Diana Walsh Pasulka: Aliens, Technology, Religion & the Nature of Belief

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Diana Walsh-Pasulka,

00:00:03.700 | a professor of philosophy and religion at UNCW

00:00:07.460 | and author of American Cosmic, UFOs, Religion,

00:00:11.260 | and Technology.

00:00:12.700 | This book is one of the most fascinating explorations

00:00:16.000 | of the interconnected nature of technology,

00:00:18.300 | belief, and the mystery of alien intelligence.

00:00:21.860 | Quick mention of our sponsors, Element Electrolyte Drink,

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00:00:35.460 | Choose wisely, my friends.

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00:00:39.460 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

00:00:42.340 | As a side note, let me say, as I did in the recent video

00:00:46.300 | on how many intelligent alien civilizations are out there,

00:00:49.460 | that the nature of alien life, intelligence,

00:00:53.180 | and how they might communicate with us humans

00:00:55.820 | is likely stranger than we imagine.

00:00:58.240 | And perhaps stranger than we can imagine.

00:01:02.060 | What is most fascinating to me is how the belief

00:01:05.340 | in the communication with such civilizations

00:01:07.940 | changes people's understanding of the world.

00:01:10.780 | And as Diana argues, the technology we create.

00:01:15.020 | Technological innovation itself seems to manifest

00:01:17.940 | the mythology in our collective intelligence

00:01:20.740 | that turns the seemingly impossible into reality

00:01:23.820 | just a matter of years through the belief

00:01:26.540 | of individual humans that carry out that innovation.

00:01:30.380 | The nature and power of this belief in both technology

00:01:33.960 | and extraterrestrial intelligence

00:01:36.140 | is mysterious and fascinating.

00:01:38.680 | Perhaps holding the key to us humans

00:01:40.880 | understanding our own mind, our consciousness,

00:01:43.880 | and engineering versions of it in the machines we create.

00:01:48.080 | If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

00:01:50.520 | review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,

00:01:53.680 | support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter

00:01:56.440 | at Lex Friedman.

00:01:58.280 | And now, here's my conversation with Diana Walsh-Basulka.

00:02:02.740 | You are a scholar of religious belief,

00:02:06.360 | or belief in general.

00:02:08.300 | So, the fascinating question,

00:02:10.640 | what do you think is the difference between our beliefs

00:02:13.920 | and objective reality?

00:02:16.440 | What is real, period?

00:02:17.840 | - Sure, what is real?

00:02:18.940 | Easy question. (laughs)

00:02:22.200 | So, first let me start with belief.

00:02:24.160 | So, belief is generally,

00:02:27.080 | there are different definitions of belief

00:02:29.400 | just as there are different definitions of what is real.

00:02:33.020 | So, for belief in my field,

00:02:35.200 | it would be attitudes toward something

00:02:38.240 | that dictate our actions.

00:02:40.800 | So, we believe the sun is gonna rise tomorrow,

00:02:43.400 | therefore we act as if it will rise tomorrow.

00:02:46.520 | Beliefs can be wrong.

00:02:48.120 | For a long time, people believed,

00:02:50.540 | and actually some still do, that the earth was flat.

00:02:54.280 | Okay, well that's obviously an erroneous belief.

00:02:57.160 | So, beliefs can be wrong.

00:02:59.200 | Now, the bigger question that philosophers ask is,

00:03:02.780 | is this belief accurate toward

00:03:06.320 | what we consider to be objective reality?

00:03:09.040 | So, now let me go to objective reality.

00:03:10.940 | So, what is real?

00:03:12.320 | I don't think we can actually obtain

00:03:15.580 | a correct understanding of what is real.

00:03:18.600 | And in that sense, I have to refer to a philosopher again,

00:03:21.600 | and that would be Immanuel Kant.

00:03:23.460 | So, Immanuel Kant is one of the,

00:03:27.160 | he was basically in the 1750s,

00:03:30.200 | he wrote "Critiques of Reason" and things like that.

00:03:32.540 | So, he said, "Well, if you're a philosopher

00:03:34.200 | "or have any kind of understanding of Western history,

00:03:36.980 | "you know who he is."

00:03:38.600 | He had this idea that we can actually never get

00:03:41.960 | to the thing in itself, okay?

00:03:43.980 | So, and he called that the noumenal, the thing in itself.

00:03:46.880 | He said, "Let's take this table, for instance,

00:03:49.180 | "that you and I are talking across.

00:03:51.140 | "So, this thing is a table.

00:03:52.860 | "You and I both know that.

00:03:54.140 | "We assume it's real.

00:03:55.540 | "We believe in it because we put our water on it,

00:03:57.860 | "and then our water stays on it, okay?

00:04:00.360 | "However, can we know this thing

00:04:02.800 | "in and of itself as a table?"

00:04:04.640 | So, that would be what he then would call the phenomenal.

00:04:10.420 | How do we know that that phenomena exists

00:04:13.500 | as we know it is, okay?

00:04:15.820 | How do we know?

00:04:16.820 | We use our faculties.

00:04:17.700 | So, we use our senses and things like that.

00:04:19.620 | But again, even our senses can be wrong.

00:04:22.140 | So, I've been on committees just recently,

00:04:25.780 | this year, last year, for hiring professors

00:04:28.700 | in my department who are philosophers.

00:04:31.660 | And we're hiring metaphysicians and people

00:04:34.940 | who are thinking about the nature of reality.

00:04:37.300 | And basically, what I've learned from them--

00:04:39.580 | - That's so great. - Yeah, they're very--

00:04:40.940 | - I'd love to attend those faculty talks.

00:04:42.620 | (both laughing)

00:04:43.580 | Metaphysics professors.

00:04:45.260 | - What's funny is that-- - That's so great.

00:04:46.460 | - For each one of them, I'm convinced each time.

00:04:49.300 | They all say different things, but they're so convincing.

00:04:51.620 | I'm like, "Yes, hire that one," right?

00:04:53.980 | - Is it like historical philosophy--

00:04:55.500 | - No, no. - Like a particular topic?

00:04:56.780 | - What they do-- - Do they have--

00:04:57.620 | - No, they're-- - Do they have

00:04:58.460 | an actual belief?

00:04:59.780 | They're practicing metaphysics--

00:05:01.860 | - Metaphysicians, yes. (Dave laughing)

00:05:03.460 | So, what they do is they come,

00:05:04.900 | and they're usually excellent philosophers

00:05:07.420 | from Harvard or USC or whatever.

00:05:11.260 | They come, and they give what's called a job talk.

00:05:13.720 | That's what philos, well, every academic does a job talk

00:05:16.900 | in order to get a, they talk to us about a department

00:05:20.540 | about what they do, and so it so happens

00:05:23.920 | that we need a metaphysician,

00:05:25.900 | and now we're hiring again for one.

00:05:27.540 | And so, I've learned a lot about metaphysics

00:05:30.740 | in the last year, and this is what I've learned,

00:05:33.560 | that they use physics as a basis for understanding

00:05:37.620 | what we can know about what is real,

00:05:39.860 | and what is real is really difficult to pin down.

00:05:43.020 | And so, your question is, what is belief?

00:05:45.860 | Well, belief, does it correspond to reality?

00:05:48.620 | That's the question I would ask.

00:05:50.260 | And first, we don't even know what is real.

00:05:52.860 | So, the table, they would say,

00:05:54.060 | how do we know that the table even exists?

00:05:55.860 | Well, how do we differentiate it from the floor,

00:05:58.540 | for example?

00:05:59.360 | So, these are the questions that philosophers are asking.

00:06:01.740 | No one else's, of course,

00:06:03.100 | but philosophers are asking these questions,

00:06:05.020 | and they have different answers for it.

00:06:06.420 | So, I would say that it's very difficult

00:06:08.780 | to know what is real, and in fact,

00:06:10.760 | what I do usually is I paraphrase my friend and colleague,

00:06:15.760 | Brother Guy Consolmagno.

00:06:17.820 | He's a Jesuit priest, he's also an astronomer,

00:06:20.620 | and he's the director of the Vatican Observatory.

00:06:23.180 | And so, he says this, he's a very smart person.

00:06:25.660 | He says, "Well, truth is a moving target."

00:06:30.420 | So, basically, to know what is real out there,

00:06:34.980 | like gravity or something like that,

00:06:36.900 | you've got to approximate it.

00:06:38.860 | And as human beings, we have senses to tell us what,

00:06:43.860 | at least so we don't get hurt,

00:06:45.800 | we're not gonna fall off a building or something like that.

00:06:48.600 | We have eyes to see and things like that.

00:06:50.280 | So, we can approximate what reality is,

00:06:52.720 | but we're never gonna get to it

00:06:54.240 | unless we develop better senses, okay?

00:06:58.560 | And I think that that is what we are in the process of doing.

00:07:01.520 | We're developing better senses.

00:07:03.400 | We have telescopes, we have microscopes,

00:07:05.440 | we have extensions of ourselves,

00:07:07.700 | which are now called technology,

00:07:09.320 | and we can get to a better understanding

00:07:12.720 | of what reality is and what the objective world is,

00:07:15.720 | and therefore, our beliefs can be honed.

00:07:18.360 | So, we can get better beliefs, more accurate beliefs,

00:07:20.640 | but can we get beliefs that actually correspond to reality?

00:07:23.600 | Not in any precise way, but in approximate ways.

00:07:28.780 | So, I hope that's not too big an answer to your question.

00:07:32.080 | - Well, do you think beliefs in themselves

00:07:34.080 | can become reality?

00:07:35.400 | I mean, so you've now adapted the,

00:07:38.140 | in this little bit of a conversation,

00:07:41.900 | adapted the metaphysician view of reality,

00:07:44.540 | which is the physics.

00:07:45.860 | - Yes.

00:07:46.700 | - But, you know, we humans kind of operate

00:07:48.900 | in the space of ideas, very much so.

00:07:51.780 | Like, we've kind of, in the collective intelligence

00:07:54.180 | of human beings, have come up with a set of ideas

00:07:56.420 | that persist in the minds of these many people,

00:07:59.820 | and they become quite strong and powerful.

00:08:02.840 | In terms of impact on our lives,

00:08:05.560 | they can have sometimes more impact than this table does,

00:08:10.560 | than the physics.

00:08:12.040 | - Yeah, I agree.

00:08:13.120 | - And in that sense, is there some sense

00:08:16.480 | in which our beliefs are reality,

00:08:19.920 | even if they're not connected to the physics?

00:08:22.360 | - Yes, even if they're not real, yeah.

00:08:24.080 | Even if, okay, so yes, absolutely.

00:08:26.640 | So, our beliefs are tremendously,

00:08:31.080 | they create social effects, absolutely.

00:08:33.860 | There was a belief that, I'm gonna use this example.

00:08:38.280 | - Uh-oh.

00:08:39.120 | - There was a belief back in the day,

00:08:40.320 | and we're talking about, when I say back in the day,

00:08:42.140 | I'm a historian, so I'm talking about like,

00:08:43.640 | a thousand years ago, right?

00:08:45.360 | That women had no souls, okay?

00:08:47.180 | So, look, I don't know if human beings have souls.

00:08:50.060 | I can tell you this, though,

00:08:51.260 | that if human beings have souls, probably animals do too.

00:08:54.320 | That's my own personal belief.

00:08:55.460 | That's not a professor belief there.

00:08:58.260 | But there was this belief among the Catholic magisterium,

00:09:02.360 | which runs Europe, that women had no souls,

00:09:05.440 | so they had to have this big meeting about it.

00:09:07.400 | Did women have souls?

00:09:08.820 | But that belief had consequences for women.

00:09:13.360 | I mean, women were treated and have been treated

00:09:16.680 | as if they didn't have souls.

00:09:18.760 | Okay, so there's--

00:09:19.600 | - And the soul was really the essence of the human being.

00:09:22.040 | - It was, it's called the animus, right?

00:09:24.440 | It's what is the essence of what is eternal,

00:09:28.060 | you know, when women weren't eternal.

00:09:30.060 | Here's another example, okay?

00:09:31.580 | This is an example from my own research.

00:09:33.960 | All right, so there in the Catholic tradition,

00:09:36.060 | there's this idea of purgatory, hell, and heaven.

00:09:40.380 | And these are three destinations

00:09:42.420 | that people can go to when they die.

00:09:45.180 | And if you're great, you go to heaven automatically,

00:09:48.260 | and you're considered a saint.

00:09:49.580 | If you're okay, you go to purgatory, right?

00:09:52.580 | And you suffer for a time and then get back into heaven.

00:09:55.660 | If you're terrible, you go to hell, right?

00:09:57.540 | Okay, well, there was a place that the Catholics determined,

00:10:02.180 | and this was a belief for a long time,

00:10:04.740 | like a thousand years or more,

00:10:07.220 | and it was called limbo, all right?

00:10:09.340 | And limbo comes from the Latin, limbus, and it means edge.

00:10:13.340 | And it was either on the edge of hell

00:10:15.020 | or on the edge of heaven.

00:10:16.600 | No one really could determine which it was.

00:10:18.520 | No historians are like,

00:10:19.360 | "Well, this person says it was on the edge of heaven."

00:10:22.140 | - Well, listen, this was a terrible,

00:10:24.540 | first of all, there is no limbo anymore.

00:10:26.180 | In 2007, Benedict, the then Pope,

00:10:30.300 | got rid of the idea that there was limbo, okay?

00:10:33.020 | So Catholics kind of went crazy

00:10:34.660 | 'cause they didn't really know,

00:10:35.940 | they forgot that limbo existed,

00:10:37.660 | and they thought it was purgatory.

00:10:38.900 | And they said, "How could you get rid of purgatory?"

00:10:40.980 | But actually, he just got rid of this idea of limbo.

00:10:43.180 | - Oh, so that's a distinct thing from purgatory.

00:10:45.340 | - It was, it was like-- - And by the way,

00:10:46.460 | people should know they have a book on purgatory

00:10:48.340 | that came before--

00:10:50.100 | - American Cosmic, yes, I wrote a book on purgatory, yeah.

00:10:52.860 | - Anyway, so limbo is a distinct thing from purgatory?

00:10:55.620 | - Yeah, and the types of people who go to limbo

00:11:00.580 | happen to be virtuous pagans, okay?

00:11:04.220 | Like Socrates or somebody like that.

00:11:06.220 | And children who weren't baptized.

00:11:09.820 | So think of this, think of for like more than 1,000 years,

00:11:14.500 | mothers and fathers gave birth to babies

00:11:18.040 | who weren't baptized and couldn't be buried

00:11:20.860 | with their family in these burial,

00:11:23.300 | and then they couldn't be reunited with them in heaven.

00:11:26.340 | Think of the pain and suffering that that caused.

00:11:28.660 | And that was nothing.

00:11:30.540 | Limbo's nothing.

00:11:32.100 | Yet the belief in it caused untold suffering.

00:11:35.460 | And that's just a small example.

00:11:37.140 | - And that was as real to them--

00:11:39.260 | - It was absolutely real.

00:11:40.780 | I mean, the effects were real, let's put it that way.

00:11:42.780 | The place itself, not real.

00:11:44.780 | - But the families themselves,

00:11:46.020 | do you think they really believed it?

00:11:47.740 | - They totally believed it.

00:11:48.960 | - As much as the table is real?

00:11:50.680 | - Yes, I've read, but listen,

00:11:53.000 | we have trigger warnings today, right?

00:11:55.080 | So don't read this, it's gonna make you upset, okay?

00:11:57.680 | History, primary sources, no trigger warnings, okay?

00:12:01.560 | So you're going through like somebody's diary from 1400,

00:12:06.440 | and you hear the suffering and pain that they went through.

00:12:09.080 | There were times in my research

00:12:10.540 | where I'd have to put my primary source down,

00:12:14.400 | and just basically go outside and take a walk,

00:12:16.920 | because it was so horrific.

00:12:18.400 | I knew it was true, because they wouldn't write something,

00:12:20.960 | you know, they're not gonna write in their diary

00:12:23.240 | something that's not true, and it was horrible.

00:12:25.000 | So yes, these people went through untold suffering

00:12:27.300 | for nothing, because they had an erroneous belief.

00:12:31.000 | But they didn't know it was erroneous.

00:12:32.720 | - So it was real to them.

00:12:33.920 | - Yeah.

00:12:35.160 | - So I don't know if you're familiar with Donald Hoffman.

00:12:38.020 | He has this idea that in terms of

00:12:41.120 | the distance we are from being able to know the reality,

00:12:46.520 | which is there, the physics reality,

00:12:48.840 | is we're actually really, really, really,

00:12:50.640 | really far away from that.

00:12:52.400 | - Yeah.

00:12:53.240 | - So like it's, I think his idea is that

00:12:56.880 | we're basically like completely detached from it.

00:13:00.000 | - Yes.

00:13:01.000 | - What's your sense, how close are we to the reality?

00:13:04.020 | We'll talk about a bunch of ideas about our beliefs

00:13:08.920 | in technology and beyond,

00:13:11.340 | but in terms of what is actually real from a physical sense,

00:13:16.240 | how close are we to understanding that?

00:13:18.320 | - Pretty far.

00:13:19.160 | I'm gonna use examples from what I do.

00:13:21.760 | Okay, so this idea that

00:13:23.520 | we're suspicious of what we actually think is real

00:13:28.960 | is not new, of course.

00:13:30.280 | It goes back a long time, thousands of years, in fact.

00:13:33.560 | And philosophers, I'm not actually technically a philosopher,

00:13:37.400 | but I was one. (laughs)

00:13:40.280 | I'm a professor of religious studies.

00:13:43.040 | - Yeah, but what do you introduce yourself at,

00:13:44.840 | like at a bar when the bartender asks, "What do you do?"

00:13:47.960 | - I never tell people what I do.

00:13:49.440 | (both laugh)

00:13:50.440 | Especially on airplanes.

00:13:52.000 | - Yeah. - It's a bad idea.

00:13:53.280 | - Okay.

00:13:54.120 | - So generally if they push, though, I say,

00:13:56.160 | I'm the chair of philosophy and religion,

00:13:57.820 | although I stepped down last year,

00:13:59.480 | so I'm no longer the chair.

00:14:00.840 | But I have like a master's degree in philosophy,

00:14:04.120 | and I was a philosophy major, and I've studied,

00:14:06.000 | I still study philosophy,

00:14:07.540 | so I integrate it into my research.

00:14:09.400 | All right, so this idea that we can't know,

00:14:14.360 | we're suspicious of what we know,

00:14:15.800 | it's called external world skepticism.

00:14:18.320 | That's the official philosophical name for it.

00:14:20.760 | Our faculties and our senses

00:14:23.280 | don't give us accurate perceptions of what is there, okay?

00:14:27.640 | Especially at a quantum level or a molecular level.

00:14:31.000 | I mean, that's just obvious.

00:14:32.480 | So yeah, so I think that the person you mentioned

00:14:35.320 | is correct in that.

00:14:36.600 | I think we're far away from it.

00:14:38.440 | - I think you're talking about our direct senses,

00:14:40.880 | but we have tools, measurement tools,

00:14:44.360 | from microscopes to all the tools of astronomy,

00:14:49.020 | cosmology, that gives us a sense of the big universe

00:14:52.000 | and also the sense of the very small.

00:14:53.800 | Do you think there's some other things

00:14:57.600 | that are completely sort of other dimensions,

00:15:01.680 | or there's ideas of panpsychism,

00:15:05.200 | that consciousness permeates all matter,

00:15:08.460 | there's like fundamental forces of physics

00:15:11.480 | we're not even aware of yet?

00:15:14.060 | - Oh, absolutely.

00:15:15.300 | I do think, and this is why I write about technology,

00:15:18.100 | and I mean, that's actually what I specialize in

00:15:22.700 | is belief in technology with respect to religion.

00:15:25.980 | So in my opinion, thank goodness for technology,

00:15:30.980 | because where would we be without it?

00:15:32.780 | I mean, frankly, I think that it's like Marshall McLuhan

00:15:36.780 | was the person who said,

00:15:38.920 | "Technology is like an extension of our senses."

00:15:42.260 | And I absolutely believe that to be true.

00:15:44.420 | I think that we're lucky that Prometheus gave us technology,

00:15:49.420 | and that we use it,

00:15:51.560 | and we're making it better and better and better and better,

00:15:54.500 | and that makes us more efficient.

00:15:57.300 | It makes us more efficient as a species.

00:15:59.400 | And my point is that I think that our instruments

00:16:06.340 | I mean, I don't want to be a religious technologist,

00:16:11.340 | but our instruments will save us.

00:16:16.460 | I mean, they're already making life better for us.

00:16:19.100 | - You think it's important that they also help us

00:16:21.040 | understand reality more directly, more deeply?

00:16:24.060 | - I think directly is better than deeply.

00:16:26.500 | I think directly, more directly is probably

00:16:29.140 | a more accurate term for what you're trying to,

00:16:32.300 | I think, ask me.

00:16:33.380 | Can we actually, I mean,

00:16:34.500 | I think you're asking me that question

00:16:36.140 | that Kant basically was trying to get at,

00:16:38.500 | was can we know the thing in itself?

00:16:40.640 | Can we know that?

00:16:41.620 | Can we have some kind of intense knowing of it?

00:16:45.660 | It's almost mystical.

00:16:47.100 | And I would say that that's where religion comes in.

00:16:52.100 | Okay, that's where we talk about religion.

00:16:54.780 | And if I may also go back to Immanuel Kant,

00:16:58.260 | this idea that he, just before he died,

00:17:01.820 | just as he died, he was working on,

00:17:03.860 | he did this critique of reason

00:17:05.660 | where basically he believed,

00:17:07.380 | he basically talks about, can we know what's real?

00:17:12.380 | And he basically has this long,

00:17:14.420 | that question, can we know what's real?

00:17:15.980 | And then a thousand pages later, no.

00:17:19.780 | (both laughing)

00:17:21.220 | I'll just give you the rundown, okay?

00:17:22.860 | So, okay, no. - Spoiler alert.

00:17:23.980 | - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:17:25.540 | Then he does this other critique.

00:17:27.340 | And okay, so he does like three critiques.

00:17:29.820 | Then he does this critique of judgment, okay?

00:17:32.300 | Well, judgment is this other thing altogether.

00:17:34.580 | And I think that that's what you're getting at.

00:17:36.340 | So how do we know things?

00:17:37.980 | How can we know things really intensely and intimately?

00:17:41.260 | And I think that he thought that judgment

00:17:43.500 | was the idea that we can actually know the thing in itself.

00:17:48.500 | And he was working on that as he died,

00:17:51.180 | and then he never finished it.

00:17:52.700 | Hannah Arendt, another philosopher of the 20th century,

00:17:56.580 | took it up, took up the critique of judgment

00:17:59.420 | and tried to finish it.

00:18:01.340 | - Oh, why the word judgment?

00:18:03.300 | - Because judgment, think about it.

00:18:04.940 | When you see a work of art, who judges that to be decent?

00:18:09.180 | Okay, so there is a group of people

00:18:13.420 | who come to the decision that that's rotten,

00:18:16.620 | or that's pretty good.

00:18:18.780 | You know, like I noticed that you like to play guitar.

00:18:21.980 | Well, you choose music that I happen to like too, okay?

00:18:25.100 | So you and I both have a sense of judgment, just a sense.

00:18:29.140 | So he said, there's a sense that some people have.

00:18:31.700 | Why do certain communities have a similar sense?

00:18:36.820 | What dictates that?

00:18:38.340 | And so he was working on that.

00:18:39.740 | He thought it had something to do with the knowledge,

00:18:42.460 | the intimate knowledge of the thing in itself.

00:18:45.340 | Yeah, so another philosopher

00:18:48.340 | that philosophers actually don't like at all,

00:18:50.180 | but religious studies people do, is Martin Heidegger.

00:18:53.300 | So Martin Heidegger has some great essays.

00:18:55.980 | One is called "What is a Work of Art?"

00:18:58.020 | And again, he gets to, you know,

00:18:59.620 | he talks about Van Gogh and Van Gogh's shoes.

00:19:02.020 | You know that picture, the painting Van Gogh's shoes.

00:19:05.020 | It's really a really intense picture.

00:19:07.820 | It's just shoes.

00:19:09.460 | It's, you know, it's an amazing painting of shoes.

00:19:13.580 | And I think everybody can agree,

00:19:15.460 | that's a cool picture of shoes, right?

00:19:18.660 | And so why?

00:19:19.820 | You know, the question is,

00:19:20.660 | why is that a cool picture of shoes?

00:19:22.460 | You know, what kind of knowledge are we accessing

00:19:25.660 | to determine that indeed that works, right?

00:19:28.980 | And in fact, we still like it.

00:19:30.660 | - So basically the nature of knowledge

00:19:32.900 | and what does it represent?

00:19:34.500 | It can operate in the space of,

00:19:36.420 | that's detached from reality,

00:19:37.860 | or can it ultimately represent reality?

00:19:41.620 | I guess that's the space of metaphysics?

00:19:45.420 | Is that the--

00:19:46.500 | - Yeah, so what can we know

00:19:47.780 | is actually called epistemology.

00:19:49.380 | - Epistemology.

00:19:50.220 | - But metaphysics is--

00:19:51.340 | - The intersect, I guess.

00:19:52.260 | - Is basically what is the nature of reality.

00:19:55.060 | - Right, and those intersect.

00:19:57.340 | - Absolutely, yeah.

00:19:58.420 | A lot of things intersect in philosophy.

00:20:00.140 | We just have fancy names for them.

00:20:02.340 | - Another non-philosopher

00:20:05.580 | that may be considered a philosopher,

00:20:07.900 | since we're talking about reality,

00:20:09.260 | is Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism.

00:20:12.980 | What are your thoughts on her sense

00:20:17.460 | of taking this idea of reality,

00:20:20.500 | calling her philosophy objectivism,

00:20:22.820 | and kind of starting at the idea

00:20:26.020 | that you really could know everything,

00:20:30.140 | and it's pretty obvious,

00:20:32.380 | and then from that you can derive an ethics

00:20:35.380 | about how to live life,

00:20:37.380 | like what is the good ethical life

00:20:40.780 | and all the virtue of selfishness,

00:20:42.820 | all that kind of stuff.

00:20:44.020 | So you talked to a lot of academic philosophers,

00:20:47.420 | so I'd be curious to see from the perspective of like,

00:20:51.540 | is she somebody that's taken seriously at all?

00:20:56.500 | Why is she dismissed, as I see from my distant perspective,

00:21:02.020 | by serious philosophers?

00:21:04.140 | And also like your own personal thoughts of like,

00:21:06.700 | is there some interesting bits

00:21:08.060 | that you find inspiring in her work or not?

00:21:12.380 | - Okay, so Ayn Rand,

00:21:14.780 | I've had so many exceedingly intelligent students

00:21:20.540 | basically give me her books

00:21:24.180 | and basically say, "Please, Dr. Basilka, read this book."

00:21:28.060 | And I'll tell them, "Yes, thank you.

00:21:30.500 | "I've read this book before."

00:21:31.660 | And then when I engage in, let me put it this way,

00:21:35.060 | they're religious about Ayn Rand, okay?

00:21:37.700 | So to them, Ayn Rand represents some type of way of life,

00:21:42.700 | right, her objectivism.

00:21:44.780 | Now, why is she not taken seriously

00:21:48.340 | by philosophers in general?

00:21:50.220 | (laughs)

00:21:51.060 | Well, let me put it this way.

00:21:52.660 | Philosophers in general tend to get pretty,

00:21:56.620 | I guess you could call it they're kind of scientists,

00:22:02.220 | but with words.

00:22:03.220 | I always call philosophy,

00:22:04.620 | when I describe it to someone

00:22:06.180 | who's gonna take a philosophy class,

00:22:07.340 | I say it's basically math problems,

00:22:10.860 | like word math problems, okay?

00:22:12.660 | So that's basically what it is.

00:22:14.020 | - So they take words very seriously

00:22:16.060 | and they're very formal about it.

00:22:16.900 | - And definitions very seriously, yeah.

00:22:18.780 | So they all wanna get on the same page,

00:22:20.260 | so there is no confusion.

00:22:22.300 | So for Ayn Rand to basically say you can know everything

00:22:25.420 | and establish ethics from that,

00:22:28.220 | I think philosophers automatically say no.

00:22:31.060 | Now, that doesn't mean I say no.

00:22:33.340 | In fact, we have at my university,

00:22:36.860 | a wonderful business school.

00:22:38.700 | And when you walk into the Dean

00:22:42.140 | of the business school's office, Ayn Rand is everywhere.

00:22:45.620 | So it's (laughs)

00:22:47.460 | So I wanna say that not all academics are anti Ayn Rand.

00:22:51.340 | And in fact, I don't think philosophers are either,

00:22:54.620 | except that they don't teach Ayn Rand, okay?

00:22:57.740 | So in one sense, you could say that

00:23:00.140 | because they don't teach her,

00:23:01.300 | they're being exclusive in what they teach.

00:23:03.900 | Or very particular, perhaps, is another way to put it.

00:23:07.540 | - Yeah, it's hard to know where to place people like her,

00:23:09.780 | because do you put Albert Camus as a philosopher?

00:23:14.220 | So I guess what's the good term for that?

00:23:16.140 | Like literary philosophers?

00:23:18.180 | Or whatever the term is,

00:23:20.980 | it's annoying to me that the academic philosophers

00:23:24.080 | get to own the word philosophy,

00:23:26.100 | 'cause it's just like people who think deeply about life

00:23:29.580 | is what I think about as philosophy.

00:23:32.060 | And to me, it's like, all right,

00:23:34.500 | so I know Nietzsche is another person

00:23:37.000 | that's probably not respected in the philosophy circles,

00:23:40.660 | because he is full of contradictions, full of--

00:23:44.140 | - I love Nietzsche.

00:23:45.140 | (Lex laughs)

00:23:45.980 | He's my favorite philosopher.

00:23:47.460 | - Oh, really?

00:23:48.300 | - Yes, I absolutely love Nietzsche.

00:23:49.620 | - So he's definitely, you know,

00:23:50.860 | I love people that are full of ideas,

00:23:52.680 | even if they're full of contradictions,

00:23:54.360 | and Nietzsche is certainly that.

00:23:55.200 | - Absolutely, yeah.

00:23:56.020 | - And Ayn Rand is also that.

00:23:58.140 | I'm able to look past the obvious ego

00:24:02.180 | that's there on the page,

00:24:03.940 | and the fact that she actually has, in my view,

00:24:07.280 | a lot of wrong ideas.

00:24:09.300 | But there's a lot of interesting tidbits to pick up,

00:24:13.060 | and the same goes with Nietzsche.

00:24:15.420 | And I'm weirded out by the religious aspect here,

00:24:19.700 | on both the people who worship Ayn Rand,

00:24:22.740 | and people who completely dismiss her.

00:24:25.020 | I just kind of see it as,

00:24:26.420 | oh, can we just read a few interesting things,

00:24:29.580 | and get inspired by it, and move on?

00:24:31.620 | As opposed to--

00:24:32.460 | - No.

00:24:33.300 | - Have a dogmatic, binary thing.

00:24:35.020 | Is there something you find about her work

00:24:37.080 | that's interesting to you,

00:24:38.700 | or her personality, or any of that?

00:24:41.940 | - Oh, I think she's fascinating.

00:24:44.020 | I don't dismiss her.

00:24:45.620 | She was a woman who reached a level of success

00:24:49.700 | with her mind at a time when that was difficult.

00:24:53.220 | So, I mean, she's definitely worth looking at,

00:24:57.460 | for even that reason.

00:24:58.940 | But also, her idea,

00:25:01.900 | I guess part of the situation with Rand,

00:25:05.580 | first of all, I think that her work is,

00:25:08.660 | you have to, it's misinterpreted, okay?

00:25:11.700 | And I think that's the same with Nietzsche.

00:25:13.780 | Like, a lot of people think that,

00:25:15.540 | I mean, in fact, it is the case that

00:25:18.860 | Nietzsche's writing before the 20th century,

00:25:22.060 | so he's got the, you know, he's somewhat,

00:25:24.840 | his rhetoric is sexist and racist,

00:25:28.500 | and of the time period, right?

00:25:30.820 | He was a educated philosopher of that time period.

00:25:35.820 | However, his books are amazing,

00:25:40.860 | and Nietzsche's philosophy is incredible.

00:25:44.900 | And I think that's what you're saying about Rand, too.

00:25:49.300 | And I agree.

00:25:50.140 | I mean, I think that we get caught up,

00:25:54.020 | I mean, likely we should,

00:25:56.300 | and we should contextualize these thinkers

00:25:58.540 | in the time period within which they are.

00:26:00.780 | We should not forgive their,

00:26:02.500 | 'cause there were people during Nietzsche's time

00:26:04.740 | that were feminist and not racist and things like that.

00:26:09.980 | And, you know, so, but each has merit.

00:26:14.980 | I mean, I would say Nietzsche is,

00:26:17.500 | you did ask me to talk about some of the books

00:26:21.020 | that made the largest impact on me,

00:26:23.260 | and Nietzsche's "Gay Science" is one of them.

00:26:25.340 | It's one of the best books ever, in my opinion.

00:26:28.860 | - I do think Nietzsche was,

00:26:30.160 | I don't know about exactly sexist,

00:26:33.980 | he certainly was sexist,

00:26:35.220 | but it felt like he didn't get laid much in his life.

00:26:40.140 | - No.

00:26:40.980 | - It felt like he was extra sexist.

00:26:43.540 | I was like, his theories on women are like, all right.

00:26:46.340 | - He's pretty angry.

00:26:47.500 | - He seems frustrated.

00:26:48.980 | - Yeah.

00:26:49.820 | (laughing)

00:26:50.660 | - Like, all right, calm down, buddy.

00:26:52.340 | - The fate of philosophers.

00:26:54.860 | - I just ignore everything Nietzsche says about women.

00:26:58.380 | So can we talk about myth and religion a little bit?

00:27:04.060 | - Yes.

00:27:04.900 | - Can we start at the beginning, which is like,

00:27:07.340 | myths, how are they born?

00:27:10.780 | There's this collective intelligence amongst us human beings

00:27:13.780 | and we seem to create these beautiful ideas

00:27:17.100 | that captivate the minds of millions.

00:27:19.540 | How is such a myth born?

00:27:21.580 | - Great question.

00:27:22.700 | Okay, so that brings us to terminology again.

00:27:26.060 | And in my field, we definitely, I think,

00:27:31.060 | try not to distinguish between religion.

00:27:34.020 | This is gonna be controversial, I think,

00:27:36.500 | between religion and myth,

00:27:37.900 | because we call other cultures, religions, myths, right?

00:27:42.900 | And then we call our myths, religions.

00:27:46.740 | - And I guess myth has a bad connotation to it,

00:27:49.140 | that it's not somehow real.

00:27:50.700 | - Yeah.

00:27:51.540 | Now, what's interesting is that people like Plato,

00:27:54.660 | who lived thousands of years ago, 2,500 about,

00:27:58.180 | basically made this distinction himself

00:28:01.460 | within his own culture, which was Greek, right?

00:28:05.180 | So Plato's a very famous Greek philosopher.

00:28:08.020 | And he would say things like this.

00:28:09.700 | He would say that, he would make a distinction

00:28:13.620 | between the reality of the one God or the one.

00:28:18.060 | He would call it, he didn't use the word God,

00:28:21.060 | but he's referencing a divinity, okay?

00:28:24.540 | And he believes in the soul, okay?

00:28:27.100 | So, but he would also say that the gods and goddesses

00:28:31.020 | of the Greeks are just myths.

00:28:33.180 | So even he would make that distinction.

00:28:35.180 | Again, he would say the population is not too bright,

00:28:39.460 | so they believe in these gods and goddesses.

00:28:42.140 | But he himself is talking to his students,

00:28:44.940 | and he's basically talking about forms,

00:28:48.580 | so that live in, seem to live in these other dimensions.

00:28:52.700 | Like this table, let's go back to this table

00:28:54.300 | that we're talking around right now.

00:28:57.060 | He would say that this table is the instantiation

00:28:59.620 | of the form table, and that there's this table

00:29:02.060 | that actually exists somewhere.

00:29:03.740 | It's where this place where numbers exist,

00:29:05.700 | like the number two, okay?

00:29:07.300 | So there, we use the number two mathematically,

00:29:09.820 | therefore it exists.

00:29:11.260 | But have you ever seen a real one?

00:29:13.220 | Have you ever seen the real two?

00:29:14.860 | No. - No.

00:29:15.820 | - Okay, so, but where does it exist?

00:29:17.500 | So he says that tables,

00:29:18.780 | so he was also talking about things that,

00:29:20.940 | he says are real, making a distinction between the people.

00:29:27.740 | And by the way, he got this from Socrates, his mentor,

00:29:31.660 | who was killed by Athens because he would say such things.

00:29:35.060 | People don't like to be told that they,

00:29:36.900 | what they believe in is not real, right?

00:29:38.780 | - Yeah, by the way, his idea of forms is just,

00:29:42.220 | you're just making me realize how incredible was that

00:29:45.060 | somebody like that was able to come up with that.

00:29:47.580 | I mean, that idea became a myth,

00:29:49.500 | the idea of forms, right, that permeated

00:29:53.300 | probably the most influential set of ideas

00:29:57.140 | in the history of philosophy, in the history of ideas.

00:30:00.500 | - Yes, yeah, I mean, Plato, we know him for a reason, right?

00:30:03.620 | - Yeah, so let's say that we're not,

00:30:07.140 | it's a gray area between religious and myth,

00:30:09.260 | and maybe not even-- - It is gray, yeah.

00:30:11.500 | - So how's that idea with like little Plato start

00:30:16.260 | and permeate the role of society?

00:30:18.780 | - Oh, how does it happen?

00:30:19.700 | Okay, so there are different ways that religions work.

00:30:23.100 | So a lot of people would call the UFO narrative today,

00:30:26.340 | like, and this is what I talk about in my book,

00:30:29.900 | like a myth, right, the UFO myth,

00:30:31.860 | but a lot of people believe in it, okay?

00:30:33.980 | So how do these things work?

00:30:35.580 | Well, what I did was I took,

00:30:37.100 | there's a, Ann Taves at UC Santa Barbara,

00:30:42.580 | she's a pretty well-known academic who studies religion,

00:30:46.020 | and she has this building block definition of religion,

00:30:49.140 | like it builds, okay?

00:30:50.460 | And so she says, "There are no religious experiences

00:30:55.140 | "or mythic experiences, there are experiences,

00:30:59.100 | "and then they get interpreted as religious or mythic,"

00:31:03.100 | okay, and so I use that with the UFO narrative.

00:31:08.100 | So I take, and I compare it to the religious narrative.

00:31:12.300 | So basically what happens, what happens is this,

00:31:15.980 | is that a person generally has a very intense experience,

00:31:20.740 | it could be with something that they see in the sky,

00:31:23.060 | a being that they see,

00:31:25.140 | like Moses in the burning bush or something like that.

00:31:28.460 | They tell other people, okay,

00:31:30.260 | and those other people believe them because they say,

00:31:33.300 | "That guy, let's take you, okay, Alex,

00:31:35.640 | "okay, so you're playing some of your music,

00:31:39.220 | "Jimmy Hendrix shows up out of the blue."

00:31:41.480 | So Jimmy Hendrix, who does electric church stuff, right,

00:31:44.900 | the electric church movement, so he shows up.

00:31:47.660 | - I was, sorry, for a small attention,

00:31:50.220 | I'm not aware of, I apologize if I should be,

00:31:53.700 | I just know how to play all of the songs.

00:31:56.500 | Electric church, is this a thing?

00:32:00.300 | - Oh yeah, yeah, it's Jimmy Hendrix's thing, yeah.

00:32:03.540 | - That was like a philosophy of his or what?

00:32:05.740 | - Yes, yes, yes, so he thought,

00:32:07.660 | it was like a mission for him, like he was a missionary,

00:32:11.060 | and he was doing the electric church.

00:32:13.500 | It was through his mission of music

00:32:16.260 | that he was actually impacting people spiritually,

00:32:18.700 | and I think you have to agree

00:32:20.100 | that his music is really spiritual, yeah.

00:32:21.980 | - Wow, that's so cool to know

00:32:23.120 | that there's like a philosophy there.

00:32:24.820 | - Yeah.

00:32:25.660 | - I wonder if he's ever written anything.

00:32:27.180 | - He's spoken about it many times.

00:32:29.020 | - Interesting.

00:32:29.860 | - Yeah.

00:32:30.700 | - I need to actually do some research here.

00:32:32.020 | Wow, that adds another level of depth, that's awesome.

00:32:34.700 | Okay, so.

00:32:35.860 | - Okay, so say Lex is playing one of his songs.

00:32:40.500 | He shows up.

00:32:41.460 | - What's your favorite Hendrix song by the way?

00:32:43.500 | - Oh, that's a hard one, I like "Castles in the Sand."

00:32:46.060 | It's a sad one, but I like it.

00:32:48.700 | - So I'm playing something, and they show up.

00:32:50.940 | - And all of a sudden, boom,

00:32:51.900 | just like Elvis does for people, Hendrix shows up, all right?

00:32:56.420 | And then you're amazed, and he tells you something

00:32:59.300 | that's very, very significant,

00:33:01.100 | and he says, "You need to tell other people this, okay?"

00:33:03.460 | So then like, okay.

00:33:04.700 | - I go on social media.

00:33:06.260 | - Yes, and you start, and because people believe you,

00:33:09.820 | and because you are a person of credibility,

00:33:14.380 | people believe you.

00:33:15.420 | And so all of a sudden a movement starts, okay?

00:33:17.820 | And it's the Hendrix movement.

00:33:19.380 | It's Hendrix 2, or something like that.

00:33:21.300 | You know, we call it something,

00:33:22.900 | the next iteration of Hendrix, right?

00:33:25.220 | Hendrix lives, but he lives as this vibration,

00:33:28.300 | and only Lex can like, you know,

00:33:30.660 | can manifest this vibration, okay?

00:33:32.980 | So like, this is how religions start, you know,

00:33:36.620 | excuse your audience who are religious,

00:33:37.940 | I'm actually practicing Catholic,

00:33:39.260 | so this is how religions start.

00:33:41.060 | They start with, first off, a contact experience.

00:33:44.460 | Not all of them, but a good portion of them.

00:33:47.540 | Some person has an experience that's transcendent,

00:33:51.420 | sacred to them, and they go and they tell other people.

00:33:54.540 | And then those people tell other people.

00:33:56.900 | And then something gets written about it, okay?

00:33:59.460 | And then it becomes, because it's a charismatic movement,

00:34:02.260 | people become affected by it.

00:34:04.460 | And if too many people are affected by it,

00:34:07.540 | an institution steps in and tries to control the narrative.

00:34:11.860 | So this is what you'd call the beginning of a religion,

00:34:15.620 | or a myth, a very powerful myth.

00:34:17.700 | And so it's almost like a star, right?

00:34:20.180 | A star is born, okay? - A star is born.

00:34:22.100 | When you say institution, do you mean

00:34:23.900 | some other organization that's already powerful?

00:34:27.020 | - Yes. - That doesn't want to become

00:34:28.820 | overpowered by this new movement?

00:34:30.660 | - Yes, absolutely.

00:34:31.500 | - Is this usually governments?

00:34:32.780 | - It's usually, yeah.

00:34:33.740 | So I have a couple examples.

00:34:35.860 | I use the example of the Christian church in my book,

00:34:38.740 | 'cause I'm most familiar with the history of Christianity.

00:34:41.500 | And Christianity was started by this Jewish man,

00:34:46.260 | and it was a movement that,

00:34:48.940 | he was a very powerful, charismatic person.

00:34:51.660 | Other people believed in him,

00:34:53.340 | and then his followers talked about him.

00:34:55.300 | Usually early Christians before the 300s

00:35:01.740 | were generally people who were disenfranchised,

00:35:05.540 | because he had a pretty radical idea

00:35:07.540 | that humans should have dignity.

00:35:10.460 | And this was pretty radical during that time.

00:35:12.740 | So women who didn't have dignity,

00:35:14.940 | and slaves who didn't have dignity at the time,

00:35:17.860 | converged to Christianity and drove.

00:35:20.900 | And so what happened was that all of a sudden

00:35:23.740 | it became this belief system that was undercurrent.

00:35:27.820 | And then Constantine, who was an elite,

00:35:31.500 | had an experience and made Christianity to state religion.

00:35:37.540 | By that time, there were different forms of Christianity,

00:35:40.260 | probably hundreds of them, well, most likely.

00:35:43.260 | And Constantine and the people who were powerful with him

00:35:48.260 | decided that their idea,

00:35:51.260 | this is the Council of Nicaea now,

00:35:53.100 | decided that there was one form,

00:35:55.260 | and they called it universal,

00:35:56.820 | the one form of Christianity, and this should be it.

00:36:00.140 | And so they kind of took out all the other denominations

00:36:03.900 | of Christianity and different forms of it.

00:36:05.820 | So you can see that a very, very powerful set

00:36:09.900 | of beliefs put a culture on fire, right?

00:36:14.900 | And so how did they,

00:36:16.620 | they had to deal with that fire somehow.

00:36:19.100 | And so they narrativized it.

00:36:20.740 | They decided, how do we interpret this?

00:36:23.140 | And they interpreted it as they wished,

00:36:25.420 | but that wasn't the only interpretation of Christianity.

00:36:28.180 | I have another example.

00:36:29.660 | I'm in a Catholic church.

00:36:32.060 | A lot of times, and I'm gonna use the example of Faustina.

00:36:38.500 | She's a nun and she's Polish.

00:36:41.820 | And I think it was in the early 20th century,

00:36:44.820 | if not the 1800s, that she had a very powerful,

00:36:48.260 | many experiences actually of Jesus.

00:36:52.380 | And she saw Jesus with rays coming out of his heart.

00:36:57.140 | And basically she called this his divine mercy,

00:37:00.140 | and it became a devotion in Poland and it spread.

00:37:04.420 | The Catholic church was not into this at all, okay?

00:37:07.780 | And so they did everything they could

00:37:09.460 | to try to suppress Faustina's influence,

00:37:12.820 | which was growing and growing and growing and growing, okay?

00:37:16.620 | And so they were very successful

00:37:18.420 | in trying to keep her quiet and she died, okay?

00:37:21.460 | Years later, John Paul II, Polish,

00:37:24.980 | sainted her and created the divine mercy devotion,

00:37:29.500 | which is worldwide now, and millions and millions of people.

00:37:33.060 | But do you see how they completely controlled it?

00:37:36.220 | - It's so fascinating that it just starts with a single,

00:37:40.300 | so like you said, contact experience,

00:37:42.260 | experience is the key word.

00:37:43.660 | Is your sense that those experiences are legitimate?

00:37:48.660 | So it's not somehow artificially constructed?

00:37:52.780 | - Yeah, I think for the most part,

00:37:54.060 | they're legitimate experiences that people have.

00:37:56.300 | Why would someone wanna put themselves

00:37:57.780 | through what they go through?

00:37:59.260 | Why would Jesus wanna get crucified?

00:38:01.020 | I mean, that's a pretty nasty way to die.

00:38:04.060 | Why would Faustina bring this upon herself?

00:38:07.340 | The people that I meet who said that they've seen UFOs,

00:38:11.220 | that most of them don't wanna be known

00:38:13.140 | because of the ridicule that goes along with it.

00:38:15.500 | So I honestly think that there are people

00:38:18.220 | who are maybe not stable and would like the attention,

00:38:22.220 | but for the most part,

00:38:23.460 | normal people don't want this attention.

00:38:25.620 | - So you mentioned building blocks.

00:38:27.380 | You did mention the word God,

00:38:32.340 | or sort of the afterlife.

00:38:34.100 | Are those essential to the myth?

00:38:36.740 | So there's a contact experience.

00:38:38.660 | Is there some other aspects of myth and religion

00:38:42.380 | which makes them viral,

00:38:43.900 | which makes them spread and captivate

00:38:46.860 | the imagination of people?

00:38:50.100 | - Yes, is there a pattern to them?

00:38:54.300 | I think that for each era, it's different.

00:38:56.820 | And people have, first, let's talk about

00:38:58.500 | the definition of religion, if that's okay,

00:39:00.260 | because most people assume the definitions

00:39:03.660 | that we in the West are familiar with,

00:39:06.540 | which is that of Christianity, Islam, Judaism,

00:39:11.540 | monotheistic religions.

00:39:13.100 | And there are, that's not,

00:39:15.860 | I mean, those are just some religions.

00:39:17.940 | There are so many different types of religions.

00:39:19.620 | Some religions have no God at all.

00:39:21.500 | Zen Buddhism, for example, is a religion

00:39:24.940 | that asks you to take away your belief structures,

00:39:29.220 | to kind of like, in fact, I would call that

00:39:31.580 | a Kantian-type religion, right?

00:39:33.620 | In that it's basically telling you

00:39:35.220 | to get rid of your concepts of what you think about things

00:39:39.500 | so that you can actually have the experience,

00:39:41.940 | like you were talking about earlier,

00:39:43.420 | of the thing in itself.

00:39:44.860 | And they call that satori.

00:39:46.620 | So there are people who believe,

00:39:49.020 | they try to, they call it meditation, Zen meditation.

00:39:52.820 | And it's fairly radical, actually.

00:39:56.700 | And some monasteries, I don't know if they still do this,

00:39:59.860 | but they'll whack you on the head

00:40:02.060 | if you appear to be not focusing and that kind of thing.

00:40:07.060 | They do things to basically take you away

00:40:11.900 | from your conceptions of reality

00:40:13.740 | and bring you into a state of all that is,

00:40:17.740 | which is what they call satori.

00:40:19.700 | And that has nothing to do with God.

00:40:21.620 | - I like this religion.

00:40:23.860 | And anything that involves sticks and whacking

00:40:26.540 | in order for you to focus better,

00:40:28.780 | I'm gonna have to join a monastery.

00:40:30.180 | So, okay, so digging into definitions of religion.

00:40:35.020 | So what do you think is the scope that defines a religion?

00:40:40.020 | - Oh, okay, so in my field,

00:40:43.220 | we have a few different definitions of religion,

00:40:46.020 | as you can imagine, just like philosophers

00:40:47.580 | have different definitions of what is real.

00:40:50.500 | So I take this definition,

00:40:52.540 | and it comes from John Livingston,

00:40:54.100 | and it's, "Religion is that set of beliefs and practices

00:40:58.340 | that is inspired by a transformative,

00:41:03.500 | what is perceived actually to be a transformative

00:41:06.620 | and sacred power."

00:41:08.780 | - Can you say that again?

00:41:09.620 | - Yeah, so religion is a set of, it's not just belief,

00:41:13.420 | it's also practices, it's both belief and practices,

00:41:15.660 | 'cause you won't have the practices without the belief.

00:41:18.300 | So you have those together, okay?

00:41:20.380 | And it's inspired by what is perceived,

00:41:23.340 | because we don't know if it's real or not,

00:41:25.100 | what is perceived to be of sacred and transforming power.

00:41:29.060 | - So perceived by the followers?

00:41:31.100 | - Yeah. - Or is this connected

00:41:32.020 | to the original sort of experience?

00:41:33.700 | - No, no, well, it's perceived by the followers.

00:41:36.820 | - That's a really good definition.

00:41:37.980 | So, and that's the governing idea,

00:41:41.860 | is that there's something of great power.

00:41:45.060 | - Yes. - Perceived to be

00:41:46.260 | of great power, which you can connect yourself

00:41:50.260 | either emotionally or intellectually somehow,

00:41:53.180 | in order to explore the world

00:41:54.660 | that is beyond your own capabilities.

00:41:56.940 | - Yes.

00:41:58.100 | - And is there communication also involved?

00:42:00.620 | - Generally. - Yeah.

00:42:01.940 | - Yeah.

00:42:02.900 | - That's a great definition, okay.

00:42:04.300 | So within that falls everything that we've talked about

00:42:08.180 | so far, including technology and alien life and so on.

00:42:13.180 | Do you think ultimately religion

00:42:16.180 | is good for human civilization?

00:42:22.380 | Let me maybe phrase it differently,

00:42:24.340 | is what's religion good for?

00:42:28.060 | - Okay, yeah, that's a great question.

00:42:30.220 | Thanks for asking that.

00:42:31.380 | Most people don't ask that.

00:42:32.740 | And I think it's the question to ask.

00:42:35.620 | Why do we still have religion?

00:42:37.660 | That's the question, right?

00:42:38.820 | Because scientists and others, scholars,

00:42:42.740 | humanists even, thought that there's this thing

00:42:48.260 | called the secularization thesis,

00:42:50.900 | and it's this idea that the more we progress rationally

00:42:55.620 | and we have better instruments for understanding

00:42:58.380 | our reality, the less religious we will be.

00:43:00.860 | But that's been found to be untrue.

00:43:03.140 | We're still very religious, okay?

00:43:04.780 | So why, why is it around?

00:43:06.420 | Well, it's adaptive in some way, in my opinion.

00:43:09.380 | Many people would not agree with me,

00:43:11.540 | but I kind of see it as an evolutionary adaptation.

00:43:15.100 | Now, think about religions, okay?

00:43:16.980 | Think about Christianity again, for one.

00:43:20.300 | Here comes this idea when you have this ruthless empire

00:43:23.580 | called the Roman Empire, which litters its roads

00:43:27.820 | with crucified bodies to let you know,

00:43:31.180 | don't mess with us, okay?

00:43:33.260 | All right, here all of a sudden you have this guy saying,

00:43:35.900 | God is love, okay?

00:43:37.940 | All right, well, that's weird.

00:43:39.540 | Okay, so why?

00:43:40.780 | Why does this take off?

00:43:42.020 | Well, it takes off because we're becoming a colonial power.

00:43:47.820 | That means we're going into other countries,

00:43:50.820 | we're conquering them.

00:43:52.420 | We are, you know, how do we survive together

00:43:56.740 | as cultures that don't clash?

00:44:00.220 | Well, we have to have a belief structure

00:44:02.060 | that allows us to, and I think religions

00:44:04.100 | function that way, frankly.

00:44:05.740 | - So religions help us, from Richard Dawkins' meme idea,

00:44:10.740 | it allows us to explore a space of ideas,

00:44:16.660 | and that in itself is the, so it's like evolution of ideas.

00:44:21.660 | And religion is a powerful tool for us to explore ideas.

00:44:25.380 | - Because, you know, if I believe that men have souls.

00:44:29.800 | - Do they?

00:44:32.580 | - Yes, they do, okay.

00:44:33.660 | - I'm still trying to figure that out.

00:44:41.020 | Well, I still, in terms of souls,

00:44:42.620 | do believe cats don't have souls,

00:44:44.460 | but we'll never be able to confirm that.

00:44:49.460 | - Maybe if we get better instruments,

00:44:51.500 | you know, the soul instrument,

00:44:52.820 | you need to come up with that one, please.

00:44:54.860 | - For cats?

00:44:55.700 | - Yeah, not just for cats,

00:44:57.000 | but for all animals and people in general.

00:44:59.340 | - For sure.

00:45:00.180 | - You could put them in like a little, you know,

00:45:01.980 | soul machine and find out what's the status of their soul.

00:45:05.800 | - That's funny.

00:45:08.340 | I hope we'll become a scientific discipline of consciousness

00:45:11.860 | and consciousness is in some sense connected

00:45:14.260 | to maybe what the meaning of the word soul used to be.

00:45:19.020 | And I think it's a fascinating open question,

00:45:21.800 | like what is consciousness and so on,

00:45:23.620 | maybe we'll touch on in a little bit.

00:45:26.940 | But yeah, anyway, back to our--

00:45:28.860 | - Religions being adaptive.

00:45:30.380 | I think that Christianity probably helped us

00:45:32.620 | become better people to each other

00:45:37.220 | as we moved into a more global society.

00:45:40.420 | And also, it goes along with my book,

00:45:42.720 | which is basically making the argument

00:45:44.380 | that belief in non-human intelligence,

00:45:47.540 | or ETs, or UFOs, UAPs, whatever you wanna call them,

00:45:50.640 | is a new form of religion.

00:45:52.900 | - And how does that work with the scientific method?

00:45:57.900 | Do you think there's always this role of religion

00:46:01.300 | as being, in its broad definition of religion,

00:46:03.860 | as being a complement to our sort of very rigorous,

00:46:08.140 | empirical pursuit of understanding reality?

00:46:10.420 | Or there's always going to be this coupling?

00:46:12.800 | We'll always redefine new eras of civilization

00:46:16.540 | of what that religion actually looks like?

00:46:20.520 | So you talk about technology and so on

00:46:22.320 | being the modern set of religious beliefs around that.

00:46:26.460 | Is religion always going to kinda cover the space of things

00:46:33.200 | we can't quite understand with science yet,

00:46:35.860 | but we still wanna be thinking about?

00:46:38.240 | - Oh, I see what you're saying, that's a great question.

00:46:40.560 | When you say religion, I would use the word religiosity,

00:46:45.120 | because I think that we're moving out

00:46:47.080 | of the dogmatic types of religions into more of a,

00:46:50.640 | I hate to put it this way, but an X-Files type religion,

00:46:53.080 | where we can say, I want to believe,

00:46:55.420 | or the truth is out there.

00:46:57.400 | But we don't know that it's out there,

00:46:58.920 | or we don't know yet what it is, but we know it's out there.

00:47:02.560 | So there's this kind of built-in capacity for belief

00:47:07.760 | and something that we don't have evidence for yet,

00:47:10.760 | and that's a sort of faith.

00:47:12.280 | So I would say yes to that question, absolutely.

00:47:15.760 | I think it's adaptive in that way.

00:47:17.360 | We're moving into a new, I mean, heck,

00:47:19.440 | we've already moved into this culture.

00:47:21.200 | Most people have not caught up with it yet.

00:47:23.440 | I see that in the school systems,

00:47:25.520 | and I think that I'm hoping we can catch up fast,

00:47:30.520 | 'cause really it's moving faster than we are.

00:47:34.480 | - So I mentioned to you offline

00:47:35.920 | that I'm finishing up on the rise and fall

00:47:40.840 | of the Third Reich.

00:47:41.960 | I'm not sure if you have anything in your exploration,

00:47:45.700 | interesting to say, but the use of religion by dictators

00:47:50.200 | or the lack of the use of religion by dictators,

00:47:53.720 | whether we're talking about Stalin,

00:47:55.440 | which is mostly a secular,

00:47:57.840 | I apologize if I'm historically incorrect on this,

00:48:00.200 | but I believe it's a secular,

00:48:02.400 | and Hitler, I think there's some controversy

00:48:06.480 | about how much religion played a role

00:48:09.680 | in his own personal life and in general,

00:48:12.580 | in terms of influencing the,

00:48:17.340 | using it to manipulate the public,

00:48:22.160 | but definitely the church played a role.

00:48:25.080 | Do you have a sense of the use of religion

00:48:27.960 | by governments to control the populations

00:48:31.520 | by dictators, for example,

00:48:33.400 | or is that outside of your little explorations

00:48:37.840 | as a religious scholar?

00:48:39.960 | - It's not outside of my framework, absolutely not.

00:48:43.660 | I think that it's done routinely.

00:48:47.080 | Propaganda is done routinely,

00:48:50.440 | especially there's nothing more powerful than religion

00:48:53.880 | to get people to act, I think.

00:48:59.960 | My mother's Jewish and my father was Roman Catholic,

00:49:04.640 | from Irish extraction.

00:49:06.960 | And so both members,

00:49:10.720 | both great-grandparents came here under duress

00:49:14.140 | because they were being, what would you call it?

00:49:17.500 | There was an act of genocide on both sides,

00:49:21.040 | being done by other cultures.

00:49:22.560 | So on the one hand, obviously we know about the Holocaust.

00:49:26.240 | So they came, the great-grandparents came here

00:49:28.240 | to avoid that and they made it.

00:49:31.160 | On the other hand, there was an English genocide,

00:49:36.160 | we just have to say it, of the Irish.

00:49:39.040 | It was called a famine, but it wasn't one.

00:49:41.440 | It was a staged thing.

00:49:43.320 | And so millions of Irish left Ireland on coffin ships

00:49:48.320 | is what they called them,

00:49:49.480 | because they usually wouldn't get here.

00:49:51.280 | Mine happened to get here.

00:49:52.680 | Okay, so that's the context that I'm coming from.

00:49:55.800 | So in each case, for one thing, Irish weren't considered,

00:50:00.280 | there was, Catholics weren't considered,

00:50:03.880 | they were considered to be terrible.

00:50:05.560 | And there was a lot of anti-Catholic rhetoric

00:50:08.000 | here in the United States, which is kind of strange

00:50:10.840 | 'cause one of the, in fact, the most wealthy

00:50:13.760 | colonial family were the Carrolls in Maryland

00:50:16.360 | and they were Catholic.

00:50:17.520 | So when you look at the United States, at our history,

00:50:20.600 | and you see the separation of church and state,

00:50:22.880 | do you wanna know where that came from?

00:50:24.520 | That came from those guys.

00:50:26.280 | They convinced George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

00:50:31.160 | I mean, they couldn't vote, yet they had,

00:50:34.440 | they have their names on the constitution.

00:50:37.600 | Is that not a strange contradiction?

00:50:39.600 | (laughs)

00:50:40.520 | So here you can see how propaganda works.

00:50:44.560 | There was anti-Catholic propaganda,

00:50:46.960 | there was anti-Jewish propaganda,

00:50:49.880 | and a lot of it was that these people weren't human.

00:50:54.320 | They weren't human beings.

00:50:55.680 | Another thing I'd like to say is that

00:50:58.880 | when the Irish did come here, they were indentured,

00:51:02.480 | a lot of times indentured servants, but that's terminology.

00:51:07.480 | Then what is an indentured servant?

00:51:09.760 | - Slave.

00:51:12.000 | - Pretty much.

00:51:12.840 | - So in that sense, religion can be used--

00:51:18.320 | - Derogatorily.

00:51:19.320 | - Yeah, derogatorily as a useful grouping mechanism

00:51:22.440 | of saying this is the other.

00:51:24.440 | - And it's powerful too, because behind it is a force of,

00:51:29.080 | what people contend to be sacred, a sacred force, right?

00:51:33.080 | So it's up to God to decide who's,

00:51:37.880 | so you have to go along with what God says, of course.

00:51:40.320 | Well, that's basically, that's not the contact event.

00:51:44.800 | The contact event is usually some type of

00:51:47.760 | very specific, legitimate event that a person has

00:51:51.640 | with something that is non-human or considered divine.

00:51:56.080 | But when religions become narrativized,

00:52:01.080 | I would call it, by different institutions,

00:52:04.320 | that's when you're in danger of getting propaganda.

00:52:07.640 | - You said Nietzsche, one of your favorite philosophers,

00:52:10.400 | he said famously, one of the many famous things he said

00:52:14.320 | is that God is dead.

00:52:16.680 | - Yes.

00:52:17.520 | - What do you think he meant?

00:52:19.840 | Do you think he was right?

00:52:21.900 | - Okay, good, I love this question.

00:52:23.340 | No one asks me about Nietzsche.

00:52:25.020 | (both laughing)

00:52:27.500 | And I love Nietzsche.

00:52:28.620 | Okay, so first, actually, I do think,

00:52:31.660 | and I could be corrected

00:52:32.700 | and probably will be in all the comments.

00:52:35.460 | Well, first, Nietzsche, it's true,

00:52:36.820 | wasn't the first to say God is dead.

00:52:38.420 | I think Hegel said it, okay?

00:52:40.220 | No one reads Hegel.

00:52:41.340 | He's like so difficult to read that it's impossible.

00:52:44.380 | - Same with Heidegger, as you mentioned.

00:52:45.820 | - Yeah, I love him, but yeah, he's really hard to read.

00:52:49.100 | So Nietzsche basically said God is dead.

00:52:51.180 | And let me give you the context for him saying that.

00:52:53.580 | He also said this.

00:52:54.700 | He said there was only one Christian.

00:52:56.420 | He died on the cross, okay?

00:52:58.860 | So he despised Christianity, and he said that--

00:53:03.860 | - And the people who practice it.

00:53:05.500 | - Absolutely, yeah, but again, he believed in Jesus,

00:53:08.100 | and he believed Jesus was,

00:53:09.420 | he didn't believe he was a divinity,

00:53:11.140 | believed Jesus was a good man, and he died on the cross.

00:53:14.220 | Okay.

00:53:15.060 | - So he believed in the morality--

00:53:16.180 | - Yeah, he absolutely did, yeah, he did.

00:53:19.020 | And Nietzsche basically was making a historical statement

00:53:22.420 | about God is dead.

00:53:23.660 | He said, and he was right.

00:53:25.540 | He was basically saying that in the century in which

00:53:27.940 | he lived, and he died, I think, in 1900.

00:53:31.940 | Again, I could be wrong about that,

00:53:34.220 | so I just wanna say that.

00:53:35.140 | I believe he died in 1900.

00:53:36.980 | Okay, so he's writing in the 1800s,

00:53:39.700 | and he's basically saying God is dead, and we killed Him.

00:53:43.980 | Okay, so he's making a historical statement

00:53:46.100 | that at that point in time, with science just kind of

00:53:49.700 | getting better and industrialization happening,

00:53:53.820 | the idea of this thing beyond what we know

00:53:58.820 | as material reality is dead.

00:54:05.100 | So the substrate of Western civilization is dead.

00:54:10.100 | That's what Nietzsche is saying, if that makes sense.

00:54:13.700 | - Yes.

00:54:14.540 | - And he basically says with that comes the ubermensch,

00:54:18.740 | okay, which is the superhuman.

00:54:20.860 | And he says there aren't many of them, he says,

00:54:23.140 | but they're gonna come.

00:54:23.980 | And he also talks about the philosophers of the future.

00:54:26.580 | And he's speaking and writing to them, is my belief.

00:54:29.980 | So he's basically telling you and me,

00:54:33.000 | because we're now the philosophers of his future, yeah.

00:54:36.100 | He's basically telling us this is what's happening now,

00:54:40.080 | and look what it has done.

00:54:42.020 | He says now everything is possible,

00:54:45.540 | all manner of terrible evil,

00:54:47.780 | because no one has the belief in God anymore.

00:54:50.620 | The belief that there is an afterlife,

00:54:53.940 | you asked about an afterlife.

00:54:55.140 | So with this kind of belief in a morality

00:54:58.180 | comes this belief, you know,

00:54:59.760 | you can have morals without God, okay, people do.

00:55:02.100 | But what Christianity is this idea

00:55:05.500 | that you will reap what you sow.

00:55:08.260 | So if people don't believe that anymore, what will happen?

00:55:11.060 | And so that's what he's basically saying,

00:55:12.780 | is that the basic anchor for Western society is now gone.

00:55:17.780 | - Do you think he was right?

00:55:19.460 | - Absolutely, absolutely right.

00:55:21.460 | - But then again, what do you think

00:55:24.260 | if we brought him back to life

00:55:25.700 | and he read "American Cosmic," your book,

00:55:29.260 | and he wrote, he tweeted about it,

00:55:31.860 | writing a review maybe for the,

00:55:36.540 | I don't know what they post, for "New York Times,"

00:55:38.340 | he'd be an editorial writer.

00:55:40.840 | With a blue check mark on Twitter.

00:55:42.960 | What do you think he would say about this idea

00:55:46.400 | that you present that's a grander idea of religion?

00:55:51.400 | And you know--

00:55:52.920 | - Like religiosity, like this new form.

00:55:55.000 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:55:55.840 | - Wouldn't that kind of reverse the idea that God is dead?

00:55:59.440 | - Yeah, because it would bring up this idea

00:56:02.080 | of external intelligences that are not human,

00:56:05.760 | which is basically a lot of religions talk about that,

00:56:08.920 | right, there are Bodhisattvas,

00:56:10.840 | there are angels, there are demons,

00:56:13.360 | there's all these types of non-human intelligences

00:56:17.160 | that religion makes space for.

00:56:20.200 | So what I'm basically saying in "American Cosmic"

00:56:22.560 | is these new things are within the realm of UFOs and UAPs.

00:56:27.560 | So no, I think that, well, I think Nietzsche would say

00:56:33.000 | that that's a progressive adaptation of religion

00:56:36.880 | is what I would hope he would say.

00:56:38.680 | Nietzsche, however, is unpredictable, I think.

00:56:41.800 | I couldn't predict him.

00:56:43.560 | So I would say that it would be my hope

00:56:46.560 | that he would say this is an accurate representation

00:56:51.560 | of a move into a new type of religion.

00:56:55.180 | And it's adaptive, therefore progressive.

00:56:58.120 | - He would probably be uncomfortable reading a book

00:57:00.240 | by a brilliant female professor.

00:57:02.880 | - Who happens also to be short.

00:57:04.880 | (both laughing)

00:57:06.600 | I don't know if you read that.

00:57:08.240 | - No.

00:57:09.080 | - Yeah, oh, he's, he says some pretty nasty things

00:57:11.960 | about short women.

00:57:13.320 | - Oh my God.

00:57:14.920 | - Yeah.

00:57:15.760 | - Oh, Nietzsche, he should be canceled.

00:57:18.200 | No, no, please don't cancel Nietzsche.

00:57:20.840 | You have to take people in the context of their time.

00:57:24.000 | Although I'm pretty sure in his time,

00:57:25.720 | he was also an asshole.

00:57:26.840 | - He was.

00:57:27.680 | - But assholes are people too.

00:57:30.960 | Okay.

00:57:31.800 | - Just bad ones.

00:57:35.600 | You wrote the book "American Cosmic UFOs,

00:57:39.480 | Religion, Technology."

00:57:41.640 | What was the goal of writing this book?

00:57:43.960 | What maybe, we'll mention it,

00:57:46.560 | we have already mentioned it many times,

00:57:49.080 | but in this little space of a conversation,

00:57:54.080 | can you say maybe what is the key insight

00:57:56.440 | that you found that lingers with you to this day

00:57:59.640 | from the process, the long process

00:58:02.480 | of putting this book together?

00:58:04.440 | - Sure.

00:58:05.560 | Just like with my book on purgatory,

00:58:07.840 | I went into the research thinking

00:58:10.960 | that it would be something that it was entirely not.

00:58:14.000 | It ended up being something completely different.

00:58:15.840 | And I think that's good.

00:58:17.120 | I think that people who do research need to,

00:58:20.280 | are very excited actually when their research surprises them.

00:58:23.160 | So I was happily surprised by my purgatory book

00:58:27.400 | to learn that it was a place, you know?

00:58:30.080 | And so I went into "American Cosmic"

00:58:35.480 | being a non-believer in UFOs entirely.

00:58:39.320 | And I came out being agnostic, okay?

00:58:43.580 | Kind of believer.

00:58:46.080 | (both laughing)

00:58:48.740 | - Yeah.

00:58:50.400 | But agnostic, sort of open to the mysteries of the world.

00:58:54.560 | - Yes.

00:58:55.400 | And I didn't think that, first of all,

00:58:58.480 | I knew that the government was part of the situation.

00:59:04.640 | I just didn't know how much.

00:59:06.400 | And so I learned that quickly and acclimated to it,

00:59:10.640 | accepted it, and noted that indeed, Horatio,

00:59:17.240 | the world is much more mysterious than we think it is.

00:59:27.440 | It's more mysterious.

00:59:28.800 | There are more mysteries in this life

00:59:31.640 | than your philosophy provides for.

00:59:34.040 | - So is a sense "American Cosmic"

00:59:36.520 | is about the mysteries of the modern life

00:59:40.560 | as encapsulated by the realm of technology

00:59:44.880 | and the realm of alien intelligences?

00:59:47.640 | - Yes, I think that, I mean,

00:59:52.640 | I'd have to go off record as a professor

00:59:55.160 | and talk personally.

00:59:56.640 | As a person, I do think that there are mysteries

01:00:02.480 | of which we have an inkling.

01:00:06.200 | And if it's something as powerful as non-human intelligence,

01:00:11.200 | whether or not it's from another planet, extraterrestrial,

01:00:15.440 | or it happens to be from another dimension

01:00:19.040 | or something else,

01:00:20.240 | I think that this is going to get the attention

01:00:24.600 | of institutions of power.

01:00:26.400 | And indeed, I think that's what has happened.

01:00:29.240 | And although probably people have had interactions

01:00:34.240 | with these things, it appears to me historically,

01:00:40.720 | for a long time, as long as humans have existed,

01:00:43.480 | I would imagine that indeed,

01:00:47.160 | this is something that's quite powerful

01:00:50.880 | and could change the belief structures

01:00:53.680 | of our entire societies, our civilization, basically.

01:00:58.240 | - So it's the same way that you're talking,

01:01:00.360 | the belief structures were strongly affected

01:01:02.320 | by religious beliefs throughout history

01:01:04.720 | in the same way this has the potential.

01:01:06.760 | It serves as a source of concern for the powerful

01:01:13.360 | because it can have very significant effects

01:01:18.760 | on the populace. - Huge effects, yes.

01:01:20.600 | - Is there some broader understanding

01:01:23.760 | of how we should think about alien intelligences

01:01:26.600 | than like little green men?

01:01:29.320 | - Yes.

01:01:30.160 | - That you can maybe elaborate on and talk about?

01:01:34.120 | - Yes, this comes directly out of my research

01:01:36.800 | in Catholic history.

01:01:38.200 | What I found was that, let's take for instance,

01:01:42.000 | this idea of an angel.

01:01:43.480 | Okay, so we all think we know what an angel looks like, why?

01:01:46.040 | Well, we've been told what an angel looks like,

01:01:47.680 | we see what an angel looks like.

01:01:49.640 | Throughout history, people have painted angels

01:01:51.600 | and they all look pretty much the same.

01:01:53.760 | But actually, if you go to the primary sources

01:01:56.480 | on either in Hebrew or in Greek or in whatever language

01:02:01.480 | and in Latin, and you look at experiences

01:02:06.760 | that people have talked about,

01:02:09.200 | where they've written down their experiences about angels,

01:02:12.160 | angels don't at all look like what we think,

01:02:16.200 | they don't look like little cherubs with wings,

01:02:18.600 | they don't look like tall, strong,

01:02:23.640 | anthropomorphic, human looking things, they don't.

01:02:27.240 | They look really weird.

01:02:28.840 | And sometimes they don't look at all humanoid.

01:02:33.280 | They look like strange spinning things, right?

01:02:36.920 | With like eyes and things like that.

01:02:39.120 | They communicate telepathically with us.

01:02:42.200 | Okay, so what does that mean for the idea of extraterrestrials

01:02:46.360 | or what we consider to be aliens?

01:02:50.760 | I do think that, first, if we are,

01:02:55.760 | listen, I'm not the first to say this.

01:02:58.920 | If we're in contact with non-human intelligence,

01:03:02.440 | we're most likely in contact with its technology.

01:03:06.400 | Because think about us.

01:03:09.000 | Do we send human beings to Mars yet?

01:03:11.640 | Some people would say yes, but let's put that aside.

01:03:14.480 | So no, we don't, we use our technology.

01:03:16.880 | We send our rovers to Mars, okay?

01:03:19.440 | Okay, so if there's an extraterrestrial civilization,

01:03:23.000 | is it sending, are they coming by themselves?

01:03:26.680 | Are they coming to see us?

01:03:28.120 | Or are they sending their technology?

01:03:29.880 | Most likely, they either are technology

01:03:32.680 | or they are sending their technology.

01:03:34.560 | - Yeah, there might be a gray area

01:03:35.880 | between what is technology and what the aliens are.

01:03:38.160 | - Yeah.

01:03:39.160 | - So but you're saying like basically a robotic probe

01:03:42.640 | that would be the equivalent of us,

01:03:44.040 | our human civilization created technology.

01:03:46.200 | - Way more advanced than what we could believe

01:03:50.880 | to be a probe, all right?

01:03:52.880 | - It's kind of funny to think about like,

01:03:54.960 | if whatever sort of

01:03:57.920 | extraterrestrial creations have visited Earth,

01:04:04.800 | that we're interacting with some like

01:04:07.720 | dumb, crappy drone technology.

01:04:09.560 | - Yeah, it's true.

01:04:10.600 | (both laughing)

01:04:12.080 | - And we're like,

01:04:15.600 | we're like building these like myths and so on

01:04:18.040 | from like an experience with some like crappy drone

01:04:20.680 | made by some crappy startup somewhere.

01:04:23.000 | - That is correct.

01:04:23.840 | (both laughing)

01:04:25.480 | - When the actual intelligence is like something

01:04:28.720 | much grander.

01:04:30.600 | Yeah, that's the more likely situation.

01:04:34.440 | - That's what I like to tell people.

01:04:36.280 | I'm like, no, it's probably a lot weirder than you think.

01:04:39.080 | - Yeah, oh boy.

01:04:41.120 | So but what forms can it possibly take?

01:04:44.720 | - So I really love this idea that

01:04:47.480 | I tend to be humble in the face of all that we don't know.

01:04:53.000 | And I tend to believe that the form alien life forms

01:04:57.760 | would take and the way they would communicate

01:05:01.960 | is much more likely to be of a form

01:05:05.440 | that we can't even comprehend

01:05:07.080 | or perhaps can't even perceive directly.

01:05:10.080 | So like, it could be in the space of,

01:05:15.080 | we don't understand most of how our mind works.

01:05:18.320 | It could be in the space

01:05:19.160 | of whatever the heck consciousness is.

01:05:21.360 | Like maybe consciousness itself is communication

01:05:25.280 | with aliens or like, I don't know.

01:05:30.160 | It could be just our own thoughts

01:05:34.120 | is actually the alien life forms communicating.

01:05:39.240 | Like, I know all of that sounds crazy,

01:05:41.200 | but I'm saying like, I'm just trying to come up

01:05:42.880 | with the craziest possible thing

01:05:44.200 | that doesn't make any sense that could very well be true.

01:05:47.040 | And you can't say it's not true

01:05:49.640 | because we don't understand basically anything

01:05:51.520 | about our mind.

01:05:52.520 | So it could be all of those things.

01:05:55.260 | Everything from hallucinations,

01:05:57.620 | all the things that are explored

01:05:59.160 | through the different drugs that we've talked about

01:06:04.160 | in this podcast in general.

01:06:06.360 | Joe Rogan loves to talk about DMT

01:06:08.040 | and all those kinds of hallucinogenic drugs.

01:06:11.040 | All of it, including love and fear,

01:06:15.600 | all of those things that could be aliens

01:06:17.040 | communicating with us.

01:06:17.880 | Memes on the internet that could be.

01:06:20.440 | Pretty sure humor is alien communication.

01:06:23.040 | No, I don't know.

01:06:24.200 | But is there some way that's helpful for you

01:06:27.680 | to think about beyond the little green men?

01:06:30.520 | - Oh, absolutely.

01:06:32.080 | It accords exactly with how I think actually.

01:06:35.360 | So I'll explain.

01:06:37.560 | I liked in American Cosmic,

01:06:41.080 | I attained the status of full professor.

01:06:44.000 | So I was like, okay, I can pretty much write this book

01:06:46.400 | like I wanna do it.

01:06:47.240 | And I did.

01:06:48.060 | So I used a lot of quotes from cool artists like David Bowie.

01:06:51.680 | Okay, so David Bowie opens the book, okay?

01:06:54.360 | And he basically says, and so does Nietzsche, by the way,

01:06:56.400 | David Bowie and Nietzsche, boom,

01:06:58.760 | two awesome quotes right together.

01:07:00.920 | That's how I opened my book.

01:07:01.760 | - No better opener.

01:07:02.580 | - Yeah.

01:07:03.420 | - Do you remember the quotes?

01:07:04.240 | - Yeah, of course.

01:07:05.080 | So the first quote by David Bowie,

01:07:06.960 | and that's what I'm gonna concentrate on

01:07:08.280 | in response to what you just said,

01:07:10.820 | which I think is absolutely correct.

01:07:13.160 | David Bowie said, "The internet is an alien life form."

01:07:16.320 | Okay, and if you've not seen David Bowie's interview

01:07:19.880 | where he says that, I highly recommend it.

01:07:22.200 | He's so brilliant.

01:07:23.600 | Okay, so David Bowie is actually quite brilliant

01:07:25.480 | about the idea of UFOs.

01:07:27.840 | He's also brilliant about the idea of technology, okay?

01:07:30.920 | And most people wouldn't think that,

01:07:32.400 | but I mean, he's pretty darn smart, okay?

01:07:36.080 | So, all right, so I started to think about it,

01:07:38.560 | and I also, early on in my research, met Jacques Vallée.

01:07:42.000 | Okay, so he's a technologist.

01:07:44.040 | He has a PhD in information technology

01:07:46.760 | from computer science, basically, from Northwestern,

01:07:49.720 | and he got that back in the day.

01:07:50.920 | You know, when I say back in the day,

01:07:51.920 | I'm not talking a thousand years ago.

01:07:53.480 | I'm talking like in the '60s, okay?

01:07:54.920 | So he's--

01:07:55.740 | - Back when computer science wasn't really even a field

01:07:58.280 | that you can get a degree in.

01:07:59.480 | - Yeah, he has a PhD in it.

01:08:01.640 | And he's French, he's from France,

01:08:03.320 | but he lives in Silicon Valley,

01:08:04.760 | and he worked on ARPANET, which is the proto-internet.

01:08:08.160 | He mapped Mars.

01:08:09.000 | He's also an astronomer.

01:08:10.000 | I mean, he's just this all-around brilliant guy, right?

01:08:12.400 | And he's also interested in UFOs,

01:08:14.520 | and most people take those two interests of his

01:08:17.680 | as separate interests,

01:08:19.440 | and I remember being at a very small conference

01:08:21.920 | and listening to him, being in awe, of course,

01:08:24.080 | because he's an awe-inspiring person,

01:08:26.400 | and then thinking, "Wait a minute.

01:08:28.200 | "Why do people compartmentalize

01:08:30.680 | "those two things about him that are one and the same?"

01:08:33.480 | Okay?

01:08:34.320 | So when we talk about UFOs and UAPs and stuff,

01:08:37.360 | we have to talk about digital technology

01:08:40.200 | and things like that.

01:08:41.260 | Now, if we're going back to what I,

01:08:44.440 | so if I were to say what,

01:08:46.260 | if I were to believe in, and I,

01:08:48.640 | like I said earlier, I was agnostic, bordering on belief,

01:08:51.520 | most likely a believer, in this extraterrestrial,

01:08:54.800 | or not extraterrestrial, let me put it another way,

01:08:57.760 | non-human intelligence that's communicating with us,

01:09:00.680 | I'm gonna tell you how I think they communicate with us,

01:09:03.040 | and I go back to the Greeks again, okay?

01:09:05.320 | And the Greeks had this idea of muses,

01:09:08.400 | you know, the muses?

01:09:09.560 | So, okay, so there are these things called muses,

01:09:11.640 | and we tend to think of them as metaphors, right?

01:09:14.760 | But what if they're not?

01:09:16.280 | What if they're actually non-human intelligence

01:09:18.840 | trying to communicate with us, but we're so stupid?

01:09:21.160 | We can't, like, understand, or like,

01:09:22.680 | so only people with, like, you know,

01:09:25.120 | super amazing capacities, like poetic, creative,

01:09:30.120 | you know, intelligent, mathematical, whatever,

01:09:33.320 | you know, 'cause they tend to do this symbolically,

01:09:35.400 | they tend to communicate with us in symbols form,

01:09:38.240 | and so music, you know, symbols,

01:09:40.700 | we've got math that are, you know, it's a symbolic language,

01:09:42.960 | and so what, so, okay, so muses are probably a good idea

01:09:47.180 | for me of what this would be.

01:09:49.520 | Now, would muses have spaceships, you know,

01:09:52.320 | or those things that we call physical counterparts

01:09:55.680 | to what they are?

01:09:57.240 | That's another question altogether,

01:09:59.920 | but if, you know, now, why would I think this?

01:10:02.680 | Because if you look at the history of our space programs,

01:10:06.220 | both Russian and American,

01:10:08.480 | you're gonna find some pretty weird stuff,

01:10:10.280 | pretty weird history there, Lex.

01:10:12.760 | So you wanna get an idea, go back to Tchaikovsky

01:10:16.680 | and read a little bit about what he has to say.

01:10:18.960 | If you look back at the history of our space programs,

01:10:21.900 | the viable space programs are both Russian and American,

01:10:25.080 | and each has an amazingly strange history,

01:10:30.080 | because the founders of the calculations

01:10:33.800 | that got us up into space, the rocket scientists, basically,

01:10:36.780 | were doing some pretty weird rituals

01:10:38.440 | and doing religious things, right?

01:10:40.280 | They weren't necessarily, like, Jack Parson's on our side,

01:10:43.440 | I was out in the desert with people like L. Ron Hubbard

01:10:46.240 | and doing really intense rituals,

01:10:50.080 | believing that they were opening stargates

01:10:52.380 | and things like that, okay?

01:10:53.220 | - That's awesome.

01:10:54.060 | - And they were really doing that, okay?

01:10:55.460 | So then you go to the Russian side,

01:10:59.300 | and they had a very specific, non-dogmatic,

01:11:03.540 | according to Catholics or Orthodox Christianity,

01:11:06.420 | idea of what Christianity was,

01:11:08.380 | and they believed that they were interacting with angels,

01:11:11.060 | okay, non-human intelligences.

01:11:13.260 | So if you look back and you see muses,

01:11:15.980 | you know, you can contextualize them within this tradition.

01:11:19.180 | And so when I started to talk to people

01:11:21.200 | who were actually in the space program

01:11:23.360 | and who were in these programs that,

01:11:25.560 | now the government has said,

01:11:26.760 | "Oh yeah, we do have those programs,"

01:11:29.100 | they have the same belief structures.

01:11:30.960 | They believe that they were also in contact

01:11:33.000 | with these non-human intelligences,

01:11:34.560 | and they were getting what they call

01:11:35.920 | downloads of information and creating,

01:11:38.280 | sometimes with Tyler D. in my book,

01:11:40.760 | creating technologies that were real,

01:11:43.520 | and they were selling them on NASDAQ for a lot of money,

01:11:46.560 | like, you know, say $100 million or something like that,

01:11:49.340 | undisclosed amounts, but a lot.

01:11:52.180 | And these things are viable technologies that we use now,

01:11:56.460 | and they make our lives better,

01:11:58.380 | and we progress as a species because of them.

01:12:00.860 | Now, that has nothing to do with the scientific method,

01:12:04.540 | as much as I know, as much as anybody's going to get angry

01:12:07.420 | at me for saying that, but you know, sorry,

01:12:10.220 | those were strange encounters

01:12:12.540 | that created our ability to go into space.

01:12:16.920 | I don't know if they're real or not,

01:12:18.640 | but these people believe they were real.

01:12:20.560 | - Right, so they have a power

01:12:22.840 | in actually having an impact in this world,

01:12:26.240 | in inspiring humans to create technology,

01:12:31.200 | which enables us to do things

01:12:32.520 | we haven't been able to do before.

01:12:33.960 | - Yeah.

01:12:34.800 | - And these, I like how we're putting like angels,

01:12:39.480 | alien life forms, aliens, and technology

01:12:44.220 | all in the non-human intelligence camp,

01:12:48.260 | which I really like that 'cause that's very true.

01:12:53.260 | It's this other source of wisdom, intelligence,

01:12:58.740 | maybe a connection to the mysterious.

01:13:02.460 | - Yes, I was really surprised by it.

01:13:05.120 | - Can you speak a little bit more

01:13:08.060 | to the connection between aliens and technology

01:13:13.020 | that Jacques Vallee had in his own one individual mind

01:13:19.220 | that's very tempting to kind of separate

01:13:21.300 | as two separate endeavors?

01:13:25.700 | Why did you come to believe that they are one and the same,

01:13:30.700 | or at least part of the same intellectual journey?

01:13:37.900 | - Thanks for asking that again,

01:13:39.220 | because nobody asks me that question,

01:13:41.940 | and it's central to my project.

01:13:46.260 | So Jacques was a huge influence, is a huge influence on me.

01:13:51.260 | He taught me a lot.

01:13:53.340 | He gave me access to some of his information that he keeps,

01:13:59.860 | but a lot of his information is actually there out there

01:14:03.620 | for everyone to read.

01:14:05.340 | He has an academia.edu page,

01:14:07.540 | and he just, so he didn't have this, unfortunately,

01:14:10.580 | when I was doing my research in 2012 and 2013,

01:14:14.440 | so I had to go back and do microfiche type stuff.

01:14:17.420 | What I did was I began to read everything that he wrote,

01:14:19.840 | and he actually gave me a lot of his books too,

01:14:21.700 | and he told me, I remember, he dropped me off from,

01:14:25.380 | this is actually quite interesting

01:14:26.940 | if you'll allow me to tell you a little story.

01:14:29.420 | - Please. - Okay.

01:14:30.460 | And it also includes ayahuasca, so. (laughs)

01:14:33.540 | - Great, every story that includes ayahuasca

01:14:35.740 | is a great story.

01:14:36.940 | - Okay, so I was at a conference,

01:14:39.220 | and it was a small conference of very interesting people

01:14:43.180 | in California on the Pacific Ocean, and Jacques was there.

01:14:46.780 | And this is actually, it opens my book.

01:14:49.460 | This is the, I go, it's the preface to my book.

01:14:53.660 | I go on this ride.

01:14:54.940 | He takes me through Silicon Valley.

01:14:56.980 | I've lived there, right?

01:14:58.700 | My grandparents grew up in the same place

01:15:00.420 | that he raised his children in Belmont.

01:15:02.940 | And so, but we were there with Robbie Graham,

01:15:06.020 | who's a great ufologist in his own right,

01:15:09.180 | and film theorist.

01:15:12.300 | I highly recommend his work.

01:15:14.580 | So we were together, and he was taking us to San Francisco

01:15:17.620 | where I was gonna meet my brother

01:15:19.260 | who was going to take me home.

01:15:20.540 | And so he took us on this long journey,

01:15:23.740 | and he talked to us, and as we got out of the car,

01:15:26.300 | he gave me several of his books,

01:15:29.940 | and one in particular he gave me,

01:15:31.700 | and he said, "Read this first."

01:15:33.580 | (both laugh)

01:15:34.620 | And I was like, okay, I definitely will read that first.

01:15:37.340 | Okay, so this is how the ayahuasca figures in.

01:15:39.620 | So we were, I didn't take it, nor have I taken it.

01:15:43.340 | Okay, so we were at this place in California,

01:15:47.940 | and Alex Gray and his wife were there,

01:15:49.740 | and they were talking about their experiences

01:15:52.580 | with psychedelics.

01:15:53.660 | You know, he's an amazing visionary artist, okay?

01:15:56.700 | So he believes that there's this place that you can enter,

01:16:00.340 | and he and his wife would enter this space

01:16:02.980 | with either ayahuasca or LSD or something like that,

01:16:06.940 | and they would not talk to each other,

01:16:08.580 | but they would be having the same exact experience.

01:16:11.780 | So it was almost like having the same dream, right?

01:16:15.020 | - Wow. - Okay.

01:16:16.100 | So somehow that whole event with Jacques there,

01:16:20.980 | and them talking about their experiences in these realms,

01:16:25.020 | of which religious studies people are quite familiar,

01:16:27.340 | by the way, because visionary experiences are what we study.

01:16:30.820 | So all of this seems super familiar to me,

01:16:33.140 | and I recognized that immediately that Jacques,

01:16:36.740 | it hit me like, you know, very obvious that UFOs

01:16:43.500 | and these experiences and technology all seemed,

01:16:48.500 | they were all meshed together.

01:16:50.740 | And I knew that I had to take them,

01:16:52.580 | I knew I had to read everything Jacques ever wrote.

01:16:54.460 | And the best stuff he's written, by the way,

01:16:56.540 | is his little essays that he wrote in the 1970s,

01:17:00.100 | and they were peer reviewed essays

01:17:01.540 | about the beginning of the internet

01:17:03.220 | and how a lot of it was based on basically

01:17:07.980 | neural connection with the internet,

01:17:12.100 | like somehow psychic connection through the internet

01:17:14.800 | with others and things like that.

01:17:15.980 | - So the brain is a biological neural network.

01:17:18.540 | There's this connection between visual neurons and so on,

01:17:21.700 | and that's what ultimately is able to have memories

01:17:25.580 | and has cognitive ability and is able to perceive the world

01:17:29.580 | and generate ideas.

01:17:31.540 | And those ideas are then spread on the internet

01:17:35.260 | even from the very early days to other humans.

01:17:37.500 | So it gets injected or travels into the brains

01:17:40.860 | of other humans and that goes around in there

01:17:43.060 | and then spits out other stuff and it goes back and forth.

01:17:45.860 | So it's nice to think of the network that's in our mind,

01:17:49.620 | individual mind, as, I mean,

01:17:53.500 | very much even deeply connected to the network

01:17:56.580 | that is the connection between humans

01:17:59.100 | through the internet. - Yes.

01:18:00.140 | - And so in that sense, Jacques saw the internet

01:18:03.660 | as this powerful,

01:18:05.940 | as a source of power and wisdom that is beyond our own.

01:18:11.580 | - Exactly, that's external to us,

01:18:13.220 | like a non, like if you could call it autonomous AI, right?

01:18:17.420 | - It's non-human intelligence in a sense,

01:18:19.420 | even though humans are a part of it.

01:18:21.480 | - Yes, or we're invaded by it,

01:18:23.140 | or whatever you wanna call it, okay.

01:18:24.660 | - Yeah, whoever, right, it's the chicken and the egg, right.

01:18:28.100 | So if I can go on, I want to experience things still.

01:18:32.300 | I'm not done with that.

01:18:33.620 | So this is where I come to this idea

01:18:37.220 | that we're in this space,

01:18:40.900 | we're in now a new space of religion, of religiosity.

01:18:43.700 | So what happens is then, and it's like a biosphere,

01:18:46.860 | and I'll talk about that in a minute.

01:18:48.300 | So Jacques takes us back.

01:18:50.800 | We get to San Francisco and my brother,

01:18:53.700 | who is your straight-laced person,

01:18:57.060 | army guy and everything like that.

01:18:59.020 | I get into his car and the first thing he tells me is,

01:19:01.540 | "I took ayahuasca."

01:19:03.020 | And I was like, "What?"

01:19:04.780 | And he goes, "It's gonna save humanity."

01:19:06.700 | (both laughing)

01:19:09.700 | - That's great.

01:19:10.540 | - Yeah.

01:19:11.360 | - As I mentioned to you offline,

01:19:12.200 | I talked to Matthew Johnson, he's a Hopkins professor.

01:19:15.460 | He's really a scholar of most,

01:19:19.060 | he's studied most drugs.

01:19:21.100 | He's also really deeply studied cocaine,

01:19:23.060 | all those stuff, negative effects.

01:19:24.980 | And he's focused on a lot of positive effects

01:19:28.420 | of the different psychedelics.

01:19:30.020 | It's kind of fascinating.

01:19:30.920 | So I'm very much interested in exploring

01:19:35.660 | the science of what these things do to the human mind,

01:19:41.780 | and also personally exploring it.

01:19:43.700 | Although it's like this weird gray area,

01:19:45.620 | which he's masterful at,

01:19:48.180 | which is he's a professor at Johns Hopkins,

01:19:51.380 | one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

01:19:54.540 | And doing large scale studies of this stuff.

01:19:57.860 | And until he got a lot of money for these studies,

01:20:02.300 | even in Hopkins itself, there's not much respect.

01:20:06.220 | It's not even respect, it was like,

01:20:08.820 | people just didn't wanna talk about it

01:20:11.100 | as a legitimate field of inquiry.

01:20:13.500 | It's kind of fascinating how hesitant we are

01:20:16.820 | as a little human civilization

01:20:19.900 | to legitimize the exploration of the mysterious,

01:20:24.140 | of whatever the definition of the mysterious is

01:20:27.040 | for that particular period of time.

01:20:29.020 | So for us now, there's little groups of things.

01:20:32.420 | I would say consciousness in the space

01:20:35.180 | of computer science research is something

01:20:37.700 | that's still, I don't know,

01:20:40.500 | maybe we'll let philosophers kick it around

01:20:42.260 | for a little longer.

01:20:43.460 | And then certainly extraterrestrial life forms

01:20:50.180 | in most formulations of that problem space

01:20:55.060 | is still the other.

01:20:57.300 | It's still the source of the mysterious,

01:20:58.980 | except maybe like SETI, which is like,

01:21:02.140 | how can we detect signals from far away alien intelligences

01:21:05.940 | that we'll be able to perceive?

01:21:09.060 | Yeah, and psychedelics is another one of those.

01:21:12.660 | That's like, we're starting to see,

01:21:14.700 | okay, well, can we try to see

01:21:16.880 | if there's some medical applications

01:21:19.520 | of helping you get, like he does studies

01:21:22.480 | of help you quit smoking,

01:21:24.520 | or help you in some kind of treatment of some disease.

01:21:27.480 | And he's sneaking into that.

01:21:29.560 | I mean, it's like openly sneaking into it.

01:21:31.640 | He's doing studies on it of like,

01:21:34.440 | how can you expand the mind with these tools,

01:21:38.800 | and what can the mind discover

01:21:40.360 | through psychedelics and so on?

01:21:42.720 | And we're slowly creeping into the space

01:21:45.500 | of being able to explore these mysterious questions.

01:21:48.080 | But it's like, it sucks that sometimes a lot of people

01:21:51.720 | have to die, meaning, sorry, they have to age out.

01:21:56.560 | Like it's like faculty and people

01:22:02.440 | have a fixed set of ideas, and they stick by them.

01:22:06.120 | And in order for new ideas to come in,

01:22:08.320 | then the young folks have to be born

01:22:12.160 | with an open mind, the possibility of those ideas,

01:22:14.920 | and then they have to become old enough

01:22:17.040 | and get A's in school and whatever

01:22:18.600 | to then carry those ideas forward.

01:22:21.760 | So, the acceptance of the exploration

01:22:25.400 | and the mysterious takes time.

01:22:27.220 | It's kind of sad.

01:22:28.520 | - It is sad, I agree.

01:22:31.120 | - Maybe to go into my source of passion,

01:22:35.800 | which is artificial intelligence.

01:22:38.000 | What's your sense about the possibility

01:22:44.000 | like Pamela McCordick has this quote that I like.

01:22:48.600 | I talked to her a couple years ago,

01:22:50.520 | or I guess already on this podcast,

01:22:52.840 | that artificial intelligence began

01:22:57.720 | with the ancient wish to forge the gods.

01:23:00.400 | So, do you think artificial intelligence

01:23:04.920 | may become the very kind of gods

01:23:11.460 | that were at the center of the religions

01:23:15.700 | of most of our history?

01:23:16.860 | - Yeah, there's a lot there.

01:23:19.540 | So, I'm gonna start by addressing this idea

01:23:23.500 | of artificial intelligence being separate

01:23:26.700 | from human beings, okay?

01:23:29.340 | So, I don't think that's actually, that might happen, okay?

01:23:34.340 | I mean, it's already happened, but let's put it this way.

01:23:36.660 | Like, you're talking about super artificial intelligence,

01:23:38.940 | like autonomous, conscious artificial intelligence?

01:23:42.540 | Okay, yeah.

01:23:43.660 | - Something with artificial consciousness.

01:23:45.980 | - First of all, I think she's correct, okay?

01:23:49.380 | But also, there's an awesome quote.

01:23:52.900 | I'd also like to bring up this writer of fiction, actually.

01:23:57.900 | Ted Chiang, and one of his essays, he writes short essays.

01:24:01.740 | One of them was "The Basis for the Movie Arrival,"

01:24:04.740 | which if you haven't seen it,

01:24:05.780 | it's a really great movie about UFOs.

01:24:09.380 | - It has a very creative way of proposing an idea

01:24:15.060 | of how they might be able to communicate.

01:24:17.060 | First of all, how they appear to us.

01:24:20.180 | Second of all, how they may be communicating with us humans.

01:24:23.420 | - Exactly.

01:24:25.060 | The author, Ted Chiang, has a lot.

01:24:27.780 | I recommend his writings, his short stories.

01:24:31.780 | One is very short, and it appeared as,

01:24:35.580 | it appeared in "Nature" about 20 years ago,

01:24:38.380 | and it is called, I think it's called

01:24:41.060 | "Eating the Crumbs from the Table," or something like that.

01:24:43.860 | And it's basically this short essay,

01:24:46.660 | and I hate to do a spoiler here,

01:24:50.180 | but if you don't wanna know what it's about,

01:24:53.040 | don't listen right now.

01:24:53.880 | - Yeah, spoiler alert.

01:24:54.860 | - Yeah, okay, so this is what it's about.

01:24:57.340 | So basically, it's about human beings

01:24:59.620 | becoming two different species, okay?

01:25:03.500 | And one of them is created, they're called metahumans,

01:25:06.780 | and they start biohacking themselves with tech, okay?

01:25:11.020 | Sound familiar?

01:25:12.380 | So they do this, and they become metahumans

01:25:15.460 | and another species, right?

01:25:18.100 | And just kind of another fork,

01:25:21.300 | such that humans can barely understand them

01:25:26.300 | because they're so far removed.

01:25:28.580 | So in a sense, are they gods, right?

01:25:32.300 | No, they're metahumans, they're superhumans,

01:25:34.140 | they're enhanced humans, okay?

01:25:35.580 | I see that, hopefully, on the horizon, frankly.

01:25:38.460 | I hope so.

01:25:39.360 | Not that we have two species,

01:25:40.780 | but that we can use our technology,

01:25:43.180 | or we can become so integrated with our technology

01:25:48.180 | that we can survive, okay?

01:25:50.140 | We can survive the radiation in space.

01:25:53.000 | We can't go places now because of the radiation in space.

01:25:55.780 | Perhaps we can develop our bodies

01:25:58.100 | such that we can survive the radiation in space.

01:26:01.060 | So there's this idea of these metahumans.

01:26:03.220 | Now, there's also this idea that technology

01:26:07.220 | is just another form of humans.

01:26:09.300 | We've created it, right?

01:26:10.740 | And so maybe it is bent on surviving,

01:26:14.220 | thereby using us kind of as a meme or a team.

01:26:18.060 | Some people are calling them teams now,

01:26:19.420 | these self-generating,

01:26:20.900 | they're replicating themselves through us, okay?

01:26:25.060 | I see that also, and I don't think that's terribly bad.

01:26:28.980 | Maybe it's just the way that we are evolving.

01:26:32.020 | It doesn't mean that, you know,

01:26:34.460 | we're evolving all the time.

01:26:36.020 | We're taller than we used to be.

01:26:37.620 | We have different skills.

01:26:40.620 | So I don't see that as a bad thing.

01:26:43.380 | I think a lot of people see it as,

01:26:44.460 | if we're not how we are now, it's a tragedy.

01:26:47.520 | But it's not a tragedy.

01:26:48.660 | How we are now is actually a tragedy for most people alive.

01:26:51.820 | - Yeah, and we might be evolving in ways

01:26:53.580 | we can't possibly perceive.

01:26:54.700 | Like you said, that humans have created Twitter,

01:26:58.580 | and Twitter may be changing us

01:27:00.940 | in ways that we can't even understand now currently.

01:27:05.460 | Like from a perspective,

01:27:07.220 | if you look at the entirety of the network of Twitter,

01:27:09.740 | that might be an organism that this,

01:27:12.780 | the organism understands what's happening

01:27:15.580 | from its level of perception.

01:27:20.140 | But we humans are just like the cells of the human body.

01:27:23.740 | We're interacting individually,

01:27:25.460 | but we're not actually aware

01:27:27.540 | of the big picture that's happening.

01:27:29.180 | And we naturally somehow,

01:27:30.500 | or whatever the force that's creating the entirety of this,

01:27:33.380 | whatever one version of it is,

01:27:38.380 | the evolutionary process, like biological evolution,

01:27:41.820 | whatever force that is,

01:27:42.940 | is just creating these greater

01:27:44.220 | and greater level of complexity.

01:27:45.980 | And maybe somehow other kinds of non-human intelligence

01:27:50.300 | are involved that we're calling alien intelligences.

01:27:53.580 | - Yes.

01:27:54.900 | - So just to step back, and we'll come back to AI,

01:27:57.060 | 'cause I love the topic,

01:27:58.900 | but through American Cosmic, and in general,

01:28:02.820 | you've interacted with much of the UFO community.

01:28:05.260 | You mentioned ufologists.

01:28:08.380 | By the way, is it ufologists, or is it ufologists?

01:28:12.580 | - It's ufologists.

01:28:13.580 | - Ufologists. - Which is, yeah.

01:28:14.620 | - So first of all, what is a ufologist?

01:28:17.500 | And second of all,

01:28:19.700 | what have you learned about this community of ufologists,

01:28:23.740 | or also as you refer to them as the invisibles,

01:28:27.900 | or the members of the invisible college,

01:28:30.700 | or just in general, people who study UFOs

01:28:32.860 | from all the different kinds of groups that study UFOs?

01:28:36.660 | - Sure.

01:28:37.500 | Generally, what I found is that they are, okay,

01:28:41.940 | so people who are interested in UFOs

01:28:43.460 | from being a kid and seeing some cool movie

01:28:46.980 | like "Star Wars" or something,

01:28:48.020 | and then they become interested,

01:28:49.460 | and then they study it as best they can,

01:28:52.220 | UFOs or UAPs,

01:28:54.540 | they're generally an honest group of people

01:28:57.740 | who are using their tools.

01:28:59.780 | There are generally two types of them.

01:29:01.940 | There are those who believe in the nuts and bolts,

01:29:04.940 | like the physical craft,

01:29:06.340 | and they believe that these are things from other planets.

01:29:10.100 | Okay, so that's like the ETH hypothesis.

01:29:13.480 | I'm sorry, ETH hypothesis.

01:29:17.820 | E-T-H is what we call it.

01:29:19.260 | Yeah, sorry about that.

01:29:20.900 | - So this is like there's an actual spaceship,

01:29:23.020 | like something akin, but much more advanced

01:29:26.940 | than the rockets we use now.

01:29:28.460 | - Yeah, they have advanced, yeah.

01:29:30.420 | - Some kind of, not necessarily biological,

01:29:34.060 | but something like biological organisms

01:29:36.020 | that travel on these spaceships.

01:29:38.380 | - So this would be like what, to you,

01:29:40.140 | the Stars Academy is trying to decipher.

01:29:42.900 | Like how do they do it?

01:29:45.020 | Maybe we could use that technology,

01:29:46.860 | the propulsion and things like that.

01:29:48.780 | They look at the rocket technology.

01:29:50.900 | Okay, so there are those.

01:29:52.180 | And then there are people who believe

01:29:53.500 | that it's more consciousness-based, okay?

01:29:56.020 | So these are your two types of ufologists who are known,

01:30:00.740 | and these are people who we know about.

01:30:02.780 | Then I found that there are people who are, quote unquote,

01:30:06.420 | I call them the invisibles,

01:30:07.900 | because Jacques Vallée in the '70s,

01:30:11.180 | he and I think actually Alan Hynek, his colleague,

01:30:14.700 | quoted, this is a Francis Bacon thing, by the way.

01:30:17.460 | It goes back to the early modern time period

01:30:20.180 | when scientists could be killed

01:30:21.860 | for basically trying to go outside

01:30:24.140 | what the church or the government institution

01:30:27.140 | determined was dogma.

01:30:29.380 | And so they had to be really careful.

01:30:31.180 | So he called it the invisible college.

01:30:33.580 | So Hynek took that term and reused it,

01:30:37.580 | or what do you call it, repurposed it.

01:30:39.860 | So he repurposed it.

01:30:41.020 | So they were still talking to each other, though.

01:30:44.300 | So what I found to be the case

01:30:45.540 | was that there was a group of people

01:30:47.340 | who were scientists but were not on the internet.

01:30:51.340 | You know, people today, and students of mine in particular,

01:30:55.260 | and my own kids, actually,

01:30:57.220 | they think that you only exist if you're on the internet,

01:30:59.940 | or something only exists if it's on the internet,

01:31:01.980 | and that's, of course, untrue.

01:31:03.740 | And so what I found was that most people

01:31:06.340 | who are the most powerful people of our society

01:31:08.660 | and are doing things are not on the internet,

01:31:10.700 | and you're not gonna find any trace of them.

01:31:12.620 | So a lot of these people are what I call invisibles,

01:31:16.700 | people who are studying, at least their work is invisible.

01:31:19.860 | You might find them on the internet,

01:31:21.140 | but you're gonna find that they're part of the bowling league

01:31:23.020 | or something like that, right?

01:31:23.940 | You will not find that they are actually engaged

01:31:26.980 | in research about this topic, okay?

01:31:29.780 | And so I called them the invisibles

01:31:31.900 | 'cause I was surprised to find them.

01:31:33.460 | And I thought, well, this is no longer the invisible college

01:31:36.620 | because these people are not even talking to each other.

01:31:38.820 | And that's why I reference this movie "Fight Club."

01:31:42.700 | In it, you have an invisible, okay?

01:31:45.260 | And his name is Tyler Durden, and he's incredible.

01:31:49.340 | He does incredible things.

01:31:50.860 | He's like a person who should not exist, right?

01:31:55.220 | Because he does so many things that are amazing.

01:31:57.980 | And so I found a person like that, and I call,

01:32:00.340 | and he's a real person.

01:32:01.980 | He's partially on the internet,

01:32:03.540 | but nothing that he does around that topic of UFOs

01:32:07.140 | is on the internet.

01:32:08.020 | So I decided to call him Tyler D after Tyler Durden.

01:32:11.500 | And so these people, I've termed the UFO Fight Club

01:32:15.100 | because they work together, but they don't know.

01:32:18.980 | In fact, his boss doesn't know what he does.

01:32:20.820 | They don't talk to each other

01:32:22.180 | because you know the first rule of "Fight Club."

01:32:24.860 | - Same as the second, yeah.

01:32:26.180 | - Exactly, yeah.

01:32:27.220 | - You don't talk about "Fight Club."

01:32:28.060 | - No, you don't do it.

01:32:29.780 | - Why do you have a sense that there's such a,

01:32:34.780 | I don't wanna say fear,

01:32:35.820 | but a principle of staying out of the limelight?

01:32:38.220 | - I think there's something real.

01:32:40.660 | And I think that the use of it could be dangerous

01:32:44.780 | for people.

01:32:45.780 | - Oh, sorry, you mean something real,

01:32:47.540 | like there's actual technology,

01:32:50.100 | I don't know, what's the right terminology here to use?

01:32:53.060 | Alien technology, ideas about technology

01:32:58.020 | that are being explored, that are dangerous,

01:33:02.020 | have made public, that may become dangerous,

01:33:04.900 | have made public.

01:33:05.740 | - Yes, so you don't have to call it alien technology.

01:33:09.020 | You can call it ideas about alien technology

01:33:11.620 | because I don't know if it's actual alien technology

01:33:14.420 | or not, I honestly don't know.

01:33:15.940 | But I do know for a fact, because it's a historical fact,

01:33:19.780 | that Jack Parsons and Konstantin Tchaikovsky,

01:33:24.700 | who's Russian, believed in these things

01:33:27.260 | and believed that they were downloading this information.

01:33:29.740 | Whether or not they were, I don't,

01:33:31.540 | I mean, they definitely created the rocket technologies.

01:33:34.220 | That's true.

01:33:35.860 | How they did and whether their process

01:33:38.540 | was exactly what they said it was, I don't know.

01:33:41.220 | So this is the same thing today.

01:33:42.580 | So we've got some powerful technologies going on here.

01:33:45.820 | And of course we have a military,

01:33:48.500 | and we have a military for a reason.

01:33:50.500 | Almost every government who needs a military has one.

01:33:53.740 | And so they're going to keep these

01:33:57.140 | the way they should be kept, in my interpretation.

01:33:59.780 | I mean, think about it.

01:34:01.260 | Everybody accepts the fact that we have a military.

01:34:03.580 | Almost everybody does.

01:34:04.660 | Why are they so upset, then,

01:34:06.340 | that the military keeps secrets?

01:34:09.300 | - Yeah, well, that's the nature of things.

01:34:11.140 | We can get into that whole thing.

01:34:12.780 | I tend to, I've spoken with the CTO, Lockheed Martin,

01:34:17.940 | on this.

01:34:18.780 | I obviously read and think about war a lot.

01:34:23.820 | It's such a difficult question,

01:34:25.820 | because this space, this particular space of technology,

01:34:29.820 | there's a gray area that I think is evolving over time.

01:34:34.700 | I think nuclear weapons change the game

01:34:37.620 | in terms of what should and shouldn't be secret.

01:34:40.540 | I think there's already technology

01:34:42.300 | that will enable us to destroy each other.

01:34:45.820 | And so there's some sense in which some technology

01:34:48.660 | should be made public.

01:34:49.580 | This is the same discussion of,

01:34:51.140 | between companies, which part of your technology

01:34:56.380 | should you make public through, for example,

01:34:59.620 | academic publications and all that kind of stuff.

01:35:02.380 | Like how the Google search engine works,

01:35:04.220 | PageRank algorithm, or how the different deep learning,

01:35:08.100 | there's pretty vibrant machine learning research communities

01:35:11.500 | within Google, Facebook, and so on.

01:35:13.620 | And they release a lot of different ideas.

01:35:15.940 | It's an interesting question,

01:35:17.260 | like how dangerous is it to release some of the ideas?

01:35:20.980 | I think it's a gray area that's constantly changing.

01:35:24.540 | I do also think it's super interesting,

01:35:27.500 | I wonder if you could elaborate on it a little bit,

01:35:30.360 | that there's this gray area between what's actually real

01:35:36.700 | in terms of alien technology and the belief of it

01:35:41.220 | when held in the minds of really brilliant people,

01:35:45.780 | that they ultimately may produce the same kind of result

01:35:49.420 | in terms of being able to create new technologies

01:35:54.280 | that are human usable.

01:35:55.900 | Is there, in your mind, they're one and the same?

01:36:04.120 | Is like believing in alien craft

01:36:07.220 | and actually being in possession of an alien craft?

01:36:12.140 | - I don't think they're the same, no.

01:36:13.980 | Belief is powerful, okay?

01:36:15.860 | In new age communities, people think thoughts are things,

01:36:21.920 | okay, that's been said.

01:36:23.480 | Thoughts are things, you can make them happen kind of thing,

01:36:25.660 | believe in them enough.

01:36:27.000 | It is true that if I believe I can run a 540 mile,

01:36:33.320 | I'll do it, okay, and I probably will do it.

01:36:35.420 | And I've done it before actually.

01:36:37.780 | Much younger, but I did it.

01:36:39.080 | (laughing)

01:36:40.980 | But my coach is the one that instilled that belief in me.

01:36:43.780 | But can I run like a one minute mile?

01:36:48.060 | No, okay?

01:36:49.620 | So I guess, does that answer your question?

01:36:52.020 | There's only so far belief goes in generating reality.

01:36:56.020 | - Well, yeah, I mean, I guess that's what,

01:36:58.260 | just having listened to Jacques Vallee,

01:37:00.860 | it seemed like reality was not as important

01:37:05.860 | for the scientific exploration

01:37:08.100 | of the concept of alien technology.

01:37:10.940 | - I could be wrong,

01:37:11.760 | but this is what I think Jacques is getting at.

01:37:13.780 | There are other ways to access places in reality

01:37:18.060 | other than what we consider to be physical.

01:37:20.680 | - Right.

01:37:21.940 | - There's consciousness, okay?

01:37:23.580 | So like I said, so religious studies is,

01:37:27.400 | among other things, it's looking at visionary experiences.

01:37:31.240 | All right, so people do have visionary experiences.

01:37:33.400 | They did without drugs.

01:37:35.080 | You know, they did with drugs.

01:37:36.720 | They do with drugs.

01:37:37.780 | They do, many have them without drugs today.

01:37:40.520 | And oftentimes those visionary experiences

01:37:43.600 | correspond to each other.

01:37:46.480 | Now, how do we make sense of that?

01:37:48.800 | So, you know, do these places actually exist?

01:37:51.960 | In a sense, I think they do.

01:37:53.860 | And so I think that, you know,

01:37:56.400 | let's take that very famous case

01:37:58.480 | of a Virgin Mary apparition in Fatima,

01:38:00.740 | where I think there was like a lot of people,

01:38:02.720 | thousands and thousands,

01:38:04.160 | if not like I think 50,000 or something like that,

01:38:06.560 | a lot of people gathered to see

01:38:09.920 | what's now called the miracle of Fatima,

01:38:13.000 | which was the spinning of the sun.

01:38:15.000 | Well, a lot of people saw different things,

01:38:17.940 | but they all saw some kind of thing.

01:38:20.160 | Okay, so they all saw different things,

01:38:21.880 | but it was, something happened, okay?

01:38:25.760 | So I guess the question is,

01:38:28.520 | what are these places where we access

01:38:33.480 | what I'd call like non-physical realities, okay?

01:38:38.560 | Where we actually do get information.

01:38:40.640 | Like who could say that Jack Parsons

01:38:42.200 | didn't get information from doing these rituals

01:38:44.200 | and accessing these?

01:38:45.340 | We have to say that he actually did,

01:38:47.760 | because we see the results of physical results.

01:38:50.200 | The same thing with Tyler,

01:38:51.240 | and that's why I put Tyler in this camp

01:38:54.440 | with this tradition with Jack Parsons.

01:38:56.880 | I say that Tyler is getting these,

01:39:00.920 | what he calls downloads,

01:39:02.360 | and you can see the results of them physically.

01:39:05.560 | He sells them on the NASDAQ.

01:39:06.640 | He makes millions of dollars from them.

01:39:08.520 | They help people.

01:39:09.800 | I've seen people who they've helped, okay?

01:39:13.120 | So.

01:39:14.180 | - Do you think psychedelics that I just mentioned earlier

01:39:18.000 | have a possibility of going

01:39:22.360 | to these kind of,

01:39:24.340 | same kind of places of exploring ideas

01:39:29.340 | that are outside of our

01:39:31.280 | more commonplace understanding of the world?

01:39:35.720 | - Yeah, I think so, absolutely.

01:39:39.560 | However, I think we have to be really careful about those,

01:39:42.560 | because young people, or people in general, I should say,

01:39:46.440 | absolutely can get hurt by them.

01:39:48.320 | I mean, but we get hurt by alcohol.

01:39:50.200 | You know, we drive our cars, and we kill each other.

01:39:53.360 | But psychedelics are really interesting,

01:39:55.440 | because I know that within the history of our country,

01:39:59.800 | we have used psychedelics in various capacities

01:40:04.440 | for our military in order to try to stimulate ideas

01:40:08.920 | and access places and information

01:40:11.240 | that can't be accessed normally.

01:40:13.720 | This is all fact.

01:40:15.600 | - Yeah, I talked to Matt for like four hours,

01:40:18.320 | so we ran out of time being able to talk.

01:40:20.040 | But I wanted to talk to him about MKUltra

01:40:22.720 | and Ted Kaczynski.

01:40:25.120 | There's so many mysterious things there.

01:40:27.120 | There's like layers of what's known or what's not known.

01:40:30.920 | It's fascinating, but I think what is interesting

01:40:33.160 | is psychedelics were used, or were attempted to be used,

01:40:37.000 | as tools of different kinds.

01:40:39.880 | That's the point.

01:40:40.720 | So like, we think of technology as tools

01:40:43.680 | to enable us to do things.

01:40:47.240 | In that same way that psychedelics, like many drugs,

01:40:52.000 | could be used as tools, some more effective than others.

01:40:54.720 | - Absolutely.

01:40:55.560 | - I don't think what you,

01:40:56.400 | I'm not sure what you can do effectively with alcohol.

01:41:00.440 | Although, I think somebody commented somewhere

01:41:03.520 | on social media that, I don't know why everyone gives,

01:41:07.960 | it's so negative about alcohol,

01:41:10.120 | because I think the person said that,

01:41:13.400 | "It's given me some of the most incredible,

01:41:16.440 | "it enabled me to let go

01:41:19.680 | "and have some of the most incredible experiences

01:41:21.840 | "with friends in my life."

01:41:23.240 | And it's true.

01:41:24.080 | We kind of sometimes say alcohol is dangerous,

01:41:26.880 | it can make you do horrible,

01:41:27.840 | but the reality is it's also a fascinating tool

01:41:32.840 | for letting go of trying to be somebody maybe

01:41:37.200 | that you're not, and allowing you to be yourself fully

01:41:40.160 | in whatever crazy form that is,

01:41:42.240 | and allow you to have really deep

01:41:44.160 | and interesting experiences with those you love.

01:41:46.560 | So, yeah, even alcohol can be used as an effective tool

01:41:50.960 | for exploring experiences and becoming,

01:41:53.920 | expanding your mind and becoming a better person.

01:41:57.600 | So, what the hell was I talking about?

01:42:01.480 | (Rachel laughs)

01:42:02.800 | So yeah, so psychedelics and, oh yeah, and MKUltra.

01:42:07.120 | Is there something interesting to say

01:42:08.480 | in our historical use of psychedelics?

01:42:13.040 | I mean, think about it.

01:42:14.120 | When did we start doing that?

01:42:15.800 | When did we start using those?

01:42:17.280 | - That's true.

01:42:18.120 | It's quite a long time ago, right?

01:42:20.240 | - But, okay, but true.

01:42:22.000 | But when did our government start experimenting

01:42:24.400 | with them with us?

01:42:26.040 | Okay.

01:42:26.860 | - Our government is the United States government.

01:42:28.280 | - Yeah.

01:42:29.120 | Okay, so that happened in around the 1950s, okay?

01:42:33.320 | After quote unquote the 1940s,

01:42:36.200 | where we have 47 and we have this Roswell type stuff

01:42:42.280 | going on, okay, like crash sites and things like that.

01:42:45.360 | So, I think that, I think there might be a correlation there.

01:42:50.360 | I don't know what it is, okay?

01:42:52.480 | But I do think--

01:42:53.320 | - That's fascinating, actually, yeah.

01:42:55.000 | A lot of interesting things started--

01:42:57.400 | - Around that time period. - Around that time, yeah.

01:42:58.640 | - Yeah, and so Aldous Huxley would say,

01:43:01.880 | "We opened the doors of perception," okay?

01:43:04.240 | And what flew in?

01:43:05.720 | (both laugh)

01:43:08.720 | - Oh, man, that was beautifully put.

01:43:11.480 | It'd be interesting to get your opinions

01:43:13.160 | on certain more concrete sightings

01:43:16.680 | that are sort of monumental sightings

01:43:20.480 | of alien intelligences in the history,

01:43:25.320 | in the recent history,

01:43:26.160 | that at least I'm aware of.

01:43:28.040 | I'm not very much aware of this history,

01:43:32.440 | but the most recent one,

01:43:34.560 | I've spoken with David Fravor on this podcast.

01:43:38.280 | I really like him as a person.

01:43:39.680 | He's a fun guy, but also he's gotten a chance to,

01:43:43.040 | he's described his account of having experience

01:43:46.600 | with what he and others now term the Tic Tac UFO.

01:43:50.960 | What do you think of that particular sighting,

01:43:53.640 | which has captivated the imagination of many,

01:43:56.280 | in particular because there's been videos released of it,

01:43:59.800 | of these UFOs, but I find the videos

01:44:03.480 | to be way too blurry and grainy to be of interest to me,

01:44:07.080 | the personally, to me, the most fascinating thing

01:44:10.760 | is the first person to comment from David

01:44:14.000 | and others about that experience.

01:44:16.680 | But what are your thoughts?

01:44:18.480 | - Those videos have been out for a while,

01:44:20.000 | actually much, I think in the mid 2000s, they were out.

01:44:24.520 | But what you have is you have kind of like this corroboration

01:44:28.720 | from a group and also the New York Times involvement

01:44:32.120 | in 2017.

01:44:33.960 | My opinion about the Tic Tacs is that

01:44:37.000 | first, I believe the people who have had the experiences,

01:44:40.560 | I know some of them, like some of the radar people

01:44:43.280 | and things like that, they'd saw them

01:44:45.480 | and they're not, I don't believe they're making it up.

01:44:48.520 | I do think that this is being used as a spin.

01:44:53.520 | And I'm just gonna say that.

01:44:55.400 | And the reason I think that is this,

01:44:57.040 | is because at the time it was released,

01:44:59.240 | I was still in touch with many people

01:45:01.280 | who were among the UFO Fight Club.

01:45:04.120 | And so they had intimate knowledge of these things.

01:45:06.800 | And the first thing they said was,

01:45:08.680 | "We have satellites that can read the news on your phone

01:45:13.280 | when you're reading it.

01:45:14.440 | So we've got better footage than this,

01:45:17.080 | and this is not good footage at all."

01:45:19.480 | Therefore, they believe that it was authentic footage

01:45:22.320 | that had been doctored up.

01:45:23.880 | Now, why?

01:45:26.200 | I don't know why.

01:45:27.320 | So I honestly don't know if it's accurate or not.

01:45:31.280 | I mean, I believe the people, absolutely.

01:45:33.600 | But was this something out there to fool these people?

01:45:37.720 | Perhaps, I don't know.

01:45:39.560 | Is it spun?

01:45:41.160 | The people who I know who are part of the UFO Fight Club

01:45:43.920 | believed it was real, okay?

01:45:45.680 | And said, "This is badly done, but real."

01:45:48.840 | Okay?

01:45:49.680 | - I see, but so there's some kind of,

01:45:50.720 | when you say spinning, there's some parties involved

01:45:52.960 | that are trying to leverage it from the-

01:45:56.480 | - For funds, probably.

01:45:58.080 | - For funds or financial interest.

01:45:59.520 | - Yeah, I think so.

01:46:01.360 | Nevertheless, it has inspired a conversation

01:46:05.040 | and just a lot of people in the world

01:46:09.520 | that there's something mysterious out there

01:46:13.360 | that we're not fully informed about.

01:46:16.760 | - And I was certainly grateful that the New York Times

01:46:19.120 | ran the story right before my book came out.

01:46:22.000 | - Well, see, but there's the financial interest

01:46:23.840 | that, to me, as a person who doesn't give a damn

01:46:27.520 | about money, actually, I don't like money,

01:46:30.600 | except for when it's used in the context of a company

01:46:35.480 | to build cool things.

01:46:37.380 | But personally, I don't know.

01:46:39.200 | I find the financial interest side off-putting,

01:46:43.080 | especially when we're talking about the exploration

01:46:46.680 | of some of the most,

01:46:47.720 | like money is a silly creation of human beings.

01:46:51.440 | - I agree.

01:46:52.340 | - And it's used to provide temporary,

01:46:58.480 | the unfortunate thing with money is that

01:47:00.800 | it helps you buy things that too easily allow you

01:47:05.800 | to forget the important things in life

01:47:10.560 | and also to forget the difficult aspects of life,

01:47:13.560 | to do the difficult intellectual work

01:47:15.280 | of being cognizant of your own mortality,

01:47:17.160 | of fully engaging in life,

01:47:21.360 | in a life of reason too,

01:47:23.520 | of thinking deeply about the world,

01:47:25.160 | all those kinds of things.

01:47:26.440 | If you get a nice car or something like that

01:47:28.560 | and just, I don't know,

01:47:30.480 | all the different things you can do with money,

01:47:33.080 | it can make you forget that.

01:47:34.360 | Anyway, there's a long way to say that,

01:47:37.760 | yes, yes, it's very nice that it coincided nicely

01:47:40.800 | with the book, but also,

01:47:43.100 | I think it, I mean, like I said,

01:47:47.160 | I think it inspired quite a lot of people that,

01:47:49.760 | maybe there's a lot of things out there that were,

01:47:52.720 | like it reminded a lot of people,

01:47:54.080 | there's things out there we don't know about.

01:47:56.600 | - Lex, I can agree with you on that,

01:47:58.560 | but can I push back on two things?

01:48:00.720 | - Okay. - Let's do it.

01:48:01.560 | - All right, the first one is that

01:48:03.040 | I was happy to receive money from the book

01:48:05.920 | because of the New York Times article.

01:48:07.720 | That's absolutely false.

01:48:09.200 | So I published my book with Oxford,

01:48:11.400 | which is an academic press,

01:48:12.840 | and you don't get paid with an academic press, okay?

01:48:15.900 | So money was not it for me.

01:48:17.840 | What it was was recognition

01:48:19.320 | that my research was being validated.

01:48:21.760 | So, 'cause then people called me and said,

01:48:24.440 | "Well, maybe it's more than interesting," okay?

01:48:26.840 | And they did, okay.

01:48:27.920 | The other thing about money is just as you say that,

01:48:31.960 | now I agree with you, I'm upset about money too.

01:48:36.000 | I think there should be universal healthcare,

01:48:38.960 | a universal income,

01:48:40.520 | I don't think people should be in poverty,

01:48:41.880 | especially because we are so wealthy as a species, frankly.

01:48:45.960 | Okay, that said, think about this.

01:48:48.680 | If you are, if you don't have money,

01:48:51.640 | you can't have a life of the mind either, right?

01:48:54.520 | - 100%, so I'm not espousing that money's the devil.

01:48:58.000 | I just think that there is,

01:49:00.560 | money can be a drug,

01:49:04.640 | or I would compare it to food or something like that,

01:49:07.920 | where you really should have enough to nourish yourself.

01:49:11.720 | - Yes. - Right?

01:49:12.720 | And-- - Too much could--

01:49:14.520 | - And too much can be a huge problem.

01:49:17.160 | So that's where I come from with money,

01:49:19.420 | and I'm just aware.

01:49:20.760 | I'm fortunate enough to have the skills and the health

01:49:23.960 | to be able to earn a living in whatever way,

01:49:27.880 | like I wish of having being in the United States,

01:49:29.960 | of being able to speak English,

01:49:31.140 | so at the very least I could work at McDonald's.

01:49:33.800 | And my standards are, I told you, I made a mistake.

01:49:37.440 | I told you, Rogan, that I've always had a few money,

01:49:42.680 | and people are like, oh, Lex was always rich.

01:49:44.360 | No, no, no, I was always broke.

01:49:46.860 | What I mean by I've always had a few money

01:49:50.320 | is my standard of what it takes to have a few

01:49:53.960 | is always very little.

01:49:55.240 | I'm just happy with very little.

01:49:57.440 | But yes, it's true that money for many people,

01:50:01.400 | including for myself, it's just a different level

01:50:04.480 | for different people, is freedom.

01:50:06.880 | - Yes, absolutely. - Freedom to think,

01:50:08.520 | freedom to pursue your passions.

01:50:11.400 | It just so happens, I am very fortunate

01:50:14.760 | that many of my passions often come with a salary,

01:50:18.200 | if I wished. - Right.

01:50:19.560 | - So everything, I love programming.

01:50:23.200 | So even just working as a basic level software engineer

01:50:27.960 | will be a source of a lot of joy for me,

01:50:29.920 | and that happens in this modern world

01:50:32.840 | to come with a salary.

01:50:34.320 | So yeah, it's definitely true.

01:50:36.520 | I just mean that it can become a dangerous drug.

01:50:38.880 | So I'm glad you are in this pursuit that you are in

01:50:43.880 | for the love of knowledge, but it's true.

01:50:48.920 | - Yes, so-- - People should definitely

01:50:50.600 | buy your book. (laughs)

01:50:52.200 | - I won't be making money off of it.

01:50:53.840 | - Oh yeah, this rocks, yeah.

01:50:55.920 | Absolutely.

01:50:56.760 | - Maybe my next book. (laughs)

01:50:58.120 | - Yes, yeah, your sense is there's something,

01:51:02.040 | there's some groups of people

01:51:07.600 | that may be trying to leverage this for financial gains.

01:51:12.600 | - And you know, probably good financial,

01:51:14.600 | I mean, they may have good reasons for this too.

01:51:17.000 | Like, okay, let's take the study of UFOs, okay?

01:51:20.160 | Maybe many people in government

01:51:22.520 | that decide who dole out the money, let's put it that way,

01:51:25.720 | they think UFOs aren't real.

01:51:27.780 | So they're not going to give these programs money.

01:51:30.160 | So how do these programs make money?

01:51:32.080 | They're gonna have to find a way to do it.

01:51:34.640 | So maybe that's how they do it, okay?

01:51:36.960 | So I-- - That's fascinating.

01:51:38.320 | This is a way to raise money for--

01:51:41.800 | - Doing the research, yeah, I think so.

01:51:45.020 | - So let's take a step back to Roswell,

01:51:47.900 | we talked about a little bit.

01:51:49.260 | What's your sense about that whole time?

01:51:51.700 | Roswell and just Area 51 and the sightings,

01:51:56.700 | and also the follow-on mythology around those sightings.

01:52:01.580 | That's with us today.

01:52:03.780 | - All right, so-- (laughs)

01:52:05.740 | - Where do I get started?

01:52:07.300 | - Well, I mean, it is a mythology here, right?

01:52:10.260 | The mythology of Roswell, it's very religious-like

01:52:13.300 | in the sense that there's a pilgrimage

01:52:15.220 | to Roswell people make, and they go to,

01:52:18.500 | there's a festival there as well, like a religious festival.

01:52:22.860 | You could get little kitschy stuff

01:52:24.500 | like you can get at a religious festival there.

01:52:26.660 | So it's very much like a place of pilgrimage

01:52:29.180 | where a hierophany occurred,

01:52:30.620 | and a hierophany is basically contact

01:52:33.420 | with non-human intelligence, okay?

01:52:35.540 | So non-human intelligence is thought to have contacted

01:52:38.740 | humans or crashed at this place in Roswell, New Mexico.

01:52:42.620 | Now, what's fascinating is that I begin my book

01:52:45.900 | by going out to a crash site in New Mexico.

01:52:48.780 | I have to get blindfolded with my,

01:52:52.340 | well, to tell you the truth,

01:52:54.180 | the story is that I'm with Tyler, who's an invisible,

01:52:58.540 | and he wants to show me a place in New Mexico

01:53:00.940 | where a crash happened, and he says that he thinks

01:53:04.140 | that I need to see physical evidence

01:53:06.500 | because I don't believe.

01:53:08.020 | And so I said, "I'll go,

01:53:09.780 | "but I'm gonna bring a friend of mine."

01:53:11.460 | And he said, "No, you have to go alone."

01:53:12.940 | He goes, "It's a place that is on government-owned property,

01:53:17.420 | "and it's a no-fly zone,

01:53:19.380 | "and when you go, you'll be blindfolded."

01:53:21.860 | And I said, "I definitely need to bring a friend."

01:53:25.060 | (both laughing)

01:53:27.580 | So he said, "Well, who do you wanna bring?"

01:53:29.780 | I just had met this university scientist

01:53:32.980 | who's very well-known, and I call him James in my book.

01:53:36.100 | And I asked, and I had a feeling James

01:53:38.420 | would definitely wanna do this.

01:53:40.100 | And I asked James, and he said, "I'll go tomorrow."

01:53:43.220 | So I suggested this to Tyler,

01:53:45.100 | and Tyler said, "Absolutely not."

01:53:48.300 | And I thought, "I know he's gonna look up James,

01:53:50.740 | "and he's gonna say yes,

01:53:52.140 | "because if anybody can figure out what this material is

01:53:55.340 | "that we're gonna go look for, it's gonna be James.

01:53:57.660 | "He has the instruments."

01:53:58.900 | And so Tyler did, in fact, look him up,

01:54:01.740 | and finally said, "Okay, I got, you can go."

01:54:04.620 | So we both head out there, and we get blindfolded,

01:54:06.580 | and Tyler takes us out there.

01:54:07.900 | It takes about 40 minutes.

01:54:10.020 | Outside of a certain place in New Mexico.

01:54:11.820 | So in terms of Roswell, this is what I can say,

01:54:14.140 | is that according to Tyler,

01:54:16.100 | there were about seven crashes out in the 1940s

01:54:19.980 | in New Mexico, in various places.

01:54:22.820 | We went to one of them, according to Tyler.

01:54:28.660 | At the time, I was completely an atheist

01:54:31.220 | with regard to anything that had to do with UFOs.

01:54:33.780 | So we were out there.

01:54:34.800 | We had specially configured metal detectors

01:54:39.380 | for these metals, and we did find these, okay?

01:54:43.820 | And they've since been studied by various scientists,

01:54:47.380 | material scientists, so forth.

01:54:49.220 | And I believe Jacques talked about,

01:54:52.900 | not those particular ones, but others on the Joe Rogan show.

01:54:57.820 | There are anomalies, so there are,

01:55:01.140 | we scientists don't, I'm not a scientist,

01:55:03.820 | so I can't weigh in on whether,

01:55:06.900 | I just believe the people, these people I believe,

01:55:09.980 | because they're well-known scientists.

01:55:12.900 | - What do you mean they're not anomalies?

01:55:14.660 | - No, they are anomalous.

01:55:17.420 | - Oh, anomalous in terms of the materials

01:55:19.460 | that are naturally occurring on Earth.

01:55:22.860 | - Yes.

01:55:23.700 | - Okay, so there's some kind of inklings of evidence

01:55:30.220 | that something happened in Roswell,

01:55:35.980 | in terms of crashes of alien technology.

01:55:40.380 | Now, what else is there to the mythology?

01:55:42.900 | So there's some crashes, right?

01:55:46.420 | I mean, that's kind of epic.

01:55:48.300 | - It's pretty epic, yeah.

01:55:50.100 | - And what else?

01:55:52.460 | Like, what are we supposed to take away from this?

01:55:55.820 | - Right, yeah, so it's weird.

01:55:57.860 | Okay, so there's this, okay, so in religious studies,

01:56:01.260 | like I said, we call it a hierophany,

01:56:03.140 | which is the meeting of a non-human intelligent thing,

01:56:06.260 | whatever it is, an angel, a god, whatever, a goddess,

01:56:09.380 | with, or an alien, with humans, and that's the place, okay?

01:56:13.900 | So the place is New Mexico.

01:56:15.620 | So New Mexico becomes folded into the mythology

01:56:20.620 | of this new religion, is what I call a new type of religion,

01:56:24.580 | of the UFO, and it becomes ground zero

01:56:28.060 | for this new mythology.

01:56:30.220 | Just like Mecca is the place where Muslims go,

01:56:34.380 | they have to go, right, at least once in their lives,

01:56:36.580 | it's a pilgrimage place now.

01:56:38.100 | So this is, so in my book, that's how I tell it.

01:56:41.380 | Now, what about Roswell in the public imagination?

01:56:44.260 | Obviously, according to Annie Jacobson, who's good,

01:56:49.140 | you know, she's a great author, investigative journalist,

01:56:52.380 | she's written about Roswell too.

01:56:53.980 | I don't agree with all of what she comes up with,

01:56:56.440 | but part of it is that there's a lot of military stuff

01:56:58.900 | going on there that is classified,

01:57:01.100 | and there's a reason why you can't get in,

01:57:03.060 | and nor would you want to, right?

01:57:05.220 | So there's a lot of experimentation going on there.

01:57:09.740 | I don't believe that it has to do with ETs, frankly,

01:57:14.580 | but in the imaginations of Americans, Roswell is that place.

01:57:19.340 | But I went to a different place,

01:57:21.220 | and apparently there are several places in New Mexico.

01:57:23.660 | Now, strangely enough, I traveled back to New Mexico

01:57:27.220 | at the very end chapter of my book,

01:57:29.740 | but it's not, I don't go there physically.

01:57:33.220 | I go there through the story of a Catholic nun

01:57:38.020 | who actually believes that she bi-located to New Mexico

01:57:42.100 | in the, gosh, in the 1600s.

01:57:46.940 | So she, yeah, it was very strange.

01:57:48.940 | And I was at the Vatican at the space observatory

01:57:52.180 | when I made that connection,

01:57:53.260 | that she probably went to the very,

01:57:55.380 | well, she believed she went to this very place

01:57:57.580 | that I had gone. (laughs)

01:57:59.100 | - Can you elaborate on it a little bit?

01:58:01.620 | Like, what does it mean to go to that place?

01:58:04.220 | - For her? - Yeah, for her.

01:58:06.460 | I mean, so we're kind of breaking down the barrier

01:58:11.460 | between what it means to be at a place and time, right?

01:58:15.900 | - Right, I agree with you.

01:58:17.860 | This is the field of religious studies.

01:58:19.620 | So, and again, I don't say it's true in my book.

01:58:23.100 | I just say it's a very strange coincidence

01:58:25.500 | that I'm at the Vatican observatory.

01:58:28.740 | In fact, I'd finished my book,

01:58:30.500 | but while I was at the Vatican observatory,

01:58:32.980 | I was there with Tyler.

01:58:34.420 | And we were looking at the records,

01:58:37.380 | they're called the trial records,

01:58:38.640 | but they're the canonization records of these two saints.

01:58:41.940 | Each was said to have done amazing things.

01:58:44.380 | One was Joseph of Cupertino, who levitated, okay?

01:58:48.500 | Or is said to have levitated.

01:58:50.420 | The other was Maria of Agrada from Spain.

01:58:54.020 | They're contemporaries in the 1600s,

01:58:56.020 | who was said to have been able to bilocate,

01:58:58.460 | which is to be in two places at once, okay?

01:59:00.860 | So this is a belief in Catholicism

01:59:02.820 | that certain very holy people can do these kinds of things,

01:59:05.660 | like levitate, which by the way,

01:59:07.540 | is also associated with UFO abductions.

01:59:10.460 | You know, people get levitated out of their beds

01:59:12.620 | and things like that.

01:59:13.620 | So we were sent there by a billionaire

01:59:16.700 | who was interested in levitation and bilocation.

01:59:21.260 | And since I could get in to the Vatican

01:59:24.140 | and I knew the director of the Vatican observatory,

01:59:28.300 | both Tyler and I were able to go to the secret archives

01:59:31.860 | and look at the canonization records,

01:59:33.540 | and then go to Castle Gandolfo,

01:59:36.860 | which is about an hour from the Vatican,

01:59:38.580 | where the first observatory,

01:59:40.260 | the space observatory of the Vatican is.

01:59:44.220 | The second one is in Arizona

01:59:45.740 | and it has a much larger telescope.

01:59:47.860 | So we went and Brother Guy gave me the keys to the archive.

01:59:52.860 | He said, "Look at anything you want."

01:59:54.140 | And I got to see a lot of stuff by Carl Sagan, by the way.

01:59:56.900 | I know you talked about, yeah, it was awesome.

01:59:59.020 | So they have a whole section on extraterrestrial,

02:00:01.220 | the search for extraterrestrial life.

02:00:03.260 | And they don't, by the way.

02:00:04.460 | - How awesome is that?

02:00:05.340 | - It was awesome, yeah.

02:00:06.620 | So we got to stay there.

02:00:07.620 | They have a scholar's quarters.

02:00:09.340 | And so they had two.

02:00:10.980 | And so Tyler stayed in one and I stayed in the other.

02:00:13.580 | And Brother Guy probably shouldn't have been so nice to me

02:00:17.220 | and given me the keys.

02:00:19.460 | Because when I got home, we were there for two weeks.

02:00:23.100 | When I got home, I got this frantic phone call from him.

02:00:25.380 | And he basically said, "Diana," he goes,

02:00:27.500 | "Do you remember where you put the original Kepler?"

02:00:30.740 | And so I had this Kepler, right?

02:00:33.140 | And so I misplaced it.

02:00:34.980 | Luckily, I remembered where it went.

02:00:39.820 | I was like, oh gosh, thank goodness I found it.

02:00:42.100 | But he'll probably change the rules

02:00:44.460 | of the Vatican Observatory after my visit.

02:00:47.140 | So Maria is, she's actually in the history of our country

02:00:52.020 | in that she first wrote a cosmography

02:00:55.940 | of what she said was the spinning earth.

02:00:59.340 | And this was in the 1600s.

02:01:00.820 | And that's her first book.

02:01:02.860 | And she wrote that.

02:01:04.420 | And then she said that she was transported

02:01:08.700 | on the wings of angels to the new world.

02:01:11.740 | And she said that she met a culture of people.

02:01:16.060 | And she basically told them about the faith of Catholicism.

02:01:21.060 | And then what happened was that the people that,

02:01:24.820 | and she described the fauna,

02:01:26.580 | she described the people and everything like that.

02:01:29.580 | And so there were actually missionaries there.

02:01:32.100 | And when they went to try to convert

02:01:36.940 | some of the people who already lived there,

02:01:40.100 | apparently they already knew a bunch of stuff.

02:01:41.980 | And they said, how did you know all this stuff?

02:01:43.460 | And they said, this lady in blue came and told us.

02:01:47.340 | And they said, did it look like this?

02:01:48.740 | And they showed them,

02:01:49.980 | they obviously didn't have a photograph,

02:01:51.940 | but they had a picture of a sister, a nun.

02:01:55.940 | And they say, yeah, she wore similar clothes,

02:02:00.220 | but she was much younger, right?

02:02:01.980 | And these guys thought that was weird.

02:02:04.380 | But when they went back to Spain,

02:02:06.120 | they found that this woman had been doing that in her mind,

02:02:09.820 | had been traveling.

02:02:11.340 | - I mean, I don't know what to make of it.

02:02:12.820 | There's so many things that are sort of forcing you

02:02:15.260 | to kind of go outside of, I'm of many minds.

02:02:19.780 | I have a very, most of my days spent

02:02:22.260 | with very rigorous scientific kind of things,

02:02:25.700 | and even engineering kind of things.

02:02:27.380 | And then I'm also open-minded.

02:02:28.980 | And just the entirety of the idea of extraterrestrial life

02:02:33.980 | forces you to think outside of conventional boundaries

02:02:39.500 | of thought, current scientific thought.

02:02:43.100 | Let's put it that way.

02:02:43.980 | And your story right now is certainly an example of that.

02:02:47.020 | - It's freaking you out, but that's okay.

02:02:48.780 | - That's a nice way to put it.

02:02:50.420 | What do you, just another person

02:02:52.380 | that seems to be a key figure in this,

02:02:55.540 | in the mythology of this is Bob Lazar.

02:02:59.200 | It'd be interesting,

02:03:01.140 | maybe there's others you can tell me about,

02:03:02.820 | but Bob, who's also been on Joe Rogan,

02:03:06.860 | but his story has been told quite a bit.

02:03:09.860 | And he's got, I think he said that he witnessed

02:03:14.700 | some of the work being done on the spacecraft

02:03:19.700 | that was captured and so on,

02:03:25.780 | in order to try to reverse engineer some of the technology

02:03:29.700 | in terms of the propulsion and so on.

02:03:31.480 | What are your thoughts about his story,

02:03:33.540 | how it fits into the mythology of this whole thing

02:03:37.220 | and the broader ufologist community?

02:03:40.820 | - Okay, so regarding Bob Lazar,

02:03:43.620 | with respect to his claims,

02:03:46.100 | again, I have no way to adjudicate

02:03:50.980 | whether or not he actually encountered this.

02:03:55.980 | I do have friends who are,

02:03:59.100 | and the people that I know who know his story,

02:04:04.100 | some know him, believe him.

02:04:08.380 | And they have said to me that the most important thing

02:04:13.020 | that they think he has said,

02:04:15.660 | in fact, one of them, I think made a meme out of it

02:04:20.500 | or something like that, was basically, he said,

02:04:23.060 | maybe the public, you know, I regret making it public.

02:04:28.020 | Maybe the public isn't ready for this kind of information.

02:04:30.620 | And basically, they've, they emphasized that to me

02:04:35.020 | and they emphasized it so much

02:04:36.700 | that they wanted me to know, right?

02:04:39.700 | So that is somewhat creepy to me.

02:04:43.060 | So I think, okay, this poor guy, Bob Lazar,

02:04:46.860 | so many people, you know, this is what happens to people

02:04:49.800 | who have experiences like this.

02:04:51.820 | They're questioned, their reputations are put on the line.

02:04:56.740 | In some instances, their reputations are manipulated

02:05:01.380 | on purpose to make them look uncredible.

02:05:04.820 | - To me, as a scientist, it's just inspiring

02:05:09.820 | that it kind of gives this kind of,

02:05:13.060 | I'm not even thinking of it,

02:05:15.700 | is there an actual spacecraft being hidden somewhere

02:05:18.540 | and studied and so on?

02:05:19.940 | I'm thinking of it like, I don't know,

02:05:21.940 | it's a thing that gives you a spark of a dream, you know?

02:05:26.180 | As a reminder that we don't understand

02:05:29.180 | most of how this world works,

02:05:32.580 | and then we can build technologies that aren't here today

02:05:37.100 | that will allow us to understand much more.

02:05:39.140 | And it's kind of like, almost like a feeling

02:05:41.580 | that it provides and that it inspires and makes you dream.

02:05:45.440 | That's the way I see the Bob Lazar story.

02:05:47.380 | I don't necessarily, people ask me, 'cause I'm at MIT,

02:05:50.220 | people ask me, did Bob Lazar actually go to MIT and so on?

02:05:53.900 | I don't know, and I personally don't care.

02:05:56.720 | Like, that's not what's interesting to me about that story.

02:06:01.000 | To me, the myth is more interesting,

02:06:03.800 | not interesting actually, but inspiring.

02:06:06.360 | - Yes, because inspiring, you're suggesting

02:06:09.280 | that the myth inspires you to create reality.

02:06:11.840 | - Yes. - Yeah.

02:06:12.980 | I think that's true.

02:06:15.000 | - So even if it's like not real--

02:06:17.280 | - It doesn't matter, does it?

02:06:19.400 | - I mean, in some sense, just like you said,

02:06:21.320 | it does, in some sense, it doesn't.

02:06:25.600 | So a lot of people know how much I love

02:06:27.400 | 2001, "Space Odyssey," so I got all these emails

02:06:31.960 | asking like, "Hey, bro, do you know what's up

02:06:36.960 | "with the monoliths in the middle of the desert?"

02:06:40.560 | Or whatever it was, I haven't been actually

02:06:42.920 | paying attention, I apologize.

02:06:45.160 | But you kind of mentioned offline

02:06:47.760 | that this was kind of cool and interesting.

02:06:49.560 | What do you make of these monoliths?

02:06:51.280 | And in general, are you a fan of 2001, "Space Odyssey,"

02:06:56.280 | where monoliths showed up?

02:06:59.320 | Do you have any thoughts about either

02:07:00.720 | the science fiction, the mythology of it,

02:07:02.400 | or the reality of it?

02:07:04.080 | - Yes, okay. (laughs)

02:07:06.520 | - No, okay, and please say more.

02:07:09.640 | - Right, so first of all, Kubrick's films

02:07:13.380 | are not ever easy for me because they're so weird, right?

02:07:18.040 | And I don't actually enjoy watching them.

02:07:20.600 | - It's work. - Yeah, it doesn't take away

02:07:23.640 | from their incredible brilliance, though,

02:07:26.000 | and their visionary merit.

02:07:29.360 | So, 2001, "Space Odyssey" is incredibly visionary,

02:07:34.360 | and of course, all those things that people say,

02:07:37.640 | I don't have to restate them.

02:07:39.080 | In terms of what I've, it's a subtext to my book,

02:07:42.800 | by the way, I didn't mean it to be,

02:07:44.600 | but it's almost a character in my book,

02:07:47.480 | "2001, A Space Odyssey."

02:07:49.380 | And when the monoliths started to appear again,

02:07:52.920 | everything went crazy with my everything,

02:07:55.320 | internet, social media, phone, what's up,

02:07:57.760 | what's going on, right?

02:07:58.960 | Is this disclosure?

02:08:00.400 | And I thought, well, you know, I'll tell you one thing,

02:08:02.880 | is it's, let's look at the timing of it.

02:08:05.000 | It's a cool, if it's an art, you know,

02:08:07.560 | and then copy art and things like that,

02:08:09.800 | it's actually happening at a really interesting time

02:08:12.440 | when all of us are forced to go online.

02:08:15.060 | When all of us are forced, because of COVID, right?

02:08:17.480 | We're completely now invaded by the screen,

02:08:20.140 | or we're invading the screen.

02:08:21.860 | Like we're leaving, our infrastructure now

02:08:23.900 | is completely changed.

02:08:25.180 | So the monolith, basically, if art is supposed to,

02:08:28.900 | like show us life, it certainly has.

02:08:31.260 | If that's an art project,

02:08:32.280 | somebody did an awesome job with it.

02:08:33.780 | But apparently that monolith was there for a long time,

02:08:36.060 | right?

02:08:36.900 | I mean, that's the thing,

02:08:37.720 | it's been there for a couple of years.

02:08:38.820 | So they said, okay, all right.

02:08:40.900 | That said, if your audience is interested,

02:08:45.660 | I think the best theory about the meaning of the monolith

02:08:49.180 | is Robert Ager, or Robert Ayer,

02:08:53.980 | I think it's Robert Ager.

02:08:55.380 | He's got a website where he does analyses of films,

02:08:59.580 | and it's called collative learning, or collative learning.

02:09:03.280 | And he does the meaning of the monolith.

02:09:05.340 | Everyone should go look at that,

02:09:06.780 | because I fully agree with him.

02:09:08.860 | When I studied different meanings of the monolith

02:09:11.900 | in 2001, A Space Odyssey, I was fascinated.

02:09:14.580 | Okay, so what is this about?

02:09:16.060 | I accepted as soon as I listened to it, and watched it.

02:09:21.620 | So basically, he says that the monolith is,

02:09:24.860 | okay, can you pick up your phone here?

02:09:27.620 | What does that look like?

02:09:28.820 | (laughing)

02:09:31.660 | - Looks awfully a lot like a monolith.

02:09:33.260 | - Yeah.

02:09:34.100 | Okay, so basically that's what he was saying,

02:09:36.020 | was that Kubrick was basically,

02:09:38.220 | the monolith was technology, or the screen in particular.

02:09:42.340 | And he basically was saying that the cinema screen,

02:09:45.660 | we're being completely, and if you think about it,

02:09:47.820 | look at all this, we live in a screen culture.

02:09:50.100 | We have computer screens, iPhone screens,

02:09:53.340 | or phone screens, we have TV screens,

02:09:56.420 | everything is something, and now that COVID has come,

02:09:59.220 | we're forced to go into these screens,

02:10:01.180 | and we're forced to live a different material existence

02:10:04.980 | than we have lived before.

02:10:06.580 | So in my sense, I think that if it's an art project,

02:10:10.180 | it's a really good one for that.

02:10:12.780 | - So I like that meaning of it, it's a screen,

02:10:17.020 | and a screen can take all kinds of forms.

02:10:20.420 | I mean, our perception system, in a sense,

02:10:22.740 | is a screen between reality and our mind.

02:10:27.220 | The screen of the computer is a screen.

02:10:30.340 | The virtual reality worlds that we might be one day living in,

02:10:35.060 | there will be an interface.

02:10:37.420 | I mean, ultimately, it's about the interface.

02:10:39.780 | That's interesting.

02:10:41.300 | - It's an interface to another world of ideas.

02:10:45.900 | - It's also a material change.

02:10:47.580 | It's a change in our material,

02:10:50.060 | I mean, when people talk about augmented reality,

02:10:52.780 | I say we already live in augmented reality, don't we?

02:10:56.420 | Because this isn't our grandparents' existence.

02:11:01.060 | - Yeah, I sometimes, you have to pause and remind yourself

02:11:05.460 | how weirdly different this reality is

02:11:08.060 | than just even like, I mean, 30 years ago.

02:11:11.820 | The internet changed so much,

02:11:13.420 | and social media has changed so much

02:11:17.060 | about actually just the space of our thinking.

02:11:20.980 | Wikipedia changed so much

02:11:23.340 | about the offloading of our knowledge,

02:11:25.820 | the way we interact with knowledge.

02:11:28.700 | I mean, it offloaded our long-term memory about facts

02:11:33.700 | onto a digital format,

02:11:35.620 | so in a sense, it expanded our mind.

02:11:38.340 | It's kind of interesting.

02:11:39.620 | I'd be curious to see if he has just one interpretation.

02:11:44.180 | I wonder if there's others.

02:11:45.020 | - I've corresponded with him, yes.

02:11:46.740 | So over the years, he and I have corresponded.

02:11:49.740 | And I told him, I said,

02:11:51.220 | "Look, I'm gonna be using this in my book,

02:11:52.940 | "so I think you should read what I say."

02:11:55.220 | And he, of course, wanted to see it. (laughs)

02:11:58.860 | - What did he think about your book?

02:12:00.100 | Did he get a chance to read it?

02:12:01.100 | - Yeah, oh yeah.

02:12:01.940 | So he is a non-believer in alien intelligence and UFOs,

02:12:06.940 | and that's fine, but I still agree with him

02:12:13.020 | that the meaning of the monolith was the screen,

02:12:15.460 | but that doesn't mean the screen isn't

02:12:17.420 | like what David Bowie said, right?

02:12:20.660 | So it's not exclusive.

02:12:22.540 | So I could still use his theory,

02:12:24.240 | but differ from the conclusions.

02:12:26.820 | - In terms of non-believer and believer,

02:12:31.420 | when you say believer, you also are kind of implying

02:12:35.300 | this, that the idea that aliens have visited

02:12:40.300 | or had made direct contact with humans in some form.

02:12:43.720 | There's also the exploration and the idea

02:12:49.820 | of just alien intelligences out there in the universe.

02:12:54.820 | You know, the Drake equation,

02:12:56.780 | estimating how many intelligent civilizations

02:13:01.380 | may be out there, how many have ever existed,

02:13:03.660 | how many are able to communicate with us.

02:13:05.740 | I mean, when you just zoom out

02:13:07.920 | from our own little selfish perspective of Earth

02:13:11.620 | and look at the entirety, let's say the Milky Way galaxy,

02:13:15.060 | but maybe even the universe,

02:13:17.560 | does the idea that there are intelligent civilizations

02:13:20.020 | out there, something that you're excited about

02:13:24.120 | or something that you're terrified about?

02:13:27.180 | - That's a good question.

02:13:28.780 | So basically I would say I'm not so keen on it.

02:13:33.780 | I think that our relationship with technology as it is

02:13:39.580 | and as I hope it will go, will help us survive, okay?

02:13:44.580 | I don't think we're equipped to do it as we stand now,

02:13:50.820 | but I think that if we can up our game

02:13:54.020 | or let's just put it this way,

02:13:55.620 | if technology is an extension of ourselves,

02:13:58.140 | which it actually is, it will help us

02:14:01.540 | because it'll probably be smarter than us, okay?

02:14:04.020 | It'll help us survive in the ways

02:14:05.500 | in which it determines best, okay?

02:14:07.620 | That said, if there are non-human intelligences out there

02:14:12.620 | and they have more advanced, you know,

02:14:17.460 | obviously technologies than us and they actually come,

02:14:20.540 | the history of human engagement with other cultures

02:14:28.060 | has not gone well for cultures that are less aggressive.

02:14:32.580 | So you see what I'm saying?

02:14:35.180 | Like it's not a good idea.

02:14:37.420 | - Well, I wonder where we stand on the,

02:14:40.260 | where humans stand on the full spectrum of aggression.

02:14:43.700 | - Well, heck, where are we now, Lex?

02:14:45.660 | I mean, we're not too great here.

02:14:47.500 | We're still aggressing against each other.

02:14:49.860 | - No, I know, but that will give us a benefit, right?

02:14:52.340 | Like, oh, you're saying, I thought, okay, I see.

02:14:57.340 | I just have a sense that there may be a lot

02:14:59.420 | of intelligences out there that are less aggressive

02:15:03.540 | 'cause they've evolved past it.

02:15:06.300 | - We can't assume that.

02:15:08.100 | - No, I know we can't assume that, but like--

02:15:10.380 | - If we can't assume it, then I'm gonna assume the worst.

02:15:13.300 | (both laughing)

02:15:15.540 | - Well, that's, despite the fact that I'm a Russian

02:15:20.540 | and think that life is suffering, I tend to assume,

02:15:23.860 | not the best, but I tend to assume

02:15:26.060 | that there is a best core to creatures,

02:15:31.060 | to people and to creatures that ultimately wins out.

02:15:35.100 | I think there's an evolutionary advantage

02:15:38.420 | to being good to other living creatures.

02:15:41.600 | And so, ultimately, I think that if there's

02:15:46.580 | intelligent civilizations out there

02:15:48.980 | that prosper sufficiently to be able to travel

02:15:51.900 | across the great spans of space,

02:15:56.620 | that they've evolved past silly aggression,

02:16:01.620 | that it's more likely in my mind to be deeply cooperative.

02:16:07.900 | So like growth over destruction.

02:16:11.220 | Like growth does not require destruction, I think.

02:16:15.820 | But if you see the universe as ultimately a place

02:16:19.960 | where it's highly constrained in resources

02:16:22.220 | that are necessary for traveling across space and time,

02:16:27.220 | then perhaps aggression is necessary

02:16:30.740 | in order to aggress against others

02:16:33.780 | that are desiring to get access to those resources.

02:16:36.860 | I don't know.

02:16:37.940 | I tend to try to be optimistic on that front.

02:16:41.700 | - I think I'm emotionally optimistic

02:16:43.580 | and intellectually non-optimistic.

02:16:46.820 | (both laughing)

02:16:48.460 | - Yeah, I guess I'm there with you.

02:16:50.720 | I tend to believe that the happiness

02:16:54.280 | and deep fulfillment in life

02:16:56.080 | is found in that emotional place.

02:16:58.020 | The intellectual place is really useful

02:17:02.480 | for building cool new technologies and ideas and so on.

02:17:07.480 | But happiness is in the emotional place.

02:17:10.480 | And there, it pays off to be optimistic, I think.

02:17:13.380 | You said that technology might be able to save us.

02:17:18.380 | - Yeah, that's also kind of optimistic too.

02:17:21.160 | (both laughing)

02:17:22.000 | It might kill us.

02:17:23.440 | - There's, talking to you offline a little bit,

02:17:26.720 | there was a sense that we humans

02:17:29.640 | are facing existential risks.

02:17:32.720 | That it's not obvious that we will survive for long.

02:17:36.140 | Is there things that you worry about

02:17:41.680 | in terms of ways we may destroy ourselves

02:17:44.640 | or deeply damage the fabric of human civilization

02:17:48.980 | that technology may allow us to avoid or alleviate?

02:17:53.980 | - Yes, I think that any, you can choose anything actually,

02:18:00.940 | and it could destroy us.

02:18:03.520 | Okay, so pollution.

02:18:06.360 | Here we're in a pandemic, okay?

02:18:10.200 | A meteor, okay?

02:18:12.740 | So we can use technology,

02:18:15.420 | or the thing is that we say we use technology,

02:18:18.780 | but actually that's not a correct way of putting it,

02:18:21.740 | in my opinion.

02:18:22.960 | So there is a term used by others,

02:18:29.080 | coined by somebody I don't know,

02:18:30.840 | and I'm sorry to not give credit where credit's due,

02:18:33.660 | but it's called technogenesis.

02:18:35.700 | And it's this idea,

02:18:37.200 | Heidegger actually had this idea,

02:18:38.440 | but he didn't use that term.

02:18:39.620 | And it's this idea that we co-evolve with technology,

02:18:42.780 | that we don't actually use it.

02:18:43.940 | Most people think it's like a tool we use, okay?

02:18:46.900 | Let's use technology to do this.

02:18:49.340 | Well, actually, when we engage with technology,

02:18:52.260 | we actually engage with it,

02:18:53.780 | and it engages back with us, and we engage with it.

02:18:57.100 | So it's this co-evolution that's happening.

02:18:59.340 | And in that sense,

02:19:01.100 | I think that as we create more autonomous, intelligent AI,

02:19:08.660 | it will help us survive,

02:19:12.060 | because if we co-evolve with it,

02:19:17.060 | it will need us as much as we need it, is my opinion.

02:19:20.660 | How that happens, or if that bears out to be true,

02:19:25.620 | we'll see.

02:19:28.060 | But I don't think the idea that we use technology

02:19:31.180 | is a correct way to put it.

02:19:32.940 | I think that technology is something so strange,

02:19:35.580 | the way it is today, like digital technology.

02:19:37.620 | I'm not talking about hammers or things like that,

02:19:40.500 | those kinds of tools, okay?

02:19:42.300 | Is technology is so far removed from that,

02:19:45.740 | and our environment is so now conditioned

02:19:50.260 | by our technology and the infrastructure we live within,

02:19:53.220 | the material structure.

02:19:54.540 | I think that it's going to,

02:19:58.620 | I don't think it's gonna be a Frankenstein.

02:20:00.420 | I think it's actually going,

02:20:01.460 | like a Mary Shelley type idea of technology.

02:20:03.660 | I think it's actually going to be more Promethean

02:20:07.340 | in the sense of, you know, think about it.

02:20:10.620 | We create children, and then we get old,

02:20:14.020 | and we rely upon our children to help us, okay?

02:20:17.700 | Well, I feel like that about technology.

02:20:19.540 | We've created, well, we've created it, right?

02:20:22.100 | And so it's kind of growing up now.

02:20:24.540 | (both laughing)

02:20:27.300 | - Or maybe it's in its teenage years, and we'll see.

02:20:32.300 | We'll see.

02:20:33.940 | What do you think about, in terms of this co-evolution

02:20:37.180 | of the work around brain-computer interfaces

02:20:41.300 | and maybe Neuralink and Elon,

02:20:45.940 | seeing Neuralink in particular as its long-term mission

02:20:52.740 | as a symbiosis with artificial intelligence?

02:20:56.860 | So like giving a greater bandwidth,

02:21:02.100 | channel of communication between technology, AI systems,

02:21:07.100 | and the biological neural networks of our human mind.

02:21:12.460 | What do you think about this idea

02:21:15.580 | of connecting directly to the brain in AI systems?

02:21:20.580 | - I mean, okay, I've listened to your podcast with Elon.

02:21:25.340 | I've listened to Elon before.

02:21:26.700 | He's very intelligent, well, obviously, super smart guy.

02:21:30.020 | I think this is already, I mean,

02:21:31.700 | not in the specific ways that he is doing it,

02:21:35.100 | but I think we are already doing that, okay?

02:21:37.180 | And I can give you some examples.

02:21:39.180 | And there are really trivial examples,

02:21:42.820 | but they do make the point, and this is one of them.

02:21:45.420 | So before he started this research

02:21:49.060 | on UFOs and UAPs and technology,

02:21:52.140 | I actually was looking at the effects of technology

02:21:56.940 | and in particular, media on religion.

02:22:01.300 | And what I did was I was lucky to be asked

02:22:04.740 | to be a consultant for various movies.

02:22:08.580 | And one in particular I learned a lot from,

02:22:11.860 | and that was "The Conjuring."

02:22:13.460 | So I was a history consultant for "The Conjuring."

02:22:17.460 | It happens to be my field.

02:22:19.500 | It's Catholic studies, right?

02:22:20.940 | And you've got these people who are real people

02:22:23.260 | and they're exercising demons and things like that.

02:22:25.620 | Okay, so I thought, wow, this is a great example for me.

02:22:28.820 | You know, I didn't do it for the money.

02:22:30.420 | It doesn't pay well, but I did it to learn, right?

02:22:33.300 | So I work closely with the screenwriters

02:22:35.860 | who I work with now all the time.

02:22:37.900 | I work with them all the time now.

02:22:39.860 | And what I found was this.

02:22:41.060 | I found that the most interesting part

02:22:43.340 | of the creation of this movie was the editing process

02:22:47.060 | because they would use, it would go through editing

02:22:51.180 | and they would use test audiences.

02:22:53.180 | And a lot of the test audiences would be,

02:22:56.300 | like, you know, there's like these things

02:22:58.420 | where they test their flicker rates and things like that,

02:23:00.780 | the eye flicker rates.

02:23:01.740 | And so, and when it goes really intense,

02:23:06.100 | they go to UC Irvine and they do this thing

02:23:08.740 | called cognitive consumption, which is basically,

02:23:12.360 | or I'm sorry, cognitive consumerism,

02:23:16.460 | where they basically hook test audiences up to EKGs

02:23:20.540 | and they read their brains.

02:23:22.180 | And they figure out which scenes create the most-

02:23:25.540 | - Arousal.

02:23:26.380 | - Yeah.

02:23:27.220 | And so they cut out all the other scenes, okay?

02:23:30.060 | So what we're getting is we're getting like this drug

02:23:32.500 | when we go to the movies or when we do video games

02:23:34.740 | or when we watch, we're literally physiologically

02:23:37.740 | responding to our technologies.

02:23:41.020 | So we're already there.

02:23:41.940 | We're already interfacing with them physiologically.

02:23:44.420 | So that's my example.

02:23:45.480 | Now, the kind of thing that he's doing,

02:23:48.820 | Musk is doing with Neuralink, I say, go for it.

02:23:52.460 | That's awesome.

02:23:53.280 | I hope he does it, you know?

02:23:54.380 | I'm fascinated.

02:23:55.660 | I want it to happen.

02:23:57.460 | Why do I want it to happen?

02:23:58.860 | Because I think that, well, first it's inevitable

02:24:02.180 | that it's going to happen.

02:24:03.980 | I also wanna point out that Jacques Vallée

02:24:05.580 | was trying to get this done back in the '60s and the '70s.

02:24:08.860 | He was writing papers about, in fact, the ARPANET,

02:24:13.860 | the proto-internet, was called

02:24:17.020 | augmentation of the human intellect.

02:24:19.800 | So we've been doing this for a while, okay?

02:24:22.320 | So props to Elon Musk,

02:24:24.980 | but we've been thinking about this for a good time.

02:24:27.620 | We've even been visioning it, okay?

02:24:30.260 | So there was a really interesting Jesuit priest.

02:24:34.860 | He was French, Tellier de Chardin.

02:24:37.820 | I don't know if you know who he is.

02:24:39.520 | If not, he's fascinating.

02:24:41.140 | He was actually a soldier before he became a priest.

02:24:45.620 | And so he believed,

02:24:47.140 | he also saw what he called a biosphere.

02:24:49.820 | Now, this guy is talking in like the early 20th century,

02:24:52.540 | like the 1917, that time period.

02:24:56.220 | And so basically he said

02:24:58.820 | and wrote about this thing called the noosphere.

02:25:01.340 | And he basically said,

02:25:02.340 | there will be a point when we merge with our technology

02:25:05.140 | and it's going to be somewhat like some kind of a biosphere.

02:25:08.160 | We have this atmosphere,

02:25:09.580 | and then we have the stratosphere,

02:25:11.260 | and it's gonna be this biosphere,

02:25:13.280 | and we're all gonna be hooked into it mentally.

02:25:16.020 | So we'll be able to communicate

02:25:18.240 | in a way in which we don't communicate now.

02:25:20.500 | So, you know, that sounds so similar to the singularity.

02:25:23.820 | So after I read him many, many years ago,

02:25:27.380 | but when I read the Kurzweil's book about the singularity,

02:25:32.380 | to me, it read just like religious language.

02:25:36.340 | Like it read like, you know, 'cause he,

02:25:38.940 | in fact, it's so much like revelation to me when I read it

02:25:43.420 | that I even assign it to my students in my classes.

02:25:46.060 | I'm like, this is it.

02:25:48.100 | You know, this is like a really great book

02:25:49.980 | of the singularity, you know, the coming singularity,

02:25:52.860 | and this religious event, because it seems like it,

02:25:56.620 | when he writes about it, he says,

02:25:58.340 | "I felt it before I even understood it."

02:26:01.220 | You know? - He, I mean, Kurzweil.

02:26:02.820 | - Kurzweil, yeah, Kurzweil.

02:26:04.140 | - I mean, what are your feelings about,

02:26:06.140 | not feelings, thoughts, feelings too,

02:26:09.460 | about the idea of the singularity?

02:26:12.660 | Do you think it's ultimately the thing

02:26:14.580 | that echoes throughout the history of ideas

02:26:16.820 | is this like moment of revelation,

02:26:21.820 | like this almost mythological religious moment?

02:26:27.100 | Or is there something more physical to this idea of--

02:26:32.140 | - Concrete. - Concrete about the idea of,

02:26:36.860 | there'll come a point where our technology,

02:26:38.900 | there'll be like a phase shift between the basic fabric

02:26:43.980 | of like humanity, of how we interact, you know,

02:26:47.460 | how evolution brought us to be,

02:26:48.980 | this biological interaction,

02:26:50.380 | that our technology crosses some kind of line of capability

02:26:55.380 | that the world be more technology than human

02:27:00.100 | to where it'll leave us behind.

02:27:02.140 | Sort of-- - Oh yeah, I don't think

02:27:04.580 | it's gonna leave us behind.

02:27:05.680 | I think it's gonna take us along.

02:27:07.380 | - But it will be, I mean, I guess the idea

02:27:10.500 | of the singularity, first of all,

02:27:11.780 | isn't the idea of the singularity is like,

02:27:13.500 | we can't possibly predict what's on the other side

02:27:15.620 | of the singularity.

02:27:16.900 | These are the senses like, this is like,

02:27:18.940 | the world will be fundamentally transformed.

02:27:21.340 | - Yes, okay, so right, and then it was, you know,

02:27:24.820 | this was characterized in various movies

02:27:26.980 | like "Lucy" and stuff like that.

02:27:28.780 | Lucy being the first human that, right,

02:27:32.580 | so kind of replicating, this is gonna be the next iteration

02:27:36.260 | of humans is the singularity.

02:27:39.180 | I actually don't believe that, frankly.

02:27:42.780 | However, and the reason I don't believe it

02:27:44.820 | is because we're material beings

02:27:47.140 | and technology has to have a host.

02:27:49.800 | So we're not gonna, you know,

02:27:51.460 | become something super abstract.

02:27:53.860 | Like, it's just impossible to do.

02:27:56.340 | There's nothing like that.

02:27:57.620 | - Well, people will be listening to this podcast

02:27:59.820 | 100 years from now and laughing at it

02:28:01.780 | because they'll be all existing in a virtual reality.

02:28:05.900 | We'll be all information as opposed to material,

02:28:10.540 | meaning connected to some kind of concept of physical,

02:28:14.700 | physical reality.

02:28:17.460 | I don't even know the right words to use here.

02:28:18.940 | - No, see, that's because there are none

02:28:20.940 | because there's no place from,

02:28:23.860 | there's no view from nowhere.

02:28:25.620 | There's no non-material, like,

02:28:29.220 | we have thoughts, but they're connected to us, right?

02:28:32.260 | They're in our, you know, they're somehow, okay.

02:28:35.260 | - As far as you know.

02:28:37.640 | Listen, platonic forms, I think, is about as, you know,

02:28:42.640 | close to what we're talking about as possible.

02:28:45.580 | Like, this place where these things exist

02:28:48.120 | and then there's like a physical instantiation of it.

02:28:50.600 | - No, but see, we're,

02:28:51.700 | the question is, from the perspective of the platonic form,

02:28:57.620 | what does our physical world look like?

02:29:00.400 | You know what I'm saying?

02:29:01.240 | Like, you know, if, say you're a creature

02:29:03.920 | existing in a virtual reality,

02:29:05.240 | like, if you grew up your whole life

02:29:08.640 | in a virtual reality game,

02:29:11.540 | like, what is it, and somebody in that virtual reality world

02:29:15.840 | tells you that there actually exists this physical world

02:29:20.320 | and, in fact, your own,

02:29:23.120 | you think you're in this virtual world,

02:29:25.240 | but it's actually, you're in a body

02:29:27.440 | and this is just your mind putting yourself

02:29:29.280 | and there's a piece of technology.

02:29:31.120 | Like, how will they be able to

02:29:34.280 | think of that physical world?

02:29:35.680 | Would they sound exactly like you just sounded

02:29:38.600 | a minute ago saying, like, well, that's silly.

02:29:41.640 | Who cares if there's a physical world?

02:29:44.240 | It's the entirety of the perception

02:29:48.000 | and my memories and all of that

02:29:51.600 | is in this other realm of,

02:29:54.480 | of like, information.

02:29:57.120 | It's just all just information.

02:29:58.880 | Why do I need some kind of weird meat bag to contain?

02:30:03.200 | So, there's a great, again, I always, you know,

02:30:06.040 | return to something for your audience to read or you.

02:30:09.320 | There's a great, very short article online for free

02:30:13.400 | by David Chalmers.

02:30:14.640 | Do you know him?

02:30:15.480 | He's the philosopher of consciousness.

02:30:17.160 | - Yeah, interviewed him on this podcast, yeah.

02:30:19.080 | - Yeah, yeah, he's cool.

02:30:20.280 | I used to, I was friends with his best friend for a while

02:30:25.240 | when I was in grad school.

02:30:27.720 | - He probably has some weird friends.

02:30:29.160 | - He does.

02:30:30.000 | (both laughing)

02:30:31.640 | He's a philosopher, okay?

02:30:33.720 | So.

02:30:34.800 | - I like his fashion choice and his style too.

02:30:37.000 | (Rachel laughing)

02:30:37.840 | I'm gonna hang out with him a little bit.

02:30:39.400 | He's a great guy.

02:30:40.880 | - Okay, so he wrote this article, which I use a lot.

02:30:44.960 | I love it because it's accessible to undergraduates

02:30:48.040 | and it's called "Matrix as Metaphysics."

02:30:50.920 | And basically, it's an answer to external world skepticism,

02:30:55.440 | which is basically,

02:30:56.640 | how do we know there's an external world, right?

02:30:58.880 | How do we know that we're not in a matrix right now?

02:31:01.360 | And so basically, he's using,

02:31:04.560 | he's also, he even references,

02:31:08.160 | he uses a religious reference even.

02:31:09.880 | He says, "You could think of the matrix of the movie

02:31:13.520 | "as the new book of Genesis for our new world," right?

02:31:18.520 | And I thought, yeah, that's absolutely correct

02:31:23.680 | because we don't know

02:31:27.000 | and we won't know for sure or for certain

02:31:31.280 | therefore what we know is what is real to us.

02:31:34.840 | And so he goes through these scenarios

02:31:37.280 | and within philosophy is called,

02:31:39.160 | there's a, this is different from that,

02:31:41.280 | but it's like this brain in a vat, right?

02:31:43.400 | If you're a brain in a vat

02:31:44.920 | and some not so kind scientist

02:31:47.640 | is like recreating this world for you just to see,

02:31:50.880 | and you think you're this awesome rockstar, right?

02:31:54.040 | And you're living this awesome existence

02:31:55.360 | but you're actually just this brain in this vat, okay?

02:31:58.600 | But there's still a brain in a vat, okay?

02:32:01.200 | So his idea in the matrix as metaphysics

02:32:05.760 | kind of takes out the brain in a vat like this.

02:32:08.760 | I don't know if this is possible.

02:32:10.400 | So I've read critiques of this that,

02:32:13.840 | what you're talking about is a non-dualism,

02:32:15.800 | like there's like,

02:32:16.800 | or it's not necessarily a non-dualism.

02:32:22.320 | I just, I mean, information in and of itself

02:32:29.640 | has to have some kind of material component to it.

02:32:33.080 | - I mean, it's that when taking it

02:32:36.440 | outside the realm of human beings,

02:32:38.080 | 'cause dualism is kind of talking about humans in a sense,

02:32:42.720 | it's just possible to me that there could be creatures

02:32:45.400 | that exist in a very different form,

02:32:49.720 | perhaps rely on very different set of materials

02:32:52.440 | that may perhaps not even look like materials to us.

02:32:57.760 | - Yes, I agree.

02:32:58.800 | - Which is why like information,

02:33:01.440 | it could be even in computers,

02:33:04.840 | the information that's traveling inside a computer

02:33:09.280 | is connected to actual material movement.

02:33:14.280 | - Right.

02:33:15.520 | - Right, so like it is ultimately connected

02:33:17.840 | to material movement,

02:33:18.800 | but it's less and less about the material

02:33:21.160 | and more and more about the information.

02:33:24.040 | So I just mean that it's possible that--

02:33:27.360 | - Do you think the singularity is basically

02:33:29.840 | like sloughing off our material existence?

02:33:32.960 | - Well, I don't know.

02:33:33.800 | - 'Cause I can tell you that this has been

02:33:35.840 | the hope of philosophers and theologians forever.

02:33:39.240 | - Yeah, well, I think we're living through a singularity.

02:33:43.360 | I don't think, I think this world,

02:33:46.000 | just like as you've said already,

02:33:48.420 | has been already transformed significantly

02:33:51.800 | and keeps continually being transformed.

02:33:53.760 | And we're just riding this--

02:33:54.960 | - Yeah, we are.

02:33:55.800 | - Beautiful wave of transformation.

02:33:58.920 | And that's why it's both exciting and terrifying

02:34:03.800 | from a scientific perspective that like,

02:34:08.440 | we're so bad at predicting the future

02:34:10.600 | and the future is always so amazing

02:34:13.600 | in terms of the things it has brought us.

02:34:16.720 | I mean, I don't know if it's always will be this exciting

02:34:19.800 | in terms of the rate of innovation,

02:34:21.960 | but it seems to be increasing still.

02:34:24.200 | And it's really exciting.

02:34:25.200 | It's exciting to-- - I think so too, yeah.

02:34:27.360 | - It's terrifying because obviously we're building

02:34:29.720 | better and better tools for destroying ourselves.

02:34:32.560 | But I, on the optimistic side,

02:34:34.920 | believe that we also can build better and better tools

02:34:38.800 | to defend against all the ways we can destroy ourselves.

02:34:41.840 | And it's kind of this interesting race of innovation.

02:34:45.520 | - Yeah.

02:34:46.360 | - Books are great.

02:34:48.280 | Of course, the greatest book of all time,

02:34:50.600 | two of the greatest books of all time are yours.

02:34:53.480 | But besides those,

02:34:54.760 | what books, technical, fiction, or philosophical

02:35:01.800 | had an impact on your life

02:35:05.400 | or possibly you think others might want to read

02:35:09.240 | and get some insights from?

02:35:10.720 | And what ideas did you pick up from them?

02:35:13.160 | - Great.

02:35:14.000 | Okay, I really enjoy Nietzsche.

02:35:16.880 | Okay, so anything by Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche.

02:35:19.560 | He's a philosopher.

02:35:21.760 | I actually hated him when I first read him

02:35:24.360 | in my early 20s.

02:35:25.720 | - That's like the opposite of most people's experience.

02:35:27.840 | Right?

02:35:28.680 | They usually love him in their 20s

02:35:30.440 | and then they throw him to the curb.

02:35:33.040 | - Later, yeah. - Later, yeah.

02:35:34.720 | - I think he's totally misrepresented and misinterpreted.

02:35:38.160 | - He grew on you.

02:35:39.720 | - Well, it happened in one night.

02:35:41.360 | So, (laughs)

02:35:43.760 | let me just describe it 'cause it's kind of funny.

02:35:45.680 | It happened on New Year's.

02:35:46.920 | So I had friends when I was in my 20s

02:35:49.360 | and they kept telling me, "You have to read Nietzsche.

02:35:52.000 | You have to read Nietzsche."

02:35:52.840 | And I tried, okay?

02:35:54.520 | But again, no.

02:35:56.920 | I didn't like, (laughs)

02:35:57.760 | was not into how he described the philosophical concepts

02:36:02.040 | he was trying to get across.

02:36:03.440 | So, but they weren't giving up.

02:36:06.240 | I have very persistent friends.

02:36:09.160 | So one of them gave me "The Gay Science"

02:36:13.120 | and I had it on my bookstand and it was New Year's Eve

02:36:18.720 | and I'm actually not a big part,

02:36:20.440 | I'm actually an introvert.

02:36:22.160 | I'm a geeky introvert, okay?

02:36:24.040 | So I don't go out and party a lot.

02:36:26.480 | It was New Year's Eve,

02:36:27.520 | even that couldn't get me out to go party.

02:36:29.320 | So I just wanted to go to bed.

02:36:30.760 | - Yeah.

02:36:31.600 | - And New Year's Eve hit and everybody went out

02:36:34.120 | and I was asleep and they woke me up.

02:36:36.200 | And I was like, "Darn, they woke me up.

02:36:37.720 | Eh, might as well read this book by Nietzsche."

02:36:39.760 | Okay, so I picked it up and lo and behold,

02:36:42.280 | I turned to a page that was exactly about,

02:36:44.880 | it was called "Sanctus Januarius,"

02:36:46.920 | which is basically St. January

02:36:48.520 | and it was about New Year's Eve.

02:36:50.600 | And I thought, "Whoa, what a weird coincidence."

02:36:52.720 | And it was a really, it was also super Catholic.

02:36:55.480 | And it was a really beautiful little aphorism.

02:36:58.880 | It's actually a book of aphorisms,

02:37:00.640 | which are kind of religious, right?

02:37:02.760 | And so it's religious, the genre is religious.

02:37:06.360 | Let's put it that way, but he's not.

02:37:08.200 | So basically he says, "Today is the day

02:37:11.120 | when people are supposed to make these resolutions."

02:37:14.080 | Right?

02:37:14.920 | And he says, "From here on out, I will never say no.

02:37:19.280 | I will only say yes."

02:37:20.680 | Okay, "I look away.

02:37:21.880 | If something's horrible, I'll just look away from it.

02:37:23.720 | I won't get angry at it."

02:37:24.880 | And then he also says, "I will be like St. January."

02:37:28.320 | And St. January is actually the saint

02:37:30.840 | whose blood is in this place in Italy.

02:37:33.600 | I think it's in Italy.

02:37:34.800 | And every year it turns to blood again.

02:37:39.560 | So it's like, it's desiccated.

02:37:41.160 | It's, you know, so it's this miracle.

02:37:42.880 | It says, "My blood is now, it flows again."

02:37:47.600 | And I was like, "Wow, that's really beautiful."

02:37:49.240 | And I said, "And a strange coincidence,"

02:37:51.160 | because it just turned, you know, 12.

02:37:54.000 | So it's like New Year's Eve, I pick up the book,

02:37:56.760 | I read this aphorism, I said, "Strange coincidence that,"

02:38:00.440 | and then I turn the page,

02:38:02.080 | and the page is about coincidences.

02:38:04.280 | And I was like, I shut it, and I thought, "This is weird."

02:38:07.760 | And I felt like it was alive.

02:38:09.200 | I felt like the book was alive

02:38:10.400 | and Nietzsche was speaking to me, right?

02:38:12.240 | I had a like experience and engagement with Nietzsche.

02:38:15.320 | And so after that, I couldn't put his stuff down.

02:38:18.520 | It was engaging, fascinating, everything.

02:38:21.120 | So yeah, so that's one book, "The Gay Science."

02:38:23.640 | - What did you pick up from "The Gay Science"

02:38:26.440 | or from Nietzsche in general?

02:38:27.280 | Is there some ideas that just kind of--

02:38:28.480 | - Yeah, yeah, the idea is basically that truth,

02:38:32.520 | he's got awesome one-liners, you know?

02:38:37.280 | So truth is a woman.

02:38:39.120 | So, okay, what does he mean by that?

02:38:42.560 | Truth is a woman.

02:38:43.520 | Basically, she's gonna lie to you.

02:38:45.400 | She looks real attractive,

02:38:47.280 | but she's not gonna tell you the truth.

02:38:49.440 | (both laughing)

02:38:51.960 | - Oh, Nietzsche, yeah.

02:38:53.280 | - So, okay, so basically, I'm not saying

02:38:55.600 | that that's true about women.

02:38:56.760 | I'm obviously a woman.

02:38:58.000 | So basically what he's saying is that truth is not,

02:39:01.760 | is like what I said, Brother Guy said,

02:39:04.480 | it's a moving target, okay?

02:39:06.480 | We started this whole conversation

02:39:08.680 | with what's real, right?

02:39:09.880 | So I should have just gone straight to Nietzsche.

02:39:11.680 | Have it not you heard truth is a woman?

02:39:13.680 | (both laughing)

02:39:15.720 | Okay, so truth is a woman.

02:39:17.040 | All right, so that, and also,

02:39:18.520 | and Foucault, this other philosopher,

02:39:20.960 | a French philosopher, actually takes up this idea

02:39:23.800 | and creates his own framework called genealogy from it.

02:39:28.040 | So the genealogy of morals,

02:39:29.840 | so that we only believe certain things

02:39:31.880 | and we sediment them into truth.

02:39:35.160 | So we say, a truth told, who said that?

02:39:38.840 | Was it Lenin or Stalin?

02:39:40.480 | A truth told enough times,

02:39:43.320 | I mean, a lie told enough times becomes the truth.

02:39:46.320 | So that's basically Nietzschean right there, okay?

02:39:48.920 | So that's Nietzsche.

02:39:49.840 | So Nietzsche also is a huge critic of Christianity,

02:39:52.800 | which I'm actually Catholic, I'm a practicing Catholic.

02:39:56.320 | So I appreciated his critique.

02:39:59.520 | I thought it was actually quite accurate.

02:40:01.960 | And he's a critique of religion in general.

02:40:04.720 | And he's fascinating.

02:40:06.280 | And also I find that his,

02:40:08.000 | he talks about altered states of consciousness

02:40:11.440 | and he calls them elevated states.

02:40:13.720 | And he, I think through his book,

02:40:15.880 | you can actually experience elevated states.

02:40:18.160 | So yeah, Nietzsche.

02:40:19.880 | (both laughing)

02:40:21.840 | Thumbs up.

02:40:22.680 | - So what other book?

02:40:24.680 | - Yeah, okay, so Hannah Rent.

02:40:26.480 | She is a philosopher that not a lot of people know about,

02:40:30.320 | but she was a Jewish woman during the Holocaust

02:40:32.440 | and she was interned at Bergen-Belsen,

02:40:36.520 | which was basically Auschwitz for women.

02:40:39.800 | And she escaped.

02:40:41.040 | She came to the United States

02:40:43.080 | and she had worked with Heidegger,

02:40:44.640 | even though he's supposed to be anti-Semitic

02:40:47.520 | and a Nazi and everything, but they were lovers, okay?

02:40:50.720 | So she comes out and she's at Columbia University

02:40:53.240 | and she teaches philosophy there.

02:40:54.840 | And she writes this, she writes two books,

02:40:57.520 | which I'll recommend.

02:40:58.520 | One is called "Eichmann in Jerusalem,"

02:41:00.440 | where she attends the Nuremberg trials.

02:41:03.200 | And she basically makes this really astute observation

02:41:06.680 | about evil.

02:41:07.520 | And she says, "Eichmann is one of the people

02:41:09.720 | "who sent the Jews to the concentration camps

02:41:11.680 | "who ran the trains," okay?

02:41:14.080 | And she said, "The thing about Eichmann was that

02:41:18.160 | "he didn't seem particularly evil.

02:41:19.960 | "Actually, he seemed to be quite a nice guy."

02:41:23.240 | She said, "What was interesting about him

02:41:24.920 | "was he seemed incredibly thoughtless and stupid."

02:41:28.080 | And she said, "And he used a lot of stereotypes

02:41:30.220 | "like memes."

02:41:31.360 | So she actually wrote about memes before we had them.

02:41:34.320 | And now people just use memes

02:41:36.080 | and they're actually used against us even.

02:41:38.080 | There's even a segments of warfare

02:41:40.080 | called mimetic warfare, all right?

02:41:42.640 | So memes are something that can sway

02:41:44.620 | a whole population of people.

02:41:46.880 | So she wrote about memes before they were even in existence.

02:41:50.400 | And that's Eichmann in Jerusalem.

02:41:52.200 | And I think she also has some really amazing things

02:41:54.080 | to say about evil, is that when people remain thoughtless,

02:41:59.560 | she has another book called "The Life of the Mind,"

02:42:01.620 | which is gigantic and I don't think anybody will read it,

02:42:05.060 | but frankly, it's one of the best books I've ever read.

02:42:08.260 | And I've read it many times.

02:42:09.700 | And basically, "The Life of the Mind,"

02:42:11.340 | in "The Life of the Mind," she asks a very simple question.

02:42:13.660 | She says, "Why do people do bad things?

02:42:15.700 | "Why are they evil?"

02:42:16.820 | And what she says is she wonders if it's,

02:42:19.680 | she says that bad people sleep well at night,

02:42:22.620 | contrary to, you know how the saying,

02:42:24.540 | "How do you sleep at night?"

02:42:25.820 | Well, that's only because you're a good person

02:42:27.500 | that you're asking that question,

02:42:28.860 | because you actually have a conscience.

02:42:30.440 | And a conscience is this dual kind of,

02:42:32.800 | you fight with yourself about

02:42:34.440 | the consequences of your actions.

02:42:36.280 | And she says, "Bad people don't seem to have a conscience.

02:42:39.640 | "So they actually sleep well at night."

02:42:41.400 | And so she goes through a whole history of philosophy

02:42:44.080 | about evil, and that's really a good one too.

02:42:46.720 | But I also have to recommend this one too.

02:42:48.920 | There's one more.

02:42:49.800 | So I know I recommended two,

02:42:51.000 | but just from the same philosopher.

02:42:53.040 | My friend Jeffrey Kripal, he's at Rice University,

02:42:55.520 | and he's in my field, religious studies.

02:42:57.800 | He's written several books.

02:42:59.900 | I mean, he's written a heck of a lot of books,

02:43:01.420 | let's put it that way.

02:43:02.400 | But I think his best book,

02:43:04.900 | or the one that impacted me the most,

02:43:06.500 | is called "Authors of the Impossible."

02:43:08.820 | And his writing is very much like Nietzsche's writing,

02:43:12.560 | in the sense that it's almost as if he reaches out

02:43:16.300 | of the pages and he grabs you,

02:43:18.420 | and he kind of slaps you around and says,

02:43:20.060 | "Think about this."

02:43:21.940 | And you can't help but be changed after you've read it.

02:43:25.140 | And he's got a great chapter in there about Jacques Vallée.

02:43:28.240 | - Oh, so he covers a bunch of different thinkers

02:43:31.480 | and authors that somehow are, what is it?

02:43:36.480 | Renegade in some aspect, or revolutionary in some aspect.

02:43:39.640 | - They're thinking the impossible.

02:43:41.920 | There's a great one he's written called "Mutants and Mystics,"

02:43:45.200 | where he talks about the comic strips.

02:43:48.360 | Gosh, why can't I remember the name of the person?

02:43:51.840 | He just died, Stan Lee.

02:43:53.680 | He talks about the history of the comics by Stan Lee,

02:43:56.860 | and they're all paranormal.

02:43:58.620 | They all start off super paranormal, and it's fascinating.

02:44:02.000 | - On the topic of Hannah Arendt.

02:44:05.740 | - Yeah, Hannah Arendt.

02:44:06.580 | - Hannah Arendt.

02:44:07.700 | So I haven't read her work,

02:44:10.500 | but I've vaguely touched upon commentary of her work,

02:44:15.500 | and it seems like some people think her work is dangerous

02:44:20.300 | in some aspect.

02:44:21.380 | I don't know if you can comment on why that is.

02:44:25.300 | It feels similar with Ayn Rand or something like that,

02:44:30.600 | where this is, I should say not dangerous, but controversial.

02:44:34.080 | - Yes, it is.

02:44:34.920 | Yes, they think it's controversial.

02:44:36.760 | This is the reason, I believe.

02:44:38.560 | I've heard of the controversy.

02:44:40.280 | The controversy is that she didn't, first of all,

02:44:44.400 | she is Jewish, and she did escape a concentration camp,

02:44:49.560 | and yet she's been called anti-Jewish.

02:44:54.020 | And I think part of that was that she basically

02:44:56.820 | was saying something that I believe,

02:45:00.440 | that a lot of normal people are like Eichmann,

02:45:05.120 | and evil things are done by people

02:45:08.100 | who just follow the rules,

02:45:09.940 | and they don't think about what they're doing.

02:45:12.340 | And that's one of the most pernicious forms

02:45:15.760 | of evil of our time.

02:45:18.160 | - So we talked quite a bit about the definitions of religion

02:45:22.520 | and what are the different building blocks of religion.

02:45:26.180 | So one of the, I don't think we touched on,

02:45:28.720 | we did a little bit with the afterlife,

02:45:30.600 | but in a sense, I don't know if you're familiar

02:45:33.700 | with the Ernest Becker work

02:45:35.100 | and all the philosophies around there

02:45:37.640 | about the fear of death and how the fear

02:45:42.240 | of our own mortality, awareness of our own mortality

02:45:45.840 | and its fear as in case of Ernest Becker,

02:45:50.840 | is a significant component in the psychology

02:45:57.120 | in the way we humans develop our understanding of the world.

02:46:01.140 | So what are your thoughts in the context of religion

02:46:06.140 | or maybe in the context of your own mind

02:46:10.000 | about the role of death in life, or fear of death in life?

02:46:15.440 | And are you afraid of death?

02:46:17.900 | (Donna laughs)

02:46:19.400 | Diana, what's your thought? - We cover everything

02:46:20.880 | in this podcast. - Every single topic

02:46:23.840 | is covered. - Wow, okay.

02:46:26.360 | I so happen to have benefited perhaps

02:46:33.140 | from living with an older brother

02:46:35.560 | who seemingly had no fear of death while growing up.

02:46:39.560 | And he did everything, okay?

02:46:42.720 | So he climbed mountains, he was a rock climber,

02:46:47.400 | he jumped out of airplanes.

02:46:49.360 | Of course he had to be a Green Beret

02:46:51.200 | and go into the special forces

02:46:52.560 | where that type of thing is a requirement, right?

02:46:57.520 | And so because of that, I did a lot of things

02:47:00.500 | outside of my comfort zone,

02:47:02.480 | and which probably I shouldn't have done.

02:47:04.020 | And hope to goodness my kids don't do them, okay?

02:47:07.680 | (Donna laughs)

02:47:09.400 | Okay, so do I fear death?

02:47:12.640 | I think about death a lot, actually.

02:47:14.840 | You may not know this about me,

02:47:16.360 | but in my field, I was the co-chair of the death panel.

02:47:21.360 | It's called the death panel. (laughs)

02:47:24.320 | Though it's the panel to think about death

02:47:28.320 | in religious studies, and I was that for many years.

02:47:32.760 | - So you've thought about it a bit.

02:47:34.160 | - A bit, let's see.

02:47:35.400 | I think that people are a little too confident,

02:47:38.600 | I think, about life in general,

02:47:40.240 | that they're gonna kind of live all the time and not die.

02:47:43.760 | I happen to, I mean, I hate to say it,

02:47:45.960 | I'm super positive, and most people would consider me

02:47:49.040 | to be too happy almost, right?

02:47:51.840 | And so it's odd then that I spend a lot of time

02:47:54.600 | thinking about death,

02:47:55.920 | but I wonder if there's a connection there.

02:47:58.240 | - Yeah. - I'm happy to be alive.

02:48:00.440 | Right? - Yeah, that's kind of

02:48:01.600 | what the thinking about death does,

02:48:03.080 | is it makes you appreciate the days that you do have.

02:48:05.920 | - Yeah. - It's a weird controversy.

02:48:07.840 | I tend to believe that the fact that this life ends

02:48:12.600 | gives each day a significant amount of meaning.

02:48:17.600 | So I don't know.

02:48:20.440 | It seems like an important feature of life.

02:48:23.560 | It's not like a bug, it seems like a feature,

02:48:25.720 | that it ends, but it's a strange feature,

02:48:28.560 | 'cause I wish it, like all the good stuff,

02:48:30.880 | you wish it wouldn't end.

02:48:32.560 | - Well, you know what's interesting, Lex,

02:48:34.360 | and I do point this out to my students,

02:48:36.080 | 'cause we cover, in a lot of the basic studies courses

02:48:39.440 | I teach, we cover all religions, or as many as we can,

02:48:42.200 | like the major religions.

02:48:43.280 | And so take Hinduism, for example.

02:48:46.600 | Now, this is an ancient religion, okay?

02:48:48.680 | So you and I are here talking about how we enjoy living

02:48:51.520 | and life and things like that.

02:48:52.920 | Well, the goal of Hinduism is basically

02:48:55.280 | never to get reincarnated again.

02:48:57.120 | It's basically to not live, okay?

02:48:59.280 | And to get off Samsara, which is the wheel of life and death.

02:49:02.320 | - Yeah, escape the whole thing. - Yeah, exactly.

02:49:05.600 | Think of that, conditions are so different

02:49:08.040 | that you and I and my students are happy to be alive.

02:49:11.320 | But they're back in the day, thousands of years ago,

02:49:15.200 | when they wrote, when they actually didn't write it,

02:49:17.080 | they spoke the Vedas,

02:49:18.320 | which were the sacred traditions of India.

02:49:21.080 | They wanted off, they didn't wanna come back.

02:49:24.000 | Life was terrible.

02:49:25.560 | That's what people don't have,

02:49:26.920 | the adequate understanding of history,

02:49:29.480 | that for the majority of people, life is really hard, right?

02:49:34.240 | And you and I, and your audience, among the lucky.

02:49:38.080 | - Yeah. - That we actually like life.

02:49:42.360 | We wanna live. (laughs)

02:49:44.880 | - Most of the time. - Yeah, most of the time.

02:49:46.800 | - What do you think, the biggest,

02:49:49.000 | since we're covering every single possible topic,

02:49:51.320 | let me ask the biggest one, the unanswerable one,

02:49:54.720 | from the perspective of alien intelligence,

02:49:57.320 | or from the perspective of religious studies,

02:49:59.400 | or from the perspective of just Diana,

02:50:02.080 | what do you think is the meaning of this existence,

02:50:06.000 | of this life of ours?

02:50:08.320 | - Yes, okay, so, all right, so. (laughs)

02:50:12.880 | Well, of course I have to,

02:50:14.920 | my philosophical training as an undergrad

02:50:18.360 | always makes me think about,

02:50:20.720 | what's the assumption in your question?

02:50:24.280 | There's an assumption there, it's like, there is a meaning.

02:50:26.480 | Okay, that's the assumption. - What do you mean by meaning?

02:50:27.920 | What do you mean by life?

02:50:28.920 | - Yeah. - Can you define the terms?

02:50:30.600 | - No, no, but listen.

02:50:31.680 | Okay, I'll answer your question.

02:50:32.800 | I'm just gonna say that there's this assumption

02:50:34.520 | that we should have meaning to life, okay?

02:50:36.560 | Well, maybe we shouldn't, maybe it's just all random, okay?

02:50:39.680 | However, I believe that it's not,

02:50:41.880 | and in my opinion, the meaning of life,

02:50:44.640 | in my opinion, is intrinsic.

02:50:46.960 | I enjoy living, I want to live.

02:50:49.000 | Sometimes I don't enjoy living,

02:50:50.480 | and when I don't enjoy living, I change my circumstances.

02:50:53.520 | So it's intrinsic, and I think that

02:50:55.920 | certain things are intrinsic, and like love,

02:50:58.320 | love of your children is kind of,

02:51:00.960 | well, it's actually physiological,

02:51:02.480 | but it's also intrinsic, it's beautiful.

02:51:04.840 | You know, there's something about it

02:51:06.560 | that is intrinsically desirable.

02:51:10.320 | So I think the meaning of life is like that,

02:51:14.360 | intrinsically desirable.

02:51:16.880 | - So it's something that just is born inside you

02:51:21.560 | based on what makes you feel good?

02:51:25.840 | - No, that's hedonism.

02:51:27.560 | That's (laughs)

02:51:28.400 | - So but where do you place love?

02:51:30.320 | Love of your children.

02:51:32.440 | - Yeah, so basically, love of your children, by the way,

02:51:36.000 | is not always easy, because they do things

02:51:39.240 | that they shouldn't do.

02:51:40.800 | You have to discipline them.

02:51:41.840 | That's one of the worst things about parenthood to me,

02:51:44.040 | is disciplining my children.

02:51:45.320 | I don't like to do that, I love them.

02:51:47.120 | So a lot of things that I do that I feel are good

02:51:53.200 | are not easy, so there's an intrinsic sense that,

02:51:57.720 | like, okay, let's take animals, okay?

02:52:01.160 | So we have dogs and cats, okay?

02:52:02.640 | So you might not, but I do.

02:52:04.320 | I've, you know, I told you about them. (laughs)

02:52:07.680 | - Can you share their names?

02:52:10.440 | - If I share their names, I will share their names, okay?

02:52:13.080 | So we have a cat, and it has red, fluffy hair,

02:52:16.680 | and so we called it Trump.

02:52:18.480 | Well, when we got our dog,

02:52:20.160 | we figured that it needed a companion,

02:52:22.000 | so we called it Putin.

02:52:23.520 | So we have Trump and Putin.

02:52:25.160 | - That's the greatest pet names of all time, I'm sorry.

02:52:28.640 | (both laughing)

02:52:31.320 | Or maybe we'll be able to share a picture of your cat,

02:52:35.120 | 'cause this is awesome.

02:52:36.360 | - It is really cute, yeah.

02:52:37.600 | (both laughing)

02:52:38.800 | - Very photogenic.

02:52:39.800 | I mean, is this something that's,

02:52:44.800 | whether we're talking about love or the intrinsic meaning,

02:52:49.800 | do you think that's something that's really special

02:52:53.920 | to humans, or if there is intelligent

02:52:57.440 | alien civilizations out there,

02:52:59.440 | do you think that's something that they possess as well,

02:53:03.000 | maybe in different forms?

02:53:05.920 | Like whatever this thing that meaning is,

02:53:10.200 | this intrinsic drive that we have,

02:53:13.600 | do you think that's just a property of life,

02:53:16.680 | of some level of complexity,

02:53:18.440 | that we will see that everywhere in this universe?

02:53:22.560 | - In my opinion, and this is just my opinion,

02:53:24.800 | I do think that it is,

02:53:27.600 | but I also think that it could take different forms.

02:53:30.240 | So if there is like, think of gravity, right?

02:53:33.240 | Gravity kind of like makes stuff stick to it, right?

02:53:35.920 | It attracts stuff.

02:53:37.560 | Well, what does love do?

02:53:38.800 | That does that too, right?

02:53:40.200 | So people who are, we call them charismatic.

02:53:43.320 | Charism, it means love.

02:53:45.720 | Charism means light and love.

02:53:47.440 | So a charismatic person is a person

02:53:50.560 | who attracts people to them like the sun does, right?

02:53:53.880 | Like, you know?

02:53:54.720 | So I think that whatever this property is,

02:53:59.520 | that's intrinsic, is like gravity,

02:54:02.160 | and most likely takes different forms

02:54:04.800 | in different types of life forms.

02:54:07.160 | - Yeah, I can't wait until like Albert Einstein type

02:54:11.560 | of figure in the future will discover that love is in fact,

02:54:14.400 | one of the fundamental forces of physics.

02:54:17.160 | - That would be cool.

02:54:18.160 | (Diana laughs)

02:54:19.280 | - Diana, this is one of the favorite conversations

02:54:22.600 | I've ever had.

02:54:23.440 | It's truly an honor to talk to you.

02:54:25.760 | And thank you so much for spending all this time with me.

02:54:28.440 | - Absolutely, it's been fun.

02:54:29.560 | Thank you.

02:54:31.200 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:54:32.720 | with Diana Walsh-Basulka,

02:54:34.520 | and thank you to our sponsors,

02:54:36.720 | Element Electrolyte Drink, Grammarly Writing Plugin,

02:54:40.560 | Business Wars Podcast, and Cash App.

02:54:43.760 | So the choice is health, grammar, knowledge, or money.

02:54:47.920 | Choose wisely, my friends.

02:54:49.520 | And if you wish, click the sponsor links below

02:54:52.120 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

02:54:54.880 | And now let me leave you with some words from Carl Sagan.

02:54:58.160 | Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

02:55:02.280 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

02:55:05.120 | (upbeat music)

02:55:07.700 | (upbeat music)

02:55:10.280 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Diana Walsh Pasulka: Aliens, Technology, Religion & the Nature of Belief | Lex Fridman Podcast #149

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