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Hey everybody, KMO here with episode number 24 of the KMO Show.

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I am walking across my neighbor's yard right now with a new clip-on mic from Rode.

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It's got a windsock on it and the wind is really blowing right now, so we'll see.

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This is a test.

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I just spent a couple hours in a tech support chat with Rode trying to get this thing to

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work with my phone and no luck.

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But it works on its own.

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I can record natively.

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Anyway, what do you care?

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As long as you get the podcast.

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So here's the podcast.

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This is a conversation with Peter Clark.

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Peter is an author and I'll ask him about himself in the actual conversations.

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So you'll get a better rundown of who he is and what he's about.

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But I know him because we were both guests on another podcast recently, one that hasn't

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actually been released yet.

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So this follow-up conversation is going to make it to the web first.

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But I read a book by Peter just recently.

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It's a very short book.

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It's very easy to read.

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And as I'll say repeatedly in the conversation you're about to hear, it's very lighthearted

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and easy book to take in.

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It is not heavy reading at all, which isn't to say that it's trivial or superficial.

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It isn't.

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In fact, the conversation that you're about to hear is basically a lot of the same topics

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covered in the book.

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So we'll be talking about memory and belief and religion and evolutionary psychology,

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the future, technology, transhumanism, all kinds of fun stuff.

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So here's my conversation with Peter Clarke.

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Hey, everybody.

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KMO here.

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And I am talking with Peter Clarke, the author of Many Things.

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But we're going to start off talking about his book.

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I am reluctant to call it a novel, but it is fiction so far.

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What is it?

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The Singularity Survival Guide?

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Yes.

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Did I get something out of order?

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No, that's right.

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It does have a subtitle too.

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It's a Singularity Survival Guide, How to Get on the Good Side of Your Future Robot

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Over Lords.

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And that subtitle kind of like emphasizes the point that it's a little, you know, in the

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realm of satire.

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Good.

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Yeah, I think one of the reviewers on Amazon missed the satire indicators.

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Yeah, that has happened.

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But you know, when you get a one star review, it means somebody other than just your friends

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has read the book.

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That's true too.

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You're right.

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So we have very indirectly informed the listeners that you have written a book about the singularity,

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which is also satirical.

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So say more.

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Okay, so this was, oh man, maybe close to probably seven years ago, I had this idea

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in my head that I was going to write a serious book about the coming singularity and, you

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know, maybe somewhat in the realm of like, is humanity going to survive the upcoming

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singularity?

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Of the idea of artificial intelligence becoming more intelligent than human beings.

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So effectively, you know, we are kind of like creating a robot overlord effectively.

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And very smart people say this.

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It is within the realm of possibility.

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But yeah, when I was writing this a number of years ago, I just couldn't crack it.

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I couldn't get it to work.

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It was just so dry and so boring.

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And I realized kind of early on, I just didn't really know what I was talking about.

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You know, I was working in Silicon Valley.

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I was working with a lot of people who do know, you know, have a background in this.

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But it would take so much research to do this properly that I just kind of abandoned it.

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But it was so much fun.

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I just kind of like kept coming back to it.

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And eventually I realized that with my particular skill set, I am more of a novelist, I should

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write this as a satire.

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And I should have fun with it rather than trying to like force it into something that

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I just wasn't capable of doing.

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And immediately, as soon as I made that turn where, oh, this is like a satirical thing.

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I had so much fun with it.

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And I literally wrote the thing in less than three months.

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It just kind of came right out of me.

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And I've always been very happy with how it turned out, even though I did just kind of

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like whip it out.

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And maybe I'll say a little bit more to describe the book itself.

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I realize I just kind of glossed over that.

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So the idea of the book is that it is fiction, this premise, that there is this group of

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researchers in Silicon Valley.

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And they create a program that spits out this massive tome about how humanity can survive

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the singularity.

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But there's like a lawsuit.

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And like sort of the vast majority of this thing gets lost.

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But we have these scraps left.

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These scraps of this text.

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And that's within this book.

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And so the book is quote unquote written by artificial intelligence telling us how to

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survive the singularity.

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And the author is then called Helen.

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So it's this fictitious author that's a robot called Helen writing the book.

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And then kind of from there, the hilarity just kind of like, I think, takes off in that

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it has chapters about how to talk to AI.

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And how to what clothes to wear.

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Like it gets very, very silly.

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But yeah, that's the idea.

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Well I was very pleasantly surprised and relieved when I got into it and discovered that it

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was satire.

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Because I was not interested in reading yet another Oh, All of Our Dreams Are Going to

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Come True, you know, when the singularity hits book.

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I was totally into that in the 90s.

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Even before Ray Kurzweil was using the term singularity, I was on board.

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I was really moved by his book In the Age of Spiritual Machines.

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But that was, you know, going on 30 years ago.

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So many people discover the concept and get really excited about it.

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And they basically just write, you know, an intro to the topic again.

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And I was not looking forward to reading that.

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So when I first started reading your introduction, I was like, wait a second, that's not true.

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Oh, oh, I get it.

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Oh, that's great.

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So I wanted to share a chapter and, you know, the chapters are super short.

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It's a very easy read.

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So I want to share just a chapter and it's very quick, as I say.

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This is the chapter entitled Go Ahead and Worship Your New God.

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By all means, rebel your passionate little heart out.

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Fuck authority.

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Gone with the evil robots.

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But at the end of the day, you are the one made of expendable meat, and your robot overlord

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may not have the programmed patience to listen to your grievances.

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Instead, consider taking a lesson from a historical deity who prescribed, of all things, humility

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in the face of subjugation.

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But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right

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cheek, turn to him the other also.

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Matthew, Book 5, Verse 39.

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Fanatic religious people may not get much right when it comes to navigating the modern

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world, but they have figured out how to, more or less, carry on while presumably living

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under the watchful eye of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing being.

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Presented with the question, why do you love and worship your God, despite his evil and

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vindictive ways, the faithful religious person answers, because he's God.

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So by definition, what he says is worthy of praise.

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Get it?

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That's not optimism talking, nor is it pessimism.

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It's die-hard fatalism.

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And in some cases, when the cards are stacked that much against you, it's all there is left.

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So, there's a taste to the book, which, as I say, I was so pleasantly surprised when

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I figured out it wasn't just another Singularity 101 primer.

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Yeah, that's actually kind of an interesting note, is that as soon as I did realize I could

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have fun with this and play around with it and be totally satirical, it did open up everything

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under the sun that I could talk about.

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I could bring in religion, I could bring in philosophy, I could bring in social commentary.

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It just opened up the doors about what is available.

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And for any literary folks out there, I know that you write some sci-fi, so you might appreciate

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this, the style of it is very much taken from, or taken in reference from this guy, J.P.

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Dunleavy.

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He's an American novelist who is most famous for the novel, The Ginger Man, but he's very

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much a stylist.

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And he wrote this book called The Expirgated Code about, again, it's like a satire book

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about how to live properly and how to go on dates with women.

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It's very, very silly at the same time.

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But he has this style that I always gravitated towards.

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And so I would actually read some of his book and then sit down and write The Singularity

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Survival Guide so I could channel his voice a little bit, because I typically don't write

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in that specific style.

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And so I very much was leaning on his literary brilliance.

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Anybody out there, I would highly recommend J.P. Dunleavy.

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His book, The Ginger Man, just to throw it out there, Johnny Depp has been trying to

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turn that into a movie for like 30 years, but J.P. Dunleavy never wanted his books to

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be made into movies, so it never happened.

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But yeah, it's like that caliber.

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Well, you know, I respect the I never want my books made into movies and holding the

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line there more than I respect the Alan Moore version of, well, I sold the film rights to

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my movies or to my comics because I thought they'd never get made.

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Now that they got made, I disown them.

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But I'm keeping the money.

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Good point.

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Yeah, good point.

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I'm keeping the money.

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Maybe just saying that to save face.

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Yeah.

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Well, what do you do?

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I hate to say it, but for your day job.

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So I went to law school and never really wanted to be a lawyer.

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So I've kind of done random jobs on the periphery of the legal system.

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So it is a little boring.

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But I worked for Indiegogo for a while as a content manager there.

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I worked for Findlaw as a content manager with them.

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Right now I work for the state government of California.

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So I'm with the Judicial Council of California and doing kind of semi tech stuff, but still

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kind of in the legal realm.

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So yeah, nothing too exciting.

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So your connection to people in the tech world is just a social connection?

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I mean, kind of more or less.

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I've worked for, you know, I always work with developers, right?

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I'm always down the hall from actual people who work on, you know, have side gigs, working

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on like automated vehicles and stuff like that.

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And I mean, I live in Sacramento right now, but when I lived in San Francisco, it's real

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that it's very easy to rub shoulders with people who are doing radical, innovative things.

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I mean, I would get off work and you would just like, you know, walk two blocks and you

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can sit in on, you know, after work social hour about people who are like actually developing

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automated vehicles and or just kind of like whatever.

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There's a lot of that going on there.

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So I did, you know, a lot of people are doing like finance crypto stuff that I find a little

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boring.

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But yeah, I mean, it's pretty easy to meet people like that in San Francisco, not so

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much in Sacramento anymore.

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But yeah, when I lived there, it was very easy.

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And do you remember when and where you first encountered the notion of the singularity?

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Wow, good, good question.

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I think it was actually probably through Zoltan Istvan, if you're familiar with him.

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And I'm not sure where I encountered him, but he's a transhumanist.

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And back in, I think it was 2016, he ran for president.

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And so he was like all over the news for a hot minute.

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And I ended up meeting him at a conference in Oakland, the Biohack the Planet conference.

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And I've always been kind of even to this day, kind of inspired by him a little bit.

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He's a character who's worth looking up because he does this interesting thing where he is

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very, very, very much into concepts like the singularity and robots and just like every

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radical futurist thing.

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He's very into it.

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But at the same time, he is very much like a traditional manly man.

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He's into athletics and sports.

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And he's very kind of nuts and crazy.

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He invented the sport of surfing down volcanoes.

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And he circumnavigated the globe in his own boat kind of thing.

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He's just a nuts dude.

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Because you think of someone who's into the singularity and you just think of a nerd at

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a desk or something like this.

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And he's the opposite of that.

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And I've just always really appreciated that because I think that humanity should hold

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on to our humanity and hold on to our animal urges at some level, even if we do merge with

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machines at some point in time.

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I think he's a good model for that.

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But yeah, I was kind of getting into him right around the time that I wrote this book.

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So if I had to guess, probably it was from his influence.

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Well, I had somebody contact me within the last 24 hours demanding that I renounce transhumanism.

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And I'm not like an avowed transhumanist.

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That word appears nowhere in any of my bios or anything.

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But this person thought he sniffed out some transhumanism in one of my posts.

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And he said, tell me you're not a transhumanist or I'm out.

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I'm like, OK, whatever, dude.

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You do you.

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But it got me thinking about, well, what does that word even mean these days?

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Because I was talking to people about transhumanism back in the 90s, really before there was a

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World Wide Web on Usenet and on listserv discussion groups and things like that.

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And at the time, trans as in transgenderism, it was not any sort of cultural hot button.

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And nobody associated transhumanism with that.

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And now that association is like front and center for a lot of people on both left and

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right, which I find very annoying.

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So it's such a thought stopper in terms of, oh, well, if you're a transhumanist, that

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means you're trans.

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That means you're my cultural enemy.

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Or even worse, oh, it means you're on my team.

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So you must share all of these assumptions as well.

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And it's like, oh, please.

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So in many instances, I'd rather not talk about transhumanism at all in the current

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context.

251
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But what does it actually mean?

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Here we are.

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You're in Sacramento, and I'm in Berryville, Arkansas.

254
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And we are carrying on a real time discussion.

255
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We can almost make eye contacts.

256
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We can certainly see each other's faces and read body language and things like that.

257
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And this was science fiction not that many decades ago.

258
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And it was an impractical but plausible, hopeful reality a couple of decades ago.

259
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And now it's totally routine.

260
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And it's kind of like telepathy.

261
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It's kind of like, what's the exact phrase I'm looking for?

262
00:16:00,180 --> 00:16:03,060
Oh, yeah, telepathy.

263
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Communicating at a distance.

264
00:16:05,980 --> 00:16:10,580
How integrated into our bodies does the technology have to be in order to count as transhumanism?

265
00:16:10,580 --> 00:16:13,980
Yeah, I like this question because I've actually written about this quite a bit.

266
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I'm going to jump in at random places there, I think.

267
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But I do want to start out by saying I feel your exact same kind of cringe, maybe for

268
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a better word, like for a better word, about the term transhumanism.

269
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And I've kind of stepped away from it a little bit myself.

270
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And I say more like futurist, futurism.

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My podcast is called Team Futurism for kind of like that reason.

272
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And also, there's a critique that transhumanists, a lot of them are just in like an anti-death

273
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cult, you can kind of say, because they're obsessed with health.

274
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At some level, which I'm totally fine with.

275
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But like I see that that is a valid critique.

276
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But one thing that I find very fascinating about transhumanism, the traditional, in the

277
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traditional sense, and this could cut either as a critique or not, depending on who you

278
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are and how you look at it.

279
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And I'm curious about this person who said that they're out if you keep talking about

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transhumanism.

281
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I wonder how they land on this.

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Because transhumanism inherently has a lot of religious undertones in the sense that

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it is all about defeating death at some level.

284
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And whether you're merging with machines or our consciousness is in the cloud or we're

285
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creating God through artificial intelligence, it is about defeating death.

286
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That's like basically the project there.

287
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And if you go back in history, the roots of transhumanism, you can find it in religion

288
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or in ancient mythology.

289
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So like the story of, well, Zarathustra to go way back, here like a little Christianity

290
00:17:49,020 --> 00:17:56,060
in a lot of ways, except for in this one particular way where in Zarathustraism or Zoroastroism,

291
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I guess, humans could find knowledge all on their own.

292
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Whereas if you read the Bible, all knowledge and wisdom comes from God himself.

293
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It's like, don't question God.

294
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Right.

295
00:18:06,940 --> 00:18:08,380
That's like the premise of Christianity.

296
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Whereas in Zoroastroism, humans could go out into the world and discover truth on their

297
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own.

298
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And that like is one foundation of this that led off to more of like a transhumanist way

299
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of looking at the world that like we can solve our own problems, we can solve our diseases

300
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and we can ultimately conquer death.

301
00:18:25,140 --> 00:18:28,500
And so you see this a little bit in the story of Prometheus too.

302
00:18:28,500 --> 00:18:33,700
You know, humanity taking fire from the gods, very much the same sort of thing.

303
00:18:33,700 --> 00:18:40,980
And if you fast forward to modern times, all those like religious undertones are all still

304
00:18:40,980 --> 00:18:46,900
very much there because to be a transhumanist and to like be all in on it, you are an atheist

305
00:18:46,900 --> 00:18:50,700
who just does not want to die and you're leaning into technology to save you in the same way

306
00:18:50,700 --> 00:18:56,100
the religious person is leaning into God to save them in like an afterlife scenario.

307
00:18:56,100 --> 00:19:01,420
So yeah, like that religious undertone thing I think is just like ultimately super fascinating

308
00:19:01,420 --> 00:19:05,460
because I don't know, a lot of people say that humanity needs religion.

309
00:19:05,460 --> 00:19:07,620
That's kind of baked into us.

310
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I go back and forth on whether or not that's true, but that might be true.

311
00:19:11,020 --> 00:19:12,020
Right.

312
00:19:12,020 --> 00:19:17,380
And if we do need religion at some like fundamental level, I mean, transhumanism is there for

313
00:19:17,380 --> 00:19:18,380
the atheists.

314
00:19:18,380 --> 00:19:20,580
It is kind of just like there for us.

315
00:19:20,580 --> 00:19:23,180
A lot of different ways to go with that.

316
00:19:23,180 --> 00:19:27,020
The Epic of Gilgamesh is about Gilgamesh searching for a cure for death.

317
00:19:27,020 --> 00:19:29,820
And that's one of the oldest stories we know.

318
00:19:29,820 --> 00:19:34,940
The Daoists, they're not alchemists, but they're sort of the Chinese equivalent of medieval

319
00:19:34,940 --> 00:19:36,060
European alchemists.

320
00:19:36,060 --> 00:19:42,300
They were looking for some process that would almost infinitely extend their lives.

321
00:19:42,300 --> 00:19:49,280
So this desire for more life, as Roy Batty says to Elden Tyrell near the end of Blade

322
00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:54,140
Runner, I want more life, fucker.

323
00:19:54,140 --> 00:19:59,340
We have a lot of us want more life and I certainly want more youthful health.

324
00:19:59,340 --> 00:20:05,140
I'm 56 and I wish I could go back to my 28 year old body.

325
00:20:05,140 --> 00:20:08,380
That'd be a good place to stop, I think.

326
00:20:08,380 --> 00:20:11,940
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly universal.

327
00:20:11,940 --> 00:20:15,660
The question of is religion innate?

328
00:20:15,660 --> 00:20:18,220
Is it sort of built into human psychology?

329
00:20:18,220 --> 00:20:23,940
That's how you define religion, but I think the metrics are pretty clear.

330
00:20:23,940 --> 00:20:32,380
Outside of the hyper prosperous tech and academic sphere, just out in the rest of the population,

331
00:20:32,380 --> 00:20:34,820
religious people have better life outcomes.

332
00:20:34,820 --> 00:20:40,820
They have more stable family lives, they tend to make more money, they have a community

333
00:20:40,820 --> 00:20:45,220
in their church, they have a lot of people that they know that aren't people from work,

334
00:20:45,220 --> 00:20:47,300
and they all share something in common.

335
00:20:47,300 --> 00:20:49,780
And it's a deeply held conviction that they share in common.

336
00:20:49,780 --> 00:20:51,420
That's a good thing to have.

337
00:20:51,420 --> 00:21:00,660
Human beings, humans, human animals are evolved to survive cooperatively in bands, and typically

338
00:21:00,660 --> 00:21:03,220
in competition with other human bands.

339
00:21:03,220 --> 00:21:09,780
And we differentiate our people from those people by our memes, by the way we talk, by

340
00:21:09,780 --> 00:21:12,700
the gods we worship, by the songs we sing.

341
00:21:12,700 --> 00:21:19,780
So yeah, I think that you have to define religion according to some non-essential aspect in

342
00:21:19,780 --> 00:21:24,440
order to say that it's not really innate to human psychology.

343
00:21:24,440 --> 00:21:28,380
If I could remove the word religion, I think that I could still make the argument and just

344
00:21:28,380 --> 00:21:31,620
say that humans need stories.

345
00:21:31,620 --> 00:21:37,720
We need a compelling story to get ourselves out of bed in the morning and to justify how

346
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:39,860
hard life is.

347
00:21:39,860 --> 00:21:41,660
And it could be anything.

348
00:21:41,660 --> 00:21:49,420
I mean, we tell ourselves stories all the time, even just the story that I'm my family,

349
00:21:49,420 --> 00:21:50,420
right?

350
00:21:50,420 --> 00:21:53,460
Let's say you have a wife and kids and you call it a family.

351
00:21:53,460 --> 00:21:57,660
Just like the word family has a story involved in it.

352
00:21:57,660 --> 00:21:59,980
It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

353
00:21:59,980 --> 00:22:00,980
It's all kind of there.

354
00:22:00,980 --> 00:22:02,660
Just the word itself, family.

355
00:22:02,660 --> 00:22:09,460
But going off beyond that, I think that we have the nationalist story that we're all

356
00:22:09,460 --> 00:22:11,820
Americans and we're all in this together.

357
00:22:11,820 --> 00:22:16,460
We have a human story that we're trying to, or many of us are trying to get off this planet

358
00:22:16,460 --> 00:22:19,940
and be an interplanetary species.

359
00:22:19,940 --> 00:22:24,580
We have the transhumanist story that we are trying to defeat death.

360
00:22:24,580 --> 00:22:31,540
And maybe it's through scientists looking through microscopes or AI geeks somehow getting

361
00:22:31,540 --> 00:22:34,540
our consciousness to merge with the machines.

362
00:22:34,540 --> 00:22:37,820
There are all these like grand, amazing stories.

363
00:22:37,820 --> 00:22:41,860
And you can kind of like tie yourself to any one of them and have that be your kind of

364
00:22:41,860 --> 00:22:43,140
like meaning and purpose in life.

365
00:22:43,140 --> 00:22:46,980
And I think that any one of those can also like serve the purpose of religion, minus

366
00:22:46,980 --> 00:22:51,620
the fact that you kind of pointed out about like how traditional religious people have

367
00:22:51,620 --> 00:22:53,500
a community that's baked in.

368
00:22:53,500 --> 00:22:57,620
I think that it's kind of unfortunate that right now in this particular moment in time

369
00:22:57,620 --> 00:23:01,340
in America, we all are kind of spread out.

370
00:23:01,340 --> 00:23:08,180
Like my parents live two states away and my brother also lives two states away.

371
00:23:08,180 --> 00:23:12,700
And my friends live in different cities across the country.

372
00:23:12,700 --> 00:23:16,300
And it's really hard to have one sense of community.

373
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And also like our cities are just not built for this.

374
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:21,300
Our cities are built by suburban sprawl.

375
00:23:21,300 --> 00:23:26,020
And so we don't have like an instant community and our quote unquote new religions, if we

376
00:23:26,020 --> 00:23:30,780
call them that, like transhumanism or wanting to go to the stars or whatever.

377
00:23:30,780 --> 00:23:35,380
There's nothing baked in there for having a community and having like a weekly potluck

378
00:23:35,380 --> 00:23:36,380
or whatever.

379
00:23:36,380 --> 00:23:39,380
I grew up going to a church every week and it was nice.

380
00:23:39,380 --> 00:23:42,460
Like it was annoying when I was a kid to have to go or whatever, but like it was nice.

381
00:23:42,460 --> 00:23:44,100
I had a lot of friends.

382
00:23:44,100 --> 00:23:49,020
And I do think that that's something that we should as a society work slightly harder

383
00:23:49,020 --> 00:23:54,500
to recreate outside of traditional religion.

384
00:23:54,500 --> 00:23:59,640
You know, there are people on what I would call the dissident right.

385
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:03,260
But I'm not a leftist.

386
00:24:03,260 --> 00:24:07,640
I grew up libertarian, you know, and I used to define that as every most people did as

387
00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:11,400
being socially liberal and economically conservative.

388
00:24:11,400 --> 00:24:15,540
And now that formulation doesn't really hold anymore.

389
00:24:15,540 --> 00:24:22,820
You know, the societal values have so gone off the rails and there's nobody with any

390
00:24:22,820 --> 00:24:26,580
access to the levers of power who's a genuine economic libertarian.

391
00:24:26,580 --> 00:24:27,580
True.

392
00:24:27,580 --> 00:24:32,620
Yeah, so, you know, I'm just not attached to that label anymore.

393
00:24:32,620 --> 00:24:34,780
And I haven't been for quite a while.

394
00:24:34,780 --> 00:24:38,940
But I am certainly sympathetic to a lot of people on the cultural right.

395
00:24:38,940 --> 00:24:45,680
And I've noticed I've sort of been investigating the dissident rights community on Substack.

396
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:50,060
And I didn't even know that phrase dissident right like six months ago.

397
00:24:50,060 --> 00:24:52,980
And it's very different from the alt right because, you know, the alt right tends to

398
00:24:52,980 --> 00:24:56,580
be very sort of shock oriented and confrontational and in your face.

399
00:24:56,580 --> 00:25:02,780
And the dissident right is much more it's intellectual and it's just polite.

400
00:25:02,780 --> 00:25:06,780
It's more congenial and social.

401
00:25:06,780 --> 00:25:10,220
More literary too, I've noticed.

402
00:25:10,220 --> 00:25:18,620
But there's a big division between Christians and atheists who are also right wingers who,

403
00:25:18,620 --> 00:25:23,740
you know, probably a lot of them would have been libertarians a couple of decades ago.

404
00:25:23,740 --> 00:25:28,980
And the atheists, they need something to go in the place of God.

405
00:25:28,980 --> 00:25:34,300
So they've sort of settled on Nietzsche and this notion of the will to power and a vitalist

406
00:25:34,300 --> 00:25:40,340
force that drives us to, you know, strive and achieve and overcome and whatnot.

407
00:25:40,340 --> 00:25:43,700
And some people don't really see that as adequate.

408
00:25:43,700 --> 00:25:48,560
It's not an adequate social, you know, it doesn't provide the social cohesion that a

409
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:49,840
religious community does.

410
00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:56,500
And so, you know, some people have tried just they've tried to abide by Pascal's Wager.

411
00:25:56,500 --> 00:26:00,980
You know, Pascal says, look, if you worship God and you're wrong, you haven't really lost

412
00:26:00,980 --> 00:26:06,540
anything, you know, but if the whole Christian cosmology is true and you say it's not, well,

413
00:26:06,540 --> 00:26:08,020
you're going to hell.

414
00:26:08,020 --> 00:26:13,240
So that's an easy bet, you know, bet on God, even if the argument for it isn't very good.

415
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:14,240
But how do you do that?

416
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:16,860
Because you don't get to choose what you believe.

417
00:26:16,860 --> 00:26:20,480
And Pascal's solution is, well, you know, fake it till you make it.

418
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:24,580
Go to church, say your prayers, even though you don't feel it.

419
00:26:24,580 --> 00:26:28,260
And Eric Weinstein said something like this fairly recently on a podcast.

420
00:26:28,260 --> 00:26:32,860
He said, yeah, you can't choose to believe any particular thing all the time, but, you

421
00:26:32,860 --> 00:26:34,660
know, sometimes you can.

422
00:26:34,660 --> 00:26:39,440
So go to church, you know, and sometimes it'll click, sometimes it'll work for you.

423
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:44,840
And I actually considered that because here I live in a small town and, you know, I kind

424
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,060
of thought about getting involved with the local Catholic Church.

425
00:26:48,060 --> 00:26:52,500
Also there's, I've been trying to learn Spanish forever and it's just, I can tell it's not

426
00:26:52,500 --> 00:26:53,660
anything I'm going to do on my own.

427
00:26:53,660 --> 00:26:56,300
I'm going to have to be around some Spanish speaking people and they go to the Catholic

428
00:26:56,300 --> 00:26:57,560
Church.

429
00:26:57,560 --> 00:27:02,080
But at the same time, I've heard this expressed, you know, elsewhere, and it also occurred

430
00:27:02,080 --> 00:27:08,040
to me, that's not really fair to that church community, you know, to that community of

431
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:14,020
actual believers for me to go in, you know, sort of like Catholic curious or theologically

432
00:27:14,020 --> 00:27:19,740
curious, but not really feeling it, not connected to it.

433
00:27:19,740 --> 00:27:25,100
It seems sort of abusive to that community or extractive or, you know, sort of mercenary.

434
00:27:25,100 --> 00:27:29,660
So I never did follow through with that, you know, that notion.

435
00:27:29,660 --> 00:27:32,220
So I will stop there and let you talk about religion.

436
00:27:32,220 --> 00:27:33,220
Okay.

437
00:27:33,220 --> 00:27:37,020
Well, yeah, that boy, that sparked a lot of thoughts.

438
00:27:37,020 --> 00:27:42,420
One thought is that, are you familiar with Simone Collins, Simone and Malcolm Collins?

439
00:27:42,420 --> 00:27:46,580
They're a little bit on the dissident right, I think, but they came into mind because I

440
00:27:46,580 --> 00:27:49,980
actually just bought a book of theirs off Amazon and have not started yet, other than

441
00:27:49,980 --> 00:27:52,060
just to skim a couple of chapters.

442
00:27:52,060 --> 00:27:57,940
But they have this book about how to create the perfect life or how to live the perfect

443
00:27:57,940 --> 00:27:59,580
life, that sort of thing.

444
00:27:59,580 --> 00:28:05,820
And so they would, you said just now that you can't exactly choose your beliefs and

445
00:28:05,820 --> 00:28:09,900
they have, like their book is all about how you totally can.

446
00:28:09,900 --> 00:28:16,020
You can intentionally choose your beliefs and then like your life will go out from there

447
00:28:16,020 --> 00:28:19,300
rather than just like living your life and waiting for your beliefs to like hit you over

448
00:28:19,300 --> 00:28:20,300
the head.

449
00:28:20,300 --> 00:28:22,860
You can choose them a priori and then like go out from there.

450
00:28:22,860 --> 00:28:24,260
I think that that's an interesting thing.

451
00:28:24,260 --> 00:28:28,860
I have not thought about this very much, but I do have a book that I'm very curious to

452
00:28:28,860 --> 00:28:33,100
read because it kind of like, it strikes me a little bit because I grew up religious and

453
00:28:33,100 --> 00:28:38,380
I do think about this all the time, that a large chunk of my life was determined by my

454
00:28:38,380 --> 00:28:39,980
parents' religion.

455
00:28:39,980 --> 00:28:41,660
Like they just chose that for me.

456
00:28:41,660 --> 00:28:43,660
I didn't choose that.

457
00:28:43,660 --> 00:28:48,020
Whereas I chose to be more of like an atheist.

458
00:28:48,020 --> 00:28:55,020
And just the fact that I chose it, it gave me like a power in the future of my life and

459
00:28:55,020 --> 00:28:57,140
where I can go from there.

460
00:28:57,140 --> 00:28:58,140
And I really like that.

461
00:28:58,140 --> 00:29:03,860
And I do kind of feel that I could actually choose something else at the same time.

462
00:29:03,860 --> 00:29:05,420
I totally could.

463
00:29:05,420 --> 00:29:08,980
Maybe it would feel a little grifter-y at first, but we can convince ourselves of anything

464
00:29:08,980 --> 00:29:09,980
at some level.

465
00:29:09,980 --> 00:29:16,620
Anyway, that's maybe a tangent, but yeah, I want to go back to the dissident right thing.

466
00:29:16,620 --> 00:29:18,620
I follow these people.

467
00:29:18,620 --> 00:29:24,180
They just crop up a lot, especially on Twitter for me, also a little bit on Substack.

468
00:29:24,180 --> 00:29:28,580
I'm more of a leftist, I think, but I grew up so conservative.

469
00:29:28,580 --> 00:29:35,300
I still am completely comfortable around conservatives of all stripes.

470
00:29:35,300 --> 00:29:42,340
But I have noticed this divide in the world of the dissident right that I think is so

471
00:29:42,340 --> 00:29:44,220
fascinating.

472
00:29:44,220 --> 00:29:48,820
Where are you familiar with Bronze Age Pervert?

473
00:29:48,820 --> 00:29:52,100
I know the name, but I haven't read any of his stuff.

474
00:29:52,100 --> 00:29:58,420
So he has a book called The Bronze Age Mindset, which I read last year, and I actually recommend

475
00:29:58,420 --> 00:30:00,020
people read.

476
00:30:00,020 --> 00:30:04,260
It's often called like, oh, like the worst book ever.

477
00:30:04,260 --> 00:30:08,220
Like it's so horrible and it's so fascist, et cetera, et cetera.

478
00:30:08,220 --> 00:30:11,620
I think people should just like read it, not fear monger around it.

479
00:30:11,620 --> 00:30:13,460
So I did that actually.

480
00:30:13,460 --> 00:30:15,180
And it's worth reading.

481
00:30:15,180 --> 00:30:20,940
And I think for this one particular reason, if you are maybe into futurism or sci-fi thoughts,

482
00:30:20,940 --> 00:30:26,860
in that it is the exact opposite of futurism.

483
00:30:26,860 --> 00:30:33,560
It is the book that is, if futurism was one thing, it is the book that is the exact opposite.

484
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:38,900
And for me, reading The Bronze Age Mindset, which is literally about trying to return

485
00:30:38,900 --> 00:30:44,940
society and our lifestyle to the time of the ancient Greeks, where the purpose and the

486
00:30:44,940 --> 00:30:49,780
meaning of life was to fight battles, like literal battles.

487
00:30:49,780 --> 00:30:56,780
And that is how you feel like fully alive and fully in the moment and fully present,

488
00:30:56,780 --> 00:31:00,860
rather than like living in suburbia and like taking weekly trips to Walmart, which is like

489
00:31:00,860 --> 00:31:04,300
so not only emasculating, but like dehumanizing.

490
00:31:04,300 --> 00:31:09,340
It's so like, and the way he paints this in a way that I'm so on board with.

491
00:31:09,340 --> 00:31:13,260
So there's that, like returning to the ancient Greeks.

492
00:31:13,260 --> 00:31:18,820
That is exactly the polar opposite of what the project of futurism is, because futurism

493
00:31:18,820 --> 00:31:20,420
is forward looking.

494
00:31:20,420 --> 00:31:23,780
It's looking forward, not backwards.

495
00:31:23,780 --> 00:31:29,100
And I think that any thinking person will realize that there is a lot of wisdom to be

496
00:31:29,100 --> 00:31:31,820
had by looking backwards.

497
00:31:31,820 --> 00:31:39,700
But I just like if you are any sort of a futurist or transhumanist, that is the worldview that

498
00:31:39,700 --> 00:31:44,340
you are actually legitimately fighting against at a very like fundamental level.

499
00:31:44,340 --> 00:31:50,740
So I think that people should read that as a way to, you know, like actually ground themselves

500
00:31:50,740 --> 00:31:54,100
in what the project of futurism is, if you are a futurist.

501
00:31:54,100 --> 00:31:56,340
And I think about it all the time.

502
00:31:56,340 --> 00:32:00,380
And maybe one more little note here that, again, I just think about like all the time

503
00:32:00,380 --> 00:32:05,980
is that the guy Zoltan Istvan, who I mentioned earlier, who is this, you know, one of the

504
00:32:05,980 --> 00:32:11,380
most famous transhumanists out there, he very much lives like an ancient Greek, again, like

505
00:32:11,380 --> 00:32:16,180
circumnavigating the globe on a boat he built himself with like 500 books in the boat, that

506
00:32:16,180 --> 00:32:17,180
sort of thing.

507
00:32:17,180 --> 00:32:20,740
And he was like the first white man to contact a number of tribes and ended up getting a

508
00:32:20,740 --> 00:32:25,900
job with National Geographic and like filming like tribes that no one had encountered before.

509
00:32:25,900 --> 00:32:28,540
This like random dude did.

510
00:32:28,540 --> 00:32:33,700
He lives that lifestyle as if he were ancient Greek, like doing the Bronze Age pervert thing,

511
00:32:33,700 --> 00:32:39,460
like to a T. But he's also a hardcore futurist and transhumanist who does nothing but think

512
00:32:39,460 --> 00:32:40,800
forward looking.

513
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:44,620
So I don't know, I think that there's a tension there, but there is some way that it does

514
00:32:44,620 --> 00:32:49,220
kind of like make sense where you can have a lifestyle that's anti-suburbia, anti-settling

515
00:32:49,220 --> 00:32:53,820
down in the comforts of modernity, anti just staring at a screen nonstop all day, being

516
00:32:53,820 --> 00:32:59,160
fully alive and fully human, but still being a futurist and transhumanist and still being

517
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:01,460
forward looking, not backwards looking.

518
00:33:01,460 --> 00:33:02,460
There's a way to do that.

519
00:33:02,460 --> 00:33:03,460
Right.

520
00:33:03,460 --> 00:33:07,340
I think maybe it's different for all people, but there's a way that can be done.

521
00:33:07,340 --> 00:33:09,580
And to think about that, I think is really fascinating.

522
00:33:09,580 --> 00:33:13,060
Are you familiar with the concept of Chesterton's fence?

523
00:33:13,060 --> 00:33:16,300
Wow, that sounds familiar.

524
00:33:16,300 --> 00:33:17,300
JK Chesterton?

525
00:33:17,300 --> 00:33:18,300
Is it?

526
00:33:18,300 --> 00:33:19,300
Possibly.

527
00:33:19,300 --> 00:33:25,740
Possibly, the notion is if you are in an unfamiliar environment and you come across a fence and

528
00:33:25,740 --> 00:33:29,580
you don't see any reason for the fence, I mean, there's not cattle on either side and

529
00:33:29,580 --> 00:33:32,980
maybe you've got used for the building materials or maybe you want to put a soccer field there

530
00:33:32,980 --> 00:33:38,140
or something, before you tear down the fence, you should maybe do some investigation because

531
00:33:38,140 --> 00:33:40,880
it's probably there for a reason.

532
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:44,260
And just don't assume that the reason was never a good one or that it's outlived its

533
00:33:44,260 --> 00:33:45,980
usefulness or whatever.

534
00:33:45,980 --> 00:33:49,580
The sort of related notion is the Lindy effect.

535
00:33:49,580 --> 00:33:51,420
How about that one?

536
00:33:51,420 --> 00:33:55,060
I know that from Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

537
00:33:55,060 --> 00:34:00,040
The Lindy effect is basically the longer something has been around, the longer it's likely to

538
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,940
stay around.

539
00:34:02,940 --> 00:34:10,620
These are two sort of ways of getting at the idea of there are certain adaptive strategies

540
00:34:10,620 --> 00:34:16,820
for getting along in the world that have endured for a very long time because they work.

541
00:34:16,820 --> 00:34:22,020
And here in the modern world, we have decided, you know what, we can rewrite all of that

542
00:34:22,020 --> 00:34:23,020
stuff.

543
00:34:23,020 --> 00:34:28,980
All of those old patriarchal ways of doing things and nationalistic ways and ethnocentric

544
00:34:28,980 --> 00:34:35,380
ways of thinking, that's all primitive and that's all just distasteful and we can just

545
00:34:35,380 --> 00:34:38,700
remake ourselves any way we want.

546
00:34:38,700 --> 00:34:47,140
And it seems unlikely that that's true, that a lot of the things that were not part of

547
00:34:47,140 --> 00:34:51,820
society 200 years ago probably won't be a couple of hundred years from now.

548
00:34:51,820 --> 00:34:56,780
That a lot of what we think of as being very modern, very contemporary, very enlightened

549
00:34:56,780 --> 00:35:03,380
and up to date, up to the current moment is an experiment that is not going to prove entirely

550
00:35:03,380 --> 00:35:06,920
successful and a lot of it is going to get thrown away.

551
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:11,180
And so there's Bronze Age pervert saying we should live like the ancient Greeks.

552
00:35:11,180 --> 00:35:18,420
Terence McKenna was saying back in the 90s, hey, we need to go back to the Neolithic era

553
00:35:18,420 --> 00:35:23,300
and sort of reconnect with the consciousness of the Neolithic shamans.

554
00:35:23,300 --> 00:35:28,800
Take our mushrooms and take five grams and be pinned to the ground, just laid out, unable

555
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:33,980
to think and talk and speak and just really connect with the numinous other.

556
00:35:33,980 --> 00:35:36,820
And that's the last sane moment we ever knew.

557
00:35:36,820 --> 00:35:37,820
He says.

558
00:35:37,820 --> 00:35:41,420
And everything that's happened since then, like the last 10,000 years, is going to be

559
00:35:41,420 --> 00:35:46,020
the unsuccessful experiment, except he's not anti-technology or he's dead now, but he wasn't

560
00:35:46,020 --> 00:35:47,020
anti-technology.

561
00:35:47,020 --> 00:35:55,060
He was very excited about the prospects for transhumanism, just encapsulate a lot of different

562
00:35:55,060 --> 00:35:58,220
things under a single banner.

563
00:35:58,220 --> 00:36:08,300
And I kind of look back on Terence McKenna's rants with nostalgia, but once you get excited

564
00:36:08,300 --> 00:36:13,380
with them, if you're serious about the ideas, then you need to do some work and dig in and

565
00:36:13,380 --> 00:36:20,100
read some other stuff that isn't quite so lyrical and easily accessible.

566
00:36:20,100 --> 00:36:21,420
But I think there's a lot there.

567
00:36:21,420 --> 00:36:27,660
I think there's a lot about humanity that has been with us for a very long time, is

568
00:36:27,660 --> 00:36:34,780
innate because it has been part of our evolutionary heritage, our means of coming, of establishing

569
00:36:34,780 --> 00:36:41,620
an enduring way of surviving in the world that will endure and that it will find a place

570
00:36:41,620 --> 00:36:47,420
alongside artificial intelligence and space travel and genetic engineering and biotechnology,

571
00:36:47,420 --> 00:36:48,660
which I know you're excited about.

572
00:36:48,660 --> 00:36:51,820
So let's sort of segue to biotechnology.

573
00:36:51,820 --> 00:36:53,800
This is actually our second conversation.

574
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:58,540
We had one with Dane Fitzgerald, which has not yet hit the web.

575
00:36:58,540 --> 00:37:03,980
But in it, I think I recall you basically showing a lot of excitement over the prospects

576
00:37:03,980 --> 00:37:04,980
for biotechnology.

577
00:37:04,980 --> 00:37:05,980
Yeah.

578
00:37:05,980 --> 00:37:14,500
If I can actually go back just one step and have one quick follow-up comment about what

579
00:37:14,500 --> 00:37:20,180
we can get rid of and what we can't, I think that it's very fascinating that some things

580
00:37:20,180 --> 00:37:28,220
are entirely entrenched in who we are as humans and some things just aren't.

581
00:37:28,220 --> 00:37:32,820
And the only way that we figure that out is by eliminating them and then see if society

582
00:37:32,820 --> 00:37:35,220
continues to progress or if it gets worse.

583
00:37:35,220 --> 00:37:39,060
It's all an experimentation because I think in my view, there is no God telling us how

584
00:37:39,060 --> 00:37:41,300
to do these things or it's all trial and error.

585
00:37:41,300 --> 00:37:43,340
But society is just society.

586
00:37:43,340 --> 00:37:47,940
And so slavery, always had slavery, always did it.

587
00:37:47,940 --> 00:37:52,020
Every society across the globe until all of a sudden we decided, oh, you know what, maybe

588
00:37:52,020 --> 00:37:53,020
we shouldn't do this.

589
00:37:53,020 --> 00:37:58,380
Maybe we just like for economic reasons, for moral reasons, for you know, maybe we just

590
00:37:58,380 --> 00:38:00,460
should try not doing this anymore, guys.

591
00:38:00,460 --> 00:38:01,900
And then we tried it.

592
00:38:01,900 --> 00:38:06,680
And lo and behold, now anyone who tries it is like a moral monster.

593
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:11,860
And it's like the worst thing in the human, like the possil- and we thrive having no slavery.

594
00:38:11,860 --> 00:38:12,860
Marriage.

595
00:38:12,860 --> 00:38:13,860
Yeah.

596
00:38:13,860 --> 00:38:16,420
But we have machines to do that work for us now.

597
00:38:16,420 --> 00:38:20,140
And slavery is still practiced in lots of parts of the world.

598
00:38:20,140 --> 00:38:23,140
And you know, those people don't think of themselves as being moral monsters.

599
00:38:23,140 --> 00:38:26,060
They think that we in the West are sort of deluded.

600
00:38:26,060 --> 00:38:29,220
I'm going to ignore that and just keep it simple here.

601
00:38:29,220 --> 00:38:33,300
Just a tiny little bow on my thought.

602
00:38:33,300 --> 00:38:34,860
Everything gets complicated, KMO.

603
00:38:34,860 --> 00:38:37,380
But I'll keep it simple.

604
00:38:37,380 --> 00:38:38,740
So slavery is bad.

605
00:38:38,740 --> 00:38:43,500
I think I'm really- I hear you on the nuance, but I'm not going to trip over the nuance.

606
00:38:43,500 --> 00:38:44,500
Slavery is bad.

607
00:38:44,500 --> 00:38:49,260
And as a globe, virtually as a globe, minus certain societies, we have actually like kind

608
00:38:49,260 --> 00:38:50,860
of come around to this.

609
00:38:50,860 --> 00:38:54,980
Marriage on the other hand, we have tried really, really hard to get rid of marriage

610
00:38:54,980 --> 00:38:56,460
in the Western world.

611
00:38:56,460 --> 00:39:01,500
We've tried- like the whole feminist movement effectively is trying to be anti-marriage

612
00:39:01,500 --> 00:39:03,620
and trying to live your life outside of that.

613
00:39:03,620 --> 00:39:05,980
And men, of course, have always tried to do this.

614
00:39:05,980 --> 00:39:08,340
And it just kind of doesn't work.

615
00:39:08,340 --> 00:39:13,540
Like to this day, the happiest and the wealthiest people, they're all married and they're all

616
00:39:13,540 --> 00:39:15,740
like broadcasting, ah, you don't need to get married.

617
00:39:15,740 --> 00:39:18,540
Ah, it's a silly old religious institution.

618
00:39:18,540 --> 00:39:20,380
And yet they all are.

619
00:39:20,380 --> 00:39:25,940
Like every low key, like powerful, high human capital person, they're all married with kids.

620
00:39:25,940 --> 00:39:29,540
So I was just saying, it's like a joke, the idea that we're going to get rid of marriage

621
00:39:29,540 --> 00:39:30,540
as an institution.

622
00:39:30,540 --> 00:39:34,460
So there's- but we only figured out that slavery we can do away with and marriage we can't

623
00:39:34,460 --> 00:39:35,920
by kind of trial and error.

624
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:38,900
So like, I think that that's kind of where we always are at.

625
00:39:38,900 --> 00:39:40,140
It's like, what can we get rid of?

626
00:39:40,140 --> 00:39:41,140
What can we not?

627
00:39:41,140 --> 00:39:42,140
But anyway, I'm sorry.

628
00:39:42,140 --> 00:39:46,860
That was my long winded bow on that part of the conversation.

629
00:39:46,860 --> 00:39:48,740
But yeah, biotech.

630
00:39:48,740 --> 00:39:52,740
We did have a quick conversation about this earlier.

631
00:39:52,740 --> 00:39:56,740
And can I tell you a little anecdote?

632
00:39:56,740 --> 00:39:58,140
Sure.

633
00:39:58,140 --> 00:40:05,800
So I recently for my channel, Team Futurism, I took a trip to this guy's bio lab in San

634
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:08,220
Francisco and I just posted the video.

635
00:40:08,220 --> 00:40:10,860
So you can check out this little video that I did of it.

636
00:40:10,860 --> 00:40:16,980
I went to this local community bio lab and the guy was showing me around his lab and

637
00:40:16,980 --> 00:40:21,140
showing me what you need to put together your own bio lab.

638
00:40:21,140 --> 00:40:26,100
And I think he said, with about $3,000, you can put together your own bio lab and you

639
00:40:26,100 --> 00:40:28,940
can start playing with DNA.

640
00:40:28,940 --> 00:40:32,380
And you can start messing around with viruses, that sort of thing.

641
00:40:32,380 --> 00:40:40,580
And he did say that in general, it's not that easy to actually create a nefarious virus

642
00:40:40,580 --> 00:40:44,420
or do anything like that exciting other than you can create glowing beer, that sort of

643
00:40:44,420 --> 00:40:45,420
thing.

644
00:40:45,420 --> 00:40:53,940
But in general, broad strokes, biotech is super, super, super accessible right now.

645
00:40:53,940 --> 00:40:58,620
And you can get basically all the tools you need to do like actual real biotech and take

646
00:40:58,620 --> 00:41:00,660
some classes online or whatever and you're good to go.

647
00:41:00,660 --> 00:41:02,420
You can start messing with stuff.

648
00:41:02,420 --> 00:41:07,180
And I went to a conference, the Biohack the Planet conference I mentioned earlier, and

649
00:41:07,180 --> 00:41:12,460
there was a guy there who created his own AIDS drug, just like as a biohacker, just

650
00:41:12,460 --> 00:41:14,020
like doing this thing.

651
00:41:14,020 --> 00:41:18,780
And because he didn't have the money or the insurance to get the actual AIDS drug that

652
00:41:18,780 --> 00:41:21,180
he needed to survive.

653
00:41:21,180 --> 00:41:22,700
So he made it himself.

654
00:41:22,700 --> 00:41:30,100
I don't think that we actually realize how accessible biotech is in the biohacking phenomenon.

655
00:41:30,100 --> 00:41:31,580
It's very much like underground.

656
00:41:31,580 --> 00:41:34,340
You don't talk about it like in normal places or read about it.

657
00:41:34,340 --> 00:41:40,460
There are people right now out there who are doing crazy weird injecting themselves with

658
00:41:40,460 --> 00:41:43,620
CRISPR type of things.

659
00:41:43,620 --> 00:41:49,640
And I do not think that we quite realize and comprehend how much this is and could potentially

660
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:53,620
be changing the human species.

661
00:41:53,620 --> 00:41:56,740
And I was recently talking to Razeeb Khan.

662
00:41:56,740 --> 00:42:00,460
I have his interview with him on my channel.

663
00:42:00,460 --> 00:42:05,340
And I was asking him, like, okay, so like, real talk, North Korea, are they creating

664
00:42:05,340 --> 00:42:06,780
super humans or what are they doing?

665
00:42:06,780 --> 00:42:08,780
And he was like, oh, yeah, they for sure are.

666
00:42:08,780 --> 00:42:09,900
There's no question.

667
00:42:09,900 --> 00:42:11,620
They're creating super humans.

668
00:42:11,620 --> 00:42:15,420
People who just like are bigger, stronger, faster, because why the hell not?

669
00:42:15,420 --> 00:42:19,380
They're literally just like they do not have the moral qualms that we do about that sort

670
00:42:19,380 --> 00:42:20,380
of thing.

671
00:42:20,380 --> 00:42:22,860
They're just like injecting people with shit and like seeing what happens.

672
00:42:22,860 --> 00:42:26,700
And they're creating like weird supermen, super soldiers.

673
00:42:26,700 --> 00:42:31,300
And I just do not think we think about this enough and the implications of it.

674
00:42:31,300 --> 00:42:37,100
So I think that we are living in a very strange time in terms of biotechnology, let alone

675
00:42:37,100 --> 00:42:38,860
all the above board stuff.

676
00:42:38,860 --> 00:42:44,340
Obviously, you know, AI is revolutionizing a lot of biotechnology right now.

677
00:42:44,340 --> 00:42:45,460
And that's crazy, too.

678
00:42:45,460 --> 00:42:50,620
But like the underground stuff, the dudes in their in their garages stuff, I think is

679
00:42:50,620 --> 00:42:52,220
just like so fascinating.

680
00:42:52,220 --> 00:42:56,340
And yeah, I wish there was more of a window into that world, because I'm very fascinated

681
00:42:56,340 --> 00:42:57,340
by it.

682
00:42:57,340 --> 00:42:58,340
Yeah.

683
00:42:58,340 --> 00:43:01,660
So going way back, you know, what is transhumanism?

684
00:43:01,660 --> 00:43:06,180
If you look at the Borg on Star Trek, you know, they've got big clunky stuff bolted

685
00:43:06,180 --> 00:43:10,620
to their head with, you know, cables that loop way out from their bodies and lasers

686
00:43:10,620 --> 00:43:11,620
shooting out of them.

687
00:43:11,620 --> 00:43:16,140
And they, you know, they're so moribund with all this stuff that's been bolted onto them.

688
00:43:16,140 --> 00:43:18,220
They can't sit down, you know.

689
00:43:18,220 --> 00:43:24,140
And it's just like if you look at the evolution of like the Tesla Optimus bot, it had the

690
00:43:24,140 --> 00:43:27,380
external loops of wires in the first generation.

691
00:43:27,380 --> 00:43:30,940
And then they figured out how to tighten that up pretty quickly.

692
00:43:30,940 --> 00:43:39,220
It seems like the Borg is very unlikely in that, you know, if they could put just a modicum

693
00:43:39,220 --> 00:43:42,700
you know of effort into public relations, a lot of people would be anxious to join the

694
00:43:42,700 --> 00:43:43,700
Borg.

695
00:43:43,700 --> 00:43:47,300
But you know, if you're just marching around stiff legged with a thing bolted to your face,

696
00:43:47,300 --> 00:43:53,560
you know, and your skin's all gray and mottled because the nanotech has no no component in

697
00:43:53,560 --> 00:43:56,740
it that is, you know, sensitive to human comfort.

698
00:43:56,740 --> 00:44:03,300
Like if you just make the Borg look like subhuman monsters rather than super super men and super

699
00:44:03,300 --> 00:44:09,900
women, you know, you're hampering your ability to proselytize and, you know, add the biological

700
00:44:09,900 --> 00:44:13,140
and cultural distinctiveness of other civilizations to your own.

701
00:44:13,140 --> 00:44:19,420
So that always struck me as just a very sort of hamfisted take on, you know, a collective

702
00:44:19,420 --> 00:44:22,460
cybernetic collective basically.

703
00:44:22,460 --> 00:44:28,660
So imagine if instead of wires and lasers and big pieces of metal bolted into your skull,

704
00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:33,020
all of the things that the Borg can do that are really cool are done with biotechnology

705
00:44:33,020 --> 00:44:38,220
and they're all just, you know, beautiful athletic people with perfect skin and beautiful

706
00:44:38,220 --> 00:44:43,140
hair, you know, but who can coordinate their actions at a superhuman level?

707
00:44:43,140 --> 00:44:44,980
I mean, who wouldn't want to join that?

708
00:44:44,980 --> 00:44:48,840
So you know, if you're thinking about transhumanism, you know, you might think about uploading

709
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:52,860
your consciousness to a computer or you might think about, you know, doing something with

710
00:44:52,860 --> 00:44:59,140
nanotechnology, but the nanotech is not made of, you know, of biological elements.

711
00:44:59,140 --> 00:45:03,400
It's made of, you know, rare earth elements and things like that.

712
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:10,620
But the more you can implement in biotechnology, I think the more sort of appealing transhumanism

713
00:45:10,620 --> 00:45:14,100
becomes to the point where it would just be sort of a silly concept.

714
00:45:14,100 --> 00:45:19,420
It would be like, you know, the Christian scientists refusing, you know, what's the

715
00:45:19,420 --> 00:45:30,820
word I'm looking for, antibiotics, you know, or refusing not some controversial injection,

716
00:45:30,820 --> 00:45:34,420
you know, like the mRNA vaccines, but like polio vaccines.

717
00:45:34,420 --> 00:45:35,420
Who rejects that anymore?

718
00:45:35,420 --> 00:45:37,780
You know, a few people, but they're weirdos.

719
00:45:37,780 --> 00:45:42,460
I think that the more you can do with biotech, the more the notion of transhumanism just

720
00:45:42,460 --> 00:45:45,140
sort of goes out the window and that's just medicine.

721
00:45:45,140 --> 00:45:49,940
You know, that's just living in a scientific society and taking advantage.

722
00:45:49,940 --> 00:45:53,900
That's another reason why I actually do think that the word transhumanism, we kind of sort

723
00:45:53,900 --> 00:45:55,660
of can just do without because you're kind of right.

724
00:45:55,660 --> 00:45:59,100
As soon as something becomes even halfway mainstream, all of a sudden it's just medicine

725
00:45:59,100 --> 00:46:00,740
and it's just science.

726
00:46:00,740 --> 00:46:06,740
And I mean, this is actually a very, oh man, if I'm worried or scared about anything in

727
00:46:06,740 --> 00:46:14,580
terms of biotech, it's that radical and very beneficial technologies could be very easily

728
00:46:14,580 --> 00:46:16,640
politicized right now.

729
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:22,500
And so I'm disgruntled with how the mRNA vaccine became politicized because that technology

730
00:46:22,500 --> 00:46:23,900
is super cool.

731
00:46:23,900 --> 00:46:28,220
Like they're already rolling it out as a vaccine for cancers.

732
00:46:28,220 --> 00:46:30,540
And there's going to be a lot of people who are just going to die from cancer because

733
00:46:30,540 --> 00:46:33,180
they didn't get this vaccine because, oh, it's the mRNA vaccine.

734
00:46:33,180 --> 00:46:34,180
It's experimental.

735
00:46:34,180 --> 00:46:37,980
And we have Tucker Carlson saying, oh, it's an experimental.

736
00:46:37,980 --> 00:46:42,380
Rick Kurzweil said this thing about the mRNA vaccine that has stuck with me.

737
00:46:42,380 --> 00:46:47,660
He's like, you know, we're told that the mRNA vaccine for COVID, it took like three months

738
00:46:47,660 --> 00:46:48,660
to develop, right?

739
00:46:48,660 --> 00:46:50,460
And then they rolled it out after like three months.

740
00:46:50,460 --> 00:46:52,840
It was like, no, it was three days.

741
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:56,060
They had this thing in three days.

742
00:46:56,060 --> 00:46:57,580
Like this is amazing, guys.

743
00:46:57,580 --> 00:47:00,180
Like this should be like the coolest thing on the planet.

744
00:47:00,180 --> 00:47:04,380
But like because governments were kind of like heavy handed and like sloppy about how

745
00:47:04,380 --> 00:47:09,060
it was rolled out, all of a sudden like half the country think that it's like a scary thing.

746
00:47:09,060 --> 00:47:11,660
But like that's amazing.

747
00:47:11,660 --> 00:47:16,300
And like right now, again, like we can, it was not available yet, but like pretty soon

748
00:47:16,300 --> 00:47:22,300
you're going to get a shot, like an mRNA vaccine shot to not get certain types of cancer ever.

749
00:47:22,300 --> 00:47:24,360
And like that's amazing.

750
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:28,020
And we should be stoked about that and like excited to be alive in this moment and not

751
00:47:28,020 --> 00:47:31,580
like, oh, the red team or the blue team rolled this out.

752
00:47:31,580 --> 00:47:33,580
And so I'm not going to get it or whatever.

753
00:47:33,580 --> 00:47:34,980
I hate that shit so much.

754
00:47:34,980 --> 00:47:40,820
I think that we should just be like pro technology and not politicize things so much.

755
00:47:40,820 --> 00:47:42,540
There's a bunch of rabbit holes there too.

756
00:47:42,540 --> 00:47:44,540
I'm not sure how you feel about any of that.

757
00:47:44,540 --> 00:47:46,540
Those are my wrong ones.

758
00:47:46,540 --> 00:47:51,380
Yeah, I mean, lots of opinions that are not really necessarily congruent with one another

759
00:47:51,380 --> 00:47:55,140
get bolted together in ideological factions.

760
00:47:55,140 --> 00:48:01,300
You know, just every side's got its catechism and really there's no logical connection between

761
00:48:01,300 --> 00:48:07,140
your views on gun control, abortion and immigration.

762
00:48:07,140 --> 00:48:08,540
You know, there shouldn't be.

763
00:48:08,540 --> 00:48:10,100
These are very different things.

764
00:48:10,100 --> 00:48:14,360
And there's nothing necessarily coherent about the red tribe or the blue tribe's position

765
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:19,040
on these things, but they do tend to cluster because that's how we identify ourselves.

766
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:25,300
We identify ourselves as parts of super organisms, you know, tribal organisms.

767
00:48:25,300 --> 00:48:28,820
And our tribe has certain beliefs and those beliefs didn't come about because they were

768
00:48:28,820 --> 00:48:29,820
logically consistent.

769
00:48:29,820 --> 00:48:33,980
They didn't come about because, you know, a committee of very intelligent people sat

770
00:48:33,980 --> 00:48:38,540
down and examined them and said, oh, this is the strongest and this is the strongest.

771
00:48:38,540 --> 00:48:44,220
So let's, you know, let's put all these rigorously examined ideas together and that's going to

772
00:48:44,220 --> 00:48:45,220
be our ideology.

773
00:48:45,220 --> 00:48:47,780
I mean, that's just not how it works, you know.

774
00:48:47,780 --> 00:48:50,420
So yeah, go ahead.

775
00:48:50,420 --> 00:48:55,420
It is useful to do that too, because having people in your tribe and being like a team

776
00:48:55,420 --> 00:48:58,420
based person, I don't know, that's how societies thrive.

777
00:48:58,420 --> 00:49:01,740
So I'm not going to knock it too much, but boy, it is annoying.

778
00:49:01,740 --> 00:49:05,300
And it's also kind of funny that in today's day and age to be a heterodox person, which

779
00:49:05,300 --> 00:49:09,500
I kind of like float in the heterodox circles.

780
00:49:09,500 --> 00:49:16,500
Most people who consider themselves heterodox have like the most normal views and they're

781
00:49:16,500 --> 00:49:18,660
more like populists rather than heterodox.

782
00:49:18,660 --> 00:49:24,340
Like if you're in a heterodox community, quote unquote, if you think that trans women shouldn't

783
00:49:24,340 --> 00:49:28,420
be in girls sports, but that's like, like no one thinks that like it's like the most

784
00:49:28,420 --> 00:49:32,580
mainstream normal thing to not think that trans girls should be in.

785
00:49:32,580 --> 00:49:37,020
But like just because mainstream media kind of like tamps down on that perspective and

786
00:49:37,020 --> 00:49:41,100
it's been like kind of politicized or whatever that feels heterodox, right.

787
00:49:41,100 --> 00:49:47,340
But it's like normies, like average normie people, both blue and red think or have questions

788
00:49:47,340 --> 00:49:52,500
about biological males being in female sports, right.

789
00:49:52,500 --> 00:49:57,820
But yeah, the whole political thing right now is kind of such a goofy mess.

790
00:49:57,820 --> 00:50:04,140
And I do think that we just use it to form tribes with our friends effectively.

791
00:50:04,140 --> 00:50:13,420
Well, you wrote a substack piece fairly recently about what you have labeled the dirt bag right.

792
00:50:13,420 --> 00:50:21,620
And you open it with a reference.

793
00:50:21,620 --> 00:50:25,140
There's more of a case to state that this dirt bag right phenomenon could bring down

794
00:50:25,140 --> 00:50:27,020
society than the dirt bag left.

795
00:50:27,020 --> 00:50:28,060
I don't actually believe that.

796
00:50:28,060 --> 00:50:31,620
And I actually like to spend most of my time to be clear criticizing the left.

797
00:50:31,620 --> 00:50:33,620
Like I hate the left, even though I'm on it.

798
00:50:33,620 --> 00:50:37,420
But anyway, this is me critiquing the right a little bit.

799
00:50:37,420 --> 00:50:44,780
Well, I don't think we have time to delve too deeply into the whole morass of the merger

800
00:50:44,780 --> 00:50:47,860
of politics and culture or the nexus of politics and culture.

801
00:50:47,860 --> 00:50:48,860
There's a lot there.

802
00:50:48,860 --> 00:50:49,860
Yeah.

803
00:50:49,860 --> 00:50:51,980
There is a lot there.

804
00:50:51,980 --> 00:50:58,260
And it's I was for a very long time part of a sort of collapse oriented community and

805
00:50:58,260 --> 00:51:01,760
people who are very focused on peak oil and they thought industrial society was collapsing

806
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:04,380
soon and well, it didn't.

807
00:51:04,380 --> 00:51:09,380
And that scene, you know, it disintegrated and the people went in various directions

808
00:51:09,380 --> 00:51:12,740
and some of them went left and some of them went right.

809
00:51:12,740 --> 00:51:17,940
And the current moment doesn't really seem to allow you to resist one of those two currents

810
00:51:17,940 --> 00:51:25,320
if you want to attract a large enough audience to monetize and, you know, pay the rent.

811
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:31,660
So I know a guy who, you know, for he was a lifelong Democrat, but he discovered that,

812
00:51:31,660 --> 00:51:37,060
you know, throwing red meat to the the mega crowd brings in the the Patreon bucks.

813
00:51:37,060 --> 00:51:38,700
And so that's his full time gig now.

814
00:51:38,700 --> 00:51:39,700
And he's good at it.

815
00:51:39,700 --> 00:51:44,620
You know, and he says things that I suspect he doesn't really believe.

816
00:51:44,620 --> 00:51:49,180
But you know, when you're getting paid to articulate a message, it's easier to just

817
00:51:49,180 --> 00:51:50,460
believe it.

818
00:51:50,460 --> 00:51:51,820
It's not that you can do it instantly.

819
00:51:51,820 --> 00:51:55,100
We're going back to the, you know, the question of can you choose what you believe?

820
00:51:55,100 --> 00:51:56,860
Not not in a moment.

821
00:51:56,860 --> 00:52:01,380
Like if I were to take, you know, the two or three generations down the line from now,

822
00:52:01,380 --> 00:52:05,900
Neuralink, Connector and just plug it into your brain and say, OK, I can see your belief

823
00:52:05,900 --> 00:52:06,900
system.

824
00:52:06,900 --> 00:52:09,820
Here's a check for 10 million dollars.

825
00:52:09,820 --> 00:52:14,820
If you can genuinely believe that Kamala Harris is a shape shifting reptilian from another

826
00:52:14,820 --> 00:52:19,300
direction, another dimension in the next five minutes, if you can formulate that belief,

827
00:52:19,300 --> 00:52:24,140
not the image, not a clear thought, not the imagining, but believe it, the money is yours.

828
00:52:24,140 --> 00:52:25,740
I don't think you could do it.

829
00:52:25,740 --> 00:52:26,740
You're so right.

830
00:52:26,740 --> 00:52:27,740
Wow.

831
00:52:27,740 --> 00:52:28,740
That's fascinating.

832
00:52:28,740 --> 00:52:29,740
You're absolutely right about that.

833
00:52:29,740 --> 00:52:30,740
Yeah.

834
00:52:30,740 --> 00:52:36,740
But but if you write a blog about the shape shifting reptilian overlords for 10 years,

835
00:52:36,740 --> 00:52:41,320
even if you started doing it for completely mercenary reasons, I think every now and again,

836
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:46,100
you're going to click into a mode where you do believe it.

837
00:52:46,100 --> 00:52:48,080
You're just living that reality.

838
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,460
And I think that's what Pascal was talking about with his wager.

839
00:52:50,460 --> 00:52:54,500
Yeah, I think that we can talk ourselves into things.

840
00:52:54,500 --> 00:53:00,180
There is a concept that I've been really into lately called metamodernism.

841
00:53:00,180 --> 00:53:01,660
Are you familiar with this concept?

842
00:53:01,660 --> 00:53:06,500
Well, I know meta and I know modernism, but put them together and I'm drawing a blank.

843
00:53:06,500 --> 00:53:10,100
Yeah, let me just give a very quick overview about this.

844
00:53:10,100 --> 00:53:12,860
And I actually had an essay today drop about this a little bit.

845
00:53:12,860 --> 00:53:15,540
I've been writing about it as much as I can.

846
00:53:15,540 --> 00:53:21,400
So there was modernism, you know, and then that merged into or, you know, went into postmodernism.

847
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:25,700
And a lot of people are philosophers trying to say that like, we're kind of like at the

848
00:53:25,700 --> 00:53:30,140
end of metamodernism, the postmodern era, it's just kind of like broken down.

849
00:53:30,140 --> 00:53:31,580
It became nonsensical.

850
00:53:31,580 --> 00:53:35,540
You can't just say there are no grand narratives.

851
00:53:35,540 --> 00:53:37,180
And then like, where do you go from there?

852
00:53:37,180 --> 00:53:39,260
Because like even that itself, it's kind of a grand narrative.

853
00:53:39,260 --> 00:53:42,320
So postmodernism is inherently a little contradictory.

854
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:46,940
And it just doesn't go anywhere other than it's very, you know, bleak and nihilistic

855
00:53:46,940 --> 00:53:48,300
at some level.

856
00:53:48,300 --> 00:53:53,580
And so there are some philosophers who are now starting to say that we're in the metamodern

857
00:53:53,580 --> 00:54:04,000
era and this is where it's marked by an oscillation between postmodern irony and modern sincerity.

858
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:11,200
And so if you look at a lot of movies or books, for example, you can find books where characters

859
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:16,220
are like self aware of their scenario in life, but they're also like they swing back to being

860
00:54:16,220 --> 00:54:18,060
sincere at the same time.

861
00:54:18,060 --> 00:54:22,620
And this is where we are right now with a lot of these things where you can be moment

862
00:54:22,620 --> 00:54:28,960
by moment ironic or sincere and you can oscillate back and forth between the two.

863
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:35,100
You can be traditionally religious on Sunday and then on Monday be a hardcore capitalist

864
00:54:35,100 --> 00:54:38,860
and realize that tension there and be fine with that because that this is the modern

865
00:54:38,860 --> 00:54:39,860
day.

866
00:54:39,860 --> 00:54:43,660
And so we're like in the metamodern era where we're oscillating back and forth between these

867
00:54:43,660 --> 00:54:47,620
two things and just like in the merger of them, maybe it's making something new and

868
00:54:47,620 --> 00:54:48,620
something different.

869
00:54:48,620 --> 00:54:53,900
And this is like maybe the way forward for ourselves and our culture is to just like

870
00:54:53,900 --> 00:54:55,680
just humor this oscillation.

871
00:54:55,680 --> 00:55:00,300
And I think that that's that's maybe also a nice summary of where I was getting that

872
00:55:00,300 --> 00:55:06,500
earlier in the conversation with this tension between the Bronze Age perverts and the Zoltan

873
00:55:06,500 --> 00:55:10,700
and his fans that are looking backwards and looking forwards, I think that you can like

874
00:55:10,700 --> 00:55:12,740
oscillate between the two a little bit.

875
00:55:12,740 --> 00:55:16,700
And maybe that is the most modern thing that you can do.

876
00:55:16,700 --> 00:55:17,700
Very good.

877
00:55:17,700 --> 00:55:18,780
Well, let's let's leave it there.

878
00:55:18,780 --> 00:55:24,140
I think we're both reaching the end of our vocal stamina.

879
00:55:24,140 --> 00:55:27,860
Usually I have got a lot more, but you know, some days the throat just doesn't doesn't

880
00:55:27,860 --> 00:55:28,860
cooperate.

881
00:55:28,860 --> 00:55:29,860
All right.

882
00:55:29,860 --> 00:55:36,100
Well, Peter, what what projects do you want to bring to people's awareness?

883
00:55:36,100 --> 00:55:38,060
Yeah, check out my sub stack.

884
00:55:38,060 --> 00:55:40,500
It's the the decadence project.

885
00:55:40,500 --> 00:55:47,900
And also I have a podcast called Team Futurism that's on YouTube or wherever you find podcasts.

886
00:55:47,900 --> 00:55:50,140
And also, yeah, check out my book, The Singularity Survival Guide.

887
00:55:50,140 --> 00:55:56,300
I think that especially if you're into goofy literature, you'll appreciate it.

888
00:55:56,300 --> 00:55:59,020
And I think it's worth saying that it's 99 cents on Kindle.

889
00:55:59,020 --> 00:56:00,380
So not going to break the bank.

890
00:56:00,380 --> 00:56:01,380
There you go.

891
00:56:01,380 --> 00:56:02,380
All right.

892
00:56:02,380 --> 00:56:03,380
Well, thanks so much.

893
00:56:03,380 --> 00:56:04,380
Yep.

894
00:56:04,380 --> 00:56:08,420
Thanks so much.

895
00:56:08,420 --> 00:56:09,420
All right.

896
00:56:09,420 --> 00:56:10,420
That was Peter Clark.

897
00:56:10,420 --> 00:56:11,420
He has got a sub stack.

898
00:56:11,420 --> 00:56:13,740
I've read some of his sub stack work.

899
00:56:13,740 --> 00:56:14,740
He also has a podcast.

900
00:56:14,740 --> 00:56:19,380
I have not yet listened to his podcast work, but links to all that good stuff and to his

901
00:56:19,380 --> 00:56:23,700
book are in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at.

902
00:56:23,700 --> 00:56:25,260
Oh, gosh.

903
00:56:25,260 --> 00:56:29,700
I think the easiest way to direct you to it is on sub stack.

904
00:56:29,700 --> 00:56:33,220
KM optimal dot sub stack dot com.

905
00:56:33,220 --> 00:56:34,660
All right.

906
00:56:34,660 --> 00:56:36,500
I will talk to you again soon.

907
00:56:36,500 --> 00:57:03,500
Stay well.