Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk

00:00:00.000 | evolutionarily, if we see a lion running at us,

00:00:03.040 | we didn't have time to calculate the lion's kinetic energy

00:00:06.360 | and is it optimal to go this way or that way?

00:00:08.840 | You just reacted.

00:00:10.440 | And physically, our bodies are well-attuned

00:00:13.240 | to actually make right decisions.

00:00:14.520 | But when you're playing a game like poker,

00:00:16.640 | this is not something that you ever evolved to do,

00:00:19.320 | and yet you're in that same flight or fight response.

00:00:22.360 | And so that's a really important skill

00:00:24.440 | to be able to develop,

00:00:25.260 | to basically learn how to meditate in the moment

00:00:28.280 | and calm yourself so that you can think clearly.

00:00:30.680 | - The following is a conversation with Liv Bury,

00:00:35.760 | formerly one of the best poker players in the world,

00:00:38.400 | trained as an astrophysicist

00:00:40.320 | and is now a philanthropist and an educator

00:00:44.240 | on topics of game theory, physics, complexity, and life.

00:00:48.280 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:51.100 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:00:53.200 | in the description.

00:00:54.440 | And now, dear friends, here's Liv Bury.

00:00:58.580 | What role do you think luck plays in poker and in life?

00:01:02.620 | You can pick whichever one you want,

00:01:04.300 | poker or life and/or life.

00:01:06.980 | - The longer you play, the less influence luck has,

00:01:10.700 | you know, like with all things,

00:01:11.700 | the bigger your sample size,

00:01:13.940 | the more the quality of your decisions

00:01:16.420 | or your strategies matter.

00:01:17.960 | So to answer that question, yeah, in poker,

00:01:21.620 | it really depends.

00:01:22.820 | If you and I sat and played 10 hands right now,

00:01:26.180 | I might only win 52% of the time, 53% maybe.

00:01:30.300 | But if we played 10,000 hands,

00:01:31.760 | then I'll probably win like over 98, 99% of the time.

00:01:35.180 | So it's a question of sample sizes.

00:01:38.220 | - And what are you figuring out over time?

00:01:40.160 | The betting strategy that this individual does

00:01:42.300 | or literally it doesn't matter

00:01:43.780 | against any individual over time?

00:01:45.940 | - Against any individual over time, the better player,

00:01:48.020 | because they're making better decisions.

00:01:49.540 | So what does that mean to make a better decision?

00:01:51.300 | Well, to get into the real nitty gritty already,

00:01:55.340 | basically poker is a game of math.

00:01:57.800 | There are these strategies,

00:02:00.020 | familiar with like Nash equilibria, that term, right?

00:02:02.540 | So there are these game theory optimal strategies

00:02:06.300 | that you can adopt.

00:02:08.300 | And the closer you play to them,

00:02:10.340 | the less exploitable you are.

00:02:12.400 | So because I've studied the game a bunch,

00:02:15.940 | although admittedly not for a few years,

00:02:17.260 | but back in, you know, when I was playing all the time,

00:02:20.020 | I would study these game theory optimal solutions

00:02:23.020 | and try and then adopt those strategies

00:02:24.900 | when I go and play.

00:02:25.740 | So I'd play against you and I would do that.

00:02:27.740 | And because the objective,

00:02:31.820 | when you're playing game theory optimal,

00:02:33.220 | it's actually, it's a loss minimization thing

00:02:35.980 | that you're trying to do.

00:02:37.340 | Your best bet is to try and play a sort of similar style.

00:02:42.340 | You also need to try and adopt this loss minimization.

00:02:46.180 | But because I've been playing much longer than you,

00:02:48.100 | I'll be better at that.

00:02:49.380 | So first of all, you're not taking advantage

00:02:51.900 | of my mistakes.

00:02:53.140 | But then on top of that,

00:02:54.980 | I'll be better at recognizing

00:02:56.900 | when you are playing suboptimally

00:02:59.500 | and then deviating from this game theory optimal strategy

00:03:02.180 | to exploit your bad plays.

00:03:05.100 | - Can you define game theory and Nash equilibria?

00:03:08.660 | Can we try to sneak up to it in a bunch of ways?

00:03:10.900 | Like what's a game theory framework of analyzing poker,

00:03:14.340 | analyzing any kind of situation?

00:03:16.300 | - So game theory is just basically the study

00:03:20.060 | of decisions within a competitive situation.

00:03:25.060 | I mean, it's technically a branch of economics,

00:03:27.660 | but it also applies to like wider decision theory.

00:03:30.860 | And usually when you see it,

00:03:35.780 | it's these like little payoff matrices and so on.

00:03:37.860 | That's how it's depicted.

00:03:38.740 | But it's essentially just like study of strategies

00:03:41.100 | under different competitive situations.

00:03:43.020 | And as it happens, certain games,

00:03:46.340 | in fact, many, many games,

00:03:47.980 | have these things called Nash equilibria.

00:03:50.460 | And what that means is when you're in a Nash equilibrium,

00:03:52.380 | basically it is not,

00:03:55.460 | there is no strategy that you can take

00:03:59.700 | that would be more beneficial

00:04:01.180 | than the one you're currently taking,

00:04:02.780 | assuming your opponent is also doing the same thing.

00:04:05.660 | So it would be a bad idea.

00:04:06.700 | If we're both playing in a game theory optimal strategy,

00:04:10.660 | if either of us deviate from that,

00:04:12.140 | now we're putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

00:04:16.620 | Rock, paper, scissors is actually

00:04:17.620 | a really great example of this.

00:04:18.860 | Like if we were to start playing rock, paper, scissors,

00:04:22.420 | you know, you know nothing about me

00:04:23.780 | and we're gonna play for all our money,

00:04:26.220 | let's play 10 rounds of it.

00:04:27.860 | What would your sort of optimal strategy be, do you think?

00:04:30.860 | What would you do?

00:04:31.780 | - Let's see.

00:04:35.220 | I would probably try to be as random as possible.

00:04:40.220 | - Exactly.

00:04:43.580 | You wanna, because you don't know anything about me.

00:04:46.060 | You don't want to give anything away about yourself.

00:04:48.140 | So ideally you'd have like a little dice

00:04:49.580 | or somewhat, you know, perfect randomizer

00:04:52.620 | that makes you randomize 33% of the time

00:04:54.540 | each of the three different things.

00:04:56.100 | And in response to that,

00:04:57.340 | well, actually I can kind of do anything,

00:04:59.660 | but I would probably just randomize back too.

00:05:01.420 | But actually it wouldn't matter

00:05:02.420 | 'cause I know that you're playing randomly.

00:05:05.180 | So that would be us in a Nash equilibrium

00:05:07.660 | where we're both playing this like unexploitable strategy.

00:05:10.660 | However, if after a while you then notice

00:05:13.060 | that I'm playing rock a little bit more often than I should.

00:05:16.420 | - Yeah, you're the kind of person that would do that.

00:05:18.180 | Wouldn't you?

00:05:19.020 | - Sure, yes, yes, yes.

00:05:19.980 | I'm more of a scissors girl, but anyway.

00:05:21.340 | - You are?

00:05:22.540 | - No, I'm a, as I said, randomizer.

00:05:24.460 | So you notice I'm throwing rock too much

00:05:27.140 | or something like that.

00:05:28.180 | Now you'd be making a mistake by continuing

00:05:30.140 | playing this game theory optimal strategy,

00:05:32.220 | well, the previous one,

00:05:33.060 | because you are now, I'm making a mistake

00:05:37.860 | and you're not deviating and exploiting my mistake.

00:05:41.340 | So you'd wanna start throwing paper a bit more often

00:05:43.820 | in whatever you figure is the right sort of percentage

00:05:45.980 | of the time that I'm throwing rock too often.

00:05:48.100 | So that's basically an example of where,

00:05:51.740 | what game theory optimal strategy is

00:05:53.300 | in terms of loss minimization,

00:05:54.700 | but it's not always the maximally profitable thing

00:05:58.060 | if your opponent is doing stupid stuff,

00:06:00.180 | which in that example.

00:06:02.580 | So that's kind of then how it works in poker,

00:06:04.540 | but it's a lot more complex.

00:06:06.460 | And the way poker players typically,

00:06:10.660 | nowadays they study, the games changed so much

00:06:12.940 | and I think we should talk about how it sort of evolved.

00:06:15.460 | But nowadays like the top pros basically spend all their time

00:06:19.380 | in between sessions running these simulators

00:06:23.140 | using like software where they do basically

00:06:25.020 | Monte Carlo simulations,

00:06:26.180 | sort of doing billions of fictitious self-play hands.

00:06:31.180 | You input a fictitious hand scenario,

00:06:34.060 | like, oh, what do I do with Jack nine suited

00:06:36.100 | on a King 10 four two spade board

00:06:40.380 | and against this bet size.

00:06:43.980 | So you'd input that, press play,

00:06:45.820 | it'll run it's billions of fake hands

00:06:49.380 | and then it will converge upon

00:06:50.380 | what the game theory optimal strategies are.

00:06:52.580 | And then you wanna try and memorize what these are.

00:06:55.460 | Basically they're like ratios of how often,

00:06:57.500 | what types of hands you want to bluff

00:06:59.940 | and what percentage of the time.

00:07:01.340 | So then there's this additional layer

00:07:02.820 | of inbuilt randomization built in.

00:07:04.500 | - Yeah, those kinds of simulations incorporate

00:07:06.420 | all the betting strategies and everything else like that.

00:07:08.540 | So as opposed to some kind of very crude mathematical model

00:07:12.340 | of what's the probability you win

00:07:13.860 | just based on the quality of the card,

00:07:16.380 | it's including everything else too, the game theory of it.

00:07:20.220 | - Yes, yeah, essentially.

00:07:21.980 | And what's interesting is that nowadays,

00:07:23.780 | if you want to be a top pro

00:07:25.100 | and you go and play in these really like

00:07:26.340 | the super high stakes tournaments or tough cash games,

00:07:29.220 | if you don't know this stuff,

00:07:30.700 | you're gonna get eaten alive in the long run.

00:07:33.260 | But of course you could get lucky over the short run.

00:07:35.140 | And that's where this like luck factor comes in

00:07:36.860 | because luck is both a blessing and a curse.

00:07:40.420 | If luck didn't, if there wasn't this random element

00:07:42.580 | and there wasn't the ability for worse players

00:07:45.260 | to win sometimes, then poker would fall apart.

00:07:48.460 | The same reason people don't play chess professionally

00:07:51.500 | for money against, you don't see people going

00:07:54.100 | and hustling chess, like not knowing,

00:07:56.860 | trying to make a living from it

00:07:57.860 | because you know there's very little luck in chess,

00:08:00.140 | but there's quite a lot of luck in poker.

00:08:01.420 | - Have you seen "Beautiful Mind," that movie?

00:08:03.940 | - Years ago.

00:08:04.780 | - Well, what do you think about the game

00:08:06.100 | theoretic formulation of what is it,

00:08:08.540 | the hot blonde at the bar?

00:08:09.980 | Do you remember?

00:08:10.820 | - Oh yeah.

00:08:11.660 | - The way they illustrated it is they're trying

00:08:13.940 | to pick up a girl at a bar and there's multiple girls.

00:08:16.460 | They're like, it's like a friend group

00:08:18.140 | and you're trying to approach.

00:08:20.100 | I don't remember the details, but I remember-

00:08:21.980 | - Don't you like then speak to her friends first?

00:08:23.860 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:08:24.700 | - Something like that, fame, disinterest.

00:08:25.700 | I mean, it's classic pickup artist stuff, right?

00:08:27.380 | You wanna-

00:08:28.220 | - And they were trying to correlate that somehow,

00:08:30.780 | that being an optimal strategy game, theoretically.

00:08:35.340 | Why?

00:08:36.740 | What, what?

00:08:37.580 | Like, I don't think I remember-

00:08:38.900 | - I can't imagine that there is.

00:08:39.740 | I mean, there's probably an optimal strategy.

00:08:41.900 | Is it, does that mean that there's an actual Nash equilibrium

00:08:45.020 | of like picking up girls?

00:08:46.620 | - Do you know the marriage problem?

00:08:48.980 | It's optimal stopping?

00:08:50.900 | - Yes.

00:08:51.740 | - So where it's a optimal dating strategy where you,

00:08:54.980 | do you remember what it is?

00:08:56.660 | - Yeah, I think it's like something like,

00:08:57.500 | you know you've got like a set of a hundred people

00:08:59.900 | you're gonna look through and after how many do you,

00:09:04.220 | now after that, after going on this many dates out of a 100,

00:09:08.020 | at what point do you then go,

00:09:09.180 | okay, the next best person I see, is that the right one?

00:09:11.580 | And I think it's like something like 37%.

00:09:14.180 | - It's one over E, whatever that is.

00:09:17.740 | - Right, which I think is 37%.

00:09:19.300 | - Yeah.

00:09:20.140 | (laughing)

00:09:21.260 | We're gonna fact check that.

00:09:22.820 | (laughing)

00:09:24.860 | Yeah, so, but it's funny under those strict constraints,

00:09:28.420 | then yes, after that many people,

00:09:30.660 | as long as you have a fixed size pool,

00:09:32.820 | then you just pick the next person

00:09:36.460 | that is better than anyone you've seen before.

00:09:38.460 | - Yeah.

00:09:39.300 | Have you tried this?

00:09:41.780 | Have you incorporated it?

00:09:42.620 | - I'm not one of those people.

00:09:44.660 | And we're gonna discuss this.

00:09:46.900 | And what do you mean, those people?

00:09:50.140 | I try not to optimize stuff.

00:09:52.580 | I try to listen to the heart.

00:09:55.340 | I don't think,

00:09:57.020 | I like, my mind immediately is attracted

00:10:02.180 | to optimizing everything.

00:10:06.260 | And I think that if you really give in

00:10:09.940 | to that kind of addiction,

00:10:11.100 | that you lose the joy of the small things,

00:10:14.940 | the minutia of life, I think.

00:10:17.220 | I don't know.

00:10:18.060 | I'm concerned about the addictive nature

00:10:19.820 | of my personality in that regard.

00:10:21.620 | - In some ways.

00:10:24.780 | - Well, I think the, on average,

00:10:26.540 | people under try and quantify things

00:10:30.140 | or try under optimize.

00:10:32.540 | There are some people who,

00:10:34.220 | it's like with all these things,

00:10:35.340 | it's a balancing act.

00:10:37.140 | - I've been on dating apps, but I've never used them.

00:10:40.180 | I'm sure they have data on this

00:10:42.060 | because they probably have

00:10:43.060 | the optimal stopping control problem.

00:10:45.260 | 'Cause there aren't a lot of people that use social,

00:10:47.380 | like dating apps are on there for a long time.

00:10:51.020 | So the interesting aspect is like, all right,

00:10:56.020 | how long before you stop looking

00:10:58.740 | before it actually starts affecting your mind negatively

00:11:01.740 | such that you see dating as a kind of--

00:11:05.140 | - Game.

00:11:08.220 | - A kind of game versus an actual process

00:11:12.780 | of finding somebody that's gonna make you happy

00:11:14.420 | for the rest of your life.

00:11:15.780 | That's really interesting.

00:11:17.340 | They have the data.

00:11:18.260 | I wish they would be able to release that data.

00:11:20.420 | And I do want to--

00:11:21.260 | - It's OKCupid, right?

00:11:22.220 | I think they ran a huge, huge study on all of their--

00:11:25.340 | - Yeah, they're more data-driven, I think,

00:11:26.780 | OKCupid folks are.

00:11:28.060 | I think there's a lot of opportunity for dating apps

00:11:30.220 | in general, even bigger than dating apps,

00:11:32.340 | people connecting on the internet.

00:11:35.020 | I just hope they're more data-driven

00:11:37.580 | and it doesn't seem that way.

00:11:40.340 | I think like, I've always thought that

00:11:43.380 | Goodreads should be a dating app.

00:11:47.220 | (Hannah laughs)

00:11:48.060 | Like the-- - I've never used it.

00:11:49.460 | - The Goodreads is just lists books that you've read

00:11:54.460 | and allows you to comment on the books you read

00:11:57.380 | and what the books you're currently reading.

00:11:58.940 | But it's a giant social networks of people reading books.

00:12:01.300 | And that seems to be a much better database of interests.

00:12:04.620 | Of course, it constrains you to the books you're reading,

00:12:06.580 | but that really reveals so much more about the person.

00:12:10.220 | Allows you to discover shared interests

00:12:12.460 | because books are a kind of window

00:12:13.940 | into the way you see the world.

00:12:16.020 | Also, like the kind of places, people you're curious about,

00:12:20.380 | the kind of ideas you're curious about.

00:12:21.740 | Are you a romantic or are you cold,

00:12:23.700 | calculating rationalist?

00:12:24.860 | Are you into Ayn Rand or are you into Bernie Sanders?

00:12:28.260 | Are you into whatever?

00:12:29.940 | And I feel like that reveals so much more

00:12:31.980 | than like a person trying to look hot

00:12:35.220 | from a certain angle in a Tinder profile.

00:12:37.140 | - Well, and it also be a really great filter

00:12:38.940 | in the first place for people.

00:12:40.340 | It's like people who read books

00:12:41.940 | and are willing to go and rate them

00:12:44.700 | and give feedback on them and so on.

00:12:47.020 | So that's already a really strong filter

00:12:48.580 | of probably the type of people you'd be looking for.

00:12:50.620 | - Well, at least be able to fake reading books.

00:12:52.380 | I mean, the thing about books,

00:12:53.540 | you don't really need to read it.

00:12:54.500 | You can just look at the CliffsNotes.

00:12:55.860 | - Yeah, game the dating app by feigning intellectualism.

00:12:59.060 | - Can I admit something very horrible about myself?

00:13:02.380 | - Go on.

00:13:03.220 | - The things that, you know,

00:13:04.340 | I don't have many things in my closet,

00:13:05.700 | but this is one of them.

00:13:06.900 | I've never actually read Shakespeare.

00:13:10.700 | I've only read CliffsNotes.

00:13:12.420 | And I got a five in the AP English exam.

00:13:14.940 | - Wow.

00:13:15.900 | - And I- - Which book?

00:13:17.100 | - Which books have I read?

00:13:19.660 | - Well, yeah, which was the exam on?

00:13:21.540 | - Oh, no, they include a lot of them.

00:13:23.340 | But Hamlet, I don't even know

00:13:27.180 | if you read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth.

00:13:30.100 | I don't remember, but I don't understand it.

00:13:32.700 | It's like really cryptic.

00:13:34.060 | - It's hard.

00:13:34.900 | - It's really, I don't,

00:13:35.980 | and it's not that pleasant to read.

00:13:37.980 | It's like ancient speak.

00:13:39.220 | I don't understand it.

00:13:40.340 | Anyway, maybe I was too dumb.

00:13:41.820 | I'm still too dumb, but I did-

00:13:44.780 | - But you got a five, which is-

00:13:45.860 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:13:46.700 | - I don't know how the US grading system-

00:13:48.020 | - Oh, no, so AP English is,

00:13:50.420 | there's kind of this advanced versions of courses

00:13:53.060 | in high school, and you take a test

00:13:54.940 | that is like a broad test for that subject

00:13:57.940 | and includes a lot.

00:13:58.940 | It wasn't obviously just Shakespeare.

00:14:00.580 | I think a lot of it was also writing, written.

00:14:04.940 | You have like AP Physics, AP Computer Science,

00:14:07.180 | AP Biology, AP Chemistry,

00:14:09.780 | and then AP English or AP Literature.

00:14:12.180 | I forget what it was,

00:14:13.460 | but I think Shakespeare was a part of that, but I-

00:14:16.980 | - And you game, the point is you gamified it.

00:14:19.180 | - Gamified, well, entirety, I was into getting As.

00:14:22.580 | I saw it as a game.

00:14:24.220 | I don't think any,

00:14:25.740 | I don't think all the learning I've done

00:14:30.380 | has been outside of school.

00:14:33.980 | The deepest learning I've done has been outside of school,

00:14:36.260 | with a few exceptions, especially in grad school,

00:14:38.420 | like deep computer science courses,

00:14:40.460 | but that was still outside of school

00:14:41.820 | 'cause it was outside of, sorry,

00:14:43.740 | it was outside of getting the A for the course.

00:14:46.220 | The best stuff I've ever done is when you read the chapter

00:14:49.660 | and you do many of the problems at the end of the chapter,

00:14:52.340 | which is usually not what's required for the course,

00:14:54.940 | like the hardest stuff.

00:14:56.180 | In fact, textbooks are freaking incredible.

00:14:58.820 | If you go back now and you look at like biology textbook

00:15:02.260 | or any of the computer science textbooks

00:15:06.100 | on algorithms and data structures,

00:15:07.780 | those things are incredible.

00:15:09.540 | They have the best summary of a subject,

00:15:11.980 | plus they have practice problems of increasing difficulty

00:15:15.340 | that allows you to truly master the basic,

00:15:17.740 | like the fundamental ideas behind that.

00:15:19.940 | - I got through my entire physics degree with one textbook

00:15:24.420 | that was just this really comprehensive one

00:15:26.300 | that they told us at the beginning of the first year,

00:15:28.660 | buy this, but you're gonna have to buy 15 other books

00:15:31.700 | for all your supplementary courses,

00:15:33.380 | and I was like, every time I would just check

00:15:35.500 | to see whether this book covered it,

00:15:36.700 | and it did, and I think I only bought like two or three extra

00:15:39.820 | and thank God, 'cause they're super expensive textbooks,

00:15:41.900 | it's a whole racket they've got going on.

00:15:44.300 | Yeah, they are, they could just,

00:15:46.220 | you get the right one, it's just like a manual for,

00:15:49.500 | but what's interesting though is,

00:15:52.940 | this is the tyranny of having exams and metrics.

00:15:56.780 | - The tyranny of exams and metrics, yes.

00:15:58.660 | - I loved them because I'm very competitive

00:16:00.980 | and I liked finding ways to gamify things

00:16:04.020 | and then like sort of dust off my shoulders afterwards

00:16:06.380 | when I get a good grade or be annoyed at myself

00:16:08.140 | when I didn't, but yeah, you're absolutely right

00:16:10.860 | in that the actual, how much of that physics knowledge

00:16:14.420 | I've retained, like I've, I learned how to cram and study

00:16:19.420 | and please an examiner, but did that give me

00:16:22.180 | the deep lasting knowledge that I needed?

00:16:24.700 | I mean, yes and no, but really like nothing makes you learn

00:16:29.100 | a topic better than when you actually then have

00:16:31.980 | to teach it yourself.

00:16:33.180 | You know, like I'm trying to wrap my teeth around this,

00:16:36.180 | like game theory, Moloch stuff right now

00:16:38.140 | and there's no exam at the end of it that I can gamify.

00:16:43.060 | There's no way to gamify and sort of like shortcut

00:16:44.940 | my way through it.

00:16:45.780 | I have to understand it so deeply

00:16:47.220 | from like deep foundational levels to then build upon it

00:16:50.700 | and then try and explain it to other people.

00:16:52.340 | And like, you're about to go and do some lectures, right?

00:16:54.340 | You can't sort of just like,

00:16:57.580 | you presumably can't rely on the knowledge

00:17:00.620 | that you got through when you were studying for an exam

00:17:03.420 | to reteach that.

00:17:04.820 | - Yeah, and especially high level lectures,

00:17:06.820 | especially the kind of stuff you do on YouTube,

00:17:09.420 | you're not just regurgitating material.

00:17:12.780 | You have to think through what is the core idea here.

00:17:17.100 | And when you do the lectures live especially,

00:17:20.740 | you have to, there's no second takes.

00:17:23.900 | That is the luxury you get if you're recording a video

00:17:28.380 | for YouTube or something like that.

00:17:30.180 | But it definitely is a luxury you shouldn't lean on.

00:17:34.800 | I've gotten to interact with a few YouTubers

00:17:37.360 | that lean on that too much.

00:17:39.320 | And you realize, oh, you've gamified this system

00:17:43.400 | because you're not really thinking deeply about stuff.

00:17:46.760 | You're through the edit, both written and spoken,

00:17:51.760 | you're crafting an amazing video,

00:17:53.920 | but you yourself as a human being

00:17:55.480 | have not really deeply understood it.

00:17:57.640 | So live teaching, or at least recording video

00:18:00.800 | with very few takes is a different beast.

00:18:04.680 | And I think it's the most honest way of doing it,

00:18:07.320 | like as few takes as possible.

00:18:09.200 | - That's why I'm nervous about this.

00:18:10.800 | (laughing)

00:18:12.040 | - Don't-- - I'll go back and be like,

00:18:12.880 | ah, let's do that.

00:18:14.040 | - Don't fuck this up, Liv.

00:18:15.520 | The tyranny of exams.

00:18:18.520 | I do think people talk about high school and college

00:18:23.520 | as a time to do drugs and drink and have fun

00:18:27.200 | and all this kind of stuff.

00:18:28.320 | But looking back, of course I did a lot of those things.

00:18:33.320 | No, yes, but it's also a time when you get to read textbooks

00:18:39.240 | or read books or learn with all the time in the world.

00:18:47.740 | You don't have these responsibilities of laundry

00:18:54.920 | and having to pay for mortgage or all that kind of stuff,

00:18:59.920 | pay taxes, all this kind of stuff.

00:19:04.060 | In most cases, there's just so much time in the day

00:19:07.360 | for learning, and you don't realize it at the time

00:19:10.280 | because at the time it seems like a chore.

00:19:12.680 | Why the hell does there's so much homework?

00:19:15.480 | But you never get a chance to do this kind of learning,

00:19:18.060 | this kind of homework ever again in life,

00:19:21.080 | unless later in life you really make a big effort out of it.

00:19:24.640 | You get, basically your knowledge gets solidified.

00:19:27.480 | You don't get to have fun and learn.

00:19:29.160 | Learning is really fulfilling and really fun

00:19:33.360 | if you're that kind of person.

00:19:34.320 | Like some people like knowledge is not something

00:19:39.320 | that they think is fun, but if that's the kind of thing

00:19:42.320 | that you think is fun, that's the time to have fun

00:19:44.880 | and do the drugs and drink and all that kind of stuff.

00:19:46.920 | But the learning, just going back to those textbooks,

00:19:51.360 | the hours spent with the textbooks

00:19:53.080 | is really, really rewarding.

00:19:55.000 | - Do people even use textbooks anymore?

00:19:56.600 | - Yeah. - Do you think?

00:19:57.640 | 'Cause-- - Kids these days

00:19:59.240 | with their TikTok and their-- - Well, not even that,

00:20:01.800 | but just like so much information,

00:20:04.680 | really high quality information

00:20:06.280 | is now in digital format online.

00:20:08.100 | - Yeah, but they're not, they are using that,

00:20:11.100 | but college is still very, there's a curriculum.

00:20:16.100 | I mean, so much of school is about rigorous study

00:20:19.640 | of a subject and still on YouTube, that's not there.

00:20:23.960 | YouTube has, Grant Sanderson talks about this,

00:20:27.760 | he's this math-- - 3Blue1Brown.

00:20:30.080 | - Yeah, 3Blue1Brown.

00:20:31.600 | He says like, "I'm not a math teacher.

00:20:33.840 | "I just take really cool concepts and I inspire people,

00:20:37.700 | "but if you wanna really learn calculus,

00:20:39.420 | "if you wanna really learn linear algebra,

00:20:41.740 | "you should do the textbook, you should do that."

00:20:45.240 | And there's still the textbook industrial complex

00:20:49.020 | that charges like $200 for a textbook and somehow,

00:20:53.400 | I don't know, it's ridiculous.

00:20:54.960 | - Well, they're like, "Oh, sorry, new edition,

00:20:58.920 | "edition 14.6, sorry, you can't use 14.5 anymore."

00:21:02.920 | It's like, "What's different?

00:21:03.760 | "We've got one paragraph different."

00:21:05.380 | - So we mentioned offline Daniel Negrano.

00:21:08.120 | I'm gonna get a chance to talk to him on this podcast

00:21:11.640 | and he's somebody that I found fascinating

00:21:14.440 | in terms of the way he thinks about poker,

00:21:16.560 | verbalizes the way he thinks about poker,

00:21:18.640 | the way he plays poker.

00:21:20.200 | So, and he's still pretty damn good.

00:21:22.900 | He's been good for a long time.

00:21:24.900 | So you mentioned that people are running

00:21:27.280 | these kinds of simulations

00:21:28.440 | and the game of poker has changed.

00:21:30.560 | Do you think he's adapting in this way?

00:21:33.140 | Do you think like the top pros,

00:21:34.880 | do they have to adapt this way?

00:21:36.540 | Or is there still like over the years,

00:21:41.540 | you basically develop this gut feeling about,

00:21:45.300 | like you get to be like good the way,

00:21:48.580 | like alpha zero is good.

00:21:49.820 | You look at the board and somehow from the fog

00:21:54.180 | comes out the right answer.

00:21:55.380 | Like this is likely what they have.

00:21:58.020 | This is likely the best way to move.

00:22:00.480 | And you don't really,

00:22:01.320 | you can't really put a finger on exactly why,

00:22:04.480 | but it just comes from your gut feeling or no.

00:22:09.060 | - Yes and no.

00:22:10.560 | So gut feelings are definitely very important.

00:22:14.700 | You know, that we've got our two mode

00:22:15.980 | or you can distill it down to two modes

00:22:18.140 | of decision-making, right?

00:22:19.060 | You've got your sort of logical linear voice in your head,

00:22:22.140 | system two, as it's often called

00:22:24.020 | and your system on your gut intuition.

00:22:27.240 | And historically in poker,

00:22:32.340 | the very best players were playing

00:22:34.300 | almost entirely by their gut.

00:22:35.860 | You know, often they do some kind of inspired play

00:22:39.220 | and you'd ask them why they do it

00:22:40.420 | and they wouldn't really be able to explain it.

00:22:42.540 | And that's not so much because their process

00:22:46.460 | was unintelligible,

00:22:47.560 | but it was more just because no one had the language

00:22:50.120 | with which to describe what optimal strategies were

00:22:52.340 | because no one really understood how poker worked.

00:22:54.260 | This was before, you know, we had analysis software,

00:22:57.540 | you know, no one was writing.

00:22:59.860 | I guess some people would write down their hands

00:23:01.440 | in a little notebook,

00:23:02.660 | but there was no way to assimilate all this data

00:23:04.540 | and analyze it.

00:23:05.900 | But then, you know, when computers became cheaper

00:23:08.460 | and software started emerging

00:23:09.880 | and then obviously online poker,

00:23:11.500 | where it would like automatically save your hand histories,

00:23:14.220 | now all of a sudden you kind of had this body of data

00:23:17.060 | that you could run analysis on.

00:23:19.580 | And so that's when people started to see, you know,

00:23:22.140 | these mathematical solutions.

00:23:24.220 | And so what that meant is the role of intuition

00:23:31.740 | essentially became smaller.

00:23:33.920 | And it went more into, as we talked before about,

00:23:38.620 | you know, this game theory optimal style.

00:23:40.600 | But also, as I said, like game theory optimal

00:23:43.300 | is about loss minimization and being unexploitable.

00:23:47.740 | But if you're playing against people who aren't,

00:23:49.620 | because no person, no human being can play perfectly

00:23:51.620 | game theory optimal in poker, not even the best AIs.

00:23:54.040 | They're still like, you know,

00:23:55.460 | they're 99.99% of the way there or whatever,

00:23:57.540 | but it's kind of like the speed of light.

00:23:59.260 | You can't reach it perfectly.

00:24:01.060 | - So there's still a role for intuition?

00:24:03.780 | - Yes.

00:24:04.620 | So when, yeah, when you're playing this unexploitable style,

00:24:08.460 | but when your opponents start doing something,

00:24:11.440 | you know, suboptimal that you want to exploit,

00:24:14.160 | well now that's where not only your like logical brain

00:24:17.360 | will need to be thinking, oh, okay, I know I have this,

00:24:19.960 | my, I'm in the sort of top end of my range here

00:24:22.200 | with this hand.

00:24:23.940 | So that means I need to be calling X percent of the time

00:24:26.860 | and I put them on this range, et cetera.

00:24:30.480 | But then sometimes you'll have this gut feeling

00:24:34.000 | that will tell you, you know, you know what, this time,

00:24:37.320 | I know mathematically I'm meant to call now, you know,

00:24:40.380 | I've got, I'm in the sort of top end of my range

00:24:42.740 | and this is the odds I'm getting.

00:24:45.140 | So the math says I should call,

00:24:46.300 | but there's something in your gut saying

00:24:48.360 | they've got it this time, they've got it.

00:24:49.960 | Like they're beating you, maybe your hand is worse.

00:24:54.960 | So then the real art,

00:24:56.940 | this is where the last remaining art in poker,

00:24:59.620 | the fuzziness is like, do you listen to your gut?

00:25:03.660 | How do you quantify the strength of it?

00:25:06.100 | Or can you even quantify the strength of it?

00:25:08.360 | And I think that's what Daniel has.

00:25:13.120 | I mean, I can't speak for how much he's studying

00:25:15.380 | with the simulators and that kind of thing.

00:25:17.760 | I think he has, like he must be to still be keeping up,

00:25:22.280 | but he has an incredible intuition for just,

00:25:26.360 | he's seen so many hands of poker in the flesh.

00:25:29.220 | He's seen so many people, the way they behave

00:25:31.900 | when the chips are, you know, when the money's on the line

00:25:33.760 | and you've got him staring you down in the eye,

00:25:36.120 | you know, he's intimidating.

00:25:37.480 | He's got this like kind of X factor vibe

00:25:39.640 | that he gives out.

00:25:42.200 | - And he talks a lot, which is an interactive element,

00:25:45.040 | which is he's getting stuff from other people.

00:25:47.200 | - Yes, yeah.

00:25:48.040 | - And just like the subtlety.

00:25:49.320 | So he's like, he's probing constantly.

00:25:51.480 | - Yeah, he's probing and he's getting

00:25:52.960 | this extra layer of information that others can't.

00:25:55.920 | Now that said though, he's good online as well.

00:25:57.880 | You know, I don't know how, again,

00:25:59.680 | would he be beating the top cash game players online?

00:26:02.680 | Probably not, no.

00:26:03.920 | But when he's in person

00:26:07.280 | and he's got that additional layer of information,

00:26:08.920 | he can not only extract it,

00:26:10.680 | but he knows what to do with it still so well.

00:26:14.160 | There's one player who I would say

00:26:15.520 | is the exception to all of this.

00:26:17.080 | And he's one of my favorite people to talk about

00:26:19.920 | in terms of, I think he might have cracked the simulation.

00:26:24.480 | It's Phil Helmuth.

00:26:25.480 | He-

00:26:28.000 | - In more ways than one, he's cracked the simulation,

00:26:30.160 | I think.

00:26:31.000 | - Yeah, he somehow to this day is still,

00:26:34.560 | and I love you, Phil, I'm not in any way knocking you.

00:26:37.360 | He's still winning so much

00:26:41.480 | at the World Series of Poker specifically.

00:26:43.920 | He's now won 16 bracelets.

00:26:45.560 | The next nearest person I think has won 10.

00:26:48.520 | And he is consistently year in, year out,

00:26:50.280 | going deep or winning these huge field tournaments,

00:26:53.200 | you know, with like 2000 people,

00:26:55.400 | which statistically he should not be doing.

00:26:57.920 | And yet you watch some of the plays he makes

00:27:02.800 | and they make no sense.

00:27:04.160 | Like mathematically, they are so far

00:27:05.800 | from game theory optimal.

00:27:07.640 | And the thing is, if you went and stuck him

00:27:09.120 | in one of these high stakes cash games

00:27:11.480 | with a bunch of like DTO people,

00:27:13.320 | he's gonna get ripped apart.

00:27:15.160 | But there's something that he has

00:27:16.640 | that when he's in the halls

00:27:17.600 | of the World Series of Poker specifically,

00:27:19.680 | amongst sort of amateurish players,

00:27:24.080 | he gets them to do crazy shit like that.

00:27:26.920 | And, but my little pet theory is that also,

00:27:30.880 | he's like a wizard and he gets the cards

00:27:35.960 | to do what he needs them to.

00:27:37.360 | Because he just expects to win

00:27:42.840 | and he expects to get flop a set

00:27:45.240 | with a frequency far beyond what the real percentages are.

00:27:50.240 | And I don't even know if he knows

00:27:51.800 | what the real percentages are.

00:27:52.640 | He doesn't need to, because he gets there.

00:27:54.760 | - I think he has found a cheat code.

00:27:56.040 | 'Cause when I've seen him play,

00:27:57.400 | he seems to be like annoyed

00:27:59.880 | that the long shot thing didn't happen.

00:28:02.000 | - Yes.

00:28:02.880 | - He's like annoyed and it's almost like

00:28:05.240 | everybody else is stupid because he was obviously

00:28:07.480 | going to win with this.

00:28:08.320 | - Meant to win, if that silly thing hadn't happened.

00:28:10.560 | And it's like, you don't understand,

00:28:11.480 | the silly thing happens 99% of the time.

00:28:13.960 | And it's a 1%, not the other way around.

00:28:15.720 | But genuinely for his lived experience

00:28:18.080 | at the World Series, only at the World Series of Poker,

00:28:20.040 | it is like that.

00:28:21.520 | So I don't blame him for feeling that way.

00:28:24.000 | But he does, he has this X factor.

00:28:26.480 | And the poker community has tried for years

00:28:29.960 | to rip him down saying like, he's no good.

00:28:32.760 | But he's clearly good because he's still winning.

00:28:34.560 | Or there's something going on.

00:28:36.240 | Whether that's he's figured out how to

00:28:38.800 | mess with the fabric of reality

00:28:40.640 | and how cards, a randomly shuffled deck of cards come out.

00:28:44.320 | I don't know what it is, but he's doing it right still.

00:28:46.680 | - Who do you think is the greatest of all time?

00:28:48.720 | Would you put Helmuth?

00:28:52.560 | - It depends.

00:28:53.400 | - He seems like the kind of person

00:28:54.640 | when mentioned he would actually watch this.

00:28:56.440 | So you might want to be careful.

00:28:58.400 | - As I said, I love Phil.

00:28:59.720 | And I would say this to his face,

00:29:03.440 | I'm not saying anything, I don't.

00:29:04.960 | He's got, he truly, I mean, he is one of the greatest.

00:29:09.520 | I don't know if he's the greatest.

00:29:11.000 | He's certainly the greatest at the World Series of Poker.

00:29:14.280 | And he is the greatest at,

00:29:16.360 | despite the game switching into a pure game,

00:29:19.440 | almost an entire game of math,

00:29:20.880 | he has managed to keep the magic alive.

00:29:22.840 | And this like, just through sheer force of will,

00:29:26.000 | making the game work for him.

00:29:27.600 | And that is incredible.

00:29:28.640 | And I think it's something that should be studied

00:29:30.440 | because it's an example.

00:29:32.000 | - Yeah, there might be some actual game theoretical wisdom.

00:29:35.240 | There might be something to be said

00:29:36.440 | about optimality from studying him.

00:29:39.200 | - What do you mean by optimality?

00:29:40.960 | - Meaning, or rather game design perhaps.

00:29:45.520 | Meaning if what he's doing is working,

00:29:48.440 | maybe poker is more complicated

00:29:51.640 | than we're currently modeling it as.

00:29:54.200 | So like-

00:29:55.040 | - Or there's an extra layer,

00:29:56.640 | and I don't mean to get too weird and wooey,

00:29:59.480 | but or there's an extra layer of ability

00:30:04.480 | to manipulate the things the way you want them to go

00:30:07.520 | that we don't understand yet.

00:30:09.760 | - Do you think Phil Hellmuth understands them?

00:30:11.960 | Is he just generally-

00:30:13.640 | - Hashtag positivity.

00:30:15.480 | He wrote a book on positivity.

00:30:17.240 | - He has?

00:30:18.080 | He did?

00:30:18.920 | - Yes, "Phil Positivity."

00:30:19.760 | - Like a trolling book?

00:30:20.600 | - No.

00:30:21.440 | - A serious-

00:30:22.280 | - He's straight up, yeah.

00:30:23.120 | - Phil Hellmuth wrote a book about positivity.

00:30:26.080 | - Yes.

00:30:27.280 | - Okay, not ironically.

00:30:28.680 | - And I think it's about sort of manifesting what you want

00:30:31.880 | and getting the outcomes that you want

00:30:34.200 | by believing so much in yourself

00:30:36.560 | and in your ability to win, like eyes on the prize.

00:30:39.120 | And I mean, it's working.

00:30:42.200 | - Demands delivered.

00:30:43.280 | But where do you put like Phil Ivey

00:30:45.400 | and all those kinds of people?

00:30:47.360 | - I mean, I'm too, I've been, to be honest,

00:30:50.160 | too much out of the scene for the last few years to really,

00:30:53.000 | I mean, Phil Ivey's clearly got,

00:30:55.040 | again, he's got that X factor.

00:30:56.600 | He's so incredibly intimidating to play against.

00:31:00.480 | I've only played against him a couple of times,

00:31:01.800 | but when he like looks you in the eye

00:31:03.760 | and you're trying to run a bluff on him,

00:31:05.080 | oof, no one's made me sweat harder than Phil Ivey.

00:31:07.160 | Just, my bluff got through, actually.

00:31:10.440 | That was actually one of the most thrilling moments

00:31:11.880 | I've ever had in poker,

00:31:12.720 | was it was in a Monte Carlo in a high roller.

00:31:15.480 | I can't remember exactly what the hand was,

00:31:16.720 | but I three bit and then like just barreled

00:31:20.680 | all the way through.

00:31:22.120 | And he just like put his laser eyes into me.

00:31:24.400 | And I felt like he was just scouring my soul.

00:31:28.200 | And I was just like, hold it together, Liv,

00:31:29.760 | hold it together.

00:31:30.600 | And he was like, ah, I folded.

00:31:31.440 | - And you knew your hand was weaker.

00:31:33.040 | - Yeah, I mean, I was bluffing.

00:31:34.400 | I presume, which, you know,

00:31:36.400 | there's a chance I was bluffing with the best hand,

00:31:37.800 | but I'm pretty sure my hand was worse.

00:31:40.720 | And he folded.

00:31:43.320 | I was truly one of the deep highlights of my career.

00:31:47.520 | - Did you show the cards or did you fold?

00:31:50.040 | - You should never show in game.

00:31:52.640 | Because especially as I felt like I was one of the worst

00:31:54.240 | players at the table in that tournament.

00:31:55.720 | So giving that information,

00:31:57.880 | unless I had a really solid plan that I was now like

00:32:01.160 | advertising, oh look, I'm capable of bluffing Phil Ivey,

00:32:03.600 | but like why?

00:32:05.160 | It's much more valuable to take advantage

00:32:07.640 | of the impression that they have of me,

00:32:09.040 | which is like, I'm a scared girl playing a high roller

00:32:10.920 | for the first time.

00:32:12.080 | Keep that going, you know.

00:32:13.440 | - Interesting.

00:32:15.640 | But isn't there layers to this, like psychological warfare,

00:32:18.800 | that the scared girl might be way smart

00:32:22.440 | and then like to flip the tables.

00:32:24.720 | Do you think about that kind of stuff?

00:32:25.920 | - Oh, definitely.

00:32:26.760 | - Is it better not to reveal information?

00:32:28.520 | - I mean, generally speaking,

00:32:29.520 | you want to not reveal information.

00:32:31.080 | You know, the goal of poker is to be as deceptive as possible

00:32:34.680 | about your own strategies while elucidating as much out of

00:32:38.240 | your opponent about their own.

00:32:39.720 | So giving them free information,

00:32:42.080 | particularly if they're people who you consider

00:32:43.440 | very good players,

00:32:44.800 | any information I give them is going into their little

00:32:47.400 | database and being,

00:32:49.240 | I assume it's going to be calculated and used well.

00:32:51.760 | So I have to be really confident that my like meta gaming

00:32:55.800 | that I'm going to then do,

00:32:56.720 | oh, they've seen this, so therefore that,

00:32:58.320 | I'm going to be on the right level.

00:33:00.640 | So it's better just to keep that little secret to myself

00:33:03.760 | in the moment.

00:33:04.600 | - So how much is bluffing part of the game?

00:33:06.680 | - Huge amount.

00:33:08.360 | - So, yeah, I mean, maybe actually, let me ask,

00:33:10.440 | like, what did it feel like with Phil Ivey or anyone else

00:33:14.080 | when it's a high stake, when it's a big,

00:33:16.040 | it's a big bluff.

00:33:18.840 | So a lot of money on the table and maybe, I mean,

00:33:23.360 | what defines a big bluff?

00:33:24.640 | Maybe a lot of money on the table,

00:33:26.000 | but also some uncertainty in your mind and heart about,

00:33:30.560 | like self doubt,

00:33:31.960 | well, maybe I miscalculated what's going on here,

00:33:34.560 | what the bet said, all that kind of stuff.

00:33:36.720 | Like, what does that feel like?

00:33:38.800 | - I mean, it's, I imagine comparable to,

00:33:43.800 | you know, running a, I mean, any kind of big bluff

00:33:49.000 | where you have a lot of something

00:33:52.360 | that you care about on the line, you know?

00:33:54.640 | So if you're bluffing in a courtroom,

00:33:57.200 | not that anyone should ever do that,

00:33:58.160 | or, you know, something equatable to that,

00:34:00.360 | it's, you know, in that scenario, you know,

00:34:04.120 | I think it was the first time I'd ever played a 20,

00:34:05.680 | I'd won my way into this 25K tournament.

00:34:09.160 | So that was the buy-in, 25,000 euros.

00:34:11.160 | And I had satellited my way in

00:34:13.000 | because it was much bigger than I would ever normally play.

00:34:16.040 | And, you know, I hadn't,

00:34:17.160 | I wasn't that experienced at the time.

00:34:18.720 | And now I was sitting there against all the big boys,

00:34:21.240 | you know, the Negranus, the Phil Ives and so on.

00:34:23.600 | And then to like, each time you put the bets out,

00:34:29.720 | you know, you put another bet out, your card.

00:34:33.000 | Yeah, I was on what's called a semi-bluff.

00:34:34.880 | So there was some cards that could come

00:34:36.280 | that would make my hand very, very strong and therefore win.

00:34:39.160 | But most of the time, those cards don't come.

00:34:40.920 | - So it's a semi-bluff 'cause you're representing,

00:34:43.880 | are you representing that you already have something?

00:34:46.960 | - So I think in this scenario, I had a flush draw.

00:34:51.120 | So I had two clubs, two clubs came out on the flop,

00:34:55.920 | and then I'm hoping that on the turn in the river,

00:34:58.080 | one will come.

00:34:59.120 | So I have some future equity.

00:35:00.960 | I could hit a club and then I'll have the best hand

00:35:02.760 | in which case, great.

00:35:04.600 | And so I can keep betting and I'll want them to call,

00:35:07.480 | but I'm also got the other way of winning the hand

00:35:09.640 | where if my card doesn't come,

00:35:11.920 | I can keep betting and get them to fold their hand.

00:35:14.720 | And I'm pretty sure that's what the scenario was.

00:35:18.000 | So I had some future equity, but it's still, you know,

00:35:21.000 | most of the time I don't hit that club.

00:35:23.280 | And so I would rather him just fold

00:35:25.320 | because I'm, you know, the pot is now getting bigger

00:35:27.080 | and bigger.

00:35:27.920 | And in the end, like I've jam all in on the river,

00:35:31.000 | that's my entire tournament on the line.

00:35:33.720 | As far as I'm aware,

00:35:34.560 | this might be the one time I ever get to play a big 25K.

00:35:37.200 | You know, this was the first time I played one.

00:35:38.680 | So it was, it felt like the most momentous thing.

00:35:42.000 | And this was also when I was trying to build myself up,

00:35:43.840 | you know, build my name, a name for myself in poker.

00:35:46.680 | I wanted to get respect.

00:35:47.720 | - Destroy everything for you.

00:35:49.280 | - It felt like it in the moment.

00:35:50.520 | Like, I mean, it literally does feel like a form of life

00:35:52.480 | and death, like your body physiologically

00:35:54.360 | is having that flight or fight response.

00:35:56.120 | - What are you doing with your body?

00:35:57.120 | What are you doing with your face?

00:35:58.320 | Are you just like, what are you thinking about?

00:36:01.360 | (laughing)

00:36:02.760 | - More than a mixture of like, okay, what are the cards?

00:36:04.800 | So in theory, I'm thinking about like, okay,

00:36:07.080 | what are cards that make my hand look stronger?

00:36:10.080 | Which cards hit my perceived range from his perspective?

00:36:13.920 | Which cards don't?

00:36:15.680 | What's the right amount of bet size to, you know,

00:36:18.360 | maximize my fold equity in this situation?

00:36:20.880 | You know, that's the logical stuff

00:36:22.160 | that I should be thinking about.

00:36:23.280 | But I think in reality, because I was so scared,

00:36:25.480 | 'cause there's this, at least for me,

00:36:26.960 | there's a certain threshold of like nervousness or stress

00:36:30.480 | beyond which the logical brain shuts off.

00:36:33.520 | And now it just gets into this like,

00:36:35.320 | it just like, it feels like a game of wits, basically.

00:36:38.800 | It's like of nerve, can you hold your resolve?

00:36:41.840 | And it certainly got by that, like by the river.

00:36:44.360 | I think by that point, I was like,

00:36:45.880 | I don't even know if this is a good bluff anymore,

00:36:47.760 | but fuck it, let's do it.

00:36:50.120 | - Your mind is almost numb

00:36:51.320 | from the intensity of that feeling.

00:36:53.200 | - I call it the white noise.

00:36:55.200 | And that's, and it happens in all kinds of decision-making.

00:36:58.920 | I think anything that's really, really stressful.

00:37:00.800 | I can imagine someone in like an important job interview,

00:37:02.960 | if it's like a job they've always wanted

00:37:04.840 | and they're getting grilled, you know,

00:37:06.560 | like Bridgewater style where they ask these really hard,

00:37:09.240 | like mathematical questions.

00:37:11.200 | You know, it's a really learned skill

00:37:13.440 | to be able to like subdue your flight or fight response.

00:37:17.840 | You know, I think get from the sympathetic

00:37:19.400 | into the parasympathetic.

00:37:20.360 | So you can actually, you know, engage that voice

00:37:23.880 | in your head and do those slow logical calculations.

00:37:26.080 | 'Cause evolutionarily, you know,

00:37:28.360 | if we see a lion running at us,

00:37:29.680 | we didn't have time to sort of calculate

00:37:31.680 | the lion's kinetic energy.

00:37:33.000 | And, you know, is it optimal to go this way or that way?

00:37:35.480 | You just reacted.

00:37:37.080 | And physically our bodies are well attuned

00:37:39.880 | to actually make right decisions.

00:37:41.160 | But when you're playing a game like poker,

00:37:43.280 | this is not something that you ever, you know,

00:37:44.800 | evolved to do.

00:37:45.960 | And yet you're in that same flight or fight response.

00:37:49.000 | And so that's a really important skill

00:37:51.080 | to be able to develop, to basically learn how to like

00:37:53.520 | meditate in the moment and calm yourself

00:37:55.720 | so that you can think clearly.

00:37:57.440 | - But as you were searching for a comparable thing,

00:38:00.800 | it's interesting 'cause you just made me realize

00:38:03.360 | that bluffing is like an incredibly high stakes form

00:38:06.880 | of lying.

00:38:08.240 | You're lying.

00:38:09.680 | And I don't think you can--

00:38:11.640 | - Telling a story.

00:38:12.480 | - It's straight up lying.

00:38:15.240 | In the context of game, it's not a negative kind of lying.

00:38:19.080 | - But it is, yeah, exactly.

00:38:20.400 | You're representing something that you don't have.

00:38:23.400 | And I was thinking like, how often in life

00:38:26.800 | do we have such high stakes of lying?

00:38:30.360 | 'Cause I was thinking,

00:38:31.520 | certainly in high level military strategy,

00:38:36.120 | I was thinking when Hitler was lying to Stalin

00:38:40.280 | about his plans to invade the Soviet Union.

00:38:44.640 | And so you're talking to a person like your friends

00:38:48.360 | and you're fighting against the enemy,

00:38:50.760 | whatever the formulation of the enemy is.

00:38:53.960 | But meanwhile, whole time you're building up troops

00:38:56.840 | on the border.

00:38:57.680 | That's extremely--

00:38:59.800 | - Wait, wait, so Hitler and Stalin

00:39:01.080 | were like pretending to be friends?

00:39:02.560 | - Yeah.

00:39:03.400 | - Well, my history knowledge is terrible.

00:39:04.360 | That's crazy.

00:39:05.280 | - Yeah, that they were...

00:39:06.640 | And it worked because Stalin,

00:39:11.520 | until the troops crossed the border

00:39:14.320 | and invaded in Operation Barbarossa

00:39:17.560 | where this storm of Nazi troops

00:39:22.560 | invaded large parts of the Soviet Union,

00:39:25.600 | hence one of the biggest wars in human history began.

00:39:30.360 | Stalin for sure thought that this was never going to be,

00:39:34.920 | that Hitler is not crazy enough to invade the Soviet Union.

00:39:38.720 | And it makes, geopolitically,

00:39:41.000 | makes total sense to be collaborators.

00:39:43.040 | And ideologically, even though there's a tension

00:39:46.280 | between communism and fascism or national socialism,

00:39:50.320 | however you formulate it,

00:39:51.520 | it still feels like this is the right way

00:39:54.360 | to battle the West.

00:39:55.800 | - Right.

00:39:56.640 | They were more ideologically aligned.

00:39:58.680 | They in theory had a common enemy, which was the West.

00:40:01.400 | - So it made total sense.

00:40:03.480 | And in terms of negotiations

00:40:05.440 | and the way things were communicated,

00:40:07.320 | it seemed to Stalin that for sure

00:40:11.520 | that they would remain at least for a while

00:40:16.120 | peaceful collaborators.

00:40:17.680 | And everybody, because of that in the Soviet Union,

00:40:22.240 | believed that it was a huge shock when Kiev was invaded.

00:40:25.840 | And you hear echoes of that when I traveled to Ukraine,

00:40:28.240 | sort of the shock of the invasion.

00:40:32.240 | It's not just the invasion on one particular border,

00:40:34.560 | but the invasion of the capital city.

00:40:36.760 | And just like, holy shit.

00:40:39.480 | Especially at that time when you thought World War I,

00:40:44.240 | you realized that that was the way to end all wars.

00:40:46.960 | You would never have this kind of war.

00:40:49.040 | And holy shit, this person is mad enough

00:40:52.440 | to try to take on this monster in the Soviet Union.

00:40:55.520 | So it's no longer going to be a war

00:40:58.360 | of hundreds of thousands dead.

00:40:59.880 | It'll be a war of tens of millions dead.

00:41:02.320 | And yeah, but that's a very large scale kind of lie,

00:41:07.320 | but I'm sure there's in politics and geopolitics,

00:41:11.480 | that kind of lying happening all the time.

00:41:13.960 | And a lot of people pay financially

00:41:17.320 | and with their lives for that kind of lying.

00:41:19.080 | But in our personal lives, I don't know how often we,

00:41:22.280 | maybe we- - I think people do.

00:41:23.720 | I mean, like think of spouses cheating on their partners.

00:41:27.400 | And then like having to lie, like,

00:41:28.440 | "Where were you last night?"

00:41:29.560 | Stuff like that. - Oh shit, that's tough.

00:41:30.600 | Yeah, that's true. - Like that's, I think,

00:41:32.920 | unfortunately that stuff happens all the time.

00:41:36.240 | - Or having like multiple families, that one is great.

00:41:39.240 | When each family doesn't know about the other one

00:41:42.240 | and like maintaining that life.

00:41:44.640 | There's probably a sense of excitement about that too.

00:41:47.320 | Or- - Seems unnecessary, yeah.

00:41:50.720 | But- - Why?

00:41:51.720 | - Well, just lying, like, you know,

00:41:54.200 | the truth finds a way of coming out, you know?

00:41:56.760 | - Yes, but hence that's the thrill.

00:41:59.240 | - Yeah, perhaps.

00:42:00.200 | Yeah, people, I mean, and that's why I think actually,

00:42:03.520 | like poker, what's so interesting about poker

00:42:05.960 | is most of the best players I know,

00:42:09.880 | they're always exceptions, you know,

00:42:10.880 | they're always bad eggs,

00:42:12.480 | but actually poker players are very honest people.

00:42:15.120 | I would say they are more honest than the average,

00:42:17.560 | you know, if you just took random population sample.

00:42:22.360 | Because A, you know, I think, you know,

00:42:26.080 | humans like to have that,

00:42:27.560 | most people like to have some kind of, you know,

00:42:30.560 | mysterious, you know, an opportunity to do something

00:42:32.720 | like a little edgy.

00:42:34.880 | So we get to sort of scratch that itch

00:42:36.840 | of being edgy at the poker table,

00:42:38.360 | where it's like, it's part of the game,

00:42:40.440 | everyone knows what they're in for, and that's allowed.

00:42:43.400 | And you get to like really get that out of your system.

00:42:46.280 | And then also like poker players learned that, you know,

00:42:51.000 | I would play in a huge game against some of my friends,

00:42:55.400 | even my partner Igor, where we will be, you know,

00:42:57.760 | absolutely going at each other's throats,

00:42:59.680 | trying to draw blood in terms of winning each money

00:43:02.080 | off each other and like getting under each other's skin,

00:43:04.040 | winding each other up, doing the craftiest moves we can.

00:43:08.360 | But then once the game's done, you know,

00:43:11.120 | the winners and the losers will go off

00:43:12.320 | and get a drink together and have a fun time

00:43:13.880 | and like talk about it in this like

00:43:15.720 | weird academic way afterwards.

00:43:17.280 | Because that, and that's why games are so great,

00:43:19.520 | 'cause you get to like live out,

00:43:21.080 | like this competitive urge that, you know, most people have.

00:43:26.440 | - What's it feel like to lose?

00:43:28.720 | Like we talked about bluffing when it worked out.

00:43:31.400 | What about when you go broke?

00:43:34.520 | - So like in a game, I'm,

00:43:37.280 | fortunately I've never gone broke through poker.

00:43:39.200 | - You mean like full life?

00:43:40.880 | - Full life, no.

00:43:42.480 | I know plenty of people who have.

00:43:44.120 | And I don't think Igor would mind me saying,

00:43:47.840 | he went broke once in poker, well, you know,

00:43:50.320 | early on when we were together.

00:43:51.840 | - I feel like you haven't lived unless you've gone broke.

00:43:54.720 | - Yeah, I-- - In some sense.

00:43:56.440 | - Right, well, I mean, I'm happy,

00:43:58.960 | I've sort of lived through it vicariously through him

00:44:00.880 | when he did it at the time.

00:44:02.320 | But yeah, what's it like to lose?

00:44:04.160 | Well, it depends.

00:44:05.000 | So it depends on the amount,

00:44:06.080 | it depends what percentage of your net worth

00:44:07.680 | you've just lost.

00:44:08.640 | It depends on your brain chemistry.

00:44:11.560 | It really, you know, varies from person to person.

00:44:13.160 | - You have a very cold calculating way

00:44:15.320 | of thinking about this.

00:44:16.920 | So it depends what percentage. (laughs)

00:44:19.000 | - Well, it really does, right?

00:44:20.720 | - Yeah, it's true, it's true.

00:44:21.560 | - But that's, I mean,

00:44:23.080 | that's another thing poker trains you to do.

00:44:24.760 | You see everything in percentages.

00:44:28.120 | Or you see everything in like ROI or expected hourlies

00:44:30.840 | or cost benefit, et cetera.

00:44:32.440 | You know, so that's,

00:44:36.080 | one of the things I've tried to do

00:44:37.240 | is calibrate the strength of my emotional response

00:44:39.840 | to the win or loss that I've received.

00:44:43.400 | Because it's no good if you like, you know,

00:44:45.560 | you have a huge emotional dramatic response to a tiny loss.

00:44:49.480 | Or on the flip side, you have a huge win

00:44:53.240 | and you're so dead inside that you don't even feel it.

00:44:55.480 | Well, that's, you know, that's a shame.

00:44:56.840 | I want my emotions to calibrate with reality

00:45:00.280 | as much as possible.

00:45:01.480 | So yeah, what's it like to lose?

00:45:04.240 | I mean, I've had times where I've lost, you know,

00:45:07.200 | busted out of a tournament

00:45:08.120 | that I thought I was gonna win in.

00:45:09.040 | It's, you know, especially if I got really unlucky

00:45:10.560 | or I make a dumb play,

00:45:13.960 | where I've gone away and like, you know, kicked the wall,

00:45:17.560 | punched a wall, I like nearly broke my hand one time.

00:45:19.920 | Like I'm a lot less competitive than I used to be.

00:45:24.120 | Like I was pathologically competitive

00:45:26.640 | in my like late teens, early twenties.

00:45:28.760 | I just had to win at everything.

00:45:30.880 | And I think that sort of slowly waned as I've gotten older.

00:45:33.520 | - According to you, yeah.

00:45:34.880 | - According to me.

00:45:35.720 | - I don't know if others would say the same, right?

00:45:38.480 | I feel like ultra competitive people,

00:45:40.880 | like I've heard Joe Rogan say this to me.

00:45:43.000 | It's like, he's a lot less competitive than he used to be.

00:45:45.440 | I don't know about that.

00:45:47.360 | - Oh, I believe it.

00:45:48.440 | No, I totally believe it.

00:45:50.080 | Because as you get, you can still be,

00:45:51.440 | like I care about winning.

00:45:53.000 | Like when, you know, I play a game with my buddies online

00:45:56.000 | or, you know, whatever it is,

00:45:57.400 | polytopia is my current obsession.

00:45:58.760 | Like when I-

00:46:00.800 | - Thank you for passing on your obsession to me.

00:46:02.960 | - Are you playing now?

00:46:03.800 | - Yeah, I'm playing now.

00:46:04.720 | - We gotta have a game.

00:46:05.840 | - But I'm terrible and I enjoy playing terribly.

00:46:08.080 | I don't wanna have a game

00:46:09.080 | because that's gonna pull me into your monster

00:46:11.400 | of like a competitive play.

00:46:13.880 | - It's important.

00:46:14.720 | It's an important skill.

00:46:15.560 | - I'm enjoy playing on the, I can't.

00:46:18.280 | - You just do the points thing, you know, against the bots.

00:46:20.920 | - Yeah, against the bots.

00:46:21.960 | And I can't even do the,

00:46:23.520 | there's like a hard one and there's a very hard one.

00:46:26.920 | - That's crazy, yeah.

00:46:27.760 | - That's crazy.

00:46:28.600 | I can't, I don't even enjoy the hard one.

00:46:29.920 | The crazy I really don't enjoy.

00:46:32.040 | 'Cause it's intense.

00:46:33.680 | You have to constantly try to win

00:46:35.000 | as opposed to enjoy building a little world and-

00:46:37.960 | - Yeah, no, no, there's no time for exploration

00:46:39.520 | in polytopia, you gotta get,

00:46:40.720 | well, once you graduate from the crazies,

00:46:42.760 | then you can come play the-

00:46:44.560 | - Graduate from the crazies.

00:46:46.440 | - Yeah, so in order to be able to play a decent game

00:46:48.640 | against like, you know, our group,

00:46:50.920 | you'll need to be consistently winning

00:46:55.640 | like 90% of games against 15 crazy bots.

00:46:58.280 | - Yeah.

00:46:59.160 | - And you'll be able to, like,

00:47:00.440 | there'll be, I could teach you it within a day, honestly.

00:47:03.360 | - How to beat the crazies?

00:47:04.640 | - How to beat the crazies.

00:47:05.720 | And then you'll be ready for the big leagues.

00:47:08.120 | - Generalizes to more than just polytopia, but okay.

00:47:12.400 | Why were we talking about polytopia?

00:47:14.360 | Losing hurts.

00:47:15.960 | - Losing hurts, oh yeah, yes, competitiveness over time.

00:47:19.360 | - Oh yeah.

00:47:20.360 | - I think it's more that, at least for me,

00:47:23.360 | I still care about playing,

00:47:24.720 | about winning when I choose to play something.

00:47:26.480 | It's just that I don't see the world

00:47:28.680 | as zero sum as I used to, you know?

00:47:32.080 | I think as one gets older and wiser,

00:47:34.960 | you start to see the world more as a positive something,

00:47:38.040 | or at least you're more aware of externalities

00:47:40.800 | of scenarios, of competitive interactions.

00:47:43.760 | And so, yeah, I just, like, I'm more,

00:47:47.480 | and I'm more aware of my own, you know, like,

00:47:50.160 | if I have a really strong emotional response to losing,

00:47:52.760 | and that makes me then feel shitty for the rest of the day,

00:47:55.000 | and then I beat myself up mentally for it,

00:47:57.200 | like, I'm now more aware

00:47:58.640 | that that's unnecessary negative externality.

00:48:01.680 | So I'm like, okay, I need to find a way to turn this down,

00:48:03.920 | you know, dial this down a bit.

00:48:05.280 | - Was poker the thing that has,

00:48:07.560 | if you think back at your life

00:48:09.680 | and think about some of the lower points of your life,

00:48:12.160 | like the darker places you've got in your mind,

00:48:15.000 | did it have to do something with poker?

00:48:17.120 | Like, did losing spark the descent into a new thing?

00:48:22.120 | The descent into darkness, or was it something else?

00:48:24.760 | - I think my darkest points in poker

00:48:29.480 | were when I was wanting to quit and move on to other things,

00:48:34.480 | but I felt like I hadn't ticked all the boxes

00:48:38.360 | I wanted to tick.

00:48:40.000 | Like, I wanted to be the most winningest female player,

00:48:43.760 | which is by itself a bad goal.

00:48:45.520 | You know, that was one of my initial goals,

00:48:48.000 | and I was like, well, I haven't, you know,

00:48:48.840 | and I wanted to win a WPT event.

00:48:50.960 | I've won one of these, I've won one of these,

00:48:52.160 | but I want one of those as well.

00:48:53.600 | And that sort of, again, like,

00:48:57.440 | is a drive of like over-optimization to random metrics

00:49:00.120 | that I decided were important

00:49:01.600 | without much wisdom at the time, but then I carried on.

00:49:05.240 | That made me continue chasing it longer

00:49:09.600 | than I still actually had the passion to chase it for.

00:49:12.920 | And I don't have any regrets that, you know,

00:49:15.760 | I played for as long as I did, because who knows, you know,

00:49:18.200 | I wouldn't be sitting here,

00:49:19.280 | I wouldn't be living this incredible life

00:49:21.040 | that I'm living now.

00:49:22.680 | - This is the height of your life right now.

00:49:24.920 | - This is it, peak experience, absolute pinnacle

00:49:28.120 | here in your robot land.

00:49:31.360 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:49:32.200 | - With your creepy light.

00:49:33.600 | No, it is, I mean, I wouldn't change a thing

00:49:37.360 | about my life right now,

00:49:38.280 | and I feel very blessed to say that.

00:49:40.080 | But the dark times were in the sort of like 2016 to 18,

00:49:48.040 | even sooner really, where I was like,

00:49:50.360 | I'd stopped loving the game

00:49:53.160 | and I was going through the motions.

00:49:55.480 | And I would, and then I was like, you know,

00:49:59.720 | I would take the losses harder than I needed to,

00:50:02.240 | 'cause I'm like, "Oh, it's another one."

00:50:03.400 | And it was, I was aware that like,

00:50:04.880 | I felt like my life was ticking away and I was like,

00:50:06.480 | is this gonna be what's on my tombstone?

00:50:07.960 | Oh yeah, she played the game of, you know,

00:50:09.600 | this zero-sum game of poker,

00:50:11.720 | slightly more optimally than her next opponent.

00:50:14.120 | Like, cool, great, legacy, you know?

00:50:16.440 | So I just wanted, you know,

00:50:19.040 | there was something in me that knew I needed

00:50:20.240 | to be doing something more directly impactful

00:50:24.120 | and just meaningful.

00:50:25.280 | It was just like a search for meaning.

00:50:26.280 | And I think it's a thing a lot of poker players,

00:50:27.960 | even a lot of, I imagine any games players

00:50:30.960 | who sort of love intellectual pursuits,

00:50:34.520 | you know, I think you should ask

00:50:37.000 | Magnus Carlsen this question.

00:50:38.120 | - Yeah, walking away from chess, right?

00:50:39.800 | - Yeah, like it must be so hard for him.

00:50:41.520 | You know, he's been on the top for so long

00:50:43.760 | and it's like, well, now what?

00:50:45.280 | He's got this incredible brain, like what to put it to?

00:50:48.680 | And yeah, it's-

00:50:52.120 | - It's this weird moment where I've just spoken

00:50:55.240 | with people that won multiple gold medals at the Olympics

00:50:58.360 | and the depression hits hard after you win.

00:51:01.540 | - Dopamine crash.

00:51:04.160 | - 'Cause it's a kind of a goodbye,

00:51:05.600 | saying goodbye to that person,

00:51:06.920 | to all the dreams you had,

00:51:07.960 | the thought you thought would give meaning to your life.

00:51:11.880 | But in fact, life is full of constant pursuits of meaning.

00:51:16.880 | You don't like arrive and figure it all out

00:51:20.240 | and there's endless bliss, no, it continues going on and on.

00:51:23.980 | You constantly have to figure out to rediscover yourself.

00:51:27.840 | And so for you, like that struggle to say goodbye to poker,

00:51:31.600 | you have to like find the next-

00:51:33.800 | - There's always a bigger game, that's the thing.

00:51:35.640 | That's my like motto, it's like, what's the next game?

00:51:38.440 | And more importantly,

00:51:41.200 | because obviously game usually implies zero sum,

00:51:43.120 | like what's the game which is like omni-win?

00:51:46.560 | Look, what- - Omni-win?

00:51:47.640 | - Omni-win. - Why is omni-win

00:51:48.920 | is so important?

00:51:50.720 | - Because if everyone plays zero sum games,

00:51:54.680 | that's a fast track to either completely stagnate

00:51:57.160 | as a civilization, but more actually,

00:51:59.200 | far more likely to extinct ourselves.

00:52:01.320 | You know, like the playing field is finite.

00:52:07.440 | Nuclear powers are playing a game of poker

00:52:10.680 | with their chips of nuclear weapons, right?

00:52:14.560 | And the stakes have gotten so large

00:52:17.080 | that if anyone makes a single bet, fires some weapons,

00:52:20.680 | the playing field breaks.

00:52:22.160 | I made a video on this.

00:52:23.320 | The playing field is finite.

00:52:26.960 | And if we keep playing these adversarial zero sum games,

00:52:31.600 | thinking that in order for us to win,

00:52:34.080 | someone else has to lose,

00:52:35.480 | or if we lose that someone else wins,

00:52:37.760 | that will extinct us.

00:52:40.000 | It's just a matter of when.

00:52:41.120 | - What do you think about that mutually assured destruction,

00:52:44.840 | that very simple,

00:52:46.360 | almost to the point of caricaturing game theory idea

00:52:50.000 | that does seem to be at the core

00:52:52.360 | of why we haven't blown each other up yet

00:52:54.040 | with nuclear weapons.

00:52:55.680 | Do you think there's some truth to that,

00:52:57.560 | this kind of stabilizing force

00:53:00.200 | of mutually assured destruction?

00:53:01.480 | And do you think that's gonna hold up

00:53:04.960 | through the 21st century?

00:53:07.360 | - I mean, it has held, yes.

00:53:10.400 | There's definitely truth to it,

00:53:11.720 | that it was a, you know, it's a Nash equilibrium.

00:53:14.800 | - Yeah, are you surprised it held this long?

00:53:17.320 | Isn't it crazy?

00:53:18.480 | - It is crazy when you factor in

00:53:20.200 | all the like near miss accidental firings.

00:53:24.680 | Yes, that's makes me wonder, like, you know,

00:53:28.160 | are you familiar with the like

00:53:29.000 | quantum suicide thought experiment?

00:53:31.160 | Where it's basically like, you have a, you know,

00:53:34.960 | like a Russian roulette type scenario

00:53:37.560 | hooked up to some kind of quantum event,

00:53:40.640 | you know, particle splitting or pair particle splitting.

00:53:45.640 | And if it, you know, if it goes A,

00:53:48.440 | then the gun doesn't go off and it goes B,

00:53:50.280 | then it does go off and it kills you.

00:53:52.480 | Because you can only ever be in the universe,

00:53:55.040 | you know, assuming like the Everett branch,

00:53:56.560 | you know, multiverse theory,

00:53:57.800 | you will always only end up in the branch

00:54:00.240 | where you continually make, you know, option A comes in.

00:54:03.320 | But you run that experiment enough times,

00:54:05.440 | it starts getting pretty damn, you know,

00:54:07.080 | out of the tree gets huge.

00:54:09.360 | There's a million different scenarios,

00:54:10.920 | but you'll always find yourself in this,

00:54:12.440 | in the one where it didn't go off.

00:54:14.840 | And so from that perspective,

00:54:18.640 | you are essentially immortal.

00:54:20.800 | 'Cause someone, and you will only find yourself

00:54:22.600 | in the set of observers that make it down that path.

00:54:24.960 | - Yeah. - So it's kind of a--

00:54:26.640 | - That doesn't mean, that doesn't--

00:54:29.200 | - That doesn't mean you're still not gonna be fucked

00:54:32.200 | at some point in your life.

00:54:33.040 | - No, of course not.

00:54:33.880 | No, I'm not advocating like that we're all immortal

00:54:36.040 | because of this.

00:54:36.880 | It's just like a fun thought experiment.

00:54:38.520 | And the point is it like raises this thing

00:54:40.120 | of like these things called observer selection effects,

00:54:42.440 | which Bostrom, Nick Bostrom talks about a lot.

00:54:44.480 | And I think people should go read.

00:54:46.240 | - It's really powerful,

00:54:47.080 | but I think it could be overextended that logic.

00:54:48.920 | I'm not sure exactly how it can be.

00:54:52.280 | I just feel like you can get,

00:54:55.160 | you can overgeneralize that logic somehow.

00:54:58.360 | - Well, no, I mean, it leads you into like solipsism,

00:55:00.680 | which is a very dangerous mindset.

00:55:02.160 | Again, if everyone like falls into solipsism of like,

00:55:04.400 | well, I'll be fine.

00:55:05.760 | That's a great way of creating a very,

00:55:08.880 | self-terminating environment.

00:55:10.880 | But my point is, is that with the nuclear weapons thing,

00:55:14.600 | there have been at least, I think it's 12 or 11

00:55:17.160 | near misses of like just stupid things.

00:55:21.080 | Like there was moonrise over Norway

00:55:24.200 | and it made weird reflections of some glaciers

00:55:26.880 | in the mountains, which set off,

00:55:28.840 | I think the alarms of NORAD radar.

00:55:33.840 | And that put them on high alert, nearly ready to shoot.

00:55:35.720 | And it was only because the head of Russian military

00:55:39.600 | happened to be at the UN in New York at the time

00:55:42.000 | that they go like, well, wait a second,

00:55:43.360 | why would they fire now when their guy is there?

00:55:47.200 | And it was only that lucky happenstance,

00:55:49.280 | which doesn't happen very often

00:55:50.240 | where they didn't then escalate it into firing.

00:55:52.000 | And there's a bunch of these different ones.

00:55:53.880 | Stanislav Petrov, like saved,

00:55:55.960 | the person who should be the most famous person on earth,

00:55:57.920 | 'cause he's probably on expectation

00:55:59.560 | saved the most human lives of anyone,

00:56:01.160 | like billions of people by ignoring Russian orders to fire

00:56:05.280 | because he felt in his gut

00:56:06.280 | that actually this was a false alarm.

00:56:07.440 | And it turned out to be, you know, very hard thing to do.

00:56:11.040 | And there's so many of those scenarios

00:56:12.560 | that I can't help but wonder at this point

00:56:14.520 | that we aren't having this kind of like selection effect

00:56:16.840 | thing going on.

00:56:17.920 | 'Cause you look back and you're like,

00:56:18.800 | geez, that's a lot of near misses.

00:56:20.800 | But of course we don't know the actual probabilities

00:56:22.880 | that they would have lent,

00:56:23.720 | each one would have ended up in nuclear war.

00:56:24.840 | Maybe they were not that likely, but still.

00:56:26.720 | The point is, it's a very dark, stupid game

00:56:29.440 | that we're playing.

00:56:30.880 | And it is an absolute moral imperative, if you ask me,

00:56:35.320 | to get as many people thinking about ways

00:56:37.240 | to make this like very precarious.

00:56:39.560 | 'Cause we're in a Nash equilibrium,

00:56:41.160 | but it's not like we're in the bottom of a pit.

00:56:42.840 | You know, if you would like map it topographically,

00:56:46.400 | it's not like a stable ball at the bottom of a thing.

00:56:48.360 | We're not in equilibrium because of that.

00:56:49.400 | We're on the top of a hill with a ball balanced on top.

00:56:52.360 | And just at any little nudge could send it flying down

00:56:55.560 | and nuclear war pops off and hellfire and bad times.

00:56:58.880 | - On the positive side,

00:57:01.080 | life on earth will probably still continue.

00:57:03.200 | And another intelligent civilization might still pop up.

00:57:06.160 | - Maybe.

00:57:07.000 | - Several millennia after.

00:57:08.440 | - Pick your X risk, depends on the X risk.

00:57:10.160 | Nuclear war, sure, that's one of the perhaps less bad ones.

00:57:13.080 | Green goo through synthetic biology, very bad.

00:57:17.560 | Will turn, you know, destroy all organic matter through,

00:57:22.560 | you know, it's basically like a biological

00:57:27.080 | paperclip maximizer, also bad.

00:57:28.880 | Or AI type, you know, mass extinction thing as well

00:57:32.480 | would also be bad.

00:57:33.320 | - Shh, they're listening.

00:57:35.000 | There's a robot right behind you.

00:57:36.440 | Okay, wait, so let me ask you about this

00:57:38.680 | from a game theory perspective.

00:57:40.360 | Do you think we're living in a simulation?

00:57:42.280 | Do you think we're living inside a video game

00:57:44.640 | created by somebody else?

00:57:45.920 | (laughing)

00:57:47.400 | - Well, I think, well, so what was the second part

00:57:49.840 | of the question?

00:57:50.680 | Do I think we're living in a simulation and?

00:57:52.600 | - A simulation that is observed by somebody

00:57:56.640 | for purpose of entertainment.

00:57:58.600 | So like a video game.

00:57:59.640 | Are we listening?

00:58:00.480 | Are we, because there's a,

00:58:03.120 | it's like Phil Hellmuth type of situation, right?

00:58:05.240 | Like there's a creepy level of like,

00:58:09.920 | this is kind of fun and interesting.

00:58:12.640 | Like there's a lot of interesting stuff going on.

00:58:16.920 | I mean, that could be somehow integrated

00:58:18.760 | into the evolutionary process where,

00:58:20.680 | the way we perceive and--

00:58:24.120 | - Are you asking me if I believe in God?

00:58:26.000 | Sounds like it.

00:58:28.800 | - Kind of, but God seems to be not optimizing

00:58:33.800 | in the different formulations of God that we conceive of.

00:58:37.400 | He doesn't seem to be or she optimizing

00:58:39.960 | for like personal entertainment.

00:58:42.700 | Or maybe the older gods did,

00:58:45.840 | but the, you know, just like the basically like a teenager

00:58:49.800 | in their mom's basement watching create a fun universe

00:58:54.200 | to observe what kind of crazy shit might happen.

00:58:58.520 | - Okay, so to try and ask this,

00:59:00.080 | do I think there is some kind of extraneous intelligence

00:59:11.280 | to like our classic measurable universe

00:59:16.200 | that we can measure with,

00:59:18.240 | through our current physics and instruments?

00:59:22.920 | I think so, yes.

00:59:25.040 | Partly because I've had just small little bits of evidence

00:59:30.760 | in my own life, which have made me question,

00:59:34.040 | like, so I was a diehard atheist even five years ago.

00:59:39.400 | You know, I got into like the rationality community,

00:59:41.680 | big fan of less wrong, continue to be incredible resource.

00:59:45.680 | But I've just started to have too many little snippets

00:59:51.320 | of experience, which don't make sense

00:59:58.040 | with the current sort of purely materialistic explanation

01:00:01.600 | of how reality works.

01:00:08.680 | - Isn't that just like a humbling practical realization

01:00:13.680 | that we don't know how reality works?

01:00:17.400 | Isn't that just a reminder to yourself?

01:00:19.360 | - Yeah, no, it's a reminder of epistemic humility

01:00:21.520 | because I fell too hard, you know, same as people,

01:00:24.360 | like I think, you know, many people who are just like,

01:00:26.440 | my religion is the way, this is the correct way,

01:00:28.280 | this is the law, you are immoral

01:00:31.200 | if you don't follow this, blah, blah, blah.

01:00:32.600 | I think they are lacking epistemic humility.

01:00:35.080 | They're a little too much hubris there.

01:00:37.040 | But similarly, I think the sort of the Richard Dawkins brand

01:00:39.720 | of atheism is too rigid as well and doesn't,

01:00:44.720 | you know, there's a way to try and navigate these questions

01:00:50.960 | which still honors the scientific method,

01:00:52.720 | which I still think is our best sort of realm

01:00:54.760 | of like reasonable inquiry, you know, a method of inquiry.

01:00:57.600 | So an example, I have two kind of notable examples

01:01:03.280 | that like really rattled my cage.

01:01:06.640 | The first one was actually in 2010, early on in,

01:01:09.800 | quite early on in my poker career.

01:01:13.480 | And I, the, I, the, remember the Icelandic volcano

01:01:18.480 | that erupted that like shut down

01:01:20.520 | kind of all Atlantic airspace?

01:01:22.760 | And I, it meant I got stuck down in the South of France.

01:01:25.280 | I was there for something else.

01:01:27.160 | And I couldn't get home and someone said,

01:01:29.920 | well, there's a big poker tournament happening in Italy.

01:01:31.880 | Maybe do you wanna go?

01:01:33.040 | I was like, oh, right, sure.

01:01:33.880 | Like let's, you know, got a train across,

01:01:35.880 | found a way to get there.

01:01:37.080 | And the buy-in was 5,000 euros,

01:01:39.920 | which was much bigger than my bankroll would normally allow.

01:01:42.520 | And so I played a feeder tournament,

01:01:45.960 | won my way in kind of like I did with the Monte Carlo,

01:01:47.920 | big one.

01:01:48.760 | So then I won my way, you know,

01:01:50.920 | from 500 euros into 5,000 euros to play this thing.

01:01:54.200 | And on day one of then the big tournament,

01:01:58.040 | which turned out to have,

01:01:59.000 | it was the biggest tournament ever held in Europe

01:02:00.880 | at the time.

01:02:01.720 | It got over like 1,200 people, absolutely huge.

01:02:04.560 | And I remember they dimmed the lights

01:02:06.640 | for before, you know, the normal shuffle up and deal

01:02:10.240 | to tell everyone to start playing.

01:02:12.120 | And they played Chemical Brothers' "Hey Boy, Hey Girl,"

01:02:16.080 | which I don't know why it's notable,

01:02:17.360 | but it was just like a really,

01:02:18.360 | it was a song I always liked.

01:02:19.200 | It was like one of these like pump me up songs.

01:02:21.200 | And I was sitting there thinking, oh yeah, it's exciting.

01:02:22.920 | I'm playing this really big tournament.

01:02:24.600 | And out of nowhere, just suddenly this voice in my head,

01:02:29.320 | just, and it sounded like my own sort of,

01:02:32.000 | you know, when you think in your mind,

01:02:33.600 | you hear a voice kind of, right?

01:02:35.000 | At least I do.

01:02:35.840 | And so it sounded like my own voice and it said,

01:02:38.640 | you are gonna win this tournament.

01:02:40.320 | And it was so powerful that I got this like wave of like,

01:02:44.200 | you know, sort of goosebumps down my body.

01:02:46.760 | And I even, I remember looking around being like,

01:02:48.760 | did anyone else hear that?

01:02:49.840 | And obviously people are on their phones,

01:02:51.040 | like no one else heard it.

01:02:51.880 | And I was like, okay.

01:02:53.480 | Six days later, I win the fucking tournament

01:02:58.160 | out of 1,200 people.

01:03:01.480 | And I don't know how to explain it.

01:03:06.480 | Okay, yes, maybe I have that feeling before every time

01:03:13.840 | I play and it's just that I happened to, you know,

01:03:16.200 | because I won the tournament, I retroactively remembered it.

01:03:18.360 | But that's just-

01:03:19.400 | - Or the feeling gave you a kind of,

01:03:22.360 | now from the film "Hellmuthian."

01:03:25.000 | - Well, exactly.

01:03:25.840 | - Like it gave you a confident, a deep confidence.

01:03:28.360 | - And it did, it definitely did.

01:03:29.880 | I remember then feeling this like sort of,

01:03:32.040 | well, although I remember then on day one,

01:03:33.960 | I then went and lost half my stack quite early on.

01:03:35.920 | And I remember thinking like, oh, well that was bullshit.

01:03:37.720 | You know, what kind of premonition is this?

01:03:40.240 | Thinking, oh, I'm out.

01:03:41.080 | But you know, I managed to like keep it together

01:03:42.920 | and recover and then just went like pretty perfectly

01:03:46.080 | from then on.

01:03:47.440 | And either way, it definitely instilled me

01:03:51.080 | with this confidence.

01:03:52.800 | And I don't want to put a, I can't put an explanation.

01:03:55.840 | Like, you know, was it some, you know,

01:03:58.680 | huge extra supernatural thing driving me

01:04:03.680 | or was it just my own self-confidence and so on

01:04:06.520 | that just made me make the right decisions?

01:04:08.000 | I don't know.

01:04:08.880 | And I don't, I'm not going to put a frame on it.

01:04:10.680 | And I think-

01:04:11.520 | - I think I know a good explanation.

01:04:12.400 | So we're a bunch of NPCs living in this world

01:04:14.720 | created by, in the simulation.

01:04:16.600 | And then people, not people,

01:04:19.200 | creatures from outside of the simulation

01:04:21.280 | sort of can tune in and play your character.

01:04:24.200 | And that feeling you got is somebody just like,

01:04:27.240 | they got to play a poker tournament through you.

01:04:29.320 | - Honestly, it felt like that.

01:04:30.680 | It did actually feel a little bit like that.

01:04:33.120 | But it's been 12 years now.

01:04:35.200 | I've retold the story many times.

01:04:36.680 | Like, I don't even know how much I can trust my memory.

01:04:38.960 | - You're just an NPC retelling the same story.

01:04:41.520 | 'Cause they just played the tournament and left.

01:04:43.800 | - Yeah, they're like, oh, that was fun.

01:04:44.760 | Cool. - Yeah, cool. Next.

01:04:46.080 | And now you're for the rest of your life

01:04:48.520 | left as a boring NPC retelling this story of greatness.

01:04:51.880 | - But it was, and what was interesting was that after that,

01:04:53.720 | then I didn't obviously win a major tournament

01:04:55.640 | for quite a long time.

01:04:56.800 | And it left, that was actually another sort of dark period

01:05:01.200 | because I had this incredible,

01:05:02.800 | like the highs of winning that,

01:05:04.360 | just on a material level were insane, winning the money.

01:05:07.080 | I was on the front page of newspapers

01:05:08.520 | 'cause there was this girl that came out of nowhere

01:05:10.200 | and won this big thing.

01:05:12.160 | And so again, sort of chasing that feeling was difficult.

01:05:16.720 | But then on top of that, there was this feeling

01:05:18.160 | of almost being touched by something bigger

01:05:22.320 | that was like, ah.

01:05:24.080 | - So maybe, did you have a sense

01:05:26.600 | that I might be somebody special?

01:05:29.520 | Like this kind of,

01:05:31.880 | I think that's the confidence thing

01:05:36.520 | that maybe you could do something special

01:05:40.240 | in this world after all kind of feeling.

01:05:42.320 | - I definitely, I mean, this is the thing

01:05:45.320 | I think everybody wrestles with to an extent, right?

01:05:47.240 | We all, we are truly the protagonists in our own lives.

01:05:51.520 | And so it's a natural bias, human bias to feel special.

01:05:56.520 | And I think, and in some ways we are special.

01:06:00.760 | Every single person is special because you are that,

01:06:03.760 | the universe does, the world literally

01:06:05.200 | does revolve around you.

01:06:06.200 | That's the thing in some respect.

01:06:08.560 | But of course, if you then zoom out

01:06:10.480 | and take the amalgam of everyone's experiences,

01:06:12.080 | then no, it doesn't.

01:06:12.920 | So there is this shared sort of objective reality,

01:06:15.680 | but sorry, there's objective reality that is shared,

01:06:17.720 | but then there's also this subjective reality,

01:06:19.240 | which is truly unique to you.

01:06:20.720 | And I think both of those things coexist.

01:06:22.280 | And it's not like one is correct and one isn't.

01:06:24.440 | And again, anyone who's like,

01:06:26.280 | oh no, your lived experience is everything

01:06:28.160 | versus your lived experience is nothing.

01:06:30.080 | No, it's a blend between these two things.

01:06:32.480 | They can exist concurrently.

01:06:33.840 | - But there's a certain kind of sense

01:06:35.280 | that at least I've had my whole life.

01:06:36.800 | And I think a lot of people have this as like,

01:06:38.480 | well, I'm just like this little person.

01:06:40.960 | Surely I can't be one of those people

01:06:42.920 | that do the big thing, right?

01:06:46.560 | There's all these big people doing big things.

01:06:48.640 | There's big actors and actresses, big musicians.

01:06:53.400 | There's big business owners and all that kind of stuff,

01:06:57.040 | scientists and so on.

01:06:58.680 | I have my own subjective experience that I enjoy and so on,

01:07:02.440 | but there's like a different layer.

01:07:04.760 | Surely I can't do those great things.

01:07:09.440 | I mean, one of the things just having interacted

01:07:11.480 | with a lot of great people, I realized,

01:07:14.160 | no, they're like just the same humans as me.

01:07:19.160 | And that realization I think is really empowering.

01:07:22.160 | And to remind yourself-- - But are they?

01:07:25.040 | - Huh? - But are they?

01:07:25.920 | - Are they?

01:07:26.760 | Well, in terms-- - Depends on some, yeah.

01:07:30.560 | - They're like a bag of insecurities and--

01:07:33.920 | - Yes.

01:07:34.760 | - Peculiar sort of,

01:07:39.320 | like their own little weirdnesses and so on.

01:07:43.120 | I should say also not,

01:07:44.920 | they have the capacity for brilliance,

01:07:50.160 | but they're not generically brilliant.

01:07:52.880 | Like, we tend to say this person or that person is brilliant

01:07:57.880 | but really, no, they're just like sitting there

01:08:01.240 | and thinking through stuff, just like the rest of us.

01:08:05.280 | I think they're in the habit of thinking through stuff,

01:08:08.120 | seriously, and they've built up a habit

01:08:10.600 | of not allowing their mind to get trapped

01:08:14.120 | in a bunch of bullshit and minutiae of day-to-day life.

01:08:17.040 | They really think big ideas, but those big ideas,

01:08:20.080 | it's like allowing yourself the freedom to think big,

01:08:24.720 | to realize that you can be one

01:08:27.280 | that actually solved this particular big problem.

01:08:29.280 | First, identify a big problem that you care about,

01:08:31.320 | and then like, I can actually be the one

01:08:33.240 | that solves this problem.

01:08:34.880 | And like, allowing yourself to believe that.

01:08:37.320 | And I think sometimes you do need to have like--

01:08:38.920 | - Yeah. - That shock go

01:08:40.280 | through your body and a voice tells you

01:08:41.680 | you're gonna win this tournament.

01:08:42.880 | - Well, exactly, and whether it was,

01:08:44.880 | it's this idea of useful fictions.

01:08:50.520 | So again, like going through the classic rationalist training

01:08:54.920 | of "Less Wrong" where it's like, you want your map,

01:08:57.440 | you know, the image you have of the world in your head

01:09:00.080 | to as accurately match up with how the world actually is.

01:09:04.400 | You want the map and the territory to perfectly align as,

01:09:07.240 | you know, you want it to be

01:09:08.440 | as an accurate representation as possible.

01:09:11.040 | I don't know if I fully subscribe to that anymore,

01:09:13.920 | having now had these moments of like,

01:09:16.400 | feeling of something either bigger

01:09:18.560 | or just actually just being overconfident.

01:09:20.400 | Like there is value in overconfidence sometimes, I do.

01:09:23.760 | If you would, you know, take, you know, take

01:09:26.240 | Magnus Carlsen, right?

01:09:30.600 | If he, I'm sure from a young age,

01:09:32.360 | he knew he was very talented,

01:09:34.440 | but I wouldn't be surprised if he was also

01:09:36.720 | had something in him to,

01:09:39.200 | well, actually maybe he's a bad example

01:09:40.320 | 'cause he truly is the world's greatest,

01:09:42.640 | but someone who, it was unclear

01:09:44.440 | whether they were gonna be the world's greatest,

01:09:45.720 | but ended up doing extremely well

01:09:47.320 | because they had this innate, deep self-confidence,

01:09:50.320 | this like even overblown idea

01:09:53.120 | of how good their relative skill level is.

01:09:54.920 | That gave them the confidence to then pursue this thing

01:09:56.960 | and like, with the kind of focus and dedication

01:10:00.480 | that it requires to excel

01:10:01.840 | in whatever it is you're trying to do, you know?

01:10:03.480 | And so there are these useful fictions

01:10:06.120 | and that's where I think I diverge slightly

01:10:09.560 | with the classic sort of rationalist community

01:10:13.440 | because that's a field that is worth studying

01:10:19.680 | of like how the stories we tell,

01:10:23.280 | what the stories we tell to ourselves,

01:10:25.040 | even if they are actually false

01:10:26.240 | and even if we suspect they might be false,

01:10:29.040 | how it's better to sort of have that like

01:10:30.400 | little bit of faith,

01:10:32.000 | the like value in faith, I think, actually.

01:10:34.360 | And that's partly another thing

01:10:35.840 | that's like now led me to explore,

01:10:37.640 | you know, the concept of God,

01:10:40.600 | whether you wanna call it a simulator,

01:10:42.920 | the classic theological thing.

01:10:44.280 | I think we're all like elucidating to the same thing.

01:10:46.440 | Now, I don't know, I'm not saying, you know,

01:10:47.760 | 'cause obviously the Christian God is like,

01:10:49.760 | you know, all benevolent, endless love.

01:10:53.480 | The simulation, at least one of the simulation hypothesis

01:10:56.680 | is like, as you said, like a teenager in his bedroom

01:10:58.680 | who doesn't really care, doesn't give a shit

01:11:01.200 | about the individuals within there.

01:11:02.560 | It just like wants to see how this thing plays out

01:11:05.120 | 'cause it's curious and it could turn it off like that.

01:11:06.960 | You know, where on the sort of psychopathy

01:11:09.880 | to benevolent spectrum God is, I don't know.

01:11:13.800 | But having this,

01:11:18.600 | just having a little bit of faith

01:11:20.160 | that there is something else out there

01:11:21.720 | that might be interested in our outcome

01:11:24.360 | is I think an essential thing actually for people to find.

01:11:27.960 | A, because it creates commonality between,

01:11:29.680 | it's something we can all share.

01:11:31.880 | And like, it is uniquely humbling of all of us to an extent.

01:11:35.040 | It's like a common objective.

01:11:36.880 | But B, it gives people that little bit of like reserve,

01:11:41.400 | you know, when things get really dark.

01:11:43.400 | And I do think things are gonna get pretty dark

01:11:44.880 | over the next few years.

01:11:46.080 | But it gives that like,

01:11:48.280 | to think that there's something out there

01:11:50.760 | that actually wants our game to keep going.

01:11:53.160 | I keep calling it the game, you know.

01:11:55.040 | It's a thing, C and I, we call it the game.

01:11:59.280 | - You and C is AKA Grimes, we call what the game?

01:12:03.680 | Everything, the whole thing?

01:12:05.000 | - Yeah, we joke about like--

01:12:06.680 | - So everything is a game?

01:12:07.880 | - Not, well, the universe, like what if it's a game

01:12:12.320 | and the goal of the game is to figure out like,

01:12:14.600 | well, either how to beat it, how to get out of it.

01:12:16.960 | You know, maybe this universe is an escape room,

01:12:19.920 | like a giant escape room.

01:12:21.240 | And the goal is to figure out,

01:12:24.000 | put all the pieces of puzzle,

01:12:25.160 | figure out how it works

01:12:26.880 | in order to like unlock this like hyper dimensional key

01:12:29.800 | and get out beyond what it is.

01:12:31.280 | That's--

01:12:32.120 | - No, but then, so you're saying it's like different levels

01:12:34.400 | and it's like a cage within a cage within a cage

01:12:36.520 | and one cage at a time, you figure out how to escape that.

01:12:40.000 | - Like a new level up, you know,

01:12:42.240 | like us becoming multi-planetary would be a level up

01:12:44.400 | or us, you know, figuring out how to upload

01:12:46.680 | our consciousnesses to the thing,

01:12:48.240 | that would probably be a leveling up.

01:12:49.600 | Or spiritually, you know, humanity becoming more combined

01:12:53.760 | and less adversarial and bloodthirsty

01:12:56.880 | and us becoming a little bit more enlightened,

01:12:58.760 | that would be a leveling up.

01:12:59.600 | You know, there's many different frames to it,

01:13:01.840 | whether it's physical, you know, digital,

01:13:05.120 | or like metaphysical--

01:13:05.960 | - I wonder what the level,

01:13:06.800 | I think level one for Earth

01:13:09.240 | is probably the biological evolutionary process.

01:13:14.040 | So going from single cell organisms to early humans.

01:13:18.360 | Then maybe level two is whatever's happening

01:13:22.200 | inside our minds and creating ideas

01:13:24.000 | and creating technologies.

01:13:26.100 | That's like evolutionary process of ideas.

01:13:30.200 | And then multi-planetary is interesting.

01:13:34.640 | Is that fundamentally different

01:13:35.880 | from what we're doing here on Earth?

01:13:37.880 | Probably, 'cause it allows us to exponentially scale.

01:13:41.520 | - It delays the Malthusian trap, right?

01:13:47.040 | It's a way to keep the playing field,

01:13:51.800 | to make the playing field get larger

01:13:53.440 | so that it can accommodate more of our stuff, more of us.

01:13:57.320 | And that's a good thing,

01:13:58.480 | but I don't know if it like fully solves this issue of,

01:14:03.480 | well, this thing called Moloch,

01:14:06.800 | which we haven't talked about yet,

01:14:08.720 | which is basically, I call it

01:14:11.040 | the god of unhealthy competition.

01:14:12.760 | - Yeah, let's go to Moloch.

01:14:14.040 | What's Moloch?

01:14:15.040 | You did a great video on Moloch,

01:14:17.480 | one aspect of it, the application of it to--

01:14:19.880 | - Yeah, Instagram beauty filters.

01:14:22.440 | - True.

01:14:23.600 | - Very niche.

01:14:25.000 | I wanted to start off small.

01:14:27.360 | So Moloch was originally coined as,

01:14:32.360 | well, so apparently back in the Canaanite times,

01:14:39.560 | it was to say ancient Carthaginian,

01:14:41.440 | I can never say it, Carthaginian,

01:14:43.240 | somewhere around 300 BC or 200 AD, I don't know.

01:14:46.760 | There was supposedly this death cult

01:14:49.720 | who would sacrifice their children

01:14:53.240 | to this awful demon god thing they called Moloch

01:14:56.080 | in order to get power to win wars.

01:14:59.400 | So really dark, horrible things.

01:15:00.920 | And it was literally like about child sacrifice.

01:15:02.640 | Whether they actually existed or not, we don't know,

01:15:04.080 | but in mythology they did.

01:15:05.680 | And this god that they worshipped

01:15:07.240 | was this thing called Moloch.

01:15:09.280 | And then, I don't know,

01:15:10.960 | it seemed like it was kind of quiet throughout history

01:15:13.720 | in terms of mythology beyond that

01:15:15.440 | until this movie "Metropolis" in 1927 talked about this,

01:15:20.440 | you see that there was this incredible futuristic city

01:15:27.040 | that everyone was living great in,

01:15:29.080 | but then the protagonist goes underground into the sewers

01:15:31.360 | and sees that the city is run by this machine.

01:15:34.280 | And this machine basically would just like

01:15:36.160 | kill the workers all the time

01:15:38.080 | because it was just so hard to keep it running.

01:15:40.080 | They were always dying.

01:15:40.920 | So there was all this suffering that was required

01:15:43.000 | in order to keep the city going.

01:15:44.560 | And then the protagonist has this vision

01:15:45.920 | that this machine is actually this demon Moloch.

01:15:48.160 | So again, it's like this sort of mechanistic consumption

01:15:50.880 | of humans in order to get more power.

01:15:53.840 | And then Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem in the '60s,

01:15:58.720 | which incredible poem called "Howl"

01:16:01.920 | about this thing Moloch.

01:16:03.120 | And a lot of people sort of quite understandably

01:16:07.000 | take the interpretation of that,

01:16:09.160 | that he's talking about capitalism.

01:16:12.360 | But then the sort of piece to resistance

01:16:14.680 | that's moved Moloch into this idea of game theory

01:16:17.320 | was Scott Alexander of Slate's "Codex."

01:16:20.240 | Wrote this incredible,

01:16:22.600 | one that literally I think it might be my favorite piece

01:16:24.400 | of writing of all time.

01:16:25.280 | It's called "Meditations on Moloch."

01:16:27.160 | Everyone must go read it.

01:16:28.600 | And-

01:16:30.560 | - I say "Codex" is a blog.

01:16:31.880 | - It's a blog, yes.

01:16:33.400 | We can link to it in the show notes or something, right?

01:16:36.200 | No, don't.

01:16:37.040 | - Yes, yes.

01:16:39.280 | - But I like how you assume

01:16:42.280 | I have a professional operation going on here.

01:16:44.280 | - I mean-

01:16:45.120 | - I shall try to remember to-

01:16:45.960 | - You're wearing a suit.

01:16:46.800 | What do you want?

01:16:48.920 | You're giving the impression of it.

01:16:50.160 | - Yeah, I'll look, please.

01:16:51.520 | If I don't, please, somebody in the comments remind me.

01:16:54.040 | - I'll help you.

01:16:54.880 | - If you don't know this blog,

01:16:56.640 | it's one of the best blogs ever probably.

01:17:00.240 | You should probably be following it.

01:17:01.960 | - Yes.

01:17:02.800 | - Are blogs still a thing?

01:17:04.160 | I think they are still a thing, yeah.

01:17:05.760 | - He's migrated onto Substack, but yeah, it's still a blog.

01:17:08.880 | - Substack better not fuck things up.

01:17:11.520 | - I hope not, yeah.

01:17:12.640 | I hope they don't turn Moloch-y,

01:17:15.160 | which will mean something to people when we continue.

01:17:17.560 | (both laughing)

01:17:18.760 | - When I stop interrupting for once.

01:17:20.040 | - No, no, it's good.

01:17:21.560 | So anyway, so he writes this piece, "Meditations on Moloch,"

01:17:25.440 | and basically he analyzes the poem and he's like,

01:17:28.720 | "Okay, so it seems to be something relating

01:17:30.200 | to where competition goes wrong."

01:17:32.960 | And Moloch was historically this thing

01:17:36.400 | where people would sacrifice a thing that they care about,

01:17:40.120 | in this case, children, their own children,

01:17:42.480 | in order to gain power, a competitive advantage.

01:17:45.920 | And if you look at almost everything

01:17:48.320 | that sort of goes wrong in our society,

01:17:50.360 | it's that same process.

01:17:52.840 | So with the Instagram beauty filters thing,

01:17:55.520 | if you're trying to become a famous Instagram model,

01:18:02.360 | you are incentivized to post the hottest pictures

01:18:04.400 | of yourself that you can.

01:18:05.680 | You're trying to play that game.

01:18:07.280 | There's a lot of hot women on Instagram.

01:18:08.720 | How do you compete against them?

01:18:10.080 | You post really hot pictures

01:18:11.600 | and that's how you get more likes.

01:18:13.320 | As technology gets better,

01:18:16.080 | more makeup techniques come along.

01:18:19.320 | And then more recently, these beauty filters,

01:18:22.080 | where like at the touch of a button,

01:18:23.480 | it makes your face look absolutely incredible,

01:18:26.080 | compared to your natural face.

01:18:28.720 | These technologies come along.

01:18:31.600 | Everyone is incentivized to that short-term strategy.

01:18:35.640 | But on net, it's bad for everyone

01:18:39.040 | because now everyone is kind of feeling

01:18:40.480 | like they have to use these things.

01:18:41.680 | And these things, they make you,

01:18:43.080 | the reason why I talked about them in this video

01:18:44.400 | is 'cause I noticed it myself.

01:18:45.880 | Like I was trying to grow my Instagram for a while.

01:18:48.840 | I've given up on it now.

01:18:50.000 | And I noticed these filters, how good they made me look.

01:18:53.440 | And I'm like, well, I know that everyone else

01:18:56.400 | is kind of doing it.

01:18:57.240 | - Go subscribe to Liz's Instagram.

01:18:59.000 | - Please, so I don't have to use the filters.

01:19:00.840 | (both laughing)

01:19:02.200 | - Post a bunch of, yeah, make it blow up.

01:19:06.000 | So yeah, you felt the pressure actually.

01:19:08.440 | - Exactly, these short-term incentives to do this thing

01:19:12.760 | that either sacrifices your integrity or something else

01:19:17.280 | in order to stay competitive,

01:19:19.160 | which on aggregate creates this sort of race

01:19:23.760 | to the bottom spiral where everyone else ends up

01:19:25.880 | in a situation which is worse off than if they hadn't started

01:19:28.480 | than it were before.

01:19:29.320 | Kind of like if, like at a football stadium,

01:19:34.600 | the system is so badly designed,

01:19:36.400 | a competitive system of like everyone sitting

01:19:38.160 | and having a view, that if someone at the very front

01:19:40.240 | stands up to get an even better view,

01:19:42.080 | it forces everyone else behind

01:19:43.640 | to like adopt that same strategy,

01:19:45.440 | just to get to where they were before,

01:19:47.000 | but now everyone's stuck standing up.

01:19:49.160 | So you need this like top-down God's eye coordination

01:19:51.880 | to make it go back to the better state.

01:19:53.840 | But from within the system, you can't actually do that.

01:19:56.080 | So that's kind of what this Moloch thing is.

01:19:57.680 | It's this thing that makes people sacrifice values

01:20:01.600 | in order to optimize for winning the game in question,

01:20:04.440 | the short-term game.

01:20:05.480 | - But this Moloch, can you attribute it

01:20:09.760 | to any one centralized source,

01:20:11.680 | or is it an emergent phenomena

01:20:13.640 | from a large collection of people?

01:20:16.160 | - Exactly that.

01:20:17.000 | It's an emergent phenomena.

01:20:18.880 | It's a force of game theory.

01:20:21.280 | It's a force of bad incentives on a multi-agent system

01:20:25.600 | where you've got more, you know,

01:20:26.600 | prisoner's dilemma is technically a kind of Moloch-y

01:20:29.880 | system as well, but it's just a two-player thing.

01:20:31.960 | But another word for Moloch is multipolar trap,

01:20:35.720 | where basically you just got a lot of different people

01:20:37.760 | all competing for some kind of prize.

01:20:39.840 | And it would be better if everyone didn't do

01:20:43.200 | this one shitty strategy,

01:20:44.720 | but because that strategy gives you a short-term advantage,

01:20:47.240 | everyone's incentivized to do it,

01:20:48.480 | and so everyone ends up doing it.

01:20:49.840 | - So the responsibility for, I mean,

01:20:52.200 | social media is a really nice place

01:20:54.040 | for a large number of people to play game theory.

01:20:56.840 | And so they also have the ability

01:20:59.720 | to then design the rules of the game.

01:21:02.560 | And is it on them to try to anticipate what kind of,

01:21:06.960 | like to do the thing that poker players are doing,

01:21:08.960 | to run simulation?

01:21:11.080 | - Ideally, that would have been great.

01:21:12.360 | If, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack and all the,

01:21:15.800 | you know, the Twitter founders and everyone,

01:21:17.240 | if they had at least just run a few simulations

01:21:20.560 | of how their algorithms would, you know,

01:21:23.240 | different types of algorithms would turn out for society,

01:21:26.200 | that would have been great.

01:21:27.320 | - That's really difficult to do

01:21:28.680 | that kind of deep philosophical thinking

01:21:30.400 | about humanity, actually.

01:21:33.080 | So not kind of this level of how do we optimize engagement

01:21:38.080 | or what brings people joy in the short term,

01:21:42.840 | but how is this thing going to change

01:21:45.320 | the way people see the world?

01:21:47.960 | How is it gonna get morphed in iterative games played

01:21:52.960 | into something that will change society forever?

01:21:57.040 | That requires some deep thinking.

01:21:58.800 | I hope there's meetings like that inside companies,

01:22:02.600 | but I haven't seen them. - There aren't.

01:22:03.600 | That's the problem.

01:22:04.480 | And it's difficult because like when you're starting up

01:22:08.640 | a social media company, you know,

01:22:10.280 | you're aware that you've got investors to please,

01:22:14.120 | there's bills to pay, you know,

01:22:17.280 | there's only so much R&D you can afford to do.

01:22:20.120 | You've got all these like incredible pressures,

01:22:22.120 | and bad incentives to get on

01:22:23.760 | and just build your thing as quickly as possible

01:22:25.200 | and start making money.

01:22:26.640 | And, you know, I don't think anyone intended

01:22:29.120 | when they built these social media platforms,

01:22:32.560 | and just to like preface it.

01:22:33.880 | So the reason why social media is relevant

01:22:36.360 | because it's a very good example of like,

01:22:38.720 | everyone these days is optimizing for clicks,

01:22:42.000 | whether it's the social media platforms themselves,

01:22:44.760 | because every click gets more impressions

01:22:47.880 | and impressions pay for, you know,

01:22:49.720 | they get advertising dollars,

01:22:51.000 | or whether it's individual influencers,

01:22:53.760 | or whether it's the New York Times or whoever,

01:22:56.080 | they're trying to get their story to go viral.

01:22:58.280 | So everyone's got this bad incentive of using,

01:23:00.200 | as you called it, the clickbait industrial complex.

01:23:02.760 | That's a very moloch-y system

01:23:04.200 | because everyone is now using worse and worse tactics

01:23:06.240 | in order to like try and win this attention game.

01:23:08.680 | And yeah, so ideally these companies would have had

01:23:14.520 | enough slack in the beginning

01:23:17.280 | in order to run these experiments to see,

01:23:19.800 | okay, what are the ways this could possibly go wrong

01:23:22.440 | for people?

01:23:23.280 | What are the ways that moloch,

01:23:24.680 | they should be aware of this concept of moloch

01:23:26.320 | and realize that it's,

01:23:27.680 | whenever you have a highly competitive multi-agent system,

01:23:31.280 | which social media is a classic example

01:23:32.800 | of millions of agents,

01:23:34.160 | all trying to compete for likes and so on,

01:23:35.920 | and you try and bring all this complexity down

01:23:39.920 | into like very small metrics,

01:23:41.880 | such as number of likes, number of retweets,

01:23:44.880 | whatever the algorithm optimizes for,

01:23:46.720 | that is a like guaranteed recipe

01:23:48.680 | for this stuff to go wrong

01:23:49.800 | and become a race to the bottom.

01:23:51.520 | - I think there should be an honesty when founders,

01:23:53.920 | I think there's a hunger for that kind of transparency

01:23:56.400 | of like, we don't know what the fuck we're doing.

01:23:58.200 | This is a fascinating experiment.

01:23:59.720 | We're all running as a human civilization.

01:24:02.800 | Let's try this out.

01:24:04.320 | And like, actually just be honest about this,

01:24:06.440 | that we're all like these weird rats in a maze.

01:24:10.440 | None of us are controlling it.

01:24:12.400 | There's this kind of sense like the founders,

01:24:15.160 | the CEO of Instagram or whatever,

01:24:17.560 | Mark Zuckerberg has a control

01:24:19.240 | and he's like with strings playing people.

01:24:21.880 | No, they're-

01:24:22.880 | - He's at the mercy of this, like everyone else.

01:24:24.640 | He's just like trying to do his best.

01:24:26.600 | - And like, I think putting on a smile

01:24:29.280 | and doing over polished videos

01:24:33.000 | about how Instagram and Facebook are good for you,

01:24:36.920 | I think is not the right way

01:24:38.000 | to actually ask some of the deepest questions

01:24:41.160 | we get to ask as a society.

01:24:43.240 | How do we design the game such that we build a better world?

01:24:48.120 | - I think a big part of this as well is people,

01:24:51.760 | there's this philosophy, particularly in Silicon Valley

01:24:55.720 | of well, techno-optimism,

01:24:58.520 | technology will solve all our issues.

01:25:00.360 | And there's a steel man argument to that

01:25:03.080 | where yes, technology has solved a lot of problems

01:25:05.440 | and can potentially solve a lot of future ones.

01:25:08.200 | But it can also, it's always a double-edged sword

01:25:10.840 | and particularly as technology gets more and more powerful

01:25:13.440 | and we've now got like big data

01:25:15.120 | and we're able to do all kinds of like

01:25:17.360 | psychological manipulation with it and so on.

01:25:20.680 | It's, technology is not a values neutral thing.

01:25:24.960 | People think, I used to always think this myself,

01:25:27.000 | it's like this naive view that,

01:25:28.880 | oh, technology is completely neutral.

01:25:30.720 | It's just, it's the humans that either make it good or bad.

01:25:33.840 | No, to the point we're at now,

01:25:36.640 | the technology that we are creating,

01:25:38.000 | they are social technologies.

01:25:39.440 | They literally dictate how humans now form social groups

01:25:44.440 | and so on beyond that.

01:25:46.240 | And beyond that, it also then,

01:25:47.760 | that gives rise to like the memes

01:25:49.600 | that we then like coalesce around.

01:25:51.960 | And that, if you have the stack that way

01:25:54.400 | where it's technology driving social interaction,

01:25:56.960 | which then drives like mimetic culture

01:26:00.480 | and like which ideas become popular, that's Moloch.

01:26:04.800 | And we need the other way around.

01:26:06.480 | We need it so we need to figure out what are the good memes?

01:26:08.400 | What are the good values that we think are,

01:26:13.400 | we need to optimize for that like makes people happy

01:26:16.680 | and healthy and like keeps society as robust

01:26:20.120 | and safe as possible.

01:26:21.360 | Then figure out what the social structure

01:26:22.840 | around those should be.

01:26:23.680 | And only then do we figure out technology.

01:26:25.480 | But we're doing the other way around.

01:26:26.800 | And, you know, like as much as I love in many ways

01:26:31.800 | the culture of Silicon Valley and like, you know,

01:26:33.840 | I do think that technology has, you know,

01:26:36.040 | I don't want to knock it.

01:26:36.880 | It's done so many wonderful things for us.

01:26:38.240 | Same with capitalism.

01:26:39.280 | There are, we have to like be honest with ourselves.

01:26:44.160 | We're getting to a point where we are losing control

01:26:47.240 | of this very powerful machine that we have created.

01:26:49.600 | - Can you redesign the machine within the game?

01:26:53.200 | Can you just have, can you understand the game enough?

01:26:57.360 | Okay, this is the game.

01:26:58.880 | And this is how we start to reemphasize

01:27:01.920 | the memes that matter.

01:27:03.840 | The memes that bring out the best in us.

01:27:06.720 | You know, like the way I try to be in real life

01:27:11.320 | and the way I try to be online is to be about kindness

01:27:15.240 | and love.

01:27:16.080 | And I feel like I'm sometimes get like criticized

01:27:19.840 | for being naive and all those kinds of things.

01:27:22.040 | But I feel like I'm just trying to live within this game.

01:27:25.840 | I'm trying to be authentic.

01:27:27.520 | Yeah, but also like, hey, it's kind of fun to do this.

01:27:31.080 | Like you guys should try this too.

01:27:32.920 | You know, that, and that's like trying to redesign

01:27:37.200 | some aspects of the game within the game.

01:27:40.960 | - Is that possible?

01:27:41.920 | - I don't know, but I think we should try.

01:27:46.760 | I don't think we have an option but to try.

01:27:48.640 | - Well, the other option is to create new companies

01:27:51.160 | or to pressure companies that,

01:27:55.280 | or anyone who has control of the rules of the game.

01:27:59.040 | - I think we need to be doing all of the above.

01:28:01.120 | I think we need to be thinking hard

01:28:03.000 | about what are the kind of positive, healthy memes.

01:28:09.760 | As Elon said, he who controls the memes controls the universe.

01:28:13.640 | - He said that.

01:28:14.480 | - I think he did, yeah.

01:28:16.320 | But there's truth to that.

01:28:17.880 | It's very, there is wisdom in that

01:28:19.440 | because memes have driven history.

01:28:22.760 | You know, we are a cultural species.

01:28:24.920 | That's what sets us apart from chimpanzees

01:28:27.200 | and everything else.

01:28:28.040 | We have the ability to learn and evolve through culture

01:28:32.520 | as opposed to biology or like, you know,

01:28:34.960 | classic physical constraints.

01:28:37.360 | And that means culture is incredibly powerful

01:28:40.800 | and we can create and become victim to very bad memes

01:28:44.960 | or very good ones.

01:28:46.680 | But we do have some agency over which memes,

01:28:49.360 | you know, we not only put out there,

01:28:52.000 | but we also like subscribe to.

01:28:53.680 | So I think we need to take that approach.

01:28:56.520 | We also need to, you know, 'cause I don't want the,

01:29:01.520 | I'm making this video right now called the Attention Wars,

01:29:03.800 | which is about like how Moloch,

01:29:05.520 | like the media machine is this Moloch machine.

01:29:08.560 | Well, is this kind of like blind, dumb thing

01:29:11.440 | that where everyone is optimizing for engagement

01:29:13.200 | in order to win their share of the attention pie.

01:29:16.480 | And then if you zoom out, it's really like Moloch

01:29:18.280 | that's pulling the strings

01:29:19.240 | 'cause the only thing that benefits from this in the end,

01:29:20.960 | you know, like our information ecosystem is breaking down.

01:29:24.040 | Like we have, you look at the state of the US,

01:29:26.480 | it's in, we're in a civil war.

01:29:28.440 | It's just not a physical war.

01:29:30.000 | It's an information war.

01:29:33.320 | And people are becoming more fractured

01:29:35.120 | in terms of what their actual shared reality is.

01:29:37.440 | Like truly like an extreme left person,

01:29:39.600 | an extreme right person,

01:29:40.520 | like they literally live in different worlds

01:29:43.440 | in their minds at this point.

01:29:45.320 | And it's getting more and more amplified.

01:29:47.280 | And this force is like a razor blade

01:29:50.320 | pushing through everything.

01:29:51.920 | It doesn't matter how innocuous the topic is,

01:29:53.400 | it will find a way to split into this,

01:29:55.320 | you know, bifurcated culture war.

01:29:57.280 | And it's fucking terrifying.

01:29:58.320 | - Because that maximizes the tension.

01:29:59.840 | And that's like an emergent Moloch type force

01:30:03.200 | that takes any, anything, any topic

01:30:06.880 | and cuts through it so that it can split nicely

01:30:11.240 | into two groups.

01:30:12.560 | One that's--

01:30:13.920 | - Well, it's whatever, yeah,

01:30:15.560 | all everyone is trying to do within the system

01:30:18.040 | is just maximize whatever gets them the most attention

01:30:21.240 | because they're just trying to make money

01:30:22.360 | so they can keep their thing going, right?

01:30:24.560 | And the way, the best emotion for getting attention,

01:30:29.240 | well, because it's not just about attention on the internet,

01:30:30.880 | it's engagement.

01:30:31.920 | That's the key thing, right?

01:30:33.120 | In order for something to go viral,

01:30:34.400 | you need people to actually engage with it.

01:30:35.960 | They need to like comment or retweet or whatever.

01:30:38.600 | And of all the emotions that, you know,

01:30:43.560 | there's like seven classic shared emotions

01:30:45.800 | that studies have found that all humans,

01:30:47.520 | even from like previously uncontacted tribes have.

01:30:51.040 | Some of those are negative, you know, like sadness,

01:30:56.080 | disgust, anger, et cetera, some are positive,

01:30:58.880 | happiness, excitement, and so on.

01:31:02.360 | The one that happens to be the most useful

01:31:04.760 | for the internet is anger

01:31:06.680 | because anger is such an active emotion.

01:31:11.120 | If you want people to engage,

01:31:13.160 | if someone's scared,

01:31:14.280 | and I'm not just like talking out my ass here,

01:31:15.840 | there are studies here that have looked into this.

01:31:17.840 | Whereas like if someone's like disgusted or fearful,

01:31:22.440 | they actually tend to then be like,

01:31:23.680 | oh, I don't wanna deal with this.

01:31:24.760 | So they're less likely to actually engage

01:31:26.360 | and share it and so on.

01:31:27.520 | They're just gonna be like, ugh.

01:31:28.480 | Whereas if they're enraged by a thing,

01:31:31.040 | well, now that triggers all the old tribalism emotions.

01:31:35.920 | And so that's how then things get sort of spread,

01:31:38.400 | you know, much more easily.

01:31:39.400 | They out-compete all the other memes in the ecosystem.

01:31:43.160 | And so this like, the attention economy,

01:31:47.440 | the wheels that make it go around is rage.

01:31:50.520 | I did a tweet, the problem with raging against the machine

01:31:55.080 | is that the machine has learned to feed off rage

01:31:57.280 | because it is feeding off our rage.

01:31:59.080 | That's the thing that's now keeping it going.

01:32:00.400 | So the more we get angry, the worse it gets.

01:32:03.240 | - So the mullet in this attention,

01:32:06.040 | in the war of attention is constantly maximizing rage.

01:32:11.040 | - What it is optimizing for is engagement.

01:32:13.600 | And it happens to be that engagement is, well, propaganda.

01:32:18.600 | You know, it's like, I mean,

01:32:20.920 | it just sounds like everything is putting,

01:32:23.240 | more and more things are being put through

01:32:24.320 | this like propagandist lens

01:32:26.000 | of winning whatever the war is in question,

01:32:28.880 | whether it's the culture war or the Ukraine war, yeah.

01:32:31.400 | - Well, I think the silver lining of this,

01:32:33.240 | do you think it's possible that in the long arc

01:32:36.520 | of this process, you actually do arrive

01:32:39.560 | at greater wisdom and more progress?

01:32:41.800 | It just, in the moment, it feels like people

01:32:43.920 | are tearing each other to shreds over ideas.

01:32:47.760 | But if you think about it,

01:32:48.600 | one of the magic things about democracy and so on

01:32:51.120 | is you have the blue versus red constantly fighting.

01:32:53.880 | It's almost like they're in discourse,

01:32:58.160 | creating devil's advocate,

01:32:59.720 | making devils out of each other.

01:33:01.240 | And through that process, discussing ideas,

01:33:04.880 | like almost really embodying different ideas,

01:33:07.680 | just to yell at each other.

01:33:08.840 | And through the yelling over the period of decades,

01:33:11.600 | maybe centuries, figuring out a better system.

01:33:15.320 | Like in the moment, it feels fucked up.

01:33:17.280 | - Right.

01:33:18.120 | - But in the long arc, it actually is productive.

01:33:20.760 | - I hope so.

01:33:23.320 | That said, we are now in the era of,

01:33:28.320 | just as we have weapons of mass destruction

01:33:30.480 | with nuclear weapons,

01:33:32.400 | that can break the whole playing field.

01:33:35.240 | We now are developing weapons

01:33:37.680 | of informational mass destruction,

01:33:39.400 | information weapons, WMDs that basically

01:33:43.560 | can be used for propaganda or just manipulating people

01:33:47.720 | however it's needed, whether that's through

01:33:51.080 | dumb TikTok videos or, you know,

01:33:54.040 | there are significant resources being put in.

01:33:59.040 | I don't mean to sound like, you know,

01:34:01.440 | too doom and gloom, but there are bad actors out there.

01:34:04.240 | That's the thing.

01:34:05.080 | There are plenty of good actors within the system

01:34:06.640 | who are just trying to stay afloat in the game.

01:34:08.240 | So effectively doing monarchy things.

01:34:09.760 | But then on top of that, we have actual bad actors

01:34:12.480 | who are intentionally trying to like,

01:34:14.960 | manipulate the other side into doing things.

01:34:17.360 | - And using, so because of the digital space,

01:34:19.640 | they're able to use artificial actors, meaning bots.

01:34:24.440 | - Exactly, botnets, you know,

01:34:26.120 | and this is a whole new situation

01:34:29.720 | that we've never had before.

01:34:31.160 | - It's exciting.

01:34:32.280 | You know what I wanna do? - Is it?

01:34:34.000 | - You know what I wanna do?

01:34:36.160 | Because there is, you know,

01:34:37.120 | people are talking about bots manipulating

01:34:38.920 | and have like malicious bots

01:34:41.600 | that are basically spreading propaganda.

01:34:43.560 | I wanna create like a bot army for like,

01:34:46.560 | that like fights that. - For love?

01:34:47.600 | - Yeah, exactly, for love.

01:34:48.680 | That fights, that, I mean.

01:34:50.960 | - You know, there's truth to fight fire with fire.

01:34:53.480 | It's like, but how, you always have to be careful

01:34:57.080 | whenever you create, again, like,

01:34:59.960 | Moloch is very tricky.

01:35:01.360 | - Yeah, yeah, Hitler was trying to spread love too.

01:35:04.240 | - Yeah, so we thought, but you know,

01:35:05.440 | I agree with you that like,

01:35:07.320 | that is a thing that should be considered,

01:35:09.160 | but there is, again, everyone,

01:35:11.440 | the road to hell is paved in good intentions.

01:35:13.560 | And there's always unforeseen circumstances, you know,

01:35:18.560 | outcomes, externalities, if you're trying to adopt a thing,

01:35:21.440 | even if you do it in the very best of faith.

01:35:23.600 | - But you can learn lessons of history.

01:35:25.040 | - If you can run some Sims on it first, absolutely.

01:35:28.600 | - But also there's certain aspects of a system,

01:35:31.000 | as we've learned through history,

01:35:32.240 | that do better than others.

01:35:34.000 | Like, for example, don't have a dictator.

01:35:36.120 | So like, if I were to create this bot army,

01:35:39.640 | it's not good for me to have full control over it.

01:35:42.920 | Because in the beginning,

01:35:44.000 | I might have a good understanding of what's good and not.

01:35:46.720 | But over time, that starts to get deviated,

01:35:49.200 | 'cause I'll get annoyed at some assholes,

01:35:50.720 | and I'll think, okay,

01:35:51.920 | wouldn't it be nice to get rid of those assholes?

01:35:54.040 | But then that power starts getting to your head,

01:35:55.680 | you become corrupted.

01:35:56.880 | That's basic human nature.

01:35:58.080 | So distribute the power somehow.

01:35:59.960 | - We need a love botnet on a DAO.

01:36:04.480 | A DAO love botnet.

01:36:07.800 | - Yeah, but, and without a leader.

01:36:10.040 | Like without-

01:36:10.880 | - Exactly, a distributed, right.

01:36:12.360 | But yeah, without any kind of centralized-

01:36:14.320 | - Yeah, without even, you know,

01:36:16.120 | basically is the more control,

01:36:17.520 | the more you can decentralize the control of a thing

01:36:21.440 | to people, you know, but the balance-

01:36:24.880 | - But then you still need the ability to coordinate,

01:36:26.720 | because that's the issue when if something is too,

01:36:29.440 | you know, that's really, to me, like the culture wars,

01:36:32.440 | the bigger war we're dealing with is actually

01:36:34.640 | between the, like the sort of the,

01:36:38.320 | I don't know what even the term is for it,

01:36:39.600 | but like centralization versus decentralization.

01:36:42.000 | That's the tension we're seeing.

01:36:44.120 | Power and control by a few versus completely distributed.

01:36:48.240 | And the trouble is if you have a fully centralized thing,

01:36:50.920 | then you're at risk of tyranny, you know,

01:36:52.720 | Stalin type things can happen, or completely distributed.

01:36:56.880 | Now you're at risk of complete anarchy and chaos

01:36:58.560 | where you can't even coordinate to like on, you know,

01:37:01.160 | when there's like a pandemic or anything like that.

01:37:03.280 | So it's like, what is the right balance to strike

01:37:05.840 | between these two structures?

01:37:08.120 | - Can't Moloch really take hold

01:37:09.720 | in a fully decentralized system?

01:37:11.080 | That's the one of the dangers too.

01:37:12.560 | - Yes.

01:37:13.720 | - So you're very vulnerable to Moloch.

01:37:14.560 | - So the dictator can commit huge atrocities,

01:37:17.760 | but they can also make sure the infrastructure works

01:37:21.000 | and trains what I'm talking about.

01:37:23.240 | - They have that God's eye view, at least.

01:37:24.880 | They have the ability to create like laws and rules

01:37:27.360 | that like force coordination, which stops Moloch.

01:37:30.960 | But then you're vulnerable to that dictator

01:37:33.280 | getting infected with like this,

01:37:34.680 | with some kind of psychopathy type thing.

01:37:37.000 | - What's reverse Moloch?

01:37:39.480 | - So great question.

01:37:40.640 | So that's where, so I've been working on this series.

01:37:45.640 | It's been driving me insane for the last year and a half.

01:37:48.320 | I did the first one a year ago.

01:37:50.120 | I can't believe it's nearly been a year.

01:37:52.120 | The second one, hopefully we're coming out in like a month.

01:37:54.800 | And my goal at the end of the series is to like present,

01:37:58.760 | 'cause basically I'm painting the picture

01:37:59.960 | of like what Moloch is and how it's affecting

01:38:02.320 | almost all these issues in our society

01:38:04.400 | and how it's, you know, driving.

01:38:06.480 | It's like kind of the generator function

01:38:08.000 | as people describe it of existential risk.

01:38:11.040 | And then at the end of that-

01:38:11.880 | - Wait, wait, the generator function of existential risk.

01:38:14.200 | So you're saying Moloch is sort of the engine

01:38:16.480 | that creates a bunch of X risks.

01:38:19.680 | - Yes, not all of them.

01:38:20.720 | Like, you know, a-

01:38:22.960 | - It's a cool phrase, generator function.

01:38:24.520 | - It's not my phrase, it's Daniel Schmachtenberger.

01:38:26.800 | - Oh, Schmachtenberger. - I got that from him.

01:38:28.120 | - Of course. - All of these ideas.

01:38:29.880 | - It's like all roads lead back to Daniel Schmachtenberger.

01:38:32.720 | - The dude is brilliant.

01:38:34.560 | He's really, really brilliant.

01:38:35.400 | - And after that it's Mark Twain.

01:38:37.800 | - But anyway, sorry, totally rude interruptions from me.

01:38:41.120 | - No, it's fine.

01:38:42.000 | So not all X risks.

01:38:43.080 | So like an asteroid technically isn't

01:38:45.440 | because it's just like this one big external thing.

01:38:49.440 | It's not like a competition thing going on,

01:38:51.520 | but, you know, synthetic bio, you know, bioweapons,

01:38:55.800 | that's one because everyone's incentivized to build,

01:38:58.600 | even for defense, you know, bad viruses,

01:39:01.040 | you know, just to threaten someone else, et cetera.

01:39:03.720 | Or AI technically, the race to AGI

01:39:05.760 | is kind of potentially a molecule situation.

01:39:08.040 | But yeah, so if Moloch is this like generator function

01:39:14.560 | that's driving all of these issues over the coming century

01:39:17.560 | that might wipe us out, what's the inverse?

01:39:20.240 | And so far what I've gotten to is this character

01:39:24.040 | that I want to put out there called Win-Win.

01:39:26.600 | Because Moloch is the God of lose-lose ultimately.

01:39:28.600 | It masquerades as the God of win-lose,

01:39:30.200 | but in reality it's lose-lose.

01:39:31.720 | Everyone ends up worse off.

01:39:34.320 | So I was like, well, what's the opposite of that?

01:39:35.800 | It's Win-Win.

01:39:36.640 | And I was thinking for ages,

01:39:37.520 | like what's a good name for this character?

01:39:39.680 | And then the more I was like, okay, well,

01:39:42.360 | don't try and think through it logically.

01:39:44.640 | What's the vibe of Win-Win?

01:39:46.480 | And to me, like in my mind, Moloch is like,

01:39:49.160 | and I addressed it in the video, like it's red and black.

01:39:52.080 | It's kind of like very, you know,

01:39:54.760 | hyper-focused on its one goal, you must win.

01:39:57.480 | So Win-Win is kind of actually like these colors.

01:40:01.360 | It's like purple, turquoise.

01:40:04.080 | It loves games too.

01:40:06.640 | It loves a little bit of healthy competition,

01:40:08.320 | but constrained, like kind of like before.

01:40:10.640 | Knows how to ring fence zero-sum competition

01:40:12.760 | into like just the right amount,

01:40:14.880 | whereby its externalities can be controlled

01:40:17.400 | and kept positive.

01:40:19.120 | And then beyond that, it also loves cooperation,

01:40:21.240 | coordination, love, all these other things.

01:40:23.920 | But it's also kind of like mischievous.

01:40:25.880 | Like, you know, it will have a good time.

01:40:28.480 | It's not like kind of like boring, you know, like,

01:40:30.640 | oh God, it knows how to have fun.

01:40:33.920 | It can get down.

01:40:36.000 | But ultimately it's like unbelievably wise

01:40:39.760 | and it just wants the game to keep going.

01:40:41.800 | And I call it Win-Win.

01:40:44.600 | - That's a good like pet name, Win-Win.

01:40:46.960 | - Yes, I think the-

01:40:48.480 | - Win-Win.

01:40:49.320 | - Win-Win, right?

01:40:50.160 | And I think its formal name,

01:40:51.280 | when it has to do like official functions, is Omnia.

01:40:55.080 | - Omnia.

01:40:55.920 | - Yeah.

01:40:56.760 | - From like omniscience, kind of, why Omnia?

01:40:59.560 | You just like Omnia?

01:41:00.400 | - Just like Omni-Win.

01:41:01.240 | - Omni-Win.

01:41:02.080 | - But I'm open to suggestions.

01:41:02.960 | So like, you know, and this is-

01:41:04.160 | - I like Omnia, yeah.

01:41:05.160 | - Yeah, like that's like-

01:41:06.000 | - But there is an angelic kind of sense to Omnia though.

01:41:08.800 | So Win-Win is more fun.

01:41:10.040 | - Exactly.

01:41:10.880 | - So it's more like, it embraces the fun aspect.

01:41:15.880 | I mean, there is something about sort of,

01:41:18.640 | there's some aspect to Win-Win interactions

01:41:23.560 | that requires embracing the chaos of the game

01:41:31.640 | and enjoying the game itself.

01:41:33.800 | I don't know, I don't know what that is.

01:41:35.240 | That's almost like a Zen-like appreciation

01:41:37.720 | of the game itself,

01:41:39.400 | not optimizing for the consequences of the game.

01:41:42.520 | - Right, well, it's recognizing the value of competition

01:41:46.160 | in of itself, it's not like about winning,

01:41:48.720 | it's about you enjoying the process of having a competition

01:41:51.520 | and not knowing whether you're gonna win

01:41:52.680 | or lose this little thing.

01:41:53.920 | But then also being aware that, you know,

01:41:56.600 | what's the boundary?

01:41:57.440 | How big do I want competition to be?

01:41:59.080 | Because one of the reason why Moloch is doing so well now

01:42:02.720 | in our civilization is because we haven't been able

01:42:05.600 | to ring fence competition.

01:42:07.000 | And so it's just having all these negative externalities

01:42:10.600 | and we've completely lost control of it.

01:42:12.600 | I think my guess is, and now we're getting really like,

01:42:18.640 | you know, metaphysical technically,

01:42:20.880 | but I think we'll be in a more interesting universe

01:42:26.800 | if we have one that has both pure cooperation,

01:42:29.720 | you know, lots of cooperation

01:42:31.360 | and some pockets of competition

01:42:33.000 | than one that's purely cooperation entirely.

01:42:36.240 | Like it's good to have some little zero-sum-ness bits,

01:42:39.360 | but I don't know that fully

01:42:41.520 | and I'm not qualified as a philosopher to know that.

01:42:44.120 | - And that's what reverse Moloch,

01:42:45.480 | so this kind of win-win creature system

01:42:49.640 | is an antidote to the Moloch system.

01:42:52.160 | - Yes.

01:42:53.600 | And I don't know how it's gonna do that.

01:42:56.360 | - But it's good to kind of try to start

01:43:00.000 | to formulate different ideas,

01:43:01.480 | different frameworks of how we think about that.

01:43:03.840 | - Exactly.

01:43:04.680 | - At the small scale of a collection of individuals

01:43:07.240 | and a large scale of a society.

01:43:09.120 | - Exactly.

01:43:09.960 | It's a meme, I think it's an example of a good meme.

01:43:13.360 | And I'm open, I'd love to hear feedback from people

01:43:15.560 | if they think it's, you know,

01:43:16.720 | they have a better idea or it's not, you know,

01:43:18.320 | but it's the direction of memes that we need to spread,

01:43:21.640 | this idea of like, look for the win-wins in life.

01:43:25.160 | - Well, on the topic of beauty filters,

01:43:27.240 | so in that particular context where Moloch creates

01:43:31.800 | negative consequences, you know,

01:43:35.160 | Dostoevsky said beauty will save the world.

01:43:37.160 | What is beauty anyway?

01:43:39.140 | It would be nice to just try to discuss

01:43:43.800 | what kind of thing we would like to converge towards

01:43:49.320 | in our understanding of what is beautiful.

01:43:52.260 | - So to me, I think something is beautiful

01:43:59.200 | when it can't be reduced down to easy metrics.

01:44:04.200 | Like if you think of a tree, what is it about a tree,

01:44:10.720 | like a big ancient beautiful tree, right?

01:44:12.280 | What is it about it that we find so beautiful?

01:44:14.680 | It's not, you know, the sweetness of its fruit

01:44:19.680 | or the value of its lumber.

01:44:23.480 | It's this entirety of it that is,

01:44:28.480 | there's these immeasurable qualities.

01:44:30.880 | It's like almost like a qualia of it.

01:44:32.920 | That's both, like it walks this fine line between,

01:44:37.360 | well, it's got lots of patonicity,

01:44:38.740 | but it's not overly predictable.

01:44:41.080 | You know, again, it walks this fine line

01:44:42.200 | between order and chaos.

01:44:43.240 | It's a very highly complex system.

01:44:45.500 | And you know, you can't, it's evolving over time.

01:44:51.440 | You know, the definition of a complex versus,

01:44:53.280 | and this is another Schmacktenberger thing,

01:44:54.760 | you know, a complex versus a complicated system.

01:44:57.660 | A complicated system can be sort of broken down into bits,

01:45:00.600 | understood and then put back together.

01:45:02.240 | A complex system is kind of like a black box.

01:45:05.000 | It does all this crazy stuff, but if you take it apart,

01:45:08.200 | you can't put it back together again

01:45:09.340 | because there's all these intricacies.

01:45:11.800 | And also very importantly, like the sum of the parts,

01:45:15.000 | sorry, the sum of the whole is much greater

01:45:16.600 | than the sum of the parts.

01:45:17.880 | And that's where the beauty lies, I think.

01:45:21.400 | And I think that extends to things like art as well.

01:45:23.560 | Like there's something immeasurable about it.

01:45:27.640 | There's something we can't break down to a narrow metric.

01:45:30.000 | - Does that extend to humans, you think?

01:45:31.840 | - Yeah, absolutely.

01:45:33.840 | - So how can Instagram reveal that kind of beauty,

01:45:37.440 | the complexity of a human being?

01:45:39.320 | - Good question.

01:45:41.160 | - And this takes us back to dating sites and Goodreads,

01:45:44.880 | I think.

01:45:45.720 | - Very good question.

01:45:47.800 | I mean, well, I know what it shouldn't do.

01:45:50.320 | It shouldn't try and like, right now, you know,

01:45:53.320 | one of the, I was talking to like a social media expert

01:45:56.240 | recently 'cause I was like, ugh, I hate-

01:45:58.320 | - Is there such a thing as a social media expert?

01:45:59.960 | - Oh yeah, there are like agencies out there

01:46:02.080 | that you can like outsource.

01:46:03.280 | 'Cause I'm thinking about working with one to like,

01:46:06.040 | I wanna start a podcast.

01:46:08.560 | - Yes.

01:46:09.440 | You should, you should have done it a long time ago.

01:46:11.920 | - Working on it.

01:46:12.920 | It's gonna be called Win-Win.

01:46:14.760 | And it's gonna be about this like positive stuff.

01:46:17.480 | And the thing that, you know, they always come back

01:46:21.000 | and say, it's like, well, you need to like figure out

01:46:23.000 | what your thing is.

01:46:24.080 | You know, you need to narrow down what your thing is

01:46:26.440 | and then just follow that.

01:46:28.000 | Have a like a sort of a formula

01:46:31.080 | because that's what people want.

01:46:32.200 | They wanna know that they're coming back to the same thing.

01:46:34.320 | And that's the advice on YouTube, Twitter, you name it.

01:46:37.480 | And that's why, and the trouble with that

01:46:40.240 | is that it's a complexity reduction.

01:46:42.480 | And generally speaking, you know,

01:46:44.120 | complexity reduction is bad.

01:46:45.400 | It's making things more, it's an oversimplification.

01:46:48.040 | Not that simplification is a bad thing,

01:46:50.240 | but when you're trying to take, you know,

01:46:55.520 | what is social media doing?

01:46:56.560 | It's trying to like encapsulate the human experience

01:47:00.120 | and put it into digital form and commodify it to an extent.

01:47:05.720 | And so you do that, you compress people down

01:47:07.600 | into these like narrow things.

01:47:09.520 | And that's why I think it's kind of ultimately

01:47:12.680 | fundamentally incompatible

01:47:13.920 | with at least my definition of beauty.

01:47:15.240 | - Yeah, it's interesting because there is some sense

01:47:18.120 | in which a simplification sort of in the Einstein

01:47:23.120 | kind of sense of a really complex idea,

01:47:28.040 | a simplification in a way that still captures

01:47:30.280 | some core power of an idea of a person is also beautiful.

01:47:36.120 | And so maybe it's possible for social media to do that.

01:47:39.360 | A presentation, sort of a slither, a slice,

01:47:44.360 | a look into a person's life

01:47:46.360 | that reveals something real about them,

01:47:50.520 | but in a simple way, in a way that can be displayed

01:47:53.240 | graphically or through words.

01:47:55.600 | Some way, I mean, in some way,

01:47:57.680 | Twitter can do that kind of thing.

01:47:59.960 | A very few set of words can reveal

01:48:03.080 | the intricacies of a person.

01:48:04.920 | Of course, the viral machine that spreads those words

01:48:09.920 | often results in people taking the thing out of context.

01:48:14.840 | People often don't read tweets in the context

01:48:18.920 | of the human being that wrote them.

01:48:20.800 | The full history of the tweets they've written,

01:48:24.080 | the education level, the humor level,

01:48:26.560 | the worldview they're playing around with,

01:48:30.440 | all that context is forgotten

01:48:31.760 | and people just see the different words.

01:48:33.640 | So that can lead to trouble.

01:48:35.520 | But in a certain sense, if you do take it in context,

01:48:39.840 | it reveals some kind of quirky little beautiful idea

01:48:43.240 | or a profound little idea from that particular person

01:48:47.200 | that shows something about that person.

01:48:48.560 | So in that sense, Twitter can be more successful.

01:48:51.320 | If we're talking about Mullicks,

01:48:53.080 | is driving a better kind of incentive.

01:48:56.080 | - Yeah, I mean, how they can,

01:48:59.600 | like if we were to rewrite,

01:49:02.040 | is there a way to rewrite the Twitter algorithm

01:49:05.480 | so that it stops being the like,

01:49:08.800 | the fertile breeding ground of the culture wars?

01:49:12.480 | Because that's really what it is.

01:49:13.720 | It's, I mean, maybe I'm giving it,

01:49:17.560 | Twitter too much power,

01:49:19.400 | but just the more I looked into it

01:49:21.800 | and I had conversations with Tristan Harris

01:49:25.640 | from the Center of Humane Technology

01:49:27.680 | and he explained it as like,

01:49:30.880 | Twitter is where you have this amalgam of human culture

01:49:34.160 | and then this terribly designed algorithm

01:49:36.280 | that amplifies the craziest people

01:49:38.480 | and the angriest, most divisive takes and amplifies them.

01:49:44.840 | And then the media, the mainstream media,

01:49:47.800 | because all the journalists are also on Twitter,

01:49:49.920 | they then are informed by that.

01:49:52.920 | And so they draw out the stories they can

01:49:55.120 | from this already like very boiling lava of rage.

01:50:00.760 | And then spread that to their millions and millions of people

01:50:04.440 | who aren't even on Twitter.

01:50:05.800 | And so I honestly, I think if I could press a button,

01:50:10.840 | turn them off, I probably would at this point,

01:50:13.640 | 'cause I just don't see a way of being compatible

01:50:16.160 | with healthiness, but that's not gonna happen.

01:50:18.600 | And so at least one way to like stem the tide

01:50:23.160 | and make it less molochey would be to change,

01:50:30.040 | at least if like it was on a subscription model,

01:50:31.960 | then it's now not optimizing for impressions,

01:50:37.040 | 'cause basically what it wants is for people

01:50:38.320 | to keep coming back as often as possible.

01:50:40.240 | That's how they get paid, right?

01:50:42.040 | Every time an ad gets shown to someone

01:50:43.760 | and the way is to get people

01:50:44.680 | constantly refreshing their feed.

01:50:46.520 | So you're trying to encourage addictive behaviors.

01:50:49.400 | Whereas if someone, if they moved on

01:50:52.320 | to at least a subscription model,

01:50:53.960 | then they're getting the money either way,

01:50:56.960 | whether someone comes back to the site once a month

01:50:59.160 | or 500 times a month, they get the same amount of money.

01:51:02.080 | So now that takes away that incentive to use technology,

01:51:06.440 | to build, to design an algorithm

01:51:08.200 | that is maximally addictive.

01:51:09.600 | That would be one way, for example.

01:51:12.520 | - Yeah, but you still want people to,

01:51:14.640 | yeah, I just feel like that just slows down,

01:51:17.280 | creates friction in the virality of things.

01:51:20.960 | - But that's good.

01:51:22.280 | We need to slow down virality.

01:51:24.440 | - It's good, it's one way.

01:51:26.600 | Virality is Moloch, to be clear.

01:51:28.960 | - So Moloch is always negative then?

01:51:34.320 | - Yes, by definition.

01:51:36.520 | - Yes.

01:51:37.360 | - Competition. - But then I disagree with you.

01:51:38.200 | - Competition is not always negative.

01:51:39.440 | Competition is neutral.

01:51:40.520 | - I disagree with you that all virality is negative then,

01:51:44.200 | is Moloch then.

01:51:45.960 | Because it's a good intuition

01:51:49.520 | 'cause we have a lot of data on virality being negative.

01:51:52.920 | But I happen to believe that the core of human beings,

01:51:57.120 | so most human beings want to be good

01:52:00.400 | more than they want to be bad to each other.

01:52:03.400 | And so I think it's possible.

01:52:05.720 | It might be just harder to engineer

01:52:07.560 | systems that enable virality,

01:52:10.560 | but it's possible to engineer systems that are viral

01:52:13.880 | that enable virality.

01:52:15.720 | And the kind of stuff that rises to the top

01:52:19.160 | is things that are positive.

01:52:21.400 | And positive not like la la positive,

01:52:24.160 | it's more like win-win,

01:52:25.840 | meaning a lot of people need to be challenged.

01:52:28.240 | - Wise things, yes.

01:52:29.640 | - You grow from it, it might challenge you,

01:52:31.480 | you might not like it, but you ultimately grow from it.

01:52:34.720 | - And ultimately bring people together

01:52:36.720 | as opposed to tear them apart.

01:52:38.480 | I deeply want that to be true.

01:52:40.560 | And I very much agree with you

01:52:42.320 | that people at their core are on average good,

01:52:44.600 | as opposed to, care for each other, as opposed to not.

01:52:47.280 | I think it's actually a very small percentage of people

01:52:50.920 | are truly wanting to do just destructive malicious things.

01:52:54.440 | Most people are just trying to win their own little game

01:52:56.520 | and they don't mean to be,

01:52:57.880 | they're just stuck in this badly designed system.

01:53:00.280 | That said, the current structure, yes,

01:53:04.640 | is the current structure means that virality

01:53:09.160 | is optimized towards Moloch.

01:53:10.800 | That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions.

01:53:12.400 | Sometimes positive stories do go viral

01:53:14.080 | and I think we should study them.

01:53:15.160 | I think there should be a whole field of study

01:53:17.080 | into understanding, identifying memes

01:53:20.360 | that above a certain threshold of the population

01:53:24.040 | agree is a positive, happy, bringing people together meme,

01:53:27.360 | the kind of thing that brings families together

01:53:29.880 | that would normally argue about cultural stuff

01:53:31.720 | at the table, at the dinner table.

01:53:34.800 | Identify those memes and figure out what it was,

01:53:37.440 | what was the ingredient that made them spread that day.

01:53:40.480 | - And also like, not just like happiness

01:53:44.760 | and connection between humans,

01:53:45.960 | but connection between humans in other ways

01:53:49.600 | that enables like productivity, like cooperation,

01:53:52.720 | solving difficult problems and all those kinds of stuff.

01:53:56.240 | So it's not just about let's be happy

01:53:59.040 | and have a fulfilling lives.

01:54:00.840 | It's also like, let's build cool shit.

01:54:03.000 | - Yeah.

01:54:03.840 | Which is the spirit of collaboration,

01:54:05.120 | which is deeply anti-Moloch.

01:54:06.480 | It's not using competition.

01:54:09.320 | It's like, Moloch hates collaboration and coordination

01:54:13.160 | and people working together.

01:54:14.600 | And that's, again, like the internet started out as that

01:54:18.080 | and it could have been that,

01:54:20.680 | but because of the way it was sort of structured

01:54:23.360 | in terms of, you know, very lofty ideal,

01:54:26.880 | they wanted everything to be open source,

01:54:28.960 | open source and also free.

01:54:30.600 | And, but they needed to find a way to pay the bills anyway,

01:54:32.800 | because they were still building this

01:54:33.840 | on top of our old economics system.

01:54:36.280 | And so the way they did that

01:54:37.600 | was through third-party advertisement.

01:54:40.240 | But that meant that things were very decoupled.

01:54:42.760 | You know, you've got this third-party interest,

01:54:45.600 | which means that you're then like,

01:54:47.480 | people are having to optimize for that.

01:54:48.960 | And that is, you know, the actual consumer

01:54:51.320 | is actually the product,

01:54:52.960 | not the person you're making the thing for.

01:54:56.600 | You're in, in the end,

01:54:57.480 | you start making the thing for the advertiser.

01:54:59.840 | And so that's why it then like breaks down.

01:55:02.000 | Yeah, like it's, there's no clean solution to this.

01:55:07.440 | And I, it's a really good suggestion by you actually

01:55:11.160 | to like figure out how we can optimize virality

01:55:16.080 | for positive sum topics.

01:55:19.560 | - I shall be the general of the love bot army.

01:55:22.700 | - Distributed.

01:55:26.200 | - Distributed, distributed.

01:55:27.440 | No, okay, yeah.

01:55:28.400 | The power, just even in saying that,

01:55:30.240 | the power already went to my head.

01:55:32.240 | No, okay.

01:55:33.280 | You've talked about quantifying your thinking.

01:55:35.920 | We've been talking about this,

01:55:37.000 | sort of a game theoretic view on life

01:55:39.320 | and putting probabilities behind estimates.

01:55:42.280 | Like if you think about different trajectories

01:55:44.280 | you can take through life,

01:55:45.680 | just actually analyzing life in game theoretic way,

01:55:48.360 | like your own life, like personal life.

01:55:50.840 | I think you've given an example

01:55:52.820 | that you had an honest conversation with Igor

01:55:54.680 | about like how long is this relationship gonna last?

01:55:57.840 | So similar to our sort of marriage problem

01:56:00.160 | kind of discussion,

01:56:01.560 | having an honest conversation about the probability

01:56:05.080 | of things that we sometimes are a little bit too shy

01:56:08.600 | or scared to think of in a probabilistic terms.

01:56:11.840 | Can you speak to that kind of way of reasoning

01:56:15.040 | about the good and the bad of that?

01:56:17.040 | Can you do this kind of thing with human relations?

01:56:20.880 | - Yeah, so the scenario you're talking about,

01:56:24.120 | it was like-

01:56:25.040 | - Yeah, tell me about that scenario.

01:56:27.680 | - I think it was about a year into our relationship

01:56:30.920 | and we were having a fairly heavy conversation

01:56:34.520 | because we were trying to figure out

01:56:35.440 | whether or not I was gonna sell my apartment.

01:56:37.720 | He had already moved in,

01:56:40.160 | but I think we were just figuring out

01:56:41.760 | what like our long-term plans would be.

01:56:43.640 | Should we buy a place together, et cetera.

01:56:46.360 | - When you guys are having that conversation,

01:56:47.720 | are you like drunk out of your mind on wine

01:56:49.800 | or is he sober and you're actually having a serious-

01:56:52.760 | - I think I'm sober.

01:56:53.680 | - How do you get to that conversation?

01:56:54.960 | 'Cause most people are kind of afraid

01:56:56.160 | to have that kind of serious conversation.

01:56:58.760 | - Well, so our relationship was very,

01:57:01.520 | well, first of all, we were good friends

01:57:03.360 | for a couple of years before we even got romantic.

01:57:06.760 | And when we did get romantic,

01:57:12.480 | it was very clear that this was a big deal.

01:57:15.800 | It wasn't just like another,

01:57:17.680 | it wasn't a random thing.

01:57:18.880 | And-

01:57:20.720 | - So the probability of it being a big deal was high.

01:57:22.880 | - Was already very high.

01:57:24.200 | And then we'd been together for a year

01:57:26.200 | and it had been pretty golden and wonderful.

01:57:28.800 | So there was a lot of foundation already

01:57:32.640 | where we felt very comfortable

01:57:33.840 | having a lot of frank conversations.

01:57:35.200 | But Igor's MO has always been much more than mine.

01:57:38.440 | He was always from the outset,

01:57:40.280 | just in a relationship,

01:57:42.600 | radical transparency and honesty is the way

01:57:45.320 | because the truth is the truth

01:57:47.080 | whether you want to hide it or not.

01:57:48.880 | It will come out eventually.

01:57:50.320 | And if you aren't able to accept difficult things yourself,

01:57:55.320 | then how could you possibly expect

01:57:57.680 | to be the most integral version?

01:57:59.800 | The relationship needs this bedrock of honesty

01:58:04.600 | as a foundation more than anything.

01:58:06.600 | - Yeah, that's really interesting,

01:58:07.720 | but I would like to push against some of those ideas,

01:58:09.960 | but let's-

01:58:10.800 | - Okay, all right.

01:58:11.640 | - Down the line, yes, throw them up.

01:58:13.720 | I just rudely interrupt.

01:58:15.280 | - No, it's fine.

01:58:16.760 | And so, we'd been about together for a year

01:58:19.840 | and things were good.

01:58:20.680 | And we were having this hard conversation

01:58:23.440 | and then he was like, well, okay,

01:58:25.280 | what's the likelihood that we're going to be together

01:58:27.280 | in three years then?

01:58:28.240 | 'Cause I think it was roughly a three-year time horizon.

01:58:31.000 | And I was like, ooh, interesting.

01:58:32.880 | And then we were like, actually wait,

01:58:34.240 | before you say it out loud,

01:58:35.080 | let's both write down our predictions formally.

01:58:37.720 | 'Cause we'd been like,

01:58:38.560 | we were just getting into like effective altruism

01:58:40.440 | and rationality at the time,

01:58:41.840 | which is all about making formal predictions

01:58:43.880 | as a means of measuring your own,

01:58:47.360 | well, your own foresight essentially in a quantified way.

01:58:53.680 | So, we both wrote down our percentages

01:58:55.480 | and we also did a one-year prediction

01:58:58.640 | and a 10-year one as well.

01:58:59.560 | So, we got percentages for all three

01:59:01.960 | and then we showed each other.

01:59:03.880 | And I remember having this moment of like, ooh,

01:59:06.240 | 'cause for the 10-year one, I was like, ooh,

01:59:07.640 | well, I mean, I love him a lot,

01:59:09.600 | but like a lot can happen in 10 years, you know?

01:59:11.880 | And we've only been together for, you know,

01:59:14.280 | so I was like, I think it's over 50%,

01:59:16.240 | but it's definitely not 90%.

01:59:17.920 | And I remember like wrestling, I was like,

01:59:19.240 | oh, but I don't want him to be hurt.

01:59:20.240 | I don't want him to, you know,

01:59:21.400 | I don't want to give a number lower than his.

01:59:22.680 | And I remember thinking, I was like, uh-uh, don't game it.

01:59:25.280 | This is an exercise in radical honesty.

01:59:28.120 | So, just give your real percentage.

01:59:29.520 | And I think mine was like 75%.

01:59:31.280 | And then we showed each other

01:59:32.400 | and luckily we were fairly well aligned.

01:59:37.200 | But honestly, even if we weren't-

01:59:38.640 | - 20%.

01:59:39.480 | - Huh?

01:59:40.320 | It definitely would have,

01:59:42.000 | if his had been consistently lower than mine,

01:59:45.520 | that would have rattled me for sure.

01:59:48.120 | Whereas if it had been the other way around,

01:59:49.880 | I think he's just kind of like a water off the duck's back

01:59:52.480 | type of guy.

01:59:53.320 | Be like, okay, well, all right, we'll figure this out.

01:59:55.200 | - Well, did you guys provide error bars on the estimate?

01:59:57.800 | Like the love them on-

01:59:58.680 | - They came built in.

01:59:59.560 | We didn't give formal plus or minus error bars.

02:00:02.200 | I didn't draw any or anything like that.

02:00:04.120 | - I guess that's the question I have is,

02:00:05.720 | did you feel informed enough to make such decisions?

02:00:10.720 | 'Cause I feel like if I were to do

02:00:14.680 | this kind of thing rigorously,

02:00:16.200 | I would want some data.

02:00:19.080 | I would want to say one of the assumptions you have

02:00:23.120 | is you're not that different from other relationships.

02:00:25.400 | - Right.

02:00:26.240 | - And so I wanna have some data about the way-

02:00:29.360 | - You want the base rates.

02:00:30.720 | - Yeah.

02:00:31.560 | And also actual trajectories of relationships.

02:00:34.400 | I would love to have time series data

02:00:39.080 | about the ways that relationships fall apart or prosper,

02:00:42.840 | how they collide with different life events,

02:00:46.720 | losses, job changes, moving,

02:00:48.840 | both partners find jobs, only one has a job.

02:00:54.520 | I want that kind of data

02:00:56.320 | and how often the different trajectories change in life.

02:01:01.280 | How informative is your past to your future?

02:01:04.400 | That's a whole thing.

02:01:05.640 | Can you look at my life and have a good prediction

02:01:09.760 | about in terms of my characteristics and my relationships

02:01:13.560 | of what that's gonna look like in the future or not?

02:01:15.880 | I don't even know the answer to that question.

02:01:17.200 | I'll be very ill-informed in terms of making the probability.

02:01:20.720 | I would be far, yeah, I just would be under-informed.

02:01:25.680 | I would be under-informed.

02:01:26.680 | I'll be over-biasing to my prior experiences, I think.

02:01:31.240 | - Right, but as long as you're aware of that

02:01:33.120 | and you're honest with yourself,

02:01:34.400 | and you're honest with the other person,

02:01:35.760 | say, "Look, I have really wide error bars on this

02:01:37.640 | for the following reasons," that's okay.

02:01:40.440 | I still think it's better

02:01:41.280 | than not trying to quantify it at all

02:01:43.200 | if you're trying to make

02:01:44.040 | really major irreversible life decisions.

02:01:46.760 | - And I feel also the romantic nature of that question.

02:01:49.480 | For me personally, I try to live my life

02:01:52.800 | thinking it's very close to 100%.

02:01:55.440 | Like allowing myself, actually,

02:01:58.400 | this is the difficulty of this,

02:02:00.000 | is allowing myself to think differently,

02:02:03.560 | I feel like has a psychological consequence.

02:02:06.520 | That's one of my pushbacks against radical honesty,

02:02:09.720 | is this one particular perspective on-

02:02:14.280 | - So you're saying you would rather give

02:02:16.320 | a falsely high percentage to your partner?

02:02:20.200 | - Going back to the wise sage- - In order to sort of

02:02:22.640 | create this additional optimism.

02:02:24.640 | - Helmuth. - Yes.

02:02:26.280 | - Of fake it till you make it,

02:02:29.440 | the positive, the power of positive thinking.

02:02:31.200 | - #positivity, yeah. - Yeah, #.

02:02:33.000 | - Well, so that, and this comes back

02:02:36.760 | to this idea of useful fictions, right?

02:02:39.800 | And I agree, I don't think there's a clear answer to this,

02:02:42.960 | and I think it's actually quite subjective.

02:02:44.280 | Some people this works better for than others.

02:02:46.600 | You know, to be clear, Igor and I weren't doing

02:02:50.160 | this formal prediction in it.

02:02:52.000 | Like we did it with very much tongue in cheek.

02:02:55.560 | It wasn't like we were gonna make,

02:02:57.400 | I don't think it even would have drastically changed

02:03:00.160 | what we decided to do, even.

02:03:02.200 | We kinda just did it more as a fun exercise.

02:03:04.400 | - But the consequence of that fun exercise,

02:03:06.920 | you really actually kinda, there was a deep honesty to it.

02:03:09.920 | - Exactly, it was a deep, and it was just like

02:03:12.160 | this moment of reflection, I'm like, oh wow,

02:03:13.840 | I actually have to think through this quite critically,

02:03:16.720 | and so on.

02:03:17.560 | And it's also what was interesting was,

02:03:22.000 | I got to check in with what my desires were.

02:03:26.000 | So there was one thing of what my actual prediction is,

02:03:28.600 | but what are my desires, and could these desires

02:03:30.440 | be affecting my predictions, and so on.

02:03:32.480 | And that's a method of rationality,

02:03:34.960 | and I personally don't think it loses anything.

02:03:37.080 | It didn't take any of the magic away from our relationship,

02:03:39.240 | quite the opposite.

02:03:40.640 | It brought us closer together, 'cause it was like

02:03:42.640 | we did this weird, fun thing that I appreciate

02:03:45.400 | a lot of people find quite strange.

02:03:47.920 | And I think it was somewhat unique in our relationship

02:03:51.880 | that both of us are very, we both love numbers,

02:03:54.880 | we both love statistics, we're both poker players.

02:03:57.320 | So this was kind of like our safe space anyway.

02:04:01.320 | For others, one partner really might not like

02:04:05.160 | that kind of stuff at all, in which case

02:04:06.400 | this is not a good exercise to do.

02:04:07.840 | I don't recommend it to everybody.

02:04:09.520 | But I do think there's, it's interesting sometimes

02:04:14.320 | to poke holes in the, probe at these things

02:04:18.920 | that we consider so sacred that we can't try

02:04:21.600 | to quantify them.

02:04:24.040 | Which is interesting, 'cause that's in tension

02:04:25.480 | with the idea of what we just talked about with beauty

02:04:27.400 | and what makes something beautiful,

02:04:28.680 | the fact that you can't measure everything about it.

02:04:30.960 | And perhaps something shouldn't be tried to,

02:04:32.920 | maybe it's wrong to completely try and value

02:04:36.360 | the utilitarian, put a utilitarian frame

02:04:39.160 | of measuring the utility of a tree in its entirety.

02:04:43.280 | I don't know, maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't.

02:04:44.680 | I'm ambivalent on that.

02:04:46.640 | But overall, people have too many biases.

02:04:52.600 | People are overly biased against trying to do

02:04:57.440 | a quantified cost-benefit analysis

02:04:59.840 | on really tough life decisions.

02:05:01.480 | They're like, "Oh, just go with your gut."

02:05:03.920 | It's like, well, sure, but guts, our intuitions

02:05:07.120 | are best suited for things that we've got

02:05:08.760 | tons of experience in.

02:05:10.360 | Then we can really trust on it,

02:05:11.880 | if it's a decision we've made many times.

02:05:13.280 | But if it's like, should I marry this person

02:05:16.000 | or should I buy this house over that house?

02:05:19.000 | You only make those decisions a couple of times

02:05:20.680 | in your life, maybe.

02:05:22.960 | - Well, I would love to know, there's a balance,

02:05:26.920 | probably it's a personal balance of strike,

02:05:29.240 | is the amount of rationality you apply

02:05:33.120 | to a question versus the useful fiction,

02:05:38.120 | the fake it till you make it.

02:05:40.080 | For example, just talking to soldiers in Ukraine,

02:05:43.520 | you ask them, what's the probability of you winning,

02:05:49.160 | Ukraine winning?

02:05:50.160 | Almost everybody I talk to is 100%.

02:05:55.640 | - Wow.

02:05:56.840 | - And you listen to the experts, right?

02:05:58.960 | They say all kinds of stuff.

02:06:00.760 | - Right.

02:06:01.600 | - First of all, the morale there is higher than probably,

02:06:06.320 | and I've never been to a war zone before this,

02:06:09.880 | but I've read about many wars,

02:06:12.560 | and I think the morale in Ukraine is higher

02:06:14.920 | than almost any war I've read about.

02:06:17.320 | It's every single person in the country

02:06:19.360 | is proud to fight for their country.

02:06:21.720 | - Wow.

02:06:22.560 | - Everybody, not just soldiers, not everybody.

02:06:25.640 | - Why do you think that is,

02:06:26.560 | specifically more than in other wars?

02:06:28.640 | - I think because there's perhaps a dormant desire

02:06:36.680 | for the citizens of this country

02:06:39.600 | to find the identity of this country,

02:06:41.960 | because it's been going through this 30 year process

02:06:45.360 | of different factions and political bickering,

02:06:48.400 | and they haven't had, as they talk about,

02:06:50.960 | they haven't had their independence war.

02:06:52.600 | They say all great nations have had an independence war.

02:06:55.880 | They had to fight for their independence,

02:06:58.920 | for the discovery of the identity,

02:07:00.700 | of the core of the ideals that unify us,

02:07:03.200 | and they haven't had that.

02:07:04.600 | There's constantly been factions, there's been divisions,

02:07:07.220 | there's been pressures from empires,

02:07:09.840 | from United States and from Russia,

02:07:12.320 | from NATO and Europe,

02:07:14.080 | everybody telling them what to do.

02:07:15.680 | Now they wanna discover who they are,

02:07:17.720 | and there's that kind of sense that we're going to fight

02:07:21.240 | for the safety of our homeland,

02:07:23.280 | but we're also gonna fight for our identity.

02:07:25.640 | And that, on top of the fact that there's just,

02:07:30.640 | if you look at the history of Ukraine,

02:07:33.960 | and there's certain other countries like this,

02:07:36.760 | there are certain cultures are feisty in their pride

02:07:43.040 | of being the citizens of that nation.

02:07:45.720 | Ukraine is that, Poland was that.

02:07:48.440 | You just look at history.

02:07:49.520 | In certain countries, you do not want to occupy.

02:07:52.880 | - Right.

02:07:53.720 | (Lex laughing)

02:07:54.560 | - I mean, both Stalin and Hitler

02:07:55.840 | talked about Poland in this way.

02:07:57.400 | They're like, "This is a big problem.

02:08:00.240 | If we occupy this land for prolonged periods of time,

02:08:02.400 | they're gonna be a pain in their ass.

02:08:04.400 | Like, they're not going to want to be occupied."

02:08:07.160 | And certain other countries are like, pragmatic.

02:08:09.540 | They're like, "Well, leaders come and go.

02:08:12.200 | I guess this is good."

02:08:13.360 | Ukraine just doesn't have,

02:08:15.680 | Ukrainians, throughout the 20th century,

02:08:19.280 | don't seem to be the kind of people

02:08:20.760 | that just sit calmly and let the "occupiers"

02:08:25.760 | impose their rules.

02:08:30.160 | - That's interesting, though,

02:08:31.000 | because you said it's always been under conflict

02:08:33.360 | and leaders have come and gone.

02:08:35.280 | - Yeah.

02:08:36.120 | - So you would expect them to actually be the opposite

02:08:37.120 | under that reasoning.

02:08:38.760 | - Because it's a very fertile land.

02:08:42.360 | It's great for agriculture.

02:08:43.480 | So a lot of people want to,

02:08:44.800 | I mean, I think they've developed this culture

02:08:46.520 | because they've constantly been occupied

02:08:47.920 | by different people, for different peoples.

02:08:51.040 | And so maybe there is something to that,

02:08:54.600 | where you've constantly had to feel,

02:08:58.320 | like, within the blood of the generations,

02:09:00.720 | there's the struggle against the man,

02:09:04.880 | against the imposition of rules,

02:09:07.880 | against oppression and all that kind of stuff,

02:09:09.440 | and that stays with them.

02:09:10.600 | So there's a will there.

02:09:13.720 | But a lot of other aspects are also part of it

02:09:16.440 | that has to do with the reverse Mollik kind of situation,

02:09:20.040 | where social media has definitely played a part of it.

02:09:23.160 | Also, different charismatic individuals

02:09:25.120 | have had to play a part.

02:09:27.220 | The fact that the president of the nation, Zelensky,

02:09:31.160 | stayed in Kiev during the invasion

02:09:35.160 | is a huge inspiration to them

02:09:37.720 | because most leaders, as you can imagine,

02:09:41.460 | when the capital of the nation is under attack,

02:09:44.560 | the wise thing, the smart thing,

02:09:46.820 | that the United States advised Zelensky to do

02:09:49.120 | is to flee and to be the leader of the nation

02:09:52.760 | from a distant place.

02:09:54.760 | He said, "Fuck that, I'm staying put."

02:09:57.280 | Everyone around him, there was a pressure to leave,

02:10:01.760 | and he didn't.

02:10:02.860 | And that, in those singular acts,

02:10:07.040 | really can unify a nation.

02:10:09.200 | There's a lot of people that criticize Zelensky

02:10:11.400 | within Ukraine before the war.

02:10:14.040 | He was very unpopular, even still.

02:10:17.240 | But they put that aside,

02:10:18.860 | especially that singular act of staying in the capital.

02:10:24.160 | Yeah, a lot of those kinds of things

02:10:27.160 | come together to create something within people.

02:10:31.660 | - These things always, of course,

02:10:35.640 | so how zoomed out of a view do you wanna take?

02:10:40.640 | Because, yeah, you describe it as an anti-Molotov thing

02:10:46.320 | happened within Ukraine

02:10:48.000 | because it brought the Ukrainian people together

02:10:49.840 | in order to fight a common enemy.

02:10:51.800 | Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a bad thing.

02:10:53.400 | In the end, we don't know

02:10:54.240 | how this is all gonna play out, right?

02:10:56.740 | But if you zoom it out from a level, on a global level,

02:11:01.200 | they're coming together to fight,

02:11:05.140 | that could make a conflict larger.

02:11:12.240 | You know what I mean?

02:11:13.120 | I don't know what the right answer is here.

02:11:15.680 | It seems like a good thing that they came together,

02:11:17.600 | but we don't know how this is all gonna play out.

02:11:20.000 | If this all turns into nuclear war,

02:11:21.600 | we'll be like, "Okay, that was the bad, that was the."

02:11:23.440 | - Oh yeah, so I was describing the reverse Moloch

02:11:26.080 | for the local level.

02:11:27.440 | - Exactly, yeah.

02:11:28.280 | - Now, this is where the experts come in

02:11:31.240 | and they say, "Well, if you channel most of the resources

02:11:36.240 | "of the nation and the nation supporting Ukraine

02:11:40.500 | "into the war effort, are you not beating the drums of war

02:11:45.500 | "that is much bigger than Ukraine?"

02:11:47.480 | In fact, even the Ukrainian leaders

02:11:50.880 | are speaking of it this way.

02:11:52.920 | This is not a war between two nations.

02:11:55.840 | This is the early days of a world war

02:12:00.840 | if we don't play this correctly.

02:12:02.480 | - Yes.

02:12:03.320 | And we need cool heads from our leaders.

02:12:07.760 | - So from Ukraine's perspective,

02:12:09.560 | Ukraine needs to win the war.

02:12:12.680 | Because what does winning the war mean

02:12:15.440 | is coming to peace negotiations,

02:12:20.240 | an agreement that guarantees no more invasions.

02:12:24.360 | And then you make an agreement

02:12:25.640 | about what land belongs to who.

02:12:28.040 | - Right.

02:12:28.880 | - And you stop that.

02:12:30.240 | And basically, from their perspective,

02:12:34.120 | is you want to demonstrate to the rest of the world

02:12:36.600 | who's watching carefully, including Russia and China

02:12:39.640 | and different players on the geopolitical stage,

02:12:42.280 | that this kind of conflict is not going to be productive

02:12:46.000 | if you engage in it.

02:12:47.240 | So you wanna teach everybody a lesson,

02:12:49.240 | let's not do World War III.

02:12:50.920 | It's gonna be bad for everybody.

02:12:53.000 | It's a lose-lose.

02:12:55.040 | - Deep lose-lose.

02:12:56.600 | Doesn't matter.

02:12:57.440 | - And I think that's actually a correct...

02:13:04.360 | When I zoom out,

02:13:06.760 | 99% of what I think about

02:13:10.160 | is just individual human beings and human lives

02:13:12.320 | and just that war is horrible.

02:13:14.600 | But when you zoom out

02:13:15.600 | and think from a geopolitics perspective,

02:13:17.760 | we should realize that it's entirely possible

02:13:22.000 | that we will see a World War III in the 21st century.

02:13:26.400 | And this is like a dress rehearsal for that.

02:13:29.840 | And so the way we play this as a human civilization

02:13:34.840 | will define whether we do or don't have a World War III.

02:13:39.800 | How we discuss war, how we discuss nuclear war,

02:13:49.320 | the kind of leaders we elect and prop up,

02:13:54.320 | the kind of memes we circulate.

02:13:58.480 | Because you have to be very careful

02:13:59.920 | when you're being pro-Ukraine, for example,

02:14:04.480 | you have to realize that you're being...

02:14:06.560 | You are also indirectly feeding

02:14:11.520 | the ever-increasing military-industrial complex.

02:14:14.620 | So you have to be extremely careful

02:14:17.560 | that when you say pro-Ukraine or pro-anybody,

02:14:22.560 | you're pro-human beings, not pro the machine

02:14:29.440 | that creates narratives that says it's pro-human beings.

02:14:36.800 | But it's actually, if you look at the raw use

02:14:39.920 | of funds and resources,

02:14:42.640 | it's actually pro-making weapons

02:14:44.880 | and shooting bullets and dropping bombs.

02:14:47.440 | The real, we have to just somehow get the meme

02:14:50.680 | into everyone's heads that the real enemy is war itself.

02:14:54.640 | That's the enemy we need to defeat.

02:14:57.120 | And that doesn't mean to say that there isn't justification

02:15:01.600 | for small local scenarios, adversarial conflicts.

02:15:06.600 | If you have a leader who is starting wars,

02:15:11.120 | they're on the side of team war, basically.

02:15:13.760 | It's not that they're on the side of team country,

02:15:15.280 | whatever that country is,

02:15:16.240 | it's they're on the side of team war.

02:15:17.920 | So that needs to be stopped and put down.

02:15:20.180 | But you also have to find a way

02:15:21.520 | that your corrective measure doesn't actually then end up

02:15:25.800 | being co-opted by the war machine and creating greater war.

02:15:28.920 | Again, the playing field is finite.

02:15:31.080 | The scale of conflict is now getting so big

02:15:35.200 | that the weapons that can be used are so mass destructive

02:15:38.800 | that we can't afford another giant conflict.

02:15:42.560 | We just, we won't make it.

02:15:44.080 | - What existential threat, in terms of us not making it,

02:15:48.000 | are you most worried about?

02:15:49.640 | What existential threat to human civilization?

02:15:51.880 | We got like--

02:15:52.720 | - Going down the dark path, huh?

02:15:53.560 | - This is good.

02:15:54.680 | Well, no, it's a dark--

02:15:56.640 | - No, it's like, well, while we're in the somber place,

02:15:58.600 | we might as well.

02:15:59.440 | (both laughing)

02:16:02.320 | - Some of my best friends are dark paths.

02:16:04.500 | What worries you the most?

02:16:08.000 | We mentioned asteroids, we mentioned AGI, nuclear weapons.

02:16:13.960 | - The one that's on my mind the most,

02:16:17.400 | mostly because I think it's the one where we have

02:16:19.480 | actually a real chance to move the needle on

02:16:22.000 | in a positive direction, or more specifically,

02:16:24.600 | stop some really bad things from happening,

02:16:26.880 | really dumb, avoidable things, is bio-risks.

02:16:31.880 | - In what kind of bio-risks?

02:16:37.440 | There's so many fun options.

02:16:39.120 | - Oh, yeah, so many.

02:16:39.960 | So, of course, we have natural risks from natural pandemics,

02:16:43.640 | naturally occurring viruses or pathogens.

02:16:45.920 | And then also as time and technology goes on

02:16:49.640 | and technology becomes more and more democratized

02:16:52.040 | into the hands of more and more people,

02:16:54.040 | the risk of synthetic pathogens.

02:16:55.980 | And whether or not you fall into the camp of COVID

02:17:00.640 | was gain of function, accidental lab leak,

02:17:03.720 | or whether it was purely naturally occurring,

02:17:05.920 | either way, we are facing a future where

02:17:13.320 | synthetic pathogens or human meddled with pathogens

02:17:17.880 | either accidentally get out

02:17:20.040 | or get into the hands of bad actors,

02:17:23.280 | whether they're omnicidal maniacs, either way.

02:17:27.720 | And so that means we need more robustness for that.

02:17:31.160 | And you would think that us having this nice little dry run,

02:17:33.920 | which is what, as awful as COVID was,

02:17:36.340 | and all those poor people that died,

02:17:39.480 | it was still like a child's play

02:17:42.400 | compared to what a future one could be

02:17:44.480 | in terms of fatality rate.

02:17:45.800 | And so you'd think that we would then be coming,

02:17:49.920 | we'd be much more robust in our pandemic preparedness.

02:17:52.620 | And meanwhile, the budget in the last two years for the US,

02:17:58.620 | sorry, they just did this,

02:18:01.900 | I can't remember the name of what the actual budget was,

02:18:04.800 | but it was like a multi-trillion dollar budget

02:18:06.960 | that the US just set aside.

02:18:08.920 | And originally in that,

02:18:10.580 | considering that COVID cost multiple trillions

02:18:12.580 | to the economy, right?

02:18:13.940 | The original allocation in this new budget

02:18:17.320 | for future pandemic preparedness was 60 billion.

02:18:19.960 | So tiny proportion of it.

02:18:22.720 | That's proceeded to get whittled down

02:18:24.840 | to like 30 billion to 15 billion,

02:18:28.680 | all the way down to 2 billion out of multiple trillions

02:18:31.560 | for a thing that has just cost us multiple trillions.

02:18:34.180 | We've just finished, we're not even really out of it.

02:18:37.480 | It basically got whittled down to nothing

02:18:39.280 | because for some reason people think that,

02:18:41.020 | "Whew, all right, we've got the pandemic out of the way.

02:18:43.160 | That was that one."

02:18:44.620 | And the reason for that is that people are,

02:18:47.080 | and I say this with all due respect

02:18:49.620 | to a lot of the science community,

02:18:50.640 | but there's an immense amount of naivety about,

02:18:55.080 | they think that nature is the main risk moving forward,

02:18:59.160 | and it really isn't.

02:19:00.500 | And I think nothing demonstrates this more

02:19:02.920 | than this project that I was just reading about

02:19:05.640 | that's sort of being proposed right now

02:19:07.120 | called Deep Vision.

02:19:10.040 | And the idea is to go out into the wilds,

02:19:12.360 | and we're not talking about just like within cities,

02:19:15.080 | like deep into like caves that people don't go to,

02:19:17.760 | deep into the Arctic, wherever,

02:19:19.200 | scour the earth for whatever the most dangerous

02:19:22.760 | possible pathogens could be that they can find.

02:19:26.480 | And then not only do, try and find these,

02:19:29.920 | bring samples of them back to laboratories.

02:19:33.080 | And again, whether you think COVID was a lab leak or not,

02:19:36.200 | I'm not gonna get into that,

02:19:37.480 | but we have historically had so many, as a civilization,

02:19:40.400 | we've had so many lab leaks

02:19:42.600 | from even like the highest level security things.

02:19:44.600 | Like it just, people should go and just read it.

02:19:47.520 | It's like a comedy show of just how many they are,

02:19:50.560 | how leaky these labs are,

02:19:52.160 | even when they do their best efforts.

02:19:54.640 | So bring these things then back to civilization.

02:19:57.520 | That's step one of the badness.

02:19:58.960 | Then the next step would be to then categorize them,

02:20:02.960 | do experiments on them and categorize them

02:20:04.520 | by their level of potential pandemic lethality.

02:20:07.000 | And then the piece de resistance on this plan

02:20:10.680 | is to then publish that information freely on the internet

02:20:14.840 | about all these pathogens, including their genome,

02:20:16.920 | which is literally like the building instructions

02:20:18.800 | of how to do them on the internet.

02:20:21.240 | And this is something that genuinely a pocket

02:20:24.640 | of the like bio, of the scientific community

02:20:27.960 | thinks is a good idea.

02:20:29.840 | And I think on expectation, like the,

02:20:32.120 | and their argument is, is that,

02:20:33.360 | oh, this is good because it might buy us some time

02:20:36.200 | to buy, to develop the vaccines, which, okay, sure.

02:20:39.520 | Maybe would have made sense prior to mRNA technology,

02:20:42.040 | but like they, mRNA, we can bank,

02:20:44.680 | we can develop a vaccine now

02:20:46.880 | when we find a new pathogen within a couple of days.

02:20:49.960 | Now then there's all the trials and so on.

02:20:51.560 | Those trials would have to happen anyway

02:20:52.960 | in the case of a brand new thing.

02:20:54.440 | So you're saving maybe a couple of days.

02:20:56.400 | So that's the upside.

02:20:57.680 | Meanwhile, the downside is you're not only giving,

02:21:01.200 | you're bringing the risk of these pathogens

02:21:03.200 | of like getting leaked,

02:21:04.040 | but you're literally handing it out

02:21:06.400 | to every bad actor on earth who would be doing cartwheels.

02:21:10.320 | And I'm talking about like Kim Jong-un, ISIS,

02:21:13.280 | people who like want,

02:21:14.880 | they think the rest of the world is their enemy.

02:21:17.200 | And in some cases they think that killing themselves

02:21:19.760 | is like a noble cause.

02:21:22.680 | And you're literally giving them the building blocks

02:21:24.240 | of how to do this.

02:21:25.080 | It's the most batshit idea I've ever heard.

02:21:26.920 | Like on expectation, it's probably like minus EV

02:21:29.560 | of like multiple billions of lives

02:21:31.640 | if they actually succeeded in doing this.

02:21:33.440 | Certainly in the tens or hundreds of millions.

02:21:35.760 | So the cost benefit is so unbelievably, it makes no sense.

02:21:38.840 | And I was trying to wrap my head around,

02:21:41.120 | like what's going wrong in people's minds

02:21:44.920 | to think that this is a good idea?

02:21:46.600 | And it's not that it's malice or anything like that.

02:21:50.000 | I think it's that people don't,

02:21:53.640 | the proponents, they don't,

02:21:56.120 | they're actually overly naive

02:21:57.400 | about the interactions of humanity.

02:22:00.680 | And well, like there are bad actors

02:22:02.840 | who will use this for bad things.

02:22:04.920 | Because not only will it,

02:22:06.160 | if you publish this information,

02:22:08.920 | even if a bad actor couldn't physically make it themselves,

02:22:12.200 | which given in 10 years time,

02:22:14.080 | like the technology is getting cheaper and easier to use.

02:22:18.000 | But even if they couldn't make it, they could now bluff it.

02:22:20.400 | Like what would you do if there's like some deadly new virus

02:22:23.000 | that we were published on the internet

02:22:26.160 | in terms of its building blocks?

02:22:27.600 | Kim Jong-un could be like,

02:22:28.600 | "Hey, if you don't let me build my nuclear weapons,

02:22:31.560 | "I'm gonna release this, I've managed to build it."

02:22:33.640 | Well, now he's actually got a credible bluff.

02:22:35.480 | We don't know.

02:22:36.480 | And so that's, it's just like handing the keys,

02:22:39.320 | it's handing weapons of mass destruction to people.

02:22:42.440 | Makes no sense.

02:22:43.280 | - The possible, I agree with you,

02:22:44.560 | but the possible world in which it might make sense

02:22:48.320 | is if the good guys,

02:22:52.240 | which is a whole another problem,

02:22:53.800 | defining who the good guys are,

02:22:55.520 | but the good guys are like an order of magnitude

02:22:59.680 | higher competence.

02:23:00.980 | And so they can stay ahead of the bad actors

02:23:06.760 | by just being very good at the defense.

02:23:10.120 | By very good, not meaning like a little bit better,

02:23:13.740 | but an order of magnitude better.

02:23:15.920 | But of course the question is

02:23:17.240 | in each of those individual disciplines, is that feasible?

02:23:21.720 | Can you, can the bad actors,

02:23:23.480 | even if they don't have the competence,

02:23:24.920 | leapfrog to the place where the good guys are?

02:23:29.720 | - Yeah, I mean, I would agree in principle

02:23:31.880 | with pertaining to this like particular plan of like,

02:23:35.720 | that, you know, with the thing I described,

02:23:38.520 | this deep vision thing,

02:23:39.360 | where at least then that would maybe make sense

02:23:41.200 | for steps one and step two of like getting the information,

02:23:43.440 | but then why would you release it,

02:23:45.680 | the information to your literal enemies?

02:23:47.280 | You know, that's, that makes,

02:23:49.920 | that doesn't fit at all in that perspective

02:23:52.600 | of like trying to be ahead of them.

02:23:53.560 | You're literally handing them the weapon.

02:23:55.000 | - But there's different levels of release, right?

02:23:56.640 | So there's the kind of secrecy

02:24:00.520 | where you don't give it to anybody,

02:24:02.440 | but there's a release where you incrementally give it

02:24:05.480 | to like major labs.

02:24:07.720 | So it's not public release,

02:24:08.880 | but it's like you're giving it to major labs.

02:24:10.960 | - There's different layers of reasonability, but-

02:24:12.880 | - But the problem there is it's going to,

02:24:14.640 | if you go anywhere beyond like complete secrecy,

02:24:18.120 | it's going to leak.

02:24:19.720 | - That's the thing.

02:24:20.560 | It's very hard to keep secrets.

02:24:21.600 | - And so that's still-

02:24:22.440 | - Information is-

02:24:23.440 | - So you might as well release it to the public,

02:24:25.920 | is that argument.

02:24:26.920 | So you either go complete secrecy

02:24:28.800 | or you release it to the public.

02:24:31.720 | So, which is essentially the same thing.

02:24:33.920 | It's going to leak anyway,

02:24:35.920 | if you don't do complete secrecy.

02:24:38.240 | - Right, which is why you shouldn't get the information

02:24:39.800 | in the first place.

02:24:40.640 | - Yeah, I mean, in that, I think-

02:24:43.720 | - Well, that's A solution.

02:24:44.880 | Yeah, the solution is either don't get the information

02:24:46.600 | in the first place or B, keep it incredibly contained.

02:24:51.600 | - See, I think it really matters

02:24:54.560 | which discipline we're talking about.

02:24:55.800 | So in the case of biology, I do think you're very right.

02:24:59.680 | We shouldn't even be, it should be forbidden

02:25:02.520 | to even like think about that.

02:25:06.640 | Meaning don't just even collect the information,

02:25:09.200 | but like don't do, I mean, gain of function research

02:25:12.440 | is a really iffy area.

02:25:14.880 | Like you start-

02:25:15.720 | - I mean, it's all about cost benefits, right?

02:25:17.680 | There are some scenarios where I could imagine

02:25:19.280 | the cost benefit of a gain of function research

02:25:21.360 | is very, very clear, where you've evaluated

02:25:24.480 | all the potential risks, factored in the probability

02:25:26.840 | that things can go wrong and like, you know,

02:25:28.560 | not only known unknowns, but unknown unknowns as well,

02:25:31.000 | tried to quantify that.

02:25:32.360 | And then even then it's like orders of magnitude

02:25:34.440 | better to do that.

02:25:35.480 | I'm behind that argument, but the point is,

02:25:37.320 | is that there's this like naivety that's preventing people

02:25:40.480 | from even doing the cost benefit properly

02:25:42.160 | on a lot of the things.

02:25:43.320 | Because, you know, I get it, the science community,

02:25:47.280 | again, I don't wanna bucket the science community,

02:25:49.320 | but like some people within the science community

02:25:52.160 | just think that everyone's good

02:25:54.080 | and everyone just cares about getting knowledge

02:25:55.560 | and doing the best for the world.

02:25:56.920 | And unfortunately that's not the case.

02:25:58.080 | I wish we lived in that world, but we don't.

02:26:00.920 | - Yeah, I mean, there's a lie.

02:26:02.400 | Listen, I've been criticizing the science community

02:26:05.640 | broadly quite a bit.

02:26:07.400 | There's so many brilliant people that brilliance

02:26:09.840 | is somehow a hindrance sometimes

02:26:11.320 | 'cause it has a bunch of blind spots.

02:26:13.200 | And then you start to look at the history of science,

02:26:16.440 | how easily it's been used by dictators

02:26:19.080 | to any conclusion they want.

02:26:20.880 | And it's dark how you can use brilliant people

02:26:24.900 | that like playing the little game of science,

02:26:27.200 | 'cause it is a fun game.

02:26:28.820 | You know, you're building, you're going to conferences,

02:26:30.740 | you're building on top of each other's ideas,

02:26:32.360 | there's breakthroughs.

02:26:33.280 | Hi, I think I've realized how this particular molecule works

02:26:37.060 | and I could do this kind of experiment

02:26:38.600 | and everyone else is impressed.

02:26:39.720 | Ooh, cool.

02:26:40.560 | No, I think you're wrong.

02:26:41.440 | Let me show you why you're wrong.

02:26:42.520 | In that little game, everyone gets really excited

02:26:44.880 | and they get excited.

02:26:46.120 | Oh, I came up with a pill that solves this problem

02:26:48.080 | and it's gonna help a bunch of people.

02:26:49.560 | And I came up with a giant study

02:26:51.400 | that shows the exact probability it's gonna help or not.

02:26:54.520 | And you get lost in this game

02:26:56.360 | and you forget to realize this game, just like Mullick,

02:27:00.100 | can have like--

02:27:03.120 | - Unintended consequences, yeah.

02:27:04.760 | - Unintended consequences that might destroy

02:27:07.600 | human civilization or divide human civilization

02:27:12.600 | or have dire geopolitical consequences.

02:27:17.560 | I mean, the effects of, I mean, it's just so,

02:27:20.360 | the most destructive effects of COVID

02:27:22.920 | have nothing to do with the biology of the virus,

02:27:25.800 | it seems like.

02:27:26.640 | I mean, I could just list them forever.

02:27:29.600 | But like one of them is the complete distrust

02:27:32.240 | of public institutions.

02:27:34.200 | The other one is because of that public distrust,

02:27:36.400 | I feel like if a much worse pandemic came along,

02:27:38.880 | we as a world have not cried wolf.

02:27:42.520 | And if an actual wolf now comes,

02:27:45.520 | people will be like, "Fuck masks, fuck--"

02:27:48.400 | - "Fuck vaccines, fuck everything."

02:27:50.080 | - And they won't be, they'll distrust every single thing

02:27:53.640 | that any major institution is gonna tell them.

02:27:56.040 | And--

02:27:57.040 | - Because that's the thing,

02:27:58.280 | there were certain actions made by certain,

02:28:04.640 | health public figures where they told,

02:28:07.800 | they very knowingly told, it was a white lie,

02:28:10.760 | it was intended in the best possible way,

02:28:12.440 | such as early on when there was clearly a shortage of masks.

02:28:17.440 | And so they said to the public, "Oh, don't get masks,

02:28:23.240 | there's no evidence that they work.

02:28:25.080 | Don't get them, they don't work.

02:28:27.280 | In fact, it might even make it worse.

02:28:29.000 | You might even spread it more."

02:28:30.240 | Like that was the real like stinker.

02:28:32.280 | Yeah, no, no.

02:28:34.360 | "The less you know how to do it properly,

02:28:35.200 | you're gonna make that you're gonna get sicker,

02:28:36.680 | or you're more likely to catch the virus,"

02:28:38.720 | which is just absolute crap.

02:28:41.360 | And they put that out there.

02:28:43.160 | And it's pretty clear the reason why they did that

02:28:45.320 | was because there was actually a shortage of masks

02:28:47.640 | and they really needed it for health workers,

02:28:50.200 | which makes sense, like I agree.

02:28:52.800 | But the cost of lying to the public when that then comes out,

02:28:57.800 | people aren't as stupid as they think they are.

02:29:02.760 | And that's, I think, where this distrust of experts

02:29:05.880 | has largely come from.

02:29:06.720 | A, they've lied to people overtly,

02:29:09.360 | but B, people have been treated like idiots.

02:29:13.160 | Now, that's not to say that there aren't a lot of stupid

02:29:14.800 | people who have a lot of wacky ideas around COVID

02:29:16.920 | and all sorts of things,

02:29:18.200 | but if you treat the general public like children,

02:29:21.560 | they're going to see that, they're going to notice that,

02:29:23.480 | and that is going to absolutely decimate the trust

02:29:26.760 | in the public institutions that we depend upon.

02:29:29.520 | And honestly, the best thing that could happen,

02:29:32.240 | I wish, if Fauci and these other leaders who,

02:29:36.400 | I mean, God, I can't imagine how nightmare his job has been

02:29:39.760 | over the last few years, hell on earth.

02:29:41.360 | So I have a lot of sympathy for the position he's been in.

02:29:46.360 | But if he could just come out and be like,

02:29:48.720 | "Okay, look, guys, hands up.

02:29:51.120 | "We didn't handle this as well as we could have.

02:29:53.920 | "These are all the things I would have done differently

02:29:55.840 | "in hindsight.

02:29:56.680 | "I apologize for this and this and this and this."

02:29:58.680 | That would go so far,

02:30:01.360 | and maybe I'm being naive, who knows?

02:30:03.040 | Maybe this would backfire, but I don't think it would.

02:30:05.040 | To someone like me, even,

02:30:06.240 | 'cause I've lost trust in a lot of these things.

02:30:08.840 | But I'm fortunate that I at least know people

02:30:10.360 | who I can go to who I think have good epistemics

02:30:12.680 | on this stuff.

02:30:13.520 | But if they could sort of put their hands on and go,

02:30:16.360 | "Okay, these are the spots where we screwed up.

02:30:18.160 | "This, this, this.

02:30:20.200 | "This was our reasons.

02:30:21.200 | "Yeah, we actually told a little white lie here.

02:30:22.680 | "We did it for this reason.

02:30:23.600 | "We're really sorry."

02:30:24.960 | Where they just did the radical honesty thing,

02:30:26.720 | the radical transparency thing,

02:30:28.680 | that would go so far to rebuilding public trust.

02:30:32.160 | And I think that's what needs to happen.

02:30:33.320 | - Yeah, I totally agree with you.

02:30:34.680 | Unfortunately, his job was very tough

02:30:38.680 | and all those kinds of things.

02:30:39.800 | But I see arrogance,

02:30:42.920 | and arrogance prevented him

02:30:44.600 | from being honest in that way previously.

02:30:47.840 | And I think arrogance will prevent him

02:30:49.480 | from being honest in that way now when he leaders.

02:30:52.840 | I think young people are seeing that,

02:30:55.440 | that kind of talking down to people

02:30:59.960 | from a position of power,

02:31:02.080 | I hope is the way of the past.

02:31:04.400 | People really like authenticity

02:31:06.120 | and they like leaders that are like a man

02:31:10.600 | and a woman of the people.

02:31:12.320 | And I think that just-

02:31:15.000 | - I mean, he still has a chance to do that, I think.

02:31:17.040 | I mean, I don't wanna- - Yeah, sure.

02:31:18.280 | - I don't think he's, you know,

02:31:19.280 | if I doubt he's listening,

02:31:20.600 | but if he is, like, hey, I think, you know,

02:31:24.000 | I don't think he's irredeemable by any means.

02:31:25.680 | I think there's, you know,

02:31:27.560 | I don't have an opinion

02:31:28.720 | of whether there was arrogance or there or not.

02:31:30.720 | Just know that I think, like, coming clean on the,

02:31:34.200 | you know, it's understandable to have fucked up

02:31:36.960 | during this pandemic.

02:31:37.800 | Like, I won't expect any government to handle it well

02:31:39.440 | because it was so difficult,

02:31:41.120 | like, so many moving pieces,

02:31:42.880 | so much, like, lack of information and so on.

02:31:46.080 | But the step to rebuilding trust is to go,

02:31:48.760 | okay, look, we're doing a scrutiny of where we went wrong.

02:31:51.320 | And for my part, I did this wrong in this part.

02:31:53.920 | - That would be huge.

02:31:55.160 | - All of us can do that.

02:31:56.040 | I mean, I was struggling for a while

02:31:57.400 | whether I wanna talk to him or not.

02:32:00.040 | I talked to his boss, Francis Collins.

02:32:01.960 | Another person that screwed up in terms of trust,

02:32:06.380 | lost a little bit of my respect too.

02:32:10.320 | There seems to have been a kind of dishonesty

02:32:14.680 | in the back rooms,

02:32:18.080 | in that they didn't trust people to be intelligent.

02:32:23.080 | Like, we need to tell them what's good for them.

02:32:26.040 | We know what's good for them, that kind of idea.

02:32:29.000 | - To be fair, the thing that's,

02:32:32.560 | what's it called?

02:32:33.400 | I heard the phrase today, nut picking.

02:32:36.440 | Social media does that.

02:32:37.800 | So you've got like nitpicking.

02:32:39.080 | Nut picking is where the craziest, stupidest,

02:32:44.080 | you know, if you have a group of people,

02:32:45.920 | let's call it, you know, let's say people who are vaccine,

02:32:47.760 | I don't like the term anti-vaccine,

02:32:48.760 | people who are vaccine hesitant, vaccine speculative,

02:32:52.080 | you know, what social media did or the media or anyone,

02:32:56.440 | you know, their opponents would do

02:32:59.240 | is pick the craziest example.

02:33:00.960 | So the ones who are like, you know,

02:33:02.280 | I think I need to inject myself with like,

02:33:04.360 | motor oil up my ass or something, you know,

02:33:07.880 | select the craziest ones and then have that beamed to,

02:33:11.600 | you know, so from like someone like Fauci

02:33:13.040 | or Francis's perspective, that's what they get

02:33:15.680 | because they're getting the same social media stuff as us.

02:33:17.440 | They're getting the same media reports.

02:33:18.960 | I mean, they might get some more information,

02:33:20.880 | but they too are gonna get the nuts portrayed to them.

02:33:24.880 | So they probably have a misrepresentation

02:33:27.200 | of what the actual public's intelligence is.

02:33:29.320 | - Well, that just, yes.

02:33:31.280 | And that just means they're not social media savvy.

02:33:33.640 | So one of the skills of being on social media

02:33:36.000 | is to be able to filter that in your mind,

02:33:37.840 | like to understand, to put into proper context.

02:33:40.120 | - To realize that what you are saying,

02:33:41.760 | social media is not anywhere near

02:33:43.920 | an accurate representation of humanity.

02:33:46.600 | - Nut picking, and there's nothing wrong

02:33:49.520 | with putting motor oil up your ass.

02:33:51.360 | It's just one of the better aspects of,

02:33:54.480 | I do this every weekend.

02:33:56.400 | Okay.

02:33:57.240 | - Where the hell did that analogy come from in my mind?

02:33:59.880 | Like what?

02:34:00.720 | - I don't know.

02:34:01.560 | I think you need to, there's some Freudian thing

02:34:03.760 | we need to deeply investigate with a therapist.

02:34:06.680 | Okay, what about AI?

02:34:08.320 | Are you worried about AGI, superintelligence systems,

02:34:13.100 | or paperclip maximizer type of situation?

02:34:17.200 | - Yes, I'm definitely worried about it,

02:34:19.960 | but I feel kind of bipolar in that some days I wake up

02:34:24.320 | and I'm like--

02:34:25.160 | - You're excited about the future?

02:34:26.120 | - Well, exactly.

02:34:26.960 | I'm like, wow, we can unlock the mysteries of the universe,

02:34:29.440 | you know, escape the game.

02:34:30.760 | 'Cause I spend all my time thinking

02:34:35.760 | about these molecule problems,

02:34:37.000 | that what is the solution to them?

02:34:38.960 | In some ways you need this like omnibenevolent,

02:34:43.280 | omniscient, omni-wise coordination mechanism

02:34:48.280 | that can like make us all not do the molecule thing,

02:34:53.000 | or like provide the infrastructure,

02:34:55.560 | or redesign the system so that it's not vulnerable

02:34:57.440 | to this molecule process.

02:34:58.900 | And in some ways, you know,

02:35:01.160 | that's the strongest argument to me

02:35:02.560 | for like the race to build AGI,

02:35:04.960 | is that maybe, you know, we can't survive without it.

02:35:08.000 | But the flip side to that is

02:35:13.260 | unfortunately now that there's multiple actors

02:35:14.880 | trying to build AI, AGI, you know,

02:35:17.280 | this was fine 10 years ago when it was just DeepMind,

02:35:19.920 | but then other companies started up

02:35:22.040 | and now it created a race dynamic.

02:35:23.340 | Now it's like, the whole thing is at the same,

02:35:27.000 | it's got the same problem.

02:35:27.960 | It's like, whichever company is the one

02:35:30.040 | that like optimizes for speed at the cost of safety

02:35:33.580 | will get the competitive advantage,

02:35:35.280 | and so we'll be the more likely the ones to build the AGI,

02:35:37.360 | you know, and that's the same cycle that you're in.

02:35:40.280 | And there's no clear solution to that,

02:35:41.600 | 'cause you can't just go like slapping,

02:35:45.020 | if you go and try and like stop all the different companies,

02:35:51.160 | then it will, you know, the good ones will stop

02:35:54.640 | because they're the ones, you know,

02:35:55.680 | within the West's reach,

02:35:57.680 | but then that leaves all the other ones to continue

02:36:00.000 | and then they're even more likely.

02:36:01.000 | So it's like, it's a very difficult problem

02:36:03.160 | with no clean solution.

02:36:04.420 | And, you know, at the same time, you know,

02:36:08.640 | I know at least some of the folks at DeepMind

02:36:12.120 | and they're incredible and they're thinking about this.

02:36:13.760 | They're very aware of this problem and they're like,

02:36:15.720 | you know, I think some of the smartest people on earth.

02:36:18.720 | - Yeah, the culture is important there

02:36:20.640 | because they are thinking about that

02:36:22.000 | and they're some of the best machine learning engineers.

02:36:26.240 | So it's possible to have a company or a community of people

02:36:29.800 | that are both great engineers

02:36:31.720 | and are thinking about the philosophical topics.

02:36:33.760 | - Exactly, and importantly, they're also game theorists,

02:36:36.720 | you know, and because this is ultimately

02:36:38.240 | a game theory problem, the thing, this Moloch mechanism

02:36:41.640 | and like, you know, how do we voice arms race scenarios?

02:36:46.640 | You need people who aren't naive to be thinking about this.

02:36:50.040 | And again, like luckily there's a lot of smart,

02:36:52.000 | non-naive game theorists within that group.

02:36:54.800 | Yes, I'm concerned about it.

02:36:56.000 | And I think it's again, a thing that we need people

02:36:59.640 | to be thinking about in terms of like,

02:37:02.360 | how do we create, how do we mitigate the arms race dynamics

02:37:05.960 | and how do we solve the thing of,

02:37:10.280 | Bostrom calls it the orthogonality problem whereby,

02:37:13.560 | because obviously there's a chance, you know,

02:37:16.080 | the belief, the hope is,

02:37:17.480 | is that you build something that's super intelligent

02:37:19.760 | and by definition of being super intelligent,

02:37:22.960 | it will also become super wise

02:37:25.160 | and have the wisdom to know what the right goals are.

02:37:27.840 | And hopefully those goals include keeping humanity alive.

02:37:30.960 | Right, but Bostrom says that actually those two things,

02:37:35.320 | you know, super intelligence and super wisdom

02:37:38.280 | aren't necessarily correlated.

02:37:40.400 | They're actually kind of orthogonal things.

02:37:42.880 | And how do we make it so that they are correlated?

02:37:44.800 | How do we guarantee it?

02:37:45.640 | Because we need it to be guaranteed really,

02:37:47.040 | to know that we're doing the thing safely.

02:37:48.920 | - But I think that like merging of intelligence and wisdom,

02:37:53.920 | at least my hope is that this whole process

02:37:56.920 | happens sufficiently slowly,

02:37:58.840 | that we're constantly having these kinds of debates,

02:38:02.040 | that we have enough time to figure out

02:38:06.160 | how to modify each version of the system

02:38:07.920 | as it becomes more and more intelligent.

02:38:09.600 | - Yes, buying time is a good thing, definitely.

02:38:12.040 | Anything that slows everything down,

02:38:14.240 | we just, everyone needs to chill out.

02:38:16.080 | We've got millennia to figure this out.

02:38:19.560 | Or at least, well, it depends again.

02:38:26.560 | Some people think that, you know,

02:38:27.800 | we can't even make it through the next few decades

02:38:29.800 | without having some kind of

02:38:31.560 | omni-wise coordination mechanism.

02:38:36.320 | And there's also an argument to that.

02:38:37.960 | Yeah, I don't know.

02:38:39.360 | - Well, there is, I'm suspicious of that kind of thinking

02:38:42.240 | because it seems like the entirety of human history

02:38:45.160 | has people in it that are like predicting doom

02:38:48.600 | or just around the corner.

02:38:50.760 | There's something about us

02:38:52.720 | that is strangely attracted to that thought.

02:38:57.320 | It's almost like fun to think about

02:38:59.680 | the destruction of everything.

02:39:01.200 | Just objectively speaking,

02:39:04.320 | I've talked and listened to a bunch of people

02:39:08.160 | and they are gravitating towards that.

02:39:11.120 | It's almost, I think it's the same thing

02:39:13.200 | that people love about conspiracy theories

02:39:15.720 | is they love to be the person that kind of figured out

02:39:19.200 | some deep fundamental thing about the,

02:39:22.120 | that's going to be,

02:39:23.400 | it's going to mark something extremely important

02:39:26.160 | about the history of human civilization

02:39:28.320 | because then I will be important.

02:39:31.320 | When in reality, most of us will be forgotten

02:39:33.720 | and life will go on.

02:39:37.640 | And one of the sad things about

02:39:40.040 | whenever anything traumatic happens to you,

02:39:42.000 | whenever you lose loved ones or just tragedy happens,

02:39:46.720 | you realize life goes on.

02:39:48.260 | Even after a nuclear war that will wipe out

02:39:52.160 | some large percentage of the population

02:39:55.040 | and will torture people for years to come

02:40:00.040 | because of the sort of,

02:40:01.960 | I mean, the effects of a nuclear winter,

02:40:05.440 | people will still survive,

02:40:07.280 | life will still go on.

02:40:08.720 | I mean, it depends on the kind of nuclear war,

02:40:10.960 | but in case of nuclear war, it will still go on.

02:40:13.520 | That's one of the amazing things about life,

02:40:15.840 | it finds a way.

02:40:17.080 | And so in that sense,

02:40:18.320 | I just, I feel like the doom and gloom thing is a--

02:40:23.760 | - Well, we don't want a self-fulfilling prophecy.

02:40:26.120 | - Yes, that's exactly.

02:40:27.480 | - Yes, and I very much agree with that.

02:40:29.680 | And I even have a slight feeling

02:40:32.980 | from the amount of time we've spent in this conversation

02:40:35.800 | talking about this 'cause it's like,

02:40:37.600 | is this even a net positive

02:40:40.200 | if it's making everyone feel,

02:40:41.880 | or in some ways, making people imagine

02:40:45.000 | these bad scenarios can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

02:40:47.480 | But at the same time, that's weighed off

02:40:51.180 | with at least making people aware of the problem

02:40:54.360 | and gets them thinking.

02:40:55.320 | And I think particularly,

02:40:56.280 | the reason why I wanna talk about this to your audience

02:40:58.360 | is that on average, they're the type of people

02:41:00.680 | who gravitate towards these kind of topics

02:41:02.800 | 'cause they're intellectually curious

02:41:04.960 | and they can sort of sense that there's trouble brewing.

02:41:07.880 | They can smell that there's,

02:41:09.400 | I think there's a reason

02:41:10.240 | people are thinking about this stuff a lot

02:41:11.440 | is because the probability,

02:41:13.640 | it's increased in probability

02:41:16.840 | over certainly over the last few years.

02:41:19.440 | Trajectories have not gone favorably,

02:41:21.700 | let's put it since 2010.

02:41:24.260 | So it's right, I think, for people to be thinking about it.

02:41:28.460 | But that's where they're like,

02:41:30.060 | I think whether it's a useful fiction

02:41:31.660 | or whether it's actually true

02:41:33.340 | or whatever you wanna call it,

02:41:34.420 | I think having this faith,

02:41:35.940 | this is where faith is valuable

02:41:38.060 | because it gives you at least this anchor of hope.

02:41:41.140 | And I'm not just saying it to trick myself.

02:41:43.900 | Like I do truly,

02:41:44.780 | I do think there's something out there that wants us to win.

02:41:47.700 | I think there's something that really wants us to win.

02:41:49.720 | And it just, you just have to be like,

02:41:53.120 | just like, okay, now I sound really crazy,

02:41:55.800 | but like open your heart to it a little bit.

02:41:58.800 | And it will give you the like,

02:42:03.200 | the sort of breathing room

02:42:04.880 | with which to marinate on the solutions.

02:42:07.720 | We are the ones who have to come up with the solutions,

02:42:10.400 | but we can use,

02:42:15.000 | there's like this hashtag positivity.

02:42:18.060 | There's value in that.

02:42:19.340 | - Yeah, you have to kind of imagine

02:42:21.340 | all the destructive trajectories that lay in our future

02:42:24.980 | and then believe in the possibility

02:42:27.980 | of avoiding those trajectories.

02:42:29.500 | All while, you said audience,

02:42:32.300 | all while sitting back, which is majority,

02:42:35.140 | the two people that listen to this

02:42:36.700 | are probably sitting on a beach,

02:42:38.700 | smoking some weed.

02:42:40.280 | - God damn it.

02:42:43.240 | - It's a beautiful sunset,

02:42:44.880 | or they're looking at just the waves going in and out.

02:42:47.880 | And ultimately there's a kind of deep belief there

02:42:50.440 | in the momentum of humanity to figure it all out.

02:42:55.440 | - I think we'll make it, but we've got a lot of work to do.

02:42:58.400 | - Which is what makes this whole simulation,

02:43:01.040 | this video game kind of fun.

02:43:02.440 | This battle of Polytopia, I still,

02:43:06.720 | man, I love those games so much.

02:43:08.560 | - They're so good.

02:43:09.400 | - And that one for people who don't know,

02:43:11.760 | Battle of Polytopia is a really radical simplification

02:43:16.760 | of a civilization type of game.

02:43:20.540 | It still has a lot of the skill tree development,

02:43:24.140 | a lot of the strategy,

02:43:25.800 | but it's easy enough to play on a phone.

02:43:29.900 | - Yeah.

02:43:30.740 | - It's kind of interesting.

02:43:32.140 | - They've really figured it out.

02:43:33.260 | It's one of the most elegantly designed games I've ever seen.

02:43:35.580 | It's incredibly complex.

02:43:37.980 | And yet being, again, it walks that line

02:43:39.580 | between complexity and simplicity

02:43:40.980 | in this really, really great way.

02:43:42.580 | And they use pretty colors that hack

02:43:46.220 | the dopamine reward circuits in our brains very well.

02:43:49.740 | - It's fun.

02:43:50.860 | Video games are so fun.

02:43:52.300 | - Yeah.

02:43:53.580 | - Most of this life is just about fun,

02:43:55.540 | escaping all the suffering to find the fun.

02:43:57.780 | What's energy healing?

02:43:59.980 | I have in my notes, energy healing question mark.

02:44:02.260 | What's that about?

02:44:03.100 | (laughing)

02:44:05.540 | - Oh man.

02:44:06.880 | God, your audience are gonna think I'm mad.

02:44:09.500 | So the two crazy things that happened to me,

02:44:13.300 | the one was the voice in the head

02:44:15.020 | that said you're gonna win this tournament,

02:44:16.140 | and then I won the tournament.

02:44:18.300 | The other craziest thing that's happened to me

02:44:20.980 | was in 2018,

02:44:23.740 | I started getting this weird problem in my ear

02:44:30.340 | where it was kind of like low frequency sound distortion,

02:44:35.300 | where voices, particularly men's voices,

02:44:37.340 | became incredibly unpleasant to listen to.

02:44:39.580 | It would create this,

02:44:42.420 | it would be falsely amplified or something,

02:44:44.140 | and it was almost like a physical sensation in my ear,

02:44:46.380 | which was really unpleasant.

02:44:48.140 | And it would last for a few hours and then go away,

02:44:51.020 | and then come back for a few hours and go away.

02:44:52.580 | And I went and got hearing tests,

02:44:54.500 | and they found that the bottom end,

02:44:56.380 | I was losing the hearing in that ear.

02:44:58.400 | And so in the end,

02:45:03.620 | the doctors said they think it was

02:45:05.380 | this thing called Meniere's disease,

02:45:07.260 | which is this very unpleasant disease

02:45:10.580 | where people basically end up losing their hearing,

02:45:12.140 | but they get this,

02:45:13.060 | it often comes with dizzy spells and other things,

02:45:16.300 | 'cause it's like the inner ear gets all messed up.

02:45:18.740 | Now, I don't know if that's actually what I had,

02:45:21.820 | but that's what at least one doctor said to me.

02:45:24.980 | But anyway, so I'd had three months of this stuff,

02:45:27.020 | this going on, and it was really getting me down.

02:45:28.860 | And I was at Burning Man, of all places.

02:45:32.580 | Don't mean to be that person talking about Burning Man.

02:45:35.140 | But I was there, and again, I'd had it,

02:45:37.980 | and I was unable to listen to music,

02:45:39.180 | which is not what you want,

02:45:40.100 | 'cause Burning Man is a very loud, intense place.

02:45:42.620 | And I was just having a really rough time.

02:45:44.060 | And on the final night,

02:45:45.980 | I get talking to this girl who's a friend of a friend.

02:45:49.660 | And I mentioned, I was like,

02:45:51.060 | "Oh, I'm really down in the dumps about this."

02:45:52.580 | And she's like, "Oh, well,

02:45:53.420 | I've done a little bit of energy healing.

02:45:54.980 | Would you like me to have a look?"

02:45:56.380 | And I was like, "Sure."

02:45:57.940 | Now, this was, again,

02:45:59.460 | no time in my life for this.

02:46:03.420 | I didn't believe in any of this stuff.

02:46:04.980 | I was just like, "It's all bullshit.

02:46:06.100 | It's all wooey nonsense."

02:46:07.500 | But I was like, "Sure, have a go."

02:46:10.740 | And she starts with her hand,

02:46:13.700 | and she says, "Oh, there's something there."

02:46:15.340 | And then she leans in,

02:46:16.180 | and she starts sucking over my ear,

02:46:18.780 | not actually touching me,

02:46:19.900 | but close to it, with her mouth.

02:46:22.660 | And it was really unpleasant.

02:46:23.780 | I was like, "Whoa, can you stop?"

02:46:24.780 | She's like, "No, no, no, there's something there.

02:46:25.820 | I need to get it."

02:46:26.660 | And I was like, "No, no, no, I really don't like it.

02:46:27.780 | Please, this is really loud."

02:46:29.140 | She's like, "I need to, just bear with me."

02:46:31.100 | And she does it,

02:46:31.940 | and I don't know how long, for a few minutes.

02:46:33.740 | And then she eventually collapses on the ground,

02:46:36.540 | like freezing cold, crying.

02:46:38.500 | And I'm just like,

02:46:41.420 | "I don't know what the hell is going on."

02:46:42.860 | I'm thoroughly freaked out,

02:46:44.300 | as is everyone else watching.

02:46:45.420 | Just like, "What the hell?"

02:46:46.380 | And we warm her up, and she was like,

02:46:47.660 | (gasps)

02:46:48.500 | "What, ugh."

02:46:49.460 | She was really shaken up.

02:46:51.340 | And she's like, "I don't know what that..."

02:46:54.700 | She said it was something very unpleasant and dark.

02:46:57.540 | "Don't worry, it's gone.

02:46:58.700 | I think you'll be fine in a couple...

02:46:59.900 | You'll have the physical symptoms for a couple of weeks,

02:47:01.420 | and you'll be fine."

02:47:02.700 | But, you know, she was just like that.

02:47:04.620 | You know, so I was so rattled, A,

02:47:07.900 | because the potential that actually,

02:47:10.020 | I'd had something bad in me that made someone feel bad,

02:47:13.060 | and that she was scared.

02:47:15.340 | That was what, you know, I was like,

02:47:16.260 | "Wait, I thought, you do this, this is the thing.

02:47:19.300 | Now you're terrified?

02:47:20.340 | Like you pulled like some kind of exorcism or something?

02:47:22.540 | Like what the fuck is going on?"

02:47:24.620 | So it, like just, the most insane experience.

02:47:29.620 | And frankly, it took me like a few months

02:47:31.740 | to sort of emotionally recover from it.

02:47:35.380 | But my ear problem went away about a couple of weeks later,

02:47:39.540 | and touch wood, I've not had any issues since.

02:47:42.940 | So...

02:47:44.700 | - That gives you like hints

02:47:48.140 | that maybe there's something out there.

02:47:50.100 | - I mean, I don't, again,

02:47:53.340 | I don't have an explanation for this.

02:47:55.180 | The most probable explanation was, you know,

02:47:57.780 | I was a burning man.

02:47:58.620 | I was in a very open state.

02:47:59.860 | Let's just leave it at that.

02:48:01.820 | And, you know,

02:48:04.580 | placebo is an incredibly powerful thing

02:48:08.060 | and a very not understood thing.

02:48:10.300 | So-

02:48:11.140 | - Almost assigning the word placebo to it

02:48:12.660 | reduces it down to a way that

02:48:14.860 | it doesn't deserve to be reduced down.

02:48:16.500 | Maybe there's a whole science of what we call placebo.

02:48:19.180 | Maybe there's a, placebo is a door-

02:48:21.580 | - Self-healing, you know?

02:48:23.940 | And I mean, I don't know what the problem was.

02:48:26.300 | Like I was told it was many years.

02:48:27.620 | I don't want to say I definitely had that

02:48:29.380 | because I don't want people to think that,

02:48:30.540 | "Oh, that's how, you know, if they do have that

02:48:32.060 | 'cause it's a terrible disease.

02:48:33.020 | And if they have that,

02:48:33.860 | that this is gonna be a guaranteed way

02:48:34.740 | for it to fix it for them."

02:48:35.580 | I don't know.

02:48:36.420 | And I also don't, I don't,

02:48:39.700 | and you're absolutely right to say like

02:48:41.300 | using even the word placebo is like,

02:48:43.260 | it comes with this like baggage of like frame.

02:48:47.900 | And I don't want to reduce that.

02:48:49.820 | All I can do is describe the experience and what happened.

02:48:52.780 | I cannot put an ontological framework around it.

02:48:56.460 | I can't say why it happened, what the mechanism was,

02:49:00.020 | what the problem even was in the first place.

02:49:02.900 | I just know that something crazy happened

02:49:05.140 | and it was while I was in an open state.

02:49:06.980 | And fortunately for me, it made the problem go away.

02:49:09.460 | But what I took away from it, again,

02:49:11.780 | it was part of this, you know,

02:49:13.500 | this took me on this journey of becoming more humble

02:49:15.900 | about what I think I know.

02:49:17.380 | Because as I said before, I was like,

02:49:18.780 | I was in the like Richard Dawkins train of atheism

02:49:21.740 | in terms of there is no God.

02:49:23.060 | There's everything like that is bullshit.

02:49:24.820 | We know everything.

02:49:25.660 | We know, you know, the only way we can get through,

02:49:28.980 | we know how medicine works and its molecules

02:49:30.820 | and chemical interactions and that kind of stuff.

02:49:33.980 | And now it's like, okay, well,

02:49:36.580 | there's clearly more for us to understand.

02:49:39.500 | And that doesn't mean that it's ascientific as well.

02:49:43.540 | 'Cause, you know, the beauty of the scientific method

02:49:47.140 | is that it still can apply to this situation.

02:49:49.940 | Like I don't see why, you know,

02:49:51.340 | I would like to try and test this experimentally.

02:49:54.300 | I haven't really, you know,

02:49:55.540 | I don't know how we would go about doing that.

02:49:57.100 | We'd have to find other people with the same condition.

02:49:58.860 | I guess, and like try and repeat the experiment.

02:50:02.780 | But it doesn't, just because something happens

02:50:06.940 | that's sort of out of the realms of our current understanding

02:50:10.060 | it doesn't mean that it's,

02:50:11.900 | the scientific method can't be used for it.

02:50:13.820 | - Yeah, I think the scientific method sits on a foundation

02:50:17.900 | of those kinds of experiences.

02:50:20.180 | 'Cause they, scientific method is a process

02:50:24.700 | to carve away at the mystery all around us.

02:50:29.700 | And experiences like this is just a reminder

02:50:33.740 | that we're mostly shrouded in mystery still.

02:50:36.700 | That's it, it's just like a humility.

02:50:38.940 | Like we haven't really figured this whole thing out.

02:50:41.580 | - But at the same time, we have found ways to act,

02:50:45.460 | you know, we're clearly doing something right.

02:50:47.500 | Because think of the technological scientific advancements,

02:50:50.020 | the knowledge that we have,

02:50:52.460 | would blow people's minds even from 100 years ago.

02:50:55.620 | - Yeah, and we've even allegedly gone out to space

02:50:58.660 | and landed on the moon.

02:51:00.340 | Although I still haven't, I have not seen evidence

02:51:02.500 | of the earth being round, but I'm keeping an open mind.

02:51:06.540 | Speaking of which, you studied physics and astrophysics.

02:51:11.620 | (laughing)

02:51:13.860 | Just to go to that, just to jump around

02:51:18.740 | through the fascinating life you've had,

02:51:20.940 | when did you, how did that come to be?

02:51:23.620 | Like when did you fall in love with astronomy

02:51:25.900 | and space and things like this?

02:51:28.620 | - As early as I can remember.

02:51:30.460 | I was very lucky that my mom and my dad,

02:51:33.380 | but particularly my mom, my mom is like the most nature,

02:51:38.300 | she is mother earth, is the only way to describe her.

02:51:41.180 | Just, she's like Dr. Dolittle, animals flock to her

02:51:44.540 | and just like sit and look at her adoringly.

02:51:47.060 | - As she sings.

02:51:48.380 | - Yeah, she just is mother earth

02:51:51.060 | and she has always been fascinated by,

02:51:53.500 | she doesn't have any, she never went to university

02:51:57.100 | or anything like that, she's actually phobic of maths.

02:51:59.380 | If I try and get her to like,

02:52:01.060 | I was trying to teach her poker and she hated it.

02:52:03.860 | But she's so deeply curious and that just got instilled in me

02:52:08.860 | when we would sleep out under the stars

02:52:11.260 | whenever it was the two nights a year

02:52:13.220 | when it was warm enough in the UK to do that.

02:52:15.820 | And we would just lie out there until we fell asleep

02:52:18.740 | looking for satellites, looking for shooting stars.

02:52:22.140 | And I was just always, I don't know whether it was from that

02:52:25.340 | but I've always naturally gravitated to like

02:52:28.660 | the biggest questions.

02:52:31.980 | And also the like the most layers of abstraction.

02:52:35.180 | I love just like, what's the meta question,

02:52:36.780 | what's the meta question and so on.

02:52:38.820 | So I think it just came from that really.

02:52:40.820 | And then on top of that, like physics,

02:52:44.140 | it also made logical sense in that it was a degree

02:52:47.460 | that was subject that ticked the box of being,

02:52:54.100 | answering these really big picture questions

02:52:55.580 | but it was also extremely useful.

02:52:57.900 | It like has a very high utility

02:52:59.660 | in terms of, I didn't know necessarily.

02:53:02.140 | I thought I was gonna become like a research scientist.

02:53:04.460 | My original plan was I wanna be a professional astronomer.

02:53:07.060 | - So it's not just like a philosophy degree

02:53:08.660 | that asks the big questions and it's not like biology

02:53:14.100 | and the path to go to medical school or something like that

02:53:16.220 | which is overly pragmatic, not overly,

02:53:19.140 | is very pragmatic. - The more pragmatic side.

02:53:23.140 | - But this is, yeah, physics is a good combination

02:53:25.580 | of the two.

02:53:26.500 | - Yeah, at least for me, it made sense.

02:53:27.940 | And I was good at it, I liked it.

02:53:30.220 | Yeah, I mean, it wasn't like I did an immense amount

02:53:32.460 | of soul searching to choose it or anything.

02:53:34.380 | It just was like this, it made the most sense.

02:53:38.220 | I mean, you have to make this decision in the UK, age 17

02:53:41.300 | which is crazy 'cause in US, you go the first year,

02:53:44.820 | you do a bunch of stuff, right?

02:53:46.260 | And then you choose your major.

02:53:48.540 | - Yeah, I think the first few years of college,

02:53:50.020 | you focus on the drugs and only as you get closer

02:53:53.100 | to the end, do you start to think,

02:53:55.820 | oh shit, this wasn't about that

02:53:57.420 | and I owe the government a lot of money.

02:54:01.380 | How many alien civilizations are out there?

02:54:05.180 | When you looked up at the stars with your mom

02:54:07.580 | and you were counting them,

02:54:11.140 | what's your mom think about the number

02:54:12.900 | of alien civilization?

02:54:13.740 | - I actually don't know.

02:54:15.780 | I would imagine she would take the viewpoint of,

02:54:18.660 | she's pretty humble and she knows how many,

02:54:21.300 | she knows there's a huge number of potential spawn sites

02:54:24.100 | out there, so she would--

02:54:25.380 | - Spawn sites?

02:54:26.220 | - Spawn sites, yeah.

02:54:28.020 | This is our spawn sites. - Spawn sites.

02:54:29.460 | - Yeah, spawn sites in polytopia, we spawned on earth.

02:54:32.160 | - Yeah, spawn sites.

02:54:35.860 | Why does that feel weird to say spawn?

02:54:39.260 | - Because it makes me feel like it's,

02:54:41.320 | there's only one source of life

02:54:45.300 | and it's spawning in different locations.

02:54:47.380 | That's why the word spawn.

02:54:49.180 | 'Cause it feels like life that originated on earth

02:54:52.540 | really originated here.

02:54:54.660 | - Right, it is unique to this particular,

02:54:58.740 | yeah, I mean, but I don't, in my mind,

02:55:00.980 | it doesn't exclude the completely different forms of life

02:55:04.340 | and different biochemical soups can't also spawn,

02:55:09.140 | but I guess it implies that there's some spark

02:55:12.580 | that is uniform, which I kind of like the idea of it.

02:55:16.180 | - And then I get to think about respawning,

02:55:19.220 | like after it dies, like what happens if life on earth ends?

02:55:23.500 | Is it gonna restart again?

02:55:26.060 | - Probably not, it depends.

02:55:28.060 | - Maybe earth is too--

02:55:28.900 | - It depends on the type of,

02:55:30.700 | what's the thing that kills it off, right?

02:55:32.820 | If it's a paperclip maximizer, not for the example,

02:55:36.100 | but some kind of very self-replicating,

02:55:39.620 | high on the capabilities, very low on the wisdom type thing.

02:55:44.380 | So whether that's gray goo, green goo, like nanobots

02:55:48.620 | or just a shitty misaligned AI

02:55:51.180 | that thinks it needs to turn everything into paperclips.

02:55:54.340 | If it's something like that,

02:55:57.700 | then it's gonna be very hard for life, complex life,

02:56:00.860 | because by definition, a paperclip maximizer

02:56:03.180 | is the ultimate instantiation of molecule,

02:56:05.660 | deeply low complexity, over-optimization on a single thing,

02:56:08.620 | sacrificing everything else, turning the whole world into--

02:56:11.100 | - Although something tells me,

02:56:12.180 | like if we actually take a paperclip maximizer,

02:56:14.620 | it destroys everything.

02:56:16.180 | It's a really dumb system

02:56:17.820 | that just envelops the whole of earth.

02:56:20.780 | - And the universe beyond, yeah.

02:56:22.380 | - I didn't know that part, but okay, great.

02:56:26.580 | - That's the thought experiment anyway.

02:56:27.420 | - So it becomes a multi-planetary paperclip maximizer?

02:56:30.300 | - Well, it just propagates, I mean,

02:56:32.100 | it depends whether it figures out

02:56:33.660 | how to jump the vacuum gap.

02:56:35.060 | But again, I mean, this is all silly

02:56:38.660 | 'cause it's a hypothetical thought experiment,

02:56:40.340 | which I think doesn't actually have

02:56:41.220 | much practical application to the AI safety problem,

02:56:43.260 | but it's just a fun thing to play around with.

02:56:45.260 | But if by definition it is maximally intelligent,

02:56:47.820 | which means it is maximally good

02:56:49.820 | at navigating the environment around it

02:56:53.100 | in order to achieve its goal,

02:56:54.740 | but extremely bad at choosing goals in the first place,

02:56:58.060 | so again, we're talking on this orthogonality thing, right?

02:57:00.060 | It's very low on wisdom, but very high on capability.

02:57:03.720 | Then it will figure out how to jump the vacuum gap

02:57:05.680 | between planets and stars and so on,

02:57:07.400 | and thus just turn every atom it gets

02:57:09.360 | its hands on into paperclips.

02:57:10.960 | - Yeah, by the way, for people who don't--

02:57:12.800 | - Which is maximum virality, by the way.

02:57:14.600 | That's what virality is.

02:57:16.240 | - But does not mean that virality

02:57:17.800 | is necessarily all about maximizing paperclips.

02:57:20.040 | In that case, it is.

02:57:21.080 | So for people who don't know,

02:57:22.280 | this is just a thought experiment example

02:57:24.280 | of an AI system that has a goal

02:57:27.360 | and is willing to do anything to accomplish that goal,

02:57:30.400 | including destroying all life on Earth

02:57:32.280 | and all human life and all of consciousness in the universe

02:57:36.320 | for the goal of producing a maximum number of paperclips.

02:57:40.720 | Okay.

02:57:41.840 | - Or whatever its optimization function was

02:57:43.960 | that it was set at.

02:57:45.000 | - But don't you think--

02:57:45.840 | - It could be recreating Lexus.

02:57:47.920 | Maybe it'll tile the universe in Lex.

02:57:50.560 | - Go on.

02:57:51.600 | I like this idea.

02:57:52.440 | No, I'm just kidding.

02:57:53.360 | - That's better.

02:57:54.800 | That's more interesting than paperclips.

02:57:56.320 | - That could be infinitely optimal

02:57:57.640 | if I were to say so myself.

02:57:58.480 | - But if you ask me, it's still a bad thing

02:58:00.400 | because it's permanently capping

02:58:02.760 | what the universe could ever be.

02:58:04.200 | It's like, that's its end state.

02:58:05.880 | - Or achieving the optimal

02:58:07.840 | that the universe could ever achieve,

02:58:09.240 | but that's up to,

02:58:10.320 | different people have different perspectives.

02:58:12.480 | But don't you think within the paperclip world

02:58:15.520 | that would emerge,

02:58:16.920 | just like in the zeros and ones that make up a computer,

02:58:20.200 | that would emerge beautiful complexities?

02:58:22.860 | Like, it won't suppress,

02:58:27.800 | as you scale to multiple planets and throughout,

02:58:30.800 | there'll emerge these little worlds

02:58:33.240 | that on top of the fabric of maximizing paperclips,

02:58:38.240 | that would emerge like little societies of paperclip--

02:58:45.200 | - Well, then we're not describing

02:58:47.480 | a paperclip maximizer anymore

02:58:48.560 | because if you think of what a paperclip is,

02:58:51.560 | it is literally just a piece of bent iron, right?

02:58:55.560 | So if it's maximizing that throughout the universe,

02:58:58.920 | it's taking every atom it gets its hand on

02:59:01.000 | into somehow turning it into iron or steel,

02:59:04.200 | and then bending it into that shape,

02:59:05.360 | and then done and done.

02:59:06.760 | By definition, like paperclips,

02:59:08.840 | there is no way for, well, okay,

02:59:11.920 | so you're saying that paperclips somehow

02:59:13.880 | will just emerge and create through gravity or something.

02:59:17.920 | - No, no, no, no,

02:59:18.920 | 'cause there's a dynamic element to the whole system.

02:59:21.560 | It's not just, it's creating those paperclips.

02:59:24.760 | And the act of creating, there's going to be a process,

02:59:27.880 | and that process will have a dance to it

02:59:30.640 | 'cause it's not like sequential thing.

02:59:32.600 | There's a whole complex three-dimensional system

02:59:35.200 | of paperclips.

02:59:36.200 | People like string theory, right?

02:59:39.400 | It's supposed to be strings

02:59:40.280 | that are interacting in fascinating ways.

02:59:41.960 | I'm sure paperclips are very string-like.

02:59:44.520 | They can be interacting in very interesting ways

02:59:46.520 | as you scale exponentially through three-dimensional.

02:59:50.040 | I mean, I'm sure the paperclip maximizer

02:59:53.840 | has to come up with a theory of everything.

02:59:55.640 | It has to create wormholes, right?

02:59:58.280 | It has to break, like,

03:00:01.000 | it has to understand quantum mechanics.

03:00:02.640 | - I love your optimism. - It has to understand

03:00:04.120 | general relativity. - This is where I'd say

03:00:06.200 | we're going into the realm of pathological optimism,

03:00:08.400 | wherever it's. (laughs)

03:00:10.520 | - I'm sure there'll be a,

03:00:11.720 | I think there's an intelligence

03:00:14.840 | that emerges from that system.

03:00:16.280 | - So you're saying that basically intelligence

03:00:18.440 | is inherent in the fabric of reality and will find a way,

03:00:21.640 | kind of like Goldblum says, "Life will find a way."

03:00:23.840 | You think life will find a way

03:00:25.160 | even out of this perfectly homogenous dead soup.

03:00:29.480 | - It's not perfectly homogenous.

03:00:31.520 | It has to, it's perfectly maximal in the production.

03:00:34.920 | I don't know why people keep thinking it's homogenous.

03:00:37.360 | It maximizes the number of paperclips.

03:00:39.520 | That's the only thing.

03:00:40.360 | It's not trying to be homogenous.

03:00:42.000 | It's trying to- - True, true, true, true.

03:00:42.840 | - It's trying to maximize paperclips.

03:00:44.720 | - So you're saying that because,

03:00:48.840 | kind of like in "The Big Bang,"

03:00:50.640 | it seems like things, there were clusters,

03:00:53.120 | there was more stuff here than there.

03:00:54.880 | That was enough of the patonicity

03:00:56.640 | that kickstarted the evolutionary process.

03:00:58.480 | - It's the little weirdnesses

03:00:59.520 | that will make it beautiful. - You think that even out of-

03:01:01.080 | - Yeah, complexity emerges.

03:01:03.000 | - Interesting, okay.

03:01:04.240 | Well, so how does that line up then

03:01:05.640 | with the whole heat death of the universe, right?

03:01:08.120 | 'Cause that's another sort of instantiation of this.

03:01:10.120 | It's like everything becomes so far apart and so cold

03:01:13.280 | and so perfectly mixed

03:01:16.720 | that it's like homogenous grayness.

03:01:20.440 | Do you think that even out of that homogenous grayness

03:01:23.320 | where there's no negative entropy,

03:01:27.280 | there's no free energy that we understand

03:01:30.960 | even from that new stuff?

03:01:34.000 | - Yeah, the paperclip maximizer

03:01:36.640 | or any other intelligent systems

03:01:38.200 | will figure out ways to travel to other universes

03:01:41.040 | to create big bangs within those universes

03:01:43.560 | or through black holes to create whole other worlds

03:01:46.160 | to break what we consider are the limitations of physics.

03:01:51.160 | (laughing)

03:01:52.760 | The paperclip maximizer will find a way if a way exists.

03:01:56.720 | And we should be humble to realize that we don't-

03:01:59.040 | - Yeah, but because it just wants to make more paperclips.

03:02:01.520 | So it's gonna go into those universes

03:02:02.680 | and turn them into paperclips.

03:02:03.800 | - Yeah, but we, humans, not humans,

03:02:07.480 | but complex systems exist on top of that.

03:02:10.320 | We're not interfering with it.

03:02:13.000 | This complexity emerges from-

03:02:16.280 | - The simple base state.

03:02:17.400 | - The simple base state.

03:02:18.320 | - Whether it's, yeah, whether it's, you know,

03:02:20.320 | Planck lengths or paperclips as the base unit.

03:02:22.640 | - Yeah, you can think of like the universe

03:02:25.720 | as a paperclip maximizer

03:02:27.320 | because it's doing some dumb stuff.

03:02:28.880 | Like physics seems to be pretty dumb.

03:02:31.320 | It has, like, I don't know if you can summarize it.

03:02:34.160 | - Yeah, the laws are fairly basic

03:02:37.320 | and yet out of them amazing complexity emerges.

03:02:39.640 | - And its goals seem to be pretty basic and dumb.

03:02:43.440 | If you can summarize its goals,

03:02:45.280 | I mean, I don't know what's a nice way,

03:02:47.000 | maybe laws of thermodynamics could be,

03:02:52.000 | I don't know if you can assign goals to physics,

03:02:55.080 | but if you formulate in the sense of goals,

03:02:57.980 | it's very similar to paperclip maximizing

03:03:00.840 | in the dumbness of the goals.

03:03:02.960 | But the pockets of complexity as it emerge

03:03:06.520 | is where beauty emerges.

03:03:07.960 | That's where life emerges.

03:03:09.120 | That's where intelligence, that's where humans emerge.

03:03:12.120 | And I think we're being very down

03:03:14.000 | on this whole paperclip maximizer thing.

03:03:16.240 | Now, the reason we hate it-

03:03:17.680 | - I think, yeah, because what you're saying

03:03:19.000 | is that you think that the force of emergence itself

03:03:24.000 | is another like unwritten, not unwritten,

03:03:27.480 | but like another baked in law of reality.

03:03:31.800 | And you're trusting that emergence will find a way

03:03:34.880 | to even out of seemingly the most molecule awful,

03:03:39.880 | plain outcome emergence will still find a way.

03:03:42.240 | I love that as a philosophy.

03:03:43.480 | I think it's very nice.

03:03:44.360 | I would wield it carefully

03:03:47.320 | because there's large error bars on that

03:03:50.520 | and the certainty of that.

03:03:52.080 | - Yeah.

03:03:52.920 | How about we build the paperclip maximizer and find out?

03:03:55.960 | - Classic, yeah.

03:03:56.880 | Molec is doing cartwheels, man.

03:03:59.160 | - Yeah.

03:04:00.000 | But the thing is, it will destroy humans in the process,

03:04:03.240 | which is the reason we really don't like it.

03:04:05.320 | We seem to be really holding on

03:04:07.240 | to this whole human civilization thing.

03:04:10.240 | Would that make you sad if AI systems that are beautiful,

03:04:13.840 | that are conscious, that are interesting

03:04:15.680 | and complex and intelligent,

03:04:17.300 | ultimately lead to the death of humans?

03:04:20.040 | Would that make you sad?

03:04:21.040 | - If humans led to the death of humans?

03:04:23.000 | Sorry.

03:04:23.840 | - Like if they would supersede humans.

03:04:25.520 | - Oh, if some AI?

03:04:26.840 | - Yeah, AI would end humans.

03:04:30.320 | I mean, that's the reason why I'm in some ways

03:04:33.320 | less emotionally concerned about AI risk

03:04:36.440 | than say, bio risk.

03:04:39.480 | Because at least with AI,

03:04:41.560 | there's a chance, if we're in this hypothetical

03:04:44.100 | where it wipes out humans,

03:04:45.640 | but it does it for some higher purpose,

03:04:48.240 | it needs our atoms and energy to do something,

03:04:51.060 | at least now the universe is going on

03:04:53.120 | to do something interesting.

03:04:55.240 | Whereas if it wipes everything,

03:04:56.800 | bio just kills everything on Earth and that's it.

03:05:00.120 | And there's no more,

03:05:01.440 | Earth cannot spawn anything more meaningful

03:05:03.340 | in the few hundred million years it has left.

03:05:05.960 | 'Cause it doesn't have much time left.

03:05:07.680 | Then, yeah, I don't know.

03:05:13.480 | So one of my favorite books I've ever read

03:05:15.680 | is "Novacene" by James Lovelock,

03:05:18.200 | who sadly just died.

03:05:19.920 | He wrote it when he was like 99.

03:05:22.080 | He died aged 102, so it's a fairly new book.

03:05:24.280 | And he sort of talks about that,

03:05:27.040 | that he thinks it's sort of building off this Gaia theory

03:05:30.840 | where Earth is living some form of intelligence itself

03:05:35.840 | and that this is the next step, right?

03:05:38.400 | Is this, whatever this new intelligence

03:05:41.740 | that is maybe silicon-based

03:05:43.360 | as opposed to carbon-based goes on to do.

03:05:46.160 | And it's really sort of, in some ways,

03:05:47.680 | an optimistic but really fatalistic book.

03:05:49.820 | I don't know if I fully subscribe to it,

03:05:52.400 | but it's a beautiful piece to read anyway.

03:05:54.400 | So am I sad by that idea?

03:05:56.760 | I think so, yes.

03:05:57.920 | And actually, yeah, this is the reason

03:05:59.240 | why I'm sad by the idea,

03:06:00.120 | because if something is truly brilliant and wise and smart

03:06:03.880 | and truly super intelligent,

03:06:05.580 | it should be able to figure out abundance.

03:06:09.320 | So if it figures out abundance,

03:06:11.720 | it shouldn't need to kill us off.

03:06:12.800 | It should be able to find a way for us.

03:06:15.060 | There's plenty, the universe is huge.

03:06:17.460 | There should be plenty of space for it to go out

03:06:19.920 | and do all the things it wants to do

03:06:21.760 | and give us a little pocket

03:06:23.440 | where we can continue doing our things

03:06:24.880 | and we can continue to do things and so on.

03:06:26.640 | And again, if it's so supremely wise,

03:06:28.920 | it shouldn't even be worried

03:06:29.760 | about the game theoretic considerations

03:06:31.920 | that by leaving us alive,

03:06:33.000 | we'll then go and create another super intelligent agent

03:06:35.120 | that it then has to compete against,

03:06:36.600 | because it should be omni-wise and smart enough

03:06:38.280 | to not have to concern itself with that.

03:06:40.680 | - Unless it deems humans to be kind of assholes.

03:06:44.200 | The humans are a source of a lose-lose kind of dynamics.

03:06:50.880 | - Well, yes and no.

03:06:55.440 | Moloch is, that's why I think it's important to say.

03:06:57.560 | - But maybe humans are the source of Moloch.

03:07:00.200 | - No, I mean, I think game theory is the source of Moloch.

03:07:03.840 | And 'cause Moloch exists in non-human systems as well.

03:07:08.000 | It happens within agents within a game

03:07:10.560 | in terms of, it applies to agents,

03:07:13.920 | but it can apply to a species

03:07:18.520 | that's on an island of animals, rats out-competing

03:07:22.680 | the ones that massively consume all the resources

03:07:25.520 | are the ones that are gonna win out

03:07:26.840 | over the more chill, socialized ones.

03:07:29.680 | And so, creates this Malthusian trap.

03:07:31.960 | Moloch exists in little pockets in nature as well.

03:07:34.480 | So it's not a strictly human thing.

03:07:35.960 | - I wonder if it's actually a result of consequences

03:07:38.320 | of the invention of predator and prey dynamics.

03:07:41.540 | Maybe AI will have to kill off every organism that--

03:07:46.540 | - Now you're talking about killing off competition.

03:07:50.280 | - Not competition, but just like the way,

03:07:55.280 | it's like the weeds or whatever

03:08:00.000 | in a beautiful flower garden.

03:08:01.720 | - Parasites.

03:08:02.560 | - The parasites, yeah.

03:08:03.960 | On the whole system.

03:08:05.240 | Now, of course, it won't do that completely.

03:08:08.520 | It'll put them in a zoo like we do with parasites.

03:08:10.560 | - It'll ring fence.

03:08:11.400 | - Yeah, and there'll be somebody doing a PhD

03:08:13.160 | on like, they'll prod humans with a stick

03:08:15.840 | and see what they do.

03:08:18.920 | But I mean, in terms of letting us run wild

03:08:22.440 | outside of the geographically constricted region,

03:08:26.040 | that might be, it might decide to,

03:08:30.020 | no, I think there's obviously the capacity

03:08:33.240 | for beauty and kindness and non-Moloch behavior

03:08:38.240 | amidst humans.

03:08:39.360 | So I'm pretty sure AI will preserve us.

03:08:41.460 | Let me, I don't know if you answered the aliens question.

03:08:46.280 | - Oh, I didn't.

03:08:47.120 | - You had a good conversation with Toby Oyd

03:08:49.520 | about various sides of the universe.

03:08:52.200 | I think, did he say, now I'm forgetting,

03:08:54.680 | but I think he said it's a good chance we're alone.

03:08:58.200 | - So the classic Fermi paradox question is,

03:09:02.220 | there are so many spawn points,

03:09:06.040 | and yet it didn't take us that long

03:09:10.640 | to go from harnessing fire

03:09:12.120 | to sending out radio signals into space.

03:09:15.160 | So surely given the vastness of space,

03:09:18.240 | we should be, and even if only a tiny fraction of those

03:09:20.760 | create life and other civilizations too,

03:09:23.160 | we should be, the universe should be very noisy.

03:09:24.920 | There should be evidence of Dyson spheres or whatever,

03:09:27.920 | like at least radio signals and so on.

03:09:29.760 | But seemingly things are very silent out there.

03:09:32.560 | Now, of course, it depends on who you speak to.

03:09:33.840 | Some people say that they're getting signals all the time

03:09:35.880 | and so on, and I don't wanna make

03:09:37.520 | an epistemic statement on that.

03:09:38.680 | But it seems like there's a lot of silence.

03:09:43.160 | And so that raises this paradox.

03:09:45.720 | And then say, the Drake equation.

03:09:50.720 | So the Drake equation is basically just a simple thing

03:09:55.160 | of trying to estimate the number of possible civilizations

03:09:58.360 | within the galaxy by multiplying the number

03:09:59.920 | of stars created per year by the number of stars

03:10:02.960 | that have planets, planets that are habitable, blah, blah,

03:10:04.640 | blah, so all these different factors.

03:10:06.560 | And then you plug in numbers into that,

03:10:08.600 | and depending on the range of your lower bound

03:10:12.200 | and your upper bound point estimates that you put in,

03:10:15.200 | you get out a number at the end

03:10:16.880 | for the number of civilizations.

03:10:18.560 | But what Toby and his crew did differently,

03:10:22.480 | was Toby is a researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute.

03:10:25.680 | They, instead of, they realized that it's like basically

03:10:31.240 | a statistical quirk that if you put in point sources,

03:10:33.880 | even if you think you're putting

03:10:34.720 | in conservative point sources,

03:10:36.040 | because on some of these variables,

03:10:38.760 | the uncertainty is so large,

03:10:41.120 | it spans like maybe even like a couple of hundred

03:10:43.640 | of orders of magnitude.

03:10:45.040 | By putting in point sources,

03:10:47.480 | it's always going to lead to overestimates.

03:10:50.920 | And so they, by putting stuff on a log scale,

03:10:54.360 | or actually they did it on like a log log scale

03:10:56.120 | on some of them, and then like ran the simulation

03:10:58.840 | across the whole bucket of uncertainty,

03:11:02.640 | across all those orders of magnitude.

03:11:04.360 | When you do that, then actually the number comes out

03:11:07.280 | much, much smaller.

03:11:08.280 | And that's the more statistically rigorous,

03:11:10.720 | mathematically correct way of doing the calculation.

03:11:13.400 | It's still a lot of hand-waving, as science goes,

03:11:15.440 | it's like definitely, just waving,

03:11:18.720 | I don't know what an analogy is, but it's hand-wavy.

03:11:21.280 | And anyway, when they did this,

03:11:24.760 | and then they did a Bayesian update on it as well

03:11:27.040 | to like factor in the fact that there is no evidence

03:11:30.160 | that we're picking up, because no evidence

03:11:31.880 | is actually a form of evidence, right?

03:11:33.960 | And the long and short of it comes out

03:11:36.600 | that we're roughly around 70% to be the only

03:11:41.400 | intelligent civilization in our galaxy thus far,

03:11:45.120 | and around 50/50 in the entire observable universe.

03:11:47.880 | Which sounds so crazily counterintuitive,

03:11:50.240 | but their math is legit.

03:11:53.440 | - Well, yeah, the math around this particular equation,

03:11:55.680 | which the equation is ridiculous on many levels,

03:11:57.840 | but the powerful thing about the equation

03:12:03.240 | is there's different things, different components

03:12:06.800 | that can be estimated, and the error bars on which

03:12:10.880 | can be reduced with science.

03:12:13.840 | And hence, throughout, since the equation came out,

03:12:17.360 | the error bars have been coming out on different aspects.

03:12:19.640 | - Yeah, that's very true.

03:12:21.000 | - And so that, it almost kind of says,

03:12:23.300 | this gives you a mission to reduce the error bars

03:12:27.020 | on these estimates over a period of time,

03:12:30.000 | and once you do, you can better and better understand.

03:12:32.760 | Like in the process of reducing the error bars,

03:12:34.720 | you'll get to understand actually what is the right way

03:12:38.480 | to find out where the aliens are,

03:12:41.480 | how many of them there are, and all those kinds of things.

03:12:43.960 | So I don't think it's good to use that for an estimation.

03:12:47.800 | I think you do have to think from like,

03:12:50.120 | more like from first principles,

03:12:51.840 | just looking at what life is on Earth.

03:12:53.860 | Like, and trying to understand the very physics-based,

03:12:59.320 | biology, chemistry, biology-based question of what is life.

03:13:04.240 | Maybe computation-based, what the fuck is this thing?

03:13:07.920 | And that, like how difficult is it to create this thing?

03:13:12.160 | It's one way to say like, how many planets like this

03:13:14.500 | are out there, all that kind of stuff,

03:13:16.160 | but it feels like from our very limited knowledge

03:13:20.560 | perspective, the right way is to think,

03:13:23.640 | how does, what is this thing, and how does it originate?

03:13:28.200 | From very simple, non-life things,

03:13:32.000 | how does complex, life-like things emerge?

03:13:36.200 | From a rock to a bacteria, protein,

03:13:42.480 | and these like weird systems that encode information

03:13:46.360 | and pass information from-- - Self-replicate.

03:13:48.480 | - Self-replicate, and then also select each other

03:13:51.080 | and mutate in interesting ways such that they can adapt

03:13:53.440 | and evolve and build increasingly more complex systems.

03:13:56.600 | - Right, well, it's a form of information processing.

03:13:58.800 | - Yeah. - Right?

03:13:59.760 | - Right.

03:14:00.600 | - Well, it's information transfer,

03:14:02.960 | but then also an energy processing,

03:14:05.640 | which then results in, I guess, information processing?

03:14:09.100 | Maybe I'm getting bogged down.

03:14:09.940 | - Well, it's doing some modification,

03:14:12.040 | and yeah, the input is some energy.

03:14:14.480 | - Right, it's able to extract, yeah,

03:14:17.640 | extract resources from its environment

03:14:20.720 | in order to achieve a goal.

03:14:22.760 | - But the goal doesn't seem to be clear.

03:14:25.000 | - Right.

03:14:25.840 | (Lex laughing)

03:14:26.680 | - The goal is, well, the goal is to make more of itself.

03:14:29.480 | - Yeah, but in a way that increases,

03:14:33.800 | I mean, I don't know if evolution

03:14:36.360 | is a fundamental law of the universe,

03:14:39.880 | but it seems to want to replicate itself

03:14:44.240 | in a way that maximizes the chance of its survival.

03:14:47.700 | - Individual agents within an ecosystem do, yes.

03:14:51.120 | Yes, evolution itself doesn't give a fuck.

03:14:53.320 | - Right.

03:14:54.160 | - It's very, it don't care.

03:14:56.040 | It's just like, oh, you optimize it.

03:14:58.560 | Well, at least it's certainly, yeah,

03:15:01.600 | it doesn't care about the welfare

03:15:03.520 | of the individual agents within it,

03:15:05.160 | but it does seem to, I don't know.

03:15:06.520 | I think the mistake is that we're anthropomorphizing,

03:15:09.760 | to even try and give evolution a mindset,

03:15:13.580 | because it is, there's a really great post

03:15:17.240 | by Eliezer Yudkowsky on "Less Wrong,"

03:15:21.500 | which is an alien god, and he talks about

03:15:26.500 | the mistake we make when we try and put our mind,

03:15:29.220 | think through things from an evolutionary perspective,

03:15:32.340 | as though we're giving evolution some kind of agency

03:15:35.180 | and what it wants.

03:15:36.360 | Yeah, worth reading, but yeah.

03:15:39.580 | - I would like to say that having interacted

03:15:42.620 | with a lot of really smart people

03:15:43.980 | that say that anthropomorphization is a mistake,

03:15:46.940 | I would like to say that saying

03:15:48.760 | that anthropomorphization is a mistake is a mistake.

03:15:51.620 | I think there's a lot of power in anthropomorphization,

03:15:54.980 | if I can only say that word correctly one time.

03:15:57.500 | I think that's actually a really powerful way

03:16:00.820 | to reason through things, and I think people,

03:16:03.020 | especially people in robotics,

03:16:04.380 | seem to run away from it as fast as possible,

03:16:07.160 | and I just--

03:16:09.060 | - Can you give an example of how it helps in robotics?

03:16:12.220 | - Oh, in that our world is a world of humans,

03:16:19.060 | and to see robots as fundamentally just tools

03:16:23.340 | runs away from the fact that we live in a world,

03:16:27.940 | a dynamic world of humans,

03:16:30.020 | that all these game theory systems we've talked about,

03:16:33.760 | that a robot that ever has to interact with humans,

03:16:37.580 | and I don't mean intimate friendship interaction,

03:16:40.820 | I mean in a factory setting,

03:16:42.500 | where it has to deal with the uncertainty of humans,

03:16:44.420 | all that kind of stuff,

03:16:45.540 | you have to acknowledge that the robot's behavior

03:16:49.860 | has an effect on the human,

03:16:52.020 | just as much as the human has an effect on the robot,

03:16:54.580 | and there's a dance there,

03:16:56.100 | and you have to realize that this entity,

03:16:58.420 | when a human sees a robot,

03:17:00.540 | this is obvious in a physical manifestation of a robot,

03:17:04.220 | they feel a certain way,

03:17:05.820 | they have a fear, they have uncertainty,

03:17:07.820 | they have their own personal life projections,

03:17:11.880 | we have to have pets and dogs,

03:17:13.260 | and the thing looks like a dog,

03:17:14.840 | they have their own memories of what a dog is like,

03:17:17.120 | they have certain feelings,

03:17:18.540 | and that's gonna be useful in a safety setting,

03:17:20.740 | safety critical setting,

03:17:22.240 | which is one of the most trivial settings for a robot,

03:17:25.100 | in terms of how to avoid any kind of dangerous situations,

03:17:29.220 | and a robot should really consider that

03:17:32.500 | in navigating its environment,

03:17:34.860 | and we humans are right to reason about

03:17:37.840 | how a robot should consider navigating its environment

03:17:41.460 | through anthropomorphization.

03:17:43.780 | - I also think our brains are designed to think

03:17:46.520 | in human terms,

03:17:51.520 | like game theory,

03:17:53.860 | I think is best applied in the space of human decisions,

03:18:00.320 | and so--

03:18:03.440 | - Right, you're dealing,

03:18:04.280 | I mean, with things like AI,

03:18:06.160 | AI is, they are,

03:18:07.400 | you know, we can somewhat,

03:18:10.520 | like I don't think it's,

03:18:12.000 | the reason I say anthropomorphization,

03:18:14.160 | we need to be careful with,

03:18:15.480 | is because there is a danger of overly applying,

03:18:19.440 | overly, wrongly assuming that this artificial intelligence

03:18:23.480 | is going to operate in any similar way to us,

03:18:25.880 | because it is operating

03:18:27.760 | on a fundamentally different substrate,

03:18:29.680 | like even dogs, or even mice, or whatever,

03:18:33.280 | in some ways, like,

03:18:34.320 | anthropomorphizing them is less of a mistake, I think,

03:18:37.520 | than an AI, even though it's an AI we built, and so on,

03:18:40.200 | because at least we know that they're running

03:18:41.980 | from the same substrate,

03:18:43.380 | and they've also evolved from the same,

03:18:45.580 | out of the same evolutionary process, you know,

03:18:48.660 | they've followed this evolution of, like,

03:18:50.620 | needing to compete for resources,

03:18:52.420 | and needing to find a mate, and that kind of stuff,

03:18:55.180 | whereas an AI that has just popped into existence

03:18:58.260 | somewhere on a cloud server, let's say,

03:19:01.180 | you know, or whatever, however it runs,

03:19:02.820 | and whatever, whether, I don't know,

03:19:04.260 | whether they have an internal experience,

03:19:05.540 | I don't think they necessarily do,

03:19:07.020 | in fact, I don't think they do,

03:19:08.100 | but the point is, is that to try and apply

03:19:11.900 | any kind of modeling of, like,

03:19:13.960 | thinking through problems and decisions

03:19:15.340 | in the same way that we do,

03:19:16.900 | has to be done extremely carefully,

03:19:18.740 | because they are, like, they're so alien,

03:19:23.540 | their method of whatever their form of thinking is,

03:19:26.300 | it's just so different,

03:19:27.180 | because they've never had to evolve,

03:19:29.140 | you know, in the same way.

03:19:30.620 | - Yeah, beautifully put,

03:19:32.260 | I was just playing devil's advocate.

03:19:33.740 | I do think, in certain contexts,

03:19:35.700 | anthropomorphization is not gonna hurt you.

03:19:37.900 | - Yes.

03:19:38.740 | - Engineers run away from it too fast.

03:19:39.940 | - I can see that.

03:19:41.140 | - But for the most point, you're right.

03:19:43.660 | Do you have advice for young people today,

03:19:48.660 | like the 17-year-old that you were,

03:19:51.340 | of how to live life you can be proud of,

03:19:55.380 | how to have a career you can be proud of,

03:19:57.780 | in this world full of mullocks?

03:19:59.960 | - Think about the win-wins,

03:20:02.460 | look for win-win situations,

03:20:05.500 | and be careful not to, you know,

03:20:09.940 | overly use your smarts to convince yourself

03:20:12.220 | that something is win-win when it's not,

03:20:13.620 | so that's difficult,

03:20:14.620 | and I don't know how to advise, you know,

03:20:16.340 | people on that,

03:20:17.620 | 'cause it's something I'm still figuring out myself,

03:20:20.180 | but have that as a sort of default MO.

03:20:23.940 | Don't see things, everything as a zero-sum game,

03:20:28.060 | try to find the positive-sum-ness,

03:20:29.740 | and, like, find ways,

03:20:30.660 | if there doesn't seem to be one,

03:20:32.700 | consider playing a different game,

03:20:34.220 | so I would suggest that.

03:20:35.700 | Do not become a professional poker player,

03:20:39.020 | 'cause people always ask,

03:20:40.940 | they're like, "Oh, she's a pro, I wanna do that too."

03:20:43.220 | Fine, you could've done it if you were,

03:20:44.860 | you know, when I started out,

03:20:46.260 | it was a very different situation back then.

03:20:48.260 | Poker is, you know,

03:20:49.620 | a great game to learn

03:20:52.580 | in order to understand the ways to think,

03:20:54.940 | and I recommend people learn it,

03:20:56.780 | but don't try making a living from it these days,

03:20:58.380 | it's almost, it's very, very difficult,

03:21:00.260 | to the point of being impossible.

03:21:03.620 | And then,

03:21:04.460 | really, really be aware of how much time you spend

03:21:09.660 | on your phone and on social media,

03:21:12.100 | and really try and keep it to a minimum.

03:21:14.260 | Be aware that, basically,

03:21:15.820 | every moment that you spend on it is bad for you.

03:21:18.100 | So, doesn't mean to say you can never do it,

03:21:20.140 | but just have that running in the background.

03:21:22.500 | I'm doing a bad thing for myself right now.

03:21:25.260 | I think that's the general rule of thumb.

03:21:27.220 | - Of course, about becoming a professional poker player,

03:21:31.140 | if there is a thing in your life

03:21:32.900 | that's like that,

03:21:35.380 | and nobody can convince you otherwise,

03:21:37.660 | just fucking do it.

03:21:38.660 | Don't listen to anyone's advice.

03:21:42.660 | Find a thing that you can't be talked out of, too.

03:21:46.340 | That's a thing.

03:21:47.340 | - I like that, yeah.

03:21:48.500 | - You were a lead guitarist in a metal band.

03:21:54.460 | Did I write that down for something?

03:21:56.940 | What did you do it for?

03:22:02.620 | Was it the performing?

03:22:03.620 | Was it the pure, the music of it?

03:22:07.140 | Was it just being a rock star?

03:22:08.980 | Why'd you do it?

03:22:10.020 | - So, we only ever played two gigs.

03:22:15.460 | We didn't last, you know, it wasn't a very,

03:22:17.940 | we weren't famous or anything like that.

03:22:20.620 | But I was very into metal.

03:22:25.340 | Like, it was my entire identity.

03:22:27.500 | Sort of from the age of 16 to 23.

03:22:29.420 | - What's the best metal band of all time?

03:22:31.940 | Don't ask me that, it's so hard to answer.

03:22:34.060 | - So, I know I had a long argument with,

03:22:39.820 | I'm a guitarist, more like a classic rock guitarist.

03:22:43.980 | So, you know, I've had friends

03:22:45.820 | who are very big Pantera fans,

03:22:47.340 | and so there was often arguments about,

03:22:50.780 | what's the better metal band, Metallica versus Pantera?

03:22:53.900 | This is a more kind of '90s maybe discussion.

03:22:57.340 | But I was always on the side of Metallica,

03:23:00.380 | both musically and in terms of performance

03:23:02.740 | and the depth of lyrics and so on.

03:23:05.780 | But they were, basically everybody was against me.

03:23:10.260 | 'Cause if you're a true metal fan,

03:23:12.260 | I guess the idea goes is you can't possibly

03:23:14.540 | be a Metallica fan.

03:23:16.180 | - I think that's crazy. - 'Cause Metallica's pop,

03:23:17.500 | it's like, they sold out.

03:23:19.580 | - Metallica are metal.

03:23:20.620 | Like, they were the, I mean, again,

03:23:24.420 | you can't say who was the godfather of metal, blah, blah, blah.

03:23:26.540 | But they were so groundbreaking and so brilliant.

03:23:31.540 | I mean, you've named literally two of my favorite bands.

03:23:35.620 | When you ask that question of who are my favorites,

03:23:37.260 | like those were two that came up.

03:23:39.020 | A third one is Children of Bodom,

03:23:41.500 | who I just think, ugh, they just tick all the boxes for me.

03:23:44.980 | Yeah, I don't know.

03:23:48.260 | Nowadays, I kind of sort of feel like a repulsion to the,

03:23:54.260 | I was that myself.

03:23:55.700 | Like, I'd be like, who do you prefer more?

03:23:56.900 | Come on, who's, like, no, you have to rank them.

03:23:58.940 | But it's like this false zero-sum-ness that's like, why?

03:24:01.740 | They're so additive.

03:24:02.660 | Like, there's no conflict there.

03:24:04.620 | - Although, when people ask that kind of question

03:24:07.020 | about anything, movies, I feel like it's hard work

03:24:11.460 | and it's unfair, but it's, you should pick one.

03:24:14.940 | - Yeah. - Like, and I,

03:24:16.260 | that's actually, you know, the same kind of,

03:24:17.820 | it's like a fear of a commitment.

03:24:19.380 | - Right. - When people ask me,

03:24:20.220 | what's your favorite band?

03:24:21.060 | It's like, phew.

03:24:22.580 | But I, you know, it's good to pick.

03:24:24.300 | - Exactly, and thank you for, yeah,

03:24:25.460 | thank you for the tough question, yeah.

03:24:27.660 | - Well, maybe not in the context

03:24:29.500 | when a lot of people are listening.

03:24:31.820 | - Can I just like, what, why does this matter?

03:24:33.980 | No, it does, it's--

03:24:35.580 | - Are you still into metal?

03:24:37.380 | - Funny enough, I was listening to a bunch

03:24:38.500 | before I came over here.

03:24:39.820 | - Oh, like, do you use it for, like, motivation

03:24:43.420 | or get you in a certain--

03:24:44.620 | - Yeah, I was weirdly listening to 80s hair metal

03:24:46.900 | before I came.

03:24:48.100 | - Does that count as metal?

03:24:49.820 | - I think so.

03:24:50.700 | It's like proto-metal and it's happy.

03:24:53.420 | It's optimistic, happy, proto-metal.

03:24:55.780 | Yeah, I mean, these things, you know,

03:24:57.780 | all these genres bleed into each other.

03:25:00.020 | But yeah, sorry, to answer your question about guitar playing,

03:25:03.420 | my relationship with it was kind of weird

03:25:05.060 | in that I was deeply uncreative.

03:25:09.140 | My objective would be to hear some really hard technical solo

03:25:12.180 | and then learn it, memorize it, and then play it perfectly.

03:25:15.980 | But I was incapable of trying to write my own music.

03:25:19.220 | Like, the idea was just absolutely terrifying.

03:25:23.140 | But I was also just thinking, I was like,

03:25:24.660 | it'd be kind of cool to actually try starting a band again

03:25:28.620 | and getting back into it and write.

03:25:31.580 | But it's scary.

03:25:34.020 | - It's scary.

03:25:34.860 | I mean, I put out some guitar playing

03:25:36.860 | just other people's covers.

03:25:38.140 | Like, I play Comfortably Numb on the internet.

03:25:41.500 | It's scary, too.

03:25:42.500 | It's scary putting stuff out there.

03:25:44.260 | And I had this similar kind of fascination

03:25:47.700 | with technical playing, both on piano and guitar.

03:25:50.300 | And one of the reasons I started learning guitar

03:25:55.300 | is from Ozzy Osbourne, Mr. Crowley's solo.

03:26:01.740 | And one of the first solos I learned is that,

03:26:04.300 | and there's a beauty to it.

03:26:07.580 | There's a lot of beauty to it.

03:26:08.420 | - Tapping, right?

03:26:09.260 | - Yeah, there's some tapping, but it's just really fast.

03:26:13.500 | - Beautiful, like arpeggios.

03:26:15.700 | - Yeah, arpeggios, yeah.

03:26:16.900 | But there's a melody that you can hear through it,

03:26:19.620 | but there's also build up.

03:26:21.620 | It's a beautiful solo, but it's also technically,

03:26:23.900 | just visually the way it looks when a person's watching,

03:26:27.060 | you feel like a rockstar playing it.

03:26:29.660 | But it ultimately has to do with technical.

03:26:32.140 | You're not developing the part of your brain

03:26:36.420 | that I think requires you to generate beautiful music.

03:26:40.620 | It is ultimately technical in nature.

03:26:42.340 | And so that took me a long time to let go of that

03:26:45.820 | and just be able to write music myself.

03:26:48.980 | And that's a different journey, I think.

03:26:52.260 | I think that journey is a little bit more inspired

03:26:55.060 | in the blues world, for example,

03:26:57.060 | where improvisation is more valued,

03:26:58.620 | obviously in jazz and so on.

03:26:59.940 | But I think ultimately it's a more rewarding journey

03:27:04.940 | 'cause you get to, your relationship with the guitar

03:27:08.420 | then becomes a kind of escape from the world

03:27:12.180 | where you can create, create.

03:27:14.100 | I mean, creating stuff is-

03:27:16.140 | - And it's something you work with,

03:27:18.780 | 'cause my relationship with my guitar

03:27:20.020 | was like it was something to tame and defeat.

03:27:22.780 | (laughing)

03:27:23.620 | - Yeah, it's a challenge.

03:27:24.780 | - Which was kind of what my whole personality was back then.

03:27:26.820 | Like I was just very, like, as I said,

03:27:28.820 | like very competitive, very just like must

03:27:31.380 | bend this thing to my will.

03:27:33.140 | Whereas writing music is you work, it's like a dance.

03:27:36.620 | You work with it.

03:27:37.860 | - But I think because of the competitive aspect,

03:27:39.900 | for me at least, that's still there,

03:27:42.460 | which creates anxiety about playing publicly

03:27:45.740 | or all that kind of stuff.

03:27:47.180 | I think there's just like a harsh self criticism

03:27:49.380 | within the whole thing.

03:27:50.780 | It's really, really, it's really tough.

03:27:53.380 | - I wanna hear some of your stuff.

03:27:55.420 | - I mean, there's certain things that feel really personal.

03:27:59.300 | And on top of that, as we talked about poker offline,

03:28:03.380 | there's certain things that you get to a certain height

03:28:05.580 | in your life, and that doesn't have to be very high,

03:28:07.140 | but you get to a certain height

03:28:09.060 | and then you put it aside for a bit

03:28:11.740 | and it's hard to return to it

03:28:13.180 | because you remember being good.

03:28:15.940 | And it's hard to, like you being at a very high level

03:28:19.860 | in poker, it might be hard for you to return to poker

03:28:22.540 | every once in a while and you enjoy it,

03:28:24.620 | knowing that you're just not as sharp as you used to be

03:28:26.900 | because you're not doing it every single day.

03:28:29.460 | That's something I always wonder with, I mean,

03:28:31.620 | even just like in chess with Kasparov,

03:28:33.780 | some of these greats, just returning to it,

03:28:35.820 | it's just, it's almost painful.

03:28:37.100 | - Yes, I can imagine, yeah.

03:28:38.420 | - And I feel that way with guitar too,

03:28:40.660 | 'cause I used to play like every day a lot.

03:28:44.180 | So returning to it is painful 'cause like,

03:28:47.260 | it's like accepting the fact that this whole ride is finite

03:28:51.460 | and you have a prime, there's a time when you were really

03:28:56.460 | good and now it's over and now-

03:28:58.780 | - We're on a different chapter of life.

03:29:00.340 | It's like, oh, but I miss that, yeah.

03:29:02.940 | - But you can still discover joy within that process.

03:29:06.500 | It's been tough, especially with some level of like,

03:29:09.140 | as people get to know you, there's,

03:29:12.100 | and people film stuff, you don't have the privacy

03:29:16.620 | of just sharing something with a few people around you.

03:29:20.580 | - Yeah.

03:29:21.580 | - That's a beautiful privacy that-

03:29:23.380 | - That's a good point.

03:29:24.220 | - With the internet, it's just disappearing.

03:29:26.020 | - Yeah, that's a really good point.

03:29:27.740 | - Yeah.

03:29:29.140 | But all those pressures aside, if you really,

03:29:31.860 | you can step up and still enjoy the fuck out of

03:29:34.940 | a good musical performance.

03:29:37.900 | What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?

03:29:42.340 | - What's the meaning of life?

03:29:43.780 | - Wow.

03:29:45.620 | - It's in your name, as we talked about,

03:29:47.340 | you have to live up, do you feel the requirement

03:29:50.980 | to have to live up to your name?

03:29:52.580 | - Because live?

03:29:55.220 | - Yeah.

03:29:56.060 | - No, because I don't see it.

03:29:57.780 | I mean, my, again, it's kind of like,

03:30:00.660 | no, I don't know.

03:30:03.300 | - And as we talked about-

03:30:04.140 | - Because my full name is Olivia.

03:30:05.340 | - Yeah.

03:30:06.180 | - So I can retreat in that and be like,

03:30:07.220 | oh, Olivia, what does that even mean?

03:30:09.060 | Live up to live.

03:30:12.020 | And no, I can't say I do,

03:30:13.820 | 'cause I've never thought of it that way.

03:30:15.340 | - And then your name backwards is evil.

03:30:17.220 | That's what we also talked about.

03:30:18.820 | There's like layers of evil.

03:30:22.060 | - I mean, I feel the urge to live up to that,

03:30:24.500 | to be the inverse of evil.

03:30:26.420 | - Yeah.

03:30:27.740 | - Or even better, 'cause I don't think,

03:30:30.420 | is the inverse of evil good,

03:30:31.980 | or is good something completely separate to that?

03:30:34.860 | I think my intuition says it's the latter,

03:30:36.980 | but I don't know.

03:30:37.820 | Anyway, again, getting in the weeds.

03:30:39.860 | - What is the meaning of all this?

03:30:42.100 | - Of life.

03:30:42.940 | Why are we here?

03:30:45.180 | - I think to explore, have fun, and understand,

03:30:51.820 | and make more of here and to keep the game going.

03:30:55.940 | - Of here?

03:30:56.780 | More of here?

03:30:57.620 | - More of-

03:30:58.460 | - More of this, whatever this is?

03:31:00.020 | - More of experience.

03:31:02.060 | Just to have more of experience,

03:31:03.180 | and ideally, positive experience.

03:31:06.460 | And more complex, I guess,

03:31:10.460 | to try and put it into a vaguely scientific term,

03:31:13.060 | make it so that the program required,

03:31:18.340 | the length of code required to describe the universe

03:31:21.460 | is as long as possible.

03:31:22.660 | And highly complex, and therefore interesting.

03:31:26.260 | Because again, I know we banged the metaphor to death,

03:31:32.180 | but like, tiled with paperclips

03:31:37.180 | doesn't require that much of a code to describe.

03:31:41.100 | Obviously, maybe something emerges from it,

03:31:42.700 | but that steady state, assuming a steady state,

03:31:44.820 | it's not very interesting.

03:31:45.620 | Whereas it seems like our universe is over time

03:31:49.660 | becoming more and more complex and interesting.

03:31:51.900 | There's so much richness and beauty and diversity

03:31:53.940 | on this Earth, and I want that to continue and get more.

03:31:56.260 | I want more diversity,

03:31:58.580 | and in the very best sense of that word,

03:32:01.860 | is to me the goal of all this.

03:32:06.860 | - Yeah, and somehow have fun in the process.

03:32:10.820 | - Yes.

03:32:12.060 | - 'Cause we do create a lot of fun things along,

03:32:14.340 | instead of in this creative force,

03:32:17.940 | and all the beautiful things we create,

03:32:19.460 | somehow there's like a funness to it.

03:32:22.460 | And perhaps that has to do with the finiteness of life,

03:32:25.100 | the finiteness of all these experiences,

03:32:27.100 | which is what makes them kind of unique.

03:32:31.300 | Like the fact that they end, there's this, whatever it is,

03:32:35.420 | falling in love or creating a piece of art,

03:32:40.420 | or creating a bridge, or creating a rocket,

03:32:45.540 | or creating a, I don't know,

03:32:48.820 | just the businesses that build something

03:32:53.140 | or solve something.

03:32:56.140 | The fact that it is born and it dies,

03:33:00.820 | somehow embeds it with fun, with joy,

03:33:05.820 | for the people involved.

03:33:08.420 | I don't know what that is, the finiteness of it.

03:33:11.420 | - It can do, some people struggle with the,

03:33:13.820 | I mean a big thing I think that one has to learn

03:33:17.860 | is being okay with things coming to an end.

03:33:21.100 | And in terms of like projects and so on,

03:33:25.620 | people cling onto things beyond what they're meant to be,

03:33:28.660 | beyond what is reasonable.

03:33:30.460 | - And I'm gonna have to come to terms

03:33:33.900 | with this podcast coming to an end.

03:33:35.820 | I really enjoyed talking to you.

03:33:37.060 | I think it's obvious, as we've talked about many times,

03:33:40.180 | you should be doing a podcast.

03:33:41.380 | You should, you're already doing a lot of stuff publicly

03:33:45.980 | to the world, which is awesome.

03:33:47.420 | You're a great educator, you're a great mind,

03:33:49.180 | you're a great intellect.

03:33:50.300 | But it's also this whole medium of just talking

03:33:52.860 | is also fun. - It is good.

03:33:53.780 | - It's a fun one.

03:33:54.620 | - It really is good.

03:33:55.540 | And it's just, it's nothing but like,

03:33:58.860 | oh, it's just so much fun.

03:34:00.580 | And you can just get into so many,

03:34:03.220 | yeah, there's this space to just explore

03:34:05.300 | and see what comes and emerges and yeah.

03:34:08.020 | - Yeah, to understand yourself better

03:34:09.380 | and if you're talking to others to understand them better

03:34:11.540 | and together with them.

03:34:12.620 | I mean, you should do your own podcast,

03:34:15.380 | but you should also do a podcast with Cee

03:34:17.020 | as we talked about.

03:34:18.740 | The two of you have such different minds

03:34:22.880 | that like melt together in just hilarious ways,

03:34:26.100 | fascinating ways, just the tension of ideas there

03:34:29.340 | is really powerful.

03:34:30.260 | But in general, I think you got a beautiful voice.

03:34:33.220 | So thank you so much for talking today.

03:34:35.340 | Thank you for being a friend.

03:34:36.540 | Thank you for honoring me with this conversation

03:34:39.380 | and with your valuable time.

03:34:40.420 | Thanks, Liv. - Thank you.

03:34:42.580 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Liv Boree.

03:34:45.180 | To support this podcast,

03:34:46.300 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:34:48.820 | And now let me leave you with some words

03:34:50.900 | from Richard Feynman.

03:34:53.040 | "I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing

03:34:56.260 | than to have answers which might be wrong.

03:34:59.300 | I have approximate answers and possible beliefs

03:35:01.820 | and different degrees of uncertainty

03:35:03.580 | about different things,

03:35:05.120 | but I'm not absolutely sure of anything.

03:35:08.540 | And there are many things I don't know anything about

03:35:11.460 | such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here.

03:35:15.460 | I don't have to know the answer.

03:35:17.580 | I don't feel frightened not knowing things

03:35:20.760 | by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose,

03:35:24.300 | which is the way it really is as far as I can tell."

03:35:27.620 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

03:35:31.720 | (upbeat music)

03:35:34.300 | (upbeat music)

03:35:36.880 | (Session concluded at 4pm)

Liv Boeree: Poker, Game Theory, AI, Simulation, Aliens & Existential Risk | Lex Fridman Podcast #314

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