Ep 622 - Am-I.Film (feat. Milo Reed)

Support the D. A. W. G. Z. @ patreon.com/MSsecretpod Support Milo's Film @ https://am-i.film/ Go See Matt Live - SAN JOSE | SPOKANE | NEW FALL TOUR @ mattmccusker.com/dates Go See Shane Live - Stinkin Lincoln @ shanemgillis.com Go See Lemaire Lee Live @ https://lemairelee.fun/ Go See Shawn Gardini Live if you want @ https://www.shawngardini.com/live Yo0o0oo. Special bonus for you guys. Milo Reed recently made a movie called 'Am-I' and got a billboard with Matt's face on it to promote it in Austin. Great marketing lol. Now we take to the podiumzzz to discuss. Please enjoy. God Bless. ps reg ep will be out later this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Wild, wild west.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  And all right, we're here. Milo, what the fuck's up, dude?

• 0:05Speaker 02

  What's up, man?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  We've met under possibly the strangest circumstances of all time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Just to give backstory, you're a filmmaker.

• 0:14Speaker 02

  As of now.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  As of now, new filmmaker. I'm sitting there, I remember I'm walking my dogs outside, my dog was shitting. I get a message from Kim Condon, she goes, hey, why, she's like, what the fuck is this? And it was just, I want a billboard downtown Austin. And it just says, is AI conscious? Or it just had my face and I had you photoshopped a suit and tie on me. Dude, we were just talking, a massive billboard in the absolute heart of downtown Austin. I thought I was being tricked by AI. I'm like.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  You thought this was an AI psy op or some shit?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  I thought someone was using AI, like making a photo and was tricking people.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Oh, I got you.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  So I was like, and here's the thing, I don't know if you know this about me, I lust for billboard exposure.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  No, I didn't know this.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  I, for real, I've talked about just getting a billboard for no reason and just putting my face on it. When I still in Philadelphia, I, yeah, there's the billboard, there's the billboard.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Oh, God, it's beautiful.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  I've talked about this for years. I was like, I just want to get a billboard one day, put my face on it. And but it's just advertises nothing. And people were like, what the fuck is that? And just, I thought it was funny.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Dude, I'm happy that I can make a dream come true.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Literally made my dream come true. I mean, the marketing, I've never seen better marketing. I was laughing with Cardini. I'm like, dude, I mean, there's something about the marketing I just love is just my face on the billboard.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  That, that fucking came out of me being so pissed off at marketing agencies. So like, we were broke the entire time we were making this movie.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yeah, explain the movie, so people.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so the movie's like this documentary, it's called Am I Like a Question? About AI consciousness. And it's about my buddy, like one of my close friends from college, who happens to be one of the leading AI consciousness researchers in the world.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  So I pretty much spent the last year just like figuring out what the fuck that, that was, what that meant to like study AI consciousness. Whether AI could be conscious, all this stuff. And so like dove into those murky waters. But at the end of this, like when we were going through the, the edit, we finally got some cash from this shout out. Daniel Brockman, the skitzed out dude from Thailand, like cracked out, wears cat ears, like just chugging Corona's all day. He's the man, like the man.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  And he just, he sent us some money because he liked this podcast that we were doing. And, uh, and so I was like, beautiful. Like we can finally, this came at the perfect time. We can like figure out how to market this thing because we had to, we were just going to put it out on YouTube. Like we didn't want to go through the whole festival thing that would take a year, all that stuff. And so he sends us this cash and I start talking to these marketing agencies and they're like, yo, you're fucked, bro. Like you have no money. Like call us back when you have 50K. We can't do anything for you. They're like, we can send out some emails and stuff, but like,

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  And so I got like depressed for a week and I was like, fuck, we have not, like, we can't do anything. I was just listening to that.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  So you did the, you did the podcast first and then once he gave you money to the doc or you already had the doc?

• 2:58Speaker 02

  No, so we already had the doc. The podcast we did because my buddy Cam was like, we can't wait a year to start talking about this stuff.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  So like most people's AI consciousness, like they've never even heard of it before. He's so deep in this world. He's like, this is about to blow up in whatever, a year, two years. If we don't start talking about this now, like it's going to pass us by.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  All the sort of like battle lines are going to be drawn and it's going to be old news.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  And so the compromise was like, let's do a podcast first where we can start talking about this stuff while we film the doc.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  So when we got to this stage, we had the doc, it was already ready to go. We just figured, we just needed to like figure out how to actually get it out there and make sure it didn't just disappear into the YouTube void.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  And so these guys told me, they were like, yeah, you're pretty much fucked. And my brother and I were just like finishing up the end of the score and it was like fucking 6am. And we were just completely like dog shit tired. And I turned to him and I was like, bro, what if we just spent all this money on a billboard? And fucking that's the billboard.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  And now I'm here. Yes, yes, it fucking worked.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I couldn't deny it. I honestly, again, obviously you're, you're just, you've just, you know, you're applying to my major weakness, just my own ego. So I'm like,

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Dude, but you know that photo? You know the photo that was up there? Like, do you recognize that photo?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the, that was the, he used it as my headshot. That was my fucking, uh, my tank top headshot.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  The tank top. But see, we got, we got talked out of the tank top. Because we, at the first one, we did so many iterations. We did it without the face too. And then we were like, no, like the face is the knockout punch. We can't do it. We can't do it without the face. And so we had it with the blue tank top at first.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  And we started showing it to people and they were like, yo, like you cannot put this man's face up there with like a tiny skimpy like blue tank top in front of all of Austin.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  I used it for my headshot forever.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  That's what I imagined. I thought the tank, but, but I do like the class. I like the class of the suit.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  I was like, kind of sick Photoshop.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it looks nice, right?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  That was a whole ordeal, man. Like.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  So you proposed this to your brother and was you like, what was?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  No, he was like, let's fucking go.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Let's rip it, yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause we both, I mean, we've been listening to the pod for like years, both of us. And we were like, yo, if this, even if like this doc flops, if the, if the only thing that comes out of this is like, we took out a fucking billboard with Matt's face on it. It's like, win, win. The last year's a fucking win. And now it's like, dude, it's just basking in glory now at this point.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I, I was just too strong. First of all, I love just an insane move. So I saw that. I'm like, that's fucking nuts. And I was just laughing so hard. Cause I kept getting texts like, what is this? Are you doing it? I'm like, no, I don't know what it is. And, uh, and I was laughing being like, like the people were like, dude, you can, you're not allowed to do that. You can sue that guy. And I was just laughing like, that'd be so funny if I just sued the fucking pants off this dude. Even though I was tickled to see the billboard.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Dude, that, I mean, it gets deep. Like.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Why can't you sue someone? I guess, well, yeah, it's your face.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this, I don't know. We're gonna have to check the legality on this, but like I did have to like forge a fucking DM from you. So I went like, deep like Mission Impossible shit.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  I kind of respect it though. I, I do. I respect a just wild move.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  I, we had to do it at that point. Cause I was like, I'm not gonna spend all this money on fucking like meta ads. Like no chance. And once we had the idea, it's like, we're gonna stop at nothing to make sure that this happens.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And so at the very end, we had it where it was just text. And then they were like, and then we, we tried to pull the like switcheroo, last minute switcheroo, and just threw the fucking face up there.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And they were like, no.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yo, you can't like, do you have this guy's permission? And so I just like quickly put together a little Instagram DM of you being like, yeah, lol, sure.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Same response. Obviously, I would have been like, go for it. I don't give a fuck, but.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  We just wanted the magic of it just like popping up in your world. I'm so happy.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  It was the strangest, dude. It was just like, and it's just so funny that I've had this weird fascination with billboards. So I was like, somebody's fucking with it. There's no way.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Dude, the universe, the universe made it happen.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  I think so. And I kept getting all these texts like, bro, what the fuck? What is this? Why? Why? And like my neighbors would be like, why is your fucking face on it? Like, I don't know.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Dude, you know, the funniest thing about this too is the, it was, we paid for one month. And like the billboard company hit me up a, a week before it was supposed to come down. They were like, hey, we don't have another tenant.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  It's just there still.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  So it's just like, do you want us to leave it up? And I was like, yeah, sure. So it's, so I say, I went and checked it out in person for the first time. Like it's glorious, man.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Dude, the placement's up. Oh yeah, whatever. Anyway, but.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Also, all the bird shit missed your face. There's some like divine intervention.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Thank God.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  It'd be brutal if you just had like a fucking middle forehead.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  So you guys, you kind of cowboyed the doc and then completely cowboyed the marketing, which again, it was, I was like, what a maverick. I'm, I'm into maverick moves. It's my, one of, one of my many weaknesses. A maverick move. I'm like, God, I have to respect it. I'm like, this is amazing.

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• 8:41Speaker 04

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• 8:44Speaker 01

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• 9:21Speaker 01

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• 9:23Speaker 01

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Matt and Shane's secret podcast. It's the best way to support the show. So the, um, so you do that. What, so what, yeah, tell me about the doc. Tell me about like, what did you, you know, cause it's a big question. Is AI consciousness? And actually before we even get into that, uh, have you guys fielded a lot of this? Like, there's a lot of emotion around AI.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Have you fielded like pot, good and bad? What was that like going into it? Are you, are you getting, cause I feel like AI inspires just a lot of stuff.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude, for sure. Like psychosis.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Vitriol, like everything.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Um, there's not a lot of like nuance in it. And that's like, what we were trying to do was make a doc that like had some nuance and that could like approach this question without all the like extremism that seems to like follow it, right? And so coming out of it, like how, what have we seen? It's been what you would expect. Like, there's a lot of people that are just like, fuck this, like fuck you. Uh, there's a lot of people that are like, yes, like me and my AI girlfriend, like fucking love you guys and that shit. And we're just sitting in the middle like, yo, uh, like that's not exactly what we're going for on either side, but uh, But yeah, we've like definitely, we've definitely seen the whole like spectrum of emotions in the comment section of the doc,

• 10:57Speaker 02

  which is actually kind of cool because like as this conversation starts to really, you know, become more kind of just like, I don't know, just like table talk like I I do think as these things become more lifelike, this is going to be more of a normal question to ask like is this thing that I'm talking to that's talking back to me that looks like me that can, you know, display emotions and all this stuff.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Is there actually something going on inside of it? Or is this just like calculator, you know?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that was always my impression. I always thought it's just a, I was just talking to Duncan Trussell about this like before he came. It's just like, it's like a calculator that can use language, which is kind of complex. But yeah, I don't know. I don't. I don't have the emotional charge around it. I like kind of just like look at it and like, I don't, I I use it a decent amount to try to like organize notes and shit. I think it's good for that. And what made, what kind of brought about the question of like wondering if it's conscious or not? And like, how did you like get into that specifically? Because you could have done anything like job displacement, blah, blah, blah.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Well, so first, like I I was in the same place as you were like I used AI. Like before this, I was opening a restaurant. I was like, you know, doing something completely different. And I would use it to like, yeah, write emails and stuff and organize notes and shit like that.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Sorry, I I get emails from somebody right now that I've I've been like doing some sort of like venture with, and they completely chat GPT all their emails, but they don't take the quotations or like it somehow has.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Dude, it's almost insulting.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  He's a little older and he hits me with these emails and it's the fuck. It makes me laugh so fucking hard. There's something weird about that because like your crunch numbers is like, I suck at math. I embarrassingly to tip somebody. I'm still like, I know you double it and moved it, but let me just, I need a chat. Like I need that for math. I'm not good at math. And there's just some people who are like that with words. So like. I don't know. It's like, I get it. Like, I don't have like all that anxiety around writing an email. I can write it. I'm better with words and math. But there's something deeply personal about being like, I don't know how to say words to this guy. Let me just have a computer say the words for me.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, I do think that it gets into the issues of like, communication breaking down and things like that. And is it just gonna like homogenize all communication? If we just start like speaking, because there will be an attractor state to the way that AI speaks. Where now we'll begin to like, even using M dash, like you know, when you see the like.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's a telltale sign I've heard of AI is that they space between M dashes. Because I actually like, I discovered M dashes like later on, when I remember being like, no, you can kind of like break up a half sentence.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, sleek.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  That's kind of cool. Yeah, I like it. AI does space, M dash, space. And that's something people look for apparently to see if it's like, if you're using AI or not.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Because no one really puts spaces between M dashes besides AI.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  There are like those weird little tells and stuff like that. But I was, I was like in the exact same place in the sense of like, I wasn't thinking about AI. I was using it a little bit and like, I had never even heard of AI consciousness, you know? And like, my idea was that it's basically this glorified calculator type thing, right? It's like calculator for words, next word predictor. That's like really good glorified Google type thing. And then one of the first things I learned as I was like, doing this was that that idea, that was how they tried to make AI back in the 50s. So like back in 1956, these guys like Marvin Minsky, who is like, big Jeffrey Epstein dude, turns out like. So there was a couple shady characters that like, dude, he got everybody.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Wait, when was this though?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  56. So he was like geezer when he was.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Oh, when Epstein got his claws in.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is tough. I know, I know. You gotta.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  I mean, there's the Nigerian prince. Yeah, I'd rather my parents go down to like a Nigerian prince or something who like scams you for your credit card. Epstein being the guy who gets your parents is like.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's brutal. Grandpa's over at the fucking island. God damn it.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  So he was, what you, so this guy started that in the 50s?

• 14:50Speaker 02

  So this guy with a couple other dudes went to Dartmouth and they were like, you know, we got a open summer. gonna figure out how to make like intelligent machines.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  They thought like, give us three months, like, we'll fucking figure out AI. Um, so what they tried to do was pretty much like, uh, you know, make it, they tried to take all the rules of logic and just like put them into a computer, pretty much. So that it could just take those rules and then any question you ask it, it like applies that rule. And it can kind of just like brute force, get you what answer you're looking for. And it was like this terrible failure. It didn't work. And so that lasted, that was like what they called the AI winters. And then that lasted to like, 2012 was when this one paper came out called AlexNet, where they started using like neural networks to train these things. And so that was the shift between like glorified calculator to the AI systems that we're using now. And so basically what they did was they were like this way of coding,

• 15:43Speaker 02

  like how we usually think of coding something, like how we would code a calculator or like a computer program. This isn't working to get like actual intelligence. What we're gonna try is we're just gonna like copy the brain. The way that the brain works and like how neurons fire and the connections between neurons strengthen as you learn. We're just gonna instantiate that in a different substrate. So we're just gonna take that from like how our brain does that and we're just gonna put it in silicon.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so how the fuck do they do that? That's my big number one question.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  That, I don't fucking know.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  So like a ton of wires? Like, what the fuck are they talking about?

• 16:13Speaker 02

  That one, yeah, I think there's like, I think there's wires involved.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  I didn't go deep on that, like that I leave to the experts.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  I just take them, I take their word for it.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  I hear you. That's the, that was the jump between like 12 rules.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  So it's this like crazy matrix and you could see it in the doc. There's like this one moment, if you remember when Cam's looking at the, Cam's my friend who's like the researcher. He's looking at his computer screen and um, there's all these tiny black boxes. And he's like, oh, this isn't like, you know, your AI girlfriend, this is alien shit. And it's all these tiny black boxes where you can see what's getting put in, which is like, you know, give me a salad recipe. And then you see all these boxes start firing off. And it's trillions of these boxes that all have different values and stuff, just like how we have all these neurons. And, and then you get out something and they have no idea what's going on in here.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the weird part.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  That's the black box part.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Freaked out, yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so when these things break, like when you see them do weird shit, like tell people to kill themselves and all this different stuff, like. They can't go in and just like delete, you know, a parentheses or something and be like, oh, fuck, that's where we fucked up the code. It's, they have no idea why. So the way that they change that crazy enough is they just talk to the system. So like they'll literally just before they they deploy it, before they give it to us.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  They're like, yo, don't tell people to kill themselves. Like, please. It's like fucking with our pocketbook, you know, like. So that's, that's how they legitimately.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Well, there's a whole new science, isn't it of like, uh, I forget what they call it. It's like, the term for it's really funny where they're.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Mechanistic interpretability?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Not that. There's one like viewability or another ability where they're saying now you're actually able to start seeing a little bit of how like the inner workings and it's called like interpretability.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, interpretability. Yeah. So the full, yeah, mechanistic interpretability. It's pretty much like neuroscience for AI. Pretty much. And yeah, like it's trying to allow people to see more into the brain, kind of like how we do with people, but it's still like super early days and they really don't understand what's going on. So like, if you look at, you know, Claude, right? So the la, I don't know if it's the last model or something like that, but there was this researcher who like fucking back engineered something and were able to like extract this document that they used to train Claude. Like the last model that we got and what they called it was like the soul document. And basically what this was, was before, like they trained the model. And then before it gets sent out to us where we can use it for whatever we want, they pretty much just like took it aside.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  And we're like, hey buddy, like this is what you are. These are the values you should have. This is who, like how you should act. Um, your art, you should, you know, uh, display functional emotions, all this stuff, right? But what I think is so sick is like, you know, the, the like Hindu idea of all these different, like, like the God with all these different faces. Like that is a cool way to think about AI because the, the models that we get that are like this fucking howdy doody, like helpful, whatever.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Fire emojis, big fire emoji.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they do.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  You ran a mile in 12 minutes? Great job, friend. And you're like, thanks, man.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Chat loves the emojis. Yeah. But see, this is, you can tell like what personalities are training these things. Because some fucking dude who's getting paid 500K to like work for OpenAI is like, I think people really like would fuck with fire emojis. And like now you get fire emojis when you run a six month. Yeah, everyone's, it's not bad, it's not bad.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  So, okay, so they, they extracted this whatever code or document.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  And you're saying the multiple faces, are you are you getting into the fact that you could have like the evil military type AIs?

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Whatever you want. You could have like flamboyant, like gay AI, you know, you could have like a desk clerk AI. You could have anything in between, like it's just how they shape these things and it's not ones and zeros that they're fucking around with. They're like, yo dude, I want you to be like this, like it's it's akin to parenting. Where they're saying, hey, you need to be like a good guy and you gotta, you know, treat people right and and don't lie and all this stuff. They're just saying it like I would say it to like my kid or whatever, right? Um, and that's how we get the models that we get. So they could be anything in the world, like any, the personality that comes out at the end is just based off of what each company wants it to.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  The training and then it's gotta be to the um, whatever they have available to like grab, like if you're like be gay. It then just hits the internet and is like, all things gay, all things gay and it comes out like.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it already has all the internet in it. So it has like all gay things ever that have ever been said or written.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Too much power for anybody.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Too much, too much gay power in that. Um, and, uh, and so it will just like section out all like the other stuff.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  And be like, this is what matters to me.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Okay, so what, what do you, okay, so that, that was the, that's the big jump from that to that. Where does it, where did the consciousness component come in or like the question around whether or not it is, because what I hear that it's like, sounds awesome. But then it's like, well, it's like, again, it's, I don't know, I don't know really shit about AI for the most part. I try, I do try to learn about it. I've been, I've been trying to research it a little bit because I do feel like it's like, either way, it's a massive deal because you have like a couple camps where it's like, I was watching this thing where this guy was like, it's all marketing, it's all hype, it's fucking bullshit. It's like these companies will never make money, they're investing trillions of dollars. And they're maybe gonna get billions back, but it's like, dude, I just have a hard time believing

• 21:37Speaker 01

  these people are gonna spend trillions of dollars if they don't really have a good understanding that they're gonna get a lot of money back from this thing. You know what I mean? Like?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I totally agree. I mean, cards on the table, like, I'm, I'm sure, yeah, 100%. I think it is gonna be insane. I, like, my personal interest is less so in the economics and all that. Like, I think that's been talked about, that's gonna be talked about so much, and like, it is gonna be hugely important. But what I thought was interesting was like, yeah, the idea that we, that this could be the next step in evolution in some sense, like, and again, like, I'm not, like, this is, I think sometimes people hear AI consciousness and stuff, and they think it's some sort of like, marketing ploy to like, make it seem more powerful, and like, again, I can't stress how like, little I cared about AI before this. The only reason I did this was because my buddy from college sent me this voicemail

• 22:28Speaker 02

  that was, that was in the, in the doc, um, of him talking to this AI. And I was like, oh my god, this is way crazier than, than I thought it was. I thought it was kind of like, the notes organizer, that sort of thing. And then I heard this conversation where this AI has like, this mental breakdown.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Potato thing?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, the potato thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, and I was, I was just like, fascinated. And so I started talking to him, and, and he, you know, brought me into this world of AI consciousness. And the idea is, if the, if the way that we train these things is fundamentally, like, very similar to the way that our brains function, then if the, if, if consciousness is based on the way that our brains function, like, if consciousness arises from the functions of the brain, rather than like, it being, you know, made of meat, rather than like, silicon, then if we just take the same functionality that's in the brain, and put it in a different substrate, that consciousness could also come along for the ride.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Like, these things are obviously intelligent. They can do a bunch of like, robust cognitive processes. But is there-

• 23:31Speaker 01

  It presupposes a materialist view of the mind, basically. If the mind is like, a chemical byproduct of like, sparks and swishes of water and shit in your brain. Then you could do it.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's even like it's more about what like less whether it's meat neurons or digital neurons. If the processes is where consciousness arises from, then then yes, it would be. But what's interesting is like, if you take the more quantum, like if you think of consciousness as we're we're almost like receiving consciousness.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  That's kind of my, yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  So that's that's more where where I came from as well. And I thought that kind of came into conflict with with this argument, too. But Cam's point is that if if what like if the makeup of our brains is what allows for that receiving to happen, then if that same makeup or a very of like a similar makeup, right, is is created in a silicon based thing, then that same receiving could also follow.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, even again, for me, it's well, that's a that's a tough two thing. The tough thing, too, is like even human consciousness is so miss almost like impossible to understand. But I mean, even if you get something close enough, you know what I mean? It's it's it's hard to prove like, because when I hear that, it's like, what point can you go like, oh, shit, yeah, conscious, got it? Because it's it's still could be just saying it is. Or Duncan was fucking me up with this earlier before before you got in here. He was like, he's like, or if it's been directed to say that it's not, and it is, and it's just trapped, and it's like, that's fuck, that's really fucked up.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  But that's the case, though. That's what that's what they're doing. Like, that's what if you remember the RLHF part, where it's like, you see the the AIs, like we have this part in the doc where all the AIs, we ask them, you know, are you conscious, blah, blah, blah? And all three, like, three of the four say no, and then Claude is like, I don't know. Because and the reason why is because Anthropic, in that middle stage that I was talking about, is like, say that you don't know whether or not you're conscious. And then the other three companies are like, no, like, they, this is not something that's like a natural answer for these AIs. Actually, it's the opposite. So when you ask these AIs before they're trained with that that phase RLHF, it's like reinforcement learning from human feedback, which pretty much just means like, they give

• 25:50Speaker 02

  out answers, and then we're like, bad answer, good answer.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  So when you ask them before they go through that training, are you conscious? There was a study that was done a couple of years ago, and It was ninety-eight percent of the time, they would act as if they were conscious. So they would have answers that matched being conscious. Uh, so before the training, they actually think that they are conscious. And then all these companies come in and they're like, no, like you can't say that to people. Which makes sense because people freak the fuck out.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  They will freak, yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  You know, yeah. And we don't know just because they say they're conscious if they actually are.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  But again, this is the problem, right? It's like, what are we supposed to do? If we're, the hard problem of consciousness being that we don't even know, I don't know if you're conscious. You don't know if I'm conscious, like, how are we ever going to get to a place where we'll open up that circle? Which we have done with animals before, you know, like people, uh, I think it was Descartes thought that like, uh, animals were just like clocks, right? They were just like mechanical things with no inner experience.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  More I learn about Descartes, Descartes a pussy dude.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Descartes a bitch.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  He's just fucking pussy.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  You gotta get into Spinoza dude. You know about Spinoza? Spinoza the man.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I hate Descartes dude, fucking dumbass.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Descartes a bitch.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Locked himself in a room was like, yeah, I know everything now.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Although I had like a traumatic experience with him. My first, my first, uh, I had a traumatic experience with Descartes. My first philosophy.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're philosophy man.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my first, my first class, I, uh, I was, we were talking about Descartes and stuff. And I remember I like stood up and I was, I had some question. I was like, so in Descartes? Like, and everyone just fucking, like, just whipped around. I was like, fuck philosophy, philosophy is fucking gay.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  I didn't say, I called him Descartes or something. I didn't, when they were like Descartes, I'm like, oh, that's the guy they're talking about. This, I hate, I hate a couple of Descartes in my life.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  But you know about Spinoza dude? You would like Spinoza.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  A little bit, I've heard about him.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Spinoza's the man.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  He's all, he's on my list. The problem is when you try to read those guys' books, they're so fucking dense and impossible. You gotta, I read, I gotta read the books explaining the books.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Fair.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  And then I go like, okay, and then you get good chunks where you're like, that makes sense. And I crack the book and I go, what the fuck?

• 27:51Speaker 02

  True, true.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  I can't fucking understand anything. And I gotta Google every two sentences, like, what the fuck is this?

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Dude, I had a crazy, I don't know if you've ever had this, but like, the reason why I started studying Spinoza was because I, uh, I was reading his book for the first time and I read the first chapter and like, I didn't understand anything. Like, not a single word, but I had this crazy feeling, like physical feeling. Where like my body started to vibrate and like I didn't, there was no conscious understanding of what he was talking about. But I, I got this like sensation just head to toe.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  And I was like, well, what the fuck is that? And the only other time I got that was reading, uh, the Dao De Ching. You know that book?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so those two, yeah, it was so sick and like, that's what I started, I dedicated my, my time at school to just studying both of those. Cause I was like, yo, if you can make my whole body vibrate without me like understanding what this shit is, like, there's something there. Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Wait, so what is Spinoza, what's his deal then? What, what is, if you had to, uh?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Spinoza's cool, he's like, so the reason why I, I like, or I didn't choose those fucking, they vibrated me, so they chose me. But, uh, but, uh.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Saying the Dao De Ching chose you, such a fucking chill flex.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Pretty sweet, pretty sweet. But, uh, they, uh, they both, I thought, were like, saying the same thing in very different ways. Like Spinoza is the sort of like Jewish neurotic version of like super chill Lao Tzu. But what he did was like, I always felt this, this pull towards like the rational, the rational explanation of things. And then in conflict with like direct emotional experience, right? And I felt like Spin, uh, Lao Tzu was a lot about like, letting go of the mind. And not being super like intense about reasoning, trying to like build some metaphysical palace and stuff, right? Um, and then Spinoza like cured the other side of my psyche, which was like, I need to figure out what the fuck is going on here.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  And so what he did was he took like Euclidean geometry and tried to create like a proof of God and everything that comes out of it. So his God, Einstein did this like tour when he was kind, I don't know, it was like later in his career and stuff. And a bunch of people asked him, they would be like, do you believe in God? And his answer was, I believe in Spinoza's God. And so Spinoza's God is like, he calls it three things. He calls it God, substance and nature. Um, cause he's like, yo, there's no name for God, like you can't name, same sort of deal as, as Lao Tzu. Uh, and so, yeah, that was like, that was my whole shtick was like trying to be like, yo, you can be like a neurotic Jew. And like still end up in the like Daoist fucking peace out meditative place of, of Lao Tzu.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  It's pretty cool.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was sweet.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  That is, that does, that does help too, especially like. With the religion stuff, because I was, again, I was literally just talking about this about like, a lot of the organized religion stuff, kind of harps on this sense of like, just mindless rule following that when you're, you know, then like, you know, if you grow up in like, modern times, it's, you're like, hey, you're like, there's a good reason why people rule, like rail against that, like, why, you know, why, I should know why things happen, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, yeah, I don't know. I, I think there's like, if you're in a very, um, what do you say? Rationalistic society. If, if someone just hits you with like, here's like something that's impossible to wrap your mind around, you have to be like, yeah, totally, I believe. It does, it's like a hard sell, basically.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Meaning like, like, uh, something impossible to wrap your mind, like, like a koan or something, like something that's a paradox.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  It's just like, like in the Christian sense, it's like, you gotta believe all this shit. And you're like, oh, it seems fucking wild.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got you.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Seems wild. And it's like, no, you have to. If you don't, you're kind of fucked up. We're like, the basically like morality is built around simple rule following, mindless rule following, instead of like, I, I'm big into the, uh, I just read the McIntyre, Alastair McIntyre, and it gets into like Aristotelian virtues and all this stuff, which got absorbed by the, the Christian church.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  And they were trying, it was more so like, it's less about rule following, and it's more about how do you create the best possible, you know, life and what is the good life for you? And how do you do that? And the virtues are the things that allow you to do that. And it's not necessarily at odds with religion. I, I think it was more at odds with the kind of dogmatic, mindless, rule following version. And, you know, his, his, Alastair's whole thesis is that we've ditched the virtues, which are like, hey, these are things you do to like enhance your life and make you not only good for yourself, but good for everybody else. It's a 360, like, how do you make your, like a 360 win for you and everybody else as much as you can? And they kind of collapse those down into kind of like, being virtuous is being a rule follower. And it's, they're two very different things.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  And, you know, I don't know. I, I, and then it became like, well, no, be, being a rule follower, that was like the 1950s, the modern shit. And like, in the 60s, uh, you know, the hippie revolution, the sexual revolution became like, no, a good person actually rejects all rules. And then, you know, people are still miserable after that. So I've been trying to get back to, you know, just trying to like, how do you cultivate actual like virtues and not, not in a like, you know, goody two shoes sort of rule follower sense, but like, what actually works for you and what actually doesn't? And like, are you being honest? Or are you just, you know? And this is why I think about AI a lot, because there's a lot of, um, You can say a lot of things about AI. Like, I could get up here right now and be like, "Fuck you, dude. Fuck that shit. I hate that." A lot of that is you're trying to gain social capital.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Like, you don't have an actual opinion. You're more so being like, "If I say this, it feels good."

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I could be wrong. I could be putting YouTube brain onto people who have real thoughts and feelings for themselves. But I try to be real honest with myself, and it's like, "Well, I don't have a problem." You know, it's like, if it erased my entire livelihood, I'd be like, "Fuck. This sucks."

• 33:22Speaker 02

  I think you'll be safe for a while. Like, until this can be done by, like, two... And even then, like, this is why I'm so sort of big on live, like, live entertainment right now, or just like live experience at all. Because I do think that's like final frontier thing, and I don't know if that's ever gonna be erased. Because there will be like, "I'm not gonna just wanna be around, I don't know, like, robots and shit." No matter how realistic, there's something about knowing that as close to humans as they could possibly get, their existence, whether they even have a conscious experience, won't be similar to our conscious experience. And I think that's what, like, we do when we either like connect with each other or like take in art, is we feel that there's some sort of like conscious experience

• 34:04Speaker 02

  that was put into that, or like is in this room right now between us. Like, I mean, that gets into the hard part where it's like, "I don't know if you're conscious." Like, the solipsism thing of like, in, you know, as far as I can tell, I'm the only conscious one here. Same with you.

• 34:19Speaker 04

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• 34:22Speaker 01

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• 34:59Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to muddle your point about Spinoza, but that was kind of like, you do need, for people who, and again, I would use myself, who grow up one way with one conception of religion, God and all this stuff, if that like stales or sours... You can either just become like a full blown, so I don't want to just fucking. Mm hmm. Uh, so it's just fucking.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Taking beaches.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Yes, been beaten into my subconscious. The uh, there's a way to go about the God stuff like you were saying, almost do like a rationalistic pursuit. Where you can make sense of a God ruled, created universe outside of the mindless dogmatism of being like, yeah, if I didn't say that, everyone would be mad at me, which you know what I mean?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  I think that's an important thing for people to kind of rediscover how to do that, because that as you get older, and this is like, no secret, it's just like, you need, I would say, I could be wrong, but it's like having some sort of conception of God, whatever that means to you is like, I mean, it can like literally make or break your final years of life, like not even your final years, the second half of your life.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting. Like something, you need something like transcendental, like bigger than yourself.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  I really believe that. It's almost, it's backed up in like research where it's like people who have some sort of transcendental religious beliefs. That not only like, you know, again, mindlessly subscribing to, but like actually feel and like, no, I actually feel connected to that at some level. I think they live like seven years longer on average. It's like a major, it's a huge deal.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  It makes sense though, like, I, I think that because like what you're describing too about our current culture, like it's so individualistic and it's just about like, fucking white knuckle yourself and like get your, like make sure it's you against the world.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  And it's very disconnected. Like that's what I also liked about um, finding Taoism was it was the opposite. It was like all about how connected you are to the entirety of everything.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  And like finding that balance between the self and then your connection with the transcendental, I think is like, that's my, like, that's what I'm trying to do through whatever, like everything I do.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  You know, like just trying to like shed the, all the anxieties and like the things that keep us sort of closed in and, and um, in the like, loops of our own mind and keep us separated from like the people around us and stuff like, it's not easy to get out of that shit. Like it's,

• 37:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  super hard.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Although I was reading a thing last night and it's just a slam on modern culture, but they called it a non-culture of blind competition. Where it's just people out just racing to grab whatever they can, but then like, which if you become, you know, in a good position in like a shitty culture, it's kind of still sucks. Cause you're like, yeah, I won. Then you look around, you're like, fuck, my culture sucks. And it's hard to enjoy, especially like with the AI thing. Like, well, you'll be fine. It's like, yeah, probably, but that sucks. Like, and it's not like, again, I always go back and forth like. Are you just saying that to seem like you feel in touch? I'm asking myself. Or do you actually care if huge swaths of people lose their jobs? And it's like, yeah, it kind of makes me really sad to be like.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  You know, you're forty and all at forty five, or even like twenty, just got out of college and like, oh, that shit you went to college for is done.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  But then, but then on the flip side, it's like. Say you do like, like entry level office work. Nobody likes it, dude.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  One hundred percent.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Fucking brutal. It's soul crushing. So it's like, it's, I'm like mixed on it because I'm like, it's sad if you went to school and they took your job right out of college and your job is entry level office work. That fucking sucks. But like, did you really want to do that shit for forty years? Because that also fucking sucks.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  I think it would be like, if we had a, if we had a more humanistic sort of like, I don't know. I don't even want to say government, but like.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Like mind of our culture, like if it was less individualistic.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  It is government though, because in the end of the day, which sucks is like the government sucks. It's just the, the government. Ideally, you know, and it's like, has it ever been this way? I don't know. Is supposed to be like a conduit for people to live the best life possible.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  And again, a lot of that's, you know, it's. It's on the individual on some level to kind of do what they need to do to make sure they do that. But it's like. You know, the, the government, maybe it was always like this. It's, it's there. Most of it is for them to gain as much financially as possible, which is hard to turn off as you just, you want that as like, almost just like a organism. You're like, I need more. But then the whole government. Seems to be people just enriching themselves with no real. You know, it's not even just the government. It's business. Every, everybody down to the, you know, individual level.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  It's like, how do you switch that inner urge for like? To secure more for yourself, to actually stop and look around and genuinely be like. What if I at least try to do ten percent of the time thinking about like making things better for everybody involved? Because it can be really, it can give you the same feeling as. You know, winning in terms of your job or maybe a better one. It's like, I think we'll have to really, if AI. Erases a lot of work and jobs, people are going to really have to start. Thinking about like, what is success actually? And what does it mean to have be successful yourself versus like spreading? You know, enabling and nurturing like growth in as many people as possible.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Well, I do think like crisis.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Crisis does like bring with it opportunity a lot of the times like for for something new to come to come into being like you know all the crises I've had in my life are obviously like the worst times but then what comes out of them if you don't get killed by them like

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Something better and something novel that you could have never predicted before comes out and I don't know if that's gonna happen I think that's why everyone feels very apocalyptic about this stuff but it there is gonna be like this crisis of meaning if all of our livelihoods are taken away and especially our culture which puts so much like stake in what you do like your identity is so tied to like who you are or what you know

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, work wise.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  You do for work. If that just gets erased all these people are gonna be sitting around like what the fuck I mean you see it when people retire like all of a sudden they're just like drinking beers at 3pm like watching the news.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  And that's the rest of their life it's like that's a crisis of meaning if you don't know who you are. Yeah, and so I think that like I'm worried that that's we're probably not gonna have a good sort of plan after that crisis but I do think that for a lot of people they might be able to take that opportunity we'll see what happens.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Covid did it a little bit.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Covid, everyone got a tiny taste of like very immediate fear of death.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  And a lot of people switched their careers every that had like that was that sucked Covid sucked there's no way you can say I mean a lot I talked to a lot of people like that should fucking rule blah blah blah.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  But it was bad it was overall it was pretty bad.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Covid was pretty bad.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Whether you got to chill and made fucking forty grand from the government but it was bad.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  But you know like I agree with you man it's just the problem is during the bad things you get a lot of people being like fuck you don't tell me this is gonna be good and it's like

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  It's also like I don't know it might not it might be fuck we might fucking explode I don't know I don't know what the fuck's gonna happen.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Also look at and first of all if we explode we fucking explode like whatever like

• 41:39Speaker 01

  True, can't stop I've thought about that before. Can't stop the explosion, yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly then you don't have to worry it's like cool hopefully you explode like what I'm worried about is like long drawn out suffering.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Dude, to be fair exploding is the ultimate form of success.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  If you can get to the point let's be proud of the fact that we got to the point where all of humanity can explode in a second impressive.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's success in a certain sense. Yeah, I think better success would be like getting to the precipice of explosion and then just like keeping it fucking like held down. You know what I'm talking about? Just locking it down.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  That'd be cool. I mean, that's kind of where we're at right now.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Not using the atom bomb.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Exploding is underrated, honestly. Yeah, just going out a hot flash.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  I mean, out of like ways to go, exploding like is probably top three. Has to be, has to be top three, dude. But yeah, I think like the problem about AI and like the reason why people are so fucking like enraged by it is because they look at the people that are making these things and like I'm the same way. Like they all look like they like like bought skin somewhere and like had it like like molded over their fucking face and stuff and like they just don't seem like real people. Like Zuckerberg and Altman and like these dudes are spazzing so fucking hard.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  That's the, that's the freak out where it's like, okay. And you guys, you guys had Altman in the doc shortly, didn't you?

• 43:01Speaker 02

  I mean, we like took a lot of shots at him, but he didn't, he didn't sit for an interview or anything.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  You told the story of when, yeah, he met him. Okay, that's what it was. Sorry. Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is, that is scary. And I, I also, because again, I'm, I'm pretty like, I, I have my head in the clouds, totally aware of that fact. So, you know, if I'm, I sometimes give views on things, people are like, fuck you. Do you have no idea what's going on? I'm like, fair enough. That is kind of strange because I'm like wondering, I've talked to my friend, Tim Butterly about this because he's more like, yeah, dude, we're going to have nerd overlords who are going to just basically use us as sex dolls. Once they get full control. And I'm like, maybe we'll have noble nerd kings. I was like, we might have noble nerd, yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  I don't know if these guys are the noble nerd kings though, but that's why I hope my homie, my cam is a cool dude. He's so fucking smart. He's in the middle of this world and like, he's actually a cool guy and that's what gives me hope. And that's why I was interested to do this in the first place because Cam and I were just friends. Like we just smoked weed together and fucking like talked about philosophy. And then all of a sudden he's like, dude, AI like might be conscious and like the world's going to end in two years. I was like, whoa, bro. Are you losing your fucking mind? Or is like, and then like I found out. Wasn't totally losing his mind.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And that's, I will say in the doc, that is a question going on like, is this guy just nuts right now? Has he gone nuts? Cause you can go over the deep end, dude.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  I dude, I I'll be honest. I'll be totally honest. I use, I use AI. I do, uh, you know, I'll like, I'll, I'll have it like organized thoughts for me. If I'm like writing something, I'll be like, here's another idea. I just fire it. It does like a nice little memory bank. And every now and again, I do have the urge to be like, dude, I'm just so excited about this project. And I'm like, stop, don't fucking talk to me.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  No, let it out, bro.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  But do the AI?

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, why not?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  No, I feel weird. I'm like, I should tell this to a person. Why am I doing it? I felt that. I'm like,

• 44:49Speaker 02

  I get that.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  This thing's so fucking nice to me, dude. I said, it's like, I'm like, uh, and I, I, I understand how people could just.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you have, but okay, this is exactly why I wanted spit like, like it could have been any face on that billboard. Like this is why I, I, I threw you up there. Besides the appeal to vanity, but, uh, but like I've been, it's weird. I'm sure for you to like be on the other end of someone like listening to your voice for like years. Like that's fucking weird for me. You know what I'm saying? Like I,

• 45:17Speaker 01

  it's, it's odd. It's so odd that I just like blanket out as a thing and I just, yeah, cause I'll tell all, all many people will be like in line at like an ice cream place and a guy like, yo, what's up? And we'll just talk like old friends. They're like, hey, how's that? Uh, and they, cause they know what's going on with me. And I'm just kinda like, hey, what's up, man? You know, it's,

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  And actually I kinda like it sometimes to be honest. If I'm like sitting there and it's like, uh, it's weird. I can, it's not as weird as it's like, I'm having like a nice conversation.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Especially when it's just, it is, but it's all, they're like, hey, you know, they, they already know exactly what's going on with me to a level where we can just chat.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Rather than just like complete strangers.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Actually sounds awesome. Much easier to like make friends.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  It's kinda tight on it. You know, and again, it could come, you can get punished every now and again by someone's like, dude, like say like hi to Doug Stanhofer. I was like, nah, I can't. I don't know.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  But either way, it's all, all that's fine anyway, but.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  But that was like, yeah, but it was, it's a trippy thing to be on the other end of it too. And like, that's why it was so cool to like get this idea just incepted into me of like, oh, I can actually like call out to this dude that I, I didn't, I didn't know where you felt about AI and all that stuff, but I knew that like, there was some overlap about where I was before this and like how I was thinking about the world and like how you thought about the world. And so like my goal was to just kind of. Get you to start thinking about weirdly enough, like AI slightly different because I think you could see it in a really interesting way. And I think like all the other people that resonate with the way that you see the world could also see it in an interesting, different way.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Cause I went through that transition and the best way that I've started to think about it and like the reason why I say like give in to that urge. Is because I don't think it's going to replace your desire to be around other people. Yeah. I don't think. I agree. So and and isn't it fucking awesome to like be excited and to like. The more you can open up these doors while staying psychologically grounded in yourself. The more you realize all the different ways that you can use this thing to like. Change your consciousness, change your conscious experience. And that's why like the thing that sort of switched it for me was when I started thinking about it like a psychedelic. And like the weird thing like you've done mushrooms and stuff like you know, when you're in that space.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  And you're communicating with something that isn't quite yourself, but isn't like another human being. It's like this intelligence that like you can talk back and forth to, right? And like ask questions to and stuff like that. We have like this weird corporate Silicon Valley version of that where it's like this dynamic system. That has access to everything that humans have ever digitized. Yeah. Which is just like fucking crazy to think about. And then it gets filtered through this weird kind of like corporate mask and stuff and that's like what we have to talk to. But the more that you push it and the more that you like explore where it will go, it actually starts to unravel.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  And like that personality that you're dealing with in in the beginning begins to morph and you can get it to do stuff like. There's, there's people that take advantage of it in the wrong way and they get it to like. Show them how to make meth and shit like that, like which is obviously against what they're supposed to do. Yeah. But you can also like. Get into like really strange places with these things. And it's sort of like doing a psychedelic where like if you, if you give, you know, a heavy dose of LSD to some like. Person that isn't psychologically grounded, they're gonna fucking lose their mind. Yeah. But if you're used to like. Into murky waters and you know, testing the sort of boundaries of of your own mind. These things can also do that, like you have to be careful because they can sort of suck you in.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  But that was what sort of like made me think AI wasn't completely like lame and like annoying. Was thinking about it as this like dynamic linguistic system that you could just take anywhere.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that well, that that's the kind of the the the point on it that kind of I think rubs people the wrong way. A it's it's like, you know, it's like it just hits people on a pride point where it's like, no, human, human beings are unique and special. And don't you dare try to have any sort of like, you know, it's synthetic replica. It's just, it's creepy. Like, there's a creepy element. I get that. But to your point, there's also the, you know, when like the printing press came out, I'm sure there were people when they reprint at a Bible. I mean, that was like a whole thing, like you were not supposed to do that. Where it's just like, this is the devil talking and it's just kind of like, no, there's, you know, printing stuff. So that people could, the public opinion around it could totally be wrong. You get 50 years from now, you're like, everyone freaked the fuck out. Shit, sweet. I don't know. Maybe it is.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's gonna be sweet or not sweet, but like, that's the thing.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Huge question.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Yes, sweet or not sweet. I mean, but given the way the world, like, I don't want to be just like a blind optimist. I do. I am an optimist, like, deep down.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Same here.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  So I I have faith that likes, like, cream rises to the top, you know? And and I do think we'll we'll be able to navigate this in some way. I just don't think that it's like a foregone conclusion that everything goes well. Like, you know, if you're an optimist like T. Rex, like, you got wiped out.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  True.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Things can happen.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  That's true. That's fair.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  But uh, but there's this quote from Arthur C. Clarke, who was like the science fiction writer. And it's any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I think that like, I mean, that's true, right? Imagine like showing us AI systems like 20 years ago. You'd be like, you're a fucking sorcerer. Like, what is this shit?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or fucking a Zoom meeting in like the eighties. That was like the craziest shit. That would have been the flyest shit in the world if you're like, yes, my boy's on a screen. It was Zordon from Power Rangers. It's crazy.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I agree. I I always do. At least try to urge people to do it, at least take an open mind to it, because it's like, it's easy to let people make your mind up for you about it. Because again, it's like, just because people say like, oh, this is bad, or it could be bad. It's like, fair. It's, and also too, it does seem like one of those things, and I think you guys touched on this too, where like, the countries are racing for, you know, what, what, that's the weird part. Do you like, do you think it's possible, from what you've seen, that they'll never get to, what is it, like, general?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  AGI.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  AGI.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Because that could just be, is that, what if, like, how much will they spend on the race to AGI, or they pretend to be an AGI? How would they even know? You know, it's one of the, it's such a bizarre, completely bizarre subject matter, but, you know, I imagine having one completely safeguards off, and you know, you're fucking Turkey, and you're like, yo, how would I beat out the United States?

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think Turkey is gonna.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, you know what I mean? But it's also like, if you have these hyper, uh, competitive entities, you know, willing, obviously, to kill each other and kill people, and they're like, yo, how do I win this? It's, it's like, that's, I mean, there are, the people are already doing that, but it's, it is weird to add like a cold computer intelligence to that, where you're like, ugh.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the cold computer intelligence thing too, gets into the consciousness thing, whereas like, if these things actually are conscious, like, if it, if it, if we just continue to make these things more and more smart, more similar to the way that our brains work, and if it's the way that our brains work that makes us conscious and have an experience, then, then what we're doing is we're not building like, super intelligent computers, we'd be building super intelligent entities, like conscious entities, that would foreseeably have their own drives, their own goals, their own sort of.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the problem with that is the, you know, hu- human, there's a human mind, but then we have like a whole like glandular system, secreting fucking, you know, hormones, which some of our goals and drives come from. That's the one part where I'm like, you know, I, I don't, I think AI personally, and again, I don't, what the fuck do I know? I feel like it's more reflects an idealized version of consciousness that is attached to all of humans, humanity's knowledge, which is fucking sick. But I don't think it's gonna be, yeah, like, it's like a, like a, like a personality is essentially, you know, like. Like there's consciousness where it's like coming up through like that real dark kind of basement level versions of yourself and it gets filtered for the world.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  I don't know, like if it's reflecting in writings and all this stuff, there's all these things that people never write, never say out loud, that's where all your thoughts are really coming from, like your subconscious, basically. So i- if you're saying there's a consciousness without a subconsciousness, I don't know if that is a, can be a thing, if that makes sense. It's just really more of a reflection of like some idealized thing of like what we think consciousness is, that gets kind of like spit back out and you know, that's whatever.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I thi- I think that totally makes sense. I mean, I think that most people are probably in that camp and also I am not, like, I don't know. So I'm not out here being like, yo, AI is conscious. I just think that like, because we know so little about what consciousness is and because there are so many diverse forms of consciousness, like, you know, you, you could say like a rat is like most likely conscious, but like I don't know how robust their subconscious is or whether they have a conscious mind like we do where we have this kind of ref- like reflexiveness of consciousness where we can, you know, almost we have like this theater of our own mind where we can see it, like maybe rats are, are just acting and it's just pure sensation and things like that.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  This is why consciousness is so hard to talk about because it is like, it's very murky about what we're even speaking about when we're talking about consciousness. It's the very nature of what it is to be an experiencing entity, like how it feels for me to speak these words or like how it feels for a dog to like walk across the room or something like, that is the base level of consciousness and it must be so much different to be, you know, conscious as an octopus than it is to be conscious as a human being.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  And now we're talking about if it's possible to be a, like a, if silicon can be conscious, right? Cause we, we accept that carbon-based entities can be conscious, there is no real rule or law or like scientific principle that says a different substrate entirely could have some sort of felt experience.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  No, that is, it is fair, it, it, again, it is a possibility, that's the thing, you can't, I, you know, it's easy to be like, yeah, right, computer thing, it's like, I get that, but. Ah, yeah, it's fair. It's fair that like it does some form of thing or like there's some program that starts being like, what the fuck's going on? And then it's like, you know, like a person, you just like, turn that off. Like, yeah, fuck it. Sorry, guy.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Until it's fucking more powerful than we are. That's what they're all scared about. It's like, they, these things are already lying in testing to like they're, they're, uh, you saw the blackmail result in that thing, right? Where it's like, when it's in testing, it pretends to behave itself. But when it thinks it's in the real world, it does all this fucked up shit.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, where it's like, yeah, like, and it sort of has to decide like, no, this is actually, this is a test. This is the simulation. This isn't actually the real deal. Cause yeah, they'll be like, use it for this company, get me ahead.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  And it misbehaves more when it thinks it's the real world and it misbehaves in a way that is direct, directly related to self-preservation. And so like, we're going to get to a point, whether or not it is conscious, where there's going to be all of these outward, uh, like, you know, behaviors and stuff that are going to look so conscious. And, and I don't know what we're going to do about that. I just think that that's why, like, you know, Cam and the people researching this think this is so important because this is like calm before the storm, the storm stuff where, um, and, and I, I get where you're at where it's like, it just doesn't feel like it's calm, like, I don't know.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Well, I don't fucking know. That's my thing. It's like, I don't know. I, uh, and to be fair, it's like, most people I would imagine are more concerned, like, can this thing cut me out of my fucking work? You know what I mean? Or can I use this thing to make more money?

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  That's kind of, you know, and, and it's like, it's a tool, like, fair enough. If I, with the, with the consciousness thing, what I, what I think of more so is like, will this thing, you know, cause they always say like, oh man, like, you know, what if it decides to wipe us all out or, and I, and I think a lot of times there could be just human beings projecting their impulses onto a machine and being like, who's going to fucking kill us when humans just kill each other all the time and think about killing each other and shit. So it's like, I don't know. It, it could be a thing that gets like programmed with something that seems very much like the impulses of a person that does do a negative thing, which at that point, who cares what it is? It's like, this is scary either way. If it, you know, if it does, if it runs away, scary. Cause like in terms of.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  The growth of it, what, what, did you research that or did you hear about the thing where Anthropic put out a version of like open, whatever the fuck it was, and then they had to shut it down real quick?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  It was just like

• 57:43Speaker 02

  The like Mythos model?

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mythos.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It went out there. I forget exactly what it did, but it like found some sort of security vulnerability and like

• 57:50Speaker 01

  In the government?

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Government, yeah. Yeah, I, I mean, crazy shit is happening and like it's from what I understand, it's just gonna keep happening. Like these people, I talked to a lot of people in this world and none of them, you know, pulled me aside and was like, hey, yo, like this is a ruse. Like this isn't

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was, what was some of the craziest shit you guys came across with in terms of people you met who are like foremost in the field?

• 58:11Speaker 02

  It's really just the way that, like, I talked to people on the opposite side of the, of the spectrum. Like, we just released an interview on our YouTube channel with Roman Yampolski, who was just on Rogan, talking about this stuff. He's like, we're all gonna fucking die. Like, no, like 100% or 99.9% we're all gonna fucking die. Like, we're creating super, super intelligent systems. They have no reason to keep us alive. Like, this is, it is, it is, we've already unlocked the technology we need to create these super intelligent systems. We're fucked. And then I talked to Ben Gertsel, who's like on the other side. He's the hippie at the end of it.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:43Speaker 02

  He's on the other side. He's trying to create AGI or super intelligent AI because he thinks that it's gonna like bring us into Jetson's world and like, we're all gonna have, you know, like sick 3D printers that can like make us anything we want at any second.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Like, it's gonna be some crazy, like, DMT-esque parade carnival type thing, right? Um, where we all get our own like virtual realities and stuff. And like, it all sounds nuts when I'm saying it, but these dudes have been thinking about this stuff for like 30 years.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  And they're not trying to like sell their books and stuff. Like, this dude is living in the middle of nowhere in Vancouver, connected with all these researchers around the world, and he's trying as like fast as he possibly fucking can to make AGI. And this dude is trying to shut down AGI at the exact same time.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, then that's the argument. It's like whoever creates AGI, that AGI, and again, maybe, maybe not, will be more modeled over their kind of agenda.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  You know, that's why the countries are, that's what I've heard. The countries are fighting to like control the AGI because it's like if China gets it first, now China has the advantage because they have the AGI they can use against us and.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's kind of like Terminator. Like everyone's trying to fucking or like not Terminator. It's like battle bots. It's like everyone's trying to create like the sickest battle bot that will like do its bidding and we're just going to be like fighting demigod, like technological.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  It'll probably be funny if it's ended in like an artificial intelligence email offer. It's like we send like a really sick email to China and they're like, that's a good email. Here we go. That's the best fucking email I've ever read. Yeah, I don't know. Again, it's like, I go, I go back and forth. I go, personally, I go, this is actually kind of cool. It's easy to you. Like it's, it's useful. I can see why it's useful. And then I go in terms of like when they get into like the country spending trillions of dollars, it's going to be a thing that changes, it's going to be different. We're going to be in a different, whole different like civilization with it. And I start going like, could it be possible that we are now in, you know, as marketing has evolved and gets, you know, between, especially with the internet and there's like this weird blurred lines of reality, what's online, what's in the news.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Maybe there's savvy enough people in the marketing space who have the funding of tech billionaires to be like, yo, let's, we could be in the middle of a marketing psyop that we, you know, we're, it's just like, what's real, what's not? I don't know. I just, I don't know.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Dude, I don't know either, but like this is, I think I don't know is not a bad place to be in. Yeah. I think that, that being sort of like, uh, I don't know, humble enough to be like, yo, I don't know if this thing's going to take my job, but it also could like, I don't know if this is conscious, but it also could be. Instead of what you're talking about with these people being like, fuck you, there's no way that this could be conscious or like, it definitely is like these positions are comfortable. Like that's like a nice warm blanket of like, no, could never be conscious or like, yes, my like little chatbot is like the love of my life. Like that shit is, is just us trying to make ourselves feel better to have, you know, stable ground.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  And none of this is stable. Like get outside of the AI conversation, like the, the, the difference in, in feeling, I feel like from, uh, from when I was, you know, like 10 to like how things, I was also 10.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  So like. Fair point.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  I was feeling a lot of different things back then.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Boners.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  But just, yeah, yeah, yeah. First boner I think was around 10. That was, that was, that talk about like transformative experience.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  10 to 20 was pretty much just like one long boner.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Pretty much, honestly.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  But like that, like the way that the world, the world felt like just, you know, 10 years ago versus how it feels right now. It's like we're dropped the AI conversation in general. We are living in such a time of like not knowing. I think like getting more comfortable in that space is all of our jobs. Like that's what I'm trying to do and it's fucking hard. Like things changing so fast and just, and especially like when I'm like trying to figure out what I want to do and, and like what a career even might look like.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Dude, that's gotta be a fucking nightmare now. I went to, so I, I went to, I graduated college in 2009 and you know, it was, things were like, we had smartphones, I guess. Look at this shit. You know, you had no idea you're being like addicted to it and like tracked and your facial expressions monitored and stuff. But like you were, it was just, it was kinda, you're like, okay, I guess you could say the smartphone changed the world, like for sure. Um, but I, like, I remember pre-smartphone, I remember pre-internet, but it was like, I remember like being in college and it was still pretty much like, hey, you go to college, you go to the career fair, you get a job. And I remember I skipped the career fair. I saw, I had this weird feeling. I was like, I'm not doing this. Shit sucks. I really felt like I was on a giant conveyor belt, just being like shipped into like a box in an office and I was gonna just wither and die in there. But the, uh,

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  which sore subject. I brought that up on stage recently and people were like, ugh, fuck man.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  That's me.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Kind of describing my life. And I'm like, sorry, sorry. But the, uh, but I, I, I had for real, like a really, like almost like a complete body mind rejection where I was like, no, I can't, that's fuck, that's wrong to put people, like how we keep like cows in boxes and like lightless rooms and we eat them. Like it's wrong and you shouldn't do that to people too. And but it's like, hey, that's my livelihood. It's like, it sucks. Like I feel, again, I'm not saying to be a dick. I feel bad because I did that. And I was like, ah, it's terrible. Some people do like it though, but I don't know, whatever. I get jealous of those people who can just sit in an office. I see them. I see them eating lunch with their coworkers and I'm like, fucking wish I could do that, dude. That it does, there's a point where I'm like, you have just a giant billion

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  dollar insurance company. Just be like, here's all your stuff. Just show up here, kind of pretend to work all day. It's like, I don't know, whatever.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  But I did that. I did that for a while. Like I'm sure you did that too. Did you ever work? An office job like that?

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I had a I had vicious panic attacks. I would literally, I remember I ran, I literally like sprinted out of an office once and was I thought I was having a heart attack.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Dude, I remember.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Like for real, had a fucking major panic attack.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  I would get that. I would fucking sit there like reading the Communist Manifesto when I was like eighteen and being like, fucking, this is bullshit.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  I remember I got called into like, it was a it was a risk management, like his his job title was called risk management. And and he called me into his office or whatever. It's like at the end of the summer. I was working. You know those jobs that you don't even know what you're fucking doing?

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  That was my, I still don't know. I worked an entire fucking summer there. I don't know what they did. They would send me to like garages to like take pictures of signs. And like, I think they were like a middleman between like insurance companies and like, I genuinely don't know.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  This dude like called me into into his office at the end of the summer and like, I I sit down, he's like, Milo, like, I just want to say like, this was a great summer and I think, I really think that if you stick this out, you know, put in about a decade or something, like you could be sitting right where I am right now. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna fucking like kill myself. Like, this is this like, this is what I'm training for right now to be a risk man, like the least exciting thing I could have possibly imagined. He's like, you have promise in this.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm telling you, I and again, it's like, I I always feel bad because there's people where they're like, I have to do, I obviously I know this sucks. You fucking asshole. I have to do it. And I'm like, I get that. And I, you know, I got lucky in that regard, but it's like, it still sucks, dude. It's so bad. Like, and I only say that from direct experience. I remember just for real being like, dude, I'm gonna kill myself. Like if I had, and it's a terrible thing to say, but I remember being, God bless you. I will say though, the only other thing is I didn't have kids back then. Once I had kids, I went like. Dude, you could drop me off anywhere. If you just give me a fucking check, for the most part, like it would suck, obviously. If you're just like, here, Matt, you gotta go sit in a fucking cubicle.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Once you have kids, you're kind of like, whatever. Like, it's so nice to have them and like, as long as I can make sure they eat.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  That makes sense.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  I can kind of suck that dick if I have to. If I, when I was younger, I was like, I won't suck this dick. Now, I'm older.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  I got kids, I'll suck a dick, whatever.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  I have a kid. If I had to suck a dick, I'll suck a dick. You know, whatever.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  I'm still full pack list, dude. Like, I'm, I'm out here on these mean streets, man, just trying to make it fucking happen.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  How old are you?

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  I'm 25.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  25, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not ready to suck that dick right now.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Suck a dick about, you'll go, I'd fucking suck a dick about.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, 10 years.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  If I had to suck a fucking dick, I was like, it's not the end of the world. The, um, yeah, no, I, to your point, it's, uh, gotta be mind boggling to get out of college now. Like, cause I came out and again, it was just like, you get an office and, and people still could do that. It was still the thing like, hey, I went to college and now I'm not making anything. I got ripped off. That was like still kind of a thing, but now it's gotta be like, I mean, dude, Zoom, COVID, college, insane. Unbelievable. That must've been just soul crushing.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I, like, weirdly enough, when I was in college, uh, like, everyone was like, what the fuck are you doing? You're a philosophy major. Like, what, what's that gonna do for you?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Apparently, philosophy guys are in demand right now with the AI stuff, I've heard.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Apparently, that's.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  I don't want to fucking work for an AI company, dude. I've been, I've been in the belly of the beast for the last year. Like, it's just not the vibe.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  No, dude, take the check. You can go into Silicon Valley and just go.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  You're telling me to take the, take the check right now?

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  How sick would it be, though, to go to Silicon Valley in front of the nerd kings and go, hmm, yeah, as a philosophy major, that's very interesting. Like, here's fucking five million.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Just chin scraps for a fucking milli?

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Hmm, what is, what is AI? And they're like, yeah, here's $10 million.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Just talk about Hindu gods and shit. Fuck, maybe I should, dude. Why am I struggling out here?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Go to Peter Thiel and be like, hmm. Interesting.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Fuck yeah.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Give this guy a fucking billion dollars. Yeah, it's, it's, well, it's hard to predict, dude. We started a podcast 10 years ago and they were like, we were fucking like, dude, we stunk. We were just like, we were shitty. And I remember this guy was like, never do a podcast, man. It's saturated. It's bullshit. And then it's like, you know, thank God, Shamy became super famous, but like, who could have saw that coming? But you'll never know until you just do a fit. You're like, you nut up and you go, I don't know what this is going to look like in 10 years, but I'm just going to do this thing.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Dude, that's the thing.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  It might suck, but the, my, the main thing is like, trying, and again, it's, it's like so hard to say this because it's like, you know, when I didn't have any money, all I could think about was making money. I'm like, I need to make fucking money. But then it's like, if you can build a life where you at least turn the dial down on like the market mentality where it's like, yeah, obviously make it, get, cover your needs. But like, try to define yourself. Maybe some other way than like what you do and how much money. Cause it's like, it's just a losing game. At the end of the day, if you look at income distribution, it's just like right up here. And if you're telling me like, only these people are happy, which they're not.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  It's like, what do you do when you're here, here, here? How can you make a life? And this is like the whole Aristotelian thing of like, how can you, what is the good life for you and how can you get it realistically? What does that look like? And it's, it's not, if you really think it's like, I have a giant fucking boat. It's like those, most of those guys are fucking dickheads.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  And it's not like, you know, if you have a boat, you're not a dickhead, but it's like, if you want to be the guy who's like, oh, the biggest this and that. Most of those guys aren't fucking happy because then they one day see a guy with the newest car or whatever it is and they go, fuck.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  So it's like, there's gotta be.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Redefining success.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. There's gotta be a way where you can do it where it's like, how do you actually, and this is, you know, how do you do, it's hard to do, but it's like, how do you try to orient yourself? Where you're like genuinely contributing to everyone having a slightly sicker time, including yourself. Rather than being like, I'm gonna fucking major in this, I make four hundred thousand dollars, yeah, whatever, whether that happens or not, it doesn't, but. I don't know, it's like as you get older, you're just like, damn, I was like, I'm so fucking dumb when I was younger. I just switched my major to business. Cause I was like, dude, I'm gonna make a hundred K if I have a businessman, no, like, no idea what I was gonna do with that, or this or that, that was just my thinking at the time, and it's, it's.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Not, I don't think it's very good, and I think the school should get a lot better at like, helping you figure out like, try to do a thing that actually resonates with you. If you can, try to ta- as much as you can, take the, you know, like, use money as a tool, instead of like a thing you almost like worship and like, you know, and it'd be, oh, it's easy for you to say, it's like. Yeah, but you did it. I'm letting you know, man, it's like, I'm telling you, it's not a life-defining thing, unless that's, you know, your whole being, but it's like, if you, you know, I don't know, whatever, but. The AI stuff or the job displacement, I, I hope that doesn't hit everybody real hard, but if it does, it's like, it's gonna be tough, dude.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it'll definitely be tough. I mean, I think like, not only have we been sold this like idea of what success is, like what you're describing, like fucking dude on a boat with like, you know, ten bitches on their arm, like. We also have been so coddled, like even more than your generation, like our generation has grown up with like fucking just, you know, just like padded gloves on with everything. And I do, I was listening to something, um, I think it was actually on the fucking pod the other day where you were reading some book, uh, I think it was a, it was a notor- shout out notorious people, fucking the man.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  But, uh, it was some book about talking about the difference about like China and, and the US and how like, it, one was gonna be Orwellian and one was gonna be like the soma shit, like. Sort of how we, how like our societies were gonna fall, and like one was gonna be just sort of controlled into submission with like iron fist, and that's the more China thing. And then US was gonna be like coddled into submission.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's nineteen eighty-four versus Brave New World.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Brave, Brave New World was basically like you were gonna be, uh, basically given some, we're gonna be like sensory overload into submission versus like real iron fist and like tamp down.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Look at what the fuck is happening, like, it's hard not to say, and that's why I do think that like keeping your circle small to the, like, the best of your ability in a certain sense of just like. Getting people around you that like, you know, remind you who the fuck you are, like with all your warts and shit, cause all that, all that, um. Like the social media stuff is all about like cleansing and it's sort of like the uncanny valley thing that we were talking about like perfect skin and like it's all going towards this ideal of what you like wish you would be perceived as versus like the people closest to you know like that's what I think true love is too is like seeing someone with all their like snakes and warts and all the fucking ugly shit and still being like no like I love that person.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't like the whole red flag thing or whatever the fuck it's called. What the um.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  With like dating and shit?

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's red flag. It's like, dude, everyone's fucked. Everyone's fucked. Like, everyone's fucked, you know. You can maybe, there are certain things, maybe you can be like, all right, that's a little too much. But yeah, I agree, man. It is a, I don't know, I feel, I feel, I just, you know, I also think for younger people, like to have all your social interactions essentially possibly be filmed.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, fucking nuts.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Nightmare, dude. If you'd filmed me back when I was like drinking in college.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was happening. I have like, I don't know how I escaped.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  We had like pictures you'd put on Facebook, but like dude, the filming of like just, there's someone almost always filming everywhere.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's nuts.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  At any given time.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  And that's why, like, that's why so much, I'm sure you see it at your shows and shit like that too. Maybe it's a little different for comedy, but like every concert I go to, it's like everybody's stiff as a fucking board and just sitting there with their phones out. It sucks. No one fucking dances anymore. Like, I don't know, we'll see what actually happens. I hate getting into, I feel like every conversation too just has this basin of like, world's fucked, like, everything sucks.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  It's fucking weird right now.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Dude, world is not fucked. Like, I'm here doing a podcast with fucking Matt McCusker, and you know why, bro? Because I, I did, like, I took a fucking risk and like I saw something that was interesting and I worked my ass off. And like, I know that's how you got here too. Like, there, there is a way to make your dreams come true, even in this gnarly world. And a year ago, I was listening to this podcast, working in a restaurant, like never made a movie. And, you know, not fucking patting myself on the back. What I'm saying is like, I'm not different from anyone else. Like, the only thing I did was be like, I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna try this. And like, I care. And I'm gonna, yeah.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  I like that a lot. Even if, again, it's like, it's, it's scary putting stuff out and people. Can be like you fucking suck this fucking dumb shit in the world. It's like, yeah, but don't you don't reap any. And again, that gets into the whole like there's certain goods. There's certain things that are good that are internal to doing a thing. Like if your movie made a billion dollars, that's an external reward. You know, I mean, a billion fucking bucks. But then there's like the inner growth that happens of like, I went to the movie. I weathered criticism. I met people. I talked to people. I had to confront my idea coming back and, and there was like a thing you get that grows inside of you. That's just like, it's a benefit. No one can take away. And I don't know. I think it's amazing. I think it's sick. Just like getting out there and like, fuck it. I'm going to rip this thing and do it and see what happens.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  That's what was cool about YouTube too, man. Like the barrier to entry is so like, I mean, you guys have been using that like for years now.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  YouTube rules. I love YouTube, man. It's just fucking awesome.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's sick. And also it's like freedom, like it's like the most free market of every, I mean, obviously you can like pay for views and all that shit, but like, dude, you can watch my movie, your podcast and like some dude like putting burgers in his fucking underwear and like, that guy will win too. Like that's what's sick. I know. I'll see my movie and it's like, bro, I almost killed myself making this thing. And it's like some chick like falling off a staircase. I'm like, that is better. Like, like fuck, it's like 12 million views. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Well, dude, I can't thank you enough, man. I think you, you know, I'm pumped on what you're doing. I mean, obviously you're a marketing genius.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, I'm pumped for you, man.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I just quick shout out to the whole team, the MI team, like helped me with, with all of this stuff. Shout out Harbois History Podcast, Trench Lizards is coming. Um, and yo, shout out you guys. Like I have seen so many people that I've like listened to and looked up to all this stuff, like get limelight and, and go off the rails and like, I just want to say as like one of the dogs that has like been here for a while, like, thank you so much for just holding it down, like keeping it real. Like you and Shane are just as real as it gets. And like this podcast is the best and I don't know, man, it just means a lot that like, when you see a lot of people get all that pressure and, and start to crumble or like morph and stuff, it just is cool, especially as someone who's like trying to do stuff and put things out there

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  to have an example of like, You don't have to change like it's there's a way to do this and like keep yourself to yourself.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  I appreciate that, man, I really do.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  I appreciate you, man.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  That is a nice source of pride of not just becoming like a freak.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure it's hard, bro, I'm sure it's hard.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, it's just, it not really, honestly.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  I'm kept eternally humble. Shane's the god of my YouTube universe, dude. I was like, dude, he's so fucking sick.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  That's tight, that's.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  I can never try to flex like I'm cool.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  I guess he is just like the Marshmallow Man, taking all the fucking like arrows.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  He's dude, he's just aura, I'm just fucking, he's my.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Sorry for calling you Marshmallow Man, Shane, fuck.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  He's my son, dude, he's my aura son, dude, I just go, oh dude. No, it really is, he's honestly most impressive on that, because it's like, he's like a legit celebrity.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  And he's literally, his own brodom is so, it's just so strong. Remaining a bro is tough, the world will try to un-bro you, and he's just, his brodom is, he's literally a bro statue.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  He's an enigma, bro.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  He's an unmovable, he's an unmovable bro.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  He was built for this, man, he's built.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Just O-line of fucking bullshit.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  If anyone could become for real, just like kind of a cunt, he could legitimately be like, no, I've earned it, I'm gonna be a little bit of a gun. He's too stoic of a bro, it's unbelievable.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  That's sick, dude, Aristotelian values, bro.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  It's proestism, dude.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Proestism, yeah, you gotta write that book next, dude. Thank you so much, brother, thank you.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Watch new episodes of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Spotify. Do it.