it has the same element.

00:54:26.840 | - I don't think it is.

00:54:28.280 | Well, first of all, I will say that a lot of tweets,

00:54:30.040 | people think, oh, he's going to be done after that.

00:54:32.560 | He's fine, he's just one man, time man of the year.

00:54:35.480 | Like, it's something, it's not sinking him.

00:54:38.560 | And I think, you know, it's not that I think

00:54:40.600 | this is like super reasoned out.

00:54:41.760 | I think that, you know, Twitter is his silly side.

00:54:43.440 | But I think that he saw,

00:54:48.200 | with his reasoning did not feel like there was a giant risk

00:54:50.800 | in just being his silly self on Twitter,

00:54:52.520 | when a lot of billionaires would say,

00:54:53.600 | well, no one else is doing that.

00:54:55.560 | So it must be a good reason, right?

00:54:58.200 | - Well, I gotta say that he inspires me to,

00:55:01.120 | that it's okay to be silly.

00:55:02.920 | - Totally. - On Twitter.

00:55:04.160 | But yeah, you're right.

00:55:06.680 | The big inspiration is the willingness to do that

00:55:09.000 | when nobody else is doing it.

00:55:11.040 | - Yeah, and I think about all the great artists,

00:55:13.280 | you know, all the great inventors and entrepreneurs,

00:55:16.240 | almost all of them,

00:55:17.800 | they had a moment when they trusted their reasoning.

00:55:19.480 | I mean, Airbnb was over 60 with VCs.

00:55:24.480 | A lot of people would say,

00:55:25.840 | obviously they know something we don't, right?

00:55:28.960 | But they didn't, they said, I think they're all wrong.

00:55:30.680 | I mean, that takes some kind of

00:55:32.120 | different wiring in your brain.

00:55:34.240 | - And then that's both for big picture

00:55:36.440 | and detailed like engineering problems.

00:55:39.520 | It's fun to talk to him.

00:55:40.760 | It's fun to talk to Jim Keller,

00:55:42.160 | who's a good example of this kind of thinking

00:55:44.520 | about like manufacturing, how to get costs down.

00:55:47.320 | They always talk about like,

00:55:49.040 | they talk about SpaceX rockets this way.

00:55:52.200 | They talk about manufacturing this way,

00:55:53.860 | like cost per pound or per ton

00:55:58.860 | to get to orbit or something like that.

00:56:02.560 | This is how they reason we need to get the cost down.

00:56:04.640 | It's a very kind of raw materials,

00:56:07.800 | like just very basic way of thinking.

00:56:10.360 | - First principles.

00:56:11.640 | - It's really, yeah.

00:56:12.480 | - And the first principles of a rocket

00:56:14.040 | are like the price of raw materials and gravity, you know,

00:56:18.360 | and wind.

00:56:19.840 | I mean, these are your first principles and fuel.

00:56:22.800 | Henry Ford, you know, what made Henry Ford

00:56:27.200 | blow up as an entrepreneur?

00:56:30.640 | The assembly line, right?

00:56:32.000 | I mean, he did, he thought for a second and said,

00:56:35.120 | this isn't how manufacturing is normally, you know,

00:56:37.280 | it is normally done this way,

00:56:38.280 | but I think this is a different kind of product.

00:56:40.680 | And that's what changed it.

00:56:41.600 | 'Cause you know, and then what happens is

00:56:42.840 | when someone reasons from first principles,

00:56:44.560 | they often fail and you're going out into the fog

00:56:47.640 | with no conventional wisdom to guide you.

00:56:49.320 | But when you succeed,

00:56:50.520 | what you notice is that everyone else turns and says,

00:56:52.200 | wait, what, what, what are they doing?

00:56:53.200 | What are they?

00:56:54.040 | And then they all, they flock over.

00:56:55.240 | Look at the iPhone.

00:56:56.480 | iPhone, you know, Steve Jobs was famously good

00:56:58.800 | at reasoning from first principles

00:57:00.120 | 'cause that guy had crazy self-confidence.

00:57:02.840 | He just said, you know, if I think this is right,

00:57:04.880 | like everyone, and that, I mean, I don't know how,

00:57:06.320 | I don't know how he does that.

00:57:07.520 | And, and I don't think Apple can do that anymore.

00:57:09.600 | I mean, they lost that, that one brain,

00:57:11.680 | his ability to do that was made of that

00:57:13.520 | in a totally different company,

00:57:14.840 | even though there's tens of thousands of people there.

00:57:17.280 | He said, he didn't say,

00:57:19.080 | and I'm giving a lot of credit to Steve Jobs,

00:57:21.560 | but of course it was a team at Apple who said

00:57:23.840 | they didn't look at the flip phones and, and, and say,

00:57:26.320 | okay, what kind of, you know, let's make a keyboard

00:57:28.360 | that's like clicky and, you know,

00:57:29.400 | really cool Apple-y keyboard.

00:57:30.360 | They said, what should a mobile device be?

00:57:32.480 | You know, what, axioms, what are the axioms here?

00:57:35.680 | And none of them involved a keyboard necessarily.

00:57:37.520 | And by the time they pieced it up,

00:57:38.360 | there was no keyboard, 'cause it didn't make sense.

00:57:40.360 | Everyone suddenly is going, wait, what?

00:57:41.600 | What are they doing?

00:57:42.440 | And now every phone looks like the iPhone.

00:57:43.760 | I mean, that's, that's how it goes.

00:57:46.760 | - You tweeted, what's something

00:57:49.680 | you've changed your mind about?

00:57:51.400 | That's the question you've tweeted.

00:57:53.560 | Elon replied, brain transplants.

00:57:55.960 | Sam Harris responded, nuclear power.

00:57:58.040 | There's a bunch of people with cool responses there.

00:58:01.280 | In general, what are your thoughts

00:58:02.640 | about some of the responses?

00:58:03.840 | And what have you changed your mind about, big or small?

00:58:07.520 | Perhaps in doing the research for some of your writing.

00:58:10.600 | - So I'm writing right now, just finishing a book

00:58:13.840 | on kind of why our society is such a shit place

00:58:18.600 | at the moment, just polarized.

00:58:20.200 | And, you know, we have all these gifts,

00:58:21.880 | like we're talking about, just the supermarket.

00:58:23.520 | You know, we have these, it's exploding technology.

00:58:25.720 | Fewer and fewer people are in poverty.

00:58:28.060 | You know, it's, Louis C.K., you know, likes to say,

00:58:30.480 | you know, everything's amazing and no one's happy, right?

00:58:32.480 | But it's really extreme moment right now,

00:58:34.960 | where it's like, hate is on the rise.

00:58:37.340 | Like, crazy things, right?

00:58:38.800 | - If I could interrupt briefly, you did tweet

00:58:41.720 | that you just wrote the last word.

00:58:43.360 | - I sure did.

00:58:44.320 | - And then there's some hilarious asshole who said,

00:58:46.920 | now you just have to work on all the ones in the middle.

00:58:49.840 | - Yeah, I earned that.

00:58:50.680 | I mean, when you earn a reputation

00:58:52.960 | as a tried and true procrastinator,

00:58:55.800 | you're just gonna get shit forever, and that's fine.

00:58:58.480 | I accept my fate there.

00:58:59.640 | - So do you mind sharing a little bit more

00:59:02.040 | about the details of what you're writing?

00:59:04.080 | - Yeah.

00:59:04.920 | - So you're, what, how do you approach this question

00:59:07.840 | about the state of society?

00:59:09.240 | - I wanted to figure out what was going on,

00:59:11.760 | because what I noticed was a bad trend.

00:59:15.040 | It's not that, you know, things are bad.

00:59:16.400 | It's that things are getting worse in certain ways.

00:59:19.360 | Not in every way.

00:59:20.200 | If you look at Max Roser's stuff, you know,

00:59:23.120 | he comes up with all these amazing graphs.

00:59:24.880 | This is what's weird, is that things are getting better

00:59:27.380 | in almost every important metric you can think of.

00:59:31.600 | Except the amount of people who hate other people

00:59:35.240 | in their own country, and the amount of people

00:59:37.780 | that hate their own country, the amount of Americans

00:59:40.880 | that hate America is on the rise, right?

00:59:42.800 | The amount of Americans that hate other Americans

00:59:45.580 | is on the rise.

00:59:47.160 | The amount of Americans that hate the president

00:59:49.120 | is on the rise, all these things,

00:59:50.200 | like on the very steep rise.

00:59:52.780 | So what the hell?

00:59:53.720 | What's going on?

00:59:54.560 | Like, there's something causing that.

00:59:56.120 | It's not that, you know, a bunch of new people were born

00:59:58.280 | who were just dicks.

00:59:59.280 | It's that something is going on.

01:00:01.280 | So I think of it as a very simple, oversimplified equation,

01:00:06.280 | human behavior, and it's the output.

01:00:09.880 | And I think the two inputs are human nature

01:00:12.000 | and environment, right?

01:00:12.840 | And this is basic, you know, super, super kindergarten level

01:00:16.120 | like, you know, animal behavior.

01:00:18.440 | But I think it's worth thinking about.

01:00:20.080 | You've got human nature, which is not changing very much,

01:00:23.000 | right, and then you throw that nature

01:00:27.520 | into a certain environment,

01:00:29.000 | and it reacts to the environment, right?

01:00:30.800 | It's shaped by the environment.

01:00:32.520 | And then eventually what comes out is behavior, right?

01:00:36.440 | Human nature is not changing very much,

01:00:38.000 | but suddenly we're behaving differently, right?

01:00:40.280 | We are, again, you know, look at the polls.

01:00:42.560 | Like, it used to be that the president, you know,

01:00:45.120 | was liked by, I don't remember the exact numbers,

01:00:47.040 | but, you know, 80% or 70% of their own party,

01:00:51.160 | and, you know, 50% of the other party.

01:00:53.000 | And now it's like 40% of their own party

01:00:54.640 | and 10% of the other party, you know?

01:00:56.600 | And it's not that the presidents are getting worse,

01:00:59.200 | since maybe some people would argue that they are,

01:01:00.680 | but more so, and there's a lot of, you know,

01:01:03.920 | idiot presidents throughout the,

01:01:05.640 | what's going on is something in the environment is changing,

01:01:08.240 | and that's, that you're seeing is a change in behavior.

01:01:11.160 | An easy example here is that, you know,

01:01:12.760 | by a lot of metrics, racism is getting,

01:01:16.360 | is becoming less and less of a problem.

01:01:18.280 | You know, it's hard to measure, but there's metrics like,

01:01:21.840 | you know, how upset would you be

01:01:23.280 | if your kid married someone of another race?

01:01:26.520 | And that number is plummeting.

01:01:28.000 | But racial grievance is skyrocketing, right?

01:01:30.800 | There's a lot of examples like this.

01:01:32.000 | So I wanted to look around and say,

01:01:33.600 | and the reason I took it on,

01:01:34.720 | the reason I don't think this is just an unfortunate trend,

01:01:36.800 | unpleasant trend that hopefully we come out of,

01:01:38.880 | is that all this other stuff I like to write about,

01:01:40.440 | all this future stuff, right?

01:01:41.960 | And it's this magical, I always think of this,

01:01:43.720 | I'm very optimistic in a lot of ways,

01:01:45.280 | and I think that our world would be a utopia,

01:01:48.440 | would seem like actual heaven.

01:01:50.120 | Like whatever Thomas Jefferson was picturing as heaven,

01:01:53.640 | other than maybe the eternal life aspect,

01:01:55.440 | I think that if he came to 2021 US, it would be better.

01:01:59.160 | It's cooler than heaven.

01:02:00.880 | But we live in a place that's cooler than 1700s heaven.

01:02:03.840 | Again, other than the fact that we still die.

01:02:05.640 | Now, I think that future world

01:02:07.200 | actually probably would have quote, eternal life.

01:02:09.600 | I don't think anyone wants eternal life, actually,

01:02:11.960 | if people think they do.

01:02:13.280 | Eternal is a long time,

01:02:14.520 | but I think the choice to die when you want,

01:02:16.920 | maybe we're uploaded, maybe we can refresh our bodies,

01:02:19.400 | I don't know what it is.

01:02:20.240 | But the point is, I think about that utopia.

01:02:23.400 | And I do believe that if we don't botch this,

01:02:25.960 | we'd be heading towards somewhere

01:02:27.160 | that would seem like heaven, maybe in our lifetimes.

01:02:30.040 | Of course, if things go wrong,

01:02:32.920 | now think about the trends here.

01:02:34.920 | Just like the 20th century would seem like

01:02:36.980 | some magical utopia to someone from the 16th century,

01:02:39.680 | the bad things in the 20th century

01:02:43.880 | were kind of the worst things ever,

01:02:46.160 | in terms of just absolute magnitude.

01:02:47.960 | World War II, the biggest genocides ever.

01:02:52.060 | You've got maybe climate change,

01:02:55.060 | if it is the existential threat that many people think it is.

01:02:58.060 | I mean, we never had an existential threat

01:02:59.700 | on that level before.

01:03:01.020 | So the good is getting better and the bad's getting worse.

01:03:04.040 | And so what I think about the future,

01:03:05.400 | I think of us as in some kind of big,

01:03:08.200 | long canoe as a species.

01:03:10.960 | Five million mile long canoe,

01:03:13.840 | each of us sitting in a row.

01:03:14.960 | And we each have one oar,

01:03:16.320 | we can paddle on the left side or the right side.

01:03:18.540 | And what we know is there's a fork up there somewhere.

01:03:22.000 | And the river forks,

01:03:24.240 | and there's a utopia on one side

01:03:26.040 | and a dystopia on the other side.

01:03:27.240 | And I really believe that that's,

01:03:28.600 | we're probably not headed for just an okay future.

01:03:30.480 | It's just the way tech is exploding,

01:03:32.560 | it's probably gonna be really good or really bad.

01:03:34.240 | The question is, which side should we be rowing on?

01:03:35.840 | We can't see up there, right?

01:03:37.760 | But it really matters.

01:03:38.600 | So I'm writing about all this future stuff,

01:03:39.600 | and I'm saying none of this matters

01:03:40.660 | if we're squabbling our way

01:03:42.020 | into kind of like a civil war right now.

01:03:44.440 | So what's going on?

01:03:45.760 | - So it's a really important problem to solve.

01:03:48.600 | What are your sources of hope in this?

01:03:51.880 | So like, how do you steer the canoe?

01:03:54.920 | - One of my big sources of hope,

01:03:56.320 | and this is my answer to what I changed my mind on,

01:03:59.880 | is I think I always knew this,

01:04:01.700 | but it's easy to forget it.

01:04:03.680 | Our primitive brain does not remember this fact,

01:04:05.600 | which is that I don't think there are very many bad people.

01:04:10.600 | Now, you say bad, are there selfish people?

01:04:13.600 | Most of us, I think that if you think of people,

01:04:16.400 | there's digital languages, ones and zeros.

01:04:21.600 | And our primitive brain very quickly can get into the land

01:04:24.080 | where everyone's a one or a zero.

01:04:25.040 | Our tribe, we're all ones, we're perfect, I'm perfect,

01:04:27.400 | my family is that other family, it's that other tribe.

01:04:29.480 | There are zeros, and you dehumanize them, right?

01:04:31.840 | These people are awful.

01:04:33.920 | So zero is not a human place.

01:04:36.200 | No one's a zero and no one's a one.

01:04:37.680 | You're dehumanizing yourself.

01:04:39.240 | So when we get into this land,

01:04:41.080 | I call it political Disney world,

01:04:42.680 | 'cause the Disney movies have good guys,

01:04:44.800 | Scar is totally bad and Mufasa's totally good, right?

01:04:48.680 | You don't see Mufasa's character flaws.

01:04:50.360 | You don't see Scar's upbringing that made him like that,

01:04:53.000 | that humanizes him, no, lionizes him, whatever.

01:04:55.560 | You are-- - Well done.

01:04:57.360 | - Yeah. (laughing)

01:04:58.600 | Mufasa's a one and Scar's a zero, very simple.

01:05:01.820 | So political Disney world is a place,

01:05:03.880 | a psychological place that all of us have been in.

01:05:06.680 | And it can be religious Disney world,

01:05:08.200 | it can be national Disney world,

01:05:09.680 | and war, whatever it is,

01:05:11.040 | but it's a place where we fall into this delusion

01:05:13.400 | that there are protagonists and antagonists

01:05:14.880 | and that's it, right?

01:05:15.740 | That is not true.

01:05:17.000 | We are all 0.5s or maybe 0.6s to 0.4s

01:05:20.280 | in that we are also, on one hand,

01:05:22.320 | it's not that, I don't think there's that many

01:05:23.360 | really great people, frankly.

01:05:24.860 | I think if you get into it,

01:05:26.240 | people are kind of, a lot of people,

01:05:27.840 | most of us have, if you get really into

01:05:29.760 | our most shameful memories,

01:05:31.200 | the things we've done that are worse,

01:05:32.440 | the most shameful thoughts, the deep selfishness

01:05:34.440 | that some of us have in areas we wouldn't want to admit,

01:05:36.840 | right, most of us have a lot of unadmirable stuff, right?

01:05:40.580 | On the other hand, if you actually got into,

01:05:42.480 | really got into someone else's brain

01:05:44.240 | and you looked at their upbringing

01:05:45.320 | and you looked at the trauma that they've experienced

01:05:47.120 | and then you looked at the insecurities they have

01:05:49.640 | and you look at all their,

01:05:50.480 | if you assembled a highlight reel

01:05:52.000 | of your worst moments,

01:05:53.640 | the meanest things you've ever done,

01:05:55.520 | the worst, the most selfish,

01:05:56.680 | the times you stole something, whatever,

01:05:58.480 | and you just, people think,

01:05:59.320 | "Wow, Lex is an awful person."

01:06:00.960 | If you highlighted your,

01:06:01.800 | if you did a montage of your best moments,

01:06:03.620 | people would say, "Oh, he's a god," right?

01:06:05.000 | But of course, we all have both of those.

01:06:06.800 | So, I've started to really try to remind myself

01:06:11.520 | that everyone's a 0.5, right?

01:06:13.720 | And 0.5s are all worthy of criticism

01:06:15.920 | and we're all worthy of compassion.

01:06:17.720 | And the thing that makes me hopeful

01:06:19.840 | is that I really think that,

01:06:21.480 | there's a bunch of 0.5s,

01:06:22.640 | and 0.5s are good enough

01:06:24.720 | that we should be able to create a good society together.

01:06:26.480 | There's a lot of love in every human.

01:06:28.040 | And I think there's more love in humans than hate.

01:06:30.540 | You know, I always remember this moment.

01:06:34.320 | This is a weird anecdote,

01:06:35.560 | but I'm a Red Sox fan, Boston Red Sox baseball,

01:06:38.000 | and Derek Jeter is who we hate the most.

01:06:40.440 | He's on the Yankees.

01:06:41.360 | - Yes.

01:06:42.400 | - And hate, right?

01:06:44.320 | Ugh, Jeter, right?

01:06:45.840 | He was his last game in Fenway, he's retiring.

01:06:47.960 | And he got this rousing standing ovation

01:06:49.800 | and I almost cried.

01:06:51.120 | And it was like, what is going on?

01:06:52.480 | We hate this guy, but actually,

01:06:53.800 | there's so much love in all humans.

01:06:56.080 | It felt so good to just give a huge cheer

01:06:58.640 | to this guy we hate

01:06:59.480 | because it's like this moment of a little fist pound,

01:07:02.040 | being like, of course we all actually love each other.

01:07:04.040 | And I think there's so much of that.

01:07:06.200 | And so, the thing that I think I've come around on

01:07:08.080 | is I think that we are in an environment

01:07:11.160 | that's bringing out really bad stuff.

01:07:13.280 | I don't think it's,

01:07:14.100 | if I thought it was the people,

01:07:15.800 | I would be more hopeful.

01:07:16.640 | Like, if I thought it was human nature,

01:07:17.640 | I'd be more upset.

01:07:19.720 | It's the two independent variables here,

01:07:23.120 | or there's a fixed variable,

01:07:24.480 | there's a constant, which is human nature,

01:07:25.840 | and there's the independent variable, environment,

01:07:27.680 | and then behavior is the dependent variable.

01:07:30.480 | I like that the thing that I think is bad

01:07:32.360 | is the independent variable, the environment.

01:07:34.520 | Which means I think the environment can get better.

01:07:36.840 | And there's a lot of things I can go into

01:07:38.040 | about why the environment I think is bad,

01:07:39.800 | but I have hope because I think the thing that's bad for us

01:07:42.760 | is something that can change.

01:07:44.520 | - The first principle's idea here

01:07:46.720 | is that most people have the capacity

01:07:48.320 | to be a 0.7 to a 0.9

01:07:51.640 | if the environment is properly calibrated

01:07:56.640 | with the right incentives.

01:07:57.960 | - I think that, well, I think that maybe if we're all,

01:08:00.200 | yeah, if we're all 0.5s,

01:08:01.680 | I think that environments can bring out our good side.

01:08:05.320 | You know, yes, if maybe we're all

01:08:06.400 | on some kind of distribution.

01:08:08.880 | And the right environment can, yes,

01:08:11.000 | can bring out our higher sides.

01:08:12.720 | And I think in a lot of ways you could say it has.

01:08:15.080 | I mean, the US environment, we take for granted

01:08:18.880 | how the liberal laws and liberal environment that we live in.

01:08:23.000 | I mean, like in New York City, right,

01:08:26.240 | if you walk down the street and you like assault someone,

01:08:29.360 | A, if anyone sees you, they're probably gonna yell at you.

01:08:31.000 | You might get your ass kicked by someone for doing that.

01:08:32.920 | You also might end up in jail, you know,

01:08:35.640 | if it's security cameras.

01:08:37.080 | And there's just norms.

01:08:38.040 | You know, we're all trained.

01:08:38.880 | That's what awful people do, right?

01:08:40.320 | So there's, it's not that human nature doesn't have it in it

01:08:43.000 | to be like that.

01:08:44.280 | It's that this environment we're in has made that

01:08:47.080 | a much, much, much smaller experience for people.

01:08:50.120 | There's so many examples like that where it's like, man,

01:08:52.160 | you don't realize how much of the worst human nature

01:08:54.520 | is contained by our environment.

01:08:56.200 | And, but I think that, you know,

01:08:58.800 | rapidly changing environment,

01:09:00.240 | which is what we have right now, social media starts.

01:09:02.240 | I mean, what a seismic change to the environment.

01:09:04.680 | There's a lot of examples like that.

01:09:05.760 | Rapidly changing environment

01:09:06.920 | can create rapidly changing behavior.

01:09:09.240 | And wisdom sometimes can't keep up.

01:09:11.680 | And so we, you know, we can,

01:09:14.240 | we can really kind of lose our grip

01:09:15.800 | on some of the good behavior.

01:09:17.280 | - Were you surprised by Elon's answer about brain transplants

01:09:21.760 | or Sam's about nuclear power?

01:09:23.320 | Or anything else just--

01:09:24.800 | - Sam's I think is, I have a friend,

01:09:27.760 | Isabel Bohemeke, who has a,

01:09:29.780 | who's a nuclear power, you know, influencer.

01:09:33.120 | I've become very convinced.

01:09:34.920 | And I've not done my deep dive on this.

01:09:37.960 | But here's, in this case,

01:09:39.480 | this is reasoning by analogy here.

01:09:41.460 | The amount of really smart people I respect,

01:09:45.120 | who all, who seem to have dug in,

01:09:46.960 | who all say nuclear power is clearly a good option.

01:09:50.000 | It's obviously emission free,

01:09:51.120 | but you know, the concerns about meltdowns and waste,

01:09:54.160 | they see it, they say, completely overblown.

01:09:56.880 | So judging from those people, secondary knowledge here,

01:10:00.260 | I will say I'm a strong advocate.

01:10:02.760 | I haven't done my own deep dive yet,

01:10:04.240 | but it does seem like a little bit odd

01:10:06.520 | that you've got people who are so concerned

01:10:09.200 | about climate change,

01:10:10.400 | who have, it seems like it's kind of an ideology

01:10:15.200 | where nuclear power doesn't fit,

01:10:17.200 | rather than rational, you know, fear of climate change

01:10:20.360 | that somehow is anti-nuclear power.

01:10:22.200 | It just, yeah.

01:10:23.200 | - I personally am uncomfortably reasoning

01:10:25.840 | by analogy with climate change.

01:10:27.960 | I've actually have not done a deep dive myself.

01:10:29.640 | - Me neither, because it's so,

01:10:31.840 | man, it seems like a deep dive.

01:10:33.320 | - Yeah.

01:10:34.760 | And my reasoning by analogy there

01:10:37.240 | currently has me thinking it's a truly existential thing,

01:10:40.600 | but feeling hopeful.

01:10:41.840 | - So let me, this is me speaking,

01:10:44.360 | and this is speaking from a person

01:10:45.760 | who's not done the deep dive.

01:10:47.240 | I'm a little suspicious

01:10:50.500 | of the amount of fear mongering going on.

01:10:52.680 | I've, especially over the past couple of years,

01:10:54.720 | I've gotten uncomfortable with fear mongering

01:10:56.640 | in all walks of life.

01:10:59.140 | There's way too many people interested

01:11:01.520 | in manipulating the populace with fear.

01:11:04.240 | And so I don't like it.

01:11:05.480 | I should probably do a deep dive,

01:11:06.920 | 'cause to me it's, well, the big problem

01:11:10.640 | with the opposition to climate change,

01:11:13.160 | or whatever the fear mongering is,

01:11:15.160 | that it also grows the skepticism in science broadly.

01:11:19.720 | - Yeah.

01:11:20.560 | - It's like, and that,

01:11:21.380 | so I need to make sure I do that deep dive.

01:11:23.480 | I have listened to a few folks

01:11:25.120 | who kind of criticize the fear mongering

01:11:27.840 | and all those kinds of things,

01:11:29.120 | but they're few and far in between.

01:11:30.840 | And so it's like, all right, what is the truth here?

01:11:33.800 | And it feels lazy.

01:11:35.280 | But it also feels like it's hard to get to the,

01:11:38.480 | like there's a lot of kind of activists talking about idea

01:11:43.040 | versus sources of objective,

01:11:48.040 | like calm, first principles type reasoning.

01:11:52.440 | Like one of the things,

01:11:54.080 | I know it's supposed to be a very big problem,

01:11:57.880 | but when people talk about catastrophic effects

01:12:00.000 | of climate change,

01:12:01.680 | I haven't been able to like see really great deep analysis

01:12:06.360 | of what that looks like in 10, 20, 30 years,

01:12:09.480 | raising rising sea levels.

01:12:12.400 | What are the models of how that changes human behavior,

01:12:16.960 | society, what are the things that happen?

01:12:19.260 | There's going to be constraints on the resources

01:12:21.620 | and people are gonna have to move around.

01:12:23.320 | This is happening gradually.

01:12:24.900 | Are we gonna be able to respond to this?

01:12:26.720 | How would we respond to this?

01:12:27.840 | What are the best,

01:12:28.920 | like what are the best models for how everything goes wrong?

01:12:32.280 | Again, I was, this is a question I keep starting

01:12:36.180 | to ask myself without doing any research,

01:12:38.640 | like motivating myself to get up to this deep dive

01:12:43.400 | that I feel is deep.

01:12:45.040 | Just watching people not do a great job

01:12:47.200 | with that kind of modeling with the pandemic

01:12:49.480 | and sort of being caught off guard and wondering,

01:12:52.640 | okay, if we're not good with this pandemic,

01:12:55.140 | how are we going to respond to other kinds of tragedies?

01:12:57.560 | Well, this is part of why I wrote the book,

01:12:59.440 | 'cause I said, we're going to have more and more of these,

01:13:04.440 | big collective, what should we do here situations?

01:13:08.200 | Whether it's, how about when,

01:13:09.720 | we're probably not that far away from people being able

01:13:11.560 | to go and decide the IQ of their kid

01:13:14.520 | or make a bunch of embryos and actually pick

01:13:17.480 | the highest IQ.

01:13:18.320 | - It can possibly go wrong.

01:13:20.000 | - Yeah, and also imagine the political sides of that

01:13:23.000 | and that's something only wealthy people can afford at first

01:13:25.480 | and just a nightmare, right?

01:13:27.340 | We need to be able to have our wits about us as a species

01:13:29.620 | where we can actually get into a topic like that

01:13:32.880 | and come up with, where the collective brain can be smart.

01:13:36.720 | I think that there are certain topics where I think of this,

01:13:40.760 | and this is again, another simplistic model,

01:13:42.440 | but I think it works, is that there's a higher mind

01:13:44.080 | and a primitive mind, right?

01:13:45.200 | You can, in your head.

01:13:47.240 | And these team up with others.

01:13:48.920 | So when the higher minds are,

01:13:50.160 | and a higher mind is more rational and puts out ideas

01:13:53.000 | that it's not attached to.

01:13:54.040 | And so it can change its mind easily

01:13:56.440 | 'cause it's just an idea and the higher mind

01:13:58.460 | can get criticized.

01:14:00.400 | Their ideas can get criticized and it's no big deal.

01:14:02.880 | And so when the higher minds team up,

01:14:05.040 | it's like all these people in the room

01:14:06.480 | like throwing out ideas and kicking them

01:14:07.920 | and one idea goes out and everyone criticizes it,

01:14:10.040 | which is like shooting bows and arrows at it.

01:14:11.800 | And the truth, the true idea is,

01:14:13.880 | the arrows bounce off and it's so okay, it rises up.

01:14:16.920 | And the other ones get shot down.

01:14:18.300 | So it's this incredible system.

01:14:19.520 | This is what good science institution is,

01:14:22.540 | is someone puts out a thing, criticism arrows come at it

01:14:25.320 | and most of them fall and the needle is in the haystack,

01:14:29.040 | end up rising up, right?

01:14:30.040 | Incredible mechanism.

01:14:30.920 | So what that's happening is a bunch of people,

01:14:32.520 | a bunch of flawed medium scientists

01:14:34.800 | are creating super intelligence.

01:14:36.500 | Then there's the primitive mind,

01:14:40.480 | which is the more limbic systemy part of our brain.

01:14:44.160 | It's the part of us that is very much not living in 2021.

01:14:48.720 | It's living many tens of thousands of years ago.

01:14:51.360 | And it does not treat ideas like this separate thing.

01:14:54.280 | It identifies with its ideas.

01:14:56.400 | It only gets involved when it finds an idea sacred.

01:14:59.920 | It starts holding an idea sacred and it starts identifying.

01:15:02.080 | So what happens is they team up too.

01:15:04.440 | And so when you have a topic that a bunch of primitive,

01:15:08.360 | that really rouses a bunch of primitive minds,

01:15:10.660 | it quickly, the primitive minds team up

01:15:14.920 | and they create an echo chamber

01:15:16.680 | where suddenly no one can criticize this.

01:15:18.480 | And in fact, if it's powerful enough,

01:15:20.680 | people outside the community, no one can criticize it.

01:15:22.840 | We will get your paper retracted.

01:15:24.040 | We will get you fired, right?

01:15:25.840 | That's not higher mind behavior.

01:15:27.120 | That is crazy primitive mind.

01:15:28.560 | And so now what happens is the collective

01:15:30.600 | becomes dumber than an individual,

01:15:32.640 | a dumber than a single reasoning individual.

01:15:34.940 | You have this collective is suddenly attached

01:15:37.120 | to this sacred scripture with the idea

01:15:40.800 | and they will not change their mind

01:15:43.200 | and they get dumber and dumber.

01:15:44.300 | And so climate change, what's worrisome

01:15:47.300 | is that climate change has in many ways

01:15:49.540 | become a sacred topic,

01:15:50.980 | where if you come up with a nuanced thing,

01:15:52.560 | you might get called branded a denier.

01:15:54.640 | So there goes the super intelligence,

01:15:57.680 | all the arrows, no arrows can be fired.

01:15:59.560 | But if you get called a denier,

01:16:01.040 | that's a social penalty for firing an arrow

01:16:03.480 | at a certain orthodoxy.

01:16:05.160 | And so what's happening is the big brain gets frozen

01:16:08.080 | and it becomes very stupid.

01:16:08.920 | Now, you can also say that

01:16:10.560 | about a lot of other topics right now.

01:16:12.600 | You just mentioned another one, I forget what it was,

01:16:16.600 | but that's also kind of like this.

01:16:19.040 | - The world of vaccine.

01:16:20.320 | - Yeah, COVID.

01:16:21.600 | - And here's my point earlier is that

01:16:23.360 | what I see is that the political divide

01:16:25.760 | has like a whirlpool that's pulling everything into it.

01:16:28.360 | And in that whirlpool,

01:16:29.800 | thinking is done with the primitive mind tribes.

01:16:34.880 | And so I get, okay, obviously something like race,

01:16:38.520 | that makes sense, that also right now,

01:16:40.240 | the topic of race, for example, or gender,

01:16:42.200 | these things are in the whirlpool.

01:16:43.860 | But that at least is like, okay,

01:16:45.680 | that's something that the primitive mind

01:16:47.080 | would always get really worked up about.

01:16:49.160 | It taps into like our deepest kind of like primal selves.

01:16:52.320 | COVID, make this COVID in a way too,

01:16:56.080 | but climate change,

01:16:57.120 | like that should just be something

01:16:57.960 | that our rational brains are like,

01:16:58.920 | let's solve this complex problem.

01:17:00.380 | But the problem is that it's all gotten sucked

01:17:02.400 | into the red versus blue whirlpool.

01:17:04.300 | And once that happens,

01:17:05.140 | it's in the hands of the primitive minds.

01:17:06.360 | And we're losing our ability to be wise together,

01:17:09.200 | to make decisions.

01:17:10.200 | It's like the big species brain is like,

01:17:13.360 | or the big American brain is like,

01:17:15.240 | drunk at the wheel right now.

01:17:16.760 | And we're about to go into a future

01:17:18.180 | with more and more big technologies,

01:17:21.160 | scary things, we have to make big, right decisions.

01:17:24.160 | We're getting dumber as a collective,

01:17:26.080 | and that's part of this environmental problem.

01:17:28.440 | - So within the space of technologists

01:17:30.360 | and the space of scientists, we should allow the arrows.

01:17:33.320 | That's one of the saddest things to me about,

01:17:35.080 | is like the scientists, like I've seen arrogance.

01:17:40.000 | There's a lot of mechanisms that maintain the tribe.

01:17:42.460 | It's the arrogance, it's how you build up this mechanism

01:17:46.520 | that defends this wall that defends against the arrows.

01:17:50.120 | It's arrogance, credentialism,

01:17:54.320 | like just ego, really.

01:17:58.200 | And then just, it protects you

01:17:59.580 | from actually challenging your own ideas.

01:18:01.960 | This ideal of science that makes science beautiful.

01:18:05.680 | In a time of fear, and in a time of division

01:18:09.600 | created by perhaps politicians that leverage the fear,

01:18:12.900 | it, like you said, makes the whole system dumber.

01:18:16.220 | The science system dumber,

01:18:17.880 | the tech developer system dumber,

01:18:22.720 | if they don't allow the challenging of ideas.

01:18:25.000 | - What's really bad is that like, in a normal environment,

01:18:28.640 | you're always gonna have echo chambers.

01:18:30.400 | And so what's the opposite of an echo chamber?

01:18:32.360 | I created a term for it, 'cause I think we need it,

01:18:34.140 | which is called an ideal lab.

01:18:35.700 | An ideal lab, right?

01:18:36.540 | It's like people treat,

01:18:37.720 | it's like people act like scientists,

01:18:38.960 | even if they're not doing science.

01:18:40.480 | They just treat their ideas like science experiments,

01:18:43.440 | and they toss them out there, and everyone disagrees.

01:18:45.360 | And disagreement is like the game.

01:18:46.940 | Everyone likes to disagree.

01:18:48.020 | On a certain text thread where everyone is just saying,

01:18:50.900 | it's almost like someone throws something out,

01:18:52.260 | and just as an impulse for the rest of the group to say,

01:18:54.140 | I think you're being overly general there.

01:18:56.620 | Or I think, aren't you kind of being,

01:18:58.340 | I think that's like your bias showing.

01:19:00.180 | And it's like, no one's getting offended,

01:19:01.620 | because it's like, we're all just messing,

01:19:02.780 | we all, of course, respect each other, obviously.

01:19:04.900 | We're just trashing each other's ideas,

01:19:08.460 | and that the whole group becomes smarter.

01:19:10.620 | You're always gonna have ideal labs and echo chambers,

01:19:12.860 | in different communities.

01:19:13.680 | But most of us participate in both of them.

01:19:15.700 | And maybe in your marriage is a great idea lab,

01:19:18.060 | you love to disagree with your spouse.

01:19:20.020 | And maybe in, but this group of friends,

01:19:21.980 | or your family at home, you know,

01:19:23.580 | in front of that sister, you do not bring up politics,

01:19:25.660 | because she's now enforced, when that happens,

01:19:27.580 | her bullying is forcing the whole room

01:19:30.300 | to be an echo chamber to appease her.

01:19:32.880 | Now, what scares me is that usually you have

01:19:34.940 | these things existing kind of in bubbles,

01:19:36.940 | and usually there's like,

01:19:38.780 | and they each have their natural defenses

01:19:40.060 | against each other.

01:19:41.220 | An echo chamber person stays in their echo chamber.

01:19:44.260 | They don't like, they will cut you out.

01:19:45.740 | They don't like to be friends with people

01:19:47.320 | who disagree with them.

01:19:48.160 | You notice that, they will cut you out.

01:19:49.220 | They'll cut out their parents,

01:19:50.300 | if they voted for Trump or whatever, right?

01:19:51.660 | So, that's how they do it.

01:19:54.460 | They will say, I'm gonna stay inside

01:19:56.080 | of an echo chamber safely.

01:19:57.220 | So my ideas, which I identify with,

01:19:59.480 | because my primitive mind is doing the thinking,

01:20:02.500 | are not gonna ever have to get challenged,

01:20:04.100 | 'cause it feels so scary and awful for that to happen.

01:20:07.400 | But if they leave, and they go into an ideal lab

01:20:09.140 | environment, they're gonna, people are gonna say,

01:20:10.500 | what, no, they're gonna disagree,

01:20:11.820 | and they're gonna say, and the person's gonna try

01:20:13.240 | to bully, they're gonna say, that's really offensive,

01:20:15.660 | and people are gonna say, no, it's not,

01:20:16.580 | and they're gonna immediately say,

01:20:17.960 | these people are assholes, right?

01:20:19.140 | So the echo chamber person, it doesn't have much power

01:20:23.260 | once they leave the echo chamber.

01:20:24.620 | Likewise, the ideal lab person,

01:20:26.140 | they have this great environment,

01:20:27.260 | but if they go into an echo chamber

01:20:28.580 | where everyone else is, and they do that,

01:20:29.980 | they will get kicked out of the group.

01:20:30.980 | They will get branded as something,

01:20:32.460 | a denier, a racist, a right-winger, a radical,

01:20:36.660 | these nasty words.

01:20:39.980 | The thing that I don't like right now

01:20:41.460 | is that the echo chambers have found ways

01:20:44.740 | to forcefully expand into places that normally

01:20:49.740 | have a pretty good immune system against echo chambers,

01:20:52.440 | like universities, like science journals,

01:20:54.980 | places where usually it's like there's a strong

01:20:57.260 | ideal lab culture, they're veritas,

01:20:59.020 | you know, that's an ideal lab slogan.

01:21:02.700 | You have is that these people have found a way to,

01:21:06.140 | a lot of people have found a way to actually go out

01:21:08.620 | of their thing and keep their echo chamber

01:21:10.260 | by making sure that everyone is scared

01:21:11.980 | 'cause they can punish anyone,

01:21:13.060 | whether you're in their community or not.

01:21:15.100 | - That's all brilliantly put.

01:21:19.180 | When's the book coming out?

01:21:20.780 | Any idea?

01:21:21.620 | - June, July, we're not quite sure yet.

01:21:24.020 | - Okay, I can't wait.

01:21:25.420 | - Thanks. - It's awesome.

01:21:26.380 | Do you have a title yet or you can't talk about that?

01:21:28.220 | - Still working on it. - Okay.

01:21:30.580 | If it's okay, just a couple of questions from Mailbag.

01:21:32.980 | I just love these.

01:21:34.300 | I would love to hear you riff on these.

01:21:37.500 | So one is about film and music.

01:21:39.580 | Why do we prefer to watch, the question goes,

01:21:41.940 | why do we prefer to watch a film we haven't watched before,

01:21:45.560 | but we want to listen to songs

01:21:47.540 | that we have heard hundreds of times?

01:21:50.060 | This question and your answer really started

01:21:52.300 | to make me think like, yeah, that's true.

01:21:54.440 | That's really interesting.

01:21:55.740 | Like we draw that line somehow.

01:21:59.100 | So what's the answer?

01:22:00.240 | - So I think, let's use these two minds again.

01:22:02.700 | I think that when your higher mind is the one

01:22:04.940 | who's taking something in and they're really interested

01:22:07.140 | in what are the lyrics or I'm gonna learn something

01:22:08.780 | or reading a book or whatever,

01:22:11.500 | and the higher mind is trying to get information,

01:22:15.820 | and once it has it, there's no point in listening to it again

01:22:17.900 | it has the information.

01:22:19.060 | Your rational brain is like, I got it.

01:22:21.960 | But when you eat a good meal or have sex or whatever,

01:22:27.420 | that's something you can do again and again

01:22:28.780 | because it actually, your primitive brain loves it, right?

01:22:32.700 | And it never gets bored of things that it loves.

01:22:35.380 | So I think music is a very primal thing.

01:22:38.140 | I think music goes right into our primitive brain.

01:22:40.540 | I think it's of course, it's a collaboration.

01:22:43.900 | Your rational brain is absorbing the actual message,

01:22:47.500 | but I think it's all about emotions

01:22:48.940 | and even more than emotions, it literally,

01:22:51.460 | music taps into some very, very deep,

01:22:55.340 | primal part of us.

01:22:59.140 | And so when you hear a song once,

01:23:02.060 | even some of your favorite songs,

01:23:03.280 | the first time you heard it, you were like,

01:23:04.340 | I guess that's kind of catchy, yeah.

01:23:06.280 | And then you end up loving it on the 10th listen,

01:23:10.220 | but sometimes you even don't even like a song,

01:23:11.620 | you're like, oh, this song sucks.

01:23:12.540 | But suddenly you find yourself on the 40th time

01:23:15.260 | 'cause it's on the radio all the time,

01:23:16.240 | just kind of being like, oh, I love this song.

01:23:17.420 | And you're like, wait, I hate this song.

01:23:19.700 | And what's happening is that the sound is actually,

01:23:23.060 | music's actually carving a pathway in your brain.

01:23:27.220 | And it's a dance.

01:23:29.140 | And when your brain knows what's coming,

01:23:30.940 | it can dance, it knows the steps.

01:23:33.060 | So your brain is, your internal kind of,

01:23:35.740 | your brain is actually dancing with the music

01:23:37.500 | and it knows the steps and it can anticipate.

01:23:39.780 | And so there's something about knowing,

01:23:45.020 | having memorized the song

01:23:46.140 | that makes it incredibly enjoyable to us.

01:23:48.940 | But when we hear it for the first time,

01:23:49.980 | we don't know where it's gonna go.

01:23:50.820 | We're like an awkward dancer, we don't know the steps.

01:23:52.380 | And your primitive brain can't really have that much fun yet.

01:23:55.220 | That's how I feel.

01:23:56.060 | - And in the movies, that's more, that's less primitive.

01:23:59.820 | That's a story.

01:24:01.500 | You're taking in.

01:24:03.620 | - But a really good movie that we really love,

01:24:05.660 | often we will watch it like 12 times.

01:24:07.220 | You know, it's to like it.

01:24:08.340 | Not that many, but versus if you're watching a talk show,

01:24:11.620 | right, listening to, if you're listening to a pod,

01:24:13.300 | one of your podcasts is a perfect example.

01:24:15.260 | There's not many people that will listen to

01:24:17.020 | one of your podcasts, no matter how good it is, 12 times.

01:24:19.060 | Because it's, once you've got it, you got it.

01:24:21.380 | It's a form of information that's very higher mind focused.

01:24:25.300 | That's how I feel.

01:24:26.140 | - Well, you know, the funny thing is,

01:24:28.180 | there is people that listen to a podcast episode,

01:24:31.140 | many, many times.

01:24:32.180 | And often I think the reason for that

01:24:33.980 | is not because of the information,

01:24:35.320 | it's the chemistry, it's the music of the conversation.

01:24:38.100 | So it's not the actual--

01:24:38.940 | - It's just the art of it they like.

01:24:40.300 | - Yeah, they'll fall in love with some kind of person,

01:24:42.360 | some weird personality, and they'll just be listening to,

01:24:45.340 | they'll be captivated by the beat of that kind of person.

01:24:47.780 | - Or like a standup comic.

01:24:48.620 | I've watched like certain things,

01:24:49.700 | like episodes like 20 times, even though I, you know.

01:24:52.340 | - I have to ask you about the wizard hat.

01:24:56.460 | You wrote a blog about Neuralink.

01:24:58.100 | I got a chance to visit Neuralink a couple of times,

01:25:00.500 | hanging out with those folks.

01:25:01.940 | That was one of the pieces of writing you did

01:25:06.540 | that like changes culture

01:25:09.260 | and changes the way people think about a thing.

01:25:12.060 | The ridiculousness of your stick figure drawings

01:25:15.860 | are somehow, it's like, you know,

01:25:19.460 | it's like calling the origin of the universe, the Big Bang.

01:25:23.340 | It's a silly title, but it somehow sticks

01:25:25.860 | to be the representative of that.

01:25:28.980 | In the same way, the wizard hat for the Neuralink

01:25:30.980 | is somehow was a really powerful way to explain that.

01:25:35.340 | You actually proposed that the man of the year

01:25:37.780 | cover of Time should be--

01:25:39.740 | - One of my drawings.

01:25:40.580 | - One of your drawings.

01:25:41.420 | - In general, yes.

01:25:42.240 | - It's an outrage that it wasn't.

01:25:43.260 | - It was.

01:25:44.180 | - Okay, so what are your thoughts

01:25:47.700 | about like all those years later about Neuralink?

01:25:50.740 | Do you find this idea, like what excites you about it?

01:25:54.220 | Is it the big long-term philosophical things?

01:25:56.860 | Is it the practical things?

01:25:58.340 | Do you think it's super difficult to do

01:26:00.540 | on the neurosurgery side and the material engineering,

01:26:03.660 | the robotics side?

01:26:05.140 | Or do you think the machine learning side

01:26:08.220 | for the brain-computer interfaces

01:26:09.540 | where they get to learn about each other,

01:26:11.220 | all that kind of stuff?

01:26:12.060 | I would just love to get your thoughts

01:26:13.300 | 'cause you're one of the people

01:26:14.260 | that really considered this problem,

01:26:17.060 | really studied it, brain-computer interfaces.

01:26:19.620 | - I mean, I'm super excited about it.

01:26:21.500 | I really think it's actually Elon's most ambitious thing,

01:26:27.400 | more than colonizing Mars,

01:26:28.740 | because that's just a bunch of people going somewhere,

01:26:31.140 | even though it's somewhere far.

01:26:33.140 | Neuralink is changing what a person is eventually.

01:26:37.700 | Now, I think that Neuralink engineers and Elon himself

01:26:42.420 | would all be the first to admit that it is a maybe,

01:26:45.620 | whether they can do their goals here.

01:26:46.940 | I mean, it is so crazy ambitious to try to,

01:26:50.300 | I mean, their eventual goals are,

01:26:52.260 | of course, in the interim,

01:26:54.020 | they have a higher probability

01:26:55.100 | of accomplishing smaller things,

01:26:56.180 | which are still huge, like basically solving paralysis,

01:26:59.620 | strokes, Parkinson, things like that.

01:27:02.600 | I mean, it can be unbelievable.

01:27:04.640 | Anyone who doesn't have one of these things,

01:27:06.440 | we might, everyone should be very happy

01:27:08.840 | about this kind of helping with different disabilities.

01:27:13.720 | But the thing that is so,

01:27:18.240 | the grand goal is this augmentation

01:27:21.440 | where you take someone who's totally healthy

01:27:23.560 | and you put a brain-machine interface in any way

01:27:26.220 | to give them superpowers.

01:27:27.700 | The possibilities if they can do this,

01:27:32.300 | if they can really, so they've already shown

01:27:35.460 | that they are for real, they've created this robot.

01:27:38.580 | Elon talks about it should be like LASIK,

01:27:40.700 | where it's not, it shouldn't be something

01:27:43.140 | that needs a surgeon.

01:27:44.260 | This shouldn't just be for rich people

01:27:46.540 | who have waited in line for six months.

01:27:48.220 | It should be for anyone who can afford LASIK

01:27:50.300 | and eventually, hopefully, something that isn't covered by

01:27:53.180 | insurance or something that anyone can do.

01:27:56.320 | Something this big a deal should be something

01:27:57.760 | that anyone can afford eventually.

01:28:00.200 | And when we have this, again,

01:28:03.160 | I'm talking about a very advanced phase down the road.

01:28:05.720 | So maybe a less advanced phase,

01:28:07.680 | maybe right now, think about when you listen to a song,

01:28:13.280 | what's happening?

01:28:14.760 | Do you actually hear the sound?

01:28:16.760 | Well, not really.

01:28:18.600 | It's that the sound is coming out of the speaker.

01:28:22.280 | The speaker is vibrating.

01:28:23.540 | It's vibrating air molecules.

01:28:25.120 | Those air molecules get vibrated all the way

01:28:27.860 | to your head, the pressure wave,

01:28:31.780 | and then it vibrates your eardrum.

01:28:34.540 | Your eardrum is really the speaker now in your head

01:28:37.100 | that then vibrates bones and fluid,

01:28:40.360 | which then stimulates neurons in your auditory cortex,

01:28:44.880 | which give you the perception that you're hearing sound.

01:28:49.840 | Now, if you think about that,

01:28:52.280 | do we really need to have a speaker to do that?

01:28:55.160 | You could just somehow,

01:28:56.120 | if you had a little tiny thing

01:28:56.960 | that could vibrate eardrums, you could do it that way.

01:28:59.320 | That seems very hard, but really what you need,

01:29:02.200 | if you go to the very end,

01:29:03.280 | but the thing that really needs to happen

01:29:05.040 | is your auditory cortex neurons need to be stimulated

01:29:08.000 | in a certain way.

01:29:09.680 | If you have a ton of neural link things in there,

01:29:11.960 | neural link electrodes,

01:29:13.440 | and they get really good at stimulating things,

01:29:15.960 | you could play a song in your head that you hear

01:29:18.760 | that is not playing anywhere.

01:29:20.520 | There's no sound in the room,

01:29:21.920 | but you hear it and no one else could.

01:29:23.760 | It's not like they can get close to your head and hear it.

01:29:25.280 | There's no sound.

01:29:26.120 | They could not hear anything, but you hear sound.

01:29:28.360 | You can turn up.

01:29:29.200 | So you open your phone, you have the Neuralink app.

01:29:31.320 | You open the Neuralink app,

01:29:32.640 | and so basically you can open your Spotify

01:29:35.640 | and you can play to your speaker,

01:29:38.800 | you can play to your computer,

01:29:39.680 | you can play right out of your phone to your headphones,

01:29:41.280 | or you now have a new one.

01:29:43.400 | You can play into your brain.

01:29:44.680 | And this is one of the earlier things.

01:29:47.160 | This is something that seems really doable.

01:29:50.640 | So no more headphones.

01:29:52.280 | I always think it's so annoying

01:29:53.320 | 'cause I can leave the house with just my phone,

01:29:56.760 | and nothing else, or even just an Apple Watch.

01:29:58.440 | But there's always this one thing,

01:29:59.280 | I'm like, and headphones.

01:30:00.120 | You do need your headphones, right?

01:30:01.440 | So I feel like that'll be the end of that.

01:30:03.080 | But there's so many things that you,

01:30:04.600 | and you keep going, the ability to think together.

01:30:08.560 | You can talk about super brains.

01:30:10.320 | I mean, one of the examples Elon uses

01:30:12.760 | is the low bandwidth of speech.

01:30:16.040 | If I go to a movie and I come out of a scary movie

01:30:19.360 | and you say, how was it?

01:30:20.200 | I say, oh, it was terrifying.

01:30:21.160 | Well, what did I just do?

01:30:22.960 | I just gave you, I had five buckets I could have given you.

01:30:26.440 | One was horrifying, terrifying, scary, eerie, creepy,

01:30:29.480 | whatever, that's about it.

01:30:31.860 | And I had a much more nuanced experience than that.

01:30:36.240 | And I don't, all I have is these words, right?

01:30:39.560 | And so instead I just hand you the bucket.

01:30:41.920 | I put the stuff in the bucket and give it to you,

01:30:44.240 | but all you have is the bucket.

01:30:45.440 | You just have to guess what I put into that bucket.

01:30:47.720 | All you can do is look at the label of the bucket and say,

01:30:50.480 | when I say terrifying, here's what I mean.

01:30:52.880 | So the point is it's very lossy.

01:30:55.120 | I had all this nuanced information

01:30:57.320 | of what I thought of the movie,

01:30:58.160 | and I'm sending you a very low res package

01:31:00.700 | that you're gonna now guess

01:31:02.040 | what the high res thing looked like.

01:31:04.080 | That's language in general.

01:31:05.680 | Our thoughts are much more nuanced.

01:31:07.160 | We can think to each other.

01:31:08.760 | We can do amazing things.

01:31:09.740 | We could A, have a brainstorm that doesn't feel like,

01:31:11.600 | oh, we're not talking in each other's heads.

01:31:13.080 | Not just that I hear your voice.

01:31:14.480 | No, no, no, we are just thinking.

01:31:15.760 | No words are being said internally or externally.

01:31:18.920 | The two brains are literally collaborating.

01:31:21.680 | It's something, it's a skill.

01:31:22.520 | I'm sure we'd have to get good at it.

01:31:23.360 | I'm sure young kids will be great at it

01:31:25.080 | and old people will be bad.

01:31:26.500 | But you think together and together you're like,

01:31:28.440 | ah, I had the joint epiphany.

01:31:29.600 | And now how about eight people in a room doing it, right?

01:31:31.760 | So it gets, you know, there's other examples.

01:31:34.040 | How about when you're a dress designer or a bridge designer

01:31:37.520 | and you want to show people what your dress looks like?

01:31:40.760 | Well, right now you gotta sketch it for a long time.

01:31:42.480 | Here, just beam it onto the screen from your head.

01:31:44.320 | So you can picture it.

01:31:45.160 | If you can picture a tree in your head,

01:31:47.400 | well, you can just suddenly,

01:31:48.840 | whatever's in your head, you can be pictured.

01:31:50.080 | So we'll have to get very good at it, right?

01:31:52.040 | And take a skill, right?

01:31:52.920 | You know, you're gonna have to,

01:31:54.240 | but the possibilities, my God.

01:31:56.240 | Talk about like, I feel like if that works,

01:31:58.960 | if we really do have that as something,

01:32:01.440 | I think it'll almost be like a new ADBC line.

01:32:04.280 | It's such a big change that the idea of like anyone living

01:32:07.300 | before everyone had brain machine interfaces

01:32:09.320 | is living in like before the common era.

01:32:12.840 | It's that level of like big change, if it can work.

01:32:16.080 | - Yeah, and like a replay of memories,

01:32:18.040 | just replaying stuff in your head.

01:32:19.400 | - Oh my God, yeah.

01:32:20.640 | And copying, you know, you can hopefully copy memories

01:32:23.040 | onto other things and you don't have to just rely

01:32:24.880 | on your wet circuitry.

01:32:27.920 | - It does make me sad 'cause you're right.

01:32:29.660 | The brain is incredibly neuroplastic

01:32:32.080 | and so it can adjust, it can learn how to do this.

01:32:34.620 | I think it will be a skill.

01:32:36.080 | But probably you and I will be too old to truly learn.

01:32:38.560 | - Well, maybe we can get, there'll be great trainings.

01:32:40.400 | You know, I'm spending the next three months

01:32:42.040 | in like one of the Neuralink trainings.

01:32:44.840 | - But it'll still be a bit of like grandpa can't--

01:32:47.520 | - Definitely.

01:32:48.360 | This is, you know, I was thinking,

01:32:49.180 | how am I gonna be old?

01:32:50.020 | I'm like, no, I'm gonna be great at the new phones.

01:32:51.440 | It's like, I'm not gonna be the phones.

01:32:52.960 | It's gonna be the, you know,

01:32:54.320 | the kid's gonna be thinking to me,

01:32:55.440 | I'm gonna be like, I just, can you just talk, please?

01:32:57.960 | And they're gonna be like, okay, I'll just talk

01:32:59.420 | and they're gonna, so that'll be the equivalent

01:33:02.160 | of, you know, yelling to your grandpa today.

01:33:04.360 | - I really suspect, I don't know what your thoughts are,

01:33:06.800 | but I grew up in a time when physical contact

01:33:10.480 | and interaction was valuable.

01:33:12.160 | I just feel like that's going to go the way

01:33:15.640 | that's gonna disappear.

01:33:17.120 | - Why?

01:33:17.960 | I mean, is there anything more intimate

01:33:19.120 | than thinking with each other?

01:33:20.200 | I mean, that's, you talk about, you know,

01:33:21.520 | once we were all doing that, it might feel like,

01:33:22.920 | man, everyone was so isolated from each other before.

01:33:24.880 | - Yeah, sorry.

01:33:25.700 | So I didn't say that intimacy disappears.

01:33:27.580 | I just meant physical, having to be in the same,

01:33:29.600 | having to touch each other.

01:33:31.000 | - People like that.

01:33:33.640 | If it is important, won't there be whole waves

01:33:36.000 | of people start to say, you know,

01:33:37.160 | there's all these articles that come out about how,

01:33:38.560 | you know, in our metaverse, we've lost something important.

01:33:41.080 | And then now there's a huge,

01:33:42.320 | all first the hippies start doing it,

01:33:43.600 | and eventually it becomes this big wave.

01:33:44.940 | And now everyone, won't, you know,

01:33:46.800 | if something truly is lost, won't we recover it?

01:33:49.600 | - Well, I think from first principles,

01:33:51.640 | all of the components are there to engineer

01:33:54.680 | intimate experiences in the metaverse,

01:33:57.400 | or in the cyberspace.

01:34:00.140 | And so to me, it's, I don't see anything profoundly unique

01:34:05.140 | to the physical experience.

01:34:08.160 | Like I don't understand.

01:34:09.240 | - But then why are you saying there's a loss there?

01:34:12.200 | - No, I'm just sad because I won't,

01:34:13.640 | oh, it's a loss for me personally,

01:34:15.000 | because the world--

01:34:15.840 | - So then you do think there's something unique

01:34:17.320 | in the physical experience?

01:34:18.360 | - For me, because I was raised with it.

01:34:20.280 | - Oh. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:34:21.120 | So whatever, so anything you're raised with,

01:34:24.240 | you fall in love with.

01:34:25.060 | Like people in this country came up with baseball.

01:34:27.320 | I was raised in the Soviet Union.

01:34:29.200 | I don't understand baseball.

01:34:30.400 | I get, I like it, but I don't love it

01:34:32.700 | the way Americans love it.

01:34:35.960 | Because a lot of times,

01:34:36.920 | they went to baseball games with their father,

01:34:39.520 | and there's that family connection.

01:34:41.680 | There's a young kid dreaming about, I don't know,

01:34:45.120 | becoming an MLB player himself.

01:34:49.840 | I don't know, something like that.

01:34:50.780 | But that's what you're raised with,

01:34:52.680 | obviously, is really important.

01:34:53.760 | But I mean, fundamentally to the human experience.

01:34:57.280 | Listen, we're doing this podcast in person,

01:34:58.920 | so clearly I still value it, but--

01:35:01.800 | - But it's true.

01:35:02.640 | If this were, obviously if there were a screen,

01:35:04.040 | we all agree that's not the same.

01:35:05.280 | - Yeah, it's not the same.

01:35:06.120 | - But if this were some, you know,

01:35:07.000 | we had contact lenses on, and like,

01:35:09.120 | maybe Neuralink, you know, maybe, again, forget,

01:35:11.840 | again, this is all, the devices,

01:35:13.800 | even if it's just cool as a contact lens,

01:35:15.280 | that's all old school.

01:35:16.800 | Once you have the brain-machine interface,

01:35:18.640 | it'll just be projection of,

01:35:20.880 | it'll take over my visual cortex.

01:35:22.320 | My visual cortex will get put into a virtual room,

01:35:25.200 | and so will yours, so we will see,

01:35:27.040 | we will hear, really hear and see,

01:35:29.160 | as if we're, you won't have any masks,

01:35:30.900 | no VR mask needed.

01:35:32.400 | And at that point, it really will feel like,

01:35:34.480 | you'll forget, you'll say,

01:35:35.320 | "Were we together physically or not?"

01:35:37.440 | You won't even, it'd be so unimportant,

01:35:39.000 | you won't even remember.

01:35:40.200 | - And you're right, this is one of those shits in society

01:35:45.040 | that changes everything.

01:35:46.760 | - Romantically, people still need to be together.

01:35:50.120 | There's a whole set of physical things

01:35:52.640 | with relationship that are needed.

01:35:55.560 | You know, like--

01:35:56.400 | - Like what, like sex?

01:35:57.560 | - Sex, but also just like, there's pheromones,

01:36:00.120 | like there's, the physical touch is such a,

01:36:03.160 | it's like music, it goes to such a deeply primitive

01:36:05.720 | part of us, that what physical touch

01:36:08.040 | with a romantic partner does, that I think that,

01:36:11.160 | so I'm sure there'll be a whole wave of people

01:36:13.440 | who, their new thing is that, you know,

01:36:14.880 | you're romantically involved with people

01:36:16.180 | you never actually are in person with,

01:36:17.440 | but, and I'm sure there'll be things

01:36:18.920 | where you can actually smell what's in the room,

01:36:20.360 | and you can--

01:36:21.200 | - Yeah, and touch.

01:36:22.040 | - Yeah, but I think that'll be one of the last things to go.

01:36:24.320 | I think there'll be, there's something,

01:36:26.840 | that to me seems like something that'll be,

01:36:29.120 | it'll be a while before people feel like

01:36:30.960 | there's nothing lost by not being in the same room.

01:36:32.960 | - It's very difficult to replicate the human interaction.

01:36:35.840 | - Although sex also, again, you could,

01:36:38.640 | not to get too weird, but you could have a thing

01:36:41.000 | where you basically, you know, or let's just do a massage,

01:36:45.480 | 'cause it's less awkward, but like, someone--

01:36:48.040 | - Everyone is still imagining sex, so go on.

01:36:50.400 | - A masseuse could massage a fake body,

01:36:54.720 | and you could feel whatever's happening, right?

01:36:57.000 | So you're lying down in your apartment alone,

01:36:58.960 | but you're feeling a full--

01:37:00.200 | - That'll be the new YouTube streaming,

01:37:02.880 | where it's one masseuse massaging one body,

01:37:05.040 | but like 1,000 people are experiencing.

01:37:06.760 | - Exactly, right, now think about it, right now,

01:37:08.160 | you know what, Taylor Swift doesn't play for one person,

01:37:10.680 | it has to go around, and every one of her fans

01:37:12.320 | she has to go play for, or a book, right?

01:37:14.440 | You do it, and it goes everywhere,

01:37:15.760 | so it'll be the same idea.

01:37:17.040 | - You've written and thought a lot about AI.

01:37:21.720 | So AI safety specifically, you've mentioned

01:37:26.160 | you're actually starting a podcast, which is awesome.

01:37:28.360 | You're so good at talking, so good at thinking,

01:37:30.560 | so good at being weird in the most beautiful of ways.

01:37:33.920 | But you've been thinking about this AI safety question,

01:37:38.600 | where today does your concern lie?

01:37:41.640 | For the near future, for the long-term future.

01:37:43.960 | Quite a bit of stuff happened,

01:37:46.600 | including with Elon's work with Tesla Autopilot,

01:37:48.640 | there's a bunch of amazing robots, there's Boston Dynamics,

01:37:52.160 | and everyone's favorite vacuum robot, iRobot, Roomba,

01:37:57.160 | and then there's obviously the applications

01:37:59.320 | of machine learning for recommender systems

01:38:01.880 | in Twitter, Facebook, and so on.

01:38:04.400 | And face recognition for surveillance,

01:38:07.820 | all these kinds of things are happening.

01:38:09.200 | Just a lot of incredible use of, not the face recognition,

01:38:12.640 | but the incredible use of deep learning, machine learning,

01:38:16.860 | to capture information about people

01:38:19.360 | and try to recommend to them what they wanna consume next.

01:38:24.200 | Some of that can be abused, some of that can be used

01:38:26.280 | for good, like for Netflix or something like that.

01:38:29.120 | What are your thoughts about all this?

01:38:30.280 | - Yeah, I mean, I really don't think humans are very smart,

01:38:35.280 | all things considered, I think we're limited.

01:38:38.680 | And we're dumb enough that we're very easily manipulable.

01:38:43.200 | Not just like, oh, our emotions.

01:38:46.120 | Our emotions can be pulled like puppet strings.

01:38:50.240 | I mean, again, I do look at what's going on

01:38:52.280 | with political polarization now,

01:38:53.440 | and I see a lot of puppet string emotions happening.

01:38:56.480 | So yeah, there's a lot to be scared of, for sure.

01:38:58.960 | Like very scared of.

01:39:00.040 | I get excited about a lot of things, very specific things.

01:39:04.200 | One of the things I get excited about is,

01:39:06.480 | so the future of wearables, right?

01:39:08.560 | Again, I think that they'll be like,

01:39:09.760 | oh, the wrist, the Fitbit around my wrist is gonna seem,

01:39:12.360 | or the whoop is gonna seem really hilariously old school

01:39:17.120 | in 20 years.

01:39:17.960 | - Like with Neuralink. - We're like a big bracelet.

01:39:21.040 | It's gonna turn into little sensors in our blood probably,

01:39:24.160 | or even infrared, just things that are gonna be,

01:39:28.720 | it's gonna be collecting 100 times more data

01:39:31.080 | than it collects now, more nuanced data,

01:39:32.600 | more specific to our body.

01:39:34.440 | And it's going to be super reliable,

01:39:36.680 | but that's the hardware side.

01:39:38.120 | And then the software is gonna be,

01:39:40.760 | I've not done my deep dive, this is all speculation,

01:39:42.640 | but the software is gonna get really good.

01:39:45.080 | And this is the AI component.

01:39:46.960 | And so I get excited about specific things like that.

01:39:49.200 | Like think about if hardware were able to collect,

01:39:54.200 | first of all, the hardware knows your whole genome.

01:39:56.680 | And we know a lot more about what a genome sequence means,

01:40:00.720 | 'cause you can collect your genome now,

01:40:03.440 | and we just don't know,

01:40:04.280 | okay, we don't have much to do with that information.

01:40:07.160 | As AI gets, so now you have your genome,

01:40:09.240 | you've got what's in your blood at any given moment,

01:40:11.280 | all the levels of everything, right?

01:40:13.240 | You have the exact width of your heart arteries

01:40:16.160 | at any given moment.

01:40:17.080 | You've got--

01:40:17.920 | - All the virons, all the viruses

01:40:21.400 | that ever visited your body,

01:40:22.800 | 'cause there's a trace of it.

01:40:24.040 | So you have all the pathogens,

01:40:25.720 | all the things that you should be concerned about health-wise

01:40:29.320 | and might have threatened you,

01:40:30.440 | or you might be immune from all of that kind of stuff.

01:40:32.920 | - They also, of course, it knows

01:40:34.200 | how fast your heart is beating,

01:40:35.640 | and it knows how much you,

01:40:37.120 | exactly the amount of exercise,

01:40:39.480 | knows your muscle mass and your weight and all that.

01:40:41.160 | But it also maybe can even know your emotions.

01:40:42.960 | I mean, if emotions, what are they?

01:40:44.960 | Where do they come from?

01:40:45.800 | Probably pretty obvious chemicals once we get in there.

01:40:48.840 | So again, Neuralink can be involved here

01:40:50.360 | maybe in collecting information.

01:40:51.960 | 'Cause right now you have to do the thing,

01:40:54.120 | what's your mood right now?

01:40:55.040 | And it's hard to even assess,

01:40:56.280 | and you're in a bad mood, it's hard to even, but--

01:40:58.840 | - By the way, just as a shout out,

01:41:00.600 | Lisa Feldman Barrett, who's a neuroscientist

01:41:03.760 | at Northeastern just wrote a,

01:41:05.440 | I mean, not just, like a few years ago,

01:41:07.040 | wrote a whole book saying,

01:41:08.320 | "Our expression of emotions has nothing to do

01:41:10.360 | "with the experience of emotions."

01:41:12.200 | So you really actually want to be measuring.

01:41:15.080 | - That's exactly.

01:41:16.480 | You can tell, 'cause one of these apps pops up

01:41:18.640 | and says, "How do you feel right now?

01:41:20.600 | "Good, bad?"

01:41:21.440 | I'm like, "I don't know.

01:41:22.260 | "I feel bad right now because the thing popping up

01:41:24.600 | "reminded me that I'm procrastinating

01:41:26.560 | "because I was on my phone and I should've been."

01:41:27.880 | You know, I'm like, "That's not my, you know."

01:41:29.320 | So I think we'll probably be able to

01:41:32.480 | very, get all this info, right?

01:41:34.660 | Now the AI can go to town.

01:41:37.280 | Think about when the AI gets really good at this.

01:41:39.720 | And it knows your genome, and it knows,

01:41:41.520 | it can just, I want the AI to just tell me what to do.

01:41:45.440 | When it turns up, okay, for when you,

01:41:47.360 | so how about this, now imagine attaching that

01:41:48.960 | to a meal service, right?

01:41:50.540 | And the meal service has everything,

01:41:51.520 | you know, all the million ingredients

01:41:53.300 | and supplements and vitamins and everything.

01:41:55.880 | And I give the, I tell the AI my broad goals.

01:41:59.400 | I wanna gain muscle, or I want to, you know,

01:42:02.480 | maintain my weight, but I wanna have more energy,

01:42:04.200 | or whatever, or I just wanna be very healthy,

01:42:06.400 | and I wanna, obviously, everyone wants the same,

01:42:08.120 | like, 10 basic things, like you wanna avoid cancer,

01:42:10.400 | you wanna, you know, various things,

01:42:11.880 | you wanna age slower.

01:42:13.200 | So now the AI has my goals, and a drone comes at,

01:42:19.280 | you know, a little thing pops up,

01:42:21.600 | and it says, like, you know, beep, beep,

01:42:23.100 | like, you know, 15 minutes, you're gonna eat.

01:42:24.980 | 'Cause it knows that's a great,

01:42:25.960 | that's the right time for my body to eat.

01:42:27.860 | 15 minutes later, a little slot opens in my wall,

01:42:30.180 | where a drone has come from the factory,

01:42:32.140 | the eating, the food factory, and dropped

01:42:33.860 | the perfect meal for my, that moment for me,

01:42:36.780 | for my mood, for my genome, for my blood contents.

01:42:40.700 | And it's, 'cause it knows my goals,

01:42:42.740 | so, you know, it knows I wanna feel energy at this time,

01:42:44.620 | and then I wanna wind down here,

01:42:45.740 | so I, those things, you have to tell it.

01:42:47.420 | - Well, plus the pleasure thing,

01:42:48.980 | like, it knows what kind of components

01:42:51.020 | of a meal you've enjoyed in the past,

01:42:52.500 | so you can assemble the perfect meal.

01:42:53.940 | - Exactly, it knows you way better than you know yourself,

01:42:56.980 | better than any human could ever know you.

01:42:58.380 | And a little thing pops up,

01:42:59.980 | you still have some choice, right?

01:43:01.500 | So it pops up and it says, like, you know, coffee,

01:43:05.260 | because it knows that, you know, my cutoff,

01:43:07.340 | they says, you know, I can have coffee

01:43:08.980 | for the next 15 minutes only,

01:43:10.260 | because at that point, it knows how long

01:43:12.260 | it stays in my system, it knows what my sleep is like

01:43:14.140 | when I have it too late, it knows I have to wake up

01:43:15.620 | at this time tomorrow, 'cause that's my calendar.

01:43:17.780 | And so I think a lot of people's,

01:43:19.300 | this is, I think, something that humans are wrong about,

01:43:22.100 | is that most people will hear this and be like,

01:43:23.660 | that sounds awful, that sounds dystopian.

01:43:26.060 | No, it doesn't, it sounds incredible.

01:43:27.460 | And if we all had this, we would not look back

01:43:29.420 | and be like, I wish I was, like, making awful choices

01:43:31.560 | every day, like I was in the past.

01:43:33.660 | And then, this isn't, these aren't important decisions,

01:43:36.180 | your important decision-making energy,

01:43:38.860 | your important focus and your attention

01:43:41.420 | can go onto your kids and on your work

01:43:43.420 | and on, you know, helping other people

01:43:45.340 | and things that matter.

01:43:46.420 | And so I think AI, when I think about, like,

01:43:49.540 | personal lifestyle stuff like that,

01:43:51.700 | I really love, like, I love thinking about that.

01:43:55.420 | I think it's gonna be very, and I think we'll all be

01:43:57.020 | so much healthier, that when we look back today,

01:44:00.460 | one of the things that's gonna look so primitive

01:44:02.060 | is the one-size-fits-all thing,

01:44:03.500 | getting, like, reading advice about keto.

01:44:05.540 | Each genome is gonna have very specific,

01:44:10.020 | one, you know, unique advice coming from AI, and so, yeah.

01:44:14.180 | - Yeah, the customization that's enabled

01:44:16.020 | by a collection of data and the use of AI,

01:44:18.900 | a lot of people think, what's the, like,

01:44:20.660 | they think of the worst-case scenario

01:44:22.340 | of that data being used by authoritarian governments

01:44:25.180 | to control you, all that kind of stuff.

01:44:26.580 | They don't think about, most likely,

01:44:28.420 | especially in a capitalist society,

01:44:30.040 | it's most likely going to be used as part of a competition

01:44:34.300 | to get you the most delicious and healthy meal possible

01:44:36.780 | as fast as possible. - Exactly.

01:44:38.340 | - Yeah, so the world will definitely be much better

01:44:40.700 | with the integration of data.

01:44:42.260 | But of course, you wanna be able to

01:44:45.220 | be transparent and honest about how that data is misused,

01:44:48.340 | and that's why it's important to have free speech

01:44:50.380 | and people to speak out, like,

01:44:51.700 | when some bullshit is being done by companies.

01:44:53.580 | - That we need to have our wits about us as a society.

01:44:55.940 | Like, this is what, free speech is the mechanism

01:45:00.480 | by which the big brain can think, can think for itself,

01:45:03.500 | can think straight, can see straight.

01:45:05.960 | When you take away free speech,

01:45:07.300 | when you start saying that, in every topic,

01:45:09.300 | when any topic's political,

01:45:10.940 | it becomes treacherous to talk about.

01:45:12.820 | So forget the government taking away free speech.

01:45:15.660 | If the culture penalizes nuanced conversation

01:45:18.860 | about any topic that's political,

01:45:21.020 | and the politics is so all-consuming,

01:45:24.380 | and it's such a incredible market to polarize people,

01:45:29.380 | for media to polarize people,

01:45:31.420 | and to bring any topic it can into that

01:45:34.020 | and get people hooked on it as a political topic,

01:45:36.700 | we become a very dumb society.

01:45:38.100 | So free speech goes away, as far as it matters.

01:45:39.820 | People say, oh, people like to say,

01:45:41.220 | well, it's not, you don't even know what free speech is.

01:45:43.220 | Free speech is, you know, it's, you know,

01:45:45.860 | your free speech is not being violated.

01:45:46.900 | It's like, no, you're right.

01:45:48.380 | My First Amendment rights are not being violated.

01:45:50.780 | But the culture of free speech,

01:45:52.060 | which is the second ingredient of two.

01:45:53.880 | You need the First Amendment,

01:45:55.540 | and you need the culture of free speech,

01:45:57.260 | and now you have free speech.

01:45:58.380 | And the culture is much more specific.

01:46:00.940 | You obviously can have a culture

01:46:01.920 | that believes people right now.

01:46:03.960 | Take any topic, again, that has to do with, like,

01:46:06.100 | you know, some very sensitive topics,

01:46:08.920 | you know, police shootings, or, you know,

01:46:11.560 | what's going on in, you know, K-12 schools,

01:46:13.680 | or, you know, even, you know, climate change.

01:46:15.440 | You know, take any of these,

01:46:16.840 | and the First Amendment's still there.

01:46:19.920 | No one, you're not gonna get arrested,

01:46:21.520 | no matter what you say.

01:46:22.760 | The culture of free speech is gone,

01:46:25.640 | because you will be destroyed.

01:46:27.080 | Your life can be over, you know, as far as it matters,

01:46:29.840 | if you say the wrong thing.

01:46:31.720 | But even, you know, but a culture of,

01:46:33.360 | a really vigorous culture of free speech,

01:46:35.280 | you get no penalty at all

01:46:36.560 | for even saying something super dumb.

01:46:38.360 | People will say, like, people will laugh,

01:46:40.160 | and be like, well, that was, like,

01:46:41.440 | kind of hilariously offensive,

01:46:42.640 | and, like, not at all correct.

01:46:43.920 | Like, you know, you're wrong, and here's why.

01:46:45.440 | But no one's, like, mad at you.

01:46:47.080 | Now, the brain is thinking at its best.

01:46:49.480 | The IQ of the big brain is, like,

01:46:50.980 | as high as it can be in that culture.

01:46:53.120 | And the culture of, and you say something wrong,

01:46:55.040 | and people say, oh, wow, you've changed.

01:46:56.500 | Oh, wow, like, look, this is his real, you know, colors.

01:46:58.800 | You know, the big brain is dumb.

01:47:01.560 | - You still have mutual respect for each other.

01:47:03.840 | So, like, you don't think lesser of others

01:47:06.960 | when they say a bunch of dumb things.

01:47:08.500 | You know it's just a play of ideas.

01:47:10.840 | But you still have respect, you still have love for them.

01:47:12.800 | Because I think the worst case

01:47:15.160 | is when you have a complete free, like,

01:47:17.640 | anarchy of ideas where it's, like,

01:47:19.720 | like, everybody lost hope that something like a truth

01:47:24.000 | can even be converged towards.

01:47:25.680 | Like, everybody has their own truth.

01:47:27.520 | Then it's just chaos.

01:47:29.540 | Like, if you have mutual respect,

01:47:31.440 | and a mutual goal of arriving at the truth,

01:47:33.760 | and the humility that you want to listen

01:47:35.800 | to other people's ideas, and a forgiveness

01:47:38.000 | that other people's ideas might be dumb as hell,

01:47:39.840 | that doesn't mean they're lesser beings,

01:47:41.320 | all that kind of stuff.

01:47:42.400 | But that's, like, a weird balance to strike.

01:47:44.560 | - Right now, people are being trained, little kids,

01:47:47.560 | college students, being trained

01:47:49.320 | to think the exact opposite way.

01:47:51.360 | To think that there's no such thing as objective truth.

01:47:53.240 | Which is, you know, the objective truth

01:47:54.640 | is the N on the compass for every thinker.

01:47:59.180 | Doesn't mean we're, you know, necessarily on our way,

01:48:01.720 | or we're finding, but we're all aiming in the same direction.

01:48:03.560 | And we all believe that there's a place

01:48:05.000 | we can eventually get closer to.

01:48:06.680 | Not objective truth, you know, teaching them

01:48:09.720 | that disagreement is bad, violence.

01:48:12.160 | You know, it's, you know, it's like, you know,

01:48:17.160 | you quickly sound like you're just going on,

01:48:18.480 | like, a political rant with this topic.

01:48:20.360 | But, like, it's really bad.

01:48:22.400 | It's, like, genuinely the worst.

01:48:24.760 | If I had my own country, I mean,

01:48:27.540 | it's like, I would teach kids some very specific things

01:48:31.760 | that this is doing the exact opposite of.

01:48:34.980 | And it sucks.

01:48:37.340 | It sucks.

01:48:38.380 | - Speaking of a way to escape this,

01:48:40.700 | you've tweeted, "30 minutes of reading a day equals,"

01:48:43.460 | yeah, this whole video, and it's cool to think about reading

01:48:46.020 | like, as a habit, and something that accumulates.

01:48:50.260 | You said, "30 minutes of reading a day

01:48:51.820 | "equals 1,000 books in 50 years."

01:48:54.300 | I love, like, thinking about this.

01:48:56.960 | Like, chipping away at the mountain.

01:48:59.360 | Can you expand on that?

01:49:00.740 | Sort of the habit of reading?

01:49:02.940 | How do you recommend people read?

01:49:04.660 | - Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's incredible.

01:49:06.980 | If you do something, a little of something every day,

01:49:10.620 | it compiles, it compiles.

01:49:12.820 | You know, I always think about, like,

01:49:13.860 | the people who achieve these incredible things in life,

01:49:16.740 | these great, like, famous, legendary people,

01:49:19.620 | they have the same number of days that you do,

01:49:21.340 | and it's not like they were doing magical days.

01:49:23.700 | They just, they got a little done every day,

01:49:26.660 | and that adds up to,

01:49:30.740 | to a monument, you know,

01:49:32.900 | they're putting one brick in a day.

01:49:33.980 | Eventually, they have this building,

01:49:35.020 | this legendary building.

01:49:36.300 | So, you can take writing, someone who, you know,

01:49:39.100 | there's two aspiring writers, and one doesn't ever write,

01:49:42.140 | doesn't, you know, manages to never, you know,

01:49:43.880 | zero write, zero pages a day,

01:49:45.060 | and the other one manages to do two pages a week, right?

01:49:49.380 | Not very much.

01:49:50.220 | The other one does zero pages a week, two pages a week.

01:49:51.740 | 98% of both of their time is the same.

01:49:55.480 | The other person, just 2%, they're doing one other thing.

01:49:58.620 | One year later, they have written,

01:50:00.780 | they write two books a year.

01:50:01.820 | This prolific person, you know, in 20 years,

01:50:04.500 | they've written 40 books.

01:50:05.580 | They're one of the most prolific writers of all time.

01:50:07.580 | They write two pages a week.

01:50:08.980 | Sorry, that's not true.

01:50:11.060 | That was two pages a day.

01:50:12.380 | Okay, two pages a week, you're still writing

01:50:14.180 | about a book every two years.

01:50:15.940 | So, in 20 years, you've still written 10 books,

01:50:17.980 | also prolific writer, right?

01:50:19.820 | Huge, massive writing career.

01:50:21.440 | You write two pages every Sunday morning.

01:50:23.380 | The other person has the same exact week,

01:50:25.300 | and they don't do that Sunday morning thing.

01:50:26.540 | They are a wannabe writer.

01:50:27.960 | They always said they could write.

01:50:29.180 | They talk about how they used to be,

01:50:30.940 | and nothing happens, right?

01:50:31.980 | So, it's inspiring, I think, for a lot of people

01:50:34.900 | who feel frustrated they're not doing anything.

01:50:36.540 | So, reading is another example

01:50:38.580 | where someone who reads very, you know, doesn't read,

01:50:43.580 | and someone who's a prolific reader.

01:50:45.700 | You know, I always think about like the Tyler Cowen types.

01:50:47.580 | I'm like, how the hell do you read so much?

01:50:50.020 | It's infuriating, you know?

01:50:51.380 | Or like James Clear puts out his like,

01:50:53.860 | his 10 favorite books of the year,

01:50:56.260 | 20, his 20 favorite books of the year.

01:50:57.860 | I'm like, your 20 favorites?

01:51:00.700 | Like, I'm trying to just read 20 books,

01:51:02.220 | like, and it would be an amazing year.

01:51:03.580 | So, but the thing is,

01:51:06.060 | they're not doing something crazy and magical.

01:51:07.980 | They're just reading a half hour a night, you know?

01:51:09.980 | If you read a half hour a night,

01:51:11.620 | the calculation I came to is that

01:51:13.020 | you can read a thousand books in 50 years.

01:51:15.260 | So, if someone who's 80, and they've read a thousand books,

01:51:18.620 | you know, between 30 and 80, they are extremely well read.

01:51:21.780 | They can delve deep into many non-fiction areas.

01:51:24.820 | They can be, you know, an amazing fiction reader,

01:51:27.860 | avid fiction reader.

01:51:29.380 | And again, that's a half hour a day.

01:51:30.580 | Some people can do an hour,

01:51:31.540 | a half hour in the morning, audiobook,

01:51:33.060 | half hour at night in bed.

01:51:34.140 | Now they've read 2000 books.

01:51:35.140 | So, I think it's,

01:51:37.940 | it's just, it's motivating.

01:51:40.860 | And you realize that a lot of times you think

01:51:43.820 | that the people who are doing amazing things,

01:51:45.820 | and you're not, you think that there's a bigger gap

01:51:48.860 | between you and them than there really is.

01:51:51.420 | I, on the reading front, I'm a very slow reader,

01:51:54.020 | which is just a very frustrating fact about me.

01:51:58.420 | But I'm faster with audiobooks.

01:52:00.700 | And I also, I just, you know, I'll just,

01:52:02.500 | it's just hard to get myself to read.

01:52:04.340 | But I've started doing audiobooks,

01:52:05.700 | and I'll wake up, throw it on, do it in the shower,

01:52:09.100 | brushing my teeth, you know, making breakfast,

01:52:11.020 | dealing with the dogs, things like that, whatever,

01:52:12.860 | until I sit down.

01:52:14.180 | And that's, I can read, I can read a book a week,

01:52:17.860 | a book every 10 days at that clip.

01:52:20.460 | And suddenly I'm this big reader,

01:52:21.820 | because I'm just, while doing my morning stuff,

01:52:24.180 | I have it on, and also it's this fun,

01:52:25.380 | it makes the morning so fun.

01:52:26.260 | I'm like, having a great time the whole morning,

01:52:27.860 | so I'm like, oh, I'm so into this book.

01:52:29.500 | So I think that, you know, audiobooks is another amazing

01:52:32.220 | gift to people who have a hard time reading.

01:52:34.180 | - I find that that's actually an interesting skill.

01:52:36.300 | I do audiobooks quite a bit.

01:52:38.700 | Like, it's a skill to maintain, at least for me,

01:52:41.740 | probably the kind of books I read,

01:52:43.180 | which is often like history, or like,

01:52:45.620 | there's a lot of content, and if you miss parts of it,

01:52:49.660 | you miss out on stuff.

01:52:51.940 | And so, it's a skill to maintain focus, at least for me.

01:52:55.700 | - Well, the 10 second back button is very valuable.

01:52:58.900 | - Oh, interesting.

01:52:59.740 | - So I just, if I get lost, sometimes the book is so good

01:53:02.500 | that I'm thinking about what the person just said,

01:53:04.020 | and I just get, the skill for me is just remembering

01:53:05.980 | to pause, and if I don't, no problem,

01:53:07.980 | just back, back, back, back.

01:53:09.060 | Just three quick backs.

01:53:10.520 | So that, of course, is not that efficient,

01:53:11.820 | but that's, but it's, I do the same thing when I'm reading.

01:53:14.060 | I'll read a whole paragraph and realize I was tuning out.

01:53:15.940 | - Yeah. - You know?

01:53:17.140 | I haven't actually even considered to try that.

01:53:19.780 | I've been so hard on myself maintaining focus,

01:53:22.940 | because you do get lost in thought.

01:53:24.340 | Maybe I should try that.

01:53:25.180 | - Yeah, and when you get lost in thought, by the way,

01:53:26.860 | you're processing the book.

01:53:27.940 | That's not wasted time.

01:53:29.260 | That's your brain really categorizing and cataloging

01:53:32.180 | what you just read, and like.

01:53:33.500 | - Well, there's several kinds of thoughts, right?

01:53:36.080 | There's thoughts related to the book,

01:53:37.580 | and there's a thought that it could take you elsewhere.

01:53:40.100 | - Well, I find that if I am continually thinking

01:53:43.900 | about something else, I just say, I'm not,

01:53:46.620 | I would just pause the book.

01:53:47.460 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah.

01:53:48.280 | Especially in the shower or something,

01:53:49.260 | when like, that's sometimes

01:53:51.220 | when really great thoughts come out.

01:53:52.180 | If I'm having all these thoughts about other stuff,

01:53:53.900 | I'm saying, clearly my mind wants to work on something else.

01:53:55.900 | So I'll just pause it.

01:53:56.740 | - Yeah, quiet Dan Carlin.

01:53:57.820 | I'm thinking about something else right now.

01:53:59.260 | - Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:54:00.660 | Also, you can, things like you have to head out to the store.

01:54:04.240 | Like, I'm gonna read 20 pages on that trip,

01:54:06.500 | just walking back and forth, going to the airport.

01:54:08.580 | I mean, flights, you know, the Uber,

01:54:10.460 | and then you're walking to the,

01:54:12.100 | walking through the airport,

01:54:13.100 | you're standing in the security line.

01:54:14.020 | I'm reading the whole time.

01:54:15.260 | Like, I know this is not groundbreaking.

01:54:17.420 | People know what audio books are,

01:54:18.540 | but I think that more people

01:54:20.020 | should probably get into them than do.

01:54:21.420 | 'Cause I know a lot of people,

01:54:22.260 | they have this stubborn kind of thing.

01:54:23.500 | Say, I don't like, I like to have the paper book.

01:54:25.380 | And sure, but like, it's pretty fun to be able to read.

01:54:27.940 | - I still, to this day,

01:54:29.420 | I listen to a huge number of audio books and podcasts,

01:54:31.920 | but I still, the most impactful experiences for me

01:54:35.860 | are still reading.

01:54:36.700 | And I read very, very slow.

01:54:38.380 | And it's very frustrating when,

01:54:40.140 | like you go to these websites,

01:54:42.120 | like that estimate how long a book takes on average,

01:54:45.660 | that those always annoy me.

01:54:46.600 | - They do like a page a minute when I read, like,

01:54:48.840 | best, a page every two minutes at best.

01:54:51.780 | - At best, when you're like really, like,

01:54:54.000 | - Right. - actually not pausing.

01:54:55.800 | - I just, my ADD, it's like, I just,

01:54:58.100 | it's hard to keep focusing.

01:54:59.880 | And I also like to really absorb.

01:55:01.880 | So, on the other side of things,

01:55:03.520 | when I finish a book, 10 years later,

01:55:05.560 | I'll be able to, like, you know that scene

01:55:06.560 | when this happens and another friend had read it,

01:55:07.720 | I'll be like, what?

01:55:08.560 | I don't remember any, like, details.

01:55:09.460 | I'm like, oh, I can tell you, like, the entire,

01:55:10.900 | so I absorb the shit out of it.

01:55:12.400 | But I don't think it's worth it to, like,

01:55:14.160 | have to read so less, so much less in my life.

01:55:16.600 | - I actually, so, in terms of going to the airport,

01:55:18.720 | you know, in these, like, filler moments of life,

01:55:22.240 | I do a lot of, there's an app called Anki,

01:55:24.880 | I don't know if you know about it.

01:55:26.640 | It's a space repetition app.

01:55:29.200 | So, there's all of these facts I have.

01:55:31.000 | When I read, I write it down if I want to remember it.

01:55:33.960 | And it's this, it, you review it.

01:55:36.960 | And the one, the things you remember,

01:55:39.160 | it takes longer and longer to bring back up.

01:55:41.380 | It's like flashcards, but a digital app.

01:55:43.660 | It's called Anki, I recommend it to a lot of people.

01:55:45.340 | There's a huge community of people

01:55:46.780 | that are just, like, obsessed with it.

01:55:48.380 | - A-N-K-E?

01:55:49.740 | - A-N-K-I.

01:55:51.660 | So, this is extremely well-known app and idea,

01:55:55.620 | like, among students who are, like, medical students,

01:55:59.460 | like, people that really have to study.

01:56:01.860 | Like, this is not, like, fun stuff.

01:56:03.740 | They really have to memorize a lot of things.

01:56:06.300 | They have to remember them well.

01:56:07.420 | They have to be able to integrate them

01:56:08.540 | with a bunch of ideas, so.

01:56:10.180 | And I find it to be really useful for,

01:56:12.040 | like, when you read history,

01:56:14.820 | if you think this particular factoid,

01:56:17.820 | it'd probably be extremely useful for you.

01:56:19.780 | 'Cause you're, that'd be interesting, actually,

01:56:23.140 | thought, 'cause you're doing,

01:56:24.140 | you talked about, like, opening up a trillion tabs

01:56:26.740 | and reading things.

01:56:27.700 | You know, you probably want to remember some facts

01:56:32.260 | you read along the way.

01:56:33.560 | Like, you might remember, okay,

01:56:34.940 | this thing I can't directly put into the writing,

01:56:37.060 | but it's a cool little factoid.

01:56:38.860 | I wanna-- - All the time.

01:56:40.300 | - Store that in there. - Yeah.

01:56:41.420 | - And that's why I go Anki, drop it in.

01:56:43.700 | - Oh, you can just drop it in.

01:56:45.020 | - Yeah. - You drop it

01:56:46.020 | in a line of a podcast or, like, a video?

01:56:48.460 | - Well, no. - I guess I can type it,

01:56:50.300 | though. - So, yes.

01:56:51.300 | So, Anki, there's a bunch of,

01:56:53.780 | it's called Space Repetitions,

01:56:54.900 | there's a bunch of apps that are much nicer than Anki.

01:56:57.060 | Anki is the ghetto, like, Craigslist version,

01:57:00.500 | but it has a giant community,

01:57:01.940 | because people are like, we don't want features.

01:57:04.540 | We want a text box.

01:57:06.620 | Like, it's very basic, very stripped down.

01:57:08.780 | So, you can drop in stuff, you can drop in--

01:57:10.540 | - That sounds really, I can't believe

01:57:12.060 | I have not come across this.

01:57:13.460 | - You, actually, once you look into it--

01:57:14.820 | - There's the amount of-- - You'll realize that,

01:57:16.660 | how have I not come, you are the person,

01:57:19.860 | I guarantee you'll probably write a blog about it.

01:57:22.020 | I can't believe you actually have--

01:57:23.260 | - Well, it's also just like-- - It's your people, too.

01:57:25.100 | - And my, people say, what do you write about?

01:57:28.220 | Literally anything I find interesting.

01:57:30.740 | And so, for me, once you start a blog,

01:57:33.740 | like, your entire worldview becomes,

01:57:36.740 | would this be a good blog post?

01:57:37.580 | Would this be, I mean, it's the lens

01:57:39.260 | I see everything through, but I'm constantly

01:57:42.100 | coming across something, or just a tweet, you know?

01:57:44.660 | Something that I'm like, ooh, I need to share this

01:57:47.340 | with my readers.

01:57:48.180 | My readers, to me, are like my friends,

01:57:52.180 | who I'm like, oh, I need to tell them about this.

01:57:55.300 | And so, I feel like just a place to,

01:57:56.460 | I mean, I collect things in a document right now,

01:57:58.140 | if it's really good, but it's the little factoids

01:58:00.500 | and stuff like that, I think, especially

01:58:01.820 | if I'm learning something, if I'm like--

01:58:03.100 | - So, the problem is, when you save stuff,

01:58:05.180 | when you look at it, a tweet and all that kind of stuff,

01:58:07.980 | is you also need to couple that with a system for review.

01:58:11.580 | 'Cause what Enki does is, like, literally,

01:58:14.100 | it determines for me, I don't have to do anything.

01:58:16.460 | There's this giant pile of things I've saved,

01:58:18.700 | and it brings up to me, okay, here's,

01:58:21.660 | I don't know, when Churchill did something, right?

01:58:27.740 | I'm reading about World War II a lot now.

01:58:29.900 | Like, a particular event, here's that.

01:58:31.900 | Do you remember what year that happened?

01:58:33.940 | And you say yes or no, or, like, you get to pick.

01:58:38.700 | You get to see the answer, and you get to self-evaluate

01:58:42.100 | how well you remember that fact.

01:58:43.380 | And if you remember it well, it'll be another month

01:58:45.660 | before you see it again.

01:58:46.900 | If you don't remember, it'll bring it up again.

01:58:48.900 | That's a way to review tweets, to review concepts.

01:58:52.260 | And it offloads the kind of, the process of selecting

01:58:55.860 | which parts you're supposed to review or not.

01:58:57.460 | And you can grow that library.

01:58:58.980 | I mean, obviously, medical students use it

01:59:00.820 | for, like, tens of thousands of facts.

01:59:03.220 | - It just gamifies it, too.

01:59:05.140 | It's like you can passively sit back and just,

01:59:07.780 | and the thing will, like, make sure

01:59:09.140 | you eventually learn it all.

01:59:10.340 | Versus, you know, you don't have to be the executive

01:59:13.500 | calling that, like, the program, the memorization program

01:59:16.300 | someone else is handling.

01:59:17.500 | - I would love to hear about, like, you trying it out,

01:59:20.900 | or spaced repetition as an idea.

01:59:22.380 | There's a few other apps, but Anki's the big must.

01:59:24.860 | - I totally wanna try it.

01:59:26.180 | - You've written and spoken quite a bit

01:59:27.660 | about procrastination.

01:59:30.580 | I, like you, suffer from procrastination,

01:59:32.820 | like many other people.

01:59:34.620 | Suffer, in quotes.

01:59:35.940 | How do we avoid procrastination?

01:59:39.740 | - I don't think the suffer is in quotes.

01:59:42.020 | (Lex laughing)

01:59:43.620 | I think that's a huge part of the problem,

01:59:45.660 | is that it's treated like a silly problem.

01:59:48.900 | People don't take it seriously as a dire problem.

01:59:55.060 | But it can be.

01:59:57.900 | It can ruin your life.

02:00:00.900 | There's, like, we talked about the compiling concept

02:00:08.260 | with, you know, if you read a little, you know,

02:00:12.220 | if you write, if you write two pages a week,

02:00:14.620 | you write a book every two years,

02:00:16.700 | you're a prolific writer, right?

02:00:18.220 | And the difference between, you know, again,

02:00:20.580 | it's not that that person's working so hard,

02:00:22.580 | it's that they have the ability to,

02:00:24.660 | when they commit to something, like on Sunday mornings,

02:00:26.460 | I'm gonna write two pages.

02:00:27.740 | That's it.

02:00:28.580 | They respect, they have enough,

02:00:33.860 | they respect the part of them that made that decision

02:00:36.820 | is a respected character in their brain.

02:00:39.460 | And they say, well, I decided it, so I'm gonna do it.

02:00:42.140 | The procrastinator won't do those two pages.

02:00:46.780 | That's just exactly the kind of thing

02:00:48.580 | the procrastinator will keep on their list

02:00:50.060 | and they will not do.

02:00:51.020 | But that doesn't mean they're any less talented

02:00:53.420 | than the writer who does the two pages.

02:00:54.980 | Doesn't mean they want it any less.

02:00:57.380 | Maybe they want it even more.

02:00:58.900 | And it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be just as happy

02:01:01.300 | having done it as the writer who does it.

02:01:03.660 | So what they're missing out on,

02:01:05.140 | picture a writer who writes 10 books, you know,

02:01:08.020 | bestsellers, and they go on these book tours,

02:01:11.100 | and, you know, they, and they just are so gratified

02:01:15.300 | with their career, you know, and they,

02:01:17.340 | think about what the other person is missing

02:01:20.620 | who does none of that, right?

02:01:23.500 | So that is a massive loss, a massive loss.

02:01:27.820 | And it's because the internal mechanism in their brain

02:01:32.020 | is not doing what the other person's is.

02:01:33.940 | So they don't have the respect for the part of them

02:01:36.580 | that made the choice.

02:01:38.020 | They feel like it's someone they can disregard.

02:01:40.060 | And so to me, is this in the same boat

02:01:42.820 | as someone who is obese because their eating habits

02:01:47.220 | make them obese over time or their exercise habits?

02:01:52.100 | That, you know, that's a huge loss for that person.

02:01:54.300 | That person is, you know, the health problems

02:01:56.700 | and it's just probably making them miserable.

02:01:58.900 | And it's self-inflicted, right?

02:02:01.900 | It's self-defeating, but that doesn't make it

02:02:04.620 | an easy problem to fix just 'cause

02:02:06.420 | you're doing it to yourself.

02:02:07.500 | So to me, procrastination is another one of these

02:02:09.380 | where you are the only person in your own way.

02:02:11.800 | You are, you know, you are failing at something

02:02:15.220 | or not doing something that you really wanna do.

02:02:17.580 | You know, it does not have to be work.

02:02:18.900 | Maybe you're, you wanna get out of that marriage

02:02:21.260 | that you know, you realize, it hits you,

02:02:23.060 | you shouldn't be in this marriage, you should get divorced.

02:02:24.980 | And you wait 20 extra years before you do it

02:02:27.140 | or you don't do it at all.

02:02:28.440 | That is, you know, you're not living the life

02:02:33.660 | that you know you should be living, right?

02:02:35.080 | And so I think it's fascinating.

02:02:38.020 | Now, the problem is it's also a funny problem

02:02:39.940 | because there's short-term procrastination,

02:02:43.020 | which I talk about as, you know,

02:02:44.220 | the kind that has a deadline.

02:02:45.680 | Now, some people, you know, this is when I bring in,

02:02:49.340 | there's different characters,

02:02:50.540 | there's the panic monster comes in the room.

02:02:52.580 | And that's when you actually, you know,

02:02:53.940 | the procrastinator can, there's different levels.

02:02:57.780 | There's the kind that even when there's a deadline,

02:03:02.540 | they stop panicking, they just, they've given up

02:03:04.660 | and they really have a problem.

02:03:06.460 | Then there's the kind that when there's a deadline,

02:03:08.340 | they'll do it, but they'll wait to the last second.

02:03:10.340 | Both of those people, I think, have a huge problem

02:03:13.300 | once there's no deadline.

02:03:15.100 | Because, and most of the important things in life,

02:03:17.420 | there's no deadline, which is, you know,

02:03:18.500 | changing your career, you know,

02:03:21.140 | becoming a writer when you never have been before,

02:03:23.180 | getting out of your relationship,

02:03:24.880 | you're gonna be doing whatever you need to,

02:03:28.500 | the changes you need to make

02:03:29.580 | in order to get into a relationship.

02:03:31.020 | There's, the thing after--

02:03:32.660 | - Launching a startup.

02:03:33.760 | - Launching a startup, right?

02:03:35.340 | Or once you've launched a startup,

02:03:37.260 | firing is the right, someone that needs to be fired, right?

02:03:39.500 | - Yes.

02:03:40.340 | - I mean, going out for fundraising

02:03:41.900 | instead of just trying to, you know,

02:03:43.340 | there's so many moments when the big change

02:03:46.420 | that you know you should be making

02:03:48.340 | that would completely change your life if you just did it

02:03:51.900 | has no deadline.

02:03:53.180 | It just has to be coming from yourself.

02:03:55.580 | And I think that a ton of people have a problem

02:04:00.580 | where they will, they think this delusion that,

02:04:04.980 | you know, I'm gonna do that,

02:04:05.820 | I'm definitely gonna do that, you know,

02:04:07.260 | but not this week, not this month,

02:04:09.380 | not today, 'cause whatever.

02:04:10.820 | And they make this excuse again and again,

02:04:12.260 | and it just sits there on their list, collecting dust.

02:04:16.300 | And so yeah, to me, it is very real suffering.

02:04:20.660 | - And the fixes and fixing the habits?

02:04:23.740 | Just--

02:04:24.580 | - I'm still working on the fix, first of all.

02:04:27.540 | So there's, okay, there is,

02:04:30.660 | there's, just say you have a boat that sucks

02:04:34.980 | and it's leaking and it's gonna sink,

02:04:37.300 | you can fix it with duct tape for a couple,

02:04:40.020 | you know, for one ride or whatever.

02:04:42.260 | That's not really fixing the boat,

02:04:43.740 | but it can get you by.

02:04:44.860 | So there's duct tape solutions.

02:04:47.300 | To me, so the panic monster is the character

02:04:49.180 | that rushes into the room once the deadline

02:04:51.500 | gets too close or once there's some scary external pressure,

02:04:54.560 | not just from yourself.

02:04:55.580 | And that's a huge aid to a lot of procrastinators.

02:04:59.140 | Again, there's a lot of people who won't, you know,

02:05:01.540 | do that thing, they've been writing that book

02:05:03.120 | they wanted to write, but there's way fewer people

02:05:05.060 | who will not show up to the exam.

02:05:07.100 | You know, most people show up to the exam.

02:05:08.940 | So that's because the panic monster

02:05:12.380 | is gonna freak out if they don't.

02:05:14.640 | So you can create a panic monster.

02:05:16.640 | If you wanna, you know, you really wanna write music,

02:05:19.340 | you really wanna become a singer, songwriter,

02:05:20.780 | well, book a venue, tell 40 people about it

02:05:25.620 | and say, hey, on this day, two months from now,

02:05:28.020 | come and see, I'm gonna play you some of my songs.

02:05:30.340 | You now have a panic monster, you're gonna write songs,

02:05:31.940 | you're gonna have to, right?

02:05:33.400 | So there's duct tape things, you know, you can do things,

02:05:38.300 | you know, people do, I've done a lot of this

02:05:40.280 | with a friend and I say, if I don't get X done

02:05:42.900 | by a week from now, I have to donate a lot of money

02:05:47.360 | somewhere I don't wanna donate.

02:05:48.200 | - And that's, you would put that in the category

02:05:49.880 | of duct tape solutions.

02:05:51.520 | - Yeah, because it's not, why do I need that, right?

02:05:55.240 | If I really had solved this, this is something

02:05:57.100 | I want to do for me, it's selfish.

02:05:59.000 | This is, I just literally just want to be selfish here

02:06:01.400 | and do the work I need to do to get the goals

02:06:03.400 | I wanna get, right?

02:06:04.320 | There's a, all the incentives should be in the right place

02:06:08.600 | and yet, if I don't say that, it'll be a week from now

02:06:11.120 | and I won't have done it.

02:06:12.080 | Something weird is going on, there's some resistance,

02:06:14.080 | there's some force that is in my own way, right?

02:06:17.800 | And so, doing something where I have to pay all this money,

02:06:21.160 | okay, now I'll panic and I'll do it.

02:06:22.520 | So that's duct tape.

02:06:23.920 | Fixing the boat is something where I don't have to do that,

02:06:27.360 | I just will do the things that I, again,

02:06:29.520 | it's not, I'm not talking about super crazy work ethic,

02:06:33.060 | just like, for example, okay, I have a lot of examples

02:06:36.560 | 'cause I have a serious problem that I've been working on

02:06:40.160 | and in some ways, I've gotten really successful

02:06:41.880 | at solving it and in other ways, I'm still floundering.

02:06:44.720 | So-- - You're the world's

02:06:45.640 | greatest duct taper.

02:06:47.520 | - Yes, well, I'm pretty good at duct taping,

02:06:49.960 | I probably could be even better and I'm like, and I'm--

02:06:52.400 | - You're procrastinating on becoming a better duct taper.

02:06:54.880 | - Literally, like yes, there's nothing I won't.

02:06:57.520 | So, here's what I know what I should do as a writer, right?

02:07:00.760 | It's very obvious to me, is that I should wake up,

02:07:03.640 | doesn't have to be crazy, I don't have 6 a.m.

02:07:05.000 | or anything insane or I'm not gonna be one of those

02:07:07.720 | crazy people, 5.30 jogs.

02:07:10.640 | I'm gonna wake up at whatever, 7.30, 8, 8.30

02:07:14.400 | and I should have a block, just say nine to noon

02:07:17.280 | where I get up and I just really quick

02:07:22.040 | make some coffee and write.

02:07:23.600 | - It's obvious because all the great writers in history

02:07:26.880 | did exactly that, some-- - Some of them have done that,

02:07:29.320 | that's common, there's some that I like these writers,

02:07:31.520 | they do the late night sessions,

02:07:32.720 | but most of them, they do-- - But there's a session,

02:07:34.840 | but there's a session that's-- - Most writers write

02:07:37.440 | in the morning and there's a reason,

02:07:38.440 | I don't think I'm different than those people.

02:07:41.040 | It's a great time to write, you're fresh, right?

02:07:43.760 | Your ideas from dreaming have kind of collected,

02:07:46.800 | you have all the new answers that you didn't have yesterday

02:07:49.400 | and you can just go.

02:07:51.120 | But more importantly, if I just had a routine

02:07:53.320 | where I wrote from nine to noon, weekdays,

02:07:58.000 | every week would have a minimum of 15 focused hours

02:08:02.240 | of writing, which doesn't sound like a lot,

02:08:03.920 | but it's a lot, a 15, 15, no, this is no joke,

02:08:06.920 | this is, you're not, your phone's away,

02:08:09.600 | you're not talking to anyone, you're not opening your email,

02:08:11.680 | you are focused writing for three hours, five,

02:08:14.100 | that's a big week for most writers, right?

02:08:16.560 | So now what's happening is that every weekday

02:08:18.840 | is a minimum of a B, I'll give myself.

02:08:21.480 | I know an A might be, wow, I really just got into a flow

02:08:24.160 | and wrote for six hours and had, great,

02:08:26.080 | but it's a minimum of a B, I can keep going if I want,

02:08:28.720 | and every week is a minimum of a B, that's 15 hours.

02:08:31.360 | Right, and if I just had, talk about compiling,

02:08:33.320 | this is the two pages a week, if I just did that

02:08:35.880 | every week, I'd achieve all my writing goals in my life.

02:08:39.040 | And yet, I wake up and most days I just,

02:08:42.600 | either I'll revenge procrastination late at night

02:08:44.920 | and go to bed way too late and then wake up later

02:08:46.360 | and get on a bad schedule and I just fall into

02:08:48.000 | these bad schedules, or I'll wake up and there's just,

02:08:50.440 | you know, I'll say I was gonna do a few emails

02:08:52.320 | and I'll open it up and suddenly I'm texting,

02:08:53.960 | I'm texting, or I'll just go and I'll make a phone call

02:08:56.880 | and I'll be on phone calls for three hours,

02:08:58.200 | it's always something.

02:09:00.080 | Or I'll start writing and then I hit a little bit of a wall,

02:09:02.080 | but because there's no sacred,

02:09:03.440 | this is a sacred writing block,

02:09:05.280 | I'll just hit the wall and say,

02:09:06.680 | well, this is icky and I'll go do something else.

02:09:08.920 | So, duct tape, what I've done is,

02:09:11.400 | White But Why has one employee, Alicia,

02:09:14.480 | she's the manager of lots of things, that's her role.

02:09:17.320 | She truly does lots of things.

02:09:19.020 | And one of the things we started doing is

02:09:23.960 | either she comes over and sits next to me

02:09:26.000 | where she can see my screen from nine to noon,

02:09:29.280 | that's all it takes.

02:09:30.120 | The thing about procrastination is usually

02:09:31.560 | they're not kicking and screaming,

02:09:32.880 | I don't want to do this.

02:09:33.760 | It's the feeling of, you know, in the old days

02:09:35.280 | when you had to go to class,

02:09:36.760 | you know, your lunch block is over and it's like,

02:09:38.520 | oh, shit, I have class in five minutes,

02:09:40.080 | or it's Monday morning, you go, oh.

02:09:41.780 | But you said, you know what, you go, you say, okay,

02:09:45.080 | and then you get to class and it's not that bad

02:09:46.480 | once you're there, right?

02:09:48.400 | You have a trainer and he says, okay, next set,

02:09:49.880 | and you go, oh, okay, and you do it.

02:09:51.600 | That's all it is.

02:09:52.440 | It's someone, some external thing being like,

02:09:55.440 | okay, I have to do this,

02:09:56.320 | and then you have that moment of like,

02:09:57.600 | it sucks, but I guess I'll do it.

02:09:59.200 | If no one's there, though,

02:10:00.320 | the problem with the procrastinator is

02:10:01.480 | they don't have that person in their head.

02:10:03.440 | Other people, I think, were raised with a sense of shame

02:10:05.480 | if they don't do stuff,

02:10:06.320 | and that stick in their head is hugely helpful.

02:10:09.720 | I don't really have that.

02:10:11.000 | And so, anyway, Alicia's sitting there next to me.

02:10:14.160 | She's doing her own work, but she can see my screen,

02:10:17.160 | and she, of all people, knows exactly what I should be doing

02:10:19.600 | and what I shouldn't be doing.

02:10:21.240 | That's all it takes.

02:10:22.480 | The shame of just having her see me

02:10:24.800 | while she's sitting there not working

02:10:26.040 | would just be too weird and too embarrassing.

02:10:27.760 | So I get it done, and it's amazing.

02:10:29.720 | It's a game changer for me.

02:10:31.600 | So duct tape can solve, sometimes duct tape is enough,

02:10:34.760 | but I'm curious to, I'm still trying to,

02:10:37.640 | what is going on?

02:10:39.000 | I think part of it is that we are actually wired.

02:10:43.600 | I think I'm being very sane,

02:10:46.240 | human, actually, is what's happening.

02:10:47.800 | Or not sane is not the right word.

02:10:48.880 | I'm being like, I'm being a natural human

02:10:52.080 | that we are not programmed to sit there

02:10:53.840 | and do homework of a certain kind

02:10:56.480 | that we get the results like six months later.

02:10:59.640 | Like that is not, so we're supposed to conserve energy

02:11:03.120 | and fulfill our needs as we need them

02:11:05.040 | and do immediate things.

02:11:06.680 | And we're overriding our natural ways

02:11:10.320 | when we wake up and get to it.

02:11:12.080 | And I think sometimes it's because the pain,

02:11:14.480 | I think a lot of times we're just avoiding suffering,

02:11:15.960 | and for a lot of people, the pain of not doing it

02:11:18.560 | is actually worse 'cause they feel shame.

02:11:20.640 | So if they don't get up and take a jog

02:11:22.200 | and get up early and get to work,

02:11:23.600 | I'll feel like a bad person,

02:11:25.840 | and that is worse than doing those things.

02:11:28.120 | And then it becomes a habit eventually,

02:11:29.560 | it becomes just easy and automatic.

02:11:31.400 | It just becomes I do it 'cause that's what I do.

02:11:33.320 | But I think that if you don't have

02:11:34.480 | a lot of shame necessarily,

02:11:36.820 | the pain of doing those things is worse

02:11:38.640 | in the immediate moment than not doing it.

02:11:42.320 | - But I think that there's this feeling

02:11:44.160 | that you've captured with your body language

02:11:46.320 | and so on, like the I don't wanna do another set,

02:11:50.140 | that feeling, the people I've seen

02:11:52.680 | that are good at not procrastinating

02:11:54.900 | are the ones that have trained themselves

02:11:57.040 | that the moment they would be having that feeling,

02:12:00.480 | it's like Zen, like Sam Harris style Zen,

02:12:03.800 | you don't experience that feeling.

02:12:05.560 | - Yeah. - You just march forward.

02:12:06.960 | Like I talked to Elon about this a lot actually offline.

02:12:09.840 | It's like he doesn't have this.

02:12:11.720 | - No, clearly not.

02:12:12.960 | - It's the way I think, at least he talks about it,

02:12:16.040 | and the way I think about it is it's like

02:12:18.080 | you just pretend you're a machine running an algorithm.

02:12:21.640 | Like you know you should be doing this,

02:12:24.560 | not because somebody told you so on.

02:12:26.080 | This is probably the thing you want to do.

02:12:28.520 | Like look at the big picture of your life

02:12:30.400 | and just run the algorithm.

02:12:31.560 | Like ignore your feelings, just run as if--

02:12:33.520 | - Like just framing, frame it differently.

02:12:35.240 | - Yeah. - You know, yeah,

02:12:36.480 | you can frame it as like, it can feel like homework

02:12:39.360 | or it can feel like you're living your best life

02:12:42.400 | or something when you're doing your work.

02:12:43.960 | - Yeah.

02:12:45.320 | Yeah, maybe you reframe it.

02:12:46.360 | But I think ultimately is whatever reframing you need to do,

02:12:49.900 | you just need to do it for a few weeks

02:12:52.320 | and that's how the habit is formed

02:12:55.240 | and you stick with it.

02:12:56.960 | Like I'm now on a kick where I exercise every day.

02:13:01.960 | It doesn't matter what that exercise is.

02:13:06.160 | It's not serious.

02:13:07.400 | It could be 200 pushups.

02:13:09.360 | But it's a thing that like I make sure I exercise every day

02:13:12.360 | and it's become way, way easier because of the habit.

02:13:15.520 | And I just, and I don't, like at least with exercise

02:13:19.640 | 'cause it's easier to replicate that feeling,

02:13:22.120 | I don't allow myself to go like,

02:13:24.400 | I don't feel like doing this.

02:13:25.360 | - Right.

02:13:26.200 | Well, I think about that even just like little things

02:13:27.520 | like I brush my teeth before I go to bed

02:13:29.320 | and it's just a habit.

02:13:30.320 | - Yeah.

02:13:31.160 | - And it is effort.

02:13:32.000 | Like if it were something else,

02:13:33.320 | I would be like, oh, I'm gonna go to the bathroom,

02:13:35.440 | I'm gonna do that.

02:13:36.280 | No, I just wanna like, I'm just gonna lie down right now.

02:13:37.680 | But it doesn't even cross my mind.

02:13:38.920 | It's just like that I just robotically go and do it.

02:13:41.440 | - Yeah.

02:13:42.280 | - And it almost has become like a nice routine.

02:13:43.680 | It's like, oh, this part of the night.

02:13:44.720 | You know, it's like a morning routine for me stuff

02:13:47.280 | is like, you know, that stuff is kind of just like

02:13:49.400 | automated.

02:13:50.240 | - It's funny 'cause you don't like go,

02:13:52.720 | like I don't think I've skipped many days.

02:13:54.480 | I don't think I skipped any days brushing my teeth.

02:13:56.520 | - Right.

02:13:57.360 | - Like unless I didn't have a tooth part,

02:13:59.120 | like I was in the woods or something.

02:14:00.720 | And what is that?

02:14:01.560 | 'Cause it's annoying.

02:14:03.120 | - To me there is,

02:14:04.440 | so the character that makes me procrastinate

02:14:06.120 | is the instant gratification monkey.

02:14:08.160 | Now that's what I've labeled him, right?

02:14:09.560 | And there's the rational decision maker

02:14:11.280 | and the instant gratification monkey

02:14:12.440 | and these battle with each other.

02:14:14.200 | But for procrastinator, the monkey wins.

02:14:18.080 | - Yeah.

02:14:18.920 | - I think the monkeys, you know,

02:14:20.800 | you read about this kind of stuff.

02:14:21.840 | I think that this kind of more primitive brain

02:14:25.920 | is always winning.

02:14:26.840 | And in non-procrastinators,

02:14:28.200 | that primitive brain is on board for some reason

02:14:30.600 | and isn't resisting.

02:14:32.680 | So, but when I think about brushing my teeth,

02:14:35.120 | it's like the monkey doesn't even think

02:14:36.720 | there's an option to not do it.

02:14:38.560 | So it doesn't even like get,

02:14:39.800 | there's no hope.

02:14:40.640 | The monkey has no hope there.

02:14:41.880 | So it doesn't even like get involved.

02:14:43.160 | And it's just like, yeah, yeah, no,

02:14:44.000 | we have to just like kind of like robotically,

02:14:45.440 | just like, you know, it was kind of like Stockholm syndrome,

02:14:48.060 | just like, oh no, no, I have to do this.

02:14:50.440 | It doesn't even like wake up.

02:14:51.840 | It's like, yeah, we're doing this now.

02:14:53.240 | For other things, the monkey's like,

02:14:54.240 | ooh, no, no, no, most days I can win this one.

02:14:56.800 | And so the monkey puts up that like fierce resistance.

02:15:01.800 | And it's like, it's a lot of it's like

02:15:03.860 | the initial transition.

02:15:05.660 | So I think of it as like jumping in a cold pool,

02:15:09.040 | where it's like, I will spend the whole day

02:15:12.560 | pacing around the side of the pool in my bathing suit,

02:15:15.080 | just being like, I don't want to have that one second

02:15:17.560 | when you first jump in and it sucks.

02:15:18.800 | And then once I'm in, once I jump in,

02:15:21.440 | I'm usually, you know, once I start writing,

02:15:22.920 | suddenly I'm like, oh, this isn't so bad.

02:15:24.640 | Okay, I'm kind of into it.

02:15:25.480 | And then sometimes you can't tear me away.

02:15:27.040 | You know, then I suddenly I'm like, I get into a flow.

02:15:29.320 | So it's like, once I get in the cold water, I don't mind it.

02:15:31.380 | But I will spend hours standing around the side of the pool.

02:15:34.960 | And by the way, I do this in a more literal sense.

02:15:36.840 | When I go to the gym with a trainer,

02:15:38.640 | in 45 minutes, I do a full ass workout.

02:15:41.960 | And it's not because I'm having a good time,

02:15:44.800 | but it's because it's that,

02:15:47.440 | ugh, okay, I have to go to class feeling, right?

02:15:49.080 | But when I go to the gym alone,

02:15:50.520 | I will literally do a set and then dick around my phone

02:15:55.480 | for 10 minutes before the next set.

02:15:57.380 | And I'll spend over an hour there and do way less.

02:15:59.680 | So it is the transition.

02:16:01.920 | Once I'm actually doing the set,

02:16:03.120 | I'm never like, I don't want to stop in the middle.

02:16:04.480 | Now it's just like, I'm going to do this.

02:16:05.560 | And I feel happy I just did it.

02:16:07.020 | So it's something, there's something about transitions

02:16:09.160 | that is very, that's why procrastinators are late

02:16:11.480 | a lot of places.

02:16:13.000 | It's, I will procrastinate getting ready

02:16:14.920 | to go to the airport,

02:16:16.880 | even though I know I should leave at three,

02:16:18.240 | so I cannot be stressed.

02:16:19.220 | I'll leave at 3.36 and I'll be super stressed.

02:16:22.440 | Once I'm on the way to the airport,

02:16:24.720 | immediately I'm like, why didn't I do this earlier?

02:16:26.360 | Now I'm back on my phone doing what I was doing.

02:16:28.660 | I just had to get in the damn car or whatever.

02:16:31.280 | So yeah, there's some very, very odd, irrational.

02:16:35.440 | - Yeah, like I was waiting for you to come

02:16:38.640 | and you said that you're running a few minutes late.

02:16:40.480 | And I was like-- - Which I did.

02:16:41.980 | - I was like, I'll go get a coffee

02:16:45.560 | because I can't possibly be the one who's early.

02:16:48.720 | - Right. - I can't,

02:16:49.600 | I don't understand, I'm always late to stuff.

02:16:51.800 | And I know it's disrespectful in the eyes of a lot of people.

02:16:55.280 | I can't help, you know what I'm doing ahead of it?

02:16:58.160 | It's not like I don't care about the people.

02:17:00.120 | I'm often like, for like this conference,

02:17:03.000 | I'd be preparing more.

02:17:04.360 | - Right. - Like it's like,

02:17:06.040 | I obviously care about the person, but for some--

02:17:08.600 | - Yeah, it's misinterpreted as like,

02:17:10.080 | there are some people that like show up late

02:17:13.060 | because they like, they kind of like that quality

02:17:14.900 | in themselves and that's a dick, right?

02:17:16.580 | There's a lot of those people.

02:17:17.680 | But more often, it's someone who shows up frazzled

02:17:20.340 | and they feel awful and they're furious at themselves.

02:17:22.580 | - Yeah. - They're so regretful.

02:17:23.540 | - Exactly. - I mean, that's me.

02:17:24.940 | And I mean, also, all you have to do

02:17:26.580 | is look at those people alone running through the airport.

02:17:28.860 | Right? - Yeah.

02:17:29.820 | - They're not being disrespectful to anyone there.

02:17:31.180 | They just inflicted this on themselves.

02:17:33.100 | Like-- - It's hilarious.

02:17:34.060 | - Yeah.

02:17:35.300 | - You've tweeted a quote by James Baldwin saying,

02:17:38.260 | quote, "I imagine one of the reasons people cling

02:17:40.620 | "to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense

02:17:45.620 | "once hate is gone, they will be forced

02:17:48.180 | "to deal with the pain."

02:17:49.700 | What has been a painful but formative experience

02:17:53.860 | in your life?

02:17:55.340 | Or what's the flavor, the shape of your pain that fuels you?

02:17:59.040 | - I mean, honestly, the first thing that jumped to mind

02:18:02.700 | is my own battles against myself to get my work done

02:18:06.300 | because it affects everything.

02:18:07.700 | When I, I just took five years in this book

02:18:09.740 | and granted, it's a beast.

02:18:11.260 | Like, I probably would have taken two or three years,

02:18:13.420 | but it didn't need to take five.

02:18:14.540 | And that was a lot of, not just, you know,

02:18:16.660 | not just that I'm not working.

02:18:17.900 | It's that I'm over-researching.

02:18:19.900 | I'm making it, I'm adding in things I shouldn't

02:18:22.420 | because I'm perfectionist, you know,

02:18:23.860 | being a perfectionist about like, oh, well, I learned that.

02:18:25.700 | Now I want to get it in there.

02:18:26.840 | I know I'm going to end up cutting it later.

02:18:28.020 | Just, you know, or I over-outline, you know,

02:18:30.980 | something, you know, trying to get it perfect

02:18:32.700 | when I know that's not possible.

02:18:33.980 | Just making a lot of immature kind of,

02:18:36.700 | like, I'm not actually that much of a writing amateur.

02:18:38.820 | I've written, including my old blog,

02:18:40.700 | I've been a writer for 15 years.

02:18:42.300 | I know what I'm doing.

02:18:43.300 | I could advise other writers really well.

02:18:45.940 | And yet I do a bunch of amateur things

02:18:47.940 | that I know while I'm doing them,

02:18:50.000 | is I know I'm being an amateur.

02:18:51.260 | So that A, it hurts the actual product.

02:18:55.620 | It makes, you know, B, it wastes your precious time.

02:18:59.380 | C, when you're mad at yourself,

02:19:01.820 | when you're in a negative, you know, self-defeating spiral,

02:19:05.860 | it almost inevitably, you'll be less good to others.

02:19:10.020 | Like, you know, I'll just, I used to, you know,

02:19:12.280 | early on in my now marriage,

02:19:15.660 | one of the things we always used to do

02:19:17.260 | is I used to plan mystery dates.

02:19:19.060 | You know, New York City, great place for this.

02:19:20.860 | I'd find some weird little adventure for us.

02:19:23.060 | You know, it could be anything.

02:19:24.740 | And I wouldn't tell her what it was.

02:19:25.740 | I said, "I'm reserving you for Thursday night,

02:19:27.500 | "you know, at seven, okay?"

02:19:29.100 | And it was such a fun part of our relationship.

02:19:31.460 | Started writing this book and got into a really bad,

02:19:33.900 | you know, personal space where it was like,

02:19:35.940 | in my head, I was like,

02:19:36.780 | "I can't do anything until this is done."

02:19:38.260 | You know, like, no.

02:19:39.140 | And I just stopped, like, ever valuing, like,

02:19:42.620 | like, joy of any kind.

02:19:44.260 | Like, I was like, "No, no, that's when I'm done."

02:19:47.180 | And that's a trap, or very quickly, you know,

02:19:49.940 | 'cause I always think, you know,

02:19:50.780 | think it's gonna be six months away,

02:19:51.960 | but actually five years later, I'm like,

02:19:53.080 | "Wow, I really wasn't living fully."

02:19:55.820 | And for five years is not, we don't live very long.

02:19:58.300 | Like, you're talking about your prime decades.

02:19:59.860 | Like, that's like a sixth of my prime years.

02:20:01.820 | Like, wow, like, that's a huge loss.

02:20:04.900 | So to me, that was excruciating.

02:20:06.300 | And, you know, and it was a bad pattern,

02:20:10.060 | a very unproductive, unhelpful pattern for me,

02:20:13.020 | which is I'd wake up in the morning in this great mood.

02:20:15.580 | Great mood every morning.

02:20:16.620 | Wake up, thrilled to be awake.

02:20:18.140 | I have the whole day ahead of me.

02:20:19.420 | I'm gonna get so much work done today.

02:20:21.180 | And, but, you know, first I'm gonna do all these other things

02:20:23.900 | and it's all gonna be great.

02:20:24.740 | And then I ended up kind of failing for the day

02:20:27.900 | with those goals, sometimes miserably,

02:20:30.300 | sometimes only partially.

02:20:31.940 | And then I get in bed,

02:20:34.300 | probably a couple hours later than I want to.

02:20:36.060 | And that's when all of the real reality hits me.

02:20:39.060 | Suddenly, so much regret, so much anxiety,

02:20:42.060 | furious at myself, wishing I could take a time machine back

02:20:44.740 | three months, six months, a year,

02:20:46.740 | or just even to the beginning of that day.

02:20:49.020 | And just tossing and turning now.

02:20:51.940 | I mean, this is a very bad place.

02:20:53.180 | That's why I said suffering.

02:20:54.340 | Procrastinators suffer in a very serious way.

02:20:56.780 | So look, I, you know, I know this probably sounds

02:21:00.100 | like a lot of like first world problems, and it is,

02:21:02.140 | but it's real suffering as well.

02:21:03.580 | Like it's, so to me, it's like,

02:21:06.940 | it's painful because you're not being,

02:21:11.540 | you're not being as good a friend or a spouse

02:21:13.220 | or whatever as you could be.

02:21:14.340 | You're also not treating yourself very well.

02:21:16.100 | You're usually not being very healthy in these moments.

02:21:17.920 | You know, you're often, and you're not being,

02:21:20.340 | I'm not being good to my readers.

02:21:21.460 | So it's just a lot of this.

02:21:23.000 | And it's like, it feels like it's one small tweak away.

02:21:27.340 | Sometimes it's like, that's what I said.

02:21:28.660 | It's like, you just suddenly are just doing that nine to 12

02:21:31.220 | and you get in that habit.

02:21:32.300 | Everything else falls into place.

02:21:33.700 | All of this reverses.

02:21:35.400 | So I feel hopeful, but it's like, it is a,

02:21:39.060 | I have not figured, I haven't fixed the boat yet.

02:21:41.220 | I have some good duct tape though.

02:21:43.420 | - And you also don't want to romanticize it

02:21:45.460 | 'cause it is true that some of the greats in history,

02:21:48.460 | especially writers, suffer from all the same stuff.

02:21:51.220 | Like they weren't quite able, I mean,

02:21:53.820 | you might only write for two or three hours a day,

02:21:56.660 | but the rest of the day is often spent,

02:21:58.780 | you know, kind of tortured by--

02:22:00.620 | - Well, right, this is the irrational thing.

02:22:02.820 | And this goes for a lot of people's jobs,

02:22:05.100 | people especially who work for themselves.

02:22:07.180 | You'd be shocked how much you could wake up at nine

02:22:10.220 | or eight or seven or whatever,

02:22:11.980 | get to work and stop at one,

02:22:13.340 | but you're really focused in those hours.

02:22:15.420 | One or two, and do 25 really focused hours of stuff,

02:22:20.060 | productive stuff a week,

02:22:20.900 | and then there's 112 waking hours in the week, right?

02:22:23.980 | So we're talking about 80 something hours of free time.

02:22:27.220 | You can live, you know, if you're just really focused

02:22:29.540 | in your yin and yang of your time,

02:22:31.460 | that's my goal is black and white time.

02:22:34.140 | I really focus time and then totally like

02:22:37.300 | clean conscience free time.

02:22:39.460 | Right now I have neither, it's a lot of gray.

02:22:40.780 | It's a lot of I should be working, but I'm not,

02:22:42.420 | oh, I'm wasting this time, this is bad.

02:22:44.260 | And that's just as massive.

02:22:45.620 | So if you can just get really good at the black and the white

02:22:49.580 | so you just wake up and it's just like full work.

02:22:51.580 | And then I think a lot of people could have like,

02:22:53.580 | all this free time, but instead,

02:22:54.700 | I'll do those same three hours.

02:22:55.940 | It's like you said, I'll do them really late at night

02:22:57.700 | or whatever after having tortured myself the whole day

02:23:00.140 | and not had any fun.

02:23:01.060 | It's not like I'm having fun.

02:23:03.140 | I call it the dark playground, by the way,

02:23:04.620 | which is where you are when you know you should be working,

02:23:06.900 | but you're doing something else.

02:23:08.740 | You're doing something fun on paper,

02:23:10.780 | but it's never, it feels awful.

02:23:12.740 | And so, yeah, I spend a lot of time in the dark.

02:23:14.660 | - And you know you shouldn't be doing it

02:23:16.060 | and you still do it and yeah.

02:23:18.100 | - It's not clean conscience fun, it's bad, it's toxic.

02:23:21.340 | And I think that it's, there's something about,

02:23:23.780 | you know, you're draining yourself all the time.

02:23:25.420 | And if you just did your focused hours

02:23:26.820 | and then if you actually have good, clean, fun,

02:23:28.780 | fun can be anything.

02:23:29.620 | You're reading a book, can be hanging out with someone,

02:23:31.460 | it can be really fun.

02:23:32.300 | You can go and do something cool in the city.

02:23:33.900 | You know, that is critical.

02:23:36.660 | It's, you're recharging some part of your psyche there.

02:23:39.060 | And I think it makes it easier

02:23:39.940 | to actually work the next day.

02:23:40.940 | And I say this from the experiences when I have had,

02:23:43.340 | if you know, good stretches, it's like,

02:23:45.300 | it's, you know what it is?

02:23:46.660 | It's like, you feel like you're fist pounding.

02:23:48.380 | One part of your brain is fist pounding the other part.

02:23:50.300 | Like, you're like, we got, like, we treat ourselves well.

02:23:54.820 | Like, it's how you're internally feel like, I treat myself.

02:23:56.980 | And it's like, yeah, no, of course it's work time.

02:23:58.380 | And then later you're like, now it's play time.

02:23:59.820 | And it's like, okay, back to work.

02:24:01.020 | And you're in this very healthy,

02:24:02.180 | like parent-child relationship in your head

02:24:04.100 | versus like this constant conflict.

02:24:06.940 | And like the kid doesn't respect the parent

02:24:08.660 | and parent hates the kid and like, yeah.

02:24:10.980 | - And you're right.

02:24:11.820 | It always feels like it's like one fix away.

02:24:14.540 | So there's hope.

02:24:15.860 | I mean, I guess, I mean,

02:24:18.620 | so much of what you said just rings so true.

02:24:21.700 | I guess I have the same kind of hope.

02:24:24.220 | - But you know, this podcast is very regular.

02:24:27.700 | I mean, I'm impressed.

02:24:29.060 | Like, and I think partially what,

02:24:32.660 | there is a bit of a duct tape solution here,

02:24:34.380 | which is you just, 'cause it's always easy

02:24:37.060 | to schedule stuff for the future for myself, right?

02:24:39.100 | Because that's future Tim and future Tim is not my problem.

02:24:42.480 | So I'll schedule all kinds of shit for future Tim

02:24:44.780 | and I will, and I will not then not do it.

02:24:48.340 | But in this case, you can schedule podcasts

02:24:51.740 | and you have to show up.

02:24:53.020 | - Yeah, you have to show up.

02:24:53.860 | - Right, it seems like a good medium for procrastinating.

02:24:55.820 | - This is not my, this is what I do for fun.

02:24:58.020 | - I know, but at least this is the kind of thing,

02:25:00.540 | especially if it's not your main thing.

02:25:02.580 | Especially if it's not your main thing,

02:25:03.420 | it's the kind of thing that you would dream of doing

02:25:05.100 | and wanna do and never do.

02:25:06.420 | And I feel like your regular production here

02:25:10.100 | is a sign that something is working,

02:25:12.220 | at least in this regard.

02:25:13.380 | - Yeah, in this regard, but this,

02:25:14.300 | I'm sure you have this same kind of thing with the podcast.

02:25:17.100 | In fact, because you're gonna be doing the podcast,

02:25:19.060 | it's possible the podcast becomes

02:25:20.540 | what the podcast is for me.

02:25:22.740 | - This is you procrastinating.

02:25:24.460 | If you think about being 80

02:25:25.740 | and if you can get into that person's head

02:25:27.420 | and look back and be like, just deep regret,

02:25:29.780 | you just, you know, yearning,

02:25:31.520 | you could do anything to just go back

02:25:33.260 | and have done this differently, that is desperation.

02:25:36.120 | It's just you don't feel it yet.

02:25:37.180 | It's not in you yet.

02:25:38.800 | The other thing you could do is if you have a partner,

02:25:40.340 | if you wanna partner with someone,

02:25:41.380 | now you could say, we meet these 15 hours every week.

02:25:45.060 | And that point, you're gonna get it done.

02:25:46.440 | So working with someone can help.

02:25:48.980 | - Yeah, that's why they say like a co-founder

02:25:51.300 | is really powerful for many reasons,

02:25:52.820 | but that's kind of one of them.

02:25:54.580 | Because to actually, for the startup case,

02:25:57.060 | you, unlike writing, perhaps,

02:26:00.940 | it's really like a hundred hour plus thing.

02:26:03.260 | Like once you really launch, you go all in.

02:26:07.060 | Like everything else just disappears.

02:26:09.420 | Like you can't even have a hope of a balanced life

02:26:11.900 | for a little bit.

02:26:12.720 | So, and there co-founder really helps.

02:26:15.380 | That's the idea.

02:26:16.380 | When you, you're one of the most interesting people

02:26:20.940 | on the internet.

02:26:21.820 | So as a writer, you look out into the future.

02:26:26.580 | Do you dream about certain things you want to still create?

02:26:30.500 | Is there projects that you wanna write?

02:26:34.180 | Is there movies you want to write or direct or?

02:26:37.460 | - Endless.

02:26:38.700 | - So it's just endless sea of ideas.

02:26:41.020 | - No, there's specific list of things that really excite me,

02:26:44.180 | but it's a big list that I know

02:26:46.260 | I'll never get through them all.

02:26:47.380 | And that's part of why the last five years really like,

02:26:51.620 | when I feel like I'm not moving as quickly as I could,

02:26:54.380 | it bothers me because I have so much genuine excitement

02:26:57.220 | to try so many different things.

02:26:58.420 | And I get so much joy from finishing things.

02:27:00.240 | I don't like doing things, but a lot of writers are like that.

02:27:03.640 | Publishing something is hugely joyful

02:27:06.620 | and makes it all worth it.

02:27:08.140 | Or just finishing something you're proud of,

02:27:10.020 | putting it out there and have people appreciate it.

02:27:11.520 | It's like the best thing in the world, right?

02:27:13.300 | You know, a lot of every kid makes

02:27:14.420 | some little bargain with themselves,

02:27:15.740 | has a little, you know, a dream or, you know, something.

02:27:19.060 | And I feel like when I do something,

02:27:21.500 | that I make something, and this, you know,

02:27:23.700 | for me it's been mostly writing,

02:27:25.780 | and I feel proud of it and I put it out there.

02:27:27.700 | I feel like I like, again,

02:27:29.160 | I'm like fist pounding my seven year old self.

02:27:30.980 | Like there's a little like, I'm,

02:27:33.260 | I like, I owe it to myself to do certain things.

02:27:35.500 | And I just did one of the things I owe.

02:27:36.860 | I just paid off some debt to myself.

02:27:38.060 | I owed it and I paid it and it feels great.

02:27:40.260 | It feels like very like,

02:27:41.740 | you just feel very, a lot of inner peace when you do it.

02:27:43.860 | So the more things I can do, you know,

02:27:46.140 | and I just have fun doing it, right?

02:27:47.460 | So I just, it's, for me, that includes a lot more writing.

02:27:50.860 | I just, you know, short, short, no, short blog posts.

02:27:53.460 | I write very long blog posts,

02:27:54.460 | but basically short writing in the form

02:27:56.100 | of long blog posts is a great, I love that medium.

02:27:59.060 | I wanna do a lot more of that.

02:28:00.860 | Books yet to be seen.

02:28:01.900 | I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna have another book

02:28:03.260 | I'm gonna do right after,

02:28:04.100 | and we'll see if I like those two.

02:28:05.340 | And if I do, I'll do more, otherwise I won't.

02:28:07.600 | But I also wanna try other mediums.

02:28:08.740 | I wanna make more videos.

02:28:10.840 | I want to, I did a little travel series once.

02:28:14.540 | I love doing that.

02:28:15.380 | I wanna do, you know, more of that.

02:28:16.740 | - Almost like a vlog, like--

02:28:18.500 | - No, it was, I let readers in a survey

02:28:21.220 | pick five countries they wanted me to go to.

02:28:24.780 | - That's awesome, okay.

02:28:25.620 | - And they picked, they sent me to weird places.

02:28:27.940 | They sent me, I went to Siberia, I went to Japan.

02:28:32.460 | I went from there to, this is all in a row,

02:28:34.740 | into to Nigeria, from there to Iraq,

02:28:37.380 | and from there to Greenland.

02:28:39.140 | And then I went back to New York,

02:28:41.000 | like two weeks in each place.

02:28:42.440 | And I get to, you know, each one I got to, you know,

02:28:45.840 | have some weird experiences.

02:28:46.840 | I tried to like really dig in and have like,

02:28:49.600 | you know, some interesting experiences.

02:28:51.560 | And then I wrote about it,

02:28:52.480 | and I taught readers a little bit

02:28:53.840 | about the history of these places.

02:28:54.960 | And it was just, I love doing that.

02:28:56.280 | I love, so, you know, and I'm like,

02:28:58.480 | oh man, like I haven't done one of those in so long.

02:29:01.780 | And then I have a big like desire to do fictional stuff.

02:29:05.760 | Like I wanna write a sci-fi at some point,

02:29:07.680 | and I would love to write a musical.

02:29:09.700 | That's actually what I was doing before Wait But Why.

02:29:11.460 | I was with a partner, Ryan Langer.

02:29:14.380 | We were halfway through a musical,

02:29:15.820 | and he got tied up with his other musical,

02:29:19.780 | and Wait But Why started taking off,

02:29:21.380 | and we just haven't gotten back to it.

02:29:22.700 | But it's such a fun medium.

02:29:24.220 | It's such a silly medium, but it's so fun.

02:29:26.500 | - So you think about all of these mediums

02:29:28.420 | on which you can be creative and create something,

02:29:30.660 | and you like the variety of it.

02:29:32.580 | - Yeah, it's just that I,

02:29:34.820 | if there's a chance on a new medium,

02:29:37.180 | I could do something good, I wanna do it, I wanna try it.

02:29:40.260 | It sounds like so gratifying, so fun.

02:29:42.460 | - I think it's fun to just watch you actually sample these.

02:29:45.500 | So I can't wait for your podcast.

02:29:47.740 | I'll be listening to all of them.

02:29:49.460 | I mean, that's a cool medium to see like where it goes.

02:29:52.220 | The cool thing about podcasting or making videos,

02:29:54.340 | especially with a super creative mind like yours,

02:29:56.840 | you don't really know what you're gonna make of it

02:29:59.640 | until you try it.

02:30:01.160 | - Yeah, podcasts, I'm really excited about,

02:30:03.020 | but I'm like, I like going on other people's podcasts.

02:30:06.540 | And I never try to have my own.

02:30:08.140 | - So there's, with every medium,

02:30:09.980 | there's the challenges of how the sausage is made.

02:30:13.180 | So like the challenges of the challenge of actually.

02:30:15.380 | - Yeah, but it's also, I like to like,

02:30:16.700 | I'll go on like, as you know, long ass monologues.

02:30:19.420 | And you can't do it on, if you're the interviewer,

02:30:21.720 | like you're not supposed to do that as much.

02:30:23.420 | So I have to like reign it in.

02:30:24.780 | And that can be, that might be hard, but we'll see.

02:30:28.060 | - You could also do solo type stuff.

02:30:29.500 | - Yeah, maybe I'll do a little of each.

02:30:31.180 | - You know what's funny?

02:30:32.020 | I mean, some of my favorite is more like solo,

02:30:34.140 | but there's like a sidekick.

02:30:36.060 | So you're having a conversation, but you're like friends,

02:30:40.600 | but it's really you ranting,

02:30:43.180 | which I think you'd be extremely good at.

02:30:46.100 | - That's funny, yeah.

02:30:46.940 | Or even if it's 50/50, that's fine.

02:30:48.820 | Like if it's just a friend who I wanna like really riff with,

02:30:51.860 | I just don't, I don't like interviewing someone,

02:30:55.380 | which I won't, that's not what the podcast will be,

02:30:57.180 | but I can't help, I've tried moderating panels before,

02:30:59.940 | and I cannot help myself.

02:31:01.020 | I have to get involved.

02:31:02.140 | And no one likes a moderator who's too involved.

02:31:04.020 | It's very unappealing.

02:31:04.900 | So I'm interviewing someone and I'm like, I can't,

02:31:08.100 | I don't even know, I just, it's not my,

02:31:09.980 | I can grill someone, but that's different.

02:31:11.540 | That's my curiosity being like, wait, how about this?

02:31:13.740 | And I interrupt them and I'm trying to-

02:31:14.580 | - Yeah, I see the way your brain works is hilarious.

02:31:17.100 | It's awesome.

02:31:17.940 | It's like lights up with fire and excitement.

02:31:19.940 | Yeah, I actually, I love listening.

02:31:21.860 | I like watching people, I like listening to people.

02:31:24.100 | So this is like me right now,

02:31:25.700 | having just listening to a podcast.

02:31:27.900 | This is me listening to your podcast right now.

02:31:28.740 | - I love listening to a podcast

02:31:30.780 | because then it's not even like,

02:31:31.820 | but once I'm in the room,

02:31:32.820 | I suddenly can't help myself by jumping in.

02:31:35.380 | - Okay, big last ridiculous question.

02:31:38.380 | What is the meaning of life?

02:31:40.340 | - The meaning of like an individual life?

02:31:42.380 | - Your existence here on earth,

02:31:44.260 | or maybe broadly this whole thing we got going on,

02:31:47.180 | descendants of apes, busily creating.

02:31:50.420 | - Yeah, well, there's, yeah.

02:31:51.260 | For me, I feel like I want to be around as long as I can.

02:31:55.580 | If I can do some kind of crazy life extension

02:31:57.860 | or upload myself, I'm gonna,

02:31:59.060 | because who doesn't want to see how cool 20,

02:32:02.020 | the year 3000 is, imagine.

02:32:03.700 | - You did say mortality was not appealing.

02:32:06.300 | - No, it's not appealing at all to me.

02:32:08.100 | Now, it's ultimately appealing.

02:32:10.180 | As I said, no one wants eternal life, I believe,

02:32:12.260 | if they understood what eternity really was.

02:32:14.180 | And I did Graham's number as a post,

02:32:15.900 | and I was like, okay, no one wants to live that many years.

02:32:18.140 | But I'd like to choose.

02:32:19.340 | I'd like to say, you know what,

02:32:20.180 | I'm truly over it now, and I'm gonna have,

02:32:21.600 | you know, at that point, we'd have,

02:32:22.700 | our whole society would have like,

02:32:24.380 | we'd have a ceremony.

02:32:25.620 | We'd have a whole process of someone signing off,

02:32:28.060 | and you know, it would be beautiful,

02:32:29.420 | and it wouldn't be sad.

02:32:30.860 | - No, I think you'd be super depressed by that point.

02:32:33.540 | Like, who's gonna sign off when they're doing pretty good?

02:32:35.380 | - Maybe, maybe, yes, okay, maybe it's dark.

02:32:37.500 | But at least, but the point is,

02:32:38.740 | if I'm happy, I can stay around for, you know,

02:32:40.500 | but I'm thinking 50 centuries sounds great.

02:32:42.780 | Like, I don't know if I want more than that.

02:32:44.140 | 50 sounds like the right number,

02:32:45.540 | and so if you're thinking,

02:32:46.860 | if you would sign up for 50 if you had a choice,

02:32:48.780 | one is what I get that is bullshit.

02:32:50.500 | Like, if you're someone who wants 50,

02:32:52.820 | one is a hideous number, right?

02:32:55.500 | You know, anyway.

02:32:56.820 | So, for me personally,

02:32:59.540 | I wanna be around as long as I can.

02:33:01.140 | And then, honestly, the reason I love writing,

02:33:03.020 | the thing that I love most,

02:33:04.140 | is like, warm, fuzzy connection with other people, right?

02:33:08.540 | And that can be my friends,

02:33:10.340 | and it can be readers.

02:33:11.820 | And that's why I would never wanna be like a journalist,

02:33:13.980 | where their personality's like hidden behind the writing.

02:33:16.740 | Or like, even a biographer, you know?

02:33:19.660 | There's a lot of people who would do,

02:33:20.500 | who's great writers, but it's,

02:33:21.580 | I like to personally connect.

02:33:23.660 | And if I can take something that's in my head,

02:33:25.380 | and other people can say, oh my God, I think that too,

02:33:27.060 | and this made me feel so much better,

02:33:28.420 | it made me feel seen, like, that feels amazing.

02:33:30.260 | And I just feel like,

02:33:31.780 | we're all having such a weird common experience,

02:33:34.700 | on this one little rock,

02:33:35.980 | in this one little moment of time,

02:33:37.380 | where this weird,

02:33:38.900 | these weird four-limbed beings,

02:33:40.940 | and we're all the same,

02:33:41.760 | and it's like, we're all,

02:33:43.100 | the human experience,

02:33:43.940 | so I feel like so many of us suffer in the same ways,

02:33:46.220 | and we're all going through a lot of the same things.

02:33:48.100 | And to me, it is very,

02:33:49.780 | if I lived, if I,

02:33:50.900 | it was on my death bed,

02:33:51.740 | and I feel like I had like,

02:33:52.560 | I had a ton of human connection,

02:33:54.780 | and like, shared a lot of common experience,

02:33:56.540 | and made a lot of other people feel like,

02:33:58.540 | like, not alone.

02:34:01.500 | - Do you feel that as a writer?

02:34:02.820 | Do you like,

02:34:04.420 | hear and feel like,

02:34:06.820 | the inspiration,

02:34:08.100 | like, all the people that you make smile,

02:34:10.500 | and all the people you inspire?

02:34:11.460 | - Honestly, not, sometimes, you know,

02:34:13.540 | when we did an in-person event,

02:34:14.940 | and I, you know, meet a bunch of people,

02:34:16.300 | and it's incredibly gratifying,

02:34:18.140 | or you know, you just, you know, you get emails,

02:34:19.660 | but I think it is easy to forget that,

02:34:21.100 | how many people, sometimes your stuff--

02:34:22.940 | - 'Cause you're just sitting there alone, typing.

02:34:25.060 | - Yeah.

02:34:25.900 | - And you get procrastination.

02:34:26.900 | - But that's why publishing is so gratifying,

02:34:28.260 | 'cause that's the moment when all this connection happens.

02:34:30.060 | - Yeah.

02:34:30.900 | - And especially if I had to put my finger on it,

02:34:32.260 | it's like, it's having a bunch of people

02:34:34.660 | who feel lonely,

02:34:35.500 | and they're like, the existence is all realized,

02:34:37.100 | like, all, you know, connect, right?

02:34:38.500 | So that, if I do a lot of that,

02:34:40.260 | and that includes, of course,

02:34:41.780 | my actual spending, you know,

02:34:43.300 | a lot of really high quality time with friends and family,

02:34:45.460 | and like,

02:34:46.300 | and making the whole thing as heartbreaking

02:34:50.180 | as like, mortality in life can be,

02:34:51.940 | make the whole thing like, fun,

02:34:53.460 | and at least we can like, laugh at ourselves together

02:34:55.740 | while going through it.

02:34:56.940 | - Yeah.

02:34:57.780 | - And that to me is the, yeah.

02:34:58.620 | - And then your last blog post will be written from Mars,

02:35:02.620 | as you get the bad news that you're not able to return

02:35:05.420 | because of the malfunction in the rocket.

02:35:07.700 | - Yeah, I would like to go to Mars,

02:35:09.180 | and like, go there for a week,

02:35:10.140 | and be like, yay, here we are,

02:35:11.180 | and then come back.

02:35:12.020 | - No, I know that's what you want.

02:35:13.500 | - Staying there, yeah.

02:35:14.780 | And that's fine, by the way.

02:35:15.740 | If I, yeah, if, so you think,

02:35:17.780 | you're picturing me alone on Mars

02:35:19.220 | as the first person there,

02:35:20.740 | and then it malfunctions.

02:35:21.580 | - Right, no, you were supposed to return,

02:35:23.180 | but it malfunctions,

02:35:24.220 | and then there's this,

02:35:25.420 | so it's both the hope, the awe that you experience,

02:35:30.540 | which is how the blog starts,

02:35:32.420 | and then it's the overwhelming,

02:35:34.980 | like, feeling of existential dread,

02:35:38.060 | but then it returns to like, the love of humanity.

02:35:41.220 | - Well, that's the thing,

02:35:42.060 | is if I could be writing,

02:35:43.780 | and actually like, writing something

02:35:44.860 | that people would read back on,

02:35:46.060 | it would make it feel so much better.

02:35:47.260 | - Yeah.

02:35:48.100 | - You know, if I were just alone,

02:35:48.920 | and no one was gonna realize what happened.

02:35:50.620 | - No, no, no, you get to write.

02:35:51.620 | No, no, no, it's perfect as safe.

02:35:53.180 | - Well, also, that would bring out great writing.

02:35:54.940 | - Yeah, I think so.

02:35:55.780 | - You know, your deathbed on Mars alone.

02:35:56.980 | - I think so.

02:35:57.820 | - Yeah.

02:35:58.640 | - Well, that's exactly the future I hope for you, Tim.

02:36:02.780 | All right, this was an incredible conversation.

02:36:04.500 | You're a really special human being, Tim.

02:36:06.580 | Thank you so much for spending

02:36:08.980 | your really valuable time with me.

02:36:10.140 | I can't wait to hear your podcast.

02:36:11.900 | I can't wait to read your next blog post,

02:36:15.280 | which you said in a Twitter reply.

02:36:17.220 | You'll get more to--

02:36:19.460 | - Yeah, soon enough.

02:36:20.940 | - After the book,

02:36:21.820 | which add that to the long list of ideas to procrastinate.

02:36:26.140 | How about, Tim, thanks so much for talking to me, man.

02:36:28.700 | - Thank you.

02:36:29.540 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tim Urban.

02:36:33.580 | To support this podcast,

02:36:34.940 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:36:37.780 | And now, let me leave you with some words

02:36:39.820 | from Tim Urban himself.

02:36:41.360 | Be humbler about what you know,

02:36:44.940 | more confident about what's possible,

02:36:47.420 | and less afraid of things that don't matter.

02:36:51.660 | Thanks for listening, and hope to see you next time.

02:36:54.220 | (upbeat music)

02:36:56.800 | (upbeat music)

02:36:59.380 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Tim Urban: Elon Musk, Neuralink, AI, Aliens, and the Future of Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #264

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