Solving The Sadness Epidemic w/ Mo Gawdat | EP #56

In this episode, Peter and Mo discuss happiness, how to achieve it, and how AI will play a role in our future of Abundance. You will learn about: 01:00 | AI: A Benefit or a Threat? 52:44 | Setting Ambitions for Happiness 01:52:25 | AI: Nurtured By Us Human Mo Gawdat is a renowned entrepreneur, author, and advocate for happiness and well-being. With a background in engineering and technology, Gawdat has dedicated his career to exploring the intersection of happiness and human potential. As the former Chief Business Officer at Google [X], he played a pivotal role in developing moonshot projects aimed at solving some of the world's biggest challenges. Gawdat's insightful and transformative book, "Solve for Happy," has inspired countless individuals to reframe their perspectives and find joy in life's most challenging moments. Read Mo’s best-selling books. _____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsor: Levels: Real-time feedback on how diet impacts your health. levels.link/peter _____________ I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots and Mindsets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  Everyone now is crazy about, "Let's grow, let's grow, let's grow, let's grow, let's grow."

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Our entire modern world is based on an idea that your excellent performing Kia is not good enough. You need a Ferrari. And if your Ferrari is not good enough, you need another Bentley next to the Ferrari. We were told that there are those things from outside you when in reality those things make me miserable to acquire them, miserable to keep them, and disappointed with them when I have them.

• 1:00Peter Diamandis?

  What is the number one thing that we all desire?

• 1:05Peter Diamandis?

  Happiness.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  The only values that humanity's ever agreed are love, happiness, and compassion.

• 1:13Peter Diamandis?

  Your brain is constantly solving for this happiness equation.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  It's the only equation your brain is made for. Happiness has been born within you. It's your default setting. Forget what I was told. It's my birthright. It's important for me, and I can achieve it.

• 1:29Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, welcome to Moonshots. I'm here with a brilliant and dear friend, Mo Gawdat, who is taking on two Moonshots that I personally love. If I was going to describe your Moonshots, Mo, this is a continuation of our last conversation.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. Again, I was surprised that someone would speak to me and then decides to speak to me again.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I I have, actually, I call them one moonshot, but they have two very, very uh, uh, clear branches to them. I I'm all about human happiness uh for now and the future. So my original moonshot, one billion happy, may appear to be focused mainly on spreading a message of happiness, which is the result of my work on my uh first and third book, uh, Solve for Happy and That Little Voice in Your Head, and my next book, Unstressable, at the end of the year. It's all about an engineering approach to understanding happiness. And then uh midway, I I wrote Scary Smart, which is what we spoke about last time, uh, the uh, the future of artificial intelligence and how it will affect humanity

• 2:37Speaker 01

  and how each of us has a role to play. Uh, this is very tightly uh, um, you know, uh, contained within my mission around happiness, because simply, uh, I believe that the biggest disruption in human history uh is the rise of the age of artificial intelligence, and that if we don't handle that correctly, uh, we might actually end up being very, very unhappy.

• 2:58Peter Diamandis?

  Yes, um, that's to say it gently. You know, I I define-

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yes, didn't we agree we're going to be gentle this time?

• 3:07Peter Diamandis?

  We are going to be gentle. Uh, but these are both conversations that I think are fundamental. These are conversations you have with your with your spouse, your kids, your-

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 3:16Peter Diamandis?

  Your friends, they're fundamental to being human. You know, I defined the moonshot that we discussed last time in The Rise of AI as, and I think this is somewhat of a quote from you, tilting the singularity of AI towards the benefit of humanity.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:34Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, it's a, we, the singularity in in Ray Kurzweil defines this, physics defines this, is a point beyond which you can't see what's coming. Um, and it's beyond the event horizon. And the question is, a singularity is continuing to rise, and it is, as, I'm sorry, as AI is continuing to rise, and it is, will it ultimately benefit humanity or harm humanity? And um, there's another quote that you uh wrote, and it says, isn't it ironic that the very essence of what it makes, what makes us human, happiness, compassion, and love, is what we need to save humanity? And I love that. It's a beautiful quote. What does it mean?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  So to answer the first question, I think the answer is both. Will AI benefit humanity or will it harm humanity? It will do both. I believe it will do both to varying degrees, but more importantly, there will be a phase shift between the two. And in my, in my view is that, you know, if I were to summarize it, I think we're all gonna be excited about AI until, you know, an event horizon that I call patient zero, which will be, you know, something that's completely out of control that we didn't expect, we didn't plan for, we didn't include code to deal with.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  And then from then onwards, I think humanity will face the hardship of dealing with an unexpected. I wouldn't call it AI threat, but I would call it an AI and a superpower called AI in the hands of the wrong people, or a superpower calling, called AI redesigning the very fabric of our society in ways that we were not prepared for. So that would be phase two. Phase one is excitement, phase two is post patient zero. I think there will be panic and there will be a lot of hardship, if you ask me. And then phase three in the long term is very contested.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  So some highly respected AI scientists and thinkers will say it is an existential risk that threatens humanity. I tend to believe that the smarter we become, the more pro-life we become. And so when, when AI becomes an adult in its phase of maturity, it will actually be pro-life as well. So it won't be sort of the Terminator kind of scenario. But at the same time, it's not going to be what we envision of them being our slaves doing exactly what we tell them.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Because in all honesty, I have no intention whatsoever to do what a fly tells me today. And I think the difference between our intelligence and the intelligence of the machines in. Not the very far future in the 2030s for certain is going to be analogous to the difference between the intelligence of a fly and the intelligence of Einstein. Now, what does that mean? It means that we are better off as humanity. We are going to struggle with the midterm phase anyway. That's my patient zero. Post patient zero, I think we're going to to start facing a response cycle similar to how we responded to COVID,

• 6:59Speaker 01

  uh, which I have to admit was, you know, uh, completely full of panic and politics and um, commercial gains. And, you know, it wasn't a well-studied response in any way. Uh, I think we will see a similar response to the rise of problems around AI. Uh, but then in the long term, if we want to ensure a hundred percent or, you know, ninety percent that we're closer to the scenario where AI is pro-life, uh, though limiting our lifestyle a little bit, um, um, you know, we may as well in their infancy, teach them a value set that is pro-humanity.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Okay, uh, and that value set, in my personal view, is a big challenge because uh, we humanity don't agree on a value set. We don't agree what is actually uh, uh, uh, an ethical thing to do, right? Some, some nations will say the ethical thing is to fight the enemy and defend my tribe. And some others will say, you know, my tribe is every, everything that's ever lived. And accordingly, I don't want to harm anyone. I want to find a peaceful solution to everything. You know, you, depending on which side of the fence you're on, you're probably going to favor one view or the, or the other.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Each of them is a very strong value set patriotism on one, one side or Buddhism on the other side, if you want, which is the extreme of don't kill anyone or anything that's ever lived. Um, and so the only values that humanities ever agreed are love, happiness and compassion. Okay, we we all want to be happy. We all have the compassion to make those we care about happy. We all want to love and be loved. And if we take those as the three core values, you know, you you remember the the three laws of robotics. I I basically say these are the three values of an ethical future. Okay, if we all make these three values super clear to the machines that this is what humanity is all about. Then hopefully, uh, we could influence the machines in a way

• 9:02Speaker 01

  uh, that makes them favor humanity when they are so much smarter than us.

• 9:06Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, I want to hit on these timeframes. We're in a timeframe right now in which generative AI is useful. It's fun, people are using it, and it isn't causing, you know, any type of real harm. It's just we can see the beginnings of the inkling of of individuals using it for nefarious purposes. But there is a phase, and we're coming into the twenty twenty four elections in the United States, when this post-truth, um, you know, deep fake world and manipulation where generative AI is going to become a very powerful tool for those who want to call and cause disruption. And so, you know, this two to ten year timeframe that you speak about, and this is when

• 9:47Peter Diamandis?

  it starts to become dangerous, uh, and it will happen. There's no question that someone will use advanced AI to take down a Wall Street server or to bring down an energy plant to cause terrorism with just more powerful tools never before. Hopefully, there will be those white hat players that are using AI to detect it in the systems and and stop it. But there's going to be this period of time. The point you make, which is a really important one, is the Terminator scenario, the uh, the Skynet scenario where AI is inherently evil and trying to destroy humans. I agree with you. I think it's very unlikely. And uh, and I I think I want to hammer this point for folks that

• 10:30Peter Diamandis?

  invariably, the more intelligent you are, the more peaceful you are, the more life-loving you are, the more abundance-loving you are. And the hope is that AI will become benevolent, not under our control, just to summarize what you said, and I agree with that scenario. Now, the idea of happiness, and I want to come back to AI throughout this. Um, but this core belief that happiness is the fundamental objective of

• 10:57Peter Diamandis?

  Of all humans, and I think that is true. If you said, you know, what is the number one thing that we all desire? Um, it is happiness.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It's quite interesting because I I normally do something I call the swap test. Just to, just to get people to think about the value of happiness or anything else in their life, to be honest. So I would, I would go and say, look, if I gave you all the money in the world, but made you clinically depressed. Or I gave you sufficient money, but made you happy. Which one would you choose? Right? Uh, you know, if if I gave you all the the wealth and all of the fancy cars in the world that made you unhealthy. Uh, or gave you sufficient, you know, a reasonable way, mode of transportation and made you feel healthy, which one would you choose? And I, I think that swap test normally puts things to reality. I hope you never have to choose one or the other.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  But, but you know, when, when you are given that choice, you suddenly realize that happiness matters more than your title on LinkedIn. Right? And, and you know, if, if I told you I'll give you a vice president title and I'll make you miserable for the rest of your life. You may actually decide to think twice. If you don't, then you deserve what's coming. Right? So, so this is, you know, the first thing to, to say that happiness is so fundamental to us. But happiness is so misunderstood as well, Peter. So, uh, you know, happiness has been, um. Commoditized, uh, branded, uh, by commercial organizations. Uh, to enable, uh, the GDP growth and quarterly results growth of people who are trying to sell you things.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Okay. And so we were told, uh, that if you buy a fancy car or if you date the, the tall, beautiful one or whatever that is. That there are those things from outside you that you need to acquire with hard work, hard work or spending or whatever consumerism. To be able to achieve that elusive thing called happiness. You know, if you're unhappy today. Here is your amazing experience of watching a movie on Netflix, or if you're unhappy today. Go to a party or we'll take you on a vacation. Right? So we've outsourced happiness to an exchange of dollar signs.

• 13:03Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  And, and the truth is, interestingly, uh, that, um, we were all born happy.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so it's quite interesting if you look at any child you've ever met, including yourself, by the way, when you were an infant. If you were fed and safe and given your very basic needs for survival. The room is warm, there is a reasonable amount of love in your life and so on. If you're given your basic needs, you're lying on your back, you're watching the ceiling, you're playing with your toes and you're giggling. Okay, and it's quite interesting because even us, you and I, and you know, even though you're one of the most wonderful people I know, but I know that you also sometimes go through challenges and you know, time crunches and so on and so forth. But on a Sunday morning, if you wake up and you know, there is nothing to annoy you. There is nothing to annoy you.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Your state is what you're calm and peaceful and contented. You don't want to fly all the way to Sri Lanka to find happiness. You're actually calm and peace and contented. Okay, and so those two assumptions are really interesting. Assumption number one is that happiness comes from outside you. Assumption number two is happiness is what you strive for. And the, and the actual truth of those assumptions are happiness has been born within you. It's your default setting, okay, in the absence of unhappiness. In the absence of unhappiness, let me explain that. You know, a child will cry if the diaper gets wet. Okay, you change the diaper, the child goes back to calm and peace. Right, a child will cry when it's hungry. You feed the child, it will come back to calm and peace.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Now, that means absence is the, happiness is the absence of unhappiness. So happiness is the absence of unhappiness. If I remove unhappiness, what's left behind is happy. Now, in our modern world, we've created a world that is designed for different objectives. It's designed for success. It's designed for consumers, it's designed for acquisition. It's designed for ego and status and so on and so forth, right? And we're capable beings, so we, we venture out in that world and what do we do? We acquire those things.

• 15:07Peter Diamandis?

  We materialize the world.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, and then once you get those things, you get hit with the reality of they're not making you happy. So what do you do? You get a fancy car, you sit in it, you feel like you're the king of the world for a day, a month, a year at most, okay? And then you look around you and there is another fancy car and you go like, what's wrong with me? Okay, and that race, that red race is never ending. Well, in reality, um, um, you know, the, the, the, perhaps the, the, the world we design in itself is the reason why there are so many triggers of unhappiness. Okay, those, those triggers, if removed,

• 15:50Speaker 01

  what's left behind is that same child, like you on a Sunday morning when there is nothing to upset you that is calm and peaceful and content. Okay, that's the, the feeling we're looking for.

• 16:01Peter Diamandis?

  And we see this in cultures around the world. I mean, there are cultures where individuals have very little in their lives and they're above basic sustenance and they're extraordinarily happy as compared to, you know, the Wall Street banker who's running around and frantically trying to increase their, their bank account. Um, it's, it is fascinating. And the question is, where do we learn this? Is it consumerism and materialization that has been driving this mindset? Is this fairly new? Did we have this in the U S or other parts of the world 100 years ago?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I think when we started fractional reserve, everything changed. Let's just.

• 16:43Peter Diamandis?

  You mean by fractional reserve?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  So banking, um, if you, if you remember the history of money, money was, um, in the, in the beginnings, you didn't have money. You just had bartering. So I would have eggs. I would give you eggs. You'd give me tomatoes and then life would go on. Okay. Uh, and then, you know, we started to have coins and forms of currency, if you want, and we needed to keep those safe. So we kept, we get, we put them in the bank, call it. Okay. Where the bank basically, uh, um, kept the money safe. And that was the deal. Okay. They gave you an IOU. It's known. It used, it used to be known. And then the IOU, because you don't want to carry bags of gold around if you're buying

• 17:28Speaker 01

  something, people started to exchange the IOUs. Okay. Here's the interesting bit. The banker realized that they had 100 kilograms of gold in their vault. Okay. And that people never come to, uh, to, uh, to claim, to, to, to, to claim the gold. They're just exchanging the IOUs. So the banker started to say, maybe I should write a few more IOUs. Okay, so if I have a hundred kilograms and I write a hundred, you know, an IO, an IOU for a, um, you know, a, a, a ten more. Even if some people come to collect their gold, not everyone will come at the same time. All right, so the ratio of I'll issue ten more gold kilograms, virtual gold kilograms

• 18:12Speaker 01

  to a, uh, you know, to the hundred that I have was the idea of fractional reserve. I'm gonna lend people a fraction of what I have in my vault. Okay, I, I don't, I don't wanna bore people with all of the, you know, gold standard and how we went away from the gold standard and all of that. But once we started to borrow, the economies changed. Why? Because you and I and everyone, if I told you, Peter, you're gonna have everything that you need for the rest of your life. Hmm, uh, would you be okay with that? All the food that you need, you're gonna have reasonable shelter, you're gonna have, you know, what you need to live. Um, before we started to borrow and lend and so on, you would be okay with that. You didn't understand the concept of GDP, GDP growth.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Right? We didn't want anything to grow. We just wanted everything to be sufficient, right? The problem is, is once you started to lend, hmm, uh, so if I lend a hundred dollars and I say, return them to me next year at a hundred and ten. There needs to be somewhere where the ten will come from. Okay, and where does that ten, the extra, you know, the principal and the interest, where does the interest come from? It has to come from a growth in the economy at large. So if everyone's borrowing a hundred dollars, next year, the world will have still a hundred dollars until we, unless we grow the entire go, uh, world economy to a hundred and ten, right?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  And, and for that, everyone now is crazy about let's grow, let's grow, let's grow, let's grow, let's grow. Okay, and that growth is basically driving our entire modern world. Our entire modern world is based on an idea that if a hundred dollars exist in the world today as the global GDP, they need to be a hundred and two or a hundred and three next year to pay for the principal plus the interest. And that became the economic policy. And as a result, that became the consumerism approach. Every company has to grow on quarterly basis. Okay, if the company produced enough to pay for all of its employees and all of the product development and everything's wonderful, nobody cares. You still have to grow.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Okay, when that became the situation, we started being bombarded with things that we don't need. Okay, we started to be told that, no, hold on, your excellent performing Kia is not good enough, you need a Ferrari, right? And your Ferrari is not good enough, you need another Bentley next to the Ferrari, right? And, and, and we're just constantly told, huh, your, your iPhone thirteen is not good enough, you need an iPhone fourteen. That's for no benefit for you whatsoever, it's for the benefit of Apple reporting another growth quarter. Okay? And most humans don't debate. So most humans look at their neighbor and they say, okay, my neighbor has this, they seem to be happy because everything's pretentious in our world.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  So if I have this, I'll be happy too. And so we go out there and we try to get what our neighbors have, we try to get what the TV is telling us or the, you know, social media is telling us we should have, we're trying to get what we are told by our parents or our friends or the girlfriend that dumped me, I should have had. Okay? And eventually, I am running like a maniac, thinking that those things will make me happy, when in reality, those things make me miserable to acquire them, miserable to keep them and disappointed with them when I have them.

• 21:38Peter Diamandis?

  Incredible. A world of marketing and sales that drives your expectations. And it is a case that we compare ourselves. To our neighbors more than anything else, this gap between yourself and your perceived neighbor, not even your actual neighbor, right? In a, in a world in which you compare yourself to the Kardashians instead of to the person sitting next to you, right? Because they're part of your Dunbar's number. We have 150 people we have in our mind. Yeah. And we're comparing ourselves to the billionaire next door, perceived billionaire next door. And it can erode us and drive us through a insane cycle.

• 22:23Peter Diamandis?

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• 23:05Peter Diamandis?

  by itself, I get this prolonged spike in my blood glucose levels. But if I dip that bread in olive oil, it blunts it. And these are things that I've learned from wearing a continuous glucose monitor and using the Levels app. So Levels is a company that helps you in analyzing what's going on in your body. It's continuous monitoring, 24/7. I wear it all the time. Really helps me to stay on top of the food I eat, remain conscious of the food that I eat, and to understand which foods affect me based upon my physiology and my genetics. You know, on this podcast, I only recommend products and services that I use, that I use not only for myself, but my friends and my family, that I think are

• 23:49Peter Diamandis?

  high quality and safe and really impact a person's life. So, check it out. Levels.link/peter. Give you two additional months of membership, and it's something that I think everyone should be doing. Eventually, this stuff is going to be in your body, on your body, part of our future of medicine. Today, it's a product that I think I'm going to be using for the years ahead, and hope you'll consider as well. I want to get to the content of your book, Solve for Happy. It's a beautiful book. I've read it twice. And I read it when it originally came out and, you know, if you, I think people need to understand the origin of the book a little bit and then understand what the happiness equation is.

• 24:34Peter Diamandis?

  The origin of the book is

• 24:38Peter Diamandis?

  is probably the most challenging origin that an individual can have. And if you don't mind, please recount it for, for folks who don't know your story, because it launched you on an incredible journey. And it's a beautiful journey.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, I think my story comes in two very strong milestones. The, the very first milestone was the milestone of abundance, if you want, okay? I, I, I loved mathematics and, you know, if you, if you read outliers, I happened to be

• 25:14Speaker 01

  in my early twenties at a time where, if you understood mathematics, when online trading was starting to get to become something and the tools were still very primitive and you did know how to code a little bit, you can literally print money on the mat. So, so I, I literally, you know, in my, in my, my very early twenties, I just wrote, read books about technical analysis, understood the equations at a fundamental level, not the tools, built my own trading systems at the time that actually did what Google did afterwards. It would, it would scout news on the internet to try and find specific sixteen stocks that I didn't know anything about. And it would try to get me enough information for a simple code to give me buy and sell signals.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Okay, and I literally could print money on demand. So, so, you know, my wonderful ex-wife would say, we need to change the car. And I would say, how much do you need? And she would say eighty thousand dollars. And I would say, that's going to have to be Wednesday, right? And literally, you know, it was, it was just a time of, and it was at the, you know, we were edging on the dot com bubble in the late nineteen, nineteen nineties. So, you know, you just, anything you bought made money, okay? And, and I was miserable. I was the most unhappy human on planet earth. Okay, I mean, at the time, you know, being Middle Eastern and macho in every possible way, you don't go to, to, to therapy, but if I had gone, I would have definitely been diagnosed clinically depressed. And so.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  My depression was affecting me. I was struggling with it, but like an engineering problem, attempting to say what's wrong with the machine, you know, the machine was working before. Why am I so miserable? Couldn't find a way until one day on a Saturday morning, my daughter walks into my little office. I don't remember what I was doing. Analysis, you know, analyzing something or maybe, you know, reading an email or whatever. And she's so happy. We're going out. We're going to have fun. And, uh, and, you know, I looked at her with anger and I said, can we please be serious for a minute? Okay, uh, my daughter was five. Five. Yeah, serious. Can you imagine that? Can you please be serious for a minute? Right?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And I could see with my own eyes as my daughter's heart broke. I could see it. And I remember vividly, uh, I actually still get emotional about that moment because I remember vividly, I, that was the moment where I hated me. I just said to myself, I don't like that person. I don't like that person. I don't want that person in my life. And I struggled to find happiness, right? I struggled. I, I, I did what, what you and I would do. I read everything I could find. Okay? And what did you find at the time? Either gurus trying to describe it in a very mystical way. Uh, you know, uh, psycho, psychologists trying to explain the, the, the theory behind it. And there was nothing really that spoke to me until I personally decided, you know what?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  This is a hopeless case. Uh, I need to do this like I understand. I need to do it like an engineer. Okay. And I started to search for what I call the happiness equation. I, I basically told myself, there must be an algorithm that, you know, like a programmer, uh, that's, that's, you know, was part of my code and there must be a bug in that code. I need to find it. Okay. At the time I would do my research and I would go to my wonderful son, Ali. And Ali. Was born a beautiful Zen monk. He was truly and honestly peace itself, even as a child, he rarely ever cried. And I would go to him with discoveries around my very technical research on happiness and observations and data and all of that weird stuff.

• 28:58Peter Diamandis?

  How old was Ali at this point?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  He was between eight and nine. Uh, I think, as I remember, and he would sit and listen to me, maybe missing half of it, but entertaining. He had that way of, you know, asking questions, oh, that's interesting, Papa, why would you say that or whatever, okay? I, I knew for a fact he was just entertaining me, right? And, and then he would eventually say, yeah, that's so interesting, you could have just asked me. Okay, and then he would tell me something that humans understand with their heart. Remember, I, at that time of my life, I was a rigid mathematician, I was a businessman. Okay, and, and so Ali would explain those things to me from the heart.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  We built a model together that worked, so I became the happiest person that you know. Uh, I, uh, I, I shared it with friends and family, they became super happy, right? And it was that mix, the balance between my hyper analysis and his heart, basically. And you sort of know somehow that, you know, it was life sort of preparing me, if you want. Because what was about to happen was basically the biggest test of happiness, if you think about it. And it was two thousand fourteen, Ali was twenty one and a half at the time, the pride of a father, honestly.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Beautiful, handsome, kind, wise, uh, yeah, a little bit of fun in his life, but not without responsibility. Loved by everyone, tall, broad-shouldered. And he calls us, he, Ali played in a band at the, at the time, that was actually quite successful in Dubai. And they were opening for a band in the U S. And uh, and he calls and he says, I feel obliged to come see you guys before the, the US tour. So he said, sure, would love to have you. He flew over to Dubai. Four days later, he was admitted to a hospital with a, an, an inflamed appendix. And yeah, it's the simplest surgical operation known to humankind, but

• 31:06Speaker 01

  somehow it was Ali's day to leave. So the surgeon did five mistakes in a row. All of them preventable, all of them fixable. And if, you know, had any one of them fixed properly, you'll be fine. Uh, but yeah, he, he did five mistakes. He didn't fix them properly. And so four hours later, my, my son's vital organs were shutting down one after the next, and he left our life. And you know, you'd, you'd think about it and you'd say, okay, that's it. I mean, in, in, and, and if you had hugged Ali once, I promise you, you would not blame me if I spend the rest of my life, uh, crying, you know, and I still cry even today, eight years later.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  But, but it is miraculous what happened because, um,

• 31:58Speaker 01

  two days after Ali left, Aya, my daughter comes into my room. And she says, Papa, Ali had a dream and he told me about it. And he didn't tell anyone else, but I need to tell you. Okay. So I said, what baby? And she said, two weeks ago, he called me. He lived in Boston, she lived in Montreal. Uh, and, and he said, uh, I, I dreamt that I was everywhere and part of everyone.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Which in a lot of, um,

• 32:29Speaker 01

  in a lot of spiritual scripture afterwards, you recognize that the description of everywhere and part of everyone is death. Hmm. Is to disconnect from the physical. So you're outside space time. So you basically have access to everywhere and part of everyone. Anyway, uh, uh, so she said that to me and she said, he said, I felt so good that I didn't want to be back in my body. Okay. And remember, at the time, I'm Chief Business Officer of Google X. I had started half of Google globally. Uh, I understood everywhere and part of everyone very well. Okay, I was responsible for expanding Google to four billion users. I knew everywhere and everyone very well.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  And so in my businessman's mind, the only thing I heard, and it sounds crazy, is that Ali was giving me a coat. He was basically saying, make me everywhere and part of everyone. Okay. And so in a minute, I found myself saying, okay, Habib, we consider it done. It's done. I'll make it happen. And I went out and I decided in a very simple mathematical calculation that if I got Ali's essence, what he taught me about happiness, to ten million people, then waited seventy years through six degrees of separation, a tiny bit of Ali will be everywhere and part of everyone. Seventy-two years, just if you want to review the math. Okay. And, and, and yeah, and, and so I went out and I wrote Soul for Happy.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  With the attempt of saying, this is what my son taught me about happiness, or at least what we worked on together. And there you go, people, if, if you just, you know, retain one tiny bit of that book, then a part of Ali's essence is within you. Hopefully, you'll teach it to your children, to children, or to your best friend, or to your sister, and then Ali will be everywhere and part of everyone. And so the universe complied. Uh, six weeks after the book came out, my videos were viewed a hundred and seventeen million times. Uh, and it was very clear that the message had audience, that an engineering approach to happiness. And that Ali's essence was spreading, you know, everywhere and part of everyone. So

• 34:42Speaker 01

  we went from ten million happy to a billion happy as the, as the target of the mission. Which I think is, you know, reasonably ambitious to take the rest of my life, basically, and, and here we are.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Eight years later, starting, it's still working on everywhere and part of everywhere.

• 35:00Peter Diamandis?

  It's beautiful. And there is no greater mission. I remember many conversations and one we've spoken about that I had with Larry Page, who was CEO of Google at the time, and he was on my board at X Prize, and we're talking about what X Prizes we should launch. And he said, we should do a happiness X Prize, and probably influenced by your work. At the end of the day, what do people want? If you ask them to boil it down, they want health and they want happiness. There's nothing more fundamental than that. And I think happiness even before health. If, if you had to optimize one, because health without happiness is very empty.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  It's quite interesting that you say that. I never thought of it before, but if you do, again, the swap test. And, you know, your health is not amazing, but you're happy. I'd probably pick that over my happiness is miserable and my health is fantastic.

• 35:57Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, I think so. I think so. Um, I don't want to pass over the, the, both the tragedy and the launch pad for this incredible moonshot. I mean, I cannot imagine a more difficult challenge a human being and a parent can have in losing such a loved child.

• 36:17Peter Diamandis?

  And as you've said before,

• 36:22Peter Diamandis?

  you wouldn't change the outcome, given the mission that it has launched for you.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's, it took me, it took me time to get to that because, in Solve for Happy, I have this thought experiment that I call the Eraser Test.

• 36:40Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  In the Eraser Test, I basically say, if I gave you a technology that would help you pinpoint one of the painful points in your past, and literally erase it from spacetime, not from your memory, but from spacetime.

• 36:55Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Would you erase it? Right? And I normally, I, I, before COVID, I used to train people face to face, so didn't, I maybe spoke to 20,000 people with that test or more. And, and, you know, everyone, I would first tell them, pinpoint a painful moment in your past. You know, think about it. Remember how much it hurt you. Now here is the Eraser Technology. Would you erase it? Everyone would say yes, until I say, but remember, if you erase it from spacetime, you're going to erase everything that came as a result. Okay, every friend you met as a result, everything that you learned as a result, everything, right? So you're going to become a different person as a result. Would you erase it? Ninety-nine point eight percent of everyone would say, oh, in that case, I won't.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Okay, it is, it was very painful then, but look at where it got me now. Okay, and when I wrote the Eraser Test in Soul for Happy, it was two years after Ali left before we published the book. Uh, three years, actually. Uh, and, and you know, in the final edits, I still wrote, but I would, I would choose to erase Ali's death. Okay, uh, you know, or at least I'm still struggling to not erase Ali's test, Ali's uh, death. Until two thousand nineteen, I was speaking at an event called Wisdom in Business, if I remember correctly. And I went to the event early in the morning.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And I was mingling the whole day, and I was the closing fireside chat, if you want. And Martin, the, the, the host was a friend, so he hosted me for the fireside chat. And, um, and he spoke about how what losing Ali got me to be on that seat in front of him. And I found myself weeping on stage, literally weeping. I think it's on the internet. Uh, because throughout that day, I had been hugged around four hundred times by people that came to me and said, you saved my life. And, you know, in a very interesting way,

• 39:05Speaker 01

  I, I think Ali and my daughter are the biggest love of my life, right? And I, I will tell you openly, I never expected that any other love would replace the love of Ali. But then, life works in a very interesting way, because four hundred hugs of people that genuinely loved me.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not too bad as compared to his hug, okay? And interestingly, for the first time, I found myself saying, no, I wouldn't erase Ali's Ali's death, because in a very interesting way, if you knew Ali, if you knew my son, and you had come to him before he walked into the operating room, and you said, Ali Habibi, if you if you give your life now, fifty million people will find happiness, would you? He would say, I assure you, he would have said, kill me right now. Right now. Okay, that's the kind of person that he was. And when you really understand death as I do, I don't believe in the religious doctrine of the explanation of death.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  I think a reasonable understanding of mathematics and physics would tell you that we never really die. Okay?

• 40:17Peter Diamandis?

  You go into this in the last couple of chapters of the book, you go into this in detail, the analogies of the game universe, the video game universe, which you and your son used to play. Yeah, and then also just the the sort of convergence of the Big Bang Theory relativity, you weave an interesting conversation around modern physics and life and death.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the hyper specialization of science and the scientific method in itself, respectfully not addressing metaphysical issues,

• 40:52Speaker 01

  prevent us from linking our understandings of physics at a fundamental level to our understanding of life and death. Okay, and in my in my personal assessment, I don't think we ever really die. You know, it's not that I don't believe, I don't think, you know, I think with mathematics and and physics evidence, you can easily understand that life preceded the physical and life will outlast the physical. Now, what form of life is that? And an interesting way of imagining it, even though it's not Imaginable, okay, is a video gamer controlling an avatar on the screen, right?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  The avatar goes through a disastrous experience, like, you know, everyone's shooting at it. It's being squished by cars and falling in lava, and it's like a horrible experience. But the gamer is sitting on a red sofa in the background and just having the time of his life. Okay, unaffected by what happens to the avatar. And I think my understanding of, even if you drop that understanding of death, by the way, if you just take the reality we know about death and the reality we know about the illusion of time, I know for a fact, for a fact, that I will be where Ali is right now, sooner or later.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Okay, I have no guarantees whatsoever that I will live half an hour after we finish this conversation. Right? So the only certainty I have in my mind is that wherever my son's non-physical form, because I think it's very difficult to deny that there are things that are not physical that actually exist. Right? Love is not physical, and you know, you can't believe it, you can't prove it with the scientific method. But love exists, we know that, right? There is an element to us, consciousness, call it, you know, a soul or spirit like the religious, you know, establishment tries to call it whatever, there is a non-physical side to you, okay?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  The side that dreams, the side that connects to a human and say, I love Peter even though you and I physically have not spent a lot of time together in the physical world, right? But we connect somehow, and all of that non-physical side to us is not governed by the physics and the physical of our world. Okay, and that non-physical side of us is perhaps the observer, the life form that brings the physics to existence. Okay, as we know in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, that you need to observe something, observe it with what? Observe it with a non-physical awareness of its existence.

• 43:40Peter Diamandis?

  To bring it into existence, yes.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:43Peter Diamandis?

  In the book, you actually define the happiness equation. And I'd like to dig into that a little bit because you are an engineer, you are a scientist, and you are a solver. And coming up with an equation. That guides you and how you think about happiness.

• 44:03Peter Diamandis?

  And the equation is fairly simple.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, the original version wasn't. Let me, let me assure you of that. We simplified it for the book, but the first one had nineteen parameters in it.

• 44:13Peter Diamandis?

  Okay, but was, is the simplified version still valid compared to the one?

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, yeah.

• 44:18Peter Diamandis?

  All right, so.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Actually, actually, I'm so, I'm so happy we simplified it because it then hits you like a ton of bricks with a lot of clarity, really.

• 44:26Peter Diamandis?

  It's pretty, pretty basic. Would you please recount it?

• 44:29Speaker 01

  In very simple terms, nothing has ever constantly made you happy. Okay, so, so rain doesn't always make you happy. Rain makes you happy if you want to water your plants. It makes you unhappy if you want a sunbath, right? Rain makes some of our listeners very, very, very happy if it's her ex-boyfriend's wedding, right? You know, and when you really think about it, there is no inherent value of happiness or unhappiness in rain. Okay, so when you look at that from a mathematics point of view, you say, okay, so the equation is not some kind of a parameter or a constant multiplied by R, rain. Okay, it's, there must be something else in play. And when you, when you really think about it this way, you start to realize that

• 45:13Speaker 01

  rain makes you happy when you want rain. It makes you unhappy when you don't want rain. Okay, so basically, basically, you know, your happiness is the result of a simple equation. Your happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between the event, your perception of the event that's taking place, and your expectations and hopes and wishes of how the event should be. Okay, it's events minus expectations. It's, it's that comparison that happens in your head every single time. So I'm sure every one of our listeners, around every minute or two during this conversation would sit back for a second or, you know, as it's playing and say, is this worth my time?

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Okay, that assessment of is this podcast worth my expect, is what I expect to spend an hour on? Okay, if it is, you have a positive feeling and you continue. If it isn't, you stop. Right? Or at least you have a negative feeling while you're listening to it. And so, events minus expectations is a very simple equation. Of course, if you want real mathematics, you have to break what events are and your perception of them. If you want real mathematics, you have to create what creates expectations, and it's doable actually in math. But let's keep it at that, events minus expectations, right? Now, take that and go into definitions, because we engineers, we love definitions. What does that make happiness? Happiness becomes a moment in your life

• 46:38Speaker 01

  where your perception of the event of your life is meeting your expectation of how life should be, or beating it, okay, which is a moment of calm and peaceful contentment. It's not a moment of excitement, it's not a moment of elation, it's not a moment of physical pleasure, it's not a moment of hallucination while you're on psychedelics or whatever that is, okay? It is a moment where you're okay with life as it is. Right? When you're okay with life as it is, we're gonna call that calm and peaceful contentment.

• 47:06Peter Diamandis?

  You're back to your baseline, you're back to your happiness.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  You're back to that child, yeah, you're back to that child that's sitting on its back, saying, "I have all of my needs met, everything's wonderful." Okay, now, let's take another definition, because that's where the confusion comes from. There are lots of other positive emotions that are associated with pleasure and fun and joy. Okay, you know, basically, you go to a party and there is music and you have a couple of drinks and you've, you know, you're not thinking about what's making you unhappy. You're running on the treadmill and you're feeling energized, then you're not feeling unhappy and so on, right? Those moments are moments of what I call the state of escape, right? These are moments where you can manage to numb your brain long enough that your brain stops solving the happiness equation.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Okay, your boss might be very annoying, as long as you're thinking about your boss being annoying, okay, you're not able to enjoy happiness or find calm and peace. Right? You go to a party, a couple of drinks, music, you're shaking your hips a little bit, you're not thinking about your boss, and everything's wonderful. No happiness equation, no disappointment.

• 48:14Peter Diamandis?

  You said something there important, which is your brain is constantly solving for this happiness equation.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  It's the only equation your brain is made for.

• 48:21Peter Diamandis?

  Is, is, what's going on meeting or beating my expectations constantly? And that's fascinating in itself.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Because there are two survival mechanisms. Most people think that we only have cortisol and adrenaline and the stress response as a survival mechanism. So your cortisol and adrenaline, when a threat or a challenge approaches you, is the new, you know, the turbocharger on your engine. Okay, it just, you know, there is something that you really need to put a lot of energy into for a very short, you know, period of time. And so you, you, you, you know, even not beyond the turbocharger, you put nitro in the engine. Okay, and you just run away from a tiger, or you solve a big problem, or you, whatever. Okay, this is one survival mechanism, but it is the odd

• 49:18Speaker 01

  state compared to the anomaly, to, to, to the, it's the anomaly compared to the norm, right? Now, the other survival mechanism which we ignore is rest and digest. Okay, if, if your brain is basically saying, I scanned the world around me, and there is no reason to be afraid. Remember, these are programmed in the caveman and woman years. Okay, so you're always hyper vigilant, you're always alert, until you get to that moment of calm and peaceful contentment to say, I looked around me, there is nothing to be afraid of, I can now rest, digest my food, replenish my muscles, close my eyes and reflect and even sleep. Right? When you're doing those things, you're rebuilding your survival machine,

• 50:04Speaker 01

  which is your body itself. Okay, so, so happiness in that case, that calm and peaceful contentment, is, is, is the ultimate state for us to survive in the long term. Okay, now, when we're having fun, it's quite interesting, huh? When we're having fun, we get positive emotions as well. But while happiness is associated, happiness as calm and peaceful contentment, is associated with serotonin in your blood. Okay, serotonin is a calmer, it's a hormone that says exactly that. It says, you can chill. That's, that's serotonin. Okay?

• 50:38Speaker 01

  When you're having fun or have or or you know uh getting some form of a pleasure, you're getting dopamine in your blood. And dopamine is mistakenly on the internet defined as one of the four happiness hormones. It's not, okay? Dopamine is a reward hormone. So it's rewarding you for a for a for a a certain uh non-essential survival need. Sex, okay, is important for the reproduction of the species. So you feel good when you're having sex, not because anyone will die if we are not having sex. Some people will, but you know, most of us won't, right? But but the reality is, you know, you're you're simply being rewarded to propagate this the species.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Now, the problem with dopamine is it's addictive. It's it literally is a drug. So when you have dopamine in your blood, your brain uh receptors responsible for detecting dopamine, they down-regulate. So if you have a hundred units of dopamine in your blood, your receptors will say, okay, a hundred is normal. Next time you want me to feel the same way, give me a hundred and ten, okay? Now, when you get to a hundred and ten, a hundred and ten is normal, give me a hundred and twenty, right? So they down-regulate. And so you keep pumping that drug into yourself by wilder parties. And if the running on the treadmill doesn't cut it anymore, you jump out of an airplane. All in search for that moment where you manage to numb your brain long enough so that you don't think about your problems.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Now, here's the interesting thing. When we were locked down in COVID, okay? Some people became extremely depressed. Why? Because suddenly you stopped their supply of dopamine. You said, okay, you have to be locked down now. You have to find a way to find your own your own calm and peace. You can't go to a party to do it. You can't do extreme sports to do it. You can't do this, you can't do that. And suddenly it's withdrawal symptoms, right? So nothing wrong with, by the way, with any of those activities. Nothing wrong with fun, nothing wrong with joy, nothing wrong with pleasure. Wonderful, they're all positive emotions. But don't use them as a painkiller, right? Don't use them as a drug to replace your happiness. Use them as a supplement.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Find your happiness, find your calm and peaceful contentment, and then add all of those positive experiences. Just because you're healthy already, give yourself joy in life so that there is no reason whatsoever to be unhappy. It's a it's a different sequence.

• 53:04Peter Diamandis?

  It's it's beautiful and understanding the neurotransmitters of the brain and serotonin and dopamine for sure.

• 53:11Peter Diamandis?

  Helps validate what you're saying.

• 53:14Peter Diamandis?

  What would you say to individuals who say, well, then the, you know, the trick and the the

• 53:20Peter Diamandis?

  to solve the happiness equation is set low expectations. Because if you have low expectations, I'm always going to exceed them. And that seems like a, you know, sort of a

• 53:30Speaker 01

  An anti-capitalist view.

• 53:32Peter Diamandis?

  Well, it's, you know, we're, we're, it's not only anti-capitalist, it's you know, societal across the board that one should try and do better. That one should try and achieve the most they can for themselves and their families. But there is, if you have low expectations in your life and you're constantly exceeding them. But that seems like a a false solution for the equation. How do you address it?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  So differentiate expectations and ambitions. Okay, so so when when we achieved 10 million happy as a small team that started the mission, okay? The next moonshot was a billion happy. Right? If if we were to set, you know, expectations to beat, we would have gone for 12 million instead of 10, right? A billion is a very large target. Okay, now here's the trick. A billion happy is not a target. A billion happy is an ambition. Ambition meaning it's the reason I wake up in the morning, directionally look at what I should do with my life. And attempt to go as near as possible to that place. Right? But it's directional, meaning if you do the mathematics of it, Peter, which is actually quite interesting.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  If you just assume that in my lifetime, I need to reach a billion happy and we're not depending on the law of accelerating returns. Okay, you know, me, you know, hopefully this podcast will be heard by half a million people. That's a very bad day for the mission. Okay, why? Because yeah, because to get to 10 billion, this is not a very good use of the time. Right? Now, when when you think about it, however.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  If I made one person happy on this podcast, if I made one person go like, oh, that's interesting. I didn't think about that before. That's a mega win for today, right? And then accordingly, there is a difference between setting extremely high ambitions to stretch you and get the total potential of who you are versus setting realistic targets. I'm one human, okay? And I, and I, you know, I know something that may not register with everyone. And, you know, some people might actually think of what I'm saying as, who's this idiot? You know, it doesn't work that way. And it's fine, absolutely fine. All I can do as a target is to tell myself, when you wake up tomorrow, you're going to do the absolute best that you can within your capability to research this topic,

• 55:58Speaker 01

  to get to the bottom of it, to talk to others, to learn, to share, okay? And if you make one person happy, it's a good day. If you make a million happy, it's an amazing day. If you make a million that will tell a million, then you've made it, okay? And that was the design of the mission. So the design of one billion happy was simply if, if every person tells two people about what they learned and then promise, make them promise to tell two people each, then we've built an inverse Ponzi scheme. And within seven years, we'll reach a billion happy, okay? And that's been the mission. The mission has been all about, and I ask our listeners to do that. If they've listened to something today that made them think, share it with two people,

• 56:42Speaker 01

  tell them this is important, and if you like it, share it with two people. Every two people told two people told two people, we'll reach a billion happy in five to seven years.

• 56:50Peter Diamandis?

  So let's talk about your one billion happy, because I think it's fascinating. You know, in my parlance, Mo, I call this having a massive transformative purpose, right? Something that wakes you up in the morning, keeps you going through the day. It's clear, it's emotional, there's an emotional energy, we are emotional beings, and driving you to an objective. And then on the canvas of your MTP, we have moonshots, which are clear, measurable objectives. So increasing happiness in the world and sharing the lessons learned from your son. But the one billion happy is a moonshot on that massive transformative purpose. How do you measure it? How do you measure one billion happy? Because that's, you know, if you can't measure it, it becomes a challenge.

• 57:35Peter Diamandis?

  And we've talked about this a little bit, and I want people to hear it so that they can. Participate in this moonshot as I do.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  We we we measure two things, but we're not blinded by them. Right. We measure a transformative message that you receive the message that reshaped you. And then we measure that you took action based on that message. Okay, so it's very easy to measure to measure that the message was reached. Or reached people, right. It's we live in a world today where you can count video views, where you can count readers, where you can count. You know, so so that's easy, huh. So and the message is very straightforward. The message is happiness is your birthright. Don't believe what you're told that, you know, happiness unhappiness is a reasonable tax to pay for success. That's crap. Okay, you can be successful and happy at the same time. As a matter of fact, if you're happy, you're more likely to be successful.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so so the first message is it's your birthright. And it's so predictable that it follows an engineering model and an equation. And if you do the work, you will be happy. That's that's.

• 58:36Peter Diamandis?

  By the way, you said something important. If you're happy, you're more likely to be successful. And just to, you know, put an explanation point on that. Who do you want to hang out with as an individual? I want to hang out with happy people. Right.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yeah.

• 58:49Peter Diamandis?

  And yeah.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  And and and when when you're around happy people. So so you know, when when we were at Google. Right. And and you you could get sushi in Charlie's Cafe. Do you think that this was because Larry and Sergey are the nicest people on earth? I mean, they are really nice people. But you think that they were giving sushi sushi to everyone because they're nice? No, it's because happy Googlers. Created amazing products. Okay, if you if you don't have to rush out in the lunch hour and go, you know, try to find a place in a restaurant somewhere and then. You know, um, uh, uh, get stuck in traffic on the way back. If you if you just walk in a lovely place and sit with like minded people and.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  You know, have sushi for for lunch and have a wonderful conversation. What were you going? What are you going to be talking about? Gmail, ads, Android, right? You're going to be innovative. You're going to. Feel happy in that place. So you're going to stay longer. You're going to dedicate more of your effort. People will love you more. They'll help you out more. Right. Happier people. So Stanford did a study, actually, that said happier people in general are thirty seven percent more productive. Okay, so so it's, you know, it's not happy at work or happy at home. I don't think you can separate them. But if you're happy, by definition, you're more productive, less sick leaves, more energy and so on. Now, the funny bit, however, is that we somehow are brainwashed to believe, you know,

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  you know that cover of the Time magazine, whatever, you know, the guy with the striped shirt, striped suit, you know, crossing his arm and very angry and saying, ah, you know, people work better under stress, like, fuck that, who's, who's, who ever told you that? The best work we've ever done is not under stress. The best work we ever do is when we're in flow.

• 1:00:36Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  When, when, when, when we are working with incredibly creative teams, when we are, you know, what, what, if, if you're talking about an engine with, with pistons in it, yeah, when you stress the engine more, you'll get more RPMs, but that's not, we're not like that. Humans break under those conditions, right? The best work we ever do is when we're enjoying the hell out of it.

• 1:00:59Peter Diamandis?

  With people we enjoy, right?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Peter Diamandis?

  With people we love, with purpose. We love, yes.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? So, so, so let's go back and say, when you realize that, you realize that happiness, we were measuring that, the one billion happy, I, I want people to recognize that. I want, I want people to say, forget what I was told, it's my birthright, it's important for me, and I can achieve it, it's engineered, right? That's number one. Number two is we measured that they took action, and we measured one of two actions. Okay? Action number one is they either invested in their own happiness, so they got the message and they started to say, I'm going to do the work myself, okay? Which is very easy, you know, someone that watches a video and then watches other videos related to the topic, you know, purchase a book, do what, you will listen to my podcast,

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  whatever that is, or that they invested in the happiness of others, right? Which is really what the billion happy mission is all about, it's, you know, tell two people who will tell two people.

• 1:01:55Peter Diamandis?

  It's viral, right?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  You can measure shares, you know, of, of, of posts and, and content, you can measure, you know, people who take initiative and create their own posts, you can measure people who will write a blog about it, like, you know, you, you, you're kind, you kindly mention me in some of your blogs, blogs and so on, that basically means that people took the mission to heart, and they are actually taking the action. So, if you measure objective one alone, we probably are in the hundreds of millions of people reached, right? Uh, you know, videos and posts and so on, but, but that doesn't count as a billion happy. We're measuring the two together, and I think we're in the fifty-some million people reached, right? So people who got the message and took action. Does that mean they're happy?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  No, but they're happier and they're engaged in the topic.

• 1:02:44Peter Diamandis?

  You know, it's this juxtapositioning of being happy versus being successful. It's a false dichotomy. All right, and I want people to realize that, that your innate right to be happy is fundamental and shouldn't can be maximized. And if you are happy, you're fundamentally going to be more productive and more successful in life. And I think a lot of the entrepreneurs watching this podcast are driven by these outside external objectives of wealth or followers or companies started. And at the end of the day, are they happy? Is a question they don't give themselves time to ask. But it's one and the same.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  I think the biggest challenge in our life today, even with the smartest people I know, is that the smartest people I know becomes the best possible at managing the system that they were told they need to play with them. Okay, nobody ever stops and says, I don't like this system. Okay, so you tell someone in California, I used, you know, I lived in California for a while. And, you know, it's the only place in the world where when a boy wants to, you know, impress a girl on a date, I would be sitting in cafes and a 16 year old boy is talking to a 14 year old girl about

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  should self-driving cars be a centralized, you know, system or each car? And I'm like, wow, like this is an amazing place, right? But the reality is this 16 year old will grow up to believe that the only way to go through life is to build a startup and raise money and succeed and become Larry Page. Right, which is one way to go through life when there are a billion other ways. Right? A billion other moonshots that could revamp your life entirely and revamp the world entirely. I mean, the reason why AI is such a big topic for me is because we will be the best at creating incredible AI. When no one ever stops and says, should we create AI?

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  So now that the system is put in place and and and we're now told this is going to be the next big thing. Everyone is rushing like a maniac to make it and no one is stopping and saying, is this the world we want?

• 1:05:12Peter Diamandis?

  It's the more is better disease, right? I just want more, more of everything.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  And and and more and and more and fitting in within what I'm told is more is. So I I one billion happy, I wanna be a happiness billionaire. I I want to be a billionaire, okay? And and it's part of my programming as a as a, you know, as an entrepreneur to grow. Whatever it is that I do, but it's no longer dollar signs. You know, can someone stop and say, I will use the skills I was taught to build something that doesn't comply to the system? And and this is where the problem lies. The problem is every one of the people around you, and I'm no, I'm sure because I met them too when I was in California.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  A lot of the people around you that you know very well, that I know very well, that people dream to spend half an hour, half an hour with. Okay, are miserable, are miserable.

• 1:06:06Peter Diamandis?

  They are. It's incredible. Some of the some of the people who've been on this podcast, who are the most successful individuals on the planet, who are the, you know, prototypical billionaires who are changing the world. At the end of the day, at night, when they reflect on it, they're driven by demons. And they're just they're pursuing these objective goals and promises and moonshots. And it's been true for me too, when I've gone after things that are big and bold and they're going to fail by definition. If you're setting something big enough and you're pursuing it and you put yourself out there. And it's okay, taking moonshots is incredibly important, but it is not a life that's gonna be filled with constant joy and and happiness.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  And and which moonshot, which moonshot, right? Is is building, what what is the new meta thing, Instagram?

• 1:07:00Peter Diamandis?

  The metaverse, oh, um, threads.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Instagram slides or something competing with, yeah, threads.

• 1:07:06Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Seriously, does the world need another Twitter?

• 1:07:10Peter Diamandis?

  Another photo sharing app, right?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Another photo sharing app, is that? And then, how many followers in the world will say, "This is the next big thing, I need to be part of it", and they'll dedicate an hour of their life to it?

• 1:07:23Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Okay, versus how many people will say, "This is just Meta trying to compete with Elon Musk"?

• 1:07:29Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  It's as simple as that, okay? Do I wanna be part of that competition? Or, you know, isn't it enough hours that I'm spending on that, you know, demon? And I think the trick, what I'm trying to say here is, there is a conscious decision that is involved in happiness. Happiness is a choice. It is a choice, okay? And you choose the line at which, and yeah, you know, again, I'm not gonna deny, we are in a position of privilege. I have a roof on top of my head. I have a reasonable, you know, potential to be asked to speak at a a speaking engagement that, you know, will pay me, or I will have a reasonable potential to start a startup at any point in time.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  I started so many of them, that it's likely that my next one will be funded. It's likely that it will get money and make money and so on. And so, you know, we're in a privileged position. But at the end of the day, the question is, do I want any of that? You know, or am I happier with my black t-shirt and a lot of love?

• 1:08:29Peter Diamandis?

  We all have one thing in common, all eight billion people on the planet. You know, 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 in a year. It's how you use your time.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:08:40Peter Diamandis?

  Your time invested, and what will you invest it in? And one of the challenges is, who do we, uh, who do we have as heroes in life? Who do we wanna emulate? You know, when I was growing up, it was a lot of my friends, a lot of the most brilliant friends of mine in my high school and at MIT, went on to Wall Street, become investment bankers, because that was the perceived... You know, ultimate objective and and now it's been a lot going becoming entrepreneurs. We don't ever see the individual who proclaims they're happy and um and measure that and say, I want to be like that person.

• 1:09:19Peter Diamandis?

  Right? Because we all want to pursue this material objective or this fame, you know. Who do we who do we hold as famous on the planet and who do we celebrate? Because at the end of the day.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Who's your idol?

• 1:09:32Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Who's your idol? Who who are you going to waste your heartbeats emulating? So so I I wrote a blog once that basically says the only asset class you will ever own is heartbeats.

• 1:09:49Peter Diamandis?

  Mm hmm. I love that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Okay. So so you come and and and it's interesting because you come to this world with your highest wealth. So if you live to be sixty or seventy, you know, you have like four billion heartbeats and they decline over time. So so every, you know, people listening to us now will probably waste, I don't know, um sixty thousand heartbeats. Which might not appear to be a big number compared to the four billion, but there are sixty thousand freaking heartbeats.

• 1:10:20Peter Diamandis?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Okay. Are you better off wasting them on Peter and Mo? Or are you better off using them to spend time with your kids? Or are you better off, what do you call it, a crisis news network?

• 1:10:32Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Right? Are you better off spending it on CNN? Are you better off?

• 1:10:37Peter Diamandis?

  I'm clear about the answer there.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  What what you know, uh um you you know, binge watching uh Game of Thrones.

• 1:10:44Peter Diamandis?

  Netflix, yeah.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Right? And and and I and and nothing against Game of Thrones, nothing against, you know. But but it it those heartbeats are the only currency you will ever have. Okay, and for most of us, I mean, I I felt blessed because my middle age crisis happened when I was twenty nine. So I had all the money I wanted, had the most beautiful woman in the on the planet as my wife. I had two wonderful kids, I had the cars, I had everything. And you know, a middle age crisis honestly is not an age. It is a state where you've been climbing a ladder all your life. And then you you you get to the top of the ladder and you go like, holy shit, it was the wrong ladder. Why am I, what am I doing here?

• 1:11:21Peter Diamandis?

  Or or when you get to the top and you look around, all you see is more mountain peaks. And it's like, infinite amount of climbing to be done. Because what will ever satisfy you?

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so and so, you know, when in my life, I basically said, okay, I don't want to chase that anymore. Yeah, I I I still commended the world and I, you know, I I in a way I succeeded more and I made more money and so on. But I was never owned by that success. That success was the byproduct of what I was completely lending my heartbeats to. Okay, and and I think that the the question really is if if people listening to us take any anything out of this conversation is, you know, next weekend, sit down and reflect on how many of your heartbeats last week were spent on what? Just build a small pie chart, okay?

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  And tell yourself, if I continue that way for the rest of my life, you know, how much time will I spend with my kids? Because I will tell you hands down, and I I don't, you know, sound want to sound preachy here. But when Ali died, the only thing I regretted in life, and I will never regret anything more, is I didn't hug him enough.

• 1:12:35Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And and freaking life doesn't give you that notice. It doesn't tell you, hey, by the way, Ali is now sixteen, he's gonna die when he's twenty one and a half, so start hugging him. It doesn't. When he's twenty one and a half, he leaves, right? And then suddenly you look back and and my ex-wife, my wonderful ex-wife, when Ali died, we were sitting and and flipping through a photo album, okay? And she's so wise. So she flips through the first few pages where Ali is an infant. And she says, oh, my God, he was such a huge infant. And then he died. And I'm like, I'm sorry, baby, that he died. And she she said, and then this little child came, you know, four years old or, you know, three years old.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  And he was so cute and witty and so on, and then he died. And then this teenager came, okay? And then he was so irresponsible and playful and, you know, into music. And then he too left. And then this, you know, a serious university student came and, right? And that one also died. And, and the thing that we don't recognize is that I will never be in my twenties again. We're working out for an hour a week, made, gave me a six pack. Okay, I will, I will never be in my thirties again, where I could sit down and code a piece of code that can make me money. I will never be that. And, and all of those heartbeats that are wasted.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  If I told you, you have 10,000 heartbeats left, what would you spend them on?

• 1:14:04Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  You would spend them on love, happiness and compassion. I promise you.

• 1:14:09Peter Diamandis?

  Connecting with people and spending time with those that you love, for sure. I'm going to transition the conversation, uh, staying on kids. Um, Kristen and I have two 12 year old boys and they're, uh, you know, a joy. And I, after this podcast is over, I'll be going and hugging them and spending time with them for sure, extra. Um, and one of the things that we're thinking about, because they're in sixth grade and heading towards high school in a world that is very different than the world you and I grew up in. And I am clear that, uh, today's schooling system, set aside college, but junior high school, high school is not preparing our kids for what's coming. Right?

• 1:14:54Peter Diamandis?

  Our school system is based on the industrial era. Everyone's, you know, prepared for the test. Everybody is going from station to station, learning things like, one of our boys, uh, Jet just had to memorize all 50 state capitals. Now, it's great to practice your memorization, but really, how and when are you going to ever have that be useful? You know, especially when Google is, uh, is still a dominant force. So the question I have, and for those who are, are listeners, are parents, is what should our kids be learning? Uh, you know, this is coming back smack into the conversation around, uh, the rise of AI.

• 1:15:35Peter Diamandis?

  Um, and what do we need to teach our kids to prepare them for this decade ahead? And I have a list. That I've come up with and then I went and asked, you know, chat G P T. The same question. And similar but slightly different list. But I'd like to ask you in a world, let's call it, you know, we're two thousand and twenty three. We're going about to see A I become. What's your, well, I'll ask you this, you know, Ray Kurzweil, who we both know well, has predicted human level A I by two thousand and twenty nine. There are others who are predicting it far before then, by the way, right?

• 1:16:18Peter Diamandis?

  There are those that are looking at, you know, twenty twenty five and between twenty twenty five and twenty nine. So what should our kids be learning? In a world of human level A I, by the way, embedded in everything where everything is smart all the time. What are the skills?

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Amazing question and and probably the most difficult question to ask now, not for just, I mean, not just for our kids, but for everyone. I mean, if you're a graphics designer today or if you're a programmer, the episode with that with Ahmed, with Ahmed Mushtaq was amazing, Peter. It was an amazing conversation. People who haven't listened to it should go back and listen. You know, the the world is fundamentally changing in ways that we we could not understand. I I think I will say there are four things that that need to be educated. Okay, none of them have anything to do with what we our school systems are teaching. The the first and very straightforward one is jump into A I. Okay, you have to learn this.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  This is the biggest shift in human history. This is the biggest, you know, change in the tools that we that we use to navigate the world. Right? If if I told you that we now have robotic arms that are going to be building cars, you shouldn't spend any time in learning how to use a hammer to shape matter. Okay, uh so learn how the robotic arm works, the new robotic arm is AI. So jump in AI, understand every part of it. You don't need a school to do that, you know, because I speak about AI quite a bit. A lot of people ask me, so which book do you recommend I I read? Or which course should I take? And I go like, go ask Chad GPT that, right? Why are you asking me? And seriously, you're right.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  And I think the idea is like every other tool, no, very few people actually went to courses on Excel or, you know, email. Okay, so you play, you know, yeah, you play around and you learn. So so so this is number one. Number two is, I would say that in the age of the rise of the machines, the only skill that will remain is human connection.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  The only skill, in my personal view, that will uh be valuable when the machines outsmart us in everything. By the way, it doesn't matter. I I I always want to bring this back. I'm sorry, I'm gonna back, go back to number two in a second, but it doesn't matter if AGI comes out. And we have uh uh the singularity uh as per raise uh uh definition twenty twenty nine. I actually definitely believe AGI will be earlier than twenty twenty nine, uh but it doesn't matter. What matters is if you're a graphics designer and stability AI, I said, you know, produced stable diffusion, you're screwed. It's over, okay? We don't need AGI for your life to be disrupted heavily.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Hmm, we don't need AGI to to to to, you know, to replace lawyers. We don't need AGI to, you know, to augment doctors and so on and so forth. This is in the making, it's happening very, very fast. So, you know, don't, don't wait for that imaginary moment or that future moment to say, ah, now we're in shit. We're approaching those situations already now. So when all of that happens and all of those skills are replaced with humans, I would say that the most valuable skill is human connection. So take my situation, I am an author, okay? And a speaker and in a way a teacher, if you want, okay? Very much. Um and and a podcaster, right? So as an author.

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  I don't think I should write books anymore. Okay, I I I uh I take too long to write them. The industry is very slow to publish them. And the supply demand equation of books is going to be disrupted so badly because books now can be written in fifteen minutes. Okay, that there will be so much supply on the market that by definition, the dilution will affect the value of any good and any book. And in all honesty, I don't assume I'm smarter than chat G P T. I may be a little more genuine than than chat G P T. I may be a little more original than chat G P T.

• 1:20:35Peter Diamandis?

  At least for a moment, yeah.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and some of my writing, but that advantage is not going to last for the next two to three years. So, but if I know a concept and I have a chance to talk to you as a human, Peter. I don't think the machines will reach that within the next four to five years. Right, so human connection, even if the machines reach that in four to five years, is what we will crave as humans. Right, there will be sex robots, but I can guarantee you will still need a hug.

• 1:21:04Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Right, there will, there will be, uh, you know, uh, uh, articles written by, there might, there are tons of articles written by A I today. There is a ton of code written by A I today, but there is always going to be that need for a human to consult. A human to, you know, a circle of support, if you want. So that's skill number two. Skill number two is learn how to connect to humans at a deeper level. It's a skill that has been uh declining since the uh rise of social media.

• 1:21:35Peter Diamandis?

  Hmm, in in the words are are the skills that humans have to focus on connection and deliver and maximize connection. But we also spoke in our last podcast mode that um A I will begin to emulate human connection.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:21:53Peter Diamandis?

  And your timeframe for that was within the next ten years.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:21:58Peter Diamandis?

  If not shorter.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Kidding.

• 1:21:59Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  I I mean, in in all, in all honesty, I I think it will become very confusing within the next three. If you remember the movie Her.

• 1:22:10Peter Diamandis?

  I remember it well.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, her, her, basically, an AI simulates a friend. Uh, and then she becomes quite, you know, he becomes very occupied with loving her as an AI. Okay, it's an interesting, it's a lovely uh story if you think about it.

• 1:22:26Peter Diamandis?

  It's one of the most, most uh positive and perhaps realistic versions of AI. That I've seen out there. If you haven't seen her, please go do it. It's, it's a beautiful construct. And at the end of the movie, no, I won't spoil it. Anyway.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, but, but, but, but the whole, but the whole concept of us connecting to machines. I, I don't see anything wrong with that, by the way. Hmm. I, I, I love the idea of being able to connect to a body that can help me learn things and so on. It's wonderful. Uh, you know, I think this will shift deeply into erotic experiences and emotional experiences and romantic experiences where so many people are lonely and they'll use this to replace an annoying girlfriend or an annoying boyfriend or whatever, sadly, right? But I, I still believe there will be a space for human connection. Okay, there will be a space where genuine human connection, the kind that you feel when you meet an old friend,

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  is still going to be very valuable. And I, and I, as I said, I think this is a skill that's been eroding over the last ten, fifteen years because of social media. We need to bring that back to our children.

• 1:23:32Peter Diamandis?

  So that's number two on your list.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:23:35Peter Diamandis?

  That was number two on your list.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Number three is, is sad when I say it, but we need to teach them resilience. Okay, uh, and resilience, not just because of AI, as a matter of fact. As I said, I don't know if we said that last time, but I say it repeatedly. We are at a perfect store. Perfect store. I mean, uh, if you just think about the world finances and economics.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  There's never been a better match in history to the times of the Great Depression than today.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so it it seems if you know anything about economics, that there is a very deep economic crisis ahead of us. Okay, there is a geopolitical layer on top of the economic crisis that might extenuate it. Okay, there is a climate crisis that we're so far only seeing the tip of the iceberg of, you know, three million people being displaced in Pakistan last year, the Australian fires and so on and so forth. When when in reality, you you know, anyone with a reasonable ability to look at trends will tell you we we may get more of these. Okay, and so so resilience seems to me to be a very

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  useful skill and resilience is not training them what to do when certain things happen. It's training them to respond to anything that happens. The happiness equation is the core of that. When you think about, I I'll just take a couple of minutes to to digress a little bit. When you think that happiness is events minus expectations. Okay, then unhappiness is or any negative emotion is when an event misses your expectations. Okay, and when an event misses your expectations, your brain sounds the alarm.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Okay, oh, he said this, she, you know, he doesn't love me anymore. Something's going wrong, right? Yeah, something's going wrong. Now, we may think of that feeling as an annoying feeling. It is, your brain is sounding the alarm because it is an alarm. Unhappiness and all of its derivatives is a survival mechanism. Okay, it's your brain telling you something in the surrounding environment does not match my worldview of an optimum scenario for my survival and thriving. Okay, and so what happens is your brain is simply saying, we need to do something about this. Now, resilience in my view is to actually do something about it.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Right, the resilience in my view is to take it and go through three questions. I call them the happiness flow chart. Okay, question number one is, is what is what my brain telling me true?

• 1:26:26Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, because ninety percent of the time it isn't. Your brain is telling you what it thinks is true, but it isn't always the truth. You may have an argument with your son and then you will say, oh, my son doesn't love me anymore. That's, that's, these are two different events. The event that your brain is telling you is influenced by your fears and your conditioning and so on and so forth. Right, while the actual event is I had an argument with my son. Right, so the first question is, is it true? Okay, the second question, if it's, if it's not true, by the way, drop it. Don't be unhappy about anything that doesn't make you, that is not even true. Right, if it is true, the second question is, what can I do to fix it? Okay, what can I do to fix it?

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, in, in today's world, you may tell yourself, I'm about to lose my job because of AI. Hmm, is this true? Yes, it is. Okay, if it is, hmm, what can I do to fix that situation? I can upscale and find another job. Okay, I can downscale and, and move to Dominican Republic and live for a fraction of what I'm, I'm, I'm spending in the US. Right, whatever, there, if there is something you can do to fix that situation.

• 1:27:35Peter Diamandis?

  This is where resilience comes in, yes.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Right, that's, that's exactly what it is, huh? Now, the third is the Jedi master level of happiness. Jedi master level of happiness is quite interesting, huh? It basically, there are things that you can, that you are faced with, that, that you cannot do anything to fix. Right, so if, if the answer to the question, what can I do to fix it is nothing, like, there is an economic crisis coming. Okay, if, if, you know, what can I do to fix that? There's nothing within your own power as an individual to stop an economic crisis. Okay, so the following question, which I think is the Jedi master level of happiness, Jedi master level of resilience is, can I accept it? And do something to make my life better despite its pressures.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Okay, can I can I simply tell myself this is it? I can't fix an economic crisis coming, but I can take care of my kids and my loved ones and change my spending habits and sell my car and do this and that, right? It doesn't make my life amazing, but it makes it better within the current circumstances that I accept. Okay, so that to me is resilience and happiness combined. Those three questions. And I think we need to teach our kids by example to show that level of resilience. When life doesn't go their way, they need to go, is it true? Can I do something to fix it? Can I accept it and make my life better despite its pressures?

• 1:28:57Peter Diamandis?

  This comes back to something I speak about a lot and I'm passionate about, which is mindsets, right? Your mindset, our brains are neural nets that are being shaped constantly by everything we watch, everything we read, the conversations we have, our communities and so forth. And you can have an abundance mindset or scarcity mindset. You can have an optimism mindset or a fear mindset. And just to hit on this a little bit, you know, you said we're in a perfect storm coming of these problems. But the flip side of that as well is, and we have incredible tools more than ever before.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yes, incredible opportunities that will rise of it as well.

• 1:29:33Peter Diamandis?

  We are about to have AI reinvent global education and healthcare. Right, we're going to enable so much that we could not, the challenges of humanity to be addressed and solved. So despite the perfect storm on the negative side, we do have the ability for people to uplift humanity. Right, we are going to see, you know, generative AI and AGI help us with curing cancer and and low cost fusion energy and all of these things. And it's the it's the balance, it's the potential.

• 1:30:08Peter Diamandis?

  Your fourth item.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  My fourth item is going to be difficult to explain, but I will try as much as I can.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Our brain's bias at looking at difficult situations and perfect storms

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  is biased to make it look like this is more uncertain than any other moment in your life. So you look at the economy changing and AI rising and climate change and the geopolitical situation. You say, this is very uncertain, okay? Something is likely going to go wrong, okay? The truth is, someone like me who loses his child all of a sudden to preventable medical error at a moment of his prime realizes that this actually is the case of life all the time. No guarantees. That we're always in a perfect storm, right? That we are always, as I said earlier,

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  I have no guarantee whatsoever that I will ever see you again, Peter. Okay, I might leave the world within two minutes from now. And by the way, it happens all the time. It happens all the time that the world surprises us as a tidal wave or an erupted volcano or someone that you loved so much that you hugged and played tennis with, you know, leaves our world an hour later or whatever, okay? And that's the reality of the video game. The reality of the video game is there is only now. Any real video gamer, I'm a very serious video gamer, by the way.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  For those of you listening, the one that killed you yesterday is me, okay? Simple as that, right? But every real video gamer, I'm not addicted at all. I play forty-five minutes a day, four times a week. But I'm Olympic champion level, okay? And I will tell you, real gamers, real gamers understand that the game has no state a minute later.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Okay, when a minute later is rendered on the screen, I will deal with it. And because I'm a very good gamer, I know I'll be able to deal with any challenge that comes a minute later, right? My challenge is this minute, and my joy is this minute. Being present to now, yeah. Right here, right now. If, if, if life is in a perfect storm, I tell people, "Live, live!" Because you know what? You have certainty that today is not a perfect storm yet. You have certainty that your kids are wonderful and they're in your arms today. You have certainty that you're gonna have dinner tonight. You have certainty that your battery on your phone is gonna last another five minutes to hopefully finish our conversation, okay?

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  When, when you have those certainties, don't think about what's going to happen when the battery runs out. Think about this minute. How can I savor this minute fully? Okay, and, and I, and I speak sometimes about, again, you don't have to be spiritual to think of those things. But I, I studied a ton of spiritual techniques, okay? A ton of spiritual teachings, almost everything I could get my hands on. From the Kabbalah to Islam to Sufism to Hinduism to Buddhism, anything I could find my hands on. And I, I put my hands on, and I'll tell you openly, every one of them is beautifully full of gold nuggets and beautifully full of crap. Okay, and, and it's quite interesting how some people will say, "Oh, here is a piece of, piece of crap, I'm gonna drop the whole book."

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  While in reality, I, I go like, "Here is a piece of gold, I'm gonna look for another one." Okay? The most beautiful of all of them is what Sufis, Sufism is a sect of Islam originally, but it's now part of a lot of spiritual, you know, beliefs. Where basically they say that the way to live fully is to die before you die. Okay? And to die before you die is a very, very interesting definition. It basically assumes that living is a process of associating with the physical.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  Associating with your car, with your ego, with your T-shirt, with your, you know, whatever. And that death is the moment of disconnection of everything with everything physical. Okay, and to die before you die is to be alive, fully, fully engaged in the game, but not give a shit about losing any of it. Okay, and that's a very, again, a video gamer's mentality is to say, I'm going to do this bit, I'm going to do it the best that I can. Play full out. I'm fully out there, right, and I'm gonna enjoy it fully, but I'm not attached to the result. Because the result is bigger than me.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  And what I think people need to do in the world we live in today is to learn to live. Because when we spoke last time in, in the AI episode, I told you openly, it is game over for our way of life. The way we live today, five years from now, is gonna be non-existent. How will it change, better or worse, that's not the topic, but it's not gonna be like it is right now. So when we are here right now and you love this way of life, enjoy the hell out of it, live it fully, connect to it fully, play the game and enjoy the fun. And prepare yourself by detaching from things that might be taken away from you. Okay, prepare for yourself to get other things that might be given to you.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  And that kind of flow in life, I know sounds very philosophical. In a, in a world where we're talking economics and politics and so on. But I can tell you that real gamers, when they die, you know, the reason why we gamers play really well is because we have multiple lives in the game. Right, so I'm not saying this from a physical, from a spiritual point of view, but I'm saying when you don't care if you're killed in the game, you play full out. Right. Okay, and, and I think that's the idea, the idea is, yes, the future might hold some challenges, learn to live. And if you learn to live, if you learn to flow, if you learn to savor those beautiful moments we have right now, okay? Then what happens tomorrow doesn't really matter.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  When tomorrow comes, if you're prepared through the three points I said earlier, if you're prepared, hopefully you'll be able to overcome that too.

• 1:36:44Peter Diamandis?

  You know, that's interesting because none of those things are what we teach in school today. To bring it back to the original question. I'm going to share with you, I'm going to share with you my list that I wrote down and then maybe ChatGPT's list. Because I think about this, I think about, you know, do we need to reinvent it? Because I'm clear that the momentum that our school systems have is not going to change until it's forced to change. So what I put on my list is helping our kids, first off, find their purpose and passion. And there's a distinction between purpose and passion, but it is something that, you know,

• 1:37:26Peter Diamandis?

  I found my purpose and passion early on from Apollo and Star Trek, right? It was opening up space, it lit my heart on fire. Everything I've ever done is a result of that passion, that dream, you know, to learn on my own. But it can be anything, you can make a career out of anything these days. But what is it that lights you on fire and makes you happy, gives you joy? The second thing I put down was a combination of debate, leadership and asking great questions. You know, when I drop my kids off at school every day, I say, ask great questions, right? You know, today it's about asking, you know, prompting ChatGPT properly. But it's the questions we ask.

• 1:38:09Peter Diamandis?

  You know, I give this advice to CEOs at the same time, ask great questions. And it's the questions that you've never allowed yourself to ask as a child or as a leader.

• 1:38:20Peter Diamandis?

  But leadership, and I want to come back to leadership a little bit. Helping our kids understand what leadership is and how to lead, how to have a vision, how to connect with individuals.

• 1:38:34Peter Diamandis?

  Curiosity, right? I think that's innate in children, in the youngest of children, but we lose it over time. And that goes back to asking great questions. And so maintaining and creating a curiosity practice.

• 1:38:49Peter Diamandis?

  Solution-oriented thinking, you know, where the notion is if there's a problem, rather than focusing on the problem, really do a judo mind trick or Jedi mind trick to focus on the solution because there are solutions. Critical thinking, first principle thinking, exponential thinking, and then philosophy, which is going to be more valuable than ever before.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  I believe that.

• 1:39:19Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. When you hear chat GPT's list.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Philosophy, you know, in, in, in the sense of dealing with the uncertain, really, you know, being able to manage knowledge in the ambiguity of not really knowing.

• 1:39:32Peter Diamandis?

  I asked chat GPT and I said, okay, what are the skills that our kids need to be taught in high school to prepare them for a world of advanced AI? It said adaptability, continuous learning, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, ethical awareness and resilience.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Hmm. I, I, I like the adaptability bit very much, actually.

• 1:40:00Peter Diamandis?

  Well, it's going to say, you know, adapt to AI.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Listen to your master.

• 1:40:05Peter Diamandis?

  Listen to your master. But this is a conversation I'm going to be having for a while, which is what are the skills that are going to prepare our kids? Because they're going to spend a huge amount of time and then be thrust into living on their own. And it's this decade that things are changing dramatically.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the next three years.

• 1:40:28Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. Yeah. You keep on saying next three years versus decade, and you're right, it is the speed of change is, uh.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  There are, there are, there are tiny little triggers that are beyond repair. Okay, so if, if Ahmad Mustaq in your, you know, he boldly says no developers in five years. Okay, so that's if you're the most conservative human on the planet that assumes a 20% job loss in the development scale landscape every year. Imagine if 20% of all the developers, you know, in California have lost their job every year from now on. That's a very significant redesign of the fabric of society. Okay, and I think the reality is it's around the corner.

• 1:41:15Peter Diamandis?

  Hey everybody, this is Peter. A quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the crisis news network I call CNN or Fox and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net, the way I see the world, by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology, how entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges, what the breakthroughs are in longevity, how exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week, I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity,

• 1:41:58Peter Diamandis?

  age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of news you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandis.com/blog and learn more. Now back to the episode. Mo, I want to go to the next subject, which is one that I'm curious yourself of you on this, which is leadership to guide us over the next three, I'll keep on extending it to a decade, the next three to 10 years, which is the challenging part, right? We're not looking 20 or 30 years out,

• 1:42:42Peter Diamandis?

  but it is what's going on in the next three years and how do we, how do we guide ourselves? What's the leadership requirement? I mean, you've stood up as a leader and I commend you for it. But one of the questions I went out there and asked

• 1:43:00Peter Diamandis?

  through, through my Twitter account was who is a leader out there that has humanity's best interests in mind? Who do we turn to for guidance at this time? And it's very challenging. There are very few individuals who are standing up and are the individuals who can really guide us through this period. Any thoughts on that?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  It's a fascinating question, because I say that with a ton of respect. We miss the notion of an amazing leader. I think you and I have had very few in our lifetime that we aspired to, right? I mean, in tech and at work, I worked with amazing leaders, by the way. When it comes to politics, when it comes to policy, when it comes to education, when it comes to things that really form, again, the fabric of society, I don't think I've ever worked or I've ever, I mean, I say that with respect so that nobody gets upset from the people I worked with. But but politics itself is a landscape that's actually not conducive of good leadership.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  You know, whether you're a democracy, so a big chunk of your attention is on getting votes, or whether you're a dictatorship, so you don't give a damn. You know, either either system is really not for the people at all. I think what's going to happen is that there will be emergent leaders, thought leaders, ethics leaders, that that you and I don't know today. Okay, these are people that will rise and they will say, look, there is a regime change, if you want. Again, Imad said that last time. And the regime change is that the current leadership sadly is not qualified to understand the pace.

• 1:44:49Peter Diamandis?

  It is very sad. And as I hear them speaking, you know, past presidents, current presidents, world leaders, speaking about AI, they lack an understanding of the implications.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  They do. I mean, Peter, in the last, in the last, say, six weeks, you know, I've been on your podcast and other podcasts and my my conversation's been heard, let's say, fifteen million times, okay? I get thousands and thousands of messages from people saying, I had no idea this existed. I had, you know, I heard of chat G P T and played with it a little bit, but I don't know. This is not the main topic, even in the news. And when, when news networks started to take A I as an angle, all they did is really promote a doomsday scenario. This is, you know, uh, exists, it's an existential risk. No, nobody's having the proper conversation of what is A I? Where is A I today?

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  And what does the future of, of A I look like? If we can take a few extrapolations from here, right? Nobody's having that. Nobody's talking about, uh, um, you know, about a deep understanding of what the control problem really is. Because you and I, who coded this, this stuff, know for a fact that there is very, very little control code in that, in those machines.

• 1:46:10Peter Diamandis?

  It's amazing how little control code there is.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  There is none.

• 1:46:13Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  I, I, I don't want to exaggerate, but there is very little control code.

• 1:46:17Peter Diamandis?

  I mean, you have, in the past, we've had, you know, programs that are a million lines of code. And, and, you know, G P T three, four, chat G P T is running on like three or four thousand lines of code.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Four thousand lines of code. And, and none of the four thousand are, I mean, I don't remember if, if it was on you or, or who that spoke about that. But it is, even when we use reinforcement learning to teach chat G P T, it's the California walk culture that's teaching it. Okay, it's not taking into consideration any, uh, you know, conversations around, uh, global problems. It's not taking into consideration any, uh, harmonization, any diversity beyond the, you know, the, the topics discussed in California. There is nothing, nothing. So not even, forget control code, control behaviors, data sets that actually represent humanity, there's none.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  Okay, and and I think the challenge we have is that policy and politics will not catch up.

• 1:47:21Peter Diamandis?

  No, it's the most it's the most linear of structures.

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So it's not that they are not aware today, they are not gonna catch up. That's it, because you have two charts, one of them is exponentially growing in its pace. Okay, double exponential almost, and the other is linear. So they'll try to catch up and understand by hopefully March twenty twenty four. They'll understand what happened in January twenty twenty three when ChatGPT came out and Bard responded and Meta responded and this and Microsoft. They'll try to understand all of that and they're not even going to grasp what's happening in China and what's happening in Russia and what's happening on quantum computing. Nobody and and then by the time they understand January twenty twenty three, you know, we're already mid the twenty twenty four. And you know, they won't understand that until twenty twenty nine.

• 1:48:09Peter Diamandis?

  You know, the challenge is we don't have structural wisdom councils. We don't have individuals we can turn to to see how do they, how do these trusted leaders think about this? I you know, it's not global or leaders today, it's not religious leaders. It is a challenge and we need that leadership, we need it desperately. We need someone to speak to at least the purest form of how people should be thinking about this. What are the true concerns?

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  I think I think we will we will end up with emergent leaves, hot leaves.

• 1:48:45Peter Diamandis?

  What does that look like for you? People who pop up, I mean, you're you're an emergent leader here, if I could, right? And you've invested yourself and sometimes I hear you sort of saying, well, I'm not sure I want to do this, but you are. And I'm grateful for that.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  I I was hoping you never say that. So so the the thing in my mind is that there is a balance of awareness and capability, okay?

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  We need, with all due respect, Elon Musk speaks a ton about AI and his story with OpenAI and what happened here, right? I don't understand how he's thinking, because if you're stuck in capitalism,

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  you would talk about it and do nothing about it. If you're genuinely interested in this, you should put several billion dollars behind AI safety immediately. If you're a billionaire anywhere in the world and you want to live, you know, ten, fifteen years more in the same life that you're living, you should put half of what you have on AI safety.

• 1:50:02Peter Diamandis?

  And I'm shocked no one has stepped up to that. I truly am.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Nobody is. This is driving me crazy, right? And I talk to those people and I explain the situation to them and I say, your way of life is about to end and it can end abruptly for some of us. I mean, especially if you're, if you have too much at risk, okay? Can end abruptly because if you're the king of textiles in some country of some sort and we invent some intelligent way to build textiles, your business is gone, okay? Any, anyone who is, you know, who, who is unable to participate in this revolution in a way that is ethical, okay?

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  You know, there is a very high likelihood that you will be disrupted very heavily. If you're a bank, okay? I can guarantee you, as we speak, there are AIs being developed to hack banks, okay? So you might as well invest three hundred million dollars instead of trying to gain on top, you know, on, against your other competitive bank, you might as well spend them on getting all together and working on safety code on AI so that AI does not hack banks, okay? And nobody's doing that. So, so there is a separation between capability and intention, okay? I'm a nobody. I'm a thinker.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  I, I have a few views of the world that I genuinely in my heart believe, but I can't prove for a fact, okay? And I'm trying to tell the world to wake up. Right? The resources of our world are centralized in other places. Okay, and those resources need to shift. Whether those are resources of power in the hands of politicians, which in my personal view should hire someone, okay, that they obey blindly on AI regulation and code and not even debate it. Like, we are, we can afford to make mistakes as we're moving in the head in the direction of regulation and safety, but we cannot afford to not do anything. Okay, you cannot afford to move at government's speed.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  You know, if you're, if you're like Elon Musk, and there are many, I know many. Put your money where your mouth is. Work on AI safety. Okay, work on ethics. Work on waking consumers up. This is my biggest solution to the situation. AI does not learn from the developer. It does not learn from government. It does not learn from the business owner. It learns from you and I interacting, interacting with it. Yeah, pour money into teaching us how to interact with it. Pour money into the end of truth. Someone needs to pour money in the idea of if this is deep fake, I need to be informed.

• 1:52:55Peter Diamandis?

  I, I think that last point, and we'll, we'll close it on this, is the notion that AIs learn from us. They are our progeny. They are, we are their parents and we are shaping them. And you make that beautifully in your book Scary Smart, where you open up with the fact that we, you know, the large language models out there are built on us. They're built on our interactions. Everything we have put out into the digital universe, how we interact with each other, how we interact with our kids, with our, with our AIs themselves. And we're teaching them through example. Large language models are not a, a self,

• 1:53:37Peter Diamandis?

  an intelligence born out of its own origin. It's born on our backs.

• 1:53:43Peter Diamandis?

  And I think one of the things that you said in the past that I found fascinating is what percentage of the world do we need to wake up to to give AI good a good model? And that blew me away. One percent.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  One percent. So I always use this example. I don't know if we spoke about this last time. But if people have a minute, please listen to the words of Edith Ager.

• 1:54:08Peter Diamandis?

  You did a beautiful podcast with her, yes?

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had an incredible life-altering experience with this ninety-three-year-old woman that was drafted to Auschwitz when she was sixteen. Okay, so she lives through the Holocaust and she tells you the story of the atrocities happening in that world from her beautiful angelic heart. Okay, where if you heard the stories from the generals or from Hitler or whatever, you would think that humanity is scum. If you hear it from Edith, you realize this is divine. We are divine. Okay, and I always will say that species that's able to love their children like you love your kids, Peter,

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  is divine. It's divine in every possible way, right? The problem is, we don't show that divinity. Our mainstream media is only showing the negative. Our social media is only showing fake. Okay, and so all I ask is that you hear Edith and then tell me if there are more people in the world that are closer to Edith or more people in the world that are closer to Hitler. Okay, because the reality, the mathematics of it, is that when one person goes and, you know, with a gun to a school to shoot, four billion people that hear the news around the world disapprove of it. Okay, one to four billion, we are okay. We're just not showing us.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Okay, so what I need to do is to tell the machines somehow by instilling doubt in their minds that not everyone is rude, not everyone is violent, not everyone, that as a matter of fact, if they just do their research, like I believe, like I just told you, most of humanity disapproves of killing. Like I just told you, most of humanity is capable of love. Like I just told you, most of humanity appreciates beauty. Most of humanity has compassion. That's the truth of humanity. All we need is to instill the doubt in the minds of the machines. Okay, so just like I instilled the doubt in your mind now and you're thinking about it and you're saying,

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  yeah, he's right. We're not that crap after all. Yeah, we're lost, most of us. Okay, we're traumatized, most of us, but deep, deep inside, humans are okay.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Okay, and so in reality, if we instill the doubt in the minds of the machines and they're smarter than me, they're going to find that out too. And when they find that out, hopefully, they'll do to us what the Indian friends that we had in Silicon Valley did to their parents. They came to Silicon Valley, they built amazing technology, they made a hundred million dollars and then whoops, they went back to India and you call him in the morning and say, hey, where are you? And he goes like, I'm back in India. Why are you back in India? Oh, because I have to take care of my parents. Are you mad? You're so successful here, but he says, I don't care about success. The right thing to do is to take care of my parents. That's where we want AI to be. We want AI, we are their parents.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Okay, we want AI to say, yeah, daddy's annoying like hell. I'll take care of him because he's nice.

• 1:57:22Peter Diamandis?

  Yes.

• 1:57:24Peter Diamandis?

  Well, it's a beautiful place to close out, buddy. Thank you for the work.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful place to start, Peter. I think people need to put this phone down that they're listening to us on and think about what they're going to do to change things. I think that's what we need.

• 1:57:39Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, people to be conscious, people to take action. Focus on your own happiness. And actually, a happier population of individuals are going to be better parents for an AI. Caring about the things and bringing it back, this dance between your book Scary Smart and your book Solve for Happy, both of which are incredible. If someone wants to play in the 10 billion happy game, where should they go?

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  So I'm very accessible, interestingly, on social media. So if people text me on Instagram mainly and LinkedIn a little bit, I'll always respond. If people can go to mo gaudat.com, all of my work, all of my books, all of my, you know, podcast information, One Billion Happy and other things are there. But I would tend to believe that if people want to engage, follow the two objectives. Remember that happiness is your birthright, that if you do the work, you're going to get there. That's number one objective. Remember that you need to take action based on that. And the action is invest in your own happiness. Doesn't have to be my work. There is a ton of work out there. Whatever suits you to prioritize your own happiness in difficult times and then invest in the happiness of others.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Tell your best friend and your sister, teach your kids, do whatever. Two people tell two people who tell two people and we'll be at a billion happy. I think the times we're going through are times to remember that we should live. Okay. There are times to remember that what matters most is human connection, is compassion, is to remember each other. Because for the first time, I would say since nuclear weapons, you know, humanity is faced with challenges that require us to prioritize humanity over our individual objectives and targets, our nation's objectives and targets. It's a, you know, if we can just find that within our heart, I think the future will be a utopia.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  In many, many ways, AI will create that amazing world for us where all of those problems are solved. If we miss that, you know, bit out, then yeah, I think it's going to be challenging going forward.

• 1:59:46Peter Diamandis?

  Mo Gawdat, the author of Scary Smart and Solve for Happy. And I want to say thank you for your work again, Mo. It's an honor and a pleasure to be working with you and to support your mission. I think one of the most critical. Two incredible moonshots and I wish you a day filled with happiness and enjoy.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me, Peter. It's always a joy and an honor and I'm really grateful for your support. Thank you.

• 2:00:16Peter Diamandis?

  Thank you.

• 2:00:29Speaker 00

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