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lex_fridman_podcast_for_llm_vicuna

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[ { "from": "human", "value": "but eventually you just have to be a Scientologist. So you mentioned the eight dynamics, but you also mentioned survival. So that seems to be a core principle that human existence is about survival. Can you elaborate what is meant by survival? We're talking about survival of the human species, survival of the individual humans, survival of the, the manifestation of thetans in human form." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What do we, what's survival? So it would be all of that because survival is the, the dominant force across all the dynamics that, I mean, Elrond Hubbard, it was either Dianetics or Science of Survival. He says he discovered the principle upon which all life exists. And that is all life, no matter what it is trying to do. Are you ready, Lex?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's trying to survive. That's pretty powerful. That's pretty powerful. I gotta tell you, I gotta- You might get me back in, Lex. No, I'm not, I'm not trying to get you back in. I'm trying to take you, get you to take seriously the power of the ideas behind Scientology, because I think those ideas are not bad ideas. They resonate with a lot of ideas throughout philosophy, throughout religions, throughout the history of human civilization." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The interesting aspect is how it goes wrong. But here's the thing, Lex, here's the thing. It is consistent with prior efforts or studies. It's just that Elrond Hubbard said this was a watershed breakthrough that it was being discovered for the first time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's kind of what I'm mocking, really. Yeah, but you can mock Nietzsche for saying man has will to power. You can mock Roy. But did he claim to be the first person to ever say it? Well, Nietzsche had a bit of an ego, so. Like, and he's full of contradictions, but I'm pretty sure the imply thing is that he was the first to say it. There's a lot of scientists. There's one of the people I really admire, Stephen Wolfram, who wrote a book called A New Kind of Science that explores complex systems and cellular automata and these mathematical systems that have been explored before. But he boldly kind of defined, I am presenting to you a whole new way to look at the world. And if you just set a little bit of the ego behind that aside, there's actually beautiful ideas in there. They have of course been done before and explored before, but sometimes people declare this is the coolest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's the only thing I'm really mocking is that this discovery that life is trying to survive is greater than the discovery of fire. I mean again, it's a little silly. But that's fine. We can agree that the fact that life is trying to survive has meaning and is meaningful and can be, is valuable. And it's true." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, life is trying to survive. Also, there's a non-trivial definition of what is life here? So this idea of a thing, the thing that permeates through lifetimes through people, there's some fabric that is bigger than the individual biological bags of meat. That's a philosophically-interesting idea. Of course, if it's not grounded in a little bit more" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of physical reality, then it becomes a little too woo-woo. And the way L. Ron Hubbard in Scientology defines survival is very much intertwined with how they define ethics. Ethics, anything to be ethical is pro-survival. To be unethical is counter-survival. But we were talking about just the concept of the dynamics, like what does survival refer to? And it actually does refer to all of them, but just keep in mind, when it comes to the seventh dynamic, Thetans collectively, involved in here is the idea that a Thetan cannot die. There's no such thing as killing a Thean. A Thean can only survive. And so, anyway, this concept of the dynamics is one of the most fundamental and important concepts in Scientology. But because I mentioned that it also gets tied up with ethics, and this probably speaks to what you're just talking about is you can have the ideas and the concepts and you can have how do they go wrong. Because they hold that Scientology, applying Scientology, getting people into Scientology is the key to basically saving every spiritual being in existence. When you're analyzing what is ethical, it becomes whatever's good for Scientology becomes by definition ethical, because anything that's good for Scientology, which is a third dynamic, is inherently good for all the dynamics. So that's where you get the ends justifying the means to do anything possible, use any means necessary to afford the aims of Scientology." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's kind of where a lot of Soviet implementation of communism went wrong, is the ends justify the means. The equality, the justice for the workers, if we have to kill, murder, imprison, censor, in the name of that, then it's for the greater good" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in the long term to achieve the ideal of communism. In some respects, Scientology created a near-perfect communist experiment in its organization. What is it, from everyone according to their ability to each according to their need, or something like that? Scientology, C Organization, is damn near a perfect communist experiment. Coming from someone who doesn't necessarily know what a perfect communist experiment really is, because I'm not grew up in a cult, Lex. You can't keep it as an excuse. It's a funny tagline I use in my videos. It is interesting that an organization that is so hyper capitalist and so money hungry and is known to be very wealthy at its core is run by these group of Syorg members that live a communist lifestyle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You can't keep using it as we're gonna jump around. Let's go, what is C or What is C organization? What is this organization?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. What is this organization? The organization is the most dedicated version, the most dedicated brand of Scientologists. So there's three like echelons of Scientologists, there's public who just live normal lives in the real world and they pay to do Scientology courses and auditing. Then there's staff members who also live in the real world, but work on two and a half year contracts or five year contracts at their local Scientology organization and then once they finished their contract, their debt is paid or whatever, and then there's the seorg members, these are the guys who signed the billion year contracts. They don't have lives in the outside world. They don't own property, they live in Scientology provided housing, they eat Scientology run cafeterias." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Is there an actual contract that says a billion years?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's symbolic, but yes. Okay. Like, no, it's not a legally enforceable contract. They haven't succeeded in enforcing it" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in any subsequent lifetimes yet. Marriage contract should be like that. A billion year, not until death's the worst part, but a billion years, it really makes it very concrete of what you're signing up for." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah. Those are the billion year guys. You hear a lot about the billion year contract, the billion year contract, that's the C-ORG. And all of Scientology management, international management, middle management, continental management, and even some lower level service orgs are one composed 100% of C-ORG members. You're not allowed to marry or date someone who's not in the C-ORG." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You're also not allowed to have children. With anybody outside of C-ORG, you know, you're not allowed to have children." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "C-ORG members are not allowed to have children unless they leave the C-ORG, if you, they're expected to have an abortion and stay in the C-ORG, cause that's the greatest good for Scientology." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If you accidentally get pregnant. Interesting. Cause it distracts from the focus of the work. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What about sexual relations? Only once married. But that's why people get married after like three days. You're like, hey you, you look, you look all right. Let's get married! Are you allowed to have divorce? Yeah, you get divorced a lot in the Sea Org. I've known people get married and divorced three times by the age of 25. Oh wow. Because in the Sea Org, getting married is practically like dating. Right. Also, unless you're married, you're living in dorms with a bunch of other people, so in order to get your own room, you also have to get married," }, { "from": "human", "value": "so there's many benefits. You look all right, let's get married. Oh, wow. Okay. So, you mentioned communism. In which way? Because is there a hierarchy" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "inside C-ORG? Is there a redistribution of influence, position, money, power? Okay. Is that C-ORG? Everyone in the C-ORG makes $50 a week. Everybody. Except David Miscavige. And some posts might have a cash bonus incentive structure, but fundamentally their pay is $50 a week. So, even the head of a big Scientology organization" }, { "from": "human", "value": "is getting $50 a week. Are celebrities also part of the C-ORG? No, not usually. So, this is really the management" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "layer. So, what's the idea behind $50 a week? Is that basically live a humble life? They don't have to give you anything at all. It's just, you mean like, what's the idea behind not paying? Yeah, basically not paying. Everything you need is already being provided for you. You're not here for the money. You're working all the time anyway. It's not like you don't have days off. I mean, you're working all the time. There's not, there's no concept of the weekends. There's no, Oh, thank God" }, { "from": "human", "value": "it's Friday. Friday is just another day. And how are the position, the tasks, the jobs allocated within the C-ORG? Like what kind" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of tasks you're doing, what kind of stuff you're doing? It's very similar to just any other business as far as you can have your human resources, you can have your sales, you can have your accounting, your operations, your quality control. It's just that in Scientology, your operations is delivering courses and auditing. So. and your quality control where most of the activity occurs as far as delivering Scientology. And then you've got your, you'd call it business development, but that's just bringing in new members, right? So the function of a Scientology organization" }, { "from": "human", "value": "is very comparable to a normal business in the normal world. So let's talk about the products of this business, auditing and courses." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So what's auditing? So auditing is, so we described earlier, Dianetics auditing, Scientology auditing is very similar to that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So at first glance, it looks like psychotherapy," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "a kind of therapy. All Scientology auditing is going to look like that. It's one-on-one talk therapy. You're in a room by yourselves, no distraction, no noise. One-on-one? Yeah. So like this? Yeah, but, and in Scientology, they have what's called an E-meter, right? Almost all auditing employs the use of an E-meter. What's an E-meter? So an E-meter is a device that just measures the resistance to a small electrical flow. Except Scientologists believe that this E-meter can be used to simply direct the progress of an auditing session, to determine whether the auditing has reached a good satisfactory conclusion. All auditing sessions have to end on a satisfactory conclusion. Like that's the job of the auditor. You don't just, it's not like, sorry, the session sucked. See you next week. It's not like that. Every auditing session has to end on a positive note. And if it doesn't, there's corrections to be made." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So the E-meter." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What does it look like visually? Oh, you can pull it up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Pull up mark eight, E-meter mark eight. So there's a few dials. There's basic information about time and duration, I'm presuming that a dial that just goes zero to something." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, so let's say that the meters in front of me" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and you're the one holding the cans. I'm holding the cans, so you're doing the auditing of me. I'm holding the cans." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No literally, in the beginning of an auditing session when you're calibrating the sensitivity of the E-meter, you do a can squeeze. So I go, squeeze the cans please. Okay, so I'm just like squeezing the cans. Yeah and I'm just changing the sensitivity because when you squeeze the cans, I want to get about a one third of a dial drop on the needle. The idea is if the needle is too sensitive then every time you shift around in your chair, the needle's gonna bounce all over the place. So you're trying to set the sensitivity of this thing, and that's all the knob there on the bottom to the left, that's the sensitivity knob. And that determines just how much how sensitive the needle is gonna be. And the bigger dial is called the tonearm. And that is changing, I wanna say voltage or current, but I'm not intending." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "I'm going to get one of those words is wrong, right? But it is a real device, It's a real device You can actually calibrate to probably, you know, get an outcome that you want." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, so here's even how just how a Scientology auditor believes it works. You're holding the cans, there's a tiny little battery in that emitter that's sending and you're completing the circuit when you pick up the cans, right? So you got a little thing going there and that needle will respond to your physical movement but that's not what we want. We want you to sit the hell still so that we can read this thing when I'm asking you questions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So you're sitting there still, very still, as still as you can, comfortable, right? And I'm going to go, is there something you're withholding from me? And what I'm looking for is... right when I say at the end of me I'm looking for the" }, { "from": "human", "value": "needle to dip to the right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Having a needle, even if it's kind of random, can really be like a catalyst for a conversation. That's what it's used for, except it's an enforced conversation. So I'll give you a really good example of this. So, you're holding the cans, say, is there anything you're withholding from me? and I get an instant read and I go, is there anything you're withholding from me?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "You're going to go, I don't think so, you're gonna tell. And I don't see the needle-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, you don't see the needle. No, you don't see the needle. I go, well, what did you think of when I asked you the question? Now, if you've already had a lot of auditing, you know how this goes. It means I got an instant read and we're not going to move on until this question gets resolved. So you're gonna go, I don't know what I was thinking of and then I'm gonna be like, you know, take a look and I'll help you out here, I'll try to steer ya. Okay, so I'm looking to get roughly the same read So, you're thinking about whatever. I mean, what was that?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "What was that? And you can start digging to what?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You can start?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I just want an answer to the question, okay?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I can go to memory? Yeah, and you can give me any answer you want. There's no way for me to know if you're giving me the right answer. But I want you to give me something. If you say you can't give me anything, I'm gonna keep using the emailashater until you give me something. Yeah. Okay, so let's say you give me something. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna get all the details about that, and until time plays, form an event, I wanna know everything that happened. I wanna know all the details. Like, hold on, I'm writing all this down. So I'm taking notes of everything. You're telling me that it's a bad thing that you did that you haven't told me about. Okay, so I'm keeping notes. When you represent to me that you've told me everything there is to tell, I'm looking for the needle to give a smooth back and forth motion like this. And Scientology called that a floating needle. That means in Scientology land, we're done with that. So now I might go back to check the question. Okay, good, I'll check the question again. Is there anything you're withholding from me? Ooh, if I got another read, we gotta go through the process again. Okay, if you tell me I've told you everything and I don't get a floating needle, I've got to go okay, is there an earlier similar thing? Have you basically done an earlier similar thing? Is there an earlier similar time you haven't told someone something or is there an earlier similar thing that you did to the thing that you just told me? We're going to keep going earlier similar, earlier similar, earlier similar until I get a floating needle. That's where, explaining it this way you can see, no matter what the specific auditing session happens to be about, there's still the potential in any auditing session that you're going into past lives. Just because you have to go earlier similar until you get a floating needle. Okay, now here's how Scientologists think the emitter actually works. We're meaning why does the emitter work? So we talked before about these mental pictures, right? These recordings, okay? Well, we spoke about engrams, just recordings of pain and unconsciousness. Well, Scientology would hold the bad recordings, aren't the only recordings that you have. Those are just the recordings in your reactive mind. You also have an analytical mind, which is just your conscious memory, conscious recording of everything from present time to the last 76 trillion years. And Hubbard would say that these memories are actually a perfectly detailed recording. And he says like 56 perceptions or something. And that it's perfect. And you can access that information. You just have trouble doing so. Okay, so he says that these recordings, these mental pictures have actual electrical charge and mass. Now you asked before, is there any actual physics in this? I don't know. Where are you supposed to store the pictures of your last 76 trillion years that have charge and mass? I don't see it, but Hubbard says it's there. Okay, so he says that these things have mass. And when you recall them or put attention on them, you create an electrical flow, which maybe through magnetic fields or whatever, impinges upon the electrical flow of the emitter. And it shows up as a read on the needle. That's how Scientologists believe that's why the needle reads. Now, cynics would say the needle only reads on palm sweat and movement. Well, I know that's not true, right? I can't tell you everything the needle does read on, but I can tell you it's not just moving your hands and sweaty hands. It does correlate to thoughts probably." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Some way, somehow. Because if it didn't correlate to thoughts, that this process would be way too inefficient. Because there's going to be a bunch of people who are just not, you're not gonna get the, what is it called? The floating needle." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like, no matter what. I can't explain to you how you get a floating needle. But it sure as hell isn't hand sweat. And it sure as hell isn't squeezing the cans." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Right, so you eventually, most people will get to the floating needle. And somehow- You get floating needles. There's like a feed, but there probably is a feedback mechanism that each person realizes how their mind and body, because you want a resolution, right? It's probably- You want your needle to float. For both people. Yes. And it's probably a great experience when you're like, yes, it's like a gamified feeling, right?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, when you get floating needles, well, when you're training on how to use the e-meter, there are drills where you practice generating with your mind various needle reactions. So, you know, there is a drill where you sit there and you consciously try to create a floating needle by recalling happy thoughts. You go to your happy place. And at the end of every auditing session, you actually have to go to a third party, sit down in front of an e-meter and verify that your needle's floating. Nice. Every single auditing session not only has to end on a floating needle, but then you have to go to someone else and have the floating needle verified. Any Scientologist who's a seasoned recipient of auditing" }, { "from": "human", "value": "knows how to make their needle float at the examiner. I gotta be honest though, this process, again, sorry to be sort of going there, but it feels like this is a very rigorous talk therapy session." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there good aspects to this? Sure. A lot of people find auditing very helpful. I mean, I've heard some describe it as quite thoroughly addictive. Me personally, I never enjoyed getting auditing. That's probably more a function of having been raised in it. And it was never something I wanted to do. It was something that was forced on me as a child. And also I was never, I don't like talking about private secret stuff. Like you kind of have to want to be an open book to honestly and thoroughly participate in an auditing session." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Because there's not necessarily a belief" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that this is going to be private. There's no expectation of privacy, but there's no expectation that your stuff's going to be leaked for blackmail either, I mean. You kind of." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You trust the people in the organizationization. Even despite rumors and stuff like that, but the rumors are coming from people" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that are lying to you essentially. If you're a Scientologist and you're participating, in participating in an auditing session, you know that anyone in the organization has the ability to know the stuff that you talk. It's not like, oh my God, I'm only telling my auditor because I think no one's ever going to know. You know that people know," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but you also trust the organization." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How quickly does it go to past memories? For people who are seasoned, like they actually like going past life. Yeah. I hated it. I would make sure, I was really good at making my needle float. I didn't want to have some auditor, because I never believed in the past life memories. So I didn't want to be in that impassable, reach an impass and an auditing session while I was being asked for something I couldn't provide. Cause I knew this auditing session has to end on a good point. But Scientologists enjoy for the most part going, they call it whole track, whole track is past life. Going whole track. Your time track they call it the time track is your whole memory. But whole track refers to anything past life. So going whole track or deep whole track, with high reality. Meaning it's not like, oh I have a fuzzy memory and I'm not sure if it's real. a real seasoned Scientologist that are like, I was on this planet this time circling this time I was eating for breakfast." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This time circling this time I was eating for breakfast. Fascinating. Before the origin of life on Earth? Billions of years ago on a distant planet where you were eating for breakfast. I wonder if there's a nice shortcut to sneak up to actual trauma that happened to you as a therapy device. So putting cytology aside, I'm thinking about as a technique for therapy, discussing, basically, you know, some people have trauma and one of the things you do with therapy is like bringing the trauma to the surface. That's the stuff that happened to your childhood. Maybe it's a more convenient thing to do to kind of map that indirectly onto a fictitious telling of what happened to you, something like that trauma on a distant planet elsewhere." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It could be a nice way to sneak up to it. Yeah, and it goes both flows there, not just things that have happened to you, but things that you've done. So, you know, you could be being asked for, you know, you'd be going back to, I wiped out a civilization. I committed genocide, I don't know, this race on this planet. Oh wow." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh yeah. But so you can actually take on a whole new guilt. Oh yeah. So, okay, all right, you might actually take on a lot more guilt than I go of. Because if you feel like that self critical aspect of the brain, boy, because my brain is really self critical. So I could see myself manufacturing if I was forced to over time, some kind of story where I didn't genocide a whole population of like Pluto or something at a distance" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in somewhere in Nalfa Centauri. Oh yeah." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, so I mean, now I walk around with that guilt." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Wait, am I actually a horrible person? So imagine though, if you had not only are you looking at, you know, if someone's being self critical, trying to identify destructive patterns of behavior in your present life, but what if you really internalize the fact that I haven't only been this way for 40 years. I've been this way for 40 trillion years. But Scientology would argue that as a thetan, you're inherently good. All theans are basically good. So the goal of the auditing procedure there would be essentially to figure out, find the moment, find what it was that caused you to make that shift as a being to dramatize, you know, evil intentions and stuff like that. So even if you're going whole track, looking at all the horrible things you've done, the goal is to find like, well, what happened just prior to that? What was like the prior confusion? And what did you misunderstand just before that and whatnot? So the goal is basically, so Scientologists, after a lot of auditing, are also convinced that they have fixed the reason" }, { "from": "human", "value": "for any non-optimum conduct. And underlying this is a belief that at the core, we're all good. Yes. And there's a lot of really powerful ideas in Scientology, which is so interesting that it goes wrong. Okay. What about the training? You mentioned the training of the auditor. That's really interesting. So how lengthy is that process?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It can take years. Yes." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It can take years. I mean, one of that question I want to ask is, are people in Sea Org, like as an auditor, do you believe everything? How much is there a crisis of faith that creeps in? In religion, you have a crisis of faith when you start to wonder like, does God even exist? So in this case, how often do you start to doubt" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that some of the core beliefs of Scientology are false? Scientology would say that Scientology is not about beliefs. It's about application of the techniques of Scientology auditing to improve someone's spiritual awareness and ability. So the belief level of Scientology" }, { "from": "human", "value": "is pretty much the stuff we've already discussed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The effectiveness of the auditing process. So the effectiveness of the auditing process, this is one of the things Hubbard says, is that standard tech, standard Scientology, they call it the tech, the technology of how to deliver auditing, standard tech, works 100% of the time when applied 100% correctly. Well, that's kind of unfalsifiable, right? Yeah. Because anytime it doesn't work. It wasn't applied correctly. Exactly. That's a nice little escape hatch to pull on having a crisis of faith. It didn't work. Well, then obviously it wasn't applied correctly. That's where quality control comes in. Their job is to nitpick, and you can always find one thing that wasn't done correctly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Communism didn't work because it wasn't implemented correctly. It's the, it's always an escape hatch with ideologies." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's right, that's right. I would probably argue that auditors are not in a position of having many crisis of faith, because actually they're usually seeing people, for the most part, improve in some ways through the process of auditing. Now, auditing can create like a state, somewhat of a euphoric state. You feel great. You're just blown out of your head. You feel, on top of the world, I've had that in some of my auditing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As an auditor, sorry?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, as a person receiving auditing. No, as a person receiving auditing. And so my point is, as an auditor, doing a lot of auditing, you're gonna have someone in front of you called the preclear, as the person in front of you who's getting the auditing, called the PC of the preclear. They see, over and over and over again, these PCs having these sort of euphoric states and floating needles and I feel great and fantastic. No, thanks, you saved my life and da, da, da, da. Like I've always said, if people didn't find Scientology helpful, nobody would ever stay in Scientology. And so auditors are pretty much the ones doing the heavy lifting of what it even means to be a Scientologist. Those guys aren't the ones that you end up having crisis of faith. I mean, doing Scientology, auditing, it doesn't require that you just have faith that you believe something. You just have to go through these motions and Scientologists, one of the reasons Scientologists think this is all scientific is because it's like, I don't care if you believe why this works, I care how you feel at the end of an auditing session." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And empirically speaking, anecdotal data is, it actually seems to improve people's lives within the context. So taking the outside world out of it, within this particular organization, you're actually measurably seeing improvement. Yes. Is that to some degree real? Because if you look at a book, Animal Farm where the pigs start to rule the other animals and over time the life of the animals gets worse and worse and worse while the pigs keep saying that it's actually getting better and better and better, again communism same thing, the rationing is getting worse and worse and worse, less and less food, but there's constant reporting that there's more and more food," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "we're winning, hashtag. I would argue that what you've just described could be an identical description of what it feels like and what it means to go up. Scientology breaks the total freedom. You are reinforcing to yourself that everything's getting better and better and better, and you don't spend time with your family anymore. You're broke, even though you make a lot of money. You're always stressed. You're at the beck and call of these people who seem to run your lives. How a Scientologist feels about their own life is, it's very interesting to compare that to how that person's life looks to their non-Scientology family members. I get contacted by a lot of people who have never been in Scientology, but they're like, I got a family member who's really deep, and can you help me understand some things? Why is this person's life like this? Why is this person's life like this? So I don't want to say that Scientologists do not actually, I don't want to say, Oh, it's all in their heads. They think they're being helped, but they're really not. That doesn't feel honest. you know, but it's this thing where if Scientology was just getting auditing when you wanted about the subjects you wanted, and you could take it or leave it, that would be fine. It's the fact that it's part and parcel to this entire organization and this entire experience that has, as a part of that experience, taking everything from you, demanding everything from you, controlling who you can speak with, controlling who you can have relationships with, who you have to erase from your life. This is where... and it's hard to place one pinpoint on this is where Scientology goes wrong. It's really hard to do that, because the good parts of Scientology and the bad parts of" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Scientology are all just Scientology. Yeah, so there's definition of what's bad for you, and it's probably in the beginning is bad for you. Someone's just, sounds like a template of a toxic relationship. You know, there's a bunch of stuff in this world that's just not good for you. So the authoritarian says like, I'm just protecting you by blocking you off from those negative things. And they're probably, they are probably negative things. But then this like, this freedom starts closing in to where you can't no longer speak freely, think freely, act freely. And there's some, I mean, that's why sort of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That person doing the controlling actually starts getting that like dope immune rush of the controller that's exciting. And it's a vicious negative cycle. So you start out as a, it starts out good because you're trying to do good for the person. But then it somehow goes to shit. Yeah. So what, what, what are the aspects that just, that are often controlled about, about a person" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "who's in mythology, especially C org? Well information control, access to the internet, access to any information. Critical of Scientology. Is some internet access allowed? Public Scientologist has no restrictions to their access to the Internet. They're just not allowed to read anything critical of Scientology. Oh" }, { "from": "human", "value": "okay, so there's self, they're supposed to self control what they read or not? And And what's the explanation? Is it always assumed that anything critical of Scientology is a lie?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. They really pushed this thing that unless you've been in a Scientology organization yourself, or unless you've actually been a Scientologist, you couldn't possibly know the truth about Scientology. If you're only getting information from people who aren't members or former members, then you couldn't possibly be getting the correct information. Now, they don't realize the math there doesn't make sense. if you can find out the true information by becoming and being a Scientologist, then that means you can get the correct information from a former Scientologist because they traveled that path and they got the correct information. So they still create this, or they try to create this unfalsifiable loop where unless you are personally doing it, you don't have correct information. And you go, well, what about the people who did personally do it. Got the correct information, left, and are now sharing that with others? Well, no, those are lies. Well, okay, so just anything you don't like is a lie then. You go, yeah, pretty much." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's kinda how it works. So what about the control of negative information on the internet? What, like the actual operations I've, you know, preparing, I should admit, I don't know too much about Scientology. I was doing a bunch of reading and the Wikipedia page on Scientology, interestingly enough, is not that negative about Scientology. So like, it made me ask, you know, you have to be a little bit careful how you consume stuff from Wikipedia. You have to consider, because money can buy things there. There's certain special interests and so on. But like, it made me wonder, like, like with a lot of controversial topics, what is true? And where do I look, where do I go for truth? So like, how much sort of deliberate action is there" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to control what is true on the internet by Scientology? Well, these days, they've pretty much, I think, thrown in the towel, but- They have. Scientology middle management was editing Wikipedia so often from IP addresses that were traced back to the Scientology buildings that Wikipedia locked them out from any IP addresses associated with Scientology from being able to edit it. It's like, the Scientology was so infatuated with trying to control the information. And in the early days of the internet, they had a certain degree of success with that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They just, it's just hopeless these days. It's the scale, the scale is not there, but actually I'm very surprised how bot farms, how effective that can be at a very small scale. If you just pay a hundred people, just spread narratives, but the bad stuff, the reason that's effective is you can kind of create conspiracy theories that create chaos and nobody knows what is true that bot farms can do, but actually really nicely control a narrative, it's hard. So to create chaos, it's easier to do, to basically say like, do PR control is very hard. Yeah, so especially on the internet, especially when the critical eye is there, the internet can smell bullshit, which is one of the really, really powerful thing" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "about the internet. And I gotta tell you, it's one of the reasons I do my YouTube channel. It's one of the reasons I decided to upload every day. I've uploaded every day for the last six months. I just wanted there to be a nonstop flow of information of any kind and any variety, as long as it's fair and balanced, intelligent, interesting, that Scientologists who stumble upon the internet will go, oh, look, someone's talking about my thing. Let's see what they got going on. And I know this guy, the fact that Scientology crushes so much information, before YouTube, before like, I have the only like big Scientology channel and that only got big in the last six months. Okay, so before that, there were channels, there was things, but it's almost like it took a lot of, like people felt like it took a lot of bravery and courage to like say something on the internet about Scientology. And so people would pop up and there weren't very many voices and I was like, I want this to be prolific. I want to be prolific. I want to have 30 or 40 other channels being prolific so that Scientology couldn't possibly successfully control the narrative about it. Have you been personally attacked? Aaron Smith Levin.com is a website created by the Church of Scientology. Have you seen it?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "No." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What kind of content is on there? Oh, Aaron's an abusive father and a horrible husband and the worst staff member we've ever had. And oh, I openly talk about it because I think the fact that Scientology even does things like that is fucking hilarious. And anything they try to do to me, the way I think about it is you know, you're just giving me an opportunity to turn the mirror back on you and show everyone how horrible you are. Does it stick?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "No. And that there is ineffective." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's completely ineffective. They're so over the top. And well, I'll tell you how the website even came into being. So I was on the first season of Leah Remini, Scientology and the Aftermath. Every single person who participated in that show got a website. It's just that everyone else's website is like, whoismarkheadly.com, whoismikerender.com. Well, I bought whoisaronsmithleven.com but I was too stupid to buy, I didn't buy aaronsmithleven.com. So I'm actually the only one who has a website in their name. Oh, nice. Yeah. And I'm like, I could really get a lawyer to get it back for me, but I'm like, why? I want everyone to see what a nasty, petty, disgusting organization that this is. And nobody believes anything Scientology says anyway." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Does the general public know that? Oh, nice. It comes from Scientology." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Pull it up. It says right on the bottom, copyright 2000 whatever, Church of Scientology International." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like they didn't even try to hide it. aaronsmithleven.com, a man with no moral compass. Aaronsmith, who is he really? Aaronsmithleven, a man with no moral compass. Read about Aaronsmithlevens, an angry man" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "spreading hate from the internet's shadows." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A man with no moral compass. Open mouth shot." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And you're saying like, wow, there's testimonies." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, there's videos from former coworkers. The slightest thing just sets him off and he just goes totally nuts. Well, that one is true. I didn't understand why you slapped me before the interview." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I felt that. I felt that. Got links to everyone else's website on the bottom. It's so funny." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cool with, cool with, okay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But like 2021 Church of Scientology International all rights reserved. Here's an example of just Scientology's complete lack of self-awareness. So me and Mike Render, we went and have these on like a house flip project, right? You know, Mike Render." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You know, Mike Render. Wait, do I, he gave me a bobblehead of the guy. I don't know him. I was just, I would like to talk to him about him, but this, there's a very fine gentleman here" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "with a bobblehead. The reason we created the bobblehead is because on Mike Render's hate site, Scientology created a gif or a gif. How do you say it? What's the right way to say it? The correct way is gif. Gif, good. Scientology created a gif of Mike Render as a bobblehead. It was an insult like, oh, all he does is sit next to Leah Remini and go, yes, Leah, yes, Leah. And so they made a gif of him with a bobblehead. So we were like, we're going to make Mike Render bobbleheads and we're going to sell them on the spshop.com to raise money for the Aftermath Foundation. I love it. Yeah. And now that I'm- So go out and buy- Yeah, go to the spshop.com and get yourself a Mike Render bobblehead. Now look, now that my profile's getting a little higher, this head was made to bobble. Like this smooth, shiny head needs its own bobblehead now. It does, 100% does. I can't believe it doesn't exist. So, but let me show you. So here's what's happening here. We just hired some day laborers off of what," }, { "from": "human", "value": "like Craigslist or something. Yeah. And now that I- So go out and buy-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, go to the- So what Scientology did was they had a private investigator stake out the house flip project. They were clearly running license plates of anyone who visited the property because otherwise, how would they find out the laborers names, do background checks on them to find out they had criminal records. And they published this as if it's going to reflect negatively on me. Oh, we hired someone to do work who had a criminal record? Who gives a shit? Do you know, one of the biggest problems people with records have is finding employment. There's nothing bad about hiring someone who's got a criminal record. It doesn't reflect negatively on me, but it shows you what they think about those people. It shows you what they think about people who are trying to put their lives back together and maybe actually work for a living. And it also shows that they're surveilling us. Like they don't realize that putting this up, they're publishing information that they could only have if they're surveilling me and Mike, and it doesn't occur to them," }, { "from": "human", "value": "maybe we shouldn't put that up. Just the general process, sad to say, of journalism, where they're looking for any kind of dirt, and they're trying to conjure up a story, and there's something about drama and negative stories that get clicks and so on. So this is a general process. The more, especially the more celebrity you become, the more these kinds of attacks come, and they look for any kind of thing that could be, it doesn't even have to be facts, it could be just asking who is he really? Seems to have traction on the internet. What is the actual truth of the man you keep claiming you are, of the good man you keep claiming you are? It's fascinating, but sometimes that can be effective. But I think if you're being transparent and authentic and just putting yourself out there completely and down your story completely, then that's the best way to fight it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's the other reason to be prolific on the internet, right? The reason Joe Rogan can't get canceled is because anyone can watch thousands of hours of the authentic Joe Rogan. You can't misrepresent him because he spent thousands of hours representing himself genuinely." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, the nice thing, when you're representing yourself genuinely, you should be a good person. If you're a good person, then the internet will know, you can smell all the bullshit. who is David Miscavige, it's even like, because you said Elrond Hubbard founded Scientology. Let's go to the story of how we transitioned" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "from that to David Miscavige. The current leader of Scientology, he was actually not selected by Elrond Hubbard to take over," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but ended up usurping power and taking over. This sounds like Stalin and Trotsky and Stalinism, similar story. It's the person oftentimes in this situation, it's not the natural successor to power," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it's the one that takes power. Right. I think the quote sometime it gets attributed to David Miscavige is power, power is not given, it is assumed, something like that. The last six years of Elrond Hubbard's life, he was often a seclusion, essentially hiding from lawsuits. Now, by the time Hubbard went off into seclusion, Miscavige had sort of already risen up through the ranks of the sea organization. Now Miscavige was like a teenager, either like 11, 12, 13, or something like that. Miscavige was not born into Scientology, but he was a young boy when his father got into Scientology. Okay. So Miscavige did start working as a Sea Org member. So there's one organization that existed to essentially serve Hubbard directly and to represent his interests, and that was called the Commodore, he was the Commodore of the Sea Organization, the Commodore's Messenger's Organization, we're gonna call it the CMO. Miscavige started working for the CMO pretty early on in his Sea Org career. By the way, as did Mike Rinder. Mini Mike. Okay. And so he just became known as a doer, like a guy who'll get it done. No excuses, no stops, you know, get it done. So he had made a name for himself in the CMO around the time, by the time Hubbard went off into seclusion. Now, when he went off into seclusion, he took two other CMO, or I'm gonna call them messengers, right? Commodore's messengers. He took two other messengers with him, Pat and Annie Broker. Now it has been said by people, Mike, Mike Rinder has told me, he goes, the reason Pat and Annie went off with LRH isn't necessarily because he desperately wanted them to, but partly because we could afford to let them go. We didn't necessarily need them. Okay. And between the two of them, Annie was the one who was like a really compassionate person, intelligent person, caring person." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Was there a possible trajectory of this world" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "where she was the one that took over? Yes. In fact, Pat and Annie Broker were the two people that were supposed to take over. Okay. But because Pat and Annie were with Hubbard in seclusion, Miscavige basically had the complete run of the operation without any oversight from Hubbard. The only way any information would get from Scientology world to Hubbard is Miscavige, and Pat Broker would meet at a confidential location, and Miscavige would give Broker any information he wanted to go to LRH. So if Miscavige wanted to get rid of somebody, all he had to do was feed LRH false information that this person had been caught doing something treasonous, and then he would get in response some order from L. Ron Hubbard to get rid of this person. So are there so many similarities between various communist regimes and fascist regimes?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, Hitler did the same thing when he became the supreme leader. He had to take power. Yeah, he had to wait for the presidency to die, but the whole time there's a control of information and a slow aggregation of power. Of course, with nations it's different because if you control the military you control a lot, so you have to also get the generals on your side and so on. But I'm sure in this situation there is similar kind of dynamics. You have to get certain people on your side, control the flow of information, let the original founder, the original leader die off, and make sure that you are the one" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that's left with the power. Yeah, right. So whereas Pat and Annie are off with LRH, all of Scientology's attorneys and accountants and lobbyists and whatever, they all know Dave. Dave's the one they deal with. So, you know, LRH passes away. Pat and Annie make disappearance. Nobody knows Pat and Annie. Everybody knows Dave. And so he ended up getting rid of Pat and Annie. This is a very short, perhaps slightly bastardized version of it, of Miscavige basically. They had been ushering just suitcases of cash to L. Ron Hubbard during this time. And, you know, Pat, like, so you have Miscavige handing boatloads of cash to Pat Broker. Pat would do crazy things like hide the money in the walls of houses and dig pits and everything. So Miscavige basically threatened to turn Pat Broker over to the IRS for tax evasion. That's part, Pat Broker's still alive. Is he a Scientologist or no? No, he basically went away and kept his mouth shut. She died a handful of years ago. She stayed a loyal Sea Org member until the very end. But literally, Miscavige put her on menial tasks, like she had no authority whatsoever. She was just put on menial tasks, washing dishes, but not really groundskeeper, just stupid low level assistant paper pusher stuff. She never operated with any actual authority, even though she was supposed to be the one" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to take over her and Pat. So on David Miscavige, difficult question, but can you make both the case that he is a good man" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "who's misunderstood, and the case that he's not a good man? First of all, I believe that Miscavige is a true believer in Scientology. I do believe that." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "That's a really important question. Do you think he believes in all the thetans and all of that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He definitely believes in that. I think he believes in Scientology, but in a different way than all other Scientologists, because he's aware of a lot more information, damaging information about L. Ron Hubbard and the true story of Scientology than most people. So his version of belief is different. I'll give you one example here. So Scientology's bridge to total freedom goes up to what they call OT8, operating thing in level eight, okay? Scientologists have all been told that L. Ron Hubbard, before he passed, finished, completed, putting together OT9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. It's just sitting in the vault waiting to be released. This is part of the Scientology belief system because, remember, I said going up Scientology's bridge to total freedom is how you're supposed to get back to your native, godlike state. While all the Scientologists in the world have already done OT8 know that they haven't gotten there, but they still believe in Scientology because they're told there's more. But wait, there's more. Miscavige knows there is no more. So Miscavige knows the fundamental promise of being able to achieve full operating Thetan is a lie. He knows L. Ron Hubbard didn't accomplish that, so therefore no one else is going to accomplish it as well. If L. Ron Hubbard had accomplished it, Miscavige knows, well, he didn't write it up, didn't leave instructions for how anyone else would accomplish it. So no matter what, Miscavige knows that the fundamental promise that what Scientology is saying, they will be able to deliver to mankind is a lie. Now it's going to sound like I'm contradicting myself because it sounds like I'm saying, well, he knows it's bullshit. I think he believes that L. Ron Hubbard just failed to finish his work and he's kind of hoping L. Ron Hubbard is going to come back to finish the job because L. Ron Hubbard did tell the people at the international management base, at least a core of them, that he was coming back. Now we know that David Miscavige believed this because right around the 21 year mark, he was supposed to come back like 21 years after he died, right around the 21 year Mark, David Miscavige was getting busy putting some things in place that had to get done in case L. Ron Hubbard came back so We know he at least believed to that level." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, he believes that like," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Elrond Hubbard can sort of enter his own body. No, that's not how it works in Scientology. Okay, so you can't have a transfer of thetans." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If you were full OT, you could. Okay, so you can't have a, can you describe the OT again? So OT levels, OT one, two, three, four, five to the eight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What are they, how do you get to level one? I'm gonna answer this question by first connecting some dots. Yes. We spoke earlier in the interview about achieving your native God-like state. That in Scientology is called native state. Okay, native state and full operating thetan mean the exact same thing. Okay, because that native state, you are a fully operating thetan. You know, operating meaning operating your full capacity. So OT means operating thetan. So the upper confidential half of Scientology's bridge are called the OT levels, the operating thetan levels. And these, and remember, they're confidential. So most Scientologists have not done these levels. They don't know it's on them. It is on these levels that you learn about the zenu and the body thetan story. Can you describe zenu please? We spoke earlier about how at the lower non-confidential levels of Scientology's bridge, Hubbard saying that what's wrong with you is your reactive mind. Okay, well in Scientology, once you've gotten rid of your reactive mind, that is what's called the state of clear. Okay, so after you finish State of Clear, the next thing on the bridge is the OT levels. Well, if you've already gotten rid of your active mind, what the heck are you supposed to do now? Well, now Elrond Hubbard says, okay, first what was wrong with you was just your reactive mind. But now the next thing you have to resolve, the next thing that's wrong with you, is you actually have tens of thousands of thetans stuck to your body, and they all have their own reactive minds." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You have to audit the thetans. How do you audit the thetans? Are these like different shades of your inner mind, and you just have to try to access them somehow?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You use the emitter, just like we spoke about, except now you've got a divider that separates the cans so they don't short-circuit, and you hold both cans in one hand, and you have the emitter in front of you. So now you're auditing yourself. You're telepathically talking to the thetans that are stuck to you. You are thinking the commands instead of saying them out loud, and you sort of do drills where you practice looking for emitter reads at the instant you have a thought. You're telepathically auditing spirits that Elrond Hubbard says are stuck to your body." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Does this sound like a recipe for a mental breakdown? Or a heck of a mental journey. Wherever that leads, it could lead anywhere. It probably lead to a very bad place, right?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Very often does, and you combine that with the fact that Scientology is against any forms of mental help or health outside of Scientology, and you have a recipe for disaster. Now you might go, where did all these spirits come from that are stuck to your body? This is where Xenu comes into play. So Hubbard says that 75 million years ago, Xenu was basically a dictator at, the Galactic Confederation is like 70 something or 80 something planets somewhere in the Milky Way. And Xenu was like a dictator, an overlord for either one of these planets or the whole system. And they had a population problem. And Xenu was like, we need to get rid of like half the people. So we called them all in for tax audits. Elrond Hubbard didn't like the IRS, so of course the story has to do with tax audits. Okay, called them all in for tax audits, said, psyches,ite bitches, froze them in glycol, loaded them up on space planes,I flew them to earth. Remember, the story has to be earth because the story is what's wrong with us. Flew them to earth, drop them in volcanoes, blew them up with hydrogen bombs and then captured them with like spirit magnets. I'm making up words because, okay. And these disembodied spirits of these people that got blown up have just been blowing in the wind here on earth and they attach themselves to things and they can be in the environment and they stick to bodies and everything. And so, and they all have reactive minds. So at Scientology's upper levels, if you get sick or you have cancer or there's something wrong with you, Scientology will say, that's one of your body things. You need to get some auditing to fix the body things." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "So this story, you do it with a kind of a bit of a chuckle, but when done seriously, so it's just told in a serious way, like to," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "or written down and you read it. By most accounts, Scientologists struggle when they read this for the first time because this is not consistent with what Scientologists are hoping for is on the OT levels. They're hoping for some real life-changing magic. The way these things are described and sold, remember, they're hoping that these OT levels are gonna make them, give them the ability to go like completely independent of their body at will, exteriors from your body, go back into your body," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you know, like I have some real spirit powers. So first is kind of a shock, this is, but then you still probably believe, you hope, and you might turn into on yourself self-critical" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that this is, I'm just not strong enough yet. Yeah, because also part of the Scientology, remember, it works 100% of the time when used 100% correctly, and if it doesn't, it could be because something's not being done right, but it also could be because you're doing bad things that you're not telling people about. Like if you're committing present time over its crime sins, Scientologists will be like, that's part of the reason auditing isn't working on you, is because you're committing criminal behavior that you're not being honest about. So every Scientologist is sort of incentivized to make auditing work on them, okay? Now, Lex, this work is a little crazy. On OT-3 you learn about the body things for the first time. When you finish OT-3 you attest to having achieved this state of having more body things and then you start OT-4 and he's like, \"'Sykes! \"'You got more BTs.' \"'Except those other BTs, they had drug problems \"'and that's why you couldn't find them the first time.\" So we're going to do something a little different here, just something a little different there. You got to get rid of these BTs that were addicted to drugs. Then you finish OT-4 and you're thinking, Man, I hope we get to the good stuff soon. And then you get to OT5 and he's like, psych, you got more BTs. You couldn't find these BTs because they were all bunched up together in clusters. And first you have to break up the clusters and then you can get rid of the BTs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And you're like, okay, gotta do that. And this was all Elrond Hubbard approved." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, this is from Elrond Hubbard. And then after you finish OT5, you get rid of all the BT clusters. OT6 is just a training course to teach you how to auto OT7. Well, OT7 is now more BTs, except it's in the environment and stuff. You're trying to locate BTs, you can find them on your body, but it's just more BTs. Okay, and then OT8 is, remember we talked about in all these auditing sessions throughout the entire Scientology bridge. You have people who've run hundreds or thousands of past life, whole track incidents. These memories have become part of their self-identity of who they even think they are. OT8, you go through all these past life recalls and essentially I'm oversimplifying this a little bit. He goes, psych, all those past life memories weren't yours. They were your BTs. And he goes, now that you've discovered this, now you know who you are not. And you are ready to find out who you really are. Well, now you're supposed to find out who you really are on OT9 and 10. Those don't exist. Do we know they don't exist? Yes. In fact, the whole story of how that became known is part of how David Miscavige was able to get rid of Pat Broker and take over power because it was believed that Pat Broker was in possession of the upper unreleased OT levels. And when Miscavige determined that he was not and there weren't in fact any levels, that was a bad day to be David Miscavige because he now knew he had something on his hands he could not get himself out of." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He's like, oh. So there's no gap for faith to seep in" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that there is a level nine and 10 and 11 and 12. Oh, the faith is there. Scientologists believe that these things do exist. L. Ron Hubbard didn't leave anything behind. Does David Miscavige believe they exist? Oh, no, he knows they don't exist. When I say exist, oh, I don't mean do advanced levels of spiritual awareness exist. When I said exist, I mean, did L. Ron Hubbard write down what anyone is supposed to do that's called OT9?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "That doesn't exist. So you're saying David Miscavige believes that they can be written down. So they exist sort of in a platonic sense. And L. Ron Hubbard is the only one that can write it down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So his faith is really deep. Oh, you mean his faith that only L. Ron Hubbard could have ever been the one to do it?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "The full principles, beliefs of Scientology," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "he is, do you have, are you sure he believes?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "That what exactly?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everything about Scientologies that is true. To the best of my ability to know that I believe it to be true. Like I'll give you small, even stupid examples. Like Mike Renders told a story where at the international base, Miscavige actually had like a copper contraption built into the ground, like grounded into the ground to come out where you could hold it. And here's something he sort of came up with to your BT, it could ground your BTs, could get your BTs that if you were feeling overstimulated or something, I'm probably slightly bastardizing this story. But he came up with this as a great idea, something to help someone de-stimulate. If their BTs were getting a little too overactive use. Now, so that's a stupid story that's sort of like, well, it shows you he believes in the concept of BTs if he's creating little rods to get rid of them," } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "to ground them into the earth. Well, he could be conjuring up the stories because he understands the power of myth and narrative and so on to inspire. Sure. But like, but also if we look at history, both with, this is the interesting thing because I've been reading a lot about Hitler and Stalin and it seems like both of them in different ways believed in the stories they were telling. Even when the stories, this is the fascinating, especially with Hitler and propaganda, where they were literally conjured up at first. But then you start to believe your own propaganda. With Stalin, I think what he always believed is the bigger ideal of pure communism and anything justifies the journey to communism because it will ultimately be good for humanity to achieve the state of pure communism. And then he's a God-like figure that can bring humanity there. But like, with Hitler, it's interesting because like there's constant propaganda that he knows is not true, a little bit. There's gotta be doubt, but then he liked that all doubt is removed very quickly. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I guess humans are just, this is how they operate. Yeah, yeah. The conversation about David Miscavige gets really interesting because I could give you a, if I wanted to make the argument that he didn't believe, I could give you a dozen examples to make that argument. I just happen to think that he believes in a different way. Whereas your average Scientologist believes that Alveron Hubbard was practically infallible, that he thought of everything in advance, he took care of everything before he left. And Miscavige still believes in like the main structure of this thing, but he's like, oh shit, it's falling to me to figure out how to actually make this thing happen. I think Miscavige sees himself as someone who has to a certain degree had to go back" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and fix Alveron Hubbard's mistakes. Do you think he sees himself as doing good for the world? I do." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What about for the people of Scientology? I think in his own way he does. I don't think he wakes up thinking he's screwing Scientologists. I think he sees everyone else is screwing him. I think he sees that it is his job to expand Scientology throughout the world and accomplish the aims of Scientology. And he sees that it's not happening. And he thinks if everyone else would just stop, if everyone else would get out of his way and stop creating problems for him, it would happen. I do think he sees himself as someone who is doing good. I think that's fair to say." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think the evidence shows that. What about the effects of clearly power and influence that he's had and money?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, without question that has served as a corrupting force." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It has. Without question. Have you seen sort of evidence of that," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that he's changed over time? After the 1993 IRS exemption that Scientology won back and this information comes from Mike Rinder, that's when David Miscavige, as soon as the checks on his power were removed," }, { "from": "human", "value": "Miscavige's behavior changed markedly. Can you tell the story of Shelley Miscavige and the mystery surrounding her?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I saw that there is quite a bit of mystery. Yeah. So Shelley Miscavige for many years held the job of her post in the C organization was David Miscavige's assistant. That was her post. It's important to truly understand that and what that means because the fact that she was Miscavige's wife is meaningless. And this is something that's hard to, for regular people in the regular world to truly grasp how meaningless it is in Scientology for Sea Org members who are spouses." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It means nothing. Your role matters more within Sea Org." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Your role's the only thing that matters. So let's say if Shelley was married to Dave, but she worked in a different organization. She would never be seen with him ever, publicly ever. Wouldn't travel with him, wouldn't go to events with him, nothing. Sometime around 2006, 2007, and I'm very oversimplifying this, okay? Shelley basically pissed off Dave to the point where he's like, okay, I'm done with you. I'm gonna take you off of your post, okay? At that point, she was reassigned to another confidential Scientology base up in Twin Peaks, California. Why am I, the reason I'm providing this type of detail is because we hear that Shelley's missing. Okay, well, you realize the same people who report that Shelley's missing are also the same people who will tell you exactly where she is. She works at this secretive CST, Church of Spiritual Technology base out in Twin Peaks, California. I have personal confirmation that she was seen and spoken with by someone who knew her well in, I'll say 2019. Shelley Miscavige is missing in the sense that she hasn't been seen with David Miscavige since about 2006. But because she's no longer his assistant," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you would never see her with him. As opposed to the mystery of a person that might be murdered, this is more of a reallocation within the organization." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. Yeah. Certain people who cover Scientology, who have published stories where Shelley Miscavige's family member told a story to another family member who told the story to a friend, who told the story to a former Scientologist, who told the story to a journalist, who published the story, has created the impression that some of Shelley Miscavige's family members are actually talking to the press, when in fact that has never occurred. And so the very people who are publishing about Shelley Miscavige missing have contributed to the fact that Shelley Miscavige does no longer speak to those family members, because she thinks they're talking to the press" }, { "from": "human", "value": "when they never have, it's pretty messed up. It's sad that she, because those family members, what would be a way for her to recover," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to flourish as a human being, to escape? Yeah, so I believe the information that I have that I verified, I'm putting out, I'm the one representing it's true without revealing my sources, that Shelley was still actively in touch regularly with family members outside of the C organization since about until about 2014. So I mean, regularly, okay? So there's no question about her safety during that period. And then someone else who knew Shelley very well, did see her and actually have a conversation with her in a public place in 2019 or 2020. Now somebody could still come along and be like, how do we know she's okay? It's been three years. Okay, you could say that about anybody, you know? The nature of working in the highest levels of Scientology management at these super secretive bases, it's a very weird and unique situation. It has isolation baked in." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "How secrecy enforced? Why is everybody holding on to their stories so intensely? People that are within the organization," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "like it's hard to leak information. Oh, they wouldn't want to leak, they're true believers. They see, like there's sort of a conspiracy theory that runs right through all of Scientology, which is that Scientology represents like an existential threat to the powers that really control this planet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Do they have a face to the powers that really control? Do they have names to it? Like who's controlling? It's Xenu's homies. Well, I'm sure that's not what they say." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Xenu embodied in- It's actually sort of a multifaceted conspiracy in that on the one hand, L. Ron Hubbard points his fingers at like the international bankers. Okay." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Which has shades of anti-Semitism too, has shades of anti-Semitism too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And then the IRS is going to be quickly baked in or no? The IRS, no, the IRS is so low on the totem pole as far as the, I mean, the international bankers, he would say runs everything. Got it. But used that these bankers also use big pharma and big psych to control the population. And Scientology is famously against pharma and psych. And so this is sort of how L. Ron Hubbard characterizes like this big war between Scientology that's trying to set everyone free and big pharma and big psych" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that's trying to enslave everyone on the planet. Yeah. Controlling their mind, controlling their body" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "through chemicals and- And who controls the press?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Big pharma and big psych. So that there's a lot of correlation to other kinds of conspiracy theories. That's fascinating." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But you asked the question, why would all these people hold on to their stories? They would never want to leak. Anyone who would want to leak would not even want to be a Scientologist anymore. If you truly believe in Scientology and you got your shoulder to the wheel and you're a SEERC member, you think Scientology is literally the only thing that can save every being on this planet from a fate of eternal amnesia and slavery, right? And so it's like, I mean, you've seen The Matrix, right? So you've got everyone, once you're unplugged from The Matrix and you realize, yeah, you could get plugged back in and live your nice life, but you're a slave. That's how Scientologists see this planet." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They actually, they refer to Earth as a prison planet. Just an individual level. How is it possible to reach a person like that? Is there something you could say to that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like what's the journey of reaching a person like that? I personally, because when I was in those shoes, I say there's nothing anybody could have said to me to get me to change how I felt and thought about Scientology. It's almost foolproof that the more evidence you try to present that there's something wrong with what Scientology is doing, the more you're just working for the psychs. It's very, very difficult. I mean, most people who leave Scientology leave because they have had some personal experience that was just such a grave injustice that it just pushed them beyond the point of what they were willing to experience. Very rare. I'm not sure I've really ever heard a story of someone going, yeah, I just woke up, you know, I just gradually realized it was all BS and drifted away. It's usually like, no, I really believed and they treated me so horribly. I almost had no choice but to leave." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then the stories get pretty crazy. Meaning you don't care what's true anymore, you just have to leave this, the unpleasant" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "feeling, the suffering. Yeah. And this sort of goes back to the conversation we're having about like, well, does Miss Scavich really believe? And I said I could make an argument for the fact that he doesn't, right? Because I go, it wouldn't be that hard to change the way Scientology treats people just a little bit and you'd probably stop losing anyone because Scientologists already believe to such a strong degree, you have to be pretty fricking horrible to people to make them leave. And that's where you go, well, does Miss Scavich even want Scientology to expand? Because if he was really being clever about it, it seems like he could at least stop the bleeding and yet he doesn't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So that's where you make the argument, well, if he doesn't, then he must not want to. So his mind is corrupted to the point where he's not able to actually be a good businessman," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "essentially. It's just that way. The numbers of Scientologists have been going down and down and down since the early 90s." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is there a good, I mean, it's very difficult to get to this number, but is there a good" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "estimate of what the current number of Scientologists or practicing Scientologists is? Oh yeah, I did a video about this. It's actually quite easy to get to the number. It's not more than 35,000 in the entire world. And that's being very generous and charitable. I was intentionally generous." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I broke it all down in a spreadsheet and everything." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Can you give some insights of how you get that information? Sure, there's about 175 to 200 Scientology organizations in the world. Anybody who's ever worked at these organizations know there's not more than 35 to 50 staff members per org. There's not more than one to 200 public Scientologists per org. I broke down the number of CRG members who'd be working at every Continental Management Unit, middle management, international management. I broke down the mission network and I was generous. I mean, my numbers were like, if L. Ron Hubbard came back and they were doing an event, I was like, L. Ron Hubbard was coming back and announcing OT9 and 10. How many Scientologists could we scrape together in every city to come to this event? It wasn't more than 35,000." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Now contrast that to what Scientology says, millions, 10 million people, millions people." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is this less people than there used to be? Yeah. At its peak, it was about 100,000 active members. But never the millions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Never, never. No. I think David Miscavige used violence in your understanding of it, in your estimation, sort" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of harassment, assault, and actual, I don't know how to define assault, but violence. Oh yeah. Dozens of former CRG members from the international base have told stories of being assaulted by Miscavige. In fact, Mike Rinder is probably the one person who's been assaulted by Miscavige more than anyone else. He's personally probably been assaulted dozens of times. Who is Mike Rinder? The man here. He's one of the highest ranking executives in Scientology. The author. There you go." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A billion years. The man here." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A billion years. It really is a fantastic book because Lex, the guy was born and raised in Scientology and worked personally with Elrond Hubbard and worked personally with David Miscavige for decades." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It doesn't get much more insider than that. A candid and deeply felt memoir of a life lost to false belief and courageously regained. Lawrence Wright." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "A billion years, my escape from a life in the highest ranks of Scientology, Mike Rinder. It's a fantastic book. He also narrates his own audio book too. I know you like the audio books. That's how I listened to it. So Mike, famously, I just said a moment ago, someone who's treated so horribly, even though he still believes in Scientology, he had no choice but to leave. He tells the story in that book and he still believed in Scientology for years after he escaped. For years. Because there's this thing called the independent Scientology movement or the free zone or whatever there are people who do Scientology outside of the church of Scientology. There's just not many of them. But Mike was one of those people who has actually doing Scientology even after he left. Now, he no longer believes in that anymore and he doesn't do it. But even though he still believed, even though everything he knew was what he was leaving" }, { "from": "human", "value": "behind, he still had to leave it behind. And by the way, I just opened a random page and he says, when I signed on for Sea Oregon Adelaide in 1973, the recruiter promised I would train as a Scientology executive under the direct tutelage of Hubbard on the Apollo. So this is another thing I should probably ask you about this. We could go for days. I was also told that after I learned all I needed to learn at the foot of the master, I would return to Australia to help expand Scientology in my home country." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So what was the thing that really broke him? We could go for days. The final thing is when he got to a point where he was no longer being forced to lie to protect L. Ron Hubbard, he was now being forced to lie to protect David Miscavige. And specifically, it was about the allegations of having been assaulted by Miscavige. Mike Rinder was at some event, it might've been a grand opening for a building, a Scientology building in London, and I believe it was John Sweeney at that time, a BBC journalist who stuck a camera and a microphone in Mike's face. Is it true David Miscavige assaulted? Is it true? And Mike denied it on camera. And then turned around and to himself is like, this is what my life has been reduced to lying to protect David Miscavige. This used to be about L. Ron Hubbard. This used to be about Scientology. Now it's about protecting this douchebag. When Miscavige had just issued orders that was going to send Mike off to Australia, Miscavige is sadistic. That is without question. Sadistic meaning? He enjoys inflicting pain upon others. So he very specifically was going to tell Mike, tell Rinder, or tell that cocksucker, we're shipping him off to Australia. He's never going to see his wife and his kids again, essentially. And that's when Mike was like, they were the only reason I hadn't already left. So if I follow the orders, I'm going to lose them. If I leave Scientology, I'm going to lose them, at least if I leave Scientology, I'll be free of something." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's fucking sad. And he still believed Scientology to some degree after he left, is what you're saying?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Has he spoken about what it took to let go of believing in Scientology? He does a very good job talking about all of this in the book. And it took him it took him like four or five years to get that book done. Like it's a polished version. It's a polished version of his story. And I think Mike's about getting ready to start his own YouTube channel, so that'll be a lot of fun. Actually, Mike comes on my channel all the time. Yeah, you guys do a thing together, right? Yeah, we do three amigos with me and Mike Rinder and Mark Headley. That's why I gave you Mark's book, because I thought maybe you would know him from our" }, { "from": "human", "value": "little three amigos are Mondays with Mike and Mark videos." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Mark Headley, blown for good, behind the iron curtain of Scientology. So he escaped from the international base on a motorcycle. It's a wild story. Nice. I won't even try to do it justice." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Who's it better? I won't even try to do it justice. Who's the better writer of the two of them? You're not going to get me there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'm trying to be investigative journalist for once." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Mike and Mark are both on the board of the Aftermath Foundation with me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Who's better looking? No, I'm just kidding. It's one of my justifications for just putting up content every day, is every video is just an excuse to, in some little way, promote the Aftermath Foundation. And I do that again, one, to genuinely help people escape, and two, because I know it drives David Miscavige crazy. If you look in your own, in your own heart, is there anger there? I don't think it's anger. I don't hate, I don't hate Scientology. I don't hate David Miscavige. I don't even hate my experience in Scientology. Are you able to accept the good from your experience? Yeah, absolutely. But it's also the only path that I traveled. So I tend, okay, a little less so these days, but earlier in life, I tended to attribute all positive characteristics in me to Scientology. Because in my simplistic way of thinking, I was like, what else could it possibly be attributed to?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "That's a very black and white way of seeing people. Well, it's a beautiful way to see life. No matter what happens to you, you attribute, like, you focus on a positive, and sometimes people have traumatic experiences with parents and so on." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And if you focus on a positive, it's a good way to let go of the trauma associated with it. Yeah, true. So for example, be like, I didn't go to school, Alex, I stopped going to school in the seventh grade, but people go, but you sound so smart. And what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to say, well, it's because of Scientology? Like how do I answer that question? Like if it's the only path I traveled, how do I answer that question? I don't necessarily want to give Scientology credit, but what the hell am I supposed to point to?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sure. You know, sure. I mean, you said this, you kind of enjoy, I mean, part of it is you joking and trolling that you enjoy knowing that your YouTube channel drives David Miscavige crazy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, there is a joy you have. There is a joy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm not going to deny that. I don't know what to make of that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because there's a, I suppose there's an intimacy when you're part of a tribe of that kind. It's almost like, let me try to frame it. I wasn't trying to get kicked out of Scientology. I was trying to not get kicked out of Scientology. So what happened first, first my mom got kicked out for basically talking some smack about David Miscavige, and then they go to me and they go, okay, you've got a disconnect from your mom or you're gonna get kicked out.\" And I lied about that and I was like, okay, I'll disconnect, but I never did. For a couple years I lied my ass off about it. Eventually they were like, this guy's gonna keep lying to us, right? And they're like, yeah, like all right, you're out. So then they go to my wife. So you gotta divorce your husband or you're gonna get kicked out." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And she goes, no. It's a hell of a statement from her." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's gonna get harder from her, so… Okay. So I'll try to get – I'll try to do maintenance benefits." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'll try to get – I'll try to do maintenance benefits." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "like a man who's afraid of hard things. Okay. So she's like, no. So then they go to her parents and they say, you've got to disconnect from your daughter and your three granddaughters, or you're going to get kicked out. But they have three other kids who are Scientologists, who have spouses, who are Scientologists, who have grandkids. So I feel like up until that point, everybody was sort of making a decision for themselves and what would be best for themselves until they get to her parents. And then they're like, which grandkids are we going to lose? Okay. At the part where they were trying to get me to disconnect from my mom, there were hours that I spent talking to them going, you know, guys, there's another way. It doesn't have to go this way. There's another way that ends well for all of us. And that wasn't even considered. And I go like, they created this monster. And that's a fact. And that's why I take joy in it. When people ask me a Scientology or destructive cult, I don't even have to get into all the academic discussions of what's a religion and what's a cult and what's the difference. I go, as long as they destroy families like that, they're a cult." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So they cut people off deliberately, one by one. And it doesn't have to be that way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Right. And why is it that way? I mean, it started with L. Ron Hubbard laying out a policy framework, a policy structure that if interpreted and applied in the worst possible way with the worst possible judgment can be abused in that way. I would make the argument that if an anti-broker had taken over, that Scientology policy does have enough little caveats baked into it that even the policies about disconnection could be interpreted and implemented in a non-destructive way. There is room for judgment and discretion. And Miscavige has just created the worst possible version of Scientology. And that's where you sort of get that argument of, does he even want Scientology to succeed? Because he seems to be hell-bent on making sure that he doesn't. And I don't want to see him make it succeed. But it does bring that question up of like, what are his motivations? Can he not see that he's destroying the thing he's supposed to be" }, { "from": "human", "value": "expanding? That's also, there's ways to measure cost. And that would probably be the most costly aspect of Scientology, is the suffering associated with the separating of families. Yeah. I mean, that's actually just puts make, it's a very concrete, what we value in human life, is the connection to our loved ones. Like everything else doesn't matter. Like getting 50 bucks a week. Like that, like getting money stolen from you, getting the truth stolen from you, none of that compares. You can even frame that as the good. There could be a lot of positives, whatever, in the tribe. But separating families, separating loved ones, that's the destructive" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "thing. Yeah. So no hate, though. No, I genuinely don't hate them. Do you forgive them? 100%. There's no one I look at in Scientology that I go, how dare you? If I was in their shoes having to operate under David Miscavige's orders, I would have done the same thing, and I would have loved it. Truthfully, I don't blame any of them. I mean, I take the opposite approach. If they knew what I knew, they'd be doing what I'm doing. If they knew what I knew and believed it, they'd be doing what I'm doing. They're not dumb. It's not dumb people in Scientology." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "They're ambitious, they're dreamers, they got hope, they're driven, all that kind of stuff." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. And it's one of the reasons I like putting up content on my channel so they can see, hey, like if you're a Scientologist, you look at it and you go, hey, he seems like he's doing well, he's kind of, he's happy, he's a positive guy, he's a good communicator, he knows what he's talking about, he's not lying, he's not exaggerating, I don't exaggerate anything on my channel, I don't make up anything. And this actually comes from an experience I had from 1998 to 2000, I was living in LA, I sort of had a two-year period of my life where I actually had almost no contact with Scientology. And during that time, I found my way onto the internet. And there was a website, it might've been ESMB, ex-Scientology message, but whatever it was, it was at that time the main source of critical information about Scientology on the internet. And I looked at it, and remember, I was still a true believer. And I looked at this and it was so offensive, insulting, hyperbolic, exaggerated, I was like, oh, just a bunch of bullshit. I was in Scientology for 16 more years. If what I had seen on the internet about critical of Scientology, if what I had seen when I had seen it was something that actually resonated with me, that I was like, oh, that I believed was true, that seemed credible, I would have gotten out of Scientology 16 years earlier. So I was like, how can I help create an experience on the internet that if a Scientologist stumbles upon it, it will resonate with them instead of repelling them? And that is exactly what I have set out to do and what I believe I've accomplished." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There's the content, the message, but also just showing that you can be happy outside of Scientology. Exactly. You can have a fulfilling life, you can be a good man. Yeah. All that. What benefit do you think Tom Cruise gets from Scientology? So why is he still in Scientology?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He genuinely loves it. And also Miscavige does, there's one celebrity who does have the most unique experience in Scientology, and that is Tom. Scientology hires all of Tom's staff. There are no, all of Tom's staff are subject to interrogations by Scientology, not only in the hiring process, but during the employment, like David Miscavige on Scientology runs Tom Cruise's life and his production company and his household staff." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Do you imagine there's some personal connection there where they're just, they like each other a lot?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Best friends. I mean, it's them against the world is how they see it. I think it's pretty easy to see how that works between the two of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think this idea of them against the world, us against the world, is a really powerful, intimate... Like I kind of see friendships and relationships that way. that I'm not in a dark sense, but it's like the world is full of cruelty and absurdity and unfairness and so on. It's nice to huddle together like the penguins in March of the against the cold. 100%. And they're just like, and so, especially with the ideology of Scientology, this idea that you can be anything, you can essentially, you can manifest it essentially through like believing it. I mean, you don't really put it into those words, but believing that you're a god against the cold. 100%. It's a really like inspiring," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "positive thing to think. If they could figure out how to do all that without destroying families and bankrupting its members, they might actually have a future. That's why, like it's funny, because sometimes I feel like it's like, like I'm rooting for them to like succeed and do it right. And I'm not, but it's an interesting academic discussion to have of like, we can all see how much people will sacrifice in the names of belief and religion. We can see how much Scientologists sacrifice based on what they already believe. If you would just start treating people less horribly, you know what I'm saying? It might actually have a future. That's what I" }, { "from": "human", "value": "wanted to. That's what I wanted to. It seems like this dark lesson of human nature that they, like, there's something about, you know, to use the word cults, that you just stop seeing reality for what it is. There's a lot of things that could make this a better organization that's actually helping people flourish and be a little bit more like loose about membership, not dividing families, not causing suffering, not causing financial harm, but actually inspiring people and helping people. But then maybe it fundamentally changes what the organization is. And maybe that means somebody like David Miscavige loses power too, which might be very difficult or people that are close to him lose power and people hold on to power. Whatever the human forces here, it seems to become worse and worse over time. What about, oh, let me ask a conspiracy question. Is there a chance that Tom Cruise is being blackmailed, that there's information from auditing? No? No. So that kind of stuff is not..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I've actually come out and said definitively, I do not know of a single person who stays in Scientology because they're afraid of being blackmailed. It's just not a thing. It's just not a thing. Does Scientology have enough information to blackmail someone if they wanted to? Well, sure. I mean, and it doesn't have to be true. It could just be lies. Who cares? Who knows? Scientology can say whatever the hell they want. So that's the thing. It doesn't even have to be true. And actually that would be the argument against blackmailing. In order for Scientology to blackmail you with that information, they'd actually have to represent that, yes, he really did tell us this. And it's like, why are you spilling secrets of members? It sets a bad precedent. What are some of the sins according to Scientology? Most of the sins from a Scientology perspective are just doing or saying anything that brings disrepute to Scientology itself. It's not like Christianity where there's rules. If you break this rule, you're not getting into heaven because Scientology doesn't think about things… You can't do drugs, right? You can't do drugs. And you can't take any psychotropic medications." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And no medications almost at all?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You're allowed to take medications. There's no rules expressly prohibiting it. It's just most Scientologists tend not to. You can take Advil, but many Scientologists won't. You just can't take anything prescribed by a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or any drugs that are psychotropic drugs. I mean SSRIs are considered probably the closest thing to pure evil in the world of" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Scientology. What about weird question, what about sex?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there boundaries on what's... There used to not be. It's become very puritanical in the last many decades for a reason I can't actually explain. Like Miscavige does seem to be infatuated with controlling sex. Like that is one thing about Miscavige version of Scientology that's gotten very strange. I mean, L. Ron Hubbard even specifically wrote a policy that says, we are no longer going to regulate in any way the bedroom activities of people. He literally said, from this point on, no one is allowed to be subject to any justice actions of any kind whatsoever for anything they do in their sexual lives. But that still did not give permission for gay relationships." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was still referring to straight stuff. And monogamous only." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like can you do open marriages and open relationships? According to the L Ron Hubbard policy you can. Yeah, but you know. I think he wrote that policy before he created the C organization. And then what happened is, this is actually how this came into effect. He created the C organization. You had a lot of people on a ship and everybody was just banging each other. And it created just a nightmare of personal relationship. It was making producer impossible. because everybody was spending so much time banging, but because everybody was so upset about who was banging it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Who was, yeah, yeah. I mean, sex and that kind of dynamic is really, I mean humans do what humans do, and then there's drama and all of that. It's understandable, because everybody's so intimate, it's a closed tribe, it makes sense to limit sex, otherwise, it becomes a sex cult, which a lot of them end up becoming." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, on that topic, would you classify Scientology as a cult? 100%. But not because I'm like, fully conversant with the academic differentiations between what's a religion and what's a cult. I mean, Scientology would say, well, all small new religions are cults. And I don't know, that's probably true. Some people would say all religions are cults. And I'd be like, depends on how you define religion. It depends on how you define cults. But I just fall back on my thing of like, if you're destroying families, and bankrupting your" }, { "from": "human", "value": "members, you're a cult. That's us versus them. And the them could be your family could be your loved ones that that's deeply destructive. And one of the things you would probably throw into definition of a cult is something that's actually destructive. Because like, I do a lot of stuff that's a cult like like jiu jitsu. Like there's a lot of really close knit tribes. But there's no negative toxicity to it. There's no divide. There's no divisions, or if there is, it's more boy, try being a fan of a certain soccer team and then becoming a fan of another soccer. That's hardcore. And like," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "but I'll tell you, I trained jiu jitsu as well. And I have found that community of people to be one of the most loving and helpful group of people ever shout out to John Keller, Gracie Baja Clearwater. No, but seriously, like it's one of it's one of the reasons I continue to do it. Despite my back, my hip, my shoulder. It's like it's just such a cool group of guys goes on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I used to not I think it was much more divisive. In the beginning, from this Brazilian roots. One of the things is really hard is the team oriented like, if you're this team, you're right or die with this team. And there's no there's a country on chairs, they go to another team. And I think that aspect, that was actually a turn off from me in the beginning that the toxicity of that because I understand that a little bit for the elites, for the highest of the highest that there is, I like the brotherhood and the loyalty of the people like the Olympic gold medalist, the like the best in the world. Yes, but for like recreational fun, I guess like this is all ultimately about the camaraderie of all human beings together, not some whatever label you put on you on yourself. I don't think we actually talked about the organization itself, we talked about tax exempt status, which is really important. We talked about some of the control like through the propaganda control of what's out there. It's actually interesting that you said that like, the Scientology has pretty much lost the battle with the internet at the yeah, which is kind of inspiring that it's hard to defeat the internet. but then there's like bots there. I think if you're sophisticated, I'm not sure that's true," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "but if you're not- It's kind of remarkable they haven't been able to capitalize on these bot armies, because there's one thing that they have, it's a lot of tax-free money that they got nothing else better to do. Yeah, right, they can invest. They just, they should give you a call," }, { "from": "human", "value": "like they just don't have the right people, apparently. But that said, how do they wield influence with government agencies, with you've talked about the local police enforcement," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "also federal agencies, anything? Yeah, that is the one way they effectively put their money to use, is lobbyists and attorneys, judges, very rarely have they ever been able just to get a politician on their side. It's the behind the scenes people. Greta Van Susteren is a very high level long-term Scientologist and her husband, I always get it wrong, it's either Jim Cole or John Cole, I always get it wrong. He's a very powerful attorney who has a lot, wields a lot of influence behind the scenes. And that's just one example. Like the reason why that's an interesting example is because he's actually a Scientologist and he travels in those circles. Scientology, though, it's money goes to good use by hiring non-Scientologists, retired judges, attorneys, lobbyists, it really is how they get almost anything done. Like Miscavige himself is not hobnobbing in a glad hand and shaking hands and meeting these folks. It's the non-Scientologist professionals" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "who work behind the scenes on Scientology's behalf. Can you describe the dynamics of how that actually happens? Like why would the police department work" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "on behalf of Scientology? I meant more the courts and regulators, not the police department, but well, for example, it can come down to something as simple as this. In Clearwater, Scientology hires Clearwater police to do off-duty work for them. They pay like three times their normal off-duty rate. So they will, even though I'm not aware of anyone on the Clearwater PD who's actually a Scientologist, they basically end up with, they would call them allies or safe points, right? People who like, will literally operate as Scientology spies. You know, someone comes in and follows a report about some child sex case. Someone in the Clearwater PD is calling Sarah Heller at the Office of Special Affairs at the Flank Aladdin Base to let her know, hey, heads up, we got a thing coming in. And then Scientology can run around and go talk to all the Scientologists who have knowledge about this" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and either get them out of Clearwater, you know. So it's not like a direct, explicit corruption, but more just friends and coworkers integrated deeply" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in the community. Yeah, I call it soft corruption. So another example, you have the mayor of Clearwater, Frank Hibbard. Well, he used to, when he won his recent election, he stepped down from some of these nonprofits that he served on. But the nonprofits that he served on also gets millions of dollars of donations from some of Scientology's richest Clearwater members, right? You have one of the mayor's best friends, Joe Burdette, literally a paid lobbyist for Scientology. So that creates a chilling effect on anyone who's gonna be talking smack about Scientology because his friends are on their damn payroll. So I call it soft corruption. It's not illegal. It's not illegal. But it's how Scientology wields influence. And what's ironic is that a lot of these people who work on Scientology's behalf" }, { "from": "human", "value": "actually secretly hate Scientology. They kind of see through it, but it's part of the community. I mean, it's deeply integrated in the community and there's financial leverage. Are you ever afraid? I mean, afraid for your wellbeing, afraid for your ability to function in society because of the pressures from Scientology? No. Is that because you're genetically malfunctioning or mentally or is there speaking out" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "as a kind of protection? I think it's one of those things that once you've seen behind the curtain and you see the Wizard of Oz, it's just a silly man. You just don't have any fear. Now it's one of these things like people say, oh, you're so brave. And I go, eh, what's that quote? Bravery is being a soldier and being afraid and going in any way. It's not brave to run in if you don't think nothing's gonna happen to you. Like, so I'm just trying to, like I do not hold myself up as an example of bravery because it's not like, oh, they could destroy me, but I don't care. No, there's not a damn thing they can do to me. And it's one of, that's one of the reasons I continue to put out content every day. So just basically go, hey, still here. I dare you to try to do something about it, but you can't and hope that that also serves as kind of an example for other people to go, if this Shmo can do it and they can't do anything else to him, then maybe I can do it too. Because I would love it. I would love there for me a 20 channels" }, { "from": "human", "value": "where former Scientologists talk about their experience. I mean, that is bravery because what happens is fear seeps in, even if it's not grounded in reality. But at the same time, like, you know, my grandfather who fought in World War II, I mean, the story is, I mean, he was very convinced and sure most of the people he fought alongside would died. He was a machine gunner, but he believed that bullets can't hit him, right? He said, well, you know, he was right, right? Because he survived. So there's some sense like you're biased that he's like, just like you are. I was like, I'm not brave. I just, the bullets can't hit me. I mean, there's a dark kind of truth to that. There's some, you know, it's like a, it's a feedback loop where if you have the confidence and you push on forward and you're brave in that way to not let fear seep in and affect you, it actually gives you less things to be scared about. I mean, but that initial few steps might be for people, it might be a very difficult step to take" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to talk about it publicly. The fear was knowing how the family was gonna be destroyed and trying to prevent that. I was terrified of that happening, but it happened. There's nothing left to be afraid of. And that's kind of the thing. Like they created this beast and the same is true for Mark Headley, the same is true for Mike Rinder. I said, they've essentially created a Scientology proof virus, Scientology resistant strain by throwing everything they have at us for so many years. They have just, through natural selection, created people who just do not give a damn about anything they could or would do. And maybe there is something a little wrong with me. Cause when I get a phone call from someone like, I just got this phone call about you. And it's clear that it's Scientology PIs doing work behind the scenes, I get really excited. I get really excited. I don't get nervous on going, oh no, it's happening. Like, oh yeah, this is gonna be exciting. I'm like, okay. Because everything they try to do to me, like I'm gonna figure out how to reflect it back on them" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "and make them look ridiculous. And that pales in comparison to the separating from family. Exactly. What is there, is there parts of your family" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that you've lost because of Scientology? Yeah, most of my episode on the Lee Remini and the Aftermath show was talking about me and my twin brother. It's just a pretty horrible story. It's just a pretty horrible story. So I do have a younger brother who's still in Scientology and disconnected from me, but I never had much of a relationship with that brother, really, to begin with. But my twin brother died when I was like 23 or 24. And that was, without any question, a direct result of our Scientology experience. He died in a car accident. That wasn't technically his fault or anything. He wasn't even the one driving. But the specific fact of his death was not, meaning like the fact and the manner of his death wasn't like specifically because of Scientology. But our story and where our relationship got to and how he was even in a position of having something like that happen to him is directly attributable" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to Scientology. Do you think about him? Miss him?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's part of what you're doing in memory of him?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "For sure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, and this is such a, such a... You know, we were identical twins." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Can you imagine two of me? I can barely handle one. I love it. Losing him, would that be the darkest moment" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in this whole journey of Scientology for you? Two moments would equal the darkest moment. It would be that. And also just the period of, you know, six, nine, 12 months of impending doom, knowing that my wife's whole family was gonna be obliterated and that there's nothing we could do about it. And kind of telling ourselves every step of the way it wasn't really gonna happen, you know? And I really felt like, you ever watched the Ozarks? I felt like Marty Byrd. Now this was happening before the Ozarks, but when I watch the Ozarks and I see that character, the entire world is crumbling down around him and all he can... All I did was like, all right, what's the next step? I watch Marty Byrd and I go, that's my fucking spirit animal because you can only control what you can control. And you can't keep Scientology from destroying your family. And literally, like, it's funny. I mentioned this show a lot because I watched that and I go like, that's exactly how I felt, you know? I talk about this six months or nine, 12 months, whatever it was, of impending doom. It's not like I was an emotional wreck during that time. You know, in private I was, but it's not like I was just freaking out. It was like, the sun's gonna come up tomorrow. The world's gonna keep spinning. I can't control it. This is horrible. I can't believe this is happening, but tomorrow's a new day. I've never personally, even at the darkest times, I've never experienced anything that I would characterize as depression. Certainly not ever any suicidal thoughts or anything. Even in the darkest of times, and again, this one thing I go, is it because of Scientology or is it just me?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "There really is an emotional detachment. There almost has to be. And it's a cold calculation. What are my options?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What do I do here? And then once I figure out the answer to that question, I'm actually quite chipper and happy. You know, like that's sort of my default. Like, you could give me six horrible options. Once I figure out the best of those six, I'm gonna feel like I just had a pretty good day." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's brilliant. Because just watching Ozarks is so stressful. It is, right? I feel stressful watching it. And he usually finds a way. And usually it is a set of really bad options. And it's one of the bad options." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the best of the bad options? And he almost gets pissed off at everyone around him" }, { "from": "human", "value": "for being so pouty about it. Oh, I'm gonna watch that show again. Same way again. Oh, that's beautiful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But you know, it's still simmering there right under the surface, like pretty damn close to the surface. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And people sometimes ask about recovery and whatnot. And like, what does that look like? And what does that mean? And sort of goes back to kind of the emotional detachment is I go, what the fuck does recovery even mean? If you're an alcoholic and you're recovering you know what that means. I used to drink, I don't drink now. Well, I used to be an occult, and I'm not an occult now. How else am I supposed to feel about this for someone to be like, it seems like you've recovered. What the fuck does that even mean? Like I'm sure some academic has an answer to that question. I'm not someone who, I don't spend any time thinking about that. My recovery is success and a little bit of trolling and revenge, but mostly success, you know? What does it mean to be a recovered former cult member? What, you don't cry when people ask you about your brother? I don't know what it means. I've never had therapy, but not because I'm still like against it from Scientology. I just like, I'm not gonna pay to talk to someone. Do you know where else I could do that? Scientology. Now I know there's a lot of people going like, oh boy, I know there's a lot, I'm not shitting on therapy. I would rather have a beer with my friend and talk about this shit than talk to a professional for $200 an hour." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "That's the kind of therapy, yeah. Yeah, listen, part of the reason I do this podcast is talking to people that you care about, that you're close with. This is a really powerful, powerful thing. Yeah, I don't know what recovery looks like. Success to you is defined, just be, defined happiness. Find happiness outside the closed bubble" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that defines what happiness looks like on Scientology." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If I can make my kids happy, that's success to me. What advice would you give to your kids on how to live- Travel the world. A life they can be proud of. Travel the world?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Travel the world. Get rid of friends who don't push you up and don't celebrate your success. It's hard to give that advice to young children because kids are always so catty. But honestly, it's like, when I see, that really is, I just think, not just advice to my kids, but some of the best advice to anybody. If you've got anyone around you who doesn't celebrate your success, just spend less time with those people. Surround yourself with people who actually want to celebrate your success and push you to succeed. I think that's true. I think it's even more important at a young age because if at a young age, you get used to being around people who kind of take joy and tearing you down, then that's what you become accustomed to. Yeah. You know? And I just think, you know, having friends that love you and support you" }, { "from": "human", "value": "just about the closest thing to the true meaning of life and who believe in you, who believe in your potential and some of those ideas underlie the good parts of Scientology And, first of all you're an inspiring human being. But most importantly, I can't wait until I can purchase a Bobblehead on the store. So, I can keep that inspiration on my desktop. Erin, thank you so much for talking today, thank you for being you, for being brave, I know you said you're not, but thank you for being brave for talking about this. You're an inspiration and you help a lot of people, thank you brother. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Aaron Smith Levin. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas. Dive deep and swim far, so you will come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that will explain and overlook the old. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "So what blows your mind most about that visualization" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "when you just sit back and think about it? It's a boring book. So 950 pages, 95% of the book. Hunter Gather is kind of doing their thing. I'm sure there's obviously some major cognitive and advancements along the way in language. And I'm sure the bone arrow comes around at some point. So tiny things, but it's like, oh, now we have 400 pages till the next thing. But then you get to page 950 and things start moving." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Recorded history starts at 976. Right, right. So basically the bottom row is when anything interesting happens. There's a bunch of agriculture for a while before we know anything about it. And then recorded history starts." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, right. Yeah, 25 pages of actual recorded history. So when we think of prehistoric, we're talking about pages one through 975 of the book. And then history is page 976 to 1000. If you were reading the book, it would be like epilogue, A.D., the last little 10 pages of the book. And we think of A.D. as super long, 2,000 years. The Roman Empire 2,000 years ago. Like that's so long. Human history has been going on for over 2,000 centuries. Like that is, it's hard to wrap your head around. And this is, I mean, even that's just the end of a very long road. Like the 100,000 years before that, it's not like that was that different. So it's just, there's been people like us that have emotions like us, that have physical sensations like us for so, so long. And who are they all? And what was their life like? And it's, I think we have no idea what it was like to be them. The thing that's craziest about the people of the far past is not just that they had different lives, they had different fears, they had different dangers and different responsibilities and they lived in tribes and everything, but they didn't know anything. Like, we just take it for granted that we're born on top of this Tower of Knowledge and from the very beginning, we know that the Earth is a ball floating in space and we know that we're going to die one day and we know that, we evolved from animals and all the, those were all like incredible epiphanies quite recently. And the people a long time ago, they just had no idea what was going on. And like, I'm kind of jealous because I feel like it might've been scary to not know what's going on, but it also I feel like would be, you'd have a sense of awe and wonder all the time and you don't know what's gonna happen next. And once you learn, you're kind of like," }, { "from": "human", "value": "oh, that's like, it's a little grim. But they probably had the same capacity for consciousness to experience the world, to wander about the world, maybe to construct narratives about the world and myths and so on. They just had less grounded systematic facts to play with. They still probably felt the narratives," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the myths that constructed as intensely as we do. Oh yeah, they also fell in love. They also had friends and they had falling outs with friends. They didn't shower much though." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They did not smell nice. Maybe they did. Maybe beauty's in the eye of the beholder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe it's all like relative. Yeah. How many people in history have experienced a hot shower? Like almost none. That's like, when were hot showers invented 100 years ago? Like less. So like George Washington never had a hot shower. It's like, it's just kind of weird. Like he took cold showers all the time or like. Yeah. And again, we just take this for granted, but that's like an unbelievable life experience to have a rain, a controlled little booth where it rains hot water on your head. And then you get out and it's not everywhere. It's like contained. That was like, you know, a lot of people probably lived and died with never experiencing hot water. Maybe they had a way to heat water over a fire, but like, then it's, I don't know. It's just like, there's so many things about our lives now" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that are completely, just total anomaly. It makes me wonder like, what is the thing they would notice the most? I mean, the sewage system, like it doesn't smell in cities. Incredible. What does the sewer system do? I mean, it gets rid of waste efficiently, such that we don't have to confront it both with any of our senses. And that's probably wasn't there. I mean, what else? Plus all the medical stuff associated with sewage." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I mean, how about the disease? Yeah. How about the cockroaches and the rats and the disease and the plagues and, you know. And then when they got, so they caught more diseases, but then when they caught the disease, they also didn't have treatment for it. So they often would die or they would just be a huge amount of pain. They also didn't know what the disease was. They didn't know about microbes. That was this new thing, the idea that these tiny little animals that are causing these diseases. So what do they think? In the bubonic plague, you know, in the black death, the 1300s people thought that it was an act of God because you know, God's angry at us. Cause why would, you know, why would you not think that if you didn't know what it was? And so the crazy thing is that these were the same primates. So I do know something about them. I know in some sense what it's like to be them, because I am a human as well, and to know that this particular primate, that I know what it's like to be, experienced such different things. And like this isn't, our life is not the life that this primate has experienced almost ever." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "So it's just a bit strange. Yeah, I don't know. I have a sense that we would get acclimated very quickly. Like if we threw ourselves back a few thousand years ago, it would be very uncomfortable at first, but the whole hot shower thing, you'll get used to it. Oh yeah. After a year, you would not even like miss it. There's a few, trying to remember which book, that talks about hiking that Appalachian Trail. But you kind of miss those hot showers. But I have a sense like after a few months," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "after a few years. Oh yeah, well your scale recalibrates. Yeah. Yeah, I was saying the other day to a friend that whatever you used to, you start to think that, oh, the people that have more than me or are more fortunate, it just sounds incredible. I would be so happy, and I know that's not true. Because the experience... What would happen is you would get these new things or you would get these new opportunities and you would get used to it, and then with the Hedonic treadmill, you'd come back to where you are. And likewise, though, because you think, oh my God, what if I had to have this kind of job that I never would want, or I had this kind of marriage that I never would want. You know what, if you did, you would adjust and get used to it. And you might not be that much less happy than you are now. So on the other side of the, you being okay going back, we would survive if we had to go back. We'd have to learn some skills, but we would buck up, and people have gone to war before that were in the shopkeepers a year before that. They were in the trenches the next year. But on the other hand, if you brought them here, I always think it'd be so fun to just bring, forget the hunter gatherers, bring a 1700s person here, and tour them around, take them on an airplane, show them your phone and all the things it can do. Show them the internet, show them the grocery store. Imagine taking them to a Whole Foods, taking them to a whole food. Likewise, I think they would be completely awestruck and on their knees, crying tears of joy. And then they'd get used to it and they'd be like complaining about, like you don't have these oranges in stock," }, { "from": "human", "value": "is like, you know, and that's, you know. The grocery store is a tough one to get used to. Like when I first came to this country, the abundance of bananas was the thing that struck me the most. Or like fruits in general, but food in general, but bananas somehow struck me the most that you could just eat them as much as you want. That took a long time for me. Probably took several years to really get acclimated to that. Is that? Why didn't you have bananas? The number of banana, fresh bananas, I don't, that wasn't available." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Bread, yes, bananas, no. Yeah, it's like we don't even know what to have, like we don't even know the proper levels of gratitude. Yeah. You know, walking around the grocery store, I don't know to be like, the bread's nice, but the bananas are like, we're so lucky. I don't know. I'm like, oh, I could have been the other way." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I have no idea. Well, it's interesting then where we point our gratitude in the West, in the United States. Probably, do we point it away from materialist possessions towards, or do we just aspire to do that towards other human beings that we love? Because in the East and the Soviet Union, growing up poor it's having food is the gratitude. Having transportation is gratitude. Having warmth and shelter is gratitude. And now, but see within that, the deep gratitude for other human beings. It's the penguins huddling together" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "for warmth in the cold. I think it's a person by person basis, I mean, I'm sure, yes. Of course, in the West people on average feel gratitude towards different things or maybe a different level of gratitude. Maybe we feel less gratitude than countries that obviously I think the easiest... The person that's most likely to feel gratitude is going to be someone whose life happens to be one where they just move up, up, up throughout their life, a lot of people in the greatest generation, people who were born in the 20s or whatever and a lot of the boomers too. The story is the greatest generation grew up dirt poor and they often ended up middle class and the boomers, some of them started off middle class and many of them ended up quite wealthy. And I feel like that life trajectory life trajectory is naturally going to foster gratitude, because you're not gonna take for granted these things because you didn't have them. I didn't go out of the country really in my childhood very much. We traveled but it was to Virginia to see my grandparents or Wisconsin to see other relatives or maybe Florida after going on to the beach. And then I started going out of the country like crazy in my 20s, because I really became my favorite thing. And I feel like because I, if I had grown up always doing that, it would have been another thing. I'm like, yeah, that's just something I do. But I still, every time I go to a new country, I'm like, oh my God, this is so cool. I'm in another country. This thing I've only seen on the map. I'm like, I'm there now. And so I feel like it's a lot of times it's a product of what you didn't have and then you suddenly had. But I still think it's case by case in that there's like a meter in everyone's head that I think at a 10, you're experiencing just immense gratitude, right? Which is a euphoric feeling. It's a great feeling and it makes you happy. It's to savor what you have, to look down at the mountain of stuff you have that you're standing on, right? To look down at and say, oh my God, I'm so lucky. And I'm so grateful for this and this and this. And obviously that's a happy exercise. Now, when you move the meter down to six or seven maybe you think that sometimes but you're not always thinking that because you're sometimes looking up at this cloud of things that you don't have and the things that they have, but you don't or the things you wished you had or you thought you were gonna have or whatever. And that's the opposite direction to look, right? And that's the either that's envy, that's yearning or often it's if you think about your past, it's grievance, right? And so then you go into a one And you have someone who feels like a complete victim. They are just a victim of the society, of their siblings and their parents and their loved one and they're wallowing in everything that's happened wrong to me. Everything I should have that I don't, everything that has gone wrong for me so that's a very unhealthy, mentally unhealthy place to be. Anyone can go there. There's an endless list of stuff it can be aggrieved about and an endless list of stuff you can have gratitude for. And so in some ways, it's a choice and it's a habit. And maybe it's part of how we were raised or our natural demeanor, but it's such a good exercise. You are really good at this, by the way. Your Twitter is like, go on. Well, you are constantly just saying, man, I'm lucky. Or like, I'm so grateful for this. And it's a good thing to do because you're reminding yourself, but you're also reminding other people to think that way. And it's like, we are lucky. And so anyway, I think that scale can go from 1 to 10. I think it's hard to be a 10. I think you'd be very happy if you could be. But I think trying to be above a 5 and looking down at the things you have more often than you are looking up at the things you don't or being" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "resentful about the things that people have wronged you. Go on. Well, the interesting thing, I think, was an open question, but I suspect that you can control that knob for the individual. Like you yourself can choose. It's like the stoic philosophy. You can choose where you are as a matter of habit, like you said. But you can also probably control that on a scale of a family, of a tribe, of a nation, of a society. I mean, you can describe a lot of the things that happened in Nazi Germany and different other parts of history through a sort of societal envy and resentment that builds up. Maybe certain narratives pick up, and then they infiltrate your mind. And then your knob goes to, from the gratitude for everything," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it goes to resentment and envy and all that. Germany between the two world wars, like you said, the Soviet kind of mentality. And then when you're soaking in a culture, so there's kind of two factors, right? It's what's going on in your own head and then what's surrounding you. And what's surrounding you kind of has concentric circles. There's your immediate group of people. Because that group of people, if they're a certain way, they feel a lot of gratitude and they talk about it a lot, that kind of insulates you from the broader culture. Because people are going to have the most impact on you or the one's closest, but often, all the concentric circles are saying the same thing. The people that are around you are feeling the same way that the broader community, which is feeling the same way as the broader country. And I think this is why I think American patriotism, nationalism can be tribal, can be not a good thing. Patriotism, I think is a great thing because really what is patriotism? I mean, if you love your country, you should love your fellow countrymen. Patriot, that's a Reagan quote. It's like, patriotism is like, I think a feeling of unity and, but it also comes along with an implicit concept of gratitude because it's like, we are so lucky to live in, people think it's chauvinist to say, we live in the best country in the world, right? And yes, when Americans say that no one likes it, right? But actually it's not a bad thing to think. It's a nice thing to think. It's a way of saying, I'm so grateful for all the great things this country gives to me and this country has done. And I think if you heard a Filipino person say, you know what, the Philippines is the best country in the world, no one in America would say that's chauvinist. They'd say awesome, right? Because when it's coming from someone who's not American, it sounds totally fine. But I think national pride is actually good. Now again, that can quickly translate into xenophobia and nationalism, and so you have to make sure" }, { "from": "human", "value": "it doesn't go off that cliff. Yeah, there's good ways to formulate that. Like you talk about, we'll talk about high-rung progressivism, high-rung conservatism. Those are two different ways of embodying patriotism. So you could talk about maybe loving the tradition that this country stands for, or you could talk about loving the people that ultimately push progress. And those are, from an intellectual perspective, a good way to represent patriotism. We gotta zoom out, because this graphic is epic. A lot of images in your book are just epic on their own. It's brilliantly done. But this one has famous people for each of the cards," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "like the best of, for each of a good way of patriotism. Yeah, and by the way, good for them, to be the person that, it's not that I could have chosen lots of people for each card, but I think most people would agree. You know, that's a pretty fair choice for each page. And good for them to be, you know, you crushed it if you can be the person" }, { "from": "human", "value": "for your whole 250-year page, so. Well, I noticed you put Gandhi, didn't put Hitler. I mean, there's a lot of people gonna argue with you about that particular last page." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "True. Yes, you're right. I could have put him, I actually, I was thinking about Darwin there, too. Darwin, yeah. Einstein. Yeah, exactly. You really could have put anyone. You think about putting yourself for a second? Yeah, I should have. I should have. That would have been awesome. I'm sure that would have endeared the readers to me" }, { "from": "human", "value": "from the beginning of the first page of the book. A little bit of a messianic complex going on, but yeah. So the list of people, just so you know. So these are 250-year chunks. Last one being from 1770 to 2020. And so it goes Gandhi, Shakespeare, John of Arc, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, Muhammad, Constantine, Jesus, Cleopatra, Aristotle, Pluto. That's so interesting to think about this very recent human history. That's 11 pages, so it would be 2750, almost 3,000 years. Just that there's these figures that stand out and that define the course of human history." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's like the craziest thing to me is that Buddha was a dude. He was a guy with arms and legs and fingernails that he might be bit and he liked certain foods and maybe he got, he had digestive issues sometimes and he got cuts and they stung and he was a guy and he had hopes and dreams and he probably had a big ego for a while before he, I guess, Buddha totally overcame that one. But like, and it's like who knows what the mythical figure of Buddha, who knows how similar he was, but the fact, Jesus, this was a guy, to me," }, { "from": "human", "value": "he's a primate, what an impact. He was a cell first and then a baby. Yeah, he was a fetus at some point." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He was a dumb baby trying to learn how to walk. Yeah, like having tantrum because he's frustrated because he's in the terrible twos. Jesus was in the terrible twos." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Buddha never had a tantrum, let's be honest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The myth, honest, the myth. The mother was like, this baby's great, like, wow. Let's figure something out. It just, I mean, listen, hearing about Genghis Khan, it's incredible to me because it's just like, this was some Mongolian herder guy who was taken as a slave and he was like dirt poor, catching rats as a young teen to feed him and his mom and I think his brother. And it's just like the odds, when he was born, he was just one of probably tens of thousands of random teen boys living in Mongolia in the 1200s. The odds of that person, any one of them being a household name today that we're talking about, it's just crazy, like what had to happen. And for that guy, for that poor dirt poor herder to take over the world, I don't know. So history just like continually blows my mind." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like, you know." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And he's the reason you and I are related probably. Yeah, no, I mean, it's also that's the other thing is that some of these dudes, by becoming king, by having a better army at the right time, William the Conqueror or whatever is in the right place at the right time, at the right army, and there's a weakness at the right moment and he comes over and he exploits it and ends up probably having, I don't know, 1,000 children, and those children are high up people who maybe have a ton of, the species is different now because of him. Like, forget England's different, or European borders look different. Like, we are, like, we look different because of a small handful of people, you know. Sometimes I think I'm like, oh, you know, this part of the world, I can recognize, someone's Greek, you know, someone's Persian, someone's wherever, because, you know, they kind of have certain facial features. And I'm like, it may have happened. I mean, obviously it's not that it's a population, but it may be that, like, someone 600 years ago that looked like that really spread their seed, and that's why the ethnicity looks kind of like that now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sorry, anyway. Yeah, yeah, do you think individuals like that can turn the direction of history," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "or is that an illusion that narrative would tell ourselves? Well, it's both. I mean, so I said, William the Conqueror, right, or Hitler, right? It's not that Hitler was born and destined to be great at all, right? I think in a lot of cases, he's some frustrated artist with a temper who's turning over the table in his studio and hitting his wife and being kind of a dick and a total nobody, right? I think almost all the times you could have put Hitler baby on Earth. He's a, or he's a rando, right? You know, maybe he's a, you know, maybe sometimes he becomes, you know, some kind of, he uses this speaking ability because that ability was gonna be there either way, but maybe he uses it for something else. But that said, I also think, but it's not that World War II was gonna happen either way, right? So it's both, it's that like, these circumstances were one way and this person came along at the right time and those two made a match made in this case, hell." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it makes you wonder, yes, it's a match in hell, but are there other people that could have taken this place or do these people that stand out, they're the rare spark of that genius whether it take us towards evil, towards good, whether those figures singularly define the trajectory of humanity. What defines the trajectory of humanity in the 21st century, for example, might be the influence of AI, might be the influence of nuclear war, negative or positive, not in the case of nuclear war, but the bioengineering, nanotech, virology, what else is there? Maybe the structure of governments and so on, maybe the structure of universities. I don't know, there could be singular figures that stand up and lead the way for human. But I wonder if the society is the thing that manifests that person or that person really does have a huge," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in the way for human, pack. I think it's probably a spectrum where there are some cases when a circumstance was such that something like what happened was gonna happen. And if you pluck that person from the Earth, I don't know whether the Mongols is a good example or not, but maybe it could be that if you plucked Genghis Khan as a baby, there was because of the specific way Chinese civilization was at that time, and the specific climate that was causing a certain kind of pressure on the Mongols, and the way they still had their great archers, and they had their horses, and they had a lot of the same advantages, so maybe it was like it was waiting to happen, right? It was gonna happen either way, and it might not have happened to the extent or whatever. So maybe, or you could go the full other direction and say, actually, this was probably not gonna happen. And I think World War II is an example. I kind of think World War II really was kind of the work of, of course, it relied on all these other circumstances. You had to have the resentment in Germany. You have to have the Great Depression. But like, I think if you take Hitler out," } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "I'm pretty sure World War I, World War II doesn't happen. Well then, it seems like easier to answer these questions when you look at history, even recent history, but let's look at, no, let's look at, I'm sure we'll talk about social media. So who are the key players in social media? Mark Zuckerberg, what's the name of the MySpace guy, Tom? Tom, it's just Tom, yeah. There's a meme going around where like MySpace is like the perfect social media because no algorithmic involvement. Everybody's happy and positive." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Also, Tom did it right. Tom, it's just Tom, yeah. Also, Tom did it right. At the time, we were like, oh man, Tom only made like a few million dollars. Oof, he sucks to not be zuck. Tom might be living a nice life right now where he doesn't have this nightmare" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that these other people have. Yeah, and he's always smiling, his profile pic. He looks up. And then so there's like Larry Page, so with Google, that's kind of intermingled into that whole thing, into the development of the internet. Jack Dorsey, now Elon, who else? I mean, there's people playing with the evolution of social media, and to me, that seems to be connected to the development of AI, and it seems like those singular figures will define the direction of AI development and social media development, with social media seeming to have such a huge impact" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "on our collective intelligence. It does feel in one way like individuals have an especially big impact right now in that a small number of people are pulling some big levers. And there can be a little meeting of three people at Facebook, and they come out of that meeting and make a decision that totally changes the world. On the other hand, you see a lot of conformity. You see a lot of, they all pulled the plug on Trump the same day. So that suggests that there's some bigger force that is also kind of driving them, in which case it's less about the individuals. I think this is, what is leadership? To me, leadership is the ability to move things in a direction that the cultural forces are not already taking things. A lot of times people seem like a leader because they're just kind of hopping on the cultural wave and they happen to be the person who gets to the top of it and now it seems like they're, but actually the wave was already going. Real leadership is when someone actually changes the wave, changes the shape of the wave. I think Elon with SpaceX and with Tesla, genuinely shaped a wave. Maybe you could say that EVs were actually, they were gonna happen anyway, but there's not much evidence about at least happening when it did. If we end up on Mars, you can say that Elon was a genuine leader there. And so there are examples now. Zuckerberg definitely has done a lot of leadership along the way. He's also potentially kind of caught in a storm that is happening and he's one of the figures in it. So I don't know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it's possible that he is a big shaper if the metaverse becomes a reality. If in 30 years we're all living in a virtual world, to many people it seems ridiculous now" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that that was a poor investment. Well, he talked about getting 10, I think it was something like a billion people with a VR headset in their pocket in by, I think it was 10 years from now back in 2015. So we're behind that. But when he was talking about that, and honestly, this is something I've been wrong about because I went to one of the Facebook conferences and tried out all the new Oculus stuff. And I was pretty early talking to some of the major players there because I was gonna write a big post about it that then got swallowed by this book. But I would have been wrong in the post because what I would have said was that this thing is, when I tried it, I was like this is, some of them make you nauseous and they're just not that, the headsets were big. But I was like, the times when this is good, it is, I have this feeling I haven't had it reminds me of the feeling I had when I first was five and I went to a friend's house and he had Nintendo. And he gave me the controller and I was looking at the screen and I pressed a button and Mario jumped. And I said, I can make the something on the screen move. And the same feeling I had the first time someone showed me how to send an email really early and he's like, you can send this, and I was like, it goes, I can press enter on my computer and something happens on your computer. Those were obviously, when you have that feeling it often means you're witnessing a paradigm shift. and I thought this is one of those things, and I still think it is but it's weird that it hasn't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Where's the VR revolution? Yeah, I'm surprised, because I'm with you. My first and still instinct is this feels like it changes everything. VR, it feels like it changes everything, but it's not changing anything," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and it just changes everything, like anything. And I'm like- A dumb part of my brain is genuinely convinced that it's real, and then the smart part knows it's not, but that's why the dumb part was like, we're not walking off that cliff. The smart part's like, you're on your rug, it's fine. The dumb part of my brain's like, I'm not walking off the cliff." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "So I was like, it's crazy. I feel like it's waiting for that revolutionary person that who comes in and says, I'm gonna create a headset. Like honestly, I got-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, it's Steve Jobs' iPhone." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Honestly, a little bit of a Karmak type guy, which is why it was really interesting for him to be involved with Facebook. It's basically, how do we create a simple dumb thing that's 100 bucks, but actually creates that experience, and then there's going to be some viral killer app on it, and that's going to be the gateway into a thing that's gonna change everything. I mean, I don't know what exactly was the thing that changed everything with a personal computer. Does that understood why that, maybe graphics? What was the use case? I mean- Exactly." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, wasn't the 84 Macintosh like a moment when it was like, this is actually something that normal people can and want to use?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Because it was less than $5,000, I think, because it's almost-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I just think it had some like Steve Jobs user friendliness already to it that other ones hadn't had. I think Windows 95 was a really big deal. I remember like, because I'm old enough to remember the MS-DOS when I was like, kind of remember the command, and then suddenly this concept of like a window you drag something into, or you double click an icon, which now seems like so obvious to us, was like revolutionary, because it made it intuitive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So, you know, I don't know, yeah. Windows 95 was good. It was crazy, yeah. I forget what the big leaps was, because Windows 2000 sucked," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and then Windows XP was good. It was crazy, yeah. I moved to Mac around 2004, so I stopped." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I sold your soul to the devil. I sold your soul to the devil. I see. Well, us, the people still use Windows and Android, the device and the operating system of the people, not you elitist folk, with your books, and your, what else, and success. Okay. You write, more technology means better good times, but it also means badder bad times. And the scary thing is, if the good and bad keep exponentially growing, it doesn't matter how great the good times become. If the bad gets to a certain level of bad, it's all over for us. Can you elaborate on this? Why is there, why does the bad have that property? That if it's all exponentially getting more powerful, then the bad is gonna win in the end? Was, is my misinterpreting that into-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, no. So the first thing is, I noticed a trend, which was like, the centuries, the good is getting better every century. Like the 20th century was the best century yet, in terms of prosperity, in terms of GDP per capita, in terms of life expectancy, in terms of poverty and disease, and every metric that matters. The 20th century was incredible. It also had the biggest wars in history, the biggest genocide in history, the biggest existential threat yet with nuclear weapons. The depression was probably as big an economic, so it's this interesting thing, where the stakes are getting higher in both directions. And so the question is, if you get enough good, does that protect you against the bad? The dream, and I do think this is possible too, is the good gets so good. Have you ever read the Culture Series," }, { "from": "human", "value": "the Ian Banks books? Not yet, but I get criticized on a daily basis by some of the mutual folks we know for not having done so." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I feel like a lesser man for it, yes. And I feel strange. So that's how I got onto it, and I read six of the 10 books, and they're great. But the thing I love about them is like, it just paints one of these futuristic societies where the good has gotten so good that the bad is no longer even an issue. Like basically, and the way that this works is the AI, you know, the AIs are benevolent, and they control everything. And so there's one random anecdote where they're like, what happens if you murder someone? Because there's still people with rage and jealousy or whatever, so someone murders someone, first of all, that person's backed up, so it's like they have to get a new body, and it's annoying, but it's not death. And secondly, that person, what are they gonna do? Put them in jail? No, no, no, they're just gonna send a Slap drone around, which is this little tiny random drone that just will float around next to them forever, and by the way, kind of be their servant. It's kind of fun to have a Slap drone, But they're just making sure that they never do anything. And it's like, I was like, oh man! It could just be, everyone could be so safe. And everything could be so at like, you want a house, the A-heads would build your house. There's endless space, there's endless resources. So I do think that that could be part of our future. That's part of what excites me is like there is, today would seem like a utopia to Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson's world would seem like a utopia to a caveman. There is a future, and by the way, these are happening faster. These jumps, right? So the thing that would seem like a utopia to us, we could experience in our own lifetimes, right? Like it's especially if, you know, life extension combines with exponential progress. I wanna get there. And I think in that part of what makes it utopia is you don't have to be as scared of the worst bad guy in the world trying to do the worst damage because we have protection. But that said, I'm not sure how that happens. Like it's easier said than done. Nick Bostrom uses the example of if nuclear weapons could be manufactured by microwaving sand, for example, we probably would be in the Stone Age right now because 0.001% of people would love to destroy all of humanity, right? Some 16 year old with huge mental health problems who right now goes and shoots up a school would say, oh, even better, I'm going to blow up a city. And now suddenly there's copycats, right? And so that's like, as our technology grows, it's going to be easier for the worst bad guys to do in tremendous damage. And it's easier to destroy than to build. So it takes a tiny, tiny number of these people with enough power to do bad. So that to me, I'm like, the stakes are going up because what we have to lose is this incredible utopia, but also like dystopia is real, it happens. The Romans ended up in a dystopia. They probably earlier thought that was never possible. Like we should not get cocky. And so to me, that trend is the exponential tech is a double-edged sword. It's so exciting. I'm happy to be alive now overall because I'm an optimist and I find it exciting, but it's really scary. And the dumbest thing we can do is not be scared. Dumbest thing we can do is get cocky and think, well, my life is always the last couple of generations, everything's been fine." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Stop that. What's your gut? What percentage of trajectories take us towards the, as you put, unimaginably good future versus unimaginably bad future?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is it like, as an optimist, put unimagin... It's really hard to know. I mean, one of the things we can do is look at history. And on one hand, there's a lot of stories. I'm actually listening to a great podcast right now called The Fall of Civilizations. And it's literally every episode is like a little like two-hour deep dive into some civilizations. Some are really famous, like the Roman Empire. Some are more obscure, like the Norse and Greenland. But each one is so interesting. But there's a lot of civilizations that had their peak. There's always the peak, right, when they're thriving and they're max size and they have their waterways and they have their... It's civilized and it's representative and it's fair and whatever, not always, but the peak is great. If I could go back in time, it's not that the farther you go back, the worse it gets. No, no, no, you want to go back to a civilization during, I would go to the Roman Empire in the year 100. Sounds great, right? You don't want to go to the Roman Empire in the year 400. We might be in the peak right now, here, whatever this empire is. Honestly, I think about the 80s, the 70s, the 80s. Oh, here we go, the music is so much better. The 80s culture is so annoying. It's just like when I listen to these things, I'm thinking the 80s and the 90s. America, the 90s was popular. People forget that now. Clinton was a superstar around the world. Michael Jordan was exported internationally, then basketball was everywhere suddenly. You had, like, music, the sports whatever. It was a little probably like the 50s coming out of the World War and the depression. Before it, it was like this kind of like everyone's in a good mood kind of time. It's like a finish a big project, and it's Saturday. I feel like the 50s was kind of like everyone was having the 20s, I feel like everybody was in a good mood randomly, then the 30s everyone was in a bad mood. But the 90s, I think we'll look back on it as a time when everyone was in a good mood. And it was like, again, at the time, doesn't feel that way necessarily, but I look at that and I'm like maybe that was kind of America's peak and like maybe not but like it hasn't been popular since really worldwide. It's gone in and out depending on the country but like it hasn't reached that level of like America's awesome around the world and the political you know situation has gotten you know really ugly and you know maybe it's social media maybe who knows but I wonder if it'll ever be as simple and positive as it was then like maybe we are in the in the you know it feels a little like maybe we're in the beginning of the downfall or not because because these things don't just it's not a perfect smooth hill it goes up and" }, { "from": "human", "value": "down up and down so maybe we're there's another big upcoming. Oh here we go the music no no I so much better. It's unclear whether public opinion which is kind of what you're talking to is correlated strongly with influence. You could say that even though America has been on a decline in terms of public opinion the exporting of technology that America has still with all the talk of China has still been leading the way in terms of AI in terms of social media in terms of just basically any software related product. Like chips. Yeah chips so hardware and software I mean America leads the way you could argue that Google and Microsoft and Facebook are no longer American companies they're international companies but they really are still at the you know headquartered in Silicon Valley broadly speaking so and Tesla of course and just all of it's all the technological innovation still seems to be happening in the in the United States although culturally and politically it this is not it's not it's not good well maybe that could shift at any moment when all the technological development can actually be create some positive impact in the world yeah I could shift" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it with the leadership and so on with the right messaging that's not it's not good yeah I think I don't feel confident at all about whether no no I don't mean that I don't mean I don't feel confident in my opinion that we may be on the downswing or that we may be outside I truly don't know it's like I think the people these are really big macro stories that are really hard to see when you're inside of them it's like it's like being on a beach and running around you know a few miles this way and trying to suss out the shape of the coastline. It's just really hard to see the big picture. You get caught up in the micro stories, the little tiny ups and downs that are part of some bigger trend. And also, giant paradigm shifts happen quickly nowadays. The internet came out of nowhere and suddenly was like, changed everything. So there could be a change everything thing on the way it seems like there's a few candidates for it. But it feels like the stakes are just high. Higher than it even was for the Romans. Higher than it was for because that we were more powerful as a species. We have God-like powers with technology that other civilizations at" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "their peak didn't have. I wonder if those high stakes and powers will feel laughable to people that live humans, aliens, cyborgs, whatever lives 100 years from now. That maybe our little like this" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "feeling of political and technological turmoil is nothing compared to like. Well, that's the big question. So right now, you know, the 1890s was like a super politically contentious decade in the US. It was like immense tribalism and the newspapers were all like lying and telling, you know, there was a lot of like what we would associate with today's media, the worst of it. And it was over gold or silver being this. I don't know. It was very, it's something that I don't understand. But the point is it was a little bit of a blip, right? It happened. It felt it must have felt like the end of days at the time. And then now we most people don't even know about that versus, you know, again, the Roman Empire actually collapsed. And so the question is just like is, yeah, you know, will in 50 years will this be like or like McCarthyism? Oh, they had like, oh, that was like a crazy few years in America and then it was fine. Or is this the beginning of something" }, { "from": "human", "value": "really big? And that's why I wonder if we can predict what the big thing is at the beginning. It feels like we're not we're just here along for the ride. And at the local level, and" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "at every level, I try to do our best. Well, how do we do beginning? Well, how do we do our best? What's the that's the one thing I know for sure, is that we need to have our wits about us and do our best and the way that we can do that, you know, we have to be as wise as possible, right to proceed forward. And wisdom is an emergent property of discourse." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So you're a proponent of wisdom versus stupidity because you can make a I can steal man the case for stupidity. Do it. I probably can't. But there's some, I think, wisdom and you talk about this can come with a false confidence? arrogance. I mean, you talk about this in the book. That's too easy" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to lose, that's not wisdom. If you're being arrogant, you're being unwise," }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unwise?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, you know, I think I think wisdom is doing what people 100 years from now with at the hindsight that we don't have, would do if they could come back in time and they knew everything. It's like, how do we figure out how to have hindsight when we actually are not-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "What if stupidity is the thing that people from a hundred years from now will see as wise? I mean- The idiot by Dostoyevsky being naive and trusting everybody," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "maybe that's what- Well, then you get lucky. Well, then you get lucky. Then maybe you get to a good future by stumbling upon it. But ideally, you can get there. Like I think a lot of the America, the great things about it are a product of the wisdom of previous Americans. The constitution was a pretty wise system to set up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There's not much stupid stumbling around. Well, there is, I mean, with Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, Prince Michigan, and Brothers Karmasov, there's Alyosha Karmasov, you err on the side of love and almost like a naive trust in other human beings. And that turns out to be, at least in my perspective, in the long term, for the success of the species, is actually wisdom. It's a compass. But we don't know. It's a compass when you're in the fog. I'm sorry. It's a compass. It's a compass, yeah. Love is a compass." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, but, it's a compass when you're in the fog. In the fog, yeah. It's a compass. Okay, but here's the thing. I think compass is nice. But you know what else is nice? It's a flashlight in the fog. You can't see that far, but you can see Oh, you can see four feet ahead instead of one foot. And that to me is discourse. That is open, vigorous discussion in a culture that fosters that, is how the species, is how the American citizens as a unit can be as wise as possible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Can maybe see four feet ahead instead of one foot ahead. That said, Charles Bukowski said that, love is a fog that fades with the first light of reality. So I don't know how that works out, but I feel like there's intermixing of metaphors that works. Okay, you also write that quote, as the authors of the story of us, which is this thousand page book, we have no mentors, no editors, no one to make sure it all turns out okay. It's all in our hands. This scares me, but it's also gives me hope. If we can all get just a little wiser together, it may be enough to nudge the story onto a trajectory that points towards an unimaginably good future works. Do you think we can possibly define what a good future looks like? I mean, this is the problem that we ran into with communism of thinking of utopia, of having a deep confidence" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "about what a utopian world looks like. Well, it's a deep confidence. That was a deep confidence about the instrumental way to get there. It was that, you know, I think a lot of us can agree that if everyone had everything they needed and we didn't have disease or poverty and people could live as long as they wanted to and choose when to die, and there was no existential major existential threat because we control, I think almost everyone can agree that would be great that communism is a, that was they, they said, this is the way to get there and that is that's a different question, you know, so the unimaginably good future I'm picturing, I think a lot of people would picture and I think most people would agree no not everyone. There's a lot of people out there who would say humans are the scourge on the earth and we should degrowth or something. But I think a lot of people would agree that, You know, just, again, take Thomas Jefferson, bring him here. He would see it as a utopia for obvious reasons, for the medicine, the food, the transportation, just how the quality of life and the safety and all of that. So extrapolate that forward for us. Now we were Thomas Jefferson, you know, what's the equivalent? That's what I'm talking about. And the big question is, I actually don't, I don't try to say, here's the way to get there. Here's the actual specific way to get there. I try to say, how do we have a flashlight so that we can together figure it out? Like how do we give ourselves the best chance of figuring out the way to get there? And I think part of the problem with communists and people is, ideologues is that they're way too overconfident that they know the way to get there. And it becomes a religion to them, this solution. And then you're not, you can't update once you have a solution as a religion. And so." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "I felt a little violated when you said communists stare deeply into myself. In this book, you've developed a framework for how to fix everything. It's called the ladder." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Can you explain it for myself? Okay, it's not a framework for how to fix everything. I would never say that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'll explain it to Tim Urban at some point. Okay. How this humor thing works. Yeah, no. The framework of how to think about collaboration" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "between humans such that we could fix things. Okay. Yeah, no. It's a compass. It's like a ruler that we can, once we look at it together and see what it is, we can all say, oh, we want to go to that side of the ruler. Not this side." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And so it gives us a direction to go." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And so what are the parts of the ladder? So I have these two characters. This orange guy, this primitive mind is, this is our software. That is the software that was in a 50,000 BC person's head that was specifically optimized for, to help that person survive in that world. And not even, not just, not really survive, but help them pass their genes on in that world. And civilization happened quickly and brains changed slowly. And so that unchanged dude is still running the show in our head. And I use the example of like Skittles. Like, why do we eat Skittles? It's trash. It's obviously bad for you. And it's because the primitive mind in the world that it was programmed for, there was no Skittles. And it was just fruit. And if there was a dense, chewy, sweet fruit like that, it meant you just found like a calorie gold mine. Energy, energy, take it, take it. Eat as much as you can. Gorge on it. Hopefully you get a little fat. That would be the dream. And now we're so good with energy for a while. We don't have to stress about it anymore. So today, Mars Inc. is clever and says, let's not sell things to people's higher minds, who's the other character. Let's sell the people's primitive minds. Primitive minds are dumb. And let's trick them into thinking this is this thing you should eat, and then they'll eat it. Now Mars Inc. is a huge company." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Actually, just to linger real quick. See, you said primitive mind and higher mind. So those are the two things that make up this bigger mind" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that is the modern human being. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's not perfect. Obviously, there's a lot of crossover. Maybe there's people who will yell at me for saying there's two minds. But to me, it is still in a useful framework where you have this software that has making decisions based on a world that you're not in anymore. And then you've got this other character. I call it the higher mind. And it's the part of you that knows that skills are not good and can override the instinct. And the reason you don't always eat skills is because the higher mind says no, no, no. We're not doing that because that's bad, and I know that, right? Now you can apply that to a lot of things. The higher mind is the one that knows I shouldn't procrastinate. The primitive mind is the one that wants to conserve energy and not do anything icky and, you know, can't see the future. So he procrastinates that, you know, you can apply this. No, I in this book apply it to to how we form our beliefs is one of the ways and then eventually to politics and political movements. But like, if you think about, well, what's the equivalent of the Skittles tug of war in your head for how do you form your beliefs? And it's that the primitive mind in the world that it was optimized for, it wanted to feel conviction about its beliefs. It wanted to be sure that it was, wanted to feel conviction and it wanted to agree with the people around there, didn't want to stand out and wanted to perfectly agree with the tribe about the tribe's sacred beliefs. And so there's a big part of us that wants to do that. That doesn't like changing your mind. It feels like it's part of our... The primitive mind identifies with beliefs. It feels like it's a threat, a physical threat to you, to your primitive mind when you change your mind or when someone disagrees with you in a smart way. So there's that huge force in us which is confirmation bias, that's where that comes from. It's this desire to keep believing what we believe and this desire to also fit in with our beliefs to believe what the people around us believe. And that can be fun in some ways, we all like the same sports team and we're all super into it and we're all gonna be biased about that call together. I mean, it's not always bad, but, it's not a very smart way to be. And you're actually, you're working kind of for those ideas, those ideas are like your boss. And you're working so hard to keep believing those. Those ideas are, you know, a really good paper comes in that you read that conflicts with those ideas and you will do all this work to say that paper is bullshit because you're a faithful employee of those ideas. Now, the higher mind, to me, the same party that can override the Skittles, can override this and can search for something that makes a lot more sense, which is truth, because what rational being wouldn't want to know the truth. Who wants to be delusional? And so there's this tug of war because the higher mind doesn't identify with ideas. Why would you? It's an experiment you're doing, and it's a mental model. And if someone can come over and say, you're wrong, you'd say, where? Or show me, show me. And if they point out something that is wrong, you say, Oh, thanks. Oh, good, I just get a little smarter, right? You're not gonna identify with the thing. Oh, yeah, kick it, see if you can break it. If you can break it, it's not that good, right? So there's both of these in our heads. And there's this tug of war between them. And sometimes, you know, if you're telling me about something with AI, I'm probably gonna think with my higher mind because I'm not identified with it. But if you go and you criticize the ideas in this book or you criticize my religious beliefs or you criticize, I might have a harder time because the primitive mind says, no, no, no, those are our special ideas. And so yeah, so that's one way to use this ladder is like it's a spectrum. At the top, the higher mind is doing all the thinking. And then as you go down, it becomes more of a tug of war." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And at the bottom, the primitive mind is in total control. And this is distinct as you show from the spectrum of ideas. So this is how you think versus what you think. And those are distinct, those are different dimensions." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We needed, we needed a vertical axis. We have all these horizontal axes left, right center, or this opinion, all the way to this opinion. But it's like, what's much more important than where you stand is how you got there and how you think. So if I can say, this person's kind of on the left or on the right, but they're up high, in other words, I think they got there using evidence and reason and they were willing to change their mind. Now, that means a lot to me what they have to say. If I think they're just a tribal person, and I can predict all their beliefs from hearing 1 because it's so obvious what political beliefs, that person's views are irrelevant to me because they're not real. They didn't come from information. and they came from a tribe's sacred Ten Commandments." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I really like the comic you have in here with the boxer. This is the best boxer in the world, wow, cool. Who has he beaten? No one, he's never fought anyone. Then how do you know he's the best boxer in the world? I can just tell. I mean, this connects with me and I think with a lot of people just because in martial arts it's especially kind of true. There's this whole legend about different martial artists and that kind of we construct like action figures like thinking that Steven Seagal is the best fighter in the world or Chuck Norris. But Chuck Norris is actually backed up. He has done really well in competition, but still the ultimate test for particular for martial arts is what we now know is mixed martial arts, UFC and so on. And that's the actual scientific testing ground. It's a meritocracy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's within certain rules and you can criticize those rules. Like this doesn't actually represent the broader combat that you would think of when you're thinking about martial arts. But reality is you're actually testing things. And that's when you realize that Aikido and some of these kind of woo woo martial arts in their certain implementations don't work in the way you think they would in the context of fighting. I think this is one of the places where everyone can agree which is why it's a really nice comic." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because then you start to talk about- It's a meritocracy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, map this onto ideas that people take personally. It starts becoming a lot more difficult to basically highlight that we're thinking with," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "not with our higher mind, but with our primitive mind. Yeah, I mean, if I'm thinking with my higher mind and now here, you can use different things for an idea as a metaphor. So here, the metaphor is a boxer for one of your conclusions, one of your beliefs. And if all I care about is truth, in other words, that means all I care about is having a good boxer. I would say, go, yeah, try, see if this person's good. In other words, I would get into arguments, which is throwing my boxer out there to fight against other ones. And if I think my argument is good, by the way, I love boxing, right? If I think my guy is amazing, Mike Tyson, I'm thinking, oh yeah, bring it on. Who wants to come see? I bet no one can beat my boxer. I love a good debate, right, in that case. Now, what would you think about my boxer if not only was I telling you he was great, but he's never boxed anyone, but then you said, okay, well, your idea came over to try to punch him and I screamed and I said, what are you doing? That's violence and you're an awful person and I don't want to be friends with you anymore because you would think this boxer obviously sucks, or at least I think it sucks deep down because why would I be so anti? Anyone, no boxing allowed, you know, people. So I think if you're in, so this, I call this a ladder, right? If you're in low rung land, you know, whether it's a culture or whatever, a debate, an argument when someone says, no, that's totally wrong, what you're saying about that and here's why. You're actually being totally biased. It sounds like a fight. People are gonna say, oh wow, we got in like a fight. It was really awkward. Like, are we still friends with that person? Because it's not a culture of boxing. It's a culture where you don't touch each other's ideas. That's insensitive. Versus in a high rung culture, it's sports. Like every one of your podcasts, whether you're agreeing or disagreeing, the tone is the same. It's not like, oh, this got awkward. It's like, the tone is identical because you're just playing intellectually either way" }, { "from": "human", "value": "because it's a good, high-rung spin. That is best, but people do take stuff personally. And then that's actually one of the skills of conversation just as a fan of podcasts is, when you sense that people take a thing personally, if they're like, there's sort of methodologies and the little paths you can take to like calm things down." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like go around, don't take it as a violation of like that. You're trying to suss out which of their ideas are sacred to them." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And which ones are, bring it on. And which ones are. And sometimes it's actually, I mean, that's the skill of it I suppose, that sometimes it's a certain wardings in the way you challenge those ideas are important. You can challenge them indirectly and then walk together in that way. Because what I've learned is people are used to their ideas being attacked in a certain way, in a certain tribal way. And if you just avoid those, like for example, if you have political discussions and just never mentioned left or right or Republican and Democrat, none of that. Just talk about different ideas and avoid certain kind of triggering words. You can actually talk about ideas versus falling into this path that's well established through battles that people have previously thought." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When you say triggering, I mean who's getting triggered? The primitive mind. So what you're trying to do, what you're saying in this language is, how do you have conversations with other people's higher minds, almost like whispering without waking up the primitive mind? Yeah, exactly. Primitive mind is there sleeping, right? And as soon as you say something the left primitive mind gets up and says what, what are you saying about the left?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "And now that everything goes off the rails? What do you make of conspiracy theories" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "under this framework of the letter? So here's the thing about conspiracy theories is that once in a while they're true, right? Because sometimes there's an actual conspiracy. Actually, humans are pretty good at real conspiracies, secret things, and then, you know, I just watched the Made Off doc, great new Netflix doc, by the way. And so the question is, how do you create a system that is good at, you put the conspiracy theory in, and it either goes, eh, or it says, is interesting, let's keep exploring it. How do you do something that it can, how do you assess it? And so, again, I think the Hiran culture is really good at it, because a real conspiracy, what's gonna happen, it's like a little machine you put in the middle of the table, and everyone starts firing darts at it, or bow and arrow, or whatever, and everyone starts kicking it, and trying to, and almost all conspiracy theories, they quickly crumble, right? Because they actually, you know, Trump Selection won, and I actually dug in, and I looked at every claim that he or his team made, And it was like, none of these hold up to scrutiny. None of that, it was open-minded, but none of them did. So that that was one that as soon as it's open to scrutiny, it crumbles. The only way that conspiracy can stick around in a community is if it is a culture where that's being treated as a sacred idea that no one should kick or throw a dart at because if you throw a dart, it's going to break. And so what you want is a culture where no idea is sacred. Anything can get thrown at it, So I think that then, what you'll find is that 94 out of 100 conspiracy theories come in and they fall down. The other, maybe four of the others come in and there's something there, but it's not as extreme as people say. And then maybe one is a huge deal and it's actually a real conspiracy." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, isn't there a lot of gray area and there's a lot of mystery? Isn't that where the conspiracy theories seep in? So it's great to hear that you've really looked into the Trump election fraud claims, but aren't they resting on a lot of kind of gray area, like fog, basically saying that there is dark forces in the shadows that are actually controlling everything. I mean, the same thing with maybe you can, there's like safer conspiracy theories, less controversial ones, like have we landed on the moon? All right, did the United States ever land on the moon? Like the reason those conspiracy theories work is you could construct, there's incentives and motivation for faking the moon landing. There's a lot of, there's very little data supporting the moon landing. Like that's very public and kind of looks fake, space counts, fake, kind of." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, that would be a big story" }, { "from": "human", "value": "if it turned out to be fake. That's the, that would be the argument against it. Like are people really as a collective going to hold on to a story that big? Yeah, so that, but there's a lot," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the reason they work is there's mystery. Yeah, it's a great documentary called Behind the Curve About Flat Earthers. And one of the things that you learn about Flat Earthers is they believe all the conspiracies, not just the Flat Earth. They are convinced the moon landing is fake. They're convinced 9-11 was an American con job. They're convinced that, name a conspiracy and they believe it. And so it's so interesting, is that I think of it as a skepticism spectrum. So on one side, it's like a filter in your head, filter in the belief section of your brain. On one end of the spectrum, you are gullible, perfectly gullible, you believe anything someone says. On the other side, you're paranoid, you think everyone's lying to you. Everything is false, nothing that anyone says is true. So obviously, those aren't good places to be. Now, the healthy place, I think that the, so I think the healthy place has to be somewhere in the middle, but also you can learn to trust certain sources and then you don't have to apply as much skepticism to them. So here's what, but when you start having a bias, just so you have a political bias, when your side says something, you will find yourself moving towards the gullible side of the spectrum. You read an article written that supports your views, you move to the gullible side of the spectrum and you just believe it and you don't have any, where's that skepticism that you normally have, right? And then you move, and then as soon as it's the other person talking, the other team talking, talking, you move to the skeptical, the closer to the, you know, in denial paranoid side. Now flat earthers are the extreme. They are either at 10 or 1. So it's like, it's so interesting because they're the people who are saying, ah, no, I won't believe you. I'm not gullible. No, everyone else is gullible about the moon landing. I won't. And then yet when there's this evidence like, oh, because you can't see Seattle, you can't see the buildings over that horizon and you should, which isn't true. You should be, if there were earth around you wouldn't be able to see them. Therefore. So suddenly the become the most gullible person hear any theory about the earth flat they believe it. He was right into their beliefs. So they're actually jumping back and forth between physics to believe anything and believe anything. And so they're the extreme example. But I think when it comes to conspiracy theories, the people that get themselves into trouble are the ones who they, they, they become really gullible when they hear a conspiracy theory that kind of fits with their worldview. And they likewise, when there's something that's kind of obviously true and it's not not a big lie, they will actually, they'll think it is. They just tighten up their kind of skepticism filter. And so, yeah, so I think the healthy places to be is where you are not, because you also don't want to be the person who says, every conspiracy, you hear the word conspiracy theory and it sounds like a synonym for like, quack job crazy theory, right? So yeah, so I think, yeah, I think it'd be somewhere" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "in the middle of that spectrum and to learn to fine tune it. Which is a tricky place to operate, because you kind of have to, every time you hear a new conspiracy theory, you should approach it with an open mind. And, you know, and also if you don't have enough time to investigate, which most people don't, kind of still have a humility" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "not to make a conclusive statement that that's nonsense. There's a lot of social pressure, actually, to immediately laugh off any conspiracy theory, if it's done by the bad guys, right? You will quickly get mocked and laughed at and not taken seriously. If you give any credence, you know, back to lab leak was a good one, where it's like, turned out that that was at least very credible, if not true. And that was a perfect example of one where when it first came out, and not only so, so Brett Weinstein talked about it. And then I, in a totally different conversation, said something complimentary about him on a totally different subject. And people were saying, Tim, you might've gone a little off the deep end. You're like quoting someone who is like a lab leak person. So, I was getting my reputation dinged for complimenting on a different topic someone whose reputation was totally sullied because they questioned an orthodoxy, right? So you see. So what does that make me want to do? Distance myself from Brett Weinstein. That's the, at least they see incentive. And what does that make other people want to do? Don't become the next Brett Weinstein. Don't say it out loud, because you don't want to become someone that no one wants to compliment anymore, right? You can see the social pressure And of course, when there is a conspiracy," }, { "from": "human", "value": "that social pressure is its best friend. Because then they see the people from outside are seeing that social pressure enact like a Tim Urban becoming more and more and more extreme to the other side. And so they're going to take the more and more and more extreme. I mean, what do you see that the pandemic did, that COVID did to our civilization in that regard, in the forces? Why was it so divisive?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you understand that? Yeah, so COVID, I thought might be, we always know the ultimate example of a topic that will unite us all as the alien attack. Although honestly, I don't even have that much faith. Then I think there'd be like, some people are super like, pro alien and some people are anti alien." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But anyway. I was actually starting to interrupt because I was talking to a few astronomers and they're the first folks that made me kind of sad in that if we did discover life on Mars, for example, that there's going to be potentially a division over that too" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "where half the people will not believe that's real. Well, because we live in a current society where the political divide has subsumed everything. And that's not always like that. It goes into stages like that. We're in a really bad one where it's actually, in the book, I call it like a vortex, like almost like a whirlpool that pulls everything into it. It pulls, and so normally you'd have to say, okay, you know, immigration naturally going to be contentious. That's always political, right? But like COVID seemed like, oh, that's one of those that will unite us all. Let's fight this not human virus thing. Like obvious is no one's sensitive. No one's like getting hurt when we insult the virus. Like let's all be, we have this threat, this common threat that's a threat to every one of every nationality in every country, every ethnicity. And it didn't do that at all. The whirlpool was too powerful. So it pulled COVID in and suddenly masks. If you're on the left, you like them. If you're on the right, you hate them. And suddenly lockdowns. If you're on the left, you like them. And on the right, you hate them. And vaccines, people will forget this. When Trump first started talking about the vaccine, Biden, Harris, Cuomo, they're all saying," }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm not taking that vaccine, not from this CDC." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because those two rushed or something like that. I'm not trusting anything that Trump says. Trump wants me to take it. I'm not taking it. I'm not taking it from this CDC. So, this was, Trump was almost out of office, but at the time, if Trump had been, it would have been, I'm pretty sure it would have stayed. Right likes vaccines, the left doesn't like vaccines. Instead, the president switched. And all those people are suddenly saying, they were actually specifically saying that if you, you know, that like, if you're saying the CDC is not trustworthy, that's misinformation, which is exactly what they were saying about the other CDC. And they were saying it because they genuinely didn't trust Trump, which is fair. But now, when other people don't trust the Biden CDC, suddenly it's this kind of misinformation that needs to be censored. So, it was a sad moment because it was a couple months, even a week or so, I mean, a month or so at the very beginning when it felt like a lot of our other squabbles were kind of like, oh, I feel like they're kind of irrelevant right now. And then very quickly, the whirlpool sucked it in. And in a way where I think it damaged the reputation of these, a lot of the trust" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in a lot of these institutions for the long run. But there's also an individual psychological impact. It's like a vicious negative feedback cycle where they were deeply affected on an emotional level" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and people just were not their best selves. That's definitely true. Yeah, I mean, talk about the primitive mind. I mean, one thing that we've been dealing with for our whole human history is pathogens. And it's emotional, right? It brings out, you know, there's really interesting studies where like, if they studied the phenomena of disgust, which is one of these like, you know, smiling is universal. You don't have to ever translate a smile, right? Certain, you know, throwing your hands up when your sports team wins is universal because it's part of our coding. And so is disgust to kind of make this like, you know, face where you wrinkle up your nose and you kind of throw, put out your tongue and maybe even gag. That's to expel, expel whatever's because it's the reaction when something is potentially a pathogen that might harm us, right? Feasties, vomit, whatever, but they did this interesting study where people who, in two groups, the control group, you know, was shown images of, and I might be getting two studies mixed up, but they were showing images of like, car crashes and like, disturbing but not disgusting. And the other one was showing, like, you know, like, you know, rotting things and just sort of things that were disgusting. And then they were asked about immigration, these were Canadians. And the group that had the disgust feeling going, pulsing through their body was way more likely to prefer, like, immigrants from white countries. And the group that had just been shown car accidents, they still prefer the groups from white countries, but much less so. And so, what does that mean? It's because the disgust impulse makes us scared of, you know, sexual practices that are foreign, of ethnicities that don't look like us, of, it stokes xenophobia, so it's ugly. It's really ugly stuff. You know, the Nazi propaganda with cockroaches, and, or it was, Rwandan was cockroaches, you know, the Nazis was rats, and, you know, it's specifically, it's a dehumanizing emotion. So anyway, we were talking about COVID, but I think it does, it taps deep into, like, the human psyche. And it's, I don't think it brings out our, I think, like you said, I think it brings" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "out an ugly side in us. You describe an ideal lab as being opposite of echo chambers. So we know what echo chambers are and you said there's basically no good term for the opposite of an echo chamber. So what's an ideal lab." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, first of all, both of these, we think of an echo chamber as, like, a group maybe or even a place, but it's a culture, it's an intellectual culture. And this goes along with the high-rung, so high-rung and low-rung thinking is individual. That's what I was talking about, what's going on in your head. But this is very connected to the social scene around us. And so groups will do high rung and low rung thinking together. Basically it's collab, so an echo chamber to me is a collaborative low rung thinking. It is, it's a culture where the cool, it's based around a sacred set of ideas. And it's the coolest thing you can do in an echo chamber culture is talk about how great the sacred ideas are and how bad and evil and stupid and wrong the people are who have the other views. And it's quite boring, it's quite boring because it's very hard to learn and changing your mind is not cool in an echo chamber culture, it makes you seem wishy washy, it makes you seem like you're waffling and you're flip-flopping or whatever, showing conviction about the sacred ideas in echo chamber culture is awesome if you're just like, obviously this makes you seem smart while being humble makes you seem dumb. So now flip all of those things on their heads and you have the opposite which is idea lab culture which is collaborative high rung thinking. It's collaborative truth finding but it's also just, it's just a totally different vibe. It's a place where arguing is a fun thing, it's not, no one's getting offended and criticizing like the thing everyone believes is actually it makes you seem like interesting like, oh really, why do you think we're all wrong and expressing too much conviction makes people lose trust in you. It doesn't make you seem smart, it makes you seem stupid if you don't really know what" }, { "from": "human", "value": "you're talking about but you're acting like you do. I really like this diagram of where on the x-axis agreement on the y-axis is decency, that's in an idea lab in an echo chamber there's only one axis, it's asshole to non-asshole. Right. This is a really important thing to understand about the difference between, you call it" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "decency here, about assholishness and disagreement. So my college friends, we love to argue, right? And no one thought anyone was an asshole for, it was just for sports. Sometimes we'd realize we're not even disagreeing on something and that would be disappointing and be like, oh, I think we agree. And it was kind of like sad, it was like, oh well, there goes the fun. And one of the members of this group has this, she brought her new boyfriend to one of our like hangouts and there was like a heated, heated debate, you know, just one of our typical things. And afterwards, the next day, he said like, is everything okay? And she was like, what do you mean? And he said, like, after the fight and she was like, what fight? And he was like, you know, the fight last night. And she had to. And she was like, you mean like the arguing? And he was like, yeah. And so that's someone who was not used to idea lab culture coming into it. And seeing it as like, that was like, this is like, are they still friends? Right? And idea lab is nice for the people in them. because individuals thrive. You don't want to just conform. It makes you seem boring in an idea. But you want to be yourself. You want to challenge things. You want to have a unique brain. So that's great. And you also have people criticizing your ideas, which makes you smarter. It doesn't always feel good, but you become more correct and smarter. And Echo Chamber is the opposite, where it's not good for the people. And you're learning skills atrophy. And I think it's boring. But the thing is, they also have emergent properties. So the emergent property of an ideal lab is like super intelligence. Just you and me alone. Just the two of us. If we're working together on something, but we're being really grown up about it. We're disagreeing. We're not, you know, no one's sensitive about anything. We're going to each find flaws in the other one's arguments that you wouldn't have found on your own. And we're going to have double the epiphanies, right? So it's almost like the two of us together is like as smart as 1.5. It's like 50% smarter than either of us alone, right? So you have this 1.5 intelligent kind of joint being that we've made. Now bringing a third person in, fourth person in, right? You see, it starts to scale up. This is why science institutions can discover relativity and quantum mechanics and these things that no individual human, you know, was going to come up with without a ton of collaboration because it's this giant ideal lab. So it has an emergent property of super intelligence. And Echo Chamber is the opposite, where it has the emergent property of stupidity. I mean, it has the emergent property of a bunch of people all, you know, paying fealty to this set of sacred ideas. And so you lose this magical thing about language and humans, which is collaborative intelligence, you lose it, it disappears." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "But there is that access of decency, which is really interesting because you kind of painted this picture of you and your friends arguing really harshly. But underlying that is a basic camaraderie, respect, there's all kinds of mechanisms we humans have constructed to communicate, like mutual respect, or maybe communicate" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that you're here for the ideal lab version of this. Totally, you don't take it, you don't get personal, right? You're not getting personal," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you're not taking things personally." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "People are respected in an ideal lab and ideas are disrespected." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And there's ways to signal that. So like with friends, you've already done the signaling, you've already established a relationship. The interesting thing is online, I think you have to do some of that work. I mean, to me, sort of steelmanning the other side, or no, having empathy and hearing out, being able to basically repeat the argument the other person is making before you and showing like respect to that argument. I could see how you could think that before you make a counter argument. There's just a bunch of ways to communicate that you're here not to do kind of, what is it, low rung, shit talking, mockery, derision, but are actually here ultimately to discover the truth and the space of ideas and the tension of those ideas. And I think it's, I think that's a skill that we're all learning as a civilization of how to do that kind of communication effectively. Because I think disagreement, as I'm learning on the internet, it's actually a really tricky skill. Like high effort, high decency disagreement. I gotta listen to, there's a really good debate podcast, Intelligence Squared. And they can go pretty hard in the paint. It's a classic idea lab. Exactly, but how do we map that to social media? When people will say, will say, well, Lex or anybody, you're not, you hate disagreement. You wanna censor disagreement. No, I love Intelligence Squared type of disagreement. That's fun. Classic idea lab, you wanna reduce assholes. And for me personally, I don't want to reduce assholes. I kind of like assholes, it's fun in many ways. But the problem is when the asshole shows up to the party, they make it less fun for the party that's there for the idea lab. And the other people, especially the quiet voices at the back of the room, they leave." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And so all you're left is with assholes. Well, political Twitter to me is one of those parties. It's a big party where a few assholes have really sent a lot of the quiet thinkers away. And so if you think about this graph again, a place like Twitter, a great way to get followers is to be an asshole with a certain, pumping a certain ideology. You'll get a huge amount of followers. And for those followers, and the followers you're gonna get, the people who like you are probably going to be people who are really thinking with their primitive mind because they're seeing you're being an asshole, but because you agree with them, they love you. And they think they don't see any problem" }, { "from": "human", "value": "with how you're being. Yeah, they don't see the asshole." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is a fascinating thing because of... Because look at the thing on the right. Agreement and decency are the same. So if you're in that mindset, the bigger the asshole, the better. If you're agreeing with me, you're my man, I love what you're saying. Yes, show them, right? And the algorithm helps those people. Those people do great on the algorithm." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There's a fascinating dynamic that happens because I have currently hired somebody that looks at my social media and they block people because the assholes will roll in. They're not actually there to have an interesting disagreement, which I love. They're there to do kind of mockery. And then when they get blocked, they then celebrate that to their echo chamber," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "like, look at this, I got them, or whatever they do. Or they'll say some annoying thing like, oh, so he talks about, he likes, if I'd done this, they'll say, oh, he says he likes idea labs, but he actually wants to create an echo chamber. I'm like, nope, you're an asshole. I'm not, look at the other 50 people on this thread that disagreed with me respectfully. They're not blocked. Yep, exactly. And so they see it as some kind of hypocrisy because, again, they only see the thing on the right. And they're not understanding that there's two axes, or that I see it as two axes. And so you seem petty in that moment, but it's like, no, no, no, this is very specific what I'm doing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You're actually killing the conversation. You're not blocking it. And generally, I give all those folks a pass and just send them love telepathically, but yes, getting rid of assholes in the conversation" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "is the way you allow for the disagreement. You do a lot of, I think, when primitive-mindedness comes at you, at least on Twitter, I don't know what you're feeling internally in that moment, but you do a lot of, I'm gonna meet that with my higher mind. And you come out and you'll be like, thanks for all the criticism. I love you. And that's actually an amazing response because what it does is that it unriles up that person's primitive mind and actually wakes up their higher mind who says, oh, okay, this guy's not so bad. And suddenly, civility comes back." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So it's a very powerful and very powerful. Hopefully long-term, but the thing is, they do seem to drive away high-quality disagreement because it takes so much effort" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to disagree in a high-quality way. I've noticed this on my blog. One of the things I pride myself on is my comment section is awesome. Everyone's being respectful. No one's afraid to disagree with me and say, tear my post apart, but in a totally respectful way where the underlying thing is like, I'm here cause I like this guy in his writing and people disagree with each other and they get in these long interviews and it's interesting and I read it and I'm learning. And then a couple posts, especially the ones I've written about politics, it seems like any other comment section, people are being nasty to me, they're being nasty to each other. And then I looked down one of them and I realized like almost all of this is the work of like three people. That's who you need to block. Those people need to be blocked. You're not being thin skinned. You're not being petty doing it. You're actually protecting an idea lab, because what really aggressive people like that do is they'll turn it into their own echo chamber, because now everyone is scared to kinda disagree with them, just so it's unpleasant, and so people who'll chime in or the people who will agree" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "with them, and suddenly they've taken over the space. And I kinda believe that those people, on a different day, could actually do high-effort disagreement. It's just that they're in a certain kind of mood, and a lot of us, just like you said, with a primitive mind, could get into that mood, And it's, I believe it's actually the job of the technology, the platform, to incentivize those folks to be like, are you sure this is the best you can do? Like if you really wanna talk shit about this idea, like do better. Like, and then we need to create incentives where you get likes for high effort disagreement. Because currently you get likes for like something that's slightly funny and is a little bit like mockery. Like, yeah, basically signals to some kind of echo chamber that this person is a horrible person, is a hypocrite, is evil, whatever. That feels like it's solvable with technology." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cause I think in our private lives, none of us want that. I wonder if it's making me think that I wanna like, because a much easier way for me to do it just for my world would be to say something like, you know, here's this axis, this is part of what I like about the latter, is it is it's a language that we can use like, specifically what we're talking about is High rung disagreement good, low rung disagreement bad. Right, and so it gives us like a language for that. And so what I would say is I would, you know, you know, I would have my, you know, readers understand this axis, and then I would specifically say something like, please do the, do it but why a favor. And upvote regardless of what they're saying horizontally, right, regardless of what their actual view is. Upvote high rungness? They can be tearing me apart. They can be saying great. They can be praising me, whatever. Up-road high-rungness and down-low-rungness. And if enough people are doing that, suddenly there's all this incentive to try to say, no, I need to calm my emotion down here and not get personal because I'm gonna get voted" }, { "from": "human", "value": "into oblivion by these people. I think a lot of people would be very good at that. And not only would they be good at that, they would want that, that task of saying, I know I completely disagree with this person, but this was a high-effort, high-rung disagreement." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And gets everyone thinking about that other axis too. You're not just looking at where do you stand horizontally? You're saying well how did you get there and how are you, are you treating ideas like machines?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Are you treating them like little babies? And there should be some kind of labeling on personal attacks versus idea disagreement. Sometimes people throw in both a little bit. And it's like no, there should be a disincentive" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "at personal attacks versus idea attacks a little bit. Well, one metric is a respectful disagreement. Just say someone else's Twitter. And I see, you put out a thought. And I see someone say, I don't see it that way. Here's where I think you went wrong, and they're just explaining. I'm thinking that if Lex reads that, he's going to be interested. He's going to want to post more stuff, right? He's going to like that. If I see someone being like, wow, this really shows the kind of person that you become. It shows something. I'm thinking that person is making Lex want to be on Twitter less. It's making him, and so what is that doing. What that person is actually doing is they're putting, is they're actually, they're chilling discussion because they're making it unpleasant to... They're making it scary to say what you think. And the first person isn't at all. The first person is making you want to say more stuff. So, and those are both disagreed. Those are people who both disagree with you." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Exactly, exactly. I want to, great disagreeing with friends in meet space is like you're, they disagree with you They could be even yelling at you. Honestly. They could even have some shit talk or it's like personal attacks" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It is still feels good is because you know them well and you know that that shit talk because I guess your friends should talk all the time playing us playing a sport or a game and again it's it's because they know each other well enough to know that this is Fun we're having fun, and obviously. I love you like exactly. You know and and that's that's important online It's a lot harder" }, { "from": "human", "value": "yeah, that Obviously, I love you that underlies a lot of human interaction. Seems to be easily lost online. I've seen some people on Twitter and elsewhere just behave their worst. And it's like, I know that's not who you are." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like, why are you, who is this human? I know someone personally who is one of the best people. Yeah. I'm just, I love this guy. Like, one of the best, like fun, funny, nicest dudes. And he, if you looked at this Twitter only, maybe you'd think he's a culture worrier, or an awful culture worrier. And biased, and just, stoking anger. And it comes out of a good place. And I'm not gonna give any other info about specific, but it comes out- I think you're describing a lot of people this. It comes out of a good place because he really cares about what he, but it's just, I can't square the two. Once you know someone like that, you can realize, okay, apply that to everyone. Cause a lot of these people are lovely people. just bring, even just back in the before social media." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You ever had a friend who like-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think you're describing a lot of people. Was just like, they had this dickishness on text or email that they didn't have in person. And you're like, wow, like, email you is like kind of a dick. And it's like, it just, certain people have a different" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "persona behind the screen. It has, for me personally, has become a bit of a meme that Lex blocks with love. But there is a degree to that where this is, I don't see people on social media as representing who they really are. I really do have love for them. I really do think positive thoughts of them throughout the entirety of the experience. I see this as some weird side effect of online communication. And so it's like, to me, blocking is not some kind of a derisive act towards that individual. It's just like saying-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, a lot of times what's happened is they have slipped into a very common delusion that dehumanizes others. So that doesn't mean they're a bad person. We all can do it, but they're dehumanizing you or whoever they're being nasty to, because in a way they would never do in person, because in a person they're reminded that's a person. Remember I said the dumb part of my brain when I'm doing VR won't step off the cliff, but the smart part of my brain knows I'm just on the rug? That dumb part of our brain is really dumb in a lot of ways. It's the part of your brain where you can set the clock five minutes fast to help you not be late. The smart part of your brain knows that you did that, but the dumb part will fall for it, right? That same dumb part of your brain can forget that the person behind that screen, that behind that handle is a human that has feelings, and that doesn't mean they're a bad person" }, { "from": "human", "value": "for forgetting that, because it's possible. But this really interesting idea, and I wonder if it's true that you're right, is that both primitive mindedness and high mindedness tend to be contagious. I hope you're right, that it's possible to make both contagious, because our popular intuition is only one of the primitive mindedness is contagious," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "as exhibited by social media. To compliment you again, don't you think that your, your Twitter to me is like, I was just looking down. And I mean, it is a, it's just high-mindedness, it's just high-mindedness down, down, down, down, down. It's gratitude. It's optimism. It's love. It's forgiveness. It's all these things that are the opposite of grievance and victimhood and resentment and pessimism, right? And there's I think a reason that a lotta people follow you because it is contagious." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It makes other people feel those feelings. I don't know. I've been recently, over the past few months, attacked quite a lot, and it's fascinating to watch because it's over things that, I think I probably have done stupid things, but I'm being attacked for things that are totally not worthy of attack." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I got attacked for a book list." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I saw that, by the way, I thought it was great. But like, you can always kind of find ways to, you know, I guess the assumption is, this person surely is a fraud or some other explanation. He sure has dead bodies in the basement and he's hiding or something like this. And then I'm going to construct a narrative around that and mock and attack that. I don't know how that works, but there is, there does, and I think you write this in the book, there seems to be a gravity pulling people" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "towards the primitive mind and it's like, mind and it's like. But when it comes to anything political, right? Religious, certain things are bottom heavy, you know, for our psyche, they have a magnet that pulls our psyches downwards on the ladder. And why? Why does politics pull our psyches down on the ladder? Because for the tens of thousand years that we were evolving, you know, during human history, it was life or death. Politics was life or death. And so there's actually an amazing study where it's like, they challenged 20 different beliefs of a person and different parts of the person's brain, and then you had an MRI going, different parts of the person's brain lit up when nonpolitical beliefs were challenged versus political beliefs were challenged. When political beliefs were challenged, when nonpolitical beliefs were challenged, like the rational, like the prefrontal cortex type areas were lit up. When the political beliefs were challenged, and then I'm getting over my head here, but it's like the parts of your brain the default mode network. The parts of your brain associated with introspection and your own identity were lit up. And they were much more likely to change their mind on all the beliefs, the nonpolitical beliefs. When that default mode network part of your brain lit up, you were gonna, if anything, get more firm in those beliefs when you had them challenged. So politics is one of those topics that just literally lights up different part of our brain. Again, I think we come back to primitive mind, higher mind here. This is one of the things our primitive mind comes programmed to care a ton about. And so it's gonna be very hard for us to stay rational and calm and looking for truth" }, { "from": "human", "value": "because we have all this gravity. Well, it's weird because politics, like what is politics? Like to talk about, it's a bunch of different issues. And each individual issue, if we really talk about," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "we don't, we don't. It attacks policy, like why are we being emotional" }, { "from": "human", "value": "about this? I don't think we're actually that, I mean, yeah," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "we're emotional about something else. Yeah, I think what we're emotional about is this, my side, the side I've identified with is in power and making the decisions and your side is out of power. And if your side's in power, that's really scary for me because that goes back to the idea of who's making, who's pulling the strings in this tribe, right? Who's the chief? Is it your family's patriarch or is it mine? You might not have food if we don't win this, kind of whatever, you know, chief election. So I think that it's not about the tax policy or anything like that. And then it gets tied to this like broader, I think a lot of our tribalism has really coalesced around this. We don't have that much religious tribalism in the US, right, now they know the Protestants and the Catholics hate each other, we don't have that really, right? And honestly, you say, people like to, you know, say we have racial tribalism and everything, but white, you know, a white, even a kind of a racist, white conservative guy, I think takes the black conservative over the woke white person any day of the week right now. So that's the strongest source of the division. It tells me that I think it's the strongest, way stronger tribalism right now. I think that that white racist guys, you know, loves the black conservative guy compared to the white woke guy, right? So it's, again, not that racial tribalism isn't a thing, of course it's always a thing, but like political tribalism is the number one right now." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "source of the division. So race is almost a topic for the political division" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "versus the actual sort of element of the tribe." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's a political football, it's, yeah. So there's a, I mean, this is dark because, so this is a book about human civilization, this is a book about human nature, but it's also a book of politics, about politics. It is just the way you list it out in the book, it's kind of dark how we just fall into these left and right checklists. So if you're on the left, it's maintain, where we weighed universal healthcare good, mainstream media fine, guns kill people, US as a racist country, protect immigrants, tax cuts bad, climate change awful, raise minimum wage. And on the right is the flip of that, reverse where we weighed universal healthcare bad, mainstream media bad, people kill people, not guns kill people. US was a racist country, protect borders, tax cuts good, climate change, overblown, don't raise minimum wage. I mean, it has, you almost don't have to think" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "about any of this, it's like literally above. So when you say it's a book about politics, it's interesting because it's a book about the vertical axis. It's specifically not a book about the horizontal axis in that I'm not talking, I don't actually talk about any of these issues. I don't put out an opinion on them, Those are all horizontal, right? But when you, so rather than having another book about those issues, about right versus left, I wanted to do a book about this other axis. And so on this axis, the reason I had this checklist is that this is a low, part of the low rung politics world. Low rung politics is a checklist. And that checklist evolves, right? Like Russia suddenly is like popular with the right as opposed to, you know, it used to be in the 60s, the left was the one defending Stalin. So they'll switch, it doesn't even matter, the substance doesn't matter, it's that this is the approved checklist of the capital P party and this is what everyone believes. That's a low rung thing. The high rungs, this is not what it's like. High rung politics, you tell me your one view on this? I have no idea what you think about anything else, right? And you're gonna say I don't know about a lot of stuff because inherently, you're not gonna have that strong an opinion because you don't have that much, these are complex things. So there's a lot of I don't know and people are all over the place. It's when, you know you're talking to someone who has been subsumed with low-rung politics when if they tell you their opinion on any one of these issues, you could just, you know you could just rattle off their opinion on every single other one. And if in three years it becomes fashionable to have this new view, they're gonna have it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's, you're not thinking, that's echo chamber culture. And I've been using kind of a shorthand of centrist to describe this kind of high-rung thinking, but people tend to, I mean, it seems to be difficult to be a centrist or whatever, a high-rung thinker. It's like, people want to label you as a person who's too cowardly to take stands somehow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As opposed to saying, I don't know is a first statement. Yeah, well, the problem with centrist is that would mean that in each of these, tax cuts bag, tax cuts good. It means that you are saying, I am in, I think we should have some tax cuts, but not that many. You might not think that. You might actually do some research and say, actually, I think tax cuts are really important. That doesn't mean, oh, I'm not a centrist anymore. I guess I'm a far, no, no, no. That's why we need the second axis. So what you're trying to be, when you say centrist is high-rung, which means you might be all over the place horizontally. You might agree with the far-left on this thing, the far-right on this thing, you might agree with the centrists on this thing, but calling yourself a centrist actually is putting yourself in a prison on the horizontal axis. And it's saying that whatever, on the different topics, I'm right and between the two policy-wise. That's not where you are." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So yeah, that's why we're badly missing this other axis. Yeah, I mean, I still do think it's just like for me, I am a centrist when you project it down to the horizontal. But the point is you're missing so much data by not considering the vertical. Because like on average, maybe it falls somewhere in the middle. But in reality, there's just a lot of nuance issue to issue that involves just thinking and uncertainty and changing and given the context of the current geopolitics and economics, and just always considering, always questioning, always evolving your views," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "all of that. Because not just about like, oh, I think we should be in the center on this, but another way to be in the center is if there's some phenomenon happening, there's a terrorist attack. And one side wants to say, this has nothing to do with Islam. And the other side wants to say, this is radical Islam, right? What's in between those? It's saying this is complicated and nuanced and we have to learn more and it probably has something to do with Islam and something to do with the economic circumstances and something to do with geopolitics. So in the case like that, you actually do get really a nuance when you go to the extremes. And all of that nuance, which is where all the truth usually is, is going to be in the middle, so, yeah." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "But there's a truth to the fact that if you take that nuance on those issues, like were in Ukraine, COVID, you're going to be attacked by both sides." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes, yes. People who are really strongly on one side strongly on one side or the other, hate centrist people. I've gotten this myself, and the slur that I've had thrown at me is I'm an enlightened centrist in a very mocking way. So what are they actually saying? What does enlightened centrist mean? It means someone who is, Stephen Pinker, Jonathan Haidt gets accused of is that they're highfalutin, intellectual world, and they don't actually have any, they don't actually take a side, they don't actually get their hands dirty, and they can be superior to both sides without actually taking a stand, right? So I see the argument, and I disagree with it, because I firmly believe that the hardcore tribes, they think they're taking a stand and they're out in the streets and they're pushing for something. I think what they're doing is they're just driving the whole country downwards, and I think they're hurting all the causes they care about. And so it's not that we need everyone to be sitting there and refusing to take a side, it's that you can be far left and far right," }, { "from": "human", "value": "the upper left and upper right. If we talk about the, you use the word liberal a lot in the book to mean something that we don't in modern political discourse mean. So it's this higher philosophical view. And then you use the words progressive to mean the left and conservative to mean the right. Can you describe the concept of liberal games" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and power games and power games? So the power games is what I call the like, basically just the laws of nature as the, when laws of nature are the laws of the land, that's the power game. So animals, watch any David Attenborough special. And when the little lizard is running away from the bigger animal or whatever, I use an example of a bunny in a bear. I don't even know if bears eat bunnies. They probably don't, but pretend bears eat bunnies. So it's like in the power games, the bear is chasing the bunny. There's no fairness. There's no, okay, well, what's right? What's legal? No, no, if the bear is fast enough, it can eat the bunny. And if the bunny can get away, it can say living. So that's it, that's the only rule. Now humans have spent a lot of time in essentially that environment. So when you have a totalitarian dictatorship it's, and so what's the rule of the power games? It's everyone can do whatever they want if they have the power to do so. It's just a game of power. So if the bunny gets away, the bunny actually has more power than the bear in that situation. And likewise the totalitarian dictatorship, there's no rules that dictator can do whatever they want. They can torture, they can flatten a rebellion with a lot of murder because they have the power to do so. What are you gonna do, right? And that's kind of the state of nature. That's our natural way. You know, when you watch a mafia movie, there's, we do a lot of it, we have it in us. We all have, we all can snap into power games mode when it becomes all about just actual raw power. Now, the liberal games is something that civilizations for thousands of years have been working on. It's not invented by America or modern times, but America's kind of was like the latest crack at it yet, which is this idea instead of everyone can do what they want if they have the power to do so, it's everyone can do what they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. Now that's really complicated, how do you define harm? And the idea is that everyone has a list of rights which are protected by the government. And then they have, they're inalienable rights and they're protected, you know, those are protected again by, you know, from an invasion by other people. And so you have this kind of fragile balance. And so the idea with the liberal games is you, that there are laws, but it's not totalitarian. They will build very clear, strict laws kind of around the edges of what you can and can't do. And then everything else, freedom. So unlike a totalitarian dictatorship, actually it's very loose. There's a lot of things can happen and it's kind of up to the people, but there are still laws that protect the very basic inalienable rights and stuff like that. So it's this much looser thing. Now the vulnerability there is that, so the benefits of it are obvious, right? Freedom is great. It seems like it's the most fair. They, you know, that equality of opportunity seem like the most fair thing. And, you know, equality before the law, you know, due process and all of this stuff. So it seems fair to the founders of the US and other enlightenment thinkers. And it also is a great way to manifest productivity, right? You know, you have Adam Smith saying, it's not from the benevolence of the butcher or the baker that we get our dinner, but from their own self-interest. So you have, you can harness kind of selfishness for progress. But it has a vulnerability, which is that because the laws, it's like totalitarian laws, they don't have an excess of laws for no reason. They want to control everything. And the US, you know, in the US we say, they're not gonna do that. And so the second, it's almost two puzzle pieces. You have the laws, and then you've got a liberal culture. Liberal laws have to be married to liberal culture, kind of a defense of liberal spirit in order to truly have the liberal games going on. And so that's vulnerable because free speech, you can have the First Amendment, that's the laws part. But if you're in a culture where anyone who, you know, speaks out against orthodoxy is going to be shunned from the community, well, you're lacking the second piece of the puzzle there. You're lacking liberal culture. And so therefore, you might as well be in a, you might as well not even have the First Amendment. And there's a lot of examples like that where the culture has to do its part for the true liberal games to be enjoyed. So it's just much more complicated, much more nuanced than the power games. It's kind of a set of basic laws that then are coupled with a basic spirit to create this very awesome human environment" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "that's also very vulnerable. So what do you mean the culture has to play along? So for something like a freedom of speech to work, there has to be a basic, what, decency? That if all people are perfectly good, then perfect freedom without any restrictions is great. It's where the human nature starts getting a little iffy. We start being cruel to each other. We start being greedy and desiring of harm and also the narcissists and sociopaths and psychopaths in society. All of that, that's when you start to have to inject" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "some limitations on that freedom. Yeah, I mean, if, so what the government basically says is we're going to let everyone be mostly free, but no one is gonna be free to physically harm other people or to steal their property, right? And so we're all agreeing to sacrifice that 20% of our freedom and then in return, all of us in theory can be 80% free and that's kind of the bargain. But now that's a lot of freedom to leave people with and a lot of people choose, it's like you're so free in the US, you're actually free to be unfree if you choose. That's kind of what an echo chamber is to me. It's, you can choose to kind of be friends with people who essentially make it so uncomfortable to speak your mind that it's no actual effective difference for you than if you lived in a country. If you can't criticize Christianity in a certain community, that you have a First Amendment, so you're not gonna get arrested by the government for criticizing Christianity. But if you have this, if the social penalties are so extreme that it's just never worth it, you might as well be in a country that imprisons people for criticizing Christianity. And so that same thing goes for for wokeness, right? This is what people get, cancel culture and stuff. So when the reason these things are bad is because they're actually, they're depriving Americans of the beauty of the freedom of the liberal games by imposing a social culture that is very power games-esque. It's basically a power games culture comes in and you might as well be in the power games now. And so liberal, if you live in a liberal democracy, there will always be challenges to a liberal culture, lowercase L, liberal. There'll always be challenges to a liberal culture from people who are much more interested in playing the power games. And there has to be kind of an immune system that stands up to that culture and says, that's not how we do things here in America, actually. We don't excommunicate people for not having the right religious beliefs or not rent. We don't disinvite a speaker from campus for having the wrong political beliefs. And if it doesn't stand up for itself, it's like the immune system of the country failing" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and power games rushes in. So before chapter four in your book and the chapters that will surely result in you being burned at the stake, you write, quote, we'll start our pitchfork tour in this chapter by taking a brief trip to the history of the Republican party. Then in the following chapters, we'll take a Tim's career tanking deep dive into America's social justice movement as you started to talk about. Okay, so let's go." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the history of the Republican party? I'm looking at this through my vertical ladder. I'm saying, what is this familiar story of the Republicans from the sixties to today, what does it look like through the vertical lens, right? Does it look different? And is there an interesting story here that's been kind of hidden because we're always looking at the horizontal. Now the horizontal story, you'll hear people talk about it and they'll say something like the Republicans have moved farther and farther to the right. And to me, that's not really true. Like, was Trump more right wing than Reagan? I don't think so." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think he's left. I think he's left. I think he's left." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah. So we're using this, again, it's just like you're calling yourself centrist when it's not exactly what you mean, even though it also is. So again, I was like, okay, this vertical lens helps with other things. Let's apply it to the Republicans. And here's what I saw is I looked at the sixties and I saw an interesting story, which I don't think that, not everyone's familiar with like what happened in the early sixties, but in 1960, the Republican party was very, it was a plurality. You had progressives, like genuine Rockefeller, pretty progressive people all the way to, then you had the moderates like Eisenhower and Dewey. And then you go all the way to the farther right, you had Goldwater and what you might call, I call them the fundamentalists. And so it's this interesting plurality, right? Something we don't have today. And what happened was the Goldwater contingent, which was the underdog, they were small, right? The Eisenhower was the president, or had just been the president and was, it seemed like the moderates were, there was the, that's the, instead you have to be close to the center of the chessboard. That's how you maintain power. These people were very far from the center of the chessboard, but they ended up basically have like a hostile takeover. They conquered their own party and they did it by breaking all of the kind of unwritten rules and norms. So they did things like they first started with like the college Republicans, which was like this feeder group that turned in, a lot of the politicians started there. And they went to the election and they wouldn't let the current president, the incumbent speak and they were throwing chairs and they were fist fights. And eventually people gave up and they just sat there and they sat in the chair talking for, their candidate until everyone eventually left and then they declared victory. So basically they came in, there was a certain set of rules agreed upon rules and they came in playing the power games saying, well actually, if we do this, you won't have the power. We have the power to take it if we just break all the rules, right? And so they did, and they won. And that became this hugely influential thing, which then they conquered California through, again, these people were taken aback. These proper Republican candidates were appalled by the kind of like, you know, the insults that were being hurled at them and the intimidation in the building. And eventually they ended up in the national convention, which was called like the right-wing Woodstock. It was like, you know, the Republican National Convention in 64 was just, again, there was jeering, and they wouldn't let their moderates or their progressives even speak. And there was racism, you know, Jackie Robinson was there and he was a proud Republican. And he said that like, he feels like he was a Jew in Hitler's Germany with the way that blacks were being treated there. And it was nasty, but what did they do? They had fiery, you know, plurality enough to win, and they won. They ended up getting crushed in the general election and they kind of faded away. But to me, I was like, that was an interesting story. I see it as, I have this character in the book called the golem, which is a big, kind of a big, dumb, powerful monster. That's the, you know, the emergent property of like a political echo chambers, like this big giant. It's stupid, but it's powerful and scary. And to me, I was like, a golem rose up, conquered the party for a second, knocked it on its ass, and then faded away. And to me, when I looked at the Trump revolution and a lot, and not just Trump, the last 20 years, I see that same lower right, that lower right monster kind of making another charge for it, but this time succeeding and really taking over the party for a long period of time. I see the same story, which is the power games are being played in a situation when it had always been, the government relies on all these unwritten rules and norms to function. But for example, you have in 2016, Merrick Garland gets nominated by Obama. And the unwritten norm says that when the president nominates a justice, then you pass them through unless there's some egregious thing. That's what has happened. But they said, actually, this is the last year of his presidency and the people should choose. I don't think we should set a new precedent where the president can't nominate people, nominate a Supreme Court justice in the last year. So they pass it through and it ends up being Gorsuch. And so they lose that seat. Now, three years later, it's Trump's last year and it's another election year and Ginsburg dies. And what did they say? They say, oh, let's keep our precedent. They said, no, oh, actually we changed our mind. We're gonna nominate Amy Barrett. So to me, that is classic power games. There's no actual rule. And what you're doing is they did technically have the power to block the nomination. Then, and then they technically had the power to put someone and they're pretending there's some principle to it. But they're going for a short-term edge at the expense of what is like, the workings of the system in the long run. And then one of the Democrats have to do, in that situation, because both parties have been doing this, is they either can lose now all the time, or they start playing the power games too. And now you have a prisoner's dilemma where it's like, both end up doing this thing and everyone ends up worse off. The debt ceiling, all these power plays that are being made with these holding the country hostage, this is power games. And to me, that's what Goldwater was doing in the 60s, but it was a healthier time in a way because there was this plurality within the parties reduced some of the national tribalism. And there wasn't as much of an appeal to that. But today, it's just like, do whatever you have to do to beat the enemies. And so I'm seeing a rise in power games. And I talk about the Republicans because they did a lot of these things first. They have been a little bit more egregious," } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "but both parties have been doing it over the last 20, 30 years. Can you place blame, or maybe there's a different term for it, at the subsystems of this? So is it the media? Is it the politicians like in the Senate, in Congress? Is it Trump? So the leadership? Is it, or maybe it's us, human beings, maybe social media versus mainstream media. Is there a sense of where, what is the cause and what is the symptom?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's very complex. So Ezra Klein has a great book, Why We're Polarized, where he talks about a lot of this. And there's some of these are, it's really no one's fault. First of all, it's the environment has changed in a bunch of ways you just mentioned. And what happens when you take human nature, which is a constant and you put it into an environment, behavior comes out. The environment's the independent variable. When that changes, the dependent variable, behavior changes with it, right? And so the environment has changed in a lot of ways. So one major one is it used to for a long time actually, the first it was the Republicans and then the Democrats just had a stranglehold on Senate, on Congress. There was no, it was not even competitive. The Democrats for 40 years had the majority. And so therefore it actually is a decent environment to compromise it because now we can both, what you want is Congress people thinking about their home district. And voting yes on a national policy because we're gonna get a good deal on it back at home. That's actually healthy, as opposed to voting in lockstep together because this is what the red party is doing, regardless of what's good for my home district. An example is Obamacare. There were certain Republican districts that would have actually officially been benefited by Obamacare, but every Republican voted against it. So, and part of the reason is because it's no longer this obvious majority. Every few years it switches, it's a 50-50 thing. And that's partially because it's become so, we've been so subsumed with this one national divide of left versus right that people are not, people are whoever, they're voting for the same party for president all the way down the ticket now. And so you have this just kind of 50-50 color war and that's awful for compromise. So there's like 10 of these things that have redistricting, but also it is social media. It is, I call it hypercharged tribalism. In the sixties you had kind of distributed tribalism. You had some people that are worked up about the USSR. They're national, that's what they care about. US versus foreign. Some people that were saying left versus right, like they today, and then other people that were saying they were fighting within the party. But today you don't have that. You have ideological realignment, so you kind of got rid of a lot of the in-party fighting, and then there hasn't been that big of a foreign threat. Not nothing like the USSR for a long time. So you kind of lost that and what's left is just this left versus right thing. And so that's kind of this hypercharged whirlpool that subsumes everything. And so yeah, it's, I mean, people point to Newt Gingrich, you know, people like there's certain characters that enacted policies that stoked this kind of thing. But I think this is a much bigger" }, { "from": "human", "value": "kind of environmental shift. Well, that's going back to our questions about the role of individuals in human history. So the interesting, one of the many interesting questions here is about Trump. Is he a symptom or a cause? Because he seems to be from the public narrative such a significant catalyst for some of the things" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "we're seeing. This goes back to what we were talking about earlier, right? Like, is it the person or is it the times? I think he's a perfect example of it's a both situation. I don't think, I don't think if you plucked Trump out of the situation, I don't think that Trump was inevitable. But I think we were very vulnerable to a demagogue. And if you hadn't been, Trump would have had no chance. And why were we vulnerable to a demagogue is because you have these, I mean, I think it's specifically on the right. If you actually look at the stats, it's pretty bad. Like the people who, because it's not just who voted for Trump, a lot of people just vote for the red, right? What's interesting is who voted for Obama against Romney and then voted for Trump? Who, you know, these are not racists, right? These are not hardcore Republicans. They voted for Obama. And where did the switch come from? Places that had economic despair. Where bridges were not working well. That's a signifier. You know, where paints chipping in the schools. You know, these little things like this. So I think that, you know, you had this, a lot of these kind of rural towns, you have true despair. And then you also have, the number one indicator of voting for Trump was distrust in media. And the media has become much less trustworthy, you know. And so you have all these ingredients that actually make us very vulnerable to a demagogue. And a demagogue is someone who takes advantage, right? There's someone who comes in and says, I can pull all the right strings and pull it and push all the right emotional buttons right now and get my self power by taking advantage of the circumstances." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And that is what Trump totally did. It makes me wonder how easy it is for somebody who's a charismatic leader to capitalize on cultural resentment when there's economic hardship to channel that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So John Haidt wrote a great article about like, we basically, like truth is in an all time low right now. Like it's, the media is not penalized for lying, right? MSNBC, Fox News, these are not penalized for being inaccurate or penalized if they stray from the orthodoxy on social media. It's not the truest tweets that go viral, right? And so Trump understood that better than anyone, right? He took advantage of it. He was living in the current world when everyone else was stuck in the past. And he saw that and he just lied. He, everything he said, you know, it doesn't, truth was not relevant at all, right? It's just, it's just truly, it's not relevant to him when what he's talking about. He doesn't care and he knew that neither do" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "as a subset of the country. I was thinking about this, just reading articles by journalists, especially when you're not a famous journalist in yourself, but you're more like in your Times journalist. So the big famous thing is the institution you're a part of. Like you can just lie. Cause you're not going to get punished for it. You're going to be rewarded for the popularity of an article. So if you write 10 articles, it's, there's a huge incentive to just make stuff up. You gotta get clicks. To get clicks. That's the first and foremost. And like culturally, people will attack that article to say it's, it's not like one half the country will attack that article for saying it's dishonest, but they'll kind of forget the, you will not have a reputational hit. There won't be a memory like this person made up a lot of stuff in the past. No, they'll take one article at a time and they'll attach the reputation hits will be to New York Times, the institution. And so for the individual journalist, there's a huge incentive to make stuff up." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Totally. It's, it's, it's, and it's scary because it's almost like you can't survive if you're just an old school, honest journalist who really works hard and tries to get it right and does it with nuance. Like what you can be is you can be a big time sub-stacker or big time podcaster. A lot of people do have a reputation for accuracy and rigor and they have huge audiences. But if you're working in a big company right now, it's, I mean, especially, I mean, I, I, I, I, I think that many of the big media brands are very much controlled by the left and, but I will say that the ones that are controlled by the right are even more egregious. Not just in terms of accuracy, but also in terms of, you know, the New York Times, for all of its criticisms, it's, they have a handful of, they, they here and there, they put out a pretty, you know, saw an article that strays from the, you know, Barry Weiss wrote there for a long time, and then you've got, they wrote an article criticizing free speech on campus stuff recently, and they have, you know, they have a couple very, you know, left progressive friendly conservatives, but they have conservatives that are operating the op-eds. Fox News, you're not seeing thoughtful, Breitbart, you're not seeing thoughtful progressives writing there, right?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "There's some degree to which the New York Times, I think, still incentivizes and values the vertical, the high effort. So you're allowed to have a conservative opinion if you do a really damn good job." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like if it's a very thorough, in-depth art kind of. And if you kind of pander to the progressive senses in all the right ways. I always joke that Ted, they always have a couple token conservatives, but they get on stage and they're basically like, so totally, you're all, the progressivism's right about all of this, but maybe libertarianism isn't all about, you know, it's just, so there is an element, but you know what? It's something, it's better than being a total tribal. I think you can see the New York Times tug of war, the internal tug of war. You can see it, because then they also have these awful instances, you know, or like, you know, the firing of James Bennett, which is this whole other story. But like, they have, yeah, you can see it going both ways, but in the 60s, what did you have? You had ABC, NBC, CBS, you know, the 70s, you know, you had these three news channels and they weren't always right, and they definitely sometimes spun a narrative together, maybe, about the Vietnam or whatever, but if one of them was just lying, they'd be embarrassed for it. They would be penalized, they'd be dinged, and they'd be known as, this is the trash one. And that would be terrible for their ratings, because they weren't just catering to half the country, they're all catering to the whole country. So, both on the axis of accuracy and on the axis of neutrality, they had to, you know, try to stay somewhere" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in the reasonable range, and that's just gone. One of the things I'm really curious about is I think your book is incredible. I'm very curious to see how it's written about by the press. Because I could see, I could myself write, with the help of Chad JPT, of course," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "clickbait articles in either direction." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, it's easy to imagine. Your whole book is beautifully written for clickbait articles. If any journalist out there need help, I can help. Yeah. I can write the most atrocious criticisms." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I'm, yeah, yeah, I'm ready, I'm braced." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, so, speaking of which, you write about social justice. You write about two kinds of social justice, liberal social justice and S.J.F., social justice fundamentalism." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What are those? Yeah, so, like, the term wokeness is so loaded with baggage, it's kind of like mocking and derogatory. And I was trying not to do that in this book. If it's the term loaded with baggage, you're already kind of, you're from the first minute, you're already behind. So, to me, also, when people say wokeness is bad, social justice is bad, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Because the proudest tradition in the U.S. is liberal social justice. And what I mean by that, again, liberal meaning lowercase L. It is intertwined with liberalism. So, Martin Luther King, classic example, I have a dream speech, he says stuff like, this country has made a promise to all of its citizens and it has broken that promise to its black citizens, right? In other words, liberalism, the Constitution, the core ideals, those are great. We're not living up to them, we're failing on some of them. So, civil disobedience, the goal of it wasn't to hurt liberalism, it was to specifically break the laws that were already violating, the laws that were a violation of liberalism to expose that this is illiberal. That the Constitution should not have people of different skin color sitting in different parts of the bus. And so, it was really patriotic, the civil rights movement. It was saying, this is a beautiful, we have a liberalism is this beautiful thing and we need to do better at it. So, I call it liberal social justice and it used the tools of liberalism to try to improve the flaws that were going on. So, free speech, Mario Savio in the 60s was a, he's a leftist and what the leftist doing in the 60s on Berkeley campus, they were saying we need more free speech because that's what liberal social justice was fighting for. But you can also go back to the 20s, women's suffrage. I mean, the emancipation, the thing that America obviously has all of it, these are all ugly things that it had to get out of, but it got out of them, one by one and it's still getting out of them. That's what's cool about America. And liberal social justice basically is the practice of saying, where are we not being perfect liberals and now let's fix that. So, that's the idea of liberalism" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "that permeates the history in the United States. But then there's interplay, you have so many good images in this book, but one of them is highlighting the interplay of different ideas over the past, let's say 100 years. So, liberalism is on one side, there's that thread. There's Marxism on the other, and then there's postmodernism. How do those interplay together?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So, it's interesting because Marxism is, and all of its various descendants, obviously there's a lot of things that are rooted in Marxism that aren't the same thing as what Karl Marx preached. But what do they all have in common? They think liberalism is bad, right? They actually think that it's not a bad thing because they think that the opposite of what Martin Luther King and other people in the civil rights and other movements, they think the opposite. He thinks liberalism is good we need to preserve it, they said liberalism is the problem. These other problems with racism and inequality that we're seeing, those are inevitable results of liberalism. Liberalism is a rigged game and it's just the power games in disguise. There is no liberal games, it's just the power games in disguise and the upper people that oppress the lower people and they convince the lower people, it's all about false consciousness. They convince the lower people that everything is fair, and that the lower people vote against their own interests and they work to preserve the system that's oppressing them. And what do we need to do? Actually there's much more revolutionary. We need to overthrow liberalism. So people think, what we call a woke-ness is a normal social justice activism but it's It's like more extreme, right? It's this, no, no, it's the polar opposite, polar opposite. And so now that's the Marxist threat. Now postmodernism is kind of this term that is super controversial and I don't think anyone calls themselves a postmodernist or take all of this with a grain of salt in terms of the term but what's the definition of radical? The definition of radical to me is how deep you want change to happen at. So a liberal progressive and a conservative progressive will disagree about policies, the liberal progressive wants to change a lot of policies. And change, change, change, right? And the conservative is more wants to keep things the way they are. But they're both conservative when it comes to liberalism beneath it, the liberal kind of foundation of the country. They both become conservatives about that. The Marxist is more radical because they want to go one notch deeper and actually overthrow that foundation. Now, what's below liberalism is kind of the core tenets of modernity, this idea of reason and the notion that there is an objective truth and science as the scientific method. These things are actually beneath, and even the Marxist, if you look at the Frankfurt School, these post-Marxist thinkers and Marx himself, they were not anti-science. They believed in that bottom, bottom foundation. They actually wanted to preserve modernity, but they wanted to get rid of liberalism on top of it. The postmodernist is even more radical because they want to actually go down to the bottom level and overthrow it. They think science itself is a tool of oppression. They think it's a tool where oppression kind of flows through. They think that the white western world has invented these concepts, like they claim that there's an objective truth and that there's reason and science. They think all of that is just one metanarrative. and it goes a long way to serve the interests" }, { "from": "human", "value": "of the powerful. So in the sense that, it's almost caricatured, but that is to the core their belief that math could be racist, for example. Oh yeah, absolutely. Not the educational math, but literally math, the mathematics." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The notion, oh yeah. Not the mathematics. The notion in math that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, that they believe is a meta-narrative that serves white supremacy, or in the post-modernist might've said it serves just the powerful or the wealthy. But so what social justice fundamentalism is, is you take the Marxist thread that has been going on in lots of countries and whoever the upper and lower is, that's what they all have in common. But the upper and lower, for Marx was the ruling class and the oppressed class. It was economic. But you come here and the economic class doesn't resonate as much here as it did maybe in some of those other places, but what does resonate here in the 60s and 70s is race and gender and these kind of social justice disagreements. And so what social justice fundamentalism is, is basically this tried and true framework of this Marxist framework kind of with a new skin on it, which is American social justice. And then made even more radical with the infusion of post-modernism, where not just is liberalism bad, but actually the sign that like you said, math can be racist. So it's this kind of like philosophical Frankenstein, this like stitched together of these and has, and so again, it's called, they wear the same uniform as the liberal social justice. They say social justice, right? Racial equality, but it has nothing to do with liberal social justice." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "It is directly opposed to liberal social justice. It's fascinating. The evolution of ideas, if we ignore the harm done by it, it's fascinating how humans get together and evolve these ideas. So as you show Marxism is the idea that society is a zero sum. I mean, I guess the zero sum is really important thing here. Zero sum struggle between the ruling class and the working class with power being exerted through politics and economics. Then you add critical theory Marxism 2.0 on top of that, and you add to politics and economics, you add culture and institutions. And then on top of that, for post-modernism, you add science, you add morality, basically anything else" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "you can think of. To stitch together Frankenstein. And if you notice, which is not necessarily bad, but in this case, I think it's actually violating the Marxist tradition by being anti-science. And it's violating the post-modernism because what post-modernists were, they were radical skeptics. They were radical skeptics, not just of the way things were, but of their own beliefs. And social justice fundamentalism is not at all self-critical. It says that we have the answers, which is the opposite of what post-modernists would ever say, no, you just have another meta-narrative. And it's also violating, of course, the tradition of liberal social justice in a million ways because it's anti-liberal. And so this Frankenstein comes together. Meanwhile, liberal social justice doesn't have a Frankenstein. It's very clear. It's a crisp ideology that says we're trying to get to a more perfect union. They're trying to keep the promises made in the Constitution. And that's what it's trying to do." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And so it's much simpler in a lot of ways. So you write that my big problem with social justice fundamentalism isn't the ideology itself. It's what scholars and activists started to do sometimes around 2013 when they began to wield a kudjo that's not supposed to have any place in the country like the US. So it's the actions, not the ideas." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, it's clear, well, it's clear, I don't like the ideology. I think it's a low-rung ideology. I think it's morally inconsistent based on, you know, it's flip-flops on its morals depending on the group. I think it's echo chamber-y. I think it's full of inaccuracies and kind of can't stand up to debate. So I think it's a low, but there's a ton of low-rung ideologies I don't like. I don't like a lot of religious doctrines. I don't like a lot of political doctrines, right? The US is a place inherently that is a mishmash of a ton of ideologies. And I'm not gonna like two thirds of them at any given time. So my problem, the reason I'm writing about this is not because I'm like, by the way, this ideology is not something I like. That's not interesting. The reason that it must be written about right now, this particular ideology, is because it's not playing nicely with others. But if you wanna be a hardcore, you know, evangelical Christian in the US says live and let live. Not only are you allowed to have an echo chamber of some kind, it's actively protected here. Live and let live. They can do what they want. You do what you want. Now, if the evangelical Christian started saying, by the way, anyone who says anything that conflicts with evangelical Christianity is going to be severely socially punished. And they have the cultural power to do so, which they don't in this case. They might like to, but they don't have the power. But there are, I'll be able to get anyone fired who they want and they're able to actually change the curriculum in all of these schools in class to suddenly not conflict with no more evolution in the textbooks because they don't want it. Now I would write a book about why, about evangelical Christianity, because that's what every liberal, regardless of what you think of the actual horizontal beliefs, doesn't matter what they believe when they start violating live and let live and shutting down other segments of society. And it's almost like, it's not the best analogy, but an echo chamber is like a benign tumor. And what you have to watch out for is a tumor that starts to metastasize, starts to forcefully spread and damage the tissue around it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And that's what this particular ideology has been doing. Do you worry about it as an existential threat to liberalism in the West, in the United States? Is it a problem or is it the biggest problem" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that's threatening all of human civilization? I would never, I would not say it's the biggest problem. It might be, I wouldn't, if someone, if it turns out in 50 years, someone says actually it was, I wouldn't be shocked. But I also, I wouldn't bet on that" }, { "from": "human", "value": "because there's a lot of problems. I'm a little sorry to interrupt. It is popular to say that kind of thing though. And it's less popular to say the same thing about AI or nuclear weapons, which worries me that I'm more worried" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "about nuclear weapons even still than I am about wokeism. So I've gotten, I've had probably 1,000 arguments about this. That's one nice thing about spending six years procrastinating on getting a book done is you end up battle testing your ideas a million times. So I've heard this one a lot, right? Which is there's kind of three groups of former Obama voters. One is super woke now. Another one is super anti-woke now. And the third is what you just said, which is sure, wokeness is over the top, right? You're not woke, but I think that the anti-woke people are totally lost their mind. And it's just not that big a deal, right? Now here's why I disagree with that. Because it's not wokeness itself. It's that a radical political movement of which there will always be a lot in the country has managed to do something that a radical movement is not supposed to be able to do in the US, which is they've managed to hijack institutions all across the country and hijack medical journals and universities and, you know, the ACLU, you know, all the, you know, activist organizations and nonprofits and- And certain tech companies. Yeah, and many tech companies. And what, so it's not that I think this thing is so bad. It's a little like we said with Trump. It's that what I'm, the reason Trump scares me is not because Trump's so bad. It's that because it shows that it reveals that we were vulnerable to a demagogue candidate. And what wokeness reveals to me is that we are currently, and until something changes, we'll continue to be vulnerable to a NGO, a bully movement and a forcefully expansionist movement that wants to actually destroy the workings, their liberal gears and tear them apart. And so here's the way I view a liberal democracy is it is a bunch of these institutions that were trial and error crafted over hundreds of years. And they all rely on trust, public trust. And there's certain kind of feeling of unity that actually is critical to a liberal democracy's functioning. And what I see this thing is, is there's a parasite on that, that whose goal is, and I'm not saying each, by the way, each individual in this is I don't think they're bad people. I think that it's the ideology itself has the property of its goal is to tear apart the pretty delicate workings of the liberal democracy and shred the critical lines of trust. And so you talk about AI and you talk about all these other big problems, nuclear, right? The reason I like writing about that stuff a lot more than I like writing about politics, this wasn't a fun topic for me, is because I realized that, all of those things, if they're gonna have a good future with those things and they're actually threats, like I said, we need to have our wits about us and we need the liberal gears and levers working, we need the liberal machine working. And so if something's threatening" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "to undermine that, it affects everything else. We need to have our scientific mind about us, about these foundational ideas. But I guess my sense of hope comes from observing the immune system respond to wokeism. There seems to be a pro-liberalism immune system. And not only that, so like there's intellectuals, there's people that are willing to do the fight. You talk about courage, being courageous. And there is a hunger for that, such that those ideas can become viral and they take over. So I just don't see a mechanism by which wokeism accelerates exponentially and takes over, like it's expand. It feels like as it expands, the immune system responds. The immune system of liberalism, of basically a country, at least in the United States, that's still ultimately at the core of the individual values the freedom of speech, just freedoms in general, the freedom of an individual." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But that's the battle, which is stronger. So to me it is like a virus in an immune system. And I totally agree, I see the same story happening. And I'm sitting here rooting for the immune system. Are you still worried? Well, here's the thing. So a liberal democracy is always gonna be vulnerable to a movement like this, right? And there will be more. Because it's not a totalitarian dictatorship. Because if you can socially pressure people to not say what they're thinking, you can suddenly start to just take over, right? You can break the liberalism of the liberal democracy quite easily and suddenly a lot of things are illiberal. On the other hand, the same vulnerability, the same system that's vulnerable to that, also is hard to truly conquer. Because now the Maoists, right, similar kind of vibe. They were saying that science is evil and that the intellectuals are, it's all this big conspiracy. But they could murder you. And they had the hard cudgel in their hand, right? And the hard cudgel is scary. And you can conquer a country with the hard cudgel. But you can't use that in the U.S. So what they have is a soft cudgel, which can have the same effect initially. You can scare people into shutting up. You can't maybe imprison them and murder them. But if you can socially ostracize them and get them fired, that basically is gonna have the same effect. So the soft cudgel can have the same effect for a while, but the thing is, it's a little bit of a house of cards because it relies on fear. And as soon as that fear goes away, the whole thing falls apart, right? The soft cudgel requires people to be so scared of getting canceled or getting whatever. And as soon as some people start, you know, Toby Lutka of Shopify, I always like think about, you know, he just said, you know what, I'm not scared of this soft cudgel, and spoke up and said, we're not political at this company and we're not a family, we're a team and we're gonna do this. And, you know what, like they're thriving." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He will be on this podcast, he seems like a fascinating human. He's amazing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He spoke up, he's saying we're not deficit moving. He's amazing. He spoke up, he's saying we're not deficit moving. He's one of the smartest and kindest dudes, but he's also, he has courage at a time when it's hard. But here's the thing is that it's different than that you need so much less courage against a soft cudgel than you'd do. The Iranians, throwing their hejabs into the fire. Those people's courage just blows away any courage we have here, because they might get executed. That's the thing, is that you can actually have courage right now, and it's, so don't worry about it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh man, the irony of that. And you talk about, so two things to fight this, there's two things, awareness and courage." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the awareness piece? The awareness piece is under, first just know understanding the stakes, like getting your heads out of the sand and being like, technology's blowing up exponentially. Our society's trust is devolving, we're kind of falling apart in some important ways. We're losing our grip on some stability at the worst time. That's the first point, just the big picture. And then also awareness of, I think this vertical axis, or whatever your version of it is, this concept of how do I really form my beliefs? Where do they actually come from? Are they someone else's beliefs? Am I following a checklist? How about my values? I used to identify with the blue party or the red party, but now they've changed and I suddenly am okay with that. Is that because my values changed with it or am I actually anchored to the party, not to any principle? Asking yourself these questions. Looking for where do I feel disgusted by fellow human beings? Maybe I'm being a crazy tribal person without realizing it. How about the people around me? Am I being bullied by some echo chamber without realizing it? Am I the bully somewhere? So that's the first, I think just to kind of do a self audit. And I think that just some awareness like that and just self audit about these things can go a long way. But if you keep it to yourself, it's almost useless because if you don't have, awareness without courage does very little. So courage is when you take that awareness and you actually export it out into the world and it starts affecting other people. And so courage can happen on multiple levels. It can happen by first of all, just stop saying stuff you don't believe. If you're being pressured by kind of a ideology or a movement to say stuff that you don't actually believe, just stop, just stay in your ground and don't say anything. That's courage, that's one first step. Start speaking out in small groups, start actually speaking your mind, see what happens. The sky doesn't usually fall. Actually, people usually respect you for it, like not every group, but you'd be surprised. And then eventually, maybe start speaking out in bigger groups, start going public, go public with it, and you don't need everyone doing this. Some people will lose their jobs for it. I'm not talking to those people. Most people won't lose their jobs, but they have the same fear as if they would, right? And it's like, what, are you gonna get criticized or are you gonna get a bunch of people, angry Twitter people will criticize you? Like, yeah, it's not pleasant, but actually that's a little bit like our primitive minds fear that really, back when it was programmed, that kind of ostracism or criticism will leave you out of the tribe and you'll die today. It's kind of a delusional fear. It's not actually that scary. And the people who have realized that" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "can exercise incredible leadership right now. So you have a really interesting description of censorship, self-censorship also, as you've been talking about, who's King Mustache? And this gap, I think, I hope you write even more, even more than you've written in the book about these ideas, because it's so strong. This censorship gaps that are created between the dormant thought pile and the kind of thing under the speech curve." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah. So first of all, so I like to think of, I think it's a useful tool, is this thing called a thought pile, which is if you have a, on any given issue, you have a horizontal spectrum. And just say I could take your brain out of your head and I put it on the thought pile right where you happen to believe about that issue. Now, I did that for everyone in the community or in a society, and you're gonna end up with a big mushy pile that I think will often just form a bell curve. If it's really politicized, it might form like a camel with two humps, because it's concentrated here, but for a typical issue, it'll just form a fear of AI, you're gonna have a bell curve, right? Things like this. That's the thought pile. Now, the second thing is a line that I call the speech curve, which is what people are saying. So the speech curve is high when not just a lot of people are saying it, but it's being said from the biggest platforms, being said in the New York Times and it's being said by the president on the State of the Union, those things are the top of the speech curve. And then when the speech across lower, it means it's being said either whispered in small groups or it's just not very many people are talking about it. Now a healthy, when a free speech democracy is healthy on a certain topic, you've got the speech curve sitting right on top of the thought pile. They mirror each other which is naturally what would happen. More people think something is going to be said more often than from higher platforms. What censorship does, and that censorship can be from the government, so I use the tale of King Mustache. And King Mustache, he's a little tiny tyrant, and he's very sensitive, and people are making fun of his mustache, and they're saying he's not a good king, and he does not like that. So what does he do? He enacts a policy, and he says, anyone who has heard criticizing me or my mustache or my rule will be put to death. And immediately at the town, because his father was a very liberal, there was always free speech in his kingdom. But now King Mustache has taken over, and he's saying this is a new rules now. And so a few people yell out, and they say, that's not how we do things here. And that moment is what I call a moment of truth. Did the king's guards stand with the principles of the kingdom and say, yeah, King Mustache, that's not what we do, in which case he would kind of have to, he's nothing he can do. Or are they going to execute? So in this case, it's as if he laid down an electric fence over a part of the stockpile and said, no one's allowed to speak over here. The speech curve, maybe people will think these things, but the speech curve cannot go over here. But the electric fence wasn't actually electrified until the king's guards, in a moment of truth, get scared and say, okay, and they hang the five people who spoke out. So in that moment, that fence just became electric. And now no one criticizes King Mustache anymore. So I use this as an allegory. Now, of course he has a hard cudgel, because he can execute people. But now when we look at the US, what you're seeing right now is a lot of pressure, which is very similar. An electric fence is being laid down, saying no one can criticize these ideas. And if you do, you won't be executed, you'll be canceled. You'll be fired. Now, is that fence electrified from there? No, they can't actually, they're not working the company, they can't fire you. But they can start a Twitter mob when someone violates that speech curve, when someone violates that speech rule. And then the leadership at the company has the moment of truth. And what the leaders should do is stand up for their company's values, which is almost always in favor of the employee and say, look, even if they make a mistake, they make, people make mistakes, we're not gonna fire them. Or maybe that person actually said something that's reasonable, and we should discuss it. But either way, we're not gonna fire them. And if they said no, what happens is the Twitter mob actually doesn't have, they can't execute you, they go away, and the fence is proving to have no electricity. What's been the problem with the past few years is what's happened again and again, is the leader gets scared, and they get scared of the Twitter mob when they fire them. Boom, that fence has electricity. And now, actually, if you cross that, it's not just a threat. You will be out of a job. It's really bad. You'll have a huge penalty. You might not be able to feed your kids. So that's an electric fence that goes up. Now, what happens when an electric fence goes up and it's proven to actually be electrified? The speech curve morphs into a totally different position. And now these new people say, instead of having the kind of marketplace of ideas that turns into a kind of a natural bell curve, they say, no, no, no. These ideas are okay to say, and not just okay. You'll be socially rewarded. And these ones don't. That's the rules of their own echo chamber that they're now applying to everyone, and it's working. And so, the speech curve distorts. And so you end up with, now, instead of one region, which is a region of kind of active communal thinking, what people are thinking and saying, you now have three regions. You have a little active communal thinking, but mostly, you now have this dormant thought pile, which is all these opinions" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "that, suddenly, everyone's scared to say out loud. Everyone's thinking but they're scared to say it loud." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Everyone's thinking, but no one's saying. And then you have this other region, which is the approved ideas of this now cultural kind of dictator and those are being spoken from the largest platforms, and they're being repeated by the president, and they're being repeated all over the place, even though people don't believe it. And that's this distortion and what happens is the society becomes really stupid because active communal thinking is the region where we can actually think together. And now no one can think together" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and it gets siloed into small private conversations. It's really powerful what you said about institutions and so on. It's not trivial to, from a leadership position to be like, no, we, we defend the employee or defend the, um, the employee, the person with us on our, like, cause we don't, there's, cause there's no actual, uh, ground to the, any kind of violation we're hearing about. So the mob, they resist the mob. It's ultimately to the leader, I guess of a particular institution or a particular company. And it's difficult." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh yeah. No, no, it's not. I don't, if it were easy it wouldn't, there wouldn't be all of these failings. And by the way this is the immune system failing. That's the liberal immune system of that company failing, but also then it's an example, which means that a lot of other, you know, it's failing kind of to the country, it's not easy. Of course it's not because why, because we have primitive minds that are wired to care so much about what people think of us and even if we're not going to, you know, maybe in, first of all, we're scared that it's going to start a cause you know what, you know, what are mobs do? They don't just say, I'm going to criticize you. I'm gonna criticize anyone who still buys your product. I'm gonna criticize anyone who goes on your podcast. So, it's not just you. It's now suddenly if Lex becomes tarnished enough. Now, I go on the podcast and people are saying, Oh, I'm not buying his book. And he went on Lex Friedman? No thanks, right? And now I get, I call it a smear web, like you've been smeared and it's so, we're in such a bad time that it, smear travels to me. And now, meanwhile, someone buys my book and tries to share it, someone said, you're buying that guy's book? He goes on Lex Friedman. You see how this happens, right? So, that hasn't happened in this case. But that, so we are so wired not, A, that is kind of bad, right? Like that is actually like bad for you, but we're wired to care about it so much because it meant life or death back in the day." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, yeah. And luckily in this case, we're both probably can smear each other in this conversation. Yes. This is wonderful. I smear you all in the... Given the nature of your book." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is wonderful." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I smear you all in the... What do you think about freedom of speech as a term and as an idea, as a way to resist the mechanism, this mechanism of a dormant thought pile and artificially generated speech, this ideal of the freedom of speech and protecting speech and celebrating speech." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah. Well, so this is kind of the point I was talking about earlier about King Lestash made a rule against, he's created official..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Can I just, I just love the, one of the amazing things about your book, as you get later and later in the book, you cover more and more difficult issues as a way to illustrate the importance of the vertical perspective. But there's something about using hilarious drawings throughout that make it much more fun and it takes you away from the personal somehow and you start thinking in the space of ideas versus like outside of the tribal type of thinking. So it's a really brilliant, I mean, I would advise for anybody to do, when they write controversial books" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to have hilarious drawings. It's true. Put the silly stick figure in your thing and it lightens, it does, it lightens the mood. It gets people's guard down a little bit, you know? And it works. It reminds people that like, we're all friends here, right? Like we're, you know, let's like laugh at ourselves, laugh at the fact that we're like in a culture war a little bit and now we can talk about it, right? As opposed to like getting religious about it. But basically like King Lestash had no First Amendment. He said we, the government is censoring, right? Which is very common around the world, right? Government censor all them. The US, you know, again, there's some, you can argue there's some controversial things recently, but basically the US, the First Amendment isn't the problem, right? No one is being arrested for saying the wrong thing, but this graph is still happening. And so freedom of speech, when people, what people like to say is, if someone's complaining about a cancel culture and saying, you know, this is an anti-free speech, people like to point out, no, it's not. The government's not arresting you for anything. This is called like, you know, the free market, buddy. Like this is called, you know, you're putting your ideas out and you're getting criticized and your precious marketplace of ideas. There it is, right? I've gotten this a lot. And this is not making a critical distinction between cancel culture and criticism culture. Criticism culture is a little bit of this kind of high-rung idea lab stuff we talked about. Criticism culture attacks the idea and encourages further discussion, right? It enlivenes discussion. It makes everyone smarter. Cancel culture attacks the person, very different. Criticism culture says, here's why this idea is so bad, let me tell you. Cancel culture says, here's why this person is bad and no one should talk to them and they should be fired. And what does that do? It doesn't enliven the discussion. It makes everyone scared to talk and it's the opposite. It shuts down discussion. So you still have your First Amendment. but First Amendment plus cancel culture equals you might as well have government censorship. First Amendment plus criticism culture, great. Now you have this vibrant marketplace of ideas. So there's a very clear difference. And so when people criticize the cancel culture, and then someone says, oh, see, you're so sensitive now. You're doing the cancel culture yourself. You're trying to punish this person for criticism. No, no, no, no, no. Every good liberal and I mean that in the lower case, which is that anyone who believes in liberal democracies, regardless of what they believe, should stand up and say no to cancel culture and say, this is not okay, regardless of what the actual topic is. And that makes them a good liberal, versus if they're trying to cancel someone who's just criticizing, they're doing the opposite. So it's the opposite things, but it's very easy to get confused. You can see people take advantage of the, and sometimes they just don't know it themselves. The lines here can be very confusing. The wording can be very confusing. And without that wording, suddenly" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "it looks like someone who's criticizing cancel culture is canceling, but they're not. You apply this thinking to universities in particular, that there's a great, yet another great image on the trade off between knowledge and conviction. And it's what's commonly, actually can maybe explain to me the difference, but it's often referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where when you first learn of a thing, you have an extremely high confidence about self estimation of how well you understand that thing. You actually say that" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Dunning-Kruger means something else. Everyone I post this, everyone's like Dunning-Kruger. And it's what everyone thinks Dunning-Kruger is. Dunning-Kruger is a little different. It's you have a diagonal line like this one, which is the place you are. I call it the humility it's Crypto Comedy Tightrope. It's a humility sweet spot. It's exactly the right level of humility based on what you know. If you're below it, you're insecure. You actually have too much humility. You don't have amount of confidence because you know more than you're giving yourself a credit for and when you're above the line, you're in the arrogant zone, right? You need an stability. You think you know more than you do. So we all want to stay on that tightrope and Dunning-Kruger is basically a straight line that's just a lower slope. So you start off, you still are, you're still getting more confident as you go along, but you start off above that line and as you learn more, you end up below the line later. So, but anyway. So this wavy thing. This wavy thing is a different phenomenon and it's just related, but." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So this idea, so for people just listening, there's a child's hill, pretty damn sure you know a whole lot and feeling great about it that's in the beginning. And then there's an insecure canyon, you crash down, acknowledging that you don't know that much and then there's a growth mountain. Growing up Mount. Growing up mountain where after you feel ashamed and embarrassed about not knowing that much, you begin to realize that knowing how little you know is the first step in becoming someone who actually knows stuff and that's the growing up mountain. And you climb and climb and climb. You're saying that in universities," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "we're pinning people at the top of the child's hill? Growing up Mount. So so for me, this is a very, you know, I think of myself with this because I went to college like a lot of 18 year olds and I was very cocky. I just thought I knew well, I know and when it came to politics, I was like bright blue just because I grew up in a bright blue suburb. I wasn't thinking that hard about it and I thought that you know, and what I did when I went to college is met a lot of smart conservatives and a lot of smart progressives, but I met a lot of people who weren't just going down a checklist and they knew stuff. And suddenly I realized that a lot of these views I have are not based on knowledge. They're based on other people's conviction. Everyone else thinks that's true, so now I think it's true. Whoa, I'm actually transferring someone else's conviction to me, and who knows why they have conviction? They might have conviction because they're transferring from someone else. And I'm a smart dude, I thought. Why am I giving away my own independent learning abilities here and just adopting other views? So anyway, it was this humbling experience. And it wasn't just about politics, by the way. It was that I had strong views about a lot of stuff. And I got lucky, or not lucky, I sought out. The kind of people I sought out were the type that loved to disagree, and they were, man, they knew stuff. And so you're quickly in, again, an ideal lab culture. It was an ideal lab. And I also went to, I started getting in the habit, I started loving listening to people who disagreed with me because it was so exhilarating to listen to a smart... when I thought there was no credence to this other argument, right? This side of this debate is obviously wrong. I wanted to see an intelligence squared on that debate. I wanted to go see, I actually got into intelligence squared in college. I wanted to see a smart person who disagrees with me talk. It became so fascinating to me. It was the most interesting thing. That was a new thing, I didn't think I liked that. And so what did that do? That shoved me down, the humble tumble here, and number three, it shoved me down where I started, and then I went the other way, where I realized that I had been, a lot of my identity had been based on this faux feeling of knowledge, this idea that I thought I knew everything. Now that I don't have that, I was like, I felt really dumb, and I felt really, almost embarrassed of what I knew, and so that's why I call this insecture canyon. I think sometimes when you're so used to thinking you know everything, and then you realize you don't, it's like, it's, and then you start to realize that actually, really awesome thinkers, if they don't judge me for this, they totally respect, if I say, I don't know anything about this, and say, oh cool, you should read this and this and this, they don't say it, you don't know anything, they don't say that, right? By the way, this is not to say I'm now on Grown Up Mountain and you should all join me. I often find myself drifting up with a helium balloon. I think I read about a new thing and suddenly, I think I have... I read three things about a new AI thing and I'm like, I'll go do a talk on this. No, I won't. I'm gonna just be spouting out the opinion of the person I just read, so I have to remind myself. But it's useful. Now, the reason my problem with colleges today is that I was a graduate in 2004. This is a recent change, is that all of those speakers I went who disagreed with me, a lot of them were conservative, so many of those speakers would not be allowed on campuses today. And so many of the discussions I had were in big groups or classrooms. And this is still, you know, this was a liberal campus. So many of those disagreements, they're not happening today. And I've interviewed a ton of college students. It's chilly. It is, you know, people keep to themselves. So what's happening is not only are people losing that push off Child's Hill, which was so valuable to me, so valuable to me as a thinker. It kind of started my life as a better thinker. They're losing that, but actually what college a lot of the college classes and the vibe in colleges a lot of what is now saying that there is one right set of views, and it's this kind of, you know, woke ideology. And it's right, and anyone who disagrees with it is bad. And anyone and don't speak up, you know, unless you're gonna agree with it. It's teaching people that Childs Hill that you know, it's nailing people's feet to Childs Hill, it's teaching people that these are right. This user, right, and like you don't have any nothing to you should You feel a complete conviction about them." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. How do we fix it? Is it part of the administration? Is it part of the culture? Is it part of the – is it part of like actually instilling in the individual like 18-year-olds the idea that this is the beautiful way to live is to embrace the disagreement and the" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "growth from that? It's awareness and courage. It's the same thing. So first of all, just get – awareness is people need to see what's happening here. But kids are getting – losing the – they're not going to college becoming better and tougher and more robust thinkers. They're actually going to college and becoming zealots. They're getting taught to be zealots and the website still advertises." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Wide variety of Mu – website is a bait and switch. You list all the universities." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, Harvard. It's a bait and switch. It's still saying – here you're coming here for – and wide intellectual – basically they're advertising, this is an idea lab and you get there and it's like actually it's an echo chamber that you're paying money for. So if people realize that, they start to get mad, hopefully. And then courage, I mean, starts, you know, yes, some brave students, there's been some very brave students who have started, you know, Big Think Clubs and stuff like that, where it's like, we're going to have, you know, present both sides of a debate here and that takes courage, but also courage and leadership. Like, it's like, if you look at these colleges, it's specifically the leaders who show strength, who get the best results. Remember, the cudgel is soft. So if a leader of one of these places says, you know, the college presidents who have shown some strength, they actually don't get as much trouble. It's the ones who pander, the ones who, you know, in that moment of truth, they shrink away, then they get a lot more trouble." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The mob smells blood. For the listener, the podcast favorite, Liv Burry, just entered, and your friend just entered the room. Do you mind if she joins us? Please. Here's a story she has about you. So Liv, you mentioned something that there's a funny story about, we haven't talked at all about the actual process of writing the book." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there, you guys made it better of some kind? Yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is this a true story? Is this a completely false fabric?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, no, no, it's true. Liv is, she's mean, which I didn't, I did not know mean Liv. She's like, she's like a bully. She's like scary. I have that, I have that screenshot. So Liv was FaceTiming me, and she was like, she was like being intimidating. I took a screenshot and I made it my phone background. So every time I opened it, I was like, nah, and I was like, nah. So to give the background of this, it's because, if you hadn't noticed, Tim started writing this book, how many years ago, six? 2016, mid 2016. Mid 2016. Right. As sort of a response to like the Trump stuff, and not even, yeah, it was just supposed to be a mini post. I was like, oh, I'm so like, I was like, I'm looking at all these like future tech things and I feel this like uneasiness, like, ah, we're gonna like mess up all these things, why? There's like some cloud over our society. Let me just write a mini post." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And I opened it up to WordPress to write a one day little essay, and things went." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "On politics. It was gonna be on like this feeling I had that we were, our tech was just growing and growing and we were becoming less wise. What's up with that? And I just wanted to write like, just like a little thousand word essay on like something I think we should pay attention to, and that was the beginning of this six year nightmare." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Did you anticipate also the blog post will take a long while?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I don't remember the process fully in terms of, I remember you saying, oh, I'm actually writing this, it's turning into a bigger thing. And I was like, you know, because the more we talked about, remember we were talking about, and I was like, oh, this goes deep. Cause I didn't really understand the full scope of the situation like no one there and you sort of explained it and I was like, okay, yeah, I see that. And then the more we dug into it, the sort of the deeper and deeper and deeper it went. No, I did not anticipate it would be six years. Let's put it that way and" }, { "from": "human", "value": "What was your TED talk on procrastination?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So that was that was March of 2016 and I started this book three months later It fell into the biggest procrastination hole that I've ever fallen into. Oh, the irony isn't lost on me I mean, it's like it's I just like I like how much credit I have as it for that TED talk I'm like, I am legit procrastinator. That is not I'm not just saying it like it wasn't just that Oh, it wasn't just us because I mean he did, you know, you did intend it to start out as a blog post But then you're like actually this needs to maybe multiple actually, let's make it into a full series You know what? I'll turn it into a book and then and and and but also what Liv witnessed a few times and my wife has witnessed like 30 of these is like these these 180 epiphanies where I'll be like Like I'll have in a moment when I'm and I don't know what you know, sometimes it's that there's a really good idea But sometimes it's like I'm just dreading having to finish this the way it is And so this epiphanies where it's like, you know what? I need to start over from the beginning and just make this like a short like 20 little blog post list and then I'll do that and I was like, no, no, no I have like a new epiphany I have to and it's these and and yeah, it's kind of like the crazy person a little bit But anyway, can I tell the story of the the bed? All right, so things came to a head When we were in we were all on vacation on Dominican Republic uh, Tim and his wife me and ego and We were in the ocean And I remember you'd been in the ocean for like an hour" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Just bobbing in there becoming it and we got talking and and we were talking about the book and uh, you know" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "you were expressing just like this You know the just the the horror of the situation basically you're like, look I just I'm so close, but there's still this and then there's this and An idea popped into my head, which is the you know poker players often Uh, we we will set ourselves like negative bets, you know, like, uh Essentially if we don't get a job done then we have to Do something we really don't want to do. So instead of having a carrot like a really really big stick Um, so I had the idea to ask tim. Okay, what is the worst either organization or individual? Uh That you if you had to you know that you would loathe to give a large sum of money to And he thought about it for a little while and he gave his answer And he gave his answer and I was like, all right What's your net worth? He said his net worth. All right, 10 percent of your net worth to that thing if you don't get The draft because oh, sorry, but just before that I'd asked him How long like if you had a gun to your head onto your wife's head And you had to get the booked into a state where you could like send off an edit to the Draft to your editor How long he's like, oh, I guess like I could get it like 95 good in a month I was like, okay great in one month's time. If you do not have that edit handed in That's right. Handed in really handed in" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Really scary" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Scary Ten percent of your net worth is going to this thing that you really really think is terrible But you're forgetting the kicker go on the kicker was that because you know procrastinator is they self-defeat That's what they do. And then Liv says i'm gonna sweeten the deal and I am going to basically match you and I'm going to put in i'm gonna send So not only are you screwing yourself your screwing a friend and she and she was like and and as your friend Because i'm your friend. I will send it. I will send the money I mean like that you know like tyranny and Drafting yeah, I just I know I well I was I know I was Actually it was it was funny because it was it was like supposed to be by the summer solstice or whatever it was It was like a certain date and I got it in it for I got no I got it in at 4 a.m Like the next morning, but then and and and and they were both like that doesn't count. I'm like it does. It's still for me It's the same day still it's so good How fucked in the head you have to be yeah like literally technically passed the deadline by four hours for an Obscene amount of money to a thing you loathe that's how bad Because I knew I knew the hard hard deadline I knew that there was no way she was gonna actually send that money because it was 4 a.m So I knew I actually had the whole night. So yeah, I should actually punish you and just I should send like a nominal amount to that thing No, thanks. No" }, { "from": "human", "value": "But is there some micro like lessons from that from how to avoid procrastination writing a book that you've learned" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes. Well, I've learned a lot of things I mean like first don't take don't write like a dissertation about like proving some grand theory of society because that's really procrastinating like I would have been an awful PhD student for that reason some and so like I'm gonna do another book and" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's gonna be like a bunch of short chapters that are one-offs cuz that's like it just doesn't feed into your book" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's like a giant like framework. There is Grand Theory all through your book. I know all through your book I know and I learn not to do that again. I did it once. I don't want to do it again. Oh with the book Yes, don't do another one of these looks look some people should it's just not for me You just did it. I know, and it almost killed me. Okay, so that's the first one. But secondly, yeah, like, basically there's two ways to fix procrastination. One is you fix, it's like a picture you have a boat that's leaking and it's not working very well. You can fix it in two ways. You can get your hammer and nails out and your boards" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and actually fix the boat. I did it once, I don't wanna do it again. Oh, with a book, with a mistake. So the book is a giant mistake." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes, don't, or you can duct tape it for now to get yourself across the river, but it's not actually fixed. So ideally, down the road, I have repaired whatever kind of bizarre mental illness that I have that makes me procrastinate in a very, like, I just don't self-defeat in this way anymore. But in the meantime, I can duct tape the boat by bringing what I call the panic monster into the situation via things like this and this scary person and having external pressure, to have external pressure of some kind is critical for me. It's, yes, I don't have the muscle to do the work" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I need to do without external pressure. By the way, Liv, is there a possible future" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "where you write a book? And meanwhile, by the way, huge procrastinator. That's the funny thing about this. Yeah, I mean, I'm- How long did your last video take you? Oh my God. Funny thing about this." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, like, is there advice that you give to Liv" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "how to get the videos done faster? Well, it would be the same exact thing. I mean, actually, I can give good procrastination advice. Panic monster, rate of panic monster. Yeah, well, we should do it together. It should be like, we have this date, but, you know, it's, yeah. We should actually just do another bet. I have to have my script done by this time. Yes. Yeah, so I gotta get the third part out. Because then you'll actually do it. And it's not, the thing is, the time in, but it's like, if you could take three weeks on a video and instead you take 10 weeks, it's not like, oh, well, I'm also, I'm having more fun in those 10 weeks. The whole 10 weeks are bad. Yeah, I told you. Bad, so you're just having a bad time and you're getting less work done and less work out. And it's not like you're enjoying your personal life. It's bad for your relationships. It's bad for your own. You keep doing it anyway. Yeah, well, a lot of people, why do people have troubles keeping a diet, right?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Primitive mind, primitive mind. Why'd you point at me when you said that? That was offensive. What's your procrastination weakness, do you have one? Everything, everything, everything. Everything, preparing for a conversation. I had your book, amazing book. I really enjoyed it. I started reading it. I was like, this is awesome. It's so awesome that I'm going to save it when I'm behind the computer and can take notes, like good notes. Of course, that resulted in like last minute, everything, everything, everything I'm doing in my life." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not everyone's like- What's your procrastination weakness, do you have one? Everything, everything. Not everyone's like that. People self-defeaten different ways. Some people don't have this particular problem. Adam Grant is a, he calls himself a pre-crastinator where he gets an assignment. He will go home and do it until it's done and handed it, which is also not necessarily good. It's like you're rushing it either way, but it's better. But some people have the opposite thing where they will, the looming deadline makes them so anxious that they go and fix it. The procrastinator, I think, has a similar anxiety," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but they solve it in a totally different way. Or they don't solve it. They just live with the anxiety." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Right, right, right. They just live with the anxiety. Now, I think there's an even bigger group of people. There's these people, the Adam Grant's, there's people like me. And then there's people who have a healthy relationship with deadlines, but they're still part of a bigger group of people that actually, they need a deadline there to do something. So they actually, they still are motivated by a deadline. And as soon as you have all the things in life that don't have a deadline, like working out and working on that album you wanted to write, they don't do anything, either. So there's actually like, that's why procrastination is a much bigger problem than people realize, because it's not just the funny last second people. It's anyone who actually can't get things done" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that don't have a deadline. You dedicate your book, quote, to Tannis, who never planned on being married to someone who would spend six years talking about his book on politics, but here we are. What's the secret to a successful relationship with a procrastinator?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's maybe for both of you." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, I think the first and most important thing. You already started with a political answer," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I can tell, okay, go ahead. No, the first and most important thing is, because people who don't procrastinate, it's like people in their instinct is to judge it as like, they think they're just being like a loser, or they'll take it personally, and instead to see this as like, this is some form of addiction or some form of ailment. They're not just being a dick, right? They have a problem and some compassion, but then also maybe finding that line where you can maybe apply some tough love, some middle ground. On the other hand, you might say that you don't want the significant other relationship where it's like they're in the one nagging you. You don't want them even being part of that, and I think that maybe it's better to have a live do it instead. Right. Having someone who can create the infrastructure where they aren't the direct stick. You need a bit of carrot and stick, right? Maybe they can be the person who keeps reminding them of the carrot, and then they set up a friend group to be the stick," }, { "from": "human", "value": "and then that keeps your relationship in a good place. Yeah. In a good place. Like looming in the background. That's your friend group. Okay. At the beginning of the conversation, we talked about how all of human history can be presented as a thousand page book. What are you excited about for the 1,000th, what do you say, that first page? So the next 250 years." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What are you most excited about? I'm most excited about, have you read The Fable of the Dragon? Okay. Well, it's an allegory for death and it's, you know, Nick Bostrom. And he talks about the, he compares death to a dragon that eats 60 million people or whatever the number is every year. And you just, every year we shepherd those people up and they feed them to the dragon and that there's a Stockholm syndrome. When we say that's just a lot of man. And that's what we have to do. And anyone who says maybe we should try to beat the dragon, they get called vain and narcissistic. But someone who tries to, someone who goes, does chemo, no one calls them vain or narcissistic. They say they're, you know, good, good for you, right? You're a hero, you're fighting the good fight. So I think there's some disconnect here. And I think that if we can get out of that Stockholm syndrome and realize that death is just the machine, the human physical machine failing, and that there's no law of nature that says you can't, with enough technology, repair the machine and keep it going until, I don't think anyone wants to live forever. People think they do, no one does. But until people are ready. And I think when we hit a world where we can, we have enough tech that we can continue to keep the human machine alive until the person says, I'm done, I'm ready. I think we will look back and we will think that anything before that time, that'll be the real AD, BC. You know, we'll look back at BC before the big advancement and it'll seem so sad and so heartbreaking, barbaric. And people will say, I can't believe that humans like us had to live with that when they lost loved ones and they died before they were ready. I think that's the ultimate achievement, but we need to stop criticizing" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "and smearing people who you talk about it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So you think that's actually doable in the next 250 years? A lot happens in 250 years," }, { "from": "human", "value": "especially when technology is really exponentially, yeah. And you think humans will be around versus AI complete takes over." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Where fatality means something complete. Look, the optimist in me and maybe the stupid kind of 2023 person in me says, yeah, of course we'll make it. We'll figure it out. But you know, I mean, we are going into a crate. I have a friend who knows as much about the future as anyone I know. I mean, he's really, he's a big investor and stuff, you know, future tech. And he's really on the pulse of things. And he just says the future's gonna be weird. That's what he says, the future's gonna be weird. It's gonna be weird. Don't look at the last few decades of your life and apply that forward and say, that's just what life is like. No, no, no, it's gonna be weird and different. It's just gonna be weird." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And it's gonna be weird. Well, some of my favorite things in this world are weird and speaking of which, it's good to have this conversation. It's good to have you as friends. This was an incredible one and thanks for coming back and thanks for talking with me a bunch more times." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This was awesome. This was awesome." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Thank you Lex. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tim Erbin, To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Winston Churchill. When there's no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "This is the LaxVietman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now to your friends, here's Andrew Strominger. You are part of the Harvard Black Hole Initiative, which has theoretical physicists, experimentalists, and even philosophers. So let me ask the big question, what is a black hole from a theoretical, from an experimental," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "maybe even from a philosophical perspective? So a black hole is defined theoretically as a region of space time from which light can never escape, therefore it's black. Now, that's just the starting point. Many weird things follow from that basic definition, but that is the basic definition. What is light that can't escape from a black hole? Well, light is the stuff that comes out of the sun, that stuff that goes into your eyes. Light is one of the stuff that disappears when the lights go off. This is stuff that appears when the lights come on. Of course I could give you a mathematical definition or physical mathematical definition, but I think it's something that we all understand very intuitively what is light. Black holes on the other hand, we don't understand intuitively, they're very weird. And one of the questions is about black holes, which I think you were alluding to, is why doesn't light get out? Or how is it that there can be a region of space-time from which light can't escape? It definitely happens. We've seen those regions. We have spectacular pictures, especially in the last several years of those regions. They're there. In fact, they're up in the sky, thousands or millions of them. We don't yet know how many. But the proper explanation of why light doesn't escape from a black hole is still a matter of some debate. And one explanation which perhaps Einstein might have given is that light carries energy. You know it carries energy because we have photo cells and we can take the light from the sun and collect it, turn it into electricity. So there's energy in light. And anything that carries energy is subject to a gravitational pull. Gravity will pull at anything with energy. Now, it turns out that there's a lot of energy Now, it turns out that the gravitational pull exerted by an object is proportional to its mass. And so if you get enough mass in a small enough region, you can prevent light from escaping. And let me flesh that out a little more. If you're on the Earth and you're on a rocket ship leaving the surface of the Earth, and if we ignore the friction from the air, if your rocket accelerates up to 11 kilometers per second, that's escape velocity. And if there were no friction, it could just continue forever to the next galaxy. On the moon, which has less mass, it's only seven kilometers per second. But going in the other direction, if you have enough mass in one place, the escape velocity can become the speed of light. If you shine light straight up away from the Earth, it doesn't have too much trouble. It's going way above the escape velocity. But if you have enough mass there, even light can't escape the escape velocity. And according to Einstein's theory of relativity, there is an absolute speed limit in the universe, the speed of light, and nothing makes any sense. Nothing could be self-consistent if there were objects that could exceed light speed. And so in these very, very massive regions of space-time," }, { "from": "human", "value": "even light cannot escape. And the interesting thing is Einstein himself didn't think that these objects that would call the black holes could exist. But let me actually linger on this. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. There's a lot of interesting things here." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "First there's the speed limit. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "First how wild is it to you if you put yourself in the mind in the time of Einstein before him to come up with the speed limit of, that there is a speed limit? And the speed limit is the speed of light. How difficult of an idea is that? You know, you said from a mathematical physics perspective, everything just kind of falls into place, but he wasn't perhaps maybe initially had the luxury to think mathematically, he had to come up with it intuitively, yes? So like what, how common intuitive is this notion to you?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is it still crazy? No, no, so it's a very funny thing in physics. The best discoveries seem completely obvious in retrospect. Even my own discoveries, which of course are far lesser than Einstein's, but many of my papers, many of my collaborators get all confused. We'll try to understand something. We say, we've got to solve this problem. We'll get all confused. Finally, we'll solve it. We'll get it all together. And then we'll, all of a sudden everything will fall into place, we'll explain it. And then we'll look back at our discussions for the proceedings of months and literally be unable to reconstruct how confused we were and how we could ever have thought of it any other way. So not only can I not fathom how confused Einstein was before he, when, you know, when he started thinking about the issues, I can't even reconstruct my own confusion from two weeks ago, you know. So the really beautiful ideas in physics have this, very hard to get yourself back into the mindset. Of course, Einstein was confused about many, many things. Doesn't matter if you're a physicist. It's not how many things you got wrong. It's not the ratio of how many you got wrong, how many you got right. It's the number that you got right. So Einstein didn't believe black holes existed even though he predicted them. And I went and I read that paper, which he wrote, you know, Einstein wrote down his field equations in 1915 and Schwarzschild solved them and discovered the black hole solution three or four months later and very early 1916. And 25 years later, Einstein wrote a paper. So with 25 years to think about what the solution means, wrote a paper in which he said that black holes didn't exist means. And I'm like, well, you know, if one of my students in my general relativity course" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "wrote this, you know, I wouldn't pass them. You get a C minus, oh, you wouldn't pass them. Okay, all right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You get a C minus, okay. Same thing with gravity waves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He didn't believe-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh, he didn't believe in gravitational waves either? He went back and forth, but he wrote a paper in I think 34 saying that gravity waves didn't exist because people were very confused about what a coordinate transformation is. And in fact, this confusion about what a coordinate transformation is has persisted. And we actually think we were on the edge of solving it 100 years later." }, { "from": "human", "value": "A hundred years later. Well, what is coordinated transformation" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "as it was 100 years ago to today. Let's imagine I want to draw a map with pictures of all the states and the mountains, and then I want to draw the weather forecast, what the temperatures are going to be all over the country. And I do that using one set of weather stations, and I number the weather stations, and you have some other set of weather stations, and you do the same thing. So the coordinates are the locations of the weather stations. They're how we describe where the things are. At the end of the day, we should draw the same map. That is coordinate invariance. And if we're telling somebody, we're going to tell somebody at a real physical operation, we want you to stay as dry as possible on your drive from here to California. We should give them exactly the same route, no matter which weather stations we use or how we... It's a very trivial... The labeling of points is an artifact and not in the real physics." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So it turns out that that's almost true, but not quite. There's some subtleties to it. The statement that you should always have the same... Give at least the same kind of trajectory, the same kind of instructions, no matter the weather stations." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, there's some very delicate subtleties to that, which began to be noticed in the 50s. It's mostly true, but when you have a space-time with edges, it gets very tricky how you label the" }, { "from": "human", "value": "edges. And space-time in terms of space or in terms of time, in terms of everything, just space." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Either one, space or time. That gets very tricky. And Einstein didn't have it right. And in fact, he had an earlier version of general relativity in 1914, which he was very excited about, which was wrong. It wasn't fully coordinate invariant, it was only partially coordinate invariant. It was wrong. It gave the wrong answer for bending light to the sun by a factor of two. There was an expedition sent out to measure it during World War I. They were captured before they could measure it. And that gave Einstein four more years to clean his act up, by which time he'd gotten it right. So it's a very tricky business, but once it's all laid out," }, { "from": "human", "value": "it's clear. Then why do you think Einstein didn't believe his own equations and didn't think that black holes are real? Why was that such a difficult idea for him?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, something very interesting happens in Schwarzschild's solution of the Einstein equation. I think his reasoning was ultimately wrong, but let me explain to you what it was. At the center of the black hole behind the horizon, in a region that nobody can see and live to tell about it, at the center of the black hole, there's a singularity, and if you pass the horizon, you go into the singularity, you get crushed, and that's the end of everything. Now, the word singularity means that it just means that Einstein's equations break down. They become infinite. You write them down, you put them on the computer. When the computer hits that singularity, it crashes. Everything becomes infinite. There's two. So the equations are just no good there. Now, that's actually not a bad thing. It's a really good thing, and let me explain why. So it's an odd thing that Maxwell's theory and Newton's theory never exhibit this phenomena. You write them down, you can solve them exactly. They're really Newton's theory of gravity. They're really very simple theories. You can solve them. Well, you can't solve the three-body problem, but you can certainly solve a lot of things about them. Nevertheless, there was never any reason, even though Maxwell and Newton perhaps fell for this trap, there were never any reason to think that these equations were exact. There's some equations that we've written down that we still think are exact. Some people still think are exact. My view is that there's no exact equation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everything is an approximation. Everything is an approximation. You're trying to get as close as possible. So you're saying objective truth doesn't" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "exist in this world? The internet's going to be very met. The internet's going to be very met. We could discuss that, but that's a different thing. We wouldn't say Newton's theory was wrong. it had very, very small corrections, incredibly small corrections. It's actually a puzzle why they're so small. So if you watch the procession of Mercury's perihelion, this was the first indication of something going wrong. According to Newton's theory, Mercury has an elliptical orbit, the long part of it moves around as other planets come by and perturb it and so on. And so this was measured by Laverrier in 1859, and he compared theory and experiment, and he found out that the perihelion process moves around the sun once every 233 centuries instead of every 231 centuries. Now, this is the wonderful thing about science. Why was this guy? I mean, you don't get any idea how much work this is. But of course, he made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science without even knowing what good it was going to be. So that was the first sign that there was something wrong with Newton. So the corrections to Newton's law are very, very small, but they're definitely there. The corrections to electromagnetism, they're mostly the ones that we see are mostly coming from quantum" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "effects. And so the corrections for Maxwell's equations is when you get super tiny, and then the corrections for Newton's law's gravity is when you get super big. That's when you require" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "corrections. That's true, but I would phrase it as saying when it's super accurate. If you look at the Bohr atom, Maxwell electromagnetism is not a very good approximation to the force between the proton and the electron. If you didn't have quantum mechanics, the electron would spiral into the proton and the atom would collapse. So that's a huge correction there. Sure. So every theory gets corrected as we learn more. There'd just be no reason to suppose that" }, { "from": "human", "value": "it should be otherwise. Well, how does this relate to the singularity?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So when you hit the singularity, you know that you need some improvement to Einstein's theory of gravity. And that improvement, we understand what kind of things that improvement should involve. It should involve quantum mechanics, quantum effects become important there. It's a small thing. And we don't understand exactly what the theory is, but we know there's no reason to think that Einstein's theory was invented to describe weakly curved things, the solar system and so on. It's incredibly robust that we now see that it works very well near the horizons around black holes and so on. So it's a good thing that the theory drives itself, that it predicts its own demise. Newton's gravity had its demise. There were regimes in which it wasn't valid. Maxwell's electromagnetism had its demise. There was regimes in which quantum effects greatly modified the equations. But general relativity all on its own found a system which originally was fine would perversely wander off into a configuration in which Einstein's equations no longer applied. So to you, the edges of the theory are wonderful. The failures are" }, { "from": "human", "value": "wonderful because that keeps us in business. So one of the things you said, I think, in your TED talk that the fact that quantum mechanics and relativity don't describe everything and then they clash is wonderful. I forget the adjective you use, but it was something like this. So why is that? Why is that interesting? Do you think in that same way that there's contradictions" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that create discovery? There's no question in my mind, of course many people would disagree with me, that now is the most wonderful time to be a physicist. So people look back at it's a classical thing to say among physicists. I wish it were 1920. Quantum mechanics had been just understood. There was the periodic table. But in fact, that was such a rich thing that what a lot of exciting stuff happened around 1920. It took a whole century to sort out the new" }, { "from": "human", "value": "insights that we got. Especially adding some experimental stuff into the bunch, actually making observations and integrating all the data. All the computers also help with" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "visualizations and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Adding all the experimental things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a whole sort of wonderful century. I mean, the seed of general relativity was the incompatibility of Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field with Newton's laws of gravity. They were incompatible because if you look at Maxwell's theory, there's a contradiction if anything goes faster than the speed of light. But Newton's theory of gravity, the gravitational field, the gravitational force is instantaneously transmitted across the entire universe. If you had a friend in another galaxy with a very sensitive measure device that could measure the gravitational field, they could just take this cup of coffee and move it up and down and Morse code, and they could get the message instantaneously over another galaxy. That leads to all kinds of contradictions. It's not self-consistent. It was exactly in resolving those contradictions that Einstein came up with the general theory of relativity. And it's fascinating how this contradiction, which seems like maybe it's kind of technical thing, led to a whole new vision of the universe. Now, let's not get fooled because lots of contradictions are technical things. We haven't set up the... We run into other kinds of contradictions that are technical and they don't seem to... We understood something wrong. We made a mistake. We set up equations in the wrong way. We didn't translate the formalisms." }, { "from": "human", "value": "As opposed to revealing some deep mystery that's yet to be uncovered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, we're never very sure which are the really important ones." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But to you, the difference between quantum mechanics and general relativity, the tension, the contradiction there seems to hint at some deeper, deeper thing that's going to be discovered" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in the century. Yes, because that one has been understood since the 50s. Pauli was the first person to notice it and Hawking in the early 70s gave it a really much more visceral form. And people have been hurling themselves at it trying to reduce it to some technicality, but nobody has succeeded. And the efforts to understand it have led to all kinds of interesting relations between quantum systems and applications to other fields and so on." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, let's actually jump around. Okay. We'll return to black holes. I have a million questions there, but let's go into this unification, the battle against the contradictions and the tensions between the theories of physics. What is quantum gravity? Maybe what is the standard model of physics? What is quantum mechanics? What is general relativity? What's quantum gravity? What are all the different unification efforts? Again, five questions." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, it's a theory that describes everything with astonishing accuracy. It's the most accurate theory in the history of human thought. Theory and experiment have been successfully compared to 16 decimal place. We have that stenciled on the door where I work. You know, it's an amazing feat of the human mind. It describes the electromagnetic interaction, unifies the electromagnetic interaction with the so-called weak interaction, which you need some good tools to even view the weak interaction. And then there's the strong interaction, which binds the quarks into protons. And the forces between them are mediated by something called Yang-Mills theory, which is a beautiful mathematical generalization of electromagnetism theory in which the analogs of the photons themselves carry charge. And so the final piece of this, of the standard model, everything in the standard model has been observed, its properties have been measured. The final particle to be observed was the Higgs particle, observed over a decade ago." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "The Higgs is already a decade ago." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think it is, yeah. Wow, time flies. Well, but you better check me on that, yeah. That's true, but so much fun has been happening. So much fun has been happening. And so that's all pretty well understood. There are some things that might or might not around the edges of that, you know, dark matter, and neutrino masses, some sort of fine points or things we haven't quite measured perfectly, and so on. But it's largely a very complete theory, and we don't expect anything very new" }, { "from": "human", "value": "conceptually in the completion of that. Anything contradictory by new, because can't you- Anything contradictory, yeah. I'll have some wild questions for you on that front. But yeah, anything that, yeah, because there's no gaps, it's so accurate, so precise in its predictions, it's hard to imagine." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything contradictory. For you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was all based on something called, let me not explain what it is, let me just throw out the buzzword, renormalizable quantum field theory. They all fall in the category of renormalizable quantum field theory." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm going to throw that at a bar later to impress the girls. Good luck." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Thank you. They all fall under that rubric. Gravity will not put that suit on. So the force of gravity cannot be tamed by the same renormalizable quantum field theory to which all the other forces" }, { "from": "human", "value": "so eagerly submitted. What is the effort of quantum gravity? What are the different efforts to have these two dance together effectively to try to unify the standard model and general relativity and kind of model of gravity?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sort of the one fully consistent model that we have that reconciles, that sort of tames gravity and reconciles it with quantum mechanics is string theory and its cousins. And we don't know what or if in any sense string theory describes the world, the physical world, but we do know that it is a consistent reconciliation of quantum mechanics and general relativity and moreover one which is able to incorporate particles and forces like the ones we see around us. So it hasn't been ruled out as an actual sort of unified theory of nature, but there also isn't, in my view some people would disagree with me, but there isn't a reasonable possibility that we would be able to do an experiment in the foreseeable future which" }, { "from": "human", "value": "would be sort of a yes or no to string theory. Okay, so you've been there from the early days of string theory, you've seen its developments. What are some interesting developments? What do you see as the also the future of string theory And what is string theory?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, the basic idea which emerged in the early 70s was that if you take the notion of a particle and you literally replace it by a little loop of string, the strings are sort of softer than particles." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What do you mean by softer?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, if you hit a particle, if there were a particle on this table, a big one, and you hit it, you might bruise yourself. But if there was a string on the table, you would probably just push it around. And the source of the infinities in quantum field theory is that when particles hit each other, it's a little bit of a jarring effect. And I've never described it this way before, but it's actually scientifically accurate. But if you throw strings at each other, it's a little more friendly. One thing I can't explain is how wonderfully precise will the mathematics is that goes into describing string theory. We don't just wave our hands and throw strings around and, you know, there's some very compelling mathematical equations that describe it. Now, what was realized in the early 70s is that if you replace particles by strings, these infinities go away and you get a consistent theory of gravity without the infinities. And that may sound a little trivial, but at that point it had already been 15 years that people had been searching around for any kind of theory that could do this. And it was actually found kind of by accident. And there are a lot of accidental discoveries in this subject. Now, at the same time, it was believed then that string theory was an interesting sort of toy model for putting quantum mechanics and general relativity together on paper. But that it couldn't describe some of the very idiosyncratic phenomena that pertain to our own universe, in particular the form of so-called parity violation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Our world is- Ooh, another term for the bar later tonight." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Ooh, one-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Parity violation. So, if you go to the bar and-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I already got the renormalizable quantum." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And you look in the mirror across the bar. Yes. And the universe that you see in the mirror is not identical. You would be able to tell if you show the lady in the bar a photograph that shows both the mirror and you- There's a difference. If she's smart enough, she'll be able to tell which one is the real world and which one is you. Now, she would have to do some very precise measurements. Yes. And if the photograph was too grainy, it might not be possible. But her principle is possible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There's a difference. But her principle is possible. Why is this interesting? Why is it- does this mean that there is some not perfect determinism? Or what does that mean?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There's some uncertainty? No, it's a very interesting feature of the real world that it isn't parity-invariant. And string theory, it was thought, could not tolerate that. And then it was learned in the mid-80s that not only could it tolerate that, but if you did things in the right way, you could construct a world involving strings that reconciled quantum mechanics and general relativity, which looked more or less like the world that we live in. And now, that isn't to say that string theory predicted our world. It just meant that it was consistent, that the hypothesis that string theory describes our world can't be ruled out from the get-go. And it is also the only proposal for a complete theory that would describe our world. Still, nobody will believe it until there's some kind of direct experiment. And I don't even believe it myself." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Sure. Which is a good place to be mentally as a physicist, right? Always, I mean, Einstein didn't believe his own equations, right? With a black hole." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, when he was wrong about that, he was wrong about that. But you might be wrong too, right? So do you think string theory is dead if you were to bet all your money on the future of" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "string theory? No. I think it's a logical error to think that string theory is either right or wrong or dead or alive. What it is, is a stepping stone. And an analogy I like to draw is Yang-Mills theory, which I mentioned a few minutes ago in the context of standard model. Yang-Mills theory was discovered by Yang and Mills in the 50s. And they thought that the symmetry of Yang and Mills theory described the relationship between the proton and the neutron. That's why they invented it. That turned out to be completely wrong. It does, however, describe everything else in the standard model. And it had a kind of inevitability and they had some of the right pieces, but not the other ones. Sure. They didn't have it quite in the right context. And it had an inevitability to it and it eventually sort of found its place. And it's also true of Einstein's theory of general relativity. He had the wrong version of it in 1914 and he was missing some pieces. And you wouldn't say that his early version was right or wrong. He'd understood the equivalence principle. He'd understood space-time curvature. He just didn't have everything… I mean, technically you would have to say it was wrong. And technically you would have to say Yang and Mills were wrong. And I guess in that sense, I would believe just odds are. We always keep finding new wrinkles. Odds are, we're going to find new wrinkles in string theory. Technically, what we call string theory now isn't quite right, but-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "We're always going to be wrong, but hopefully a little bit less wrong every time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Exactly. And I would bet the farm, as they say. Do you have a farm? I say that much more seriously, because not only do I have a farm, but we just renovated it. So before I renovated, better get the farm. My wife and I spent five years renovating it before I- Before I renovated something-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "You were much looser with that statement, but now it really means something." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Now it really means something. And I would bet the farm on the guess that 100 years from now, string theory will be viewed as a stepping stone towards a greater understanding of nature. And it would- Another thing that I didn't mention about string theory is, of course, we knew that it solved the infinities problem, and then we later learned that it also solved Hawking's puzzle about what's inside of a black hole. And you put in one assumption, you get five things out, somehow you're doing something right. Probably not everything, but there's some good signposts. And there've been a lot of good signposts like that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is also a mathematical toolkit, and you've used it. You've used it with Kalman and Wafa. Maybe we can sneak our way back from string theory into black holes. What was the idea that you and Kalman and Wafa developed with the holographic principle and string theory? What were we able to discover through string theory about black holes?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or that connects us back to the reality of black holes? Yeah. So that is a very interesting story. I was interested in black holes before I was interested in string theory. I was sort of a reluctance string theorist in the beginning. I thought I had to learn it because people were talking about it. But once I studied it, I grew to love it. First, I did it in a sort of dutiful way. These people say they've claimed quantum gravity. I ought to read their papers at least. And then the more I read them, the more interested I got, and I begin to see. They phrased it in a very clumsy way. The description of string theory was very clumsy. Mathematically clumsy or just the interpretation?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was all correct, but mathematically clumsy. But it often happens mathematically clumsy or" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "just the interpretation. That in all kinds of branches of physics that people start working on it really hard and they sort of dream about it and live it and breathe it and they begin to see interrelationships and they see a beauty that is really there. They're not deceived. They're really seeing something that exists. But if you just kind of look at it, you can't grasp it all in the beginning. And so our understanding of string theory in 1985 was almost all about weakly coupled waves of strings colliding and so on. We didn't know how to describe a big thing like a black hole in string theory. Of course, we could show that strings in theory in some limit reproduced Einstein's theory of general relativity and corrected it, but we couldn't do any better with black holes than before my work with Kumbin. We couldn't do any better than Einstein and Schwarzschild had done. Now, one of the puzzles, if you look at the Hawking's headstone and also Boltzmann's headstone and you put them together, you get a formula for their really central equations in 20th century physics. I don't think there are many equations that made it to headstones. And they're really central equations and you put them together and you get a formula for the number of gigabytes in a black hole. Now, in Schwarzschild's description, the black hole is literally a hole in space and there's no place to store the gigabytes. And this really was Wheeler and Bekenstein and Hawking to come to the conclusion that if there isn't a sense in which a black hole can store some large number of gigabytes that" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "quantum mechanics and gravity can't be consistent. We've got to go there a little bit. So how is it possible? When we say gigabytes, there's some information. So black holes can store information. How is this thing that sucks up all light and is supposed to basically be super homogeneous and boring? How is that actually able to store information? Where does it store information? On the inside, on the surface, where? And what's information? I'm liking this ask five questions to see which one you actually answer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh, okay. I'm going to ask you. Oh, okay. I'm going to ask you. I should try to memorize them" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and answer each one in order just to answer. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "desperately trying to figure it out as I go along here. I'm desperately. So, Einstein's black holes are short-serve black hole. They can't store information. This stuff goes in there and it just keeps flying and it goes in the singularity and it's gone. However, Einstein's theory is not exact. It has corrections and string theory tells you what those corrections are. And so you should be able to find some way of, some alternate way of describing the black hole that enables you to understand where the gigabytes are stored. So what Hawking and Beckenstein really did was they showed that physics is inconsistent unless a black hole can store a number of gigabytes proportional to its area divided by" }, { "from": "human", "value": "four times Newton's constant times Planck's constant. Newton's constant. And that's another wild idea. You said area, not volume." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Exactly. Exactly. That's the holographic principle." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The universe is so weird. And that's the holographic principle. That's called the holographic principle that it's the area. We're just jumping around what is the holographic principle? What does that mean? Is there some kind of weird projection going on? What the heck?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, I was just before I came here writing an introduction to a paper. And the first sentence was the as yet imprecisely defined holographic principle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So nobody knows exactly what it is, but roughly speaking, it says just what we were alluding to that really all the information that is in some volume of space-time can be stored on the boundary of that region. This is not just about black holes, it's about any area space. However, we've made sense of the holographic principle for black holes. We've made sense of the holographic principle for something called the anti-decider space which could be thought of as a giant as a black hole turned into a whole universe. We don't really understand how to talk about the holographic principle for either flat space which we appear to live in or asymptotically decider space which astronomers tell us we actually live in as the universe continues to expand. So it's one of the huge problems in physics is to apply or even formulate the holographic principle for more realistic well black holes are realistic we see them but yeah in in more general context" }, { "from": "human", "value": "so a more general statement of the holographic principle. So what's the difference between flat space and asymptotic decider space so flat space is just an approximation of like the world we live in so like a decider space asymptotic I wonder what that even means meaning like" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "asymptotic over what okay so for thousands of years you know until the last half of the 20th" }, { "from": "human", "value": "well sorry until the 20th century we thought space time was flat can you elaborate on flat" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "well what do we mean by flat well like the surface of this table is is flat let me just give an intuitive explanation surface of the table is flat but the surface of a basketball is curved so the universe itself could be flat like the surface of a table or it could be curved like a basketball which actually has a positive curvature and then there's another kind of curvature called a negative curvature and curvature can be even weirder because that That kind of curvature I've just described is the curvature of space, but Einstein taught us that we really live in a space-time continuum so we can have curvature in a way that mixes up space and time." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And that's kind of hard to visualize. Because you have to step, what, a couple of dimensions up?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So it's hard to... You have to step a couple... But even if you have flat space and it's expanding in time, you know, we could imagine we're sitting here, this room, good approximation, it's flat, but imagine we suddenly start getting further and further apart, then space is flat, but it's expanding, which means that space-time" }, { "from": "human", "value": "is curved. Ultimately it's about space-time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, so what's the sitter and anti-dissitter space? The three simplest space-times are flat space-time, which we call Minkowski space-time, and negatively curved space-time, anti-dissitter space, and positively curved space-time, dissitter space. And so astronomers think that on large scales, even though for thousands of years we hadn't noticed it, beginning with Hubble, we started to notice that space-time was curved. Space is expanding in time, means that space-time is curved. And the nature of this curvature is affected by the matter in it, because matter itself causes the curvature of space-time. But as it expands, the matter gets more and more diluted. And one might ask, when it's all diluted away, is space-time still curved? And astronomers believe they've done precise enough measurements to determine this, and they believe that the answer is yes, the universe is now expanding, eventually all the matter in it will be expanded away, but it will continue to expand because, well, they would call it the dark energy, Einstein would call it a cosmological constant. In any case, in the far future, matter will be expanded away and will be left with empty" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "dissitter space. Okay, so there's this cosmological, Einstein's cosmological constant that now hides this thing that we don't understand called dark energy. What's dark energy? What's your best guess at what this thing is? Why do we think it's there?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's because it comes from the astronomers. Dark energy is synonymous with positive cosmological constant. And we think it's there because the astronomers have told us it's there, and they know what they're doing, really, really hard measurement, but they really know what they're doing, and we have no friggin idea why it's there. Another big mystery. Another reason it's fun to be a physicist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And if it is there, why should it be so small?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We don't know what to hack it. Why should there be so little? Why should it have hid itself from us? Why shouldn't there be enough of it to substantially curb the space between us and the moon? Why did there have to be such a small amount that only the crazy, best astronomers" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in the world could find it? Well, can't the same thing be said about all the constants, all of the, can't that be said about gravity? Can't that be said about the speed of light? Like, why is the speed of light so slow? So fast, so slow relative to the size of the universe. Can't it be faster or no?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, the speed of lights is a funny one because you could always choose units in which the speed of light is one. You know, we measure it in kilometers per second and it's 186,000 or miles per second is 186,000 miles per second. And but if we use different units, yeah, then we could make it one, but you can make dimensionless ratios. So, you know, you could say why is the time scale set by the expansion of the universe so large compared to the time scale of a human life or so large compared to the time scale for a neutron to decay," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, the reference, the temporal reference frame here is a human life. Maybe. Isn't that the important thing for us descendants of apes? Isn't that a really important aspect of physics? Like, because we kind of experienced the world, we intuit the world through the eyes of these biological organisms. I mean, I guess mathematics helps you escape that for a time, but ultimately, isn't that how you wander about the world? Absolutely. That like a human life times only 100 years. Because if you think of everything, if you're able to think in, I don't know, in billions of years, then maybe everything looks way different. Maybe universes are born and die and maybe all of these physical phenomena become much more intuitive than we see at the grand scale of general relativity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe. Isn't that through the eyes? Yeah. Well, that is one of the little off the track here, but that certainly is one of the nice things about being a physicist is you spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, insides of black holes and billions of years in the future. And it sort of gets you away from the day-to-day into another fantastic realm. But I was answering your question about how there could be information in a black hole. So Einstein only gave us an approximate description, and we now have a theory that corrects it, string theory. And now sort of was the moment of truth. Well, when we first discovered string theory, we knew from the get-go that string theory would correct what Einstein said, just like Einstein corrected what Newton said. But we didn't understand it well enough to actually compute the correction, to compute how many gigabytes there were. And sometime in the early 90s, we began to understand the mathematics of string theory better and better. And it came to the point where it was clear that this was something we might be able to compute. And it was a kind of moment of truth for string theory because if it hadn't given the answer that Bekenstein and Hawking said it had to give for consistency, string theory itself would have been inconsistent and we wouldn't be doing this interview." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, that's a very dramatic statement, but yes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's not the most dramatic thing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What'd he say? I mean, okay. That's very life and death. You mean that Bekenstein string theory was centered to your work at that time. Is that what you mean? Well, string theory would have been inconsistent." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, okay. So then Bekenstein, string theory would have been inconsistent. But those inconsistencies can give birth to other theories, like you said. The inconsistency. Something else could have happened. It would have been a major change in the way we think about string theory. And it was a good thing that one supposition that the world is made of strings solves two problems, not one. It solves the infinity problem and it solved the Hawking's problem. And also, the way that it did it was very beautiful. It gave an alternate description. So alternate description of things are very common. To take a simple example, this bottle of water here is 90% full. I could say it's 90% full. I could also say it's 10% empty. Those are obviously the same statement. It's trivial to see that they're the same, but there are many statements that can be made in mathematics and mathematical physics that are equivalent but might take years to understand that they're equivalent and might take the invention or discovery of whole new fields of mathematics to prove they're equivalent, and this was one of those. We found an alternate description of certain black holes in string theory which we could prove was equivalent. And it was a description of the black hole as a hologram that can be thought of, a holographic plate that can be thought of as sitting on the surface of the black hole and the interior of the black hole itself sort of arises as a projection. Or the near horizon region of the black hole arises as a projection of that holographic plate. So the two descriptions were the hologram, the three dimensional image, and the holographic plate. And the hologram is what Einstein discovered, and the holographic plate is what we discovered. And this idea that you could describe things very, very concretely in string theory in these two different languages, of course, took off and was applied to many different contexts within string theory." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "So you mentioned the infinity problem and the Hawking problem, which Hawking problem? That the black hole destroys information? Or which Hawking problem are we talking about?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, there's really two Hawking problems. They're very closely related. One is, how does the black hole store the information? And that is the one that we solved in some cases. So it's sort of like your smartphone. How does it store its 64 gigabytes? Well, you rip the cover off and you count the chips and there's 64 of them each with a gigabyte and you know there's 64 gigabytes. But that does not solve the problem of how you get information in and out of your smartphone. You have to understand a lot more about the Wi-Fi and the internet and the cellular. And that's where Hawking radiation, this prediction starts. That's where Hawking radiation comes in. And that problem of how the information gets in and out, you couldn't have explained how information gets in and out of an iPhone without first explaining how it's stored in the first place." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. So just to clarify, the storage is on the plate, on the holographic plate, and then it projects somehow inside the... The bulk, the space-time is the hologram. The hologram? Man, I mean, do you have an intuitive, when you sit late at night and you stare at the stars, do you have an intuitive understanding of what a holographic plate is? Um, like that there's two dimension, you know, projections that store information." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How a black hole could store information on a holographic plate, I think we do understand in great mathematical detail and also intuitively. And it's very much like an ordinary hologram where you have a holographic plate and it contains all the information. You shine a light through it" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and you get an image which looks three-dimensional. Yeah, but why should there be a holographic plate? Why should there be? Yeah. Why? Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That is the great thing about being a theoretical physicist is anybody can very quickly stump you when they go on to the next level of whys. Yeah, Laelas. Why is the fact that you can just keep asking? Yeah, you could just keep asking and it won't" }, { "from": "human", "value": "take you very long to... Yeah, Laelas." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So the trick in being a theoretical physics is finding the questions that you can answer. So the questions that we think we might be able to answer now, and we've partially answered, is that there is a holographic explanation for certain kinds of things in string theory. Sure. We've answered that. Now we'd like to take what we've learned, and that's what I've mostly been doing for the last 15, 20 years. I haven't really been working so much on string theory proper. I've been sort of taking the lessons that we learned in string theory and trying to apply them to the" }, { "from": "human", "value": "real world using only, assuming only what we know for sure about the real world. So on this topic, you co-wrote, co-authored a paper with Stephen Hawking called Soft Hair on Black Holes. Yes. That makes the argument against Hawking's original prediction that black holes destroy information. Can you explain this paper? Yes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And the title. Yes. And the title. Okay, so first of all, the hair on black holes is a word that was coined by the greatest phrase master in the history of physics, John Wheeler, invented the word black hole. And he also said that he made the statement that black holes have no hair. Mm-hmm. That is, every black hole in the universe is described just by its mass and spin. They can also rotate, as was later shown by Kerr. And this is very much unlike a star, right? Every star of the same mass is different in a multitude of different ways, different chemical compositions, different motions of the individual molecules. Every star in the universe, even of the same mass, is different in many, many different ways. Black holes are all the same. And that means when you throw some in Einstein's description of them, which we think must be corrected. And if you throw something into a black hole, it gets sucked in. And if you throw in a red book or a blue book, the black hole gets a little bigger, but there's no way within Einstein's theory of telling how they're different. And that was one of the assumptions that Hawking made in his 1974-75 papers in which he concluded that black holes destroy information. You can throw encyclopedias," }, { "from": "human", "value": "thesis defenses, the Library of Congress. It doesn't matter. It's going to behave exactly the same uniform way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. So what Hawking and I showed, and also Malcolm Perry, is that one has to be very careful about what happens at the boundary of the black hole. And this gets back to something I mentioned earlier about when two things which are related by a coordinate transformation are and are not equivalent. And what we showed is that they're very subtle imprints. When you throw something into a black hole, they're very subtle imprints left on the horizon of the black hole, which you can read off at least partially what went in. And so this invalidates Stephen's original argument that the information is destroyed. And that's the soft hair. That's the soft hair, right. And soft is a word that is used in physics for things which have very low energy. And these things actually carry no energy. There are things in the universe which carry no energy." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "You said, I think to Sean Carroll, by the way, everyone should go check out Sean Carroll's Mindscape podcast. It's incredible. And Sean Carroll is an incredible person. I think you said there, maybe in a paper, I have a quote. You said that a soft particle is a particle that has zero energy, just like you said now. And when the energy goes to zero because the energy is proportional to the wavelength, it's also spread over an infinitely large distance. If you like, it's spread over the whole universe. It somehow runs off to the boundary. What we learned from that is that if you add a zero energy particle to the vacuum, you get a new state. And so there are infinitely many, plural for vacuum, which can be thought of as being different from one another by the addition of soft photons or soft gravitons. Can you elaborate on this wild idea? If you like, it spreads over the whole universe. When the energy goes to zero because the energy is proportional to the wavelength, it also spreads over an infinitely large distance. If you like, it's spread over the whole universe. Can you explain" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "these soft gravitons and photons? Right. Yeah. So the soft gravitons and photons have been known about since the 60s, but exactly what we're supposed to do with them or how we're supposed to think about them, I think has been well understood only recently. And in quantum mechanics, the energy of a particle is proportional to Planck's constant times its wavelength. So when the energy goes to zero, the wavelength goes to infinity. Now, if something has zero energy and it's spread all over the universe, in what sense is it actually there? Yeah. That's been the confusing thing to make a precise statement about when something is and isn't there. Now, the simplest way of seeing... So people might have taken the point of view that if it has zero energy and it's spread all over the universe, it's not there. We can ignore it. But if you do this, you'll get into trouble. And one of the ways that you'll get into trouble is that even though it has zero energy, it doesn't have zero angular momentum. If it's a photon, it always has angular momentum one. If it's a graviton, it's angular momentum two. So you can't say that the state of the system with the zero energy photon should be identified with the one without the zero energy photon, that we can just ignore them, because then you will conclude that angular momentum is not conserved. And if angular momentum is not conserved, things won't be consistent. And of course, you can have a lot of these things. And typically, you do get a lot of them, and you can actually do a calculation that shows that every time you" }, { "from": "human", "value": "scatter two particles, you create an infinite number of them. Infinite number of the soft photons and gravity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of the zero energy ones." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. And so these are somehow everywhere. They're everywhere. But they also contain information or they're able to store information." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They're everywhere. And they're able to store information. They're able to store an arbitrary large amount of information. So what we pointed out is… So what these things really do, one way of thinking of them is they rush off to the edges of the universe, spreading all over the space. It's like saying they rush off to the edge of the universe. And that includes, if the interior of the black hole is not considered part of the universe, that includes the edge of the black hole. So we need to set up our description of physics so that all the things that are conserved are still conserved in the way that we're describing them, and that will not be true if we ignore these things. We have to keep careful track of these things. And people had been sloppy about that, and we learned how to be very precise and careful about it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And once you're being precise, you can actually answer this kind of very problematic thing that Hawking suggested that black holes destroy information." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, what we showed is that there's an error in the argument that all black holes are the same because they hadn't kept track of these very subtle things. And whether or not this is the key error in the argument remains to be seen, or whether this is a technical point." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yes. But it is an error. It is an error." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And Hawking obviously agreed with it. Hawking agreed with it, and he was sure that this was the critical error, and that understanding" }, { "from": "human", "value": "this would get us the whole story, and that could well be. What was it like working with Stephen Hawking and this particular problem because it's kind" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of a whole journey, right? Well, you know, I love the guy. He's so passionate about physics." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He just, yeah, his oneness with the problem and the, I mean it's- So his mind is all occupied by the world that's- Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And let me tell you, there's a lot of other things with his illness and with his celebrity" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and a lot of other things. A lot of distractions pulling at his mind. He's still there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "He's still there. That's right." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I remember him turning down tea with Lady Gaga so we could spend another hour on paper. That my friend's dedication. What did you learn about physics?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What did you learn about life from having worked with Stephen Hawking? Well, he was one of my great teachers. Of course, he's older than me, and I was reading his textbooks in graduate school. And I learned a lot about relativity from him. I learned about passion for a problem. I learned about not caring what other people think. Physics is an interesting culture, even if you make a great discovery like Hawking did. People don't believe everything you say. In fact, people love to disagree. It's a culture that cherishes disagreement. And so he kept ahead with what he believed in and sometimes he was right and sometimes" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "he was wrong. Do you feel pressure from the community? So for example, with strength theory, it was very popular for a time. There's a bit of criticism or it's less popular now. Do you feel the forces of the community as it moves in and out of different fields or do you try to stay, like how difficult is it to stay intellectually and mathematically" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "independent from the community? Personally, I'm lucky. I'm well equipped for that. When I started out in graduate school, the problem of quantum gravity was not considered" }, { "from": "human", "value": "interesting." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You still did it anyway. I still did it anyway. I'm a little bit of a contrarian, I guess, and I think that has served me well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "People are always disagreeing with me and they're usually right, but I'm right enough. Like you said, the contradiction ultimately paves the path of discovery. Let me ask you just on this tension, we've been dancing between physics and mathematics. What to you is an interesting line you can draw between the two. You have done some very complicated mathematics in your life to explore the laws of nature." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the difference between physics and mathematics to you? Well, I love math." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think my first love is physics and the math that I've done because it was needed." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In service of physics. In service of physics, but then, of course, in the heat of it, it has its own appeal." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the heat of it, I like it. Sure." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It has its own appeal and I certainly enjoyed it. Ultimately, I would like to think, I wouldn't say I believe, but I would like to think that there's no difference between physics and mathematics, that all mathematics is realized in the physical world. All physics has a firm mathematical basis that they're really the same thing. Why would there be math that had no physical manifestation? It seems a little odd, right? You have two kinds of math, some that are relevant to the real world." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, they don't have to be contradictory, but can't you not have mathematical objects that are not at all connected to the physical world? This is to the question of is math discovered or invented. To you, math is discovered and there's a deep linkage between the two. Do you find it all compelling, these ideas, something like Max Tegmark, where our universe is actually a fundamentally mathematical object, that math is, our universe is mathematical," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "fundamentally mathematical in nature? My expertise as a physicist doesn't add anything to that. I was once very interested in philosophy and physics. I like questions that can be answered. It's not obvious what the answer is and that you can find an answer to the question and everybody will agree what the answer is and that there's an algorithm for getting there. Not that these other questions aren't interesting and they don't somehow have a way of presenting themselves, but to me, the interesting thing is motion in what we know, is learning more and understanding things that we didn't understand before. Things that seemed totally confusing, having them seem obvious, that's wonderful. I think those questions are there. I would even go further, the whole multiverse, I don't think there's too much concrete we're" }, { "from": "human", "value": "ever going to be able to say about it. This is fascinating because you spent so much time in string theory, which is devoid from a connection to the physical world for a long time, not devoid, but it travels in a mathematical world that seems to be beautiful and consistent and seems to indicate that it could be a good model of the laws of nature, but it's still traveling independently because it's very difficult to experimentally verify. There's a promise laden in it in the same way multiverse or you can have a lot of very far out there questions where your gut and instinct and intuition says that maybe in" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "50, 100, 200 years, you'll be able to actually have strong experimental validation. I think that with string theory, I don't think it's likely that we could measure it, but we could get lucky. In other words, just to take an example, about 10 or 20 years ago, it was thought that they had seen a string in the sky and that it was seen by doubled stars that were gravitationally lensed around the gravitational field produced by some long string. There was a line of double lensed, now the signal went away. But people were hoping that they'd seen a string and it could be a fundamental string that it's somehow gotten stretched and that would be some evidence for string theory. There was also bicep too, which the experiment was wrong, but it could have happened. It could have happened that we got lucky and this experiment was able to make direct measurements. Certainly would have been measurements of quantum gravity if not string theory. So it's a very logical possibility that we could get experimental evidence from string. That is a very different thing than saying, do this experiment, here's a billion dollars and after you do it, we'll know whether or not strings are real. But I think it's a crucial difference. It's measurable in principle and we don't see how to get from here to there. If we see how to get from here to there, in my eyes, it's boring, right? So when I was a graduate student, they knew how to measure the Higgs boson. It took 40 years, but they didn't... Not to say that stuff is boring, I don't want to say that stuff is boring, but when Magellan set out, he didn't know we could get around the world, there was no map. So I don't know how we're going to connect in a concrete way all these ideas of string theory to the real world. When I started out in graduate school, I said, what is the most interesting problem that there might be the deepest, most interesting problem that there might be progress on in 60 years? And I think it could be that in another 30 years that maybe we'll learn that we have understood how black holes store information. That doesn't seem wild, that we're able to abstract what we learned from string theory and show that it's operative and the Bose-Einstein conduct that they did, if you went Bose and Einstein predicted it, when was that, the 30s maybe, early 30s, there were 20 orders of magnitude that were needed in improvement, in order to measure it, and they did 50 years later. And then you couldn't have guessed how that had happened, how they could have gotten that. And it could happen that we, I don't think we're going to see the heterotic string spectrum at an accelerator, but it could be that things come around in an interesting way and some how it comes together. And the fact that we can't see to the end isn't a reason not to do it. What did they do when they were trying to find the specific, right? They took every route, they just tried everything, and that's what we're doing. And I'm taking the one that my nose tells me is the best. And other people are taking other ones, and that's good because we need every person taking every route, and if somebody on another route finds something that looks really promising, I'm going to make a portage over the mountain and get on their stream. So the fact that you don't see the experiment now isn't to me a reason to give up on what I view as the most fundamental paradox in 20th century, in present physics, 20th, 21st" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "century physics. So you can see that it's possible, you just don't know the way. But that's what I mean why some of the philosophical questions could be formulated in a way that's explorable scientifically. So some of the stuff we've talked about, but for example, this topic that's become more okay to talk about, which is the topic of consciousness. To me as an artificial intelligence person, that's a very practically interesting topic, but there's also philosophers, Sean Carroll loves to argue against them, but there's the philosophers that are panpsychists." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'm not against philosophers, it's just not as fun, I don't-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's not as fun, all right. They start a little flame of a fire going that some of those flames, I think, eventually become physics. So eventually become something that we can really, like having them around is really important because you'll discover something by modeling and exploring black holes that's really weird. And having these ideas around, like the ideas of panpsychists, that consciousness could be a fundamental force of nature. Just even having that crazy idea, swimming around in the background could really spark something where you were missing something complete. And it's just that's where the philosophy done right, I think, is very useful. That's where even these thought experiments, which is very fun in the tech sci-fi world that we live in a simulation, taking a perspective of the universe as a computer, as a computational system that processes information, which is a pretty intuitive notion, but you can just even reframing it that way for yourself could really open up some different way of thinking. And then you have, I don't know if you're familiar with Stephen Wolfram's work of like" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "cellular automata and complexity. Could be, yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I did a podcast with Stephen. With Stephen, that's awesome. To me, forget physics, we get all that. Cellular automata make no sense. They're so beautiful. They're so, from simple rules you can create complexity. I just don't think, he wrote a book on new kind of science basically hinting at, which a lot of people have hinted as like, we don't have a good way to talk about these objects. We can't figure out what is happening here." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "These simple, these trivial rules can create incredible complexity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "He's totally right about that, yeah. And physicists, I guess, don't know what to do with that, don't know what to do with cellular automata because you can describe the simple rules that will govern the system or how complexity" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "can emerge, like incredible complexity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Of course, Wolfram's version of that is that physicists will never be able to describe. Right. Yeah, exactly. He tries to prove that it's impossible. What do you make of that? What do you make about the tension of being a physicist and potentially not being able to? If you're not a Freud or somebody that may be a Sigmund Freud, maybe you'll never be able to actually describe the human psyche. Is that a possibility for you? That you will never be able to get to the core fundamental description of the laws of" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "nature? Yeah, so I had this conversation with Weinberg. Yeah, how did it go? So Weinberg has this book called Dreams of a Final Theory. And I had this conversation with him, I said, why do you think there's ever going to be a final theory? Why should there ever be a final theory? I mean, what does that mean? Do physics departments shut down? We've solved everything. And doesn't it seem that every time we answer some old questions, we'll just find new ones and that it will just keep going on forever and ever? He said, well, that's what they used to say about the Nile. They were never going to find the end. Then one day they found it. Yeah. I don't know. String theory doesn't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Then one day they found it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So string theory doesn't look like a candidate to me for a final theory." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "As it stands now, it doesn't get to the bottom of the well, to the sides, to the whole, to the sides, to the whole. Yeah, it seems to me that even if we kind of solved it and we did experiments, there still would be more questions like why are there four dimensions instead of six? It doesn't seem to have anything in it that would explain that. You can always hope that there's something that we don't know about string theory that will explain it. But it still doesn't look like it's going to answer every question. And why is there one time, not two?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It doesn't seem like it's, I don't even know what it would mean to answer every question. But to answer every question, obviously, so when you refer to the theory of everything, you'll be able to have a, if it exists, it would be a theory that allows you to predict precisely the behavior of objects in the universe and their movement, right? What about them? Their movement. Yeah. Like precisely no matter the object." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Right, that's true. So that would be a really interesting state of affairs. If we could predict everything, but not necessarily understand everything. So for example, let's just forget about gravity. I mean, we're not too far from that situation. If we forget about gravity, the standard model, in principle, given a big enough computer, predicts almost everything. But if you look at the standard model, it's kind of a laundry list with neutrino masses and all that stuff. There are hundreds of free parameters. Where do they come from? Is there an organizing principle? Is there some further unification?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "So being able to predict everything is not the only goal that physicists have. So on the way to trying to predict, you're trying to understand." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's actually probably the goal is to understand. Right, we're more interested in understanding than actually doing the predictions. But the predictions are more focusing on how to make predictions is a good way to improve" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "your understanding because you know you've understood it if you could do the predictions. One of the interesting things that might come to a head with is artificial intelligence. There's an increasing use of AI in physics. We might live in a world where AI would be able to predict perfectly what's happening. And so as physicists, you'll have to come to the fact that you're actually not that interested in prediction. I mean, it's very useful. But you're interested in really understanding the deep laws of nature versus a perfect predictor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like you want to play chess, AI perfect predictor. Like you want to play chess. Even within AI, AI people are trying to understand what it is that the AI bots have learned in" }, { "from": "human", "value": "order to produce whatever they produce. For sure. But you still don't understand deeply, especially because they're getting, especially language models if you're paying attention, the systems that are able to generate text, they're able to have conversations, chat GPTs, the recent manifestation of that. They just seem to know everything. They're trained on the internet. They seem to be very, very good at something that looks like reasoning. They're able to generate, you can ask them questions, they can answer questions. It just feels like this thing is intelligent. And I could just see that being possible with physics. You ask any kind of physical question and they'll be able to be very precise about a particular star system or a particular black hole and they'll say, well, these are the numbers. It'll perfectly predict and then sure you can understand how the neural network is, the architecture is structured. Actually for most of them now they're very simple. You can understand what data is trained on. Huge amount of data. You're giving a huge amount of data from a very nice telescope or something. And then, but it seems to predict everything perfectly. How a banana falls when you throw it. Everything is perfectly predicted. You still don't have a deep understanding of what governs the whole thing. And maybe you can ask it a question. It'll be some kind of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy type answer that it's a funny world we live in. Of course, it's also possible that there's no such deep, simple governing laws of nature behind the whole thing. I mean, there's something in us humans that wants it there to be, but doesn't have to be, right? Right. Which again, you're betting the, you already bet the farm, but if you were to have a second farm, do you think there is a theory of everything that we might get at?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So simple laws that govern the whole thing. It's possible. Yeah. I don't, I don't, honestly, I don't know, but I'm pretty confident that if there is, we won't get to it in my lifetime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I don't think we're near it. But doesn't it feel like the, like the fact that we have the laws we do, they're relatively simple already. That's kind of incredible." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's just that there seems to be, there seems to be simple laws that govern things, right? By a theory of everything, you mean theory, a theory of, of everything, an algorithm to predict everything. But a simple algorithm. A relatively simple algorithm to predict everything." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So for me it would be a sad day if we arrived at that without answering some deeper questions. Sure, of course. but the question, yes, but one of the questions before we arrive there, we can ask, does such a destination even exist? So, because asking the question and the possible answers and the process of trying to answer that question is in itself super interesting. Is it even possible to get there where there's an equals mc squared type of, there's a function, okay, you can have many parameters, but a finite number parameter function" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that can predict a lot of things about our universe. Well, okay, but just to sort of throw one thing in, in order to answer every question, we would need a theory of the origin of the universe. And that is a huge task, right? So, and the fact that the universe seems to have a beginning defies everything we know and love, right? Because one of the basic principles of physics is determinism that the past follows from, the present follows from the past, the future follows from the present, and so on. But if you have the origin of the universe, if you have a big bang, that means before that, there was nothing and you can't have a theory in which something follows from nothing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So, somehow-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sounds like you don't like singularities." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, I thought for somebody that works with black holes, you will get used to them by now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, no, no, no, no. I like this because it's so hard to understand. I like it because it's hard to understand, but it's really challenging us." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's not a, I don't think we're close to solving that problem." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So even- And string theory has basically had nothing, there's been almost nothing interesting said about that" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in the last many decades. So string theory hasn't really looked at the big bang." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It hasn't really tried to get to the origin. Not successfully, there aren't compelling papers that lots of people have read that people have taken it up and tried to go at it, but there aren't compelling. String theory doesn't seem to have a trick" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that helps us with that puzzle. Do you think we'll be able to sneak up to the origin of the universe, like reverse engineer it from experimental, from theoretical perspective?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, if we can, we'll be the detector, you've already gotten yourself in trouble because you use the word reverse engineer. So if you're gonna reverse engineer, that means you forward engineering means that you take the present and determine the future. Reverse engineering means that you take the present" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "and determine the past." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Estimate the past, but yes, sure. But if the past was nothing, how are you ever going to reverse engineer it to nothing?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's hard to do. Well, run up against the nothing, right? Until have mathematical models that break down nicely to where you can actually start to infer things. Let's work on it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, but do you think that... Let's work on it. Maybe, but it is... People have tried to do things like that. Have not succeeded." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's not something that we're getting A pluses in. Yeah, have not succeeded, but sure. Let's pretend we live in a world where in 100 years we have an answer to that. What would that answer look like? What department is that from? What fields let us there? What set of ideas in theoretical physics? Is it experimental? Is it theoretical? Like what can you imagine possibly could have possibly lead us there? Is it through gravitational waves and some kind of observations there? Is it investigation of black holes? Is it simulation of universes? Is it maybe we start creating black holes somehow? I don't know." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe some kind of high energy physics type of experiments?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, I have some late night ideas about that that aren't really ready for prime job. Okay, sure. But you have some ideas." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But and many people do. It could be that some of the advances in quantum information theory are important in that they kind of go beyond taking quantum systems and just replicating themselves, but combining" }, { "from": "human", "value": "them with others, important. Do you think since you highlighted the issue with time and the origin of the universe, do you think time is fundamental or emergent?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think ultimately it has to be emergent." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What does it mean for time to be emergent? Well, let's review what it means for space to be emergent. What it means for space to be emergent is that you have a holographic plate and you shine some light that's moving in space and it produces an image which contains an extra spatial dimension and time just goes along for the ride. So what we'd like to do, and indeed there is some rather concrete work in this direction, though again, I would say even within our stringing community, we're not getting A pluses on these efforts, but what we'd like to do is to see examples in which the extra space time dimension is time. In other words, usually what we understand very well mathematically is how to take systems in some number of space-time dimensions and rewrite them as a plate in fewer space dimensions. What we'd like to do is to take systems with one time and some number of space dimensions and to rewrite them as a system that had only space dimensions in it, had no time evolution. evolution. And there's some fairly concrete ideas about how to do that, but they're not universally accepted even within the stringy community." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But isn't it wild to you? Yes. For it to be emergent? Yes. How do we intuit these kinds of ideas as human beings for whom space and time seems as fundamentals as apples and oranges? Well, they're both." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How do we as apples and oranges? They're both illusions. Okay." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They're both illusions, even time. You co-authored a paper titled Photon Rings Around Warped Black Holes. First of all, whoever writes your paper titles, you like the soft hair and the term black hole in the Big Bang, you're very good at coming up with titles yourself. Anyway, you co-authored a paper titled Photon Rings Around Warped Black Holes. In it, you write, quote, recent work has identified a number of emergency symmetries related to the intricate self-similar structure of the photon ring." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So what are photon rings? What are some interesting characteristics of a photon ring? So that was a paper with Dan Koppitz and Alex Lipsaska that just came out. And this paper is kind of a wonderful example of what happens when you start to talk to people who are way out of your comfort zone of no different stuff and look at the world a different way. And some two or three years ago, I'm part of the Black Hole Initiative and I'm also part of this event horizon telescope collaboration that took the famous, though I had nothing to do with the experiment, but that took the famous picture of the donut of M87. And through conversations with them, which started out in an effort to understand the image that they'd seen. So it's a great thing for somebody like me, a theoretical physicist, lost, seemingly lost in string land to be presented with an actual picture of a black hole. And to be asked, what can we learn from this? So with some help from Michael Johnson and Alex Lipsaska and a bunch of other people, ventureized in collaboration. And we came up with a fantastic, beautiful answer using Einstein's theory that is both shaping the future of now, it is shaping the future of improved black hole photographs. What do you want to concentrate on in the photograph? You're just pointed at the sky and click? No, you don't do that. You optimize for various features. And it's both shaping that and in the process of talking to them and thinking about how light behaves around a black hole, black holes just have so many magic tricks and they do so many weird things. And the photon ring is among the weirdest of them. We understood this photon ring and in the process of this, we said, hey, this photon ring has got to be telling us something about the puzzle of where the holographic plate is outside of an ordinary astrophysical black hole. And we nailed it for the stringy black holes, but they have a somewhat different character. What's a stringy black hole? The black holes that describe us. The black holes that are contained in string theory and they have different structure in them." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Well, basically, can we step back? So what was the light in the image taken in 2019?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, not taken in 2019, presented in 2019. So here's the puzzle. What they really saw, all right. So the black holes tend to gather stuff that swirls around it and they don't know what that stuff is made of, they don't know what its temperature is. They don't know what kind of magnetic fields there are around there. So the form of the image has a lot of unknowns in it that it's dependent on many other things other than the geometry of the black hole. So most of what you're learning is about the stuff. Now the stuff, the swirling stuff, the hot swirling stuff is interesting as hell, but it's not as interesting as the black hole which are the most, in my view, the most interesting things in the universe. So you don't want to just learn about the stuff, you want to learn about the black hole that it's swirling around." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So at the very first step, at the very primitive level, this is just a big lead for human civilization to be able to see a black hole and the way you can see it is because there's stuff around it. But you don't get to learn much about the black hole, but you get to learn more about" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the stuff just from the image. Yeah. But you're not gonna learn about the details before you've" }, { "from": "human", "value": "even seen it. Cuz there's too many parameters, it's too many variables that govern the stuff." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. So then we found a very wonderful way to learn about the black hole. And here's how it works. A black hole is a mirror. And the way it's a mirror is if light, a photon, bounces off your face towards the black hole and it goes straight to the black hole, just falls in, you never see it again. But if it just misses the black hole, it'll swing around the back and come back to you and you see yourself from the photon that went around the back of the black hole. But not only can that happen, the black hole, the photon can swing around twice and come back. So you actually" }, { "from": "human", "value": "see an infinite number of copies of yourself. Like with a little bit of a delay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With a little bit of a delay, right. This is awesome. Yeah. And in fact," }, { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, we're not used to an object that bends light like that, right? Yeah, yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So you're going to get some trippy effects. Yeah. And in fact, one of my students has made a really awesome computer animation of this, which I'm going to show at a public lecture in a couple of weeks where the audience will see infinitely many copies of themselves swirling around the black hole. So a black hole is like a hall of mirrors, like in an apartment store where you go and there's the three mirrors and you see infinitely many copies of yourself. Think of the black hole as the mirror, and you go in there with your clothes. If you want to know about your clothes, you just look at the direct image. You're not learning anything about the configuration of mirrors. But the relation of the image you see in front of you to the one you see at the side and the next one and so on depends only on the mirrors. It doesn't matter what clothes you're wearing. So you can go there a thousand times wearing different clothes, but each time there will be the same relation between the subsequent images. And that is how we're going to learn about the black holes. We're going to take the stuff that is swirling around and we're going to tease out the subsequent images and look at their relation. And there's some very beautiful, really beautiful mathematics, which we were surprised to realize with the volumes and volumes of papers on black holes and their properties this particular... Because it was a physical" }, { "from": "human", "value": "question that had never been asked in exactly this way. So basically, you're looking at the... The relation between the subsequent images. But those are ultimately formed by photons that are swirling around the... Photons that are orbiting. So the photon ring are the photons that orbit around. And beyond. So like orbit and lose orbit. Like are they... Yeah. Wow. And that starts to give you, what can you possibly figure out mathematically about the" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "black hole? The geometry of it, the spin of it. The geometry, the spin, and you can verify things behaving. We have never seen a region of space time with such high curvature. I mean, the region around a black hole is crazy. It's not like in this room. The curvature is everything." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You spent probably enough time with the math and the photons. Can you put yourself in that space? So we're having a conversation in pretty peaceful, comfortable, flat space. Are you able to put yourself in a place around a black hole?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I'm able to imagine that kind of thing. Yeah. So for example, and actually, there's a wonderful movie, Interstellar. And in that movie, Kip Thorne, of course, is a great theoretical physicist, experimental, who later won the Nobel Prize for LIGO. And that movie is very accurate, scientifically. And there's some funny statements in there that of the hundred million people who saw that movie, there can't be more than 10 or 20 understood about why Matthew McConaughey is ejecting the trash in a certain direction in order to... But for example, if I were a spinning black hole right here, if I were spinning fast enough, you wouldn't be able to stay still there. You'd have to be orbiting around like that. You'd have" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to have your microphone on a... But I wonder what the actual experience is," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "because I mean, space itself is curved. Well, if space gets very curved, you get crushed. Body gets ripped apart because the forces are different on different parts. Sure. Okay, so that would be... But if it can be less curved so that the curvature is very noticeable," } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "but you're not ripped apart. The fact that this was just nonchalantly stated is just beautiful. Like two biological systems discussing which level of curvature is required to rip apart said biological system. Very well. You propose in the paper that a photon ring of a warped black hole is indeed part of the black hole hologram. A photon ring of a warped black hole is indeed part of the black hole hologram. So what can you intuit about the hologram and the holographic" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "plate from looking at the photon rings. Well, this paper is exploring a new idea. It's not making a new discovery, so to speak. It's exploring an idea and the ins and outs of it and what might work and what might not. And this photon ring, somehow everybody always thought that the holographic plate sat at the horizon of the black hole and that the quantum system that describes the black hole is inside the horizon. And in fact, we think it's plausible and we give some evidence in some soluble examples, in this case in an example in one lower dimension where we can handle the equations better, that the quantum system that describes the black hole should correspond to a region of space-time, which includes the photon ring. So it's bigger. So that would be the holographic plate? That would be the holographic plate. All of that. I mean, we didn't prove this. We put it out there. It hadn't really been considered previously. We put it out there and it does seem more plausible than the idea that it sits literally at the horizon. And it is a big outstanding problem of how you have a holographic reconstruction of black holes like M87." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Do you think there could be further experimental data that helps explore some of these ideas that you have for photon rings and holographic plates through imaging and through higher and higher resolution images and also just more and more data?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I wish so, but I don't think so. But what I think already has happened and will continue happen is that there are many different ways that theorists and observers can interact. The gold standard is the theorist makes a prediction, the observer measures it and confirms it, or the observer makes a discovery, and the theorist explains it. But there's a lot less than that, which is really the bread and butter of those are dramatic moments when that happens. Those are once in a lifetime moments when that happens. But the bread and butter is more when it has already happened. They came to us and said, what is the interesting theoretical things we can understand in this swirl around the black hole? And we gave an answer and then that, in turn, jogged us to think about the holographic principle in the context of M87 a little bit differently. And so it's a useful... And in the same vein, it's useful to talk to the philosophers and it's useful to talk to the mathematicians and a lot of..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We don't know where we're going, we just gotta like, sir, and then gotta do everything. Let me ask you another sort of philosophical type question, but not really, actually. It seems that thought experiments are used... So it's not just mathematics that makes progress in theoretical physics, but thought experiments do. They did for Einstein as well. They did for a lot of great physicists throughout history over the years. How's your ability to generate thought experiments or just your intuition about some of these weird things like quantum mechanics or string theory or quantum gravity or even general relativity? How's your intuition" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "improved over the years? Have you been able to make progress? The hard part in physics is most problems are either doable, most problems that a theoretical calculation, that a theoretical physicist would do, there's no end of problems whose answer is uninteresting, can be solved, but the answer is uninteresting. There's also no end of problems that are very interesting, some of which you've asked me, but we don't have a clue how to solve them. And when first presented with a problem, almost every problem is one or the other. It's the jackpot when you find one that isn't one or the other." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It seems like there's a gray area between the two, right? That's where you should be looking." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, I wouldn't describe it as a gray area, I would describe it as a knife edge. So it's a very small area. There isn't like a huge area with a sign, here lie problems that are doable and people want to know the answer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In some deep sense, that's where timing is everything with physics, with science, with discovery. With timing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With timing. I mean, I think earlier in my career, I erred more on the side of" }, { "from": "human", "value": "problems that were not solvable. The ambition of youth. What made you fall in love with physics at first? If we can go back to the early days, you said black holes were there in the beginning, but what made you do you remember what really made you fall in love?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You know, I wanted to I wanted to reach Nirvana and I sort of realized that wasn't going to happen. Then after that, I wanted to know the meaning of life. And I realized I wasn't probably wasn't going to figure that out. And then I wanted to like, understand, you know, justice and socialism and world things and I couldn't figure those out either." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And the smaller and smaller problems. Smaller and smaller problems." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, most of this I'm talking about adolescence, you know, but it was the biggest problem that I thought that there was a prospect of, but not 100%, you know, and I was definitely ready to spend my life in the wilderness, knocking my head against the wall. But I haven't had to. I haven't solved them, but I've said enough interesting things that you're interviewing me. So I'm not in the wilderness, but yeah, so." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Do you remember the early days, do you feel nostalgic when you think back to the ideas, the circumstances that led you down this path towards black holes, towards theoretical physics, towards the tools of physics, towards this really fascinating world of theoretical physics?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, I wouldn't add nostalgia to it because it's not like a, you know, a summer in Italy or something. It's like there's results that are there, that people are, and that's what's so gratifying, you know. I mean, of course one's name disappears from these things." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Unless you're Einstein or Newton or something, people are not gonna remember my name in 50 years. Well, most, basically every name will be forgotten in hundreds of years, yeah. Yeah. Are you able to, by the way, love the idea, the exploration of ideas themselves without the names, the recognition, the same?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So I have not, I hope someday, but I have not, you know, there are some experiments now to verify some of my predictions about, you know, properties of gravity and so on, but I have not, like, you know, most of what I've done is in the, you know, it could happen still. It's still a logical possibility that everything having to do with string theory and the, I mean, as we mentioned, I'm betting the farm that it's not, but it is indeed a logical possibility that people always say, can you believe Lex Fridtman interviewed Elon Musk and Kenya West and he interviewed Strominger who was on this, working on this theory that just completely went into the toilet, you know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm gonna make, I'm gonna get, with a wife I don't have, I'm gonna make a public statement, she'll be on stage, I'll say, I'm really sorry, I made this giant mistake of platforming this wild-eyed physicist that believed for decades in the power of theoretical physics, yes. No, like you said." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So that could happen, it could happen, it could happen. It's in the, and of course, if that couldn't happen, it wouldn't be real exploration, right? Absolutely. And so, but I do take a lot of satisfaction that some of the things I discovered are at the minimum mathematical truths and they're still, so you don't have that sort of nostalgic feeling of it being something that was gone and I'm still making discoveries now that I'm as excited about, we'll see if they hold the test of time that, that stand the test of time that these other ones did, but that I'm as excited about as I was about those when I made them. I am easily excitable, as my friends will tell you." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, one interesting thing about you is-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I have been very excited about things which turned out to be completely wrong," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you know? Well, the excitement is a precondition for breakthroughs. But you're also somebody, just like you said, you don't have a cynical view of the modern state of physics. No. So there's a lot of people that glorify like the early days of string theory and that, all these things are made in the 20s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're saying like this to you might be one of, if not the most exciting times to be a theoretical physicist. Like when the alien civilizations 500 years from now that Visit Earth will look back, they'll think the 21st century, some of the biggest discoveries ever" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "were made in the 21st century. Yeah, I mean, when they have a measurement" }, { "from": "human", "value": "of string theory, the fun's over. Then we have to go on to something new, you know? No, there's deep, there's going to be, the fun is over. Oh man. But there is an end to the Nile, right? Is there? Who told you? Some Weyberg guy. Let me ask you another trippy out there question. So again, perhaps unanswerable from a physics perspective, but do you wonder about alien civilizations? Do you wonder about other intelligent beings out there making up their own math and physics trying to figure out the world?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you think they're out there? They told you. It is hard to understand why there would, given that there's so many planets and of course there's Drake's formula and we don't exactly know what the, but I mean, I think Fermi's paradox that, you know, is a real paradox and I think there probably are and I think it's very exciting that, you know, we might, you know, find some, it's a logical possibility that we could learn about it, you know, we might, you know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, to me, it's super interesting to think about aliens from a perspective of physics, because any intelligent civilization is going to be contending with the ideas of trying to understand the world around it. So, I think that the universe is filled with alien civilizations. So they all have their physicists, right? They're all trying to understand the world around them and it's just interesting to me to imagine all these different perspectives, all these different" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Einstein's. Like trying to make sense of like... Yeah, though they might be more different than we think. They might be different in a way that we haven't even thought of. They might be like smarter or different. Just different, something that we're not even able to describe now. We just haven't thought of that, you know?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, this is a really frustrating thing when we think, from me as an AI person, you start to think about what is intelligence, what is consciousness, and you start to sometimes, again, evening thoughts is how little we understand, how narrow our thinking is about these concepts. That intelligence could be, something could be intelligent and be very different. Intelligent in a very different way that we won't be able to detect because we're not keeping an open mind, open enough mind. And that's kind of sad because to me there's also just a strong possibility that aliens or something like alien intelligence or some fascinating, beautiful physical phenomena are all around us and we're too dumb to see it, for now, or too close-minded to see it. There's something we're just deeply missing, whether it's fundamental limitations of our cognitive abilities or just because our tools are too primitive right now. It's like you said, the ideas seem trivial once you figure it all out looking back, but that kind of makes me sad because there could be so much beauty in the world we're not seeing because we're too dumb. There surely is." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I guess the process of science and physics is to keep exploring, to keep exploring because" }, { "from": "human", "value": "we're too dumb to find the thing that will, in a century, seem obvious." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, it's something we know for sure. I mean, the brain we don't really understand and that's got to be some fabulously beautiful story." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm hoping some of that story will be written through the process of trying to build a brain, so the process of engineering intelligence, not just the neuroscience perspective of just looking at the brain but trying to create it. But yeah, that story hasn't been written almost at all, or just the early days of figuring that one out. But see, like you said that math is discovered, so aliens should at least have the same math as us, right?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think so." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Maybe different symbols." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, they might have discovered it differently and they might have had" }, { "from": "human", "value": "a different idea of what a proof is. Sure. Yeah. We're very like black and white with the proof thing. Yeah. Maybe they're looser." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. Right. Well, so you can know something is true. First of all, you never know something is true with 100% uncertainty. I mean, you might have had a blackout just to be, it's never 100%, right? You might have had a momentary lapse of consciousness as the key step in the proof and nobody read it and whatever. Okay. So you never know for sure. But you can have a preponderance of evidence, and preponderance of evidence is not accepted very much in mathematics. And that was sort of how the famous Ramanujan work. He had formulas which he guessed at and then he gathered a preponderance of evidence that you were sure they were true. Yeah. So there might be or something completely different. They might function in a very different" }, { "from": "human", "value": "way. Let me ask you kind of a heavy question for physicists, but one on nuclear weapons. Just in general, what do you think about nuclear weapons where, like philosophical level, where brilliant physicists and brilliant engineering leads to things that can destroy human civilization? Sort of like some of the ideas that you're working on have power when engineered into machines, into systems. Is there some aspect of you that worries about this?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, first of all, I don't know what the brilliant had to do with it because, of course, you know, Oppenheimer and all that, okay, they did it really fast. But if you didn't have Oppenheimer, you know, I mean, would all have happened anyway? It had a reality of its own. The possibility of making a nuclear, it didn't depend on the fact that the physicists who built it were brilliant. Maybe that sped it up by a year or two years. But by now, we'd have nuclear weapons. It's" }, { "from": "human", "value": "something that... So the ideas have momentum and that they're unstoppable." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. Unstoppable. Right. The possibility of making nuclear weapons was discovered, right? It was there before. It's not like somebody made it, right? Without Picasso, you know, there would never have been a Guernica, but without Oppenheimer, there would surely have still been an atom bomb." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But timing matters, right? Timing is very important. There's a guy with a mustache." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, of course. The timing mattered there. But I... Yeah, okay. I mean, you could try to make a case for stopping." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No, no, no, no. It's the case of carrying the burden of the responsibility of the power of ideas when manifested into systems. So it's not a game. It's not just a game of fun mathematics. Just same with artificial intelligence. You have this... A lot of people in AI... Yeah. You know, a lot of people in the AI community, it's a fascinating fun puzzle. How to make systems more and more intelligent, how to... You have a bunch of benchmarks, you're trying to make them perform better and better and better. And all of a sudden, you have a system that's able to outsmart people. It's now able to be used in geopolitics. It's able to create super intelligent bots that are able to, at scale, control the belief of a population of people. And now you can have world wars. You can have a lot of really risky instabilities that are created. They're incredible. They really are incredible. And so just like there is some responsibility. This is not sort of..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, incredible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's a beauty and a power and a terror to these ideas, you know?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. At that moment, it was certainly a question for Oppenheimer and everybody who participated in that. What is the responsible way to serve society when you're sort of accidentally in this position of being at the forefront of a development that has a huge impact on society? I don't see my work a likelihood of having a huge impact on the development of society itself, but if I were you, you, working on AI, I think that there is a possibility there. And that it is, as a responsible scientist, that it's really not a good thing to say, I'm just the scientist here and I'm figuring out what's possible. Because you're in a role where you have more of a podium to influence things than other people and it's your responsibility as a citizen of the planet or let me phrase it a little less shouldy. You have an opportunity as a citizen of the planet to make the world a better place, which it would be sad to" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "plan it to bypass. Yeah, it's a nice world without going. It'd be nice to keep it going for a little bit longer. Andrew, I'm really honored that you sit down with me. Thank you for your work. Thank you." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, it was a really great conversation. I really enjoyed it. You really covered a lot. I can't believe you're able to discuss at this level on so many different topics. So it's a" }, { "from": "human", "value": "pleasure. It was super fun. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Strominger. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Werner Heisenberg. Heisenberg, not only is the universe stranger than we think," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it is stranger than we can think. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Ayala. I feel like this conversation can go anywhere. Is that exciting or terrifying to you? I think it's more exciting. The uncertainty" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "exciting to you. Yes. In conversations in general or just this one? I think conversations in general, like is anybody out of a certainty is really exciting. Maybe the certainty is something new. I mean, novelty always comes with uncertainty. Almost always. I started trying to think of a" }, { "from": "human", "value": "counter example. Immediately. Yeah. You're uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like, always is always a really bold word to use." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But if it's truly novel, that means you don't really understand it. It's outside your distribution. So therefore, it's going to have a bunch of uncertainty. But you don't think of it as uncertainty. You think about it as something new, but it actually also attracts you because there's a lot of uncertainty around it probably." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like, what is this new thing? Yeah, like annihilating the mystery. Like that drive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What about the danger of it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's like part— I was just thinking of on the drive over, because I was like, I'm like a little nervous about doing this podcast. And then I was like feeling into the unpleasantness of it like the like the fear of what if something goes terribly wrong and Then I was also feeling like how much that feels like part of why it's exciting like if I knew that it was going to" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Go great. I don't know. Did you actually imagine all the possible ways you can go wrong?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Not like all of them But I was like, what if I say something really dumb or like you ask me a question and I answer it in a way That makes me sound like a lot less capable than I am. I'm like really afraid of being perceived as Stupid or something. I certainly not this on the way over like I'm kind of risk averse in some ways like I don't driving fat like driving fast in cars cuz I was driving very carefully here cuz the roads are bad yeah, and then I was thinking but I'm very like pro risk in other ways like being really exposed to like a wide variety of people who might hate you and I think like from the outside that might look fine But I think the monkey brain is really sensitive to lots of people yelling at you" }, { "from": "human", "value": "For whatever problems that you seem to have that so that's the big risk. You're taking is is putting yourself out there as an intellectual, like through your writing and then a lot of people yelling at you. Is that the worst embarrassment you can experience," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the worst embarrassment you can experience? It's pretty bad, yeah. I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something out there that I failed to, like be properly skeptical of in myself and then people are like, oh, we caught this thing that you didn't catch." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think that's the biggest terror. Yeah, from looking at your reading and listening to your interviews, you seem to be very defensive" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and worried about being a good scientist." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, definitely. Well, you're like methodology. Yes. And funny enough, you get attacked on that methodology. Even though, you know, I'm a fan of psychology, I'm like the academic psychology and it's kind of disappointing often how non-rigorous their work is, how small the sample size and so on, and how big and ambitious, over ambitious, the proclamations about results is. Especially when the news reports on it. Now you're both the researcher, the scientist and the reporter, right? So like that's what you have with the blog. Your sample size is often gigantic. The methodology is right there, the data is right there, you provide the data. And then you're like raw and honest with your interpretation of the data. There's an honesty, authenticity to it. So I don't know, it's actually really refreshing. I don't know why people criticize it. I think this is what psychologists are probably terrified about being transparent and transparent in that way is because they'll get attacked for their methodology. So they wanna cloak it in a sort of layer of authority. Like I'm from this institution, it was peer reviewed. There's kind of all these layers and I'm also not gonna share the data with you. And I'm also gonna pretend like most psychology studies are not replicable." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'm just going to pretend there's authority to it. I think it works on a lot of people, like from the outside, you're like the scientists with the white lab coats with credentials. Those are the people who are like doing science and like doing sciences. You have like fancy terms that other people don't really understand. And to be fair, I have a lot to learn. I'm still like, I'm self-teaching I'm like learning through people learning as I go I'm definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff. But a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard. And a lot of people like don't try to learn it because it seems so elevated. And this is one thing that really bothers me. I think everybody can do science. If you just have this aspect of curiosity and you just really wanna figure something out, you can go and start asking people questions, doing surveys, writing down the answers. And then you can go learn how to look at that data in a way that gives you more information about the world. It's very simple and straightforward. If you just approach it humbly and earnestly, and you're like, please, let's figure this out together. But people are, I think, self-crippled in this because they view this as like relegated to the domain of the experts and the fancy scientists." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And I think that makes me feel really sad. You're almost attracted to the questions" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "you're not supposed to ask. Oh yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Also, yes, it might contribute to the controversy. Not exclusively, probably, but you're just not limited by, like, part of your curiosity is asking questions that seem common sense. Like, some of the most controversial questions are around sex. It's like everybody thinks and talks and does sex. I mean, it's the driver of human civilization. And yet there's so little rigorous discussion about the philosophical and the scientific questions around it. It gets really weird to be able to discuss them." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It becomes tricky to discuss them. Yeah, supercharged. Because everybody has a really strong opinion. Like, whether or not pornography is damaging to society or how sex corresponds to gender, or what kind of sexuality is acceptable. Can you have sexual preferences that in themselves are immoral?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "People get very angry about it. Well, the sad part is they're not just opinionated, but most of us, our relationship with sex is," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I think, I guess, I wanna say not rigorous. I think it's very difficult to be rigorous about sex. I would consider sexual urges to be kind of elusive to introspection in a way that's a little bit disproportionate to a lot of other things. Like, you could introspect about how I want other people to like me and where my insecurities lie. But sex is one of those black box things. A really common thing is for people to, if you have a fetish, you sort of check back in your childhood to see an event that corresponds to that fetish, and then you develop a narrative. Like, ah, this event in my childhood must have caused this fetish. And so I think this causes people to be biased towards a concrete, coherent, causative way that events happen, or that sexual fetishes happen. This is just one example of why I think it's really harder to be rigorous with introspection. Because we can't avoid, you just wanna tend towards making like, coherent narratives." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Which I think is not always the correct way to explain it. The narratives that are connected to childhood and so on, how they originate, yeah. I mean, we'll talk about fetishes because you have a lot of really interesting writing on that. Just actually zooming out. I should mention, you tweeted, I wrote this down. You tweeted, I do not understand how to have normal conversations with people in person if I'm not on drugs. So I guess let's both agree to not have a normal conversation, I guess. Assume you're not on drugs, no. Or if you are, you don't have" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to talk with somebody like that. Or if you are, you don't have to talk with somebody like that. I feel like a very small amount of fetipet, which is a nootropic. I don't know if that counts." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, I guess I'm on caffeine." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. So we're both- Drugged up." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Good enough have a normal conversation?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Drugged up. Good enough have a normal conversation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We don't have to. What is normal anyway? What do you think is the primary driver of human civilization? Is it the desire for sex, love, power, or immortality? Like avoiding the fear of death, constructing illusions that make us forget about our terror over mortality." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So sex, love, power, death." }, { "from": "human", "value": "This is a Twitter poll? It's four options. This is reality. Not everything maps perfectly into a Twitter poll, but in this case, because there's four options and it is a small number of characters, it does. But I'd like to think I'm more interested. You know what? I think your Twitter polls are fundamentally interesting. There's something about the brevity of a poll limiting to a set of choices and having an existential crisis and searching for the answer." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's beautiful. That combination." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Well, this one's a big one. Well, this one's a big one." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like what do you think is behind it? Do you believe that there is one primary driver? Like do you think that it can be understood" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in the terms of primary drivers? Yeah, I think, well, maybe it's an engineering perspective, like trying to reverse engineer the brain. I don't think we're equipped" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "or understand enough about the mind to get there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, like what's the primary driver of a tree? Yeah, well then it gets to the question of what is life?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What is the living organism?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "To self-replicate probably. That's a very clean simplification, but I think life is more interesting" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "than just self-replication. Yeah, but it sounds like there's a curiosity in you that you're trying to like poke at," }, { "from": "human", "value": "and I don't understand exactly what that curiosity is. So if I had to dedicate a thousand years to understand one of these topics, which one would be the most fruitful, I guess, is the indirect thing I'm asking. Fun? No, well, fun. To me, everything is fun. But- Really? Yeah, I mean, I'm with David Foster Wallace. The key to life is to make sure that everything is unborable, or to be unborable, or nothing is boring. Everything is fun. Like everything, I could just literally sit. I honestly, because I don't think, I don't know where you got that glass, but that glass exists, and I forgot it exists," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and it was really fun to me to know that now I was there. What if it were really unpleasant things?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Like if you're in like a deep agony. Yeah, that's fun. Okay. That's fun, because it's like, I mean, yeah, heartbreak. It's like knowing that I'm capable of that. You know, we're all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars. So when you're in that gutter, for some reason, the stars look brighter, right? So like whenever you're going through a difficult time, or whenever you see maybe other people being shitty to each other, it makes you like really appreciate when they're not. The contrast makes life kind of amazing. I'm reading a bunch of books. One of them is Brave New World, where they remove the ups and downs of life, partially through drugs, but over over-sexualization, all that kind of stuff. And I feel like you need that contrast, you need the ups and downs of life. The dark, you know, you need the dark to have happiness, have like a deeply intense feeling of affection" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "towards another thing or a human being." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Yeah, so everything's fun. But fun is also a weird word to define, because fun, I think for a lot of people in, that's why I talk about level. I think love is a better word than fun. Because fun is like lighthearted, love is more intense. Like I love that glass, and the water that's in it, because it's freaking awesome. Like somebody made that glass, right. And like not have many mistakes, and the way it bends light in interesting ways, and the way water bends light in interesting ways, like I can see part of your arm through that water that's freaking amazing. Everything is amazing. I'm with the Lego movie. Anyway, if, like from a scientific perspective, if I were to investigate sex, I don't know why I put love in there. Let's just narrow it down to Twitter poll. Let's focus on the basics here. Sex, power, or death, immortality. If I were to try to, like from a neuroscience, neurobiology perspective, or reverse engineer through building AI systems that focus on these kinds of dynamics, exploring the game theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of it, which one would get me to a deeper understanding of the human condition? That's the question. Sex, okay. Nietzsche is the world to power. Freud and the bunch is all about sex. And then death. Liv just, Liv Burley, brilliant previous guest on this podcast, she's just released a video where on her bedside was the book Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, which of course she would have on her bedside, but that the, his whole work is that everything is motivated by our trying to escape the cold harsh reality that we're going to die and we're terrified of it. One of the gifts and burdens for human beings is that we are cognizant of our own death. And that terrifies us. That's the theory. And because of that, we do everything we can." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "We build empires to escape the fact that we're mortal. Wouldn't this change quite a bit for religious people then" }, { "from": "human", "value": "who don't believe that they're going to die? Well, they created religion. The idea there is to create myths, religions." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You can create religions of all kinds. Yeah. But if this is like one of the defining things that define civilization, then we should expect to see like massive differences between people who believe we're gonna die and people who don't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Good, I love it. You're thinking like a scientifically here, but and they have actually answers like there's a whole terror management theory where they do type right psychology type papers and they do actual experiments. I can mention how their methodology is interesting. They primed with the discussion of death. Like they'd take one certain set of people and they'd have a conversation with them and another set of people, they mentioned death to them before the conversation and see how that affects the nature of the conversation. It's really interesting because death fundamentally alters the nature of the conversation. just even priming, like reminding you that you're going to die briefly," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "changes a lot of things. These kinds of priming papers, usually not replicated. I just have like, I feel like I've heard" }, { "from": "human", "value": "a bunch of priming ones that. I think you have PTSD over psychology papers," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it's not replicated, it's not replicated. I just did one, I just did a priming experiment on my own and found it didn't have any effect. But again, it's something." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Can't you just give me a perilous statement summarizing an entire scientific discipline of terror management theory? I don't know. Like I haven't rigorously looked at how good of it psychologically. I think it is interesting philosophically, the way Freud talked about the subconscious mind. Philosophically, it's an interesting discussion. Then you have to get rigorous with each for sure. But the idea is that, like it's not that religious people get rid of the terror of death. This is just one of the popular ways they create an illusion on top of it. That's that idea, like a myth that makes it easier for them to forget to escape that terror. But everybody else does different methods. Like you fill your days with, a capitalism has a whole religion of itself, like the rat race for getting" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "more and more material possessions and so on. And couldn't you argue it in the opposite direction? Like let's say, assume that we're Christians here and we're like, ah, the atheist, everybody has terror of hell and the atheists invent this mythology where actually evolution is true in order to escape their terror of hell. So that doesn't feel like a persuasive argument to me. But I used to be very, very Christian and I did not have a terror of death. And then I lost my faith. And then I had a deep terror of death set in" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "for a few years and it felt very different to me. So for Danal of death, I don't know if he says that it's actually possible without really a lot of work to get to the actual terror. Like I think his claim is that in early, early, early childhood development, that's when the terror is real. And then we aggressively construct systems around it of social interaction to sort of construct illusions at the top of it. I'm doing a half as description of this philosophy, but it is interesting to simplify the human mind" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "into underlying mechanisms that drive it. Yeah, I was gonna say your thinking seems kind of poetic. Like the way that you're sort of handling these. Yeah. These concepts feel like more like aesthetically driven." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, I think this theme is gonna continue throughout this conversation as we talk about relationships and sex, yes, for sure. I think so. And I think your thinking seems to be very driven by how can I construct an experiment" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to test this hypothesis." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, something like that, something like that. Yeah, but aren't, there's some things, especially that have to do with the human mind that are really messy, really difficult to understand. There's so many uncertainties and mysteries around that we don't yet have the tools to collect the data. Like one of your favorite tools is the survey, is asking people questions and then figuring out different ways to indirectly get at the truth because there's flaws to the survey, and you kind of learn about those flaws and you get better and better at asking the right questions and so on. But that's not, that's indirect access to the human mind." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But do you think like poetic narratives are? I'm not like saying poetic narratives are bad. Like I think it's like a cool way of like handling concepts," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but I'm not sure that they are more rigorous. No, no, no. Okay. No, but like they might be the more correct, like philosophy might be the right way to discuss things" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that were really far from understanding. Yeah, I mean, they might be more useful shorthand. Yeah. Like morality, like I don't think morality it makes any sense, but it's really useful shorthand" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to use when handling concepts in a lot of the time. Right, like ethics and morality. You could construct studies that ask different questions, like, you know, just having worked autonomous vehicles a lot the the trolley problem gets brought up and I don't know you can construct all kinds of interesting surveys about the trolley problem but does that really get at some deep moral calculus that humans do it's sexy because people like write clickbait articles about it but doesn't really get to like what you value more five grandmas or like three children whatever like they construct these arguments of like if you could steer a train if you could steer an autonomous car which do you choose yeah I don't know I don't know if it's possible with some of those to construct like sometimes the fuzzy area there's some topics that are fuzzing will forever be fuzzy given our" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "limited cognitive capabilities I don't know there's a way of looking at things where it's like for example the childhood fetish thing that I was talking about like deploy to your fetishes come from they can develop a narrative for it's like you know I think like this kind of thing is you know you're surrounded by feet when you're a child this cause to put fetishes and This is kind of a cool narrative. I think a lot of people's ideas about philosophy follow the same sort of thing. What is the narrative that is cool? And I think this is useful for meaning-making. I'm very pro-meaning-making. When you're talking about everything is fun because the contrast or whatever. I very much just ascribed for that. I really enjoy that philosophy. I also find everything to be very delightful. And this isn't like a question of truth. We're not like, where's the true delight that we're objectively measuring? this is a frame a poetic frame that you're using to like sort of change the way the light hits the world around you and that's super useful because it like makes you happier or something yeah but also gets to the truth or something yeah" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I guess if one is true you had another question what is truth you you've actually to jump back you don't believe you believe that free will is an" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "illusion so why does it feel like I'm free to make any decision I want it's a cool illusion another product like where it's not of identity the pollution Oh like when he really meds hate in your sense of identity for at least for me it seems like it comes down to the sense of choice like oh I am doing the thinking like what does it mean to do with thinking it's like something in me has exclusive agency over having the spot or not having this thought like the sense of self really comes down to And so when I say that like free will is an illusion" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I also mean there's something like the self is an illusion identity is a trick of the light, but it's a really fun one Yeah, you think a lot about your identity. Yeah, I have occasionally. Yeah, like you're really struggle with it You're proud of it. I do too. It's not we have different journeys, but mm-hmm" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So I really take a lot of delight in it I used to be very into like deconstructing it like you probably maybe you know I did a bunch of like way too much LSD for a while and at that point very no no ego And now I'm like very ego. I really enjoy having a lot of ego" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "I actually happen to know like everything about you really yeah like more than you do it's interesting Oh, that's fascinating. Wait, could you can you solve my problems? Yes, all of them. I did thorough research, okay What is consciousness then I actually wrote that as a quick what is consciousness I Remind myself so like how is that tying together with free will and identity and all that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like one of the biggest questions ever I think I do think that people often get confused when talking about consciousness I think people are referring to two separate concepts and often like combining them into one thing like we asked the question You know is AI going to be conscious? I think this is kind of the wrong question like Like we can identify signs of consciousness like Ah, they seem to refer to themselves But this is not necessarily eyebrows of consciousness in the same way that like dream characters Acting exactly the way normal human do people do and your dream is not evidence that they themselves are conscious So like signs of consciousness or not pref Wat of consciousness But there is something that we definitely know which is like I currently am conscious I can tell because right like I like I'm like just directly observing my experience Yeah, and so they there's one kind of consciousness which is I am directly observing my experience and that you cannot replicate it Like they're I cannot observe two experiences It is necessarily singular, and it is necessarily certain like you can make all the arguments. You want like I'm still directly observing It's not a thing that subject to reason whereas our other things conscious. This is something that's replicable Like you can apply it to multiple people It's something that's not certain like almost definitionally not certain like we don't actually know if there is you know an internal experience So my argument is that like when people are talking about other things, having experience they're using a different concept than the thing that they're actually looking at when they look at their own experience." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I think they're two different things. Definitely, not possible." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, if you understand the mechanism of consciousness you'll be able to measure it probably, right? But what are you measuring? I think this is like a subtle difference. Like, when you're asking the question is this other thing conscious?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, the easy thing to measure is like a survey, does this thing appear conscious? And then the hard thing is you understand the actual mechanism of how consciousness arises" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in the physics of the human brain. You can do that in a dream, presumably. Like if you had a very good dream or a very good simulation. But we could then have somebody in a simulation or a dream where they go through and they fully understand. They do all the tests and the tests come back exactly the way you'd expect them to. But from the outside, we're like, well, this is misleading. They're not actually conscious. Like your dream characters aren't conscious, right?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Probably. And are you asking?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Are you telling?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm like appealing to an intuition. But it sounds like you're driving towards a narrative." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I don't, you did a poll about men and women and dreams." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Those are some kind of difference. I couldn't tell what the difference was except that more men and women." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Quite a lot more women dream vividly than men. Oh. Which I actually found my chaos survey. So I did a survey, maybe you know that. I just had a people. I know everything, do you remember? You do know, yes, I'm sorry. So as you clearly know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, I know everything, do you remember? I'll try not to talk down to you through this conversation and not only know everything, I know how your future looks like. Really?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And how everything ends, yeah. Really? So you could probably win all the prediction markets on my life. Yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Cool. So we should also mention that you have like prediction markets, you have like votes. What's the site called again? Manifold. Manifold. And one of them was, will I be on the Lex Friedman podcast? Yeah. And I voted." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I invested everything I owe into the yes. Manifold. The third such thing is insider trading on there. So that goes against the terms of the. No, I think insider training is part of the information." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, I see. So it's supposed to be. Oh I see. And then I realized it's actually public information that I voted because like, I think my face shows up there as likems, dammit it's gonna influence significantly. You could make the fake account. Or it could be lying, right. Yeah. And then dump the stock or whatever." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You know. And then dump the stock and whatever. You know what? I try to manipulate. Somebody made a market, Eila going to post a poll, spelled p-o-l-e on her twitter, like a photo. And I was like I'm gonna manipulate this market, so I like fucked around with it and I voted no. And then I accidentally posted a photo of a poll without thinking, it's like a terrible poll. But it's like self-sabotage. Yeah I accidentally fucked up my own market" }, { "from": "human", "value": "without thinking, it's a corrupt poll. But that's like self-sabotage." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's like the reverse of insider training." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. What were you talking about, oh the women and the man and the difference, the vivid dreams, and the markets, if you go with the markets, because I can perfectly predict your future. But then it's not fun. I like the romance of unpredictability. And so I like to, even though I know everything," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I like to forget everything. Yeah, very Buddhist of you." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The river, no man in the river once, whatever, the footsteps, however that goes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's one of my favorite questions is like, if you could press a button and then have all of your wants fulfilled, anything that you want. So it's like such a rapid degree that you don't really experience the want. Like as the want arises, it then is like completed as immediately so that you are completely without want. Like would you press that button? 100% not." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, I didn't think you would. No, because immediately everything stops being fun. The first, it's only fun the first time. But if you want it to be fun. But like what would be my source of fun? I feel like I would, like on day four, just to get off," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I would need to like do like nuclear war." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, but if you want it to be fun." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because it'll escalate quickly." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I feel like if everything is possible. I assume you mean like something that like is not just normal human things. Yeah, magical world. Magical world. Then you start escalating really quickly. Like I wonder, I'll probably do like, I want everybody to just fly into the air and hover in the air. Everybody. And then you're like, oh, life is meaningless. Like why does, like you go, I feel like you get, no, actually that'd be a really interesting experiment. Like what are the limits?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like are we all capable of becoming psychopaths essentially?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, magical world. Like I like to believe not. There's a very hard limits on that. Like in our own mind, like of basic compassion. Because I love being compassionate towards other human beings. And it's one of the things I think about if you give me power, like a lot of power, like absolute power. And I think that's the power you mentioned is the scariest kind of power. Cause it's like, it's not even power in this normal world. It's like magical power where you lose, it's a dream world power where you like video game power. You don't even think of it as reality. You could just mess with the world. And I feel like that's terrifying. Yeah, you'd basically be God. God, yeah. But without like, I feel like the idea of God, it wants to like kind of keep things" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "like functioning properly. And then you'd probably would, if you wanted to keep them functioning properly, then it would wrap it up. Like you would never experience a time where you're like, oh no, that was a mistake. Because as soon as you, like before you even experienced that the world would shift to match it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Oh, interesting. No, I think I would actually, I take it back. I think I would regret the first time I heard somebody. See in my visualization was like a video game where everybody's like NPC really dumb. No, I think the first time I witnessed pain from anybody, that's when I would stop. And I would probably run into that very quickly. Like even just the hovering, make a person hover. And they're going to be probably really upset with the hovering, right? And so I'm going to be like, no, don't do that anymore. And then I'll probably go to, honestly, I'll just return back to my normal life." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, that's kind of what I feel like. Like if I had the power to do anything, I think I would probably want to have a life" }, { "from": "human", "value": "very similar to where I am now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, it's like with Uber, like it would be probably more convenient to do certain things. But even then, like the struggle like I've got a flat tire, so I have to fix that. I kind of, the flat tire makes everything more beautiful. It's like cool, I can do like a normal manual thing. But also it makes you like appreciate your car, appreciate transportation, appreciate the convenience," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the transportation, all of it. I know some people who would like call this a bunch of copium like you just sort of making do with what you have, like we wouldn't go back to Amish times or like pre-technology because to like in order to make ourselves appreciate things more and so it seems like a hindsight reasoning uh which is like I can" }, { "from": "human", "value": "appreciate that argument but I don't know I'm like anyone who uses sorry to interrupt the word copium" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in their um in their argumentation um I think it's sus it's sus yeah it's sus yeah it's sus" }, { "from": "human", "value": "my entire argument is now no I'm just kidding I'm sorry go ahead sorry I interrupted rudely the floor of thought uh but you you so you don't think so in part you disagree with that kind of" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "argument um yeah because I think people have this idea that if you uh like come to accept or like find meaning in what you have now this is sort of at odds with trying to improve it and right I don't find this to be the case I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part of of it. I enjoy the fact that there's something problematic going on because now I get the experience of striving to make it go away. That in itself is where the meaning lies. It's not just that things are bad, it's that things are bad and we're trying to stop it" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and also. Exactly. If you combine that with a sense of optimism that the future can be better, yeah, that feeds into this productive effort of making things better. It somehow makes the vision of the things that are better more intense, having experienced" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "shitty things." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. So we talked about free will and consciousness and what drives human civilization. Question left unanswered. It's a homework problem for the reader. Okay, let's." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I'm going to get like a scoreboard at the end, the amount of questions. The answer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Complete successfully versus not. The answer. Complete successfully versus not. Like polls. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Can we talk about some practical things?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, sure. So one of the many amazing things, I think of you as a researcher, but you've also been" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "doing research in the field. Yeah fieltrick. Fielwork." }, { "from": "human", "value": "structural work. The sex work. How did you get?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the the short and a long story of how you got into sex work? I get into sex work well that I mean there's a whole like childhood thing where I was conservatively homeschooled." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Do you want to actually talk about your childhood? I think it's interesting because you also worked at a factory. Your childhood is really fascinating. saying, and difficult, traumatic. So, and you've written about it, there's a lot of ways we can talk about it, but maybe what are the things you remember the good and the bad of your childhood," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of your maybe interaction with your father? Yeah, my dad probably has narcissistic personality disorder and so it was very centered on very controlling childhood, immensely so. We were homeschooled and pretty isolated from the outside world, like we didn't know anybody else who wasn't homeschooled. We went through a program called Growing Kids God's Way, which was very, it was like the kind of program where you're not supposed to pick up babies when they cry to train them that they can't manipulate the parents, because like baby crying was viewed as like, you're just teaching them from an early age that they're allowed to make the parents do what the kids want. And we're very against this philosophy. So, that combined with a narcissistic personality disorder, dad was pretty rough." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So controlling? Super controlling, yeah. And developing and feeding the self critical aspect" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of your brain. Super controlling, yeah. Yeah, very much. It was, you know, I was like lazy, but I was never gonna accomplish anything in life. I was gonna move out of the house and realize how good I had it at home, you know, the classic stuff. He was very like logical and smart though. And so he'd also like teach us logic stuff. I remember some of my earliest memories or him like giving me basic logic puzzles, like the dog has three legs, you know, how many dogs have four legs and I would mess up and, but he was a evangelist, basically a Christian evangelist. So we like Bible study five nights a week. I memorized I think 800 verses of the Bible by the time before I became an adult. Yeah, and it was very patriarchal also. So I was expected to grow up and become a housewife, basically, they're like, oh, you can go to college to meet a man and also to get a little bit of education so that you can homeschool your own kids. Like we were explicitly told that women were subordinate to men in regards to like making decisions when you're married. Our pastor's daughter was not allowed to leave home because she would be outside of the authority of a man. So when she got married, she was allowed to leave because she was never allowed to live in a house where she was not under a hierarchy. So this is like the kind of culture that we live in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So there's a hierarchy and the gender aspects of the hierarchy is men at the top of that hierarchy. Okay, but your own psychology and your own mind," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "so most of that self critical brain is bad, right? It was confusing, cause he told me that I was smart, but also that I would fail. But I think that-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "But not smart enough, right? Like smart, but not smart enough? Smart, but like not virtuous or something. Okay, so, okay, right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There's always a flaw. Yeah, there's always a flaw. I think a lot of it was, a lot of the fucked-up-ness of my brain came from feeling like I didn't have the authority to think. Cause it was so like carefully like suppressed. Like my ability to like express or have any sort of power was just absolutely annihilated. Like systemically, like psychologically, they would do like psychological torture mechanisms to make sure that like I wasn't actually thinking on my own or like being able to deviate from anything anybody ever told me. To the degree that it's such an ungrained in me. Like I once was a friend, we were traveling and he wanted me to hop a turnstile. It was like very late at night, the train was here. And I could not physically force myself to do it. Like he was like yelling me like, come on, do it. Like, I was trying so hard to make my body cross the line. And it was just, it's like embedded in my physical being to like be unable to do stuff like that," }, { "from": "human", "value": "which is really annoying." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you're not free to take action in this world? Yeah, some of them. So that was I think the most annoying part" }, { "from": "human", "value": "of the, my upbringing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Would you classify it as like suffering? At the time, yeah, definitely. Well, it's confusing cause like when I was a child, it was just painful in the sense that like things suck, but it was placed in a meaning framework, right? Like it is good, it is virtuous to submit to your parents and do what they want. If they tell you to say goodbye to your best friend forever and never talk to them again, you go do that without complaining. And so like, I would go do something like that. And I would, like it would suck. It really was like concretely painful, but it was also placed in this narrative where I was like fulfilling some sort of greater purpose. And so, it's very confusing to refer to it as suffering because there's so many painful things we do today that are placed in the narrative of a greater purpose that like I think I would agree with like I go get a medical procedure done, and that sucks. but I'm like, ah, this is helping me in the long run. But like, say if I got abducted to an alien planet and they're like, by the way, all of those medical procedures you got done, like you didn't have to get them done, those are totally unnecessary, then I might get really upset about it." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, I would trust those aliens though, because they probably want to do different medical procedures than I do. I saw a thumbnail for a video that I'm proud of myself for not clicking on about a man who has claimed that he had sex with aliens. And I was like, not clicking on that? Because I would probably watch it for like 20 minutes, and then I should be doing work. Oh, I see. And I'm actually happy, because I get to imagine all the different possibilities that could have been for that man who has sex with aliens." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is true. How do you suffer not clicking on that? Oh, I see. Do you just have like a really high" }, { "from": "human", "value": "like resting happiness state? Yes, yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's probably like a mushroom state, yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Wow, do you do mushrooms? I've done mushrooms before. It was very awesome, but like more intensely awesome. But like, because I was just looking at nature, it makes nature even more beautiful, I think. But it's already pretty beautiful. I haven't done MDMA. People say that I should. It's very nice, yeah. Yeah, anyway, but I'm already, yeah. What did you call it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Resting happiness state? It's very nice, yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, high resting happiness. Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. But it's not like some of it is genetic that you're able to notice the beauty in the world. And some of it is practiced where you realize focusing on the negative things in life, like unproductively is, it just doesn't help your mind flourish. So like, you just noticed that and it's like, I mean, I think people with like depression learn that or like probably with trauma too is like there's certain triggers. Like if you're, if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of consciously know there's going to be triggers that will like force you to spiral down. And so just avoid those triggers. Some people have that with diet, with food and so on. And so I just don't like, whenever there's shady things happening or shady people flourish, unless I can help, unless I can have some help. Like why focus on it? Yeah, anyway, back to your upbringing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What was the journey of escaping that? I, well, I left home like kind of early because my dad and I were not getting along by the time I was a teenager, but I still Christian for a while. And I lost my faith after I think I moved away and I started having friends that weren't religious or like weren't raised in the super conservative environment that I came from. And I think, this was not conscious at the time, this is my hindsight story, but I believe that like being exposed to a culture in which I had the capacity to believe like allowed my brain to actually seriously consider the thought that maybe all of the stuff was untrue. That I had been taught like 6000 year old earth and evolution is a lie and macro evolution and all of this stuff. Because like, when you're immersed in an environment like that, I don't think you actually have a choice. Like your brain has to believe these things because this is a survival thing. Like if you believe this, you'll be, if you believe the wrong thing, it'll be totally cast out. Even if they're not gonna cast you out, you're gonna be cast out in like communion with others because we were always told you can't like trust non-believers really, they don't have a moral compass, they're gonna screw you over. And so I'm like well I can't be that, like everybody's gonna outcast me internally. So anyway I wasn't, I don't think I actually had the capacity to seriously question my faith, even though I thought that I was questioning it quite hard, until I got into an environment where it was safe to do so. And once I started being able to make friends who were not religious, I'm like oh if I lose my faith, I'm still gonna have some sort of community. And then at that At that time I went through some questioning" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and then I lost my faith. So in that, given your friends, given your situation, you now have the freedom" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to think, essentially. Or at least the ability to think of something" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that was acceptable in the new culture, yeah. I mean, is there a danger of adopting the beliefs of the new culture? So there's some aspect of just being able to think freely, which you weren't able to do when you were growing up, just to think, look at the world and wonder how it works." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That kind of thing. I mean, you work it within certain boundaries. There's certain basic assumptions. And as long as you were following those basic assumptions, which is, to be fair, it's kind of what we're doing now. We have, have I gone and done the personal research that evolution is the thing that's going on? Have I looked at the age of the stones? No, I haven't, I'm trusting other people. Which I think is a fair choice to make, given where I'm at right now." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, but you're also assuming there's causality in the universe, time is real. Yeah, that first of all, the thing that your senses are perceiving is real." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You're assuming a lot of things. Yeah, I think it's better just to become aware of the assumptions you're making, like, as opposed to not making this assumptions at all. You have to assume something, and it's very suspicious, right? That I went out of this very conservative culture and now, well, I guess I don't believe things that are super in line with the current culture. I think this is why I feel a little bit safer right now. Because when I was Christian, I believe generally Christian things. But now I believe a bunch of things Like people really hate it canceled online all the time. I'm like okay, this is a sign that maybe you're thinking independently, if you're able to think things that are completely at odds with the people around you. And to be fair, this is a little bit easier to do when it's like general culture, but it's much harder to do with your peer group. Like the people that you trust, your friends, the people whose opinions you respect like, disagreeing with those people is very difficult" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "and I'm not very good at it. Yeah. I do think that if you establish yourself as a person who could be trusted and is a good human being, you have a lot more freedom to then explore ideas that are different from your peer group. So like those seem like, if you separate the space of ideas versus some kind of like deeper sense of what this person is like that they're an interesting" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and trustworthy and good human being. Well, like, is there somebody that you respect to, you can consider significantly smarter than you. And can you imagine believing an idea that you've heard them talk really disdainfully about? Like, how would you feel coming to me?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like, I believe this thing that you find to be. Yeah, I do all the time." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Yeah. You make me braver than me. And to be fair, I support doing this. Like I try to do this, but I think like subconsciously I noticed that I don't do it as much. And so I'm suspicious of myself. I'm like, oh, I wonder if I'm hiding to myself like actual curiosity about things that might deviate from my peer group. Because I noticed that I'm not actually deviating with them" }, { "from": "human", "value": "as much as I do with the outside world. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, because I do see most people I interact with as smarter than me, but I also have this intuitive feeling that dumb people, which I consider myself being, have wisdom. So like, in the disagreement, actually, I mostly believe in the power of conversation and in the tension of disagreement. So I think even just disagreeing from a place, from a good place, from a place of like love and respect for each other, I think I just believe in that. So it's not like individuals, you're disagreeing. You're like working towards arriving at some deeper truth together, right? Even if the other person is smarter. Maybe that's how I justify it for myself. I'm also a fan of conversations, because like I've seen just listening to conversations. It seems like a great conversation more emerges from it than the sum of its parts, right? Like somehow two people together can do like that, dance of ideas can somehow create a cool thing. By the way, I saw a video of you dancing at a bar drunk. It wasn't the bar drunk, it didn't look drunk, but just the dancing. It was like ballroom dancing type of thing. I was like, yeah. Something like that. I've been doing a bit of tango dancing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I like it. Something like that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Argentine? I like stuff with the body in general, like wrestling or combat. Usually when there's a tension, you have to understand the mechanics of how two bodies move" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "when they're in conflict and dancing is similar. You have to do rapid thinking, also. Rapid intuitive physical thinking, and that's my favorite kind of thing. A lot of exercise is really boring to me, because you can just do it while your brain's off. But something like ballroom dancing or fusion dancing, you have to constantly be figuring out," }, { "from": "human", "value": "like it's a rapid puzzle, and that's so wonderful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's fusion dancing? That's the video. Fusion dancing is like, if you have any sort of dance background, you can come and you just kind of mix those together. Oh, just kind of improvise. So you can have lot of people doing ballet, with people doing ballroom, with people doing blues." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, it's cool. So you can have like people doing ballet. Okay, cool, and then there's an interesting dynamic because there's I don't know, maybe you can correct me, but there's, that's very meta. There's usually a lead and a follow. I guess most dancers have that. Yeah. Yeah, and so that, but both have a different, like you both have to be quite sensitive" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to the other human being, but in a different way." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, it's interesting. So I like both that there is that definitive role" }, { "from": "human", "value": "but also it's not somehow that one is better than the other." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There's an interesting tension between the two. Yeah, because it's like a basic rule set that allows for a ton of expression. I've recently started to experiment with reverse leading. It's not like back leading, it's like, I don't know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sometimes I was like, lead a move. So you can lead as a follow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh, you can lead as a follow. When I'm typically following," }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'll occasionally throw in a little lead here and there. But don't you kind of always, oh, I see. But don't you hint at a lead when you're following? Don't you, just by the dynamics of your movement, you're not perfectly following. Because the lead is listening to your body, right? Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So you're kind of both figuring out what you do next. Yeah, that's true. I'm a very good follow though. Okay. So I'm like, I'm an invisible follow. You do move, it's like I..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, oh, interesting. I'm not good at technique. I didn't know those existed like a perfect follow." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You seek it for perfect follow. I'm not good at technique. Oh yeah, I'm perfect. I didn't seek a perfect follow. I'm really ideal. I'm not great at technique and sometimes I'll follow over" }, { "from": "human", "value": "but like with the following part, I'm very good at it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you enjoy following? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really nice. It's, again, like it's a very fast physical puzzle you have to solve. It's like typing, I really like typing," }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's why I was inquiring about your keyboard earlier." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Why do you like typing? It's like the very fast, like the really rapid response was the reaction time. I like things that like have very fast reaction times," }, { "from": "human", "value": "like games like that. But typing is not a reaction. Or is it the brain generating words and then you're cost typing" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "a reaction? Well, okay the sensation that I get when I am typing is the kind of thing that I'm trying to point at. So maybe reaction time isn't quite, I don't know what the term is. But whatever that thing is. Like the thing where you have like look at a word and then communicate it into your fingers. Yeah." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "It feels like dancing. Like you're responding. You're responding to your brain. Your fingers are doing the responding" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to the brain that generated the words. Making your body do what your brain" }, { "from": "human", "value": "wants it to do but like best and precisely. Well then you might not like this can use this keyboard because it makes it easier to do that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You probably like the struggle, right? Well, I mean, it looks hard because it looks like" }, { "from": "human", "value": "it's high-depression on the keys. No, it's, well, oh, I see. Yes, more than like a laptop keyboard, but like, that you don't have to, one of the main things is you don't have to move your fingers at all. So like, for example, a lot of people, I think they have a backspace up in the top right corner." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So if you have to make mistakes, which is like," }, { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, that's like so metaphorical. Like every mistake you have to like really hurt yourself for" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "because it's like stretch for the backspace. So there's that poetic narrative again. It emanates like a lot of your perspective." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's like, it emanates like a lot of your perspective. Yeah, no, yeah, I don't, and I see it as a good thing. It's a good, like a, a romantic element permeates my interpretation of the world, yes. But you left home early." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How did you end up working at a factory? I tried to go to college, but failed." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Couldn't afford it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did you like it? I remember it just being really slow. I remember being shocked that the teachers didn't care. Like I was used to homeschooling. Yeah, yeah. And where, I don't know, it just like meant something. It felt like the people around me that were teaching me because we had like a mom's group also, like directly cared about what I was learning. And I would be able to ask questions and they would like really respond. What's a mom's group? And it was like homeschooling groups where a bunch of moms who are homeschooling their kids" }, { "from": "human", "value": "get together and then teach other kids. What's a mom's group? Oh cool. And they have different like interest and capabilities" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and so on and they kind of... And sometimes when some of the kids are really good at something you have like the older kids teaching the other ones too. So it's very like everybody kinda figures out what they get good at and they show that skill set with everybody else. Which I think is a pretty great setup. Honestly, I think my childhood kinda sucked in a lot of ways, but homeschooling was excellent for me. Mainly because it just had so much free time. Like, I just did like two to three hours of school and then did whatever the fuck I wanted for the rest of the day. And I got to actually pursue skills" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that are still useful for me to this day, so." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even in that constrained environment. Like, I've read fantasy books and I wrote so much. And now I'm writing a lot for my blog, so. What kind of fantasy books, like sci-fi type stuff? Like classic, like I read like Mercedes Lackey" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and the E.E. Knight and Ursula Le Guin and. I don't know any of this. What is this? What is it, is it like a romantic thing," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "or is it like? All the fantasy books, like Dragons and elves." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, dragons, oh dragons." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How did you end up in a factory, you tried school? Yeah, yeah, yeah, tried school, had to drop off a couple months and then I was like, well, I'm poor and I was trying to take any job, I was like applying for super jobs and then I got a factory, and I'm like, Because my parents know no financial help at all. They're like you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, you know So anyway, I went to work at a factory and that sucks ass do not recommend We had work up a wake up like 4 a.m You know work on weekends to fluorescent lights It was terrible And so I did that for about a year and I was like this is I was trying to grip my teeth and be like This is my life right that I didn't have high expectations for my life I was just like I thought like if you get a job where you don't have to be on your feet all the time That's that you're living a good life But and then I got another job briefly as a photographer and then they fired me. I think I was 19 at the time fired you four like I was just I was too young the Really bad at interacting with people in the outside world Like I was pretty well socialized as a homeschooler with other homeschoolers But in the outside world, especially with all of the like hierarchy submission stuff beaten in to me Like literally beaten into me It was very difficult for me to interact with other people who were like older than me or had any sort of confidence at all So they hired me to do photography for people and then I was rapidly turned out that I was bad at this and so they fired me. But at that point, I'd left my factory job. I'm like, I can't go back to the factory. So I had some savings and I slept on friends' couches and I tried various self-employment stuff. I'm like, maybe I can do product photography or something. But it's Idaho. If you're like a 19 year old with no experience in the outside world at all, it was really difficult. And so I had a friend recommend that I try becoming a cam girl. So" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that's how it started. I fired you for like... I was just... What is camming? What is being a" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "cam girl? Camming is like you talk to the camera live on the computer, like you livestream. It's kind of like Twitch and then people are typing in the chat like, huh, I do this stuff. And then the people can tip you money and then you can do things in response. Like, oh, if you tip me a" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "hundred tokens, I'll take my shirt off or something like that. And like, what site were you using at that time? My free cams. My free cams? Is that a popular site? Yeah, it's pretty popular. Okay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And how did... What were the next steps? Like, did you enjoy it? Yeah, it's pretty popular. Oh, well, it was the first time I had actual control over my life and I made like actual real money. And so I just exploded into it. I thought about it nonstop. I was streaming all the time. I was coming up with new creative things. And the thing is... I don't know, there's something about public school that... I ended up living in a house of cam girls full of other girls who had gone to public school. And I don't know how much of it is genetic or just because I'm weird or is it because of our upbringing. But I felt like I was much more fearless and much more weird and creative online than other people were. Not because they weren't awesome people, but because I think public school... I got the impression based on them talking about it that it sort of beats out any sort of deviance from you? You had moral deviance was beaten out. Creative deviance wasn't so much. I didn't have other kids making fun of me ever. I don't think I'd ever heard an insult about my physical appearance as a child." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Creative deviance was not... Your father was basically saying you're not good enough, was intellectual." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, that was like moral failure. Moral failure. Yeah, like I was not virtuous. Oh, wow. Like in various ways, like, you know, like you're lazy and mostly the lazy part. I have like ADHD or something. Yeah. And it was, I was not good at it as a kid either." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I would totally forget all the time and fail. Moral, moral failure. Yeah. Oh, wow. Like in various ways. Yeah. Is there some sexual repression aspect to that? Like, you know how they say that there's, it's not just homeschooling, but just like Catholic girls and so on, is because like there's moral, you're forbidden to do certain things? Like there's a kind of liberating feeling of saying like basically rediscovering yourself, rediscovering your freedom by doing, just diving head in, head first into sexuality, interior your own sexuality. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there some aspect to that? Is there some aspect to that? Yeah, absolutely to some degree. I think that like people kind of model it slightly wrong. Like I think there's just a truth to it. But when I first got out of the house, For me, freedom was going outside at 2 a.m. or eating chocolate on days that I've previously wasn't allowed to eat chocolate. That was a really intense expression of rebellion for me. And I think people don't think of this. I got out a lot of my intense rebellion through things that people don't typically consider to be rebellious at all. I wore a bikini." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Insane. I just walked around in it and I could do this." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, basically. And so this was most of that emotional processing for me. And it took me a couple years from leaving home in all of that conservative culture into doing sex work. In the meantime, I did try having sex with a lot of people, but this was mainly because I didn't know what the norms were. I didn't really understand. I was just like, okay, take things logically. Take things one step at a time. And I'm like, okay, if the whole previous set about how I'm not supposed to kiss somebody until the altar of marriage, if that's not the way that things are supposed to go, then what is the way things are supposed to go? And I was like, well, if I am aroused, I should go have sex with someone, right? Is there any reason not to? No, so I would go around asking random people" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to have sex with me. Did you have any peer pressure saying that's not good or that is good? Or did you feel any occurrence of society in any direction or are you independently" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "just thinking for first principles? I mean, I'm not saying it was a totally clean thing. I'm sure that I was experiencing society telling me this is bad. But you have to know, I wasn't watching normal movies when I was a teen. Christian movies are the stuff that we watched was filtered. I watched The Titanic and I had no idea that Jack and Rose had sex because it was put through a filtered... Wait did they? Yeah, they went and he painted her naked and there's a scene in a car on the ship. Yeah, a car on the ship. There had cars in storage and there's a hand. I watched it again later. I was like, oh my God. I don't know about the sex scene. Well, maybe were you also put through on the ship? On the car on the ship. I don't know about the sex scene." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No, maybe it's the filter I see, like did the couple in the notebook also have sex? Because maybe for romantic movies, I focus on the romance, maybe, right? And the sex scenes are always like weirdly filmed in these, because it's never, I mean, it doesn't, it feels more like romance than sex. I guess that's the main focus of this, right? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, anyway, today had sex, it's good to know now. They did, let it go. I'll go back and watch now." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you have your own personal filter? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense, sense? No, no, I'll go back now. You have your own personal filter on your brain." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And once you realize that the foundation of your beliefs were wrong, then everything might be wrong, and you're kinda just doing first principles," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it's full. First principles, basically. And again, not totally separate from culture, but also I think in general, I also have a predisposition to just be like, fuck what culture tells you, just figure out what's right for you and do it. And so that mixed with, you know, figuring things out from first principles. I did eventually figure out that I didn't like having casual sex with just anybody, quite as much. So I stopped that, but it took me awhile" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to figure that out." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the negative of casual sex? It's just like not good. I mean, if you like figure out the chemistry you have with someone better, then it can be a lot nicer. But I wasn't doing that, I was just like somebody I met, and I'm like, you seem kind of cute." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, like I didn't bother to try and develop any chemistry, I mean, I didn't know. Chemistry, even outside of sex, just chemistry like human chemistry conversation," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "okay, just Worth conversation. It's kind of cringy, but I would walk up guys or send them messages like, would you like to have coitus is what I would say. You would say coitus. I'd said that. You would say coitus. I mean it's kinda cute, no way. I mean it's a girl asking you to get laid so they probably didn't care that much. So even though I'm saying that I had a lot of rebelling out of my system by the time I started sex work. Like for me, like maybe, I'm sure it was somehow related, because we were extremely sexually oppressed growing up. I remember the day I learned I had a vagina which was absolutely horrifying. Do not recommend figuring out, you have another orifice in your body. But like-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Do you want to share the process of you figuring out that you had a vagina?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or you just," }, { "from": "human", "value": "They told me I had a vagina. Oh, like intellectually, somebody said you have a vagina. Vagina yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I was horrifying to you, you have a vagina? Vagina yeah. Yeah. I didn't know I had, cause you weren't supposed to ever touch or look at yourself ever. So I never did. It was really disgusting. And so I had no idea that what was going on in my genital region. And so one day my mom sat me down, I think it was like nine or 10. And she was like, you have a, there's another? What? And you're going to bleed out of it, is what she told me. You're going to bleed out of it for a while. And I was like, what the fuck, mom? I didn't know what the word fuck was, but I would have said that if I had known." }, { "from": "human", "value": "She told me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "When did you first learn the word fuck? Oh, I think I learned it when I was at a playground and it was written somewhere and I read it out loud." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And then the kid next to me started giggling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did you ever, did you say fuck again for a while? No, I think the next time I said, I swore the first time I was 18. Like intentionally I said a swear word when I was 18 Did you feel good? I was like really nervous. It was like nervous. I was like, perfect. I'm nervous." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, fuck's pretty good. Yeah. Fuck it's pretty good. Okay. So, so that's camming. I mean, what are the, the pros and cons of camping And how does Onlyfans map into this?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did you switch to Onlyfans at some point? I did, yeah. I came for like five or six years" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and I burned out eventually. What are the good aspects," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "what are the bad aspects of cheming? Well, the good aspects were that it was just your own terms. You get to decide. Everything about it is under your control, which I loved at the time. I was like, I can work. When I want, how I want, any sort of expression. I experimented and I was very successful. I was making around $200 an hour, which for that website at the time was like pretty good. I had elaborate routines, I was a mime. I would dress up as a mime and then dress up a chair and I would seduce the chair." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh cool, cool." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was there an artistic element to it almost? Yeah. Very much. Did you talk to the chair? You had gnomes? No, I was a mime." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I had gnomes." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did you talk to the chair? You had gnomes. Oh, sorry. Right. Get it straight, dude." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You know what I really appreciate about you is I'm asking some really dumb questions and you're answering in a very intelligent way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I said, I appreciate that. in your answer. All right. Did you ask the chair questions? I was in mine, you fucking idiot. Okay, I'm sorry." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sure, and there is gnomes on the, like big gnomes or small gnomes? Like lawn gnomes. Lawn gnomes?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And you seduced the lawn gnome on the chair, the gnome is sitting on the chair. The lawn gnomes. There were some gnomes on the chair. I-I did a photo set which I submitted to Reddit, where I got abducted. I was like stripping, taking my clothes off and then slowly the gnomes surrounded me in the background and dragged me off. Oh! as a photoset and I essentially I mean, I mean I didn't feel consensual in the photos, but, but it was the learningband Citadel not consumed with the numbers. The it was very successful in it. Basically it was a top posting on wild and 11 top posts of all times." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Conaciously not contraction, but all that which I think it probably just means it's like it's artistic, it's interesting. It's edgy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's funny, so really, really well done, but it was really shocking to be that nobody else was doing anything creative with satire. Like for me, it was, it was like breathing. Like you're just doing sex and you're bored, and I'm like, what do you do? I don't know, let's try something funny. Like it's just the natural progression. And it felt to me like there was almost no competition. Like I would just be really creative and like immediately it was the top not safe for post on Reddit. Like, well, I didn't even try that hard. And so it's really shocking to me that other women who are doing this sort of thing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is that still a little bit of the case? Like that there's not as much like, because from my sort of outsider perspective that seems to be still the case. Like there's not, like, as you describe it, that's kind of cool. That's like almost like playing, like having fun with sexuality almost." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. And yeah, but that does require kind of thinking through... It's almost like a creative project, like a photography project or something like that almost like a little skit movie," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "it's interesting, movie, it's interesting. Is this vibe of like how can you bring like vibrant novelty to whatever you're doing, anything you're doing. Yeah. And I really like doing this with surveys too. Like I've been doing a lot of standard surveys, but I'm also like experimenting with novel creative artistic surveys. I'm like, how do you ask a question in a way that's like beautiful and unusual and like a thing that's completely groundbreaking?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like nobody's ever like trying to cross it with the word. You always make everything so poetic and romantic is disgusting, no. But yes, I think you have that engine in your head, I guess, of creativity. Like, yeah, the way you ask questions, which is not trivial to do. Like for, it's actually very difficult to do like good survey questions. And I mean, we're joking, but like, yeah, almost like poetic because you have to ask a question in a way that doesn't lead to the answer. Yes. Like you have to kind of inspire them to think and then indirectly get at the truth." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's just very, it's an art form, honestly. Yes, yeah, and also in a way where they don't misinterpret the question because it's amazing how any question you think, oh, this is the clearest question possible. No, you're wrong." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It has to be even clearer. Right. Willingly or unwillingly. Cause like you also have to defend against that question being criticized later when you publish about it. All of that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You have to think about it all. I think this might be my greatest strength. So I'm not very good at statistics. I'm not like great at presenting data, but I think probably my greatest strength is in fact survey design and like question phrasing. Cause I've tweeted so many thousands of polls and every single one, I get people telling me like the way that they misinterpreted the poll. So it's like, it's like gone through fire. And then again, I am testing the phrasings all the time. like, what happens if you slightly shift phrasings and eventually, I'll do the same question test over time to see how it changes and the way" }, { "from": "human", "value": "the framing affects the results. So the good and the bad or the scamming, so you said good, the what was it, I forgot about your meaning you said? The freedom. The freedom." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The freedom to also be creative. Yeah, and the advantage to it, it was exhausting, the site that I was on the way that it structured is that you're ranking on the site and thus the amount of people that see you and thus the amount of money you earn is affected by the amount of money that you earn on average over the last 60 days. So if you're streaming and nobody's tipping you, this means that you're going to be dropping down in the rankings, which is gonna make it harder" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in the future." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, so the rich get richer in that site? Yeah, so it's very high pressure. Like if you're on, you need to be making money as fast as you can, if you wanna continue to make money. So that was really stressful. It was very mentally taxing. I would do it for a couple hours and just log off and be completely exhausted because you're just like on as hard as you can. And this is why I have a little PTSD on streaming. Like I've considered Twitch streaming and I try a little bit and I'm like, I haven't fully integrated the fact that you don't have to be like maximally entertaining every single second yet. You can actually just chill out and take it slow" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and nothing bad happens." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, you can just enjoy silence." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Did you feel lonely doing it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, even just streamers feel lonely." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I moved into a house of cam girls." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Did that make it better or worse? It better, they're great." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm still friends with them to this day. Also, it was like a team," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I was like, we're in this kind of together. Yeah, so we was like working together and stream together and swap our clothes and stuff." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It was great." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Swap ideas too." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Swap ideas, yeah. And actually on a small tangent, maybe a big tangent, what do you think, because it's a recent controversy of Andrew Tate and that he, I think in the past ran a camming business and he's being accused of sex trafficking. What do you think? Like from your own experience, what do you understand about Andrew Tate? Is he a good person? Is he a bad person?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there something shady about his practices or not? I wish I could answer, but I don't know. I haven't looked into it at all. At all. I've heard people talking about it. I just haven't bothered to go into it. It is well known that like, when I was doing it back in the day, the Eastern European politics had something different going on though. There's like a trope about, there's the Eastern European models and then there's everybody else." }, { "from": "human", "value": "At all. They're what?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's like darker or something?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like they do studios and they're lower quality." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which means what? Studios are, you go into like a warehouse And then they have set up a little like things that replicate bedrooms, but they're just like stalls and Then you give you rent out or you pay the studio percentage of your income and you can tell when something looks like a studio It's like a type of background. Yeah, if you're like watching an epic kind of starts to notice the patterns" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, so like the standards are lower there and the ethical boundaries are a little looser Yeah, how people are treated?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's uncle we didn't I never heard anything about the ethical side I just knew that it was like lower quality like the girls seemed like they were less into it and like" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Carried less. How does this all interplay with like sex trafficking? So consensual versus not consensual" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I would be shocked if there were never any non-consensual camming I mean I guess it's like if it were going to happen in that coin be surprised if it were in fact Eastern European" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Models based on this is outdated. This is I'm just thinking of my stereotypes back when I cammed a lot sure" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So some of that is stereotypes versus like collecting good data, right? Yeah, I haven't done data on yeah" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I haven't done data on cam girl heart. I mean it's hard it's it's even hard to get that data, right Yeah, obviously a really important problem" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, there's a method that I'm trying that. I really like I designed a survey type which is like asking people. Who you know Yeah, like who do you who do you know who's done this? and you tell me like Oh, do you know anybody who's a doctor did you know anybody who you know, I said cancer or like smokes? Are personally evening. Yeah, personally Just do you know anybody? Yeah, and then if you ask her about a whole bunch of things you can calibrate the responses so like that's really interesting if you're if your population you know 20% of them know doctors and then you know the actual amount of doctors then you can tell like how this is corresponding like what is a" }, { "from": "human", "value": "visibility of doctors. yeah personally I mean just you can reconstruct the" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "graph basically yeah basically yeah and and we can do this with sex trafficking and of course people are gonna be like well sex trafficking is not visible people you don't know those like well then we can ask about other nonvesible things so other people don't know that we do have data for like homelessness or being in jail or like if you have been like sexually assaulted a lot of people don't like talking about if they've been sexually assaulted. So you can do a whole bunch of things that are like similarly suppressed in knowledge in some way that we do actually have rates for. And then compare that to the graph when we ask people, do you know anybody who's in sex traffic? So again, this is not perfect. I'm not saying this is ideal." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But you can infer things." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You can infer things about that graph. But I'm saying we don't have good ways of measuring sex trafficking right now. Anyway, I did a big deep dive into the research that we have in sex trafficking in the Western world. And the actual, like I read the studies and like reports about the studies and it's really pitiful. We have terrible data. It's like, there's just like vague estimations made from one guy in a basement in the 80s. That's like the basis for like one big study that like a lot of people report on. And so I'm like, okay, so the method I'm proposing obviously is not perfect," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but like the bar is so low at this point. Well, I wonder also if there's ways to design a survey that gets at the victims of sex trafficking also, which is they presumably have public access to the internet. And I wonder how many of them are distinctly aware that they're victims. Like it's asking the question, when you're inside of a toxic relationship, are you inside of a toxic relationship? I mean, if the toxic relationship is truly toxic, sometimes your mind is fucked with, right? You don't even know it's true. So it's interesting if you can design surveys. Who can break through that? So basically get data on how many people" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "are getting sex trafficked directly. Is that correct? Oh yeah. Like if you don't frame it, like if you don't say the word sex trafficking, if you're like are you just in a situation" }, { "from": "human", "value": "where you would think- Yeah, and maybe through the survey, I mean, that's very better," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "but through the survey help them. So I've done a series of relationship surveys and that was because I knew somebody a terrible relationship, and I was like I bet if she took a survey where she answered questions about her relationship and at the end got a score that compared her to everybody else, she'd be like oh wait everybody else has much better relationships than I do. So that's why I started making the relationship surveys was exactly for that reason." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah that's really really really powerful to know that like you're not you're not" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "crazy for thinking this is a bad relationship. Right or I think like the actual question is like could you do better if you broke up? And I think that the thing that keeps most people in their relationships is like this this is the best that I can do. This is normal. And if it were normal, I would say that they are right. Like if you live in a culture where everybody is abusing their people and their relationships, then yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do? Break up and then just be alone for the rest of your life." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Most people don't wanna do that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But now comparing yourself to the average is good to know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No, your options are. At least understand it because being normal is not always, like this conversation is not always great. Meaning this conversation is anything but normal. Okay, and okay. That was a tangent on a tangent about a niche passion, which is really fascinating that you're playing with those kinds of ideas of survey design. But back to camming. So what were the cons?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What were the negatives of camming? Oh, like the exhaustion of just like live, like the high pressure thing." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That was probably the worst thing. So not, was there, what about the interaction with different people? Like the dynamics of the interaction with the fans, I guess." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I had pretty great time. I mean, obviously it wasn't perfect because it's the internet, but I don't know. This is the thing that confuses me a lot because a lot of women that I know complain about being harassed by men quite a lot. They're like, you know, men are always, you know, grow up in arrest, you know, you have to be paranoid in the club. People are like, they're always off and on you and you're just like Jesus Christ, get away men. And I do not have this experience or like maybe I do, but I'm interpreting it differently. I don't know. The thing is I don't know what causes me to have such a different experience from these women that are like really, feel really hostile towards men. And my guess is that there's some sort of very subtle signaling that we're accidentally doing. We're like, no fault of our own, I'm not saying this is a virtue, I'm saying maybe it's just genetic" }, { "from": "human", "value": "or the fact that I fall." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The women are doing? That the women are doing, yeah. And it might be just something that I'm completely accidentally through no intention, happening to signal the thing that is causing men to not view me as a desirable target," }, { "from": "human", "value": "or like a target at all, like a target at all. What about the flip side?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe you're not sensitive to the creepy stare." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, that also might be true. The dude who's like, as I'm dressing you with his eyes, that like in a creepy way, that you're just not, you don't like worry about it. Or you're not touched, like the fear of that, the anxiety of that, the unpleasantness of that" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "just doesn't hit you. I think that's also at least part of it, maybe all of it. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's some evidence for it. I think often like guys will do a thing to me and I'm just like, that's a thing, cool. I don't have any negative response whatsoever. Yeah, call back to the tire. It's a thing, this is nice. Yeah. That happened, it was good to know that can happen. I once had a homeless guy ask me to come back to my place baby and I was like, this is fun like, I love asking men, are you trying to get me to have sex with you? Just like saying it out front and they'll be like, well usually they stop for a minute. They're like, well yeah, we would like to have sex. And they'll be like, thanks for asking but I'm not interested in having sex with you. have a good day, walk away and it's great, I don't know I have no issues with the interaction, but like maybe this is the kind of thing that other women would find to be really offensive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "So you have that conversation, and it doesn't turn into like a threatening feel. No. I'd go to homeless guy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No. I'd go the homeless guy. No, I've never had that happen though, but I think there's such something, I think I'm doing something like again, this is kind of accidental like, I just am like this always. And I think I just happen to be like this at people and they don't expect it, like they don't expect me to be like, really nice while explicitly asking them them what their intentions are, like directly putting my finger on the thing that like, oh, you're trying to have sex with me. And then also not judging them for it. I think this like throws people off a little bit so they don't get aggressive." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like, oh, you're autistic or something." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Even the cloak of anonymity on the internet, you weren't getting. Yeah, I just think I'm just not reactive. Or maybe I'm giving off, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's both, maybe it's a feedback loop. So I just, I had a pretty good experience. I know not everybody did. Definitely people reported having antagonistic experiences, but when I was scamming, I generally" }, { "from": "human", "value": "really liked people who were really nice to me, had a great time, made friends. So you also did OnlyFans, as you mentioned, and I read on a website, so this is very investigative reporting that on some months you've made over $100,000 on OnlyFans." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How did that feel? Great. Really great." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, like, well, actually, because so much of your upbringing, you didn't have money. You had to struggle with the fact of your job and so on." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Maybe a good person to ask, can money buy happiness? Well, I mean, I think you get like a resting set point of happiness, regardless of how" }, { "from": "human", "value": "much money you have, but money can buy being less stressed, I would say. Is there a lot of variation in the basic rest happiness for humans in general? Like, is that a good thing to think about?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, they've done some studies, but again, like, again, I'm not sure. I haven't actually read the studies, so maybe they didn't replicate, where like, they measured people before and after winning a bunch of money to see if their happiness was higher. Yeah. I think, like, it's by some measures it was, and by some it wasn't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. No, I mean, like, basically almost genetically, so nature and nurture, but is there, let's say after year 18, is there like some stable level of happiness that all the environmental genetic factors combine to create so that everything that life throws at you has to face that happiness? I think you mentioned earlier that I seem to be happy with a lot of stuff, so maybe I have a certain level, do other people have a lower level, some people have a higher level? Yeah, definitely." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is that a useful or is, is that a useful model of human beings, or is it all ups and downs? Yeah, definitely. Like, is, like, is it all like, there's not stable, like, there's not stable, right? Like, I don't know. Some people just are happier than others in general and other people aren't, but then you also have ups and downs. Like, I'm sure you've experienced sadness sometimes and happiness the other times." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like if I actually were to integrate, so have an interglot on the curve, the area under the curve, I don't know if I'm different than other people. Maybe I'm just like, really focused on the happy moments and maybe feel the down moments more intensely and maybe that, like, on average is all the same, that possible?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, maybe. I don't know, I remember when I was a kid my mom would call me Pollyanna all the time, so I was like finding the good in everything. Oh yeah? Try something better than have been- You were a happy kid. I was a really happy kid, yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like something bad would happen, something bad would happen. You were a happy kid. I was a really happy kid, yeah. Even in the harsh condition." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I mean, like I said, like I think the harshness comes from the bad meaning, like, and I had good meaning applied to it. You were stoic. With another book I'm reading next week, tune in. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All right. All right. Chiaming, 100K, so it felt good. So it's crazy though, right? You can just like take clothes off in a creative way with some gnomes and make 100,000. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot more to it than that, but yeah. What was it? What's the different process?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I mean, it's marketing. I mean, it's marketing. Like, so with my free cams, I was unusual in that I decided to do outside of the website marketing. I would like post on Reddit, right? This was very unusual at the time, but like Onlyfans is structured such that they have almost no internal discovery whatsoever. So if you want people to come to your page, you have to go out onto external websites and advertise for yourself directly. Very different model. And so this is something that I had already been doing and already had practiced in. And so I think I was like already quite advanced. Like I already had an account on Reddit that was like seven years old at the time, tons of like karma that means I could post in subreddits. I already been on Twitter for years, you know, like posting actively. So I already had the presences on all these other platforms" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that really helped with the conversion, really." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So, Reddit and Twitter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Reddit, Twitter, FetLife, Instagram, TikTok. And you were still advertising creatively? So, like there's like sexuality, but there's also like creative sexuality and ideas too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And ideas too. Yeah, like one of the really popular ones was I like molested myself as a mime using one arm through a jacket. And so the jacket looked like it was... The jacket looked like it was alive and that one did really well." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The jacket looked like it was alive. Did you like brainstorm with somebody? Like I recently got to hang out with Mr. Beast and sit on a session of brainstorming different ideas. I mean, I just envision you with like a team brainstorming. All right, how about we try the mime and the molesting thing? I don't know, it's too edgy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I wish, I think the team would have had a lot more fun, but it was just me, like I had an apartment that looked like kind of like this, you know, you just sit alone and you're like, well, that would be a good idea. And I'd seen... You just collect ideas over time, right? And I'd seen somebody doing a version of like this animated hand act like when I was a kid. And I just always stuck in my head and like one day I was like, I bet I could do that. And then when I didn't try and think of ideas to do as a sex worker, I was like, why don't I just try that?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And then it turned out to be like a really, like quite a viral hit. Is there stuff like you mentioned too edgy? Like Mr. Beast tries to keep it PG. Do you try to keep it PG-13?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Well, with the sex advertising stuff, I mean, it's sex advertising, so it's obviously not" }, { "from": "human", "value": "PG-13. I don't know these ratings. What is even beyond that R-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's not familyfriendly. It's not... What is even beyond that R- Family friendly? It is X. The one that I'm describing to you at some point, like... You can see my boob. That's a boob, that's a boob, it's X. A boob is, I guess. It's not R." }, { "from": "human", "value": "B, it maybe is not- B, it maybe is not- I think you can show a boom in PG-13. Yeah, maybe, maybe..." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That sound, but the rhythmic motion, not." }, { "from": "human", "value": "The sound. B, it maybe is not. You can have one or the other, but you can't have both. !\"" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They're both ex. So he definitely not fail, i mean, with the sex advertising stuff, guys like vanillas, shit guys want basic hotgirl, you can do something like, kinda sexy, like getting abducted by gnomes or like the self molestation, right? But those are still pretty within the normal boundaries." }, { "from": "human", "value": "what do you mean guys like, vanillas?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "stuff? i mean, most guys like vanillas. stuff. what's vanillas stuff?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "like hotgirl bighorn. you'll talk about fetish? Festishes. I think my origin window on what is vanilla is expanding quickly after following your work, but what is that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I actually have done a lot of studies on what is vanilla. I've done a couple different surveys where I ask people how taboo is this thing, and I have a rating from least to most taboo." }, { "from": "human", "value": "By the way, I don't appreciate" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the beauty of vanilla ice cream. You don't?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "It is really good, though." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You eat vanilla ice cream?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I eat vanilla ice cream, yeah. I think there's just so many more options. It's like the absence of creativity. I mean, if you put it in some chocolate chips or something. Yeah, they already made it more interesting to start. Okay, so what's vanilla? And why do guys like vanilla? So hot girl doing hot girl things, what, like undressing," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and then having sex. Yeah. Having sex. The thing that I found was most successful were frames where the man was framed as passive and the woman is active, or like, for example, oh, you know, we got assigned to the same bunk at the breeding school or something, or like, oh, we're the last people on earth, right? Or like, oh no, you know, I desperately need somebody to cure me with this disease and I need semen. So it's like in any scenario where the guy just finds himself such that the woman desperately needs him for some reason and he doesn't have to do much, that is typically one of the much more successful things. That guy's like women falling into their lap," }, { "from": "human", "value": "or like, oh, we're the right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What about the power dynamic? So guys are less into power dynamics than women are and you can do power dynamics as long as it's like handed to them. Some guys, obviously, some guys are like very dominant and like prefer like having to work, but this is the minority. Like if you're trying to make 100K in a month and you're trying to appeal to the widest group of people, the most effective advertising, you're not gonna be making the most money" }, { "from": "human", "value": "by being like particularly submissive. So on the camming side, that's your, unlike escorting or just personal relationships, you're trying to, you have an audience." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You have like a theater full of people. Like with life-caming? Yeah, well, life-caming. Yeah it's like a live theater." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, well, life-caming. Yeah. Does that freak you out?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There's just like a bunch of people watching." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How do you feel right now? I don't know they're watching," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "because it's not live. Yeah that's true, it's not live. Because they're not watching. I feel like it might as well be," }, { "from": "human", "value": "like they could be watching. I feel like they're just the two of us, I don't. And sometimes I imagine there's a third person. Like God. No, not God, just, I usually imagine either a guy or girl or a couple just sitting there for some reason, like usually on the beach and usually high or on some kind of like a mushrooms, just like listening passively, just kind of looking at the sunset." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's what I imagined. Oh, that's really good. Yeah. I think that's useful. Like when I write my blog posts, sometimes I do terribly, but it's the most effective when I imagine one person that I'm writing to, to try to explain. And like having a high couple watching the sunset" }, { "from": "human", "value": "is maybe really lovely as a calibration. Yeah, I have to say, it is pretty romantic because I've gotten a chance to meet couples that listen to podcasts together. I don't know why, that seems like intentionally romantic to me because like, because you're not watching TV together. You're listening to a thing. I mean, I guess sometimes they watch it, but like you're listening to ideas together. I don't know. It seems- It's like you're going through the same kind of thought process at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really beautiful way to put it. So it's like you're melding, your thinking is following the same line. Some of our podcasts do that more than movies. I think movies give you a lot more freedom to think about stuff. I feel like your thoughts are aligned. And like, especially if the podcast is good, like if it's listening to like a Dan Carlin podcast" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "about history, that you're like on a journey together. It seems- It's like you're going through the same kind of thought process at the same time." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's an intimacy to that, anyway. But I've learned that those couples do that, you know? Hashtag relationship goes, go ahead. That's what you want with your feature life." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "With my, yeah. You should make an application. Application. An application for dating you. I mean, maybe this is more of like my strategy and less yours, but you have like a wide enough audience that might work." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Application. I, it's not. Okay, let's just go there. So you put together an application of like people to have casual sex with you, I think. And also dating. And also dating and relationship. I'd love to, so what is in that application?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because if at that-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "And also dating, yeah. You know, I'm sure there's quite a lot of people that would like to date you or to sleep with you, but finding the person, I mean, it depends on your goals. I guess relationship would be an open relationship for you. Yes. Right. Like for me, I guess it's more intensely selective because it's like a monogamous relationship and a committed one. Like, I'm swinging for the, yeah, like for like long-term. I'm not like weirdly obsessed with long-term, but it's like, I would love to have one girl for the rest of my life. But the finding that, I feel like applications will not get to that. I feel like there's some aspect of the magic of the serendipity of it, of meeting people in strange places and so on. I just personally have noticed that like fame" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "has not made that process easier. I mean, like if you could, you know, if there's two rooms and one of them, it's like a random population of hot women and the other one is a random population of hot women, but all of them definitely are monogamous and are looking for a long-term committed relationship. Like which room would you rather go into?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like if you're looking for a mate. If you're looking for a mate. Yeah, well, but see, I guess my preferences are more, this is a really strong point, but my preferences represent the majority probably. Right? Because don't most women want monogamous relationships? Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So like, it's, I'm okay with either options." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because like statistically speaking. But I feel like we can apply it to like a bunch of other things. Yeah, and this is just a problem if you have a high volume to filter through and you're like, you don't know. Like it's a good initial filter. Yeah, and like you can take it from like a thousand people to 20 people" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and then go on dates with them. But the filters so anti-romantic." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is true. This is not the romantic narrative" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that you're very prone to. Like if I feel like, how did you two meet? Well, I should pass the three filters I set up. And I mean, but that's also, but also, can you put into a survey the things that you're interested in. I mean, I definitely think about this a lot with hiring like teams, engineers, and so on. But with engineers, you're okay losing truly special engineers because you have to filter because there's thousands of applications. It feels like I worry that you would miss the thing that actually, because so much of it is chemistry, so much of it is magic." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But the thing is you're missing it anyway. Yeah, you're missing it. It's all, you can just run it, and then in addition try some of those people. But then go on the dates that you were going to go on with anyway regardless, it's just the thing it helps pull someone out of the crowd. I dated a guy from my survey. I'd ran the survey. I assigned point values, reached the questions. I went on a date with the top couple of people, and then one of them I was like, and I'm still dating him to this day. It was awesome. I would never, I never would have gone" }, { "from": "human", "value": "on a date with him without the survey. Yeah, you're missing it. It's just that. you can you if from memory or where we can look it up do you remember what kind of questions" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "were on the survey? I asked a couple different categories. I asked about like basic life stuff. So like what kind of relationships? Like monogamy versus polyamory. Like do you want kids, you know, like where do you want to live? Like basic things that you need to be compatible. And then I asked like sexualitive ability. Like various preferences. And then I had a section about like personality, like I try to ask questions that would do the most effective filtering. So like what are ways that like, I can't give give people what they need, like maybe they they want, I don't really, I'm not very outdoorsy. It was just very common, a lot of people like being outdoorsy. So I asked the question, how much do you value someone else that you're dating being outdoorsy? And if they murked, yes, I was like, okay, we probably, I should probably downgrade the results." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But what if, man, but doesn't polyamory make that really difficult? Because can't they find somebody for the outdoorsy stuff?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, they could, I mean, this isn't, but if you're going to have somebody," }, { "from": "human", "value": "it's nicer to have them be more compatible than less. But you're a little bit, in terms of sexual compatibility, you were able to, like, you're self aware enough to know what preferences you have." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like you can, like, you can.. I think so. I think that one helped a lot with the escorting." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like the escorting helped a lot with knowing my preferences. But there's out of the giant pool of different preferences, you haven't like a subset, that's clearly defined for you?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, like Dominus Admissive. Yeah, Powerdynamic stuff." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Powerdynamic stuff. Powerdynamic stuff. Okay, in the, not just sexual between relationships, too." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like, that, was that in the survey? don't like power dynamics in relationships." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I didn't ask love. I didn't ask love. Not defining them, making it clear in a survey." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Asking a question about power dynamics in a relationship. I don't think I asked about power dynamics in relationships, because I assume most people don't." }, { "from": "human", "value": "There's a lot of things that are kind of like. Most people don't. You're putting together a survey a systematic survey to understand compatibility When power dynamics inside of relationships that naturally emerge often be part of the question, or is that hard to question because it naturally emerges" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and you can't really comment. The thing is a lot of questions sort of overlap and demographic and if you're making a survey you wanna have the minimum possible questions that give the maximum possible filtering information." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. But the purpose of that survey wasn't to do a good research study." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It was to select one subject that you could take. So that's part of it is good. Like you want to most efficiently filter out because one, like you get more people taking the survey the fewer questions you have, which is good for finding a mate. Like if you have 5,000 men take the surveys" }, { "from": "human", "value": "better than 1,000 men take it. Don't you want men that would be patient enough" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and dedicated enough to fill up enough to fill up? What if you're like a high powered man who's like on his lunch break, right? So it's like, you just- Much like a billionaire is too busy just flipping through, yeah. And the guy that I dated was, he took the survey, he was waiting for the piece to come out of the oven. And so it was important that it was short. And so you want to be efficient. Is it metaphor or literally pizza coming out of the oven? He's literally waiting for pizza. And he saw the thing, it's like, I guess I'll just fill up the survey really fast and changed our lives. So romantic. For me, this is my kind of romance, I'm really into it. But you could be efficient with surveys by like making sure your questions don't overlap. So for example, if somebody is very polyamorous, they're very unlikely to be interested in like a traditional like man works and like the job in the woman stays home and raises the kids kind of relationship. Cause probably people just generally don't do that. And so if I'm asking about polyamory, it's sort of kind of already covers the thing. And so if I have a whole bunch of questions, like I can kind of like triangulate a bunch of implicit kinds of questions that I haven't directly asked about." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Right, right. So it's like- Much like a billionaire is too busy just flipping through. Yeah. And so you want to be efficient. Is it metaphor or literally pizza coming out?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So romantic. So this is why I didn't ask directly about power dynamics because like from the rest of the questions that are in my survey, like I can pretty accurately predict whether or not you're gonna be interested" }, { "from": "human", "value": "in power dynamics. But I'm afraid, yeah, like I'm trying to think as you're talking, I get it. That's really interesting that you did that. Also maybe not for the effectiveness of finding a partner but for just exploring the actual, the process of human sexuality, of like the search, this complicated optimization process we're all engaging in on the landscape of happiness that seems to be this not even a differentiable function. It's a giant nonlinear mess. Okay. But like for me, I don't think I would be able to design that survey. I would like bias it too strongly. Like I'll probably prefer women that have read Dostoyevsky or something like that. Like that would be a filter for me, right? Yeah. But like that's a horrible filter because there's a lot of like, there's a lot of amazing people that have never, they don't give a shit about reading or they don't give a shit about reading Russian literature or they don't give a shit about, but they're amazing and passionate and creative and all in some other dimension that you might completely miss but you were like, I wonder if there's any basically, you're saying compatibility like hard lines that you know statistically is just going to be an issue?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. Yeah. You mean you wait, there's a lot more. Yeah. Well, there's also like preferences. Like if you have a woman who's totally equal and she's read the thing that you like it's another woman who's also identical but like she hasn't read the thing that you like. You probably like very slightly prefer the one" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, but you don't know if the identical, yes, yes, but you can't through survey get the identical." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You don't know. Sure, but you can kind of do a whole bunch of weights. So the person that I ended up going on a date with, he did not answer correctly to a lot of the survey questions, but he didn't have to. He was just overall, overall the weights were like," }, { "from": "human", "value": "he just tended to be more in the direction. Was there a text-based fill-in survey?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sorry, paragraph? No, you had to avoid that if you're dealing" }, { "from": "human", "value": "with large amounts of data. No, why not? Because you have to fill, oh, interesting. Interesting, like I'm different. First of all, you can do keyword searches. Second of all you do you can do machine learning models that like, first of all," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "you can do like crude metrics, like the length," } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "second of all of how long they've written, right? And it could flag certain things. Yeah, it's actually pretty easy to like I've looked at like for hiring, I've looked at like thousands of applications really quickly. You can really, the human brain is really interesting, especially like if you visually highlight certain information for yourself like keywords or again with machine learning models like sentiment, you can highlight different parts that will catch your eye better than not." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "And I can go through just a huge number of applications. Are you telling me I can use, if I learn machine learning," }, { "from": "human", "value": "I can process dating survey applications better?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yes, no, like textual. Yeah, like I can like have them write things in." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like it's just like a new way of sub really good sentence? Yeah, sub really good sentence I think that would serve the really nice aspect of text input, like long form text input multiple long form text input based on an interestingly phrase question is you get to learn how to make a better survey. I think you would appreciate that. Like you start to see how they're actually interacting with these questions like I ask certain questions like just to see how people think Is it better to work smart or better to work hard to achieve that? Or is it ever okay to betray a close friend? I'll ask questions like this that don't really have a right answer, but I just want to see how they think." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Or is truth more important than loyalty? And I get their long form answer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And you get to see the reasoning process about it. Like what they, it reveals so much, not just about the person, but about the kind of questions I should be asking that have nothing to do with truth or loyalty. But like how to get a good engineer with like very specific questions." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But I think it's really useful to get text input. I have done text input, usually with beta surveys. So I usually do beta surveys before I do the real survey. What's the beta survey? Like, I do like a shorter version or it depends on what I'm doing, but like a different version of the survey that I have people take before I release, I use the information from the initial survey to inform the questions that I ask in the real survey. And I haven't actually recently, but I used to do a lot of like the text based questions to see for similar, although I don't think I relied on it quite as heavily, and if I introduced machine learning," }, { "from": "human", "value": "things would be a lot more efficient. What's the basis of that? I love that you're also doing, like you're writing scripts and stuff, like you're doing some like statistical analysis." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Are you using Python mostly? Yeah, I had to learn Python for this," }, { "from": "human", "value": "just a couple months ago. This is the best way to learn Python. And the best reason to learn machine learning" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "is to solve actual, like best reason to probably do it. I can't be motivated. I'm just not motivated to learn something unless there's an actual curiosity I have, and I have to learn it and to solve it. I was trying to avoid learning coding for so long, but eventually my dataset became too large. I couldn't work with it with anything else," }, { "from": "human", "value": "so I thought, oh, Python it is. You know what's also an interesting dataset that you're probably interested in? A little bit, it's like Twitter itself, right? I don't know if you've," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I've played with the Twitter API a lot. Can you just get the, download the, I'm just, I'm stuttering now, because the- The Twitter, you got to download Twitter. Download the Twitter, you got to download Twitter." }, { "from": "human", "value": "No, there's a lot of Twitter. Twitter, so Twitter is a social network with a bunch of people that are interacting a lot. There's like, I don't know. The number is insane, the number of interactions, but there's different ways to interact, to get data from Twitter. There's streams. You can look at, it depends on what you're interested in. You can do results for searches. you can look at individual tweets and get entire, which to me is super interesting, the entire tree of different conversations that replies, which might be very interesting for you because like they're on track. It's not, it's much harder to ask rigorous questions which you do with your polls, but you could see like how divisive certain things are." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If you look at sentiment. If you look at sentiment. Like calibrators to figure out like exactly" }, { "from": "human", "value": "what questions you should be asking. Yeah. And also highlight interesting anecdotal things when like two people freak out at each other and just argue like a thread that goes on for like a thousand messages that you might never be even aware is happening cause you're like, cause Twitter doesn't like surface that like it would be Twitter doesn't make it easy for you to like visualize what the hell is going on even with your own social network. Like if you post something that's controversial that gets a large amount of attention, you can't clearly visualize everything that's going on. Yeah. It's, it's very, it's a blurry amorphous. Like you're just kind of looking through the fog at different replies and the kind of it's, yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So to be able to. Yeah. To be able to." }, { "from": "human", "value": "They have like, like graphs of networks. They have the data for the graphs. Yeah. So you can reconstruct to yourself. Yeah. And then you have different levels of access" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in terms of how many queries you can do." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "That's really cool. And now because there's like Elon, there's a lot of sort of revolutionary stuff happening at Twitter. I think you could literally sort of push for innovation there. Like there's aggressive innovation happening. So in terms of requesting stuff for the API, you could do all that kind of stuff. I think Twitter is just a fascinating platform for the as cliches it sounds for studying, for me it's interesting what makes for a healthy conversation that term has been used but it's interesting how conversation to me fascinating how conversations break down and not, like how, like the virality of drama or conflict or disagreement, how that evolves when a large number of people are involved, when a large number of misinterpretation of statements is involved in text-based with some anonymity thrown in, like I feel like there's a lot of studies that can be done" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "there. And it's not great at it, right, as it stands, because it's necessarily short, you can" }, { "from": "human", "value": "quote-treat things out of context, et cetera. No, but we should understand that, at a large scale, you should be able to study that kind of thing. Oh yeah, what was your casual sex survey?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I actually haven't looked at it in a while. I think I just ask people about a whole bunch of fetishes, because you don't want to be obvious about yours because people are going to hijack it to try to tell you that they like what you like. Oh, sure. So you want to be obscure, so how do you design a survey, where you're testing for a thing," }, { "from": "human", "value": "But you're still obscure about the thing you're trying to ask about so you still see it as a survey" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, like an application. Yeah" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, cuz you I think he tweeted saying like I'm thinking of just like showing up to San Francisco saying is anybody open for casual sex Something like this am I? Maybe escorting. I'm not sure. Oh for exercise" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Which is similar like I kind of use escorting as the way to have casual sex now" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, so let's talk about escorting. So you wrote about escorting in your blog post escorting was good for me" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How did you get into escorting I was working at like I'd quit camming because I was burned out and I was like trying to Work at a friend's startup and it was Hard for me. I don't it's difficult for me to work on projects that are not my projects And so I was like, okay fuck it. Like I want to go back to sex work I want to make more money, but I don't want to come any more cuz I'm we're not something Well, I had a friend who was an escort. I'm like, let's try that.' So we had a call, she outlined the basics for me" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and then I put up some ads and started working. What's the basics of escorting?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "How does it work? If you want to get started escorting, so it's just in case you have a career change. I would like to. Well, you're going to want to get some nice photos, so you probably have those. I would like to." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In case you have a career change, first of all, you assumed I haven't done it before," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "how rude." }, { "from": "human", "value": "How rude, how rude. Yeah, well, you know, recreation, I would like to do it professionally, I suppose. So if I wanted to do it, if I wanted to do it, if I really wanted to step up my game, how would I do it?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, well, you got the whole tutorial." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Recreational escorting is just, okay, okay. No, meaning like selling products on Etsy" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "versus doing a startup, you know? Well, I mean, escorting is kind of also" }, { "from": "human", "value": "selling products on Etsy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But selling a lot of products on Etsy. Like high volume. You've like dabbled. Yeah. You've like dabbled. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Small handcrafted artisan dolls. It's a small handcrafted doll. Yeah, escorting. Versus mass manufacturer." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, if you want a mass manufacturer, you're escorting. I just feel like I haven't been getting, you know, I've been undervaluing my services" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and I would like to really step up. I think you could really just like grease the marketing gears and be true." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. I mean, it's just, some of this is marketing. So like how, I guess I want to know, is it similar to camming in that way? Like is it, you're basically advertising yourself and you're like, the marketing, all of the creativity that you mentioned before," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "all of that? Yeah, I found escorting to be pretty easy because escorting is not like highly competitive. For example, camming is highly competitive because like the sticker, the thing that I outlined before, you know, the amount of money that you make determines your ranking. And you can also go and see other girls. You can see what they're doing. So if a girl figures that an incredible strategy for making money, it's like two seconds before that strategy, pearl of little threats into everybody else. So it's very fast-paced and really tough. With escorting you don't get to see what other girls are doing. You can look at their websites, but you don't know what they're doing with clients at all. You can look at their rates, but you don't know what their volume is. So you don't actually know what is successful and what isn't very much. So I think there's much less evolution of marketing through this process. And so I came in with like my aggressive marketing skills for being a cam girl. I think that really helped I did very well as an escort. I just came in like made a fantastic website. You know, I knew how to do the ads, right?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "And and what was the finding people? I guess it's also like finding the right kind of customer" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The right kind of client. I got like in a lot of trouble for this recently in the sex worker sphere because I said that if You raise prices you're more likely to encounter clients that aren't going to abuse you Like it's safer. Yeah, they did not they Said that I was being classist, you know implying that poor people are more violent But to be fair if you're a guy and you want to be violent towards a woman You're probably not gonna be paying her a lot of money You're probably gonna like you're the kind of person likely who's going to haggle a lot because you don't respect her But anyway that aside it's a little pet peeve for me Yeah, I just I charged started charging 800 an hour and then pretty rapidly raised it to 1200 and then a while after that" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Raise it to 1400. Well, the interesting thing you mentioned in my extensive research You used to do 1200 to 1400 an hour and then you said that you're thinking of jumping back in at a rate of 2400 the first hour Yeah, and I think 900 each successful hour. That's interesting" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's like that's that I mean it to me. That's really interesting like the first like why it's like like Why's the first hour? Yeah a lot of the first hour. Oh, yeah, oh it's just because Just depends on how you want to incentivise like the amount of hours so you have to pay a lot for the first hour but not very much for this excessive you're more likely to buy like a Longer period of time and usually, I find that clients who buy a longer period of time are nicer to you I don't care like a great theory for why that is but there's the more likely like you did and get to know You first and I just enjoy that a lot more. I enjoy like Like no, I'm gonna have sex with" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like a date, you know? Yeah, so it incentivized the long form date dynamic versus like a knot. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. How does money change the dynamic? Just basic human dynamic of interacting for free versus for money. Like I think about that a lot because like just talking to rich people, it's like you usually get paid for your time and you're doing this for free. Like what's the difference?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there a difference really or no? Yeah, so I've actually, it depends a lot. So when I was doing it full time, it was my only source of income. It changed quite a lot because I was really incentivized to have repeat customers. So I'm like, okay, if I'm, my primary interaction with you is to like have you hire me again. I will do whatever that takes to make that happen. And so if I have to like laugh at jokes that I don't find funny or like be like more adoring of your penis than I actually genuinely feel, like that's what I'm going to express. And obviously it's to some degree like titrated, you know, like it's unpleasant to force yourself to like something that you don't. So like I would actually like not see clients again that I didn't want to, but it's just some degree there was a sort of self-suppression going on, which I think is the way it works in any sort of customer service job. Like you want the customer to leave happy. So you just make sure that you are happy the whole time and you're like, ah, really enjoying the other person. But so recently when I've like kind of dabbled in it since baking money through other means where I don't need the money, it's more like a fun side thing that I'm, like I said, it's fulfilling the role of casual sex for me. So like, I don't have to do it. This is not my primary job. I just want sort of a good excuse to like have sex with somebody and the money is like a great filter for that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And so in that case. That's interesting. So the money is, but yeah, okay, the money is basically a filter for somebody" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "who's taking this interaction seriously. Yeah, it also, so there's an interesting like psychological thing where I have difficulty having casual sex with somebody because some part of my brain, which I assume is like quite female, is doing some evaluation of status whether or not this is going to damage my reputation by having sex with them. If you found out that I went and had random sex with a homeless man, you might be like, wow, that says something about Ayla. Maybe she's trashy or she just has no standards for who she's going to fuck. Some part of me is continually anxious. I'm like, does this mean I have no standards if I decide to have casual sex with you? What are people going to think? If you introduce money, it takes away that anxiety. I don't have to worry about it because it's like, oh, of course Ayla would have sex with that person. They paid her. She's the person of the kind of mate that she can get. This is just an indication of a business transaction. This allows me to enjoy casual sex so much more when somebody pays me for it to the degree that I almost view it as a kink. I'm using it to replace casual sex and occasionally I'm like, just pay me a little bit to erase the anxiety and I'll have a fun time." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Let me get you to see dinner like that or something like that if the person pays for dinner or it's all just if any money is involved. If it's a kink, then you could just use it and you buys a coffee at a Starbucks." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's like, all right. Great. It has to be plausible. You have to trick my brain into having it actually be incentivizing for me. Two coffees? A cappuccino or something? Yeah. The homeless man bought me a coffee and then I sucked his dick. That's not cool. Two coffees? A cappuccino or something? Yeah. All right. Sorry. No shade of homeless man, by the way. I've been friends with a lot of them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm just using some sort of stereotype of right now. It has to be plausible where you could trick your mind. Interesting." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. That's different. Now, in this sort of frame, I'm accepting money but still much more expressive of my actual preferences. Before when I would start escorting full-time, I was suppressive and now I'm like, I'm doing" }, { "from": "human", "value": "this for me, so we're going to make sure that I have a good time and so I'm much more demanding. Then you're having more fun because you're not pretending, laughing at a joke or something like that. That sounds terrible. Sounds like... It's... It's also like social. I mean, I guess I would... Would I do that? When you first meet people, like strangers and so on, there's some aspect of niceties but I don't know, intimacy, real intimacy requires getting past the niceties. Laughing at somebody's joke when it's not funny feels like anti-intimacy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, but I laugh at so many jokes automatically. It's interesting because I don't mean to, I'm not trying to be fake, but if I'm in a group of people and somebody makes a joke and everybody laughs, I laugh even before I'm checking within myself. Do I genuinely enjoy this joke? Yeah. I don't know. The degree that I am just a result of social programming in all cases, that when I'm with a client back when I was doing it full-time, it doesn't feel significantly different. It just felt like a different version of myself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's interesting because I don't... Yeah, it's true. Yeah, to that degree. To that degree, you don't feel like you're going against your nature." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. Yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's very rare that I actually felt like I was going against my nature. What about the market of how much to charge? See, 2,400. How transparent is that market?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there a market?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "How much can you sell it when you're charging that much? Yeah, no. What are the competitors? If this... Oh, yeah. Are you distinctly... Because you said it's a lot of it is a bit more shrouded in mystery, it's more confidential." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you have some transparency to the market, what the competitors are and so... Oh, yeah. The survey of escorts, it's only like 130, I'm trying to remember, and the median was around like $300, I think, an hour. Oh, wow. Something like that with a very long tail at the top end. I'm trying to remember what the... I also asked where I could calculate the amount they made per month. I think it was like $6,000 or $7,000 a month. I need to double-check that one, but..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, wow. I charged $50 an hour." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You charged $50 an hour. You should raise your rates." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. I believe I'd give a really shitty hand job. All right." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But usually the rates are around like if you want a median escort in a big city, it's usually" }, { "from": "human", "value": "four to six hundred. A city. A city. I'm sorry, four to 600." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "In a big city." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But smaller cities, you charge, the rates go lower. That's so fascinating." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "What's the most you've ever seen somebody charge? I think I am. You're like..." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But at this point, it's because I'm post-work, I can just put it in a safe number. Like just the fact that you're sort of like a sexuality expert, like a researcher and so on. Like your mind is fascinating as well and you're a bit of a celebrity, does that play" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "into it? Yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Or do you feel the celebrity now?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like when you're with people? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Usually if people are interested in hanging out with me, it's because of that. But that's different. I think besides the fun part, like this is a kink as opposed to this is a job. Usually the high end is closer to $2,000 an hour." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like the very high end." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Have clients ever fallen in love with you? I think so. Yeah. I think it doesn't... It happens to me much less than most other people due to the thing that I think we were talking about before. Which is what? Where like, you know, you give off vibes, maybe subconscious vibes. But they have fallen in love but not as often. I think something about my signaling indicates that people should not fall in love with me because I don't think it happens very much. And it happens a lot with other women, but I know. I have occasionally had, the thing is it's hard for me because I try to be as vulnerable as I can in a connection with a client. And I do really like some of them. I still remember some of them very fondly and I'm like, I hope they're doing well. And some of them are really profound. One guy saw me because he found out he was dying of cancer and he was like, I don't wanna die without seeing someone. I'm like, Jesus Christ, that's such a, I don't know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm very touched by many of the people that I saw." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So there's like deep intimacy there. I know that it's brief and I know that it's kind of weird, but there's a real glimpse into somebody's soul when you get to be intimate. And I think this is especially true for men because a lot of times, men don't have a way to be really vulnerable in front of anybody. But if you're in bed with a woman that you find to be attractive," } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "you can sort of let loose a little bit more. So they can become vulnerable in general quickly?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, and I really like that. I like being as vulnerable as I can to match it. I'm not forcing myself or anything, but I would just feel into it and notice how beautiful the person was and feel grateful for being able to be in this intimate experience with them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "And that was so wonderful." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Does it ever hurt to say goodbye? No, but I think that's as unique to me because I like being alone a lot. Even with my friends who I dearly, I'm happy not seeing them. Because I don't like making facial expressions very much." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But I do miss some of my clients. Wait, sorry. What does making facial expression have to do" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "with saying goodbye? Well, if you are not with somebody in person," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you don't have to make facial expressions anymore." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh, you can just think about them. Yeah, you can just sit there totally blank face" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and then have all of the emotions that you want." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh, you're telling me." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Do you have this thing too? It's not a thing, but you're on camera. So I feel feelings, but people usually want, social interaction is such that you probably want me to show feelings on my face. Yeah, like that, good job. Yeah, there you go. So I definitely, there could be just an introvert thing where you have a vibrant inner world that you forget to show to the rest of the world. And also, I'm scared of social interaction and I just have a lot of anxiety about interacting" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "with the external world, so yeah. Yeah, like that, good job. I'm kind of surprised to hear that because when you talked about finding the light and everything and everything is fun, like I usually don't associate that" }, { "from": "human", "value": "with having not very much anxiety. Well, because I have the, we mentioned that earlier, I just appreciate the beauty in the world when I observe it, but then when I'm interacting with others, I have a very harsh, self-critical aspect to my brain that says like, you're gonna fuck this up. You're gonna fuck up this interaction. You're gonna fuck up the beauty that's there. If I'm sort of being fragile and vulnerable for a moment, one of the things I'm afraid of, I get so much love from people that listen or even like reach out, like you said through the survey, like women and so on, it says, I'm afraid that yeah, you admire me because you don't know me, but you won't admire me once you know me. So that's self-critical, but it's a silly, I mean, as you get older, you're like, yeah, okay. Like I'm able to step away and objectively look at myself as like there's no, this is, you're fine, you're good. But it's still, this is the part of the brain" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that you can't just shut off once you know me. What would fucking up in this conversation look like? Doesn't have to be rational," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but I'm curious if there's a specific thing. A lot of it is just a feeling, like an amorphous fear, a failure, what it would actually look like, maybe because we're talking about sexuality, me not being able to eloquently explain the world view I have and why I appreciate it, that would make me feel like a failure because that would make me feel like maybe you don't know what you're doing, right? Because sexuality, not sexuality, but even romantic relationships are really important to happiness, they're really important to me. And I'm not sure like the conception of love I have, romantic love is like fully made rigorous. So especially when I'm talking to you that thinks very rigorously about a lot of these topics, I'm not sure I've thought about them a lot. I feel them. I interact with the world in the space of feelings. Maybe I'm almost afraid to be very rigorous with these kinds of thoughts. And so I think the failure would be like, I would be confronted with the fact that I can't explain what makes me happy. That could be a failure. And there could be just a bunch of other failures. Another big failure is like, I think you're a really brilliant person. And a lot of folks I know, know and admire your work as well. And so like for me not to be part of highlighting" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that brilliance would be a failure, definitely, definitely. Like because another people might feel like, like notice the discrepancy or something?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, yeah, but no, no, no, that's not other people, just my personal, my personal feeling. And the other is like jokes, because like we're talking about sex, right? So for me like it's fun to just joke around, but you also have to tread carefully because like it's a weird, it's a weird surface because like, you know, even, I already feel bad about making a joke for 50 bucks for a hand job that's crappy by me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But I think, I think sometimes you just got to go for it. I went for it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It kind of flat, fell flat on his face," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "but that's the thing with the conversation. I think there's like, this fear where it's like, if you become like scientific about something, you'll figure out that your feelings are unjustified and then you'll experience this horrible thing where like, ah shit, like I'm like afraid of this, but I'm sort of being forced to, by my logical mind to like believe this thing. Which I don't think this is true at all. Like, I think like your feelings are there for a reason, like they're for a good reason. And like logic or like rigorous analysis or something to be dedicated to figuring out why it's there." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Not to like suppress it or tell it it shouldn't be there. What do you think is more important to like, to just life, to reason versus emotion?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like not life, to what makes us human, I guess. My romantic narrative answer to this," }, { "from": "human", "value": "which is like not rigorous at all is curiosity. Curiosity. Yeah. Is curiosity, that's such a middle, so curiosity is like both emotion and reason, right? Yeah. So it's like this pull, because reason is the tool you use to figure out the puzzle" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and then curiosity is the pull towards the puzzle. Yeah, yeah. I don't like world views that pit like emotion and rationality opposite each other. They feel like beautiful parts of like a cohesive whole. Like, if you're doing rationality to the extent where you're like suppressing some emotional reactions you have, then I think you're doing it wrong. You're like missing a big part of it. It should be integrated, it should be part of one unified flow. The things that you like if you wanna be in a romantic committed relationship for the rest of your life, then this is beautiful and good and the kind of logic that you're using to make sense of the world should be fitted into that correctly. I think that's really cool. Anytime you have an internal at odds thing with it, you're using some sort of force to suppress one or the other. You're not allowed to reason about this or I'm not allowed to feel about that. And that feels harsh to me. And I think curiosity is the solution. Like if you're simply just calmly curious, oh, why do I feel like that? Let's go find out, that's so cool. Right, like you need to use logic and your feelings" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to like discover the answer. Do you sometimes, cause you do this kind of technique, which is interesting. And I've mentioned it to others. You'll sometimes step away from like a third person perspective and describe the feeling you're feeling. Or like even just the situation, like you'll step out and talk about," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "wait, what is happening here? Like in the conversation itself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "In the conversation itself. In the conversation itself. First off, what is that? It was that, do you find that to be useful and interesting cause it's very interesting. It feels raw and honest. The danger of it seems like you escape the actual experience of it though. So that's the trade off. You make it intellectual, right?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is it though intellectual to do that?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I mean, maybe it is, I don't mean to. No, maybe it's wrong word. You can make it intellectual, but you can still continue the same flavor." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cause you're not fully disengaging from the conversation." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. You're just creating an extra meta layer. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's happening. Yeah. That's happening. I think exploring the emotional reaction to what's going on in the moment." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Yeah. In some way it's actually making it stronger. Like, or enriching it. Like making them more, giving them more context, giving a deeper understanding." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I think there's a way of going meta that is a flinch move like, oh, I noticed that we're doing this thing. I'm going to name it. And I think the thing that I described earlier, like when the homeless guy approached me and asked, can you go home with me? And I was like, oh, are you trying to have sex with me right now? What I was doing was like a meta move. You're stepping outside and like, OK, what is the purpose of this conversation? We explicitly identify it. And in that case, I think that is a flinch move. I'm not telling him my emotional response. I'm not being fully present. I'm sort of identifying it as a way to subvert what's going on. And I absolutely think this is a possible thing. But I usually try to be aware of that myself." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But it depends on the purpose of what's going on. That guy, cause that is actually like a chess move you did. You had a purpose for that chess move, but the flirtation is on. Like he could have like done a better move that would make you like curious. Like, huh. Yeah, that's true. Like interesting, cause you had an agenda with that, but he could have changed your mind. Like he could have with a few words, cause you just created extra layers, extra entry points." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "If he had gotten more meta. Might've been like, okay, well, no," }, { "from": "human", "value": "I am gonna sleep with you. Might've been like. Exactly. See, there is something, yeah, that's aids into the chemistry of the conversation when you do that, Matt. I really enjoy it. It's like a rare, I forget, did you not, I forget who, I've had a few people do that with me, like just in conversation. And I feel like you were involved somehow, because I've met you before, somewhere." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I don't know if we were, or you were just in, or you were just in-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "We were in a couple parties together. Maybe it was just like a bunch of people that kind of played with the same, or like a con, nothing." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The circling." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's just a practice explicitly dedicated towards that. What's circling? Circling's like these-" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That might be the thing that- Circling's like these- That might be the thing that- Yeah, I think we know we have some mutual circleurs in our networks here." }, { "from": "human", "value": "What's circling?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I don't remember what's circling. I'm gonna describe it horribly, because it's like one of those things it's difficult to describe unless you experience it, kind of like drugs. Yeah. But it's something like you sit around there's kind of guidelines to the conversation where you talk about the present moment. You're like honest about your experiences as much as you can be and if you don't wanna be honest, then you say I don't wanna be honest. And it's your like commitment to connection. So you're here to actually connect with the other person, understand them and be understood. You're not supposed to like project. So if you're like have an analysis about the other person you own it, you're like I'm experiencing you as this, and then you check is it true. Or like." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Are you supposed to be almost like converting towards the thing you're thinking, like constantly?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Are you supposed to say what you're thinking? If it feels right in the moment, you can. The thing is it's very amorphous, right? It's like almost like creating a magical sensation. And I've been with some, I've seen some very good circulars, really high-skill circle. And I feel like I'm on drugs when that happens." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's very rare to see. Does it feel honest somehow?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah, very honest. Like right now in this moment, I'm feeling like kind of like nervous energy because I'm talking to you and this is a unique situation. And like, I want you to think I'm cool. I want everybody listening to me to think I'm cool. But I'm also having some sort of delight at being able to express in this way, and like some admiration for how you like setup and built this thing that I can be a part of. And all of these things are sort of in my body right now" }, { "from": "human", "value": "as it's sort of vibrating high thing. I remember like in the party setting, cause I've had to talk to a few people." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I felt like it was going sexual very quickly. Okay, I don't know if you remember this, but the first time I met you, I didn't know who you were. I just heard, I knew I'd heard your name. Like you'd just hear your name. And I'm like, I think I've heard people discuss that. It's true. And I was in the middle of a very sexual conversation with another woman. Oh you were. Yeah it was. And you just like turned around and left very shortly afterwards, and I thought it was great." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh you were. Oh was I listening in on the conversation" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "or something like that? It was like I was talking to her and you were kind of like right there and so we introduced ourselves and then we continued on with the conversation. Oh delicious. And you were standing there and listening." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Stop. I don't think I would have left the cut. So it's funny you probably interpreted it in a different way." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I interpret it as you not wanting to listen" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to like graphic sexual stuff." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Was it super graphic? I don't know, I was asking her about, I was doing, I was interviewing her about her fetish, basically." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh yeah, I don't think I would have walked away from that. I would have been like curious, oh, interesting, because I don't often see people having a deep interview about fetishes. Like I wouldn't even be, listen, I'm like Jane Goodall here. I'm not like, I'm not afraid of sexuality or something like that, I just have certain values in terms of like monogamy and so on. But I think sexuality is really beautiful, yeah. I don't think, yeah, I can't imagine myself walking away from that conversation." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay, somebody must've like called you or something, I just don't remember exactly how it worked. I just remember thinking later on. Or maybe I thought I was intruding." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Oh, maybe." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Because if. I was kind of drunk, so. And I was probably was very drawn to it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay. And I probably was very drawn to it. I would like to actually have like footage of that conversation can actually interpret what actually happened, because it's probably, I mean, human interactions are funny like that. They can happen for all kinds of reasons." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Have you ever fallen in love with a client?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "No, I mean, like in tiny ways, like micro loves." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Have you ever fallen in love love? I mean, I don't know what it means, but probably. The thing that other people say when they say fall in love" }, { "from": "human", "value": "is probably something I've experienced. What do you think they mean? What is love? Ayla?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I know. No, no. It's a fantastic question. I think, so love is one of those words that refers to like a billion different concepts and I think we maybe should just taboo the term to have a better understanding of what we're referring to. Cause there's things like a feeling of intense attachment. There's something feeling like soulfully aligned. There's like sexual attraction. There's like excitement." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Are you talking to me and saying we should taboo the term love in this conversation? How dare you? No, uh, well, okay, romantic love." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "To make it flourish into lots of other new definitions." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, thank you. We're expanding love. It sounds like you're censoring the most important word. This is like 1984 all over again. Okay, also on the book reading list. No, okay. Listen, no, romantic love, like a deep intimacy for somebody like a deep connection with a human being that is also, I mean, yeah, with polyamory it's tricky and your relationship with sex is also tricky. So like what's the difference between a deep friendship" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "and a friendship that also has a sexual component? We're expanding love. I remember being very confused about that when I did a lot of LSD. I was like, what? The line between romantic relationships and everything else kind of got blurred. I was like, oh, I'm just like in intimacy. Some intimacies mean that you spend your life together more and have sex, but like the same basic thing is there." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like you're seeing someone for like who they are. Do you think you can be, if you're heterosexual, do you think you could be really deeply close with friends" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "with a guy and not have sexual relationships with him? I assume it's possible. Like if anything is ever possible, then probably, yeah." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Everything is possible, time travels is possible. Quantum mechanics makes every, traveling faster than the speed of light is possible. According to general relativity, everything's possible. So you're saying there's a chance I'm a dumber has taught mech" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that everything is fucking possible. Everything is fucking possible. not super likely, assuming that they are" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "attracted to each other. Yeah, and for somebody that has surveys and statistical analysis, we're interested in" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "what's the likely thing here versus what's possible in here versus what's possible." }, { "from": "human", "value": "If you say possible, it's like anything's open. Did you just avoid answering the love thing?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Okay. There's a lot to say about love." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I just need to be precise." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, okay, let's be precisely and precise and continue." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Sorry, that's my phone. Uh. It feels like a passive-aggressive suggestion that we shouldn't talk about love anymore," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "but we shall continue. No, we should absolutely talk about love. It's just the term is very confusing because some people say the word love, and the thing that they're thinking of is, oh, the butterfly, it's the sparkle thing that I get in my stomach when I think about my loved one, but I study relationships over time. I did a survey about it, and that sparkle goes away within two to four years, but people still report loving their partner after that. I'm like, okay, like when you say the word love, what the fuck are we talking about? Yeah. I just want to get all the same page." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's okay, okay, yeah. Just want to get all the same page. Okay, so what are the different... so the butterflies, boy, I'd like to push back two" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to four years on the butterflies, but okay. I mean statistically, not everybody." }, { "from": "human", "value": "All right, butterflies don't give a fuck about statistics. You ever heard of the flap of a butterfly wing causing a nuclear war? How do you describe that? Your statistics. Okay. Uh, okay, the butterflies, that's the basic infatuation, the chemistry of the initial interactions. Sure, but a deep, meaningful connection like, that feels like sexuality is a component of that, like, the kind of intimacy that's only possible when you're also sexual with another human being. On top of that you have the butterfly and on top of that you have the friendship and on top of that you have like, what is that? That's a sandwich, for me." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's the love sandwich. The love sandwich. Still love sandwich." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, I'm down to call it a love sandwich. Okay, sandwich, we just call sandwich, L-S. Okay, what role does that play in the human condition?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like- He asked me about the human condition. It's an interesting phrase. Yeah. I'm like, this is like not a phrase" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that's common in my own thinking. Sure, human condition is a good summary. And you know, what do you think? What do you feel when you, when I say- I need to ask very different kinds of questions than you." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Sure, yeah. Which is interesting. But I mean, I'm trying to like figure out what kind of brain that you have is creating this category of question. Which is why I was thinking there's something about a poetic narrative in there. Yeah. Because it's very like, like aesthetic. I think you have much more aesthetic questions than I do. Yeah, I don't even know what the word aesthetic means really. Like artistic. Artistic." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Why, I mean, I know what aesthetic means, but I also don't know what it means. It's kind of like the word love. Ah. Aesthetic perspective. Yeah, well, but part of it in conversation," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "you don't wanna ask a question that has an answer fully, always. Do you have an example of a question that has- What's the meaning of, oh, has an answer? Yeah, yeah. Like one that you say was like," }, { "from": "human", "value": "ah, that's like a bad question because it has an answer. How many sexual partners you had in the last year?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Oh my God, that's such a cr- Okay, I feel like we just like got to some sort of crux about the kinds of questions that we like to answer. Sure. Because I would love that question to ask enough people." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, right. Right, but does that really tell the story?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of what you've felt over the past year. Okay. But then I could just tell you, okay, so by when you're saying the kinds of questions that you like, the ones that don't have an answer, by not an answer, you mean like, not an answer where you can know that you're done telling it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Is that it? That you can escape having to think" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "by actually answering it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I see. Yeah. The struggle is the place where we discover something, not the destination." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah. It's working. It's working. Okay. So what is the role of the love sandwich in the human condition? Okay, that's fine. I take that question, but it's a stupid question. You don't have to." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I'm ready to do it. I'm ready to- Do you like love? Do you personally love?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Do you like love? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a part of me that feels like I have unconditional love for all things. Like when you're talking about the class being beautiful, I felt that. It feels like it rang something" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that like I have a similar resonance in me for that. If I were to circle right now, I feel like you're avoiding the love question. The love sandwich question. What's your own personal feeling towards loving another human being" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "versus having sex with another human being? Love is like one of the concepts that dissolved for me a long time ago. So I have difficulty directly answering it. But I have the experience. When you describe the love sandwich, I feel like I have had that experience. I have it currently for some people also." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like I'm dating people and I have that, but- So people who you date, you would describe sharing a love sandwich with them. Yeah. Okay. So how does, I mean, that's great to hear." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So you're not, are you afraid of love?" } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "No, not at all. So can you describe to me polyamory? What is it? What does it mean? Because there's like different terms. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You have a nice blog post about it. Yeah, I have a personal definition of it, which I readily admit is not shared by a lot of people. But to me the definition of polyamory is simply not forbidding your partner from pursuing intimacy with others. Yeah, for me- It doesn't mean that you have to pursue it. Personally, like two people could be married and only have had sex with each other for 20 years. And as long as they're like, you know what? If ever you want to go have sex with somebody else," }, { "from": "human", "value": "you're welcome to do that. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing you said is that doesn't mean they have to do it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "They just have the freedom to do it. Yeah. They just have the freedom to do it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, it's the freedom that matters to me. I mean, it's called the polyamory post. You have so many good blog posts. People should just go read your writing because it's really, really strong and often backed by data, but also just a deeply honest look at yourself and your understanding of the world. It's refreshing to be, like with a lot of stuff I disagree with, but I feel like if I disagree with it, you'll be very open to arguing it and kind of thinking through it. There's just the honesty that radiates from the whole thing. Anyway, so yeah, it would be interesting to kind of explore polyamory, like how it works. What are different versions? What does that freedom look like? What does that freedom feel like" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to be able to go see other people? Depends on you. Like, do you wanna go see other people? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. So usually for me, I tend to be pretty happy with like one or a few people and then occasionally I like some novelty. So usually I'll go, like, I host orgie sometimes, so I'll host an orgie and then I'll go have sex with people at the orgie" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and then that'll be good for the novelty for awhile. Can I ask you about orgies? Yeah. So how many people are in an orgie, what's like, a standard, we're having a Sunday picnic and it's an orgie," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "what's a like a number of people on it at an orgie? Oh, wait, I've been... I've only recently started hosting orgies, but I have been to a lot of orgies" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and I would say the median is maybe 15 people. I like how you say median versus mean, okay." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Media is 15 people, what's the gender distribution usually? Usually about even. It's like ideal if you can get more women than men in most of them. I've recently been hosting free use orgies or orgies where consent is assumed by default when you enter. And of course you can revoke it any time where go over a whole bunch of rules to make sure it's very safe, you like have wristbands. So nobody's actually doing anything they don't want to," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but in those ones, you have to have more men than women. I thought free use was like consensual, like at any time, but it's at any time within the constraints" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "of this building or something like that. Yeah, so at the orgies it's like you by entering, if you wear a wristband then you are like by default opting into consent. So people don't have to like, do a thing where they negotiate with you and like, to be like, is this okay? It's just the default is like, you just go for it. And if they want you to stop, they stay the safe word, like red, don't and then you have to stop. And we do like exercise in the beginning if people saying red to make sure" }, { "from": "human", "value": "that everybody knows exactly what the rules are. What's your favorite safe word? Red." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Red. Red. When I first started doing weird kinky shit, I was like, oh, let's make a safe word. And we picked the word foliage. I was like, that's goofy, right? And then, but then eventually came a time where I did actually, in fact, want to say the safe word and I couldn't. I was like, in agony, I was crying, like I can't make myself say this stupid word right now. I was like. Foliage. So after that, I was like, red. Doesn't matter, I don't care, that's not funny. We're just going with very simple." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Very practical. How does an orgy compare sexually to like a one-on-one sexual experience? Like what, is it same ballpark" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "or is it fundamentally different? I mean, the experience of both orgies and one-on-one sex can be like really high variety. There's a high variety. But you kind of, it's a little bit like you're having sex with someone, but you're surrounded by really realistic VR porn of other people having sex. Oh, okay, cool. And sometimes there's like three sums also, like maybe there's another person involved, but it's hard to like have a whole bunch of people on one, in one cluster. Because usually there's kind of different little clusters of people having their experience. I once was part of a 10-woman orgy. It was a total lesbian thing," }, { "from": "human", "value": "and that felt like a writhing cluster was very nice." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "There's a high variety. Oh, okay, cool. But typically you kind of separate out" }, { "from": "human", "value": "with like very small pods of people doing stuff. Okay, so back to polyamory. So what's a good, what does it take to manage? Do you have a main partner if you're being polyamorous and you're dating multiple people?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is there usually a main one for you personally? For me, personally, kind of? Yes, like right now, I kind of, too, that aren't, like I see roughly around, for me it's kind of just descriptive. Like, if I just happen to be seeing you a lot more and I then confide in you more, then like you're descriptively my primary partner. But I don't usually have rules to protect that. I'm down with rules to protect it if you're like, you're trying to build something. I'm like, if I buy a house together, I'll be like, okay, we need to, like, whatever our relationship is, we have to do the thing, we're both paying the rent for the house or the mortgage or whatever. A lot of people do have primary, so it's very common to have like prescriptive ha... Like, I'm going to get married to you and you're not allowed to like have anal sex with anybody else." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "That's her thing. What about like the transparency and the communication they have to do? You usually try to be super honest." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Extremely, yeah. Through the age of 18, I mean I've learned over time that like, even if it seems like a very small thing, you talk about the small thing, because often I would just sort of have like a small Twitch in myself, I'm like, I don't know if I like that, but I'd be like, okay, this is really minor. It's probably nothing. And I don't, if I talk about it, it's gonna make it into a thing. And I just don't wanna make it into a thing, you know? And I've come to realize that it's worth making into a thing. Because I can't predict at the time if this small feeling I have is going to grow. And then when I grow it, now it's much more difficult to deal with. So now it's any little bit of jealousy I have immediately communicated. I'm like oh, I'm the little jealous of you right now. I don't hold that in at all. I used to be kind of like... Back when I first started being Paulie I used to try to pretend that I was not a jealous person and that backfired quite a lot." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's really interesting. So you do still feel jealousy. Oh, yeah, definitely. And it's also interesting that you kind of recommend when there's a little bit of jealousy" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "to bring that to the surface. Oh yeah, definitely. Just like excessively communicate, even if it feels stupid. Like this is, I feel like a cliche, I feel like a stupid therapist training video. Like I just feel ridiculous sometimes when I'm saying the things, but it's just, I've learned over time," }, { "from": "human", "value": "it's just important to just say the things. Cause like, you know, the traditional view of jealousy is exactly like you said, if you bring it up to the surface, like it's gonna sound like you're overreacting to everything. But you're saying like, still do it. Because your, basically your brain" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "blows stuff out of proportion. Yeah. And it's good to be going through it with a partner. Like I have a partner right now who's like dating this other girl and he like really likes her and he went traveling with her and stuff. And I was like, I feel jealous about it. And I have to tell him that and that way he can be with me in it. He like holds me when I'm feeling jealous and it's like a bonding experience. But it's important for me that he's able to handle it. Like I try not to date people who really freak out when I have negative emotions. Because I wanna be able to express that I'm upset by something they're doing without it being taken as a demand that they've changed their behavior." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Right, right. She has to be able to skillfully handle it. Yeah." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "The interaction. The interaction. You have to be like, cool, all right. You're jealous. Like I'm not gonna freak out about, I'm not gonna change my behavior I'm just gonna be with you in that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "We're gonna sit in it together. Is some of that just insecurity that he should also just comfort? Like basically alleviate your insecurity, bringing it back to like a rational" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "objective of evaluation? My relationship I love. when people do not reassure me.\" I like not being comforted quite a lot, and so usually the people I date don't. I'm very gravitating. It's one of the things people do to make me fall in love with them is if I say something really terrible, and they're just like, do not give me any comfort whatsoever. That's where my heart gets captured. So I typically am in relationships where I'm like, man, I'm so jealous, and they just do not reassure me at all. And that's good, because it doesn't give me an out. I have to deal with it myself. Like maybe because it's true that the other woman is better than me. Like maybe that is an actual possible reality and I don't want to be dealing with my life in a way where I'm like pretending I'm only okay when that reality is not true. Okay. Right. Like they're still there to hear it." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Who would you like them would you like them to to say that that the other woman is better than you" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "if they if they feel that if they feel that Yeah, I mean they should say it in according to themselves like oh I prefer like I have a better time with her than I have with you than I would want to know that yeah" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and even though that might be painful to hear Yes, that which can be destroyed by the truth should be that which can be destroyed by the truth What is that that your ego or something like that? So your ego?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Just gently grows and you like the destruction of it. Yeah Truth like a fun experience like I've had like guys to be like, well, you're not as pretty as I'd like I'm just like, oh you know" }, { "from": "human", "value": "stabbed to the heart and" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "But then also they give me your number after yeah" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Man's oh, well, that's that's kind of beautiful It's beautiful. What do you think of monogamous relationships? Like philosophically? Can you maybe steal man or make the case for monogamous relationships? Can you understand the pros and cons of monogamous relationships?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I guess. Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you, if you're like, hey, you can do whatever you want, but you and I are gonna spend the rest. Like we just, you're 80 years old and like, oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together. We've never had sex with anybody else. I think that's like awesome. That's what you want. That's great. I have like a little bit more problems with people doing that while also forcing their partner not to misbehave if they want to. I feel like, oh, we only made it this far in a monogamous relationship because I forced my partner not to pursue an intimacy that she wanted to. Then I feel like a little more, like, I don't know if that's great." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "I feel like- How do you know if it's a real want for intimacy? Like checking out a attractive person while being inside a monogamous relationship. Yeah. How do you score that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Is that bad, that the person cannot pursue those feelings? Oh, it depends if they want to. like I often find people attractive if don't want to pursue. I'm also okay with people entering into agreements, like if you and I want to agree, like I'm only going to enter this because I'm gonna be so hurt if you pursue somebody else, so I'm not going to pursue anybody else, that seems fine to me, but I also extend that. Like if somebody is like, I don't want you to have any friends, I'm gonna feel really insecure if you, and like okay, like if you wanted into that agreement, like I feel the same way, like I think you should have the right to do it if this is what you want, but I also kind of feel a little weird about restricting your partner from doing things, you know." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Right, oh, but I guess if you're honest about it and you just put it on the table, I don't want you to have any friends. I want you to sit in a box. I don't want you to have any friends. yeah I think a lot of- I guess if you're like really on the but then if there's like, there's a power dynamic that like you can be quite influential in a relationship and convincing your partner and it sure sounds like you're honestly agreeing to a thing but you're not really agreeing, does the I mean part of that is the beauty of relationships right, like it's messy It can be messy." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "It's hard to know what you really want, right? I think that's mainly my complaint with monogamy. Like I'm down with like conscious monogamy, but I think so many relationships are like monogamous by default. And people, it's not actually right for them, but they just get into it because culture" }, { "from": "human", "value": "just doesn't give them another option. And they don't even ask themselves," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "the question is this right for me? Which like, I'm a weird ass person who thinks a lot of weird shit, but I didn't even think about applying where it's an option before I had heard that it existed. And it was only when I first met my first polyamorous couple and I was like, oh, that's what I am." }, { "from": "human", "value": "That's clearly the thing that I am. Yeah, it's funny, because to me, monogamy, it doesn't make sense for it to be a default. Like to me, monogamy goes against human nature. That's in some sense like romance is a fuck you to the way the world works. Really? Yeah, like it's a like Romeo and Juliet romance, like traditional description of what romance looks like versus like, sure, there's like a million variations of that, but in my head, like this partnership that's for a long time together is a kind of, you know, like, I don't know, like true romance, you know that movie? It's a really fucking good movie. I haven't seen it, no. Okay, there's just like, you're together against the world. That's the, I mean, that's what close friendship feels like. It's like ride or die, like that. I guess it doesn't, it can be, it can span across multiple, you can have multiple partners in that way. Yeah, absolutely. But I just don't see monogamy as like this, definitely not a default. I would actually like, honestly," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "would probably see polyamory as a more natural default. Yeah, I mean, I guess depends on what you mean by default. Like most of human history has been sort of a weird mix. Like you get polygamy and monogamy or the kind of the main arrangements." }, { "from": "human", "value": "But I mean, just like, sure, but it's just like human nature." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Like I, yeah, people are attracted to other people and they wanna, especially in longer term relationships. I tracked, in my relationship survey, I track the amount of cheating over time in a relationship, like how long have you been in this relationship" }, { "from": "human", "value": "and have you cheated? Yeah, that's what's the results of that." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Men cheat a lot. Women too, but men cheat about 30% more than women do. I also asked men and women to predict if they think their partner has cheated and people's predictions are about the same. So people roughly predicted that their male or female like spouse hadn't cheated about the same rate," }, { "from": "human", "value": "but men cheated much more than women." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "So who was more correct in their prediction though? So men were more correct in their prediction predicting women and women were more off. Women thought men cheated much less than they actually did. And, but both of them were off, but like the male gap was significantly more. So yeah, I mean, you're right. When you say monogamy is not default, like I think you're like really getting at something. Like human beings are just, especially in long-term relationships, it's difficult to only want one person. But to be fair, I think monogamy and commitment are very different. I think it'd be incredibly, I haven't known so many very long-term super committed poly couples that live lives that look very similar to the very romantic monogamous couples, like children, houses, like 20 years. And that works great for them." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much to like open your mind to in these kinds of conversations, these kinds of ideas. But I also like realized like some of the cake is baked. Like I have some assumptions that are hard to break through. Like what? Like it's difficult for me to imagine" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "a polyamorous relationship for me that would work." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "Like what? But I don't have enough data. I don't have a, like I have very little, but like at this point, it's like, I haven't eaten pizza in like 20 years. Cause I know I just don't, there's a bunch of stuff. I just eat low carb cause it makes me feel good. But there's so many foods I haven't explored. It's just like, well, I know what I love. So you explore every once in a while, yeah. And you kind of figure that out. But at the same time, you're humbled by like even talking to you and looking at your data. Like sexuality is a fascinating topic because it seems that we're very, like we were talking about, very afraid of this topic. Like to be really honest with ourselves about it, the whole like academic research is afraid of it, but it's so core to who we are as human beings. I got to ask you about this. I can't believe it took us long to get there, but one of your many fascinating surveys is on fetishes. You wrote a blog post about it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Probably several, cause it's like a huge day still. You explore every once in a while." }, { "from": "human", "value": "It's still in progress, yeah. So the one I'm referring to is on popularity and taboo-ness of various fetishes. So what are some interesting takeaways?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I got to pull up this graph cause it's freaking epic. Yes, this is a big graph and it has taboo-ness" }, { "from": "human", "value": "as one axis and popularity as the other. Okay, for people who are just listening on the x-axis as taboo-ness, asked to rate how taboo society viewed the sexual interest. And on the y-axis is percent of people reporting interest, log scale. Oh boy, all right. So just some examples on the low taboo-ness and high popularity, there's a correlation here. I think you said it's 0.69. Yeah. It's just not, it's just hilarious. Is it still 0.69, are you tracking that?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "I haven't looked so excited. All right, tracking that." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I haven't looked so excited this, yeah. So like the last taboo stuff is more likely to be popular and the more taboo stuff is less likely to be popular. And on the like missionary position, fingering, vagina, blow jobs, light spanking, cuddling." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Cuddling is more taboo than missionary. I think people are conceiving like if you're like, I'm really sexually roused by cuddling specifically, then you're like that's a little more weird than getting specifically roused by blow jobs." }, { "from": "human", "value": "You expect people to be roused by blow jobs. So this was like getting at like as a fetish" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "versus like an activity. As a specific as like a concrete sexual interest," }, { "from": "human", "value": "like I am specifically interested in this thing, yeah. And so those are thighs and lips, different body parts. Jaw lines, and then some of it is color based on more female preference versus male preference, All lines is more female preference. Being submissive is more female preference, light bondage, yeah, more female. There's a lot of interesting ones, there's so much. Okay, but then on the far side of that, I mean, it gets pretty dark. But even all along the way, like extreme bondage being at 50 tabunas, pegging, pain, giving pain," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "sexual frustration, I suppose, as a kink." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. And there's so many interesting ones to me, just that I haven't even considered." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, yeah. I had to do so much research into fetishes" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to compile the list. Are there some surprising options to you" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "that you're like, oh, okay, this is a fetish. Yeah, well, more confusing was what the fetishes are about, because I didn't want to overlap fetishes, so I had to kind of look into them. And I'm like, there's such interesting manifestations of core drives. You're really aroused by disgust, maybe you're very into rolling around in dirt, but you're not into rolling around with ice cream. So I'm like, okay, I have to make those with the two separate fetishes, you know?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah, and like, I'm seeing like at the far end, rodents, like different types of incest, branding, so there's like pain, and then. It's like wound fucking. Sex with animals, I guess, dogs, horses. Receiving oral sex from an animal is high tabunas, and pretty high popularity." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, it's surprisingly high popularity. I was really shocked by that one. I wasn't gonna triple check that number, because I'm like, no way this about of people" }, { "from": "human", "value": "are reporting interest. Do you know which animal? Is there?" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "No, I didn't specify. No, I didn't specify. I asked like which animals are erotic, and then I separately asked like how erotic is it" }, { "from": "human", "value": "to receive oral sex from your preferred animal. This is so fascinating. So I would, can we just talk about the methodology of this, this feels like deeply honest map of humanity" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "in a way we don't usually map humanity." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. Like, because it's so, like your fetishes" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "are so meaningful to each individual person. Yeah, that's what I love about this work. It's like nobody cares about someone's fetishes. You never get to express them, and if you have a more unusual fetish, people usually judge you. So it's like this tiny little pocket of like this shame thing, but it's so cool to me that like human brains could be oriented in such a way like wound fucking." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Like somebody finds that so erotic, and that's so cool. Yeah, and then they probably, it should be explored. Like how did that come to be? You mentioned that we like to construct narratives that somehow is grounded in childhood, but maybe it's genetic, maybe it has to do with, maybe you can actually form and unform that fetish very quickly. I don't know." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "This is one of the things that I'm researching. So in the big survey that I'm doing, I asked so many questions about childhood. All the ones that I think like, we have common theories about like, oh, are you abused? Is it yelled at by a man or a woman? Stuff like that. Like are you really sexually repressive? You know, is it gender roles where you've expected to conform? A whole bunch of stuff. And then I asked, you know, obviously about like a massive amount of fetishes. And my sample size right now is 500,000 people. 500,000 people. Yeah, it's massive. And I have stayed for all of it. And the result looks like it's not really correlated. Nothing that I asked about in childhood, nothing correlates with fetish preference later in life. It does correlate with onset. Lots of things that happen in childhood can like change like the age at which it triggers." } ]

[ { "from": "human", "value": "500,000. Yeah, it's- You have so many fascinating blog posts. You had a blog post, I think, on the age of fetish onset. Yeah. And like you really nicely organized it by age, like reproduction as a fetish, I guess pregnancy at age of 17, about 16.9," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "toys and like anal beads is 15.5. Yeah. Yeah, one of the interesting things I found, I mean, this data set is so huge, it's taking me a long time to go through it. So this is like snippets from what I remember and I was glancing through the data. So this part is not rigorous, but I seem to get the impression that if you are, if a fetish occurs for you earlier, like you've much earlier onset, you're more likely to report being extremely interested into it. So later on that means you're gonna be like less into the fetish. But if it hits earlier it's like-" }, { "from": "human", "value": "I wonder if it passes. Like is there like." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah, I didn't measure." }, { "from": "human", "value": "Yeah. I didn't measure old fetishes at all. Like no longer, right? You used to, but it's no longer there." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "That's interesting. One interesting thing that I don't understand is that non cis people seem to have more correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes. So I was saying that there's no correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes. This holds for some cis people. but trans people, especially trans men, there's a correlation. It doesn't mean they have absolutely higher rates of abuse or fetishes or anything, but I'm just saying that like for them, there does actually seem to be some sort of connection between childhood experiences and sexuality later in life. And I don't understand why this applies to one group but not the other." }, { "from": "human", "value": "I don't have a good theory for that. So usually you try, like when you see something like that, you'll try to construct theory and see if you can find, like you keep that theory in mind, like a hypothesis of why it would be and then you ask further questions that try to elaborate. So can you maybe talk about the methodology of how you got the 500,000, like what," }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "like how did this come to be? Yeah, this is, I might go into way too much detail about this, because I thought about this so much. Because I'm like, the question is, how do you get a lot of people to take a big survey? The longer the survey is, the lower the response rate. And I really wanted to do one big comprehensive survey. So I could like check a whole bunch of correlations with it, within it, because it's more annoying and it's harder to get a lot of people to retake similar surveys to each other at a time. So I'm like, okay. I need to convince a very large number of people to take a lot of these questions. And even building the questions that was really hard, because I'm like, okay, I need a comprehensive amount of fetishes, I can't ask everybody to answer for every single niche fetish. I'm like, do you like ball gags? Do you like funnel gags? Do you like wife shrew gags or whatever? I'm like, you can't do that. Nobody's gonna finish that survey. Can you define, okay. No one's gonna finish that survey. Okay, fine. I'm not gonna ask questions. What's a wife shrew?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Okay, that's quite I'm not doing the I'm trying to refer to like there's like a thing that like different types of gags" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "Yeah different So I'm like so what I need to do is I didn't ask people a question like are you in like bondage? And if you say yes, then then I'll go ask you all the bondage questions. Got it Right, but then this seems simple but then it's just exploded because I'm like, how do I categorize these fetishes? There's like if you're into splashing Which is like you like sitting in cakes you like getting in mud basically like kind of messy sensory. Like, is this a discussed thing? Is it a humiliation thing? Is it a sensory thing? Like, which category do... Anyway, so it took me like two months of just agonizing over each fetish, cause you don't want to miss a fetish. You don't wanna like have a really important thing that you accidentally put in a discussed category when it actually belongs to the humiliation category, you know?" }, { "from": "human", "value": "Ah, got it, what's that? Well, let me think about that. Cause like you're still catching it." }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "You're just miscategorizing it. Cool, right. Cause if you're into splashing the humiliation snake. So you say, yes, I'm into humiliation stuff and then I don't ask you about splashing. Then I'm missing a whole data set of people" }, { "from": "human", "value": "because I've falsely categorized their question. As you're going to miss stuff you're just picking" }, { "from": "gpt", "value": "what to what's less and less important to miss. Well, I'm trying to get people into the right questions set. because like I can't ask you all the questions I have to ask you a couple overarching questions to know what specific questions to ask you. And so those overarching questions have to be really really well calibrated so that I can accurately feed you into the right sub part of the survey. So that was extremely difficult when I'm dealing with, I think it was like 850 fetishes. So I did a couple things to spot check. I did a couple questions where I asked in the detailed in the survey, but also the beginning of the survey just to see what percentage of people I was capturing. And then I scored the survey. So if you take it, I had other people answer preliminary surveys where they gave me data about how taboo the various fetishes were. And then I used that data so that when you fill out the survey, it's extremely comprehensive and you get data about exactly how taboo your interests are and you get a score at the end. And I gave you an equivalent kinky character, which I also had people right a whole bunch of fictional characters and some historic ones, but like how kinky they were, so I matched the historic character," } ]