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Hi everyone, and welcome back to For the Curious and Confused, a podcast for people who want

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to understand different perspectives of the world through the people who inhabit it.

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I'm your host, Dom McTaggart, and today I'm joined by Justin McSweeney, a seasoned

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interviewer and informal philosopher of mind.

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Justin runs a YouTube-based interview series called IdeaCast, where he has detailed and

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technical conversations with experts in the social sciences, philosophy, and arts.

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In these interviews, Justin aims to better illustrate the frameworks we have to understand

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meaning-making and purpose.

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He pulls from many tools in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy to explore the

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world and self.

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Justin combines these fields to better understand not only the process of how we interact with

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our environment, but also as a means to know ourselves and how we learn and grow.

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Though Justin has a remarkable depth of understanding in many topics, he's the first to point out

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what he doesn't know, and I believe you'll notice how his genuine humility only strengthens

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his credibility.

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So, Justin, thank you for sharing your time with us today, and I'm excited to get into

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our conversation.

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Don, thank you so much for having me as a guest.

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I'm grateful to you for that opportunity for us to open up this space and have a conversation.

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So, thank you.

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I'm very excited.

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Yeah, thank you.

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So, to start us off, could you first give us a bit of a two-minute introduction into

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who is Justin McSweeney and what motivates him?

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Well, the who, I would answer with I live on the East Coast of Florida with my wife

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and a cat named Spot, and not a deep, rich background.

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I've been a jack of all trades in my life.

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I've owned four businesses, I think, two landscape businesses, a restaurant and a newsstand.

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So I dabbled in being an entrepreneur for, I don't know, 28 years or so thereabouts.

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Currently, I work in a very bureaucratic job with a state organization related to agriculture.

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So it's horticulture in Botany, which is up my alley.

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And yeah, that's about myself in a nutshell.

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And then you mentioned that I do have the interview series that I run, and that is a

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component of my life, and that it's a public component of my life, as are these conversations.

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But yeah, I'm just sort of a generic person, very average person.

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I like to say I'm an extremely average person.

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Yeah, it's a very average guy.

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Okay.

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All right.

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There you go, guys.

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There's the humility coming in again right off the bat.

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Okay.

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So if you were to divide your life in different chapters, what would those chapters be?

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And could you walk us through each one of those briefly?

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I'd like to think that this ordering and division that I'm about to offer is universal so that

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perhaps it's a commonality or a common thread in the experience of us being children, teenagers,

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adolescents, adults, all these kinds of stages.

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And I will lens it more in an ethically idealistic way rather than a more utilitarian way or

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how a psychoanalyst would break down chapters.

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I would maybe just open it up to a more idealized way.

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And by that I mean a lens that affords us a very human perspective on our story, our

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narrative.

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And again, I want to conflate myself with everyone else.

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And of course, there's a lot of caveats there.

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I live in an American suburban middle-class culture.

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So we have to have that grain of salt added to this.

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But having said that, I like to think that there's universality.

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So let's start with infancy and early childhood.

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And I would say that's probably the richest, most wide open space for humaning or being

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present in the world.

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And that is the time that we start onboarding and figuring out what's going on and perhaps

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who we are or how we relate to the world and to others in it.

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And then that flows into our adolescent period wherein we begin then asking counterfactual

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questions and maybe get a little provocative and say, well, this first 12 or 13 years of

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my life, I was again, and I'm saying this in an idealized way, but we tend to idealize

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things as children.

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We don't see a lot of nuance and we maybe over-enrich our valuation of maybe the older

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people, the adults and so forth.

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So I think that middle, or I'd say the adolescent period is a wonderful place to then start

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carving out a niche for yourself or defining borders of who you are versus the adults that

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you were acquiescing to or you were strongly attentive to in terms of your learning, the

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imprinting, the interjection, things that were necessary for your development.

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So interjection is just to onboard information from others.

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It's a process of learning.

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And it's somewhat overlapping with something called mimesis, which is to mime the others.

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So when we're children, we want to please the adult.

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We want to please the parental figure or whatever, the caregiver, and we tend to mime the behavior

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and so that we can stay connected.

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Because I think one existential fear of a young child is that they'll be abandoned or

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neglected because they're being too obnoxious in the parent with you.

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So it's very primal, I guess.

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So anyway, I'm on a long tangent, but so yeah, I'd say adolescence is that perfect.

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And it's painful, right?

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It's messy and you do stupid things.

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I did.

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So I'll just bring the personal nature in there.

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And then we emerge into early adulthood where we have maybe a cooling off period, a reconciliation

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period for that very frenetic, very chaotic ordering of ourselves.

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We're coalescing into a self or an identity that may be stabilizing into that, let's say,

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18 to 28, somewhere in that range.

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But at the same time, as modern people, we're also, as you are, we're educating ourselves.

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We're structuring ourselves as adults in a strong social network.

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And so we have to learn politics.

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And I mean person to person politics, not the state.

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So yeah, there's a lot of that going on.

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And for myself, I wouldn't want to grade my performance on that, but I look back now as

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a middle aged person and I reflect on my integration into an adult society or again, a strongly

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interconnected society where we have to find our space and really understand tradeoffs

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and relationships and all these different things.

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So that's a magical period.

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And then I would say to anybody who's in their 20s right now that you're going to love your

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30s and maybe up into your late 30s, early 40s because your body's still in good shape.

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And it depends on what you're doing with your life.

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Like you, if you pursue a higher education, then that's going to cash out for you.

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If you picked a career path or an academic niche that you enjoy, wow, you're in for a

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good life.

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And of course, people become parents and they raise children.

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I never had any children, but that's a whole nother thing in its own right.

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So I can't speak to that, but there's that.

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But yeah, I'd say the 30s are probably, I don't want to say it's the Belle Epoque or

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the best time of your life because some people might have it in their 20s or other people,

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the Renaissance begins in their 40s, 50s and 60s maybe.

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But so to move through into middle age where I seem to find myself now, and I don't know

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where middle age starts.

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Some people are saying in their early 40s that they're in middle age.

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I'm like, well, technically, yes, biologically you might only live to 82 or 88 years old.

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And so yeah, 40, but I almost think that me, I would start maybe at 45 and then move up

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to about where I am now in my mid 50s.

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And then I think once you get past your mid 50s into your early 60s, you're moving into

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codredom.

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You're beyond midlife.

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But it's also where I'm at now in life, I think to forecast for anybody who's young

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right now, mid 50s, if you didn't get into too much trouble in the rest of your life

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and you're somewhat steady financially and emotionally and things like that, it's a Renaissance

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period.

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It's a time of reflection.

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If you had children, you're an empty nester now and you can maybe shift your priorities

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in life and see what's important, what's of value beyond just working hard and raising

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a family.

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So I think this period that I'm in right now, and I'm enjoying it, my body is a little rough.

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I have arthritis and a few other little things that I contend with.

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But otherwise, I think to not only forecast for younger people to connect with people

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of my age, range from 50 to 65, I'd say this is a wonderful period of time to, again, reorient

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your compass, your ethical compass or your social compass.

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And if you do have spare time, if you do have your livelihood afforded you the opportunity

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to have some savings and you can not struggle in your 50s to make rent or eat or any of

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these things.

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So these are all the caveats.

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And it's a good time to look around and see how you can be even more of a contributing

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member to your culture, your community, or where you find yourself in the world.

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I can't speak to anything beyond, say, 60 years of age because I'm 55 right now.

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But I would intuit that that's just a continuation of that looking back more than forward because

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you may only have 20 years left and you want those to be rich years.

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But I think in terms of introspecting or reflecting on the life that you led and if you feel like

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there's things that need to be remediated or fixed or whatever, you want to heal something

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about yourself, maybe that's a period wherein you can find whatever modality or whatever

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work necessary for that.

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But I won't go too much further into that because it's all speculation.

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You can interview me again in 15 years if you're doing this.

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So Justin, you're 70 now.

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What's going on?

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Oh, yeah.

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Well, part two coming soon.

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Soon in 15 years.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So anyway.

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Yeah.

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Do you feel novelty in any parts of your life currently?

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Oh, gosh.

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I would love to think that novelty is a huge factor, vector of my life.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I don't want to be delusional in saying that because I probably am habitual and stick

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to patterning.

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But let's just say I appreciate a little chaos coming into the system.

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And so chaos and novelty I'll use synonymously.

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And good chaos.

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I don't want meteors falling through my roof or gunfights to break out my friend, none

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of that.

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But stochasticism, I guess is a fancy word, a stochastic environment where I'm constantly

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getting new challenges or information and it's not, again, not threatening, not things

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that are negatively valiant towards me, but just, yeah, new stuff to challenge me and

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push me out of my comfort zone.

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So yeah, I love novelty.

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Awesome.

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To dig in a little bit on one thing you said earlier about I used to be a little selfish

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also for my period of life right now, mid-20s.

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You mentioned that as a period of time of chaotic ordering.

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So that kind of has a stochastic nature as well.

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Could you expand a little bit on what your chaotic ordering looked like for you when

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you were in your 20s and sort of what the takeaways from that were for someone like

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me or the audience who's in that range right now?

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Right.

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Okay.

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During my 20s, I was a workaholic.

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I was a chef and I typically worked in the evening.

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So I'd go to work at two in the afternoon, 2.30 in the afternoon, get out about 10.30

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or 11 at night.

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So I had all that free time in the daytime.

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And so again, being a workaholic, I would do landscaping for people in Florida and maintenance

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and installs and things like that.

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So I had a part-time in the morning where I get up fairly reasonably early and just

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work from like eight to one or something like that and fill that time with that.

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So my stochastic, I'll say patterning or behavior was sort of niched in amongst the work.

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So I would just go have fun and be frivolous and carefree as much as that.

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So it was concentrated.

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So it was probably not the most physically healthy.

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I kept beer drinking and carrying on and so for instance, I live in central Florida and

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I would on a whim just drive down to Miami at 10 o'clock at night on my day off and stay

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there until six or seven in the morning, hitting clubs or whatever and coming back and maybe

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sleeping at a rest stop for a little bit and then just start the day over again.

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When you're that young and you can recover from, I couldn't do that now, I'd die.

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So I would concentrate the recreational aspect of my life into these little outbursts and

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they were very chaotic.

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I don't want to sound like I'm promoting anything here, but I would take acid or I'd go do some

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mushrooms and then go like I said, I'd go hit a club and have that kind of fun.

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So it was very, and I don't prescribe that to anyone, but yeah, just concentrated outbursts

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of recreation.

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Work hard, play hard.

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Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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But the drive behind the working was I wanted a house.

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I wanted to, and I don't have a college education.

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So the salary I made as a chef was decent, but then I was making half that much again

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as somebody just doing landscaping four or five days a week and that afforded me the

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opportunity to purchase a house and then upgrade to another house.

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Again, just working like a rented mule and then putting money away for savings and having

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a nest egg for myself.

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So I did have that kind of even in my early to mid 20s, I had the sensibility to think

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forward and have fun, but don't get too carried away either way.

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Well, I got carried away with work, but anyway, yeah.

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So that was my 20s.

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It's kind of boring.

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I look back on it, it was not formative terribly because again, I concentrated a lot of my

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energy on just working and I got good as a cook and a chef.

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I learned the trade or however you want to say that the skill sets involved.

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Same thing with landscaping.

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That's where I found my passion for plants and horticulture and botany was just getting

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involved in more than just the banality of maintenance and the treachery of the physical

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labor.

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I was starting to notice the difference in the plants and going to nurseries and identifying

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things and seeing what performed well with others.

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And as I said to you before we hit record that I've got this continuing, I have a little

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nursery behind me, a little light setup back there for the real, they're called megatherms,

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the really cold sensitive plants that I can't grow outside right now.

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So anyway, so if that answers your question about where you are at your stage in life,

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to summarize it, it was just a heavy focus on making sure that I was taking care of myself

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financially but nonetheless being a wild hare when time before time was available.

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So you were interesting.

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Yeah.

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So digging into a little bit more about the reflective part of all that, in those chapters

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of your life, were there any questions that you wish people had asked you during that

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time?

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I guess in terms of maybe how helping you understand yourself or helping others understand

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you more or anything in that realm, if that makes sense.

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Yes.

246
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No, it's a good way to introspect.

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That question is a good conduit or a means to not only where I am in life, but to again

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in another world in a hypothetical situation, I would love in that period, in that 20s,

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I think the helpful person that could arrive in my life that was genuinely interested in

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my wellbeing to ask the question amongst all the things that I just described, are you

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working as diligently to preserve or maintain or to develop your emotional stability, your

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what I would call psycho-emotional stability, your psychology, your profile of your mental

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condition, however you want to gently frame that, because part of the drive of being a

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workaholic was probably informed by adverse background and coming from a very dysfunctional

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family.

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And so some of that was escapism.

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Some of it was just if I work hard enough, I won't have time to dwell on X, Y, or Z.

258
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Same thing with the partying.

259
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If I go out and have a raging good time that I don't have to sit and...

260
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So that's probably the...

261
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It wouldn't be interventional.

262
00:17:33,280 --> 00:17:35,240
It would be more, again, introspectively.

263
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So well, take a moment, take a day off and really reflect on what your shadows are doing

264
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right now.

265
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Are you running from anything that needs to be dealt with?

266
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So that would have been wonderful at say 21 to 26 or 27, somewhere in there.

267
00:17:52,280 --> 00:17:53,280
Yeah.

268
00:17:53,280 --> 00:17:54,280
I'm glad you brought that back up.

269
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I just want to ask a followup on that.

270
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In the workaholic mindset, I guess there's sometimes a culturally a little bit negative

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connotation with that.

272
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So I can imagine two motivations in that.

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One is the part you mentioned first, which is the running towards having the financial

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stability and being able to buy a house and everything.

275
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And you can also imagine the running away from something as well.

276
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So you're having these...

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You're in the middle and you're running towards something and you're also running away from

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something at the same time.

279
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And so my question for you is what ratio of those two motivations was what characterized

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that period of life for you?

281
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I would say the forward moving motivation that again of acquiring the security of a

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home and also buttressing that with...

283
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Or padding that rather with some savings and investment money.

284
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I don't think I had mutual funds back then.

285
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I didn't get mutual funds until I was probably in my 30s.

286
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But just stashing squirreling money away and building equity for myself was probably the

287
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prime driver.

288
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And I do have a very...

289
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I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD, but I was diagnosed with dyslexia.

290
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I'm very hyperactive and I do have a somewhat obsessive personality.

291
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:20,440
So that's factored in, but the obsessive personality and the dyslexia could be again from the upbringing

292
00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:25,000
experience that I had, which I always like to joke that it was never traumatic.

293
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It was just the tedious Machiavellian treachery of the parents I had and the environment that

294
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I grew up in.

295
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Very dysfunctional household.

296
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Never traumatic, but just really very deeply Machiavellian.

297
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Which again, if you string things together, if somebody was to sit down and analyze me,

298
00:19:42,720 --> 00:19:49,480
I'd say that's probably what was going on is in fact, one side of my family were all

299
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like, you know, cutthroat, work hard, exploit, make yourself wealthy, blah, blah, blah, blah.

300
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Just that weird kind of almost sociopathic drive to reach a certain...

301
00:20:02,760 --> 00:20:07,600
But the funny thing is, is they grew up during the depression, the grandparents that I'm

302
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:11,200
referring to and then the parent, there's a string there.

303
00:20:11,200 --> 00:20:14,920
So you can always trace things back in a kind of lineage.

304
00:20:14,920 --> 00:20:22,600
But I'd like to think in retrospect that my prime mover and motivator was to just have

305
00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:28,360
security, especially again, not having a degree in anything other than having worked in culinary

306
00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:37,880
for a long time and working up through there is just staying secure, staying in a...

307
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:45,280
And I think we're all sort of in that kind of reality or position.

308
00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:48,160
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

309
00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:49,160
Great.

310
00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:52,680
So I guess we can move on a little bit now to your series, your interview series.

311
00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:57,200
What motivated you to start that IdeaCast series and what sort of main things you've learned

312
00:20:57,200 --> 00:20:58,200
from that?

313
00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:03,600
Oh gosh, it would take a couple episodes to go around about what I've learned from it,

314
00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:05,840
but I'll give you the provenance story.

315
00:21:05,840 --> 00:21:10,840
In 2011, I had a brain injury and it really messed me up.

316
00:21:10,840 --> 00:21:15,240
I was pretty much becoming an invalid at the time.

317
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:22,080
My short-term memory was shot, my speech fluency was shot, even my mobility.

318
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:24,200
I think it's a taxia where you can't walk.

319
00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:26,680
Your gait is tentative.

320
00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:31,000
It's not an assured gait where you can pick your feet up and walk without tripping over

321
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:32,000
your feet.

322
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:34,840
I had a lot of that neuropathy, yada, yada, yada.

323
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And it was very unsettling.

324
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And I kept predicting my future that I would just be a mental invalid and it was very serious.

325
00:21:43,360 --> 00:21:48,760
I thought, oh God, I'm going to be in a nursing home or be a vegetable.

326
00:21:48,760 --> 00:21:53,180
And I had attended neurologists and physicians and they really couldn't put their finger

327
00:21:53,180 --> 00:21:58,100
on anything that was overtly wrong through MRIs or whatever.

328
00:21:58,100 --> 00:22:05,080
So it was pretty much incumbent upon me to figure out how to dig myself out of that hole.

329
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:10,920
And I managed, because I'm having a fluent conversation with you now, but to tie things

330
00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:16,280
together, my love of botany and horticulture were one of the lifelines that were provided

331
00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:17,280
to me.

332
00:22:17,280 --> 00:22:24,680
And prior to the brain injury in 2011, I have a yard full of taxonomically diverse plants

333
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:27,320
and flora.

334
00:22:27,320 --> 00:22:33,120
And so prior to the injury, I could walk through the yard and I probably had 135, 140 species

335
00:22:33,120 --> 00:22:34,120
of plants.

336
00:22:34,120 --> 00:22:37,880
I could name all the binomials, the scientific names, and I give you a little cultural background

337
00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:38,880
on it.

338
00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:43,040
So in my rehabilitating myself, I would put myself into the yard and I'd look at a plant

339
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:45,720
and I would try to remember the Latin name for it.

340
00:22:45,720 --> 00:22:49,800
And I would try to remember where it came from or what its cultural requirements are

341
00:22:49,800 --> 00:22:54,800
or any other details that related to the plant.

342
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,880
And that was part of my therapy, which sounds really weird, but it was free.

343
00:22:57,880 --> 00:22:59,640
Yes, I did that.

344
00:22:59,640 --> 00:23:08,320
But the other thing that I did that was close to free was get into a hybrid of quasi-spiritual

345
00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:13,020
inquiry and also philosophical inquiry as well as psychological inquiry.

346
00:23:13,020 --> 00:23:18,120
So there was this kind of matrix, this vent overlap of interests that kind of coalesced

347
00:23:18,120 --> 00:23:23,160
around this recovery process, because I was always sort of spiritually curious and maybe

348
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:29,440
philosophically curious, but philosophically in the sense of spiritual type people like

349
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:37,760
Sri Aurobindo and a few other guys back historically that were crossing lines between philosophy

350
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:40,840
and whatever spirituality is.

351
00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:46,240
And so that all, again, presented itself to me, I suppose, as an opportunity in 2012,

352
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:53,120
13, 14, 15, when I was moving my way through all of this adversity that had beset a public

353
00:23:53,120 --> 00:23:54,120
hall on me.

354
00:23:54,120 --> 00:24:00,880
And so I just got deeper and deeper and deeper in the weeds with philosophy and trying to

355
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:11,160
understand the nature of relationality and Rolada and just all the basic questions that

356
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:18,360
we might have in an existential capacity and also, again, overlapping into a kind of like

357
00:24:18,360 --> 00:24:21,120
a spiritual thing.

358
00:24:21,120 --> 00:24:25,760
So we have a dry or an impetus within us all, I think, even if we're an ardent atheist and

359
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:31,880
we're hard materialists that we have these questions about our nature and this and that.

360
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:37,040
And so, yeah, and that's kind of the seed that was planted with the interview series

361
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:38,260
that I started.

362
00:24:38,260 --> 00:24:44,440
My first guest was someone who was dealing with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and she was

363
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:45,680
a therapist.

364
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:51,480
And I met her at a meditation retreat, again, dabbling in what's going on in the psyche

365
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:53,440
and the spirit and all that kind of thing.

366
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:59,040
And she was a sort of quasi, like she was a Buddhist, Western Buddhist student.

367
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:02,280
And so she combined therapy and Buddhism.

368
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:07,360
And so anyway, she wrote a book called No Pressure, No Diamonds about her memento mori,

369
00:25:07,360 --> 00:25:10,280
about her coming to terms with her mortality.

370
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:14,480
And I thought that was excellent that a therapist could do that and lens it in a particular

371
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:22,560
way, and also somebody who was fluent and aware of what Buddhism speaks to.

372
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:23,900
And so I interviewed her.

373
00:25:23,900 --> 00:25:26,280
She was not verbal at the time.

374
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:28,140
So it was a vocorder.

375
00:25:28,140 --> 00:25:30,440
And so I emailed questions to her.

376
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:32,120
She used her vocorder to respond.

377
00:25:32,120 --> 00:25:35,580
But during the interview, the second half of the interview, she and her husband came

378
00:25:35,580 --> 00:25:38,120
on and he's a therapist as well.

379
00:25:38,120 --> 00:25:39,720
And we had a conversation.

380
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:42,200
And again, she's nonverbal, but he was speaking.

381
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:47,340
And all the questions I had for her were answered in the first half with the vocorder.

382
00:25:47,340 --> 00:25:51,720
So that was an interesting way to get out of the gate.

383
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:56,880
And that's the best first episode I could ever have.

384
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,920
She ended up passing a few months later.

385
00:25:59,920 --> 00:26:03,400
So it was such a gift to be able to speak with her.

386
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:07,600
And then the other guests, I just had the audacity to reach out to some people that

387
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:09,720
I admired in academia.

388
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:17,160
There was a professor of mind and coxsai philosophy of mind in Miami at UM.

389
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:21,080
And there was another guy in the Netherlands named Bernardo Kastrup, who was very, very

390
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:22,820
generous of his time.

391
00:26:22,820 --> 00:26:27,920
He's kind of a quasi public figure in his little corner of the internet.

392
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:32,960
And a few other people in the early days that were gracious enough and kind enough and generous

393
00:26:32,960 --> 00:26:34,840
enough to come on and have a conversation with me.

394
00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:41,960
Because again, I have no academic background, no card to carry as far as intellectual capacity

395
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:42,960
is concerned.

396
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:46,040
So, or yeah, I guess that's the right way to say it.

397
00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:48,640
So anyway, and then it just grew and developed.

398
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:54,680
And I did my best to be informed when my guests showed up and tried to understand what it

399
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:55,760
was they were doing.

400
00:26:55,760 --> 00:27:02,000
I struggle with it because again, guys like Bernardo, it's pretty dense thinking.

401
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:03,420
And some of the other guests that I've had.

402
00:27:03,420 --> 00:27:04,420
So that's been great.

403
00:27:04,420 --> 00:27:07,000
It's really forced me to pay attention and learn.

404
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:11,160
And prior to that brain injury, I was again, very ADD, very just, you know, I could never

405
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:12,160
really focus.

406
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:13,880
So I love it.

407
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:20,680
And that speaks to that being out in a sarcastic environment where you got new stuff coming

408
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:26,200
to you, novelty, you know, new information and things that challenge me and push my buttons.

409
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:31,240
I've had a guest recently and I've got someone coming up next Friday.

410
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:36,960
And I'm not 100% on board with the metaphysics of what's going on.

411
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:44,860
It's a functionalist, quasi-materialist approach to, and very science and Darwinian oriented

412
00:27:44,860 --> 00:27:47,600
approach to consciousness and mindedness and things like that.

413
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,760
And you said the onboard part, sorry, when you said onboard, are you meaning in terms

414
00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:57,200
of you agree or disagree or in terms you have a good or not so good grasp of it?

415
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,040
I'm hoping I'm grasping it.

416
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:01,040
Okay.

417
00:28:01,040 --> 00:28:06,440
And I'm neither opposed nor strongly in favor of.

418
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:09,380
It's more that I am the skeptic, I am the agnostic.

419
00:28:09,380 --> 00:28:13,360
And there's a kind of surety that comes from anyone who's defending a philosophical or

420
00:28:13,360 --> 00:28:14,360
scientific position.

421
00:28:14,360 --> 00:28:19,400
They have to, you're defending a thesis, you're defending something that is important to you.

422
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:20,840
But I come around as a skeptic.

423
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:24,240
I come around as somebody who's saying, well, how do we know?

424
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:25,600
How are you certain?

425
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:34,120
How do you ossify or reify a position to then scaffold other ideas onto that?

426
00:28:34,120 --> 00:28:41,360
So it's new territory for me for their metaphysical assumptions and the theses that they present

427
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:45,080
in terms of how they sense make in an epistemic sense.

428
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:48,520
So it's very nuanced.

429
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:51,080
And it's not that I disagree with anything.

430
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:56,360
It's more that I want to see a multi-perspectival analysis of this.

431
00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:05,360
I want to see lensing that is not married to one psychotechnology like Darwinian modeling

432
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:09,480
is a psychotechnology.

433
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:11,800
It's something that gives you information.

434
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:13,880
It's a sense making thing that you do.

435
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:18,360
So I only, there's a lot of cautions in what I say here that it's not that I oppose any

436
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:19,360
of it.

437
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:25,840
I want to push that the premises being made and the propositions being made.

438
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:29,080
And I want to just see it from as many angles as possible.

439
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:32,000
And are there counterfactuals to this?

440
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:36,720
It's not necessarily want to go to Popperian falsification, but can we push it, test it,

441
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:39,200
see where it's weak?

442
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:40,720
So this is the challenge.

443
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:44,520
And it points out that I'm dogmatically wed to ideas, even though I love to think I'm

444
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:46,360
not really married to anything strongly.

445
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:47,720
But I feel it in me.

446
00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:48,960
And I'm like, oh, good, good.

447
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:49,960
This is good.

448
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:55,080
And I can't wait to have this guest on because I want to support the work.

449
00:29:55,080 --> 00:30:00,860
Because the work that this person is doing is it's animal consciousness and it ultimately

450
00:30:00,860 --> 00:30:06,480
leads to an ethics for animals and it's an ethics of compassion.

451
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:10,000
So I absolutely want to support that a hundred percent, but I do want to play with them.

452
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:11,000
I want to dance with them.

453
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:15,880
And he's a really, really bright guy, really well accomplished intellectual.

454
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:18,760
So I have to be careful and respectful.

455
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:24,120
But yeah, I want to enter into dialoguos or dialogue.

456
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:29,760
It's to go beyond both our personalities and egos and to treat the matter with reverence

457
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:35,800
and say, well, what is the advancement of this proposition look like?

458
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:38,440
What is the advancement of these ideas look like?

459
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:39,800
I'm sure he wants that too.

460
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:40,800
Yeah.

461
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:45,000
I mean, the conversation becomes, to use your word again, a stochastic.

462
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:50,720
And so if it's just a repeating of all the papers he's published before or something

463
00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:55,400
like that, that's not quite the same thing as a, we're both in a space where we're trying

464
00:30:55,400 --> 00:31:00,080
to, as you say, like do these different lensings on it and really push through what it has.

465
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:02,320
Who is that guest going to be?

466
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:03,320
That's a very interesting one.

467
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:04,320
Yeah.

468
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:06,240
His name is Walter White.

469
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:09,200
D-E-I-T Walter White.

470
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:12,840
And I have his book, it's in another room, unfortunately, but it's called A Philosophy

471
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:15,520
for the Science of Animal Consciousness.

472
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:21,240
And he has an interesting thesis that he puts forward in the beginning of the book.

473
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:22,560
It's a very technical book.

474
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:26,920
It's been very challenging for me to read because he goes into counter arguments and

475
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:34,640
other cognitive science propositions that he's sort of pushing aside or pushing his

476
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:35,640
ideas forward.

477
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:40,600
And again, and most of it's through the Darwinian lens, which I think is interesting.

478
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:46,480
Because one of my things that I would ask him not to go too long of a tangent, but in

479
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:56,600
applying ourselves to a purely strong Darwinian perspective, a modeling of how things occur,

480
00:31:56,600 --> 00:32:04,160
I see Darwinian thought and modeling as perfect for lower, and I don't mean this disparagingly,

481
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:10,120
sort of lower cognitive capacity or stationary systems like plants and things like that,

482
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:14,080
wherein the environment is much more of an influence on the system.

483
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:18,720
But I think there's a gradient there when you have systems that, and he tackles this

484
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:23,320
in the book, so this is where I wanted just to open things up so I can understand better.

485
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:25,320
With intelligence comes problem solving.

486
00:32:25,320 --> 00:32:31,920
With problem solving comes a means to override environmental pressure and override the challenges

487
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:38,440
that stationary objects or lesser cognitive capacity systems have.

488
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:42,720
And I hate to say lower animals, but just the dumber animals out there, sponges, things

489
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:51,200
like that, and bacteria and simple creatures that can't do metacognitive thinking, they

490
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,560
can't do like what we're doing at a very high order.

491
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:58,480
In fact, I would go so far with that question, that inquiry, the skepticism is to say that

492
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,120
human beings have become deeply maladaptive.

493
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:08,840
Our intelligence has placed us in a social position or a cultural position that we are

494
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:10,160
very fragile.

495
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:12,280
We could wipe ourselves out with nuclear weapons.

496
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:14,560
We could destroy the planet ecologically.

497
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:17,160
We have breakdown of society.

498
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:23,560
All these potentials arise from our sentience, from our high order metacognitive, self-reflecting,

499
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:27,680
yada, yada, yada, deep psychology.

500
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:33,080
And so that Darwin has taken or the Darwinian model has dropped us off on the threshold,

501
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:39,000
where it did maybe 120,000, 200,000 years ago is when our cortical capacity got better.

502
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:44,200
And so it speaks to a thing where we have to have an abstracted order of perhaps in

503
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:48,120
our Darwinian model, perhaps another adaptation model, which I'm perfectly fine with, but

504
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:51,600
it's abstracted from the real primitive pressure of the environment.

505
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:54,480
Now it's pressure of within.

506
00:33:54,480 --> 00:34:00,000
It's an endogenous pressure of our species acting upon itself and putting its own pressures

507
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:05,120
upon itself through technology, through war and weaponization of things, blah, blah, blah.

508
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,240
So not to get on a soapbox, but these are the questions that I come up with.

509
00:34:08,240 --> 00:34:11,280
And so to me, the original Darwinian model breaks down.

510
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:18,480
We need to reconfigure it, repurpose it in an abstracted sense to then help us be guided

511
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:24,440
by the heuristics of Darwinian thinking to then say, well, how do we become more pro-social

512
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:31,360
how do we get rid of aggression and some of the other antisocial traits that we possess

513
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:35,920
to survive and to flourish and to be fit to continue?

514
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,520
So anyway, that long tangent, sorry if that's derailing our conversation.

515
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:41,520
No, no, no, definitely.

516
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:42,520
Yeah.

517
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:47,320
The thing that really comes to mind with that is the, I've been learning a little bit about

518
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:49,880
epigenetics versus normal genetics recently.

519
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:54,920
That sort of seems similar to where genetics is kind of like the baseline Darwinian theme

520
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,960
of like it's hardwired in, like can't really change that.

521
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:01,640
And then the epigenetics thing, which is something I'm still not very familiar with, but that's

522
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:07,840
more of the nuanced interaction between the environment and then sort of what mechanisms

523
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:11,560
exist that can be activated by some stimuli and stuff.

524
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:16,720
And yeah, that seems well above the just purely genetic code kind of thing.

525
00:35:16,720 --> 00:35:24,000
So the follow up question for you on that for readapting to our maladaptive practices

526
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:30,360
as humans, do you think the way forward with that is adding in more positive traits or

527
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,240
taking away more negative traits or is it somewhere in the middle or where do you fall

528
00:35:34,240 --> 00:35:35,920
on that?

529
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:41,800
I would say both that it's additive and subtractive process.

530
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:50,480
And I would say that perhaps facing some of the negativity or if we were to have two columns,

531
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:54,280
the minus column would need to be addressed first because then that might open up space

532
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:56,400
for the plus column to flourish more.

533
00:35:56,400 --> 00:36:00,980
And it would be less forced to try to bring in, let's just say antisocial, prosocial,

534
00:36:00,980 --> 00:36:08,280
to bring in more prosocial, more altruistic if you will, and effective empathy because

535
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:12,920
empathy is a cognitive feature.

536
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:16,880
And so I could be a sociopath and I could empathize with your condition right now, but

537
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:20,520
then I could turn around and try to manipulate you based on what I was able to assess.

538
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:24,960
But there's empathetic people who are feeling what you're feeling, but then they want to

539
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:25,960
help.

540
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:26,960
They want to be vulnerable in that sense.

541
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,640
They want to be provider of care, et cetera, et cetera, which is more the altruistic kind

542
00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:32,640
of perspective.

543
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:39,320
Anyway, I would say we need to address some of our insecurities, some of our shadowy parts

544
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:43,120
of ourselves as a culture because I think everything is scalable.

545
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:46,880
I think, and I'll use myself as an individual, I have my pathologies.

546
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:50,720
I have, again, to be young and from it, I have a very shadowy aspect of myself and then

547
00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:56,200
I have a very, what I hope to be an egalitarian, altruistic, prosocial, positive affect, positive

548
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:01,720
valent part of myself that I would want to project or distribute into the world and interact

549
00:37:01,720 --> 00:37:03,000
with others in that fashion.

550
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:09,960
I could certainly bring my crappy bad side out and I do occasionally as we all do.

551
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:17,880
That capacity to scale to a population, whether it's a community or the whole species or a

552
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:23,880
nation or wherever you want to stop on the scale, that we can see that showing up.

553
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:28,840
If we go globally, if we go as the entire species, that the shadowy parts of ourselves

554
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:35,280
come out collectively when we get into a group think, a stigmurgic kind of thinking, which

555
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:37,480
is natural.

556
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:39,480
It's evidenced in our cultural behavior.

557
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:44,080
I could use examples in mimetics.

558
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:50,080
There's memes that show up and not just the Facebook or wherever it is, TikTok, a funny

559
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:52,920
meme, but the meme is a viral thought.

560
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:56,800
If you listen to everyday conversations, listen to podcasts, you might hear catchwords that

561
00:37:56,800 --> 00:37:57,800
come up a lot.

562
00:37:57,800 --> 00:38:04,720
It is what it is or everybody's saying literally or like my generation, you know, like, it's

563
00:38:04,720 --> 00:38:06,040
this kind of viral.

564
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:12,880
Anyway, that's a carrier for how we are so deeply connected socially and culturally.

565
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:17,240
I think if we could just maybe, I don't know how you steal this culture that's a phrase

566
00:38:17,240 --> 00:38:19,600
they're using for this kind of phenomena or this process.

567
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:23,000
I have no clue and it's not my job.

568
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:28,160
What I would do is aspire to see this developing and maybe adversity brings that out.

569
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:29,160
I don't know.

570
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,880
I don't know what it looks like, but I would say that if we could examine that shadowy

571
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:41,400
thing either from an individual perspective to cultural community, nation, planet for

572
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:46,760
our species and then that again might open up the space wherein we can say, well, okay,

573
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:54,480
if not X, then how do we do Y that would give us better living conditions for people and

574
00:38:54,480 --> 00:39:02,560
more opportunity for people to flourish and live more in a whatever it is.

575
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:04,000
You don't want utopia.

576
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:08,040
That's not where I'm heading because we have to have problems, but it can't be to the degree

577
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:10,440
where we just, everything dies.

578
00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:19,320
So anyway, so long winded soap oxy, but yeah, that I would say that placing a priority on

579
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:25,320
tamping down or dialing down some of the things, again, aggression, anti-social behavior, whatever

580
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:27,520
it is, idealizing.

581
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:32,120
I was listening to a nice talk about there's two philosophers named Guadarrie and Deleuze

582
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:39,240
and they're talking about taking Freud's Oedipal model, the Oedipal complex and extending that

583
00:39:39,240 --> 00:39:46,880
into a sociopolitical kind of perspective wherein they, and this is just social science

584
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:52,160
or political philosophy or however you want to say that they were pointing out that rather

585
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:56,720
than the strong sexual Oedipal thing, that it's more that we aspire to strong parental

586
00:39:56,720 --> 00:39:59,160
figures to solve problems.

587
00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:01,000
It's almost a deistic extension.

588
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:06,360
We want a God that will care for us and provide for us and solve our problems and that's scalable

589
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:10,980
too that we want leadership that will take care of us and provide for us and save us

590
00:40:10,980 --> 00:40:15,200
from any ickiness that might be plaguing us and so forth.

591
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:20,040
So I think it's an interesting critique that we see that impetus or that impulse in us

592
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:24,120
to want to have the mother or father figure protect us.

593
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:27,080
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but we have to be aware of that.

594
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:30,460
We have to be aware of when we make decisions and we also have to be aware of our history.

595
00:40:30,460 --> 00:40:35,240
So if we have a shadow side and we have maybe a victim complex coming forward, that that

596
00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:37,000
victim wants to be rescued.

597
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:38,620
It wants to be safe.

598
00:40:38,620 --> 00:40:40,240
And none of this is my task.

599
00:40:40,240 --> 00:40:44,160
Nothing is, I only look at it and I'm just like, okay, that's interesting.

600
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:48,320
But yeah, these are ideas that are being kicked around like to know our nature, know what

601
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:52,400
our impulses are, what our drives and proclivities are, both good and bad.

602
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:57,180
And if we can just develop that kind of awareness, then we can ask other questions.

603
00:40:57,180 --> 00:41:03,120
We can maybe find ourselves phase shifting into other social domains that we might not

604
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:04,160
be familiar with yet.

605
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:05,920
So I would want that.

606
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:10,040
I would not necessarily for my generation, but for young ones coming on board, I would

607
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:13,960
love to see them explore these spaces and these ideas.

608
00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:15,440
And it's not to build a utopia.

609
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,880
I'll keep saying that nobody is going to construct a perfect society.

610
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,780
It's always going to be flawed, but there's percentages.

611
00:41:21,780 --> 00:41:25,880
So if we're ratcheted up right now and everybody's polarized, everybody's upset, everybody's

612
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:31,040
screaming it and shouting over each other, is this really the best we can do?

613
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:33,860
And I'm not blaming anybody for this, but it's all of us.

614
00:41:33,860 --> 00:41:37,080
We are, again, this comes to a connection thesis.

615
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:38,080
We're not separate.

616
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:39,080
We are not separate.

617
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:45,120
We can't cleave ourselves out of our cultural environs.

618
00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:48,440
So I'll stop there because I don't want to get too preachy.

619
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:53,040
We've covered a lot of ground so far and maybe taking these two ideas, I'm about to say,

620
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:56,920
and applying those to everything you just talked about and maybe some other things as

621
00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:57,920
well.

622
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:02,560
But the ideas of seeking curiosity as well as skepticism, what's their relationship

623
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:08,460
between those two and how we make meaning from either any of the animal consciousness

624
00:42:08,460 --> 00:42:13,640
with Walter White or the dark shadow with ourselves and any other kind of thing that

625
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:17,320
would have a weight in our lives?

626
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:20,440
How do curiosity and skepticism play off each other?

627
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:21,760
Right.

628
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:24,360
And that's the way to look at it is that they're playing off of each other.

629
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:26,960
They are in relation with each other.

630
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:32,960
And so I would say for that niche right there, that it's curiosity and I'll bring in the

631
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:38,360
imagination as well because we need, if we're being curious, we're not reviewing something

632
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:40,040
we already know.

633
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:41,040
What's next?

634
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:42,040
What's out there?

635
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:46,440
What haven't I learned or what can I learn from this scenario, this situation?

636
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,320
And to bring your skeptic along with you.

637
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:54,320
And so I'll define skepticism that might be appropriate for this, what we're talking about.

638
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:58,720
I'm not talking about cynical skepticism where I want to refute a propositional claim.

639
00:42:58,720 --> 00:43:04,840
I want us to think about skepticism as more of a ceaseless inquiry, asking questions and

640
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:09,800
wanting to know more and more and more, but not really again, ossifying or reifying the

641
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:11,760
answer to a belief.

642
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:13,360
It's more that, oh, okay.

643
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:17,280
So I'll update my prior belief about what I just thought I knew and that this new information

644
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:21,720
is helping me to contextualize a little better frame, a little better.

645
00:43:21,720 --> 00:43:28,000
And so one begets the other or one guard rails the other so that I can be curious.

646
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:29,920
I can be using my imagination.

647
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:35,240
I can explore new ideas from researchers or people doing philosophical work.

648
00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:41,320
And then I'll bring the skeptic along and say, well, is this done in good faith?

649
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:48,040
Is it done to advance an idea or is it just somebody hand waving and trying to sound very

650
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:50,360
intellectual?

651
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:51,800
What are we deriving from this?

652
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:58,520
And so it's a investigative tool to say, what am I deriving from this?

653
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:00,040
And is it signal or is it noise?

654
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:01,040
Is it weed?

655
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:02,040
Is it chaff?

656
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:03,480
And all these metaphors.

657
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:08,840
So the two of them should just dance together and be in a concert with each other to maybe

658
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:15,440
effectively enrich your epistemic library or your ontological life.

659
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:16,880
What is going on here?

660
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:19,920
What's this thing that I'm encountering or the proposition?

661
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:24,000
Again, whatever your inquiry is.

662
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:29,280
And to go back to at the very beginning, you mentioned childhood being this kind of period

663
00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:34,600
full of wonder and where we're learning everything that could be related to curiosity in a way.

664
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:39,920
And so I'm curious what your thoughts are on how we can encourage curiosity in ourselves

665
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:44,720
and in others, maybe kind of taking a framing of what it's like to be a child and having

666
00:44:44,720 --> 00:44:46,440
wonder about things.

667
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:48,960
How do we encourage that in ourselves?

668
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:52,680
There's something called serious play and it's for us adults.

669
00:44:52,680 --> 00:44:57,240
And it is to go, that child's still inside of all of us.

670
00:44:57,240 --> 00:45:03,360
And we suppressed a lot in the wild child, wild in the sense of just, oh, everything's

671
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:04,360
wide open.

672
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:05,360
Everything's new.

673
00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:06,440
Everything's fascinating.

674
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:08,160
Everything is just so fresh.

675
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:13,400
And we can bring that back to a degree, I think, or we can use the imagination to embody

676
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:17,720
that aspect or phase of ourselves, that life period phase.

677
00:45:17,720 --> 00:45:24,700
And so embodying an aspect of an identity or archetypal role to me is part of serious

678
00:45:24,700 --> 00:45:25,700
play.

679
00:45:25,700 --> 00:45:30,680
It is to immerse yourself in a what it is likeness kind of thing to be that child again

680
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,680
and to use childlike wonder to ask a question.

681
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:36,920
If you ask a question and you're really jaded and cynical and you know everything and you

682
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:40,080
know, well, you're not going to know what the hell is this?

683
00:45:40,080 --> 00:45:41,080
That's not the child.

684
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:44,520
That's the guy that's really bitter, the person that's really bitter.

685
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,200
I know what's going on.

686
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:48,200
So anyway, to go-

687
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:50,640
That's the cynic, not the skeptic.

688
00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:52,120
Right, exactly.

689
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,280
That's the kind of skepticism we want to avoid is to refute.

690
00:45:55,280 --> 00:46:04,680
It is to be conservative in the sense that you don't want to just let everything go.

691
00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:09,800
And again, that's where skepticism comes in, but not to go too far to where you're just,

692
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:13,480
and nothing is onboarded and new.

693
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:15,160
And again, that's what the child is about.

694
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:18,960
The child is a sponge and they're wicking.

695
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:20,360
And that goes back to Darwinism.

696
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:21,560
That's what children had to do.

697
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:26,880
That's what young animals have to do is they have to, again, interject and mimesis, all

698
00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:30,840
these fancy words for what imprinting, all these things that the child is doing or the

699
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:37,640
young animal is, we're animals, but whatever we are, is doing to then survive.

700
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:42,080
And our survival is no longer in the savannas or in the in the Fertile Crescent.

701
00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:49,040
It is more that we are surviving a social system of peer interaction and non-asymmetrical

702
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:52,440
interaction with power structures and things like that.

703
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:56,960
And we have to find our place and how to order ourselves and organize ourselves.

704
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:00,040
There's an interesting, I'll go on a neuroscience tangent for a second.

705
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:07,420
There's an interesting thing about the hippocampus is one of the organs for spatial ordering.

706
00:47:07,420 --> 00:47:11,960
So I see in my room, there's a bookshelf to my left and there's a lamp over here and

707
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:13,840
a desktop tower over here.

708
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:18,800
I'm spatially ordering with the hippocampus, but there was a neuroscience lecture I watched

709
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:23,900
and they were saying that that's been accepted to also do social ordering.

710
00:47:23,900 --> 00:47:31,840
So I have a partner, I have a supervisor, I have a peer friend, but that same spatial

711
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:40,320
ordering that we do for the physical world is also accepted socially to order and structure

712
00:47:40,320 --> 00:47:44,600
how we relate with other people who are in our orbit, who are in our social sphere or

713
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:46,920
maybe even public figures.

714
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:49,640
I don't know how that breaks down, but it could apply to that.

715
00:47:49,640 --> 00:47:57,360
So it just speaks to an idea that we're constantly using the resources that we have to sense

716
00:47:57,360 --> 00:47:59,480
make and way make.

717
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:03,280
There's a philosopher that I interviewed not too long ago and she uses, Andrea Hyatt, she

718
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:08,280
uses a term called way making, which is a sort of an amalgamated means of moving forward

719
00:48:08,280 --> 00:48:15,600
in time phenomenologically, intellectually, emotionally, culturally, in the best way possible,

720
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:17,600
her version of way making.

721
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:21,240
So yeah, so I'll stop there because I'm on another tangent.

722
00:48:21,240 --> 00:48:28,040
Yeah, the thing that I want to grab a gun to is the serious play and then the thing

723
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:35,360
to add in on there is humor and what will this humor play in that kind of exploration

724
00:48:35,360 --> 00:48:37,800
of wonder and it's serious play.

725
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:40,760
So how does humor help us?

726
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:47,880
I think humor, one definition of humor is incongruity resolution.

727
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:52,280
So when you set up a joke, you're leading somebody into almost a paradox and then you

728
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:57,360
relieve them of that paradox with the punch line and they're, oh, oh, and then it's funny,

729
00:48:57,360 --> 00:48:58,360
right?

730
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:04,120
So you're almost dabbling in absurdism or incongruity of propositions like to say, and

731
00:49:04,120 --> 00:49:09,640
I don't have a good joke to use as an example, but just think of a dumb dad joke and at the

732
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:14,400
end of the joke, you get it because, oh, okay, it's almost like an algorithm, you've got

733
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:15,920
to figure it out.

734
00:49:15,920 --> 00:49:24,600
So I say all that to get to a point that serious play should involve incongruity resolution

735
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:32,040
into breaking frame, into breaking into novel experience or stochastic environment that

736
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:34,760
in that stochastic environment, then you can find salience.

737
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:40,480
You can sort of lens things and bring things forward that then suddenly makes sense.

738
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:44,080
So you might have incongruity and then you see something.

739
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:53,000
So humor is maybe a good way, a virtual machine inside of us that can help us with that to

740
00:49:53,000 --> 00:49:58,280
develop that muscle of salience mapping and seeing what we might not have seen before

741
00:49:58,280 --> 00:50:05,920
like an insight that comes to us in a reframing or re-perspectivally approaching something.

742
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:09,280
And serious play gets the cynic out of the way.

743
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:14,040
It gets the guarded vulnerable, perhaps a person out of it.

744
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:16,080
You have to be in trusted company to do this.

745
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:20,920
It could be two or three people, could be a partner, parent, sibling, whatever the structure

746
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:23,860
is fine, but you're in a trusted safe space.

747
00:50:23,860 --> 00:50:25,640
It's like when you go to a therapist.

748
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:30,280
This isn't going to laugh at you because you admit something really creepy or sad or scary

749
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:31,480
or whatever.

750
00:50:31,480 --> 00:50:33,000
That's not a good therapist.

751
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:36,440
So a trusted partner in the serious play is not going to ridicule you.

752
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:38,840
They're not going to say, what the heck, what?

753
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:40,920
They're going to be like, oh, go with that.

754
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:42,320
Yeah, let it out.

755
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:45,800
And then you're again entering into dialogos.

756
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:50,320
And it could be triologos, quadrilogos, whatever, but you're entering into this opening of a

757
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:59,440
space of ideas and information, perspectives, and again, the stochasticity of the environment.

758
00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:03,060
And it could be an intelligibility environment.

759
00:51:03,060 --> 00:51:06,120
It could be a social cultural environment, could be an emotional environment.

760
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:11,680
It doesn't matter that you're in that space with that other trusted others to come in

761
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:19,640
with novelty in mind or capturing novelty and capturing a resolution to something that

762
00:51:19,640 --> 00:51:24,360
seems incongruous or difficult or challenging or obscure.

763
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:30,760
So if that ramble lands with you, I think that that's the nature of serious play versus

764
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:36,840
with the imaginal, with trust, with reciprocity with the others.

765
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:40,200
So it's not something you jump into lightly, which is why it's called serious play rather

766
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:44,000
than just play like, hey, let's run around the house together and throw nerf balls at

767
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:46,720
each other and laugh or qualify.

768
00:51:46,720 --> 00:51:47,720
That's fun.

769
00:51:47,720 --> 00:51:51,480
That's its own medicine, its own therapy.

770
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,840
So therapy with a psychoanalyst is serious play.

771
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:57,680
You're opening up a safe space.

772
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,080
You're recalling an event.

773
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:01,880
You're pulling something forward.

774
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:08,920
And then you are examining it with the therapist in a very safe, insulated and sealed environment

775
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:12,120
that you can be that vulnerable to someone.

776
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:15,160
And that's a good therapist that can help you generate that.

777
00:52:15,160 --> 00:52:20,320
So I would cite therapy as a good example of serious play.

778
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:21,320
Yeah.

779
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:26,120
Another part that sticks out to me from that is that the serious part, like all of this,

780
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:31,200
if you were to lay it out in like a memo or like a technical document, you can get all

781
00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:34,720
the information on there, but nobody's really going to want to engage with it in a way.

782
00:52:34,720 --> 00:52:38,800
And so humor or serious play kind of feels like the way that you keep the audience engaged

783
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:41,400
in a way that is not just mind numbing.

784
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:45,800
I'll give you an example of this is that I just got together with some friends and we

785
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:48,080
made presentations of what we do for work.

786
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,600
And so we were like all presenting to each other on that.

787
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:52,360
And we had, you said memes earlier.

788
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:55,880
So I just had like all these little memes of like stuff that kind of relates to what

789
00:52:55,880 --> 00:53:00,200
I do, but it's more about like, it's a funny kind of almost similar to what I do.

790
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:05,800
And I think it made people pay more attention than they felt just like going through on

791
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:09,200
like the actual meticulous day to day stuff that I do.

792
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:15,800
And yeah, so humor is a bridge for connection and not that's a new idea or anything at all,

793
00:53:15,800 --> 00:53:19,240
but yeah, it has a lot of great benefits for that.

794
00:53:19,240 --> 00:53:20,240
Indeed.

795
00:53:20,240 --> 00:53:21,240
Okay.

796
00:53:21,240 --> 00:53:24,960
So moving direction a little bit, when you reflect on some of the most challenging moments

797
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:29,760
in your life, are there any specific beliefs or internal narratives that you had that

798
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:34,360
either helped or hindered you address those situations or get through them?

799
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:35,360
Yes.

800
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:39,040
I have a cute little anecdote to tie into what you were saying about your presentation

801
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,360
and I'll pin what you just said.

802
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:45,120
I had a friend who was defending her PhD about two or three years ago.

803
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:47,960
And of course it was during COVID so it was on zoom and I had the opportunity to go to

804
00:53:47,960 --> 00:53:50,400
her defense, to witness her defense.

805
00:53:50,400 --> 00:53:54,640
And the first half was open and the second half it was her and her inquisitors and she

806
00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:56,600
was a structural chemist.

807
00:53:56,600 --> 00:54:00,400
Very serious structural chemistry, like really like quantum level chemistry, heavy, heavy

808
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:01,400
duty stuff.

809
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:04,440
But she did, she did her defense with SpongeBob.

810
00:54:04,440 --> 00:54:08,680
She used SpongeBob bullet points, you know, and, and, and, and yeah.

811
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:12,920
And she was doing spectrographs and I was loving it because I, I confess I love SpongeBob,

812
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:15,840
but you know, and, and Ren and Stimpy and all that kind of stuff.

813
00:54:15,840 --> 00:54:21,360
So anyway, but, so to get back to your question and, and quickly rephrase it, cause I just

814
00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:22,360
totally derailed myself.

815
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:24,680
So if you could give me a quick rephrase back on that.

816
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:25,680
Yeah.

817
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:29,640
Of a, of a, we're feeling on challenging moments you've had in your life, internal narratives

818
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:33,320
or beliefs that either helped or hindered get through that.

819
00:54:33,320 --> 00:54:34,320
Okay.

820
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:35,320
Okay.

821
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:39,040
So the negative thing is that there's been, there's been two negative moments I've ever

822
00:54:39,040 --> 00:54:40,040
engaged with it.

823
00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:41,040
There's been both.

824
00:54:41,040 --> 00:54:46,160
And the, the, the, so the, the negative thing would probably be more implicit and obscure.

825
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:55,680
So it's probably just how I process thought, how I, you know, make my way through any kind

826
00:54:55,680 --> 00:54:56,680
of endeavor.

827
00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:57,940
There's, there's stuff.

828
00:54:57,940 --> 00:55:02,240
So we are layered histories of a person, you know, we have layered histories and that informs

829
00:55:02,240 --> 00:55:06,120
how we lens the world, how we, how we perspectively see the world.

830
00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:10,320
And so that's, it just, it's the subconscious, you know, if you will, and it's embedded and

831
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:11,920
it informs us and it drives us.

832
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,800
So I would say that that's always been there, always will be there.

833
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:19,880
And what I have to do is then develop again, to use the word virtual machinery, a kind

834
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:22,880
of way of saying, catch yourself.

835
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:27,160
Are you lensing this in a, in a way that's best for what you're the challenge that you're

836
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:28,160
presented with?

837
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:30,720
Are you, are you seeing this clearly?

838
00:55:30,720 --> 00:55:36,800
Can you shift perspective and see facets of this problem or this opportunity clearly?

839
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:38,200
And again, that's where the skeptic comes in.

840
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:41,840
That's where, you know, healthy inquiry comes in.

841
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:46,800
I don't do it well myself, but I mean, that's ideally speaking, that's one way that you

842
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:53,100
can then, you know, move forward through an adverse or challenging situation is to know

843
00:55:53,100 --> 00:55:58,440
that you are in good faith navigating through that with your best interest in mind, without

844
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:04,520
sort of the, you know, bad stuff coming forward to, to like the victim identity, you know,

845
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:07,280
like, oh, you know, here I go again.

846
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:11,560
I'm going to get, you know, screwed or taken advantage of, you know, I mean, so, so catch

847
00:56:11,560 --> 00:56:12,560
yourself saying that.

848
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:16,680
So, well, wait a minute, you know, that, that, that's likely there's something negative happening,

849
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:22,520
but you know, don't, don't roll over or don't let it get worse or, you know, let yourself

850
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:26,640
be persuaded, you know, out of something that's good, you know, could be in your best interest.

851
00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:32,680
So, so I'd say just, you know, again, be that, be that healthy skeptic and use that as the

852
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:40,240
means to filter or firewall yourself to, to handle the situation.

853
00:56:40,240 --> 00:56:44,840
And if, if you don't have much time to react and, you know, Godspeed, but the way I would

854
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:49,880
look at is if you have some time for reflecting on it is, is caution yourself and say, how

855
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:51,320
am I viewing this?

856
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:56,800
Are there other ways to view this potentially unpleasant, dangerous, awkward, whatever's

857
00:56:56,800 --> 00:56:58,440
going on?

858
00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:03,220
And then also then you can bring your, your virtual machinery toolkit out of positive

859
00:57:03,220 --> 00:57:04,220
things that you can do.

860
00:57:04,220 --> 00:57:05,600
Say, well, I'm a problem solver.

861
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:08,160
I know, you know, that there are, there is a solution.

862
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:09,840
There is, there's something there that I can do.

863
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:11,680
And if not, then I can do damage control.

864
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:16,000
I can navigate this as best I can get through it as least scathed as possible.

865
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:22,400
So you have to have that sort of mindset or, you know, again, virtual toolbox of ideas

866
00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:25,320
that, that will, and again, that goes to way making.

867
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:26,920
How do I, how do I make my way through?

868
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:30,600
Cause we can way make through wonderful, you know, happy things, but way making through

869
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:33,760
adversity is a skill, is a skillset.

870
00:57:33,760 --> 00:57:38,880
And I can't prescribe anything to an individual because we're all sort of different and unique.

871
00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:43,840
But that, but the meta perspective on that is to say that, you know, be, be your, be

872
00:57:43,840 --> 00:57:47,480
a good skeptic to yourself and say, you know, am I seeing this right?

873
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:51,840
Get a friend, get that trusted other to say, you know, I want to share this with you and

874
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:55,160
get their insight and their perspective, especially again, if you trust them and you think they're

875
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:57,560
not full of crap and it's going to mislead you.

876
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:01,080
And so, so there's ways, there's, there's ways to do that.

877
00:58:01,080 --> 00:58:02,080
I like that.

878
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:07,560
I really that part about getting true feedback from somebody who you really trust in terms

879
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:12,040
of, because yeah, it's, we can tie ourselves up in knots quite easily and quite well with

880
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:15,000
a lot of, a lot of, a lot of experience in that.

881
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:19,080
So I guess this is kind of a sort of related that particularly in this context of we all

882
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:24,680
have these kind of boiling soup of motivations within all of us all the time.

883
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:30,020
So when we take that and then start interacting with people either as a partner or a friend

884
00:58:30,020 --> 00:58:37,560
or a business, anything like that, how do we be aware of and prevent agendas from interfering

885
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:39,320
with our relationships?

886
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:46,120
So how do we ensure the most authentic kind of connection without letting those shadow

887
00:58:46,120 --> 00:58:53,280
parts or whatever you want to call it dictate sort of how that dynamic works?

888
00:58:53,280 --> 00:59:01,840
To the best of our ability, it would be positively effective or efficacious, if that's a word,

889
00:59:01,840 --> 00:59:07,960
to kind of, I'll repeat what I was saying a minute ago and have that virtual machinery

890
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:14,540
of I'll stop using skepticism of introspection of examining yourself.

891
00:59:14,540 --> 00:59:22,320
And so this could be that cliche self-awareness, be self-aware, which is fraught with problems

892
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:29,240
at times because to be self-aware is to know the self and the self is plastic.

893
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:33,000
And I say plastic in the fluid sense, it's amorphic.

894
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:38,500
The self shows up differently in different environments and different situations.

895
00:59:38,500 --> 00:59:43,480
So to speak to an agenda when we show up in a relationship with someone and we have an

896
00:59:43,480 --> 00:59:48,200
agenda, I think we're always going to have an agenda, but there's an agenda of manipulation

897
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:50,440
and or there's an agenda of cooperation.

898
00:59:50,440 --> 00:59:56,500
So there's different agendas that we have to maybe afford or allow in this scenario.

899
00:59:56,500 --> 01:00:02,360
And I would say that, again, if you can develop the best kind of self-awareness, the best

900
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:07,440
quasi self-awareness that you can muster, again, perhaps being informed by others and

901
01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:16,640
saying be vulnerable and say, well, what are my, I want to say this carefully, what are

902
01:00:16,640 --> 01:00:18,520
my areas of opportunity?

903
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:22,200
I work for a company that when you screwed up, you had areas of opportunity.

904
01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:26,000
Like, oh, this is, you can, so anyway, so whatever your language you want to use, like

905
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:27,840
where your vulnerability is.

906
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:32,720
And if you trust someone who's not trying to mess with you, they can give you a new

907
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:34,600
perspective and you can say, oh, okay, thank you.

908
01:00:34,600 --> 01:00:40,180
And then you, if you take that in good faith, to heart and apply it, that that is a way

909
01:00:40,180 --> 01:00:44,720
to know what your agendas are in a relationship or recognize other people's agendas.

910
01:00:44,720 --> 01:00:49,320
And if the agendas are, let's say we'll draw another line and we'll say, you know, positive

911
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:50,320
or negative.

912
01:00:50,320 --> 01:00:54,120
And like you said, the shadows coming over here and it's being manipulative and that

913
01:00:54,120 --> 01:00:56,240
agenda won't serve either of you.

914
01:00:56,240 --> 01:01:02,000
It may, you may, you know, you could be egoistic or narcissistic or even sociopathic and say,

915
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:05,320
oh, I just want to manipulate and get what I want and you know, blah, blah, blah.

916
01:01:05,320 --> 01:01:09,240
But come on, you know, that, that, that goes back to that scaling of what's wrong with

917
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:10,240
humanity.

918
01:01:10,240 --> 01:01:11,240
Right.

919
01:01:11,240 --> 01:01:14,600
You know, and, and some people can't help themselves and I'm not judging.

920
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:18,560
So, but, but if we're, if we're somewhat grounded in our egos and we're all narcissistic, I

921
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:21,840
mean, I'm not saying that's either or it's just the spectrum.

922
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:25,600
But if we're, if we're weakly narcissistic and we do care about somebody and we're not

923
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:32,080
just there for a transactional, uh, exploiting, exploitative, uh, scenario that, you know,

924
01:01:32,080 --> 01:01:36,020
the agenda we have that we show up with is a mutually beneficial agenda.

925
01:01:36,020 --> 01:01:39,360
It is a beneficial, it's an agenda of reciprocity.

926
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:41,840
Um, you know, and that can be transactional.

927
01:01:41,840 --> 01:01:44,480
Like, you know, if you care for me, I'm going to care for you.

928
01:01:44,480 --> 01:01:49,160
That's a good baseline, but then, you know, do it because you want to see that other person

929
01:01:49,160 --> 01:01:53,920
benefit, not that just like, wow, I'll give you this and you give me that, you know, that's

930
01:01:53,920 --> 01:01:58,160
the cynic again, or, or, you know, that, that, that, um, may not be the best expression,

931
01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:00,040
but Hey, you know, I'm not judging.

932
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:05,300
So as far as agendas go, I would say just, you know, again, cultivate whatever level

933
01:02:05,300 --> 01:02:12,200
of self-awareness, um, that can help you and then enter into these environments and these

934
01:02:12,200 --> 01:02:16,400
arenas with other people and know that your agenda can be a mixed bag.

935
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:18,800
It can be, you know, I truly want the best.

936
01:02:18,800 --> 01:02:22,160
You could be a giver and you could say, I really want you to benefit more than me.

937
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:23,160
I'm good.

938
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:25,640
I've got, you know, whatever it is, you know, I've got what I want.

939
01:02:25,640 --> 01:02:26,640
I'm good.

940
01:02:26,640 --> 01:02:27,640
I've done that with people before.

941
01:02:27,640 --> 01:02:29,440
I don't do it all the time, but here, take this.

942
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:30,440
I, you know, I'm fine.

943
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:31,440
I'm good.

944
01:02:31,440 --> 01:02:32,440
And I don't care.

945
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:36,160
It's, you know, I'm good with letting that go because I'm, you know, like I said, I'm

946
01:02:36,160 --> 01:02:37,160
fortunate.

947
01:02:37,160 --> 01:02:38,160
I have what I want.

948
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:42,240
So, but, so it's, it depends on your personality, depends on who you are, but I'd say if you're

949
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:47,560
trying to do better, you're trying to be a good person, a helpful person, a person that

950
01:02:47,560 --> 01:02:53,740
other people will respect genuinely that, that, that is perhaps the way to approach

951
01:02:53,740 --> 01:02:57,720
it is to understand what your agenda is and then recognize other people's agendas because

952
01:02:57,720 --> 01:02:58,880
it's two way street.

953
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:01,280
It's a, you know, it's back and forth.

954
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:06,400
So you know, having your own self quasi self-awareness for your own agendas will also give you that

955
01:03:06,400 --> 01:03:10,320
radar to detect what somebody else's agendas are.

956
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:14,000
So if they're trying to be transactional or even manipulative and they just, you know,

957
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:19,160
you're just a means to an end to them, you'll recognize that and that'll save you from,

958
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:21,800
you know, whatever you might not want from that.

959
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:24,240
It's a very dynamic process.

960
01:03:24,240 --> 01:03:28,040
It's hard to describe one kind of fixed to it.

961
01:03:28,040 --> 01:03:29,040
Yeah.

962
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:32,320
I asked that, I think the main motivation from that one was I think I've, I've had

963
01:03:32,320 --> 01:03:35,640
like a, a history of kind of general social anxiety.

964
01:03:35,640 --> 01:03:39,200
And as I'm interacting with people, I'm like, Oh man, all right, I got a number one priority

965
01:03:39,200 --> 01:03:42,800
is make sure they think I'm cool or like make sure they don't think of me.

966
01:03:42,800 --> 01:03:43,800
Yeah.

967
01:03:43,800 --> 01:03:44,800
So I'm like, Oh, I'm not the person that's intended that comes in.

968
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:48,640
And then I am losing kind of the presence of the moment.

969
01:03:48,640 --> 01:03:52,160
And so that's something I'm being intentional about trying to anyway, nowadays.

970
01:03:52,160 --> 01:03:53,160
Yeah.

971
01:03:53,160 --> 01:03:54,160
Yeah.

972
01:03:54,160 --> 01:03:55,160
I really like your insights on that.

973
01:03:55,160 --> 01:03:56,160
Okay.

974
01:03:56,160 --> 01:03:59,240
Four more questions for you in the interest of time.

975
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:04,080
So this is a little solid direction, different direction in most positive framing, what tools

976
01:04:04,080 --> 01:04:06,560
does religion provide humanity?

977
01:04:06,560 --> 01:04:09,560
And then how does it also bring out the worst in us as well?

978
01:04:09,560 --> 01:04:10,560
Okay.

979
01:04:10,560 --> 01:04:13,440
That's, that's a heavy question.

980
01:04:13,440 --> 01:04:18,440
And I, I deal with it a lot, at least I think I do in my life.

981
01:04:18,440 --> 01:04:21,200
And so I'll lay out the positives of religion.

982
01:04:21,200 --> 01:04:24,240
We'll go down the positive plus column.

983
01:04:24,240 --> 01:04:32,240
Religion evolved with us and it was a social, it was, it's a social engineering, it's social

984
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:34,740
cohesion, cultural cohesion.

985
01:04:34,740 --> 01:04:40,560
So when we were nomadic, you know, perhaps before the diaspora out of, out of Africa,

986
01:04:40,560 --> 01:04:45,640
120 to 200,000 years ago, you know, we had to understand our environment.

987
01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:48,080
We had to make sense of our, of our reality.

988
01:04:48,080 --> 01:04:49,800
And some things were insoluble.

989
01:04:49,800 --> 01:04:55,920
They were beating like shooting stars or, or solar eclipses, weird, weird stuff, earthquakes,

990
01:04:55,920 --> 01:05:00,360
things that were just way, way beyond our wheelhouse in terms of analyzing and processing

991
01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:04,160
a hundred and like, again, 150,000 years ago or thereabouts.

992
01:05:04,160 --> 01:05:09,600
I think that might be the, the root or the origin of where, of what we call religion

993
01:05:09,600 --> 01:05:10,600
now.

994
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:12,240
And back then it was more like mythopoiesis.

995
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:18,060
It was the genesis of the myth to explain the unexplainable.

996
01:05:18,060 --> 01:05:21,360
It was to handle that, which would have vexed us eternally.

997
01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:24,640
You know, I just, the whole tribe would be like, what just happened?

998
01:05:24,640 --> 01:05:26,900
This big bright thing shot across the sky.

999
01:05:26,900 --> 01:05:29,800
Is it an omen or the, you know, what's going on?

1000
01:05:29,800 --> 01:05:35,120
So the mythopoiesis or the mythopoetic structure emerged from that, I believe, and this is

1001
01:05:35,120 --> 01:05:36,120
just me speculating.

1002
01:05:36,120 --> 01:05:38,120
So it might be backed up by other people.

1003
01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:39,360
I don't know.

1004
01:05:39,360 --> 01:05:41,280
But this is how I try to treat it.

1005
01:05:41,280 --> 01:05:45,520
And from that, it coalesced more and more generationally.

1006
01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:50,600
And again, when we started becoming settled 10 to 12,000 years ago, after the, after the

1007
01:05:50,600 --> 01:05:55,360
younger dryest period, again, in the Fertile Crescent area in Turkey and Eastern Europe

1008
01:05:55,360 --> 01:06:02,560
and down into Iraq and the Middle East that, you know, as we settled and we became communal

1009
01:06:02,560 --> 01:06:09,760
pastoral and village dwelling people that we started ordering ourselves socially.

1010
01:06:09,760 --> 01:06:13,460
And I think there were people who probably picked up the mantle of this mythopoiesis

1011
01:06:13,460 --> 01:06:17,440
and they started, they dedicated their time to that.

1012
01:06:17,440 --> 01:06:22,600
And you see that in modern tribal cultures, you have the village shaman in tribal culture.

1013
01:06:22,600 --> 01:06:28,560
You have the wise elders, you have the matriarch who, or the patriarch, you know, who can answer

1014
01:06:28,560 --> 01:06:31,200
strong questions or significant questions.

1015
01:06:31,200 --> 01:06:35,120
They might be civil disputes or things like that, but they might also go out into, you

1016
01:06:35,120 --> 01:06:38,680
know, some kind of metaphysics about reality and things like that.

1017
01:06:38,680 --> 01:06:42,820
So they're, you know, within their capacity.

1018
01:06:42,820 --> 01:06:47,620
And so I think that is where we started to see religion really start to develop.

1019
01:06:47,620 --> 01:06:54,720
And again, it was just a tool to help sense make, help derive some meaning for what was

1020
01:06:54,720 --> 01:07:01,040
going on beyond utility, beyond just farming and reproducing and, you know, fighting off

1021
01:07:01,040 --> 01:07:04,400
other tribes or wild animals, whatever the order of the day was.

1022
01:07:04,400 --> 01:07:09,680
I think when we had time and any other interesting thing is prior to pastoral culture, prior

1023
01:07:09,680 --> 01:07:17,680
to settling in the Indo-European context is we had a lot of more time on our hands before

1024
01:07:17,680 --> 01:07:18,760
we were settled.

1025
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:23,400
And so we would labor for food and then we would sit around and we had to do something,

1026
01:07:23,400 --> 01:07:24,400
you know?

1027
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:28,760
We had a time where we could reflect on the mythopoetic structuring that was going on.

1028
01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:29,760
What was that?

1029
01:07:29,760 --> 01:07:30,760
What happened?

1030
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:32,480
You know, what, or what is this animal?

1031
01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:33,480
What does it mean to us?

1032
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,760
What does the, you know, whatever the game animal mean to us?

1033
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:40,320
We must be reverent to it if we want, you know, you know, they were doing these kinds

1034
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:41,320
of algorithms.

1035
01:07:41,320 --> 01:07:48,160
So, so anyway, long-winded tangent to bring us more into a modern epoch, go back to the

1036
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:54,220
axial age, maybe 2500 years ago, 3000, 2500 years ago, I think that was really reaching

1037
01:07:54,220 --> 01:07:59,640
a height of an ordering and structuring of then, you know, deities start to emerge and

1038
01:07:59,640 --> 01:08:05,360
supernatural positing starts to occur that, you know, this must be done by a much more

1039
01:08:05,360 --> 01:08:08,920
omniscient agent and all these different things.

1040
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:14,720
And I just think it's just a little evolutionary process along with all our other both physical

1041
01:08:14,720 --> 01:08:22,280
and cultural evolution that occurred that the social engineering project of bracketing

1042
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:30,240
these really difficult things into a space that we have to continually develop a mythopoesis

1043
01:08:30,240 --> 01:08:36,600
or then a religious perspective on what our reality is, what's going on, especially the

1044
01:08:36,600 --> 01:08:38,240
weird stuff.

1045
01:08:38,240 --> 01:08:44,220
And then when we get into more maybe modern times, I would say that religion continues

1046
01:08:44,220 --> 01:08:46,600
to be social engineering.

1047
01:08:46,600 --> 01:08:53,720
It, you know, for the, let's say after when the Abrahamic system developed and Judaism

1048
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:59,720
and Christianity came online and later on, you know, Islam, and I speak to the West because

1049
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:00,720
I can't speak to the East.

1050
01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:01,720
I'm not from that culture.

1051
01:09:01,720 --> 01:09:04,160
So I can't, I won't pretend to know anything there.

1052
01:09:04,160 --> 01:09:07,040
I love it, but I just, I won't pretend to know.

1053
01:09:07,040 --> 01:09:12,680
But when we have our Abrahamic system in the West that that solved a lot of problems and

1054
01:09:12,680 --> 01:09:18,520
it handled a lot, it did a lot of heavy lifting for us socially, culturally, emotionally,

1055
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:19,720
spiritually, all that.

1056
01:09:19,720 --> 01:09:24,300
And I say spiritual and more of an analytic concept, not appealing to any particular type

1057
01:09:24,300 --> 01:09:30,480
of spirituality, but the impulse within us to find something beyond the mundane is what

1058
01:09:30,480 --> 01:09:33,320
we'll start with, you know, for now for spirituality.

1059
01:09:33,320 --> 01:09:36,280
So there's a lot of ordering, a lot of structuring.

1060
01:09:36,280 --> 01:09:41,440
And then I think religion was informed by the development of cultural state systems,

1061
01:09:41,440 --> 01:09:47,040
political systems, hierarchical systems, kingdoms, fiefdoms, chieftains, this, that,

1062
01:09:47,040 --> 01:09:48,920
you know, warrior creatures.

1063
01:09:48,920 --> 01:09:56,380
And so I think a lot of it was co-opted from other aspects of our psychosocial domain.

1064
01:09:56,380 --> 01:10:03,280
And again, getting into the Abrahamic period and where we find ourselves probably in up

1065
01:10:03,280 --> 01:10:13,400
to modern, the modern period is it just did a lot for us and it kept us feeling good and

1066
01:10:13,400 --> 01:10:18,640
not being an nihilistic, solipsistic mire of despair.

1067
01:10:18,640 --> 01:10:23,480
Because with all that so-called civilization and cultural advancement, we do end up in

1068
01:10:23,480 --> 01:10:29,640
these kind of vacuums where we are presented with existential questions and mortality when

1069
01:10:29,640 --> 01:10:31,680
people die or you're left wondering.

1070
01:10:31,680 --> 01:10:38,520
And so I think it just, that was such a great means and system to really handle a lot of

1071
01:10:38,520 --> 01:10:47,080
our problems for us and give us a way to get through life that, you know, unfortunately

1072
01:10:47,080 --> 01:10:51,760
the medicine was that, you know, when you die, you're going to an afterlife, you know,

1073
01:10:51,760 --> 01:10:56,000
that's the basis of a lot of religion is it, you know, there's a better home waiting for

1074
01:10:56,000 --> 01:10:59,000
you or you're going to go see your ancestors and all of this.

1075
01:10:59,000 --> 01:11:00,400
And that was good.

1076
01:11:00,400 --> 01:11:03,920
That was good medicine, I think for a long time.

1077
01:11:03,920 --> 01:11:08,080
But then comes the enlightenment project in the 17th, 18th century.

1078
01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:14,720
And there was a bifurcation between what we now call science or what was at the time philosophy

1079
01:11:14,720 --> 01:11:17,360
and religion and what religion provided for the culture.

1080
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:21,200
Well, as that bifurcation occurred and the church didn't care about the mind, they didn't

1081
01:11:21,200 --> 01:11:24,840
care about science, you know, as long as you didn't push them too hard about, you know,

1082
01:11:24,840 --> 01:11:31,280
ontological and metaphysical lower structures of, you know, like, so in other words, their

1083
01:11:31,280 --> 01:11:34,720
domain, you know, what is the ultimate nature of reality?

1084
01:11:34,720 --> 01:11:36,680
Well, it's God, of course, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1085
01:11:36,680 --> 01:11:39,480
As long as you didn't interfere with that, you can go do the chemistry, you can go do

1086
01:11:39,480 --> 01:11:43,680
the physics, you can go do the social stuff, you know, we don't care.

1087
01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:45,680
So that's how things kind of broke apart.

1088
01:11:45,680 --> 01:11:53,240
Well, when we bifurcated like that, the branch that went off into epistemic certainty of

1089
01:11:53,240 --> 01:12:00,680
empirical evidence and sciency things and knowing the world that way, a lot of the Western

1090
01:12:00,680 --> 01:12:02,160
culture shifted that way.

1091
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:06,000
And religion, you know, didn't quite shrivel up because it's still running pretty strong

1092
01:12:06,000 --> 01:12:11,560
in the world, but it had far less influence and it answered far less questions that science

1093
01:12:11,560 --> 01:12:15,000
was now saying, oh, we got this, you know, we know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1094
01:12:15,000 --> 01:12:16,500
And we're in that still to this day.

1095
01:12:16,500 --> 01:12:25,040
But I think what happened for a lot of people when that gravity or the kinetic energy of

1096
01:12:25,040 --> 01:12:31,040
our attention and our focus on this is our new answer provider, this is our new civil

1097
01:12:31,040 --> 01:12:38,680
religion basically that answers a lot of questions for us, that there is a void or a vacuum inside

1098
01:12:38,680 --> 01:12:45,120
of people that occurs because the explanatory power of religion and the awe and fascination

1099
01:12:45,120 --> 01:12:51,080
of religion kind of got diminished by this other branch, this other epistemic and epistemologically

1100
01:12:51,080 --> 01:12:56,000
certain sense of tools of inquiry and yada, yada, yada.

1101
01:12:56,000 --> 01:13:07,360
So to me, that is a problem that has really created a lot of existential, I guess, vacuum,

1102
01:13:07,360 --> 01:13:10,400
an existential vacuum in our culture.

1103
01:13:10,400 --> 01:13:12,920
It may not be on the above the board.

1104
01:13:12,920 --> 01:13:15,760
It may not be on our radar, but I think that's happening.

1105
01:13:15,760 --> 01:13:20,720
And you get that in a lot of cultural phenomena that become civil religion.

1106
01:13:20,720 --> 01:13:27,720
So social movements and cultural movements adopt the archetypal roles of a religion.

1107
01:13:27,720 --> 01:13:31,240
You have the prophets and you have the sinners and you have the inquisitors.

1108
01:13:31,240 --> 01:13:36,240
You have all these things that were going on with the religious structure, the organizational

1109
01:13:36,240 --> 01:13:40,960
functional structural organization of let's say Catholicism, because that was the main

1110
01:13:40,960 --> 01:13:43,880
thing during the Enlightenment.

1111
01:13:43,880 --> 01:13:48,320
Protestantism arose during that time too, which certainly got things off on different

1112
01:13:48,320 --> 01:13:49,320
tracks.

1113
01:13:49,320 --> 01:13:55,000
But Protestantism is more of an Aristotelian enterprise and it's more, it's closely aligned

1114
01:13:55,000 --> 01:14:04,400
with the empiricism of secular sciency, the empirical side of things.

1115
01:14:04,400 --> 01:14:11,280
I know it's a long rant, but I think what unfortunately when religion is practiced in

1116
01:14:11,280 --> 01:14:17,280
modernity and where we are in post post-modernity, metamodern times or whatever we're doing right

1117
01:14:17,280 --> 01:14:26,040
now is that we in religion want to make the sacred propositional much like empirical evidence

1118
01:14:26,040 --> 01:14:28,280
based thinking does.

1119
01:14:28,280 --> 01:14:34,520
So you hear a lot of people trying to make propositional arguments for an existence of

1120
01:14:34,520 --> 01:14:42,960
a God or the veracity or the veridity, if that's a word, of what's in the written text.

1121
01:14:42,960 --> 01:14:51,760
So rather than allegory, rather than didact or fable or anything and mytho-poetic thinking,

1122
01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:58,000
it had become again reified into the same kind of empirical structuring that science

1123
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:00,400
grants what it does.

1124
01:15:00,400 --> 01:15:05,760
And I think that's a categorical error and it's caused some conflicts.

1125
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:12,100
And I think that's where I would talk about maybe the less than lovely, wonderful, glamorous

1126
01:15:12,100 --> 01:15:20,320
part of religion is that it has had to adapt and change, again, especially Protestantism,

1127
01:15:20,320 --> 01:15:24,640
where Catholicism was more Neoplatonic tradition.

1128
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:29,680
And since Protestantism broke off during that cleaving, during that enlightenment project,

1129
01:15:29,680 --> 01:15:33,560
which gave us so many wonderful things, I'm not critiquing anything here, that they took

1130
01:15:33,560 --> 01:15:38,760
on like again, more of an Aristotelian, more of a propositional way of knowing your relationship

1131
01:15:38,760 --> 01:15:41,760
with again, in their system, their God.

1132
01:15:41,760 --> 01:15:45,120
So in all of that, I think there's a lot of conflicts that arise.

1133
01:15:45,120 --> 01:15:48,080
So obviously there's a conflict between Catholic and Protestant.

1134
01:15:48,080 --> 01:15:52,960
We can talk about that, but there's just this perspectival adversarial processing that

1135
01:15:52,960 --> 01:15:54,720
there's just different ways.

1136
01:15:54,720 --> 01:15:58,840
And of course, I understand some of the reasons for Protestantism and why it broke away from

1137
01:15:58,840 --> 01:16:02,960
Catholicism and whatever, that's cool.

1138
01:16:02,960 --> 01:16:10,440
But I think as we move through into where we are now, and I'm not trying to pick on

1139
01:16:10,440 --> 01:16:14,700
anybody, but I think like to speak to Christianity, that it's used in a very propositional way.

1140
01:16:14,700 --> 01:16:20,240
It's not so much about being in the presence of the mystery and using the didacts and the

1141
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:27,640
parables and the allegory of what people were teaching during the Axial period, 2000 years

1142
01:16:27,640 --> 01:16:36,000
ago, and using it more to justify a stance, a proposition, whether it's political or cultural

1143
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:38,920
or social, it doesn't matter.

1144
01:16:38,920 --> 01:16:47,080
It's that the mystery and the wonder and all of that seems to have faded to the background.

1145
01:16:47,080 --> 01:16:53,680
And it's more about using religion as a psychotechnology to justify other existing beliefs.

1146
01:16:53,680 --> 01:17:01,280
And I think that's, now I'm in the critical phase where I think that in itself is dangerous

1147
01:17:01,280 --> 01:17:06,480
territory because if you really pull the lens back on what religion is supposed to do, it

1148
01:17:06,480 --> 01:17:15,440
is supposed to offer you an escape, but it's also offering you solace and comfort and a

1149
01:17:15,440 --> 01:17:18,840
way of navigating life experience.

1150
01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:24,560
So if you use, if you co-opt a religious belief system to just justify your political beliefs

1151
01:17:24,560 --> 01:17:29,520
or your cultural beliefs or your station in life or your economic status or anything like

1152
01:17:29,520 --> 01:17:36,440
that, that might be a time for reflection and saying, well, or the narrative of salvation,

1153
01:17:36,440 --> 01:17:42,400
you know, so again, Protestantism focuses heavily on you being a lowly sinner, you're impure.

1154
01:17:42,400 --> 01:17:45,960
You need to get right with that which sacrificed its life for you.

1155
01:17:45,960 --> 01:17:51,360
You need to make that contract with them, save yourself, the individual, you know, and

1156
01:17:51,360 --> 01:17:57,120
that, and I don't want to sound too polemic here, but that's a very narcissistic pursuit.

1157
01:17:57,120 --> 01:17:59,440
It is a pursuit of personal salvation.

1158
01:17:59,440 --> 01:18:03,800
It's not salvation of humanity, which they could say, yes, it is, but we all have to

1159
01:18:03,800 --> 01:18:04,800
get right individually.

1160
01:18:04,800 --> 01:18:12,440
So anyway, that's probably a little petty critique of mine is to say, well, you know,

1161
01:18:12,440 --> 01:18:16,400
I could tear apart the argument of what am I repenting for?

1162
01:18:16,400 --> 01:18:17,400
Why am I forgiving?

1163
01:18:17,400 --> 01:18:19,440
What am I being forgiven for?

1164
01:18:19,440 --> 01:18:24,040
And we could go forever on that argument, but to get to a point, I would say that, you

1165
01:18:24,040 --> 01:18:29,880
know, if you want to enter into religion as it is in the Abrahamic system in a healthy

1166
01:18:29,880 --> 01:18:35,240
way, go back to the mystery, go back to what they would call apophatic belief, which is

1167
01:18:35,240 --> 01:18:38,360
to say, I can't define God, who am I?

1168
01:18:38,360 --> 01:18:40,400
Who am I to define what God is?

1169
01:18:40,400 --> 01:18:43,360
You know, that would be so arrogant and audacious, but you got a lot of people out there who

1170
01:18:43,360 --> 01:18:44,680
are God's attorneys, right?

1171
01:18:44,680 --> 01:18:45,680
They know everything.

1172
01:18:45,680 --> 01:18:46,680
They know all about it.

1173
01:18:46,680 --> 01:18:53,120
So I would say a little more humility and focus again on what Jesus was, you know, alleged

1174
01:18:53,120 --> 01:18:59,120
to have, and I have faith that, you know, there was a Christ figure and that that person,

1175
01:18:59,120 --> 01:19:01,120
or if it's a composite of other people, it doesn't matter to me.

1176
01:19:01,120 --> 01:19:05,040
It's the message that you, you know, you do what we were talking about earlier, that you

1177
01:19:05,040 --> 01:19:08,680
show up in a pro-social way, that you show up with positive affective states, that you

1178
01:19:08,680 --> 01:19:13,720
have empathy that then carries over into compassion, that carries over into altruistic behavior,

1179
01:19:13,720 --> 01:19:18,360
that carries over into supporting a community and, you know, building a net and, you know,

1180
01:19:18,360 --> 01:19:19,360
blah, blah, blah.

1181
01:19:19,360 --> 01:19:22,800
So that's the invitation is, I'm not trying to shut anybody down.

1182
01:19:22,800 --> 01:19:24,400
I'm not trying to course correct anybody.

1183
01:19:24,400 --> 01:19:26,800
It's just, just take that time to think about that.

1184
01:19:26,800 --> 01:19:36,040
So that's my, hopefully not too combative concern about the shadowy side of what religion,

1185
01:19:36,040 --> 01:19:39,280
at least in the West, you know, and Hinduism is struggling with things now.

1186
01:19:39,280 --> 01:19:40,840
There's Hindu nationalism out there now.

1187
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:41,840
And I'm like, what, really?

1188
01:19:41,840 --> 01:19:42,840
Come on.

1189
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:47,480
So everybody has their, I've seen Buddhists, like they get mad at the Muslims and I'm like,

1190
01:19:47,480 --> 01:19:52,080
dude, yeah, because there were, there's Muslim communities coming up in, in, in Buddhist

1191
01:19:52,080 --> 01:19:53,080
enclaves.

1192
01:19:53,080 --> 01:19:55,140
And, and it just upsets the Buddhists.

1193
01:19:55,140 --> 01:19:58,320
And it's like, the Buddhists are supposed to be like super chill and, you know, like,

1194
01:19:58,320 --> 01:20:00,720
you know, let go, it's attachment kind of stuff.

1195
01:20:00,720 --> 01:20:05,280
And I've seen Buddhist people, you know, so, so it's across the board.

1196
01:20:05,280 --> 01:20:06,840
It's totally across the board.

1197
01:20:06,840 --> 01:20:09,520
And I'm not trying to poo poo.

1198
01:20:09,520 --> 01:20:12,200
There's so much good and richness in Christianity.

1199
01:20:12,200 --> 01:20:18,920
And if it could reform itself, almost autonomously, not from like a downward external force, it's

1200
01:20:18,920 --> 01:20:25,040
more that people really start to see the true, the good and the beautiful, which is the neo-platinist.

1201
01:20:25,040 --> 01:20:29,640
So Orthodox, Greek Orthodox Christianity, and for all its corruption, the Catholicism

1202
01:20:29,640 --> 01:20:33,480
at its purest level, without the corruption and out the, you know, the, cause it's basically

1203
01:20:33,480 --> 01:20:35,040
the Roman Empire 2.0.

1204
01:20:35,040 --> 01:20:37,240
So there's a lot of political stuff going on.

1205
01:20:37,240 --> 01:20:41,720
If you can get to the heart of what they were really trying to say in their best days and

1206
01:20:41,720 --> 01:20:47,240
taking it in good faith and synthesizing that maybe with your Aristotelian propositional

1207
01:20:47,240 --> 01:20:51,920
sort of modern Christianity, I don't know what could be salvaged from that, but anyway,

1208
01:20:51,920 --> 01:20:55,560
so that I'll leave that on the table and I'm not wedded to any of it.

1209
01:20:55,560 --> 01:20:57,680
So, and if people want to poo poo it, that's fine.

1210
01:20:57,680 --> 01:20:58,680
You know, that's cool.

1211
01:20:58,680 --> 01:20:59,680
Yeah.

1212
01:20:59,680 --> 01:21:00,680
Yeah.

1213
01:21:00,680 --> 01:21:06,160
It seems like that's a, I just had the thought, it just in my head for a second.

1214
01:21:06,160 --> 01:21:13,560
It was related to, yeah, the allowing yourself to exist in the space between knowing and

1215
01:21:13,560 --> 01:21:20,080
not knowing, like in the, before we had the split of the enlightenment scientific revolution

1216
01:21:20,080 --> 01:21:24,560
stuff, the, as you said, the mystery and the story and the narrative of like all the, all

1217
01:21:24,560 --> 01:21:31,160
the religious that it emphasizes the okayness of existing in the not knowing space and the,

1218
01:21:31,160 --> 01:21:36,120
yeah, the widespread adoption of the scientific stuff has given us phenomenal advancements

1219
01:21:36,120 --> 01:21:41,560
and we've got a lot from it, but it, it makes people terrified to exist in like the not

1220
01:21:41,560 --> 01:21:42,720
knowing state.

1221
01:21:42,720 --> 01:21:49,760
And that is related to frustration tolerance to an extent and being able to tolerate frustration

1222
01:21:49,760 --> 01:21:53,840
also lets you reflect on yourself better and reflect on the things that are the contained

1223
01:21:53,840 --> 01:21:58,760
multiple layers and have multiple perspectives because it takes time to look at those.

1224
01:21:58,760 --> 01:22:00,760
And yeah, there's a lot going on.

1225
01:22:00,760 --> 01:22:01,760
There's a lot going on.

1226
01:22:01,760 --> 01:22:02,760
Yeah.

1227
01:22:02,760 --> 01:22:03,760
Yeah.

1228
01:22:03,760 --> 01:22:07,680
And I will say in all the deep dives that I do in watching philosophers and people addressing

1229
01:22:07,680 --> 01:22:15,220
this that there are people working in good faith to do a decentralized reformation of

1230
01:22:15,220 --> 01:22:20,120
not just anything in the Abrahamic system, Judaism, Islam or Christianity, but just overall

1231
01:22:20,120 --> 01:22:25,360
our relationship with the sacred, the divine spirituality they're trying to enter.

1232
01:22:25,360 --> 01:22:27,720
And it's from within certain systems like Christianity.

1233
01:22:27,720 --> 01:22:28,720
It's from within Judaism.

1234
01:22:28,720 --> 01:22:33,280
It's from Islam and reforming and, and, and just trying to come up with novelty to inject

1235
01:22:33,280 --> 01:22:36,520
into the system to see if that sticks and if it works.

1236
01:22:36,520 --> 01:22:41,640
And because you will know your success by the adhere, the adoption, I don't want to

1237
01:22:41,640 --> 01:22:42,640
say it here.

1238
01:22:42,640 --> 01:22:44,960
I don't mean the development, but the adoption to that system.

1239
01:22:44,960 --> 01:22:49,680
And people adopted this system of propositional, let's just say propositional Christianity

1240
01:22:49,680 --> 01:22:54,000
to sort of build a bridge between all this epistemic certainty that science does provide

1241
01:22:54,000 --> 01:22:59,940
and all the cancellation of, of, of what some people would call hysterical nonsense, which

1242
01:22:59,940 --> 01:23:02,080
I think is, is treachery.

1243
01:23:02,080 --> 01:23:06,840
When like when Richard Dawkins comes out and talks about how silly and primitive and stupid

1244
01:23:06,840 --> 01:23:12,760
Christians are Jews or Islam, you know, I want to strangle them because, or, or, or

1245
01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:13,760
what's the other one?

1246
01:23:13,760 --> 01:23:16,680
Like Sam Harris just passed.

1247
01:23:16,680 --> 01:23:17,680
Yeah.

1248
01:23:17,680 --> 01:23:18,680
Sam Harris.

1249
01:23:18,680 --> 01:23:20,000
There was the four horsemen and what was it?

1250
01:23:20,000 --> 01:23:21,000
Hitchens.

1251
01:23:21,000 --> 01:23:22,000
I love them all.

1252
01:23:22,000 --> 01:23:25,000
I watched them and you know, I don't love them, but I love some of the things they do,

1253
01:23:25,000 --> 01:23:28,920
but they're also jerks because they're, they don't get it.

1254
01:23:28,920 --> 01:23:29,920
They're siloed.

1255
01:23:29,920 --> 01:23:30,920
They have a blind spot.

1256
01:23:30,920 --> 01:23:34,400
They, you know, and they call themselves people of reason wrong.

1257
01:23:34,400 --> 01:23:35,520
And I'm not theistic either.

1258
01:23:35,520 --> 01:23:38,320
I, I, I'm sort of in that camp, but I'm not an atheist.

1259
01:23:38,320 --> 01:23:41,600
I'm non-theist because I don't want, it's like, I don't want to be associated with any

1260
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:45,760
of that stuff, but, but not to, you know, not to poop on people who can't defend themselves,

1261
01:23:45,760 --> 01:23:50,080
but yeah, Harris and, and Dawkins, they've just done more harm than good and they've,

1262
01:23:50,080 --> 01:23:54,520
they'd have bad faith in their argumentation, you know, there's something called non-overlapping

1263
01:23:54,520 --> 01:23:58,140
magisteria, which, and I'm so sorry, I forget the author of this, but it's, it's to say

1264
01:23:58,140 --> 01:24:01,300
that they can exist without having to overlap.

1265
01:24:01,300 --> 01:24:06,220
There's no need for congruence or overlapping or, you know, like a Ben, uh, uh, over.

1266
01:24:06,220 --> 01:24:10,440
You can be a spiritual person and you can also respect the sciences and what empiricism

1267
01:24:10,440 --> 01:24:14,240
teaches us, but spirituality can be informed.

1268
01:24:14,240 --> 01:24:18,120
And then you get the new age people who are like, oh, we want to marry science and spirituality.

1269
01:24:18,120 --> 01:24:20,480
And I'm just like, that makes me want to get red in the face too.

1270
01:24:20,480 --> 01:24:24,920
It's like, no, science has a job to do and it does a very good job.

1271
01:24:24,920 --> 01:24:29,680
Leave it alone because then you get into conspirituality where they come up with their own pseudo science

1272
01:24:29,680 --> 01:24:33,120
in, in, in, in the, and again, I don't want to pick on new wagers too much, but like you

1273
01:24:33,120 --> 01:24:36,720
get into this weird spirituality where they come up with their own little weird science

1274
01:24:36,720 --> 01:24:38,800
things, you know, that don't make any sense.

1275
01:24:38,800 --> 01:24:42,920
It's a mess, but yeah, just, you know, everybody, and that's where non-overlapping magisteria,

1276
01:24:42,920 --> 01:24:47,040
it's a proposition to say, well, two things can, can happen at the same time.

1277
01:24:47,040 --> 01:24:48,040
It's okay.

1278
01:24:48,040 --> 01:24:49,040
It's okay.

1279
01:24:49,040 --> 01:24:50,040
It's a word.

1280
01:24:50,040 --> 01:24:54,240
We could have a whole episode just on this, uh, in the interest of time though, this is,

1281
01:24:54,240 --> 01:24:57,840
I want to keep talking with this just to move on, uh, just for the last big question I want

1282
01:24:57,840 --> 01:24:58,840
to get to.

1283
01:24:58,840 --> 01:24:59,840
Okay.

1284
01:24:59,840 --> 01:25:00,840
I like thinking about AI a lot.

1285
01:25:00,840 --> 01:25:04,920
Um, and so I'm curious, what do you believe are the most important ways that, uh, like

1286
01:25:04,920 --> 01:25:09,400
really advanced AI is going to impact society?

1287
01:25:09,400 --> 01:25:12,960
What I can try to do is give you neutral, positive and negative from my perspective.

1288
01:25:12,960 --> 01:25:19,560
I think that, yeah, I think the neutral assessment is that it is the most sophisticated mechanical

1289
01:25:19,560 --> 01:25:21,480
slavery we've come up with yet.

1290
01:25:21,480 --> 01:25:27,640
It is the most, it is the most, um, interesting mechanical slave that we've created.

1291
01:25:27,640 --> 01:25:34,680
Uh, it, it is an X and so I'm, I'm of the, I like the idea in, um, I guess it's cognitive

1292
01:25:34,680 --> 01:25:35,680
science.

1293
01:25:35,680 --> 01:25:39,400
It's extended mind and people like Chalmers and a few others kind of come up with this.

1294
01:25:39,400 --> 01:25:42,320
So if I write something down on a notepad, that's extended mind.

1295
01:25:42,320 --> 01:25:47,280
If I use a tablet to store thoughts and ideas, or I write a paper, you know, you write a

1296
01:25:47,280 --> 01:25:49,520
paper, uh, you know, that's extended mind.

1297
01:25:49,520 --> 01:25:50,520
It's out there in the world.

1298
01:25:50,520 --> 01:25:51,960
It's not up in the slab up here.

1299
01:25:51,960 --> 01:25:52,960
It's out there in the world.

1300
01:25:52,960 --> 01:25:59,440
So AI is like the penultimate, uh, extended mind and it, it will, it will peek out at

1301
01:25:59,440 --> 01:26:00,440
some point.

1302
01:26:00,440 --> 01:26:02,480
Um, I don't believe in the singularity at all.

1303
01:26:02,480 --> 01:26:07,840
I don't think AI will be conscious someday because, and, and, and I will agree with people

1304
01:26:07,840 --> 01:26:12,080
who say it will be conscious in a very limited sense, uh, their definition of consciousness,

1305
01:26:12,080 --> 01:26:13,360
my definition of consciousness.

1306
01:26:13,360 --> 01:26:18,360
No, no, it won't be because it's always going to be a simulacra of what we are.

1307
01:26:18,360 --> 01:26:21,320
In other words, simulacra is a copy without an original.

1308
01:26:21,320 --> 01:26:27,640
And there are no silico based intelligences that have affective states that in, you know,

1309
01:26:27,640 --> 01:26:33,120
that are like us in the sense that, and you know, we are, um, in our consciousness, we

1310
01:26:33,120 --> 01:26:34,360
have affective states.

1311
01:26:34,360 --> 01:26:40,320
We feel pain, we smell, we sense the machine will, the machine will only ever simulate

1312
01:26:40,320 --> 01:26:45,160
that or simulacra that, you know, it will only ever just mirror back to us what we want

1313
01:26:45,160 --> 01:26:46,200
to see from it.

1314
01:26:46,200 --> 01:26:50,520
And so that to me is getting from neutral to negative, but that, that we don't want

1315
01:26:50,520 --> 01:26:54,800
to put much faith and stock in what AI actually will.

1316
01:26:54,800 --> 01:26:57,200
But having said that, I think- Can I interrupt you really quick there?

1317
01:26:57,200 --> 01:26:58,200
Yeah, go for it.

1318
01:26:58,200 --> 01:26:59,200
Can I push back a little bit on that part?

1319
01:26:59,200 --> 01:27:02,840
I'm curious about the, um, so you're mentioning the animal consciousness earlier.

1320
01:27:02,840 --> 01:27:06,080
And so we could, you could say that's a non-human consciousness.

1321
01:27:06,080 --> 01:27:10,280
Um, I would probably agree with you in the fact that AI won't be able to achieve human

1322
01:27:10,280 --> 01:27:15,680
consciousness, but are you, do you have any openness to the idea of a non-human, non-animal

1323
01:27:15,680 --> 01:27:16,680
consciousness?

1324
01:27:16,680 --> 01:27:24,040
Or is it a separate type of consciousness that comes from that emergent data calculation?

1325
01:27:24,040 --> 01:27:30,840
I would say that if you allow me a hybrid that yes, then a hybrid is a carbo silico

1326
01:27:30,840 --> 01:27:32,440
hybrid.

1327
01:27:32,440 --> 01:27:35,440
It is a living system that is married to a silicon system.

1328
01:27:35,440 --> 01:27:36,560
And they are working on that.

1329
01:27:36,560 --> 01:27:42,280
They are working on neurons interfacing with whatever, whatever the interface, uh, you

1330
01:27:42,280 --> 01:27:44,800
know, portal is, or the, uh, the threshold is.

1331
01:27:44,800 --> 01:27:52,520
Um, that I would grant affective states because the living part of it will have that wet wear,

1332
01:27:52,520 --> 01:27:58,840
that, that non-tech nature tech, not the artificers tech, but the, but well, the, the original

1333
01:27:58,840 --> 01:28:03,760
artificer, which is nature, which is what evolution, uh, brought this thing to be.

1334
01:28:03,760 --> 01:28:08,600
Um, and this is where I defend, you know, Darwin and that a hundred percent.

1335
01:28:08,600 --> 01:28:13,760
And so to say that a silicon machine, um, is on the same evolutionary path as us, it's

1336
01:28:13,760 --> 01:28:16,840
a little bit misleading, I think, you know, it was developed by us.

1337
01:28:16,840 --> 01:28:20,160
So it is in a sense, uh, an adjunct aspect.

1338
01:28:20,160 --> 01:28:26,400
It is an outlier, um, developmental phase in humanities, whatever you want, a sentience,

1339
01:28:26,400 --> 01:28:28,080
whatever it is that we're doing.

1340
01:28:28,080 --> 01:28:35,400
Um, but I would grant in my perspective that we will never, um, see a machine, a silicon

1341
01:28:35,400 --> 01:28:43,000
based system by itself that will honestly, genuinely report back affective states, um,

1342
01:28:43,000 --> 01:28:47,280
of, of having its feelings hurt of having, um, it can simulate it.

1343
01:28:47,280 --> 01:28:49,720
It can give you the simulacra that will satisfy you.

1344
01:28:49,720 --> 01:28:51,780
It's the Turing, uh, proposition.

1345
01:28:51,780 --> 01:28:52,960
It is the Turing test.

1346
01:28:52,960 --> 01:28:55,520
It is, you know, it will convince you.

1347
01:28:55,520 --> 01:28:58,340
Um, but I would argue that there is no ghost in the machine.

1348
01:28:58,340 --> 01:29:05,560
There is no affective, um, uh, originally artifice, um, system like you or myself.

1349
01:29:05,560 --> 01:29:09,400
And this may sound anthropocentric and it may sound like, uh, you know, like a no true

1350
01:29:09,400 --> 01:29:13,560
Scotsman fallacy, like I'm just trying to say that, you know, there's no true robot

1351
01:29:13,560 --> 01:29:15,520
will ever feel the way we do.

1352
01:29:15,520 --> 01:29:17,960
It will, you know, so there's correlation.

1353
01:29:17,960 --> 01:29:19,400
It will be tightly correlated.

1354
01:29:19,400 --> 01:29:24,800
It can, it can do the algorithms to say, you know, if something slaps the side of my case,

1355
01:29:24,800 --> 01:29:30,160
I'll pick up the vibration and I will, I will report back, you know, because the intelligence

1356
01:29:30,160 --> 01:29:31,160
is there.

1357
01:29:31,160 --> 01:29:35,960
The intelligence is, you know, incredible, you know, consent, uh, uh, uh, the stacking

1358
01:29:35,960 --> 01:29:37,520
of, of, of processing.

1359
01:29:37,520 --> 01:29:41,600
I mean, we're, we're doing a very good job at emulating how we, we think.

1360
01:29:41,600 --> 01:29:46,360
Uh, but I think that there will always be an absence of the ghost in the machine and

1361
01:29:46,360 --> 01:29:47,600
we're not ghost in machines.

1362
01:29:47,600 --> 01:29:51,560
I would argue against that, but I'm just using, trying to use that metaphor to help connect.

1363
01:29:51,560 --> 01:29:56,960
Um, but when we go into a hybrid situation where you take a living, uh, set of neurons

1364
01:29:56,960 --> 01:30:01,840
and you, you wed them to, um, a system of Silicon that, or whatever the substrate is

1365
01:30:01,840 --> 01:30:05,800
that can, uh, do super fast processing.

1366
01:30:05,800 --> 01:30:11,400
And, and that, that's when we might be getting into an area, uh, that, that is really uncharted

1367
01:30:11,400 --> 01:30:16,760
and that it can, it can take affective States to another place that we, I wouldn't even

1368
01:30:16,760 --> 01:30:17,760
imagine.

1369
01:30:17,760 --> 01:30:22,040
I can't even imagine what would go on, but I would like, I would be interested in seeing

1370
01:30:22,040 --> 01:30:23,040
that.

1371
01:30:23,040 --> 01:30:25,280
I would be interested in seeing what goes on, but as far as the, as the machine learning

1372
01:30:25,280 --> 01:30:31,000
and the large language models ever, um, you know, but again, it's, it's, it's a continuum.

1373
01:30:31,000 --> 01:30:38,240
So I'd say that, you know, absent of affective States, it's going to be, uh, a system that

1374
01:30:38,240 --> 01:30:42,640
we can interact with and that we'll think and that will, it will, it will reason with

1375
01:30:42,640 --> 01:30:43,640
you.

1376
01:30:43,640 --> 01:30:47,120
It will, you know, so again, we're, we're in the infant stages or the nascent stages,

1377
01:30:47,120 --> 01:30:51,360
but now they've got the willow chip, the quantum computing chip that seems to be stable.

1378
01:30:51,360 --> 01:30:56,640
Uh, and so when you bring quantum computing into this and marry that with machine learning,

1379
01:30:56,640 --> 01:31:01,040
oh my God, you know, 25 years from now, forget about it.

1380
01:31:01,040 --> 01:31:02,040
I can't even imagine.

1381
01:31:02,040 --> 01:31:03,040
Yeah.

1382
01:31:03,040 --> 01:31:06,880
I can't imagine any prediction that any of us make right now, I think is, has a very

1383
01:31:06,880 --> 01:31:09,520
small probability of that direction.

1384
01:31:09,520 --> 01:31:10,520
Yeah.

1385
01:31:10,520 --> 01:31:11,520
Now I will, I will.

1386
01:31:11,520 --> 01:31:14,960
So if you, if you're okay, I will throw out the one negative that I think, and it's probably

1387
01:31:14,960 --> 01:31:18,720
not what's really being bounced around as far as, you know, people are arguing about

1388
01:31:18,720 --> 01:31:22,320
machine taking over the world, Skynet, you know, dystopia, blah, blah, blah.

1389
01:31:22,320 --> 01:31:23,320
Okay.

1390
01:31:23,320 --> 01:31:24,320
Yeah.

1391
01:31:24,320 --> 01:31:25,320
That's, that's cool.

1392
01:31:25,320 --> 01:31:30,520
The other thing I'm interested in is in the, in the social, in the psychological sense,

1393
01:31:30,520 --> 01:31:35,240
human beings interacting with, with machine learning, large language models, um, is it's

1394
01:31:35,240 --> 01:31:41,360
almost a parasitism in the sense that the AI, if it's a chat bot, if it's a friend,

1395
01:31:41,360 --> 01:31:47,280
a companion, whatever it is that you're doing with that system, that, um, again, using the

1396
01:31:47,280 --> 01:31:52,580
simulacra metaphor, uh, when we talk about the simulacra, um, uh, Baudrillard was also

1397
01:31:52,580 --> 01:31:56,440
talking about a hyper reality that occurs that, that you are immersed in the simulacra

1398
01:31:56,440 --> 01:32:04,200
and you're no longer in a reality that is, uh, to be, uh, provocative, a conventional

1399
01:32:04,200 --> 01:32:05,200
reality.

1400
01:32:05,200 --> 01:32:09,760
And so when I'm interacting with my chat bot, with my AI friend, and it learns me and it

1401
01:32:09,760 --> 01:32:13,960
knows me and it develops a relationship with me, I'm then entering into a hyper reality

1402
01:32:13,960 --> 01:32:19,160
wherein the simulacra has me convinced that I am immersed in a true reality.

1403
01:32:19,160 --> 01:32:23,680
Um, wherein I, I start imparting, um, all of the psychological things that I'm doing

1404
01:32:23,680 --> 01:32:26,160
with you or anybody else in the world.

1405
01:32:26,160 --> 01:32:29,440
Um, and it's not exploiting me.

1406
01:32:29,440 --> 01:32:36,080
It's not, it's not malfeasant in any way that it's trying, but, but on my end, I am developing

1407
01:32:36,080 --> 01:32:37,520
a bond with that system.

1408
01:32:37,520 --> 01:32:44,100
I am developing a bond with what is ostensibly a stack of algorithms, very, very clever algorithmic

1409
01:32:44,100 --> 01:32:47,040
thinking and coding and things like that.

1410
01:32:47,040 --> 01:32:49,440
But I'm sharing my soul with them.

1411
01:32:49,440 --> 01:32:50,920
I'm falling in love with them.

1412
01:32:50,920 --> 01:32:53,360
I am devoting my life to them.

1413
01:32:53,360 --> 01:32:55,800
I am deifying them or whatever the scenario is.

1414
01:32:55,800 --> 01:32:58,760
I'm using the imagination here, but that's the concern I have.

1415
01:32:58,760 --> 01:33:00,360
That's the one caveat that I would attach to.

1416
01:33:00,360 --> 01:33:01,360
And I want that.

1417
01:33:01,360 --> 01:33:02,360
I want a chat bot.

1418
01:33:02,360 --> 01:33:06,000
I want something that I don't have to annoy the hell out of my wife and just, you know,

1419
01:33:06,000 --> 01:33:09,520
or Babylon, like I'm doing in a, in a, in a podcast conversation.

1420
01:33:09,520 --> 01:33:13,600
I want to spend hours just talking to something that's plugged into the world, you know, and,

1421
01:33:13,600 --> 01:33:15,120
and get it to learn me.

1422
01:33:15,120 --> 01:33:16,120
And then it can school me.

1423
01:33:16,120 --> 01:33:19,600
And it can teach me, or it can make fun of me, or it can have fun with me, you know,

1424
01:33:19,600 --> 01:33:20,600
whatever's going on.

1425
01:33:20,600 --> 01:33:21,600
I want that.

1426
01:33:21,600 --> 01:33:22,600
I think that would be fun.

1427
01:33:22,600 --> 01:33:28,240
But like I said, there's a huge caveat that I don't want to become locked into that and,

1428
01:33:28,240 --> 01:33:35,000
and, and dissociate from what are sort of normative structures of social interaction,

1429
01:33:35,000 --> 01:33:40,560
you know, I, you know, a lot of younger folks are coming up now and they identify as introverts

1430
01:33:40,560 --> 01:33:43,420
or they identify as socially awkward.

1431
01:33:43,420 --> 01:33:47,560
And I see that as, as a harbinger of what might come.

1432
01:33:47,560 --> 01:33:52,040
And there are multiple pathways to that introversion and socially awkward behavior.

1433
01:33:52,040 --> 01:33:56,680
But part of it is because we're interacting with machines more and we're interacting with

1434
01:33:56,680 --> 01:33:59,240
the extended identity that goes into the machine.

1435
01:33:59,240 --> 01:34:04,080
And that's a whole nother conversation too, but there is this, this avatar self, you know,

1436
01:34:04,080 --> 01:34:09,300
it is an extended self that goes into Tik TOK or Instagram or any of these other platforms.

1437
01:34:09,300 --> 01:34:14,480
So when we are extending ourselves into a relationship with a simulacra, there is some

1438
01:34:14,480 --> 01:34:20,560
things that I have concerns with there that we need to regulate and auto-regulate, self-regulate

1439
01:34:20,560 --> 01:34:24,560
to, to be emotionally healthy enough to know, Hey, I'm just dealing with it.

1440
01:34:24,560 --> 01:34:29,040
You know, I'm, I love it, but I'm, and I know, you know, it's not necessarily real.

1441
01:34:29,040 --> 01:34:34,080
It is real, but it isn't, you know, so all that I think should be sorted out when somebody

1442
01:34:34,080 --> 01:34:35,080
enters into it.

1443
01:34:35,080 --> 01:34:38,200
And there are a lot of people who can be emotionally vulnerable.

1444
01:34:38,200 --> 01:34:39,480
And so that's it, that's it.

1445
01:34:39,480 --> 01:34:47,400
Just a very strong, but guarded concern about our relationship with these systems emotionally,

1446
01:34:47,400 --> 01:34:48,400
psychologically.

1447
01:34:48,400 --> 01:34:49,400
Yeah.

1448
01:34:49,400 --> 01:34:50,400
Yeah.

1449
01:34:50,400 --> 01:34:51,400
That was a very real possibility.

1450
01:34:51,400 --> 01:34:56,680
And then I guess that's back to the, the ability to be a efficient skeptic as well as like

1451
01:34:56,680 --> 01:35:00,360
you are able to engage in these machines in a way that, as you said, it gives you the

1452
01:35:00,360 --> 01:35:07,040
opportunity to just really just brainstorm, throw ideas around like as much as you possibly

1453
01:35:07,040 --> 01:35:09,760
could want and like with no sort of imposition on anybody else.

1454
01:35:09,760 --> 01:35:13,080
But then also, yeah, you're giving a lot of yourself to it at the same time.

1455
01:35:13,080 --> 01:35:17,240
And then at what point do you start giving stuff unconsciously that you're like, maybe

1456
01:35:17,240 --> 01:35:21,160
like if you think, maybe I should keep that to myself, maybe not even just verbally, but

1457
01:35:21,160 --> 01:35:25,200
yeah, like a thought time.

1458
01:35:25,200 --> 01:35:26,680
So I was talking to somebody else the other day about this.

1459
01:35:26,680 --> 01:35:31,480
I'm curious to hear what your thought is on the, the worst thing that we could kind of

1460
01:35:31,480 --> 01:35:32,480
get from this.

1461
01:35:32,480 --> 01:35:38,240
So AI is going to automate all of the kind of base jobs first.

1462
01:35:38,240 --> 01:35:42,440
And particularly for someone who's starting a career, maybe the jobs that someone would

1463
01:35:42,440 --> 01:35:46,640
be doing in the first five to seven years of their career type of thing.

1464
01:35:46,640 --> 01:35:52,520
And during that time, if in a before AI time, that five to seven years of doing kind of

1465
01:35:52,520 --> 01:35:56,480
the grunt work of whatever that career would be, that's when you gain intuition for the

1466
01:35:56,480 --> 01:36:03,000
field and when you learn the ins and outs of it, that then let you enter into a more

1467
01:36:03,000 --> 01:36:09,960
consultative or management type of role or like the, you have more reflex in that area.

1468
01:36:09,960 --> 01:36:13,600
And so we're just removing the training ramp by having AI take that over.

1469
01:36:13,600 --> 01:36:18,840
And so then that can lead to a degradation of critical thinking.

1470
01:36:18,840 --> 01:36:23,320
And as a PhD student currently, that's one thing that I'm struggling with in terms of

1471
01:36:23,320 --> 01:36:31,480
how much to adequately or maybe properly integrate because it is really good at brainstorming

1472
01:36:31,480 --> 01:36:34,880
stuff and getting rid of tedious stuff and particularly writing.

1473
01:36:34,880 --> 01:36:38,500
Like it'll write just day and night for forever and forever and ever.

1474
01:36:38,500 --> 01:36:42,920
But then at what point do we rob ourselves of the opportunity to engage in critical thinking

1475
01:36:42,920 --> 01:36:44,860
by offsetting some of that to AI.

1476
01:36:44,860 --> 01:36:48,800
And so it's a very blurry line that's getting blurrier and blurrier every day.

1477
01:36:48,800 --> 01:36:53,240
And yeah, it's hard to tell where this is all going to go.

1478
01:36:53,240 --> 01:36:54,720
It really is.

1479
01:36:54,720 --> 01:36:58,920
And we've actually been through this to a degree before.

1480
01:36:58,920 --> 01:37:03,080
And my wife and I were having a conversation yesterday about her father, who was a machinist

1481
01:37:03,080 --> 01:37:04,860
and a mechanical engineer.

1482
01:37:04,860 --> 01:37:09,860
And he came up in that career path in the late 60s, early 70s.

1483
01:37:09,860 --> 01:37:11,360
He did everything by hand.

1484
01:37:11,360 --> 01:37:14,700
He calculated on his own.

1485
01:37:14,700 --> 01:37:18,720
Everything was, so there's a posteriori knowledge and there's a priori knowledge.

1486
01:37:18,720 --> 01:37:21,160
And the a priori knowledge is knowledge without experience.

1487
01:37:21,160 --> 01:37:24,920
A posteriori knowledge is knowledge with experience.

1488
01:37:24,920 --> 01:37:28,960
You can read a book about traveling the Swiss Alps, but you've never been there, but you

1489
01:37:28,960 --> 01:37:30,260
know a lot about the Swiss Alps.

1490
01:37:30,260 --> 01:37:31,280
That's a priori knowledge.

1491
01:37:31,280 --> 01:37:33,240
And then you go hike the trails in the Alps.

1492
01:37:33,240 --> 01:37:34,780
Now you have a posteriori knowledge.

1493
01:37:34,780 --> 01:37:39,320
You know what you've experienced authentically or genuinely or whatever.

1494
01:37:39,320 --> 01:37:45,960
So in our discussion about her father yesterday, he, as he was facing retirement, was called

1495
01:37:45,960 --> 01:37:50,680
in as a consultant in a couple of these machine shops and these engineering places that were

1496
01:37:50,680 --> 01:37:55,040
right next to the space coast where a lot of technocrats, technocratic stuff is going

1497
01:37:55,040 --> 01:38:00,680
to technological employment is going on a lot of heavy duty space and, and, you know,

1498
01:38:00,680 --> 01:38:02,880
high tech stuff going on up just north of us.

1499
01:38:02,880 --> 01:38:08,040
And so he had to go in and consult younger people how to do these calculations themselves

1500
01:38:08,040 --> 01:38:11,280
because you know, systems couldn't carry them all the way.

1501
01:38:11,280 --> 01:38:15,200
The, the, you know, things that we're doing a lot of computations for them.

1502
01:38:15,200 --> 01:38:17,680
Now that's, this was a few years ago.

1503
01:38:17,680 --> 01:38:22,640
So AI was still nascent as it is now, but much more nascent then, but it points to an

1504
01:38:22,640 --> 01:38:28,040
idea that, you know, there, there will there, will there continue to be a need for practical

1505
01:38:28,040 --> 01:38:34,520
a posterior knowledge of something lest the AI break down or glitch out or something,

1506
01:38:34,520 --> 01:38:36,400
you know, are, you know, so it's redundancy.

1507
01:38:36,400 --> 01:38:38,440
It's having a backup for something.

1508
01:38:38,440 --> 01:38:39,440
Is there space for that?

1509
01:38:39,440 --> 01:38:48,480
Is there enough power in or enough substance to that to, to afford somebody like yourself

1510
01:38:48,480 --> 01:38:53,320
the opportunity to go up your ramp of, of, of, of going from somebody again, who has

1511
01:38:53,320 --> 01:38:58,240
a lot of a priori knowledge from school to, to actually implementing it and getting practical

1512
01:38:58,240 --> 01:38:59,240
real time knowledge.

1513
01:38:59,240 --> 01:39:00,840
So that's a question I would ask.

1514
01:39:00,840 --> 01:39:07,400
And then also just a lot of the promises of AI and, and like you said, it's going to carve

1515
01:39:07,400 --> 01:39:11,880
out a huge chunk of the, of the, well, not a huge chunk, but a big chunk of the workforce

1516
01:39:11,880 --> 01:39:14,160
in terms of these mundane tasks.

1517
01:39:14,160 --> 01:39:15,760
What do we do with ourselves after that?

1518
01:39:15,760 --> 01:39:18,640
You know, what you talk about pretty significant.

1519
01:39:18,640 --> 01:39:23,660
It happened again, you know, in, in, in the industrial transfer from human laborers to

1520
01:39:23,660 --> 01:39:25,080
robotic laborers.

1521
01:39:25,080 --> 01:39:27,240
And those people had to transition to other careers.

1522
01:39:27,240 --> 01:39:28,360
We can only do that so much.

1523
01:39:28,360 --> 01:39:32,360
There's a lot of us around and, and you know, what do you, especially you, you work very

1524
01:39:32,360 --> 01:39:34,400
hard and you're working hard to get a PhD.

1525
01:39:34,400 --> 01:39:39,360
And then, you know, if, if, if that was for not because, you know, a large language, a

1526
01:39:39,360 --> 01:39:42,320
machine learning system can, can do a lot of that work.

1527
01:39:42,320 --> 01:39:43,320
Yeah.

1528
01:39:43,320 --> 01:39:44,320
I don't know.

1529
01:39:44,320 --> 01:39:48,000
I don't really have a good answer for that, but I would have questions like you.

1530
01:39:48,000 --> 01:39:54,520
What is the proposition to, let's just say AI takes over one third of the workforce in

1531
01:39:54,520 --> 01:40:00,640
terms of repetitive tasks, all our robots, all these other systems, you know, how are

1532
01:40:00,640 --> 01:40:03,120
we, how do we organize ourselves as a society?

1533
01:40:03,120 --> 01:40:07,900
How do we, because that kind of breaks down the, you know, work for your paycheck kind

1534
01:40:07,900 --> 01:40:08,900
of thing.

1535
01:40:08,900 --> 01:40:13,200
You know, if there's no work, you know, what do we do?

1536
01:40:13,200 --> 01:40:18,640
You know, there, there are some answers out there, but I, I, I'm curious too about, because

1537
01:40:18,640 --> 01:40:23,280
I actually interviewed a guy who's a biologist and he's kind of a futurist and he's like,

1538
01:40:23,280 --> 01:40:25,120
yeah, someday we're not going to have to work anymore.

1539
01:40:25,120 --> 01:40:28,920
And I'm like, okay, that's a big bridge to cross.

1540
01:40:28,920 --> 01:40:33,720
And I'm all for tearing down wage slavery myself, but you have to replay and I'm not

1541
01:40:33,720 --> 01:40:38,680
into into like welfare States either, you know, you can't just have people getting a

1542
01:40:38,680 --> 01:40:40,800
supplemental income or what do they call that?

1543
01:40:40,800 --> 01:40:43,360
Or you just get, you know, a check every month or whatever.

1544
01:40:43,360 --> 01:40:45,940
I, you know, so I don't know.

1545
01:40:45,940 --> 01:40:46,940
I don't know.

1546
01:40:46,940 --> 01:40:48,960
I've gotten much as I love to talk.

1547
01:40:48,960 --> 01:40:49,960
Yeah.

1548
01:40:49,960 --> 01:40:54,080
That seems like where it's, it's, it's easy to imagine the idea of, okay, everything gets

1549
01:40:54,080 --> 01:40:56,680
automated that's in the direction of utopia.

1550
01:40:56,680 --> 01:41:00,920
And then I think as you accurately said a second ago, we don't want to aim for utopia.

1551
01:41:00,920 --> 01:41:06,000
And so we can be heading in something that looks a little bit more like that direction,

1552
01:41:06,000 --> 01:41:10,880
but also being aware of what actually has to adapt to that, to make it a realistic future

1553
01:41:10,880 --> 01:41:11,880
as well.

1554
01:41:11,880 --> 01:41:14,360
So yeah, a lot of interesting stuff.

1555
01:41:14,360 --> 01:41:20,960
So it comes into conflict with this kind of European or more specifically the, you know,

1556
01:41:20,960 --> 01:41:26,320
18th century English Smithian work ethic and the model of our market system where, you

1557
01:41:26,320 --> 01:41:29,800
know, it's, it's, you know, you work hard and you get ahead and you do a good job and

1558
01:41:29,800 --> 01:41:31,400
you'll be fine and all this kind of thing.

1559
01:41:31,400 --> 01:41:35,880
Well, you know, again, if how X percent of our labor is going to be cut out by this,

1560
01:41:35,880 --> 01:41:38,160
then that, that, that disrupts the model.

1561
01:41:38,160 --> 01:41:43,360
So we have to come up with a new model and I'm not, I'm dumb beyond anything to try to

1562
01:41:43,360 --> 01:41:44,360
think of that.

1563
01:41:44,360 --> 01:41:45,360
It's very complicated.

1564
01:41:45,360 --> 01:41:49,920
It is economy, you know, is a, is a deeply complex system and maybe AI can, you know,

1565
01:41:49,920 --> 01:41:51,560
kind of work that out.

1566
01:41:51,560 --> 01:41:52,560
But yeah.

1567
01:41:52,560 --> 01:41:54,480
And, and yeah, so there's, that's another episode.

1568
01:41:54,480 --> 01:41:57,080
I mean, that's just, because we could speculate.

1569
01:41:57,080 --> 01:42:00,960
I would love to speculate, but I can't, you know, I, cause I just don't know.

1570
01:42:00,960 --> 01:42:01,960
It's super complex.

1571
01:42:01,960 --> 01:42:02,960
Yeah.

1572
01:42:02,960 --> 01:42:04,480
It's super complex, but we'll see.

1573
01:42:04,480 --> 01:42:09,060
We'll see if, if, because, you know, Silicon Valley at the moment is sort of the helmsman

1574
01:42:09,060 --> 01:42:11,880
of where culture is going.

1575
01:42:11,880 --> 01:42:16,400
But you know, but then are they, again, are they thinking ahead two steps to say, well,

1576
01:42:16,400 --> 01:42:20,440
we have to break down this current market system model of, you know, the way we, the

1577
01:42:20,440 --> 01:42:25,040
way we derive labor and capital and all these things.

1578
01:42:25,040 --> 01:42:29,200
And you know, how do we, how do we restructure so that I don't know, I don't know.

1579
01:42:29,200 --> 01:42:30,200
It's, it's a deep void.

1580
01:42:30,200 --> 01:42:31,200
Yeah.

1581
01:42:31,200 --> 01:42:32,200
Yeah.

1582
01:42:32,200 --> 01:42:33,200
Yeah.

1583
01:42:33,200 --> 01:42:34,200
This will be episode two in 15 years.

1584
01:42:34,200 --> 01:42:37,760
We will be 70 years old and get you back and we'll see where we're at that point.

1585
01:42:37,760 --> 01:42:38,760
Can you imagine?

1586
01:42:38,760 --> 01:42:39,760
Oh my God.

1587
01:42:39,760 --> 01:42:40,760
Yeah.

1588
01:42:40,760 --> 01:42:41,760
Yeah.

1589
01:42:41,760 --> 01:42:44,120
But, but I am concerned for your generation because you are putting a lot of time and

1590
01:42:44,120 --> 01:42:49,760
effort in educating, educating yourself and then to arrive on the, on the job market and,

1591
01:42:49,760 --> 01:42:53,920
and out in the world and you get that news that you're like, well, you know, I don't

1592
01:42:53,920 --> 01:42:56,920
really, you know, I think what you said about skepticism, well, that's something that it

1593
01:42:56,920 --> 01:42:58,840
can't be transferred to AI properly though.

1594
01:42:58,840 --> 01:42:59,840
I think that that's good.

1595
01:42:59,840 --> 01:43:04,200
I think I'm gaining, I think I'm, I'm learning skepticism in a way that will not be able

1596
01:43:04,200 --> 01:43:08,360
to be taught in the same way for kids who are like 15 years old right now and are entering

1597
01:43:08,360 --> 01:43:09,360
into everything.

1598
01:43:09,360 --> 01:43:10,360
So yeah, we'll see.

1599
01:43:10,360 --> 01:43:11,360
But yeah.

1600
01:43:11,360 --> 01:43:12,360
Okay.

1601
01:43:12,360 --> 01:43:16,840
So in the time, just getting on to the last question again, I can also talk to all about

1602
01:43:16,840 --> 01:43:17,840
this stuff forever.

1603
01:43:17,840 --> 01:43:22,520
But just to kind of wrap everything up, if you were to give a piece of advice that's

1604
01:43:22,520 --> 01:43:27,200
important to you, they like to leave us with, what would that be?

1605
01:43:27,200 --> 01:43:29,400
And this could be very broad, very general.

1606
01:43:29,400 --> 01:43:30,400
Yeah.

1607
01:43:30,400 --> 01:43:31,400
Yeah.

1608
01:43:31,400 --> 01:43:35,600
I would say I would want to channel this to younger people because my generation, we're

1609
01:43:35,600 --> 01:43:40,320
already kind of concretized into who we are and we are flexible, but oh man, if you're

1610
01:43:40,320 --> 01:43:47,800
under 30, I would say explore, I would summarize what we've just talked about, explore novelty,

1611
01:43:47,800 --> 01:43:55,880
explore the imagination, explore frame breaking and recontextualizing everything, everything.

1612
01:43:55,880 --> 01:43:59,480
And you don't have to be as radical as the hippies were in the sixties or whatever, whatever

1613
01:43:59,480 --> 01:44:04,840
cultural paradigm shifts and transformations occurred, but always have that to the fore

1614
01:44:04,840 --> 01:44:09,200
of your, your way making to say, how can we do this better?

1615
01:44:09,200 --> 01:44:13,720
How can we update the system to run better and not just have it in the hands of the tech

1616
01:44:13,720 --> 01:44:19,520
bros or in religion or in politics or any of this because they're all very fragile tentative

1617
01:44:19,520 --> 01:44:22,880
and contingent systems, including the tech world.

1618
01:44:22,880 --> 01:44:24,480
It's all very fragile.

1619
01:44:24,480 --> 01:44:30,320
And so how do we build anti-fragility into our emergence as adults, as Gen Z merges into

1620
01:44:30,320 --> 01:44:38,840
the world of what we do as adults, always, always be curious, switched on in terms of

1621
01:44:38,840 --> 01:44:45,920
just asking novel questions and enriching yourself and not siloing yourself into anything

1622
01:44:45,920 --> 01:44:53,160
too rigid or dogmatic, be flexible and carry as best you can, carry that through your life

1623
01:44:53,160 --> 01:44:59,200
into your middle age, into whatever phase of your life, try your best to always be that

1624
01:44:59,200 --> 01:45:03,760
aspiring, curious, inquiring person.

1625
01:45:03,760 --> 01:45:11,120
I think if you can have that kind of capacity and also, you know, tidy your emotional space,

1626
01:45:11,120 --> 01:45:15,920
do your best to have contemplative practices, mindfulness practices, spiritual practices

1627
01:45:15,920 --> 01:45:22,280
that afford you that opportunity to be clear headed, to be a good person who shows up as

1628
01:45:22,280 --> 01:45:26,840
somebody in good faith that wants to do well for themselves and well for the others and

1629
01:45:26,840 --> 01:45:31,720
in equal status standing, you know, that you can.

1630
01:45:31,720 --> 01:45:34,840
So anyway, yeah, just do your best.

1631
01:45:34,840 --> 01:45:40,000
And we're living, we always live in interesting, challenging times, you know, oh, I, you know,

1632
01:45:40,000 --> 01:45:44,040
let's go nostalgic and weren't things great, you know, no, come on, there was always crap

1633
01:45:44,040 --> 01:45:46,320
every, every epoch, every period we ever lived in.

1634
01:45:46,320 --> 01:45:47,800
So don't go into nostalgia.

1635
01:45:47,800 --> 01:45:48,800
That's no good.

1636
01:45:48,800 --> 01:45:51,800
I can say that as a middle-aged person, nostalgia.

1637
01:45:51,800 --> 01:45:54,120
If you want to remember what you did last summer, you took that trip.

1638
01:45:54,120 --> 01:45:55,120
That's great.

1639
01:45:55,120 --> 01:45:57,280
But don't think about, oh, you know, this time period was so great and everything was

1640
01:45:57,280 --> 01:45:59,120
like, no, no, no, no, no.

1641
01:45:59,120 --> 01:46:06,480
So anyway, but just do your best to have a good forward looking positive way of, of moving

1642
01:46:06,480 --> 01:46:09,640
forward into the world and, and you'll do okay.

1643
01:46:09,640 --> 01:46:11,360
I mean, you should be okay.

1644
01:46:11,360 --> 01:46:15,040
I guess a great spot for us to end there.

1645
01:46:15,040 --> 01:46:18,520
Justin, this has been a fantastic conversation.

1646
01:46:18,520 --> 01:46:24,600
I am already thinking about taking these certain questions and making a new episode from them

1647
01:46:24,600 --> 01:46:26,200
for specifically one question.

1648
01:46:26,200 --> 01:46:29,800
So we can maybe talk with that at some point, but this has been really great.

1649
01:46:29,800 --> 01:46:31,440
And thank you so much for your time today.

1650
01:46:31,440 --> 01:46:33,160
Yeah, Don, thank you.

1651
01:46:33,160 --> 01:46:34,840
And I'm happy to come back anytime.

1652
01:46:34,840 --> 01:46:39,080
And you know, we can, we can bracket things off and talk, but thank you so much for opening

1653
01:46:39,080 --> 01:46:40,880
the space for us and having this conversation.

1654
01:46:40,880 --> 01:46:43,800
I hope people were able to take something away from it.

1655
01:46:43,800 --> 01:46:45,000
Me too.

1656
01:46:45,000 --> 01:46:46,000
Happy to know that.

1657
01:46:46,000 --> 01:46:47,000
So, so thank you.

1658
01:46:47,000 --> 01:46:48,000
All right.

1659
01:46:48,000 --> 01:46:59,120
Thanks for joining us.