Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 8, 2024 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:18:46

A Conversation With Naval Ravikant CWSA 11/07/24

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Well, we're live with Naval Ravikant, and if the indication from the post on X is any indication at all, there's going to be a lot of people here today, because I've never seen people so excited about anything I was doing.
	Apparently, it has to do with you.
	I think I've been doing a few of them.
	I go for the scarcity bit.
	If there's anybody who doesn't know who Naval is, let's say entrepreneur, investor, philosopher, mentor.
	We run out of rooms.
	There's not enough names for you.
	What do you call yourself?
	If you had to introduce yourself, do you just get clever and say like the joke version?
	What do you do?
	You know, it's hilarious.
	It's funny you say that because I used to, you know, when I was really young, I had the, oh, I'm an entrepreneur.
	I have this company.
	I'm the founder of this, right?
	It's a resume speak.
	Midwit resume speak, if you will.
	And then as I got older, then I did these self-deprecating, you know, false, humble brag, like, ah, ha, ha, you know, and then say something ludicrously low, like gas station attendant or whatever.
	But now, of course, they say, hey, I'm Naval.
	That's it, you know?
	And if you know who I am, great.
	And if you don't, that's great, too.
	I don't believe in this whole, you know, it's a form of identity politics to have like your history behind you.
	You should have to prove yourself in every instance.
	So if what I say is true, then that stands on its own.
	And if it doesn't, it doesn't.
	So it doesn't matter.
	You're the most famous, unfamous person I know.
	Meaning that the number of people who will privately bring up your name, just independent of knowing whether I know you or not, is really phenomenal.
	But I can just pick somebody out and say, have you heard of?
	And they won't, you know, not necessarily the household name.
	Influencers, right?
	It's more efficient.
	Actually, I realized this when I was first in the Tim Ferriss podcast.
	And after the Tim Ferriss podcast, like every podcast in the world reached out after.
	And it's because Tim Ferriss influences the influencers, right?
	And I think you're one of those, too.
	You influence the influencers.
	You can look at X, right, formerly Twitter, even when it had a much smaller audience, it was so influential to the influencers because the journalists and the politicians weren't on there.
	So it punched out of its weight.
	And whenever somebody, like, in a huff deletes their X account and storms off, they just fade into irrelevance, like Sam Harris.
	Where is he now?
	I think Yan Bakun is the latest casualty of that, right?
	And sometimes they slink back on, tail between their legs, and sometimes they don't.
	But if you influence the influencers, just like the left realize, if you control the institutions and the elites, you can just punch out of your weight.
	So you bring up one of the points I wanted to talk to you about.
	It seems like during the political process, as you learn the names of the people who are connected to what, especially on the left, you say, oh, it's that person.
	Whenever there's a hoax, you see the same group of people emerge.
	It's like they've got the designated liars.
	But then there are little...
	There are little, maybe, I don't know, gangs within the Democrats.
	And then you learn, you know, who's got the connection, who's married to whom, you know, whose husband's in the top of the CIA and stuff.
	But what happened on the right was that there was this sort of organic growth of connection and persuasion that is invisible to the left.
	So the right has kind of, you know, we've now figured out the entire network on the left, but the left is blinded because they see, well, I think it's podcasters.
	It has something to do with Joe Rogan, and they can't go deeper than that.
	Well, the right doesn't even know what the network is because the right is not a coherent entity.
	The left is a set of people who hate market outcomes, whether in the free market of evolution and genetics and nature or in the free market of capitalism.
	Because they don't want inequality.
	It's an equality religion.
	Formerly Christianity, now elements of it mixed up with Marxism and identity and race politics.
	You get this thing where they basically want everyone to have equal outcomes no matter what.
	And then on the right, you know, you have the people who just want to be left alone.
	They're like, hey, just leave me alone.
	It's basically the collection of people who don't like the left.
	And it's a ragtag collection.
	And if you had to divide them up broadly, there are at least three groups.
	There's sort of the fiscal free market, you know, classic conservatives.
	They're sort of the people who are bound by race and ethnicity and, you know, common culture.
	And then there are the people who are religious and, you know, like raising families and God fearing and so on.
	And sort of these three categories together that when you kind of get them together, you get the right.
	But it's inherently disorganized.
	So they don't form institutions.
	They don't form networks.
	They're busy with their jobs.
	They're not like running out and creating NGOs and institutions.
	And they're not as ideological.
	So I don't think even the right can identify the right.
	If you had two different right-wing people list the top figures in the industry or in the group, it would break down after five people.
	They would just be listed in three different sets.
	It's almost like the right is a set of nodes, and then there's all these memes and reframes that are flying through.
	If we go back to 2015, some people will remember this, when people thought Trump was a clown, and he was just a clown, and that's all he was.
	So I wrote a blog post, some will remember it.
	It was called Clown Genius.
	So I reframed him as somebody who was a showman, and he could use those talents in a productive way.
	And you better watch out, because he's not going to just change politics, I said.
	He's going to change the nature of reality itself in 2015.
	Now, that one...
	You were leading back then, and then you were pacing for a while, and now leading again.
	So then January 6th comes, and his reputation goes down.
	And I think that's when it was important that the Silicon Valley, the smartest people kind of came in and said, okay, he's not crazy.
	He's not dumb.
	A lot of this stuff makes sense.
	You don't have to love the personality.
	That's not what we're voting for.
	And I think Elon was the biggest, most prominent of that, but you must have seen a lot of that behind the scenes.
	Were you seeing dominoes falling like sort of privately?
	I definitely heard a lot of people basically privately say, oh my god, you know, this Biden administration has been a disaster.
	Kamala looks even worse.
	These are like full-on socialists.
	You know, they want to...
	Seize the means of production, price caps, and race politics, and gender politics.
	It's just idiocy.
	And a lot of us are in California, and we've seen how much California suffered by being a one-party state.
	And then when you have just enormous amounts of illegal immigration combined with the push for amnesty, birthright citizenship, path to citizenship, etc., etc., these are all code for flipping votes, voters.
	And so the thing that...
	I think the thing that really got me off the sidelines was the lawfare.
	Just the lawfare and then the warfare, right?
	Lawfare graduated to warfare with outright bullets being fired.
	Obviously, that's more incitement related than planned.
	But the lawfare was crossing the line for me.
	And I think for a lot of people...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Can I put you on the spot?
	Do you remember your post about changing the rules?
	Vaguely, you know, there are two posts I'm proud of in this whole thing.
	And one of them is about changing the rules.
	And I didn't word it the perfect way.
	I could have worded it a little better sometimes by wordsmith.
	So I know it wasn't quite perfect.
	I almost didn't put it out for that reason.
	But the post was basically that, you know, leaders come and leaders go, but you don't want to change the rules of the game.
	Right?
	And lawfare is changing the rules of the game.
	Censorship is changing the rules of the game.
	Importing voters is changing the rules of the game, right?
	These are structural changes you're making to get us into one party rule that'll never come back from.
	And the ending of that was like, let's change out the people who are changing the rules of the game, right?
	Now, there is only one valid comeback to that, by the way, which was made by some commentators, which is, well, Jan 6 was an attempt to change the rules of the game.
	And I would argue no, because, you know, it can go through all that evidence why, but it's like, yeah, a bunch of unarmed people taking over a building, and nobody actually dying in the attack.
	Like, that's not how you take over a country this size.
	You don't just seize a building, right?
	We'll trespass until you surrender.
	Exactly.
	And that was so exaggerated.
	I mean, yeah, it was a bad thing to storm into the Capitol, but it was so exaggerated after the fact by the left and so hoaxed that they just lost all credibility on it.
	But regardless, that was the only slight comeback you could have to it.
	But it's very clear there's one side that keeps talking about changing the rules, packing the Supreme Court, adding states, destroying the Electoral College, right?
	These are all attempts to change the rules of the game because they don't like losing.
	And this is a one-way slope that we've been on for a while.
	You know, no ID voting, that's another, you know, mail-in ballot voting, mandatory voting, non-secret voting, right?
	Felon not being able to run for office, right?
	Let's make him a felon.
	Okay, we call you a felon, now you can't run for office.
	So all of these are attempts to hack the system.
	And I like democracies because you can vote people out of power.
	Because if you can't vote them out of power, then you got to shoot your way out.
	And that's not good for anybody, you know, especially the unarmed 60% of the country.
	So...
	But what do you think...
	Realistically, once you look at the history of, say, Kennedy on, have we really been picking presidents?
	I mean, I was watching an old documentary about...
	I don't want to get conspiratorial, but yeah, Kennedy was shot and they still haven't released the files, which is absurd.
	They still haven't released the files 60 years later.
	Nixon, you know, the whole Watergate thing, now we know how the media works, so what was that all about?
	Yeah, it's, you know...
	But even the exceptions look kind of weird, right?
	Because you get, okay, Reagan, he was just all American, but he was going to spend a whole lot on the military.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, these are all pro-military candidates.
	Look, I also tweeted that I think the first act that Trump should take is the Patriot Act needs to go, and the FISA courts and the FISA surveillance that goes with it, because that's been weaponized and turned domestic.
	As an excuse, all they have to do is accuse you of foreign collusion, and then they can treat you like a non-citizen.
	All your Fourth Amendment rights go out the window, and now they're surveilling you and coming after you.
	And as we know, the federal register is so large, you know, show me the man, I'll show you the crime.
	What was it?
	Rich in his mind, like, six sentences written by an honest man, and I will have him hang.
	Every word you said, I just love to hear, because once Silicon Valley types of thinkers are set loose on the government, you know, Elon, of course, looks like he's going to be the biggest one, RFK Jr., etc., they're systems thinkers, as you are.
	Yeah, I actually volunteered for public service.
	I never thought I'd do it.
	You know, it would be pretty limited in public service and I don't know what they have that would match up, but I just put the word out.
	I said, hey, if you want me to do something in this government, I'm happy to do it because I want to protect the American dream for my kids.
	Well, where I see your greatest value is just what you're talking about, which is you're seeing how things are connected.
	And I don't know that the Democrats are good at that.
	I don't know that the standard Republicans are good at it.
	I don't think Trump's as good at it as you would be or Elon would be or Janie Vance will be.
	So the level of...
	The re-engineering that can be brought to the country is breathtakingly exciting to me.
	It feels like 1776, and it feels like...
	Here's something I always wondered.
	How was it that the 8 or 12 people who started the revolution, which was crazy...
	I mean, it was crazy that they were just going to get killed, but somehow they made it work...
	And then somehow, just when we needed it, when the countries were falling off the rails, the characters who had exactly the right skills, and historically so, like Elon as Ben Franklin, it almost seems like reincarnation or something.
	Does that seem like a coincidence to you?
	You're inspiring me because I wasn't sure how much work I wanted to put into politics, but now you're inspiring me.
	If it's that kind of moment, then yeah, that'll pull everyone off the benches.
	Here's the way I look at it.
	Of course, I'm biased for American greatness, but some of that's hyperbole, et cetera, patriotism.
	But I do think that Americans have one superpower.
	Which is, we will shit-can absolutely anything.
	Capitalism works because it makes you fire your best friend.
	Right.
	If you can't fire your best friend, if you can't tear the entire structure down, if you can't cannibalize your last product to put out your new iPhone, you're going nowhere.
	All the successful systems take feedback from free markets or nature.
	And it's when you're a president and you say, I'm not going to listen to what the market's telling me, I know what's right, that's when you're going to fail economically.
	If you say, no, we don't need Tesla or we don't need electric cars, we don't need to go to space, you're setting us back centuries as humanity, right?
	You're not taking feedback from nature and we could just be wiped out on this earth.
	So having a forward-looking person like Elon actually executing, I think that's what separates, that's one of the main things, but that's probably the largest thing in my mind that separates 2024 from 2016.
	Instead of having a bunch of Republican Party apparatchiks and neocons running the administration, he actually has incredibly competent people available if he will take advantage of them.
	You know, the one thing that Trump doesn't get enough credit for Is that he has his ear to the public like nobody else.
	And he listens to lots of suggestions from lots of people.
	And so it's not a top-down situation.
	I think Democrats are kind of a Top-down machine and the Republicans are a bottom-up machine.
	Well, yeah, the Democrats are better organized.
	You know, they're collectivists.
	By nature, they're better organized.
	That's what they do.
	What they have, though, is they have worse leadership because the great men tend to be more on the right, so to speak, right?
	The great man theory of history.
	You're just more likely to be on the right because they're more individualistic.
	So the left tends to win elections when they have a charismatic male leader.
	You have Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, right?
	You win an election.
	And that's why also in a lot of countries, the first elected female prime ministers or presidents are conservative.
	You know, the Maggie Thatchers, the Indira Ghandis of the world, the Benazir Bhutto.
	They're actually warmongers, all of them, right?
	So you kind of have to...
	The left is better organized, but they tend to have worse leadership overall.
	And I think that's a pattern you see across the board with them.
	Well, at the moment, their affinity for identity over competence somewhat forecast what was going to happen.
	Not necessarily this election, but there was somewhat of a guarantee that if they didn't go for merit, that eventually the wheels were going to fall off the whole machine.
	I think that's what happened this year.
	Yeah.
	Historically, in a democracy, I would be A little more pessimistic, just because if you look at what the left does well, it gets all the have-nots together.
	And over time, the have-nots sort of outnumber the haves.
	And technology leverage has been making that worse.
	Yes, everybody's better off, but the delta between Elon Musk and the lowest paid workers is much larger than historically.
	However, Technology also gives leverage to the winners, right?
	So you have a microphone now.
	I have Twitter.
	You know, Elon has his empire of companies behind him and people who trust him and work with him.
	So the amount of leverage that's available to the really high-functioning individual society is much higher.
	And so that helps them fight back.
	Essentially, we can't help but mention Elon in most conversations.
	He's become the universal reference to almost everything.
	But I wanted to bring him up because if you look at Elon Musk's life, I'm trying to reconcile the coincidence that he believes we're a simulation with the fact that he lives like he's in a simulation.
	He does look like he's in a simulation.
	Yes, he's supposed to be broke every time.
	He's like, well, what would be the most impossible thing I can do now?
	Change the government, go to Mars, build an electric car, solve climate change.
	One of the, you know, I called out in 2022, I put out a tweet saying, Elon Musk is the new leader of the center-right.
	And then I did a troll poll, like, you know, who's the leader of the free world?
	And it was like, is it Elon Musk, Joe, or who's the leader of the world?
	It's Elon Musk, Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin.
	And of course, Elon won, right?
	And obviously, my follower base is self-selected.
	But, you know, I kind of knew that he's the real deal.
	And I don't know him that well.
	I mean, I just exchange occasional, once in a blue moon, I get a message through him.
	So I don't claim to know him at all.
	But...
	There was a story that I read about him that really affected me, which was when he was talking to Bill Gates.
	And Bill Gates had just taken out some huge short on Tesla, like a billion-dollar short or something.
	And Ilan was like, why would you do that?
	Why would you short Tesla?
	And Bill goes, well, you know, I talked to my financial advisors, and I looked at the math, and there's no way it's overvalued, and so I'm going to make money on the short.
	And Elon goes, what do you care about making money?
	I thought you were into electric cars and climate change and saving the world.
	What are you doing trying to save a few bucks and betting against?
	And he just walked away in disgust.
	And I think he never talked to Bill Gates after that.
	And that's when I realized Elon's a purist.
	He means what he says.
	The money is a tool for him to get what he's trying to do.
	And so I take him at face value.
	Which is the crazy thing.
	Because there are a lot of people who set these audacious goals to inspire people.
	But you kind of know they don't really mean it.
	Elon, I take it face value.
	So I really do think he intends to get to Mars.
	I don't think he's joking about that.
	And I think he means to get there within a defined window of time.
	And I don't think it's just like an inspirational, faraway goal.
	I think he's very, very concretely going to do whatever it takes.
	Because Elon doesn't want to go down in history as the electric car guy or even the guy who saved America guy.
	He wants to go down as a guy who got humanity to the stars.
	Again, I'll give him more credit than that.
	I don't even think he wants to go down as the I got humanity to the stars guy.
	He's just like, I want to get to the stars.
	And so I have to make it happen in this lifetime.
	The only way that I get to experience the science fiction world in my head is if I get to the stars.
	And so that's so inspirational.
	I think that drives everything.
	So I think the government was just a thing that got in his way.
	I have an idea that's even simpler.
	He has to go to Mars because he already conquered the planet.
	He already needs a new planet.
	He conquers the planet as a side effect.
	If you get to Mars, you also have the most powerful rockets and missiles in the world.
	You've conquered Earth as a side effect.
	If you get to Mars, you can already mine asteroids for gold and resources.
	You've got all the economics.
	You just want Earth as a side effect.
	So just getting to Mars as a side effect conquers everything because it's the most audacious goal by far.
	He's going to launch thousands of these rockets at a cadence of every few hours to build a Mars colony.
	I mean, they don't have air.
	They literally don't have air.
	It's a terraform of planet.
	But it gets better because he's going to, I assume, that the base on Mars will be built by his own robots.
	Yeah, he has to build the robots to build the bases.
	He has to have the AI to, you know, pilot those robots and control them and the vehicles to drive themselves.
	The batteries.
	Yeah, there's no gasoline on Mars.
	It's all got electric vehicles, right?
	He's thought a lot of this through.
	The two pieces that I see him not having done yet, although I'm sure he's thought about them a lot, are terraform formation, like how to terraform Mars properly.
	And you could even start by terraforming parts of Earth.
	You could take deserts and Earth and turn them into Mediterranean paradises.
	And the other piece that he has to do is drones.
	Like, he doesn't have a drone company yet.
	And, you know, the future.
	Yeah.
	I've been wondering about that.
	It just seems so obviously missing from the portfolio, doesn't it?
	Well, I mean, we sort of make it look like it's effortless, like, oh yeah, Elon, you've done it before, spin up another company.
	But before Steve Jobs and Elon Musk came along, the conventional wisdom, and Jack Dorsey too, the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is you can't run more than one company at a time.
	And you would never invest in somebody who's trying to run two companies at a time.
	So spinning these up does take effort.
	And, you know, he's been busy conquering the United States.
	So give him a breather.
	Give him another three months on that one.
	But yeah, I expect, if I had to guess, just looking from afar, he'll eventually want a drone company.
	But, you know, in the meantime, there's Anduril, Palmer Luckey's company.
	Yeah.
	He got an Oculus and then was, I think he was tossed out for bad reasons.
	But he was an early, early right-wing troll.
	And now he's doing Anduril, which is, like, probably the most important new company in defense on the planet.
	Yeah, he's got some good toys there.
	Every time I see one of his little ads, I think, ooh, I wouldn't want to be on the other end of that.
	Right, right.
	But see, that's another example of the over-regulated world that we live in that I know Elon's not a fan of.
	The US is way behind in drone development.
	Android is like the one bright spot that's out there.
	But the Chinese have such an advantage in drones because DJI is the world's leading commercial manufacturer.
	And here in the US, we got hamstrung a lot by the FAA. A lot of drone companies and drone entrepreneurs had to pivot or went out of business because the FAA was too restrictive.
	And DJI has just taken over the entire drone business.
	So if the Chinese actually do get drone supremacy above us, and I don't think they're that far off, that's like a form of, that's at the same tier as nuclear supremacy.
	Like in terms of you can win entire wars, entire countries, because the next war is not going to be fought with humans.
	It's going to be fought with robots.
	Like the lesson of the Ukraine-Russia war is if you can see it, you kill it.
	The first one to spot, the other one wins.
	Literally, that's the whole game.
	Because drones are guided bullets.
	And so they're the end state of all weaponry is drones.
	There's one exception I can get into.
	But essentially, all the submarines and the warships will turn to drone ships.
	All the bullets, individual bullets will be flying drones.
	They'll turn corners.
	They'll have face wreck.
	So in that world, the infantryman is completely obsolete.
	It's like a mounted knight against a musketeer.
	So we need to get drone supremacy back pretty quickly or Taiwan is gone for sure.
	Which means we're basically at the old Star Trek episode where I think they did a computer simulation to see who would win the war.
	That's right.
	If you're a loser, you 600,000 have to go into the...
	Yeah, you get over here and you die.
	But that's exactly what would happen because it would be like, hey, our drone army beat your drone army.
	Now there is one of our drones circling every one of your citizens' heads, you know, and we're going to execute 10% because you lost, right?
	Or because you didn't surrender in the first place.
	I mean, this could still be in, but...
	But do you think we maybe have reached a point, you know, probably every year in civilization, they said that, where the big war doesn't make sense, and it so doesn't make sense that you couldn't even get there accidentally, because it would just take too many accidents to start?
	Yeah, the big war doesn't make sense for any sufficiently advanced society, because any sufficiently advanced society is just short on technology and ideas.
	It's not short on resources.
	It's not short on, you know, it's not fighting for food.
	But we're living in this weird world where you have 21st century societies like the United States or parts of the United States and Japan.
	And then you have countries that are literally 150 years back in terms of their moral, cultural, intellectual, technological development.
	And so to them, the idea of like conquering somebody still makes sense, right?
	Beating up their neighbor to get a piece of land or to lose something sort of still makes sense.
	And it's absurd, obviously, but the problem is the technology developed in the Neolithic countries kind of filters into the Paleolithic countries.
	We can then use that same technology 10 years later, and 10 years is not enough for them to have developed their moral and cultural institutions to know how to deal with it, to realize, hey, there's more to life than blowing each other up.
	That's why I think the top five powers should just say, why don't we just stay in the top five powers forever and just make sure the little guys don't kill any of us?
	Well, that's what happened with the UN, right?
	After the nuclear weapon was invented.
	Well, the top seven basically said, we're going to hang on to the nukes.
	Thank you very much.
	And then South Africa and Israel and Pakistan and North Korea snuck in, and India.
	But originally, it was just a security council, right?
	The security council was Russia, China, England, France, US had nukes, and that's it.
	Nobody else gets a say.
	But drones will leak out more than that.
	And drones aren't, like, as apocalyptic as nukes right away.
	It's not like a zero to one.
	You go from non-nuclear to nuclear.
	But the drones just get better and better.
	And you can see that Iran and Turkey and these countries, like, they punch out of their weight, above their weight, just because they're advanced in drone development.
	You know, Turkey with the TB2 drones that Ukraine has been using and, you know, Iran making the Shahid drones for Russia.
	And, of course, China with DJI. Would you get a robot?
	Would you get a home robot?
	Yeah, I'm on the list for Optimus Prime.
	Or Optimus, whatever it's called.
	Optimus Prime is a transformer.
	Optimus, the Tesla robot.
	I think I'm pretty far in the front of the list, I hope.
	But look, I don't expect it to be that great at the beginning.
	It's probably going to suck, okay?
	But you have to both support the future, unlike Bill Gates, right?
	And you have to...
	You have to try the future.
	Like, if you live in the future, you're just so much better off than not living in the future.
	I buy every random technology gadget that looks halfway interesting, but I don't have any qualms about throwing it out either.
	I do it for learning, because judgment is everything.
	We live in a very highly leveraged age.
	One of the biggest mistakes I made was I talked myself out of a Tesla years ago, so I got a Tesla later than I should have, because if I'd gotten it earlier, I would have bought the stock.
	I would have made many Teslas worth of money.
	And I would have understood where electric cars are going, what the future of automotive looks like, and I would have understood what self-driving can do and what it couldn't earlier.
	So just for purely judgment reasons, to improve your judgment, you should be pro-tech.
	So yeah, I'm going to buy an Optimus.
	I can afford it, obviously, so that makes it easy for other people.
	Okay, yeah, you can wait until it's a more finished product.
	Do you think the LLM AI is ever going to be able to drive a robot?
	Because I don't think it is.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I mean, the transformer breakthrough.
	So what happened was this breakthrough, this thing called the transformer, which was really designed for translation between languages.
	But it also works well for transcription, for some self-driving and art generation, and so on.
	That breakthrough has generalized quite a bit, more than this language, because it does art, right?
	It does like video and art.
	But yeah, I don't think it generalizes forever.
	And I think with these robots, they're going to have to give them a lot more real-world data and feedback.
	But the whole AI boom has now brought a lot more money and a lot more research and a lot more development into AI. So just people are taking it a lot more seriously.
	And I will say what the Optimus robot can already do on a machine-learn model is actually already more than I think they were able to do under the old rules-based systems where they were like coding it by hand.
	So I would say I'm cautiously optimistic.
	And one thing Elon has taught us is just, you know, stay at it, throw the best people at it, throw a lot of resources at it, it's worth it, and eventually you'll get it to work.
	Yeah, it does have the feel of, it's definitely the thing, and there's no way to avoid AI, but we don't know what it looks like.
	So it's hard to know what to do to get ready for that.
	Well, I don't think one should fear AI. My current read on it is that it's the dawn of natural language computing.
	You can basically speak in natural language to computer, and it can go through huge unstructured data sets, make sense out of them, and speak back to you in natural language.
	So that alone is a huge breakthrough.
	And then I think for highly bounded tasks, like driving a car, which is actually pretty bounded because there are rules of the road and you have a lot of data, or translation, transcription, image generation, classification.
	There's just a few of them.
	I think it's really good and quite worthwhile.
	But I think in terms of AGI and you're having a conversation with it and it's creating new science, I know that's the hope.
	I don't see the road to that just now.
	I also think it's a tool.
	You become more effective and more efficient like any other tool.
	So just learn how to use it and you'll be more productive, you'll be more valuable.
	So I don't know if I mentioned this to you years ago, but for over 30 years I've had a plan that I would replace myself with a robot before I go.
	So I just needed the right level of AI. And the AI now, believe it or not, doesn't allow me to just...
	Teach it who I am so I could reproduce it?
	There's a company doing that.
	It just came in my inbox the other day.
	And I passed without meeting it.
	But it's a good company, and they have good product and good technology, and they're basically making AI clones of famous people that you can then rent by the hour, right?
	Who is it?
	What's the company?
	Do you remember?
	I do.
	I don't know if I should be advertising or not advertising it because I'm not investing.
	Does it start with a D? Yes.
	Oh, I think I tried that one.
	Yeah, exactly.
	The Oracle.
	Right.
	The hint on the name.
	But yeah, the thing is, I just think it's inauthentic.
	I don't think these AIs are mimics, right?
	They're patchwork plagiarists.
	They can grab little sentences and translate them and combine them, but it doesn't make sense underneath.
	But when I tried it, it couldn't remember accurately even things I put in a file and say, remember this about me.
	Okay, but that's in practice.
	I'm talking about even in theory.
	We don't have anything approaching AGI. We don't know how creativity works.
	So it's going to be fake.
	It's going to be a fake parrot.
	It's literally a stochiastic parrot, like a random number generator parrot is one way to think about it.
	Another way is I call it a patchwork plagiarist.
	It's plagiarizing your past work and sort of stitching it together, but it's like a Frankensteinian output.
	It's not a lie.
	I'm in the process of building out some kind of a state trust structure so that I can fund my permanent robot that can be upgraded as the AI improves so it'll be its own little trust entity.
	Well, we could work the other way.
	You're talking about one way to bring you back is to keep you around as a robot.
	Another way is we could just stick a chip in your brain, record everything that's going on, and then when you die, or even while you're alive, flip you to the chip.
	Turn the brain off and flip you to the chip.
	So that's another route.
	A third one is we could just simulate you.
	We could just record you well enough and create a simulated version.
	If it's a good enough simulation, why isn't that alive?
	There's a lot of ways through this rabbit hole.
	Well, it's also going to be interesting because if I say that the robot is me, and who gets to say it doesn't?
	I mean, it would have to have some kind of rights that are managed by a human being.
	But if I say that's a continuation of me...
	Who's to say otherwise?
	There's a great sci-fi short story called Lena, and it's about the first human to get his brain virtualized, you know, like virtually copied.
	And then basically he realized that it goes open source.
	And so everybody starts using it for everything.
	And then, you know, 400 years later, it's powering washing machines and robot slaves and so on.
	And it's always the same guy.
	And he's waking up and he's like, oh my God, I'm a robot slave.
	You You know, it's like for the rest of eternity, he's suffering in all these menial roles.
	It's a fun story.
	But this goes back to the question of which one is real, right?
	Like in the multiverse, which copy of me is real?
	I have an answer to that, by the way.
	I can come back to that.
	But in the...
	You know, if I make copies of myself of the transporter accident in Star Trek, or if I make robot duplicates, which one is real?
	There's a Calvin and Hobbes strip, which I'm sure you've seen.
	It went for a while, where Calvin has this box, this cardboard box.
	You know, kids always have the cardboard box game going through the cardboard box.
	Something like that.
	He opens it, and another Calvin comes out.
	So he can create a Calvin copy.
	It's a cloner.
	And so he's showing Hobbes, like, okay, this one's going to do the chores, that one's going to do the homework, this one's going to go, you know, do that, and I'm just going to relax.
	But pretty soon, they're all bums, they're all fighting over the food, there's not enough clothes, they're all trashing the place, nobody wants to clean up, because they're all Calvins, right?
	So it doesn't actually solve any problems.
	It just creates duplicates.
	But, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, the way to test that is, like, you wouldn't pull the plug on yourself, right?
	Like, if you really believe that's you, then you're ready to pull the plug on this copy of you, and nobody ever is.
	That's the real test on it.
	There's a sci-fi short story called The Jewel, and I'm going to blow the punchline so if somebody doesn't want to know it, just skip ahead.
	But basically, it's about a future society in which they put a chip in your brain when you're born.
	And the chip records every action, every sensation, every feeling, every development.
	And then when you hit a certain point in maturity, you go in for an operation where they scrape your brain out and replace it with a warm spongy material that'll survive forever.
	And they turn the jewel on and you're now the jewel.
	So your brain's been uploaded into the secure chip that you control.
	And the rest of the body is all replaceable.
	It's only the brain, the mind that they couldn't replace, the software.
	So this is how they do it.
	And so our protagonist has like a week coming up until his brain is going to be scraped out and he's going to be, you know, flipped on as a jewel.
	And after a while, he's like, no, no, I don't want to do this, right?
	And then he goes and then runs off and joins some secret society of underground lunatics who refuse to have their brains replaced because they're now very much in the minority.
	And they're mortal, so they're going to die.
	They age and die.
	Everybody else gets to live forever, so they're kind of crazy.
	And then when he goes into the secret society, he sort of escaped He finds out, actually, they turned the jewel on two weeks ago.
	So your brain is still there, but you're not listening to it.
	You are the jewel.
	Now, do you want to go through with it or not?
	And then he goes, yeah.
	So then he goes into the operation to script the brain out.
	That's the end.
	But even that doesn't quite solve it, right?
	Because if I flipped you to a robot you, then robot you would say, yeah, get rid of meat.
	Meat Suit Scott.
	He's not necessary anymore.
	But Meat Suit Scott would say, get rid of Robot Scott.
	So you actually independently exist.
	It's a clone.
	It's not you.
	But it solves itself because Meat Scott goes his, Meat Scott way and the robot goes on forever.
	That's true.
	That's true.
	It's like creating a clone.
	By the way, you can already clone yourself.
	You know, rich people are already cloning dogs and cats.
	I hate to say it, not me.
	But I know people who have literally cloned their dead animal and they have a clone of it running around.
	And you ask the kids, you're like, hey, how's the clone?
	And they're like, oh, same behavior.
	I can't tell it apart from the old dog.
	So for a dog, the problem is solved.
	And you can already clone yourself.
	There are companies that are doing embryos stuff.
	They have the ability to do clones.
	I'll bet you the Chinese Communist Party, the top people, have some clones on ice.
	That is so cool to think about.
	They could just break one out.
	Isn't that like, what is the Sci-Fi Foundation?
	The Foundation.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah, there's Altered Carbon, I think, or Rick and Morty has some stuff on this.
	But yeah, the future is here.
	It's just unevenly distributed, right?
	So let me ask you some more questions about the future.
	What do you think is the future of the family?
	Yeah, so I think the Catholic Church was right and that contraception killed the family.
	It sort of killed Catholicism, actually.
	Killed religion, for sure.
	Contraception was a groundbreaking technology, right?
	And it changed the nature of the family.
	And now we're in this situation where You kind of had enforced monogamy in society before, right?
	And if you had sex, you had a child, you needed two people to raise a child, you didn't have washing machines, you didn't have cars or whatever, etc.
	So you're kind of forced into the family unit.
	And now, through a combination of...
	Robotics, technology, automation, contraception, sex and marriage and childbearing, all these things have become highly decoupled, right?
	And so a lot of people are playing choose your own adventure.
	But those bundles were there for a reason, right?
	We're biologically hardwired for those bundles.
	So I would say like the happiest situation is if you have a happy family.
	If you're happily married and you got your kids and everyone loves each other, that's the best of all possible worlds.
	But that's so rare.
	Most people, you know, either fail trying to get to that or they don't even want to...
	Take the risk because if you try for it and you fail, there's so much downside that they sort of are opting into all of these alternative models.
	The weirdest one that I heard, and this is a Los Angeles story.
	I don't know if I want to out him.
	It's up to him.
	But this guy's having a...
	He has a son with a woman.
	They were married.
	They had a child.
	Then they didn't get along.
	They got divorced.
	They're still friends.
	They're obviously raising the son as divorced father and mother.
	But he decided he wants to have another kid.
	And who would he be best situated to have a kid with?
	He's already got all the child support worked out.
	He knows they're genetically compatible.
	They still get along.
	They're already raising a child together.
	So he's having a kid with his ex-wife.
	And paying her.
	I think that he's basically, it's like a divorce, like he's paying her enough to, you know, it's like the alimony thing, but you add for the extra kid, right?
	You use the same rules that you have with the existing kid.
	So in that sense, it's probably worked out.
	But if you tell people like, oh, I'm going to have another kid with my ex-wife, like that triggers them, right?
	It breaks their mind in so many ways.
	And I think it's weird.
	It's fine.
	It's probably better than having a kid with someone you don't know or don't love or having a kid without a mom.
	I know that happens too.
	So it's probably fine, but it's weird.
	It's definitely weird.
	And people are getting pretty mad at him about it.
	Mad enough, I think he's going to write a book on the topic and become famous for it.
	He's already famous, but he's going to be even more famous, right?
	But...
	My advice to him was, I was like, just tell him you're gay.
	Right?
	Just tell him you went gay.
	Because then it's suddenly okay.
	It's weird how these rules work.
	The exact same thing is happening.
	But because you say you're gay, it's suddenly okay.
	You get out of jail.
	I've been holding that card in case I need it someday.
	It's like, well, you know, I wasn't going to mention it, but now I need to bring it up.
	Put on a wig.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think the whole family thing is going to go into permutations that we're not used to.
	I think you're going to see...
	I don't know if this is a fake news or not.
	Wasn't Elon talking about having all of the mothers of his kids in one building?
	Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, it's like Mormon style, right?
	I mean, there are people, a lot of people are opting out of the gene pool.
	They're not even having kids, can't be bothered, right?
	Or it's too difficult.
	I think that's a mistake.
	I think if you can have kids, you should have kids.
	It kind of answers the meaning of life question, right?
	But my rule on that is you either got to have kids or you got to find God.
	Like pick one of the two.
	What's that?
	I've read God's Debris.
	I've read your simulation stuff.
	I know the game you're playing.
	You're playing the God game.
	And you're just playing it in your own way with your own words.
	So you have more conviction, which makes sense, right?
	It's not some white-bearded dude who lived 2000 years ago, has certain commandments.
	You're thinking it through for yourself and you're stitching it together in your own framework, your own models, your own language.
	And so it's solid within you.
	You have your own, I wouldn't call it faith because it's there through reason, but you have your own deep spirituality, although you don't use that language of those words.
	And I think you'd have to, otherwise you wouldn't be happy right now, because then you'd be just self-obsessed and looking for pleasure in the next pill or the next thing or the next activity.
	You have to have a mission.
	If you don't have a mission, you're better than yourself.
	You have something that you truly believe in more than yourself.
	And kids are the easiest one, right?
	And one of the great ones.
	I'm finding politics as my escape.
	Because if I do anything that helps people, I've had a job where people contact me all the time and say, oh, you helped me lose weight or get a new job or something.
	And that just feeds me.
	That's just like, oh my God, that's the nourishment I need.
	It's like, I helped you?
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Well, I think, especially if you're a traditional male, you get a lot of value, like self-value, out of taking care of your tribe, doing your duty towards your tribe.
	And you get to define your tribe.
	And the more capable you are, the broader that tribe, the more people you should take care of.
	And that's why people like Elon are so impressive, because he's basically saying, humanity is my tribe.
	I'm going to push this all forward.
	Now, to that point, my hypothesis is that the reason that Trump prevailed is that the danger to society, to America, got to the point where just male biology kicked in, and people who otherwise would have said, you take care of it, I'm sure it'll be fine— Just said, oh no, there's a lion at my door and I'm the guy with the gun.
	I gotta kill the lion.
	So you mentioned one tweet of mine before that changed the people who are trying to change the system, right?
	But the other tweet that I was really proud of this cycle, right?
	I almost want to pin this to my profile, but it's the battle of the masculine men and the feminine women against the masculine women and the feminine men.
	And that one was written in such a way that it's lyrical, it's poetic, it flows, but it's also true.
	And once you see it, you can't unsee it.
	And I think that one influenced more people than any tweet I put out because they saw it and they immediately knew whether they're masculine men or feminine women.
	And then they immediately thought on the other side, like, oh yeah, they're all men are feminine and all the women are masculine, right?
	And it immediately sorted you.
	It properly sorted you into your bucket.
	And it did it with, actually, ironically, identity politics.
	But it works.
	It does work.
	Yeah.
	And so I think what you have is you have very capable people now who decided that the nonsense has to stop, the identity politics has to stop, the gaslighting has to stop, the lawfare has to stop, the censorship has to stop.
	And hacking the system has to stop, and we've got to put our foots down.
	So in this administration, I think you have some very intelligent people working with Trump.
	Hopefully, they will figure out how to navigate the bureaucracy and the intel apparatus before they get blown up, right?
	Because the intel apparatus and the bureaucracy are not going to give up.
	I have a theory that over a long enough period of time, the people with the guns are always in charge, right?
	So if you look at Roman history, at the end, all the emperors came from the Praetorian Guard, which was guarding the emperor.
	Now they were suddenly in charge.
	If you look at what happened in Russia, you know, the FSB, the KGB, the secret police, the people who were guarding the premiers, they took over, right?
	So that's Putin and his crew.
	So on a long enough cycle, the Praetorian Guard is eventually in charge.
	The people with the guns always end up in charge.
	And that's happened kind of everywhere in the world, where the intel apparatus, for example, has their secret courts and their secret laws and their gag orders.
	So why hasn't it fully happened in the U.S.? It's the only place in the world, and it's because of the Second Amendment, because the people with the guns are in charge, because the people have the guns.
	Well, but the possibility is that they just use the media so that they could get around the gun holders.
	Correct, correct.
	So the power actually goes to the best organized and armed intolerant minority, right?
	To win revolutions and wars, and even to have the soft powers that revolutions and wars are never fought against in the first place, you need the organized group.
	And I think as a society, we've lost fact of where voting comes from.
	Voting developed as a way for people who had won wars to divide up the spoils amongst themselves and not fight each other.
	And it became a right that was granted to you if you fought for the empire, if you had a sword and shield, you had some land, you went when you were called by the king or the emperor or the senate, you went to war for them.
	And so Power gave you the right to vote because the other guys didn't want to fight you.
	They didn't want a civil war.
	So like, let's just divide up the vote amongst us.
	Like if you're in a pirate ship and 10 people are armed and 90 aren't, you crash in some island, who's going to end up voting?
	It's going to be the 10 with the weapons.
	The 90 without the weapons will not get a vote.
	Especially if the ten are organized, especially if they have a common culture, race, religion, nationalism, philosophy, whatever, that's binding them together.
	So it's that power gives you the right to vote.
	And now we've gotten upside down where the right to vote gives you power, where it doesn't matter if you're capable of exercising power or not, you get the right to vote.
	But how long is that going to work?
	If the 51% that's unarmed and not powerful is voting to stomp a jackboot on the 49% that's armed, eventually that 49% will organize.
	Unless, as you say, the media keeps them disorganized, off balance, and doesn't give them a chance to organize.
	That's why anyone who's in charge is really good at Breaking up crime, breaking up rings, organization, right?
	They don't want the opponents to organize.
	So it's the organized resistance that can win.
	Disorganized, they don't, right?
	Like if there's jackboot of thugs coming in and kicking down doors, if we all fight them at once, they always lose.
	North Korea would be free if everyone in that giant open air gulag could organize in one action, in one moment, but they can't coordinate So they get picked off one by one like dissidents.
	The same way like Twitter can, you know, the old Twitter before Elon took over, kick off people one by one, but they couldn't all leave in a huff to another side at the same time.
	They couldn't organize because Twitter is the organization mechanism.
	So the single most consequential thing that freed this country is Elon bought X. And the best tweet I saw on this was from Greg Fodor.
	He had this great tweet.
	He said, I can't believe that he noticed that the 80% completed Imperial Death Star and just bought it.
	They'd basically been building this Death Star to control all of news media forever and they were using it left and right.
	It was 80% done and he just bought it.
	And there's many ironic sub-stories in there, but one of my favorites is that when he went to buy it, he offered the $44 billion, right?
	I think it was $42 because he loves that number, right?
	He's in the simulation, so he's a troll.
	He's trolling the simulation.
	You're right.
	He's the guy who takes the simulation seriously.
	And so are you, right?
	And so you guys live your lives.
	You YOLO it.
	You truly YOLO it.
	Anyway, you YOLO it with some faith that there's some wind out there at your back, which by the way, it might be called a religious belief, nevertheless.
	So, you know, they built this Death Star and he goes in to buy it and he offers 44 billion.
	I don't remember, 42, and it gets to 44 through some accounting stuff.
	But I don't know if you remember But the market crashed hard right then.
	That was when the market fell off a cliff.
	And then he realized he was way overpaying.
	The bankers all tried to back out.
	Nobody wanted to invest.
	He was in over his head.
	The stock he put up as collateral had come down.
	And he didn't want to buy it anymore.
	He didn't want to buy it.
	And he was like, well, you know, there are too many bots here.
	And they're like, well, that's not good enough.
	You can't back out.
	So they dragged him to court in front of a Delaware judge and they made him buy it.
	That's the best part.
	And he freed us all.
	So here's my cynical question.
	Can any modern country survive with free speech if their news is real?
	Because you think they'll just fracture, they'll fall apart, they'll realize there's been too much shenanigans in the past, and they'll be...
	I think if we saw all the warts of our government and there wasn't a counter thing that was saying, oh, that's not true, I don't know if any government could survive long enough to do anything good.
	That's the nice thing about democracy.
	It gives us a way to have peaceful revolutions, right?
	So if all of that came out, the people, if they truly understood it, Which I'm a little skeptical on.
	I mean, the reality is I think most people are single issue voters and parties are collections of single issue voters and most people have one thing they really care about and understand and they don't really pay attention to everything else.
	So there's only a small percentage of people who care if Kennedy was killed by the CIA or not.
	It might be enough to tip the boat on the margin, but I just don't think enough people will care.
	Or that Nixon was framed.
	Like, okay, half the country will believe it and the other half won't.
	You know exactly how this will work out, right?
	Whether it's a true or false, if it has a political component to it, half the country will believe it and half the country won't.
	I feel I'm only curious.
	I'm not bought into the answer at all.
	I'm not either.
	For the record, I don't think the CIA killed him, but I'll bet one of their ex-people probably went rogue.
	Well, yeah, something along those lines.
	Yeah, their fingerprints are somewhere, but not directly on the gun.
	I don't think I've asked you about UFOs yet, have I? I've never talked about UFOs, have I? I don't think so.
	You might have.
	I'm a UFO skeptic.
	So am I. The fact that the government keeps telling us that somebody else has seen the spacecraft and we can't tell you where it is or what it looks like.
	There's too many camera phones.
	There's too many people.
	There's too many blabbermouths.
	There's too many wannabe heroes.
	That information will be out already.
	Plus, why would the aliens even hide it?
	And how would the UFOs get captured?
	And how do they even make it here so far?
	And wouldn't we see some evidence like electromagnetic radiation from their transmission?
	There's just so many problems with the UFO thing.
	It's kind of...
	Okay, so when you're trying to figure out how to navigate this world full of dueling memes that are trying to occupy your brain, what you really need is good epistemology.
	Epistemology is just theory of knowledge, fancy word for theory of knowledge.
	You need to know how to tell what's true from what's false.
	And that's becoming one of the most important, if not the most important, survival trait in society.
	The other one might be like, can you resist eating sugar?
	Although I think Ozempic will solve that.
	It's really about how do you tell what's true from what's false.
	And too many people are lazy.
	They don't have the foundation to figure out what's true, what's false.
	And they just assume one thing, then the next thing you do, and you're in this giant edifice of men can give birth, right?
	Or UFOs are real.
	Or I'm embarrassed for the people who are into this, but it's like the pyramid was a giant battery or something.
	That one seems to be in vogue right now.
	But there's always a bunch of these lunatic fringe theories that go through.
	And I just think if you have any kind of understanding of physics, politics, people, numbers, you know, numeracy, you would understand that, no, the government's not hiding a bunch of UFOs somewhere.
	So here's my favorite recreational belief about UFOs.
	This is not a real belief, it's a recreational belief.
	Mm-hmm.
	Apparently our moon has so many oddities to it compared to other moons that we can see that it's almost like it doesn't seem like a real moon.
	And some people say it's a hollow spaceship that has been there.
	But I've added to it that on the dark side of the moon, there's this enormous crater impact that you can't see from our side.
	So my theory is that the aliens were using their giant ship That didn't look like it was covered with dirt when it first got there.
	Maybe it was just a big ball.
	And they were sort of trying to geo-form the Earth for later.
	Maybe they gave us a little DNA and stuff like that, and they're watching it.
	And maybe even they thought they would block an asteroid or something from destroying the good work they've done.
	Maybe they moved the Moon in front of it and took the hit.
	So my theory is that the inhabitants of the Moon space vehicle all died But it's automated.
	And that what we see as UFOs that do that weird thing where you can see them and they show up on radar, but they seem to be able to change directions like faster than an object can, that they're holograms from the moon.
	In other words, there is something there, but it's just an intersection of electromagnetic waves.
	So maybe you could pick it up on radar and maybe you could see it, but if you put your hand on it, it wouldn't be there.
	Yet it could operate like sonar or radar, which is if you send out any kind of signal into the world, you can get a ping back.
	I just think eyewitness evidence is worthless and people are very gullible.
	I don't waste neurons in thinking about UFOs.
	There are zillions of probably nearly infinite Kepler planets in the universe or in the multiverse.
	So yeah, there is life out there somewhere.
	It's probably just...
	You don't think so?
	Well, I'm still caught on we're a simulation.
	And if we are, there doesn't need to be life anywhere else.
	I don't think your simulation...
	Okay, let's go into the simulation thing because I'm going to take you up on it.
	I don't think it explains anything useful.
	Okay, here's what the simulation hypothesis basically does.
	It just kicks the whole God problem up one level, right?
	It's an axiomatic kind of thing saying, well, we're just in a simulation.
	It can't be falsified.
	You can always just say, well, that's just a simulation.
	You can cherry pick, like with horoscopes, you can cherry pick outcomes and say, well, that would only happen in the simulation, and you could ignore all the ones that followed regularity.
	It doesn't actually explain anything.
	It doesn't make any risky and narrow predictions.
	It's not falsifiable.
	So it's not scientific.
	It's purely a belief.
	It's a faith-oriented belief.
	And you can replace the word simulation with God.
	You can replace it with computer program, VR reality, chemical scum, VAT, brain in the VAT, and the whole thing still holds.
	It's a very easy to vary theory.
	But what about the statistical likelihood?
	If we know that one is created...
	There are two places where the simulation theory differs from just a pure made-up God theory.
	One of those is the statistical argument, which is like, on a long enough time scale, your computers get strong enough that you can do this, right?
	The second problem, sorry, the second thing that it kind of addresses is it kind of says that, and that's why reality is quantum underneath, zeros and ones, right?
	It's a system that we're used to.
	So let's forget the second one.
	Let's go with the first one for a sec.
	So you're basically saying that it's just likely to happen, right?
	So you just wait long enough, the computers get good enough.
	Well, okay, what would happen?
	They're already good enough, but go ahead.
	Okay, well, what happens is anytime you're simulating something, it is much, much, much lower resolution and much less real than the base reality that you're simulating out of, right?
	Just like we observed.
	To render that, to guide that photon over there.
	So you lose massive amounts of resolution.
	So the only way the simulation is going to be better is if you can control it.
	Right?
	If you can basically say...
	Otherwise, you're going to stay in your real reality.
	The reason you play video games is because you can win easily.
	You can control it.
	That's what affirmations are.
	Okay, yeah.
	So, okay, I'm going along with you.
	So the only reason you would go into a simulation is you can control it.
	But if you can control it too easily, then it's not fun.
	There's no surprise.
	So to make it fun and surprising, you want to have it either be multiplayer or convincingly multiplayer, where there are other actors that can do things you don't expect and it's adversarial, right?
	So you would end up with something that looks a lot like what we have today.
	So the only reason you would do it is because base reality wasn't giving you that feedback and entertainment.
	If base reality was giving you that same level of multiplayer game, you would rather stay in base reality because it's like billions of time higher resolution.
	In fact, this reality would be so unsatisfyingly low res, you would have to nuke your memory and probably nuke your body to not understand what's going on.
	No, here's where I must disagree with you.
	Okay, please.
	So if you're playing tennis and you see the tennis ball zip by and it hits the line and you say, hey, that's out, and everybody else says, no, that's in.
	You can play it back on the video and you can find out for sure what it was.
	But the person who saw it out and the person who saw it in have a perfect memory.
	Except one of them didn't happen.
	And what we know is that our brains create the resolution or imagine the resolution.
	And so I'm talking to you right now surrounded by detail that is completely being invisible to me and I don't even know if it's really there unless I look at it.
	Right.
	Our actual experience of life is that we're imagining resolution that isn't there, and that's easily provable.
	What's the difference between imagining resolution and having resolution?
	How can I imagine it if it doesn't?
	It would take the same compute power for me to imagine it as it would for it to exist.
	Although you could argue the unseen universe doesn't need to exist.
	Exactly.
	Now it's an argument for consciousness, because if it's not conscious, why bother rendering it?
	Which leads me to a different place.
	Everything is conscious rather than to the unconscious stuff isn't rendered.
	I don't know that point, but let me ask this.
	So my belief is if we're a simulation, then if I were to go in the backyard and dig a hole where no human or any entity had ever dug a hole, that the stuff that I dig to doesn't exist until I'm digging to it because it doesn't need to and never did need to.
	So everything that's not directly observed doesn't have to exist, and that's how you save all your compute time.
	Why do you need to save compute time?
	Because the universe is massively big and you couldn't build a computer that would be big enough to replicate in detail.
	In the simulation, you need to conserve compute time.
	But from what we see of our universe, it is so massive.
	It's potentially a multiverse.
	It has so many black holes and capable of computing power.
	It has so much compute power.
	Why would you need to leave this reality?
	Even stepping back...
	Okay, it's a simulation.
	Let's go with that for a second.
	Doesn't mean you left it though.
	Okay, go ahead.
	What does that explain that was unexplained before?
	First of all, I don't accept your assumption that that's a necessity for it to be true.
	Well, I think the set of potential falsehoods is infinite, and truth is a very rare thing.
	So to pluck truth out of the falsehood, you have to have certain rules for what is true and what is not.
	What about statistical arguments, though?
	Statistical arguments only...
	Let me give you one.
	I'll give you one so you can...
	Here's the problem with the statistical argument.
	The problem is I can give you an equally infinite number of scenarios in which we choose not to do a simulation just because base reality is already so good.
	The problem with the simulation argument, another problem is like Like, you can never break out of the simulation.
	Or if you do, then how do you know you're not in another simulation, right?
	It's doing the God thing.
	It's basically hiding everything behind a layer where you're not allowed to look.
	And so it's adding complexity without explaining anything new.
	It violates Occam's razor in that sense.
	Because you've added a new explanation.
	In this case, the simulation.
	But that new explanation doesn't give you anything.
	It doesn't allow you to do anything more.
	It doesn't explain anything that you see or observe.
	And so therefore, you've just added unnecessary entities in the explanation.
	Just an Occam's razor, you don't want to do that.
	Well, so let me test that.
	So my belief is that if we're a simulation, it wouldn't necessarily be for entertainment.
	That could be one.
	That would be in the top three.
	But my audience knows that I have a long history of having massive water-related problems.
	Just probably 12 of them this year in my house alone, my outdoor irrigation.
	And it's in all my homes and it doesn't matter where I'm living.
	It doesn't matter who the contractor was.
	It doesn't matter.
	And to me, it's becoming obvious that I'm an AI training tool and that I'm training How to deal with infinite water-related problems.
	Everyone different.
	And everyone, you know, I attack like it's a brand new problem.
	So if you could download my knowledge of fixing water-related problems, you could populate like a plumber robot in the higher universe.
	Now, you said there's no prediction.
	I don't know if you can see the comments, but if I ask my locals people, have I predicted that I will have ongoing, incredibly coincidental water problems, and have they watched it for three years in a row, and every time, like, here's another one?
	And it doesn't match any experience that they have.
	But I can also see, because you believe this, you look for water-related problems and other people will let it slide.
	It's on the ground.
	It's coming through the roof.
	More than usual.
	But I think I have water-related problems in my place.
	Somebody else takes care of it.
	I don't think about it.
	I don't add it to my list of water-related problems.
	Did you have 12 separate occasions where there were major water problems in one year?
	I'm not going to take your streak of water problems as evidence that we live in a simulation.
	By that, you could be saying, it's because I'm Capricorn, right?
	Now all of a sudden we have to believe astrology.
	A theory that's very easy to vary, where you can change the components without changing the outcome, is a bad theory.
	But I'm making a prediction.
	I'm making a prediction that next year, like all the years before...
	No, because you're arbitrating that one.
	You're the one who's coming back and seeing your water...
	Now, if you made a prediction about me, if you said, hey, Naval, you're going to have a dozen water-related problems next year, then I'm going to keep an eye.
	That's better.
	It's still not really scientific.
	We should get a whole bunch of people.
	Well, neither of them are the scientific process.
	But would you agree that if I made an unusual prediction...
	And let's say I could keep making this unusual prediction time after time again.
	Would that convince you?
	Or would you just think there's some reason I could make a prediction and you don't know why?
	I would first look for the non-supernatural explanation.
	I would first try to figure out, like, is it...
	What are the statistical odds of this?
	And do we, you know...
	Hey, that's no fair calling it supernatural.
	You're trying to win by a word.
	You can't win by a word.
	No, no, it is a supernatural.
	Because it appeals to something outside of our current physics.
	That's what I mean by supernatural.
	Oh, but this would be well within our current physics.
	We're just a video.
	We're just zeros and ones.
	No, no, that's not our current physics.
	That's not our current laws of physics.
	That's not our current understanding of physics.
	That's not our current, you know, theory of physics that we're definitely running on some computing substrate.
	But there's nothing inconsistent with saying that we're in a video game that was designed to give us...
	Nothing inconsistent is back to unfalsifiable.
	And there's infinite number of those theories.
	You're a brain floating in a vat.
	Go falsify that.
	You can't, right?
	But are you saying in general that if something does uncanny predictions, that it still doesn't tell you something useful?
	No, I'm not saying that.
	It depends on what predictions it's making, how statistically likely or unlikely they are, how well they're tested for error, who's corroborating them, what that mechanism was, and also then the claim.
	How does that evidence match up to the claim?
	So the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinary the evidence it requires.
	Of course.
	So I agree with all that.
	I think my experience with my audience has been pretty extraordinary.
	I try not to go too much in the supernatural, but I'll be honest, there are times when I've prayed.
	Can't hurt.
	Nobody's perfect.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Pascal's a wager, right?
	Just in case.
	Yeah, I've got a version of this.
	I don't know if I've ever said this out loud before, but every now and then I just talk to the creators of the simulation that are watching me, because it might be me.
	Yeah, exactly.
	No, I completely agree.
	Yes, if simulation hypothesis is true, then, you know, God or creator or master programmer has your best interest at heart.
	I say things like, you know, is this the plan?
	I mean, are you really going to do this to me?
	Yeah, exactly.
	No, yeah, like, don't take me out of the game too fast.
	Like, give me some resource if you want me to be effective, right?
	Or like, I'm not Job.
	Don't try me.
	I'll fail.
	Let's not go through.
	Let's not take that route.
	Let's try a different way.
	Yeah, I think everybody does that.
	Because at the end of the day, existence itself is an unexplained miracle.
	Like, how did we get here?
	Why am I here?
	Why am I a monkey?
	Why am I three-dimensional?
	Why am I male?
	Why am I talking to you right now?
	What does it even mean to talk?
	The whole thing is so surreal.
	That there is an instantaneous and overarching miracle of just consciousness.
	Like, why even be conscious?
	Why not just be like zombies or robots talking to each other, going through the same actions?
	Why even be aware?
	So there's so much here that you just have to take axiomatically.
	And that is spirituality.
	And I think your spirituality, your current religion, is a simulation hypothesis.
	It's perfectly valid.
	You know, mine is probably closer to the Tao and, you know, other people's Christianity or whatever.
	But somehow, you have to explain this miracle of existence.
	Right?
	And everyone has to do it in their own frame.
	But I think not.
	The rest is science, right?
	The rest is all follows the rules of science.
	And so what I don't like is when someone says, this one, I'm correct.
	It's scientific.
	You should believe it because of these following arguments.
	And then I'm like, okay, well, what are the implications?
	How do we test it?
	If you want me to believe in the real world, it has to be scientific, which means it has to be testable.
	There's a third category that I will accept, which is direct experience, but that's only valid for you.
	So if you have a direct experience of something, you can hold it, but your ability to convey it is zero because everybody has their own experience and you can't take anybody else's experience as valid.
	I'll give you that.
	I'm going to give you that my personal experience is so bizarre.
	I don't think it's quite Elon Musk level, but you've got your own life that doesn't matter.
	Yeah, very surreal.
	I mean, how do the three of us exist?
	Is this really...
	Like, there's so many things in my life that happen, and I'm sure you have the same feeling, where you just say, how is this real?
	I mean, just how is this real?
	If you want to talk absolute truth and nothing else, the only statement that you can make that is absolutely true is that...
	What's that?
	Go ahead.
	I know where this is going.
	Sorry.
	What's yours?
	It's that we exist.
	To ask the question.
	That's the only thing you know.
	It's actually even worse than that.
	So I used to say it was, I exist.
	And then a very smart friend of mine corrected me and he said, no, awareness exists.
	You don't even know that you exist.
	Your thought, like, yes, your current thought exists and you're aware of that current thought.
	But what is the you that is having that thought?
	That's the whole Buddhist question, the whole enlightenment question.
	Is there a persistent self-identity other than just thoughts that are referring to each other?
	Like when you look for yourself, you're not actually there.
	There's an awareness.
	The awareness exists.
	But the you separate from that awareness, does that even exist?
	Where are you on the question of whether your mind is one you or you are several people in your head?
	Several.
	I think it's several.
	So there's two questions in there.
	There's one implicit, one explicit.
	The explicit is, do you believe in the agent theory of the brain, where it's all different agents battling it out?
	Or do you think it's one unified thing?
	And I think that one, yeah, it's the agent theory of the brain.
	It's more correct.
	But then the other question is, is that you?
	Are your thoughts you?
	And that's a deeper question.
	And that one I go back and forth on.
	Are your thoughts you?
	Well, you mean are your thoughts coming from the you?
	What is this you that's having the thoughts?
	We very casually refer to this you, this self, this I, but the thoughts referred to, but when you're not thinking, where did you go?
	You're still there.
	And then if you can observe the thoughts, well, You can dispassionately observe your own thoughts.
	It's possible.
	That's what meditation is all about.
	So is that you if you can observe it?
	And if you're the thoughts that are talking, then who's the one that's listening?
	So the you or I that we refer to is this very amorphous entity.
	It's like, you know, it's Alan Watts compared to like a whirling stick.
	It looks like a fire.
	But when you pause and look at any element of it, there's actually nothing there.
	Do you have the voice in your head?
	Yeah, everyone does, right?
	No, no.
	You don't have one.
	No, I do have one, but apparently there was a thing in the news recently.
	Again, it's eyewitness evidence.
	It's some person trying to be famous.
	You know, there were a lot of people who weighed in and said they also...
	Actually, you know what?
	I take it back.
	I retract my earlier statement.
	You're right.
	I've seen a Twitter thread where some appreciably large number of people will say they don't have a voice in their head.
	But I would say they still have a persistent self-identity.
	And it may be events through, they think visually, you know, they think in feelings.
	They're not necessarily thinking verbally, but they still have a strong sense of self and I. The classic people in history who don't have that strong sense of self are the Buddhas, right?
	Like if you're the Buddha or Jesus, or you're like a spiritual figure that, you know, I don't know, Saint Augustine or pick your enlightened person.
	Right?
	Supposedly, what they have found is they've seen through the illusion of the separate self, the Ramana Marshis of the world, right?
	And so they don't take themselves as seriously because they know they're not separate from anything that's happening.
	And all that remains for them is awareness and consciousness.
	That's what they see themselves as.
	You know, I've defined consciousness.
	My best take at it, and I think we can give it to AI, is a prediction of everything that's going to happen next, like, you know, right around you, around your body.
	Then there's the action, and then there's your reaction to how close your prediction was to the reality.
	And my argument is that if everything happened exactly as you knew it was going to happen, you would lose all your five senses eventually.
	Because they wouldn't have any purpose.
	The conscience is the lag between what you think is happening and what's happening.
	It allows you to adjust.
	So then you can say, well, why do only...
	It seems like humans have the most of it, but it wouldn't be any surprise that it's such a superpower that you can imagine what you're going to do before you do it, and then you can make an adjustment after, that that would make you the king of all the animals.
	I'm not sure I fully understood your definition.
	Can you go through it again?
	I really want to understand that.
	The definition would be a continuous process where you predict what's going to happen next.
	So I pick up the pen and I'm going to drop it and I predict it will...
	Exactly like I thought, but a little off.
	A little off.
	So it's the little off that's the consciousness.
	Because then I say, did that matter?
	Do I need to do it differently next time?
	And it's only the difference between everything else doesn't matter.
	So consciousness is only to solve that one thing, the difference between the prediction and the actual.
	And then what do you do about it?
	It exists to solve that.
	Exists to solve that.
	And that would be why humans went to the top of the mountain, because when I observed my dog, she doesn't seem to be thinking about what happens next.
	I think normally when people talk about consciousness or awareness, they tend to use the term synonymously, although maybe they shouldn't.
	But they're more referring to just, like, I'm aware of something.
	Like, I feel it.
	I have this feeling of being here.
	And I can, you know, I have this feeling of experiencing these things.
	I know what's going on around me.
	So if I give my robot the sense of touch or smell, does it have awareness?
	I mean, that's the unanswerable zillion dollar question.
	We're going to have to answer that with AGI. I mean, if an AGI says, hey, I'm conscious, and it's truly an AGI, it passes the Turing test and all that, not the fake one that people do on Twitter with real one, you know, then you would have to take it as face value.
	You would have to say, sure, okay, you're conscious.
	So today I find a programmer, let's say, and I say, build me an artificial person who's going to live in this video game.
	They will imagine that they see things in great resolution, but they won't.
	They will imagine that they have consciousness, but they don't.
	They will believe that they're special, but they're not.
	And in every way, they will react as though they were human beings.
	Now, put them on there and let's talk to them, and you tell me if they're conscious.
	And the answer is...
	Trapped!
	It's going to take you about five seconds before you say, I don't know the difference between you and this guy sitting next to me.
	Yeah, I mean, if that thing, you know, it would have to pass the Turing test first before I would take its claims for consciousness seriously.
	And I have a high bar for the Turing test.
	By Turing test, I mean, you've got to convince me you're alive and creative.
	But if it would convince me it's alive and creative, and it said I'm conscious, and I'd be like, yeah, I guess you're conscious.
	Yeah, we're nowhere close to the Turing test.
	I mean, the easiest one is, can you tell me a joke, but don't make it wordplay?
	And we're done.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I tested on poetry because there isn't much poetry stuff to crawl on the web.
	It's terrible at understanding poetry and parsing the meter and verse and rhyme.
	But I was going to go with this.
	You were talking about the little simulation guy.
	Yeah, I forget.
	It's fine.
	We'll kill him.
	Well, you know, I don't want to take you forever.
	No, I enjoy talking to you.
	You know, it's funny because I get invited into a lot of podcasts, but they're all asked the same boring questions.
	And you make yourself scarce, at least on these one-on-ones.
	So it's good.
	So I want to talk to you.
	But we should do another one.
	You know, it's funny because I want to...
	I have literally...
	After Periscope, we used to have fun in Periscope.
	I remember that, right?
	You and I were probably the two biggest Periscopers for a long time.
	I was number one for a little bit.
	Then you were number one.
	I was number two.
	And then I dropped off.
	And then...
	When Clubhouse launched, I was big on Clubhouse trying to get that same feeling back.
	And I even did my own company, AirChat, trying to get that same feeling back.
	But I think every smart person is starved for conversation with other smart people.
	Um, and so the internet is great for that.
	It helps connect us, but still like this kind of a setup is fantastic.
	I can get to talk to you.
	There's like 20 people I want to talk to and that's it.
	And you're on that list.
	So when something news breaking happens, you know, it's, it's fun to get online and talk.
	It's better than going to a podcast and they ask you the same interview questions, you know, then you answer them to check off like number 1309 check.
	Naval, you're one of the reasons I think I live in a simulation.
	Because if I do, I think there are player characters and NPCs.
	And from the first moment I met you, say, okay, you're a player.
	But beyond that, I've always felt connected to you, no matter where you were or what you were doing.
	Huh.
	You know, what's funny is when I was in college, I don't remember many books and I don't remember many t-shirts.
	But weirdly, like I have, you know, I have memories and photos and people even bring it up to me how I would always have all the Dilbert books and I would always be like making jokes out of them.
	And I used to wear this t-shirt that my girlfriend at the time gave me because I was ignoring her.
	And it basically had Dilbert at night and he was on his computer and it said, while you are sleeping, I'm working on world domination.
	That's what I do.
	I'd be up on my computer all night, like working on figuring out how to make money and be successful.
	And so they got me that t-shirt.
	So I've always felt a deep connection.
	It's weird.
	I mean, yes, maybe the simulation brought us together and it's good.
	I knew I could flip you.
	You just got to flatter me.
	Just appeal to my ego.
	That's right, right.
	You got to go that way.
	Persuasion is, right?
	All right.
	So we'll definitely do this again.
	But I love this.
	It's awesome.
	Anytime.
	Great talking to you, Scott.
	Thanks, everybody.
	All right.

▲