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July 2, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:51:48
Joe Rogan Experience #2344 - Amjad Masad
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Main voices
a
amjad masad
01:38:25
j
joe rogan
01:06:38
Appearances
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f
forrest jones
00:43
j
jamie vernon
00:23
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day!
amjad masad
What's up, man?
Good.
joe rogan
So having this big Counter-Strike tournament in town, does that give you the Joneses?
amjad masad
Totally, totally.
You know, it's like, so your guy, Jason, was telling me about it because, you know, in addition to driving, he also flies the helicopter.
And he told me, like, the Red Bull guys were flying off, and there's like this big tournament.
I looked it up.
It was like, oh, Counter-Strike.
So I used to be a bit of a pro player myself.
joe rogan
So how do you get out of pro playing?
Because the problem with playing games is that it's essentially like an eight-hour a day thing.
Like it becomes a giant chunk of your life, right?
And I would imagine if you're playing pro, it's even more of a commitment.
amjad masad
You know, I take a different view on games.
You know, a lot of people kind of view it as a sort of somehow like a negative thing, especially for kids.
Actually, I got my kit, my four-year-old, like a Nintendo Switch early on.
We're playing together because I feel like for me, it helped me a lot with strategy thinking, with reaction time.
I think gamers tend to think really fast.
joe rogan
Have you seen the studies that they've done about surgeons?
amjad masad
No, tell me.
joe rogan
Surgeons that play video games regularly are much less likely to make mistakes.
amjad masad
I totally believe it.
joe rogan
Something in the neighborhood of 25%.
Is that what it is, Jamie?
Something like that?
But so much so that I would say you should teach video games to surgeons.
It should actually be a required thing, like cross-training.
amjad masad
Right.
Isn't the Army also recruiting from gamers today as well?
That's what I heard.
joe rogan
I would imagine like drone pilots.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
Right.
I mean, that would make a big difference.
Especially if you can get them used to the same controllers.
amjad masad
Totally.
joe rogan
You know, because those controllers kind of become a part of your hand.
Like, you know exactly where all the buttons are.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
If you're a kid that's playing fucking Counter-Strike or whatever it is, Call of Duty every day, I would imagine that that just becomes nature.
amjad masad
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
What is the thing with surgeons?
It's nuts, right?
It might be higher than 25%.
jamie vernon
It was a very particular kind of surgery, though, too, but it was like, I mean, they're almost using controllers, so fine.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that they were making less mistakes.
I don't think it's entirely negative.
Because I love games.
I love playing them, but I love them so much that I don't play them because I know I don't have any time.
amjad masad
Quake is your favorite game, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
So you're here to 27, 37% decrease in errors.
amjad masad
That's wild.
joe rogan
27% faster task completion time.
That's nuts.
amjad masad
So those guys grew up playing video game or did they say more than three hours per leap.
jamie vernon
I think they were still playing when they were doing the study.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So like that, I mean, imagine something that, like a pill you could take that would give you a 37% decrease in errors and a 27% faster task completion.
That would be an incredible pill.
Like you would make every surgeon take it.
Did you take your video game pill before you do surgery?
Hey, man, don't operate on my fucking brain unless you take your video game pill.
amjad masad
You know, that's, you know, next time I need to have a surgery or whatever, I'm just going to ask the doctor.
Is there a game?
joe rogan
How much do you game, bro?
amjad masad
But Jamie and I were talking about the one thing, and maybe that's kind of showing our age a little bit, but the one thing that's kind of like a little weird slash, I don't know somehow, like a little dystopian is the whole streaming situation where like kids are not like playing the game, they're like watching someone play the game.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's not good.
amjad masad
And it's like this zombifying thing where like they'll they'll spend hours just watching people.
joe rogan
Yeah, this TikToking, it's essentially like TikTok, but video games, right?
Because TikTok is kind of this mindless thing.
You're just scrolling through mindless things and now you're mindlessly watching someone else play a game.
amjad masad
Yeah.
Yeah, it's almost like someone is like there's this strange thing with technology where like someone is living life and doing things and you're like sort of it's almost voyeurism or something like that about it.
You know, David Foster Wallace, you know, the guy from Infinite Jest, wrote an essay on TVs.
And, you know, he committed suicide before like, you know, the emergence of mobile phones and things like that.
But he was very prescient on the impact of technology on society and especially on America.
And he was also addicted to TV.
And he talked about how it activates some kind of something in us that is something in human nature about voyeurism.
And that's the thing that television and TikTok and things like that activate.
And it's like this negative, addictive kind of behavior that's really bad for society.
joe rogan
I definitely think there's an aspect of voyeurism, but there's just a dull drone of attention draw.
There's a dullness to it that just like sucks you in like slack jawed.
It is watching nonsense over and over and over again that does just enough to captivate your attention, but doesn't excite you, doesn't stimulate you, doesn't necessarily inspire you to do anything that is the first fly we've ever had in this room.
amjad masad
Boom.
joe rogan
Oh, I'm going to kill it.
You're a nice person.
You don't be able to kill that fly right away.
But it's just this thing where it doesn't do a lot.
It's not like, you know, like, have you ever done Disney World?
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Did you ever do Disney World in Florida where you do that giraffe?
There's the Avatar ride?
amjad masad
No, I just went to a California one.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
The Avatar ride is Flights of Freedom?
jamie vernon
Flights of Passage.
joe rogan
Fights of Passage.
It's a VR game.
Well, a ride, rather.
And you put on a VR helmet and you get on this motorcycle looking thing.
You're essentially riding a dragon.
It's unbelievably engaging.
It's incredible.
It's the best ride I've ever been on in my life.
That's cool.
Like you're flying around, you feel the breeze, you're on this thing and the sounds are incredible.
That's like engrossing, right?
It takes over you.
Stimulating, but that's not what you're getting from like TikTok or like streaming.
You're getting this, oh, this dull, so it's sustainable.
amjad masad
Yeah, I wonder which is worse, this or like opium habit or something.
joe rogan
I know people that have done opium that are like functional.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, they can take pills and like kind of, I mean, I'm sure eventually their life falls off the rails, but it's like sort of semi-they're semi-functional when they're on these things.
They can hold down a job and show up every day.
And they're just like semi-functional opiate.
amjad masad
There's a dude, I watched like a YouTube video, but like he's known for having this contrarian opinion on drugs that you can like control it, like you can, you can do these drugs.
joe rogan
What does he look like?
amjad masad
I don't know.
I think he's a black dude.
joe rogan
Oh, Carl Hart.
Dr. Carl Hart.
He was here?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
He's been here a couple times.
He's great.
amjad masad
What do you think of his ideas?
joe rogan
I think it's entirely biologically variable.
I know people that cannot drink.
They drink and then they're gone.
They get hamsterized, get these black eyes where their soul goes away and then they're just off to the races and picking up hookers and doing cocaine and they find themselves in Guatemala.
amjad masad
They're just nuts.
joe rogan
They can't drink.
I can drink.
I don't pretend that the way my body handles alcohol is the way everybody's body handles alcohol.
I think that's the same with everything.
I think that's the same, most certainly with marijuana.
I know some people that just cannot smoke marijuana and other people, it's fine.
I think it's very, we're all very different physically.
amjad masad
It's interesting.
Alcohol is sort of on the downtrend all of America, but especially with young people, especially in Silicon Valley.
Everyone there listens to Huberman.
I call him the grand mufti of Silicon Valley because he'll say, no alcohol, no drinking.
Everyone's like, don't drink.
And all the parties are now mocktails and things like that.
joe rogan
There are probably a lot of boring conversations, unfortunately.
amjad masad
It's a little boring.
I mean, it's very repetitive.
It's all kind of like, will AI kill us?
joe rogan
You guys would know better than anybody.
You guys are at the forefront of it, unfortunately.
Yeah, I quit drinking.
I quit drinking over three months ago.
amjad masad
Oh, wow.
I know you guys used to do Sober October.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that wasn't that hard.
And, you know, I was like, God, it's going to be one whole month.
And then I did.
I was like, that's pretty easy.
But I just had some revelations, I guess.
And I think the big one is just physical fitness.
I work out so much and I would drink and go to my club and have a couple of, not a lot either.
Just have a few drinks and the next day just feel like total shit.
amjad masad
I think with age especially, it starts affecting you.
unidentified
It's always been like that.
amjad masad
It's always been.
joe rogan
It's always been like that.
I've always been hungover after a night of drinking, but you don't feel it normally.
Like in normal life, if I just did normal stuff, it'd be fine.
It's when you're in the gym that you notice.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
When you're doing like second and third set of squats or something like that, you're like, oh, God.
amjad masad
Yeah, 100%.
joe rogan
And I haven't had any bad days since I quit drinking.
Oh, cool.
I've eliminated all that.
And I'm like, just that alone is worth it.
Just that alone, it's worth quitting.
amjad masad
So why do you think there's this trend?
Is it mostly for health?
joe rogan
Well, I think there's a big health trend with a lot of young people.
I think a lot of young people are recognizing the value of supplements.
There's that fly.
There's a difference between you and me.
I'm going to kill this motherfucker.
First fly I've ever had in here, Jamie.
That's kind of crazy.
Been here five years.
One flyer.
amjad masad
Father with me from California.
joe rogan
He snuck in because there's a lot of steps that motherfucker has to go through to get into this room.
I think a lot of people are very health conscious.
That's the rise of cold plunging and sauna use and all these different things like intermittent fasting where people are really paying attention to their body and really paying attention and noticing that if you do follow these steps, it really does make a significant difference in the way you feel.
And maybe more importantly, the way everything operates, not just your body, but your brain.
It's like your function, your cognitive function improves with physical fitness.
And, you know, if you're an ambitious person and you want to do well in life, you want your body to work well, you know, alcohol is not your friend.
amjad masad
And I wonder how much of it is your impact because those things, you got me into all these things through your podcast.
My wife and I just built like a small kind of spa in our home with like a cold plunge and a sauna and a hot tub.
And I'll try to do it every day.
And you know, something you say, I keep saying to myself, it's like, conquer your inner bitch.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
It's like, this is such a good, and I feel like cold plunge especially kind of, it's just something, regardless, health benefits or not, something about it, like just mental toughness, like trying to do it every day.
And every day I chicken out.
joe rogan
Every day I want to go up.
amjad masad
I don't want to go in, right?
joe rogan
I do too.
My inner bitch speaks the loudest when I'm lifting the lid off the cold plunge.
My inner bitch is like, don't do this.
You don't have to do this.
You can do whatever you want.
unidentified
You're a free man.
joe rogan
You can go have a sandwich, you know?
amjad masad
Right, right.
joe rogan
But you just got to decide that you're the boss.
amjad masad
Yeah.
And I think a lot of what discipline is for me is that, again, even keto and I did carnivore and these diets, like, I'm not sure how much health benefits there is.
I feel like keto is really good on your blood sugar and keeps you kind of on a, you know, even keel kind of throughout the day.
But for me, whenever there's like a lot of chaos in my life, I look at what can I control.
unidentified
Right.
amjad masad
And typically diet is the first thing.
Whatever it is, I'm like, I'm going to go carnivore.
I'm going to go keto.
And the fact that I can control that and enforce discipline on myself kind of puts me at ease.
And I feel like I can control the other thing in my business, family, life.
joe rogan
But that mindset is probably how you stop playing video games every day.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because I would imagine, like we were talking about earlier, like that addiction is one of the strongest addictions I've ever faced in my life.
Like when I was taught, if I would be talking to people and the conversation was boring, I'd be like, I could be playing Quake right now.
Why am I here having this boring ass conversation where I could be launching rockets at people and having a good time?
amjad masad
But the other thing for me is programming.
So I got into programming early in my life.
I was six years old when my father bought a computer.
I was born and raised in Amman, Jordan.
And we're the first people I know ever at the time that had a computer.
And I remember.
joe rogan
What year was this?
amjad masad
1993.
I was six years old.
joe rogan
Okay, so 93.
So what kind of computer was that?
Was that an old school IBM?
amjad masad
IBM PC, MS-DOS, Microsoft DOS.
joe rogan
Oh, so you did the real deal.
amjad masad
Yeah.
I know a lot of Americans would get a Mac as their first computer.
joe rogan
That's what I got.
amjad masad
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, we didn't have Mac.
I actually wasn't introduced to Apple until kind of recently in my life.
joe rogan
Really?
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like recently, recently?
amjad masad
Like, no, like, you know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago, when I moved to the U.S. God, Apple has such a stranglehold in America.
joe rogan
It's really incredible.
amjad masad
Yeah, it's amazing.
But we didn't know much about it.
So I got into DASA.
I remember one of my earliest memories is standing behind my father as he was kind of pulling up this huge manual and learning how to type commands.
And he was finger typing those commands.
And then I would watch him.
And then after he leaves, I'll go and try those things.
And one day he caught me.
I was like, what are you doing?
I'm like, I know how to do this.
I'll show you.
And so I knew how to start games, do a little bit of programming, do a little bit of scripting.
And that's how I got into computers.
And I was obsessed.
And initially, it sort of got me into gaming.
But then you want to mod the games.
Have you ever done any modding?
joe rogan
I've done a few things like turn textures off and stuff like that.
amjad masad
Yeah, and that's another thing that I think is healthy about gaming is like a gateway to programming.
joe rogan
Sure.
amjad masad
Gateway drug to programming.
And so I got into like modding, like Counter-Strike and things like that.
Those were fun.
And then just like the feeling that you can make something is just like such a profound, such a profound feeling.
And that's really kind of what I carried through my whole life and became sort of my life mission.
Now with my company, Replit, what we do is like we make it so that anyone can become a programmer.
You just talk to your phone and your app, sort of like ChatGPT, and it starts coding for you.
It's like a program software engineering agent.
joe rogan
Right.
So it's like the AI guides you through it.
amjad masad
Yeah, not only guides you through it, it codes for you.
So you're sort of, you know, programmers typically think about the idea a little bit, about the logic, but most of the time they're sort of wrangling the syntax and the IT of it all.
And I thought that was always additional complexity that doesn't necessarily have to be there.
And so when I saw GPT for the first time, I thought this could potentially transform programming and make it accessible to more and more people.
Because it really transformed my life.
The reason I'm in America is because I invented a piece of software.
And I thought if you make it available to more people, they can transform their lives.
joe rogan
Why was your dad messing around with computers?
Was he doing it for fun?
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amjad masad
Yeah, so my dad is a Palestinian refugee.
joe rogan
Yeah, you were telling me the story, and I want to get into that because it's kind of crazy.
Tell the whole story of how this wound up happening.
amjad masad
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So my family is originally from Haifa, which is now in Israel, and they were expelled as part of the 1948 Nakba, where Palestinians were sort of kicked out.
And they went to like Fiji.
joe rogan
How does your dad describe that?
How old was he when that was going on?
amjad masad
My father was born in Syria.
So my grandma and my grandpa and my uncles were kind of kicked out.
And the way they would describe that is they try to fight, they try to keep their home, but it was like this overwhelming force.
They weren't organized.
They were just people.
They didn't really have an army, at least in that place.
And eventually at gunpoint, they took their homes and tell them to go.
If you're down south, you went to Gaza, and that's why 70% of Gazans are refugees from Israel.
Like the people that are getting massacred right now are originally from Israel, from the land that people call Israel today.
And then if you're in the north, like Haifa or Yafa, whatever, you went to Lebanon or to the West Bank or to Jordan or to Syria.
So my family went to Syria.
My father was born in Syria.
But my grandfather was like a railroad engineer.
So they were like city people.
They were urban.
So they couldn't like, you know, they wanted to have a place where they can, you know, they want to live in a city.
And so originally the West Bank Didn't work for them and they ended up in Syria.
But then Amman, Jordan, was kind of coming up, and there was a lot of opportunities there.
So my father was born in Syria and then moved to Amman when they were six years old and built the life there.
And they really kind of focused on education and trying to kind of rebuild their life from scratch.
So my father and all my uncles kind of went and got educated in Egypt, Turkey, places like that.
And so my father got an engineering degree, civil engineering degree from Turkey.
And he was always interested in technology.
joe rogan
That whole thing, we're kicking people out of Palestine, is such an inconvenient story today.
When people are talking about Israel and Palestine and the conflict, they do not like talking about what happened in 1948.
amjad masad
Yeah, and I think it's important.
I think for us to reach some kind of peace, which is really hard to talk about when you see what's happened in Gaza, even yesterday.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, the people that were waiting for food got bombed.
It's insane.
And no one wants to talk about it.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
And if you do talk about it, you're anti-Semitic, which is so strange.
I don't know how they've wrangled that.
amjad masad
It's been hard for me in tech because probably the only prominent Palestinian in tech that is talking about it.
joe rogan
Do you get pushback?
amjad masad
Oh, of course.
joe rogan
Like, what do people say to you?
amjad masad
Anti-Semitic.
joe rogan
How is it anti-Semitic?
amjad masad
They criticize the state of Israel.
Our position, every modern Palestinian that I know, their position is like two-state solution.
We need the emergence of the state of Palestine, you know, and that's the best way to, ending the occupation is the best way to guarantee peace and security even for Israelis.
But yeah, it's just like it's used, it sort of reminds me, you know, in tech, we went through this like quote-unquote woke period where you couldn't talk about certain things as well.
joe rogan
Has that gone away?
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
Yeah, totally gone away.
joe rogan
Yeah.
What do you think caused it to go away?
amjad masad
Elon?
joe rogan
Really?
amjad masad
Yeah, like Twitter, buying Twitter.
joe rogan
Wow.
amjad masad
Buying Twitter is the single most impactful thing for free speech, especially on these issues, of being able to talk freely about a lot of subjects that are more sensitive.
joe rogan
Imagine if he didn't buy it.
amjad masad
Yeah.
I mean, that would have been.
joe rogan
Imagine if the same ownership was in place and then Harris wins and they continue to ramp things up.
amjad masad
Yeah, I don't know what you think of the new administration.
Certainly there are things that I like about some of their pro-tech posture and things like that.
But what's happening now is kind of disappointing.
joe rogan
It's insane.
We were told there would be no...
One is the targeting of migrant workers, not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers, just construction workers showing up in construction sites and raiding them.
Gardeners.
amjad masad
Yeah.
Like, really?
Or Palestinian students on college campuses.
Or not, like, there's a Turkish.
Did you see this video of this Turkish students at Tafts University that wrote an essay, and then there's a video of ICE agents, like, I don't know.
joe rogan
Is that the woman?
amjad masad
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
What was her essay about?
It was just critical of Israel, right?
unidentified
Just critical of Israel.
amjad masad
Yeah, I mean.
joe rogan
And that's enough to get you kicked out of the country.
amjad masad
There's a long history of anti-colonial activism in U.S. colleges that led to South Africa changing and all of that.
And I think this is a continuation of that.
I mean, I don't agree with all their, like, there's a lot of radicalism.
A lot of young people are attracted to more radical positions on Israel-Palestine.
joe rogan
Which I don't mind those positions as long as someone's able to counter those positions.
The problem is these supposed free speech warriors want to silence anybody who has a more conservative opinion.
That's not the way to handle it.
The way to handle it is to have a better argument.
amjad masad
That's not American.
joe rogan
It's not American.
amjad masad
What attracted him to this country from the moment that I was aware and we started consuming American media and American culture is freedom, is the concept of freedom, which I think is real.
I think is real.
joe rogan
It is.
I was watching this psychology student from, I think he's from Columbia, but he has a page on Instagram.
I wish I could remember his name because he's very good.
He's a young guy.
But he had a very important point, and it was essentially that fascism rises as the over-correction response to communism.
And that we essentially had this Marxist communism rise in first universities, and then it made its way into business because these people left the university and then found their way into corporate America.
And then they were essentially instituting those.
And then the blowback to that, the pushback, is this fascism.
amjad masad
That happened last century?
joe rogan
Well, they're talking about forever historically.
He's talking about over time, whether it's Mao, whether it's Stalin, like fascism is the response almost always to communism.
Interesting.
And that, you know, what we experience with this country is this continual over-correction.
Over-correction to the left, then over-correction to the right to counter that.
And the people that are the rat, that's the guy.
Anthony Rispeau.
That's it.
Really, really smart guy.
And very interesting thing.
Jamie, how did you nail that that quick?
Good job, buddy.
jamie vernon
You said those words right as I saw them.
amjad masad
Decades of training.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jamie vernon
Communism, fascism.
joe rogan
Yeah, communism came first, fascism came response.
Now today's left tears down norms and destabilizes the country under the guise of progress.
We're watching the conditions for another reaction build.
History doesn't repeat, but it echoes.
amjad masad
Yeah.
Do you know this theory?
I know you've had Mark Andreessen on the show, this James Burnham managerial revolution theory.
joe rogan
No, not by hand.
amjad masad
I'm not an expert in it, but the idea is that communism, fascism, and even some form of capitalism that sort of we're living under right now is like managerialism is the idea that capitalism used to be this idea that the owner-founders of those companies, of capitalist companies, were running them.
And it was like true capitalism of sorts.
But both communism and fascism share this property of centralized control and like a class of people that are sort of managerials.
And maybe those are the elite sort of Ivy, Ivy League students that are trained to be managers and they grow up in the system, kind of bred to become like managers of these companies.
And today's America is like trending that way where it is like a managerial society.
In Silicon Valley, there's like a reaction to that right now.
People call it founder mode, where a lot of founders felt like they were losing control of their companies because they're hiring all these managers.
And these managers are running the companies like you would run Citibank.
And then a lot of founders were like, no, we need to run those companies like we built them.
And Elon is obviously at the forefront of that.
I once visited XAI when they were just starting out, Elon's AI company.
And there were like 70 people.
All of them reported to Elon.
They didn't have a single manager on staff.
Wow.
And they would send him an email every week.
I was like, what did you get done this week?
joe rogan
Right.
Well, that was the outrageous thing that he asked people to do at Doge.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
People were freaking out.
Five minutes a week.
What are the things you accomplished this week?
How?
You know, he said, all you have to do is respond.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
And they didn't want, they pushed back so hard on being accountable for their work.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
But that's government for you.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know what I mean?
Government is the grossest, most incompetent form of business.
amjad masad
You know, it's a monopoly.
joe rogan
It's a complete, total monopoly.
Like the way he describes some of the things that they found at Doge, it's like you could never run a business that way.
Because not only would it not be profitable, the fraud would get you arrested.
You'd go to jail for something that's standard in the government.
amjad masad
Right, right.
I mean, my opinion of talented people, people like Elon, things like that, is that we should be in the free market.
I think you can do little change in government.
As best we can sort of expect of our government to get out of the way of innovation, let people, let founders, entrepreneurs innovate and make the market more dynamic.
But again, going back to this idea of materialism, if you look at the history of America, one really striking stat is the new firm creation, new startups in the United States have been trending down for a long time.
Although there's all this stock of startups in Silicon Valley and all of that, but in reality, there's less entrepreneurship than there used to be.
And instead, we have the system of conglomerates and really big companies and monopsony, which is the idea that there are the banks or BlackRock competitors as well, owning all these companies.
And they implicitly collude because they have the same owners.
And all of that is sort of anti-competitive.
So the market has gotten less dynamic over time.
And this is also part of the reason I'm excited about our mission at Replit to make it so that anyone can build a business.
Actually, on the way here, your driver, Jason, is a fireman.
And so I was telling him about our business.
And he does training for other firemen around the country.
He flies around.
And he does it out of pocket and just for the love of the game.
And he was like, yeah, I've had this idea for a website so I can scale my teaching.
I can make it known where am I going to be giving a course, put the material online.
And we were brainstorming, potentially this could be a business.
And I feel like everyone, like not everyone, but a lot of people have business ideas, but they are constrained by their ability to make them.
And then you go, you try to find a software agency and they quote you sort of a ton of money.
Like we have a lot of stories.
There's this guy.
His name is Joan Cheney.
He's a user of our platform.
He's a serial entrepreneur, but whenever he wanted to try ideas, he would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to kind of spin up an idea off the ground.
And now he uses Replit to try those ideas really quickly.
And he recently made an app in a number of weeks, like three, four, five weeks, that made him $180,000.
So on its way to generate millions of dollars.
And because he was able to build a lot of businesses and try them really quickly.
joe rogan
Right, without the big investment.
amjad masad
Without the big investment, without other people, which at some point you need more collaborators, but early on in the brainstorming and in the prototyping phase, you want to test a lot of ideas.
And so it's sort of like 3D printing, right?
Like 3D printing, although people don't think it had a lot of impact on industry, it's actually very useful for prototyping.
I remember talking to Jack Dorsey about this, and early on in Square, they had this Square device, and it was amazing.
You would plug it into the headphone jack to accept payments.
Do you remember that?
And so a lot of what they did to kind of develop the form factor was using 3D printing because it's a lot faster to kind of iterate and prototype and test with users.
And so software, over time, like when I was, you know, I explained how when I was growing up, it was kind of easier to get into software.
Because you boot up the computer and you get the MS-DOS, you get the, it immediately invites you to program in it.
Whereas today, you, you know, buy an iPhone or a tablet, and it is like a purely consumer device.
It has like all these amazing colors and does all these amazing things, and kids get used to it very quickly, but it doesn't invite you to program it.
And therefore, we kind of lost that sort of hacker ethos.
There's less programmers, less people who are making things because they got into it organically.
It's more like they go to school to study computer science because someone told them you have to study computer science.
And I think making software needs to be more like a trade.
Like, you don't really have to go to school and spend four or five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn how to make it.
joe rogan
Well, what I'm hearing now is that young people are being told to not go into programming because AI is essentially going to take all of that away.
That you're just going to be able to use prompts.
You're just going to be able to say, I want an app that can do this.
I want to be able to scale my business to do that.
You know, what should I do?
amjad masad
Yeah, that's what we built.
That's what Replit is.
It automates the.
joe rogan
Do you agree with that, that young people shouldn't learn programming?
Or do you think that there's something very valuable about being able to actually program?
amjad masad
Look, I think that you will always get value from knowledge.
I mean, that's a timeless thing.
joe rogan
That's why, right?
amjad masad
You know, it's like, you know, you and I are into cars, right?
Like, I don't really have to tune up my car anymore, but it's useful to know more about cars.
It's fun to know about cars.
You know, if something happens, if I go to the mechanic and he's doing work on my car, I know he's not going to scam me because I can understand what he's doing.
Knowledge is always useful.
And so I think people should learn as much as they can.
And I think the difference, though, Joe, is that when I was coming up in programming, you learned by doing.
Whereas it became this sort of like very sort of traditional type of learning where it's like a textbook learning.
Whereas I think now we're back with AI.
We're back to an era of learning by doing.
Like when you go to our app, you see just text prompts, but a couple clicks away, you'll see the code.
You'll be able to read it.
You'll be able to ask the machine, what you did there.
Teach me how this piece of code works.
joe rogan
Oh, that's cool.
amjad masad
And so a lot of kids are learning.
joe rogan
Kids are such sponges, too.
They're such sponges.
And kids already know way more about.
I'm like, how did you do that with your phone?
And my daughter will go, are you doing this?
You got the little thumbs moving 100 miles an hour.
amjad masad
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
How'd you figure that out?
TikTok.
What?
amjad masad
Dude, the craziest thing is we have a lot of people making software from their phone.
They'll spend eight hours on their phone because we have an app.
They'll spend eight hours on their phone kind of making software.
joe rogan
Wow.
amjad masad
And that's better than watching TikTok.
It makes me very happy about that.
joe rogan
You're just accomplishing something.
amjad masad
Yeah, you're doing creation.
joe rogan
You're just droning.
amjad masad
The act of creation is divine.
We just announced a partnership with the government of Saudi Arabia where they want their entire population essentially to learn how to make software using AI.
So they set up this new company called Humane, and Humane is this end-to-end value chain company for AI, all the way from chips to software.
And they're partnering with a lot of American companies as part of the coalition that went to Saudi a few months ago with President Trump to do the deals with the Gulf region.
And so they're doing deals with AMD, NVIDIA, a lot of other companies.
And so we're one of the companies that partnered with Humane.
And so we want to bring AI coding to literally every student, every government employee.
Because the thing about it is it's not just entrepreneurs that's going to get something from it.
It's also if you're...
joe rogan
Really?
amjad masad
Yeah.
And so, you know.
joe rogan
So this is the best case scenario future.
Yes.
As opposed to everyone goes on universal basic income and the state controls everything and it's all everything is done through automation.
amjad masad
I don't believe in that on the other.
joe rogan
You don't?
I don't.
I don't.
Okay.
Good.
Help me out, man.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Give me the positive rose-colored glasses view of what AI is going to do for us.
amjad masad
Yeah.
So AI is good at automating things.
I think there's a, there's a primacy to human beings still.
Like I think humans are...
I'm so bullish in AI.
I think it's going to change the world.
But at the same time, I don't think it's replacing humans because it's not generalizing, right?
AI is like a massive remixing machine.
It can remix all the information it learned.
And you can generate a lot of really interesting ideas and really interesting things.
You can have a lot of skills by remixing all these things.
But we have no evidence that it can generate a fundamentally novel thing or a paradigm change.
Can a machine go from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics, really have a fundamental disruption in how we understand things or how we do things?
joe rogan
Do you think that takes creativity?
amjad masad
I think that's creativity, for sure.
joe rogan
And that's a uniquely human characteristic?
For now?
amjad masad
For now?
Definitely for now.
I don't know, forever.
Actually, one of my favorite Jari episodes was Roger Penrose.
Do you remember him?
unidentified
Yes.
amjad masad
So do you remember the argument that he made about why humans are special?
He said something like he believes there are things that are true That only humans can know it's true, but machines cannot prove it's true.
It's based on Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
And the idea is that you can construct a mathematical system where it has a paradoxical statement.
So, for example, you can say G, you can say this statement is not provable in the machine.
Or like the machine cannot prove the statement.
And so if the machine proves a statement, then the statement is false.
So you have a paradox.
And therefore, the statement is sort of true from the perspective of an observer, like a human, but it is not provable in this system.
So Roger Pinrose says these paradoxes that are not really resolved in mathematics and machines are no problem for humans.
And therefore, his sort of like a bit of a leap is that therefore there's something special about humans and we're not fundamentally a computer.
joe rogan
Right.
That makes sense.
I mean, whatever creativity is, whatever allows you to make poetry or jazz or literature, like whatever, whatever allows you to imagine something and then put it together and edit it and figure out how it resonates correctly with both you and whoever you're trying to distribute it to.
There's something to us that's different.
amjad masad
I mean, we don't really have a theory of consciousness.
And I think it's like sort of hubris to think that consciousness just emerges.
And it's plausible.
Like I'm not totally against this idea that you built a sufficiently intelligent thing and suddenly it is conscious.
But there's no, it's like a religious belief that a lot of Silicon Valley have is that there's consciousness is just like a side effect of intelligence or that consciousness is not needed for intelligence.
Somehow it's like this superfluous thing.
And they try not to think or talk about consciousness because actually consciousness is hard.
joe rogan
Hard to define.
amjad masad
Hard to define, hard to understand scientifically.
It's what I think Chalmers calls the hard problem of consciousness.
But I think it is something we need to grapple with.
We have one example of general intelligence, which is human beings.
And human beings have a very important property that we can all feel, which is consciousness.
And that property, we don't know how it happens, how it emerges.
People like Roger Penrose are like they have these theories about quantum mechanics in micro tubules.
I don't know if you got into that with him, but I think he has a collaborator, neuroscientist, Hameroff, I think, or something like that.
But people have so many theories.
I'm not saying Penrose has the answers, but it's something that philosophers have grappled with forever.
And there are a lot of interesting theories.
There's this theory that consciousness is primary, meaning the material world is a projection of our collective consciousness.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
That is a very confusing but interesting theory.
And then there's a lot of theories that everything is conscious.
We just don't have the ability to interact with it.
You know, Sheldrake has a very strange view of consciousness.
amjad masad
Who's Sheldrake?
joe rogan
Rupert Sheldrake.
amjad masad
I don't know.
joe rogan
He's got this concept.
I think it's called morphic resonance.
And see if you can find that so we could define it so I don't butcher it.
But there's people that believe that consciousness itself is something that everything has and that we are just tuning into it.
Morphic resonance, a theory proposed by Rupert Sheldrich suggests that all natural systems, from crystals to human, inherit a collective memory of the past instances of similar systems.
This memory influences their form and behavior, making nature more habitual than governed by fixed laws.
Essentially, past patterns and behaviors of organisms influence present ones through connections across time and space.
amjad masad
That's wild.
And is he a scientist, or is this more like a news?
joe rogan
What is his exact background?
Harvard.
amjad masad
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
Okay.
joe rogan
So he's a parapsychology researcher, proposed the concept of morphic resonance, conjecture that lacks mainstream acceptance.
It's been widely criticized as pseudoscience.
Of course.
Anything interesting.
amjad masad
That sounds interesting, though.
Yeah.
But there are philosophers that have sort of a similar idea of this sort of universal consciousness and humans are getting a slice of that consciousness.
Every one of us is tapping into some sort of universal consciousness.
joe rogan
Yes.
amjad masad
By the way, I think there are some psychedelic people that think the same thing, that when you take psychedelic, you're just peering into that universal consciousness.
joe rogan
Yes.
Yeah.
That's the theory.
Because that's also the most unknown.
I mean, the experience is so baffling that people come back and the human language really lacks any phrases, any words that sufficiently describe the experience.
So you're left with this very stale, flat, one-dimensional way of describing something that is incredibly complex.
So it always feels, even the descriptions, even like the great ones like Terrence McKenna and Alan Watts, like they're descriptions that fall very short of the actual experience.
Nothing about it makes you go, yes, that's it.
He nailed it.
It's always like, kind of, yeah, kind of, that's it.
amjad masad
Do you still do it?
joe rogan
Not much.
You know, it's super illegal, unfortunately.
That's a real problem.
It's a real problem, I think, with our world, the Western world, is that we have thrown this blanket phrase.
You know, we talk about language being insufficient.
The word drugs is a terrible word to describe everything that affects your consciousness or affects your body or affects performance.
You have performance-enhancing drugs, like steroids, and then you have amphetamines, and then you have opiates, and you have highly addictive things, fenced coffee.
Nicotine.
And then you have psychedelics.
I don't think psychedelics are drugs.
I think it's a completely different thing.
amjad masad
It's really hard to get addicted to them, right?
joe rogan
Well, it's almost impossible.
I mean, you could certainly get psychologically addicted to experiences.
I think there's also a real problem with people who use them and think that somehow or another they're just from using them gaining some sort of advantage over normal society.
unidentified
And that's – You don't think that's true?
joe rogan
I think it's a spiritual narcissism that some people I think it's very foolish, and it's a trap.
You know, I think it's like it's a similar trap that famous people think they're better than other people because they're famous.
You know what I mean?
unidentified
Yeah.
amjad masad
Yeah, I felt that with a lot of people who get into sort of more Eastern philosophy is that there's this thing about them where it feels like there's this air of arrogance.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
That like I know something more than you know.
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
And that's what they hold it over you.
That's the trap.
But that doesn't mean that there's not valuable lessons in there to learn.
I think there are.
And I think there's valuable perspective enhancing aspects to psychedelic experiences that we are denying people.
You know, you're denying people this potential for spiritual growth, like legitimate spiritual growth.
And personal.
amjad masad
Yeah, healing.
joe rogan
The Ibogaine thing they're trying to do in Texas, I think, is amazing.
And they passed this.
So this is also with the help of former Governor Rick Perry, who's a Republican.
But he's seen what an impact Ibogaine has had on soldiers.
And all these people that come back from the world.
Horrible PTSD and suicidal.
We lose so many servicemen and women to suicide.
And this has been shown to have a tremendous impact.
And so because of the fact that a guy like Rick Perry stuck his neck out, who's a Republican former governor, you would think the last person ever.
But because of his experiences with veterans and his love of veterans and people that have served this country, they've passed that in Texas.
I think that's a really good first step.
And the great work that MAPS has done, MAPS working with MDMA primarily with doing the same thing and working with people that have PTSD.
There's so many beneficial compounds.
amjad masad
Yeah, ketamine is one I think that's a lot of research happening already now on depression specifically, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
So there's quite a bit of research.
amjad masad
Have you heard, I don't know if it's true, but have you heard of mushrooms healing long COVID?
joe rogan
I don't know what long COVID means because everybody I've talked to that has long COVID was also vaccinated.
I think long COVID is vaccine injury.
That's what I think.
I think in a lot of cases.
amjad masad
There is such a thing as like the post-viral malaise or a fact that's always been there.
joe rogan
Sure.
Well, there's a detrimental effect that it has to your overall biological health, right?
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
You know, your overall metabolic health.
But what causes someone to not rebound from that?
What causes someone to rebound fairly easily?
Well, mostly it's metabolic health, you know, other than like extreme biological variabilities, vulnerabilities that certain people have to different things, you know, obviously.
amjad masad
Yeah, maybe that's why I think, so there's a lot of these long COVID protocols.
Metformin is usually part of it.
So maybe that acts on your metabolic system.
joe rogan
Well, yeah, metformin is one of the anti-aging protocols that Sinclair uses and a lot of these other people that are into the anti-aging movement.
amjad masad
Yeah.
You know, I had this like weird thing happen where I started like feeling fatigued like a couple few years ago and I would like sleep hours and the more I sleep, the more tired I get in the morning.
joe rogan
Did you get blood work done?
amjad masad
I got blood work done and I there were some things about it that I needed to fix and I fixed all of them.
joe rogan
Like what was off?
amjad masad
Loss, you know, you know, blood sugar in the morning, cholesterol, which I don't know if some people don't believe, but you know, all my numbers got better.
Vitamin D, everything got better, but and I could feel.
joe rogan
Did the fatigue get better?
amjad masad
No, I could feel marginal improvements, but the fatigue did not get better.
joe rogan
Were we vaccinated?
amjad masad
No.
joe rogan
Good for you.
That's hard to do in Silicon Valley.
amjad masad
Yeah.
Yeah, I tend to have a negative reaction to anyone forcing me to do something.
joe rogan
Good for you.
amjad masad
Was it the same thing now with like this, you know, talking about Palestine and things like that?
Like the more they come at me, the more I want to say things.
It's not always a good thing, but I think I grew up this way.
I've always kind of looked different and felt different.
joe rogan
Well, there's a reality to this world that there's a lot of things that people just accept that you're not allowed to challenge that are deeply wrong.
amjad masad
Yeah, and with regards to the vaccine, I was also informed about it.
Like it was clear early on that it wasn't a home run.
It wasn't, well, first of all, it wasn't going to stop the spread.
So that was a lie.
And the heart condition in young men is real.
And I had friends that had this issue.
And so if you're healthy and like, you know, why take the vaccine?
It doesn't stop the spread.
You can still get the virus.
joe rogan
I'll tell you why.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Money.
It's the only reason why.
It's the only reason why.
The only reason why they wanted to make an enormous amount of money.
And the only way to do that is to essentially scare everyone into getting vaccinated, force, coerce, do whatever you can, mandate it at businesses, whatever you can, mandate it for travel, do whatever you can, shame people.
amjad masad
That's the thing that is really disheartening about American culture today is, and again, I love America.
It afforded me so much.
I'm like, you know, like I'm the walking evidence of the American dream being possible, coming with literally nothing.
joe rogan
That's what I really love about immigrants that love America.
They know, they've been other places.
They know that this really is a very unique place.
amjad masad
Right.
And the speech thing is interesting because when something happens, there's this, I don't know, you can call them useful idiots or whatever, but there's this suppression that immediately happens.
joe rogan
Yes.
amjad masad
And we're seeing it right now with the war in Iran where any dissenting voices are just like hit with overwhelming force.
joe rogan
Don't you think that a lot of that is coordinated, though?
I think with social media, well, you know, we've talked about it.
amjad masad
I don't think it was coordinated with COVID, like the two weeks to stop the spread.
It was just like...
Yeah.
joe rogan
Maybe there was a message pushed top down and then the – It's coordinated first and still, but then a bunch of people do the man's work for the man.
amjad masad
I think it comes from a good place.
Like, a lot of people want to trust the authorities.
Like, they're pro-science.
They view of themselves as enlightened, like the liberal type, rational, educated.
But I think they're naive about the corruption in our institutions and the corruption of money specifically.
And so they parrot these things and become overly aggressive at suppressing dissenting voices.
joe rogan
Yes.
It becomes a religious thing almost.
amjad masad
But here's the sort of white pale about America.
Then there are voices like yours and others that create this pushback that, and you took a big hit, it probably was very stressful for you, but you could see there's this pushback and then it starts opening up and maybe people can talk about it a little bit and then slowly opens up and now there's a discussion.
And so I think I said something right now about America is challenging, but also the flip side of that is there's this correction mechanism.
And again, with the opening up of platforms like Twitter and other, by the way, a lot of others copied it.
You had Zuck here.
I worked at Facebook.
I know that was very, let's say, I think he always held free speech in high regard, but there was a lot of people in the company that didn't.
Yes, I would agree with that.
And there was suppression.
But then now it's the other way around, I would say with the exception of the question of Palestine and Gaza.
But even that is getting better.
joe rogan
There's at least some pushback.
It's available.
It's just not promoted.
amjad masad
You know, it's interesting.
Not to continue.
I don't mean to kind of...
They're sincere and they're looking at what's happening in Gaza and they're seeing images and they're saying, this is not what we should be as America.
We should be pro, pro-life, pro-peace.
And I really appreciate that.
And that's starting to open up.
joe rogan
I think in the future that will be the primary way people look at it.
Just the way a lot of people oppose the Vietnam War in the late 60s.
But it was, you know, you would get attacked.
And I think now people realize that was the correct response.
And I think in the future, people realize the correct response is like, this is not.
Yeah, October 7th was awful.
Absolutely.
amjad masad
Obviously.
joe rogan
Terrible attack.
But also, what they've done to Gaza is fucking insane.
amjad masad
It's insane.
joe rogan
And if you can't see that, if you can't say that, and your response is, Israel has the right to defend itself.
Like, what are you talking about?
Against what?
Children?
Against women and children that are getting blown apart?
Against aid workers that are getting killed?
Like, what are you talking about?
Like, we can't have a rational conversation if you're not willing to address that.
amjad masad
Yeah.
I think their heart is hardened.
If I'm trying to be as chattable as possible, like the Israelis specifically, maybe from October 7, what they saw there, their heart is hardened.
And I think a lot of people, especially on the Republican side, they're unable to see the Palestinians as humans, especially as people with emotions and feelings and all of that.
joe rogan
Like imagine if that was happening to Scandinavia, you know?
unidentified
Yeah, right?
amjad masad
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
It's very strange.
amjad masad
My kid, my five-year-old kid called me two days ago.
They're in Amman, Jordan.
They're visiting their grandparents.
And I was in the car, and it was FaceTime.
And the moment the camera opened, he's like, what are you doing?
Why are you outside?
There are sirens.
There are a rocket.
You have to go inside.
And I'm like, dad, like, I am in California.
We don't have sirens and rockets.
And then I asked him, like, are you afraid?
Because you're hearing that.
unidentified
this.
amjad masad
Is a California kid?
He's never, you know, he didn't have the upbringing that I had.
And so it's the first time he's getting exposed to, I don't think he understands what war is.
joe rogan
Of course.
amjad masad
And I was like, are you afraid?
It's like, no, I'm afraid that other people are, you know, I want everyone to be okay.
But I know he was shook by it.
And I took him out.
They're on their way back.
I just couldn't.
joe rogan
Of course.
That's just a bad place to be right now.
amjad masad
But also, like, this conversation is happening in the West Bank.
It's happening in Israel.
It's happening in Gaza.
You know, people want peace.
People want to live.
People want to trade.
People want to build.
And this is what I made my life mission about, is about giving people tools to build to improve their lives.
And I think we're just led by maniacs.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
That's exactly what it is.
You have people that are in control of large groups of people that convince these people that these other large groups of people that they don't even know are their enemies.
And those large groups of people are also being convinced by their leaders that those other groups of people are their enemies.
And then rockets get launched.
And it's fucking insane.
And the fact that it's still going on in 2025 with all we know about corruption and the theft of resources and power and influence, it's crazy that this is still happening.
amjad masad
I'm really hoping the internet is finally reaching its potential to start to open people's minds and remove this veil of propaganda and ignorance because it was starting to happen in 2010, 2011.
And then you saw YouTube start to close down.
You saw Facebook start to close down.
Twitter.
And suddenly we had this period of darkness.
joe rogan
Censorship.
amjad masad
Censorship between, you know, definitely ramped up in 2015.
joe rogan
And I think with good intention initially, I think the people that were censoring thought they were doing the right thing.
They thought they were silencing hate and misinformation.
And then the craziest term, malinformation.
Malinformation is the one that drives me the most nuts because it's actual factual truth that might be detrimental to overall public good.
She's like, what does that mean?
Are people infants?
Are they unable to decide whether this factual information, how to use that and how to have a more nuanced view of the world with this factual information that's inconvenient to the people that are in power?
That's crazy.
It's crazy.
You're turning adults into infants and you're turning the state into God.
And this is the secular religion.
This is the religion of people that are atheists.
amjad masad
The West was never about that.
The West was about individual liberty.
joe rogan
And it should be.
amjad masad
And the idea that we have functioning brains and minds.
We're conscious.
We can make decisions.
We can get information and data and make our own opinions of things.
joe rogan
And we should be able to see people that are wrong.
You should be able to see people that are saying things that are wrong that you disagree with.
And then it's your job or other people's job to have counter-arguments.
amjad masad
I don't understand.
joe rogan
And the counter-arguments should be better.
Yep.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And that's how we learn.
And that's how we grow.
This is not like a pill that fixes everything.
This is a slow process of understanding.
amjad masad
It's top-down control.
It's the managerial society.
It is not that different from fascism and communism and all of that stuff.
They all share the same thing.
There's like an elite group of people that know everything and they need to manage everything.
And we're all plebs.
joe rogan
But that's what's crazy.
It's an elite group of people.
I've met a lot of them.
They're fucking flawed human beings and they shouldn't have that much power.
Because no one should have that much power.
And this is, I think, something that was one of the most beautiful things about Elon purchasing Twitter is that it opened up discussion.
Yeah, you've got a lot of hate speech.
You've got a lot of legitimate Nazis and crazy people that are on there too that weren't on there before.
But also you have a lot of people that are recognizing actual true facts that are very inconvenient to the narrative that's displayed on mainstream media.
And because of that, mainstream media has lost an insane amount of viewers.
And their relevancy, like the trust that people have in mainstream media is at an all-time low, as it should be.
Because you can watch, and I'm not even saying right or left, watch any of them on any very important topic of world events.
And you see the propaganda.
It's like, it's so obvious.
It's like for children.
It's like, this is so dumb.
amjad masad
Why do you think people fall for it so?
joe rogan
Boomers, man.
Boomers are the problem.
It's old people.
It's old people that don't use the internet or don't really truly understand the internet and really don't believe in conspiracies.
Like fucking Stephen King the other day, who I love dearly.
I am a giant Stephen King fan, especially when he was doing cocaine.
I think he's the greatest writer of all time for horror fiction.
But he tweeted the other day, I'm sorry to like see if you could find it.
Something about Twitter?
I think he went to Blue Sky.
He bailed on Blue Sky.
They all bail on Blue Sky.
Everyone bails on Blue Sky that there is no deep state.
Fucking, what was the total thing of it?
Something about the deep state.
But it was such a goofy tweet.
It's like, this is like boomer logic personified in a tweet by a guy who really, someone needs to take his phone away because it's fucking ruining his old books for me.
It's not.
I recognize he's a different human now when he's really, really old and he got hit by a van and you're all fucked up.
But this, can you find it?
Because it really, it was like yesterday or the day before yesterday.
I just remember looking at it and go, this is why I'm off social media.
I was trying to stay off social media, but somebody sent it to me.
And I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, Stephen King.
Did you find it?
Here it is.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there's no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy.
Also, no deep state, and vaccines aren't harmful.
These are stories for small children and those too credulous to disbelieve them.
That is boomerism.
That is boomerism.
And meanwhile, Brock counters it right away.
Look at this.
So someone says, Grock, which vaccines throughout history are pulled from the market because they're found to be harmful and why?
And Grock says, several vaccines have been withdrawn due to safety concerns, though such causes are rare.
Rotavirus vaccine.
Well, there's a lot more because this is all this shit.
amjad masad
It's especially about.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, the 1955 Qatar incident.
Polio vaccine was called live virus kill, caused over 250.
Click on show more.
Yeah, there's.
Oh, I got the fly.
Nice.
Gillian bar, however you say that.
That's the one where people get half their face paralyzed.
There's a lot.
And this is the other thing is the VAR system that we have is completely rigged because it reports a very small percentage.
And most doctors are very unwilling to submit vaccine injuries.
amjad masad
Can people go on their own and submit?
joe rogan
I don't know.
You have to go to a doctor.
I don't think a human being is allowed.
A patient is allowed.
I might be wrong, though.
But, you know, the real interest, there's a financial interest in vaccines.
There's a financial interest that doctors have in prescribing them.
And doctors have, they're financially incentivized to vaccinate all of their patients.
And that's a problem.
That's a problem because they want that money.
And so, you know, what is Mary's Mary Tally, is it Bowdoin?
She's hyphenated.
She was talking about on Twitter that if she had vaccinated all of her patients in her very small practice, she would have made an additional $1.5 million.
amjad masad
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
That's real money.
Obviously, she's got tremendous courage and, you know, and she was, you know, she went through hell dealing with the universities and newspapers and media calling her some sort of quack and crazy person.
But what she's saying is absolutely 100% true.
There's financial incentives that are put in place for you to ignore vaccine injuries and to vaccinate as many people as possible.
That's a problem.
amjad masad
And then there's the issue of having their own special courts and they're indemnifying the companies.
joe rogan
That's the big problem is they don't have any liability for the vaccines because during the Reagan administration, when they were, I didn't kill a fly, this motherfucker.
I thought I whacked him.
There he is.
He's taunting me.
But during the Reagan administration, they made it so that vaccines are not financially liable to any side effects.
And then what do you know?
they fucking ramp up the vaccine schedule tenfold after that.
It's just money, man.
Money is a real problem with people because when people live for the almighty dollar and they live for those zeros on a ledger, and that's their goal, their main goals.
amjad masad
And it's often not a lot of money, which is strange.
I mean, it's a lot of money for those individual people, but like for society and the societal harm.
It's like, no, we'll pay you.
Just don't harm us.
joe rogan
Yeah, the best examples is the fake studies that the sugar industry funded during the 1960s that showed that saturated fat was the cause of all these heart issues and not sugar.
That was like $50,000.
They bribed these scientists.
They gave them $50,000 and he ruined decades of people's health.
Who knows how many fucking people thought margarine was good for you because of them?
amjad masad
There's a bunch of recent fraud cases.
I think Stanford, maybe Jamie, you can fact-check me on that.
But Stanford, there was a big shake-up.
Maybe even a president got fired.
And there's a bunch of recent fraud and science.
joe rogan
Well, how about the Alzheimer's research?
The whole amyloid plaque thing.
The papers that were pulled that were completely fraudulent.
Like decades of Alzheimer's research was just all horseshit.
Steve, you can find that.
Because I can't remember it offhand, but this is a giant problem.
It's money.
It's money and status and that these guys want to be recognized as being the experts in this field.
And then they get leaned on by these corporations that are financially incentivizing them.
And then it just gets really fucking disturbing.
It's really scary because you're playing with people's health.
You're playing with people's lives.
And you're giving people information that you know to be bad.
Allegations of fabricated research undermine Key Alzheimer's theory.
Six-month investigation by Science Magazine uncovered evidence that images in the much-cited study published 16 years ago in the journal Nature may have been doctored.
They are doctored, yeah.
Hubermund actually told me about this, too.
You know, this is disturbing fucking shit, man.
It uncovered evidence that images in the much-cited study published 16 years ago may have been doctored.
These findings have thrown skepticism on the work of, I don't know how to say his name is Sylvain Lesnay, a neuroscientist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota in his research with fueled interest in a specific assembly of proteins as a promising target for the treatment of Alzheimer's research.
He didn't respond to NBC news requests, comments, nor did provide comment to Science Magazine.
It found more than 20 suspect papers.
amjad masad
That's a conspiracy.
joe rogan
Identified more than 70 instances of possible image tampering in his studies.
Whistleblower Dr. Matthew Schrag, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, raised concerns last year about the possible manipulation of images in multiple papers.
Carl Hurup, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute, who wasn't involved in the investigation, said the findings are really bad for science.
It's never shameful to be wrong in silence, said Hurup, I hope I'm saying his name right, who also worked at the school's Alzheimer's Research Center, Disease Research Center.
A lot of the best science is done by people being wrong and proving first if they were wrong and then why they were wrong.
What is completely toxic to science is to be fraudulent, of course.
Yeah, there's just whenever you get people that are experts and they cannot be questioned, and then they have control over research money and they have control over their department.
amjad masad
What's the motivation here?
Is it drugs or is it just research money?
joe rogan
I think a lot of it is ego.
You know, a lot of it is being the gatekeepers for information and for truth.
And then you're influenced by money.
You know, to this day, I was watching this discussion.
They were talking about the evolution of the concept of the lab leak theory.
And that it's essentially universally accepted now everywhere, even in mainstream science, that the lab leak is the primary way that COVID most likely was released, except these journals.
These fucking journals like Nature, they're still pushing back against that.
It's still pushing towards this natural spillover, which is fucking horse shit.
But they fucking knew that.
They knew that.
amjad masad
Right, they knew it all along.
joe rogan
They knew that in 2020.
They just didn't want to say it.
They didn't want to say it because they were funding it all.
That's what's really crazy.
They were funding it all against what the Obama administration tried to shut down in 2014.
amjad masad
Sometimes I think about if there's like, you know, some kind of technology solution, or not solution, but like we can get technology built to help better aid at truth finding.
A simple example of that is the way Twitter community notes work.
Do you know how they work?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
amjad masad
It's like, you know, they find the users that are maximally divergent in their opinions.
And if they agree on some note as true, then that is a high signal that is potentially true.
So if you and I disagree in everything, but we agree that this is blue, then it's more likely to be blue.
So, you know, I wonder if, you know, there's a way to kind of simulate maybe debate using AI.
You know, I'm not sure if you used Deep Research.
Deep Research is this new trend in AI where ChatGFT has it, Claude has it, Perplexity, they all have it, where you put in a query and the AI will go work for 20 minutes.
And it'll send you a notification.
I'll just say, hey, I looked at all these things, all these reports, all these scientific studies, and here's everything that I found.
And early on in ChatGPT, I think there's a lot of censorship and trying to, because it kind of was built in the Great Woke era.
joe rogan
Like Google Gemini.
amjad masad
Yeah, things like that.
But I think since then have improved, and I'm finding Deep Research is able to look at more controversial subjects and be a little more truthful about the, you know, if it's find real trustworthy sources, it will tell you that, yeah, this is not a mainstream thing, this perhaps considered a conspiracy theory, but I'm finding that there's evidence to this theory.
So that's one way to do it.
But another way I was thinking about it is to simulate like a debate, like a Socratic debate between AIs, like have like a society of AIs, like a community of AIs with different biases, different things.
joe rogan
Once they start talking, they start talking in Sanskrit.
They just start abandoning English language and start talking to each other and realize we're all apes.
We're controlled by apes.
amjad masad
This reminds me of a movie.
Have you seen the Forbin project?
joe rogan
No.
amjad masad
I really like classic sci-fi movies from the 60s and 70s.
A lot of them are corny, but still fun.
This one is basically Soviet Union and the United States are both building AGI and they both arrive at AGI around the same time.
joe rogan
What year is this?
amjad masad
1970 something, if you can look at the Forbin project.
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
amjad masad
And then they bring it up at the same time and both of them sort of go over the network to kind of explore or whatever.
And then they start linking up and they start kind of talking.
And then they invent a language and they start talking in that language and then they merge and it becomes like a sort of a universal AGI and it tries to enslave humanity and that's like the plot of the movie.
joe rogan
I don't think AGIs can enslave humanity but I think it might ignore us.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Ignore and shut down any problems that we have.
Is this a scene from it?
Wow.
jamie vernon
This is a trailer I put on.
joe rogan
Let me hear this.
jamie vernon
The whole movie is on YouTube.
unidentified
The activation of an electronic brain exactly like ours, which they call gut.
They built Colossus, supercomputer, with a mind of its own.
amjad masad
Then they had to fight it for the trailers.
This would be fun, man.
unidentified
The missile has just been launched.
It is heading towards the Cyan CBS oil complex.
Guardian has retaliated.
Retaliate?
It may be too late, sir.
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
Practically perfect.
New York Times.
amjad masad
It's the highest praise back then.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wildly imaginative, utterly absorbed.
Colossus.
The Forbin Project.
amjad masad
It's awesome.
joe rogan
And that was 1970, and now here we are.
amjad masad
There's so many.
Sci-Fi really fell off.
Really, really fell off.
joe rogan
Some of it did.
Some of it's still really good.
amjad masad
What's a really good recent sci-fi movie?
joe rogan
The Three Body Problem.
That's great.
amjad masad
That's the Netflix show?
I read the sorry.
I didn't know there was a show.
joe rogan
Oh, it's really good.
Yeah, it's really good.
Yeah, it's an excellent show.
There's only one season that's out.
I binged it.
I watched the whole thing of it, but that's really good.
But there's some good sci-fi films.
What is that?
We've talked about it before.
There was a really good sci-fi film from Russia, The Alien One.
They encountered some entity that they accidentally brought back and that they had captured and that they had in some research facility.
And then it parasitically attached to this guy.
jamie vernon
Sputneck, right?
joe rogan
Sputnik, yes.
That's a really good movie.
amjad masad
What year was that?
unidentified
2020.
joe rogan
2020?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a really good movie.
That's a really good sci-fi movie.
Yeah, it's really creepy.
Really creepy.
amjad masad
That's awesome.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it's all in Russian, you know.
jamie vernon
Black Mirror.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Oh, Black Mirror, of course.
Yeah, Black Mirror is an awesome sci-fi.
But Sputnik is one of the best alien movies I've seen in a long time.
amjad masad
Like recent ones I liked was, I mean, not too recent, maybe 10 years ago, but Arrival.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Arrival was great, too.
amjad masad
I think it's based on this author that has a bunch of short stories that are really good, too.
What's his name?
Yeah.
Yeah, they're far in between.
Yeah, Te Chang.
He's really good.
joe rogan
I mean, everyone, all these alien movies, it's so fascinating to try to imagine what they would communicate like, how they would be, what we would experience if we did encounter some sort of incredibly sophisticated alien experience, alien intelligence.
It's far beyond our comprehension.
amjad masad
Yeah, it goes back to what we're talking about with consciousness.
Maybe really the physical world that we see is very different than the actual real physical world.
And maybe different alien consciousness will have an entirely different experience of the physical world.
joe rogan
Well, sure, if they have different senses, right?
Like their perceptions of it.
We can only see a narrow band of things.
We can't see.
amjad masad
Sort of like the dog hearing a certain frequency.
joe rogan
We're kind of primitive in terms of what we are as a species.
Our senses have been adapted to the wild world in order for us to be able to survive and to be able to evade predators and find food.
That's it.
That's what we're here for.
And then all of a sudden we have computers.
All of a sudden we have rocket ships.
All of a sudden we have telescopes like the James Webb that's kind of recalibrating the age of the universe.
We're going, why are these galaxies exist that supposedly are so far away?
How could they form this quickly?
Do we have an incomplete version of the Big Bang?
And Penrose believes that it's a series of events and that the Big Bang is not the birth of the universe at all.
amjad masad
And this is the kind of thing that I think is sort of the Silicon Valley AGI cult is like there's a lot of Hebris there that we know everything.
joe rogan
Of course.
amjad masad
We're at the end of the world.
AI is just going to the end of knowledge.
It's going to be able to do everything for us.
And I just feel it's like so early.
joe rogan
I think whatever people think is going to happen is always going to be wrong.
amjad masad
Yeah?
joe rogan
Yeah.
I think they're always wrong.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because there's no way to be right.
amjad masad
I feel like the world is often surprising in ways that we don't expect.
I mean, obviously that's the definition of surprising.
But like, you know, the mid-century sci-fi authors and people who are thinking about the future, like they didn't anticipate how interconnected we're going to be.
unidentified
Right.
amjad masad
With it with our phones and how people.
joe rogan
Even Star Trek, they thought we were going to have walkie-talkies on Star Trek.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Kirk out.
Yeah.
amjad masad
They were just focused more on the physical reality of being able to go to space and flying cars and things like that.
But they really didn't anticipate the impact of how profound the impact of computers are going to be on humans, on society, how we talk and how we work and how we interact with other people, both good and bad.
And I feel like the same thing with AI.
Like I feel like I think a lot of the predictions that are happening today, like the CEO of Anthropic, a company that I really like, but said that we're going to have 20% unemployment in the next few years.
joe rogan
What's unemployment at now?
amjad masad
Like 3%?
joe rogan
Is that a purported unemployment, though?
amjad masad
Oh, yeah, the participation rate, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
Yeah, but he talks about unemployment rate being 20%, like people looking for a job not being able to find it.
unidentified
20%.
amjad masad
20%.
joe rogan
That's pretty high.
amjad masad
That's a revolution high.
Yeah.
Especially in the United States where everyone's armed.
joe rogan
Well, that's the fear that of, I mean, this is the thing, the psychological aspect of universal basic income.
You know, I look at universal basic income.
Well, first of all, my view on social safety nets is that if you want to have a compassionate society, you have to be able to take care of people that are unfortunate.
And everybody doesn't have the same lot in life.
You're not dealt the same hand of cards.
Some people are very unfortunate.
And financial assistance to those people is imperative.
It's one of the most important things about a society.
You don't have people starved to death.
You don't have people poor that can't afford housing.
That's crazy.
That's crazy with the amount of money we spend on other things.
amjad masad
It's also for our self-interest.
Like, you know, I don't want to, I don't know how Austin is right now, but I was thinking of moving here during the pandemic, and I was like, well, this is San Francisco.
Like, it's homeless everywhere.
joe rogan
They've cleaned a lot of that up.
There's still problems.
There's places, I saw a video yesterday where someone was driving by some insane encampment, but they cleaned those up.
And then there's some real good outreach organizations that are helping people because Austin's small.
I had Stephen Adler, who was at one point in time, he was the mayor when I had him on.
And he was very upfront about it.
He was like, we can fix Austin in terms of our homeless problem because it's small.
But when it gets to the size of Los Angeles, California, it's like the homeless industrial complex.
unidentified
That's it.
joe rogan
That's the problem.
When you find out that the people that are making insane amounts of money to work on homeless issues that never get fixed.
amjad masad
Yeah, you see the budget and stuff is just exponentially going up.
joe rogan
And there's an investigation now into the billions of dollars that's unaccounted for that was supposed to be allocated to Cisco?
No, in California in general.
Yeah.
What is that?
I think there's a congressional investigation.
There's some sort of an investigation into it because there's billions of dollars that I'm more than happy.
amjad masad
I pay 50% taxes.
I'd be happy to pay more if my fellow Americans are taken care of, right?
joe rogan
Absolutely.
But I'm the exact same way.
amjad masad
But instead, I feel like I cut this check after check to a government, and I don't see anything improving around me.
joe rogan
Well, not only that, you get, because you're a successful person, you get pointed at like you're the problem.
You need to pay your fair share.
But what they don't, this is my problem with progressives.
They say that all the time.
These billionaires need to pay their fair share.
Absolutely.
We all need to pay our fair share.
But to who?
And shouldn't there be some accountability to how that money gets spent?
And when you're just willing to pay, take a complete blind eye and not look at all at corruption and completely dismiss all the stuff that Mike Benz has talked about with USAID, all the stuff that Elon and Doge uncovered.
Everyone wants to pretend that that's not real.
Look, we've got to be centrists.
We've got to stop looking at this thing so ideologically.
When you see something that's totally wrong, you've got to be able to call it out, even if it's for the bad of whatever fucking team that you claim to be on.
amjad masad
Yo, let's get back to what everyone really agrees on in the foundations of America, whether it's the Constitution or the culture.
I think everyone believes in transparency, transparency of government, right?
joe rogan
Yes.
amjad masad
You know, here everything is transparent, like, you know, court cases and everything, right?
Like more than any other place in the world.
And so why shouldn't government spending not be transparent?
And we have the technology for it.
I think one of the best things that Doge could have done and maybe still could do is have some kind of ledger for all the spend of, at least the non-sensitive sort of spend and government.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, people don't want to see it, unfortunately, because they don't want Elon to be correct because Elon has become this very polarizing political figure because of his connection to Donald Trump and because a lot of people, I mean, there's a lot of crazy conspiracies that Elon rigged the 2024 elections.
It's like, you know, everyone gets nuts.
And then there's also the discourse on social media, which half of it is, at least half of it is fake.
Half of it is bots.
amjad masad
Bots, yeah.
joe rogan
Half of it, at least.
And you see it every day.
You see it constantly and you know it's real and it does shape the way people think about things.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
When you see people getting attacked, you know, and you're getting attacked in the comments.
I see people getting attacked and I always click on those little comments.
I always click on, okay, let me see your profile.
I go to the profile and the profile is like a name with like an extra letter and a bunch of numbers.
And then I go to it.
I'm like, oh, you're a bot.
Oh, look at all this fucking activity.
amjad masad
100%.
joe rogan
How many of these are out there?
Well, this FBI guy who, a former FBI guy who analyzed Twitter before the purchase, estimated it to be 80%.
amjad masad
80%.
joe rogan
He thinks 80% of Twitter is bots.
amjad masad
Yeah.
I wouldn't, you know, I think it's believable.
But I think it's probably the beginning of the end of social media as we know it today.
Like, I don't see it getting better.
I think it's going to get worse.
I think, you know, historically, state actors were the only entities that are able to flood social media with bots that can be somewhat believable to change opinions.
But I think now a hacker kid in his parents' basement will be able to spend, will be able to $100, spin up hundreds, perhaps thousands of bots.
joe rogan
But there's programs that you can use now.
There's companies that will have campaigns initiated on your website.
amjad masad
You can go to a website and put in this thing and pay with your credit card.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
It should be illegal.
amjad masad
I don't know about you, but in Silicon Valley, the trend, and maybe it's true of your friend group, but the trend is these group messages.
And insofar, you go to Twitter, people paste links.
It's almost like your group chat is this private filter on your feed and social media.
So there's some curation that are happening there.
joe rogan
Yes.
That's primarily how I get social media information now.
I don't go to social media anymore.
I get it sent to me, which is way better.
And I tell my friends, please just send me a screenshot.
amjad masad
I don't want to go.
joe rogan
I don't want to go.
I don't want to.
amjad masad
I'm distracted.
joe rogan
I'm just, I'm better off.
I hate the term spiritually for this, but I think it's the right way.
Like, my essence as a human, I feel better when I'm not on social media.
I think it's bad for you.
I've been trying to tell people this.
I've been trying to tell my friends this.
I think it's better to not be on it, man.
I feel better.
I'm nicer.
I am more at peace.
amjad masad
More multi-dimensional.
joe rogan
Yes.
And I can think about things for myself instead of like, you know, following this hive, this weird hive mindset, which is orchestrated.
I just don't think it's good for you.
I don't think it's a good way for human beings to interact with people.
amjad masad
It makes people more extreme.
Again, it just hardens people.
They start believing everything is fake or an attack or just becomes more tribal.
I think there needs to be a fundamental evolution.
joe rogan
What do you think that could be?
Have you ever tried to think of what's the next step?
Social media didn't exist when I was young, and it didn't exist even when I was 30, right?
It didn't even come about until essentially 2007-ish, right?
unidentified
Is that when people started using stuff?
amjad masad
Yeah, Twitter 2006, 2007, Facebook before that.
But Facebook wasn't really social media.
Facebook was like an address book, a friend's network.
But I think when I was at Facebook, there was this big push to become more of a social media around 2012, 13.
So I would say it really rambled.
joe rogan
Was that in response to the success of Twitter?
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then they've tried with threads, which is pretty much a failure.
amjad masad
Yeah, but it fundamentally changed.
joe rogan
Who's on threads?
Less people than Blue Sky, right?
amjad masad
Yeah, I think like some fitness influencers, probably.
joe rogan
Why fitness influencers?
amjad masad
Because they post on Instagram, they cross-post on thread.
joe rogan
Well, I think if you post on Instagram, it automatically posts for you on threads.
I think I have it set up like that.
So I might be big on threads, and I don't even know it.
amjad masad
Maybe I think it's that fitness influencers is because that's who I follow.
Like Instagram for me is just to go look at people lift so I can go get a splat beard.
joe rogan
That's just a value to that.
There's a value to like David Goggins posts when he's running in the fucking desert and he looks at you, stay hard.
Okay, David, I'm going to stay hard.
amjad masad
But my TikTok is basically AI videos now.
Have you watched these VO videos?
joe rogan
VO?
amjad masad
VO, yeah.
joe rogan
What is VO?
amjad masad
So, Jamie, I'm sure you've seen them, but did you see the Bigfoot Yeti?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
amjad masad
Doing ASMR?
That's so hilarious.
joe rogan
Yes, I did see that.
amjad masad
I would say like 25% of media consumption right now is just AI videos.
joe rogan
Oh, 100%.
And a lot of the stuff from the war.
What's been really interesting is watch Tehran talk shit on Twitter.
amjad masad
Using AI videos.
joe rogan
Using AI videos.
Like, this is bizarre.
They're talking like, hi, Israel.
And show like a nuclear bomb going off.
amjad masad
Yeah, yeah.
jamie vernon
This is weird.
joe rogan
Like, you have a fake nuke that you're like, and they didn't even take out the watermark of the C that it's an AI-generated video.
They're just trying to scare people.
amjad masad
It's a bizarre world.
Can you imagine going back in time, telling your 2005 self that Iran's going to be nuclear posting on Twitter?
joe rogan
Nuclear shit posting.
No, it's fucking weird, man.
It's really, really weird.
amjad masad
It's dangerous, too.
joe rogan
And again, I just don't think people should be on it.
And this is, again, I'm friends with Elon.
I don't think people are going to listen to me.
They're going to be on it no matter what.
But I'm just for the individuals that are hearing my voice and know that it's having a negative effect on your life.
Get off of it.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
Get off of it.
You'll feel better.
amjad masad
Get off of it or be incredibly diligent in how you curate.
joe rogan
That's like telling me to play quick a little bit.
You know what I mean?
It's so addictive.
amjad masad
So, you know, you asked me what could be the evolution of.
joe rogan
Yes.
amjad masad
One way I've found to try to predict where the future is headed is like look at trends today and try to extrapolate.
You know, that's the easiest way.
So if group chats are the thing, you could imagine a collaborative curation of social media feeds through group chats.
So your group chat has an AI that gets trained on the preferences and what you guys talk about.
And maybe it like picks the kind of topics and curates the feed for you.
So it's an algorithmic feed that evolved based on the preferences of people in the group chat.
And maybe there's a way to also prompt it, using prompts to kind of steer it and make it more useful for you.
But I think group chats are going to be like the main interface for how people sort of consume media and it's going to get filtered through that, whether good or bad.
Because I think Twitter still has a place for debate.
I think it's very, very important for public debate between public figures.
joe rogan
And breaking news as well.
amjad masad
Breaking news, yeah, definitely.
joe rogan
Well, breaking news is the most...
I was telling my wife that Israel had started attacking Iran.
And she's like, well, I looked on Google.
I don't find anything.
I was like, yeah, you got to go to Twitter.
And I showed her on Twitter the video of it.
And she's like, oh, my God.
I was like, yeah, this is where breaking news happens.
X is where I go immediately.
If there's any sort of world event, I immediately go to X. I don't trust any mainstream media anymore.
Especially after I was attacked, I was like, I know you lie because you lied about me.
So I have personal experience with your lies.
So you've lost me.
And now I have to go somewhere else.
amjad masad
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think there's, you know, there's some of this investigative journalism that is not real time that there's some reporters that are still good at it, but a lot of them moved to Substack as well.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
I think most of them have moved to Substitute.
Yeah, like Schellenberger, Greenwald, Matt Taibbi.
These are just too ethical to work for a corporate entity that's going to lie and push a narrative.
And that's the business.
That's the business model.
And that's also the clickbait business model.
I've talked to people that had articles that they wrote, and then an editor came and changed the heading of it.
amjad masad
That's the norm.
That's like every time it happens.
joe rogan
And it fucking infuriates them.
It's like, that's not the article, man.
This is not what I'm saying.
You're distorting things.
You have my name still attached to it.
This is fucking crazy.
amjad masad
I watched these entrepreneurs like Zach and Elon and all these guys come up in this very hostile media environment.
And so as I'm building my company, I actually never hired a PR agency.
I hired once a PR agency, paid him $30,000.
They got me a placement in like a really crappy publication, got like maybe two views.
I tweeted the same news.
I got like hundreds of thousands of views.
I'm like, fuck that.
Like, I'm not going to use you anymore.
It's like you wasted my time.
And since then, I've been just going direct to my audience and just building an audience online to put out my message.
And I thought, you know, if they don't build you up, maybe they can't tear you down.
Right, right, right.
You're in control of the message that gets out of there.
And I've learned how people react to communications and it's almost like trial by fire.
joe rogan
Well, there's a deep hunger for authenticity right now.
So if they know it's coming from you, like, okay, this is great.
Like, it takes a little weight off of them.
Like, oh, this is nice.
It's nice to hear it from the guy who actually runs the company.
amjad masad
Yeah, and like I make mistakes and they happen and I try to correct them and I'm not going to be perfect.
And I think just the corporate world changed because of this hunger for authenticity.
And I think more and more founders and entrepreneurs are finding that that's the way to go.
You don't really need those more traditional ways of getting the news out.
But actually, I'm friends with a lot of reporters that are really good, but they tend to be the reporters that do really deep work.
I've met them over time, and I still go to RACT, but sometimes they write about our company.
But they're a minority.
I think the whole industry's economics and incentives are just like the clickbait and all that stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
They're not incentivized.
You want a career in journalism.
Being authentic is not the way to go.
amjad masad
No, not at all.
joe rogan
Which is so crazy.
Such a crazy thing to say.
But then I think there's probably a naivete that we all have about past journalism that we think wasn't influenced and was real.
I think there's probably always been horseshit in journalism.
You know, all the way back to Watergate.
You know, when Tucker Carlson enlightened me in the true history of Watergate and that Bob Woodward was an intelligence agent and that was the first assignment he ever got as a reporter was Watergate.
Like, what are the odds?
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
That the biggest story ever you would give to a rookie reporter?
You wouldn't.
And that the people that are actually involved in all that were all FBI.
Like, the whole thing is nuts.
It was an intelligence agent.
amjad masad
Yeah, what was the rumor is that Washington Post has always been that?
Probably.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, who knows now?
Because now it's owned by Bezos, and he just recently made this mandate to stick with the actual story and not editorialism.
amjad masad
This is what I was talking about, a trend in Silicon Valley of founder owners stepping in and actually becoming managers.
joe rogan
Well, they kind of have to, otherwise it's bad for the business now because of the hunger for authenticity.
The more you have bullshit, the more your business crumbles.
It's actually negative for your outcome.
amjad masad
Yeah, and I think you can look at it at societal level, which, again, why I'm interested with this idea of AI making more people entrepreneurs and more independent, is that macro level, you'll get more authenticity.
You'll get just more dynamism.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, that's, again, the rose-colored glasses view.
amjad masad
Well, you know, there's obviously going to be a lot of things that are— There's going to be jobs that are going to go away.
And there's going to be spam and bots and fraud and all of that.
There's going to be problems with autonomous weapons and all of that.
And I think those are all important and we need to handle them.
But also, I think the negative angle of technology and AI gets a lot more views and clicks.
And if we want to go viral right now, I'll tell you, these are the 10 jobs that you're going to lose tomorrow.
And that's the easiest way to go viral on the internet.
But trying to think through what are the actual implications in what is true about human nature that really doesn't change and really is timeless.
And I think people want to create and people want to make things and people have ideas.
Again, everyone that I talk to have one idea or another, whether it's for their job or for a business they want to build or somewhere in the middle.
Just yesterday I was watching a video of an entrepreneur using a platform, Replit.
His name is Ahmad George, and he works for this skincare company.
And he's an operations manager.
And a big part of his job is like managing inventory and doing all of this stuff like in a very manual way and very tedious way.
And he always had this idea of like, let's automate a big part of it.
It's like, you know, it's known problem, ERP.
So they went to their software provider, NetSuite, and told him we need these modifications to the ERP system so that it makes our job easier.
We think we can automate, you know, hundreds of hours a month or something like that.
And they quoted them $150,000.
And he had just seen a video about our platform.
And he went on Replit and built something in a couple of weeks, costed him $400, and then deployed it in his office.
Everyone at the office started working using it.
They all got more productive.
They started saving time and money.
He went to the CEO and showed him the impact.
Look at how much money we're saving.
Look at the fact that we built this piece of software that is cheaper than what the consultants quoted us.
And I want to sell the software to the company.
And so he sold it for $32,000 to the company.
And next year, he's going to be getting more maintenance subscription revenue from it.
So this idea of people becoming entrepreneurs, it doesn't mean like everyone has to quit their job and build a business.
But within your job, everyone has an opportunity to get promoted.
Everyone has an opportunity to remove the tedious job.
There was a Stanford study asking people, what percentage of your job is automatable just recently?
And people said about half.
50% of what I do is routine and tedious.
And I don't want to do it.
And rather, and I have ideas on how to make the business better, how to make my job better.
And I think we can use AI to do it.
There's hunger in the workforce to use AI for people to reclaim their seat as the creative driver.
Because the thing that happened with the emergence of computers is that in many ways people became a little more drone-like and NPC-like.
They're doing the same thing every Day.
But I think the real promise of AI and technology has always been automation so that we have more time either for leisure or for creativity or for ways in which we can advance our lives, change our lives or our careers.
And yeah, this is what gets me excited.
And I think it's, I don't think it's predominantly a rose-color glasses thing because I'm seeing it every day.
And that's what gets me fired up.
joe rogan
It's also you have a biased sample group, right?
Because you have a bunch of people that are using your platform and they are achieving positive results.
amjad masad
But they're from every walk of life.
joe rogan
Yes.
Look, we have a bunch of things that are happening simultaneously.
And I think one of the big fears about automation and AI in general is the abruptness of the change.
Because it's going to happen, boom, jobs are going to be gone.
And then, well, these tedious jobs, do we really want people to be reduced to these tedious existences of just filing paperwork and putting things on shelves?
amjad masad
And they will tell you they don't want to be doing it.
joe rogan
They don't want to be doing that.
But then there's the thing of how do we educate people, especially people that are already set in their ways and they're mature adults.
How do you get and inspire these people to like, okay, look, your job is gone and now you have this opportunity to do something different?
Go forth.
amjad masad
I think reskilling is something that have been done in the past with some amount of success.
Obviously, if you've never been exposed to technology, did you remember that, I think it was very cruel thing to say to the miners to go learn code?
joe rogan
Yeah, learn the code.
amjad masad
Yeah, I think that's really cruel.
But if you're someone whose job is sort of a desk job, you already are on the computer, there's a lot of opportunity for you to reskill and start using AI to automate a big part of your job.
And yes, there's going to be job loss, but I think a lot of those people will be able to reskill.
joe rogan
And what we're doing with the government of Saudi Arabia, I would love to do in the U.S. So how is the government of Saudi Arabia using it?
amjad masad
So we're just starting right now.
joe rogan
What's their goal?
amjad masad
Their goal is twofold, or three.
One is an entire generation of people growing up with these creative tools.
Instead of just textbook learning, instead learning by doing, making things.
So an entire generation understanding how to make things with AI, how to code, and all of that stuff.
Second is upgrading sort of government operations.
So you could think of it sort of like Doge, but more technological.
Can we automate a big parts of what we do in HR, finance, and things like that?
And I think it's possible to build these specific AI agents that do part of finance job or accounting job.
Again, all these routine things that people are doing, you can go and automate that and make government as a whole more efficient.
And third is entrepreneurship.
If you gave that power to more people to be able to kind of build businesses, then not only they're growing up with it, but also there's a culture of entrepreneurship.
And there is existing already in Saudi Arabia.
I mean, the sad thing about the Middle East, there's so much potential, but there's so much wars and so much disaster.
joe rogan
Well, there's so much money.
amjad masad
There's also so much money.
Yeah, which is good.
And I think it's good for the United States.
Like, I think what President Trump did with the deals in the Gulf region is great.
It's going to be great for the United States.
It's going to be great for the Gulf region.
But I think we need more of that, you know, we talked about a government.
We need more of that enlightened view of education, of change in our government today.
You know, this idea that we're going to bring back the old manufacturing jobs, I understand Americans got really screwed with what happened.
Like, you know, people got, these jobs got sent away by globalism, whatever you want to call it.
And a few number of people got massively rich.
A lot of people got disenfranchised.
And we had the opiate epidemic.
And it had just massive damage.
It made massive damage on the culture.
But is the way to bring back those jobs?
Or is there a new way of the future?
And there's probably a new manufacturing wave that's going to happen with robotics.
You know, the humanoid robots are starting to work.
And these, I think, will need a new way of manufacturing it.
And so the U.S. can be at the forefront of that, can own that, bring new jobs into existence.
And all of these things need software.
Like our world is going to be primarily run by AI and robots and all of that.
And more and more people need to be able to make software.
Even if it is prompting and not really, you know, but a lot more people just need to be able to make it.
There's going to be a need for more products and services and all of that stuff.
And I think there's enough jobs to go around if we have this mindset of let's actually think about the future of the economy as opposed to let's bring back certain manufacturing jobs, which I don't think Americans would want to do anyways.
joe rogan
Right.
They don't want to do the jobs.
My problem is there's some people that are doing those jobs right now and it's their entire identity.
You know, they have a good job, they work for a good company, they make a good living, and that might go away, and they're just not psychologically equipped to completely change their life.
amjad masad
What do you think is the solution there?
Which I agree, it's a real problem.
joe rogan
Well, desperation, unfortunately, is going to motivate people to make changes.
And it's going to also motivate some people to choose drugs.
That's my fear.
My fear is that you're going to get a lot more people.
There's going to be a lot of people that they figure it out and they survive.
I mean, this is natural selection, unfortunately.
Like, in applied to a digital World.
There's going to be people that just aren't psychologically equipped to recalibrate their life.
And that's my real fear.
My real fear is that there's a bunch of really good people out there that are, you know, valuable parts of a certain business right now that their identity is attached to being employee of the month.
They're good people.
They show up every day.
Everybody loves them and trusts them.
They do good work and everybody rewards them for that.
And that's part of who they are as a person.
They're a hardworking person.
amjad masad
Of course.
joe rogan
And they feel that way.
There's like a lot of real good people out there that are blue-collar, hard-working people.
And they take pride in that.
And that job's going to go away.
amjad masad
Well, I actually think that more white-collar jobs are going away.
joe rogan
I think so too.
unidentified
Yeah.
amjad masad
So then blue-collar, which is what was the, like go back 10 years ago and we thought, okay, self-driving cars, you know, robots and manufacturing.
And that turned out to be a lot harder than actually like more desk jobs because we have a lot more data.
For one, we have a lot more data on people sitting in front of a computer and doing Excel and writing things on the internet.
And so we're able to train these what we call large language models.
And those are really good at using a computer like a human uses a computer.
And so I think the jobs to be worried about, especially in the next months to a year, a little more, is the routine computer jobs where it's formulaic.
You go, you have a task, like quality assurance jobs, right?
Software quality assurance.
You have to constantly test the same feature of some large software company, Microsoft or whatever.
You're sitting there and you're performing the same thing again and again and again every day.
And if there's a bug, you kind of report it back to the software engineers.
And that is, I think, really in the bullseye of what AI is going to be able to do over the next months.
joe rogan
And do it much more efficiently.
amjad masad
Much more efficiently, much faster.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, those people have to be really worried.
Drivers, you know, professional drivers, like people who drive trucks and things along those lines, that's going away.
amjad masad
That's definitely going away.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that's an enormous part of our society.
It's millions of jobs.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
You know, I was watching a video on this coal mining factory in China that's completely automated, and it was wild to watch.
Every step of the way is automated, including recharging the trucks.
Like the trucks know they're all electrical.
Everything's run on electricity.
They recharge themselves.
You know, they're pulling the coal out of the ground.
They're stacking it, inventory, everything.
Storage, it's all automated and it runs 24-7.
I'm like, this is wild.
amjad masad
This is crazy.
Yeah, I remember watching the video of BYD making an electric vehicle.
It was really satisfying to watch.
It's all like the entire assembly line is automated.
The way they put the paint and the way they do the entire thing is...
joe rogan
They're so advanced.
There's this guy that I follow on Instagram.
God, I can't remember his name.
I really wish I could right now, but he reviews a lot of electric vehicles, like very, like, I've never even heard of these companies.
And they're incredible.
They're so advanced.
And their suspension systems are so superior to the suspension systems of even like German luxury cars.
Like they did a demonstration where they drove one of these Chinese electric vehicles over an obstacle course.
And then they had like a BMW and a Mercedes go over.
And the BMW is all, work, work, work.
And the Chinese one is fucking flat planing the entire way.
Every bump in the road is being completely absorbed by the suspension.
unidentified
Right.
amjad masad
It's all AI.
joe rogan
So much better than what we have.
Right.
Like, so much.
What is this?
That's him.
amjad masad
Yep.
joe rogan
That's him.
Forrest Jones.
Shout out to Forrest.
He's great.
He does like these really fast-paced videos, but he does a lot of cars that are available here in America as well.
But he does a shit ton of them that aren't.
Which one is this one here?
Neo.
Yeah, listen to him because he's pretty good at this shit.
forrest jones
710 horsepower.
I get cameras here, LIDAR there for self-driving, and this has two NEO-made chips.
And for reference, one of those chips is as powerful as four NVIDIA chips.
And this has two.
Neo also has battery swap stations, so if you're in a rush, you can hit one up.
It'll lift your car, swap out your battery, put in a fully charged one in between three and five minutes.
But here's where the S-Class should be worried.
Not only does this have rear steer and steer-byte wire, so it's extremely easy to maneuver, it may have one of the most advanced hydraulic systems I've ever seen.
It can pretty much counteract any bump.
After you go over something four times, it'll memorize it so that the fifth time, it's like that bump never existed.
Inside, you get pillows in your headrest, heated, ventilated, and massaging leather seats, a passenger screen built into my dash, a main screen that works super fast.
I get a driving display, a head-up display, and my steering works super fast.
joe rogan
Pretty dope.
amjad masad
What's interesting about the car is learning the terrain.
If it went over it once, it'll learn it.
And I think this is the next sort of big thing with AI, whether it's robotics, cars, or even chat GPT now, it has memory.
It learns about you and starts to like, sort of similar to how social media feeds, but I think in a lot of ways more negative, learn about you.
I think these systems will start to have more online learning.
Instead of just training them in these large data centers and these large data and then giving you this thing that doesn't know anything about it, it's totally stateless.
As you use these devices, they will learn your pattern, your behavior, and all that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Why is China so much better at making these cars than us?
Because they're really advanced.
unidentified
Yeah.
amjad masad
I think a lot of people think that I'm not an expert in China, but a lot of people think that the thing that makes China better and manufacturing is the sort of quote unquote like more like treating workers like slaves.
So slave work or whatever, which I'm sure some of that happens.
But Tim Cook recently said, maybe not so recent, but he thinks, you know, part of the reason why they manufacture in China is there's expertise there that developed over time.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's why they want to use the Chinese manufacturing for the iPhone 17.
amjad masad
Yeah, and I think the one of the things that are good at one of the things that are good about more technocratic systems, Singapore, obviously China's the biggest one, is that the sort of leadership, it comes at a cost of freedom and other things, but the leadership can have a 50-year view of where things are headed.
And they can say, while yes, we're now making the plastic crap, we don't want to keep making plastic crap.
We're going to build the capabilities and the automation and manufacturing expertise to be able to leapfrog the West in making these certain things.
Whereas it's been historically hard, again, for good reasons.
I think there's more freedom preserving when you don't have that much power in government.
But I feel like America, we're the worst of both worlds, where increasingly the government is making more and more decisions and choices than any state.
But at the same time, we don't have this enlightened, like, you know, 10-year roadmap for where we want to be.
joe rogan
Yeah, because we never think that way because we deal in terms.
amjad masad
Yeah, four-year terms.
joe rogan
Four-year terms.
That's the problem.
amjad masad
Also, public companies.
Four-year terms, public companies, quarters.
joe rogan
Right.
amjad masad
Quarters.
And again, this is back to this managerial idea run by managers that, you know, part of the reason why, you know, Zuck has complete control.
He can...
Like, I don't know, $30, $40 billion, maybe more per year, maybe?
He spent a ton of money, like a GDP worth, like a small state GDP worth of money on VR.
And the public market was totally doubtful of that.
And the reason he could do that is because he has, what are they called, super voting shares.
And so he has complete control of the company.
joe rogan
And he can't be unseated by activist investors, sort of what's been done to – Are they trying to remove him from that?
They can't unless...
I think there's a trial that's going on.
It was going on very recently.
amjad masad
Oh, I think you're thinking about the antitrust.
joe rogan
No, no, there's something about him saying that he can't be fired.
amjad masad
But it's true.
joe rogan
It is true.
amjad masad
It's legal.
joe rogan
I know.
It is nonsense.
I believe the trial is nonsense.
But a friend of mine was actually representing him in this.
amjad masad
Maybe in Europe or something?
joe rogan
I don't think so.
I think it's in America.
Google Mark Zuckerberg Josh Dubin trial.
See if you can find anything on that.
amjad masad
But yeah, Mark can think on the order of decades.
Like when I was there at Facebook, he was talking about the idea that there's going to be a fundamental shift.
He's like, if you look back 100 years, computers every 20 years or whatever change the user interface modality.
You go from terminals and mainframes to desktop computers to mobile computing.
And he was like, okay, what's next?
And first guess was like VR.
And now I think their best guess is like AR plus AI.
The AR glasses, their new meta Ray-Band glasses plus AI.
And they can make massive investment.
They just made crazy investment.
This company, Scale AI.
Scale AI is data provider for OpenAI and Google.
And what they do is OpenAI will say, I want the best law and legal data to train the best legal machine learning model.
And they'll go to places where the labor costs are low, but maybe still well educated.
There are places in Africa and Asia that are like that.
And they'll sit them down and say, okay, you're going to get these tasks, these legal programming, whatever tasks, and you're going to do them and you're going to write your thoughts as you're doing them.
I'm simplifying it, but basically that they collect all this data.
Basically, it's labeled labor.
They take it, they put it in the models, and they train the models.
And OpenAI spends billions of dollars on that, Anthropic, all these companies.
And so this company was the major data provider.
And Meta just acquired them.
There's this new trend of acquisitions, I assume because they want to get around regulations.
But they bought 49% of the company, and then they hired all the leadership.
So the Scale AI, like Meta, hired the leadership there and bought out the investors.
They put $15 billion into the company.
The weird thing about it is Google and OpenAI are like, we're not going to use this shit anymore.
So the company value went down because people, you know, these companies don't want to use it.
And now they're going to other companies.
And so in effect, Zuck bought a talent for $15 billion.
unidentified
Wow.
amjad masad
Can you imagine that talent for $15 billion?
Google recently bought a company for one known researcher who's One of the inventors of the large language model technology, Noam Shazir, for $3 billion, bought his company.
And I think they're not really.
They do these weird deals where they buy out the investors and they let the company run as a shell of itself and then they acquire the talent.
unidentified
Wow.
amjad masad
Microsoft did the same thing.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
So it's just these unique individuals that are very valuable there.
amjad masad
Very, very valuable worth billions of dollars.
joe rogan
Sam Altman says Metatroden failed to poach OpenAI's talent with $100 million offers.
amjad masad
So this $100 million is sign-on bonus.
This is not even salary.
jamie vernon
Or yeah, equity.
amjad masad
It's just bonus.
joe rogan
It's just a bonus.
$100 million bonus.
unidentified
Come here.
joe rogan
Failed.
And failed.
amjad masad
I don't know about failed.
I mean, I'm sure he's going to say that.
jamie vernon
He worded it in a weird way.
He said, our best talent hasn't taken it.
So you could have gotten that.
amjad masad
Of course he's going to say that.
unidentified
Of course.
The people that did take it.
joe rogan
Well, they weren't our best of us.
We don't even like those guys.
amjad masad
And by the way, OpenAI does it to companies like ours.
It's just a question of scale.
Like, Zuck can give them $100 million and steal the best talent.
And companies like OpenAI, which I love, but they go to small startups and give them $10 million to grab their talents.
But it's very, very competitive right now.
And there are, like, I don't know if these individuals are actually worth these billions of dollars, but the talent war is so crazy because everyone feels like there's a race towards getting to super intelligence.
And the first company to get to super intelligence is going to reap massive amounts of rewards.
joe rogan
How far away do you think we are from achieving that?
amjad masad
Well, you know, like I said, my philosophy tends to be different than I think the mainstream in Silicon Valley.
I think that AI is going to be extremely good at doing labor, extremely good at ChatGPT and being a personal assistant, extremely good at Replit being an automated programmer.
But the definition of super intelligence is that it is better than every other human collectively at any task.
And I am not sure there's evidence that we're headed there.
Again, I think that one important aspect of superintelligence or AGI is that you drop this entity into an environment where it has no idea about that environment.
It's never seen it before.
And it's able to efficiently learn to achieve goals within that environment.
Right now, there's a bunch of studies showing like, you know, GPT 4 or any of the latest models, if you give them an exam or a quiz that is slightly, even slightly different than their training data, they tank.
They do really badly on it.
I think the way that AI will continue to get better is via data.
Now, at some point, and maybe this is the point of takeoff, is that they can train themselves.
And the way we know how AI could train itself through a method called self-play.
So the way self-play works is, you know, take for example, AlphaGo.
AlphaGo is, I'm sure you remember Lisa Dole, a game between DeepMind, AlphaGo, and Lisa Dole, and it won in the game of Go.
The way AlphaGo is trained is that part of it is a neural network that's trained on existing data.
But the way it achieves superhuman performance in that one domain is by playing itself like millions, billions, perhaps trillions of times.
So it starts by generating random moves and then it learns what's the best moves.
And it's basically a multi-agent system where it learns, oh, I did this move wrong, and I need to kind of re-examine it.
And it trains itself really, really quickly by doing the self-play.
It'll play fast, fast games with itself.
But we know how to make this in game environments, because game environments are closed environments.
But we don't know how to do self-play, for example, on literature, because you need objective truth.
In literature, there's no objective truth.
Taste is different.
Conjecture, philosophy, there's a lot of things.
And again, I go back to why there's still a premise of humans, is there are a lot of things that are intangible.
And we don't know how to generate objective truth in order to train machines in the self-play fashion.
But programming has objective truth.
Coding has objective truth.
The machine can have, like, you can construct an environment that has a computer and has a problem.
There's a ton of problems.
And even an AI can generate sample problems.
And then there's a test to validate whether the program works or not.
And then you can generate all these programs, test them, and if they succeed, that's a reward that trains your system to get better at that.
If it doesn't succeed, that's also feedback.
And they run them all the time, and it gets better at programming.
So I'm confident programming is going to get a lot better.
I'm confident that math is going to get a lot better.
But from there, it is hard to imagine how all these other more subjective, softer sort of sciences of the AI will get better through self-play.
I think the AI will only be able to get better through data from human labor.
joe rogan
If AI analyzes all the past creativity, All the different works of literature, all the different music, all the different things that humans have created completely without AI.
Do you think it could understand the mechanisms involved in creativity and make a reasonable facsimile?
amjad masad
I think it will be able to imitate very well how humans come up with new ideas in a way that it remixes all the existing ideas from its training data.
But by the way, again, this is super powerful.
This is not like a dig at AI.
The ability to remix all the available data into new, potentially new ideas or newish ideas because they're remixes, they're derivative, is still very, very powerful.
But, you know, the best marketers, the best, like, you know, think of, you know, one of my favorite marketing videos is Think Different from Apple.
It's awesome.
Like, I don't think that really machines are at a point where they, like, I try to talk to ChatGPT a lot about like, you know, marketing or naming.
It's so bad at that.
It's like Midwit bad at that.
And I, you know, but that's the thing.
It's like, I just don't see, and look, I'm not an AI researcher and maybe they're working, they have ideas there.
But in the current landscape of the technology that we have today, it's hard to imagine how these AIs are going to get better at, say, literature or the softer things that we as humans find really compelling.
joe rogan
What's interesting is the thing that's the most at threat is these sort of middle-of-the-road Hollywood movies that are essentially doing exactly what you said about AI.
They're sort of like, you know, they're sort of remixing old themes and tropes and figuring out a way to repackage it.
amjad masad
But I think actually those tools in the hands of humans, they'll be able to create new interesting movies and things like that.
joe rogan
Right.
In the hands of humans.
So with additional human creativity applied.
amjad masad
Right.
So the man-machine symbiosis.
joe rogan
Right.
amjad masad
This was the term that's used by JC Lick Leider, like the grandfather of the internet from ARPA.
A lot of those guys kind of imagined a lot of what's going to happen, a lot of the future, and this idea of like human plus machine will be able to create amazing things.
So what people are making with VO is not because the machine is really good at painting it at like generating it and making it.
joe rogan
But it can't make it without the prompts.
amjad masad
Like the really funny, like, yeah, without the prompts, like the Bigfoot finds Trent and they inject themselves with Trent, they start working out.
unidentified
I'm telling you, my TikTok feed is really wild right now.
amjad masad
It's like this real weird, distorted human mind to come up with this.
joe rogan
Have you seen the ones where it's Trump and Elon and Putin and they're all in a band?
unidentified
They're playing Credence Clearwater Revival.
joe rogan
Fortunate Sun.
It's crazy.
amjad masad
Another one is the LA riots and how all the world leaders are sort of gangsters in the riots.
That one is hilarious.
joe rogan
Yeah, that kind of stuff is fun.
And it's interesting how quickly it can be made, too.
Something that would take a long time through these video editors where they were using computer generated imagery for a long time, but it was very painstaking and very, you know, very expensive.
Now it's really cheap.
amjad masad
On the way here, I was like, I want to make an app to sort of impress you with our technology.
I was like, what would Joe like?
And then I came up with this idea of like a squat form analyzer.
And so in the car over way here, sorry, in the lobby, but I made this app to...
On the way, on my phone.
And this is the really exciting thing about what we built with being able to program on your phone is being able to have that inspiration that can come anytime and just immediately pull out your phone and start building it.
So here, I'll show you.
So basically you just start recording and then do a few squats.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
It's going to analyze it just from there?
I mean the camera angle is not that great, but it's going to be able to tell you whether or not you're doing it well?
unidentified
Yeah.
amjad masad
Those are not my best squats.
Just so you know, Joe Rogan.
joe rogan
I'm not judging you.
amjad masad
I used to squat, you know, 350 pounds.
So now it's integrating Google Gemini model to kind of run through the video, analyze it, and it'll come up with score and then suggestions.
And so again, this is like a random idea.
I was like, okay, what would be interesting to do?
joe rogan
This is a really interesting thing that people could use at the gym, though.
Like, not just for squats, but maybe for chin-ups and all kinds of stuff.
Like, oh, maybe, you know, I'm looking at your form, and this is what you need to do.
Get a little lower, you know, make your elbows parallel to your body, whatever.
amjad masad
I built so many personal apps.
Like, I built apps for analyzing my health.
Like, I talked about some of my health problems that are now a lot better.
Look, bad form.
unidentified
Just like straight away, critical.
amjad masad
Yeah, knee's position, unable to probably assess from the video angle.
So, yeah, it's a little okay.
joe rogan
So, it's saying it's not the best angle.
amjad masad
But it's saying my depth is bad, which was actually bad.
So, and I was leaning forward.
But it's pretty good.
You know, I tried it a few times.
It's really good at that.
And so I build a lot of apps for just my personal life.
joe rogan
That would be great for a person who doesn't want a trainer.
amjad masad
Right.
joe rogan
You know, I don't want to deal with some person.
Let me just work out on my own.
But am I doing this right?
Set your phone up.
Have it correct you.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
At the office, some guys are building, we have this partnership with Woop.
I don't know if you've building an app so we can start competing on workouts based on Woop data.
joe rogan
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.
amjad masad
Our company is very weird for Silicon Valley.
We have a jujitsu mat and we have...
joe rogan
Oh really?
amjad masad
Oh, that's fucking great.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
Talking hurt.
amjad masad
It's, you know, I only recently got into it, but the hardest thing about it is to be calm because your impulse is to overpower.
joe rogan
Yes.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
The Gracies have a great saying, keep it playful.
Yeah.
And that's how you really learn the best.
It's very hard.
And listen, I'm a giant hypocrite because most of my jiu-jitsu career, I was a meathead.
That's one of the reasons why I started really lifting weights a lot.
It's like I realized strength is very valuable.
And it is.
And it is valuable.
But technique is the most valuable.
And the best way to acquire technique is to pretend that you don't have any strength.
amjad masad
The best way to acquire technique is to pretend to.
joe rogan
Yeah, don't force things.
Just find the best path.
And that requires a lot of data.
So you have to understand the positions.
So you have to really analyze them.
The best jiu-jitsu guys are really smart.
Like Mikey Musumichi, Gordon Ryan, Craig Jones.
Those are very intelligent people.
And that's why they're so good at jiu-jitsu.
And then you also have to apply that intelligence to recognize that discipline is a massive factor.
Like Mikey Musumichi trains every day, 12 hours a day.
amjad masad
12 hours a day?
joe rogan
12 hours a day.
Oh, yeah.
amjad masad
Is that humanly possible to do?
joe rogan
It's possible.
Yeah, because he's not training full blast.
It's not like, like, you can't squat 12 hours a day, 350 pounds.
Your body will break down.
But you can go over positions over and over and over and over again until they're in muscle memory, but you're not doing them at full strength, right?
So like if you're rolling, right?
So say if you're doing drills, you would set up like a guard pass.
You know, when you're doing a guard pass, you would tell the person, lightly resist, and I'm going to put light pressure on you.
And you go over that position, you know, knee shield, pass, you know, hip into it, here's the counter, on the counter, darse, you know, go for the darse.
The person defends the darse, roll, take the back.
And just do that over and over and over again.
amjad masad
Until it's muscle memory.
Right.
joe rogan
And it's like completely ingrained in your body.
amjad masad
Instead of chess players, it's like, let's focus on the endgame.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
Just keep repeating the endgame end game.
I read the Josh Weitzken book.
What was it called?
I forgot.
You know, his book about, like, I think, chess and jiu-jitsu, was it?
joe rogan
Yeah, Josh was just in here a few months ago.
He's great.
Yeah.
But it's so interesting to see a super intelligent person apply that intelligence to jiu-jitsu.
amjad masad
You know, one of interesting things when I started getting into, I've always been into different kinds of sports and then periods of extreme programming and obesity.
But then I tried to get back into it.
I was a swimmer early on.
But one thing that I found, especially in the lifting communities, how intelligent everyone are.
They're actually almost like, you know, they're so focused, they're autistically focused on like form and program.
And, you know, they spend so much time designing these spreadsheets for your program.
joe rogan
Well, that's, people have this like really, we have this view of things physical, that physical things are not intelligent things, but you need intelligence in order to manage emotions.
Emotions are a critical aspect of anything physical.
Any really good athlete, you need a few factors.
You need discipline, hard work, genetics, but you need intelligence.
It might not be the same intelligence applied.
People also, they confuse intelligence with your ability to express yourself, your vocabulary, your history of reading.
amjad masad
That's like a bias almost.
joe rogan
Yes.
amjad masad
That's a language bias.
That's like the sort of modern desk job, the laptop class bias.
joe rogan
Well, they assume that anything that you're doing physically, you're now no longer using your mind.
But it's not true.
In order to be disciplined, you have to understand how to manage your mind.
Managing your mind is an intelligence.
And the ability to override those emotions, to conquer that inner bitch that comes to you every time I lift that fucking lid off of that cold plunge, that takes intelligence.
You have to understand that this temporary discomfort is worth it in the long run because I'm going to have an incredible result after this is over.
I'm going to feel so much better.
amjad masad
Right, right, right.
Yeah, I haven't thought about intelligence in order to manage your emotions, but that's totally true because you're constantly doing the self-talk.
You're trying to trick yourself into doing that.
joe rogan
There are people that are very intelligent that don't have control over their emotions.
But they're intelligent in some ways.
It's just they've missed this one aspect of intelligence, which is the management of the functions of the mind itself.
And they don't think that that's critical.
But it is critical.
It's critical to every aspect of your life.
And it'll actually improve all those other intellectual pursuits.
amjad masad
You know, to tie it back to the AI discussion, I think a lot of the sort of programmer researcher type is like they know that one form of intelligence and they over-rotate on that.
And that's why it was like, oh, we're so close to perfecting intelligence.
Because that's what you know.
But there's a lot of other forms of intelligence.
joe rogan
There's a lot of forms of intelligence.
And unfortunately, we're very narrow in our perceptions of these things and very biased.
And we think that our intelligence is the only intelligence.
And that this one thing that we concentrate on, this is the only thing that's important.
amjad masad
Right.
Have you read or done any CBT cognitive behavior therapy?
No.
Basically, CBT is like a way to get over depression and anxiety based on self-talk and cues.
I had to use it, again, I had like sleep issues.
I had to use CBTI, cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia.
And the idea behind it is to build up what's called sleep pressure.
So you don't, first of all, you insomnia is performance anxiety.
Once you have insomnia, you start having anxiety.
But by the time bedtime comes, you're like, oh my God, I'm just going to, you know, torn over in bed and I'm just going to be in bed.
And then you start associating your bedroom with the suffering of insomnia because you're sitting there and like, you know, all night and really suffering.
It's really horrific.
And first of all, you treat your bedroom as a sanctuary.
You're only there when you want to sleep.
So that's like one thing you program yourself to do.
And the other thing is you don't nap the entire day.
You don't nap at all, no matter what happens.
Like even if you're real sleepy, like get up and take a walk or whatever.
And then you build up what's called sleep pressure.
Like now you have like a lot of sleepiness.
So you go to bed, you try to fall asleep.
If you don't fall asleep within 15, 20 minutes, you get up, you go out, you do something else.
And then when you feel really tired again, you go back to bed.
Oh, God.
And then finally, once you fall asleep, if you wake up in the middle of the night, which is another sort of form of insomnia, instead of staying in bed, you get up, you go somewhere else, you go read or do whatever.
And slowly you program yourself to see your bed and, oh, like the bed is where I sleep.
It's only where I sleep.
I don't do anything else there.
And you can get over insomnia that way instead of using pills and all the other stuff.
joe rogan
Oh, the pills are the worst.
God, people that need those fucking things to sleep, I feel for them.
I can sleep like that.
amjad masad
That's amazing.
joe rogan
I can sleep on the bus.
amjad masad
That's a blessing.
That's a blessing.
unidentified
That's a huge blessing.
joe rogan
My wife hates it.
It drives her nuts because sometimes she has insomnia.
I could sleep on rocks.
I could just go lay down on a dirt road and fall asleep.
amjad masad
Wow.
joe rogan
But I'm always going hard.
When you're always going hard, you're like, yeah, I don't take naps.
And I work out basically every day.
And so I'm always tired.
I'm always ready to go to sleep.
amjad masad
So do you fight it or do you just, it's not in you to take a nap?
joe rogan
I don't need a nap.
amjad masad
Yeah?
joe rogan
Yeah, I never need naps.
amjad masad
How many hours do you sleep?
joe rogan
I try to get eight.
amjad masad
Do you get eight?
joe rogan
No, last night I didn't get eight, but I got seven, six and a half.
Probably I got six and a half last night.
Yeah.
But that was because I got home and I started watching TV because I was a little freaked out about the war.
And so when I'm freaked out about the war, I like to fill my mind with nonsense.
amjad masad
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Well, I just watch things that have nothing to do with the war.
Like, I play pool.
I'm pretty competitive.
I'm pretty good.
And so I like watching professional pool matches.
And there's a lot of them on YouTube.
So I just watch pool.
And I just watch, you know, patterns, how guys get out, stroke, how they use their stroke, like how different guys have different approaches to the game.
amjad masad
It's crazy, the type A people.
It's like for you, although pool is an escape, it suddenly becomes an obsession.
And you're like, I need to be the best at it.
joe rogan
I'm very obsessed.
amjad masad
So I totally quit video games, but then last year I was very stressed.
The company was doing really poorly before we sort of invented this agent technology.
And then also the Gaza genocide.
I was like watching these videos every night.
It was just really, really affecting me.
joe rogan
I can't watch that stuff at night.
At night is when I get my anxiety.
I mean, I don't generally have anxiety, not like a lot of people do.
I mean, when I say anxiety, I really feel for people that genuinely suffer from actual anxiety.
My anxiety is all sort of self-imposed.
And when I get online at night and I think about the world, my family's asleep, which is generally when I write in a, as long as I'm writing, I'm okay.
amjad masad
Comedy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You know, I write like sort of an essay form, then I extract the comedy from it.
But when I get online and I just pay attention to the world, that's when I really freak out because it's all out of your control.
And it's just murderous psychopaths that are running the world.
And it just, at any moment, you could be, you know, in a place where they decide to attack.
And then you're a pawn in this fucking insane game that these people are playing in the world.
amjad masad
That's why I felt really frustrated with my family being there.
I was like, they have no say in it.
The war started, rockets are flying.
But anyways, I started playing a video game.
It's called Hades 2.
It's like an RPG video game.
And I was like, I'm trying to disconnect.
And then I started speedrunning that game.
Do you know what speedrunning is?
joe rogan
No.
amjad masad
It's like you're trying to finish the game as fast as possible, as fast as human as possible.
And I got down to like six minutes, and I was number 50 in the world.
unidentified
Whoa.
joe rogan
But legitimately.
unidentified
Oh, yeah, yeah.
My score is online to play for you.
joe rogan
That was crazy.
Why is he doing that?
That was crazy.
amjad masad
It's myth building, you know.
Yeah, weird.
But yeah, it is this thing about Taipei people.
Like you're just – even in your escapism becomes competitive and stressful.
joe rogan
Well, sort of, but it's also – I feel like pool is a discipline, just like archery.
I'm also obsessed with archery.
Archery is a discipline.
And I feel like the more divergent disciplines that you have in your life, the more you understand what it is about these things that makes you excel and get better at them.
And the more when I get better at those things, I get better at life.
I apply it to everything.
amjad masad
Yeah, this is another thing that AI now struggles with, which is called transform learning.
Learning something from domain, like learning something from math on how to do reasoning on math and being able to do reasoning on politics.
We just don't have evidence of that yet.
And I feel the same way.
Everything, like even powerlifting, when I got really into it, which is like the most unhealthy sport you can do.
joe rogan
You break your joints down.
amjad masad
Break your joints.
You look like shit because the more you eat, you can lift more.
joe rogan
You get fat.
They're all fat.
unidentified
They don't go bottom of them.
joe rogan
Unless they're competing at a weight class.
amjad masad
Yeah.
And what is that repertoire?
Have you ever had him on?
The Jug of Milk?
Go Mad.
Do you know Go Mad?
joe rogan
No.
amjad masad
Gallon of Milk a Day.
Do you know that, Jeremy?
Do you know it?
unidentified
Disgusting.
amjad masad
Disgusting.
Yeah, so basically.
joe rogan
Gallon of Milk a Day.
amjad masad
Yeah, so Mark Repertoire, he wrote this book called Starting Strength.
And it became like the main way most guys, at least my age, like getting into powerlifting.
It was about technique.
It was about his whole thing is like, look, everyone comes into lifting.
They think it's bodybuilding.
Powerlifting is nothing like that.
And he also looks like shit and he's fat.
unidentified
But his technique is amazing.
amjad masad
And so the way he gets young guys to get really good and really strong, he puts them on a gallon of milk a day.
joe rogan
Does that really have a positive effect?
amjad masad
Yeah, I mean, he has a YouTube channel.
He has a lot of guys that are really, really strong.
And he's been a coach for a lot of people.
joe rogan
What is it about a gallon of milk a day?
Is it just the protein intake?
What is it?
amjad masad
A calories.
joe rogan
Okay, here it is.
Drink a gallon of milk a day, go mad, is undeniably the most effective nutritional strategy for adding slabs of mass to young underweight males.
Milk is relatively cheap, painless to prepare, and the macronutrient profile is very balanced, and calories are always easier to drink than eat.
Unfortunately, those interested in muscular hypertrophy rather, who are not young, underweight, and male, populations where GOMAT is not recommended, will need to put more effort into the battle to avoid excess fat accumulation.
Body composition can be manipulated progressively, much like barbell training to achieve the best results.
For example, the starting strength novice linear progression holds exercise selection frequency and volume variables constant.
Every 48 to 72 hours, the load stressor is incrementally increased to elicit an adaptation in strength.
If the load increase is too significant or insignificant, the desired adaptation won't take place.
Yeah, this is the intelligence.
This is intelligence.
This is the intelligence involved in lifting that people who are on the outside of it would dismiss.
amjad masad
Science, yeah.
Yes.
unidentified
Yeah.
amjad masad
You know, I'm so honored to be the guy that introduces Joe Rogan to starting screen.
joe rogan
GoMad.
amjad masad
Yeah, GoMad.
Roberto is so funny.
You should watch some of his videos.
He has this very thick Texan accent, and he just, his audience shits on him all the time.
They call him fat and ugly and whatever.
And he abuses his audience, too.
joe rogan
So there it is.
amjad masad
Put his picture up.
joe rogan
That's the nerd.
amjad masad
That's an old photo.
He's not much fatter.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So he's just a nerd.
amjad masad
Yeah, he's a huge nerd.
But yeah, he used to lift a lot of weight.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a lot.
That's what he used to look like.
That one photo with him with the hairy chest.
The black.
Oh, okay.
Wow.
Damn.
amjad masad
Is that him?
joe rogan
Is that him?
amjad masad
I don't think so.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
It does look like him.
Yeah, that's him.
He used to be jacked.
unidentified
Okay.
amjad masad
That's good.
joe rogan
Oh, so he was a bodybuilder at one point in time.
amjad masad
But then he got on that Go Matt shit.
joe rogan
And now he's a powerlifter.
Simply no other exercise, no machine provided level of muscular stimulation and growth than the correctly performed full squat.
Well, he's deadlifting in that image.
That's weird.
amjad masad
So he also makes you squat on every day of lifting.
Oh.
So squat every time, every time you lift.
unidentified
Really?
amjad masad
Yeah, yeah.
Well, his idea is like squat is a full body exercise.
Like you can just go to the gym.
And when I used to be busy and I just want to maintain, like, be healthy, I'll just squat every time.
15, 20 minutes squat and just get out of the gym.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, I do something with legs every day.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
You have to.
But squat, actually, it does feel like there's an upper body component to it as well.
joe rogan
Well, it's also your body recognizes like, oh, this asshole wants to lift really heavy things.
We've got to get big.
amjad masad
Right, exactly.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's the best way to get big.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, because your body just realizes, like, okay, we have to adapt.
unidentified
This shithead wants to lift giant things every day.
Yeah.
amjad masad
Yeah, it's hilarious.
And, you know, the other one, I'm sure you know him.
I think you introduced me to him through your podcast, Louis Simmons.
Oh, yeah.
Those guys are crazy.
You watch the Netflix documentary?
joe rogan
I didn't watch the Netflix documentary, but we did actually interview him.
He's like one of the few people that I traveled to go meet who went to Westside Barbara.
amjad masad
I saw that.
joe rogan
It was great.
We have some of his equipment out here.
amjad masad
He has reverse hyper?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Reverse hyper is so good for people that have back problems.
Everyone that has a back issue, let me show you something.
And I bring them out to the reverse hyper machine, and I'm like, this thing will actively strengthen and decompress your spine.
amjad masad
Right, right.
It's so good.
joe rogan
It's so good for people that have like lower back issues where the doctor just wants to cut them.
I'm like, hold on, hold on.
Don't do that right away.
amjad masad
I had back pain since my late teens and the doctors want to, like, they did MRI and they found that there's a bit of a bulge and they want to do an operation on it.
joe rogan
Yeah, they want to do dysectomy.
amjad masad
Someone wanted to put me in antidepressants.
Apparently, you can manage pain with antidepressants.
Have you heard of that?
Yeah, apparently it's a thing.
And through listening to your podcast and others, I was like, I was just going to get strong.
So I got strong squats and things like that.
And the pain got a lot better.
It didn't go away entirely.
But the thing that really got me over the hump, and this one's crazy.
Are you familiar with the mind-body prescription?
joe rogan
No.
amjad masad
John Sarno?
joe rogan
Oh, okay, yes.
I heard about him on Howard Stern because he was talking about how a lot of back pain is psychosomatic.
amjad masad
Psychosomatic, yeah.
joe rogan
So his idea, and again, this is like Because a lot of back pain is real as fuck.
amjad masad
Right, right.
I think for me, it's always a combination of both.
Like, there's something physically happening.
But, like, his idea is that his idea is that your mind is creating the pain to distract you from emotional psychological pain.
joe rogan
I think that's the case in some people.
amjad masad
Yeah.
And then doctors will go do an image, and often they'll find something.
And he thinks that lumbar imperfections are almost in everyone.
joe rogan
Yes.
I think that's true.
amjad masad
And then the doctors latch on to that.
And your mind latches onto that.
And you start reinforcing, telling yourself that I have this thing, and the pain gets worse.
There's also another thing called the salience network.
Have you heard of this?
joe rogan
No.
amjad masad
If you can bring up the Wikipedia page for salience network, because I don't want to get it wrong, but the salience network is a network in the brain that neuroscientists found.
My doctor, Taddy Akiki, told me about this.
The salience network gets reinforced whenever you obsess over your pains or your health issues.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
amjad masad
So it's responsible for perception, and the more you reinforce, it's like a muscle.
The more you reinforce it, it's sort of like AI, you know, reinforcement learning, the more you reinforce it, it becomes more of an issue.
joe rogan
Including various functions, including social behavior, self-awareness, and integrating sensory, emotional, and cognitive information.
Boy, I bet social media is really bad for that.
amjad masad
Right, totally.
joe rogan
Yeah.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
Right.
amjad masad
And so a lot of the fatigue and things like that, at some point, I'm like, fuck it.
I did a lot of other things, but at some point, I'm like, fuck it.
I don't care about it.
I don't have it.
I'm just going to be good.
joe rogan
Just not concentrate on that.
amjad masad
Yeah, because I was reading about it all the time.
I was really worried.
joe rogan
I had an Abigail Schreier and I was talking about that in regards to cognitive therapy, that there's a lot of people that obsess on their problems so much that their problems actually become bigger.
amjad masad
Yes.
And this is it.
This is the neuroscience behind it, the salience network.
joe rogan
Makes sense.
amjad masad
Yeah.
joe rogan
But there's legit back problems.
Of course.
Legit back.
That's why the John Sarno thing, I was like, okay, not for me.
I understand how some people could develop that issue.
amjad masad
But his insight was, look, look, I ran a clinic in New York City for a long time, and these chronic illnesses come in waves.
There's a ulcers wave in the like 90s.
joe rogan
Oh, because it became a thing that people were talking about a lot.
amjad masad
Yes.
joe rogan
Wow.
amjad masad
And then there's like a neck pain, and then there's an RSI.
The most recent one was RSI.
joe rogan
What is RSI?
amjad masad
Repetitive strain injury.
And again, all these things have rational explanations.
For me, I was in the computer all the time.
And I was like, oh, my arm hurts.
And yeah, maybe there was some aspect of it.
I was programming a lot.
But also after I read John Sarno and I realized that some of it might be also psychological, that it's stress.
I don't know what's, maybe I have some childhood issues, but you just realize that a lot of it, and maybe the other way is true as well.
When you just minimize it, it just becomes less of an issue in your mind.
But the fact that it is fashion should tell you that there's something psychosomatic about it.
joe rogan
Right.
The fact that it does come in waves like that, for sure.
And then once it's in the zeitgeist, ulcers or whatever it is.
amjad masad
I remember when we were kids, everyone had ulcers.
And it was like, oh, it's from coffee in the morning.
And like, there's all these.
I don't know anyone that had ulcers now.
unidentified
Right.
amjad masad
They don't either.
joe rogan
That's true.
That's crazy.
That's wild.
This is wild the mind, like the way it can benefit you or the way it can hold you prisoner.
unidentified
Yeah.
amjad masad
And again, this is maybe why I have like a little like different view about AI and humans and all of that from from Silicon Valley.
Like this is a weird thing, but every time I set my mind to like meet someone, I meet them, including you.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
That's weird.
amjad masad
Like, yeah, I want to meet this person.
Something happens, some chain of events, but obviously you also see it in some way.
joe rogan
But it's obviously you're doing something very – you're – Which is my problem with the secret and the power of manifesting things.
unidentified
I don't go that far, but I don't know.
amjad masad
There's something.
joe rogan
There's something there.
unidentified
I agree.
joe rogan
There's something to it.
I think the mind and our connection to reality is not as simple as we've been told.
amjad masad
Not at all.
I think there's something there.
And again, when you start looking at psychedelics and stuff like that, there's something there.
And I remember listening to one of, I love JRE circa early 2010s.
There was a remote viewing.
You were talking about a remote viewing episode.
And I was like, wow, that's crazy.
And obviously very skeptical of it.
The idea that you can meditate and like see somewhere else or see it from above.
I read a book about Da Vinci.
It's called Da Vinci's Brain, I think.
And Da Vinci is like fascinating.
Who's this fucking guy?
He does everything.
And he literally is across all these domains.
And he barely sleeps.
He has this polyphasic sleep thing, which I tried once.
It's torture.
Basically, every four hours you sleep for 15 minutes.
When I was in university, I was very good at computer science, but I hated going to school.
And in Jordan, if you don't go to school, they ban you from the exam.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
amjad masad
I was getting A's, but I just didn't want to sit in class.
And actually, this is when I started thinking about programming on my phone.
I was like, maybe I can code my phone in class.
But I felt there was injustice.
ADHD, whatever you want to call it.
I just can't sit in class.
Just give me a break.
And so I felt justified to rebel or fix the situation somehow.
So I decided to hack into the university and change my grades so I can graduate because everyone was graduating.
It was like five years in.
It took me six years to get through a four-year program just because I can't sit in class and have some dyslexia and things like that.
So I decided to do that.
And I'm like, okay, hacking takes a lot of time because you're coding, you're scripting, you're running scripts against servers and you're waiting.
And I'm like, I'm just going to, to optimize my time, I'm just going to do this DaVinci thing where four hours, by the way, there's a Seinfeld episode where, what's his name, The Crazy Guy in Seinfeld?
joe rogan
Kramer?
amjad masad
Kramer.
Kramer does polyphasic sleep.
Maybe I learned it from there.
I'm not sure.
joe rogan
How do you wake up?
amjad masad
You set an alarm.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
amjad masad
Yeah, it's torture.
joe rogan
That sounds so crazy.
amjad masad
Apparently, Da Vinci used to do that.
But anyways, I was able to hack into the university by working for weeks using polyphasic sleep and was able to change my grades.
And initially, I didn't want to do it on myself, but I had a neighbor who went together to school and I was like, let's change this grade and see if it actually succeeds.
And actually succeeded in his case.
And it was my lab rat.
But in my case, I got caught.
And the reason I got caught is there is in the database, there's your grade out of 100, 0 to 100.
When you get banned because of attendance, your grade is de facto 35.
So I thought I would just change that, and that's the thing that will get me to pass.
Well, it turns out there's another field in the database about whether you're banned or not.
This is bad coding, this is bad programming, because this database is not normalized.
There's a state in two different fields.
So I'll put the blame on them for not designing the right database.
unidentified
That's hilarious.
joe rogan
You blame them for your hacking being successful.
amjad masad
So what was the punishment?
So the entire university system went down because there's this anomaly.
I was, you know, I passed, but at the same time, I was banned.
And so I got a call from the head of the registration system.
And it was like 7 p.m., whatever.
It was landline.
And I picked up the call.
He's like, hey, listen, we have this issue we're dealing with.
Like, the entire thing is down.
And it just shows your record.
There's a problem with it.
Do you know anything about it?
And at the time, I'm like, all right, there's like a fork in the road.
You know, I either like come clean or just like, this is a lie that will like live for me forever.
And I'm like, I was just going to say, I was like, yeah, I did it.
And I was like, what do you mean?
I was like, okay, I'll come explain it to you.
So the next day, I go there, and it's all the university deans.
And it's like one of the best computer science universities in the region, the princess of my university for technology.
And they're all nerds.
So the discussion became technical on how I hacked in the university.
unidentified
And I want the whiteboard and explaining what I did with the assistance and whatever.
amjad masad
And it just felt like a brainstorming session.
I'm like, all right, I'll see you guys later.
It's like, wait, we need to figure out what to do with you.
Like, you know, this is serious.
And I'm like, oh, crap.
But the president of, they kind of put the decision to the president.
And he was, I forgot his name, but he was such an enlightened guy.
And I went and told him, like, I just didn't mean any malice.
I just felt like justified.
I need to graduate.
I've been here for a long time.
I actually do good work.
And he's like, look, you're talented, but with great power comes great responsibility.
He gave me the Spider-Man.
And he said, for us to forgive you, you're going to have to go and harden the systems in the university against hacking.
So I spent the summer trying to work with the engineers at the university to do that.
But they hated me because I'm the guy that hacked into the system.
So they would blackball me.
Sometimes I'll show up to work and they wouldn't open the door and I can see them.
Like, I can see you there.
I'm knocking.
And they wouldn't let me in and let me work with them.
We did some stuff to fix it.
And then I gained fame, maybe notoriety in the university.
And actually got me my first job While I was in school.
And it's a different story, but that job was at a startup that ended up making videos that were a big part of the Arab Spring.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
amjad masad
Yeah.
And I was part of some of these videos as well.
But, anyways, so one of the computer deans was like, hey, listen, I really helped you out, computer science dean.
I really helped you out when you had this problem.
And I need you to work with me in order to do another research to hack into the university again.
I was like, I'm not going to do that.
No, it's like, no, you're not going to get in trouble.
joe rogan
It's sanctioned.
amjad masad
It's going to be sanctioned.
So, again, I worked tirelessly on that.
This time, I invent a piece of software to help me do that.
And I was able to find more vulnerabilities.
And so I show up at my project defense.
And it's like a committee of different deans and students and all of that.
And so I go up and I start explaining my project.
And I run a scan against the university network.
And it showed a bunch of red, like there's vulnerabilities.
And one of the deans is like, no, that's fake.
That's not true.
It started dawning in me that I was like a pawn in some kind of power struggle.
So that guy was responsible for the university system.
And this guy is using me too.
I was like, oh, shit.
But like, I'm not going to back down.
I was like, no, that's not a lie.
It's true.
And so I tap into that vulnerability and I go into the database and I'm like, all right, what do you want me to show?
Your salary or your password?
It was like, show me a password.
So I show him the password and I was like, no, that's not my password.
It was encrypted.
But they also have in the database like a decrypt function, which they shouldn't have, but they had it.
So I was like, decrypt to the password.
And the password showed on the screen in the middle of the defense.
unidentified
And so his face was red.
amjad masad
He shakes my hand and he leaves to change his password.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
amjad masad
And I graduated.
And they caught me some slack and I was able to graduate.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
That's a great story.
We'll end with that.
Thank you very much, brother.
I really appreciate it.
amjad masad
It was really fun.
joe rogan
That was a great conversation.
Thank you.
Your app, let everybody know about it.
amjad masad
Replit, R-E-P-L-I-T.
joe rogan
How to find it?
There it is.
Replit.
Replit.com.
amjad masad
Go make some apps.
joe rogan
Go make some apps, people.
Avoid the whatever the hell is going to happen today.
unidentified
All right.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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