No Regrets, The Case Against Empathy, and Is AI Coming for Us All?

This week, we dive headfirst into the messy, uncomfortable topic of regret. From the aches and grays that come with hitting a new decade to the deeper realizations about relationships, selfish mistakes, and missed opportunities, we unpack how regret shapes who we are. And there's a twist: what if regret isn’t something to fear or avoid? What if it’s a tool for growth? I share my own stories of taking people for granted, self-destructive habits, and the lessons I’ve learned about self-forgiveness and choosing your regrets wisely. We also tackle some fascinating questions about whether empathy is actually good for society. Is it always a good thing, or can it sometimes lead us astray? To round things off, we share our thoughts on AI and its impact on creativity and human connection. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Welcome to 40: Turning Points and Reflection 00:02:10 The Regret Conversation: Looking Back on Life at 40 00:03:15 Identity and Experience: Why Mark Doesn't Do Regret 00:04:48 The Five Regrets of the Dying and What They Reveal 00:07:42 Taking People for Granted: Drew's Biggest Regret 00:09:11 The Disrespect Factor: When Young Mark Was a Dick 00:11:44 Health Regrets and Ignoring Your Own Advice 00:15:45 Self-Forgiveness and Moving Forward from Regret 00:18:20 Brilliant or Bullshit: Is Empathy Overrated? 00:19:23 The Rise of Empathy in Gen Z and What It Means 00:22:14 When Empathy Blinds You: The Spotlight Effect 00:25:50 The George Floyd Effect: When Empathy Backfires 00:27:45 Cognitive vs. Emotional Empathy and Effective Altruism 00:33:02 How Netflix Manipulates Your Empathy for Serial Killers 00:37:15 Empathy's Proper Place: Small, Local, and Personal 00:38:43 AI and Creativity: What's the New Scarcity? 00:41:10 The Two Internets: Machine Internet vs. Human Internet 00:42:58 Why Magnus Carlsen Matters More Than Chess Software 00:44:39 Reddit, Live Events, and the Return to Human Connection 00:48:23 Using AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement 00:49:51 Wisdom of the Week: Regret for Wasted Time ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mark, I joined the club.

• 0:02Mark Manson?

  Oh, which one?

• 0:04Speaker 00

  I just turned 40.

• 0:05Mark Manson?

  Oh shit.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  And I'm not, this isn't fishing for some celebration here.

• 0:10Mark Manson?

  I completely forgot.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  No, no, no, you wished me on my birthday.

• 0:15Mark Manson?

  No, no, no, I remembered on your birthday. I completely forgot. I was like, we're gonna use Drew's birthday as a cold open. And then I forgot.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I didn't forget. I've, I've actually been reminded that I'm 40 every day since I've been 40.

• 0:28Mark Manson?

  How, how is it? How, how have your 40s been? It's been what, a week now?

• 0:32Speaker 00

  It's been a week. It's been a week. Um, the entire week leading up to my birthday, I'm not shitting you, my back hurt.

• 0:39Mark Manson?

  Just preparing you. It's just getting, your body is getting you ready for what's ahead.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  So my, my back hurt. Um, my hair, I'm sure got grayer. It just keeps getting grayer and grayer as everybody is pointing out.

• 0:51Mark Manson?

  It does that.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  It also though too, I don't know about you, but I don't really do the whole, I sit down at the first of the year and I don't really do much of that. But birthdays, I kind of, I kind of sit back and look back at the year, behind the year ahead, where I've been, where I've come from.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 1:14Mark Manson?

  How would you rate 39? Was it, was it an A year, a B year? What was it?

• 1:22Speaker 00

  It was, um, this was one, it was a mixed bag.

• 1:25Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Year for sure. We've done a lot of work, you know, professionally, we've done, been doing a lot of work. We've had a lot of ups and downs with that.

• 1:31Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  You know, and these personally things happen too. Um, I felt like my, like my mid 30s were like, man, this is, I'm like, I'm winning. And you know, we talked previously on an episode about like, ah, I always gotta keep in mind like, eh, there's something on the corner here.

• 1:46Mark Manson?

  Life has a, whenever you just like feel like you're winning for too long, life has a way of reminding you who's boss.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  It was not in like a fatalistic catastrophic way by any means, but I was just reminded of some things and, and it kind of made me be grateful. Also though, it started to make me think about like, um, maybe what I would have done differently up to this point.

• 2:06Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  Which is what I kind of wanna, that's what I want to talk about today for the fuck of the week.

• 2:10Mark Manson?

  Ah, regrets.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Regrets.

• 2:13Mark Manson?

  Are you a man of regret?

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Um. I think the older I get, the less I am.

• 2:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19Mark Manson?

  I'm a man of very few regrets.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  You are.

• 2:21Mark Manson?

  I.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  We've talked about this, you and I just personally have talked about this before.

• 2:24Mark Manson?

  I.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  And you're fucking weird, man.

• 2:26Mark Manson?

  I don't have like the regret bone, the shame bone.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:30Mark Manson?

  Very little of it.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  It's like you're like, oh, I would have done this differently, but then you just move on.

• 2:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  You move on.

• 2:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I was like, yeah, I fucked that up. All right.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  I dwell on shit. One thing I've started to notice, though, is that I'm, I'm getting better at choosing my regrets, I think.

• 2:46Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  I think, anyway.

• 2:48Mark Manson?

  That's fair. I, well, I do think it's probably not good to have zero regrets, but you know, my, my approach to it was always,

• 2:56Mark Manson?

  and I remember I, I actually wrote about this years and years and years ago, like very early in my career. I wrote that part of who you are as a person, part of your identity is all of your past experiences. So if there is any past experience that you wish never happened, you're essentially wishing for a part of yourself to not exist. And that just strikes me as incredibly unhealthy. Like, why would I ever wish a part of myself to not exist?

• 3:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:21Mark Manson?

  That's just like a losing proposition. So to me, it just, from the get go, it just seems emotionally, mentally imperative to, to, to find a justification or a silver lining for any and every experience I've had. That said, too, I've just, I've never been the sort of person that beats, like, I don't know, like, things roll off me pretty easily.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:45Mark Manson?

  If, if I have a superpower, it's probably that.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  It's crazy. Like, I looked up some of the, you know, the surveys they've done on regret, and people regret education, the things, you know, decisions they made around education, their careers, romance, parenting, self-improvement, leisure activities, I wish I would travel more, that sort of thing. I don't know, some, none of those really land for me, and I don't know. But do any of those when I pop, when I read those off, do they pop up for you like, oh, I wish I would have done that differently?

• 4:14Mark Manson?

  No.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  I sound like I'm the same.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  For those especially.

• 4:18Mark Manson?

  But it is, you know, there is that cliche that, that the most, most regrets are the things that you haven't done, right?

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:24Mark Manson?

  And.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Regrets of omission, not commission, right?

• 4:27Mark Manson?

  Yes. And I definitely have always taken that to heart and been like, I would rather regret doing something and falling on my face than regret not trying at all. So I try to keep that in mind, but I don't know. I, to me, it's, I feel like a lot of people's regret, like, there was a thing that went super, super viral 10 or 12 years ago. It was like a hospice nurse wrote the five most common regrets of a dying.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:55Mark Manson?

  It turned into a book and a TED Talk and all this stuff.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

• 4:58Mark Manson?

  Everything was, you know, I spent too much time at work. I didn't spend enough time with loved ones. I, I fought over stupid things. You know, got sucked up in the drama and things. So to me, they're all like pretty obvious. I'm not saying I don't struggle with those things. I mean, I do, but it, there's nothing like coming out of left field. There's nothing like, oh, wow. I never expected somebody to regret that. It's like, yeah, we're, we tend to take things, like, we're human. We take things for granted. We get upset over like petty, stupid things. We probably work too much and don't spend enough time with loved ones, you know? So I don't know if I have regrets around that, but it's like, I don't know. I definitely look at past behaviors and, and even current behaviors.

• 5:42Mark Manson?

  And I'm like, yeah, that could be, that could have been done better.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. So do you, do you have any regrets at all then? I mean, everybody does. That's kind of my point here. As much like the fucks we give, you have to give a fuck about something. You're, you have to regret things in your life because everything you do has a cost to it, right?

• 6:00Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:02Mark Manson?

  I struggle, again, I struggle with this question a lot because of what I just said about the identity. Like, it's like all the mistakes I've made, I feel like have eventually made me who I am today. So it's like. The bar for me to actually genuinely regret something is extremely high because to me, what regret means is like if you could go back and undo it, you would.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 6:26Mark Manson?

  So there's very, very, very few things in my life that if I could go back and undo it, I would. My biggest embarrassments, my biggest failures, the tragedies and traumas and stuff, I wouldn't take those back. The only things that I can think of that if I could go back and undo them, I would tend to be times that I was really selfish or disrespectful to people I cared about. So there are, you know, I was a kind of a drunk narcissistic selfish young man in my late teens and early twenties and I was kind of a dick to a number of people

• 7:08Mark Manson?

  in my life and many of whom I cared deeply about. So there's some experiences around that that I'm like, yeah, if I could go back and not say that thing or not do that thing, that would have been, I would do that.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think when I was thinking about this, again, like looking back on my life on my birthday or whatever, I was thinking of the embarrassment thing you brought up, right? And I used to, that used to really eat at me. I'm like, oh, I did this stupid thing 10, 20 years ago. That doesn't so much anymore. I think what I found was a little bit more clarity around, like I said, choosing, choosing my regrets.

• 7:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  And very similar to you too, it's usually around, it's been around relationships. What I found though too, is that a lot of the regrets that I have have a common theme that kind of underlying, underlie all of them. It's been a theme of taking people for granted in my life.

• 7:56Mark Manson?

  Yes, yes.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  That's probably, that's the biggest regret I have around just about anything. I've lost big chunks of money doing stupid things.

• 8:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  I've done dumb, dumb things where I put myself in danger or other people, whatever. It's the relationships that I've taken for granted. It started like with grandparents, when my grandparents started passing away.

• 8:16Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Like that was kind of the first like, oh shit, you know, my grandma's not, my, my first grandparent died when I was 16.

• 8:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  And until the funeral, I didn't even really realize that she was gone. You know what I mean? And I was like, God, I took her for granted that whole time.

• 8:30Mark Manson?

  But when you're that age too, it's like.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  I get that, but then I continued to do it way into my adult life.

• 8:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Ex-girlfriends, you know, other family members, my parents.

• 8:41Mark Manson?

  It's funny, because I'm the same. It's the taking for granted slash disrespect of other people. Like, I'll give you an example. I cheated on my girlfriends when I was young. And when I look back at that experience, on the one hand, if I'm only evaluating, you know, my life and my development and my growth and everything, I don't necessarily regret that because it's like I learned, I fucked up my relationships and I learned lessons from those things and I had to learn how to be a better partner and more committed and more honest. And I kind of had to go through some of those experiences to figure my shit out.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:20Mark Manson?

  What kills me is when I think back to my girlfriends, how they didn't deserve that.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 9:27Mark Manson?

  How I really did care about them and I like was so blatantly disrespectful towards them. You know, the 40-year-old Mark is horrified by my behavior. Whereas, you know, the 20-year-old Mark, you know, was just kind of doing his thing. So.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  I think we found a little pocket of regret there.

• 9:50Mark Manson?

  Just a little smidgen.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Definitely, yeah. The taking for granted and like the bad behavior was part of it. The other kind of theme I saw running throughout all of this though, too, was I took them for granted because in a way that I was like looking for something else.

• 10:10Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Something quote unquote better, you know, whether it was a family member or, you know, ex-girlfriends or whatever it was. It was like, oh, I was behaving poorly because I was looking for something else.

• 10:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  And not, like, the biggest thing I actually do regret was not like appreciating what I had right in front of me, which was so much now that I realize that as I get older.

• 10:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  I had so much that was just like right in front of me.

• 10:34Mark Manson?

  But isn't some of this just being a wise old man and looking back at?

• 10:39Speaker 00

  That was a question I was gonna have for you too. Yeah, like how much of this is?

• 10:42Mark Manson?

  Because I think some of this is just being young. Like, when you're young, you do take everything you grew up with for granted and you do just kind of assume it's always gonna be there. And you do assume that there's something better out in the world than whatever you got stuck with, you know, growing up with. And. I certainly relate to that in that it's taken me a long time to come around and really appreciate a lot of the people and things that I grew up with. So I hear you. I hear you. It's we now we sound like two old men sitting on a porch.

• 11:19Mark Manson?

  Back in my day.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, that's true. And there is just some of it.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  That's another lesson I've just learned about being a human being is that there's just some shit you just have to learn on your own and there's no way of getting around that.

• 11:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't again, to me, regret is like a very strong word. For example, I

• 11:44Mark Manson?

  probably the closest thing that doesn't involve other people that I would potentially regret is it took me, I think, way too long to get on the the health bandwagon.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:56Mark Manson?

  I had a lot of very self destructive habits when I was young and that persisted well into my 30s. And I was very cavalier about them. My brain is just very good at justifying whatever I want.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:06Mark Manson?

  And and that worked against me with a lot of these self destructive behaviors. I always found ways to justify them. And and so my health got a little bit out of control in my 30s. And now that I have gotten my shit together and I do have healthy habits and I I'm sober and I'm eating well and sleeping well and exercising and everything. I'm like, oh, why the fuck did I wait so long? Like, I'm definitely having an experience of like, what if I did this 10 years ago? What if I like went to half as many parties and drank half as much booze? And instead spent that time in the gym? And it's I try not to dwell on that too much because it just, I don't know, I don't think it's very productive, but

• 12:52Mark Manson?

  that pains me a little bit to think about, for sure. But but do I regret it? I don't know, man. I had a lot of great fucking times.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:00Mark Manson?

  You do learn some crazy shit when you're.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  And you've talked before too about like, you know, people say, I wish I wouldn't have spent so much time at work. And you're like, well, I went, you went all in.

• 13:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  When you're in your 20s for years and you were not balanced and you don't regret that, you know, that that sort of thing. So I think there's pockets of that where if you apply it in in certain cases, you're okay.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  The the health thing, though, that's a very, very common one that older people cite too. Like, I regret not taking care of my health.

• 13:29Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  And so I think there are just a handful of those, like, if you, if you ever get on a plane.

• 13:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  And there's somebody who looks like Yoda, like, switch seats with with whoever's sitting next to them and talk to them about this kind of thing. You will be blown away at what they come up with.

• 13:42Mark Manson?

  Well, you know what's funny about that one, too? As you probably remember, when I turned 30, we crowdsourced an article from the audience. I basically asked everybody in the audience, I said, if you're over 40, what do you wish somebody told you at your 30th birth? Like, what's your best piece of advice for somebody turning 30? And the number one piece of advice was, don't wait to get your health in order.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:05Mark Manson?

  Because when, by, by the time you're in your 40s and 50s, in some cases, it's too late, or it's gonna be too hard. Or, or it's, you know, whatever. And I fucking just completely disregarded that.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:16Mark Manson?

  It's like, literally, like, 98% of my audience told me the same thing. And I was like, yeah, I'm good.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it goes back to, it goes back to, we've talked about this before, but taking care of your health is all these little tiny things.

• 14:28Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  And those, that takes a very, very long time to build that, that bank up, that bank of health, if you will.

• 14:34Mark Manson?

  It does, and I think the, in my case, the, the issue was a lack of clear measurement. So it's, I fell victim to my own ability to delude myself and convince myself that I was being healthy when I, I know today I was not being healthy at all. So it's, it's, um, you know, living under a little bit of delusion for a while. But then again, it's like, I don't know how I would have snapped out of that any other way, right? So it's hard to regret something that I don't know how I would have changed. Like, it's not like, it's not like I had a realization when I was 30 of like, dude, you're fucking up your health and you're lying to yourself and you're doing all these wrong things and you drink way too much.

• 15:20Mark Manson?

  And then I kept doing it. It's like, no, I just never had that realization.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:23Mark Manson?

  I just, yeah, I was out to lunch, so to speak.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Well, okay, if, if somebody is out there just wallowing in regret.

• 15:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  I don't know, reframe? I don't even know what the language around this would be.

• 15:35Mark Manson?

  In my experience, the people who are like, really hung up on regrets, it's one of two things. Either it's a very traumatic or tragic experience that they just.

• 15:46Mark Manson?

  Are really having a hard time letting go of. And to me, that's, that's like a more of a grieving issue. Or their actual issue is just a very deep self-loathing and

• 16:00Mark Manson?

  lack of self-worth in that it manifests through constantly being preoccupied by all the things that they did wrong, or they could have done better, or that they fucked up, or missed opportunities, or whatever, like. So the symptom is the, is the regret, but the real issue is just like this general loathing of oneself.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I think, uh, like you said, just having a bias towards doing things and just going for it.

• 16:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  That'll go a long ways.

• 16:29Mark Manson?

  And this is gonna sound really cheesy, so get, get your, your cheese hats ready. Self-forgiveness goes a long way.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah.

• 16:40Mark Manson?

  I know that that just like sounds so banal and, but it really is true. Like you just, everybody fucks up, everybody misses opportunities, everybody takes people and things for granted. Everybody has parts of themselves that they're not satisfied with, or that they don't love, or that they wish was different. I think where we really get in the trouble is when we start telling ourselves that we shouldn't feel that way. That we're like, well, Drew's completely happy with himself and didn't fuck up his opportunities, you know? It's like, no, we all have stuff that we feel like we missed out on, or that we didn't do right. And, um, so there's no reason to judge yourself for it. It's just like a normal part of the human condition.

• 17:25Mark Manson?

  And much in the same way, like, we fuck anything up and we have to, you know, people in our lives mess things up and we forgive them. Like if your best friend screws up and, uh,

• 17:39Mark Manson?

  You know, you don't, you probably don't have that hard of a time for giving them or letting them like letting it go with them. Yet so many of us struggle to do that with ourselves.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's definitely getting older. That was one of the lessons I've learned as well, too, is that like self compassion, self love, self forgiveness is a skill you have to develop because you can't always get that from outside. And I think regret is a big part of that. People are looking for some sort of outside solution. It's just not there.

• 18:13Mark Manson?

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 18:20Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back. So brilliant and bullshit.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Brilliant or bullshit, Mark? This is gonna sound, this is gonna make me sound like a real asshole.

• 18:28Mark Manson?

  Oh, I'm here for it. I'm here for it.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Mark is, is empathy brilliant or bullshit?

• 18:35Mark Manson?

  Is empathy bullshit?

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Is empathy bullshit? Yeah.

• 18:38Mark Manson?

  Let's do, we'll put that a giant full screen quote. Empathy is bullshit. Drew Bernie.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, 2024.

• 18:47Mark Manson?

  24. The man turns 40 and he's just, he's decided that he has no empathy.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Full on get off my lawn crabby old man at this point. There's, there's, okay.

• 18:58Mark Manson?

  This is a serious question. People, so people who, I think people who are not psychology nerds don't realize that this is actually a very legit question.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Actually, like it goes back to pre psychology even. I mean, it's a, there's a deep philosophical argument behind a lot of this. And we, we found this article recently. It's, it was from, we found this on CNN. The title of the article is empathy is on the rise in young people. Here's how to build yours. So there's an assumption right there, or obviously that, you know, empathy is good. And we do take that for granted these days. We, we take it as a given that empathy is a, is a good thing.

• 19:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Just some quick stats on this, though. From 1979 to about 2009, they've monitored, they've, they've measured this in, in different surveys. And it seems that empathy has gone down from 1979 to 2009 in younger people. Okay. Teens, adolescents, early twenties, that, that sort of thing. This includes both cognitive empathy, which is being able to understand someone else's perspective, and also emotional empathy, which is feeling concern for others and feeling like you can feel how they feel. That's what we think of as empathy.

• 20:07Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  A lot, anyway. So, uh, from 2009 to 2018, though, they measured a measurable increase in empathy among this, this population.

• 20:18Mark Manson?

  Same population or a young population?

• 20:19Speaker 00

  A young population. Yeah, they just, they haven't.

• 20:22Mark Manson?

  So, Gen Z, basically?

• 20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes.

• 20:24Mark Manson?

  So, what you're telling me is our generation is the least empathetic generation in the population?

• 20:30Speaker 00

  So, if you look back at the data, it kind of waxes and wanes a little bit. But there has been a noticeable increase in, in the last 15 years or so.

• 20:39Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:40Mark Manson?

  Gotcha. Yeah, how's that, how's that working out?

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Well, that's what I, that's what I want to talk about, right? So.

• 20:47Mark Manson?

  Where, where is that getting us?

• 20:48Speaker 00

  You know, they, they, I, I looked up the paper here, too, the, the actual paper. And, you know, they, they, they posit there's a few different causes for this, you know, increased social connectivity through social media or, or all these different communication technologies we have now. Collective responses to economic hardship was one of theirs, too, like a 2008, 2009, like, I'm not sure about that one.

• 21:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  These are speculative from, from the paper. Changes in the social norms, that probably goes back also to just cultural connectivity. Increased awareness of social issues, again, through news media, social media, communication technology. One I found pretty interesting, too, was loneliness and social isolation. They found a, a correlation between respondents who were more lonely were also more empathetic.

• 21:35Mark Manson?

  Huh.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  So I wonder if it just, you know, they have a lot of time to sit around and think about, oh, God, I'm lonely, this other person must be lonely, and that must suck, or it must suck to be ostracized, or.

• 21:43Mark Manson?

  Or maybe highly empathic people have a higher need for social interaction and intimacy.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  That can be very well, too.

• 21:51Mark Manson?

  And so even though they are interacting with lots of people, they feel lonely.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 21:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  But the, the, the, the argument that's kind of implied in this is. You know, empathy is a good thing, and the title of this article said, here's how to build yours, here's how to have more empathy.

• 22:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  What do you think, is empathy always a good thing, Mark?

• 22:13Mark Manson?

  Um, 10 years ago, I would have said yes.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:18Mark Manson?

  Um, there's a great book by Paul Bloom called Against Empathy, which I was triggered when I saw that title. It came out probably 2016, 2017 or something.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  I think it read in there 2018, 2016 or 18, yeah.

• 22:35Mark Manson?

  And I remember being like, what the fuck? And actually, it's a great book. It's really fascinating. And he basically convinced me with, with, with the book. Like, he won me over. And I do think that the key distinction is what you made, it was cognitive empathy versus emotional empathy.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  That's one of them, yeah.

• 22:51Mark Manson?

  You know, I do think it's important to be able to cognitively or rationally put yourself in the other person's shoes, so to speak. Like, imagine what life would be like if you were a Ukrainian refugee or whatever. That's very useful, I think. The emotional empathy, to me, it's, it's like, what I took away from it is that it can cut both ways. Because depending on who you are empathizing with, and why you're empathizing with them, like any other emotion, empathy can blind you or bias you. And so, the results can be very mixed.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:27Mark Manson?

  The same way people justify awful things with love, or care, or compassion, you can justify a lot of awful things with empathy.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:36Mark Manson?

  And, uh, so it's, it seems to me that it's like, just empathizing with a person or a population is not sufficient on its own. There needs to be like some sort of, uh, like rational placement or contextualization to have around it.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 23:56Mark Manson?

  If that makes sense.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's, that Paul Bloom, that's one of his, the big arguments throughout the book. It's narrow, it narrows your focus. He calls it the spotlight effect. And so, um, your empathy is kind of like a spotlight going around, like, what should I, who or what should I empathize with?

• 24:11Mark Manson?

  That's confusing, because there's another spotlight effect in psychology, which is that when you assume that people are paying more attention to you than they actually are.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  So, the empathy, a highlighter.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:24Mark Manson?

  It's a pink highlighter that you just color people with. Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  So, so, yeah, you can, it can blind you to, you can get, which you see this all the time now. People glom onto one single issue or one group of people. And they say, why aren't you caring? Why aren't you as empathetic and caring about this? And it's like, well, why aren't you as empathetic and caring about this to all these other things?

• 24:45Mark Manson?

  I think, yes.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Not that we should be, like, not that we should, not that we can, not that we have the capacity.

• 24:51Mark Manson?

  The issue is, is that it's not sufficient, right?

• 24:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:55Mark Manson?

  So, we're starting to get into the, we're, we're, we're starting to approach a lot of social issues that have been going on lately, because I think part of the problem is that a lot of people who empathize deeply with people like victims or populations, they seem to feel that that is sufficient. It's like, okay, well, this bad thing happened to this person. So, I'm really upset and you should be really upset too. And, and it's like, it kind of ends there.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:25Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 25:25Speaker 00

  It feels like you've done something.

• 25:26Mark Manson?

  Whereas like, well, what actually happened?

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:28Mark Manson?

  And, and I think that this can backfire in a lot of cases. So, perfect example is the George Floyd

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:37Mark Manson?

  protests and the fallout from that, from 2020, right? So, for people who are not familiar, George Floyd was a African American man, was murdered by a police officer, was caught on camera. There were massive protests against police brutality in 2020. A huge firestorm of racial debate and arguments. And there were calls to defund police and put body cameras on every cop in the country and all, all these things. And that outrage is understandable. The empathy that came, I mean, I saw the video. I thought it was horrifying. The empathy is completely understandable.

• 26:20Mark Manson?

  But it's interesting that, you know, we're about four and a half years removed from that. And there's actually a thing now that some researchers are calling the George Floyd effect, which is since the George Floyd protests and all the outrage towards police, police are much less likely to, to arrest or subdue people out in public. And as a result, The murder rates and the violent crime rates have gone up in certain communities, predominantly African American communities. And so the people who have actually suffered the most from the George Floyd effect are the very people that everybody had empathy for.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Right, they were the targets of the empathy.

• 27:02Mark Manson?

  Exactly, right? And so it's, again, it's like the emotion, the emotion's valuable, right? Like, it's especially when you have this like outpouring of outrage and this sense of injustice and everybody's upset and they want to make things better. Like, that is valuable. It just needs to be channeled in the right direction. And when you don't channel it in the right direction, it can actually unwittingly make things worse.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Right, right. Okay, so you are kind of getting at the emotional empathy versus cognitive empathy then there. Where, and Paul Bloom makes the argument, he's not, the title is against empathy, but he's not like, I don't hate empathy. He's like, I just think it's overrated.

• 27:43Mark Manson?

  Paul Bloom hates you.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. Right, like, Paul Bloom is a psychopath.

• 27:47Mark Manson?

  That was actually, that was probably the first title he wanted.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  He submitted that first.

• 27:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and the publisher was like, you know, yeah, maybe we change this.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Let's redirect. But, but he does make a case that cognitive empathy, where you can understand somebody, but you don't necessarily have to put yourself in their shoes or feel a certain way, you just need to be able to understand them.

• 28:08Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  I should say, there's some psychologists who think, can you really cognitively understand somebody without having some emotional component to it too? I kind of, maybe not, I don't know.

• 28:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  But the point still remains that this whole cognitive empathy is kind of the basis for what we now call effective altruism.

• 28:28Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  You know, made famous by Peter Singer, made infamous by Sam Bankman-Fried, I'd say too. But there's this rational side to our brain that he thinks we need to use alongside our empathy to make sure that we're effectively channeling

• 28:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  all of these emotions, all of this empathy into the right direction and making sure that we're using our higher reasoning powers to make sure that the good we want to come can actually come.

• 28:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  What do you think of that?

• 28:56Mark Manson?

  I mean, that's, that's, that's a big thing to bite off and chew.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:00Mark Manson?

  I agree with the principle.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:02Mark Manson?

  That the limiting factor is understanding the, the second and third order effects, understanding the downstream effects of the empathy and making sure that you're not acting out in such a way that is, is gonna backfire or, or work against you. The problem is, and I like, I, I never really got the effective altruism thing, just because it's, once you get past like the second order effects of anything, it's just the complexity becomes overwhelming.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:33Mark Manson?

  And people's biases kick in that it's just like, there's such a fog of war to understand what is actually gonna have the biggest long-term impact and what's not. That I, I've just always been very skeptical that you could objectively measure that sort of thing. And in my observation is that any like really serious attempts to quantify that sort of thing of like, what's gonna create the greatest good for the greatest amount of people leads you into a very absurd place very quickly. You know, like, like, like, from what I understand, there's a whole subset of effective altruists who basically came to the conclusion that since there was like a 0.01% chance that a super intelligent AI would just destroy humanity, that all of their efforts should

• 30:16Mark Manson?

  be put into preventing super intelligent AIs.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:20Mark Manson?

  Which like, that just strikes me as completely nonsensical, right? Like.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Or like, like, the, the, we all have two kidneys.

• 30:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  You shouldn't have one of your kidneys because you don't need it and that the.

• 30:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  The, the risk of dying from the kidney transplant surgery is so low, and yet the, the outsized return you get for donating your kidney is so high.

• 30:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  It goes to some ridiculous places pretty quickly.

• 30:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it does.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Like, none of us should have both of our kidneys.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  It's amoral for us.

• 30:52Mark Manson?

  We're gonna put that quote under the first line. So Drew Bernie.

• 30:56Speaker 00

  None of us should have two kidneys.

• 30:57Mark Manson?

  Empathy is bullshit. Drew Bernie, no one should have two kidneys.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Well, okay, okay. So I mean, that is part of the argument.

• 31:07Mark Manson?

  We're barely staying on the rails here.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. Let me see if I can get us back on the train here.

• 31:12Mark Manson?

  Where are we going with this?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  So the case that Bloom makes against empathy, one of them, we've covered a little bit of this. It narrows your focus a little too much on, on single issues or a handful of issues when there's all sorts of issues going on. It doesn't scale very well. Like empathy causes you, again, it narrows your focus, causes you to focus more on a single person rather than the thousands of people that are suffering. It's how our brains are wired.

• 31:40Mark Manson?

  Or it causes you to stereotype very plainly.

• 31:43Speaker 00

  That's another one. The, that it, that's, it's kind of the basis for in-group, out-group thinking.

• 31:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Is empathy, because you're going to empathize with one group over the other. Just naturally, you have a natural inclination for that.

• 31:53Mark Manson?

  And it is human nature that we naturally empathize with people who look and.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Think and act like us.

• 31:59Mark Manson?

  Think and act like us and come from the same place we come from. So it's, again, if you are, if you're against things like racism and prejudice and nationalism and all these things, and then, you know, baseline empathy is actually potentially, empathy is not only the solution of those problems, it is also the cause of those problems.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, another one too, your empathy is easily manipulated. I thought that was an interesting one that he brings up in the book.

• 32:28Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:29Mark Manson?

  As a writer, a hundred percent.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Right. Empathetic responses depend on prior.

• 32:33Mark Manson?

  Give me two pages, I'll make you empathize with anybody.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And so it's, it's very easily manipulated because it's an emotion that, a deep emotion that we feel.

• 32:42Mark Manson?

  Can I give you an example? Okay, this, this pissed me off. There is a new trend going on, particularly on Netflix, but I think it started with all the podcast, like all the murder, whodunit podcasts. So Netflix is getting in on it. And now Netflix is producing all these like murder mystery shows and shows about serial killers and all this stuff. And I've watched a few of them and it's really bugging me what they do.

• 33:10Mark Manson?

  They they they did this with the recent Menendez Brothers one and they did it with the Jeffrey Dahmer one and it like it makes me sick, which is that they show the murder, like they show the murderer and the murder and it's like horrendous and horrific and you you're just absolutely disgusted. And then you get like episode three, three or four, and and the next like the next 50% of the show is completely written to make you empathize with the murderer.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:39Mark Manson?

  So you start seeing how horrible their childhood was and how, oh, they he was bullied and, oh, his dad was this horrible person and, you know, and it's like it they spend multiple episodes like getting you to feel so sorry for him and maybe he was actually the victim and all this stuff. And to me, it's a really sick use of the audience's empathy.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 33:59Mark Manson?

  Because I think particularly in a case like of somebody like Jeffrey Dahmer, like, I actually don't think we should empathize with him. I think it's it is quite the the ethics of getting people to empathize with Jeffrey Dahmer is a very questionable thing. I I don't think, yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  I can't believe you had to say that, but yeah, you're right.

• 34:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like, I don't know how those writers and directors sleep at night.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:25Mark Manson?

  Like, it's it's sick.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 34:27Mark Manson?

  And there are, again, because empathy is a powerful tool and getting people to empathize with certain actions and behaviors and people and find and helping them find justifications or explanations for those heinous behaviors. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing that we should be like broadcasting to millions of people within society. So that's a perfect example where I think empathy is used terribly and and it also just makes the shows bad.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:57Mark Manson?

  Like, I I I don't buy it.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 34:59Mark Manson?

  You know, like, I.

• 35:02Mark Manson?

  I've watched a few of them now and every single time I get halfway through and I'm just like, I don't buy this. This just feels, it feels too contrived. It's like, uh, we're doing the like, the both sides thing, you know, I'm not, I'm not here for that. Maybe I'm old.

• 35:16Mark Manson?

  Maybe I've aged out of this demographic, but anyway, um, what you were saying made me think of that of just like how easy it is to manipulate what, what the audience feels and what they care about and, and by dictating the narrative around what happened.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah.

• 35:32Mark Manson?

  And what the justifications were for something.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Something similar is happening and you have a connection with this as well in El Salvador, right? Bukele has had to come out. People are railing against, he's, he's thrown gangsters or suspected gangsters in jail en masse, right? Hundreds of thousands of them. And people are like, you're mistreating them. And he had to come out and say, look, most people in El Salvador eat beans and rice every day. I, I'm not going to worry about what criminals are eating in prison right now. Okay. I have other things to think about. So it's like, that's a misdirection of empathy too, I think as well.

• 36:05Mark Manson?

  That's another great example. It's so for people who aren't aware, we shot a YouTube video in El Salvador. It will be coming out by the end of this year. And part of the reason was I, I actually wanted to go talk to the people in, in the neighborhoods, the poor neighborhoods where the gangs controlled everything and where there was just immense amounts of violence as recently as a few years ago. And yeah, I mean, regardless of what you think about him or his politics, like he has a point, which is, I think the outside world has been so focused on the potential human rights violations of the mass incarceration there that they're, they're missing the forest for the trees. And, and they don't realize like, I think Bukele himself even

• 36:46Mark Manson?

  said it. He, he said, "Some say I wrongly imprisoned thousands. I think I freed millions."

• 36:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:52Mark Manson?

  Right? Cause it's like, you have a country of five million who no longer lives in fear. They're not no longer afraid to go outside. They can take their kids to school, like do all the normal things. So anyway, that video is coming soon.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, just a little teaser.

• 37:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah, a little teaser. It'll be on the YouTube channel. Check it out. What else? Anything else about empathy? Are we, I'm not as extreme as you, Drew. I'm not gonna say it's bullshit.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I'm not gonna call it. Yeah, okay, here's.

• 37:18Mark Manson?

  I'm just putting words in your mouth.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. Empathy has its place, absolutely. And I think it has its place in, especially in your personal relationships with people, one-on-one situations or smaller groups.

• 37:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  That's what we evolved the empathy for. That's where it's supposed to, like, you know, that's our evolutionary past, probably. That's how empathy evolved. It's kind of been hijacked, though, lately, I think.

• 37:44Mark Manson?

  Yes. I think that's a really good point, is that it's empathy is it's optimized for the small and local and the people close to you.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  And it's best used there.

• 37:54Mark Manson?

  And it's best used there. And I think maybe a side effect of our technology is that it's, it's empathy has been inflated and amplified and spread a little bit too much and too far. Yeah, I don't know. We definitely sound like two 40-year-olds.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, we do. We do. Embracing it. That's the other thing about getting older. You're just like, yep.

• 38:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah, fuck them. Fuck them. All right, we'll be right back.

• 38:25Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back. What are the questions, Drew? What do the people want to know?

• 38:30Speaker 00

  The people want to know, this one came in from YouTube. Mark, what are your thoughts on ChatGPT and AI in general, and increasing commodification of the creative process, like using it to write essays, song lyrics, that sort of thing? What's your take on AI in 2024, Mark?

• 38:46Mark Manson?

  This is a great question. So I use AI quite frequently. I believe you do as well. The team uses it quite a bit. I think when anytime you look at like a major technological leap. Something gets, something that used to be scarce gets commoditized, becomes abundant. And then something new create, it becomes scarce, right? Like, I, I don't think, any time people start freaking out about a new technology, they, they always freak out about the thing that used to be scarce, then it's gonna become abundant. They never think about the new scarcity. And I think what AI is gonna do is it's gonna make creativity very abundant. It's gonna make it easier, more accessible to most people.

• 39:31Mark Manson?

  The time that it takes to go from idea to execution is drastically gonna get reduced. And I, I generally think that anybody who is a creative, first of all, if you're not messing around with it and trying to use it, you're dumb.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  You're already behind that.

• 39:47Mark Manson?

  You're already behind. And then two, I think it's just, it's going to make creatively talented people even better. I don't think it's gonna replace creativity. I, I just think it's gonna make the creative people even better. But what I'm excited for, and this is something I've actually been asking myself this a lot since ChatGPT broke out. It's like, what is the new scarcity gonna be? And I have, I have a theory about this. I think AI is actually going to put a premium back on in-person connection and relationships and community in particular. Because we've already seen, you know, information is already commoditized.

• 40:28Mark Manson?

  Information's already free and abundant and there's like, probably too much of it. There's like so much bad information, like we could actually probably deal, we'd probably be better off if we had a little bit less information. Pretty soon, we're gonna have something similar with creativity. Like, it's just any, any, anything that you wanna be entertained by or any crazy idea you have, it's gonna be out there, there's gonna be some version of it available. What's gonna be hard to find is people that you connect with, people that you feel like you're part of something, people that you relate to. And I actually think there's, I've got a little pet theory around this, which is I think there, I think we're gonna end up with two internets. And I think of them as human internet and machine internet.

• 41:13Mark Manson?

  So the machine internet is basically anytime you just want.

• 41:18Mark Manson?

  To solve a problem, or know a fact, or get feedback on something, you're just gonna go ask the AI. You're like, you know, read these five books and summarize for me and 10 bullet points and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the AI will do that pretty much instantaneously. And that's great, because then it's a tool, it's gonna help you, and it just makes your life better. But there's no emotional sustenance in that, right? Like, I could go to ChatGPT, let's pretend ChatGPT is like 10 times better than it currently is. And let's say it's good enough to write like a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. I could go and ask it, hey, write me a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about this, this, and this with these themes and whatever.

• 41:58Mark Manson?

  I could read it and be like, this is a really good novel, but it's gonna lack, because I know it's a machine and it's not a human, there's gonna be some sort of missing piece there. I'm not gonna feel like I'm relating to the author. And I personally believe very strongly that a huge percentage of why we like art is because of the person behind it. Right? Like, if that wasn't true, then it wouldn't bother us that like Michael Jackson was a pedophile. Or it wouldn't bother us that, you know, I don't know, Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't sleep with a girl over 25. Like, it's, we care about those things because we attach people's art to the person.

• 42:41Mark Manson?

  And that's human nature, and that's never gonna change. I think the example that a lot of people refer to, which is indicative, is that

• 42:51Mark Manson?

  computers have been better than humans at chess for over 20 years now. Yeah. And there are tons of chess tournaments for software. Like, software developers enter their software into chess tournaments and they have, they compete in the exact same way that humans compete, to see which software is the best chess software. Nobody watches that.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, who gives a shit?

• 43:12Mark Manson?

  Nobody gives a shit. Nobody knows who won.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:15Mark Manson?

  Nobody cares. Everybody knows that Magnus Carlsen is the best chess player in the world.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:19Mark Manson?

  And he has been for the last 12 years.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:21Mark Manson?

  He has millions of followers online. He has tons of fans. He's made millions of dollars, right? Why? Because he's the best human player. And that's what we care about. We care about who is the best human chess player. So I think we're, the second internet is going to be the human internet. And that is where we go to connect with people. Where we go to relate to people, to hear drama and stories and judge each other and do all the human things and be parts of communities and ideally see each other more in person. Because AI is going to solve all the abstract informational stuff, or most of it, for us. So what it can't solve is that human, human relational.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Right. Well, okay, a lot to unpack there.

• 44:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  One, I think, I'm already starting to use the internet that way. I've found anyway. I don't, I really don't even use Google anymore. I use Perplexity. Have you used? Have you been using?

• 44:20Mark Manson?

  I've not messed with Perplexity.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  It's pretty sweet.

• 44:22Mark Manson?

  I've heard it's great.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  It's like, it's like AI for Google, basically.

• 44:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  It kind of like, you put in a question, it gives you the answer. And it gives you the citations, you know? So you can click into those. So it's, that's a cool way to use kind of the AI internet right now. But then, what I've also noticed too, and this is something I wanted to ask you about. Should we all be investing in Reddit? You think?

• 44:41Mark Manson?

  What for?

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Because that's the human side of the internet.

• 44:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  That's the early human internet that I think you might be talking about. Because now, like, if, like you just said, if I want to go and I want to find out, okay, oh god, should I have kids or not? I'm gonna go to Reddit for that. Because there's threads of people who've done it. And there's people in their 60s, 70s are on there, people in their 20s.

• 44:59Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Still thinking about it and everybody in between. That's kind of the human internet. That's how I'm starting to use the internet more and more.

• 45:05Mark Manson?

  I would say, I think it's all social media. So I really think you're gonna have the social media.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:12Mark Manson?

  And then you're just gonna have the AI.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Which already, the social media is already the internet for a lot of people.

• 45:16Mark Manson?

  It really is.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:17Mark Manson?

  It really is. And, and it's funny too, because I, I get on social media to

• 45:25Mark Manson?

  Find new information or hear about new things. And then I go to Google or an AI to verify and learn more about it.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Ah, okay.

• 45:34Mark Manson?

  Is this true?

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 45:36Mark Manson?

  Who said this? Or, you know, did this actually happen? So, yeah, I'm kind of already using it as like two separate internets as well. But I really do think, I just think the, the social media companies.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're pretty well positioned, aren't they?

• 45:51Mark Manson?

  You can, you can hate on them as much as you want, but they are where the human internet's gonna live.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:00Mark Manson?

  And we, you know, I think we will eventually appreciate that.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. I do, I think you're absolutely right, though, about social connection being, being the new scarcity. And you're already seeing that as well. Not, but chess, you, you, you said that, that chess events, like live chess events where people play, they're hugely popular right now. There's, chess is more popular than it's ever been. And we can't, there's nobody on the planet who can beat the best chess computers.

• 46:23Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  It's insane.

• 46:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  AIs can write songs. You can put in all sorts of parameters, be like, write me the next pop hit.

• 46:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Of 2024, or whatever it is. And they could probably put you out something that's gonna be, it would be close to it. Live music, though, is also at an all time high. There's probably a little bit of like revenge.

• 46:42Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Live music stuff from the pandemic, but still.

• 46:44Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Live music venues are doing as best they have. Touring artists, that's how they're making all their money right now. Cause people want that. I have a friend in London who runs like a little record label on live event music.

• 46:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  And all of my other friends in England are like, oh, God, we need this so bad. And London, London's has great music. But the, the social connection scene there is, is just, it's just now starting to flourish. It's insane.

• 47:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:12Speaker 00

  The other thing, too, that I think I sent this to you recently. Dating apps are becoming a little bit less used.

• 47:21Mark Manson?

  You did send that to me, that, that people are leaving dating apps.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  We might talk about this on another, another episode at some point. But I want to make the point here about how. You know, as soon as like ChatGPT came online and then, you know, all these other tools that were kind of already around, they started getting repurposed for all these different, uh, all, all different things that people do. One of them was here, use AI to improve your, your dating, profile on these apps. And I think people were just like, Jesus Christ, are you serious? And so actually now, like on Eventbrite, live events, live dating singles events are more and more popular than they ever have been. So I think, I think the trend is already there. I don't think, I don't think it's a prediction you're making. I think it's already happened.

• 48:00Mark Manson?

  It's starting. Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:02Mark Manson?

  I believe it. I believe it. It's, it's

• 48:05Mark Manson?

  in my experience too, I mean, you know, when, when ChatGPT first came out, I kind of had the same fear. I think I even tweeted this at one point. I like joked, I was like, okay, how long do I have before I, I'm out of a job? And, um, I was like, I think I can make it to 2030.

• 48:22Mark Manson?

  But honestly, the way the last two, you know, the more I use it, the, the less convinced I am that it's going to replace anybody. I just think it's, I mean, the, the phrase that's going around Silicon Valley, to my understanding at the moment is, uh, you're, you're not going to be replaced by an AI. You're going to be replaced by somebody who knows how to use the AI.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:43Mark Manson?

  And I've definitely found that to be true, that it's, if I tell, we were actually joking earlier, that if you, if you tell ChatGPT to like, write something in the style of Mark Manson, it is

• 48:53Speaker 00

  It's awful.

• 48:53Mark Manson?

  It is like the worst half-ass parody of my work that you've ever seen. But, um, but

• 49:02Mark Manson?

  I use ChatGPT all the time to help research. I use it to come up with title ideas. I use it to come up with segment ideas. Like it's, it's super useful as a tool. And, um, so yeah. Big ups on AI.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think this is one of those where we need to just embrace it. Don't fight it so much. I, I get the pushback. I do understand the, the knee jerk reaction to it. But it, it is, it's, it's like a huge unlock for us. And I think if we, we need to not be so scared about it. Not, not be so scared of it. So we can use it in, in better ways.

• 49:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I agree. Cool. Well, that's our show. This was not produced by an AI.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  It was not.

• 49:40Mark Manson?

  This was produced by two humans. Or was it?

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Wisdom of the week, Mark. This one comes from Manson Cooley, who said, this goes back to the regret. Mason Cooley said, regret for wasted time is more wasted time.

• 49:56Mark Manson?

  Hmm. Well said.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:59Mark Manson?

  Well said. That's it. We'll be back next week. Please like and subscribe. And if you have a question, feel free to submit it. Uh, you can comment on YouTube or email us at [email protected]. We will be back next week and maybe, just maybe, we might be more empathetic next time. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choy is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.