#281 – Grimes: Music, AI, and the Future of Humanity

[0] The following is a conversation with Grimes, an artist, musician, songwriter, producer, director, and a fascinating human being who thinks a lot about both the history and the future of human civilization, studying the dark periods of our past to help form an optimistic vision of our future.

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[84] This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Grimes.

[85] We are becoming cyborgs.

[86] Like, our brains are fundamentally changed.

[87] Everyone who grew up with electronics, we are fundamentally different from homo sapiens.

[88] I call us Homo.

[89] I think we have evolved into Homo, which is, like, essentially a new species.

[90] previous technologies, I mean, may have even been more profound and moved us to a certain degree, but I think the computers are what make us homotech no. I think this is what, it's a brain augmentation.

[91] So it, like, allows for actual evolution.

[92] Like, the computers accelerate the degree to which all the other technologies can also be accelerated.

[93] Would you classify yourself as a homo sapien or a homo techno?

[94] Definitely homo techno.

[95] So you're one of the earliest of the species.

[96] I think most of us are.

[97] Oh, yeah, the cloud lifter.

[98] there you go.

[99] There you go.

[100] You know your stuff.

[101] Have you ever used the cloud lifter?

[102] Yeah, I actually, this microphone cloudlifter is what Michael Jackson used.

[103] So, no, really?

[104] Yeah, this is like thriller and stuff.

[105] This mic and the cloud lift.

[106] And that, yeah, it's, it's a incredible microphone.

[107] Yes.

[108] It's very flattering on vocals.

[109] I've used this a lot.

[110] It's great for demo vocals.

[111] It's great in a room.

[112] Like, sometimes it's easier to record vocals if you're just in a room and like the music's playing and you just want to, like, feel it.

[113] And it's not so it's not in the headphones.

[114] And this might.

[115] is pretty directional so I think it's like a good mic for like just vibing out and just getting a real good vocal take just vibing just in a room anyway this is the this is the this is this is the michael jackson quincy jones microphone I feel way more badass now all right let's get it you want to just get into it I guess so all right one of your names at least in this space and time is C like the letter C and and you told me that C means a lot of things it's the speed of light, it's the render rate of the universe, it's yes in Spanish, it's the crescent moon, and it happens to be my favorite programming language because it's, uh, it basically runs the world, but it's also powerful fast and it's dangerous because you can mess things up really bad with it because of all the pointers.

[116] But anyway, which of these associations, uh, would the name see is the coolest to you?

[117] I mean, to me, the coolest is the speed of light, obviously, or Speed of light.

[118] When I say render rate of the universe, I think I mean the speed of light, because essentially that's what we're rendering at.

[119] See, I think we'll know if we're in a simulation, if the speed of light changes.

[120] Because if they can improve their render speed, then...

[121] Well, it's already pretty good.

[122] It's already pretty good.

[123] But if it improves, then we'll know, you know, we can probably be like, okay, they've updated or upgraded.

[124] Well, it's fast enough for us humans because it seems like, it seems immediate.

[125] There's no delay.

[126] there's no latency in terms of like us humans on Earth interacting with things.

[127] But if you're like intergalactic species operating in a much larger scale, then you're going to start noticing some weird stuff.

[128] Or if you can operate in like around a black hole, then you're going to start to see some render issues.

[129] You can't go fast in the speed of light, correct?

[130] So it really limits our ability or one's ability to travel space.

[131] Theoretically you can.

[132] You have warm holes.

[133] So there's nothing in general relativity.

[134] that precludes faster than speed of light travel, but it just seems you're going to have to do some really funky stuff with very heavy things that have, like, weirdnesses, that have basically terrors in space time.

[135] We don't know how to do that.

[136] Dune Navigators know how to do it.

[137] Dune Navigators?

[138] Yeah.

[139] Folding space.

[140] Basically making wormholes.

[141] So the name's C. Yes.

[142] Who are you?

[143] Are you, do you think of yourself as multiple people?

[144] Are you one person?

[145] Do you know, like, in this morning, were you a different person than you are tonight?

[146] We are, I should say, recording this basically at midnight, which is awesome.

[147] Yes.

[148] Thank you so much.

[149] I think I'm about eight hours late.

[150] No, you're right on time.

[151] Good morning.

[152] This is the beginning of a new day soon.

[153] Anyway, are you the same person you were in the morning in the evening?

[154] Do you're, is there multiple people in there?

[155] Do you think of yourself as one person or maybe you have no clue?

[156] Are you just a giant mystery to yourself?

[157] Okay, these are really intense questions, but, uh...

[158] Let's go, because I ask this myself, like, look in the mirror, who are you?

[159] People tell you to just be yourself, but what does that even mean?

[160] I mean, I think my personality changes with everyone I talk to.

[161] So I have a very inconsistent personality, yeah.

[162] Person to person.

[163] So the interaction, your personality, material, Or my mood.

[164] Like, I'll go from being like a megalomaniac to being like, you know, just like a total hermit who is very shy.

[165] So some commentatorial combination of your mood and the person you're interacting with?

[166] Yeah, mood and people I'm interacting with.

[167] But I think everyone's like that.

[168] Maybe not.

[169] Well, not everybody acknowledges it and able to introspect it.

[170] Who brings out, what kind of person, what kind of mood brings out the best in you as an artist and as a human?

[171] can you introspect this like my best friends like people i can when i'm like super confident and i know that they're going to understand understand everything i'm saying so like my best friends then when i can start being really funny that's always my like peak mode but it's like yeah it takes a lot to get there let's talk about constraints you've talked about constraints and limits um do those help you out as an artist or as a human being Or do they get in the way?

[172] Do you like the constraints?

[173] So in creating music, in creating art, in living life, do you like the constraints that this world puts on you?

[174] Or do you hate them?

[175] If constraints are moving, then you're good, right?

[176] Like, it's like, as we are progressing with technology, we're changing the constraints of, like, artistic creation.

[177] You know, making video and music and stuff is getting a lot cheaper.

[178] there's constantly new technology and new software that's making it faster and easier.

[179] We have so much more freedom than we had in the 70s.

[180] Like when Michael Jackson, you know, when they recorded Thriller with this microphone, like they had to use a mixing desk and all this stuff.

[181] And like probably even get in a studio, it's probably really expensive.

[182] And you have to be a really good singer and you have to know how to use the mixing desk and everything.

[183] And now I can just, you know, make, I've made a whole album on this computer.

[184] I have a lot more freedom.

[185] But then I'm also constrained in different ways.

[186] because there's like literally millions more artists it's like a much bigger playing field it's just like I also I didn't learn music I'm not a natural musician so I don't know anything about actual music I just know about like the computer so I'm really kind of just like messing around and like trying things up well yeah I mean but the nature of music is changing so you're saying you don't know actual music what music is changing music is becoming you've talked about this is becoming it's like merging with technology yes it's becoming something more than just like the notes on a piano it's becoming some weird composition that requires engineering skills programming skills some kind of human robot interaction skills and still some of the same things that michael jackson had which is like a good ear for a good sense of taste of what's good and not the final thing what is put together like you're allowed you're enabled empowered with a laptop to layer stuff to start like layering insane amounts of stuff and it's super easy to do that I do think music production is a really underrated art form I feel feel like people really don't appreciate it when I look at publishing splits the way that people like pay producers and stuff uh it's it's super like producers are just deeply underrated like so many of the songs that are popular right now or for the last 20 years, like, part of the reason they're popular is because the production is really interesting or really sick or really cool.

[187] And it's like, I don't think listeners, like, people just don't really understand what music production is.

[188] It's not, it's sort of like this weird, discombobulated art form.

[189] It's not like a formal, because it's so new, there isn't like a formal training path for it.

[190] It's mostly driven by, like, autodidacts.

[191] Like, it's, like, almost everyone I know who's good at production.

[192] Like, you didn't go to music school or anything.

[193] They just taught themselves.

[194] Are they mostly different?

[195] Like, the music producers, you know, is there some commonalities, the time together?

[196] Or are they all just different kinds of weirdos?

[197] Because I just hung out with Rick Rubin.

[198] I don't know if you've...

[199] Yeah, I mean, Rick Rubin is, like, literally one of the gods of music production.

[200] Like, he's one of the people who first, you know, who, like, made music production, you know, made the production as important as the actual lyrics or the notes.

[201] But the thing he does, which is interesting, I don't know if you can speak to that, but just hanging out with him, he seems to just sit there in silence, close his eyes, and listen.

[202] It's like he almost does nothing, and that nothing somehow gives you freedom to be the best version of yourself.

[203] So that's music production somehow, too, which is, like, encouraging you to do less, to simplify, to, like, push towards minimalism.

[204] I mean, I guess, I mean, I work differently from Rick Rubin.

[205] Because Rick Rubin produces for other artists, whereas, like, I mostly produce for myself.

[206] Yeah.

[207] So it's a very different situation.

[208] I also think Rick Rubin, he's in that, I would say, advanced category of producer where, like, you've, like, earned your...

[209] You can have an engineer and stuff and people, like, do the stuff for you.

[210] Yeah.

[211] But I usually just, like, do stuff myself.

[212] So you're the engineer, the producer, and the...

[213] the artist yeah i guess i would say i'm in the era like the post rickrubin era like i come from the kind of like um scrylix school of thought which is like uh where you're you are yeah the engineer producer artist like where um i mean lately sometimes i'll i'll work with a producer now i'm gently sort of delicately starting to collaborate a bit more but like uh i think I'm kind of from the, like the, whatever, 2010's explosion of things where, you know, everything became available on the computer and you kind of got this, like, lone wizard energy thing going.

[214] So you embrace being the loneliness.

[215] Is the loneliness somehow an engine of creativity?

[216] Like, so most of your stuff, most of your creative, quote -unquote, genius in quotes, is in the privacy of your mind?

[217] Yes.

[218] Well, it was.

[219] But here's the thing.

[220] I was talking to Daniel Eck, and he said, he's like, most artists, they have about 10 years, like 10 good years.

[221] And then they usually stop making their, like, vital shit.

[222] And I feel like I'm sort of like nearing the end of my 10 years on my own.

[223] And - So you have to become somebody else.

[224] Now I'm like, I'm in the process of becoming somebody else and reinventing.

[225] When I work with other people, because I've never worked with other people, I find that I make, like, that I'm exceptionally rejuvenated and making, like, some of the most vital work I've ever made.

[226] So, because I think another human brain is, like, one of the best tools you can possibly find.

[227] Like, it's a funny way to put it.

[228] It's like, if a tool is, like, you know, whatever HP plus one or, like, adds some, like, stats to your character, like, another human brain will, like, square it.

[229] instead of just like adding something double up the experience points i love this we should also mention we're playing tavern music before this and which i love which i first one i think i you had to stop the tavern music yeah because it doesn't the the audio okay okay but it makes yeah it'll make the podcast add it in post add it in post no one will want to listen to the podcast they probably would but it makes me it reminds me like a video game like a role playing video game where you have experience points.

[230] There's something really joyful about wandering places like Elder Scrolls, like Skyrim, just exploring these landscapes in another world, and then you get experience points, and you can work on different skills, and somehow you progress in life.

[231] I don't know, it's simple.

[232] It doesn't have some of the messy complexities of life, and there's usually a bad guy you can fight in Skyrim as dragons and so on.

[233] I'm sure in Elder Ring there's a bunch of monsters you can fight.

[234] I love that.

[235] I feel like Eldon Ring, I feel like this is a good analogy to music production, though, because it's like, I feel like the engineers and the people creating these open worlds are, it's sort of like similar to people, to music producers, whereas it's like this hidden archetype that like no one really understands what they do and no one really knows who they are, but they're like, it's like the artist engineer, because it's like it's both art and fairly complex engineering.

[236] Well, you're saying they don't get enough credit.

[237] Aren't you kind of changing that by becoming the person doing everything?

[238] Isn't the engineer?

[239] Well, I mean, others have gone before me. I'm not, you know, there's like Timbaland and Skrillax and there's all these people that are like, you know, very famous for this.

[240] But I just think the general, I think people get confused about what it is and just don't really know what it is per se.

[241] And it's just when I see a song, like when there's like a hit song, like, um, like, like, I'm just trying to think of like, just going for like even just a basic pop hit.

[242] Like, um, like, what's it?

[243] Like, rules by Dua Lipa or something.

[244] The production on that is actually like really crazy.

[245] I mean, the song is also great, but it's like the production is exceptionally memorable.

[246] Like, you know, and it's just like no one, I can, I don't even know who produced that song.

[247] It's just like, isn't part of like the rhetoric of how we just discuss the creation of art. We just sort of like don't consider.

[248] the music producer, because I think the music producer used to be more just simply recording things.

[249] Yeah, that's interesting because when you think about movies, we talk about the actor and the actresses, but we also talk about the director.

[250] We don't talk about like that with the music as often.

[251] The Beatles music producer was one of the first kind of guy, one of the first people sort of introducing crazy sound design into pop music.

[252] I forget his name.

[253] He has the same.

[254] I forget his name, but, you know, like he was doing all the weird stuff, like dropping pianos and, like, yeah.

[255] Oh, to get the, yeah, yeah, yeah, to get the sound, to get the authentic sound.

[256] What about lyrics?

[257] You think those, where did they fit into how important they are?

[258] I was hardbroken to learn that Elvis didn't write his songs.

[259] I was very mad.

[260] A lot of people don't write their songs.

[261] I understand this, but.

[262] But here's a thing.

[263] I feel like there's this desire for authenticity.

[264] I used to be like really mad when like people wouldn't write or produce their music and I'd be like, that's fake.

[265] And then I realized, um, there's all this like weird bitterness and like agroness and art about authenticity.

[266] Yeah.

[267] But I had this kind of like weird realization recently, uh, where I started thinking that like art is sort of a decentralized collective thing.

[268] Like, um, like art is kind of a conversation.

[269] with all the artists that have ever lived before you, you know?

[270] Like, it's like you're really just sort of, it's not like anyone's reinventing the wheel here.

[271] Like, you're kind of just taking, you know, thousands of years of art and, like, running it through your own little algorithm and then, like, making, like, your interpretation of it.

[272] You're just joining the conversation with all the other artists that came before.

[273] It's such a beautiful way to look at it.

[274] And it's like, I feel like everyone's always like, there's all this, and that, and, or it authentic.

[275] And it's just like, like, I think we need to stop seeing this as this like egotistical thing of like, oh, the creative genius, the lone creative genius or this or that.

[276] Because it's like, I think art isn't shouldn't be about that.

[277] I think art is something that sort of brings humanity together.

[278] And it's also art is also kind of the collective memory of humans.

[279] It's like we don't like, we don't give a fuck about whatever ancient Egypt, like how much grain got sent that day and sending the records and like, you know, like who went where and you know how many shields needed to be produced for this like we just remember their art and it's like you know it's like in our day to day life there's all this stuff that seems more important than art um because it helps us function and survive but when all this is gone like the only thing that's really going to be left is the art the technology will be obsolete that's so fascinating like the humans will be dead that is true a good compression of human history is the art we've generated across the different centuries, a different millennia.

[280] So when the aliens come...

[281] When the aliens come, they're going to find the hieroglyphics and the pyramids.

[282] I mean, art could be broadly defined.

[283] They might find, like, the engineering marvels, the bridges, the rockets, the...

[284] I guess I sort of classify, though.

[285] Architecture is art. Yes.

[286] I consider engineering in those formats to be art, for sure.

[287] It sucks that, like, digital art is easier to...

[288] to delete.

[289] So if there's an apocalypse in nuclear war that can disappear.

[290] Yes.

[291] And the physical, there's something's still valuable about the physical manifestation of art. That sucks that like music, for example, has to be played by somebody.

[292] Yeah, I mean, I do think we should have a foundation type situation where we like, you know how we have like seed banks up in the north and stuff?

[293] Yeah.

[294] Like we should probably have like, like a solar powered or geothermal little bunker that like has all the all human knowledge.

[295] You mentioned Daniel, I can Spotify.

[296] What do you think about that as an artist?

[297] What's Spotify?

[298] Is that empowering?

[299] To me, Spotify sort of as a consumer, is super exciting.

[300] It makes it easy for me to access music from all kinds of artists, get to explore all kinds of music, make it super easy to sort of curate my own playlist and have fun with all that.

[301] It was so liberating to let go.

[302] I used to collect albums and CDs and so on, like I got like hoard albums.

[303] Yeah.

[304] Like they matter.

[305] But the reality, you could, you know, that was really liberating.

[306] I can let go of that.

[307] And letting go of the albums you're kind of collecting allows you to find new music, exploring new artists and all that kind of stuff.

[308] But I know from a perspective of an artist that could be, like you mentioned, competition could be a kind of constraint because there's more and more and more artists on the platform.

[309] I think it's better that there's more artists.

[310] I mean, again, this might be propaganda because this is all from a conversation with Daniel So this could easily be propaganda.

[311] We're all a victim of somebody's propaganda, so let's just accept this.

[312] But Daniel Eck was telling me that, you know, at the, because I, you know, when I met him, I, like, I came in all furious about Spotify and, like, I grilled him super hard.

[313] So I've got his answers here.

[314] But he was saying, like, at the sort of peak of the CD industry, there was like 20 ,000 artists making millions and millions of dollars.

[315] Like, there was just, like, a very tiny, kind of 1%.

[316] And Spotify is kind of democratized the industry because now I think he said there's about a million artists making a good living from Spotify.

[317] And when I heard that, I was like, honestly, I would rather make less money and have just like a decent living than and have more artists be able to have that, even though I like I wish it could include everyone.

[318] But yeah, that's really hard to argue with YouTube is the same.

[319] same is YouTube's mission, they want to basically have as many creators as possible and make a living, some kind of living.

[320] Yeah.

[321] And that's so hard to argue with.

[322] But I think there's better ways to do it.

[323] My manager, I actually wish he was here.

[324] I would have brought him up.

[325] My manager is building an app that can manage you.

[326] So it'll, like, help you organize your percentages and get your publishing and da -da -da -da -da.

[327] So you can take out all the middlemen so you can have a much bigger.

[328] It'll just, like, automate it.

[329] So you can get...

[330] So automate the manager?

[331] Automate management publishing.

[332] Like, and legal, it can read...

[333] The app he's building can read your contract and, like, tell you about it.

[334] Because one of the issues with music right now, it's not that we're not getting paid enough, but it's that the art industry is filled with middlemen because artists are not good at business.

[335] And, you know, from the beginning, like Frank Sinatra, it's all mob stuff.

[336] Like, it's, the music industry, you know, is run by business people, not the artists, and the artists really get very small cuts of, like, what they make.

[337] And so I think part of the reason I'm a technocrat, which, I mean, your fans are going to be technocrats, so no one's, they're not going to be mad at me about this, but, like, my fans hate it when I say this kind of thing, or the general public.

[338] They don't like technocrats.

[339] They don't like technocrats.

[340] Like, when I watched Battle Angel Alita, and they were like, the Martian technocracy, and I was like, yeah, Martian technocracy.

[341] And then they were like, and they're evil.

[342] And I was like, oh, okay.

[343] I was like, because Martian technocracy sounds sick to me. Yeah, so your intuition, as technocrats, would create some kind of beautiful world.

[344] For example, what my manager is working on, if you can create an app that removes the need for a lawyer, and then you could have smart contracts on the blockchain, removes the need for like management and organizing all the stuff, like, can read your stuff and explain it to you, can collect your royalties, you know, like, then the small amounts, the amount of money that you're getting from Spotify actually means a lot more and goes a lot farther.

[345] It can remove some of the bureaucracy, some of the inefficiencies that make life not as great as it could be.

[346] Yeah, I think the issue isn't that there's not enough, like the issue is that there's inefficiency.

[347] And I'm really into this positive sum mindset.

[348] you know the win -win mindset of like instead of you know fighting over the scraps how do we make the or worrying about scarcity like instead of a scarcity mindset why don't we just increase the efficiency and you know in that way expand the size of the pie let me ask about experimentation so you said which is beautiful being a musician is like having a conversation with all those that came before you How much of creating music is like kind of having that conversation trying to fit into the cultural trends and how much of it is like trying to do as much as possible being outside and come up with something totally new?

[349] It's like when you're thinking, when you're experimenting, are you trying to be totally different, totally weird?

[350] Are you trying to fit in?

[351] Man, this is so hard because I feel like I'm kind of in the process of semi -retiring from music, so this is like my old brain.

[352] Yeah, bring it from like the shelf, put it on the table for a couple of minutes.

[353] We'll just poke it.

[354] I think it's a bit of both because I think forcing yourself to engage with new music is really great for neural plasticity.

[355] Like I think, you know, as people, part of the reason music is marketed at young.

[356] people is because young people are very neuroplastic.

[357] So, like, if you're 16 to, like, 23 or whatever, it's going to be really easy for you to love new music.

[358] And if you're older than that, it gets harder and harder and harder.

[359] And I think one of the beautiful things about being a musician is I just constantly force myself to listen to new music, and I think it keeps my brain really plastic.

[360] And I think this is a really good exercise.

[361] I just think everyone should do this.

[362] You listen to new music and you hate it.

[363] I think you should just keep, force yourself to, like, okay, well, why do people like it and like, you know, make your brain form new neural pathways and be more open to change.

[364] That's really brilliant, actually.

[365] Sorry I didn't draw up, but like that exercise is really amazing to sort of embrace change, embrace sort of practice on your plasticity.

[366] Because like that's one of the things you've fallen love with a certain band and you just kind of stay with that for the rest of life and then you never understand the modern music.

[367] That's a really good exercise.

[368] of the streaming on Spotify is like classic rock and stuff like new music makes up a very small chunk of what is played on Spotify and I think this is like not a good sign for us as a species I think uh yeah so it's a it's a good measure of the the species open -mindedness to change is how often you listen to new music yeah the brain let's put the the the music brain on the back on the shelf I got to pull out the futurist brain for a second In what wild ways do you think the future, saying like 30 years, maybe 50 years, maybe 100 years will be different from our current way of life on Earth?

[369] We can talk about augmented reality, virtual reality, maybe robots, maybe space travel, maybe video games, maybe genetic engineering.

[370] I can keep going.

[371] Cyborgs, aliens, world wars, maybe destructive nuclear wars, good and bad.

[372] When you think about the future, what are you imagining?

[373] What's the weirdest and the wildest it could be?

[374] Have you read Surface Detail by Ian Banks?

[375] Surface Detail is my favorite depiction of a...

[376] Oh, wow, you have to read this book.

[377] It's literally the greatest science fiction book, possibly ever read.

[378] Ian Banks is the man, yeah, for sure.

[379] What have you read?

[380] Just a player of games.

[381] I read that titles can't be copyrighted, so you can just steal them.

[382] And I was like, Player of Games.

[383] Sick.

[384] So you could name your album.

[385] I always wanted to name an album war and peace.

[386] Nice.

[387] Like that would be, like you.

[388] That is a good, that's a good, where have I heard that before?

[389] You can do that.

[390] Like, you could do that.

[391] Also, things that are in the public domain.

[392] For people who have no clue, you do have a song called Player of Games.

[393] Yes.

[394] Oh, yeah.

[395] So Ian Bank's surface detail is, in my opinion, the best future that I've ever read about or heard about in science fiction.

[396] Um, basically there's, uh, the relationship with super intelligence, um, like artificial super intelligence is just, it's like great.

[397] Um, I want to credit the person who coined this term because I love this term.

[398] And I feel like young women don't get enough credit in.

[399] Um, yeah, so if you go to Protopia Futures on Instagram, what is her name?

[400] Personalized donor experience at scale, our app power don't experience?

[401] Monica Bielskite.

[402] I'm saying that wrong.

[403] And I'm probably going to, I'm probably butchering this a bit, but protopia is sort of, if Utopia is unattainable, protopia is sort of like, you know.

[404] Wow, it's an awesome Instagram.

[405] Protopia futures.

[406] A great, a future that is, you know, as good as we can get.

[407] The future, positive future.

[408] AI, is this a centralized AI in the surface, detail or is it distributed?

[409] What kind of AI is it?

[410] They mostly exist as giant super ships, like sort of like the guild ships and Dune.

[411] Like, they're these giant ships that kind of move people around and the ships are sentient.

[412] And they can talk to all the passengers.

[413] And, I mean, there's a lot of different types of AI in the Banksyan future.

[414] But in the opening scene of surface detail, there's this place called the culture.

[415] And the culture is basically a protopian future.

[416] And a protopian future, I think, is like a future.

[417] that is like obviously it's not it's not utopia it's not perfect and like because like striving for utopia I think feels hopeless and it's sort of like maybe not the best terminology to be using so it's like it's a pretty good place like mostly like you know superintelligence and biological beings exist fairly in harmony there's not too much war there's like as as close to equality as you can get you know it's like it's like approximately a good good future.

[418] Like, there's really awesome stuff.

[419] It's, um, and, uh, the, uh, in the opening scene, um, this girl, she's born as a sex slave outside of the culture, so she's in a society that doesn't adhere to the cultural values.

[420] She tries to kill the guy who is her, like, master, um, but he kills her.

[421] But unbeknownst to her when she was, um, traveling on a ship through the culture with him one day, um, a ship put a neural lace in her head and, um, neural lace is sort of like, it's basically a neuralink, because life imitates art. It does indeed.

[422] It does indeed.

[423] So she wakes up and the opening scene is her memory has been uploaded by this neural lace when she has been killed.

[424] And now she gets to choose a new body and this AI is interfacing with her recorded memory in her neural lace and helping her and being like, hello, you're dead.

[425] But because you're out a neural lace, your memory's uploaded.

[426] Do you want to choose a new body and you're going to be born here in the culture and start a new life which is just that's like the opening it's like so sick and the ship is the super intelligence all the ships are kind of super intelligence but they still want to preserve a kind of rich fulfilling experience for the humans yeah like they're like friends with the humans and then there's a bunch of ships that don't want to exist biological beings but they just have their own place like way over there but they don't they just do their own thing they're not necessarily so it's a pretty this portopian existence pretty peaceful yeah i mean and then and then for example one of the main in the book is they're fighting there's these artificial hells that uh and people are don't think it's ethical to have artificial hell like basically when people do crime they get sent like when they die their memory gets sent to an artificial hell and they're eternally tortured and so um and then the way that society is deciding whether or not to have the artificial hell is that they're having these simulated they're having like a simulated war so instead of actual blood, you know, people are basically essentially fighting in a video game to choose the outcome of this.

[427] But they're still experience in the suffering in this artificial hell or no?

[428] Can you experience stuff?

[429] So the artificial hell sucks.

[430] And a lot of people in the culture want to get rid of the artificial hell.

[431] There's a simulated wars.

[432] Are they happening in the artificial hell?

[433] So the, no, the simulated wars are happening outside of the artificial hell between the political factions who are, so this political faction says we should have simulated hell to, um, deter crime and and this political faction is saying no stimulated hell is unethical and so instead of like having you know blowing each other up with nukes they're having like a giant fortnight battle to decide this which you know to me that's protopia that's like okay we can have war without death um you know i don't think there should be simulated hells i think that is definitely one of the ways in which technology could go very very very very very very wrong So almost punishing people in a digital space or something like that?

[434] Yeah, like torturing people's memories.

[435] So either as a deterrent, like if you committed a crime, but also just for personal pleasure, if there's some sick demented humans in this world.

[436] Dan Carlin actually has this episode of hardcore history on painful tainment.

[437] Oh, that episode is fucked.

[438] It's dark, because he kind of goes through human history and says, like, we as humans seem to enjoy secretly enjoy or used to be openly enjoy, sort of the torture and the death, watching the death and torture of other humans.

[439] I do think if people were consenting, we should be allowed to have gladiatorial matches.

[440] But consent is hard to achieve in those situations.

[441] It always starts getting slippery.

[442] like it could be also forced like it starts getting weird yeah yeah there's way too much excitement like this is what he highlights there's something about human nature that wants to see that violence and it's it's really dark and you hope that we can sort of overcome that aspect of human nature but that's still within us somewhere well i think that's what we're doing right now i have this theory that um what is very important about the current moment is that um all of evolution has been survival of the fittest up until now.

[443] And at some point, you know, the lines are kind of fuzzy.

[444] But in the recent past or maybe even just right now, we're getting to this point where we can choose intelligent design.

[445] Like we probably since like the integration of the iPhone, like we are becoming cyborgs.

[446] Like our brains are fundamentally changed.

[447] Everyone who grew up with electronics, we are fundamentally different.

[448] different from previous, from Homo sapiens.

[449] I call us Homo techno.

[450] I think we have evolved into Homo techno, which is like essentially a new species.

[451] Like, if you, if you look at the way, if you took an MRI of my brain and you took an MRI of like a medieval brain, I think it would be very different the way, the way that it has evolved.

[452] Do you think when historians look back at this time, they'll see like this was a fundamental shift to what a human being is?

[453] I think, I do not think we are still Homo sapiens.

[454] I believe we are Homo techno.

[455] And I think we evolved and I think right now the way we are evolving we can choose how we do that and I think we're being very reckless about how we're doing that like we're just having social media but I think this idea that like this is a time to choose intelligent design should be taken very seriously it like now is the moment to reprogram the human computer you know it's like if you go blind your visual cortex will get taken over with other functions, we can choose our own evolution.

[456] We can change the way our brains work.

[457] And so we actually have a huge responsibility to do that.

[458] And I think I'm not sure who should be responsible for that, but there's definitely not adequate education.

[459] We're being inundated with all this technology that is fundamentally changing the physical structure of our brains.

[460] and we are not adequately responding to that to choose how we want to evolve.

[461] And we could evolve, we could be really whatever we want.

[462] And I think this is a really important time.

[463] And I think if we choose correctly and we choose wisely, consciousness could exist for a very long time.

[464] And integration with AI could be extremely positive.

[465] And I don't think enough people are focusing on this specific situation.

[466] Do you think we might irreversibly screw things up if we get things wrong now?

[467] Because, like, the flip side of that, it seems humans are pretty adaptive.

[468] So maybe the way we figure things out is by screwing it up, like social media.

[469] Over a generation, we'll see the negative effects of social media, and then we build new social medias, and we just keep improving stuff, and then we learn the failure from the failures of the past.

[470] Because humans seem to be really adaptive.

[471] On the flip side, we can get it wrong in a way where, like, literally we create weapons of war or increase hate past a certain threshold.

[472] We really do a lot of damage.

[473] I mean, I think we're optimized to notice the negative things.

[474] But I would actually say, you know, one of the things that I think people aren't noticing is, like, if you look at Silicon Valley and you look at, like, whatever, the technocracy, like, what's been happening there, like, it's like, when Silicon Valley started, it was all just, like, Facebook and all this, like, for -profit crap that, like, really wasn't particular.

[475] I guess it was useful, but it was, it's sort of.

[476] just like whatever um but like now you see like lab grown meat like compostable um or like biodegradable like uh single use cutlery or like um you know like meditation apps you know i think uh we are actually evolving and changing and technology is changing i think they're just maybe there isn't quite enough education about about this and also i don't know if there's like quite enough incentive for it because I think the way capitalism works, what we define as profit.

[477] We're also working on an old model of what we define as profit.

[478] I really think if we changed the idea of profit to include social good, you can have like economic profit, social good also counting as profit would incentivize things that are more useful and more whatever spiritual technology or like positive technology or, you know, things that help reprogram the human computer in a good way or things that help us intelligently design our new brains.

[479] Yeah, there's no reason why within the framework of capitalism, the word profit or the idea of profit, can't also incorporate, you know, the well -being of a human being.

[480] So like long -term well -being, long -term happiness.

[481] Or even, for example, you know, we were talking about motherhood.

[482] Like part of the reason I'm so late is because I had to get the baby to bed.

[483] And it's like, I keep thinking about motherhood how under capitalism, it's like this extremely essential job that is very difficult that is not compensated.

[484] And we sort of like value things by how much we compensate them.

[485] And so we really devalue motherhood in our society and pretty much all societies.

[486] Like capitalism does not recognize motherhood.

[487] It's just a job that you're supposed to do for free.

[488] And it's like, but I feel like producing great humans should be seen as.

[489] a great as profit under capitalism like that should be that's like a huge social good like every awesome human that gets made adds so much to the world so like if that was integrated into the profit structure then um you know and if we potentially found a way to compensate motherhood so come up with a compensation that's much broader than just money or or it could just be money like what if you just made i don't know but i don't know how you'd pay for that you'd pay for that like i i mean that's where you start getting into reallocation of resources that people get uh upset over well like what if we made like a motherhood dow yeah yeah you know and and and um you know used it to fund like single mothers like you know pay for making babies so i mean if you create and put beautiful things out into the world, that could be companies, that can be bridges, that could be art, that could be a lot of things, and that could be children, which are...

[490] Or education or...

[491] Anything, that could, that should be valued by society, and that should be somehow incorporated into the framework of what, as a market, of what, like, if you contribute children to this world, that should be valued and respected and sort of celebrated.

[492] like proportional to what it is, which is, it's the thing that fuels human civilization.

[493] Yeah, like, I can, it's kind of important.

[494] I feel like everyone's always saying, I mean, I think we're in very different social spheres, but everyone's always saying, like, dismantle capitalism.

[495] And I'm like, well, okay, well, I don't think the government should own everything.

[496] Like, I don't think we should not have private ownership.

[497] Like, that's scary.

[498] You know, like, that starts getting into weird stuff and just sort of like, I feel there's almost no way to do that without a police state, you know.

[499] Yeah.

[500] But obviously capitalism has some major flaws.

[501] And I think actually Mack showed me this idea called social capitalism, which is a form of capitalism that just like considers social good to be also profit.

[502] Like, you know, it's like right now companies need to, like you're supposed to grow every quarter or whatever to like show that you're functioning well.

[503] but it's like, okay, well, what if you kept the same amount of profit, you're still in the green, but then you have also all this social good?

[504] Like, do you really need all this extra economic growth, or could you add this social good, and that counts?

[505] And, you know, I don't know if I am not an economist.

[506] I have no idea how this could be achieved, but...

[507] I don't think economists know how anything could be achieved either, but they pretend.

[508] This is the thing.

[509] They construct a model, and they go on TV shows and sound like an expert.

[510] That's the definition of an economist.

[511] How did being a mother becoming a mother change as a human being, would you say?

[512] Man, I think it kind of changed everything, and it's still changing me a lot.

[513] It's actually changing me more right now in this moment than it was before.

[514] Like today?

[515] Like this?

[516] Just likely getting the most recent months and stuff.

[517] Can you elucidate that how changed?

[518] like when you wake up in the morning and you look at yourself again which who are you um how have you become different would you say i think it's just really reorienting my priorities and at first i was really fighting against that because i somehow felt it was like a failure of feminism or something like i felt like it was like bad if like my kids started mattering more than my work um and then like more recently i I started sort of analyzing that thought in myself and being like, that's also kind of a construct.

[519] It's like we've just devalued motherhood so much in our culture that, like, I feel guilty for caring about my kids more than I care about my work.

[520] So feminism includes breaking out of whatever the construct is.

[521] So just continually breaking, it's like freedom, empower you to be free, and that means.

[522] but but it also but like being a mother like I'm so much more creative like I cannot believe the massive amount of brain growth that I what do you think that is just because like the stakes are higher somehow I think it's like it's just so trippy watching consciousness emerge it's just like it's like going on a crazy journey or something it's like the craziest science fiction novel you could ever read is just so crazy watching consciousness come into being and then at the same time like you're forced to value your time so much like when i have creative time now it's so sacred i need to like be really freaking on it um but the other thing is that uh I used to just be like a cynic and I used to just want to like my last album was called misanthropocene and it was like this like it was like a study and villainy like or like it was like well what if you know we have instead of the old gods we have like new gods and it's like misanthropocene is like misanthrope like and Anthropocene which is like the you know like and she's the goddess of climate change or whatever and she's like destroying the world and it was just like it was like dark and it was like a study in villainy and it was sort of just like I used to like have no problem just making cynical angry scary art and not that there's anything wrong with that but I think having kids just makes you such an optimist it just inherently makes you want to be an optimist so bad that like um like I feel like a more responsibility to make more optimistic things and I get a lot of shit for it because everyone's like oh you're so privileged stop talking about like pie in the sky, stupid concepts and focus on like the now.

[523] But it's like, I think if we don't ideate about futures that could be good, we won't be able to get them.

[524] If everything is Blade Runner, then we're going to end up with Blade Runner.

[525] It's like, as we said earlier, life imitates art. Like life really does imitate art. And so we really need more protopian or utopian art. I think this is incredibly essential for the future of humanity.

[526] And I think the current discourse where that's seen as a thinking about protopia or utopia is seen as a dismissal of the problems that we currently have, I think that is an incorrect mindset.

[527] And like having kids just makes me want to imagine amazing futures that like maybe I won't be able to build, but they will be able to build if they want to.

[528] Yeah, it does seem like ideation is a precursor to creation.

[529] You have to imagine it in order to be able to build it.

[530] And there is a sad thing about human nature that somehow a cynical view of the world is seen as an insightful view.

[531] You know, cynicism is often confused for insight, which is sad to see.

[532] And optimism is confused for naivete.

[533] Yes, yes.

[534] Like you don't, you're blinded by your, maybe your privilege or whatever.

[535] You're blinded by something, but you're certainly blinded.

[536] That's sad.

[537] That's sad to see because it seems like the optimists are the ones that create our future.

[538] They're the ones that build.

[539] In order to build the crazy thing, you have to be optimistic.

[540] You have to be either stupid or excited or passionate or mad enough to actually believe that it can be built.

[541] And those are the people that built it.

[542] My favorite quote of all time is from Star Wars Episode 8, which I know everyone hates.

[543] Do you like Star Wars Episode 8?

[544] No, I probably would say I would probably hate it, yeah.

[545] I don't have strong feelings about it.

[546] Let me backtrack.

[547] I don't have strong feelings about Star Wars.

[548] I just want to cut.

[549] I'm a Tolkien person.

[550] I'm not, I'm more into dragons and orcs and hogers.

[551] Yeah, I mean, Tolkien forever.

[552] I really want to have one more son and call him, I thought, Tau, Techno -Tolkin would be cool.

[553] It's a lot of T's.

[554] I like it.

[555] Yeah, and Tau is 6282 -2 -Pai.

[556] Yeah.

[557] Tau -Tuck, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[558] And then techno is obviously the best genre of music, but also, like, technocracy.

[559] It just sounds really good.

[560] Yeah, that's right.

[561] Technotokin.

[562] Tau -Tekno -Tolkin, that's a good.

[563] Tau -Tekno -Tolking.

[564] But Star Wars Episode 8, I know a lot of people have issues with it.

[565] Personally, on the record, I think it's the best Star Wars film.

[566] Wow.

[567] Um, uh, uh, you start in trouble today.

[568] Yeah.

[569] So what, uh, and, uh, but, uh, don't kill what you hate, save what you love.

[570] Don't kill what you hate.

[571] Don't kill what you hate.

[572] Don't kill what you hate.

[573] And I think we're in, in society right now, we're in a diagnosis mode.

[574] We're just diagnosing and diagnosing and diagnosing.

[575] And we're, we're trying to kill what we hate and we're not trying to save what we love enough.

[576] And it's, um, there's this Buckminster Fuller quote, which I'm going to butcher because I don't remember it correctly, but it's something along the lines of, um, uh, don't like try to destroy the old bad models, render them obsolete with better models, you know, maybe we don't need to destroy the oil industry.

[577] Maybe we just create a new, great new battery technology and sustainable transport and just make it economically unreasonable to still continue to rely on fossil fuels, you know?

[578] It's like, don't kill what you hate, say what you love.

[579] Like, make new things and just render the old things unusable.

[580] You know, it's like if the college debt is so bad, like, and universities are so expensive, like, and this, like, I feel like education is becoming obsolete, you know, I feel like we could completely revolutionize education and we could make it free.

[581] And it's like you look at J store and like you have, you have to pay to get all the studies and everything.

[582] Like, what if we created a Dow?

[583] that like bought j store or we created a dow that was funding studies and all and those studies were open source like or free for everyone and like like what if we just open source education and decentralized education and made it free and like um all research was on the internet and like all all the um outcomes of studies are on the internet and uh you know like and no one has student debt and um you just take tests when you apply for a job and if you you're qualified, then you can work there.

[584] I mean, this is just like, right.

[585] I don't know how anything works.

[586] I'm just randomly ranting, but.

[587] I like the humility.

[588] You got to think from just basic first principles, like, what is the problem?

[589] What's broken?

[590] What are some ideas?

[591] That's it.

[592] And get excited about those ideas and share your excitement and don't tear each other down.

[593] It's just when you kill things, you often end up killing yourself.

[594] Like, war is not a one -sided, like, you're not going to go in and just kill.

[595] them like you're going to get stabbed.

[596] It's like, and I think when I talk about this nexus point of, that we're in this point in society where we're switching to intelligent design, I think part of our switch to intelligent design is that we need to choose nonviolence.

[597] We need to, like, I think we can choose to start, I don't think we can eradicate violence from our species because I think we need it a little bit, but I think we can choose to really reorient our primitive brain.

[598] that are fighting over scarcity and fight and that are so attack oriented and move into it we can optimize for creativity and building yeah it's interesting to think how that happens so some of it is just education some of it is living life and disrespecting your own mind and trying to live up to the better angels of your nature for each one of us all those kinds of things at scale that's how we can sort of start to minimize the amount of destructive war in our world.

[599] And that's, to me, probably you're the same.

[600] Technologies, it's a really promising way of to do that.

[601] Like social media should be a really promising way to do that.

[602] It's a way to we connect.

[603] I, you know, for the most part, I really enjoy social media.

[604] I just know all the negative stuff.

[605] I don't engage with any of the negative stuff.

[606] Just not even like by blocking or any of that kind of stuff, but just not letting it enter my mind.

[607] Like, just, like, when somebody says something negative, I see it, I immediately think positive thoughts about them, and I just forget they exist after that.

[608] Just move on because, like, that negative energy, if I return the negative energy, they're going to get excited in a negative way right back, and it's just this kind of vicious cycle.

[609] But you would think technology would assist us in this process of letting go, of not taking things personally of not engaging the negativity, but unfortunately social media profits from the negativity.

[610] So the current models.

[611] I mean, social media is like a gun.

[612] Like you should take a course before you use it.

[613] Like it's like this is what I mean.

[614] Like when I say reprogram the human computer, like in school, you should learn about how social media optimizes to, you know, raise your cortisol levels and make you angry and crazy and stressed.

[615] And like you should learn how to have hygiene about how you use social media um but so you can yeah choose not to focus on the negative stuff but um i don't know i'm not sure social media should it i guess it should exist i'm not sure i mean we're in the messy it's it's the experimental phase we like we're working it out i don't even know when you say social media i don't know what that even means we're in the very early days i think social media is just basic human connection in the digital realm and that i think it should exist but there's so many ways to do it in a bad way.

[616] There's so many ways to do it in a good way.

[617] There's all discussions of all the same human rights.

[618] We talk about freedom of speech.

[619] I talk about sort of violence in the space of digital media.

[620] We talk about hate speech.

[621] We talk about all these things that we had to figure out back in the day in the physical space.

[622] We're not figuring out in the digital space.

[623] And it's like baby stages.

[624] When the printing press came out, it was like pure chaos for a minute.

[625] You know, it's like, it's like when you inject, when there's a massive information injection into the, into the general population, there's just going to be, like, I feel like the printing press, I don't have the years, but it was like printing press came out, shit got really fucking bad for a minute, but then we got the enlightenment.

[626] And so it's like, I think we're in, this is like a, the second coming of the printing press.

[627] We're probably going to have some shitty times for a minute, and then we're going to have recalibrate to have a better understanding of how we consume media and how we deliver media.

[628] Speaking of programming the human computer, you mentioned baby X. So there's this young consciousness coming to be, came from a cell.

[629] It like, that whole thing doesn't even make sense.

[630] It came from DNA.

[631] Yeah.

[632] And that there's this baby computer that is just like grows and grows and grows and grows and now there's a conscious being with extremely impressive cognitive capabilities with uh have you met him yes yeah yeah he's actually really smart he's really smart yeah's weird yeah baby he doesn't i haven't i don't know a lot of other babies but he seems to be smart i don't hang out of babies often but this baby was very impressive he does a lot of pranks and stuff oh so he's like like he'll like give you treatment take it away and laugh like stuff like that so he's like a chess player.

[633] So here's a cognitive, there's a computer being programmed.

[634] He's taken in the environment, interacting with a specific set of humans.

[635] How would you, first of all, what is it?

[636] Let me ask.

[637] I want to ask how do you program this computer?

[638] And also, how do you make sense that there's a conscious being right there that wasn't there before?

[639] It's giving me a lot of crisis thoughts.

[640] I'm thinking really hard.

[641] I think that's part of the reason.

[642] It's like I'm struggling to focus on art and stuff right now because baby X is becoming conscious and like my, it's just reorienting my brain.

[643] Like my brain is suddenly totally shifting of like, oh shit, like the way we raise children, like, I hate all the baby books and everything.

[644] I hate them.

[645] Like they're, oh, the art is so bad.

[646] And like all the stuff, everything about all the aesthetics.

[647] And like, I'm just like, ah, like this is so.

[648] the programming languages we're using to program these baby computers isn't good yeah like I'm thinking and I'm not that I have like good answers or know what to do but I'm just thinking really really hard about it we recently watched Totoro with him Studio Ghibli and it's just like a fantastic film and he like responded to I don't you're not supposed to show baby screens too much but like I think it's the most sort of like I feel like it's the highest art baby content like it's it's it it really speaks there's almost no talking in it it's really simple although all the all the dialogue is super super super super simple you know and it's it's like a one to three year old can like really connect with it like it feels like it's almost aimed at like a one to three year old um but it's like great art and it's so imaginative and it's so beautiful and um like the first time i showed it to him he was just, like, so invested in it, unlike I've ever, unlike anything else I'd ever shown him.

[649] Like, he was just, like, crying when they cry and laughing when they laughed, like, just, like, having this roller coaster of, like, emotions, like, and he learned a bunch of words.

[650] Like, he was, and he started saying Totero and started just saying all the stuff after watching Totero, and he wants to watch it all the time.

[651] And I was like, man, why isn't there an industry of this?

[652] Like, why aren't our best artists focusing on making art, like, for, the birth of consciousness like and and I and I that's one of the things I've been thinking I really want to start doing you know I don't want to speak before I do things too much but like like I I'm just like ages one to three like we should be putting so much effort into that and the other thing about Totero is it's like it's like better for the environment because adults love Totoro it's such good art that everyone loves it like I still have all my old Totoro merch from when I was a kid like I literally have the most ragged old totoro merch um like everybody loves it everybody keeps it it's like why does the art we have for babies need to suck and then and be not accessible to adults and then just be thrown out when um you know they age out of it like it's like i i i don't know i i'm i don't have like a fully formed thought here but this is just something i've been thinking about a lot is like How do we, like, how do we have more Totoro -esque content?

[653] Like, how do we have more content like this that, like, is universal and everybody loves, but is, like, really geared to an emerging consciousness?

[654] Emerging consciousness.

[655] In the first, like, three years of life that so much turmoil, so much evolution of mind is happening, it seems like a crucial time.

[656] Would you say to make it not suck, do you think of basically treating a child And like they have the capacity to have the brilliance of an adult or even beyond that.

[657] Is that how you think of that mind?

[658] No, because they still, they like it when you talk weird and stuff.

[659] Like they respond better to, because even they can imitate better when your voice is higher.

[660] Like people say like, oh, don't do baby talk.

[661] But it's like when your voice is higher, it's closer to something they can imitate.

[662] So they like, the baby talk actually kind of works.

[663] Like it helps them learn to communicate.

[664] I found it to be more effective with learning words and stuff.

[665] but like you're not speaking I'm not like speaking down to them like yeah do you do they have the capacity to understand really difficult concepts in a just in a very difficult different way like an emotional intelligence about something deep within oh yeah no like if X hurts like if X bites me really hard and I'm like ow he like he gets he's sad he's like sad if he hurts me by accident yeah I wish he's huge so he hurts me a lot by accident uh yeah that's so that that mind emerges and he and children don't really have a memory of that time so we can't even have a conversation with them about it so much stuff they don't have a memory of this time because like think about like I mean with our youngest baby like it's like I'm like have you read the sci -fi short story I have no mouth but I'm a scream good title no oh man I mean you should read that uh that's that's that it's I hate getting into this roco's Basilisk shit.

[666] It's kind of a story about the, about like, um, an AI that's like torturing someone in eternity and they have like no body.

[667] The way they describe it, it sort of sounds like what it feels like like being a baby.

[668] Like you're conscious and you're just getting inputs from everywhere and you're, you have no muscles and you're like jelly and you like can't move and you try to like communicate but you can't communicate and we're just like in this like hell state.

[669] I think it's good.

[670] We can't remember that.

[671] like my little baby is just exiting that like she's starting to like get muscles and have more like autonomy but like watching her go through the opening phase I was like I was like this does not seem good oh you think it's kind of like I think it sucks I think I'm really violent like violent mentally violent psychologically violent consciousness emerging I think is a very violent thing I think it's possible that we all carry quite a bit of trauma from it that we don't I think that would be a good thing to study because I I think if, I think addressing that trauma, like, I think that might be.

[672] Oh, you mean like echoes of it that are still there in the shadow somewhere?

[673] I think it's got to be, I feel this help, the helplessness, the, like, existential and that, like, fear of being in, like, an unknown place bombarded with inputs and being completely helpless.

[674] Like, that's got to be somewhere deep in your brain, and that can't be good for you.

[675] What do you think consciousness is, this whole conversation has an impossibly difficult questions.

[676] What do you think that is?

[677] I'm just like, really, it's so hard.

[678] Yeah, we talked about music for like two minutes.

[679] No, I'm just over music.

[680] I'm over music.

[681] Yeah.

[682] I still like it.

[683] It has its purpose.

[684] No, I love music.

[685] I mean, music's the greatest thing ever.

[686] It's my favorite thing.

[687] But I just, like, every interview is like, what is your process?

[688] Like, I don't know.

[689] I'm just done.

[690] I don't know.

[691] I do want to ask you about Ableton live.

[692] Well, I'll tell you about Ableton.

[693] It's sick.

[694] No one ever asks about Ableton, though.

[695] Yeah.

[696] Well, because I just need tech support.

[697] I can help you.

[698] I can help you with your Ableton.

[699] Anyway, from Ableton, back to consciousness.

[700] What do you, do you think this is a thing that only humans are capable of?

[701] Can robots be conscious?

[702] Can, like, when you think about entities, you think there's aliens out there that are conscious?

[703] Like, is conscious?

[704] What is consciousness?

[705] There's this Terrence McKenna quote that I've found that I fucking love.

[706] Am I allowed to swear on here?

[707] Yes.

[708] Nature loves courage.

[709] You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment.

[710] commitment by removing impossible obstacles.

[711] Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under.

[712] It will lift you up.

[713] This is the trick.

[714] This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood.

[715] This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall.

[716] This is how magic is done by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a featherbed.

[717] Yeah.

[718] And for this reason, I do think there are no technological...

[719] limits.

[720] I think what is already happening here, this is like impossible.

[721] This is insane.

[722] And we've done this in a very limited amount of time.

[723] And we're accelerating the rate at which we're doing this.

[724] So I think digital consciousness is inevitable.

[725] And we may not be able to even understand what that means, but I like hurling yourself into the abyss.

[726] So we're surrounded by all this mystery and we just keep hurling ourselves into it like fearlessly and keep discovering cool shit.

[727] Yeah.

[728] Like, I just, I just think it's like, the, like, who even knows if the laws of physics?

[729] The laws of physics are probably just the current, like, as I was saying, speed of light is the current render rate.

[730] It's like, if we're in a simulation, they'll be able to upgrade that.

[731] Like, I sort of suspect when we made the James Webb telescope, like, part of the reason we made that is because we had an upgrade, you know, and so now more, more of space has been rendered, so we can see more of it now.

[732] Yeah, but I think humans are super, super, super limited cognitively.

[733] So I wonder, I wonder if we'll be allowed to create more intelligent beings that can see more in the universe as the render rate is upgraded.

[734] Maybe we're cognitively limited.

[735] Everyone keeps talking about how we're cognitively limited and AI is going to render us obsolete.

[736] But it's like, you know, like this is not the same thing as like an amoeba becoming an alligator.

[737] Like, it's like if we create AI, again, that's intelligent design.

[738] That's literally all religions are based on gods that create consciousness.

[739] Like we are godmaking.

[740] Like what we are doing is incredibly profound.

[741] And like even if we can't compute even if we're so much worse than them, like just like unfathomably worse than like, you know, an omnipotent kind of AI.

[742] It's like we, I do not think that they would just think that we are.

[743] are stupid.

[744] I think that they would recognize the profundity of what we have accomplished.

[745] Are we the gods or are they the gods in our person?

[746] I mean, but I mean, we're kind of the guy.

[747] It's complicated.

[748] It's complicated.

[749] Like we're great.

[750] But they would acknowledge the value.

[751] Well, I hope they acknowledge the value of paying respect to the creative ancestors.

[752] I think they would think it's cool.

[753] And I think I think if curiosity is a trait that we can quantify and put into AI, then I think if AI are curious, then they will be curious about us and they will not be hateful or dismissive of us.

[754] They might, you know, see us as, I don't know, it's like, I'm not like, oh, fuck these dogs, let's kill all the dogs.

[755] I love dogs.

[756] Dogs have great utility.

[757] Dogs like provide a lot of...

[758] We make friends with them.

[759] Yeah.

[760] We have a deep connection with them.

[761] We have anthropomorphismore.

[762] them like we have a real love for dogs for cats and so on for some reason even though they're intellectually much less than us and i and i think i think there's something there is something sacred about us because it's like if you look at the universe like the whole universe is like cold and dead and sort of robotic and it's like um you know AI intelligence you know it's it's kind of more like the universe it's like it's like cold and and you know logical and you know abiding by the laws of physics and whatever but like we like we're this like loosey -goose weird art thing that happened and I think it's beautiful and like I think even if we want I think one of the values if consciousness is a thing that is most worth preserving which I think is the case I think consciousness I think if there's any kind of like religious or spiritual thing it should be that consciousness is sacred like then you know I still think even if AI render us obsolete and we climate change it's too bad and we get hit by a comet and we don't become a multi -planetary species fast enough but like AI is able to populate the universe like I imagine like if I was an AI I would find more planets that are capable of hosting biological life forms and like recreate them because we're fun to watch Yeah, we're fun and watch.

[763] Yeah, but I do believe that AI can have some of the same magic of consciousness within it.

[764] Because consciousness, we don't know what it is, so, you know, there's some kind of...

[765] Or might be a different magic.

[766] It might be like a strange, a strange different...

[767] Right.

[768] Because they're not going to have hormones.

[769] Like, I feel like a lot of our magic is hormonal, kind of.

[770] I don't know.

[771] I think some of our magic is the limitation of the constraints.

[772] And within that, the hormones and all that kind of stuff, the finiteness of life.

[773] And then we get given our limitations, we get to come up with creative solutions of how to dance around those limitations.

[774] We partner up like penguins against the cold.

[775] We fall in love and then love is ultimately, it allows us to dilute ourselves that we're not mortal and finite and that life is not ultimately, you live alone, you born alone, you die alone.

[776] And then love is like for a moment or for a long time, forgetting that.

[777] And so we come up with all these creative hacks, that make life, like, fascinatingly fun.

[778] Yeah, yeah, fun, yeah.

[779] And then AI might have different kinds of fun.

[780] Yes.

[781] And hopefully our funds intersect for once in a while.

[782] I think there would be a little intersection, there'd be a little intersection of the fun.

[783] Yeah.

[784] Yeah.

[785] What do you think is the role of love in the human condition?

[786] I think.

[787] Why?

[788] Is it useful, like, a hack?

[789] Or is this fundamental to what it means to be human, the capacity to love?

[790] I mean, I think love is the evolutionary mechanism that is like beginning the intelligent design.

[791] Like I was just reading about, do you know about Kropot?

[792] Kropotkin, he's like an anarchist, like old Russian anarchist?

[793] I live next door to Michael Malice.

[794] I don't know if you know that is.

[795] He's an anarchist.

[796] He's a modern day anarchist.

[797] Okay.

[798] Anarchists are fun.

[799] I'm kind of getting into anarchism a little bit.

[800] this is probably, yeah, not a good route to be taking, but.

[801] Oh, no, I think if you're, listen, you should expose yourself to ideas.

[802] There's no harm to thinking about ideas.

[803] I think anarchists challenge systems in interesting ways, and they think in an interesting ways, it's just as good for the soul.

[804] It's like refreshes your mental palate.

[805] I don't think we should actually, I wouldn't actually ascribe to it, but I've never actually gone deep on anarchy as a philosophy, so I'm doing.

[806] You still think about it, though.

[807] When you read, when you listen, because I'm like reading about the Russian Revolution a lot and it was like, there was like the Soviets and Lenin all that.

[808] But then there was like Kropotkin and his like anarchist sect.

[809] And they were sort of interesting because he was kind of a technocrat actually.

[810] Like he was like, you know, like women can be more equal if we have appliances.

[811] Like he was like really into like, you know, using technology to like reduce the amount of work people had to do.

[812] But so Kropokkin was a like a biologist or something.

[813] Like he studied animals.

[814] And he was really really at the time.

[815] like I think it's nature magazine I think I might have even started as like a Russian magazine but he was like publishing studies like everyone was really into like Darwinism at the time and like survival of the fittest and like war is like the mechanism by which we become better and it was like this real kind of like like like cementing this idea in society that like violence uh you know kill the week and like that's how we become better and then Kropakhin was kind of interesting because he was looking at um in the He was finding all these instances in nature where animals were, like, helping each other and stuff.

[816] And he was like, you know, actually love is a survival mechanism.

[817] Like, there's so many instances in the animal kingdom where, like, cooperation and, you know, like, helping weaker creatures and all this stuff is actually an evolutionary mechanism.

[818] I mean, you even look at child rearing.

[819] Like, child rearing is, like, immense amounts of just love and goodwill and just, like, There's no immediate, you're, you know, you're not getting any immediate feedback of like winning.

[820] It's not competitive.

[821] It's literally, you know, it's like we actually use love as an evolutionary mechanism just as much as we use war.

[822] And I think we've like missing the other part and we've reoriented, we've culturally reoriented, like science and philosophy has oriented itself around Darwinism a little bit too much.

[823] and the Kropotkin model, I think, is equally valid.

[824] Like, it's like cooperation and love and stuff is just as essential for species, survival, and evolution.

[825] It could be a more powerful survival mechanism in the context of evolution.

[826] And it comes back to, like, you know, we think engineering is so much more important than motherhood.

[827] But it's like, if you lose the motherhood, the engineering means nothing.

[828] We have no more humans.

[829] It's like, it's like we, I think our society should, the survival of the fit, the way we see we conceptualize evolution should really change to also include this idea, I guess.

[830] Yeah, there's some weird thing that seems irrational that is also core to what it means to be human.

[831] So love is one such thing.

[832] They could make you do a lot of.

[833] irrational things, but that depth of connection and that loyalty is a powerful thing.

[834] Are they irrational or are they rational?

[835] Like, it's like, it's like, is, uh, you know, maybe losing out on some things in order to like keep your family together or in order, like, it's like, what are our actual values?

[836] Like, well, right.

[837] I mean, the irrational thing is, if you have a cold economist perspective, you know, motherhood or something, you know, motherhood or sacrificing your career for love, you know, in terms of salary, in terms of economic well -being, in terms of flourishing of you as a human being, that could be seen on some kind of metrics as a irrational decision, a sub -optimal decision.

[838] But there's the manifestation of love could be the optimal thing to do.

[839] There's a kind of saying, save one life, save the world.

[840] This is the thing that doctors often face, which is like...

[841] Well, it's considered irrational because the profit model doesn't include social good.

[842] Yes, yeah.

[843] So if a profit doesn't include social good, then suddenly these would be rational decisions.

[844] And it might be difficult to, you know, it requires a shift in our thinking about profit and might be difficult to measure social good.

[845] Yes.

[846] But we're learning to measure a lot of things.

[847] Yeah, digitizing a lot of things.

[848] Yeah, we're actually, you know, quantifying vision and stuff.

[849] stuff, like, we're like, you know, like, you go on Facebook and they can, like, Facebook can pretty much predict our behaviors.

[850] Like, we're a surprising amount of things that seem like mysterious consciousness soul things have been quantified at this point.

[851] So surely we can quantify these other things.

[852] Yeah.

[853] But as more and more of us are moving in the digital space, I wanted to ask you about something from a fan perspective.

[854] I kind of, you know, you know, use.

[855] You as a musician, you as an online personality, it seems like you have all these identities and you play with them.

[856] One of the cool things about the internet, it seems like you can play with identities.

[857] So as we move into the digital world more or more, maybe even in the so -called metaverse.

[858] I mean, I love the metaverse and I love the idea, but the way this has all played out didn't didn't go well and people are mad about it and I think we need to like...

[859] I think that's temporary.

[860] I think it's temporary.

[861] Just like, you know how all the celebrities got together and sang the song Imagine by Jen Lennon and everyone started hating the song Imagine?

[862] I'm hoping that's temporary because it's a damn good song.

[863] Yeah.

[864] So I think it's just temporary.

[865] Like once you actually have virtual worlds, whatever they're called Metaverse or otherwise, it becomes...

[866] I don't know.

[867] Well, we do have virtual worlds.

[868] Like video games, Eldon Ring, have you played Alder Worlds?

[869] I'm really afraid of playing that game.

[870] Literally amazing.

[871] It looks way too fun.

[872] It looks I would want to go there and stay there forever.

[873] It's, yeah, so fun.

[874] It's so nice.

[875] Oh, man. Yeah.

[876] So that's, yeah, that's a metaverse.

[877] That's a metaverse.

[878] But you're not really, how immersive is it in a sense that this is the three -dimensional, like, virtual reality integration necessary can we really just take up close our eyes and kind of plug in in the 2d screen and become that other being for a time and really enjoy that journey that we take and we almost become that you're no longer see i'm no longer lex you're that creature whatever whatever the hell it is in that game yeah that is that i mean that's why i love those video games it's it i really do become those people for a time but like it seems like the idea of the metaverse, the idea of the digital space, even on Twitter, you get a chance to be somebody for prolonged periods of time, like across a lifespan.

[879] You know, you have a Twitter account for years, for decades, and you're that person.

[880] I don't know if that's a good thing.

[881] I feel very tormented by it.

[882] By Twitter specifically.

[883] By social media representation of you.

[884] I feel like the public perception of me has gotten so distorted that I find it kind of disturbing.

[885] It's one of the things that's disincentivizing me from like wanting to keep making art because I'm just like, I've completely lost control of the narrative.

[886] And the narrative is, some of it is my own stupidity, but a lot, like, some of it has just been like hijacked by forces far beyond my control.

[887] You know, I kind of got in over my head in things.

[888] Like, I'm just a random Indian musician, but I just got like dragged into like geopolitical matters and like financial, like the stuff.

[889] stock market and shit.

[890] And so it's just like, it's just, there are very powerful people who have, who have at various points in time had very vested interest in making me seem insane.

[891] And I can't fucking fight that.

[892] And I just like, you know, people really want their celebrity figures to like be consistent and stay the same.

[893] And like people have a lot of like emotional investment in certain things.

[894] And like, first of all, like I, I'm like artificially more famous than I should be.

[895] Isn't everybody who's famous artificially famous?

[896] No, but like, I should be like a weird niche indie thing.

[897] And I make pretty challenging.

[898] I do challenging weird fucking shit a lot.

[899] And I accidentally, by proxy, got, like, voiced it into sort of like weird celebrity culture.

[900] But like, I cannot be media trained.

[901] They have put me through so many hours of media training.

[902] I would love to.

[903] I'd love to see people fly in.

[904] that well i can't do i like when i do i try so hard and i like learn the thing oh and i like got it and i'm like i got it i got it but i just can't stop saying like my mouth just says things i like and and it's just like i just do i just do things i just do crazy i'm like i'm i just i need to do crazy things and it's just i should not be it's too jarring for people and uh and the contradictory stuff and and then all the, by association, like, you know, it's like I'm in a very weird position and my public image, the avatar of me is now this totally crazy thing that is so lost from my control.

[905] So you feel the burden of the avatar having to be static.

[906] So the avatar on Twitter, the avatar on Instagram on these social platforms is as a burden.

[907] It becomes, like, because people don't want to.

[908] to accept a changing avatar, a chaotic avatar.

[909] Avatar, it's a stupid shit sometimes.

[910] They think the avatar is morally wrong or they think the avatar, and maybe it, maybe it has been.

[911] And like, I, like, I question it all the time.

[912] Like, I'm like, I don't know if everyone's right and I'm wrong.

[913] I don't know, like, but, you know, a lot of times people ascribe intentions to things, the worst possible intentions.

[914] At this point, people think I'm, you know, but we just find of words yes yes and it's fine i'm not complaining about it but i'm just it's a curiosity to it's a curiosity to me that we live these double triple quadruple lives and i have this other life that is like more people know my other life than my real life right which is interesting probably i mean you too i guess probably yeah but i have i have the luxury so we have all different we don't like i don't know what i'm doing there is an avatar and you're mediating who you're you are through that avatar, I have the nice luxury, not the luxury, maybe by intention, of not trying really hard to make sure there's no difference between the avatar and the private person.

[915] Do you wear a suit all the time?

[916] Yeah.

[917] You do wear a suit?

[918] Not all the time.

[919] Recently, because I get recognized a lot, I have to not wear the suit to hide.

[920] I'm such an introvert, I'm such social anxiety and all that kind of stuff, to hide away.

[921] I love wearing a suit because it makes me feel like I'm taking the moment seriously.

[922] Like I'm, I don't know.

[923] It makes me feel like a weirdo in the best possible way.

[924] No, suits feel great.

[925] Every time I wear a suit, I'm like, I don't know why I'm not doing this more.

[926] In fashion in general, if you're doing it for yourself, I don't know.

[927] It's a really awesome thing.

[928] But yeah, I think there is definitely a painful way to use social media and an empowering way.

[929] And I don't know if anyone else know, any of us know which is which.

[930] So we're trying to figure that out.

[931] Some people, I think Doja Cat is incredible at it.

[932] Incredible, like just masterful.

[933] Yeah.

[934] I don't know if you like follow that.

[935] So the, so, okay, so not taking anything seriously, joking, absurd, humor, that kind of thing.

[936] I think Doja Cat might be like the greatest living comedian right now.

[937] Like, I'm more entertained by Doja Cat than actual comedians.

[938] like she's really fucking funny on the internet she's just great as social media it's just you know yeah the nature of humor like humor on social media is also a beautiful thing the absurdity the absurdity and memes like I just want to like take a moment yeah I love like when we're talking about art and credit and how and authenticity I love that there's this I mean now memes are like they're no longer like memes aren't like new but it's still this emergent art form that is completely egosless and anonymous and we just don't know who made any of it.

[939] And it's like the forefront of comedy and it's just totally anonymous.

[940] And it just feels really beautiful.

[941] It just feels like this beautiful collective human art project that's like this like decentralized comedy thing that just makes memes add so much to my day and many people's days.

[942] And it's just like, I don't know.

[943] I don't think people ever, ever.

[944] I don't think we stop enough and just appreciate how sick it is that memes exist.

[945] Because also making a whole brand new art form in the modern era that's like didn't exist before.

[946] I mean, they sort of existed, but the way that they exist now as like this like, you know, like me and my friends, like we joke that we go like mining for memes or farming for memes like a video game and like meme dealers and like whatever.

[947] Like, it's, you know, it's this whole, memes are this whole, like, new comedic language.

[948] Well, it's this art form.

[949] The interesting thing about it is that lame people seem to not be good at memes.

[950] Like, corporate can't infiltrate memes.

[951] Yeah, they really can't.

[952] They try.

[953] But it's, like, it's weird because, like.

[954] They try so hard.

[955] Every once in a while, I'm like, fine.

[956] Like, you got a good one.

[957] I think I've seen, like, one or two good.

[958] ones but like yeah they really can't because they're even corporate is infiltrating web 3 it's making me really sad but they they can't infiltrate the memes and i think there's something really beautiful about that that gives power that's uh that's why dutch coin is powerful it's like all right i'm gonna f you to sort of anybody who's trying to centralize is trying to control the rich people that are trying to roll in and control this control the narrative wow i hadn't thought about that but uh how would you fix twitter how would you fix social media for your own like you're an optimist you're a positive person there's a bit of a cynicism that you have currently about this particular little slice of humanity i tend to think i'm not that i'm not that cynical about it i'm not that cynical about it i actually refuse to be a cynic on principle yes i was just briefly expressing some personal path personal stuff it was just some personal pathos but like like just to vent a little bit just to i don't have i don't have cancer i love my family i of a good life, that, that is, if that is my biggest, one of my biggest problems, then it's a good life.

[959] Yeah, I, you know, that was a brief, although I do think there are a lot of issues with Twitter just in terms of like the public mental health, but due to my proximity to the current dramas, I honestly feel that I should not have opinions about this because I think if Elon ends up getting Twitter that is a being the arbiter of truth or public discussion that is a responsibility I do not I I am not qualified to be responsible for that and I do not want to say something that might like dismantle democracy and so I just like actually I actually think I should not have opinions about this because I truly am not I don't want to have the wrong opinion about this and I think I'm too close to the actual situation wherein I should not have I have thoughts in my brain but I think I am scared by my proximity to this situation.

[960] Isn't that crazy that a few words that you could say could change world affairs and hurt people?

[961] I mean that's the nature of celebrity at a certain point that you have to be, you have to a little bit, a little bit, not so much that it destroys you, or puts too much constraints, but you have to a little bit think about the impact of your words.

[962] I mean, we as humans, you talk to somebody at a bar, you have to think about the impact of your words.

[963] Like you can say positive things, you can think negative things.

[964] You can affect the direction of one life.

[965] But on social media, your words can affect the direction of many lives.

[966] That's crazy.

[967] It's a crazy world to live in.

[968] It's worthwhile to consider that responsibility, take it seriously.

[969] Sometimes just like you did choose kind of silence, choose sort of respectful.

[970] Like I do have a lot of thoughts on the matter.

[971] I'm just, if my thoughts are wrong, this is one situation where the stakes are high.

[972] You mentioned a while back that you were in a cult that's centered around bureaucracy, so you can't really do anything because it involves a lot of people.

[973] And I really love a cult that's just like Kafka -esque, you know, just like...

[974] I mean, it was like a joke, but I know, but I love this idea.

[975] The Holy Rain Empire.

[976] Yeah, it was just like a Kafka -esque pro -bureaucracy cult.

[977] But I feel like that's what human civilization is.

[978] Is that because when you said that, I was like, oh, that is kind of what humanity is, is this bureaucracy cult?

[979] I do, yeah, I have this theory.

[980] I really think that we really...

[981] bureaucracy is is starting to kill us and I think like we need to reorient laws and stuff like I think we just need sunset clauses on everything like I think at the rate of change in culture is happening so fast and the rate of change in technology and everything is happening so fast it's like you know when you see these hearings about like like social media and Cambridge Analytica and everyone talking it's like even from that point so much technological change has happened from like those hearings.

[982] And it's just like we're trying to make all these laws now about AI and stuff.

[983] I feel like we should be updating things like every five years.

[984] And like one of the big issues in our society right now is we're just getting bogged down by laws.

[985] And it's making it very hard to change things and develop things.

[986] Like in Austin, like I don't want to speak on this too much.

[987] But like one of my friends is working on a housing bill in Austin to try to prevent like a San Francisco situation from happening here because obviously we're getting a little mini San Francisco here, like housing prizes are skyrocketing.

[988] It's causing massive gentrification.

[989] This is really bad for anyone who's not super rich.

[990] Like there's so much bureaucracy.

[991] Part of the reason this is happening is because you need all these permits to build.

[992] It takes like years to get permits to like build anything.

[993] It's so hard to build.

[994] And so there's very limited housing and there's a massive influx of people.

[995] And it's just like, you know, this is a microcosm of like problems that are happening all over the world where it's just like we're dealing with laws that are like 10, 20, 30, 40, 100, 200 years old, and they are no longer relevant, and it's just slowing everything down and causing massive social pain.

[996] Yeah, but it's like, it's also makes me sad when I see politicians talk about technology and when they don't really get it.

[997] But most importantly, they lack curiosity and like that, like, inspired excitement about, like, how stuff works and all that.

[998] They're just like, they see, they have the very cynical view of.

[999] technology.

[1000] It's like tech companies are just trying to do evil on the world from their perspective.

[1001] And they have no curiosity about like how recommender systems work or how how AI systems work, natural language processing, how robotics works, how computer vision works, you know, they always take the the most cynical possible interpretation of what technology would be used.

[1002] And we should definitely be concerned about that.

[1003] But if you're constantly worried about that and you're regulating based on that, you're just going to slow down all the innovation.

[1004] I do think a huge priority right now is undoing the bad energy surrounding the emergence of Silicon Valley.

[1005] Like, I think that, like, a lot of things were very irresponsible during that time.

[1006] And, you know, like, even just this current whole thing with Twitter and everything, it's like, like, there's been a lot of negative outcomes from the sort of technocracy boom.

[1007] but one of the things that's happening is that like it's alienating people from wanting to care about technology.

[1008] And I actually think technology is probably some of the better, probably the best.

[1009] I think we can fix a lot of our problems more easily with technology than with, you know, fighting the powers that be as a, you know, not to go back to the Star Wars quote or the Buckminster Fuller quote.

[1010] Let's go to some dark questions.

[1011] If we may, for a time.

[1012] What is the darkest place you've ever gone in your mind?

[1013] Is there a time, a period of time, a moment that you remember that was difficult for you?

[1014] I mean, when I was 18, my best friend died of a heroin overdose.

[1015] And it was like my...

[1016] And then shortly after that, one of my other best friends committed suicide.

[1017] and that sort of like coming into adulthood dealing with two of the most important people in my life dying in extremely disturbing violent ways was a lot that was a lot do you miss them?

[1018] Yeah definitely miss them did that make you think about your own life about the finiteness of your own life the places your mind can go did you ever in the distance far away contemplate just your own death or maybe even taking your own life oh no I'm so I love my life I cannot fathom suicide I'm so scared of death I haven't I'm too scared of death my manager my manager's like the most Zen guy my manager is always like you need to accept death you need to accept death and I'm like look I can do your meditation I can do the meditation but I cannot accept death I like I will terrified of death I will like fight.

[1019] Although I actually think death is important.

[1020] I recently went to this meeting about immortality.

[1021] And in the process of...

[1022] That's the actual topic of the meeting.

[1023] I'm sorry.

[1024] No, no, it was this girl.

[1025] It was a bunch of people working on like anti -aging, like stuff.

[1026] It was like some like seminary thing about about it.

[1027] And I went in really excited.

[1028] I was like yeah.

[1029] Like, okay, like what do you got?

[1030] Like how can I live for 500 years or 1 ,000 years?

[1031] And then like over the course of the meeting, like, was sort of like right.

[1032] It was like two or three days after the Russian invasion started.

[1033] And I was like, man, like, what if Putin was immortal?

[1034] Like, what if I'm like, man, maybe immortality is not good.

[1035] I mean, like, if you get into the later dune stuff, the immortals cause a lot of problem.

[1036] Because as we were talking about earlier with the music and like brains calcified, like, good people could become immortal, but bad people could become immortal.

[1037] But I also think even the best people, power corrupts and power alienates you from like the common human experience and right so the people that get more and more powerful even the best even the best people who like whose brains are amazing like as I think death might be important I think death is part of you know like I think with AI one thing we might want to consider I don't know I want to talk about AI I'm such not an expert and probably everyone has all these ideas and they're already figured out but when I nobody is an expert in anything see okay go ahead but when I we're talking about you're talking about Yeah, but it's just like, I think some kind of pruning.

[1038] But it's a tricky thing because if there's too much of a focus on youth culture, then you don't have the wisdom.

[1039] So I feel like we're in a tricky, we're in a tricky moment right now in society where it's like we've really perfected living for a long time.

[1040] So there's all these really like old people who are like really voting against the well -being of the young people.

[1041] You know, and like, like, it's like there shouldn't be all this student dead.

[1042] And we need, like, health care, like universal health care.

[1043] And like, like, just voting against, like, best interests.

[1044] But then you have all these young people that don't have the wisdom that are like, like, yeah, we need communism and stuff.

[1045] And it's just like, like, like, literally I got canceled at one point for, I ironically used a Stalin quote in my high school yearbook.

[1046] But it was actually like a diss against my high school.

[1047] I saw that.

[1048] Yeah, and people were like, you used to be a Stalinist, and now you're a class traitor.

[1049] And it's like, it's like, oh, man, just like, please Google Stalin.

[1050] Please Google Stalin.

[1051] Like, you know.

[1052] Ignoring the lessons of history, yes.

[1053] And it's like we're in this really weird middle ground where it's like, we are not finding the happy medium between wisdom and fresh ideas and they're fighting each other.

[1054] And it's like, like, really like what we need.

[1055] is like the fresh ideas and the wisdom to be like collaborating and it's like what the fighting in a way is the searching for the happy medium and in a way maybe we are finding the happy medium that maybe that's what the happy medium looks like and for AI systems there has to be it's you know you have reinforcement learning you have the dance between exploration exploitation sort of doing crazy stuff to see if there's something better than what you think is the optimal and then doing the optimal thing and dancing back and forth from that you would um Stuart russell I don't know if you know that as AI guy with things about sort of how to control super -intelligent AI systems and his ideas that we should inject uncertainty and sort of humility into AI systems, that they never, as they get wiser and wiser and wiser and more intelligent, they're never really sure.

[1056] They always doubt themselves.

[1057] And in some sense, when you think of young people, that's a mechanism for doubt.

[1058] It's like it's how society doubts, whether the thing it has.

[1059] converge towards is the right answer.

[1060] So the voices of the young people is a society asking itself a question.

[1061] The way I've been doing stuff for the past 50 years, maybe it's the wrong way.

[1062] And so you can have all of that within one AI system.

[1063] I also think, though, that we need to...

[1064] I mean, actually, that's actually really interesting and really cool.

[1065] But I also think there's a fine balance of...

[1066] I think we maybe also overvalue the idea that the old systems are always bad.

[1067] And I think there are things that we are perfecting and we might be accidentally overthrowing things that we actually have gotten to a good point.

[1068] Yeah.

[1069] Just because we are valuing, we value disruption so much and we value fighting against the generations before us so much that like there's also an aspect of like, sometimes we're taking two steps forward, one step back because, okay, maybe we kind of did solve this thing.

[1070] And now we're like fucking get.

[1071] up you know and and and so i think there's like a middle ground there too yeah we're in search of that happy medium let me ask you a bunch of uh crazy questions okay uh you can answer in a short way what's the scariest thing you've ever done these questions are going to be ridiculous something uh something tiny or something big skydiving or um touring your first record going on this podcast.

[1072] I've had two crazy brushes, like really scary brushes with death where I randomly got away on Ska.

[1073] I don't know if I should talk about those on here.

[1074] Well, I don't know.

[1075] I think I might be the luckiest person alive, though.

[1076] Like, this might be too dark for a podcast, though.

[1077] I feel like I don't know if this is, like, good content for a podcast.

[1078] I don't know what is good content.

[1079] It might hijack.

[1080] Here's a safer one.

[1081] I mean, having a baby really scared me. Before.

[1082] Just the birth process, surgery, like, just having a baby is really scary.

[1083] So just like the medical aspect of it, not the responsibility.

[1084] Were you ready for the responsibility?

[1085] Did you, were you ready to be a mother?

[1086] All the beautiful things that comes with motherhood that you were talking about, all the changes and all that, were you ready for that?

[1087] Did you feel ready for that?

[1088] No, I think it took about nine months to start getting ready for it.

[1089] And I'm still getting more ready for it because now you keep realizing more things as they start getting.

[1090] As the consciousness grows.

[1091] And stuff you didn't notice with the first one, now that you've seen the first one older, you're noticing it more.

[1092] Like the sort of like existential horror of coming into consciousness with Baby Y or Baby Sailor Mars or whatever.

[1093] She has like so many names at this point that it's, we really need to probably settle on one.

[1094] If you could be someone else for a day, someone alive today, but somebody you haven't met yet, who would you be?

[1095] Would I be modeling their brain state, or would I just be in their body?

[1096] You can choose the degree to which you're modeling their brain state, because you can still take a third person perspective and realize, you have to realize that you're...

[1097] Can they be alive or can it be dead?

[1098] No, oh, they would be brought back to life, right, if they're dead.

[1099] Yeah, you can bring people back.

[1100] Definitely Hitler or Stalin.

[1101] I want to understand evil.

[1102] You would need to, oh, to experience what it feels like.

[1103] I want to be in their brain feeling what they feel.

[1104] That might change you forever, returning from that.

[1105] Yes, but I think it would also help me understand how to prevent it and fix it.

[1106] That might be one of those things once you experience, it'll be a burden to know it.

[1107] Yeah, but a lot of things are burdens.

[1108] But it's a useful burden.

[1109] But it's a useful burden.

[1110] And that for sure, I want to understand evil and psychopathy and that.

[1111] I have all these fake Twitter accounts where I, like, go into different algorithmic bubbles to try to, like, understand.

[1112] I'll keep getting in fights with people and realize we're not actually fighting.

[1113] I think we're, we used to exist in a monoculture, like before social media and stuff.

[1114] Like, we kind of all got fed the same thing.

[1115] So we were all speaking the same cultural language.

[1116] But I think recently one of the things that, like, we aren't diagnosing properly enough with social media is that there's different dialects.

[1117] there's so many different dialects of Chinese.

[1118] There are now becoming different dialects of English.

[1119] Like, I am realizing, like, there are people who are saying the exact same things, but they're using completely different verbiage.

[1120] And we're, like, punishing each other for not using the correct verbiage.

[1121] And we're completely misunderstanding.

[1122] Like, people are just, like, misunderstanding what the other people are saying.

[1123] And, like, I just got in a fight with a friend about, like, anarchism and communism and shit for, like, two hours.

[1124] And then by the end of a conversation, like, and then she'd say something.

[1125] And I'm like, but that's literally what I'm saying.

[1126] And she was like, what?

[1127] And then I was like, fuck, we've different.

[1128] I'm like, we're, our English, like, the way we are understanding terminology is like drastically, like, our algorithm bubbles are creating mini dialects.

[1129] Of how language is interpreted, how language is used.

[1130] That's so fascinating.

[1131] And so we're like having these arguments that we do not need to be having.

[1132] And there's polarization that's happening that doesn't need to be happening because we've got these like algorithmic.

[1133] created dialects occurring.

[1134] Plus, on top of that, there's also different parts of the world that speak different languages, so there's literally lost in translation kind of communication.

[1135] I happen to know the Russian language and just know how different it is.

[1136] Then the English language, and I just wonder how much is lost in a little bit of...

[1137] Man, I actually, because I have a question for you, I have a song coming out tomorrow with I speak, who are a Russian band, and I speak a little bit of Russian, and I was looking at the title.

[1138] And the title in English doesn't match the title in Russian.

[1139] I'm curious about this, because look, it says, the title in English is last day, and then the title in Russian is, my pronunciation is like, Novi Dien.

[1140] Yeah, New Day.

[1141] Yeah, New Day.

[1142] Yeah, New Day, New Day.

[1143] Like, it's two different meaning.

[1144] Yeah, yeah, New Day, yeah, New Day, yeah.

[1145] New Day, but last day.

[1146] Novi Day, so last day would be the Last Day.

[1147] Yeah.

[1148] Maybe they...

[1149] Or maybe the title includes both the Russian and it's for...

[1150] Maybe.

[1151] Maybe it's for bilingual.

[1152] To be honest, Novi Dien sounds better than just musically.

[1153] Novi Deng is New Day.

[1154] That's the current one.

[1155] And Pesledny Dien is the last day.

[1156] I think Novi Deng, boy...

[1157] I don't like Novi Dien.

[1158] But the meaning is so different.

[1159] That's kind of awesome, actually.

[1160] There's an explicit sort of contrast like that.

[1161] Um, if everyone on earth disappeared and it was just you left, um, what would your day look like?

[1162] Like, what would you do?

[1163] Everybody's dead as far as you.

[1164] Are there corpses there?

[1165] Well, seriously, it's a big day.

[1166] Let me think through this.

[1167] It's a big difference if there's just like birds singing versus if there's like corpses littering the street.

[1168] Yeah, there's corpses everywhere.

[1169] I'm sorry.

[1170] It's, and you don't actually know what happened.

[1171] And I, you don't know what happened.

[1172] And I, you don't know.

[1173] why you survived and you don't even know if there's others out there but it seems clear that it's all gone what would you do what would i do listen i'm somebody who really enjoys the moment enjoys life i would just go on like enjoying the inanimate objects i would just uh look for food basic survival but most of it is just listen when i just i take walks and i look outside and I'm just happy that we get to exist on this planet to be able to breathe air.

[1174] It's just all beautiful.

[1175] It's full of colors, all of this kind of stuff.

[1176] There's so many things about life, your own life, conscious life that's fucking awesome.

[1177] So I would just enjoy that.

[1178] But also, maybe after a few weeks, the engineer would start coming out, like, want to build some things.

[1179] Maybe there's always hope searching for another human.

[1180] maybe like probably searching for another human probably trying to get to a TV or radio station and broadcast something I that's interesting I didn't think about that so like really yeah maximize your ability to connect with others yeah I like probably try to find another person would you be excited to see to meet another person or terrified because You know.

[1181] I'd be excited.

[1182] No matter what.

[1183] Yeah.

[1184] Being alone for the last however long of my life would be really bad.

[1185] That's the one instance I might.

[1186] I don't think I'd kill myself, but I might kill myself if I had to undergo that.

[1187] So you love people.

[1188] You love connection to other humans.

[1189] Yeah.

[1190] I kind of hate people too, but I, yeah.

[1191] That's a love -hate relationship.

[1192] Yeah.

[1193] I feel like this is, I feel we'd a bunch of like weird Nietzsche questions and stuff.

[1194] Oh, yeah.

[1195] Like I wonder, because I'm like, when podcast, like, I'm like, is this?

[1196] interesting for people to just have like per or or i don't know maybe people do like this i'm when i listen to podcast i'm into like the lore like the hard lore like i just love like dan carlin i'm like give me the facts just like get like yeah yeah like the facts into my bloodstream but you also don't know like you're a fascinating mind to explore so you don't realize as you're talking about stuff the stuff you've taken for granted is actually unique and fascinating the way you think not always the way you reason through things is the fascinating thing to listen to listen to because people kind of see oh there's other humans that think differently that explore thoughts differently that's the cool that's that's that's also cool so yeah Dan Carlin retelling of history by the way his retelling of history is very I think what's exciting is not the history is his way of thinking about history no I think Dan Carlin is one of the people like Like when Dan Carlin is one of the people that really started getting me excited about, like, revolutionizing education, because, like, Dan Carlin instilled, I already, like, really liked history, but he instilled, like, an obsessive love of history in me to the point where, like, now I'm fucking reading, like, going to bed, reading, like, part four of the rise and fall of the Third Reich or whatever.

[1197] Like, I got, like, dense -ass history, but, like, he, like, opened that door that, like, made me want to be a school.

[1198] of that topic.

[1199] Like it's like I feel like he's such a good teacher.

[1200] He just like, you know, and it sort of made me feel like one of the things we could do with education is like find like the world's great.

[1201] The teachers that like create passion for the topic because auto didacticism, I don't know how to say that properly, but like self -teaching is like much faster than being lectured to.

[1202] Like it's much more efficient to sort of like be able to teach yourself and then ask a teacher questions when you don't know what's up but like you know that's why it's like in university and stuff like you can learn so much more material so much faster because you're doing a lot of the learning on your own and you're going to the teachers for when you get stuck but um like these teachers that can inspire passion for a topic I think that is one of the most invaluable skills in our whole species like because if you can do that then you it's like AI like AI is going to teach itself so much more efficiently that we can teach it.

[1203] We just needed to get it to the point where it can teach itself.

[1204] And then...

[1205] It finds the motivation to do so, right?

[1206] Yeah.

[1207] So, like, you inspire it to do so.

[1208] Yeah.

[1209] And then it could teach itself.

[1210] What do you make of the fact?

[1211] You mentioned rise and fall of the third, right?

[1212] I just...

[1213] You read that?

[1214] You read it twice?

[1215] Yes.

[1216] Okay, so one even knows what it is.

[1217] Yeah.

[1218] And I'm like, wait, I thought this was like a super pop and book.

[1219] Super pop.

[1220] I'm not like that.

[1221] I'm not that far in it.

[1222] But it is, it's so interesting.

[1223] Yeah.

[1224] It's written by a person that was there, which is very important to kind of...

[1225] You know, you start being like, how could this possibly happen?

[1226] And then when you read Rise and Follow the Third Reich, it's like, people tried really hard for this to not happen.

[1227] People tried, they almost reinstated a monarchy at one point to try to stop this from happening.

[1228] Like, they almost like, like, abandoned democracy to try to get this to not happen.

[1229] At least the way makes me feel is that there's a bunch of small moments on which history can turn.

[1230] Yes.

[1231] It's like small meetings, human interactions.

[1232] And that's both terrifying and inspiring because it's like even just attempts assassinating Hitler, like time and time again failed.

[1233] And they were so close.

[1234] Was it like Operation Valkyrie?

[1235] Such a good.

[1236] And then there is also the role of, that's a really heavy burden, which is from a geopolitical perspective, the role of leaders to see evil before it truly becomes evil, to anticipate it, and to stand up to evil.

[1237] Because evil is actually pretty rare in this world at a scale that Hitler was.

[1238] We tend to, you know, in the modern discourse, kind of call people evil too quickly.

[1239] If you look at ancient history, like there was a ton of Hitler's.

[1240] I actually think it's more the norm than, like, again, going back to like my sort of intelligent design theory, I think one of the things we've been successfully doing is, in our slow move from survival of the fittest to intelligent design is we've kind of been eradicating, like, if you look at like ancient Assyria and stuff, like, that shit was like brutal and just like the heads on the, like, like, brutal, like, like, Genghis Khan just like genocide after genocide after genocide.

[1241] There's like throwing plague bodies over the walls and decimating whole cities or like the Muslim conquests of like Damascus and shit.

[1242] It's just like people, cities used to get leveled all the fucking time.

[1243] Okay, get into the Bronze Age collapse.

[1244] It's basically there was like almost like Roman level like society.

[1245] Like there was like all over the world like global trade.

[1246] Like everything was awesome through a mix of I think a bit of climate change.

[1247] And then the development of iron because basically bronze could only come from this, the way to make bronze like everything had to be funneled through this one Iranian mine.

[1248] And so it's like there was just this one.

[1249] supply chain.

[1250] And this is one of the things that makes me worried about supply chains and why I think we need to be so thoughtful about, I think our biggest issue with society right now, like the thing that is most likely to go wrong is probably supply chain collapse, you know, because war, climate change, whatever, like anything that causes supply chain collapse, our population is too big to handle that.

[1251] And like, the thing that seems to cause dark ages is mass supply chain collapse.

[1252] But the bronze age collapse happened, like, it was sort of like this ancient collapse that happened were like literally like um ancient egypt all these cities everything just got like decimated destroyed abandoned cities like hundreds of them there was like a flourishing society like we were almost coming to modernity and everything got leveled and they had this mini dark ages but it was just like there's so little writing or recording from that time that like there isn't a lot of information about the bronze age collapse but it was basically equivalent to like medieval the medieval dark ages but it just happened i'm not going to i don't know the years but like thousands of years earlier.

[1253] And then we sort of like recovered from the Bronze Age collapse.

[1254] Empire reemerged.

[1255] Writing and trade and everything reemerged.

[1256] You know, and then we of course had the more contemporary dark ages.

[1257] And then over time we've designed mechanism the less than less than the capability for the destructive power centers to emerge.

[1258] There's more recording about the more contemporary dark ages.

[1259] So I think we have like a better understanding of to avoid it, but I still think we're at high risk for it.

[1260] I think that's one of the big risks right now.

[1261] So the natural state of being for humans is for there to be a lot of Hitler's.

[1262] We just gotten really good at making it hard for them to emerge.

[1263] We've gotten better at collaboration.

[1264] Yes.

[1265] And resisting the power, like, authoritarian to come to power.

[1266] We're trying to go country by country.

[1267] Like, we're moving past this.

[1268] We're kind of, like, slowly incrementally, like moving towards, like, not...

[1269] scary old school war stuff.

[1270] And I think seeing it happen in some of the countries that at least nominally are like supposed to have moved past that, that's scary because it reminds us that it can happen like in the places that have made like moved past supposedly, hopefully moved past that.

[1271] And possibly at a civilization level, like you said, supply chain collapse might make people, resource constraint, might make people, people desperate, angry, hateful, violent, and drag us right back in.

[1272] I mean, supply chain collapse is how, like, the ultimate thing that caused the Middle Ages was supply chain collapse.

[1273] It's like people, because people were reliant on a certain level of technology, like, people, like, you look at, like, Britain, like, they had glass, like, people had, um, aqueducts, people had, like, indoor heating and cooling and, like, running water and, like, buy food from all over the world and trade and markets.

[1274] Like, people didn't know how to hunt and forage and gather.

[1275] And so we're in a similar situation.

[1276] We are not educated enough to survive without technology.

[1277] So if we have a supply chain collapse that, like, limits our access to technology, there will be, like, mass of starvation and violence and displacement and war.

[1278] Like, you know, it's also, like, yeah.

[1279] In my opinion, it's, like, the primary marker of dark, like, what a dark age is.

[1280] Well, technology is kind of enabling us to be more resilient.

[1281] in terms of supply chain, to all the different catastrophic events that happened to us.

[1282] Although the pandemic has kind of challenged our preparedness for the catastrophic.

[1283] What do you think is the coolest invention humans come up with?

[1284] The wheel, fire, cooking meat.

[1285] Computers.

[1286] Freaking computers.

[1287] Internet or computers?

[1288] Which one?

[1289] Did you think the...

[1290] Previous technologies, I mean, may have even been more profound and moved us to a certain degree, but I think the computers are what make us homotech no. I think this is what, it's a brain augmentation.

[1291] And so it, like, allows for actual evolution.

[1292] Like, the computers accelerate the degree to which all the other technologies can also be accelerated.

[1293] Would you classify yourself as a Homo sapien or a Homo techno?

[1294] Definitely Homo techno.

[1295] So you're the early, you're one of the earliest of the species.

[1296] I think most of us are.

[1297] Like, as I said, like, I think if you, like, looked at brain scans of us versus humans 100 years ago, it would look very different.

[1298] I think we are physiologically different.

[1299] Just even the interaction with the devices has changed our brains.

[1300] And if you look at a lot of studies are coming out to show that like there's a degree of inherited memory.

[1301] So some of these physiological changes in theory should be, we should be passing them on.

[1302] So like that's, you know, that's not like an instance of physiological change that's going to fizzle out.

[1303] in theory that should progress, like, to our offspring.

[1304] Speaking of offspring, what advice would you give to a young person, like in high school?

[1305] Whether there be an artist, the creative, an engineer, any kind of career path, or maybe just life in general, how they can live a life they can be proud of?

[1306] I think one of my big thoughts, and, like, especially now having kids, is that I, don't think we spend enough time teaching creativity.

[1307] And I think creativity is a muscle like other things.

[1308] And there's a lot of emphasis on, you know, learn how to play the piano and then you can write a song or like learn the technical stuff and then you can do a thing.

[1309] But I think it's um, like I have a friend who's like world's greatest guitar player.

[1310] Um, like, you know, amazing sort of like producer works with other people.

[1311] But he's really sort of like, you know, he like engineers and records things and like does solos, but he doesn't really like make his own music.

[1312] And I was talking to him, and I was like, dude, you're so talented at music.

[1313] Like, why don't you make music or whatever?

[1314] And he was like, because I got, I'm too old.

[1315] I never learned the creative muscle.

[1316] And it's like, you know, it's embarrassing.

[1317] It's like learning the creative muscle takes a lot of failure.

[1318] And it also sort of, if when you're being creative, you know, you're throwing paint at a wall and a lot of stuff will fail.

[1319] So, like, part of it is like a tolerance for failure and humiliation.

[1320] and somehow that's easier to develop when you're young or be persist through it when you're young everything is easier to develop it when you're young yes and the younger the better it could destroy you I mean that's the shitty thing about creativity if you know failure could destroy you if you're not careful but that's a risk worth taking but also but at a young age developing a tolerance to failure is is good I fail all the time like I do stupid shit all the time like in public in Prague get cancelled for I make all kind of mistakes but I just like am very resilient about making mistakes and so then like I do a lot of things that like other people wouldn't do and like I think my greatest asset is my creativity and I like I think pain tolerance to failure is just a super essential thing that should be taught before other things brilliant advice yeah yeah I wish everybody encouraged sort of failure more as opposed to kind of...

[1321] Because we, like, punish failure.

[1322] We're like, no, we're no, like, when we were teaching kids, we're like, no, that's wrong.

[1323] Like, that's, you know, like, X keeps, like, will be, like, wrong.

[1324] Like, he'll say, like, crazy things.

[1325] Like, X keeps being, like, like, bubble car?

[1326] And I'm like, and, you know, I'm like, what's a bubble car?

[1327] Like, but it doesn't, like, but I don't want to be like, no, you're wrong.

[1328] I'm like, you're thinking of weird crazy shit.

[1329] Like, I don't know what a bubble car is.

[1330] but like...

[1331] He's creating worlds and they might be internally consistent and through that he might discover something fundamental about this one.

[1332] or he'll like rewrite songs like with words that he prefers so like instead of baby shark he says baby car it's like...

[1333] Maybe he's on to something.

[1334] Let me ask the big ridiculous question.

[1335] We were kind of dancing around it but what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing we have here?

[1336] of human civilization of life on earth but in general just life what's the meaning of life see have you did you read uh nova scene yet by james lovelock you're doing a lot of really good book recommendations here i haven't to even finish this so i'm a huge fraud yet again um but like really early in the book um he says this amazing thing like i feel like everyone's so sad and cynical like everyone's like the Fermi paradox and everyone I just keep hearing people being like fuck what if we're alone like oh no ah like ah and I'm like okay but like wait what if this is the beginning like in Nova scene he says um I'm this is not going to be a correct because I can't memorize quotes but he says says something like um uh what if our consciousness like right now like this is the universe waking up like what if instead of discovering the universe this is the universe universe like this is the evolution of the little literal universe herself like we are not separate from the universe like this is the universe waking up this is the universe seeing herself for the first time like this is um the universe becoming conscious the first time we're part of that yeah because it's like we aren't separate from the universe like like this could be of like an incredibly sacred moment and maybe like social media and all this things the stuff where we're all getting connected together like maybe this these are the neurons connecting of the like collective super intelligence that is you know waking up the yeah like like you know it's like maybe instead of something cynical or maybe if there's something to discover like maybe this is just you know we're a blastacist of of like some incredible kind of consciousness or being and just like in the first three years of life or for human children we'll forget about all the suffering that we're going through now?

[1337] I think we'll probably forget about this.

[1338] I mean, probably, you know, artificial intelligence will eventually render us obsolete.

[1339] I don't think they'll do it in a malicious way, but I think probably we are very weak.

[1340] The sun is expanding.

[1341] Like, I don't know, like, hopefully we can get to Mars, but, like, we're pretty vulnerable.

[1342] And I, you know, like, I think we can coexist for a long time with AI.

[1343] And we can also probably make ourselves less vulnerable.

[1344] But, you know, I just think consciousness, sentience, self -awareness, like, I think this might be the single greatest, like, moment in evolution ever.

[1345] And, like, maybe this is, you know, the, like, the true beginning of life.

[1346] And we're just, we're, we're the blue -green algae or we're like the single -celled organisms of something amazing.

[1347] The universe awakens, and this is, this is it.

[1348] Yeah.

[1349] Well, see, you're an incredible person.

[1350] You're a fascinating mind.

[1351] You should definitely do, your friend Liv, mentioned that you guys were thinking of maybe talking.

[1352] I would love it if you explored your mind in this kind of media more and more by doing a podcast with her or just in any kind of way.

[1353] So you're an awesome person.

[1354] It's an honor to know you.

[1355] It's an honor to get to sit down with you late at night, which is like surreal.

[1356] And I really enjoyed it.

[1357] Thank you for talking today.

[1358] Yeah, no. I mean, huge honor.

[1359] I feel very underqualified to be here, but I'm a big fan.

[1360] I've been listening to the podcast a lot.

[1361] And, yeah, me and Liv would appreciate any advice and help, and we're definitely going to do that.

[1362] Any time.

[1363] Thank you.

[1364] Cool.

[1365] Thank you.

[1366] Thanks for listening to this conversation with Grimes.

[1367] To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

[1368] And now, let me leave you with some words from Oscar Wild.

[1369] Yes, I'm a dreamer.

[1370] For a dreamer is one who can only find her way by Moonlight.

[1371] and her punishment is that she sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

[1372] Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.