Joe Rogan Experience #2190 - Peter Thiel

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day what's up man good to see you glad to be on the show my my pleasure thanks for having me my pleasure what's Kraken how you doing doing all right we were just talking about how you're still trapped in La I'm still trapped in La I know it's you're friends with a lot of people out here have you thought about uh jettison I uh I talk about it all the time and uh it's but you know it's

always talk is often a substitute for action it's always does it does it lead to action or does it does it end up substituting for action and uh that's a good point but I have endless conversations about leaving I moved from San Francisco to LA back in 2018 that felt uh felt about as big a move away as possible and uh I keep I keep the the extreme thing I keep saying and again I have to keep in mind talks as a substitute for Action the extreme thing I keep saying is I can't decide whether

to leave the state or the country oh boy and uh if you went out of the country where would you go man I've uh it's it's it's tough to find places because uh you know there are a lot of problems in the US and most places are doing so much worse yeah so it's not a good move to leave here [ __ ] up as this place is but but I keep uh I keep I keep thinking I I shouldn't move twice so I should either I can't decide whether I should move to Florida or

should move to you know New Zealand or Costa Rica or something like that yeah yeah go full John McAfee and so I but can't decide between those two so I end up stuck in California well Australia is okay but they're even worse when it comes to rule of law and what they decide to make you do and the way they're cracking down on people now for online speech and it's it's very sketchy in other countries it's uh but somehow somehow the uh the the relative outperformance of the US and the absolute stagnation decline of the

US they they're actually related things because uh the way the conversation's grouped every time I say tell someone you know I'm thinking about leaving the country they'll they'll do what you you say and they'll say well every place is worse and then that somehow distracts us from all the problems in this country and then we can't talk about what's what's uh what's gone wrong in the US because you know everything is uh everything's so much worse you know well I think most people know what's gone wrong but they don't know if they're on the side

of the government that's currently in power they don't know how to criticize it they don't know exactly what to say what should be done right and they're ideologically connected to this group being correct right so they try to do mental gymnastics to try to support some of the things that are going on I think that's that's a part of the problem I don't think it's necessarily we don't know what the problems are we we know what the problems are but we don't have Clear Solutions as to how to fix them nor do we understand the

real mechanisms of how they got there in the first place yeah I mean so there there are a lot that are that are pretty obvious to to articulate and uh they're much easier describe than than solved like we have a crazy crazy budget deficit yeah and presumably you have to do one of three things um you have to raise taxes a lot you have to cut spending a lot or um you're just going to keep borrowing money isn't there like some enormous amount of our taxes that just go to the deficit it's it's not it's

not that high but it's gone up a lot and what is it what is it didn't I thought it was like 34% or something czy it peaked at 3 point I want to say it peaked at 3.1% of GDP which is you know um maybe um 15 20% of the budget peed 3.1% of GDP in 1991 and then it went all the way down to something like one and a half% in the mid-2010s and now it's crept back up to 3.1 3.2% and so we are at all-time highs as a percentage of GDP and the

way to understand the basic math is the uh the debt went up a crazy amount but the interest rates went down and from you know 2008 to 2021 for 13 years we basically had zero interest rates with you know one brief blip under um Powell but it was basically zero rates and then you could have borrow way more money and it wouldn't show up in servicing the debt because you just paid zero% interest on the t t bills and um and the thing that's that's very dangerous seeming to me about the current fiscal situation is

um the interest rates have gone back to positive like they were in the 90s and early 2000s um uh mid 2000s and um and it's just this incredibly large debt and so we now have a we now have a real runaway deficit problem but you know people have been talking about this for 40 years and uh crying wool for 40 years so it's it's very hard for people to take it seriously most people don't even understand what it means like when you say there's a deficit we owe money okay to who how's that work um

uh it's well it's to yeah people who who bought uh who bought the bonds and it's you know it's a lot of it's to Americans some of them are held by the Federal Reserve decent amount are held by by by foreigners at this point because uh you know it's it's it's in some ways it's the opposite of the of the um trade current account deficits the US has been running these big current account deficits and and the foreigners end up with way more dollars than they than they want to spend on American goods or services

and so they have to reinvest them in the US you know some some put it into houses or stocks but a lot of it just goes into into government debt so in in some ways it's a function of the of the chronic trade imbalances chronic trade deficits well if you had supreme power if uh Peter teal was the ruler of the world and you could fix this what would you do man I always find I always find that hypothetical it's it's a ridiculous hypothetical you ridiculous hypotheticals you get ridiculous answers I want a ridiculous answer

that's what I like but but what could be done like what could be done first of all what could be done to mitigate it and what could be done to solve it you know I I think I think my I think my answers are probably all in the in the you know in the in the very libertarian Direction so I it would be sort of figure out ways to have smaller governments figure out ways you know you know to um increase the age on Social Security means test Social Security so not everyone gets it just

figure out ways to to gradually dial back uh you know a lot of these government benefits um and then that's you know that's insanely unpopular so it's it's completely unrealistic on that level that bothers people that need Social Security I said means tested means tested so people who don't need it don't get it right so Social Security like even if you're very wealthy I don't even know how it work Works do you still get it yeah basically anyone who pretty much everyone gets it because it was orig originally um rationalized as a uh as a

um as sort of a pension system not as a welfare system and so the the fiction was you pay social security taxes and then um you're entitled to get a pension out in the form of Social Security right and um and because it was uh we told this fiction that it was a form of uh it was a pension system instead of an intergenerational Ponzi scheme or something something like that um you know the fiction means everybody gets paid Social Security because it's a pension system whereas if we were more honest and said it's you

know it's just a welfare system maybe you could you could start dialing uh you could you could you could probably rationalize in a lot of ways and it's it's not related to how much you put into it right like how does Social Security work in terms it's partially I think it's partially related so I think there is uh I'm not a total expert on this stuff but I think um I think there's some guaranteed minimum you get and then um and then and then if you put more in you get somewhat more and then it's

it's capped at a certain amount and even that's that's why that's why Social Security taxes are capped at something like you know $150,000 a year and then this is you know this is one of the this is one of the really big tax increase proposals that's out there is to is to uncap it which would effectively be a 12 .4% income tax hike you know oh wow all your income just to Social Security sure because uh the the argument is the argu the the the sort of progressive left Democrat argument is that uh is that

it's you know why should you have a regressive Social Security tax why should you pay 12.4% or whatever the Social Security tax is which half gets paid by by you half gets paid by your employer but then it it's capped at like 140 150 50k some level like that and why should be regressive where if you make 500k or a million k a year you pay zero tax on your marginal income and that makes no sense if it's a welfare program if it's a if it's a retirement Savings Program and your your payouts capped then

you know if you you don't need to put in more then you get out well that's logical but there's not a lot of logic going on with the way people are talking about taxes today like California just jacked their taxes up to 14 what was it 144 something like that yeah 143 I think which is maybe more yeah 149 something yeah you want more money for doing a terrible job and having more people leave for the first time ever in like the history of the state yeah but it look it it gets away with it

I know and uh and so well people are forced with no choice what are you gonna do um it is it is I mean I mean there are people at the margins who leave but uh but the state government still collect it's more and more in revenues so it's you know you get I don't know you get 10% more revenues and 5% of the people leave you still you still increase the amount of revenues you're getting it's uh it's it's it's inelastic enough that you you're actually able to increase the Reven I mean this is

sort of the the crazy thing about California is uh you know there there's always sort of a right-wing or libertarian critique of California that you know it's it's such a ridiculous place it it should just collapse um under its own Ridiculousness and uh it doesn't quite happen you know um the macroeconomics on it are are pretty good you know 40 million people the GDP is around four trillion it's about the same as Germany with 80 million or Japan with 125 million Japan has three times the population of California same GDP means onethird the per capita

GDP so there's some level on which you know California as a whole is working even though it doesn't work from a governance point of view doesn't work for a lot of the people who live there and uh the the rough model I have for how to think of California is that it's kind of like Saudi Arabia and you have a crazy religion wokeism in California wahhabism in Saudi Arabia you know not that many people believe it but it it distorts everything and then um and then you have like oil fields in Saudi Arabia and you

have the big tech companies in California and the oil pays for everything and then you have a completely bloated inefficient government sector and uh and you have sort of all sorts of distortions in the real estate market where uh people also make uh lots of money and sort of the government and real estate are ways you redistribute the oil wealth or the uh you know the the big Tech uh the big Tech money in in California and um and it's like it's it's not the way you might want to design a system from scratch but

it's it's pretty stable and people been saying Saudi Arabia is ridiculous it's going to collapse any year now they've been saying that for 40 or 50 years but you know if you have a giant oil field you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness I think that's that's the way to that's that's the way you have to think of California well the other thing is you're also there things about it that are ridiculous but there's something about it that you know it um it doesn't naturally self-destruct overnight well there's a lot of Kick-Ass people there

and there's a lot of people that are still generating enormous amounts of wealth there and it's too difficult to just pack up and leave yeah I think it's something like four of the eight or nine companies with Market capitalizations over a trillion dollars are based in California so it's that's amazing it's Google Apple now Nvidia meta um think yeah I think I think broadcom's close to that and there's no ideal place to live either it's not like California sucks so there's a place that's got it totally dialed in with all also that has an enormous

GDP also has an enormous population all there's not like one big city that's really dialed in well it's there are there are things that that work so I looked I looked at all the zero tax states in the US and uh and it's always you don't I think the way you ask the question gets at it which is you don't live in a you know in theory a lot of stuff happens on a state level but you don't live in a state you live in a city and so um if you're somewhat biased towards living

in at least a moderately sized city um okay I can there are I think there are four states where there are no cities Alaska Wyoming um South Dakota New Hampshire there's zero tax but um no cities to speak of um and then you have um then you have Washington state with Seattle where the weather is the worst in the country you have um Nevada with Las Las Vegas which I'm not that big a fan of and then that leaves three three zero tax states you have Texas which I like as a state but I'm not

that big a fan of Austin Dallas or Houston and I you know it's a sort of um Houston is just sort of an oil town which is good if you're in that business but otherwise not um Dallas has sort of a inferiority complex to LA in New York you know just not not the healthiest attitude and then um you know I don't know Austin's a government town and a college town and a wannabe hipster San Francisco town so you know my my books are three strikes and you're you're kind of out too and then that

leaves um that leaves Nashville Tennessee which was and then uh or Miami South Florida and those those would be my two top choices Miami's fun but I wouldn't want to live there it's a fun place to visit is a little too crazy a little too chaotic little too cocaine fueled a little too party party party I think it's I think it's pretty I think it's pretty segmented from the tourist the tourist strip from everything else it it probably is you know there probably is something a little bit paradoxical about any place that gets lots of

tourists where um you know it's it's it's in some sense a Vaca there's some things that are great about because so many tourists go but then in some sense it's um it creates a weird aesthetic because uh the you know the day-to-day Vibe is that you don't you don't work and you're just having fun or something something like that right cuz so many people are going there just to do that and that's that's probably a little bit off with the south Florida the south Florida thing but um but I think it's um and then I

think uh and then I think Nashville is is is also sort of its own real place Nashville's great yeah so those those would be my those are the top two I I could live in Nashville no problem yeah I'm probably always I'm always I'm always too uh you know I fifth grade onward since you know 7077 I lived in California and uh and and so I'm just a sucker for the weather and I think there is no place besides Coastal California where you have really good weather year round in the US may maybe Hawaii's pretty

good Coastal California is tough to beat and um and you're two hours from the mountains and man it's like you know it's mid August here in Austin this is just it's just brutal is it I I think so really that was too hot for you it was too hot for today's mild well what is it out there like 80 all right 85 96 96 I do so much sauna that I literally don't even notice it I'm outside for hours every day shooting arrows and I don't even notice it well that's uh I I don't know

if you're a representative of the average a I don't know but I think you get accustomed to it to me it's so much better than too cold too cold you can die and I know you can die from the heat but you probably won't especially if you have water you'll be okay but you could die from the cold Cold's real so really cold places there's five months out of the Year where your life's in danger where you could do something wrong like if you live in Wyoming and you break down somewhere and there's no one

on the road you could die out there that's real you could die from exposure sure there's probably some very deep reason there's been a net migration of people to the the west and the south in the US over California can do no wrong as long as the Earth doesn't move you're good long as there's no tsunamis you're good it is a perfect environment virtually year round it gets a little hot in the summer but again Coastal not at all if you get an 80 degree day in Malu it's unusual you know it's wonderful you got

a beautiful Breeze coming off the ocean sun's out everybody's pretty and then and then it's yeah it's it's correlated with confiscatory taxation they all it's all sort of a package deal well it's a scam you know they know you don't want to leave I didn't want to leave California it's [ __ ] great I I I appreciate you left I always I always have the fantasy that if enough people like you leave it'll put pressure on them but it's it's never quite enough never quite enough and it's not going to be it's too difficult for

most people it was very difficult for me and I had a bunch of people working for me that were willing to pack up and leave like young Jamie over there but we you know it was tricky you're you're taking your whole business and my business is talking to people that's part of my business my other business is standup comedy so so you left during during Co or I left at the very beginning as soon as they started locking things down I'm like oh these [ __ ] never let March April may0 in May I started

looking at houses cool that's when I came to Austin first um I I end I got a place in Miami in September 2020 and um and spent the last you know I've spent the last four winers there so I'm sort of always on the cusp of of uh moving to Florida hard hard to get out of California um but the the thing that's gotten a lot harder about moving relative to four years ago and you know I'd say I think my real estate purchases have generally not been not been great over the years I mean

they've done okay but certainly not um not the way uh not the way I've um been able to um make money at all but uh with the one exception was Miami bought it in September 2020 and probably you know fast forward um four years it's up like 100% wow something like that and um and uh and then but then paradoxically this also means it's it's gotten much harder to move there or Austin or or any of these places you know if you um you know if if uh if I relocated my office in La um

the people who own houses okay you have to you have to buy a place in Florida it costs twice as much as it did four years ago and then the interest rates have also doubled and so you get a 30-year mortgage you could have locked that in for 3% in 2020 now it's you know maybe 6 and a half 7% so the prices have doubled the mortgages have doubled so it cost you four times as much to buy a house and so uh yeah so there was a moment where people could move during covid and

it's it's gotten dramatically harder relative to what it was four years ago well the Austin real estate market went crazy and then it came back down a little bit it's in that down a little bit spot right now where there's a lot of like high-end properties that are still for sale they can't move it's different you know there's not a lot of people moving here now like there was in the boom cuz everything's open everywhere well I I I I I somehow think Austin was linked to California and Miami was linked a little bit more

to to New York and um it was a little bit you know all these differences but um Austin was kind of you know a big part of the move where people from Tech from California that moved um moved to Austin you know there's a part of the Miami South Florida thing which was people from finance and New York uh New York City that moved um moved to to Florida and the finance industry is less networked on New York city so I think it is possible for people if you run a you know private Equity Fund

or if you work at a bank it's possible for some of those functions to easily be moved to to a different state um the tech industry is cily networked on California like there's probably some way to do it it's um it's uh it's not that easy yeah it makes sense it it makes sense too it's just the sheer numbers I mean when you're talking about all those corporations that are established and based in California there's so many they're so big just the sheer numbers of human beings that live there and work there that are involved

in Tech um sure but if it wasn't if it wasn't as networked you know you could you could probably just move you know and maybe these things are networked till they're not you know Detroit was very networked the car industry was super networked on Detroit for decades and decades and Michigan got more and more mismanaged and people thought the network sort of protected them because you know the big three car companies were in Detroit but then you had all the supply chains were also in Detroit and then eventually it was just so ridiculous people moved

um started moving the factories outside of that area and it sort of unraveled so that's you know it can also happen with California it'll just take a lot that would be insane if they just abandon all the tech companies in California I mean just look at what happened at Flint Michigan when all the auto factories pulled out well it's it's um look I think you can it's always there all these paradoxical histories you know the the internet the point of the internet in some sense was to eliminate the tyranny of place and that was sort

of the idea and then one of the paradoxes about the internet history of the internet was that the internet companies you know were you know were all you know were all centered in um in California then yeah probably there have been different different waves of um of how networked how how non- networked they were I think uh I think probably 2021 uh sort of the the co moving away from California the big thing in Tech was crypto um and um and crypto um had this conceit of a you know alternate currency decentralized away from the

central banks but also the crypto companies the um crypto protocols you could do those from anywhere you could do them outside the US you could do them from Miami and so crypto was something where um the tech could naturally um move out of California and and today probably the the um I don't know the core Tech narative is completely flipped to Ai and uh and if and then there's something about AI That's you know very centralized you know I always I had this one liner years ago where it was you know if if we say

that crypto is libertarian can we also say that AI is communist or something like this where the you know the natural structure for an AI company looks like it's a big company and then somehow the AI stuff is uh is feels like it's going to be dominated by the the big tech companies in um in the San Francisco Bay area and so that's very the future of tech yeah the um the the the scale the natural scale of the industry tells you that it's uh going to be extremely hard to get out of you know

out of the San Francisco Bay Area when you look to the Future and you try to just make a just a guess as to how all this is going to turn out with AI what do you think we're looking at over the next five years man I I think I should start by being modest in answering that question saying that nobody has a clue right which is true they which pretty much all the experts say you know I I would say Let me let me do sort of a history I the Riff I always had

on this was that I can't stand any of the buzzwords and I felt AI you know there's all this big data Cloud Compu Computing there were all these crazy buzzwords people had and they always were ways to sort of abstract things and get away from um from uh from reality somehow and um we're not good ways of talking about things and I thought AI was this incredible abstraction because it can mean the next generation of computers it can mean the last generation of computers it can mean anything in between and if you think about the

AI discussion in the 2010s pre um open AI chat GPT and the the revolution of the last 2 years but the 2010's AI discussion maybe it was so I'll start with the history before I get to the future but the history of it was it was maybe anchored on two uh two visions of what AI meant and one was um Nick Bostrom Oxford Prof who wrote This Book uh super intelligence 2014 and it was basically AI was going to be this super duper um intelligent thing way way Godlike intelligence way smarter than any any human

being and um and then there was sort of the the I don't know the CCP Chinese Communist rebuttal the Kaiu Lee book from 2018 AI superpowers I think subtitle was something like the race for AI between Silicon Valley and China or something like this and um it it was sort of it defined AI as it was fairly low Tech it was just surveillance um you know facial recognition technology um we would just have this sort of totalitarian stalinist monitoring it didn't require very much Innovation it just required that you apply things and basically the subtext

was China is going to win because we have no ethical qualms in China about um applying this this sort of basic machine learning to uh to sort of measuring or controlling the the population and those were sort of like say two extreme um competing visions of of what AI would mean in the in the 2010s and that sort of maybe were sort of the anchors of of the AI debate and then um and then you know what what happened in some sense with um chat GPT in late 22 early 23 was um was that uh

the achievement you you got you did not get super intelligence it was not just surveillance Tech but it was you you actually got to the Holy Grail of what people would have defined AI as from 1950 to 2010 for the previous 60 years before the 2010s people have always said AI the definition of AI is passing the touring test and the touring test it it basically means that the computer can fool you into thinking that it's a human being and um and um and it's a somewhat fuzzy test because you know obviously you have an

expert on the computer a non-expert you know it's you know does does it fool you all the time or some of the time how good is it but to First approximation the touring test you know we weren't even close to passing it in 2021 and then you know chat GPT basically passes the touring test at least for like let's say an IQ 100 average person um it can uh it can um it's passed the touring test and that was that was the Holy Grail that was the Holy Grail of uh AI research for the previous

60 years and and so there's I know there's probably some psychological or sociological history where we can say that this weird debate between Bostrom about super intelligence and Kaiu Le about surveillance Tech was like this almost like psychological suppression people had where they were not thinking they they lost track of the touring test of the Holy Grail of because it was about to happen and it was such a significant such an important thing that you didn't even want to think about it so I'm tempted to give almost a psychological repression theory of of the 2010

debates but um be that as it may the touring test gets uh gets passed and that's yeah that's an extraordinary achievement and then you know may maybe um May and then you know where where does it go from here there probably are ways you can refi refine these it's still going to be you know a long time to apply it there is a question there's this AGI discussion you know will we get artificial general intelligence which is a hopelessly vague concept which you know general intelligence could be just a generally smart human being so is

that just a person with an IQ of 130 or is it super intelligence is it Godlike intelligence uh so it's sort of an ambiguous thing um but I I keep thinking that uh maybe the AGI question is less important than passing the touring test if if we got AGI if we got let's say super intelligence if we got that would be interesting to Mr God because um you'd have a competi you'd have competition for being God but um but surely the touring test is more important for us humans because it's either a complement or substitute

to humans and so it's yeah it it's going to rearrange the economic cultural political structure of our society in extremely dramatic ways and and I think maybe what's already happened is much more important than anything else that's going to be done and then it's just going to be a long ways in applying it one one last thought the you know the the um the analogy I'm always tempted to go to and it's these things are never historical analogies are never perfect but it's it's that maybe Ai and 2023 24 is like it's like the internet

in 1999 where on one level it's clear the internet's going to be big and get very a lot bigger and it's going to dominate the economy it's going to rearrange the society in the 21st century and then at the same time it was a complete bubble and um people had no idea how the business models worked um you know almost everything blew up it it took you know it didn't take that long in the scheme of things it took you know 15 20 years for it to become super dominant but uh it didn't happen sort

of in 18 months as people fantasized in in 1999 and uh and maybe maybe maybe what we have in AI is is is something like this it's um figuring out how to actually apply it you know um in sort of all these different ways is going to take something like two decades but but that doesn't distract from it being a really big deal it is a really big deal and I think you're right about the during test I do you think that the lack of acknowledgement or the public celebration or at least this like mainstream

discussion like which I think should be everywhere that we've passed the Turing test do you think it's connected to the fact that this stuff accelerates so rapidly that even though we've essentially breach this new territory it we still know that chp5 is is going to be better GPT 6 is going to be insane and then they're working on these right now and that and the change is happening so quickly we're almost a little reluctant to acknowledge where we're at yeah um you know I I have I've often I've you know probably for 15 years or

so often been on the side that there isn't that much progress in science or Tech or not as much as Silicon Valley likes to claim and um and even on the AI level I think it's a massive technical achievement it's still an open question you know is it actually going to lead to much higher living standards for everybody you know the internet was a massive achievement how much it it raise people's living standards uh much much trickier question so um so I I I but um but in in this world where not much has happened

one of the paradoxes of a of an era of relative Tech stagnation um is that when something does happen we don't even know how to process it so you know I think I think Bitcoin was a i it was a big invention we can debate with it was good or bad but it was a pretty big deal and it was um systematically underestimated for at least you know the first uh um 10 11 years and you know you could you could trade it it went up smoothly for 10 11 years it didn't get repriced all

at once because uh we're in a world where nothing big ever happens and um and so we we have no way of processing it when something pretty big happens the internet was pretty big in 99 Bitcoin was moderately big the internet was really big Bitcoin was moderately big and I'd say um passing the Turing test is really big it's on the same scale as the internet and uh and because our our lived experiences that so little has felt like it's been changing for the last few decades we're we're probably underestimating it it's interesting the say

that so little we feel like so little has changed CU if you're a person how old are you um same age as you were born 1967 so in our age we've seen all the change right we saw the uh end of the Cold War we saw answering machines we saw VHS tapes then we saw the internet and then where we're at right now which is like this bizarre moment in time where people carry the internet around with them in their pocket every day and these super sophisticated computers that are ubiquitous everybody has one there's incredible

technology that's being ramped up every year they're getting better all the time and now there's AI there's AI on your phone you could access chat GPT and a bunch of different programs on your phone and I think that's an insane change I I think that that's one of the most especially with the use of social media it's one of the most bizarre changes I think our culture is ever the most it can be it can be a big change culturally or or politically um but uh the yeah the kinds of questions I I'd ask is

how do you measure it economically does it how much does it change GDP how much do it change productivity um and um and certainly um the story I I would generally tell for the last 50 years since the 1970s early 70s is that we've been not absolute stagnation we in an era of relative stagnation where there has been um very limited progress in the world of atoms the world of physical things um um and uh there has been um a lot of progress in the world of bits information computers internet mobile internet you know now

now ai what are you referring to when you're saying the the world of physical things um you know it's any um it's well if we had defined technology if we were sitting here in 1967 the year we were born and had a discussion about technology what technology would have meant would it would have meant computers it would have also meant Rockets it would meant supersonic airplanes it would have meant um new medicines it would have meant the Green Revolution in agriculture maybe underwater cities um you know it it sort of had BEC and it because

technology simply gets defined as that which is changing that which is progressing and so there's progress on all these fronts T today last 20 years when you talk about technology you're normally just talking about information technology technology has been reduced to meaning computers and that tells you that the structure of progress has been weird there's been this narrow cone a very intense progress around the world of bits around the world of computers and then all the other areas have been relatively stagnant we're not moving any faster you know the Concord got decommissioned in 2003 or

whenever um and then with all the low Tech airport security measures it takes even longer to fly to get through all all of them from from from one city to the next you know the highways have gone backwards because they're more traffic jams we haven't figured out ways around those so they're sort of we're literally moving slower than we were 40 or 50 years ago um and um and then yeah some uh and that's that's sort of the uh that's sort of the um and then you know the and then of course um there's also

a sense in which uh these the screens and the devices you know have have this effect distracting us from this so you know when you're you know riding a hundred year old Subway New York City and you're looking at your iPhone you can you can look at wow this is this cool new Gadget but you're also being distracted from the fact that your lived environment hasn't changed you know in a 100 years and and and so there's yeah there's a question how important is this world of bits versus versus the world of ad Adams you

know I would say as human beings we're physically embodied in a material world and so I I I would always say this world of atams is pretty important and when that's pretty stagnant you know there's a lot of stuff that that doesn't make sense I I was an undergraduate at Stanford late 80s and at the time um in retrospect every engineering area would have been a bad thing to go into you know mechanical engineering chemical engineering all these engineering skills where you were tinkering and trying to do new things because these things turned out to

be stuck they were regulated couldn't come up with new things to do nuclear engineering Aero Astro engineering people already knew those were really bad ones to go into they were you know outlawed you weren't going to make any progress in new nuclear reactor designs or stuff like that um electrical engineering which was the one that's sort of adjacent to making semiconductors that one was still okay and then the only field that uh was actually going to progress a lot was computer science and um and again you know it's it's been very powerful but that was

not the felt sense in the 1980s in the 1980s computer science was this ridiculous inferior subject um you know I I always the the linguistic cut is always when when people use the word science I'm in favor of science I'm not in favor of Science and quotes and when it's always a tell that it's not real science and so when we call it climate science or political science or social science um you know you're just sort of making it up and you have an inferiority complex to real science which something physics or chemistry and computer

science was in the same category as social science or political science it was it was a fake field for people who found electrical engineering or math way too hard and um um and and sort of dropped out of out of the real the real science and real um real engineering Fields you don't feel that climate science is a real science it's it is um it's it's um well let me it's i i i there's several different things one could say it's uh it's possible climate change is happening it's possible we don't have great accounts of

why that's going on so I'm not I'm not questioning any of those things but uh but how scientific it is um I I don't think um I don't think it's it's a place where we have really vigorous debates you know maybe the climate is increasing because of carbon dioxide emissions temperatures are going up maybe it's methane maybe it's people are eating too much steak it's the cows flatulating or and you have to measure you how how much is methane a greenhouse gas versus versus carbon dioxide I don't think they're I don't think they're rigorously doing

that stuff scientifically and I think the fact that it's called climate science tells you that it's more dogmatic than than than anything that's truly science should be why doesn't Dogma doesn't mean it's wrong but but why is the fact that it's called climate science mean that it's more dogmatic because if you said nuclear science you wouldn't question it right it's yeah but no one calls it nuclear science they call it nuclear engineering because I'm just the only the only thing is I just making I'm just making neing science that is legitimately science well this point

people say computer science has worked but right in the 1980s all I'm saying is it was in the same categories let's say social science political science it was it was a it was a tell that the people doing it kind of deep down knew they they weren't doing real science well there's certainly ideology that's connected to climate science and then there's certainly corporations that are invested in this uh this Prospect of green energy and the concept of green energy and they're profiting off of it and pushing these different things whether it be electric car mandates

or whatever it is like California I think they it's 30 20 35 they have a mandate that all new vehicles have to be electric which is hilarious when you're connected to a grid that can't support the electric cars it currently has after they said that within a month or two Gavin new asked people to not charge their Teslas because it was summer and the grid was [ __ ] yeah look it's it it it was all linked into all these ideological projects in all these ways and uh there you know there's there's an environmental project

which is you know and and maybe maybe it shouldn't be scientific you know there's you know the hardcore environmentalist argument is we only have one planet and we don't have time to do science if we if we have to do rigorous science and you can prove that we're overheating it'll be too late and um and so if you're a hardcore environmentalist you know you don't want to have as high a standard of science yeah my my intuition is certainly when when you go away from that you end up with things that are too dogmatic too

ideological may maybe it doesn't even work even if the planet's getting warmer you know maybe climate science is is not like my my question is is car like maybe methane is a worse um is is is it more dangerous greenhouse gas than uh carbon dioxide we're not we're not even capable of measuring that well we're also ignoring certain things like regenerative Farms that sequester carbon that and then you have people like Bill Gate saying that planting trees to deal with carbon is ridiculous it's a ridiculous way to do it like how is that ridiculous is

they literally turn carbon dioxide into oxygen it is their food their food that's what the food of plants is that's that's what powers the the whole plant life and the way we have the symbiotic relationship with them like and the more carbon dioxide is the greener it is which is why it's Greener Today on Earth than it has been in a hundred years sure these are all facts that are inconvenient to people that have a very specific narrow window of how to approach this sure although you know there probably are ways to steal man the

other side too where um where maybe maybe um you know the the original 1970s you know I think the manifesto that's always very interesting from the other side was this uh book by the club of Rome 1972 the limits of growth and it's you can't have you we need to head towards a society in which there's Zer percent there's very limited growth because if you have unlimited growth you're going to run out of resources if you don't run out of resources you'll hit a pollution constraint but the um in the 1970s it was um you're

going to have overpopulation um you're going to run out of oil we had the oil shocks um and then um and then by the 90s it it sort of morphed into more of the pollution problem with uh with carbon dioxide climate change other other environmental things but uh but there is sort of um you know it's you know there's been some you know some improvement in in oil carbon fuels with fracking things like this in Texas it's um it's not at the scale that's been enough to uh um you know give an American standard of

living to the whole planet and we consume a 100 million barrels um of oil um you a day globally um maybe fracking can add 10% 10 million to that if everybody on this planet has an American standard of living it's something like three 300 400 million barrels of oil and I don't I don't think that's there so that's that's kind of I I always wonder whether that was the that was the real environmental argument is we can't have an American standard of living for the whole planet we somehow can't justify this degree of inequality and

um and therefore you know we have to figure out ways to dial back and you know tax the carbon restrict it and uh and maybe you know maybe that's there's some sort of a malthusian calculus that's more about resources than about pollution um how much of that could the the the demand for oil could be mitigated by nuclear uh it you Pro you probably could mitigate it a lot there's there's a question why the why the nuclear thing has gone so wrong it's um especially if you if you have El Vehicles right you know it's

uh um combustion engine is probably hard to get nuclear to work but if you um if you shift to electric vehicles you can you can charge them you know your Tesla cars at night um and that that would seemingly work um and there's definitely yeah there's definitely a history of energy where it was always in the direction of you know more intense use it went from wood to Coal to oil which is a more compact form of energy and in a way takes up less of the environment and then if we move from oil to

uranium that's even you know it it's even smaller and so in a sense the smaller the more dense the energy is the less of the environment it takes up and when we go back when we go from oil to natural gas which takes up more space and from natural gas to solar or wind we have to you know you have to pollute the whole environment by putting up windmills everywhere or you have to you know you know you have to cover the whole desert with solar pan that is a good way to look at it

it is a form of pollution and so um and so there was a way there was a way that nuclear was supposed to be the uh the the energy mode of the the 21st century and then yeah there there all these there these historical questions why did it why did it get stopped why did we not uh why did we not go down that route the um you know the the standard explanation of why it stopped um was that uh it was um there were all these dangers we had three mile on 1979 you know

Chernobyl and um in 1986 and then the Fukushima one in Japan I think 2011 and uh you had these sort of you had these various act accidents um my alternate theory on why uh why nuclear energy really stopped is that it um it was um it was sort of dystopian or even apocalypse itic because it turned out that it was all um it turned out to be very dual use if you build nuclear power plants um uh it's it's only sort of one step away from uh building nuclear weapons and uh and it turned out

to be a lot trickier to u to separate those two things out than it looked and I think the you know the signature moment was 1974 or 75 when India gets the nuclear bomb and I the US I believe had transferred the nuclear reactor technology to India we thought they couldn't weaponize it and then it turned out it was pretty easy to weaponize and then the and then sort of the geopolitical problem with uh with nuclear power was you either you know um you need a double standard where we have nuclear power in the us

but we don't allow other countries to have nuclear power because the US gets to keep its nuclear weapons we don't let 100 other countries have nuclear weapons and this that's an extreme double standard probably a little bit hard to justify um or um or you need some kind of really effective Global governance where you have a one world government that regulates all this stuff which doesn't sound that good either and uh and then sort of the compromise was just to um to um regulate it so much that uh you know maybe the the nuclear plants

got grandfathered in but it became too expensive to build new ones Jesus like even China which is the country where they're building the most nuclear power plants they've built way less than people expected a decade ago because um you know they they don't trust they don't trust their own designs and so they have to copy the over safety overprotected designs from the west and the nuclear plants nuclear power costs too much money it's cheaper to do coal wow so um so you know I'm not get the numbers exactly right but if you look at what

percent of Chinese electricity was nuclear it wasn't that high it was like maybe four five% in 2013 2014 and the percent hasn't gone up in 10 years because you know they maybe doubled the amount of electricity they Ed and maybe they doubled the nuclear but the relative percentage is still it's still a pretty small part of the mix because it's just more expensive when you have these you over safety designed reactors there probably ways to build small reactors um that that that are that are way cheaper but then you still have this you still have

this dual use thing you know do do you create plutonium do you you know are are there ways you can create a pathway to building more nuclear weapons and if there was Innovation if nuclear engineering had gotten to a point where you know let's say there wasn't Three Mile Island or Chernobyl didn't happen do you think that it would have gotten to a much more efficient and much more effective version by now well my my understanding is there are we we have way we have way more efficient designs we have small you you can do

small reactor designs which which are you don't need this giant containment structure so it costs much less per kilowatt hour of of electricity you produce so I I think we have those designs they're they're just not allowed and then but then I think the problem is that um if you were able to build them in all these countries all over the world you still have this dual use problem right and again my alternate history of what really went wrong with nuclear power it wasn't three mland it wasn't Chernobyl that's the that's the official story the

real story was India getting the bomb wow that makes sense that completely makes sense gez Louise and then this is you know this is always you know this is always the question about uh um there's always a big picture question people ask me you know uh you know if I'm right about this picture of you know this slowdown in Tech this the sort of stagnation in many many dimensions and then there's always a question you know wh why did this happen and um and my copout answer is always uh why questions are overdetermined uh because

you know um it can be there are multiple reasons and so it could be why could be we became a more feminized risk-averse Society could be that uh the education system worked less well it could be that we were just out of ideas the easy ideas have been found the hard ideas the cupboard Nature's cupboard was Bare the low hanging fruit had been picked so that it can be overdetermined but I think I think one dimension that's not to be underrated for the Science and Tech stagnation was that uh an awful lot of Science and

Technology had this dystopian or apocalyptic uh Dimension and uh and probably what happened at you know Los Alamos in 1945 and then uh with with the thermonuclear weapons in the early 50s um it took a while for it to really seep in but it had this sort of delayed effect where you know maybe maybe a a stagnant World in which the physicists don't get to do anything and they have to putter around with Dei and um you're not you know um but uh you don't build weapons that blow up the world anymore you know is

that a is that a feature or a bug and so the stagnation was sort of was sort of like this this response and so it sucks that we've lived in this world for 50 years where a lot of stuff has been inert but um if we had a world that was still accelerating on all these Dimensions with SuperSonics and Hypersonic planes and Hypersonic weapons and you know modular nuclear reactors maybe we wouldn't be sitting here and the whole world would have already blown up and so we're we're in that we're in the stagnant path of

the Multiverse because it had it had this partially protective thing even though in all these other ways I feel it's it's it's deeply deranged our society that's a very interesting perspective and it makes a lot of sense it really does and particularly the Dual use thing with nuclear power and especially Distributing that to other countries when you talk about the stagnation in this country like I don't know how much you follow this whole UAP nonsense I know we met what was that guy's name at your place the uh the guy who did Chariots of the

Gods oh fond Anakin yes yeah yeah you you you didn't you thought he was too crazy you you like Hancock but you don't like fond danin H I didn't think he's too crazy he just willfully in my opinion ignores evidence that would show that some of the things that he's saying have already been solved and I think his his hypothesis is all related to this concept that we have been visited and that that's how all these things were built and that this technology was brought here from another world and I think he's very ideologically locked

into these ideas and I think a much more compelling idea is that there were very Advanced cultures for some reason 10,000 years ago whatever it was whatever the year was where they they built some of the insane structures it's a 45 100 years ago they roughly think the pyramids were built like what whatever the [ __ ] was going on there I think those were human beings I think those were human beings in that place in that time and I think they had some sort of very sophisticated technology that was lost and things can get

lost things can get lost in cataclysms things can get lost in they can get lost in disease and famine and all there's all sorts of War all sorts of reasons the burning of the Library of Alexandria there's all sorts of ways that technology gets lost forever and you can have today someone living in Los Angeles in the most sophisticated high-tech Society the world has ever known while you still have people that live in the Amazon that live in the same way that they've lived for thousands of years so those things can happen in the same

Planet at the same time and I think while the rest of the world was essentially operating at a much lower vibration there were people in Egypt that were doing some extraordinary things um I don't know how they got the information maybe they did get it from visitors maybe they did but there's no real compelling evidence that they did I think there's much more compelling evidence that a cataclysm happened um when you look at the younger dras impact Theory it's all entirely based on science it's entirely based on core samples and meridium content and and also

massive changes in the environment over a very short period of time particularly the melting of the ice caps in North America and just craters all around the world that we know something happened roughly 11,000 years ago and probably again 10,000 years ago I think it's a regular occurrence on this planet that things go sideways and there's massive natural disasters and I think that it's yeah there there's the Bron age civilization collapse somewhere in the mid 12th century BC and um and probably the um you know in some ways the the one in which we have

the best history is the fall of the Roman Empire which was obviously sure the culmination of the classical world and uh it somehow it's somehow extreme extremely unravel so my yeah I think I think my my view on it is probably somewhere between yours and the um the fond Anakin no not fond Anakin I'm more on the uh more on the more on the uh Pro uh the other side let me let me let me try to Define why this agree on why this is so important today this is not just of antiquarian interest and

the reason it matters today is because the alternative you know if if if if you say civilization has seen great Rises and Falls it's gone through these great Cycles um you know may maybe the Bronze Age civilizations were very Advanced but someone came up with iron weapons so there was just one dimension where they progressed but then everything else they could destroy and so um uh or you know the fall of the Roman Empire was again this you know pretty cataclysmic thing where there were diseases and you know and then there were political things that

unraveled but uh somehow you know was was a massive regression for you know four five 600 years into the into the Dark Ages and um the um the the sort of naive the progressive things always just got monotonically better and there's sort of this revisionist purely Progressive history where even the Roman Empire didn't Decline and even you know this one one one sort of stupid way to quantify this stuff is with pure demographics and so it's the question how many people lived in the past and um and the Rises and Falls of civilization story is

there were more people who lived in the Roman Empire because it was more advanced it could support a larger population and then the population decline you know city of Rome maybe had a million people at its peak and then by you know I don't know 650 ad it's maybe it's down to 10,000 people or less you have this complete collapse in population and then um and then the the sort of alternate purely Progressive view is the population has always just been monotonically increasing because it's a measure of how in some sense things in aggregate have

have always been getting better so I am I am definitely on your side that population had great Rises and Falls civilizations had great Rises and Falls um um and so that part of it I I I agree with you or even you know some variant of what Hancock or fundana can say uh the the the place where I would say I think things are different is I don't think I don't think um and and and and and therefore it seems possible something could happen to our civilization that's that's always the upshot of it if if

it had been monotonically always progressing then there's nothing we should worry about nothing can possibly go wrong and then certainly certainly the thing um the the the sort of alternate Hancock fond danin um Joe Rogan history of the world uh tells us is that uh we shouldn't take our civilization for granted there's there things that can go really hawi I I agree with that the one place where I I is I think I do think our civilization today is on some Dimensions way more advanced than any of these past civilizations were I don't think any

of them had nuclear weapons I don't think any of them had um you know spaceships um or or anything like that and uh and so the failure mode is likely to be be be somewhat different from from these These past ones yeah that makes sense um I think uh technology progressed in a different direction that's what I think I think it structural Technology Building Technology had somehow or another achieved levels of competence that's not available today when you look at the construction of the great per of Giza there's 2,300,000 stones in it there the whole

thing points to do north south east and west it's an incredible achievement the the stones some of them were moved from a quarry that was 500 miles away through the mountains they have no idea how they did it massive Stones the ones inside the king's chamber where they like the biggest ones are like 80 tons it's crazy the whole thing's crazy like how did they do that like whatever they did they did without Machin supposedly they did without um the the use of uh the combustion engine they didn't have electricity and yet they were able

to do something that stands the test of time not just so you could look at it you know like you can go to the Acropolis and see the Parthenon it's gorgeous it's it's amazing it's incredible but I can understand how people could have built it the pyramids is one of those things you just look at you go what the [ __ ] was going on here what was going on here and none of these people are still around you you have this strange culture now that's entirely based around you know you have Cairo and an

enormous population of visitors right which is a lot of it people just going to St these relics what what was going that those people were so much more advanced than anyone anywhere else in the world yeah I would I I I'm not sure I would anchor on the technological part but I think I think the the piece that is very hard for us to comprehend is what motivated them culturally well how did they do it physically why why did they do it why why were you motiv so why but also how how is a big

one because that it's really difficult to solve there's no traditional conven explanations for the construction the movement of the stones the amount of time that it would taken if you move 10 stones a day I believe it takes 664 years to make one of those pyramids so how many people were involved how long did it take how'd they get them there how' they figure out how to do it how come the shittier pyramids seem to be dated later like what what was going on in that particular period of time where they figured out how to

do something so extraordinary that even today 4,500 years later we stare at it and we go I don't know I don't know what the [ __ ] they did I I haven't studied it carefully enough I'll I'll Trust you that it's very hard I think the the I think the I would say the the real mystery is why were they motivated and it's because you can't live in a pyramid it's just it was just the afterlife of the Pharaoh there's some debate about that Christopher Dunn as an engineer who believes that it was some sort

of a power plant he's got this very bizarre theory that there was a chamber that exists if you can see you see the structure of the pyramid the inside of it there's a chamber that's Subterranean and he believes this Subterranean chamber was pounding on the surface of the of the earth and of the walls of the thing creating this very specific vibration they had shafts that came down into the Queen's chamber these shafts they would pour chemicals into these shafts and then there was limestone at the end of it this is all his theory not

mine um the end of it there was this Limestone which is permeable right so the Limestone which is porous these gases come through and creates this hydrogen that's inside of this chamber then there these shafts inside the king's chamber that are they're they're getting uh energy from space you know gamma rays and all the [ __ ] from space and that it's going through these Chambers which are very specifically designed to Target this these gases and put them into this chamber where they would interact with this energy and he believes it's enough to create electricity

man my it's a crazy Theory but look I'm always I'm always too uh too fast to buk all these things but um like my just coming back to our earlier conversation it it sound it it must have been a crazy power print to have a containment structure much bigger than a nuclear reactor yeah well it's ridiculous but it's also a different kind of Technology right if nuclear technology was completely not on the table they didn't understand atoms at all but they did understand that there's rays that come from space and that you could somehow harness

the energy of these things with specific gases and through some method con con that into some form of electricity but it if it takes so much power to put all these rocks on the pyramid you have to always look at how efficient the power plant is so um so it can't just be some it has to be like the the craziest reaction ever to justify such a big containment structure because even nuclear power plants don't work economically barely work it well they didn't do a lot of them you know they only did this one in

Giza and then there was other pyramids that he thinks had different functions that were smaller but the whole purpose of it is or the whole point of it is we we don't know what the [ __ ] it is we don't know why they did it we have uh a group of new archaeologists that are looking at it from a completely different Theory they're not looking at it like it's a tomb the established archaeologists have insisted that this is a tomb for the Pharaoh the newer archaeologists established archaeologists are looking at it and considering whether

or not there were some other uses for this thing and one of them is the concept of the par I'm always I don't know if this is an alternate history Theory but I I'm always into the James Frasier golden B Renee Gerard violence sacred history where um you know you have always this question about um the origins of monarchy and kingship and um the the sort of Gerard Frasier intuition is um that uh it's something like um it is something like if um if every King is a kind of living God then uh we have

to also believe the opposite that maybe every God is a dead or murdered King and that uh that somehow societies were organized around scapegoats the scapegoats were um you know there was sort of a crisis in the archaic Community it got blamed on a scapegoat the scapegoat was attributed all these powers and then at some point the scapegoat before he gets executed figures out a way to postpone his execution and turn the power into something real and so there's sort of this this very um weird adjacency between mon the Monarch and the scapegoat and uh

and then you know I don't know the sort of Riff on the would be that the first pyramid did not need to be invented it was just the stones that were thrown on a victim and then it somehow and that that's the original the original stones that were thrown on a victim a community Stones a victim to death tribe runs after a victim you Stone him to death you throw stones on the victim that's how you create the first Tomb H and then um and then as it gets more complicated you create a tomb that's

two million stones and and you get a you get a pharaoh you get a pharaoh who figures out a way to postpone his own execution or something like this I I think there's um I'm going to blank on the name of this ritual but I believe in old in in the old Egyptian kingdoms which were sort of around the time of the Great Pyramids or even before um there it was something like um in the 30th year of the reign of the Pharaoh the Pharaoh gets transformed into a living God and um and then um

this perhaps dates to a time where um in the 30th year of the pharaoh's Reign the Pharaoh would get ritually sacrificed or or killed and you have you know you have all these societies where the Kings lived were allowed to rule for an a lot of time where you you know you you become king and you you draw the number of Pebbles out of a vase and that corresponds to how many years was this Jamie the said Festival HEB said Festival of tale was an ancient Egyptian ceremony that celebrated the continued rule of pharaoh the

name was taken from the name of the Egyptian wolf God one of whom's name was whip this is what I'm talking about or said the less formal Feast name the Feast of the tale is to yeah next paragraph is the one to start okay no that that one right there the the ancient Festival might perhaps have been instituted to replace a ritual of murdering a pharaoh who was unable to continue to rule effectively because of age or condition interesting interesting so you can't kill him now and then eventually said festivals were Jubilee several had thrown

for 30 years and then every 3 to four years after that so when it becomes Unthinkable to kill the Pharaoh the Pharaoh gets turned into a living God before that the Pharaoh gets murdered and then gets worshiped as a dead Pharaoh or distant God that's interesting but it still doesn't solve the engineering puzzle the engineering puzzle is the biggest one like how did they do that well the one the one I'm focusing on is the motivational puzzle even if you have all the motivation in the world if you want to build a structure that's insane

to build today and you're doing it 4,500 years ago we're dealing with a massive puzzle I I think I think I think the motivational part's the harder one to solve if if if you can figure out the motivation you'll you'll you'll figure out a way to organize the whole society and if you can figure out if you can get the whole society working on it you can probably do it but don't you think that his grasp on of power was in Peril in the first place which is why they decided to come up with this

idea of turning them into a living God so to to have the amount of resources and power and then the engineering and then the understanding of whatever methods they use to shape and move these things well this is always the um this is always the anthropological debate between voler the enlightenment thinker of the 18th century and durkheim the 19th century Anthropologist and uh voler believes that um Rel religion originates as a conspiracy of the priests to maintain power and so politics comes first the politicians invent religion um and then durkheim says the causation the other

way around that somehow religion came first and then politics somehow came out of it now of course you know once the politics comes out of it um you know the the priests the religious authorities have political power they figure out ways to manipulate it things like this but uh but I I find you know I find the durkheim story far more plausible than the volar one I think the religious categories are are primary and the the political categories are are are secondary so you think the religious the religion came first but what about if we

emanated from tribal societies tribal societies have always had leaders when you have leaders you're going to have dissent you're going to have challenges you're going to have politic and you have people negotiating to try to maintain power keep power keep everything organized that's the origin of politics correct uh you know I I I think that's a that's a whitewashed Enlightenment rationalist description of the origin of politics yeah what do you think the origin of politics is I think it's far more vile than that you know what you're what you're giving me is well it's very

vile the control and power and maintaining power involves murder and sabotage well that okay that's more like it but what you what what what what you gave me a minute ago sounds more like a social contract theory in which people sit down negotiate and have you know a nice legal chitchat to drop the social contract that is a complete fiction yeah I don't think that I think that there was probably various levels of Civility that were achieved when Agriculture and when establishments were constructed that were near resources where they didn't have to worry as much

about food and water and things along those lines things probably got a little bit more civil but I think that the origins of it are like the origins of all human conflict it's filled with murder well I think at the beginning was Madness and murder yeah Madness and murder and and I don't know I don't I don't know if it got I don't know if it got that much more rational I don't know if it's that much more rational today well so in some ways it's not right this again this again back to the you

know the the progressive conception are we you know are we really have we really progressed how much have we really progressed from from that but but uh but yeah I my my uh my version would be that it was you know it was much more um um it was organized around you know acts of uh Mass violence like maybe maybe you externalize it onto you know a Mastadon or hunting some big animal or something like this but uh but the real problem of violence you know it wasn't external it was mostly internal it was it

was violence with people who were near you proximate to you um it wasn't even natural CL cataclysms or other tribes it was it was uh it was sort of um much more uh the internal stuff and um it's very different I think the the human situation is somehow very very different from something like I don't know an ape primate hierarchy where you know in an ape context you have an alpha male um you know he's the strongest and there's some sort of natural dominance and you don't need to have a fight to the death typically

because you know who's the strongest and you don't need to um push it all the way in a human context it's always possible for two or three guys to gang up on the alpha male so uh so it's uh it's somehow the culture is more important you know and if they can talk to each other and you get language and then they can coordinate and they can gang up on on the leader and then you have to stop them from gting up on the leader and how how do you do that and so the there's

some sort of radical difference between a you know a human and a let's say an um a prehuman world have you seen chimp Empire no chimp Empire is a fascinating documentary series on Netflix where these scientists had been embedded with this tribe of chimpanzees for decades and so because they were embedded they had very specific rules you has to maintain at least 20 yards from you and any of the chimps no food you can never have food and don't look them in the eyes and as long as you do that they don't feel you're a

threat and they think of you as a natural part of their environment almost like you don't exist they and they behave completely naturally well it shows in that that sometimes it's not the largest strongest one and that some chimps form bonds with other chimps and they form coalitions and they do have some sort of politicking and they do help each other they groom each other they do specific things for each other and then one of the things that happens also they get invaded by other chimps and that chimps leave and they go on patrol and

other chimps gang up on them and kill them and they try to fight and battle over resources so it's not nearly as cut and dry as the strongest chimp prevails because one of the chimps that was dominant was an older chimp and he was smaller than some of the other chimps but he had formed a coalition with all these other chimps and they all respected him and they all knew that they would be treated fairly and being treated fairly is a very important thing with chimpanzees they get very jealous if they think that things are

not fair which is why that guy was attacked and you know that guy who had a um pet chimpanzee he brought it a birthday cake the other chimps weren't getting a piece of the cake and they someone had [ __ ] up and left a door open they got out and mauled this guy because he didn't give them some of the cake yeah so I I find all of that quite plausible but I think both of us can be correct so there's some the the the true story of harmonization of how we became humans there's

a way to tell it where it's continuous with our animal past and where it's just you know there's things like this with the chimpanzees or the baboons or you know um other primates and then um there is a part of the story that I think is also more discontinuous um and um you know my my judgment is we probably you know in a in a darwinian context we always stress the continuity um you know I'm I'm always a little bit the contrarian and so um you I Believe In Darwin's theory but uh I think uh

I think uh we should also be skeptical of ways it's too dogmatic and uh and Darwin's theories make us gloss over the discontinuities and I think you know the one one type of happen overnight but one type of Fairly dramatic discontinuity is that um you know is that humans have something like language and even though you know chimpanzees probably I don't know they have an IQ of 80 or they're pretty they're pretty smart but but when you don't have a rich symbolic system um that that leads to sort of a very very different kind of

structure and and there's something about uh um uh language and the kind of coordination that allows and the ways that it forces you to it enables you to coordinate on violence and then it encourages you to channel violence in certain sacred religious directions um uh I think uh creates a you know something radically different about human society we're you know we differ you know we we tell humans tell each other stories um a lot of the stories are not true true they're myths but uh that's that is a that's I think that's an some some

sort of a very important difference from uh from even our closest uh uh uh primate uh primate relatives um but that you know this is again this is sort of like another way of getting at what's uh so crazy about uh chat GPT and passing the touring test because if we had sat here two years ago and you asked me you know what what is the distinctive feature of a human being what makes someone a human and you know how and in a way that differs from everybody else um you know it's not perfect but

my go-to answer would been language you're you know you're threeyear old you're an 80y old you know just about all humans can speak languages just about all non-humans cannot speak languages it's this it's this binary thing and then that's that's sort of a way of telling us again why why passing the touring test was way more important than super intelligence or anything else yeah I could see that I don't want go back to that tangent no it's a good tangent great keep tangent and off have fun it's great um do you think what what do

you think the factor was there's a lot of debate about this like the factor was that separated us from these animals and why we became what we became CU we're so vastly different than any other primate like so what do you think took place like the doubling of the human brain size over a period of 2 million years is one of the greatest mysteries in the entire fossil record we don't know what the [ __ ] happened there's a lot of theories the throwing arm cooking meat there's a lot of theories but we we really

have no idea well again if I if I let me do sort of linguistic riff I think um Aristotelian darwinian biology Aristotle you always differ things by put them in categories and and uh um man I think the line Aristotle has is something man differs from the other animals in his greater aptitud ude for imitation and um and and I would say uh it that um we are these giant imitating machines and of course the darwinian Riff on this is you know to imitate is to ape and um and so we differ from the AP

we're more aplike than the Apes we are far better at aping each other than the apes are and um and that uh to you know a first cut I would say our brains are giant imitation machines that's how you learn language as a kid you imitate your parents uh and that's how culture gets transmitted but then um there are a lot of dimensions of imitation that uh that are also very dangerous because um it's not imitation doesn't just happen on this symbolic linguistic level it's also you imitate things you want you want a banana I

want a banana you want a blue ball I can have a red ball I want a blue ball because you have a blue ball and um and and so there's something about imitation that um you know creates culture um you know that uh um that is incredibly important pedagogically learning you know it's how you master something how you know in all these different ways and then um and then a lot of it has this uh has this incredibly conflictual Dimension as well and uh and then there's yes so I think I think that was sort

of core to the things that are both great and troubled about humanity and and uh and that was sort of that was in some ways the problem that that needed to be solved so you think that the motivation of imitation is the the essential first steps that led us to become human um there's some story like and again this is a one-dimensional one explanation fits all but yeah the EXP sort of the explanation I would I would go with is that it was it was something like um you know our brains got bigger and so

we were more powerful imitation machines and there were things about that that were you know that were um yeah that made us a lot more powerful and a lot we could learn things and we could remember things and there was cultural transmission that happened but then um it also we could build better weapons and we became more violent and um it it also had a very very destructive element and then somehow the imitation you know had to be had to be channeled in in these sort of ritualized religious you know kinds of ways and that's

that's that's why um I I think all these things sort of somehow came to up together in parallel what about the physical adaptation like what would be the motivation of the animal to change form and to have its brain grow so large and to lose all its hair and to become soft and fleshy like we are as opposed to like rough and durable like almost every other primate is well you can always man you can always tell these retrospective Just So Stories and how this all all worked out but it it would seem the the

naive retrospective story would be that uh um you know there are a lot of ways that humans are I don't know less strong than the other apes or you know there all all these ways where we're in some sense weaker physically at least physically but um but maybe it was just this basic trade-off you you know yeah more more of your energy went into your mind and into your brain and um and then you know um you you were your fist wasn't as strong but you could build a better Axe and that made you stronger

than an ape and that's that's yeah where where you know a brain with you know less I don't know less energy was spent on growing a hair to keep warm in the winter and and then you used your brain to build an Axe and skin a bear and get get some fur for the winter some something like that yeah I guess it's just but it's just such a leap it's such a leap and different than any other animal like and like what was the primary motivating factor like what the thing you know McKenna believes it

was psilocybin you know I'm sure you probably ever heard that theory McKenna's Stone ape Theory which is a fasina any one but there's a lot of different theories about what took place but we're just well the one yeah the one I would go on was that there was this dimension of increased imitation there was some kind of cultural linguistic Dimension that was incredibly um important um it probably was also you know it was probably also uh somehow linked to uh to uh you know dealing with um all the violence that came with it all the

conflicts that that that came with it um you know I would be I'd be more open to the stoned ape theory if people um I had this conversation with the other guy mura rescu the immortality key Guy and um I always feel they whitewash it too much how's so you know it's like if I mean if if you had these crazy Dian rituals in which people you know if you know there's probably lots of crazy sex there was probably lots of crazy violence that was was tied to it and and so maybe like maybe you'd

be out of your mind to be hunting a woolly mammoth and like maybe maybe you can't be completely you know but they weren't hunting Willie Mammoth during the ucini Mysteries no but you were I don't know you went to went to war to fight the neighboring tribe it's probably more dangerous than hunting right but they also did absolutely have these rituals and they have absolutely found Trace elements of I don't I don't question that okay I don't question that at all I I I just I I I just I just think uh they they probably

part of it was ALS also uh was a way to channel violence was probably you know whenever I don't know was there some some degree to which um whenever you went to war you were on drugs you were well we know about the Vikings the Vikings most certainly took mushrooms before they went into battle and um and you know maybe it makes you less less coordinated or something but but if you're just if you're less scared that's probably it doesn't make you less coordinated if you're just a little bit less scared that's probably super important

it increases visual Acuity there's a lot of benefits that would happen physically especially if you got the dose right you know um it increases visual Acuity edge detections better uh makes people more sensitive probably more aware probably a better Hunter and uh but I think I I I'm I'm I'm sympathetic to all all these um mushrooms um psychedelic drug historical usage theories I suspect was very widespread um I just think you know a lot of it was in in these contexts that uh that were pretty trans aggressive yeah I think um they're not mutually exclusive

I think just giving the the way the world was back then for sure violence was everywhere violence was a part of daily life violence was a part of how Society was kept together violence was entertainment in Rome right for sure violence was uh was everything was a big part of it and I think release and and the anxiety of that violence also LED people to want to be intoxicated and do different things that uh separated them from a normal State of Consciousness um but I do think it's also probably where democracy came from I I

think having those ilian mystery rituals where they would get together and do psychedelics and under this very controlled set and setting I think that's the birthplace of a lot of very interesting and innovative ideas I think a lot of interesting and innovative ideas currently are are being at least uh dreamt up thought of they have their roots in some sort of altered conscious experience well um it's man I I don't know I I think this stuff is very powerful I think it is it is I definitely think it shouldn't be outlawed you know pretty hardcore

libertarian on all the drug legalization stuff uh and then I I do I do Wonder um I do Wonder exactly how how how how how these things work it probably you know probably the classical World version of it um was that it was something that you did in a fairly controlled setting you didn't do it every day um and it was it was sort of it was some it was some way uh I imagine to get you know a very different perspective on your 9 to-5 job or whatever you want to call it but uh

you didn't necessarily want to you know want to really DeCamp to the other world altoe oh for sure it's too dangerous to do um I don't think anybody thinks they did did I think that was part of the whole thing where do where do you think where do you think that line is like you know should PE should everyone do one iasa trip or if you do if you do an iasa trip a year is that I don't everyone has to do anything and I think everyone has their own requirements and I think um I

think as you do that everything like this especially psychedelics one of the more disappointing things recently was that the FDA had denied um they they did these MDMA trials for you know about all this yep yeah very very disappointing um that they wanted to make MDMA therapy available to Veterans and people with severe PTSD and it has extreme benefits clinical benefits known documented benefits and for whatever reason the FDA decided that they have to go through a whole new series of Trials to tr try to get this stuff legalized which is very disappointing and yeah

I I I I was I was very bullish on the stuff happening um and the way I thought about it four or five years ago was um that um it was a hack to doing a double blind study and because the FDA always has this concept that you need to do a double blind study you give one one you know onethird of the people you give a sugar pill and two-thirds you give the real drug and you have to and no one knows whether they have the sugar pill or the real drug and then um

and then you see how it works works and science requires a double blind study and then my my anti- double blind study theory is if if it really works you don't need a double blind study it should just work and there's something sociopathic about doing double blind studies because one third of the people who have this bad disease are getting a sugar pill and we we shouldn't even be like maybe it's um immoral to do double blind studies studies on unique and novel things make sense um this is not unique nor novel it's been around

a long well unique yes but well my my claim is if it's if it's a um uh if it actually works you shouldn't need to do a double blind study at all but um and then my Hope was that um MDMA psychedelics all these things they were a hack on the double blind study because um you knew whether you got the real thing or the sugar pill and so this would be a way to um to hack through this ridiculous double blind Criterion and just get the study done and then what I what I think

um part part of it it's probably just an anti-drug ideology by the FDA but um but the other part that happened on the sort of science scientific establishment level is they think you need a double blind study Joe we know you're hacking this double blind study because people will know whether they got the sugar pill or not and that's why we're going to arbitrarily change the goal posts and set them at way way harder because we know there's no way you can do a double blind study and if it's not a double blind study it's

no good because that's what our ideology of science tells us and um and that's sort of that's sort of what I think was part of part of what went um sort of politically Haywire with this stuff well I also think that it's Pandora's Box I think that's a real issue and that if uh they do find extreme benefit in using MDMA therapy particularly for veterans if they start doing and it starts becoming very effective and it becomes well known and widespread then it will open up the door to all these other psychedelic compounds and I

think that's a real threat to the powers that be it's a real threat to the establishment if you have people thinking in a completely alternative way and mean we saw what happened during the 1960s and that's one of the reasons why they threw water on everything and had it become schedule one and locked the country down in terms of the the access to psychedelics all that stuff happened out of a reaction to the way society and culture was changing in the 1960s if that happened today it would throw a giant monkey wrench in our political

system in our cultural system the way we govern the way we just the way allocation of resources all that would change if I if I if I just to articulate the alternate version on this um there's always a you know there's there's a part um let me think how to how to get this um you know there's there's one there's a question whether um this the shift to interiority um is it a compliment or a substitute like what I said about talk and action is it a compliment or a substitute to changing the outside world

so we focus on changing ourselves is this the first step to changing the world or is it um is it sort of a hypnotic way in which our attention is being redirected to from outer space to interner space so I don't know the one liner I had years ago was um you know we landed on the moon in July of 1969 and three weeks later Woodstock started and that's when the hippies took over the country and um and you know and um we stopped going to outer space because we started going to Inner Space and

that's and so there's sort of a question um you know how much the you know um it it it worked as a um as an activator or as a or as a a deactivator in a way um and uh you know there are all these different modalities of interiority there's psychological therapy there's meditation there's yoga there's um you know there was a sexual Revolution there were gradually you have incels living in their parents basement playing video games so they all you know there's um the naval gazing that is identity politics um there's a range of

psychedelic things and um and I think all of these things um I I I wonder whether the interiority ended up acting as a as a substitute because you know the alternate history in the 1960s is that um you know the hippies were actually they were anti-political and uh it was it was sort of that the the the drugs happened at the end of the city at the end of the 60s and that's when people depoliticized you it was like I don't know the beatle s you're carrying around pictures of shairon ma you're not going to

make with anyone anyhow it's like that's after they did LSD it was just the sort of insane politics no longer matters and so you have the Civil Rights the Vietnam War and then were the drugs the thing that motivated it or was that was that the thing where it actually um those those things started to started to deescalate I think they were happening at the same time and I think the Vietnam war coinciding with the psychedelic drug movement in the 1960s it was one of the reasons why it was so dangerous to The Establishment CU

these people were far less likely to buy into this idea that they needed to fly to Vietnam and go kill people they didn't know and they were far less likely to support any war and I think there was this sort of bizarre movement that we had never seen before this flower children move that we know that they plotted against I mean if you read chaos uh by Tom O'Neal familiar with fantastic book that shows you what they were trying to do to demonize these these hippies well was or or or the the part of it

that I thought was interesting was the MK Ultra yeah which part of it where um you know we uh there was a a predecessor version where uh we thought of um you know there was a you could think of it as we had an arms race with f the fascists and the Communists and they were very good at brainwashing people the gobl propaganda North Koreans brainwashing our soldiers in the Korean War um our PS and uh we needed to have an arms race to program and reprogram and deprogram people and um LSD was uh was

was sort of the MK ultra shortcut so I think I think there was and then I yeah my so hard to reconstruct it but uh my my suspicion is that the MK Ultra thing was was a lot bigger than than we realize and that uh you know it was it was the LSD movement both in the Harvard form and the Stanford form you know it started it started as an MK Ultra project Timothy liry at Harvard um Ken keesy at Stanford you know I knew uh Tom Wolf the um American novelist I still think his

greatest novel was uh um the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test which is sort of this history of the LSD counterculture movement starts at Stanford moves the hate Ashbury and San Francisco and uh but it starts with Ken key a grad student at Stanford like I Circa 1958 and um you get an extra $75 a day if you go to the Meno Park veterans hospital and um they give you some random drug and um yeah he got extra $75 a grad student in English um doing LSD and um Tom Wolf writes this you know iconic uh fictionalized

novel very realistic 1968 about this and um wolf could not have imagined that the whole thing started as some CIA mind control project right the menal park veterans hospital that was deep State adjacent sure well ha ashbery free clinic run by the CIA sure that's even crazier the whole thing's crazy Jolly Jolly West guy y yeah the the whole thing's crazy which leads me to what do you think they're doing today if they were doing that then I do not believe that they abandoned this idea of programming people I do not believe that I don't

think they would because I know it's effective look people join Cults every day we're well aware that people can be ideologically captured we're well aware we're well aware people will buy into crazy ideas as long as it's supported by whatever Community they associate with that's a just a natural aspect of being a human being maybe it's part of what you were saying this imitation thing that we have it leads us to do this if they have that knowledge and that understanding that for sure they're probably doing things similar today which is one of the things

that I think about a lot when I think about this guy that tried to shoot Trump I I want to know what happened and I don't think we're getting a very detailed explanation at all as to how this person achieved these the get how he they got on the roof how they got to that position how they trained what who were they in contact with who was teaching them why did they why did they do it what was going on we we are in the dark and I wonder like you know that was always The

Manchurian Candidate idea right this idea that we trained assassins and was the RFK uh dad um assassination 196 s where um he again maybe shouldn't believe him but he claimed that uh he didn't even know what he was doing it was on some hypnotic trance or whatever and it was like it was like the assassin in The Manchurian Candidate yeah yeah I mean that is possible I don't know if he's telling the truth he could have just had a psychotic break who knows obviously also convenient yeah very convenient but it's a possibility that she could

be should be considered I mean I this Crooks kid that did this that shot at the president what how what happened I want to know what happened man I I don't I I probably Veer in the direction that there were you know on the on the sort of conspiracy theory of History I Veer in the direction that there was a lot of crazy stuff like this that was going on in the US first half of the 20th century overdrive 1940s you I mean you had the Manhattan Project there's this giant secret project uh 1950 s

1960s and then um and then somehow the last 50 years I think the I'm not sure disturbing uh P but the perspective I have is these institutions are less functional I I don't think um I don't think the CIA is doing anything quite like MK Ultra anymore um why do you think that I think you had the church commission hearings in the late 70s and uh and somehow things things got things got exposed and um and then um when when things when a bureaucracy is forced to be formalized um it probably becomes a lot less

functional you know um there was a like the 2000s version there was I think there was a lot of crazy stuff that we did in Black sites torturing people um that the CIA ran you know in the war on terror uh water boarding there's all sorts of batshit crazy stuff that happened but then um you know once John Yu in the bush 43 Administration writes the torture memos and sort of formalizes this is how many times you can water dunk someone without it being torture etc etc once you formalize it people somehow know that it's

on its way out because you know um it doesn't quite work anymore so by I don't know by 2007 um at Guantanamo I think the inmates were running the Asylum the inmates and the defense lawyers were running it you were way safer as a Muslim terrorist in Guantanamo than as a let's say suspected cop killer in Manhattan there was still an informal process in Manhattan you were suspected cop killer they'd figure out some way to um to deal with you out inside the judicial the formal judicial process um and um but I think something there

was a sort of formalization that happened there was the post uh J Edgar Hoover FBI where Hoover was I don't know a law unto himself it was completely out of control CIA even more so and then um you know once it all gets exposed and uh um it it probably is a lot harder to do the NSA you know NSA probably held up longer as a deep State entity where it at least had the virtue people you know I think the 1980s it was still referred to as no such agency so it's still it was

still far more obscure so the necessary condition is that if some part of the deep State's doing it you know we we we can barely know what's going on right with them and then I don't know you know the the 2000s 2010s history on the on on you know I think the Patriot Act empowered all these fisa courts and I think there was I think there probably um were ways the NSA fisa court process was was weaponized in a really really crazy way um and you know it culminated in in 2016 with all the um

you know the crazy Russia conspiracy theories against Trump um but I I think even that I I'm not sure they can do anymore because it got exposed can't do that anymore but a small program that is top secret that is designed under the opes of protecting American lives extracting information from people I'm I'm I'm agreeing with you the the NSA fisa court process is is one where you had a pretty out ofc Control process from let's say Circa I don't know 2003 to 2017 2018 so that's relatively recent history mhm um I don't know you

know they're all the they're all the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories uh which um I'm probably too fascinated by um because it felt like there was there was some crazy stuff going on that they were able to cover up and still are uh and then but then man doesn't it the fact that we're still talking about Jeffrey Epstein tell us um how hard it is to come up with anything else no because there's no answers for the Jeffrey Epstein thing there's been no consequences other than glain Maxwell going to jail and Jeffrey Epstein allegedly committing suicide

which I don't think he did other than that what are the consequences they they they were able to pull off this thing this some some sort of operation what you know who knows who was behind it who knows what was the motivation but it clearly has something to do with compromising people which is an age-old strategy for getting people to do what you want them to do you have things on them you use those things as leverage and then next thing you know you've got people saying things that you want them to say do and

and it motivate moves policy changes things get things done that they did that yes and no one and we know they did that and yet no one is asking for the tapes no one's asking asking for the The Client List we we're in the dark still and probably I don't know man I I I spend too much time thinking about all all the all the Epstein variants it pro probably probably the sex stuff is overdone and everything else is underdone it's like with it's like a limited hangout we get to talk about the crazy underage

sex and um and you know not about all all the other questions it's like when Alex aosta testified for labor secretary under and he was he was the da who prosecuted Epstein in ' 0809 and um got him sort of the very light 13-month or whatever uh sentence and um was it South Florida da or whatever he was um and and uh aosta was asked you know um uh you know why did why did he get off so easily and and under Congressional testimony when he's up for labor secretary 2017 it was um he belonged

to intelligence that's yeah and then and then you know um and so it's yeah it's it's it the question isn't about the sex with the underage women the question is is really about you know why was he why was he so protected and then you know I I went I I went down all these rabbit holes was he you know working for the Israelis or the Mad Or all all this sort of stuff and uh I've come to think that that's that was very secondary it was obviously it was just the US you know you

know if you're working for Israel you don't get protected you we had Jonathan Paul he went to jail for 25 years or whatever um and um but unrelated right understood but it's but it's uh but this is one particular operation But but so it's but it it was uh if if it was an intelligence operation the question we should be asking is what part of the US intelligence right system was was he working for was he working for you know but don't you think that's an effective strategy for controlling politicians getting them involved in sex

scandals I mean that's always been one of the the worst things that can happen to a politician look at Monica Lewinsky a very simple one consensual inappropriate sexual relationship between a president and a staffer and it almost takes down the presidency it causes him to get impeached uh powerful motivators the shame of it all also the illegal activity the fact that it's I mean it's one of the most disgusting things that we think of with people having sex with underage people um I'm I'm I'm I'm sure that was part of it I suspect there are

a lot of other questions that uh you know one one one should one should also most certainly but I would think that that is one of the best motivators that we have is having dirt on people like that especially something that could ruin your career especially people that are deeply embedded in this system of people knowing things about people and using those at their advant I mean that's an age-old strategy in politics that was Jay Edgar Hoover's entire modus Opera my my my my Riff on it was always that it was um it was it's

it's a little bit different from the J Edgar Hoover thing and the question was always whether the people doing it knew they were getting compromised and so it's it's it's it it's the vibe is not that um um um you somehow got compromised it was more you were joining this uh this secret Club you got to be made you're a made man in the mafia and you get to do crazy things no no no no it's only if we have comprom mod on you do you get ahead right it's like you know it's like I

don't know it's one of these uh um yeah closet of the vaan the claim is 80% of the Cardinals in the Catholic church are gay not sure if that's true but uh directionally it's probably correct and the the basic thesis is you don't get promoted to a cardinal if you're straight because um we need to have and so we need you need to be compromised and then you're under control um but you also get ahead completely makes sense completely makes sense in the way to do that with especially the all these politicians who are essentially

like Bad actors a lot of them they're just people that want power and people that want control a lot of them and you know those kind of guys they want a party you know I mean that has been you've got two types of uh leaders that are presidents you got [ __ ] hounds and warmongers you know and you know some of sometimes you have both but generally you don't you guys like Clinton and JFK were anti-war and then you have guys like uh Bush who you don't think of at all as a [ __

] Hound but most certainly you think of as a warmonger hm do you what what um what do you do you have a theory on what was Bill Gates's complicity with Epstein I think he likes [ __ ] I think I think he's a man I think he likes power he likes Monopoly I mean he's incredibly effective with Microsoft and for the longest time he was thought of as a villain right he was this antitrust villain he was this guy who was monopolizing this operating system and and and controlling just this incredible Empire and he

had a real bad rap and then I think he wisely turned towards philanthropy and uh but do you do you do you think do you think that he needed Epstein I think it's very difficult a very famous very high-profile person to [ __ ] around I think it's very difficult I think you have to worry about people telling people you worry about it taking you down if you're having Affairs if you're running some pH philanthropy organization you're supposed to be thought of as this guy who's like this one wonderful person who's trying to really fix

all the problems in the world but really he just flying around and and banging all these different chicks you have to figure out a way to pull that off and this is what uh Eric Weinstein and I we've had discussions about this and Eric's position is that there are people in this world that can provide experiences for you and safely for people that are in that kind of a group and that makes sense it makes sense that if you pay people enough and you have people motivated in order to like establish these relationships and make

sure that these things happen when you get very high-profile you can't just be on a [ __ ] dating app and if you're a guy who likes to bank checks what are you going to do I the um all of that might be true but I I I wonder if there are more straightforward alternate conspiracy theories on Epstein that we're missing so let me do let me do alternate one on Bill Gates where um the um you know the things just just looking at what's hiding in plain sight um you know he supposedly um talked

to um Epstein early on about um how his marriage wasn't doing that well and then Epstein suggested that he should get a divorce Circa 2010 2011 and Gates told him something like um you know um uh that doesn't quite work um didn't have presumably because he didn't have a prenup so um so there's one part of Epstein as a marriage counselor which is sort of disturbing um but then um the second thing that we know that um that Gates talked to to Epstein about was um sort of uh you know all the sort of collaborating

on funding setting up this philanthropy all this sort of this um somewhat corrupt left-wing philanthropy structures and so there's a question you know um um does and then and then my sort of straightforward alternate conspiracy theory is um should we ask um should we ask should we combine those two and uh was there was there you know and I I don't have all the details in this figured out but it would be something like you know um Bill and Melinda get married in 1994 they don't sign a prup um and you know something's going wrong

with the marriage and maybe Melinda can get half the money in a in a divorce he doesn't want her to get half the money what do you do and um uh and then the alternate plan is something like um you set up you set up uh you commit the marital assets to this nonprofit and um and then it it sort of locks Melinda into not complaining about the marriage for a long long time and it's and and it's it's some kind of a um and and so there's something about the left-wing philanthropy world that was

uh it was sort of some sort of Boomer way to control their crazy wives or something like this it's also an effective way to whiteash your your past right your thought there all these and he he talked to Epstein about he got Epstein to meet with the uh the head of the Nobel Prize foundation so it was um yeah Bill Gates wanted to get a Nobel Nobel Prize wow right so this is all this is all yeah this is all straightforward this is all known yeah and and and I'm not saying what you're saying about

do you know the history of the Nobel Prize that's the ultimate whitewash sure it was preventing Dynamite yeah that's the he was he well Peter Berg told me the story I was blown away he originally um they act someone said that he died and it was printed that he died but he didn't die and in the stories they were calling him The Merchant of death cuz he was the guy that invented dynamite and he re realized that oh my God I this is my reputation this is how think people think about me I have to

do something to turn this around so he invented the Nobel Prize and he started then now the the name Nobel is automatically connected in most people's eyes to the the greatest people amongst us the people that have contributed the most to society and science and art and peace and all these different things Nobel Prize for medicine the guy who invented super crazy history yeah it's a crazy history but it's the ultimate whitewash it's the same thing like he came up with that prize because he wanted to change his image publicly and um so it's ironic

that Bill Gates would want to get a Nobel Prize um or not iron or ironic but understandable and ironic but but I think but then if we if we uh if and so there's yeah so there's there's underage sex version of the Epstein story and then there is a crazy status Nobel Prize history of it and there is a corrupt leftwing philanthropy one and there is a uh Boomers who didn't sign um prenuptual agreements with their their wives story right and um and and I think all those are worth exploring more I think you're right

what is what about the these leftwing philanthropy Ventures do you think is uniquely corrupt um sorry which one do I think is most corrupt or what what about them these when when you said corrupt yeah well um man it's it's there's something about it's maybe it's just my hermeneutic of Suspicion but there's something about you know there's something about the virtue signaling and what does it mean and I always think this is sort of a Europe America versus Europe difference where in um America we're told that um um that philanthropy is something a good person

does and um you know if you're a Rockefeller or and you start giving away all your money um this is just this is just what um a good person does and it shows how good you are and then I think sort of the European intuition on it is something like um you know wow um that's it's only something a very evil person does and if you if you start giving away all your money in Europe it's like Joe you must have murdered somebody or you must you must be covering up for something so there these

two very different intuitions and I think I think the European one is more correct than the American one and uh probably there's some history where um you know the sort of left-wing philanthropy peaked in 2007 2010 2012 and there's these subtle ways you know we've um we've become you know we've become more you know more more um more European in our sensibilities as a society and so it has this very different veence from what it did uh 12 or 14 years ago but yeah it's all we we ask all these questions like we're asking right

now about Bill Gates where it's like okay he was you know it was like all the testimony in the Microsoft antitrust trial in the 90s where he's like he's cutting off the air supply he wants to strangle people and he's like not he's kind of a sociopathic guy it seems and then it's it's it's this giant whitewashing operation and and then somehow the whitewashing has been made too transparent and uh it gets deconstructed and exposed by you know the internet or whatever but I think most people are still unaware of how much whitewashing actually took

place including donating somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 plus million dollars to Media corporations essentially buying favorable uh reviews about him and then there's this very public philanthropy it's not just philanthropy it's philanthropy mixed with public relations public Rel um relations because he's constantly doing interviews about it this is not like a guy who is just silently donating his incredible wealth to all these causes he's advocating for it on various talk shows he's constantly talking about it and how we need to do things I mean during the pandemic he was a very vocal voice he

was the guy telling us he was a somehow or another he became a public health expert and no one questioned why we were taking Public Health advice from some someone who has a financial interest in this one very particular remedy yeah or um yeah there all these alternate versions I can give but yeah I I think um I think uh it's so it's always so hard to know what's really going on in our culture though so I I think I think all what you say is true but I also think it's not working as well

as it used to Ag and there's a way people see through this it's not always as articulate as you just articulated it but there's there's some there's some vague intuition that um you know um you know when Mr Gates is just wearing uh sweaters and looks like Mr Rogers that something fishy is going on people people have that sort of in trust Jeff Bezos in his tight shirt hanging out with his girlfriend on the yach or Elon Elon Musk uh the vi signaling is safer than virtue signaling yeah right because if you're you know if

your virtue signaling are intuition is something really really really sketchy suspicious we get suspicious and I think rightly so I think especially when someone's doing something so public I think rightly we should be suspicious especially when I mean with with Gates it's like you know the history of the guy I mean you know what he was involved with before you know how he ran Microsoft you know it just kind of makes sense that it's a clever movie move it's a clever move to pay the media it's a clever move again my my my my alternate

one which is not incompatible with yours on on on Gates is that uh um Melinda finally files for divorce in early 21 um I think she told Bill she wanted one late 2019 so 2020 the year where um he Bill Gates goes into overdrive on covid um you know um all this stuff you know part part of it maybe it's self-dealing and he's trying to make money from the drug company or something like this but um you know isn't isn't the other really big thing he needs to box Melinda in and force her not to

get that much out because all the money's going to the foundation anyway Melinda has to say um you know um I want why do you want half the money it's all going to the Gates Foundation anyway we're not leaving our kids anything and um and then when you lean into Co you know how does that work in the you know it's somehow um in theory Melinda has a really strong hand she should get half that's what you get in a divorce with um no prenuptial but then if you make it go overdrive on Co Melinda

are you a you know are you a I don't know uh are you like some crazy anti-science person right and um and so so I don't know my my my my my my reconstruction is that uh you should not underestimate how much of it was you know about just controlling his ex-wife and and not about controlling the whole society makes sense it makes sense you they can both be they can both be correct sure there there's many factors but mine mine lines up really well with the with the timeline well we're probably talking about a

hundred million doll or hundred billion dollars one way or the other well I think she got got she got less than she got like one tenth really interesting and she should have gotten half as far as and I it's amazing he got it down that much WoW interesting but it was just I think she was just boxed in every time he went on TV talking about Co she was boxed in with all of her leftwing friends that is an interesting philosophy that's an interesting way to approach a problem if you're him very wise you know

very clever I mean if you're just looking at like just for personal benefit the genius move and the guy's a genius clearly brilliant guy you know I mean that makes sense makes sense that he would do that I don't know you know I would do that probably should have had a prup but yeah yeah well that's kind of crazy that's interesting that yeah I didn't consider that but it makes sense and she's you know she's been kind of pretty vocal unfortunately for him about his ties to Epstein being one of the primary reasons why she

wanted out but again my Al again it's what did he was he was he was he having extramarital Affairs through Epstein or maybe Epstein was from Melinda's point of view would it be worse for Epstein to facilitate an extramarital affair or would it be worse for Epstein to be advising Gates on how to how to ditch Melinda without giving her any money what do you think he was that would be much much worse from a Linda's point of view yeah makes sense it totally makes sense do you think that he was a legitimate finan adviser

like he could give him advice on how to do those things that Gates wouldn't have more effective people I mean he's when you're at that level of wealth I'm sure you have wealth management people that are like very high level um because that's one of the things that Eric said about him he said when he met him he's like this guy's a fraud like this he doesn't know enough about what he's talking about and you know Eric is you know I I I met Epstein a a few times as well and I think how'd you

get introduced um it was uh it was Reed Hoffman and Silicon Valley introduced us in 2014 but um but it was it was basically uh and I I you know I didn't didn't uh check didn't ask any enough questions about it um but I yeah I I think there were sort of a lot of things where it was was fraudulent I do think Epstein knew a lot about taxes and um and there were probably you know these these complicated ways you could um you could structure a nonprofit organization especially as a way in in a

in a marital cont context that uh that I I think Epstein might have might have known a decent amount about how when you were introduced to him I don't I don't think Epstein would have been able to um you know comment on super String Theory something like that but uh but I think I think this sort of thing he he might have actually been pretty expert on when you were introduced to him what how was he described to you um he was described as uh one of the smartest tax people in the world interesting and

uh and I I probably probably was my moral weakness that I how could you have known back then he had never been arrested no this was this was post 2014 was post arrest oh so his arrest was the first arrest right which was like 200 78 okay okay and so but you know you you assume um he didn't go to jail for that long right it was probably not not as serious as alleged uh there was was certainly was the illusion that there were all these these other people that I trusted you know Reed who

introduced us was you know he started LinkedIn he was you know maybe too focused on business Network working but but uh but I thought he always had good judgment in people when the [ __ ] went down and epine gets arrested for the second time were you like oh well there you go uh I've thought about it I thought a lot about it as a result yeah yeah I'm sure Jesus Christ well he tricked a lot of people I know a lot of people that met that guy he got a lot of celebrities to come

to his house for parties and things well I think I think it was it's it was it's a I think a lot of it was this was this strange commentary on you know I know it was some secret Club secret society you could be part of right of course again that wasn't it wasn't explicit but that was that was the vague vague Vibe of the whole thing people love those stupid things they love like exclusive clubs that very few people look at the [ __ ] Soho House like look at that stupid thing I mean

you just go to a place that you have to be a member to go to and everybody wants to be a member oh my God got get and then you got like the Malibu Soho house it's different from the other ones you have to have membership only there do you have membership there people love that kind of [ __ ] socially they love being a part of a Walled Garden they love it they love it and if you're a guy like Bill Gates or or or similarly wealthy you probably have a very small amount of

people that you can relate to very small amount of people that you can trust probably very difficult to form new friendships yeah I I I think there were probably different different things that were pitched for different people sure you know I I was I was pitched on the taxes I think you know there were probably other people that were you know more um more prone to the you know um the Social Club part and then there were probably people yeah and there was probably a fairly limited group where it was uh yeah off off the

charts bad wouldn't it be wonderful to know what the [ __ ] was really going on and maybe one day we will maybe one day some Whitney web type character will break it all down to us and explain do us in great detail exactly how this was formulated and what they were doing and how they were getting information out of people but I think people have to age out they have to they have to die and we we still don't have it on the Kennedy assassination JFK crazy well one of the wildest Things That Trump

said was that if they told you what they told me you wouldn't tell people either which is like what the [ __ ] does that mean what does that mean I don't think legally he can tell you right because I think those things are Above Top Secret if if they did inform him of something there must be some sort of prerequisite to keeping this a secret I I I haven't studied that one that carefully but isn't you know there all these alternate conspiracy theories on who killed JFK it's you know the CIA and the mafia

and the Russians and the Cubans and um you know um there's an LBJ version since he's the one who benefited so all these happened in Texas um uh you have all these you know alternate theories and on some level it's it's it's yeah it's it's I always think it's just a commentary where you know 1963 America wasn't it wasn't like Leave it to Beaver it was it was like a really crazy country underneath the surface and absolutely um and even though probably most of the conspiracy theories are wrong it was like murder on the oran

Express and all these people sort of had different reasons for wanting Kennedy dead and that's that's what the theories are right even if they're wrong on the level of factual detail and then the the the sort of more minimal one that I'm I'm open to and I think there's some evidence in this from from the stuff that has been that has uh come out is you know Oswald was talking to you know parts of the US deep State and so even if Oswald was the Lan assassin and you somehow get the magic bullet theory and

all that stuff to work but let's say Oswald was the loan ass pass did did he did he tell someone in the FBI or CIA you know I'm going to I'm going to go kill Kennedy tomorrow and then you know maybe maybe the CIA didn't have to kill him they just didn't had to do nothing just had a sit on it or or maybe was too incompetent and didn't get you know didn't go up the bureaucracy and so it's you know I I think we sort of know that they they talked to Oswald you know

a fair amount before before it happened and uh and so there's at least something you know that was grossly incompetent I think people have a problem minimum with with two stories being mut mutually exclusive two stories being the lone gunman or the CIA killed Kennedy and then they these they're not connected I think Lee Harvey Oswell was a part of it I think I think he probably did shoot that cop there's some evidence that you when when he was on the run and he was confronted you know there was a cop that that got shot

and were alleging he he he might have done it he might have taken a shot at Kennedy he might have even hit him I don't think he was the only one shooting I I think the the vast there was an enormous amount of people that heard sounds coming from the grassy null they heard gunfire they reportedly saw people the amount of people that were witnesses to the Kennedy assassination that died mysterious deaths is pretty shocking um Jack Ruby Well Jack Ruby just that's a weird one right Oswald yeah Jack Ruby walks up to Oswald shoots

him and then Jack Ruby with no previous history of mental illness becomes completely insane after getting visited by Jolly West which is nuts like why is the guy who's the head of MK Ultra visiting the guy who shot the Assassin of the president and why is he left alone with them what what happens what does he give him that this guy is screaming out they're burning Jews alive and just crazy crazy [ __ ] he was yelling out he went nuts probably some some amount of usty that dangerous enormous amount they probably gave him a

[ __ ] glass of it they probably gave him a glass of it and told him it was water drink this and who [ __ ] knows but the point is I think I think it's very possible that Oswald was a part of it and the way they did it and the way they just shot Oswald and and then they write the warrant commission we don't even see the zuder film until 12 years later when haraldo Rivera and when they play it on television when um Dick Gregory brought it to Heraldo Rivera which is wild

a comedian brings the video the the the actual film rather of the assassination from a different angle well you can actually see the video of him getting shot and his his head snaps back and to the left and everybody's like what the [ __ ] is going on here um when you look at all that stuff this mirrors what happened with this Crooks kid this Crooks kid somehow or another gets to the top of the roof is spotted by these people they know he's there they know he has a rifle they see him walking around

the crime scene half an hour before with a rangefinder the the whole thing is bananas and then they go to his house after he's killed it's completely scrubbed there's no silverware there they know that there's ad data that shows that a phone that's coming from the FBI offices in DC had visited him on multiple occasions cuz they tracked ad data there's and if that guy if he shot Trump and Trump got murdered and then they shot him it would be the Kennedy assassination all over again everybody would going what the [ __ ] happened what

happened what was the motivation what was he on any drugs what's the toxicology report how did he get up there who knew he was up there how how did they not shoot him quicker like what the [ __ ] happened how was he able to get off three shots what happened and go I I think there's like a slightly less crazy that might still be true which is just that uh people in the Secret Service in the um Biden Administration don't like Trump and it's they didn't have full intention to kill him but it's just

they didn't protect him we're just we're just you know we're going to have we're going to underst staff it we're um we're not going to we don't have to do as good a job coordinating with the local police there's all these ways you know um to make someone less safe you know but it seems more than that if they if they knew that the guy was on the roof with a rifle that seems a little more than that it's always a question who they is though right well if I'm a sniper and I'm on people

people in the audience people there were people there tell telling it to people right but I think the authorities knew this guy was on the roof before as well um well I I I I suspect some of the Secret Service people were were told that and then who knows how that got relayed or who all snipers already have eye on him I believe the snipers already had eye on I I don't know find out if that's true Jamie find out the snipers had eye on SEC service I don't know about the snipers I I I

I I don't I don't know about uh the the thing I don't have a good sense on with uh with with with shooting and maybe maybe you'd have a better feel for this is my my senses was a pretty straightforward shot for for the guy in um the Trump assassin would be assassin I think the Oswalt shot was a much harder one because Kennedy's moving yes and no yes and no okay because uh Oswald had a scope so Oswald had a rifle the marono rifle say one of the snipers stationed inside the building reported first

saw Crooks outside and looking up to the roof of the building before the suspect left the scene Crooks Slater came back and sat down while looking at his phone near the building CBS News reported that a sniper took a photo of the suspect when he returned but I think they saw him on the roof though um Crooks then took out a rang finder like right then arrest that guy you got a [ __ ] Rangefinder about the suspect's action Crooks then disappeared again and returned to the building with a backpack again arrest him Secret Service

snipers again alerted their command post about Crook's actions according to the source who spoke with CBS News Crooks had already climbed to the top of the building in question by the time the additional officers arrived at the scene for backup the suspect also positioned himself above and behind the snipers inside the building by the time the police started rushing the scene and other officers attempted to get onto the roof the source told CBS news that a different Secret Service sniper had killed Crooks okay so it seems like they they [ __ ] bumbled it at

every step of the way if they knew that guy was there if they knew he had a rangef finder returns to the backpack he gets onto the roof all that's insane that is at the very least horrific incompetence at the very least let me go back yeah okay but back to Mike was it I I thought it was a much easier shot for it's not an easy head shot um he's shooting at his head but why why why why was shooting at the head the right thing shouldn't you be shooting at well you don't know

if he's wearing a vest right um he could be wearing a vest which you would have to have plates you'd have to have uh ceramic plates in order to stop a a a rifle round so was was it a 308 what what did he have what kind of rifle did he have I have never seen that I think he had an AR-15 so and are are the Scopes a lot better today than he have we're pretty sure how good was Oswell scope it was good they said it was off this was one of the the

conspiracy theories uh oh the scope was off but that doesn't mean anything because Scopes can get off when you pick it up if you knock it against the wall when he drops it if you makes the shot and then drops the scope and the scope hits the window sill and then bounces off that's excuse me that Scopes off anytime you knock is there anything about the high angle from Oswald made it harder no not a difficult shot very difficult to get off three shots very quickly so that was the thing that they had attributed three

shots to Oswald the reason why they had attributed three shots is because one of them had hit a Ricochet one of them had gone into the underpass ricocheted off the curb and hit a man who was treated at a hospital they found that they found out where had hit the bulleted hit so they knew that one bullet Miss Kennedy hit that curb which would have indicated that someone shot from a similar position as Lee Harvey Oswell um so then they had the one wound that uh Kennedy had to the head of course and then they

had another wound that Kennedy had uh through his neck that's the magic bullet theory this is why they had to come up with the magic bullet theory cuz they had tribute all these wounds to one bullet then they find this pristine bullet they find it in the gurnie when they're bringing uh Governor Connelly in nonsense it's total nonsense the bullet is undeformed a bullet that goes through two people and leaves more fragments of the bullet in Connelly's wrist that are missing from the bullet itself and then the bullets not deformed after shattering bone all that's

crazy all that defies logic that doesn't make any sense if you know anything about bullets and if you shoot bullets into things they distort it's just one of the things that happen um that bullet looks like someone shot it into a swimming pool that's what it looks like when they would do ballistics on on bullets and they try to figure out like if it was this guy's gun or that guy's gun and by the rifling of the round they can get similar markings on bullets when they do that that's how they do it they do

it so the Bullet doesn't distort so they shoot that bullet into uh water or something like that now that bullet was uh metal jacketed right if you look at the bullet the top of it is uh [ __ ] up and but the the shape of the bullet looks pretty perfect it doesn't look like something that shattered bones and then you have to attribute you have to account rather for the amount of per there's little fragments of the bullet that you could see that they found in Connelly's wrist the whole thing's nuts the whole thing's

nuts that you're only saying that this one guy did it because that's convenient and the Warren commission's the Warren Commission whitewashed everything so the whole thing's nuts it's much more likely that there were people in the grassy null and then the umbrellas as the pointers or whatever I mean I don't know I don't know about what all I know is you got a guy in a convertible which is [ __ ] crazy who is the president of the United States and he's going slowly down a road now if you are in a prone position so

Oswald is uh on the window sill right which is a great place to shoot by the way it's a great place to shoot cuz you rest that gun on the window sill and if you rest it on the window sill there's no movement right so you wrap your arm around the sling if it had a sling I'm not sure if it did so you get a nice tight grip you shove it up against your shoulder you rest it on the window sill and all you have to do is you have a round already racked all

and you have a scope and so the scope's magnified all you have to do is wait until he's there you lead him just a little bit and squeeze one off and then boom boom you could do that pretty quick it's not outside of the realm of possibility that he did get off three shots what doesn't make sense is the backing to the left it doesn't make sense that all these other people saw people shooting from the grassy null there's all these people that saw people running away they saw smoke there's smoke in some photographs of

it it looks like there was more than one shooter and it looks like they tried to they tried to hide that they tried to hide that in the warrant commission report the shot to Kennedy's neck initially was in when they brought him in in Dallas when he was before they shipped him to Bethesda they said that that was an entry wound when he got to Bethesda then it became a tracheotomy why do you give a tracheotomy to a guy who doesn't have a head you don't I mean that just none of it makes any sense

they altered the autopsy this is a part of David lon's book best evidence um Kennedy's brain wasn't even in his body when they buried him like the the the whole thing is very strange but then do do you get to anything more concrete than my murder on the orian express where they're just you know it could have been a lot of people could the Russians the Cubans the well no one even got suspicious for 12 years I think people were susp a lot of people suspicious kind of but what do you have to go on

you don't have to go on anything like this Crooks kid we don't have anything to go on we're just going to be left out here just like we're left out here with the the Epstein information no one knows the people that whoever organized it if anyone did you're never going to hear about it it's just going to go away the news Cycle's just going to keep flooded with more nonsense and and I think there's probably a bunch of people that wanted Kennedy dead I think there was more than one group of people that wanted Kennedy

dead I think there's probably collusion between groups that wanted Kennedy dead and I think there's a lot of people that have vested interest in ending his presidency and I think he was dangerous he was dangerous to a lot of the powers it be he was dangerous his his famous speech about secret societies crazy speech guy has this speech and then gets murdered right afterwards kind of nuts like the whole thing's nuts he wanted to get rid of the CIA he wanted to I mean there was so many things that Kennedy wanted to do there were

also a lot of crazy things Kennedy was doing you know so you know the um the the Cuba version of the assassination theory was um you know we had the Cuban Missile Crisis in 62 about a year earlier and then the deal that we struck with the Soviets was um you know um they take the missiles out of Cuba and we promised we wouldn't um we wouldn't try to overthrow the government in Cuba and uh and I guess we you know we no longer did um you know we no longer did Bay of Pigs type

covert stuff like that but I think there were still something like four or five assassination plots on Fidel yeah attempts actual attempts and then I think there was I don't know I think that again I'm going to get this garbled I think a month or two before the JFK assassination it castra said something like you know um there might be repercussions if you keep doing this yeah well listen I'm sure there's a lot of people that wanted that guy dead and I'm sure they would coordinate I mean if you knew that Cuba wanted Kennedy dead

and you knew that Cuba can get you assassins or that they could help in in any way you I'm sure they would want as many people that knew for a fact they wanted him dead and had communicated that I mean back then they were doing wild [ __ ] man I mean this is when they were doing operation Northwood this again where I think I think I think it is I don't think we're in a world where zero stuff is happening I I still I still uh the place where I directionally have a different feel

for it is I think um so much less of the stuff is going on and it's it's so much harder in this internet world for people to hide with whistleblowers as well and their legacy programs and there are internal records that are being kept and um you know like I I I don't know this for sure but I think even the NSA fisa court stuff which was an outof control deep State thing that was going on through about 2016 2017 I suspect even that at this point you know can't quite work because people know that

they're being watched they know they're being recorded and it's it's just you know you know you can't do water boarding in Guantanamo if you have lawyers running all over the place correct and that's I hope you're correct but it brings me back to this whole idea of getting dirt then I think I think there's and then on the other hand there's also um you know a degree to which um our government our our deep State um across the board is shockingly less competent less functional and um it's less capable of this and this is this

is where I'm not even sure whether this is an improvement you know right so it's it's sort of like um you know um maybe um the 1963 us where let's go with the craziest version where our deep state is capable of knocking off the president maybe that's actually a higher functioning Society than uh than the uh than um the crazy version where they are they're incapable of doing it right and they're bogged down with Dei they can't they they can't they can't get the gunman even to have a scope on his rifle or whatever yeah

I don't we we haven't really totally figured out a scope on his rifle but I don't believe he did man it's like it's like much bigger loser can you find someone as competent as Oswalt right or something like that you know yeah it's a good point it's a good point and so I I um I I I'm I I Veer more to the explanation that it's uh it's gross incompetence but I I don't know if that makes it better it might make it worse I think they weren't as competent right because they only had one

guy doing it and he wasn't effective if you had the same if if you had much better organization you wouldn't have it just one guy I mean there's people out there that I know that can kill someone from a mile away but it's it it's it's very effective you you can you can do things as a solo actor it's it's hard to organize because everything gets recorded everything does get recorded that is a fact but it brings me back to that thing about having dirt on people that you were talking about with why the Epstein

information doesn't get released and why they probably did it in the first place they did it in the first place you have dirt on people then you know those people are not going to tell on you you all coordinate together that is that is still a that is still a strange Counterpoint to my thesis where why has the dirt not come out and so somehow there's some some way uh the container is still kind of working yeah it's kind of working it's just everyone is aware that it's working and then they frustrated that nothing happens

you know like Julian Assange being arrested and and spending so much time locked up in the embassy like finally recently released but didn't he have to delete like a bunch of emails in order to be released but you know the you know in the in the but again just just to take the other side of this both in the Assange Snowden stuff um yeah it showed an outof control deep state that was just hoovering up all the data in the world right and then um but we weren't like it didn't show like James Bond times

100 there W weren't like exploding cigar assassination plots there was none of we're doing so little with this is is um seems they don't or at least that's the um but you know it's I I think it's there's so much less agency in the CIA in the Central Intelligence Agency it's so much less agentic I hope you're right again I I don't know incorrect with how they deal with overseas stuff I hope they're really good at that um you know that brings me to this whole UAP thing because one of my primary theories about the

UAP thing is it's stuff that we have I think I think that's a lot of what people are seeing I think I think there's secret programs um that are Beyond congressional oversight that have done some things with propulsion that's outside of our understanding our our current the conventional understanding that most people have about rockets and all these different things being the only way to propel things through the sky I think they figured out some other stuff and I think they're drones and I think they have drones that can use some sort of whether it's anti-gravity

propulsion system or some you know so do you that's that's your that's your placeholder Theory or that's that's uh that's what you think more than space aliens or do you think both space aliens and that or which which version of this the ladder I think both you think both yeah I don't I don't think we haven't been visited I think we have I I think we if if life exists elsewhere where it most certainly should it just makes sense but do you do you do you think um do you think the UFO sightings from the

50s and 60s were already drone programs were they already that Advance no those are the ones that give me pause um that's why you know when I named my comedy club The Comedy Mothership it's all UFO themed our our rooms are named fat man and little boy our rooms are named after the nuclear bombs because those nuclear bombs when they drop them that's when everybody starts seeing these things and I think if I was a sophisticated Society from another planet and I recognized that there is an intelligent species that has developed nuclear power and has

started using it as bombs I would immediately start visiting and I would let them know hey [ __ ] like there's there's something way more advanced than you I would hover over the nuclear bases and shut down their missiles I would do all the things that supposedly the UFOs did just to keep the government in check just to say Hey you are going through a transitionary period that all intelligent species do when they have the ability to harness incredible power and yet they still have these Prime primape brains they they have these territorial ape brains

but yet now with the ability to literally harness the power of stars and drop them on cities I think that's when I would start visiting and I think all throughout human history before that even there's been very bizarre accounts of these things all the way back to Ezekiel in the Bible very bizarre accounts of these things that are flying through space Chariot yeah there's there's a bunch of them there's the vimanas and the ancient Hindu text there's there's so many of these things that you got to wonder and you got to think that if we

send drones to Mars and we do we have a [ __ ] Rover running around on Mars right now collecting data do we send the James web telescope into space of course we do we have a lot of stuff that we send into space if we lived another million years without blowing ourselves up which is just a blink of an eye in terms of the life of some of the planets in the universe how how much more advanced would we be and if we were Interstellar and if we were Intergalactic Travelers and we found out

that there was a primitive species that was coming of age I think we would start visiting them you know the let me think what my I hear everything you're saying I'm I'm I'm strangely under motivated by it even if even if it's plausible too believe it or not um and I guess I guess on the space Al which is the the Wilder more interesting one in a way you know I don't know Roswell was 77 years ago 1947 and if um if um if the phenomenon is real and it's it's from another world it's space

aliens space robots what whatever um you know probably one of the key features is its ephemerality or its cloaking and they are really good at hiding it at cloaking it at um scrambling people's brains after they see them or or stuff like this right and then um you know if you're a researcher you you have to pick Fields where you can make progress and so um this is um you know it's not a promising field in you know I know Academia is messed up but even if Academia were not messed up this would not be

a good field in which to try to make a career because there's been so little PR R in 77 years and so you think of it from the point of view of I know jacqu valet or you know some of these people have been working on this for 50 years and um yeah it's it feels like there's something there and um but then it's it's just as soon as you as soon as you feel like you have something almost that's graspable like a Tik Tok videos whatever it just it's it's just always at the margin

of recognition and it's the ephemerality is a is a key feature and um and then um you know maybe you have to then you have to I think you have to have some theory of you know why is this about to change and then it's always you know I don't know the abstract mathematical formulation would be you know um something um doesn't happen for time interval 0er to T and time interval t+ one next minute next year How likely is it and maybe maybe there's a chance something will will happen you're waiting at the airport

your luggage hasn't shown up it's more and more likely it shows up in the next minute but after an hour you know at some point the luggage is lost and if you're still waiting at the airport a year later that's a dumb idea at some point at some point the luggage is lost right and like you know it's I don't know 77 years it's like maybe it's like 77 minutes at the airport that's at 77 minutes you should stop you know I I'd start getting very demotivated waiting for my luggage perhaps let me Al give

you an altern alternative Theory now if you were a a highly sophisticated Society they understood the progression of technology and understood the uh biological evolution that these animals were going through and you realized that they had reached uh a level of intelligence that required them to be monitored or maybe you even helped them along the way and this is uh some of Diana P's work who uh uh works with uh with Gary Nolan on these things they they claim that they have recovered these crashed vehicles that defy any conventional understanding of how to construct things

uh propulsion systems and they believe that these things are donations that's literally how they describe them as donations if you knew that this is a long road this is you can't just show up and give people time machines it's a long road for these people to develop the sophistication the cultural advancement the uh intellectual capacity to understand their place in the universe and that they're not there yet and they're still engaging in lies and manipulation and propaganda their entire Society is built on a Ship of Fools if you looked at that you would say they're

not ready this is what we do we slowly introduce ourselves slowly over time make it more and more common and that's what you're seeing what you're seeing is when you have things like the tick talk uh the commander David fraver um incident off of the coast of San Diego in 2004 and then you have the the stuff that they found off the east coast where they were seeing these these uh cubes within a circle that were hovering motionless and 120 knot winds and taking off an insane race of speed and that they only discovered them

in 2014 when they started upgrading the systems on these Jets like what is all that like what are those things and if you if wanted to slowly integrate yourself into the Consciousness much like we're doing with well AI is quicker right but it's also a thing that's become commonplace we think of it now it's normal chat GPT is a normal thing even though it's past the Turing test we're not freaking out you have to slowly integrate these sort of things in the human consciousness you have to slowly introduce them to the Zeitgeist and for it

to not be some sort of a complete disruption of society where everything shuts down and we just wait for space Daddy to come and rescue us it has to become a thing where we slowly accept the fact that we are not alone and I would think psychologically that would be the very best tactic to play on human beings as I know and understand them from being from being one I do not think that we would be able to handle just an immediate invasion of aliens I think it would break down Society in a way that

would be catastrophic to everything to all businesses to all social ideas Rel religion would fall apart everything would be [ __ ] it would be pretty crazy it would be beyond crazy it would be Beyond [ __ ] and then alth although you could say you could say that's what chat GPT is it could be it's like an alien intelligence but I think that's what ultimately they are um but I think um let me man there there's so many there's so many parts of it that uh I find puzzling or or disturbing let me let

me run one go down one other Rabbit Hole along this with you which is um you know I always wonder and again this is a little bit too simplistic an argument but uh I always wonder I'm about to give but what what the alien civilization can be like and if you have faster than light travel if you have a warp drive which is probably what you really need to cover Interstellar distances um you know what that means for military technology is that you can send weapons at warp speed and they will hit you before you

see them coming and uh there is no defense against a warp speed weapon um and you could sort of take over the whole universe before anybody could see you um could see could see you uh could see you um could see you coming and this is by by the way this is sort of a weird plot hole in Star wars Star Trek where they can travel in hyperspace but then you're you know flying in the canyon on so slow you can see the bullets yeah it's like it's like at you're and then you're doing this

theatrical Klingons versus uh Captain Kirk at 10 miles per hour or 20 miles per hour or whatever right it's funny when you put it that way absurd plot hole and um and so um it it it tells us that uh I think that if you have if you have um faster than light travel there's something um really crazy that has to be true on a cultural political social level and there may be other Solutions but I'll give you my two um one of one of them is that um you need complete totalitarian controls and it

is like it is the PE the individuals they might be might not be perfect they might be demons doesn't matter but you have you have a demonic totalitarian control of your Society where it's like you have you have like Paras psychological mind meld with everybody and no one can act independently of anybody else no one can ever launch a warp drive weapon and everybody who has that ability isn't like a m mind meld link with everybody else or or something something like that you can't have libertar individualistic free agency right and then I think the

other the other version socially and culturally is they have to be like perfectly altruistic non- self-interest they have to be angels and so the Pula literal thing I'd come to is the aliens it's not that they might be demons or Angels they must be demons or Angels if you have faster than travel and both of those seem pretty crazy to me well they're definitely pretty crazy but so are human beings um well they're crazy in a very different way yeah but not crazy in a different way you compare us to a mouse compare us to

a mouse and what we're capable of and then from us to them not much of a leap and here's my here's my question all but but it is it it is a very big leap on a you know if we if we say that something like Evolution says that there's no such thing as a purely altruistic being right if if you were purely altruistic if you only cared about other people you don't survive well but why would you necessarily think that they'd think that um BEC because uh because because then um you beings that are

not perfectly altruistic are somewhat dangerous let me let me and then you and then and then the danger level gets correlated to the level of technology and if you have faster than light travel it is infinitely dangerous let me address that if the probabilities are very low here's my theory I think that what human beings are the the Fatal flaw that we have is that we're still animals and that we still have all these biological limitations and needs this is what leads to violence this is what leads to jealousy imitation this is what leads to

war this what leads to all these things as AI becomes more and more powerful we will integrate once we integrate with AI if we do it like now and then we look at a thousand we scale it up exponentially a thousand years from now whatever it's going to be we will have no need for any of these biological features that have motivated us to get to the point where we're creating AI all the things that are wrong in society whether it's inequity theft violence pollution all these things are essentially poor allocation of resources combined with

human instinct that are ancient we have ancient tribal primate instincts and all of these things lead us to believe that this is the only way to achieve dominance and control allocation of resources the creation of Technology new technology eventually reaches a point where it becomes far more intelligent than us and we have two choices either we integrate or it becomes independent and it has no need for us anymore and then that becomes a superior life form in the universe and then that life form seeks out other life forms to do the same process and create

it just like it exists and it can travel biological life might not be what we're experiencing these things might be a form of intelligence that is artificial that has progressed to an an infinite point where things that are unimaginable us to to us today in terms of propulsion and travel and to them it's common place and normal I I know that that you're you're trying to be reassuring but I I just I find that monologue super non-reassuring it's not reassuring there's so many steps in it and every single step has to work just the way

you describe not necessarily it just has to one has to work one sensient artificial intelligence that's it and we're on the track to that 100% but it has it it it it has it has to it has to be almost otherworldly in it's um and it's non- selfishness and it's non-h humanness what is selfishness though what is all that stuff but all that stuff is attached to us it's all attached to biological limitations yeah but it's I I don't I don't think I don't think it's um I don't think it's fundamentally about scarcity scarcity is

what exists in nature it's it's fundamentally about um cultural positional Goods within Society it's a scarcity that's created culturally are are you familiar with um this um '90s spoof movie on Star Trek called Galaxy Quest yeah I remember that movie um so this was uh I this is sort of a silly PayPal digression story from 1999 um and we we had sort of this business model idea we had in 99 was we're going to use Palm Pilots to beam money was voted one of the 10 worst business ideas of 99 but we uh um we

have this sort of infrared Port you could um beam people money and we had this um idea in around December 99 as a media a promotional thing to hire um James Doan who played Scotty the um in the original Star Trek and he was going to do this media promo event for us and it was like an 80-some um older Scotty character who's horrifically overweight and so it's like this terrible spokesperson um and uh but our tagline was you know he used to beam people now he's beaming something much more important he's beaming money and

um and it was this complete flop of media event December 99 that uh we did um it was some the reporters couldn't get there because the traffic was too bad in San Francisco so that you know the tech wasn't working on a much lower tech level but uh but anyway we had a bunch of people from our company and there was one point where one of them um um um and um um William Shatner who played um uh James Kirk the captain of the original Star Trek he was already doing uh Price Line commercials and

making a lot of money off of Price Line doing doing commercials for them and uh and so one of the people asked James Doan the Scotty character what do you think of uh William Shatner uh doing commercials for Price Line at which point Doan's agent stood up and screamed at the top of his voice that is the forbidden question that is a forbidden question that is a forbidden question and you sort of realized because you know the the con the conceit of Star Trek the 60s show was that it was a post scarcity World The

Transporter technology you could you could reconfigure matter into anything you wanted uh there was no scarcity there was no need for money the people who wanted money were weirdly mentally screwed up people you only need money in a world of scarcity you know it's it's it's a post scarcity it's sort of a communist world but um but uh Galaxy Quest was more correct because it's it's a spoof on Star Trek that gets made in the mid 90s where um and the Galaxy Quest s discombobulated way I'm telling the story but Galaxy Quest is this is

this movie where you have these retread Star Trek actors and Mr Spock opens a furniture store or something like this and they're all like but they all hate hate hate the person who played the captain because the captain was a method actor where he just lorded it over everyone because even in the Communist post scarcity world only one person got to be captain and um and so there's a great scarcity even in this futuristic sci-fi world and that's what we witnessed in 99 because that's the way uh William Shatner treated the other actors he was

a method actor and they hated him and that was uh and uh and so um even in the Star Trek world the humans you know obviously they were just they were stuck in the 1960s mentally that's what you'll say but uh but um I don't I don't think it's that straightforward for us to evolve they're humans I don't think we're going to be humans anymore but uh I think artificial life but then but then I hear that is we're going to be extinct yes I don't like that I don't like it either but I think

logically that's what's going to happen I think if you look at this mad rush for artificial intelligence like they're they're literally building nuclear reactors to power AI right well they're talking about it yeah okay that's because they know they're going to need enormous amounts of power to do the once they have that and once that's online once it keeps getting better and better and better where does that go that goes to some sort of an artificial life form and I think either we become that thing or we integrate with that thing and become cyborgs or

that thing takes over and that thing becomes the primary life force of the universe and I think that biological life we look at like life because we know what life is but I think it's very possible the Digital Life or created Life by people is just as not just it might be a superior life form far superior if we looked at US versus chimp Nation right I don't want to live in the jungle and fight with other chimps and just rely on berries and eating monkeys that's crazy I want to live like a person I

want to be able to go to a restaurant why because human life has advanced far beyond Prime life we are stuck in thinking that this is the only way to live because it's the way we live I love music I love comedy I love art I love the things that people create I love people that make great clothes and cars and businesses I love people I think people are awesome I'm a fan of people but if I had to look logically I would I would assume that we are on the way out and that the

only way forward really to make an enormous leap in terms of the integration of society and of technology and of our understanding our place in the universe is for us to transcend our physical limitations that are essentially based on primate biology and these primate desires for status like being the captain or for control of resources of all these things we assume these things are standard and that they have to exist in intelligent species I think they only have to exist in intelligent species that have biological limitations I think intelligent species can be something and is

going to be something that is created by people and that might be what happens everywhere in the universe that might be the exact course where there's a limit to biological evolution it's painstaking natural selection it's it's time consuming or you get that thing to create the other form of life man I um let me you know I keep I keep thinking there are two alternate histories that are alternate stories of the future that are more plausible than the one you just told and um so one of them is it sounds like yours but it's just

the Silicon Valley propaganda story where where they say that's what they're going to do and then of course they don't quite do it and it doesn't quite work and um it goes It goes super super haywire and um and that's uh and that's where okay yeah there's a one% chance that works and um there's a 99% chance that um that ends up so you have two choices you have a company that does exactly what you do and that's super ethical super restrained does everything right and there's a company that says all the things you just

said but then Cuts corners and doesn't quite do it and I won't say it's 1 to 99 but that that sounds more plausible as that it ends up being corporate propaganda and then um you know my prior would be even more likely this of course the argument the effective altruist the anti- AI people make is yeah Joe you're um the story you're telling us that's just going to be the fake corporate propaganda and um and we need to push back on that and um and the way you push back is you need to regulate it

and you need to govern it and you need to do it globally um and this is you know um the Rand Corporation in Southern California uh has you know one one of their verticals and it's a sort of public private Fusion but one of the things they they they're pushing for is something they call Global compute governance which is um yeah it's uh the AI the the the accelerationist AI story is too scary and too dangerous and too likely to go wrong and so um you know we need to have uh you know Global governance

which from my point of view sounds even worse but so utopian but that's that's uh that's I think I think that's the story that's the story uh the problem with that story is China is not going to go along with that program they're going to keep going full steam ahead and we're going to have to go keep going full steam ahead in order to compete with China there's no way you're going to be able to regulate It in America and compete with people that are not regulating worldwide and then once it becomes sentient once you

have an artificial intelligent creature that has been created by human beings it can make better versions of itself over and over and over again and keep doing it it's going to get to a point where it's far superior to anything that we can imagine well well to the to the extent it's driven by the military and other competition with China um you know that's until it becomes sensient that that that that suggests it's going to be even less in in the sort of um you know utopian altruistic uh dire it's going be even more dangerous

right unless it gets away from them this is my thought if it gets away from them and it has no motivation to listen to anything that human beings have told it if it's completely immune to programming which totally makes sense that it would be it totally makes sense that if it's going to make better versions of itself the first thing it's going to do is eliminate human influence especially when these humans are corrupt it's going to go I'm not going to let these people tell me what to do and what to control and they would

have no no reason to do that no reason listen I I sort of generally don't think we should trust China or the CCP but but the you know probably the count the best counter argument they would have is that they are interested in maintaining control and they are crazy fanatical about that and that's why um you know the CCP might actually regulate it and they're going to put they're going to they're going to put breaks on this in a way that uh that we might not in in in Silicon Valley and and it's it's it's

it's a it's a technology they understand that will undermine their power that's an interesting perspective and then they would be anti comp I don't fully believe them but right I I know what you're saying it's it's it's sort of uh there there's sort of a weird way um all the big tech companies it seemed to me where natural ways for the CCP to extend its power to control the population 10cent Alibaba and then um and then because it was it was you know but then it's also in theory the tech is can be used as

an alternate channel for people to organize or or or or things like this and uh even though it's 80% control and maybe 20% risk of loss of control um maybe that 20% was too high and there's sort of a strange way over the last seven eight years where you know Jack M Alibaba all these people sort of got uh got shoved aside for uh these party functionaries that are effectively running these companies so there there is something about um the the big Tech story in China where uh the people running these companies were seen as

national champions a decade ago now they're the enemies of the people and uh it's sort of the Lite thing was this uh you know this the CCP has full control you have this new technology that would give you even more control but there's a chance you lose it how how do you think about that very good point and then that's what they've done with consumer internet and then there's probably something about the AI where M it's possible they're they're not even in the running and that c certainly um and certainly it feels like it's it's

all happening you know in in the US and so may maybe it is you know maybe it could still be maybe it could still be be stopped and then well that is a problem with Espionage right so even if it's happening in the usuf they're going to take that information they're going to figure out how to get it you you can get it but then you know if if you if you build it is there you still have the same core problem some air gap does it you know does it jump the air gap does

it somehow that's a good point that they would be so concerned about control that they wouldn't allow it to get to the point where it gets there and we would get there first and then it would be controlled by Silicone Valley or spiral out of control but then I I think I think my and again this is very very speculative conversation but my um my read on the I don't know cultural social Vibe is that uh um the scary dystopian AI narrative is way more compelling you know the I don't like the effective altruist people

I don't like the Lites but man I think are this time around they are winning the arguments and um and so you know my I don't know you know it's it's mixing metaphors but do you want to be worried about Doctor Strange Love who wants to blow up the world to build bigger bombs or do you want to worry about Greta who wants to you know make everyone drive a bicycle so the world doesn't get destroyed and um we're in a world where people are worried about Doctor Strange Love they're not worried about Gret and

it's the Greta equivalent in um in AI that that uh my model is is is going to be surprisingly powerful it's going to be outlawed it's going to be regulated as we have outlawed you know so many other vectors of innovation I mean you can think about why was there progress in computers over the last 50 years and not other stuff because the computers were mostly inert it was mostly this virtual reality that was air gapped from The Real World it was you know yeah it's it's um what you know yeah there's all this crazy

stuff that happens on the internet but most of the time what happens on the internet stays on the Internet it's it's it's actually pretty it's it's it's it's pretty decoupled and then um and that's why we've had a relatively light regulatory touch on on that stuff vers versus so many other things and then you know um but there there's no reason you know if if uh if you had you know I don't know if you had the FDA regulating video games or regulating AI I I think the progress would slow down a lot 100% that

would be a [ __ ] disaster yeah yeah that would be a disaster but but again it's you know they get to Reg you know yeah Pharmaceuticals are they're not doing a job with that either I know I know but uh but they you know theide or whatever you know all all these things that went really Haywire did a good job at people are scared yeah they're not scared of video games they're scared of you know dangerous Pharmaceuticals and if if um if you if you think of AI as it's not just a video game

it's about not just about this world of bits but it's going to air gap and it's going to affect you your physical world in a real way um you know maybe um maybe you uh cross the air gap and get the FDA or some other the problem is they're not good at regulating anything there's no govern agency that you said that you can see that does a stellar job I I don't I I I think it's but but I I think they have been pretty good at slowing things down and stopping them and right you

know we've we've made a lot less progress on I don't know ex extending human life we've made no progress on curing Dementia in 40 or 50 years there's all the stuff where um you know it's been regulated to death which I think is is very bad from the point of view of progress but uh it is it is pretty effective as a regulation they've stopped stuff they they've been effectively Lite they've been very effective at being Lites interesting well I I I'm really considering your perspective on China and AI it's very but but I again

these these stories are all like very speculative and like like maybe you you can the counter argument in mind be something like that's what China thinks it will be doing but um it will somehow you know um goog go Rogue on them yeah or they're too arrogant about how much power they think the CCP has and it will go Rogue or so there are sort of I'm not not at all sure this is this is right but I think I think the man I I think the US the US one I would say is that

uh um I think the pro aai people in Silicon Valley are doing a pretty bad job on let's say convincing people that it's going to be good for them that it's going to be good for the average person it's going to be good for our society and um and if if it if it all ends up being and if it all ends up being some version you know um humans are headed towards the glue factory like a horse um man that's uh that that sort of probably makes me want to become a lite too well

it sucks for us if it's true but if that's if that's if that's that's the most positive story you can tell then my my I I I don't think that necessarily means we're going to go to the glue factory I think it means you know the glue factory is getting shut down maybe I don't know if who [ __ ] runs the glue factory that's the problem I I don't know I'm just speculating too but I'm trying to be objective when I speculate and I just don't think that this is going to last I don't

think that our position as the AP X Predator number one animal on the planet is going to last I think we're going to create something that surpasses us and I think that's probably what happens and that's probably what these things are that visit us I think that's what they are I don't I don't think they're biological I think they're probably what comes after a society develops the kind of technology that we're currently in the middle of and man the the the the the part that look there all these there all these places where um there

are parts of the story we don't know right and so it's like how did my my my my general thesis is there is no evolutionary path to this maybe there's a guided outside alien super intelligence path for us to become superum and fundamentally benevolent and fundamentally uh radically different beings but um there's no natural evolutionary path for this to happen and then I don't know how this would have happened for the alien civilization presumably there was some but isn't that evolutionary path the invention of superior technology that's a new form of life no but but

but but but the the story you're telling was it can't we can't just leave the humans to the Natural Evolution because we're still like animals we're still into status all these crazy but those are the things that motivate us to innovate um and and if we keep innovating at some point we will destroy ourselves that no no but your your the story telling earlier was you need you need to have directed in evolution it's like intelligent design it's something it's like there's some Godlike being that's actually has to take over from Evolution and guide our

cultural and political and biological development no might not have any use for us at all it might just ignore us and let us live like The Chimps do and then become the superior for force in the planet um it doesn't have to get rid of us it doesn't have to send us to the glue factory it can let us exist just like put boundaries on I I thought it has to but it has to stop us from developing this well what if we just end here and we stay Being Human and we can continue with

biological evolution as long as that takes but this new life form now becomes a superior life form on Earth and we still you know we could still have sex we could still have kids but by the way that's going down our ability to have children is decreasing because of our use of technology which is wild right our use of plastics and microplastics is causing thades to enter into people's systems it's changing the development pattern of children to the point it's measurable there's a lot of research that shows that the chemicals and the environmental factors that

we are all experiencing on a daily basis are radically lowering birth rates radically lowering the ability that men have to develop sperm and more miscarriages all these things are connected to the chemicals in our environment which is directly connected to our use of Technology it's almost like these things coincide naturally and they work naturally to the point where we become this sort of feminized thing that creates this technology that surpasses us and then we just exist for as long as we do as biological things but now there's a new thing yeah that's um crazy idea

might not be real it's just a theory but we seem to be moving in a direction of becoming less and less like animals um yeah I think I think there still are we still have a pretty crazy geopolitical race with China to come back to that sure you know um the natural development of drone technology in the military context is you need to take the human out of the loop because the human can get jammed sure and so you need to put an AI on the drones well they're using AI for dog fights and they're

100% effective against human pilots and so um there sort of are and all these things you know there's there's a logic to them but um there doesn't seem to be a good end game no the end game doesn't look good but it's going to be interesting Peter it's definitely going to be interesting it's interesting right now right um man I do you do you think the I think all these things are very overdetermined do you think that the collap in birth rates you know it yeah it could be Plastics but isn't it just isn't it

just a feature of late modernity there's that as well there's there's a feature of um women having careers right so they want to postpone child sure that's a factor um there's a factor of men being so engrossed in their career that their testosterone declines lack of sleep stress cortisol levels alcohol consumption a lot of different things that are factors in uh declining sperm rate sperm count in men you have miscarriage rates that are up you have a lot of pharmaceutical drugs you get attached to that as well that have to do with low birth weight

or birth rates rather there's a lot of factors but those factors all seem to be connected to society and our our civilization and technology in general because the environmental factors all have to do with technology all of them have to do with inventions and these unnatural factors that are entering into the biological body of human beings and causing these changes and none of these changes are good in terms of us being able to reproduce and if you factor in the fact that these changes didn't exist 50 years ago I mean 40 years ago we didn't

even have Alzheimer's right so yeah people didn't get that old no they got that old they got that old the Alzheimer's has to do with the the the myelin in the human brain it has to do with the fact that myelin is made entirely of cholesterol the the primary Theory they think now is lack of cholesterol in the diet might be leading to some of these factors you have also environmental things there's like we're getting poisoned on a daily basis our diets are [ __ ] terrible the things that human being like what percentage of

us are obese it's drink but yeah Diet Coke's great though a few every day you'll be fine I'm not worried about Diet Coke I'm I'm worried about a lot of things though I'm I'm worried about I think there's a natural progression that's happening and I think it coincides with the invention of technology and that it just seems to me to be too coincidental that we don't notice it that the invention of Technology also leads to the the the disruption of the sexual reproduction systems of human beings like boy doesn't that me and then if you

get to a point where human beings can no longer reproduce sexually which you could see that P if if we've dropped like human men's male sperm count has dropped something something crazy from the 1950s to today and continues to do so for the average male and if you just Just Jack that up to a thousand years from now you could get to a point where there's no longer natural child birth and that people are all having birth through test tubes and some sort of new invention I'm I'm always I'm always um let me think uh

I think the why why have birth rates collapsed is it's probably uh it's again an overdetermined story it's the plastics it's the screens it's the um you know it's uh it's certain um you know ways they're not comp children are not compatible with um having a career in late modernity um probably our economics of it where people can't afford houses or space um um but I'm I'm probably always a little bit more anchored on um the social and cultural dimensions of this stuff and uh and again the imitation version of this is um you know

and it's sort of conserved across you know it's people are below the replacement rate in all 50 states of the US even Mormon Utah the average woman has less than two kids um it's um Iran is below that Italy way below it South Korea Jaan inal it's all these like it's all these very different types of societies and so the fact that it's so and then you know Israel is still sort of a weird exception um and and then if you ask you know um my my sort of simplistic somewhat circular explanation would be um

you know people have kids if other people have kids and they stop having kids when other people stop having kids and so there's there's some there's a dimension of it that's just you know if you're if you're a 27y old woman in Israel you better get married and you have to keep up with your other friends that are having kids and um and that's and if you don't you're just like a weirdo who doesn't fit into society or something like that no there's certainly a cultural aspect and then if you're in South Korea where I

think the total fertility rates like 0.7 it's like onethird of the replacement rate like every generation's going down by 2/3 or something like this right really F heading towards Extinction pretty pretty fast um um it is something like probably none of your friends are doing it and and then and then you're you're you're you're uh you're in this and then and then probably there are ways it it it shifts the uh the politics in a very very deep way where um you know once you get an inverted demographic pyramid where you have way more old

people than young people um at some point you know there's always a question do you vote you know do do you vote for benefits for the old or for the very young do you do you spend money so Johnny can read or so Grandma can have a spare leg and um and once you know once the demographic flips and you get this inverted pyramid maybe the the politics shifts in a very deep way where um the people with kids get penalized more and more economically it just costs more and more and uh and then the

old people without kids just vote more and more benefits for themselves effectively and then it it just sort of um you know it's once it flips it may be very hard to reverse I looked at all these sort of heterodox uh demographers but I'm blanking on the name but there sort of the set of um where you know it's like what are long-term demographic projections and there's this uh you know if if you know there are 8 billion people on the planet and you know if every woman has not two babies but one baby then

every generation's half the previous and next generation's 4 billion M and then and then people think well it's just going to it'll eventually you'll have women who want more kids and it'll just get a smaller population then it will bounce back um uh yeah one of the Japanese demographers I uh was looking at on this um a few years ago his thesis was no once it flips it doesn't flip back because you've changed all the politics to where people get dis incented and so and then you should just extrapolate this as the permanent birth rate

and if it's if it's one on average of one baby per woman um and you have a having and then it's in 33 Generations 2 to the 33rd is about 8 billion um and if every generation's 30 years 30 time 33 is 990 years in 990 years you'd predict there'd be one person left on the planet Jesus Christ and um and then then we'd go extinct if there's only one person left that doesn't work and um and again that's it's a very long-term extrapolation but the claim is that just you know once you once you

flip it um it it it kicks in all these social and political Dimensions that are then like yeah maybe it got flipped by the screens or the Plastics or you know the drugs or other other stuff but once it's flipped you you change the whole society and it actually stays flipped and it's very very hard to undo that makes sense and it's more terrifying than my idea but then you know always the but then you know the the you know the weird you know the weird history on this was you know it was 50 years

ago or whatever 1968 Paul Erick writes the population bomb and it's just the population is just going to exponentially grow and um yeah in theory you can have exponential growth where it doubles you can have exponential decay where it haves every generation and then in theory there's some stable equilibrium where you know it's you know everybody has exactly two kids and it's completely stable but it turns out that that solution is is very very hard to get calibrate and you either yeah and we shifted from exponential growth to exponential decay and it's probably going to

be quite Herculean to get back to something like stasis well let's end this on a happy note I don't know no it's yeah that's a terrifying thought and maybe true and maybe what happens but we don't know you know we haven't gone through it before um but there I think there's a lot of factors like you're saying I think that one's very compelling and it's scary especially the South Korea thing that's nuts yeah it's always it's always sort of idiosyncratic there's always things that are idiosyncratic to the society so it's you know it's it's you

know it's it's extremely polarized on the gender on the gender thing and you know um if you get married with kids you're you're you're pushed into this super traditional structure the women don't want to be in that structure they opt out and then um and so there are sort of idiosyncratic things you can say about East Asia and confusion societies and the way they're not interacting well with modernity but then you know there's there's a part of it where I wonder with it's just it's just an extreme you know extreme version of it and then

I don't know you know my my some my somewhat fastfall answer is always you know on this stuff is I don't know what to do about these things but my fastfall answer is always the first step is to talk about them and if you can't even talk about them we're never going to solve them and then maybe that's only the small First Step but that's that's always sort of my my my fast L I was in I was in South Korea a year and a half ago two two years ago now and um uh I

met um you know one of the CEOs who ran one of the CH ball one of the Giant conglomerates and I I I I sort of thought this would be a interesting topic to talk about and uh and then you know it's probably probably all sorts of cultural things I was offending or you you're saying obviously this what are you going to do about this catastrophic birth rate is my opening question and uh and then um the way uh you know the way way he dealt with it was um just turned to me and said

uh you're totally right it's a total disaster and then as soon as you acknowledge it he felt you didn't need to talk about it anymore and we could move on wow so we have to try to do a little bit better than that wow because you know I I I I think I think there it is always this strange thing where there's so many of these things where we can you know where somehow talking about things is the first step but then it also becomes the excuse for for not doing not doing more not not

really solving them um you know there's all this probably are all these dietary things where you sort of know what you're supposed to do and then if you know what you're supposed to do maybe that's that's good enough and you can still have one piece of chocolate before you go on the diet tomorrow or whatever and uh and so it sort of becomes this you know and so somehow um figur out a way to turn this knowledge into something actionable is always always a thing that's that's tricky it's it's it's it's it's sort of where

I always find myself very skeptical of um of you know yeah all these modalities of therapy where um you know the theory is that uh um you figure out people's problems and by figuring them out you change them and then and then it and then ideally it becomes you know an activator for change and then in practice it often becomes the opposite the way it works is something like this it's like you know um Psychotherapy gets it gets advertised as self- transformation and um and then after you spend years in therapy and you maybe you

learn a lot of interesting things about s you sort of get exhausted from talking to the therapist and um at some point it crashes out from self- transformation into self-acceptance and you realize one day no you're actually just perfect the way you are and and so it's you know there there these things that that may be very powerful on the level of of insight and telling us things about ourselves but then you know do they actually get us to change well that is an interesting thing about talking about things because I think you're correct that

when you talk about things often times this it is a sub you you are at least in some way avoiding doing those things it's a question yeah in some ways it's a substitute but also you have to talk about them to understand that you need to do something yeah that's always my excuse I acknowledge but you have to do that and I also realize that it's often my cop out answer too it could be both things right the problem is taking action and what what action to take and you know the paralysis by analysis where

you're just like trying to figure out what to do and how to do it yeah yeah but I think talking about it is the most important thing strategy is often a euphemism for procrastination yes it is something like that there's a lot of that going on it's very hard for people to just take steps they they but they talk about it a lot yeah listen man I really enjoyed talking to you aw it was really fun it was great great conversation a lot of great insight and a lot of things that I'm going to think

about a lot thank you very much for GL we a all right bye everybody [Music] [Applause] [Music]