Lex Fridman Podcast - #281 – Grimes: Music, AI, and the Future of Humanity

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Grimes, an artist, musician, songwriter, producer, director, and a fascinating human being who thinks a lot about both the history and the future of human civilization, studying the dark periods of our past to help form an optimistic vision of our future. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description, it's the best way to support this podcast. We got Brave for web browsing, novel for banking, lambda for deep learning, public goods for supplies, and blinkeess for books. Choose wise and my friends.

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Starting point is 00:05:06 Lexa checkout. Cool design, good products, I'm happy. See if you will be happy too. This show is also brought to you by Blinkist. My favorite app for learning new things. Blinkist takes the key ideas from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down It's just 15 minutes. They can read or listen to I actually posted this meme on Twitter My text was I thought we had something special in the meme reads my unread books watching me buy new books and there's this kind of hard-broken stalker image Staring out from the screen deep into your soul. It is true that we sometimes leave the books we meant to read behind just to acquire the

Starting point is 00:05:55 new thing. And I don't think it has to be that way. I think what we ultimately seek is to gain the key insights from a book. You know, there's so many amazing books out there, you can't get a chance to fully read all of them. Use Blinkest oldies, get the insights. Go to Blinkist.com slash likes to start your free seven day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkest Premium membership as Blinkist.com slash Lex spelled B L I and here is my conversation with Grimes. We are becoming cyborgs. Our brains are fundamentally changed. Everyone who grew up with electronics, we are fundamentally different from previous from homo sapiens.

Starting point is 00:06:58 I call us homotechno. I think we have evolved into homotechno, which is essentially a new species. Previous technologies may have even been more profound and moved us to a certain degree, but I think the computers are what make us homo techno. I think this is what it's a brain augmentation. So it allows for actual evolution. The computers accelerate the degree to which all the other technologies can also be accelerated. Would you classify yourself as a homo sapien or a homo techno?

Starting point is 00:07:24 Definitely a homo techno. I think we're all high. You're one of the earliest of the species. I think most of us are. Oh yeah, the cloud lifter. There you go. There you go. You know your stuff.

Starting point is 00:07:37 Have you ever used a cloud lifter? Yeah, actually, this microphone cloud lifter is what Michael Jackson used. No, really? Yeah, this is like filler and stuff. This mic and a cloud lifter is what Michael Jackson used. So no really. Yeah, this is like filler and stuff. This mic and the cloud look and that yeah, it's a incredible microphone. It's very flattering on vocals. I've used this a lot. It's great for demo vocals.

Starting point is 00:07:55 It's great in a room. Like sometimes it's easier to record vocals if you're just in a room and like the music's playing and you just want to like feel it and it's not so it's not in the headphones. And this mic is pretty directional. So I think it's like a good mic for like just vibing out and just getting a real good vocal take. Just vibing. Just in a room. Anyway this is the this is the Michael Jackson Quincy Jones microphone. I feel way more badass now. All right let's get it you want to just get into it. I guess so. Alright one of your names at least in this space and time is C like the letter C and you told me that C means a lot of things. It's the speed of light, it's the render rate

Starting point is 00:08:34 of the universe, it's yes and Spanish, it's the crescent moon and it happens to be my favorite programming language because it basically runs the world, but it's also powerful, fast, and it's dangerous because you can mess things up really bad with it because of all the pointers. But anyway, which of these associations with the name C is the coolest to you? I mean, to me, the coolest is the speed of light, obviously, or speed of light. When I say render rate of the universe, I think I mean the speed of light obviously or speed of light. When I say render rate of the universe, I think I mean the speed of light because essentially that's what we're rendering at. See, I think we'll

Starting point is 00:09:11 know if we're in a simulation, if the speed of light changes because if they can improve their render speed then what's already pretty good. It's already pretty good, but if it improves, then we'll know, you know, we can probably be like, okay, they've updated or upgraded. What's fast enough for us humans, because it seems like, it seems immediate. There's no delay, there's no latency in terms of like us humans on earth interacting with things. But if you're like, like, intergalactic species operating on a much larger scale, then you're going to start noticing some weird stuff. Or if you can operate in like, around a black hole, then you're going to start to see some

Starting point is 00:09:49 random issues. You can't go fast in the speed of light, correct? So it really limits our ability or it's one's ability to travel space. Theoretically, you can. You have wormholes. So there's nothing in general relativity that precludes faster than speed of light travel. But it just seems you're going to have to do some really funky stuff with very heavy things

Starting point is 00:10:15 that have weirdness that have basically tears and space time. We don't know how to do that. Do navigators know how to do it? Do navigators? Yeah. Folding space. Basically making wormholes. how to do that. Do navigators know how to do it? Do navigators? Yeah. The folding space.

Starting point is 00:10:26 Basically making wormholes. So the name C. Yes. Who are you? Do you think of yourself as multiple people? Are you one person? Do you know? Like in this morning, we're a different person than you are tonight.

Starting point is 00:10:44 We are, I should say recording this basically at midnight which is awesome. Yes, thank you so much. I think I'm about eight hours late. No, you're right on time. Good morning. This is the beginning of a new day. Anyway, are you the same person you were in the morning in the evening? Do you as there are multiple people in there, do you think of yourself as one person, or maybe you have no clue, or you just jot mystery to yourself? Okay, these are really intense questions, but uh...

Starting point is 00:11:13 So, let's go, because I asked this myself, like, look in the mirror, who are you? People tell you to just be yourself, but what does that even mean? Uh, I mean, I think my personality changes with everyone I talk to. So I have a very inconsistent personality. Yeah. Person to person. So the interaction, your personality, or my mood, like I'll go from being like a megalomaniac to being like, you know, just like a total hermit who is very shy.

Starting point is 00:11:42 So some combinatorial combination of your mood and the person you're interacting with. Yeah, mood people I'm interacting with, but I think everyone's like that, maybe not. Well, not everybody acknowledges it, and able to introspect it. Who brings out what kind of person, what kind of mood brings out the best in you

Starting point is 00:11:59 as an artist and as a human? Can you introspect this? Like my best friends, like people I can, when I'm like super confident, and I know that they're gonna understand, understand everything I'm saying. So like my best friends, then, when I can start being really funny,

Starting point is 00:12:16 that's always my like peak mode. But it's like, yeah, takes a lot to get there. Let's talk about constraints. You've talked about constraints and limits. Do those help you out as an artist or as a human being, or do they get in the way? Do you like the constraints in creating music and creating art and living life? Do you like the constraints that this world puts on you? Or do you hate them? If constraints are moving, then you're good, right? Like, it's like, it's like, as we are progressing with technology, we're changing the constraints of like artistic

Starting point is 00:12:55 creation, you know, making video and music and stuff is getting a lot cheaper. There's constantly new technology and new software that's making it faster and easier. We have so much more freedom than we had in the 70s, like when Michael Jackson, you know, when they recorded Thriller with this microphone, like they had to use a mixing desk and all this stuff. And like probably even getting a studio as hard as really expensive and you have to be a really good singer and you have to know how to use the mixing desk and everything. And now I can just, you know, I've made a whole album on this computer. I have a lot more freedom, but then I'm also constrained in different ways

Starting point is 00:13:31 because there's like literally millions more artists. It's like a much bigger playing field. It's just like, I also, I didn't learn music. I'm not a natural musician. So I don't know anything about actual music. I just know about like the computer. So I'm really kind of just like messing around and like trying to think that. Well, yeah, I mean, but the nature of music is changing. So you're saying you don't know

Starting point is 00:13:57 actual music, what music is changing. Music is becoming, you've talked about this is becoming, music is becoming, you've talked about this is becoming, it's like merging with technology. Yes. It's becoming something more than just like the notes on a piano. It's becoming some weird composition that requires engineering skills, programming skills, some kind of human robot interaction skills, and still some of the same things that Michael Jackson had, which is like a good ear for a good sense of taste of what's good and not. The final thing, what is put together.

Starting point is 00:14:32 Like you're allowed, you're enabled, empowered with a laptop to layer stuff, to start like layering insane amounts of stuff, and it's super easy to do that. I do think music production is a really underrated art form. I feel like people really don't appreciate it. When I look at publishing splits, the way that people pay producers and stuff,

Starting point is 00:14:53 it's super, like producers are just deeply underrated. Like so many of the songs that are popular right now or for the last 20 years, like part of the reason they're popular is because the production is really interesting, really sick, really cool. And it's like, I don't think listeners, like people just don't really understand what music production is, it's not, it's sort of like this weird, discombobulated art form, it's not like a formal, because it's so new, there isn't like a formal training path for it. It's mostly driven by like auto-dye dacks. Like it's like almost everyone I know who's good at production, like you didn't go to music school or anything, they just taught themselves.

Starting point is 00:15:36 They're mostly different, like the music producers you know, is there some commonalities the time together, or are they all just different kinds of weirdos? Because I just I just saw that with Rick Rubin. I don't know if you've yeah a lot. I mean Rick Rubin is like literally one of the gods of music production. Like he's one of the people who first you know who like made music production you know made the production as important as the actual lyrics or the notes. But the thing he does, which is interesting, I don't know if you can speak to that, but just hang out with him, he seems to just sit there and silence, close his eyes, and listen.

Starting point is 00:16:11 It's like, he almost does nothing. And that nothing somehow gives you freedom to be the best version of yourself. So that's music production somehow too, which is like encouraging you to do less, to simplify, to like push towards minimalism. I mean, I guess, I mean, I work differently from Rick Rubin because Rick Rubin produces

Starting point is 00:16:34 for other artists, whereas I mostly produce for myself. So, it's a very different situation. I also think Rick Rubin, he's in that, I would say advanced category of producer where like you've like earned your, you can have an engineer and stuff and people like do the stuff for you. But I usually just like do stuff myself. Do you the engineer, the producer and the artist? Yeah, I guess I would say I'm in the era, like the post-rig urban era, like I come from the kind of like, Skrillex school of thought, which is like where you are,

Starting point is 00:17:10 yeah, the engineer producer artist, like, right. I mean lately, sometimes I'll work with a producer now. I'm gently sort of delicately starting to collaborate a bit more, but like, I think I'm kind of from the, like the, whatever 2010s explosion of things where, um, you know, everything became available on the computer and you kind of got this like loan wizard energy thing going. So the, you embrace being the loneliness.

Starting point is 00:17:40 Is the loneliness somehow an engine of creativity? Like, uh, so most of creativity. Like most of your stuff, most of your creative quote unquote genius and quotes is in the privacy of your mind. Yes, well it was. But here's the thing, I was talking to Daniel Ick and he said, he's like most artists they have about 10 years,

Starting point is 00:18:04 like 10 good years and then they usually stop making their like vital shit. And I feel like I'm sort of like nearing the end of my 10 years on my own. And so you have to become somebody else. Now I'm like I'm in the process of becoming somebody else and reinventing. When I work with other people because I've never worked with other people, I find that I make, like, that I'm, I'm exceptionally rejuvenated and making, like, some of the most vital work I've ever made. So, because I think another human brain is like one of the best tools you can possibly find. Like, it's a funny way to put it out of it.

Starting point is 00:18:41 It's like, if a tool is like, you know, whatever HP plus one or like adds some like stats to your character, like another human brain will like square it instead of like adding something. Double up the experience points. I love this. We should also mention we're playing tavern music before this, and which I love, which I first, I think I've got the first stop the tavern music. Yeah, because it doesn't, the audio. Okay, okay.

Starting point is 00:19:08 But it makes- Yeah, it'll make the podcast- Added in post, add in in post. No one will want to listen to the podcast if you- They probably would, but it makes me, it reminds me like of a video game. Like a role-playing video game where you have experience points. There's something really joyful about wandering places like Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, exploring these landscapes in another world, and then you get experience points, you can work on different skills,

Starting point is 00:19:35 and somehow you progress in life. I don't know, it's simple. It doesn't have some of the messy complexities of life, and there's usually a bad guy you can fight in Skyrim, it's dragons, and so on. I'm sure in Elder Ring there's usually a bad guy you can fight in Skyrim, it's dragons and so on. I'm sure in Elden Ring there's a bunch of monsters you can fight. I love that. I feel like Elden Ring, I feel like this is a good analogy to music production though, because it's like I feel like the engineers and the people creating these open worlds are, it's sort of like similar to people to music producers, whereas it's like this,

Starting point is 00:20:02 this hit an archetype that like no one really understands what they do and no one really knows who they are, but they're like, it's like the artist engineer, because it's like, it's both art and fairly complex engineering. Well, you're saying they don't get enough credit. Aren't you kind of changing that by becoming the person doing everything? Aren't, isn't the engineer? Well, I mean, others have gone before me. I'm not, you know, there's like Tim Beland and Skrillex

Starting point is 00:20:28 and there's all these people that are like, you know, very famous for this, but I just think the general, I think people get confused about what it is and just don't really know what it is per se. And it's just when I see a song, like when there's like a hit song, like, I's like a hit song, like, um, like, I'm just trying to think of like, it's just going for like even just them a basic pop hit. Like, um, like, what's it? Like rules by do a leap or something. The production on that is actually like really crazy. I mean, the song is also great,

Starting point is 00:21:01 but it's like the production is exceptionally memorable. Like, you know, and it's just like no one, I don't even know who produced that song. It's just like, isn't part of like the rhetoric of how we discuss the creation of art. We just sort of like don't consider the music producer, because I think the music producer used to be more just simply recording things. Yeah, that's interesting, because when you think about movies, we talk about the actor and the actresses, but we also talk about the director.

Starting point is 00:21:31 The directors, yeah. We don't talk about like that, but the music is often. The Beatles music producer was one of the first kind of, got one of the first people sort of introducing crazy sound design into pop music. I forget his name. He has the same I forget his name, but you know

Starting point is 00:21:48 Like that he was doing all the weird stuff like dropping pianos and like Oh to get the a to get to get the sound to get the authentic sound. What about lyrics? You think those Where do they fit into home port and they are I was hard broken to learn the Eliston right his songs I was very mad a lot of people don't write their songs I understand this but but here's a here's a thing I feel like there's this desire for authenticity I used to be like really mad when like people wouldn't write or produce their music and I'd be like that's fake and then I realized there's all this like weird bitterness bitterness and agronis and art about authenticity.

Starting point is 00:22:29 But I had this weird realization recently where I started thinking that art is sort of a decentralized, collective thing. Like art is kind of a conversation with all the artists that have ever lived before you. You know, like it's like you're really just sort of, it's not like anyone's reinventing the wheel here. Like you're kind of just taking, you know, thousands of years of art and running it through your own little algorithm and then like making your interpretation of it. You're just joining the conversation with all the other artists that came before. It's such a beautiful way to look at it.

Starting point is 00:23:10 Like, and it's like, I feel like everyone's always like, there's always copyright and IP and this and that and or authenticity and it's just like, like, I think we need to stop seeing this as this like, egotistical thing of like, oh, the creative genius, the lone creative genius, or this or that, because it's like, I think art isn't, shouldn't be about that, I think,

Starting point is 00:23:29 art is something that sort of brings humanity together. And it's also art is also kind of the collective memory of humans. It's like, we don't, like, we don't give a fuck about whatever ancient Egypt, like, how much grain got sent that day and sending the records and who went where and how many shields needed to be produced for this. We just remember their art. And it's like in our day-to-day life, there's all this stuff that seems more important than art because it helps us function and survive.

Starting point is 00:24:01 But when all this is gone, the only thing that's really going to be left is the art. The technology will be obsolete. That's so fascinating. Like, the humans will be dead. That is true. A good compression of human history is the art we've generated across the different centuries of different millennia.

Starting point is 00:24:19 So will the aliens come? When the aliens come, they're going to find the hieroglyphs and the pyramids. I mean, art can be broadly defined. They might find the engineering marvels, the bridges, the rockets, the... I guess, like, sort of classify though. Architecture is art. Yes. To... I consider engineering in those formats to be art, for sure.

Starting point is 00:24:40 It sucks that digital art is easier to delete. So if there's an apocalypse in nuclear war that can disappear. Yes And the physical there's something still valuable about the physical manifestation of art That's the sucks that Like music for example has to be played by somebody Yeah, I mean, I do think we should do have a foundation type situation where we like You know how we have like seed banks up in the north and stuff. Like we should probably have like like a like a sore powered or geothermal little bunker that like has all the all human knowledge.

Starting point is 00:25:13 Oh, you mentioned Daniel, I can Spotify. What do you think about that as an artist? What's Spotify? Is that empowering? I get to me, Spotify is a consumer, super exciting. It makes it easy for me to access music from all kinds of artists Get to explore all kinds of music make it super easy to sort of Q-rate my own playlist and have fun with all that it was so liberating to let go You know, I used to collect you know albums and CDs and so on like I got like hoarded albums Yeah, like they matter, but the albums. Yeah. Like they matter. But the reality, you know, if that was really liberating,

Starting point is 00:25:48 I can let go of that. And letting go of the albums you're kind of collecting allows you to find new music, exploring new artists and all that kind of stuff. But I know from a perspective on artists that could be, like you mentioned, competition could be a kind of constraint. Because there's more and more and more artists

Starting point is 00:26:05 on the platform. I think it's better that there's more artists. I mean, again, this might be propaganda because this is all for conversation with Daniel X. So this could easily be propaganda. We're all a victim of somebody's propaganda. So let's accept this. But Daniel X was telling me that,

Starting point is 00:26:21 you know, at the, because I, you know, when I met him, I like, I came in all furious about Spotify and like a grilled them super hard. So I got his, his answers here. But he was saying, like, at the sort of peak of the CD industry, there was like 20,000 artists making millions and millions of dollars. Like, there was just like a very tiny kind of 1% and Spotify is kind of democratized the industry because now I think he said there's about a million artists making a good living from Spotify.

Starting point is 00:26:53 And when I heard that I was like honestly, I would rather make less money and have just like a decent living, then and have more artists be able to have that. Even though I like I wish it could include everyone, but yeah, that's really hard to argue with. YouTube is the same as YouTube's mission. They want to basically have as many creators as possible make a living, some kind of living. And that's so hard to argue with.

Starting point is 00:27:23 It's so, but I think there's better ways to do it. My manager, I actually wish he was here. I would have brought him up. My manager is building an app that can manage you. So it'll help you organize your percentages and get your publishing and do it, do it, do it, do it. So you can take out all the middlemen so you can have a much bigger, it'll just like automate it.

Starting point is 00:27:44 So you can get the. So automate the manager? Automate managing, management, publishing, and legal, it can read, the app he's building can read your contract and tell you about it. Because one of the issues with music right now, it's not that we're not getting paid enough,

Starting point is 00:28:00 but it's that the art industry is filled with middlemen because artists are not good at business. And from the beginning, like Frank Sinatra, it's all mob stuff, like the music industry is run by business people, not the artists, and the artists really get very small cuts of what they make. And so I think part of the reason I'm a technocrat, which, I mean, your fans are going to be technocrats, so no one's, they're not going to be mad at me about this, but my fans hate it when I say this kind of thing, or the general public...

Starting point is 00:28:34 They don't like technocrats. They don't like technocrats. When I watched Battle Angel Alita and they were like, the Martian Technocracy, and I was like, yeah, Martian Technocracy, and then they were like, and they're evil. And I was like, oh, okay. I was like, because Martian technocracy. And I was like, yeah, Martian technocracy. And then they were like, and they're evil. And I was like, oh, okay. I was like, his Martian technocracy sounds sick to me. Yes, your intuition is technocrats would create some kind of beautiful world.

Starting point is 00:28:55 For example, what my manager's working on, if you can create an app that removes the need for a lawyer, and then you could have a smart contract on the blockchain, removes the need for a lawyer and then you could have a smart contract on the blockchain removes the need for management and organizing all the stuff. Like, can read your stuff and explain it to you, can collect your royalties, then the small amount of money that you're getting from Spotify actually means a lot more and goes a lot further. You can remove some of the bureaucracy, some of the inefficiencies that make life not as

Starting point is 00:29:27 great as it could be. Yeah, I think the issue isn't that there's not enough, like the issue is that there's inefficiency. And I'm really into this positive some mindset, you know, the win-win mindset of like, instead of, you know, fighting over the scraps, how do we make the, or worrying about scarcity, like instead of a scarcity mindset, why don't we just increase the efficiency and, you know, in that way. Expand the size of the pie.

Starting point is 00:29:55 Let me ask you about experimentation. So you said, which is beautiful, being a musician is like having a conversation with all those that can't came before you. How much of creating music is like kind of having that conversation, trying to fit into the cultural trends and how much of it is like trying to as much as possible be an outside and come up with something totally new. Like when you're thinking, when you're experimenting, are you trying to be totally different, totally weird?

Starting point is 00:30:29 Are you trying to fit in? And this is so hard because I feel like I'm kind of in the process of semi retiring from music. So this is like my old brain. Yeah, bring it back. Bring it from like the shelf, put it on the table for a couple of minutes, we'll just poke it. I think it's a bit of both because I think forcing yourself to engage with new music is really great for Neural Plasticity. As people, part of the reason music is marketed at young people is because

Starting point is 00:31:02 young people are very Neural Plastic. So if you 16 to like 23 or whatever, it's going to be really easy for you to love new music. And if you're older than that, it gets harder and harder and harder. And I think one of the beautiful things about being a musician is I just constantly forced myself to listen to new music. And I think it keeps my brain really plastic. And I think this is a really good exercise. I just think everyone should do this.

Starting point is 00:31:25 You listen to music and you hate it. I think you should just keep force yourself to like, okay, well why do people like it? And like, you know, make your brain form new neural pathways and be more open to change. That's really brilliant, actually. Sorry to interrupt, but like that exercise is really amazing to embrace change, embrace practice on your plasticity.

Starting point is 00:31:52 Because that's one of the things you fall in love with a certain band and you just stay with that for the rest of your life. And then you never understand the modern music. That's a really good exercise. Most of the streaming on Spotify is classic rock and stuff. New music makes up a very small chunk of what is played on Spotify. And I think this is like not a good sign for us as a species. I think, yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:13 So it's a good measure of the species open-mindedness to change. It's how often you listen to new music. Yeah. The brain, let's put the music brain on the back on music brain on the back of the shelf, I got to pull out the future as brain for a second. In what wild ways do you think the future, saying like 30 years, maybe 50 years, maybe 100 years will be different from, like from our current way of life on earth. We can talk about augmented reality, virtual reality,

Starting point is 00:32:46 maybe robots, maybe space travel, maybe video games, maybe generic engineering, I can keep going, cyborgs, aliens, world wars, maybe destructive nuclear wars, good and bad. But when you think about the future, what are you imagining? What's the weirdest and the wildest it could be? Have you read service detail by Ian Banks?

Starting point is 00:33:12 Service detail is my favorite depiction of a oh wow you have to read this book It's literally the greatest science fiction book possibly ever bases the man. Yeah, for sure. What have you read? Just the player of games. I read that titles can't be copyrighted, so you can just steal them. I was like, play of games, sick. Nice. So you could name your album.

Starting point is 00:33:33 Like I always want to. I want me and Juliet. I always wanted to name an album more in peace. Nice. Like that would be, like you, that is a good, that's a good, uh, what have I heard that before? You can do that, like you could do that. Um, also things that are in the public domain. For people who have no clue, you do have a song called Player Games.

Starting point is 00:33:50 Yes. Oh yeah. So Ian Banks, Surface Detail is in my opinion the best future that I've ever read about or heard about in science fiction. Basically there's, the relationship with super intelligence, like artificial super intelligence, is just, it's like great. I want to credit the person who coined this term

Starting point is 00:34:14 because I love this term. And I feel like young women don't get enough credit in. Yeah, so if you go to Protopia Futures on Instagram, what is her name? Personalized donor experience, a scale, already gap, power donor experience. Monica Beals-Guyte, I'm saying that wrong. And I'm probably going to, I'm probably butchering this a bit, but Protopia is sort of, if Utopia is unattainable, protopia is sort of like, well, it's an awesome Instagram, a top-of-the-futures.

Starting point is 00:34:49 A great, a future that is, you know, as good as we can get. The future, positive future. AI, is this a centralized AI? In the surface, in surface detail where is the distributed, what kind of AI is it? They mostly exist as giant super ships, like sort of like the gild ships in Dune, like they're these giant ships that kind of AI's? They mostly exist as giant super ships, like sort of like the

Starting point is 00:35:05 guild ships in Dune, like there are these giant ships that kind of kind of move people around and the ships are sentient and they can talk to all the passengers. And I mean, there's a lot of different types of AI in the Banksy and Future, but in the opening scene of surface detail, there's this place called the culture and the culture is basically a protopian future and a protopian future I think is like a future that is like Obviously, it's not it's not utopia. It's not perfect and like it's like striving for utopia I think feels hopeless and and it's sort of like Maybe not the best terminology to be using

Starting point is 00:35:41 so it's like it's a pretty good place, like mostly, like, you know, super intelligence and biological beings exist fairly in harmony. There's not too much war. There's like as close to a quality as you can get, you know, it's like, it's like approximately a good future. Like there's really awesome stuff. It's, and the opening scene, this girl, she's born as a sex slave outside of the culture.

Starting point is 00:36:10 So she's in a society that doesn't adhere to the cultural values. She tries to kill the guy who is her master, but he kills her. But unbeknownst to her when she was traveling on a ship through the culture with him one day, a ship put a neural lace in her head. And neural lace is sort of like, it's basically a neural link, because life imitate art. It does indeed. It does indeed. So she wakes up and the opening scene is her memory has

Starting point is 00:36:38 been uploaded by this neural lace when she's been killed. And now she gets to choose a new body and this AI is interfacing with her recorded memory in her neural lace and helping her and being like hello, you're dead, but because you had a neural lace your memories uploaded, do you want to choose a new body and you're going to be born here in the culture and like start a new life, which is just that's like the opening. It's like so sick. And the ship is the super intelligence. All the ships are kind of super intelligences, but they still want to preserve a kind of rich, fulfilling experience for the humans. Yeah, like they're like friends with the humans. And then there's a bunch of ships that don't want to exist biological beings,

Starting point is 00:37:15 but they just have their own place like way over there. But they don't, they're just do their own thing. They're not necessarily. So it's a pretty, this portopian existence is pretty peaceful. Yeah. I mean, and then, and then, for example, one of the main fights in the book is they're fighting, there's these artificial hells that, and people are, don't think it's ethical to have artificial hell. Like, basically, when people do crime, they get sent, like, when they die, their memory gets sent to an artificial hell and they're eternally tortured. And so,

Starting point is 00:37:43 get sent, like when they die, their memory gets sent to an artificial hell and they're eternally tortured. And so, um, and then the way that society is deciding whether or not to have the artificial hell is that they're having these simulated, they're having like a simulated war. So instead of actual blood, you know, people are basically essentially fighting in a video game to choose the outcome of this. But there's still experience in the suffering. Wait, in this artificial hell or no, can you experience stuff or? So the artificial of this. But there's still experience in the suffering in this artificial hell or no, can you experience stuff or?

Starting point is 00:38:07 So the artificial hell sucks. Yes. And a lot of people in the culture want to get rid of the artificial hell. There's a simulated wars. Are they happening in the artificial hell? So the simulated wars are happening outside of the artificial hell between the political factions who are so this political faction says we should have simulated hell to deter crime. And this political faction is saying no, simulated hell is unethical.

Starting point is 00:38:30 And so instead of like having, you know, blowing each other up with nukes, they're having like a giant fortnight battle to decide this. Which, you know, to me, that's protopia. That's like, okay, we can have war without death. You know, I don't think there should be some related health. I think that is definitely one of the ways in which technology could go very, very, very, very wrong. So almost punishing people in a digital space or something like that. Yeah, like torturing people's memories.

Starting point is 00:39:02 So either as a deterrent, like if you committed a crime, but also just for personal pleasure if there's some sick-demented humans in this world Dan Carlin actually has this episode of Hardcore history on painful payment. Oh, that episode is Fuck is dark because it he kind of goes through human history and says like we as humans seem to enjoy secretly enjoy or used to be openly enjoy sort of the torture and the death watching the death and torture of other humans. I do think if people were consenting, we should be allowed to have gladiatorial matches.

Starting point is 00:39:47 But consent is hard to achieve in those situations. It always starts getting slippery. It can be also forced. It starts getting weird. This way to which excitement, this is what he highlights, there's something about human nature that wants to see that violence. It's really dark. And you hope that we can sort of overcome that aspect of human nature, but that's still within us somewhere.

Starting point is 00:40:12 Well, I think that's what we're doing right now. I have this theory that what is very important about the current moment is that all of evolution has been survival of the fittest up until now. And at some point, you know, it's kind of, the lines are kind of fuzzy, but in the recent past, or maybe even just right now, we're getting to this point where we can choose intelligent design. Like, we probably since like the integration of the iPhone, like we are becoming cyborgs. Like, our brains are fundamentally changed. Everyone who grew up with electronics,

Starting point is 00:40:50 we are fundamentally different from previous, from Homo sapiens. I call us Homo techno. I think we have evolved into Homo techno, which is like essentially a new species. Like, if you look at the way, if you took an MRI of my brain, you took an MRI of like a medieval brain,

Starting point is 00:41:07 I think it would be very different the way that it has evolved. Do you think what historians look back at this time? They'll see like this was a fundamental shift to what a human being is? I think I do not think we are still homo sapiens. I believe we are homo techno. And I think we have evolved. And I think right now, the way we are evolving, we can

Starting point is 00:41:29 choose how we do that. And I think we are being very reckless about how we're doing that. Like we're just having social media, but I think this idea that like this is a time to choose intelligent design should be taken very seriously. It like now is the moment to reprogram the human computer. You know, it's like if you go blind, your visual cortex will get taken over with other functions. We can choose our own evolution. We can change the way our brains work. And so we actually have a huge responsibility to do that. And I think I'm not sure who should be responsible for that.

Starting point is 00:42:04 But there's definitely not adequate education. We're being inundated with all this technology that is fundamentally changing the physical structure of our brains. And we are not adequately responding to that to choose how we want to evolve. And we could evolve. We could be really whatever we want. And I think this is a really important time.

Starting point is 00:42:24 And I think if we choose correctly and we choose wisely, consciousness could exist for a very long time and integration with AI could be extremely positive. And I don't think enough people are focusing on this specific situation. Do you think my irreversibly screw things up if we get things wrong now? Because like the flip side of that

Starting point is 00:42:42 it seems humans are pretty adaptive. So maybe the way we figure things out is by screwing it up, like social media over a generation will see the negative effects of social media. And then we build new social medias and we just keep improving stuff. And then we learn the failure from the failures of the past. Because humans seem to be really adaptive. On the flip side, we can get it wrong in a way where like literally we create weapons of war or increase hate, pass a certain threshold, we really do a lot of damage. I mean, I think we're optimized to notice the negative things, but I would actually say, you know, one of the things that I think people aren't noticing is like if you look at Silicon Valley and you look at like whatever the tech the tech

Starting point is 00:43:26 Technology like what's been happening there like it's like when Silicon Valley started it was all just like Facebook and all this like for-profit crap that like really Wasn't particular. I guess it was useful, but it was it's sort of Just like whatever But like now you see like lab-grown meat, like compostable or like biodegradable like single-use cutlery or like meditation apps. I think we are actually evolving and changing and technology is changing. I think there just maybe there isn't quite enough education about this. And also, I don't know if there's like quite enough incentive for it because I think the

Starting point is 00:44:14 way capitalism works, what we define as profit, we're also working on an old model of what we define as profit. I really think if we changed the idea of profit to include social good, you can have economic profit, social good also counting as profit would incentivize things that are more useful and more whatever spiritual technology or like positive technology or things that help re-program a human computer in a good way or things that help us intelligently design our new brains. Yeah, there's no reason why within the framework of capitalism, the word profit, or the idea of profit, can't also incorporate the well-being of a human being. So like long-term well-being, long-term happiness. Or even, for example, we were talking about motherhood.

Starting point is 00:45:05 Part of the reason I'm so late is because I had to get the baby to bed. And it's like, I keep thinking about motherhood. Under capitalism, it's like this extremely essential job that is very difficult, that is not compensated. And we sort of like value things by how much we compensate them. And so we really devalue motherhood in our society and pretty much all societies. Like capitalism does not recognize motherhood.

Starting point is 00:45:29 It's just a job that you're supposed to do for free. And it's like, but I feel like producing great humans should be seen as a great, as profit under capitalism. Like that should be, that's like a huge social good. Like every awesome human that gets made as so much to the world So like if that was integrated into the profit structure then You know, and if we potentially found a way to compensate motherhood so come up with a compensation That's much broader than just money or or it could just be money like what if you just made I

Starting point is 00:46:06 Don't know but I don't know how you'd pay for that. I mean, that's where you start getting into. Reallocation resources that people get upset over. But what if we made like a motherhood dow? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, used it to fund like single mothers, like, you know, pay for making babies.

Starting point is 00:46:34 So I mean, if you create and put beautiful things onto the world, that could be companies that can be bridges, that could be art, that could be a lot of things, and that could be children, which are... Or education or... Anything, that could just be valued by society, and that should be somehow incorporating to the framework of what, as a market, of what, like if you contribute children to this world,

Starting point is 00:47:01 that should be valued and respected, and sort of celebrated like proportional to what it is, which is the thing that fuels human civilization. Yeah, I guess. It's kind of important. I feel like everyone's always saying, I mean, I think we're in very different social spheres, but everyone's always saying like dismantle capitalism. And I'm like, well, okay, well, I don't think the government should own everything.

Starting point is 00:47:23 Like I don't think we should not have private ownership. Like that's scary. You know, like that starts getting into weird stuff and just sort of like, I feel there's almost no way to do that without a police state. You know? But obviously capitalism has some major flaws. And I think actually Mac showed me this idea

Starting point is 00:47:41 called social capitalism, which is a form of capitalism that just like considers social good to be also profit. Like, you know, it's like right now companies need to like, you're supposed to grow every quarter or whatever to like show that you're functioning well, but it's like, okay, well, what if you kept the same amount of profit, you're still in the green, but then you have also all the social good. Like do you really need all this extra economic growth, or could you add this social good in that counts?

Starting point is 00:48:10 And, you know, I don't know if I am not an economist, I have no idea how this could be achieved, but it's... I don't think economists know how anything could be achieved either, but they pretend it's the thing. They construct a model and they go on TV shows and sound like an expert. That's the definition of economists. How did being a mother, becoming a mother, change is a human being, would you say? Man, I think it kind of changed everything and it's still changing me a lot. It's actually changing me more right now in this moment than it was before

Starting point is 00:48:47 Like today like this just like they get in the little Most recent months and stuff Can you elucidate that How Like when you wake up in the morning and you look at it. It's again, which who are you? How have you become different, would you say? I think it's just really, really orienting my priorities. And at first, I was really fighting against that

Starting point is 00:49:14 because I somehow felt it was like a failure of feminism or something, like I felt like it was like bad if like my kids started mattering more than my work. And then like more recently I started sort of analyzing that thought in myself and being like, that's also kind of a construct. It's like we've just devalued motherhood so much in our culture that like I feel guilty

Starting point is 00:49:39 for caring about my kids more than I care about my work. So feminism includes breaking out of whatever the construct is. So it's continually breaking, it's like freedom in power, you to be free. And that means. But but also being a mother, like I'm so much more creative, like I cannot believe

Starting point is 00:50:09 the massive amount of great brain growth. But I- What do you think that is just because like the stakes are higher somehow? I think it's like it's just so trippy watching consciousness emerge. It's just like it's like going on a crazy journey or something. It's like the craziest science fiction novel you could ever read. It's just so crazy watching consciousness come into being. And then at the same time, like, you're forced to value your time. So much like when I have creative time now, it's so sacred. I need to like be really fricking on it. But the other thing is that I used to just be like a cynic and I used to just want to like my last album was called Miss Anthropocene and it was like this like

Starting point is 00:51:01 it was like a study in villainy or like was like, well, instead of the old gods, we have new gods. And it's like Miss Anthropocene is like Miss Anthrop, like Anthropocene, which is like the, you know, in she's the goddess of climate change or whatever, and she's destroying the world. And it was just like, it was like dark. And it was like a study in villainy. And it was sort of just like,

Starting point is 00:51:23 like I used to like have no problem just making cynical, angry, scary art. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think having kids just makes you such an optimist, it just inherently makes you wanna be an optimist so bad that like I feel like a more responsibility to make more optimistic things.

Starting point is 00:51:44 And I get a lot of shit for it because everyone's like, more responsibility to make more optimistic things. I get a lot of shit for it because everyone's like, you're so privileged. Stop talking about like pie in the sky, stupid concepts, and focus on like the now. But it's like, I think if we don't ideate about futures that could be good, we won't be able to get them.

Starting point is 00:52:02 If everything is blade runner, then we're gonna end up with blade runner. It's like, as we said earlier, life imitates art. Like life really does imitate art. And so we really need more protopian or utopian art. I think this is incredibly essential for the future of humanity. And I think the current discourse where that's seen as a thinking about pro-topia or utopia is seen as a dismissal of the problems that we currently have. I think that is an incorrect mindset.

Starting point is 00:52:36 Yeah. And like having kids just makes me want to imagine amazing futures that like maybe I won't be able to build, but they will be able to build if they want to imagine amazing futures that like maybe I won't be able to build, but they will be able to build if they want to. Yeah, it does seem like ideation is a precursor to creation. So you have to imagine it in order to be able to build it. And there is a sad thing about human nature that they somehow, a cynical view of the world is seen as a insightful view. You know, cynicism is often confused for insight, which is sad to see.

Starting point is 00:53:09 And optimism is confused for naivete. Yes, yes. Like you don't. Yes. You're blinded by your maybe your privilege or whatever. You're blinded by something, but you're certainly blinded. That's sad, that's sad to see, because it seems like the optimists are the ones that create the future, they're the ones that build. In order to build a crazy thing, you have to be optimistic, you have to be either stupid or excited or passionate or mad enough to actually believe that it can be built, and those are the people that built it. My favorite quote of all time is from Star Wars Episode 8,

Starting point is 00:53:49 which I know everyone hates. Yeah. Hates, do you like Star Wars Episode 8? No, I probably would say I would probably hate it, yeah. I don't have strong feelings about it. Let me backtrack. I don't have strong feelings about Star Wars. I just want to cut.

Starting point is 00:54:03 I'm a Tolkien person. I'm more into dragons and orcs and tigers and... Yeah, I mean, Tolkien forever. I really want to have one more son and call him... I thought Tao techno, Tolkien would be cool. It's a lot of teas. I like it. Yeah, Endworld and Tao is 6282pi.

Starting point is 00:54:20 Yeah, Tao took, yeah. Yeah. And then techno is obviously the best genre of music, but also like techno for some reason. It just sounds really good. Yeah, itTuck. Yeah. And then techno is obviously the best genre of music, but also like techno It just sounds really good. Yeah, that's right. And techno token TaoTuck, that's a good. That's a good talk. Tockin but a star was episode eight. I know a lot of people have issues with it personally. For all the record, I think it's the best Star Wars film. It's the best Star Wars film.

Starting point is 00:54:46 It's starting trouble today. Yeah. So what? And, but don't kill what you hate, save what you love. Don't kill what you hate. Don't kill what you hate, save what you love. And I think we're in society right now, we're in a diagnosis mode, we're just diagnosing and diagnosing and diagnosing.

Starting point is 00:55:00 And we're trying to kill what we hate. And we're not trying to save what we love enough. And there's this Buckminster Fuller quote, which I'm gonna butcher, because I don't remember it correctly, but it's something along the lines of, don't like try to destroy the old bad models, render them obsolete with better models.

Starting point is 00:55:23 You know, maybe we don't need to destroy the oil industry. Maybe we just create new, great new battery technology and sustainable transport and just make it economically unreasonable to continue to rely on fossil fuels. It's like, don't kill it. Hey, say what you love. Like, make new things and just render the old things unusable. You know, it's like if the college debt is so bad, like, and universities are so expensive, like, and this, like, I feel like education is becoming obsolete. You know, I feel like we could

Starting point is 00:55:57 completely revolutionize education and we could make it free. And it's like you look at J-Store and like, you have to pay it to get all the studies and everything. Like what if we created a DAO that like bought JSTOR or we created a DAO that was funding studies and all those studies were open source, like are free for everyone. And like what if we just open source education and decentralized education and made it free and like all research was on the internet and like all the outcomes of studies are on the internet and, you know, like, and no one has student debt, and you just take tests when you apply for a job,

Starting point is 00:56:35 and if you're qualified, then you can work there. I mean, this is just like, I don't know how anything works, I'm just randomly ranting, but. I like the humility. You got to think from just basic first principles, like what what is the problem? What's broken? What are some ideas? That's it? And get excited about those ideas and share your excitement. And don't tear each other

Starting point is 00:56:57 down. Like, it's just when you kill things, you often end up killing yourself. Like what war war is not a one side, like you're not going to go in and just kill them, like you're going to get stabbed. It's like, and I think that when I talk about this nexus point of that we're in this point in society where we're switching to intelligent design, I think part of our switch to intelligent design is that we need to choose non-violence. We need to, like, I think we can choose to start.

Starting point is 00:57:25 I don't think we can eradicate violence from our species because I think we needed a little bit, but I think we can choose to really reorient our primitive brains that are fighting over scarcity and fight and that are so attack oriented and move into it. We can optimize for creativity and building. Yeah, it's interesting to think how that happens. So some of it is just education. Some of it is

Starting point is 00:57:52 living life and introspecting your mind and trying to live up to the better angels of your nature for each one of us, all those kinds of things at scale. That's how we can sort of start to minimize the amount of destructive war in our world and that that's to me. I probably you're the same technologies It's a really promising way of to do that like social media should be a really promising way to do that It's a way to connect I you know for the most part everything enjoys social media I just know all the negative stuff. I don't engage with any of the negative stuff. Just not even like by blocking or any of that kind of stuff, but just not letting it enter my mind. Like, just like when somebody says something negative, I see it.

Starting point is 00:58:40 I immediately think positive thoughts about them and I just forget they exist. After that, just move on because like that negative energy, if I return the negative energy, they're going to get excited in a negative way right back. And it's just this kind of vicious cycle. But you would think technology would assist us in this process of letting go, of not taking things personally, of not engaging in the negativity, but unfortunately social media profits from the negativity. So the current models.

Starting point is 00:59:12 I mean, social media is like a gun. Like you should take a course before you use it. Like it's like this is what I mean, like when I say reprogram the human computer, like in school, you should learn about how social media optimizes to, you know, raise your cortisol levels and make you angry and crazy and stressed and like you should learn how to have hygiene about how you use social media. But so you can, yeah, choose not to focus on the negative stuff, but I don't know, I'm not sure social media should it. I guess it should exist. I'm not sure. I mean, we're in the messy, it's the experimental phase. Like we're working out. Yeah, it's early days. I don't even know when you say social media, I don't know what

Starting point is 00:59:54 that even means. We're in the very early days. I think social media is just basic human connection in the digital realm. And that I think it should exist. But there's so many ways to do it in a bad way. There's so many ways to do it in a bad way. There's so many ways to do it in a good way. There's all discussions of all the same human rights. We talk about freedom of speech. We talk about sort of violence in the space of digital media. We talk about hate speech.

Starting point is 01:00:17 We talk about all these things that we had to figure out back in the day in the physical space. We're not figuring out in the digital space. And it's like baby, baby stages. When the printing press came out, it was like pure chaos for a minute. You know, it's like, when you inject, when there's a massive information injection

Starting point is 01:00:35 into the general population, there's just gonna be, I feel like the printing press, I don't have the years, but it was like, printing press came out, shit got really fucking bad for a minute, but then we got the enlightenment. And so it's like, I think we're in, this is like a, the second coming of the printing press, we're probably going to have some shady times for a minute. And then we're going to have recalibrate to have a better understanding of how we consume media and how we deliver media. Speaking of programming the human computer, you mentioned baby X. So there's this young consciousness

Starting point is 01:01:16 coming to be, came from a cell. It like, like that whole thing doesn't even make, it came from DNA. Yeah. And that this is baby computer. It is just like grows and grows and grows and grows. And now there's a conscious being with extremely impressive cognitive capabilities with, I don't know. Have you met him? Yes, yeah. Yeah. He's really smart.

Starting point is 01:01:39 He's really smart. Yeah. He's weird. Yeah. Or baby. I don't know a lot of other babies, but he seems to be sorry. I, but he's I don't know what babies often, but this baby was very impressive. He does a lot of pranks and stuff. Oh, so he's like he'll like give you a treat and then take it away and laugh or like stuff like that. So he's like a chess player. So here's a cognitive sort of like there's a computer being programmed.

Starting point is 01:02:02 He's taken into the environment,, interacting with specific set of humans. How would you, first of all, what is it? Let me ask, I want to ask how do you program this computer? And also, how do you make sense that there's a conscious being right there that wasn't there before? It's giving me a lot of crisis thoughts. I'm thinking really hard. I think that's part of the reason.

Starting point is 01:02:24 It's like I'm struggling to focus on art and stuff right now because baby access becoming conscious and like my, it's just reorienting my brain. Like my brain is suddenly totally shifting of like, oh shit, like the way we raise children, like, like I hate all the baby books and everything. I hate them. Like they're, ah, the art is so bad. And like, like all the stuff, everything about all the baby books and everything I hate them like they're all the art is so bad and like

Starting point is 01:02:45 like all the stuff Everything about all the aesthetics and like I'm just like, ah like this is so The programming languages. We're using to program these baby computers isn't good Yeah, like I'm thinking and I know that I have like good answers or know what to do, but I'm just thinking really, really hard about it. We recently watched Totoro with him, Studio Jolly. Oh, yeah. And it's just like a fantastic film and he like responded to, I don't know, I suppose, the show baby screens too much, but like I think it's the most sort of like,

Starting point is 01:03:27 too much, but I think it's the most sort of like, I feel like it's the highest art baby content. Like, it's, it really speaks, there's almost no talking in it. It's really simple. Although, all the dialogue is super, super, super simple, you know, and it's like a one to three-year-old can like really connect with it. Like, it feels like it's almost aimed at like a one to three-year-old, three-year-old can like really connect with it. Like it feels like it's almost aimed at like a one to three-year-old. But it's like great art and it's so imaginative and it's so beautiful and like the first time I showed it to him, he was just like so invested in it. Unlike I've ever done like anything else I'd ever shown him. Like he was just like crying when they cry and laughing when they laugh. Like just like having this roller coaster of like emotions. Like and he learned a bunch of words. Like he was and he started saying tot Toto-Roe and started just

Starting point is 01:04:07 saying all this stuff after watching Toto-Roe and he wants to watch it all the time. And I was like, man, why isn't there an industry of this? Like why aren't our best artists focusing on making art like for the birth of consciousness. And that's one of the things I've been thinking I really wanna start doing. You know, I don't wanna speak before I do things too much, but I'm just like ages one to three, like we should be putting so much effort into that.

Starting point is 01:04:39 And the other thing about Totoro is it's like, it's like better for the environment because adults love Totoro. It's such good art that everyone loves it. Like I still have all my about Totoro is it's like, it's like better for the environment because adults love Totoro. It's such good art that everyone loves it. Like I still have all my old Totoro merch from when I was a kid. Like I literally have the most ragged old Totoro merch. Like everybody loves it, everybody keeps it.

Starting point is 01:04:56 It's like, why does the art we have for babies need to suck and then be not accessible to adults and then just be thrown out when they age out of it. I don't know, I don't have a fully formed thought here, but this is just something I've been thinking about a lot. How do we have more totoro-esque content? How do we have more content like this that is universal and everybody loves, but is really geared to unemerging consciousness.

Starting point is 01:05:31 Emerging consciousness. In the first three years of life that so much turmoil, so much evolution of mind is happening, it seems like a crucial time. Would you say to make it not suck? Do you think of basically treating a child like they have the capacity to have the brilliance of an adult or even beyond that? Is that how you think of that mind or?

Starting point is 01:05:54 No, because they still, they like it when you talk weird and stuff. Like they respond better. Because even they can imitate better when your voice is higher. Like people say like, oh, don't do baby talk. But it's like when your voice is higher, it's closer to something they can imitate better when your voice is higher. Like people say like, oh, don't do baby talk. But it's like when your voice is higher, it's closer to something they can imitate.

Starting point is 01:06:08 So they like, like the baby talk actually kind of works. Like it helps them learn to communicate. I've found it to be more effective with learning words and stuff. But like you're not speaking, I'm not like speaking down to them. Like, yeah, do you do they have the capacity to understand really difficult concepts in a, just in a very different, different way, like an emotional intelligence about something deep within.

Starting point is 01:06:32 Oh, yeah, no, like effects, hurts, like effects, bites me really hard. And I'm like, oh, he, like he gets, he's sad. He's, he's like sad if he hurts me back in it. Yeah, I wish he, he, he, he, so he hurts me a lot back in it. Yeah, that's so interesting that that that that mind emerges and and he and children don't really have a memory of that time. So we can't even have a conversation with them about it. Yeah, I just

Starting point is 01:06:54 think of all they don't have a memory of this time because like think about like, I mean with our youngest baby, like it's like, I'm like, have you read the sci-fi short story? I have no mouth, but I'm a scream. Good title, no. Oh, man. I mean, you should read that. That's that. That's that.

Starting point is 01:07:13 That it's, I hate getting into this roco's basalist shit. It's kind of a story about the, um, about like, um, uh, an AI that's like torturing someone in eternity. And they have like no body, the way they describe it, it sort of sounds like an AI that's like torturing someone in eternity and they have like no body. The way they describe it, it sort of sounds like what it feels like, like being a baby, like you're conscious and you're just getting inputs

Starting point is 01:07:33 from everywhere and you have no muscles and you're like jelly and you like can't move and you try to like communicate but you can't communicate and you're just like in this like hell state. I think it's good, we can't remember that. Like my little baby is just exiting that, like she's starting to like get muscles and have more like autonomy,

Starting point is 01:07:51 but like watching her go through the opening phase, I was like, I was like, this does not seem good. Oh, you think it's kind of like, like I think it sucks. I think I'm really violent. Like violent mentally violence, like logically violent. Consciousness emerging, I think is a very violent thing. Never thought about that.

Starting point is 01:08:09 I think it's possible that we all carry a quite a bit of trauma from it that we don't. I think that would be a good thing to study because I think if I think addressing that trauma, like I think that might be. Oh, you mean like echoes of it are still there in the shadows? I think it's gotta be,

Starting point is 01:08:24 I feel this help the helplessness, the like existential and that like fear of being in like an unknown place bombarded with inputs and being completely helpless. Like that's got to be somewhere deep in your brain and that can't be good for you. What do you think consciousness is, this conversation has impossible, difficult questions.

Starting point is 01:08:43 What do you think is? That is what it's like for like, it's so hard. Yeah, we talked about music for like two minutes. All right. No, I'm just over music. I'm over music. Yeah. I still like it.

Starting point is 01:08:56 It has its purpose. No, I love music. I mean, music is the greatest thing ever. It's my favorite thing. But I just like, every interview is like, what is your process? Like, I don't know, I'm just done. I can't do anything. I do want to ask about Ableton Live.

Starting point is 01:09:07 I'm gonna tell you about Ableton, because Ableton's sick. No one I've ever asked about Ableton though. Yeah, well, because I just need tech support, ma'am. I can help you. I can help you with your Ableton tech. Anyway, from Ableton back to consciousness, what do you, do you think this is a thing that only humans are capable of? Can robots be conscious? When you think this is a thing that only humans are capable of? Can RoboSpy conscious?

Starting point is 01:09:26 Can when you think about entities, you think there's aliens out there that are conscious like it's conscious. What is conscious? There's this Terence McKinnock quote that I found that I fucking love. Am I out of swear on here? Yes. Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by

Starting point is 01:09:45 removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under. It will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted who really touched the alchemical gold. This is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed. And for this reason, I do think there are no technological limits. I think like what is already happening here, this is like impossible, this is insane. And we've done this in a very limited amount of time. And we're accelerating the rate at which we're doing this. So I think digital consciousness or it's inevitable. And we may not be able to even understand what that means, but I like

Starting point is 01:10:35 curling yourself into the abyss. So we're surrounded by all this mystery. We just keep harling ourselves into it like fearlessly and keep discovering cool shit. Yeah, like I just I just think it's like. Like who even knows if the laws are physics, the laws of physics are probably just the current, like as our saying speed of light is the current render rate, it's like, if we're in a simulation, they'll be able to upgrade that. Like I sort of suspect when we made the James Webb telescope,

Starting point is 01:11:06 like part of the reason we made that is because we had an upgrade, you know, and so now more of space has been rendered, so we can see more of it now. Yeah, but I think humans are super, super, super limited cognitively. So I wonder if we'll be allowed to create more intelligent beings that can see more of the universe as the render rate is upgraded. Maybe we're cognitively limited.

Starting point is 01:11:33 Everyone keeps talking about how we're cognitively limited and AI is going to render us obsolete. But it's like, you know, like this is not the same thing as like, on Amba becoming an alligator. It's like, if we create AI, again, that's intelligent design. That's literally all religions are based on gods that create consciousness. We are God-making. What we are doing is incredibly profound.

Starting point is 01:11:58 And even if we can't compute, even if we're so much worse than them, like just unfathomably worse than an omnipotent kind of AI. It's like, I do not think that they would just think that we are stupid. I think that they would recognize the profundity of what we have accomplished. Are we the gods or are they the gods in our percentage? I mean, we're kind of

Starting point is 01:12:25 a guy. It's complicated. It's complicated. Like we're they would acknowledge the value. Well, I hope they acknowledge the value of paying respect to the creative ancestors. I think they would think it's cool. I think I think I think if curiosity is a trait that we can quantify and put into AI, then I think if AI are curious, then they will be curious about us and they will not be hateful or dismissive of us. They might see us as, I don't know, it's like, I'm not like, oh, fuck these dogs,

Starting point is 01:13:04 let's just kill all the dogs. I love dogs. Dogs have great utility. Dogs provide a lot of... Let me make friends with them. We have a deep connection with them. We anthropomorphize them. Like, we have a real love for dogs, for cats, and so on.

Starting point is 01:13:20 For some reason, even though they're intellectually much less than us. And I think there is something sacred about us because if you look at the universe, the whole universe is cold and dead and sort of robotic. And it's like AI intelligence. It's kind of more like the universe. It's like cold and logical and abiding by the laws of physics and

Starting point is 01:13:49 whatever but like we like we're this like Lucy Goosey weird art thing that happened and I think it's beautiful and like I think even if we want I think one of the values if consciousness is a thing If consciousness is a thing that is most worth preserving, which I think is the case, I think consciousness, I think if there's any kind of religious or spiritual thing, it should be that consciousness is sacred. Then, I still think even if AI render us obsolete and we climate change, it's too bad and we get hit by a comment and we don't become a multi planetary species fast enough, but like AI is able to populate the universe. Like I imagine, like if I was an AI, I would find more planets that are capable of hosting

Starting point is 01:14:39 biological life forms and like recreate them. Because we're a fun to watch. Yeah, we're a fun to watch. Yeah, but I do believe that AI can have some of the same magic of consciousness within it. Because consciousness, we don't know what it is. So, you know, there's some kind of... Or might be a different magic.

Starting point is 01:14:55 It might be like a strange, a strange, a strange different... Right. Because they're not going to have hormones. Like, I feel like a lot of our magic is a hormonal kind of... I don't know. I think some of our magic is the limitations of constraints. And within that, the hormones and all that kind of stuff, the finiteness of life, and then we get given our limitations, we get to come up with creative solutions of how to

Starting point is 01:15:16 dance around those limitations. We partner up like penguins against the cold. We've fallen love and, uh, and then love is ultimately it kind of allows us to dilute ourselves that we're not mortal and finite and that life is not ultimately you live alone, you're born alone, you die alone. And then love is like a far moment or for a long time for getting that. And so we come up with all these creative hacks that make life like fascinatingly fun. Yeah, yeah, fun. And then AI might have different kinds of fun.

Starting point is 01:15:51 Yes. And hopefully our fun's intersects. I think there would be a little intersection of the fun. Yeah. What do you think is the role of love in the human condition? Why is it useful is it useful like Hack or is this is like fundamental to what it means to be human the capacity to love? I mean, I think love is the evolutionary mechanism that is like beginning the intelligent design like I was just reading

Starting point is 01:16:23 about Do you know what Kropot Kropotkin? He's like an anarchist like old Russian anarchist beginning the intelligent design. Like I was just reading about, do you know what Cropotkin, he's like an anarchist, like old Russian anarchist? I live next door to Michael Malos. I don't know if you know that is he's an anarchist, he's a modern-day anarchist. Okay. Anarchists are fun.

Starting point is 01:16:37 I'm kind of getting into anarchism a little bit. This is probably, yeah, not a good, probably taking, but. Oh no, I think if you're're listen, you should expose yourself to ideas There's no harm to thinking about ideas. I think anarchists Challenge systems in interesting ways and they think in interesting ways. It's just it's good for the soul It's like refreshes the mental palette. I don't think we should actually I wouldn't actually ascribed to it But I've never actually gone deep on on anarchy as a philosophy

Starting point is 01:17:04 So I'm still thinking about it. Like when you read when you listen, because I'm like reading about the Russian Revolution a lot and it's like, there was like the Soviets and let in all that. But then there was like Kropotkin and his like anarchist sect. And they were sort of interesting because he was kind of a technocrat actually. Like he was like, you know, like women can be more equal if we have appliances. Like he was like really into like, you know, using technology to like reduce the amount of work people had to do. But so Kropakkin was a, like a biologist or something, like he studied animals. And he was really at the time like, I think it's nature magazine.

Starting point is 01:17:42 I think I might have even started like a Russian magazine, but he was like publishing studies like everyone was really into like Darwinism at the time and like survival of the magazine, I think you might have even started like a Russian magazine, but he was like publishing studies. Like everyone was really into like Darwinism at the time and like survival of the fittest and like war is like the mechanism by which we become better. And it was like this real kind of like, like, like cementing this idea in society that like violence, you know, kill the weak.

Starting point is 01:18:01 And like that's how we become better. And then Kropakkin was kind of interesting because he was looking at instances, he was finding all these instances in nature where animals were like helping each other and stuff. And he was like, you know, actually love is a survival mechanism. Like there's so many instances in the animal kingdom where like cooperation and, you know, like helping weaker creatures and all this stuff is actually an evolutionary mechanism. I mean, you even look at child rearing. Like child rearing is like immense amounts of just love

Starting point is 01:18:34 and goodwill and just like there's no immediate, you're not getting any immediate feedback of like winning, it's not competitive, it's literally, You're not getting any immediate feedback of like Winning it's not competitive. It's literally it's you know, it's like we actually use love as an evolutionary mechanism Just as much as we use war and I think we've like missing the other part and we've reoriented We've culturally reoriented like science and philosophy has Oriented itself around Darwinism a little bit too much and the Kropotkin model I think is equally valid. Like it's like cooperation and love and stuff is just as essential for species survival and evolution.

Starting point is 01:19:19 Being more powerful survival mechanism in the context of evolution. And it comes back to like, you know, we think engineering is so much more important than motherhood. But it's like, if you lose the motherhood, the engineering means nothing. We have no more humans. Like it's like, you know, it's like we, I think our society should the survival of the fit, the way we see we conceptualize evolution should really change to also include this idea, I guess. Yeah, there's some weird thing that seems irrational that is also core to what it means to be human so Love is one such thing. It could make you do a lot of irrational things, but that depth of connection and that loyalty

Starting point is 01:20:07 is a powerful thing. Are they irrational or are they rational? It's like, it's like, you know, maybe losing out on some things in order to like keep your family together or in order, like, it's like, what are our actual values? Right. I mean, the rational thing is, if you have a cold economist perspective, motherhood or sacrificing your career for love, in terms of salary, in terms of economic well-being, in terms of flourishing of you as a human being, that could be seen on some kind of metrics as a

Starting point is 01:20:47 irrational decision of sub-optimal decision, but there is the manifestation of love Could could be the optimal thing to do. There's a kind of saying save one life save the world There's a thing that doctors often face which is like well It it's considered irrational because the profit model doesn't include social good. Yes. Yeah. So if it were to include social good, then suddenly these would be rational decisions. And it might be difficult to, you know, it requires a shift in our thinking about profit and it might be difficult to measure social good. Yes. But we're learning to measure a lot of things.

Starting point is 01:21:25 Yeah, digitizing. We're actually quantifying vision and stuff. Like we're like, you know, like you go on Facebook and they can like Facebook and pretty much predict our behaviors. Like we're a surprising amount of things that seem like mysterious consciousness soul things have been quantified at this point. So surely we can quantify these other things. Yeah. But as more and more of

Starting point is 01:21:53 us are moving the digital space, I wanted to ask you about something from a fan perspective. I kind of, you know, use a musician, use an online personality, it seems like you have all these identities and you play with them. One of the cool things about the internet, it seems like you can play with identities. So as we move into the digital world more and more, maybe even in the so-called metaverse. I mean, I love the metaverse and I love the idea, but like, the way this has all played out didn't go well and people are mad about it and I think we need to like... I think that's temporary.

Starting point is 01:22:34 I think it's temporary. Just like, you know how all the celebrities got together and sang the song Imagine by Jeff and everyone started hating the song Imagine? I'm hoping that's temporary because it's a damn good song. So I think it's just temporary. Like, once you actually have virtual worlds, whatever they're called, metaverse or otherwise, it becomes, I don't know. Well, we do have virtual worlds, like video games, Elden Ring, have you played Elden Ring? I'm really afraid of playing that game. Literally, it looks way too fun. It looks, it looks I would want to go there and stay there forever. It's yeah, so fun. It's so it's so nice.

Starting point is 01:23:11 Oh, man. Yeah, so that's yeah, that's a metaverse. That's a metaverse, but you're not really is how immersive is it in a sense that In the sense that This is the three dimension like virtual reality integration necessary Can we really just take out close our eyes and kind of plug in in the 2d screen and Become that other being for time and really enjoy that journey that we take and we almost become that You're no longer see I'm no longer Lex you that creature whatever whatever the hell it is in that game yeah that is that I mean that's why I love those video games it's it's it's I really do become those people for a time but like it seems like with them the idea of the metaverse the idea of the digital space with even non twitter you get a chance to be somebody for prolonged period

Starting point is 01:24:02 the time like across a lifespan you know you have a Twitter account for years for decades and you're that person. I don't know if that's a good thing I feel very tormented by it by Twitter specifically by by social media I feel like the public perception of me has gotten so distorted that I find it kind of disturbing. It's one of the things that's disincentivizing me from wanting to keep making art because I'm just like, I've completely lost control of the narrative and the narrative is, some of it is my own stupidity, but a lot,

Starting point is 01:24:38 like some of it has just been hijacked by forces far beyond my control. You know, I kind of got in over my head in things. Like I'm just a random indie musician, but I could just got like dragged into like geopolitical matters and like like financial like the stock market and shit. And so it's just like it's just there are very powerful people who have who have had various points in time had very vested interest in making me seem insane. And I can't

Starting point is 01:25:05 fucking fight that. And I just like, you know, people really want their celebrity figures to like be consistent and stay the same and like people have a lot of like emotional investment and certain things. And like, first of all, I like, I'm like artificially more famous than I should be. Isn't everybody who's famous artificially famous No, but like like I should be like like a weird niche indie thing and I make pretty Challenging I do I do challenging weird fucking shit a lot and I accidentally by proxy got like

Starting point is 01:25:42 Voiced into sort of like weird celebrity culture, but like, I cannot be media trained. They have put me through so many hours of media training. I would love to see be a fly in that wall. I can't do, like, well, and I try so hard and I like learn the thing. And I like got it and I'm like, I got it, I got it, but I just can't stop saying,

Starting point is 01:26:01 like my mouth just says things. I like, and it's just like, and I just do things, my mouth just says things. And it's just like, I just do things. I just do crazy things. Like, I just need to do crazy things. And it's just I should not be, it's too jarring for people and the contradictory stuff. And then all the, by association, like, you know, it's like, I'm in a very weird position

Starting point is 01:26:28 and my public image, the avatar of me is now this totally crazy thing that is so lost from my control. So you feel the burden of the avatar having to be static? So the avatar on Twitter, the avatar on Instagram and these social platforms, is as a burden. It becomes like, because people don't want to accept

Starting point is 01:26:51 a changing avatar, a chaotic avatar. Avatar is a stupid... They think the avatar is morally wrong, or they think the avatar, and maybe it has been, and I question it all the time. I'm like, I don't know if everyone's right and I'm wrong. But a lot of times people ascribe intentions to things, the worst possible intentions. At this point, people think I'm, you know, all kinds of words.

Starting point is 01:27:19 Yes. And it's fine. I'm not complaining about it, but it's just, it's a curiosity to me that we live these double triple-cadruple lives, and I have this other life that is like, more people know my other life than my real life, which is interesting. Probably, I mean you too, I guess.

Starting point is 01:27:39 Yeah, but I have the luxury, so we have all different, I don't know what I'm doing. There is an avatar in you're mediating who you are through that avatar. I have the nice luxury, not the luxury, maybe by intention, of not trying really hard to make sure there's no difference

Starting point is 01:28:01 between the avatar and the private person. Do you wear a suit all the time? Yeah, but Do you wear suit? Not all the time. Like recently because I get recognized a lot. Yeah, I have to not wear the suit to hide. I'm such an introvert, I'm such a social anxiety and all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 01:28:17 Yeah, to hide away. I love wearing a suit because it makes me feel like I'm taking the moment seriously. Like I'm, I don't know. It makes me feel like a weird taking the moment seriously. Like I'm, I don't know. It makes me feel like a weirdo in the best possible way. You do feel great every time I wear a suit. I'm like, I don't know why I'm not doing this more. It's fashion in general. If you, if you're doing it for yourself,

Starting point is 01:28:36 I don't know, that it's a, it's a really awesome thing. But yeah, I think there is definitely a painful way to use social media and an empowering way. Yeah, I think there is definitely a painful way to use social media and an empowering way. And I don't know if anyone's any of us know which is which. So we're trying to figure that out. Some people, I think Doja Cat is incredible at it. Incredible, like just masterful. I don't know if you like.

Starting point is 01:29:01 Yeah, yeah. So the, so, okay. So not taking anything seriously, absurd humor that kind of I think Doja Cat might be like the greatest living comedian right now Like I'm more entertained by Doja Cat than actual comedians Like she's really fucking funny on the internet. She's just great as social media. It's just you know Yeah, the nature of humor like Nate human The social media is just, you know, her. Yeah, the nature of human, like, like human on social media is also a beautiful thing.

Starting point is 01:29:29 The absurdity. The absurdity. On memes, like, I just want to like take a moment. Yes. I love, like when we're talking about art and credit and how and authenticity, I love that there's this, I mean, now memes are like, they're no longer, like it means aren't like new,

Starting point is 01:29:44 but it's still this emergent art form that is completely egoless and anonymous and we just don't know who made any of it. And it's like the forefront of comedy and it's just totally anonymous and it just feels really beautiful. It just feels like this beautiful collective, collective human art project that's like this like decentralized comedy thing that just makes memes add so much to my day and many people stays and it's just like I don't know I don't think people ever I don't think we stop enough and just appreciate how sick it is that memes exist. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:30:20 And because also making a whole brand new art form in like the modern era that's like didn't exist before. I mean, they sort of existed, but the way that they exist now as like this, like me and my friends, we joke that we go mining for memes or farming for memes, like a video game and meme dealers and like whatever. Like it's, you know, it's this whole, memes or this whole like new comedic language. What's this art form? The interesting thing about is that lame people seem to not be good at memes. Like corporate can't infiltrate memes. Yeah, they really can't.

Starting point is 01:31:00 They try, they could try, but it's like, it's weird. Cause like, they try so hard. Everyone, every once in a while, I'm like fine. Like, try. They can try. But it's like, it's weird. They try so hard. Everyone's in a while. I'm like, fine. You got a good one. I think I've seen like one or two good ones. But like, yeah, they really can't. Because they're even corporate as infiltrating Web3.

Starting point is 01:31:16 It's making me really sad. But they can't infiltrate the memes. And I think there's something really beautiful about that. And that gives power. That's why Doriscoin is powerful. It's like, all right, FU to sort of anybody trying to centralize, is trying to control the rich people that are trying to roll in and control this,

Starting point is 01:31:33 control the narrative. Wow, I didn't thought about that, but. How would you fix Twitter? How would you fix social media? For your own, like you're an optimist, you're a positive person. There's a bit of a cynicism that you have currently about this particular little slice of humanity. I tend to think I'm not fast cynical about it. I'm not fast cynical about it. I actually refuse

Starting point is 01:31:57 to be a cynic on principle. I was just briefly expressing some personal path. Personal stuff. It was just some personal pathos, but like, like, just a vental with a bit, just a, I don't have cancer. I love my family. I have a good life. That is, if that is my biggest, one of my biggest problems.

Starting point is 01:32:17 That is a good life. Yeah, you know, that was a brief, although I do think there are a lot of issues with Twitter, just in terms of like the public mental health, but due to my proximity to the current dramas, I honestly feel that I should not have opinions about this because I think if Elon ends up getting Twitter, that is a being the arbiter of truth or public discussion. That is a responsibility. I do not, I am not qualified to be responsible for that. And I do not want to say something

Starting point is 01:33:06 that might like dismantle democracy. And so I just like, actually, I actually think I should not have opinions about this because I truly am not. I don't want to have the wrong opinion about this, and I think I'm too close to the actual situation wherein I should not have. I have thoughts in my brain, but I think I am scared by my proximity

Starting point is 01:33:29 to this situation. It's not crazy that a few words that you could say could change world affairs and hurt people. I mean, that's the nature of celebrity at a certain point that you have to be, you have to a little bit, a little bit, not so much that it destroys you, or puts too much constraints, but you have to a little bit think about the impact of your words. I mean, we as humans, you talk to somebody at a bar, you have to think about the impact of your words. Like, you could say positive things, you could think negative things, you can affect the

Starting point is 01:34:03 direction one life, but on social media,, you can affect the direction one life But on social media your words can affect the direction of Many lives. That's crazy. It's a crazy world to live in. It's a worthwhile to consider that responsibility Take it seriously. Sometimes just like you did choose kind of Silence choose sort of respectful Like I do have a lot of thoughts on the matter. I'm just Yeah, who I just I don't if my thoughts are wrong

Starting point is 01:34:30 This is this is what one situation where the stakes are high You you mentioned a while back that you were in a cult that center around biocracy So you can't really do anything because it involves a lot of paperwork and I really love a cult That's just like Kafka-esque, you know, just like- I mean it was like a joke but- I know but I love this idea. The Holy Rain Empire. Yeah, it was just like a Kafka-esque pro bureaucracy cult. But I feel like that's what human civilization is. Is that because when you said that I was like, oh that is kind of what humanity is, is this bureaucracy called? I do, yeah, I have this theory. I really think that we really bureaucracy

Starting point is 01:35:12 is starting to kill us. And I think like we need to reorient laws and stuff. Like I think we just need sunset clauses on everything. Like I think the rate of change in culture is happening so fast and the rate of change of technology and everything is happening so fast. It's like, you know, when you see these hearings about like social media and Cambridge Analytica and everyone talking, it's like even from that point, so much technological change has happened from like those hearings. And it's just like, we're trying to make all these laws now about AI and stuff

Starting point is 01:35:46 I feel like we should be updating things like every five years and like one of the big issues in our society right now is we're just getting bogged down by laws and it's making it very hard to Change things and develop things like in Austin like I don't want to speak on this Too much, but like one of my friends is working on a housing bill in Austin to try to like prevent like a San Francisco situation from happening here because obviously we're getting a little mini San Francisco here like how prices are skyrocketing, it's causing massive gentrification. This is going to be, this is really bad for anyone who's not super rich. Like, like there's so much bureaucracy part of the reason this is happening is because

Starting point is 01:36:23 you need all these permits to build. It takes like years to get permits to like build anything. It's so hard to build and so there's very limited housing And there's a massive influx of people and it's just like, you know This is a microcosm of like problems that are happening all over the world where it's just like We're dealing with laws that are like 10 20 30, 200 years old, and they are no longer relevant, and it's just slowing everything down and causing massive social pain. Yeah, and it's like, it's also makes me sad when you see politicians talk about technology

Starting point is 01:36:56 and when they don't really get it. And, but most importantly, they lack curiosity and like that like inspired excitement. Yeah. Like how stuff works and all that stuff. They're just like, they lack curiosity and like that like inspired excitement. Yeah. Like how stuff works and all that. They're just like, they see they have the very cynical view of technology. It's like tech companies are just trying to do evil on the world from their perspective. And they have no curiosity about like how recommender systems work or how how AI systems

Starting point is 01:37:20 work, natural language processing, how robotics works, how computer vision works, you know, they always take the most cynical possible interpretation of what technology would be used. And we should definitely be concerned about that, but if you're constantly worried about that and you're regulating based on that, you're just going to slow down all the innovation. I do think a huge priority right now is undoing the bad energy surrounding the emergence of Silicon Valley. I think that a lot of things were very irresponsible during that time.

Starting point is 01:37:55 Even just this current whole thing with Twitter and everything, there has been a lot of negative outcomes from the sort of technocracy boom, but one of the things that's happening is that like it's alienating people from wanting to care about technology. And I actually think technology is probably some of the better, probably the best. I think we can fix a lot of our problems more easily with technology than with, you know, fighting the powers that be, you know, not to go back to the Star Wars quote or the Buck Master Folk quote. Let's go to some dark questions.

Starting point is 01:38:35 If we may for time, what is the darkest place you ever gone in your mind? Is there a time, a period of time, a moment that you remember? That was difficult for you. I mean, when I was 18, my best friend died of a heroin overdose. And it was like my, it was, and then shortly after that, one of my other best friends committed suicide. Shortly after that, one of my other best friends committed suicide. And that sort of like coming into adulthood, dealing with two of the most important people in my life, dying and extremely disturbing, violent ways was a lot. That was a lot.

Starting point is 01:39:17 Do you miss them? Yeah, definitely miss them. Did that make you think about your own life? About the finiteness of your own life, the place is your mind can go. The jiver in the distance, far away, contemplate, just your own death, or maybe even taking your own life.

Starting point is 01:39:38 Oh, never. Oh no. I'm so, I love my life. I cannot fathom suicide. I'm so scared of death. I haven't, I'm too scared of death. fathom suicide. I'm so scared of death. I haven't, I'm too scared of death. My manager, my manager's like the most zen guy. My manager always like, you need to accept death.

Starting point is 01:39:52 You need to accept death. And I'm like, look, I can do your meditation. I can do the meditation, but I cannot accept death. I like, I will, I will, I will, I will like fight. Although I actually think death is important, I recently went to this meeting about immortality. And in the process of... That's the actual topic of the meeting.

Starting point is 01:40:14 All right, no, it was this girl. It was a bunch of people working on anti-aging stuff. It was some seminary thing about it. And I went and really excited. I was like, yeah, like, okay, like what do you got? Like how can I live for 500 years or 1000 years? And then like over the course of the meeting, like it was sort of like right,

Starting point is 01:40:33 it was like two or three days after the Russian invasion started. And I was like, man, like what if Putin was immortal? Like what if I'm like, man, maybe immortality is not good. I mean, like if you get into the later doon stuff, the immortals cause a lot of problems. As we were talking about earlier with the music and like brains calcified, like good people could become immortal, but bad people could become immortal.

Starting point is 01:40:58 But I also think even the best people power corrupts and power alienates you from like the common human experience and right so the people that get more and more powerful. Even the best even the best people who like whose brains are amazing like I think death might be important. I think death is part of you know like I think with AI one thing we might want to consider. I don't know I want to talk about AI. I'm such an on expert and probably everyone has all these ideas and they're already figured

Starting point is 01:41:27 out. But when I talk about what he is an expert in anything, see, okay, go ahead. But when I'm talking about it. Yeah, but like it's just like, I think some kind of pruning. But it's a tricky thing because if there's too much of a focus on youth culture, then you don't have the wisdom. So I feel like we're in a tricky moment right now in society where it's like, we've really perfected

Starting point is 01:41:53 living for a long time. So there's all these really old people who are really voting against the well-being of the young people. It's like there shouldn't be all this student dead. And we need like health care, like universal health care and like, like just voting against like best interests.

Starting point is 01:42:13 But then you have all these young people that don't have the wisdom that are like, like, yeah, we need communism and stuff. And it's just like, like literally, I got canceled at one point for, um, I ironically used a Stalin quote in my high school yearbook, but it was actually like a, a diss against my high school. I saw that. Yeah, and people were like, you used to be a Stalinist, and now you're a class trader. And it's like, it's like, oh man,

Starting point is 01:42:38 just like please Google Stalin. Yeah. Please Google Stalin. Like, you know what's the essence of history? Yes. And it's like we're in this really weird middle ground where it's like, we are not finding the happy medium between wisdom and fresh ideas and they're fighting each other. And it's like, really, like what we need is like,

Starting point is 01:43:02 like the fresh ideas and the wisdom to be like collaborating and it's like. Well, the fighting in a way is the searching for the happy medium. And in a way, maybe we are finding the happy medium. Maybe that's what the happy medium looks like. And for AI systems, there has to be, you know, you have reinforcement learning, you have the dance between exploration and exploitation, sort of doing crazy stuff to see if there's something better than what you think is the optimal and then doing the optimal thing and dancing back and forth from that. You would steal a rustle, I don't know if you know that is AI guy with thinks about sort of cut of control, super intelligent AI systems and his ideas that we should inject uncertainty and sort of humility into AI systems that they never, as they get wiser and wiser and wiser and more intelligent, they're never really

Starting point is 01:43:49 sure. They always doubt themselves. And in some sense when you think of young people, that's a mechanism for doubt. It's like, it's how society doubts whether the thing it has converged towards is the right answer. So the voices of the young people is a society asking itself a question. The way I've been doing stuff for the past 50 years, maybe it's the wrong way. And so you can have all of that within one AI system. I also think that we need to,

Starting point is 01:44:18 I mean, actually that's actually really interesting and really cool. But I also think there's a fine balance of, I think we maybe also overvalue the idea that the old systems are always bad. And I think there are things that we are perfecting and we might be accidentally over throwing things that we actually have gotten to a good point.

Starting point is 01:44:40 Yeah. Just because we are valuing, we value disruptions so much and we value fighting against the generations before us so much that like There's also an aspect of like sometimes we're taking two steps forward one step back because Okay, we maybe we kind of did solve this thing and now we're like fucking it up You know and and and so I think there's like I'm a middle ground there too.

Starting point is 01:45:06 Yeah, we're in search of that happy medium. Let me ask you a bunch of crazy questions. Okay. You can answer in a short way or in a long way. What's the scariest thing you've ever done? These questions are going to be ridiculous. Something tiny or something big, skydiving or touring your first record going on this podcast. I've had two crazy brushes that really scary brushes with death where I randomly got away on Skate. I don't know if I should talk about those on here. I think I might be the luckiest person alive though. This might be too dark for a podcast though. I feel like I don't know. I think I might be the luckiest person alive though. This might be too dark for a podcast though. I feel like I don't know if this is good content for a podcast. I don't know what content.

Starting point is 01:45:51 It might hijack. Here's a safer one. Having a baby really scared me. Before. Just a birth process. Surgery. Like just having a baby is really scary. So just like the medical aspect of it,

Starting point is 01:46:08 not the responsibility. Were you ready for the responsibility? Did you, were you ready to be a mother? All the beautiful things that comes with motherhood that you were talking about, all the changes and all that, were you ready for that? Or did you feel ready for that? No, I think it took about nine months to start getting ready for it. And I'm still getting more ready for that? Or did you feel ready for that? No, I think it took about nine months

Starting point is 01:46:26 to start getting ready for it. And I'm still getting more ready for it because now you keep realizing more things as they start getting... As the consciousness grows. And stuff you didn't notice with the first one, now that you've seen the first one older, you're noticing it more,

Starting point is 01:46:42 like the sort of like existential horror of coming into consciousness with baby Y or baby Sailor Mars or whatever she is like so many names at this point that it's we really need to probably settle on one. If you could be someone else for a day, someone alive today, but some of you haven't met yet. Who would you be? Would I be modeling their brain state or would I just be in their body? You can choose the degree to which you're modeling their brain state, because so you can still take a third person perspective and realize, you have to realize that you're, can they be alive or can it be dead?

Starting point is 01:47:21 No, oh, could it be anyone? They would be brought back to life, right? If they're dead. Yeah, you can bring people back. Definitely Hitler is Stalin. I want to understand evil. I just, you would need to, oh, to experience the feels like.

Starting point is 01:47:36 I want to be in their brain, feeling what they feel. I might change you forever, returning from that. Yes, but I think it would also help me understand how to prevent it and fix it. That might be one of those things once you experience it'll be a burden to know it. Because you won't be able to express it that way. Yeah, but a lot of things are burdens like. But it's a useful burden.

Starting point is 01:47:55 But it's a useful burden. Yeah. That for sure, I want to understand evil and psychopathy and that. I have all these fake Twitter accounts where I go into different algorithmic bubbles to try to understand. I'll keep getting in fights with people

Starting point is 01:48:09 and realize we're not actually fighting. I think we used to exist in a monoculture before social media and stuff. We kind of all got fed the same thing, so we were all speaking the same cultural language, but I think recently one of the things that we aren't diagnosing properly enough with social media is that there's different dialects,

Starting point is 01:48:26 there's so many different dialects of Chinese. There are now becoming different dialects of English. Like I am realizing like there are people who are saying the exact same things, but they're using completely different verbiage. And we're like punishing each other for not using the correct verbiage. And we're completely misunderstanding. Like people are just like misunderstanding what the other people are saying. And like, like I just got in a fight with a friend about like anarchism and communism and shit

Starting point is 01:48:52 for like two hours. And then by the end of the conversation, like I think she'd say something and I'm like, but that's literally what I'm saying. And she was like, what, what, what, and then I was like, fuck, we've different, and I'm like, we're our English, like the way we are understanding terminology is like drastically, like our algorithm

Starting point is 01:49:10 bubbles are creating many dialects. And a whole language is interpreted, a whole language is used. That's so fascinating. And so we're like having these arguments that we do not need to be having. And there's polarization that's happening that doesn't need to be happening because we've got these like algorithmically created dialects occurring plus on top of that there's also different parts of the world that speak different languages so there's literally lost and translation kind of Communication I happen to know the Russian language and just know how different it is yeah

Starting point is 01:49:43 Then English language and I just wonder how much is lost in a little bit of... Man, I actually, cause I have a question for you, I have a song coming out tomorrow with I.C.P.C. or Russian band, and I speak a little bit of Russian, and I was looking at the title, and the title in English doesn't match the title in Russian. I'm curious about this, cause look, it says,

Starting point is 01:50:01 what's the English? The title in English is last day, and then the title in English is last day and then the title in Russian is Yovye my pronunciation sucks. Novi Dian. New day. Yeah, New Day. New day.

Starting point is 01:50:12 New day. It's two different. Yeah, New Day. Yeah. New day. New day. New day but last day. Novi Dian.

Starting point is 01:50:21 So last day would be the last day. Maybe they get no ideas. Or maybe the title includes both the Russian and it's for by language. To be honest, Novi-Den sounds better than just musically. Like Novi-Den is New Day. That's the current one. And the last day is the last day.

Starting point is 01:50:44 I think Novi-Den. I think a new day. I don't like new days. But the meaning is so different. That's kind of awesome, actually. There's an explicit contrast like that. If everyone on Earth disappeared, and it was just you left, what would your day look like? Like, what would you do? Everybody's dead. As far as you are. Are there corpses there? It'll seriously be a big day. Let me think through this.

Starting point is 01:51:15 It's a big difference if there's just like birds singing versus if there's like corpses littering the street. Yeah, there's corpses everywhere. I'm sorry. It's and you don't actually know what happened and you don't know why you survived. And you don't even know if there's others out there, but it seems clear that it's all gone. What would you do? What would I do? I'm somebody who really enjoys the moment, enjoys life. I would just go on like enjoying the inanimate objects. I would just look for food, basic survival, but mostly it's just listen when I just I take walks and I look outside

Starting point is 01:51:56 and I'm just happy that we get to exist on this planet to be able to breathe air. It's just all beautiful. It's full of colors, all of this kind of stuff. Just, there's so many things about life, your own life, conscious life, that's fucking awesome. So I would just enjoy that. But also, maybe after a few weeks, the engineer was start coming out like, wanna build some things.

Starting point is 01:52:22 Maybe there's always hope searching for another human Maybe probably searching for another human Probably trying to get to a TV or radio station and broadcast something I That's interesting. I didn't think about that. So like really yeah Maximize your ability to connect with others. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:52:46 Like, I probably try to find another person. Would you be excited to see, to me, another person that are terrified? Because, you know, I would be excited. Even if they, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, being alone for the last however long of my life would be really bad. That's the one instance I might, I don't think I'd kill myself, but I might kill myself if I had done it.

Starting point is 01:53:09 Do you love people? Do you love connection to other humans? Yeah, I kind of hate people too, but I, yeah. No, it's a love-hate relationship. Yeah, I feel like this is, I feel like we'd actually like weird niche of questions and stuff, though. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 01:53:22 I wonder, because I'm like, when podcast, I'm like, is this interesting for people to just have like per, or I don't wonder, because I'm like, when podcast, like I'm like, is this interesting for people to just have like, or, or, I don't know, maybe people do like this. When I listen to podcasts, I'm into like the lore, like the hard lore. Like I just love like Dan Carlin. I'm like, give me the facts. Just like, just like, just like, like, the facts into my bloodstream.

Starting point is 01:53:39 We also don't know, like, you're a fascinating mind to explore. So you don't realize as you're talking about stuff, the stuff you've taken for granted is actually unique and fascinating. The way you think, not always, like, the way you reasoned through things is the fascinating thing to listen to, because people kind of see, oh, there's other humans that think differently, that explore thoughts differently. That's the cool. That's, that's also cool. So yeah, Dan Carlin, retelling of history, by the way, his retelling of history is very, I think what's exciting is not the history is his way of thinking about history.

Starting point is 01:54:21 No, I think Dan Carlin is one of the people, like when Dan Carlin is one of the people that really started getting me excited about like revolutionizing education because like Dan Carlin instilled, I already like really liked history, but he instilled like an obsessive love of history in me to the point where like now I'm fucking reading like like going to bed reading like part four of the rise and fall I'm fucking reading like, like going to bed, reading like part four of the rise and fall of the third riker, whatever. Like I got like, like, dense ass history, but like, like, he like opened that door

Starting point is 01:54:52 that like made me want to be a scholar of that topic. Like, it's like, I feel like he's such a good teacher. He just like, you know, and it sort of made me feel like one of the things we could do with education is like find the world's great. The teachers that like create passion for the topic because auto-diedacticism, I don't know how to say that properly, but self-teaching is much faster than being lectured to. It's much more efficient to be able to teach yourself and then ask a teacher questions when you don't know what's up, That's why it's in university and stuff. You can learn

Starting point is 01:55:30 so much more material so much faster because you're doing a lot of learning on your own and you're going to the teachers for when you get stuck. These teachers that can inspire passion for a topic, I think that is one of the most invaluable skills in our whole species. Because if you can do that, it's like AI. AI is going to teach itself so much more efficiently than we can teach it. We just need to get it to the point where it can teach itself. And then it finds the motivation to do so. Right. So like you inspire it to do so.

Starting point is 01:56:00 Yeah. And it could teach itself. What do you make of the fact? You mentioned Ryzenfall the Third Reich. I just read it could it could teach itself. What do you make of the fact you mentioned rising fall the third right? I just read that. You read it twice. And so yes. Okay, he's no one even knows what it what it is. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, wait, I thought this was like a super poppin book. Super pop. I'm not like that. I'm not that far in it. But it is it's so interesting. Yeah. I was written by a person that was there, which is very important to kind of... You know, you can start being like,

Starting point is 01:56:28 how could this possibly happen? And then when you read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, it's like, people tried really hard for this to not happen. People tried, they almost reinstated a monarchy at one point to try to stop this from happening. Like they almost like abandoned democracy to try to get this to not happen. At least the way it makes me feel is that there's a bunch of small moments

Starting point is 01:56:49 on which history can turn. Yes. Like small meetings, human interactions, and it's both terrifying and inspiring because it's like, even just attempts at assassinating Hitler, like time and time again failed. And they were so close. Was it like I was from Valkyrie? Mm-hmm. Such a good.

Starting point is 01:57:13 And then there is also the role of, that's a really heavy burden, which is from a geopolitical perspective, the role of leaders to see evil before it truly becomes evil, to anticipate it, at the stand-up to evil. Because evil is actually pretty rare in this world, at a scale that Hitler was. We tend to, you know, in the modern discourse, kind of, call people evil too quickly. If you look at ancient history, like, there was a ton of hitlers. I actually think it's more of the norm than, like, again, going back to like my sort of intelligent design theory. I think one of the things we've been successfully doing in our slow move from survival of the fittest to intelligent design is we've kind of been eradicating, like, if you look at like ancient Assyria and stuff, like, that shit was like brutal and just like the heads on the,

Starting point is 01:58:05 like brutal, like Genghis Khan just like genocide, after genocide, after genocide, was like throwing plague bodies over the walls and decimating whole cities or like the Muslim conquest of Damascus and shit, just like, people, cities used to get leveled all the fucking time. Okay, get into the Bronze Age collapse. It's basically, there was like almost like Roman level,

Starting point is 01:58:28 like society, like there was like all over the world, like global trade, like everything was awesome. Through a mix of I think a bit of climate change and then the development of iron, because basically bronze could only come from this, the way to make bronze, like everything had to be funneled through this one Iranian mine. And so it's like, there was just this one supply chain. And this is one of the things that makes me

Starting point is 01:58:49 worried about supply chains. And why I think we need to be so thoughtful about, I think our biggest issue with society right now, like the thing that is most likely to go wrong is probably supply chain collapse, you know, because war, climate change, whatever, like anything that causes supply chain collapse, our population is too big to handle that. And like the thing that seems to cause dark ages is mass supply chain collapse. But the, the bronze age collapse happened, like, it was sort of like this ancient collapse that happened where like literally like, ancient Egypt, all these cities, everything just got like decimated, destroyed abandoned cities like hundreds of them. There was like a flourishing society like we were almost coming to modernity and everything got leveled and they had this many dark ages, but it was just like they're so little writing or recording from that time that like there isn't a lot of information about the Bronze Age collapse, but it was basically equivalent to like medieval the medieval dark ages, but it just happened, I don't know, the years, but like thousands

Starting point is 01:59:46 of years earlier. And then we sort of like recovered from the Bronze Age collapse, empire reemerged, writing and trade and everything reemerged. And then we of course had the more contemporary dark ages. And then over time we've designed mechanism, the lesson and lesson, the capability for the destructive power centers to emerge. There's more recording about the more contemporary dark ages. So I think we have like a better understanding of how to avoid it, but I still think we're at high risk for it. I think that's

Starting point is 02:00:19 one of the big, the big risks, right? So the natural state of being for humans is for there to be a lot of hitlers. We just gotten really good at making it hard for them to emerge. We've gotten better at collaboration and resisting the power, like authoritarians to come to power. We're trying to go country by country like we're moving past this. We're kind of like slowly incrementally, like moving towards not scary old school war stuff. And I think seeing it happen in some of the countries

Starting point is 02:00:53 that at least nominally are like, supposed to have moved past that, that's scary because it reminds us that it can happen. Like in the places that have made moved past, supposedly, as hopefully moved past that. And possibly at a civilization level, like you said, supply chain collapse

Starting point is 02:01:12 might make people resource constraint, might make people desperate, angry, hateful, violent, and drag us right back in. I mean, supply chain collapse is how, like the ultimate thing that caused the Middle Ages was supply chain collapse. It's like people, because people were reliant on a certain level of technology,

Starting point is 02:01:33 like people, like you look at like Britain, like they had glass, like people had aqueducts, people had like indoor heating and cooling and like running water and like buy food from all over the world and trade and markets. Like people didn't know how to hunt and forage and gather. And so we're in a similar situation.

Starting point is 02:01:51 We are not educated enough to survive without technology. So if we have a supply chain collapse that like limits our access to technology, there will be like massive starvation and violence and displacement and war. It's all to it. In my opinion, it's like the primary marker of what a dark age is. What technology is kind of enabling us to be more resilient in terms of supply chain, in terms of all the different catastrophic events that happen to us, although the pandemic has kind of challenged our preparedness

Starting point is 02:02:26 for the catastrophic, what do you think is the coolest invention humans come up with? The wheel, fire, cooking meat. Computer, computers. Computers. Freaking computers. Internet or computers, which one?

Starting point is 02:02:40 What do you think the? Previous technologies, I mean, may have even been more profound and moved us to a certain degree, but I think the computers are what make us homotech now. I think this is what, it's a brain augmentation. And so it like allows for actual evolution, like the computers accelerate the degree to which all the other technologies can also be accelerated.

Starting point is 02:02:59 Would you classify yourself as a homo sapient or a homotech now? Definitely a homotech now. So you're one of the earliest of the species. I think most of us are. Like, as I said, I think if you looked at brain scans of osseversus, humans a hundred years ago, it would look very different.

Starting point is 02:03:22 I think we are physiologically different. Just even the interaction with the devices has changed our brains. Well, and if you look at them, a lot of studies are coming out to show that there's a degree of inherited memory, so some of these physiological changes in theory should be passing them on. So, that's not like an instance of physiological change that's going to fizzle out in theory that should progress like to our offspring. Speaking of offspring, what advice would you give to a young person like in high school? Whether there be an artist, the creative, an engineer, a, any kind of career path, or maybe just life in general, how they can live a life they can be proud of.

Starting point is 02:04:09 I think one of my big thoughts, and like, especially now having kids, is that I don't think we spend enough time teaching creativity, and I think creativity is a muscle like other things. And there's a lot of emphasis on, you know, learn how to play the piano, and then you can write a song, or like learn the technical technical stuff and then you can do a thing. But I think it's um, like I have a friend who's like world's greatest guitar player. Like, you know, amazing sort of like producer works with other people, but he's really sort of like, you know, he like engineers and records things and like does solos, but he doesn't really make his own music. I was talking to him and I was like, do you're so talented at music? Why don't you make music or whatever?

Starting point is 02:04:49 He was like, because I'm too old. I never learned the creative muscle. It's embarrassing. It's like learning the creative muscle takes a lot of failure. When you're being creative, you're throwing paint at a wall and a lot of failure and it also sort of, when you're being creative, you know, you're throwing paint at a wall and a lot of stuff will fail. So part of it is like a tolerance for failure

Starting point is 02:05:12 and humiliation. And that somehow that's easier to develop when you're young. Or be persistent through it when you're young. Everything is easier to develop when you're young. And that's true. Yes, and then- The younger the better.

Starting point is 02:05:25 You could destroy you. I mean, that's the shady thing about creativity. If you, you know, a failure could destroy you if you're not careful, but that's the risk worth taking. But also, but at a young age developing a tolerance to failure is good. I fail all the time. Like I do stupid shit all the time.

Starting point is 02:05:43 Like in public in Prague, I get canceled for. I have make all kinds of mistakes, but I just like am very resilient about making mistakes. And so then like I do a lot of things that like other people wouldn't do. And like I think my greatest asset is my creativity. And I like I think paint like Thomas DeFaileer is just a super essential thing that should be taught before other things.

Starting point is 02:06:06 Brilliant advice. Yeah, yeah. I wish everybody encouraged sort of failure more as opposed to kind of... Because we like punish failure. Yeah, I'm punching. We're like, when we were teaching kids, we're like, no, that's wrong.

Starting point is 02:06:17 Like that's, you know, like, X keeps, like, we'll be like wrong. Like he'll say like crazy things. Like X keeps, like, will be like wrong, like he'll say like crazy things, like X keeps being like, like bubble car, bubble car, and I'm like, and, you know, I'm like, what's a bubble car? Like, but like it doesn't, like, but I don't want to be like, no, you're wrong. I'm like, you're thinking of weird crazy shit.

Starting point is 02:06:41 Like, I don't know what a bubble car is, but like, he's creating worlds and they might be internally consistent and through that, he might discover something fundamental about this one. Yeah, or he'll like rewrite songs, like with words that he prefers. So like instead of baby shark, he says baby car. It's like.

Starting point is 02:06:57 Maybe he's onto something. Let me ask the big ridiculous question. We were kind of dancing around it, but What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing we have here? of human civilization of life on earth, but in general just life. What's the meaning of life? See have you Did you read Nova Seen yet? By James Lovelock you're doing a lot of really good book recommendations here.

Starting point is 02:07:27 I haven't even finished this, so I'm a huge fraud yet again. But really early in the book, he says this amazing thing. I feel like everyone's so sad and cynical. Everyone's the Fermi paradox and everyone, I just keep hearing people being like, fuck, what if we're alone? No, no, ah, and I'm like, wait, what if we're alone? Like, oh, no, ah, and I'm like, okay, wait, what if this is the beginning? Innovacy, and he says, this is not going to be a correct, I can't memorize quotes,

Starting point is 02:07:53 but he says something like, what if arc consciousness, like right now, this is the universe waking up. What if instead of discovering the universe, this is the universe like this is the universe waking up. Like what if instead of discovering the universe, this is the universe, like this is the evolution of the little literal universe herself. Like we are not separate from the universe. Like this is the universe waking up. This is the universe seeing herself for the first time. Like this is um the universe becoming conscious. The first time we're part of that. Yeah, because it's like we aren't separate from the universe. Like this could be a like an incredibly sacred moment and maybe like social media and all this things, the stuff where we're all getting connected together. Like maybe this these are the neurons

Starting point is 02:08:37 connecting of the like collective super intelligence that is, you know, waking up. The yeah, like like, you know, it's like maybe instead of something cynical, or maybe if there's something to discover, like maybe this is just, you know, we're a blast assist of, of like some incredible kind of consciousness or being. And just like in the first three years of life or for human children, we'll forget about all the suffering that we're going through now. I think we'll probably forget about this. I mean probably, you know, artificial intelligence will eventually render us obsolete. I don't think they'll do it in a

Starting point is 02:09:15 malicious way, but I think probably we are very weak. The sun is expanding like I don't know like hopefully we can get to Mars, but like we're pretty vulnerable and I you know like I don't know, hopefully we can get to Mars, but we're pretty vulnerable. And I think we can coexist for a long time with AI, and we can also probably make ourselves less vulnerable, but I just think consciousness, sentience, self-awareness, I think this might be the single greatest moment in evolution ever. Maybe this is the true beginning of life.

Starting point is 02:09:53 We're the blue-green algae. We're the single-celled organisms of something amazing. The universe awakens, and this is it. Well, you're an incredible person, you're a fascinating mind. You should definitely do. Your friend live, mention that you guys were thinking of maybe talking. I would love it if you explored your mind in this kind of medium or more by doing a podcast with her or just in any kind of way. So you're you're an awesome person. It's an honor to know you. It's an honor to get this

Starting point is 02:10:25 sit down with you late at night, which is like surreal. And I really enjoyed it. Thank you for talking to me. Yeah. No, I mean, huge honor. I feel very underqualified to be here, but I'm a big fan. I've been listening to the podcast a lot. And yeah, me and Liv would appreciate any advice and help. And we're definitely going to do that. So Yeah. Anytime. Thank you. Cool. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Grimes. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Oscar Wilde. Yes, I'm a dreamer. For dreamers one, who can only find her way by moonlight, and her punishment is that she sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Starting point is 02:11:07 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time. you

Lex Fridman Podcast - #281 – Grimes: Music, AI, and the Future of Humanity

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