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<s>[INST] When you describe it like that, it's obvious. But when you're first saying in this little circuit that there's going to be one candidate better than uh, than half. That's not obvious. [/INST] It's not </s><s>[INST] funny math. Nice. Okay, so you have this, but ultimately you want your trying to with the voting tree, I don't know if you're trying this, but to have a circuit that's, that's like complete, that's [/INST] small, that </s><s>[INST] achieves the achieves the the same kind of, I mean, the smaller is the four. Look, practically speaking, the lower the cost of running the election of running through of computing the circuit. [/INST] That is true. But actually at this point, the reason the question was interesting is because the there was no good guarantee that the winner of that circuit would have like have beaten a lot of people, Let me give an example, The best known circuit. When we started thinking about this was the circuit called Candidate, one plays against candidate to candidate, three plays against four. And then the winners played against each other. And then by the way, five plays against 67 against eight, the winners play against each other. You understand like a giant binary tree where the binary like a balanced binary tree, it's a balanced binary tree 1234 up, 2020 for everyone going up to find the winner. Beautiful. Well, you know what? There's a system in the world where It could just be that there's a candidate called # one That just beats like 10 other people, Just the 10 that they need to be on their way up and they lose to everyone else. But somehow they would get all the way up. My point is it is possible to outsmart that circuit in one weird way of the world, which makes that circuit a bad one because you want to say I will use this circuit for all elections And you might have a system of inputs that go in there where the winner only beat 10 other people, which is the people they had to beat on the way up. </s><s>[INST] So you want to have a circuit where there's as many like the final result is as strong as possible. Yes. And so what ideas do you have for [/INST] that? So we actually only managed to improve it to square root event. So if n is number of vortices and over two would be the ideal. We gotta we gotta describe the event versus longest. Yeah, exactly. Which is, well that is how it could be, a lot could be, it </s><s>[INST] could be a big improvement, so that's okay. Cool. Is there something you can say with words about what kind of circuit, what that looks like? [/INST] I can give an idea of one of the tools inside, but the actual execution ends up being more complicated. But one of the widgets inside this is building a system where you have like a candidate who plays like the one part of the whole huge huge tree. Is that that same candidate? Let's call them 77 plays against somebody. Let's make up some numbers, let's call the others like letters. So seven plays against a seven is also going to play against me separately. And the winners of each of those who play each other by the way. Seven is also going to play C seven is going to play D. And the winners are going to play each other and the winners are going to play each other. We call this seven against all. Well seven against, like everyone from a bunch of Got it. So there's some </s><s>[INST] nice overlap between the matchups. Yes somehow has a nice [/INST] feature to it. Yes. And I can tell you the nice feature because at the base of this giant tree, at the base of this giant circuit, like this is a widget, you rebuild the things that the widget. So I'm just describing one widget, but in in the base of this widget, you have lots of things which are seven against someone, Seven against someone. Seven against someone. In fact every matchup at the bottom is seven against someone. What that means is if seven actually beat everyone, they were matched up against, well, seven would rise to the top. So one possibility is, if you see a seven emerged from the top, you know, that seven actually beat everyone they were against. On the other hand, if anyone else is on top, let's call it f if f is on top, How did that get there? Well, FB seven on the way at the beginning. So the point is the outcome of this circuit has a certain property. If you see a seven, you know, that the seven actually be the Brazilian people, if you see anyone else at least, you know, they beat seven? </s><s>[INST] Yeah. Then you can prove that has a nice property. That's really interesting. Is there something you can say perhaps going completely outside of what we're talking about, is how we may uh have mathematical ideas of improving the electoral [/INST] Process. That wouldn't know, I can't give you that one. I mean, is </s><s>[INST] there like, do you ever see as um as is there be, do you see as there being a lot of opportunities for improving how we vote? Uh Like from your I don't know if you saw parallels, but you know, it seems like if this actually kind of maps to your sort of covid work, which is there's a network effect, right? It seems like we should be able to apply similar kind of effects of how we decide other things in our lives and and uh one of the big decisions will make is who represents us in government? Do you ever think about like mathematically about those kinds of systems? [/INST] I think a little bit about those because where I went to college, the way we voted for student government was based on this. Is it called ranked choice where you eliminating you eliminate the bottom and there's runoff elections? So that was the first time I ever saw that. And I thought that made sense. The only problem is it doesn't seem so easy to get something that makes sense adopted as the new voting system. That's a whole </s> |
<s>[INST] a group or [/INST] coalition because I think we're intensely coalitional </s><s>[INST] species. [/INST] So there's something about being a group </s><s>[INST] member. So [/INST] like just even, </s><s>[INST] I don't know if you're in sports, [/INST] if your team wins, you feel that somehow </s><s>[INST] that's your part [/INST] of that. Um </s><s>[INST] uh and but this goes [/INST] for both the positive and the </s><s>[INST] and the [/INST] darker sides of things. So so for example, warfare, you see these men who have been through a war </s><s>[INST] together and [/INST] who where their </s><s>[INST] lives have depended [/INST] on each other and </s><s>[INST] they're like [/INST] best friends for for </s><s>[INST] life and have a bond [/INST] that is </s><s>[INST] stronger [/INST] than most </s><s>[INST] people form with [/INST] a friend ever in their life because they've been through these life or death </s><s>[INST] experiences. [/INST] And so, </s><s>[INST] you know, I [/INST] wouldn't want to um you know, it doesn't cause </s><s>[INST] me to want to charge off and [/INST] being in </s><s>[INST] war, but [/INST] but there are some </s><s>[INST] types of adaptations, [/INST] even like warfare adaptations </s><s>[INST] were in principle. [/INST] I would like to experience </s><s>[INST] them, I would like to [/INST] experience and and never will. But uh you know, </s><s>[INST] what is it like [/INST] to be in a coalition where you are in combat with another coalition and not not in modern warfare because it's it's horrible, but where your life is in danger, where your life, you </s><s>[INST] depend for your [/INST] life on other people and they're depending for their life on you. And there's </s><s>[INST] this kind of [/INST] coalitional solidarity that is um is unique now. Um </s><s>[INST] another [/INST] thing that of course I'll never </s><s>[INST] be able to experience [/INST] this is </s><s>[INST] murder because I'm never going to murder anybody. [/INST] Okay, But but studying homicidal ideation really gave me </s><s>[INST] uh it wasn't it was [/INST] an eye opener, it was as interesting as studying sexual </s><s>[INST] fantasies because the [/INST] if you ask what triggers homicidal </s><s>[INST] thoughts, ideas Asia most people [/INST] have had them. Uh and uh and I because I asked this question I've ever thought </s><s>[INST] about killing someone. And [/INST] and I get that </s><s>[INST] 91% of men say yes, about 84% of women [/INST] say no. And even when I talk to people, they </s><s>[INST] say uh one [/INST] On one, they say, Oh no, </s><s>[INST] I've never thought of killing someone. And what kind of person [/INST] do you think I am? And </s><s>[INST] Then 10 minutes later I say [/INST] actually </s><s>[INST] there was this [/INST] one time when </s><s>[INST] I got this [/INST] guy humiliated </s><s>[INST] me in public. And I, you know, [/INST] and and so but I think </s><s>[INST] um thoughts [/INST] about killing um homicide ideation and they're very </s><s>[INST] predictable from an evolutionary [/INST] perspective, if you </s><s>[INST] like, we mentioned mate poachers [/INST] earlier and uh </s><s>[INST] infidelity and there are [/INST] other things, but uh things like that, being humiliated in in public </s><s>[INST] status loss, you [/INST] know, do trigger </s><s>[INST] homicidal thoughts. [/INST] So, so anyway, I don't go off too much on that. But I guess what I'm saying in answer to your question is </s><s>[INST] is [/INST] experiencing </s><s>[INST] the rich array [/INST] of um complex psychology that we have </s><s>[INST] within us, [/INST] most of which </s><s>[INST] remains [/INST] un activated and some of which will never be experienced. Um like, you know, </s><s>[INST] there's some people who will [/INST] never never experienced love for example because of, you </s><s>[INST] know, cultural [/INST] restrictions or or or whatever. And so to me that that's part of the meaning of </s><s>[INST] life. So that's that's so [/INST] beautifully put the saying that they're </s><s>[INST] kind of dormant inactivated [/INST] aspects of </s><s>[INST] the [/INST] uh sort </s><s>[INST] of the psychological mechanisms. So we have the [/INST] capacity to experience a </s><s>[INST] bunch of stuff. [/INST] It's almost like in </s><s>[INST] video games you can unlock levels and so [/INST] on. And </s><s>[INST] so this is [/INST] basically </s><s>[INST] there's all of these things that are [/INST] dormant in our mind </s><s>[INST] that we have the capacity [/INST] to experience. And part of </s><s>[INST] the meaning is to try [/INST] to experience </s><s>[INST] um [/INST] as many of them </s><s>[INST] or uh as many new ones novel for [/INST] the particular society or maybe the </s><s>[INST] entirety of human civilization. Who knows? Psychedelic drugs like you said violence uh experiences that might have to do [/INST] with brain computer interfaces. </s><s>[INST] The interaction with all [/INST] of those are experiences. And </s><s>[INST] so the question is what is the [/INST] ceiling? What are like </s><s>[INST] how infinite or nearly infinite is the capacity of the human [/INST] mind to experience all those </s><s>[INST] things and we'll get to uh we'll get to discover those things. [/INST] So um I'm glad you never got a chance and never will </s><s>[INST] get a chance to murder. [/INST] But I just want to </s><s>[INST] put on record that [/INST] uh </s><s>[INST] um you know that's definitely something on my bucket [/INST] list. Why do you think </s><s>[INST] I dress like this [/INST] anyway? </s><s>[INST] Um [/INST] There is something appealing like one of my favorite movies is leon the professional. </s><s>[INST] I love that movie. What is that? [/INST] Why is that so excited? </s><s>[INST] Listen maybe it's in the O. C. D. Thing [/INST] like </s><s>[INST] killing other bad guys. No Children [/INST] no </s><s>[INST] Children also loving [/INST] that with uh </s><s>[INST] Natalie Portman incredible actress. Uh also the complex [/INST] whatever that is. The </s><s>[INST] fatherly or romantic whatever that is like [/INST] Lolita type of thing. </s><s>[INST] I don't know what I've never like uh read a PhD thesis on that interpretation of that movie. But that's [/INST] a fascinating one. </s><s>[INST] Violence and violence and love [/INST] and sex. That's </s><s>[INST] what makes [/INST] uh life worth </s><s>[INST] living. That's what makes it fun. David, [/INST] you're an incredible person, </s><s>[INST] incredible scientists. It's a huge honor to share a city [/INST] with you or I'm the visitor. </s><s>[INST] You own this place. You run this place. [/INST] Why don't we </s><s>[INST] both we both live here now. Yeah and uh [/INST] it's been great talking to. It's a great </s><s>[INST] honor for me. Um I mentioned [/INST] I've followed your </s><s>[INST] podcast for a long [/INST] long time now and </s><s>[INST] tremendously [/INST] enjoy your interviews and you have a </s><s>[INST] very um [/INST] inquisitive inviting style that brings out things in </s><s>[INST] your guests which I think is [/INST] fantastic, </s><s>[INST] activates all those [/INST] dormant psychological </s><s>[INST] mechanisms. That's [/INST] what that's what life </s><s>[INST] that's what conversation is all about. Thank you for talking today. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with David Buss [/INST] to support this </s> |
<s>[INST] time stamps and you can audit at least enough to know that the ownership is right. But the way... if you think about physics and the universe, the universe has figured out a way to update the ledger of physics in a way where, like, a lot of people can be updating it and it stays consistent. Is there something you can say about the task of updating the ledger when a bunch of people [/INST] are trying to do it, or a bunch of entities are trying to do it? Well, yeah, that's the whole point of a consensus algorithm. So whatever ledger you're running, there has to be some mechanism to decide who's in charge. That's what proof of work does and proof of stake does and all these other systems. And you break them down to basically three steps. And so we'll use Eve for kind of step number one. Hi Eve, how are you doing? And we're going to use Wally for step number two. And I need the monkey. </s><s>[INST] Give me the monkey doing it. What's the monkey's name? [/INST] Daisy Daisy, the monkey. Okay. I like Daisy. </s><s>[INST] Daisy is a very confused monkey. [/INST] It's pondering its own mortality, just to. Right? And so anyway, the first step is all about basically deciding who's in charge for that moment. the blockchain is just a sequence of events. The heart has to beat, the metronome has to click. So somebody has to be in charge. And so generally you have this notion of a resource. So there's some pool of resource out there and it can be a token. And in that case, it's a plutocratic system. And that's what proof of stake does, or it can be computation, but there can be other resources, but computation is what proof of work does. And so it makes so many hashes and then eventually somebody wins and that person wins is now the person who basically gets to decide the order of transactions and put them all together from their perspective in the system. Then once that person wins, they'll make the block, that's step two, and after it's made, transmit it and it gets validated and accepted. So actually it's quite fortuitous, you have the magnifying glass, because at this stage people are trying to decide is what I'm looking at correct or not. Now, there are other ways to potentially conceive of this, but this particular model gives you a kind of a way of thinking of all consensus algorithms in one setting. You can be Algorand, you can be a classic BFT protocol, you can be Paxos, you can be Raft, you can be proof of work, you can be proof of stake. It's always the same idea. You have to find someone or some group to be in charge, they'll reach a consensus on order, they have to then do some work, change the state of the system, update it, and then the network has to accept that that's valid. So even if this process works well, this side will say, oh, you created a Bitcoin out of thin air, you're not allowed to do that. So that's rejected. Okay, so there's checks and balances and guards all the way through. There's a meta question of fairness in all of this. So the proof of work people, they're kind of a cult and they say that this is the only truth and everything out here or any other resource is not legitimate or valid. And there's not a lot of evidence to that, but that's what they believe. The proof of stake people, the downside and weakness they have is it's a plutocratic model. The more ownership of the system you have, the more control you have over that system. And it suffers from the same thing the shareholder models suffer from, whereas you may maximize short-term gain over the long-term viability of the system. So a really cool question is, can you build systems that are multi-resource? So instead of just pooling from one resource to select who wins this 25% of the time and maybe this 25%, you can do that. In fact, the cryptocurrency space did that a long time ago. There was a cryptocurrency called Peercoin in 2011, and it was a hybrid proof-of-work proof-of-stake. So some of the blocks were made with the token ownership distribution, and some of the blocks were made with proof-of-work, but, you could keep adding, you could put in like, hey, I want hard disk, and my thinking, you can put Permicoin in, or something like that, so create incentive for hard drives, and then you could say, oh no, I wanna do, like, a human system, like a proof-of-merit. Oh my God, now we're up to four. And you just keep adding. And each of these pools will have different adherence and actors, </s><s>[INST] and then you can actually balance out the whole thing. So you're supposed to having one call, you have many cults. Exactly. [/INST] And they argue. Exactly. And they argue. And the cults argue with each other </s><s>[INST] and we call that a government. By the way, not all cults are bad. [/INST] Physics is a cult too. </s><s>[INST] And it's sometimes bad. It's honest at least. Nature is a cult. Yes. Nature is metal. Yes. [/INST] Check out the Instagram. Yes, yes. Check out the Instagram. So that's really the crux of it. You do you have a ledger and the ledger is just all about saying, hey, we need to put some stuff in here. And once it's put in here, you can't turn it back. And you know when it was put in and everybody can see it or some group can see it. And then you need to pick somebody to modify that. So all this chaos will happen. All these transactions are all around the world and our perception of them are different. There's a beautiful paper from Lamport that kind of talks about this from the 70s. It's like one of the most classic papers ever in computer science, I think it's been cited like 50,000 times or something like that. It's crazy paper. But basically you have to figure out, okay, well, somebody has to be in charge. Some group has to be in charge. You can do it with a meritocratic, hashocratic computation thing. You can say, well, if you have coins, 25% of supply, 25% of the time on average, you'll be selected to have the right to do this or give it to somebody else. Or you could search for other resources and they can even be human resources, like some notion of merit or social benefit. Maybe you get a token for that and you can wait it with these other systems. And that's where kind of where everything's going. We're getting to a point where we've really optimized all the properties here. We've proven all these nice things about it. And there's a lot of competition to basically build like the perfect proof of stake system, whether you're Polkadot or Algorand or any of these other guys. But now the next step is say, well, why do we just have one? We should have multiple resources. And the point is each of these has different trade-off profiles. And so they balance each other and you end up building a much more resilient system. </s> |
<s>[INST] and so on and so forth and forth. So I love thinking about that distribution that you mentioned, and here's where I can be my usual ridiculous self. And I sometimes think about that army of sperm cells, however many hundreds of thousands there are. And I kind of think of all the possibilities there because there's a lot of variation and one gets to win. Is that- It's not a random one. Is it a totally ridiculous way to think about- [/INST] No, not at all. Is that- It's not a random one. So I would say evolutionarily, we are a very slow evolving species. Basically, the generations of humans are a terrible way to do selection. What you need is processes that allow you to do selection in a smaller, tighter loop. And part of what, if you look at our immune system, for example, it evolves at a much faster pace than humans evolve because there is actually an evolutionary process that happens within our immune cells. As they're dividing, there's basically VDJA recombination that basically creates this extraordinary wealth of antibodies and antigens against the environment. And basically all these antibodies are now recognizing all these antigens from the environment, and they send signals back that cause these cells that recognize the non-self to multiply. So that basically means that even though viruses evolve at millions of times faster than we are, we can still have a component of ourselves, which is environmentally facing, which is sort of evolving at not the same scale, but very rapid pace. Sperm expresses perhaps the most proteins of any cell in the body. And part of the thought is that this might just be a way to check that the sperm is intact. In other words, if you waited until that human has a liver and starts eating solid food, and sort of filtrates away, or kidneys or stomach, et cetera, basically if you waited until these mutations manifest late, late in life, then you would end up not failing fast and you would end up with a lot of failed pregnancies and a lot of later onset psychiatric illnesses, et cetera. If instead you basically express all of these genes at the sperm level, anything misform that basically caused the sperm to cripple, then you have at least on the male side, the ability to exclude some of those mutations. And on the female side, as the egg develops, there's probably a similar process where you could sort of weed out eggs that are just not carrying beneficial mutations, or at least are carrying highly detrimental mutations. So you can basically think of the evolutionary process in a nested loop, basically, where there's an inner loop where you get many, many more iterations to run, and then there's an outer loop that moves at a much slower pace. And going back to the next step of evolution of possibly designing systems that we can use to sort of compliment our own biology or to sort of eradicate disease and you name it, or at least mitigate some of the, I don't know, psychiatric illnesses, neurodegenerative disorders, et cetera. You can basically, and also metabolic, immune, cancer, you name it, simply engineering these mutations from rational design might be very inefficient. If instead you have an evolutionary loop where you're kind of growing neurons on a dish and you're exploring evolutionary space and you're sort of shaping that one protein to be better adapt that sort of, I don't know, recognizing light or communicating with other neurons, et cetera, you can basically have a smaller evolutionary loop that you can run thousands of times faster than the speed it would take to evolve humans for another million years. So I think it's important to think about sort of this evolvability as a set of nested structures that allow you to sort of test many more combinations </s><s>[INST] but in a more fixed setting. Yeah, that's fascinating that the mechanism there is for sperm to express proteins to create a testing ground early on [/INST] so that the failed designs don't make it. Yeah, I mean, in design of engineering systems, fail fast is one of the principles you learn. You assert something. Why do you assert that? Because if that something ain't right, you better crash now than sort of let it crash at an unexpected time and in a way you can think of it as like 20,000 assert functions. Assert, protein can fold. Assert, protein can fold. </s><s>[INST] And if any of them fail, that sperm is gone. Well, I just like the fact that I'm the winning sperm. [/INST] I'm the result of the winning, winning sperm. I'm the result of the hashtag winning. My wife always plays me this French song that actually sings about that. It's like, you know, remember in life, we were all the first one time. </s><s>[INST] So at least one time you were the first. I should mention this as a brief tangent back to the place where we came from, which is the base model that I mentioned for OpenAI, which is before the reinforcement learning with human feedback. And you kind of give this metaphor of it being kind of [/INST] like a psychiatric hospital. I like that because it's basically all of these different angles at once. You basically have the more extreme versions of human psyche. </s><s>[INST] So the interesting thing is, well, I've talked with folks in OpenAI quite a lot, and they say it's extremely difficult to work with that model. Yeah, kind of like it's extremely difficult to work with some humans. The parallels there are very interesting because once you run the alignment process, it's much easier to interact with it, but it makes you wonder what the capacity, what the underlying capability of the human psyche is in the same way that what is the underlying capability [/INST] of a large language model? And remember earlier when I was basically saying that part of the reason why it's so prompt malleable is because of that alignment problem, that alignment work. It's kind of nice that the engineers at OpenAI have the same interpretation that in fact it is that. And this whole concept is easier to work with. I wish that we could work with more diverse humans in a way, and sort of that's one of the possibilities that I see with the advent of these large language models. The fact that it gives us the chance to both dial down friends of ours that we can't interpret or that are just too edgy to sort of really truly interact with, where you could have a real time translator. Just the same way that you can translate English to Japanese or Chinese or Korean by real time adaptation. You could basically suddenly have a conversation with your favorite extremist on either side of the spectrum </s> |
<s>[INST] Is it possible to have your cake and eat it too? Is it possible to have the depth of a religious life without believing in God? Like how do you make sense of eric? Weinstein's devout life within the tradition? I mean, I honestly think he believes in God, but doesn't believe in God and it's oscillating, like it's a quantum mechanical system of some sort [/INST] Schrodinger's God. Um so I think that he would probably agree with what Ellie Wiesel said that that a jew can can be angry at God or be disbelieving of God, but is not allowed to be indifferent to God and I think eric is not indifferent to God. Um and and it's different than Christianity, I've had this conversation many times because you can be very jewish and have deep doubts about theological questions because Judaism isn't a religion, it's a religious family, and so you're born jewish, like if I said to you tomorrow, if I was christian and I said, oh I believe in jesus today and then tomorrow, I didn't, I'm not christian anymore, but if tomorrow I said I don't believe all this stuff, I'm still jewish, so it's a more complicated um system. Having said that though, I think it's very hard to sustain over generations without some belief that the source of it is beyond ourselves and and in that sense, as in many others, eric is unique. </s><s>[INST] Well, he was actually making that claim that we need faith to propagate this tradition through the generations. So without that the traditions crumble, it's a very interesting idea, very interesting argument for developed faith, which is, it's a thing, it's a glue that holds the tradition together, otherwise, like traditions fall apart, so you can't have the intensity um of that tradition, I mean on the other hand, you do see tradition, I mean, thanksgiving one of my favorite. [/INST] So I would say traditions that are demanding fall apart traditions that that require Turkey might not fall apart, But traditions that are, that make demands of you that are counter cultural or are hard, they fall apart. I </s><s>[INST] think I need to introduce you to some thanksgiving dinners that are quite demanding getting the family together. [/INST] There's a first of all, I'm a vegetarian, so it's tough to have at thanksgiving dinner, but there's a, there's a comedian and Kathy Landesman who one year I heard this on the radio and it stuck with me, she said that uh that holidays are a chance to renew your resentments of fresh, you know, and that's basically what people do with their families. It's like I'm gonna </s><s>[INST] go home [/INST] and fight with the uncle again this year, </s><s>[INST] I apologize to take a dark turn. But you mentioned Elie Wiesel, I recently saw a picture of Elie Wiesel when he was in the camp when he was liberated. [/INST] For </s><s>[INST] some reason that hit hard. Like, you know, I've seen pictures in concentration camps of people, I don't know or whose words I haven't really felt and gone through. But for some reason like here's just a normal person, like a normal body um laying there that just something that, that was him, [/INST] I've seen it, it's a and, and you see you can see his face, but at the same time you see that this is animation and I think what's so disturbing about it is exactly what you were saying is I've seen 1000 people like this and I know this one and I know what he became. So what about all those other people who look exactly like him, who didn't make it out of the camp? </s><s>[INST] You know, maybe it's projection, but it seemed like this perhaps is also just combining with maths. Um search for meaning is it seemed like it was a regular day for them in the picture. It didn't seem like, I mean, I'm not sure what I expect to see what suffering looks like, but it's almost like there's no celebration. [/INST] I've never seen a picture of actually liberation be celebratory. It's true, It's really true. </s><s>[INST] So what do you make sense? And I apologize to take a step into that moment in history? How does how do you make sense of the holocaust that of Nazi Germany that such things could be committed by human beings to each other? Is it religion? Is it the thirst for power? Is it the madness of crowds somehow carrying us forward? [/INST] I mean for me it's multi causal, I don't think there's one reason. So one of the things, especially there has to do with the special nature of anti Semitism, which is let's put that to one side for the moment. The second is I think human beings are fundamentally split. They are mostly good except when put under certain pressures. My first explanation for hatreds is as follows, go to a playground, what happens when a new kid comes on the playground Did the other kids say, oh, let's go share our toys with the new kid. No, they say who is that stranger? And let's go get him because otherness is built into our genetic, I mean we're tribal by nature and we see people form tribes all the time of different kinds. Um, I asked you before if you were a chess player and when I was a kid and playing in tournaments and I didn't do it for that long and I didn't do it that well. But when I was, it was like the whole world was divided into people who could play chess and people who couldn't play chess, which is ridiculous. If you think about it as though that's the way you divide the world. But we, we tend to do that. And the jews were always the identifiable. Other. There were Frenchmen and jews, there were Russians and jews, there were Germans and jews and the great blessing of America is that there is no identifiable other quite that way is that there's all these minorities and no, there's not an american and a something. Um, but once you have that identifiable other and you have a long history of blaming that identifiable other for all the ills that befall you of </s> |
<s>[INST] and we'll talk about the sort of the biggest picture view of it all. Uh But let me just ask in terms of your worries of if you look 100 years from now, we're in the middle of what is now a natural pandemic that from the looks of it, unfortunately, it's not as bad as it could have possibly been. If you look at the spanish flu, if you look at the history of pandemics, if you look at all the possible pandemics that could have been that that folks like Bill Gates are exceptionally terrified about. We've I know many people are suffering, but it's it's better than it could have been. Uh So now we're talking about nuclear weapons in terms of existential threats to us as sinful humans. What worries you the most? Is it nuclear weapons? Is it natural pandemics engineered pandemics, nanotechnology? In my field of artificial intelligence, [/INST] some people are </s><s>[INST] afraid of uh killer robots. [/INST] And is </s><s>[INST] there, do you think in those existential terms uh do any aspect to any of those things where you [/INST] I am certainly not confident that my Children and grandchildren will experience the benefits of civilization that I have enjoyed. I think it's possible for our civilizations to break down catastrophically. Um I also think that it's possible for our civilizations to break down progressively and I think they will, if we continue to have the explosion of population on the planet that we currently have. I mean, it's quite, it's quite wrong to think of our problems as mostly being CO two. If we can just solve CO two, then we can go on having this, you know, continually expanding economy everywhere in the world. Of course, you can't do that okay. I mean, there is a finite, you know, bearing capacity of our </s><s>[INST] planet and the resources of our [/INST] planet on the resources of our planet and, and we can't continue to do that. So, I think there are lots of technical reasons why, um, a continually expanding economy and, and, and civilization is impossible. And therefore, um, actually, I'm as much nervous about the fact that our population is eight billion or something right now worldwide as I am about the fact that, you know, a few million people would be would be killed by covid 19. I mean, I don't want to be callous about this, but from the big picture, it seems like that's much more of a problem. Overpopulation. People not dying is ultimately more of a problem, uh, than people dying. Um, so, you know, that probably sounds incredibly callous tea or your listeners. But I think it's simply, you know, a sober assessment of the of the situation. </s><s>[INST] Is there, is there a ways from the way those eight billion or seven billion or whatever the number is live that could make it sustainable? Uh, you know, because you've kind of implied there's a kind of, uh, we have, especially in the West, this kind of capitalist view of really consuming a lot of resources, Is there a way to like if you could change one thing or a few things, what would you change to make this life, make it more likely that your grandchildren have a better life than you? [/INST] Well, okay, so let's talk a bit about energy because that's something I know a lot, a lot about having thought about it most of my career In order to reach Steady State Co two level. Okay, that's acceptable. In terms of global climate change and so on and so forth, we need to reduce our carbon emissions by at least a factor of 10 worldwide. Okay, What's more, you know, um, the average energy consumption and hence CO two emission of people in the world is less than 1/10 of what we per capita of them? What we have in the West in America and europe and so forth. So, if you have in mind some utopia in the future, where we've reached a sustainable use of energy and we've also reached a situation in which there is far less inequity in the world in the sense that people have shared the energy resources more uniformly, Then what, what that is equivalent to would be to reduce the co two emissions in Western economies, Not by a factor of 10, but by a factor of 100 in other words, has to go down to 1% of what it is now. Okay, so, you know, when people talk about Uh you know, let's use natural gas because you know, maybe it only uses 60% of the energy of coal. It's complete nonsense. That's not not even scratching the surface of what we would need to do. So, you know, is that going to be feasible? I I very much doubt it. And therefore I actually doubt that we can reach um a level of energy um uh fossil energy use. That is 1% of the current use in the West without totally dramatic changes either in, you know, our society, our use of energy and so forth. Which actually of course is much of that. Energy is used for producing food and so on and so forth. So it's actually not so obvious that we can we can we can cut down our energy usage by that factor or we've got to reduce the human population population. </s><s>[INST] So you run up against that number that's increasing still. Uh And you don't think that [/INST] could be as depressing? No, </s><s>[INST] it's it's not. Uh it's not it's not it's not depressing. It's uh it's difficult. Like many truths are uh do you do you have a hope that there could be a technological solution [/INST] in short. No, there is no technological solution to, for example, for population control. I mean we have the technology just you know, to prevent ourselves bearing Children. That's not a problem. Technologies in okay solved the challenge is society the challenge is human choices, the challenges almost entirely human and sociological, not technology, not technology. And when people thought talk about energy, they say they think that there's some kind of technological magic bullet for this, but there isn't okay and there isn't for the reasons I just mentioned not because it's obvious there isn't, but actually there isn't. Uh and and in in any case um that it's true of energy, it's true of pollution. It's true of human population is true of most of the big challenges in our society are not scientific or technological challenges their human sociological challenges. And that's why I think it's a terrible mistake. Um even for folks like me who work at, you know, well the high temple of science and technology in America and maybe in the galaxy, I mean, you know, it's </s> |
<s>[INST] So yeah, the natural state of the human body with the immune system and all the different parts he wants to be healthy and it's really damn good at being healthy. But sometimes it breaks down, let's understand how it breaks down. So what are the five ways that you list that are the roots of war? [/INST] Yeah. So I mean they're kind of like buckets so there's sort of things that rhyme right? You know, because it's not all the same. There's like lots of reasons to go to where there's this great line. You know there's a reason for every war and award for every reason and that's true and it's kind of overwhelming right? And and and it's overwhelming for a lot of people was overwhelming for me for a lot of time. And I think I think one of the gifts of this of social sciences actually people have started to organize this for us and I just tried to organize it like a tiny bit better </s><s>[INST] buckets that rhyme [/INST] buckets economical for </s><s>[INST] right [/INST] handed metaphors. So so the idea is that like that basic instead of like something overrides these incentives. And I guess I was saying there's five ways there they get override it and three are called strategic like they're kind of logical their circumstances that um and and and this is their sort of strategic strategy is like the game theory is you could use those two things interchangeably, but but game theory is sort of making it sound more complicated, I think, than it is. It's basically saying that there's times when this is like the optimal choice because of circumstances. And and and one of them is when people who are deciding don't bear those costs. So that's or maybe even have a private incentive that's going to that's that's if they don't, if they're ignoring the cost, then maybe the costs of war are not so material, uh, that's a contributing factor. Another is just there's uncertainty and we can talk about that. But there's just the absence of information means that it actually there's circumstances where it's your best choice to attack. There's this thing that political economists call commitment problems, which are basically saying there's some big power shift that you can avoid by attacking now. So it's like a dynamic incentive. It's sort of saying, well, in order to keep something from happening in the future, I can attack now. And because of the structure of incentives, it actually makes sense for me, even the words in theory, uh, really costly or it is really costly nonetheless. And then there's these sort of human things. One is a little bit like just war, one sort of thing. There's like ideologies or principles or things we value that way against those costs, like Exterminating the heretical idea or standing up for a principle might be so valuable to me that I'm willing to use violence even if it's costly and there's nothing irrational about that. And then the fifth bucket is all of the irrationality is all the passions and all of the most importantly, I think like misperceptions the way we get like we basically make wrong calculations about whether or not war is the right decision. We get, we miss, we misunderstand or misjudge our enemy or mistrust ourselves. </s><s>[INST] So if you put all those things into buckets, so how much can it be modeled in a, in a simple game theoretic way and how much of it is a giant human mess. [/INST] So four of those five are really on some level. Easy to think strategically and model in a simple way. Um, in the sense that any of us can do it right. We we do this all the time. You know, think of like bargaining in the market for a carpet or something or whatever you bargained for. You're thinking a few steps ahead about what your opponent is going to do and you stake out a high price, like a low price and the seller stakes out a high price and you might both say, oh I refuse to like I could never accept that. And there's all this sort of cheap talk. Um, but you kind of understand where you're going and it's efficient to like find a deal and, and by the market by the carpet eventually. Um, so we all understand this like game theory in the strategy, I think intuitively, or maybe even a closer example is like suppose, I don't know, you have a tenant, you need to evict or anyone normal, like kind of legal or not. It's not yet a legal dispute, right? Like we just have a dispute with a neighbor or somebody else. Most of us don't, I'm going to court, going to court is like the war option. That's the costly thing that just ought to be able to avoid. We ought to be able to find something between ourselves that doesn't, you know, require this hiring lawyers and long drawn out trial and most of the time we do, right? And so, so we all understand that incentives and then four of those five buckets. So everything except all the irrational and the misperceptions are really easy to model then from a technical standpoint, it's actually pretty tricky to model the misperceptions and I'm not a game theorist. And so I'm more channeling my colleagues to do this and what I know. Um, but but it's not rocket science. I mean, I think that's what I, that's trying to, what I try to lay out in the book is like there's this, all this, all these ideas out there that that can actually help us just make sense of all these wars. Um, and just bring some order to the morass of reasons </s> |
<s>[INST] So that's actually a strong signal when there's no variation. That's so fast. [/INST] Exactly, genes that have very little variation are hugely important. You can actually rank the importance of genes based on how little variation they have and those genes that have very little variation. But no association with disease. That's a very good metric to say, oh, that's probably developmental gene because we're not good at measuring those prototypes. So it's jeans that you can tell evolution has excluded mutations from, but yet we can't see them associated with anything that we can measure nowadays. It's probably early embryonic, lethal. </s><s>[INST] What are all the words you just said early embryonic, [/INST] What lethal meaning meaning that you don't have that guy. </s><s>[INST] Okay, there's a bunch of stuff that is required for a stable functional organism across the board for our entire [/INST] for for </s><s>[INST] entire species. I guess [/INST] if you look at sperm, it expresses thousands of proteins. Does sperm actually need thousands of proteins? No, but it's probably just testing them. So my speculation is that misfolding of these proteins is an early test for failure. So the out of the millions of sperm that are possible, you select the subset that are just not grossly misfolding thousands of proteins. </s><s>[INST] So it's kind of an assert that this is folded correctly. Yeah. This just because [/INST] if this little </s><s>[INST] thing about the folding of approaching is incorrect, [/INST] that probably </s><s>[INST] means somewhere down the line, there's a bigger [/INST] issue. That's exactly right to fail fast. So basically if you look at the mammalian investment in a new born, that investment is enormous in terms of resources. So mammals have basically evolved mechanisms for fail fast. We're basically in those early months of development. I mean it's horrendous of course, at a personal level when you lose a your future child. But in some ways there's so little hope for that child to develop and sort of make it through the remaining months that sort of fail fast is probably a good evolutionary principle for mammals. And of course humans have a lot of medical resources that you can give those Children a chance. And you know, we have so much more success in giving folks, we'll have these strong carrier mutations a chance. But if they're not even making it through the first three months, we're not going to see them. So that's why when we, when we say, what are the most important genes to focus on? The ones that have a strong effect mutation or the ones that have a weak effect mutation? Well, you know, the jury might be out because the ones that have a strong effect mutation are basically, you know, not mattering as much the ones that only have weak effect mutations by understanding through genetics that they have a weak effect mutation and understanding that they have a causal role in the disease. We can then say, Okay, great evolution has only tolerated a 2% change in that gene Pharmaceutically. I can go in and induce a 70% change in the gene and maybe I will poke another hole at the bathtub that was not easy to control in, you know, many of the other sort of strong effect genetic variants. So, </s><s>[INST] okay, so there's this beautiful map of uh, across the population of things that you're saying, strong and weak effects or stuff with a lot of mutations and stuff with little mutations with no mutations and you have this map and lays out the puzzle. [/INST] Yeah. So, so when I say strong effect, I mean at the level of individual mutations. So, so basically jeans where So so you have to think of first the effect of the gene on the disease, remember how it was sort of painting that map earlier from genetics all the way to phenotype. That gene can have a strong effect on the disease. But the genetic variant might have a weak effect on the gene. So basically when you ask, what is the effect of that genetic variant on the disease? It could be that that genetic variant impacts the gene by a lot and then the gene impacts the disease by a little or it could be that the genetic variants impacts the gene pay a little and then the gene impacts the disease by a lot. So what we care about is genes that impact the disease a lot. But genetics gives us the full equation. And what I would argue is if we couple the genetics with expression variation to basically ask what genes change by a lot and you know, which genes correlate with disease by a lot. Even if the genetic variants change them by a little then that those are the best places to intervene. Those are the best places where pharmaceutically if I have even a modest effect, I will have a strong effect on the disease. Whereas those genetic variants that have a huge effect on the disease. I might not be able to change that gene by this much without affecting all kinds of other things, </s><s>[INST] interesting. So, you're okay. So that's what we're looking at and what have we been able to find in terms of which disease could be helped [/INST] again and don't get me started. This is um, we have found so much our understanding of disease has changed so dramatically with genetics. I mean places that we had no idea would be involved. So one of the worst things about my genome is that I have a genetic predisposition to age related macular degeneration. AMG. So it's a form of blindness that causes you to lose the central part of your vision progressively as you grow older. My increased risk is fairly small. I have an 8% chance. You only have a 6% chance. </s><s>[INST] You know, I'm an [/INST] average </s> |
<s>[INST] him. Conversation like any other. Yeah. Between two friends. [/INST] He hugs me. Yeah. Before I go, I have something to warm up. I can't remember what. And he says, hey, in my ear, I know what you do for a living. It's not a safe place for you to be. And I walk off. A few moments later, the army showed up, and you could feel the amount of rounds going off from two blocks away. We came back with our guys, and it was over. So he didn't survive that? I looked through the bodies, and the cars that were left, you know, there was bodies all over the place. </s><s>[INST] People left there, the bodies. [/INST] It was a mess that spent, like, an hour looking for him. The only way I could recognize him was his hair. I stayed with his body all night. There's a bridge in Tijuana that goes over the river in a place called La Mesa, and that's where the forensic offices were. His body was taken there, and I stayed with his body until it was released. I told his family about it because I knew them, and that aspect of, you know, us versus them, or they're the enemy, and you're like that, and my mom told me those words, nobody's against you. They're just for themselves, so don't make the mistake of dehumanizing anybody. And those roles could have been easily reversed. I could have been shot in the face there. That aspect of conflict brings where the bad guys, good guys, you know, heroes, villains, you know, there's an innocence to that that goes away. Is your mom still with us? No. Almost three weeks before I decided to quit, she passed away. Did that have a role to play? A major one. After I got done on the protection detail with the governor, like everything down there, again, the whole cycle, you know, he got his turn. So when he went away, you know, politics change, and down there, basically, if you're a gubernatorial candidate, you have either a friend, a friend of a friend or a family member be the head bodyguard guy, and the guy that won the elections had his head bodyguard guy already there. So all of us were sent back to whatever we came from. So I went back to work on the streets. I was back on the operations group. I was working with the sub director directly with him, basically, back on the ground doing the stuff that I was doing before that job. We were moving away from the successes that had been had by people like Lazola when they were in charge of that whole process to people that I used to work with. Some of the only successes in that counter push against cartels in Mexico, and you can kind of like, it's documented, you can read about it out there, a bunch of people wrote papers on it. Some of the only successes were had by Lazola and the places where he had leadership. He not only pacified Tijuana, he also did the same in Juarez. He was sent to be the police chief in Juarez too. But politics change and, you know, heroes become villains. A lot of people started calling him a villain because of his unorthodox approach and human rights violations and all of this type of stuff kind of come through the forefront. And people forgot, you know, people forgot what it took to get Tijuana off the most dangerous city list on the planet. And people were vilified, people like him. And the police force that I was a part of started getting compromised. A lot of the things that were put forth to try and keep us honest. There was a program, they had these centers called C3s. They would go there every year, you would get your financials checked, you would get a physical, psychological evaluation, you would get a polygraph exam done on you, all of the works. They'd try and see if you were somebody doing something wrong. And all of that was canceled because it violated your human rights if you get fired from a job because of a failed polygraph exam, because that was not an actual admissible way of firing somebody. So all of a sudden you had people that were known cartel compromised people that were fired five, six years ago, showing back up to work with their back paid and everything. So this started happening and I quickly realized that it was going to be hard to stay there. I was driving home from work and I got a call from my brother that my mom had been going through some health issues that had turned into psychiatric issues. So we were basically taking turns trying to take care of her, locking the door so she wouldn't wander off and stuff like that. So not only was I dealing with the job on the street, but I was dealing with that. And also I had a two-year-old and a marriage that was difficult at that time. So I was trying to figure all these things out. I made it more difficult by your job. It's not a financially secure job, you know, and the pressures that it has and the odd hours and all that made it really hard. And then all of a sudden my brother calls me and tells me that let's go to the hospital with my mom. Something happened to my mom. It wasn't my turn to watch her, so I felt pretty shitty about that. I got to the hospital and the doctors, you know, came out and told us that she was gone. It was a massive heart attack. She had a pacemaker by then, so she was gone. She was in her sixties, so, you know, we kind of expected something, but not, you know, that was like hard for me. She was my center. She was going to be the one that I would ask for advice as far as work, you know, as fast as she leaves or not. The ground was removed from underneath. There was nobody, there was, yeah, there's nothing underneath me. I get three days off work. That's what they gave me. And I'm trying to grieve as I go back to work. Dark shit crosses my mind as I'm going through that process of trying to figure things out. </s> |
<s>[INST] So what can you return to the question before about this fundamental symmetry it seems like if this perfect symmetry between matter and anti matter, if we have the equal amount of each and our universe, it would just destroy itself. And just like you mentioned, we seem to live in a very unlikely universe where it doesn't destroy itself. So you have some intuition about about why that is. [/INST] I mean, well, I I'm not a fear, I don't have any particular ideas myself. I mean I sort of do measurements to try and test these things. But I mean in terms of the basic problem is that in the Big bang, if you use the standard model to figure out what ought to have happened, you should have got equal amounts of matter antimatter made because whenever you make a particle in our collisions, for example, when we collide stuff together, you make a particle, you make an anti particle, they always come together, they always annihilate together. So there's no way of making more matter than antimatter that we've discovered so far. So that means in the Big Bang you get equal amounts of matter antimatter as the universe expands and cools down during the Big bang, Not very long after the Big bang of I think a few seconds after the Big Bang, you have this event called the great annihilation, which is where all the particles and anti particles smack into each other annihilate, turn into light mostly. And you end up with the universe later. If that was what happened then the universe we live in today would be black and empty apart from some photons, that would be it. So there's stuff in, there is stuff in the universe, it appears to be just made of matters. There's this big mystery as to where the, how did this happen. And there are various ideas um which all involved sort of physics going on in the first trillionth of a second or so of the big bang. So it could be that one possibility is that the Higgs field is somehow implicated in this, that there was this event that took place in the early universe, where the Higgs field basically switched on. It acquired its modern value. And when that happened, um this caused all the particles to require mass and and the universe basically went through a phase transition where you had a hot plasma of massless particles. And then in that plasma, it's almost like a gas turning into droplets of water. You get kind of these little bubbles forming in the universe where the Higgs field has acquired its modern value. The particles have got mass and this phase transition in some models can cause more matter than antimatter to be produced depending on how matter bounces off these bubbles in the other universe. So, that's one idea, there's other ideas to do with neutrinos that there are exotic types of neutrinos that can decay in a biased way to just matter and not to anti matter. So, uh and people are trying to test these ideas, that's what we're trying to do. LHC B it's there's neutrino experiments planned that are trying to do these sorts of things as well. So yeah, there are ideas, but at the moment no clear evidence for which of these ideas might be right. </s><s>[INST] So, we're talking about some incredible ideas by the way. Never heard anyone be so eloquent about describing uh even just the standard model. So I'm just listening, interesting, just have, having fun, enjoying it. So, the yes, the theoretical the particle physics is fascinating here. To me, one of the most fascinating things about the large Hadron collider is the human side of it. That [/INST] a bunch of </s><s>[INST] sort of brilliant people [/INST] that probably have </s><s>[INST] egos got together and were collaborate together and countries, I guess collaborating together, you know, for the funds and everything. Just collaboration everywhere, because you may be uh I don't know what the right question here to ask, but almost what's your intuition about how it's possible to make this happen and what are the lessons we should learn for the future of human civilization in terms of our scientific progress? Because it seems like this is a great, great illustration of us working together to do something big. [/INST] I think it's possibly the best example, maybe a I can think of of international collaboration that isn't for some unpleasant purpose, basically, you know, I mean, so I when I started out in the field in 2008 as a new PhD student, the LHC was basically finished. So I didn't have to go around asking for money for it or trying to make the case. So I have huge admiration, admiration for the people who managed that, because This was a project that was first imagined in the 1970s in the late 70s was when the first conversations about the LHC were muted and it took 2.5 decades of campaigning and fundraising and persuasion Until they started breaking ground and building the thing in the early noughties in 2000. So, I mean, I think the reason just from a sort of, from the point of view of the sort of science scientists there, I think the reason it works ultimately, is that everywhere, everyone there is there for the same reason, which is, well, in principle, at least they're there because they're interested in the world, they want to find out, you know, what are the basic ingredients of our universe, all of the laws of nature. And so everyone is pulling in the same direction. Of course, everyone has their own things, they're interested in, everyone has their own careers to consider. And, you know, I wouldn't pretend that there isn't also a lot of competitions, there's this funny thing in These experiments where you're collaborators, you're 800 collaborators in LHCB but you're also competitors because your academics in your various universities and you want to be the one that gets the paper out on the most exciting new measurements. So there's this funny thing where you're kind of trying to stake out your territory while also collaborating and having to work together to make the experiments work and it does work amazingly well actually considering all of that. And I think there was actually I think Mackenzie or one of these big management consultancy firms went into southern maybe a decade or so, go to try to understand how these organizations functions. They figure it out. They think they could. I mean I think one of the things that's interesting, one of the other interesting things about these experiments is you know they're big operations like outlets is 3000 people. Now there is a person nominally who is the head of atlas there called the spokesperson. Um and the spokesperson is elected by usually by the collaboration but they have no actual power really. I mean they can't fire anyone, they're not anyone's boss. So you know, my boss is a professor, is a professor at Cambridge, not the head of my experiments. The head of my experiment can't tell me what to do really. And there's all these independent academics who are their own bosses who you know, so that somehow it nonetheless by kind of consensus and discussion and lots of meetings these things do happen and it does get done. But </s> |
<s>[INST] it's not, it's not the adds a lot of people blame the ads. The the problem I think is the engagement and the engagement is just the easiest, the dumbest way to solve the ads. I think there's much different metrics that could be used to make a lot more money than the engagement in the long term. It has more to do with planning for the long term. So optimizing the selling of ads to make people happy with themselves in the long term as opposed to some kind of addicted like dopamine feeling. And so that's to me that has to do with metrics and measuring things correctly and sort of also creating a culture with what's valued to have difficult conversations about what we're doing with society, all those kinds of things. And I think once you have those conversations, this takes us back to the University of Austin kind of once you have those difficult human conversations, you can design the technology that will actually make for help people grow become the best version of themselves, help them be happy in the long term. What gives you hope about the future as somebody who studied some of the darker moments of human history, what gives you hope [/INST] a couple of things, first of all, the United States has a very unique operating system, which was very well designed by the founders who thought a lot about history and realized it would take quite a, a novel design to prevent the republic going the way of all Republics. Republics tend to end up as tyrannies for reasons that were well established by the time of the renaissance. And it gives me hope that this design has worked very well and withstood an enormous stress test, stress test. In the last, In the last year, I became an American in 2018. I think one of the most important features of this operating system is that it is the magnet for talent. Here we sit, uh, part of the immigration story, uh, in, uh, you know, in a darkened room with funny accents, talking about in a Russian scott in a Russian walk into a recording studio and talk about America. It's, it's very much like a joke and islands of South African and so on and still is a german and we're, we're extraordinarily fortunate that the natives let us come and play and, and play in a way that we could not in our countries of birth. And as long as the United States continues to exploit that superpower, that it is the talent magnet, then it should out innovate the totalitarian competition every time. So that's, that's one reason for being an optimist. Another reason and it's quite a historical reason as you would expect from me. Another reason that I'm optimistic is that my kids Give me a great deal of hope. They range in age from 27 down to four, but each of them in their different way, seems to be finding a way through this crazy time of hours without losing contact with that culture and civilization that I hold dear, I don't want to live in the metaverse, as Mark Zuckerberg imagines it. To me, that's a kind of ghastly hell. I think Western civilization is the best civilization and I think that almost all the truths about the human condition can be found in Western literature, art and music. And I think also that the civilization that produced the scientific revolution has produced the great problem solving tool that eluded the other civilizations that never really cracked science. And what gives me hope is that despite all the temptations and distractions that their generation had to contend with my Children and their different ways to found the found their way to literature and to art and music and they are civilized. And I don't I don't claim much of the credit for that. I've done my best, but I think it's deeply encouraging that that that they found their way to the things that I think are indispensable for a happy life, a fulfilled life, That nobody I think can be truly fulfilled if they're cut off from the great body of Western literature. For example I've thought a lot about Elon's argument that we might be in a simulation. No, no, there is a simulation. It's cold literature and we just have to decide whether or not to enter it. I'm currently in the midst of the later stages of priests. Great Allora shark to tom people do and Proust observation of human relationships is perhaps more meticulous than that of any other writer. And it's impossible not to find yourself identifying with Marcel and his obsessive jealous relationships, particularly with Albertine. It's the simulation and you decide, I think as a a sentient being, how far too, in your own life Re enact these more profound experiences that others have written down one of my earliest literary simulations was to reenact Jack Kerouac's tripping on the road when I was 17, culminating and getting very wasted in the hanging gardens of Xochimilco, not to be, not to be missed. And it hit me just, just as I was reading proof that that's really how to live a rich life that one lives life. But one lives it juxtaposing one's own experience against the more refined experiences of the great the great writers. So it gives me hope that my Children do that a bit. </s><s>[INST] Do you include the Russian authors very much in the [/INST] Cannon. Yes, I don't read Russian. Um, but I was entirely obsessed with Russian literature as a school boy. I read my way through dostoevsky. Uh, Tolstoy turgenev. I, Jack off. I think of all of those writers, Tolstoy had the biggest impact because at the end of war and peace, there's this great essay on historical determinism, which I think was the reason I became a historian, but I'm I'm really temperamentally a kind of turgenev person, oddly enough, I think if you if you haven't read those novelists, I mean, you can't really be a complete human being. If you haven't, if you haven't read the Brothers Karamazov, you're not really you're not grown up. And so I think, I think in many ways those are the greatest, the greatest novels, Raskolnikov remember Raskolnikov nightmare at the end of crime and punishment in which he imagines in his dream, a world in which a terrible virus spreads. Remember this and this virus has the effect of making every individual think that what he believes is right and in this self righteousness, people fall on one another and commit appalling violence. That's Raskolnikov nightmare. And it's a prophecy, it's a terrible prophecy of of Russia's future. </s> |
<s>[INST] it's un controversial statement to say that Gordon Ryan is one of the, the greatest grappler ever. [/INST] Gordon? Obviously a very polarizing figure and people tend to react to going on an emotional level rather than a statistical level. And um that colors a lot of people's minds, but I also have the benefit that I've seen both of these guys extensively in the gym and that as a whole new perspective, like if you think those guys are dominant on the stage, Wait, do you see them in the gym? It's even a different level of domination above and beyond what they did in competition. </s><s>[INST] Have they trained against each other and [/INST] they never trained together, they've been in the same gym, I think only on one occasion when Haji was stopped by new yorker came better, came by to say hello and uh Gordon was here at the time. They shake hands, they know each other and they both wonderful people in their own way. </s><s>[INST] So I'd like to talk to you about Gordon Hajer and uh George Gsb, let's first talk about, what do you think is is very different from my perspective. Maybe you can correct me, but very different artists masters of their pursuits. So what makes Hajer so good, [/INST] Hajer was probably the living embodiment of someone who played a classical jiu jitsu game based around the fundamental four steps of jiu jitsu. And like if if you took someone who had Take an introduction lessons in Jujitsu for three months, they would recognize the outlines of Hodges game with many of the techniques they learned in those first three months. Hajer was the best example of the dichotomy between the fundamentals of jujitsu, but also a kind of hidden sophistication underneath those fundamentals. People always say Hodges game was so basic. No, the outlines of Hodges game were basic, but the degree of sophistication and the application was extraordinary and his ability to refine existing technology with truly impressive. Um I never saw anyone in his generation that even came close to his, his ability both in competition and uh in the gym. </s><s>[INST] So for people who don't know Hydra Gracie basically is just like you said, very simple techniques on the surface from the outsider's perspective that most people learn when they started jitsu like passing guard in a very simple way, taking mount and choking from MT. Also when he's on his back, this closed guard and all the basic submissions from closed guard, arm bar and triangle and just that's it. And being able to dominate, shut down and submit. So control and submit the best people in the world for many, many years, just as you said, including coming out of retirement and beating the best, perhaps by far the best of the next generation. So that's, that's just kind of lays out the story. Is there some lessons about his systems that you learn in developing your own system? Excellent question. [/INST] The thing which always impressed me the most about Hodja was his relentless pursuit of uh position to submission. Everything was done with the belief that no victory was worthwhile if it didn't involve so many his opponent. That's a mindset that I tried very, very hard to imbue in my students the easiest path to victory and judas who was the one which takes the least risk. So for example, you will see many modern athletes focus on scoring the first point or the first advantage and then doing the minimum amount of work to victory. Once they've done that they get a small tactical advantage, they realize they're ahead, take no more risks and just do the minimum amount of work to get the victory. Hodges mindset was always to take the riskier gambit of submission which entails a lot more work and in many cases a lot more skill. Yeah. What I always liked about Hajer is he never tried to play tactics. It was always just go out there and try to win by submission and that more than anything that mindset of looking for the most perfect victory rather than the victory that takes the least skill and the least effort is probably the thing I took from his career the most and tried to work on in my students. </s><s>[INST] I always wonder what are the little details he's doing under there when he is in mount the literal adjustments but perhaps that's like almost indescribable the details of that control what makes Gordon Ryan the greatest grappler of all time. So good [/INST] with Gordon. He's also very strong and fundamentals all of my students are but he's also obviously a member of a new generation of nog grapplers that also bring in technologies that weren't really emphasized in previous generations, specifically the prolific use of lower body attacks especially from bottom position. Um This means that he can play a game between upper body and lower body, which was not really a part of Hodges game. Mhm. Nonetheless, you will also see significant similarities. He's got a very strong and crushing passing game to mount and very strong and crushing passing game to the back. Um you will see that the major differences between the two are from bottom position. Hodges bottom game is essentially based around his closed guard. Gordon Ryan's game is based around his butterfly guard. So one is based on outside control and one is based on inside control. One focuses almost entirely on the classical notion of getting past the legs to the upper body and the other one works between the two as alternatives and sees them as competing alternatives. Whether stronger you become at one the more your opponent has to overreact and become vulnerable to the second. So they have strong similarities in top position but are very different in bottom. </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah. So the goddess of chest had to send a message. [/INST] Yeah, that's okay. Okay, so Gary, you should do something else time </s><s>[INST] now for a question that you have heard before. But give me a chance. You've dominated the chess world for 20 years, even still got it? Is there a moment you said you always look to create something new. Is there is there games or moments where you're especially proud of in terms of your brilliance of a new creative move? You've talked about Mikhail tall as somebody who was aggressive and creative chess player in your own game. [/INST] Look, you mentioned Michael call, it's very aggressive, very short player, famous for his combinations and sacrifices, even called magician from riga. So for his very unique style, but any any world champion, you know, it's yeah, was a creator. Some of them were so flamboyant and flash like tall, some of them will know just, you know, less uh discerned at the chessboard like ground Petrosian, but every world champion, every top player brought something into the game of chess and each contribution was priceless because it's not just about sacrifices of course, amateur stay enjoy, you know, the brilliant games where peace is being sacrificed, it's all just, you know, it's an old piece of hanging and, and it's all of a sudden, you know, being material down the road down or just, you know, queen down the, the the weaker side uh, delivers the final blow and just, you know, mating opponents king. But there's other kinds of beauty. I mean, it's a slow positional maneuvering, you know, looking for weaknesses and just and gradually strangling uh, your opponent and eventually delivering sort of a position of masterpiece. Yeah. So I think I made more difference in the game of chess then I could, I could have imagined when I started playing and uh the reason I thought it was time for me to leave is that, I mean, I knew that I was not, I was not no longer the position to uh bring, bring the same kind of contribution, the same kind of uh new knowledge into the game. So um and going back, I could immediately look at my games against Anatoly Karpov, it's not just, I won the match in 1985 and became World champion at age 22, but there were at least two games in that match, of course, the last one game 20 for that was decisive game of the match I won and became world champion. But also the way I want it was, it was a very short game and I found a unique maneuver that was absolutely new and it became some sort of just a typical now though, this, when the movie was made Was made on the board and put on display, a lot of people thought it was ugly. So that's another game game 16 in a match where I just also managed to outplay corp of completely with black pieces. Just, you know, paralyzing his entire army in its own, its own camp </s><s>[INST] Technically or psychologically or is that a mix of both in game 16? [/INST] Yeah, I think it was a big blow to Karpov. I think it was a big psychological victory for number of reasons, one, the score was equal at the time and uh the world champion, you know, by the rules could retain his title in case of a tie. So we still have, you know, before games 16, we have nine games to go. And also it was some sort of a bluff because neither me nor Karpov saw the reputation of this opening idea and uh, and I think it's just for Carpal, it was double blow because not that he lost the game, triple blow, he lost the game, it was a brilliant game. And I played impeccably after, you know, just this, this, this opening bluff. And then, you know, they discovered that it was a bluff. So it's the, uh, I didn't know I was not bluffing. So that's why it happens very often. It's been, You know, some ideas could be refuted and it's just what I found out. And this is again, going back to your, you know, spiritual theme is that it's, you could spend a lot of time working. And when I say, you could just, it's in the 80s and the 90s, it doesn't happen these days because everybody has a computer, you can immediately see if it works or it doesn't work. Machine shows your reputation in a split of a second. But many of the our analysis in the eighties or in the nineties, they were not perfect simply because we're humans and they just, you, you you analyze the game, you look for some fresh ideas and then just, it happens that there was something that you missed because the level of concentration at the chessboard is different from one that when you analyze the game just moving the pieces around. But somehow if you spend a lot of time at the chessboard preparing. So in your studies with your coaches, hours and hours and hours and nothing of what you found could have materialized on the, on, on chest on the chessboard. Somehow these hours help. I don't know why I always helped you. It's, it's as if you know the amount of work you did, uh could be transformed into some sort of yeah spiritual energy that helps you to come up with other great ideas during the board. Again, even if it was, there was no direct connection between your preparation and your victory in the game. There was always some sort of invisible connection between the amount of work you did, your dedication to actually two and your passion to discover new ideas and your ability during the game at the chessboard. When the clock was ticking, we still had taken clock digital clock at the time. So to come up with some, some, some buoyancy and, and I also can mention many games from the nineties. So it's the, obviously all amateurs would pick up my game against veselin Topalov in 1999 and vegans again, because it was a brilliant game. The Black king traveled from uh, from its own camp to into the, into the whites camp across the entire board. It doesn't happen often trust me as you know, in, in, in, in the games of professional players, top professional players. So that's why visually it was one of the most impressive victories, but I could bring to your attention many other games that were not so impressive for, for amateurs. Not so not so um, beautiful. Just guess it's sacrifice, always beautiful. You sacrifice prices and then, and then eventually you have so very few resources left and you, you, you use them just to, to, to, to crush your, your, your reporting basically to, you have to make the king because you have Almost almost nothing, nothing nothing left at your disposal. But I, you know, I up to the very end, get less and less, but still up to the very end. I always had games with some sort of, you know, interesting ideas and uh, and games that gave me great satisfaction. But I think it's what happened from 2005 up to these days was also a very, very big accomplishment since, you know, I had to find myself to sort of relocate myself, </s> |
<s>[INST] You think the educated the [/INST] edges are interesting. The edges is interesting because it is not so easy to get good bond exact boat. It's not many cases where you have the bond is not exactly but interesting principles. Did you discover the moss? </s><s>[INST] Do you think it's interesting because it's challenging and reveals interesting principles that allow you to get those bounds. Or do you think it's interesting because it's actually very useful for understanding the essence of a function of of an algorithm. Uh So it's like me judging your life as a human being by the worst thing you did in the best thing you did versus all this stuff in the middle. It seems uh not productive. [/INST] I don't think so because you cannot describe a situation in the middle or it will be not general. So you can describe edge cases and it is clear it has some model but you cannot describe model for every new case. So you will be never quit when you use it. But </s><s>[INST] from a statistical point of view the way you've studied uh functions and the nature of learning and the world don't you think that the real world has a very long tail that the education are very far away from the mean the stuff in the middle or no, [/INST] I don't know that because I think that but from my point of view, if you will use formal statistic uniform law of large numbers, if you will use this invariance business, you will need just law of large numbers. You don't and there's a huge difference between uniform law of large numbers and large numbers. </s><s>[INST] Is it useful to describe that a little more or should we just take it [/INST] for example when, when I'm talking about dark, I gave three pre decades, that was enough. But if you will try to do formal distinguish, you will need a lot of observation. Uh, and so that means that information about looks like a dog contain a lot of bit of information form of bits of information. So if you don't know that how much bit of information contained things from artificial from intelligence and that is the subject of analysis. Hell no old business. I don't like have people consider artificial intelligence, they consider as some courts which imitate activity of human beings. It is not science, it is applications. You would like to imitate go hurt. It is very useful and good problem. But you need to learn something more half. People try to help people can to develop say pretty fits sleeps like a dog or play like butterfly or something like that. They're not lots of teacher says you how it came in his mind have he chooses image. So </s><s>[INST] that process that. This problem [/INST] of intelligence. </s><s>[INST] That is the problem of intel. And you see that connected to the problem of learning. [/INST] Absolutely. Are they? Because you immediately give this predicate like specific predicates seems like a dog or quack like the dog it was choosing somehow. </s><s>[INST] So what is the line of work would you say? Uh if you were to formulate as a set of open problems? Mhm. That will take us there. We'll play like a butterfly will get a system to be able to, [/INST] Let's separate two stories run with a magical story that if you have predicated you can do something. And another story you have to get predicated. It is intelligence problem. And people even did not start understand intelligence because to understand intelligence first of all try to understand what doing teachers of teacher teach. Why want one teacher better than another lot. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. So you think we really even haven't started on the journey of generating the predators. [/INST] You don't understand even don't understand that this problem exists because did </s><s>[INST] you know [/INST] I just know the name. I I want to understand why one teacher better than another in half affect teacher student. It was not because he repeating the problem which is in textbook, he makes some remarks, he makes some philosophy of </s><s>[INST] producing, you know that's a beautiful so it is a formulation of a question that is the open problem. Why is one teacher better than another? Right? [/INST] But she does better. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. What what what why in at every level? Uh how did they get better? What does it mean to be better? Uh the whole [/INST] yeah, yeah. From from whatever model I have one teacher can give a very good predicated picture, can say uh swims like a dog and another can say jump like a dog And jump like a dog's carries zero information. </s><s>[INST] So what is the most exciting problem in statistical learning you've ever worked on or are working on now? [/INST] Oh I just figured this invariants story and I'm happy is that I believe that it is ultimate learning story. At least they can show that there are no and there's a mechanism. Only two mechanisms but they separate statistical part from intelligent part. And I know nothing about intelligent part. And if we will know this intelligent part. So it will help us a lot in teaching learning. </s><s>[INST] You know, we'll know it when we see it. [/INST] So for example in my talk the last slide was a challenge. So you have seen east digitization problems and diplomatic claims that they did it Very well say 99.5% of it correct answers. But they use 60,000 observations. Can you do the same using content times less but incorporating invariants what it means you know digit want to say just looking at that explain the vision variant. I should keep to use 100 examples or 100 times less examples to do the same job. </s><s>[INST] Yeah that last slide and unfortunately you're talking it quickly. But that last slide was a powerful open challenge and a formulation of the essence [/INST] that this exact problem of intelligence. Because everybody, when machine learning started it was developed much much mutation. They immediately recognize that we use much more training data and human needed. But now again we came to the same story after decrease. That is a problem of learning. It is not like in deploring they used zillions of training data because my Brazilians are not enough. If you have a good invariance, maybe you will never collect some number of observations. But now it is a question to intelligence have to do that because statistical parties radio as soon as you suppliers this predicate we can do a good job with small amount of observations and the very first challenges will know digital recognition and you know, digits and please there have been variants I think it's about that I can say for digital three. I would introduce the concept of horizontal cemetery. So the digits three has horizontal symmetry say more than say digital or something like that. But as soon as I get the deal horizontal symmetry. I can mythological invent a lot of measure horizontal symmetry on the vertical symmetry or the orginal symmetry whatever. If I have a deal of symmetry. But hotels looking on digital sees that it is meta meta predicates which is not shape. Just something like symmetry. Like how dark this whole picture, something like that. Which which can so far is a pre decade. </s> |
<s>[INST] What does the rule look like in the space of hypergrass? [/INST] progress. So, right, so what the rule says is something like, if you have a little tiny piece of hypergraph that looks like this, then it will be transformed into a piece of hypergraph that looks like this. So that's all it says. It says you pick up these elements of space, and you can think of these, these uh edges, these hyper edges as being relation between elements in space. You might pick up these two relations between elements in space, and we're not saying where those elements are what they are but every time there's a certain arrangement of elements in space then arrangement in the sense of the way they're connected </s><s>[INST] then we transform it into some other arrangement so there's a little tiny pattern and you transform into another little pattern that's right and then because of this I mean again it's kind of similar to cellular imagining that [/INST] like yes on paper the rule looks like super simple it's like that's right yes </s><s>[INST] yeah okay yeah like yeah right from this the universe can be born but like Like, once you start applying it, beautiful structure starts being, potentially can be created. And what you're doing is you're applying that rule to different parts, like any time you match it within the hypergraph. Exactly. And then one of the, like, incredibly beautiful and interesting things to think about is the order in which you apply that rule. Yes. [/INST] Because that pattern appears all over the place. Right, exactly, yeah, right. So this is a big, complicated thing, very hard to wrap one's brain around. Okay, so you say the rule is every time you see this little pattern, transform it in this way. But yet, you know, as you look around the space that represents the universe, there may be zillions of places where that little pattern occurs. So what it says is just do this, apply this rule wherever you feel like. And what is extremely non-trivial is, well, okay, so this is happening sort of, in computer science terms, sort of asynchronously. You're just doing it wherever you feel like doing it. And the only constraint is that if you're going to apply the rule somewhere, the things to which you apply the rule, the little, you know, elements to which you apply the rule, if they have to be, okay. Well, you can think of each application of the rule as being kind of an event that happens in the universe. Yeah. these... the input to an event has to be ready for the event to occur, that is if one event occurred if one transformation occurred and it produced a particular atom of space then that atom of space has to already exist before another transformation that's going to apply to that </s><s>[INST] atom of space can occur. So that's like the prerequisite for the event... That's right, [/INST] exists. That's right. That's right. So it that defines a kind of this sort of set of causal relationships between events. It says, this event happens. It has to have happened before this event. </s><s>[INST] But that is um, but that's that's not a very limiting constraint. No, it's not. [/INST] And what's it still, you still get the zillion. That's a technical term, options. No, it's not. What's the term? That's correct. But but okay, so this is where things get a little bit more elaborate. But they're mind-blowing. So. Right. But so what happens is, so the first thing you might say is, you know, let's, well, okay. So this question about the freedom of which event you do when, well, let me sort of state an answer and then explain it, okay? The validity of special relativity is a consequence of the fact that in some sense it doesn't matter in what order you do these underlying things, so long as they respect this kind </s><s>[INST] of set of causal relationships. So that's, that's the, the part that's in a certain sense is a really important one, but the fact that it sometimes doesn't matter, that's a, I don't know, that's another like [/INST] beautiful thing. Well, okay. So, okay. So there's this idea of what I call causal invariance. Causal invariance exactly. </s><s>[INST] Really, really causal invariance exactly. [/INST] So that's really, really powerful idea, powerful idea, powerful idea, which has actually arisen in different forms many times in the history of mathematics, mathematical logic, even computer science has many different names. I mean, our particular version of it is a little bit tighter than other versions, but it's basically the same idea. Here's, here's how to think about that idea. So imagine that, well, let's talk about it in terms of math for a second. Let's say you're doing algebra and you're told, you know, multiply out this series of polynomials that are, that are multiplied together. Okay. You say, well, which order should I do that in? Say, well, do I multiply the third one by the fourth one and then do it by the first one? Or do I do the fifth one by the sixth one and then do that? Well, it turns out it doesn't matter. You can, you can multiply them out in any order. You'll always get the same answer. That's a, that's a property. If you think about kind of making a kind of network that represents in what order you do things, you'll get different orders for different ways of multiplying things out, but you'll always get the same answer. Same thing if you, let's say you're sorting, you've got a bunch of A's and B's. They're in random, some random order, you know, BAA, BBBA, whatever. And you have a little rule that says every time you see BA, flip it around to AB. Okay. Eventually you apply that rule enough times, you'll have sorted the string so that it's all the A's first and then all the B's. Again, you, there are many different orders in which you can do that, that many different sort of places where you can apply that update. In the end, you'll always get the string sorted the same </s> |
<s>[INST] Of course it's possible that science, like from my place of Ai would be able to if we were able to engineer consciousness or understand. I mean, it's very difficult because we're so far away from it now. But I understand how the actual mechanism that consciousness emerges, that in fact this table is not real, that we can determine that it uh exactly how our mind constructs the reality that we perceive, then. Then you can start to make interesting, [/INST] but my mind doesn't construct the reality to perceive the reality we perceive as there. We perceive a reality that exists now. And we perceive it in particular ways given the nature of our senses, right? A bat perceives this table, definitely. But it's still the same table with the same characteristics and the same identity. It's just a matter of we use eyes, they use a radar system to, you know, they use sound waves to perceive it, but it's still their existence exist whether we exist or not. And so you could create. I mean, I don't know how and I don't know if it's possible, but let's say you could create a consciousness, right? And I expect that to do that. You would have to use biology, not just electronics, but you know, the way outside my expenses. Um, because consciousness, as far as we know, is the phenomenon of life and you would have to figure out how to create life before you created consciousness, I think. But if you did that, then that wouldn't change anything. All I would say is we have another conscious being cool. That's great. But it wouldn't change the nature of our consciousness. Our consciousness is what it is </s><s>[INST] about respect. So that's very interesting. I think this is a good way to set the table for discussion of objectivism is, let me at least challenge a thought experiment, which is uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Donald Hoffman's work about reality. So his idea is that we're just, our perception is just an interface to reality. [/INST] So Donald Hoffman is the, is the guy. You see, you're fine. Yes, I've met Donald and I've seen this video and look Donald is not invented anything new. This goes back to ancient philosophy. </s><s>[INST] Let me just stating yes, in case people aren't familiar. I mean, it's a fascinating thought experiment to me, uh, like of out of the box thinking perhaps literally is that, you know, our there's a different there's a gap between the world as we perceive it and the world is that actually exists. And I think that's for the philosophy, objectivism is a really important gap to close. So can you maybe at least try to entertain the idea that that there is more to reality than our minds can perceive? [/INST] Well, I don't understand what more means, Right? Of course, there's more to reality than what our senses perceive. That is, for example, I don't know, certain certain elements have radiation, right? Uranium has really I can't perceive radiation. The beauty of human reason is I can I can through experimentation discover the phenomenon of radiation then actually measure radiation and I don't worry about it. I can't perceive the world the way about perceives the world and I might not be able to see certain things that. But I can We've created radar. So a We understand how about perceives the world and I can mimic it through a radar screen and creating images like the bat, Its consciousness somehow perceives it. Right? So the beauty of human reason is our capacity to understand the world beyond what our senses give us directly. At the end, Everything comes in through our senses. But we can understand things that our senses don't provide us. But but what he's doing is he's doing something very different. He is saying what our census provides us might have nothing to do with the reality out there. That is just a random, arbitrary nonsensical statement and he actually has a whole evolutionary explanation for it. He run some simulations simulations seem, I mean I'm not an expert in this field, but they seem silly to me, they don't seem to reflect and look all these doing is taking immanuel Kant's philosophy, which articulates exactly the same cause and he's giving it a Vanunu of of of evolutionary ideas. I'm not an expert on evolution and an expert on epistemology, which is what this is. So to me as as a semi layman, it doesn't make any sense. And uh you know, I, I'm actually, you know, I have a, I have this year on book show, I don't know if I'm allowed to pitch it, but I've got to shoot on book show, let me pause Youtube huge fan. </s><s>[INST] I listen to very often as a small aside the cool thing about reason which you practice is you have a systematic way of thinking through basically anything and that's so fun to listen to. It's rare that I think there's flaws in your logic. But even then it's fun because I'm like disagreeing with the screen. [/INST] It's great when somebody disagrees with me and they give good arguments because that makes it challenging, you know, so, so one of the shows I want to do in the next few weeks is one of my philosophy being one of my philosophy fence to discuss the video that Hoffman where he presents his tv because it surprises me how seductive it is and it seems to be so first of all, completely counterintuitive, but because you know, somehow we managed to cross the road and not get hit by the car. And if our senses do not provide any information about what's actually going on in reality, how do we do that? And not, not to mention build computers, not to mention flight to the moon and actually land on the moon. And if reality is not giving us information about the moon, if our senses are not giving us information about the moon, how did we get there? You know, and what did, where did we go? Maybe we didn't go anyway. Um it's just it's nonsensical to me and it's it's a, it's a very bad place are philosophically because it basically says there is no objective standard for anything, there is no objective reality, You can come up with anything, you could argue anything and there's no methodology. Right? My I believe that at the end of the day, what reason allows us to do? It provides us with a methodology for truth. And at the end of the day for every claim that I make, I should be able to boil it down to see, look at the evidence of the census is right? Then once you take that away, knowledge is gone and truth is gone. And that opens it up to, you know, complete </s> |
<s>[INST] two going to talk right? Like can't you [/INST] imagine if you try to set it up on zoom, like it never happened to many delegates, like just imagine it happening </s><s>[INST] like sitting there like [/INST] live is live right? </s><s>[INST] Just jumping [/INST] in </s><s>[INST] um Okay uh actually just in a small tension, so how how do you have a productive day, do you have any insights and how to manage your time optimally? [/INST] Yeah, I mean I've gone the gamut of from obsessive time tracking in 15 minute buckets to kind of like the the other extreme where it's more um kind of like large scale, some deep work here to our bucket, you know, account for an hour of lunch and some other things, but now now I just roughly because I manage a team and there's some things that kind of come up, it's only a team too, it's not like big, but I just have things that are not necessarily controllable by me, I like have to take some meetings or whatever, it's not as easy to plan out my day ahead of time. So I do a lot of retrospective time management where I look at my day and that's what I mostly do now. Um and I account did I spend this day productively, what could I do better and then try to implement it in the future. So a lot of this I realize is very personal for me, I do very well in long streaks of working And if I can't do a lot of work in 15 minutes, I can't do a lot of work in even an hour, but if you give me like three hours or five hours or six hours of uninterrupted work, that's like, that's where I get most of my stuff done. </s><s>[INST] So from the, it just would be fun to explore those when you did 15 minute buckets. So you have a day in front of you and you have like a Google sheet or spreadsheet or something? Yeah, [/INST] I didn't excel, </s><s>[INST] excel. Uh and you're do you have a plan for the day or do you go like when you did it? Uh or you just literally Sort of focus on a particular task and then you're tracking as you're doing that task of every 15 minutes? [/INST] Yeah, I would kind of do it live. Um I'm not so one of the reasons I'm so obsessive about it is because I'm not organized by nature and I lost, like in college I learned how much lack of organization can just hurt you in terms of output. And so I realized like I just had to build systems that would enable me to become more organized. So uh really, I think, I think that doing that really taught me a lot about time in the same way that tracking calories can teach you about food, like just learning accounting for these things will give you skills that eventually you might not need to track on such a granular level because you've kind of like figured out, so that's kind of how I feel about it. I think everyone should, if you care about productivity and stuff should do a little bit of it. I don't think it's sustainable in the long term, it just takes so much effort and time to like, and I think the marginal effect of it in the long term is kind of minimal once you learn these basic skills. But um yeah, I was basically tracking like live what I did and what I saw is that a lot of my real work would be done in small sections of the day and it would be like a lot of just nothing, like a lot of small things where I'm busy, but little is being achieved and so I think that's a really interesting insight. I've never figured out how to un busy myself and focus on the like core essentials. I'm still getting to that. But um, it is interesting realizing most of your day is like a lot of nothing and then like some real deep work where most of your value comes from is like 20% of your day. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, I try to start every day with that. So the hardest task of the day and you focus for long periods of time. And I also have the segment of two hours where it's a set of tasks I do every single day with the idea is you do that for like your whole life. It's like long term investment of Anke and it's just like learning and um reminding yourself of facts, you know that they're useful in your everyday life and then for me also music, I'll play a little bit of music, Piano, piano. And so like keeping that regular thing is part of your [/INST] life. And one thing that I've really taken from this is because I read all the like I had a self improvement phase in my early twenties. Um And one thing you learn is that everyone wants to give you a broad general solution. But really the real trick of figuring out like optimizing is figuring out the things that work for you specifically. So like one interesting thing you said is like oh I like to do my hard work at the beginning of the day. Um I know a lot of people recommend this. I've tried so many times and I just do better work late at night and so usually my streak of work is like from like after dinner 7 30 to like two a.m. That's my prime time. Um And so like a lot of my videos which you'll see which is like lit from this studio which appears to be daytime. It's like shot at three a.m. You know just like in a caffeine field rush. Um But that's kind of how it works for me. And then also like with the social outlets and stuff like that, which it's easy and I know I feel like we think similarly on this so it's easy to discount these things as less relevant because they don't have quantitative metrics associated with them. But in terms of longevity and like I think to be able to do creative work there's an amount of recharge and like re inputting stuff that is frequently discounted by people like us who are like obsessed with you know quantitative metrics. And so I really found that some of my best work gets done after I take like a break or like I'll go play like live sets of music and I mean like that's like for me really recharging but nowhere on a spreadsheet is that gonna show up as productive or like meaningful? But for me for whatever reason it recharges me in a way that like I need to pay attention to. </s> |
<s>[INST] and then uh don't resist the despair and take a nap, [/INST] definitely take a nap and listen, it's okay to experience it. Like I said, yeah, you're gonna experience the spirit, what else would you, what should you be feeling? You know, things are going poorly and you just lost all your money excited maybe like, okay, have your moment of grief, allow yourself to experience it so that you can, you know, there's a fundamental </s><s>[INST] way in which you haven't really lived life. You haven't, if you haven't experienced periods of despair, you [/INST] have a jaded view of the world, </s><s>[INST] weird thing about the human condition that the both the highs and the lows are important. Uh what role does love play in the human condition? Daniel in the ground role has love played in your life? [/INST] It's yeah, that's you know, you sort of talked about the ups and downs of uh of the human condition and love has been that for me, right? Like I'm in a good place now, but you know, even with my now wife years ago, you know, she was young, she was you know, new to poker and she wasn't ready to settle down, I was like when I met her, I think I was 31 she was 21 I was ready to like lock her up if you will, you know, let's do this. And I bought a ring way back when she was like not about that, she was living the Hollywood life, she was living you know partying in L. A. Doing that kind of stuff and wasn't ready and we split and that one hit me hard so I didn't realize how much of a hit that had on my confidence in my and everything really in poker with other women. It had me a little jaded about women too, you know resentful you know. Um and it took a lot of like self, I did like a lot of personal growth work and workshops and things like that and then didn't see her for years and she came back to town it was a much different person, it was you know four years ago or something like that and she was too went to dinner a few months later we were married. Yeah it worked out so different cause we both had to grow you know and become different </s><s>[INST] people. [/INST] Yeah like she went through her relationships, I went through mine you know we experienced life and I was married once before too, you know called my starter marriage if you will um which yeah you know we just don't know I think like until you do it until you get married, you know experience like the sacrifice not necessarily sacrifices but your value systems if they don't align identically which they're not going to someone like me, one of probably one of my, one of my strengths in poker, but my weaknesses in relationship is judgment, right? When I play poker, I need to judge you essentially what I'm doing. I'm gauging who you are and what you're good at and what you're bad at and that can have repercussions because it leads. That's that's how, you know, that's the lens I look at everyone with based on how you live your life. I'm judging you this guy is this this guy is that this guy's that and that's not healthy, </s><s>[INST] you [/INST] have to learn to like. And the thing I finally realized what love is frankly for me with her is no judgment, right? </s><s>[INST] So [/INST] like, yeah, so I have my way of being right. If she wants to have cereal for dinner, that's the best decision for I I was living in a framework of better and worse the way that I do things better and yours is worse do things more like I do. That's that's a recipe for disaster, true acceptance and true love is accepting someone like exactly as they are. You know, if she wants to do something different, I'm gonna support her whatever it is. Even if I disagree with it personally. And like the way that I would do things learning to just realize that she's had a different journey in a different walk towards where she's at, then I have. </s><s>[INST] So I [/INST] can't pass my judgment on other people like that. </s><s>[INST] I believe it is ethically wrong and probably illegal to eat cereal for dinner. [/INST] She listen, if she wants it, she wants it </s><s>[INST] like [/INST] when she goes to bed, like all these little things, but my regimented life, she's not like our motto at her on her wedding was like, you keep me wild, I'll keep you safe, you keep me wild. I keep her safe. She keeps me wild. She's like not organized and anal and those kind of things. I am, She helps me like let loose, you know, Oh no, I'm eating this. This she's like have some popcorn. All right, let's do it. You know, she keeps me uh freed </s><s>[INST] and accepting that embracing that the difference is the chaos of it. Yes. Like [/INST] I literally do think about with her how important it is and how much I try to like </s><s>[INST] just [/INST] come from neutral and like compassion and never judge because she's got other things that she deals with, right that I don't, she's bipolar, right? So with that I've studied and I've learned a lot about, you know, sort of mental health and what that means and um, ways in which a lot of characteristics about somebody is completely out of their control when they're bipolar, right? And there's swings, like there's no, there's no cocktail for, for bipolar that solves the issue, right? So there's medications that work to, you know, level you out for periods of time, But then they start to fade and they don't work as well. So they constantly need readjustment. It's an unsolved mystery to a certain degree. So in some sense, you know, her diagnosis made our relationship easier because I don't take anything personal, right? I realize that sometimes she's gonna be in a mood, you know, I mean, she's so good about communicating it though. She tells me some morning, she'll be like bad mood trying to get out of it babe. Like, okay, I leave her alone. </s> |
<s>[INST] you said it doesn't seem exciting to you, but what if exciting is part of the objective function? The thing is optimized over. So there's probably a huge amount of data of humans if you look correctly, of humans communicating online. And there's probably ways to measure the degree of, you know, as they talk about engagement. So you can probably optimize the question that's most created an engaging conversation in the past. So actually if you strictly use the word exciting, uh there is probably [/INST] a </s><s>[INST] way to create a optimally exciting conversations that are involved, ai systems at least one side is a I [/INST] yeah, that makes sense. I think maybe looping back a bit to games and the game industry when you design algorithms, um you're thinking about winning as the objective, right, or the reward function. But in fact when we discussed this with Blizzard, the creators of Starcraft in this case, I think what's exciting fun, um if you could measure that and optimize for that, that's probably why we play video games or why we interact or listen or look at cat videos or whatever on the internet. So it's true that modeling reward beyond the obvious reward functions we used to in reinforcement learning is definitely very exciting. And again, there is some progress actually into a particular aspect of Ai which is quite critical, which is um for instance, is a conversation that or is the information truthful? Right? So you could start trying to evaluate this from, except from the internet, right, That has lots of information. And then if you can learn a function automated ideally. So you can also optimize it more easily. Um then you could actually have conversations that optimize for non obvious things such as excitement. Um So yeah, that's quite possible. And then I would say in that case it would definitely be fun, fun exercise and quite unique to have at least one side that is fully driven by um an excitement reward function. Um but obviously there would be still quite a lot of humanity in the system both from who, who's building the system of course, and also um ultimately, if we think of labeling for excitement, that those labels must come from us, because it's just hard to have a computational measure of excitement as far as I understand, there's no such thing. </s><s>[INST] Well, as you mentioned, truth also, I would actually venture to say that excitement is easier to label than truth or perhaps has lower consequences of failure. Uh but there is perhaps this the humanness that you mentioned, that's perhaps part of a thing that could be labeled and that could mean an ai system that's doing dialogue, that's doing conversations should be flawed. For example, like that's the thing you optimize for which is uh have inherent contradictions by design have flaws by design. Maybe it also needs to have a strong sense of identity. So it has a back story, it told itself that it sticks to, it has memories, not in terms of the how the system is designed, but it's able to tell stories about its past, its able to have um mortality and fear of mortality in the following way that it has an identity. And like if it says something stupid and gets canceled on twitter, that's the end of that system. So it's not like you get to rebrand yourself that system is that's it. So maybe that the high stakes nature of it because like you can't say anything stupid now or because uh you be canceled on twitter and that there's there's stakes to that. And then I think part of the reason that makes it uh interesting and then you have a perspective like you've built up over time that you stick with and then people can disagree with you. So holding that perspective strongly holding sort of maybe a controversial at least a a strong opinion, all of those elements, it feels like they can be learned because it feels like there's a lot of data on the internet of people having an opinion and then combine that with a metric of excitement. You can start to create something that as opposed to trying to optimize for sort of grammatical clarity and truthfulness, the factual consistency over many sentences, your optimized for the humanness. And there's obviously data for humanness on the internet. So I wonder, I wonder if there's a future where that's part or I mean I sometimes wonder that about myself, I'm a huge fan of podcasts and I listen to podcasts podcasts and I think like what is interesting about this, what is compelling uh the same way you watch other games like you said, watch play Starcraft or uh have magnus carlsen play chess, so I'm not a chess player, so but it's still interesting to me and what is that? That's the the stakes of it, maybe um the end of the domination of a series of wins. I don't know, there's all those elements somehow connect to a compelling conversation. And I wonder how hard is that to replace because ultimately all of that connects the initial proposition of how to test whether an Ai is intelligent or not with the touring test, which I guess my question comes from a place of the spirit of that test. [/INST] Yes. Um I actually recall, I was just listening to our first podcast where we discuss during test. Um so I would say from a neural network, you know, ai builder perspective, um there's you know, usually you try to map many of these interesting topics, You discuss two benchmarks and then also to actual architectures on the how these systems are currently built, how they learn what data they learn from, what are they learning, right. We're talking about ways of a mathematical function and then looking at the current state of the game, maybe what do we need leaps forward to get to the ultimate stage of all these experiences. Um Lifetime experience fears like words that currently barely we're seeing um progress just because what's happening today is you take all these human interactions, it's a large, vast variety of, of human interactions online and then you're distilling these sequences, right going back to my passion, like sequences of words, letters, images sound, there's more modalities here to be, to be at play. And then you're trying to just learn a function that will be happy that maximizes the likelihood of seeing all these through a neural network. Um now I think there's a few places where the way currently we train these models would clearly like to be able to develop the kinds of capabilities you say, I'll tell you maybe a couple one is the lifetime of an agent or a model. So you you learn from this data offline, right? So you're just passively observing and maximizing this. You know, it's almost like a mountains like landscape of mountains and then everywhere there's data that humans interacted in this way you're trying to make that higher and then lower where there's no data. And then these models generally don't then experience themselves. These they just are observers right there, passive observers of the data. And then we're putting them to then generate data when we interact with them. But that's very limiting the experience they actually experience when they could maybe be optimizing or further optimizing the weight. We're not even doing that. So to be clear. And again, mapping to Alpha go Alpha Star, we train the model. And when we deploy it um to play against humans or in this case interact with humans like language models, they don't even keep training, right? They're not learning in the sense of the ways that you've learned from the data, they don't keep changing. Now there's something a bit more feels magical, but it's understandable if you're into neural net, which is, well they might not learn in the strict sense of the words the way it's changing. Maybe that's mapping to how neurons interconnect and how we learn over our lifetime. But it's true that the context of the conversation that they that takes takes place with when you talk to these systems, it's held in their working memory, right? It's almost like you start the computer, it has a hard drive that has a lot of information, you have access to the internet, which has probably all the information, but there's also a working memory where the these agents as we call them or start calling them build upon now these memories very limited. I mean right now we're talking to be concrete about 2000 words that we hold and then beyond that we start forgetting what we've seen. So you can see that there's some short term coherence already right with when you said, I mean it's a very interesting topic um having sort of a mapping um an agent to like have consistency, then, you know, if if you say, oh what's your name, Um it could remember that, but then it might forget beyond 2000 words, which is not that long of context, if we think even of this podcast books are much longer. So technically speaking there's a limitation there super exciting from people that work on deep learning to be working on, but I would say we like maybe benchmarks and the technology to have this lifetime like experience of memory that keeps building up. However, the way it learns offline is clearly very powerful, right? So you know, you asked me three years ago, I would say, oh we're very far, I think we've seen the power of this imitation again on the internet scale that has enabled this to feel like at least the knowledge, the basic knowledge about the world now is incorporated into the weights, but then this experience is lacking and in fact, as I said, we don't even train them when, you know when we're talking to them other than their working memory of course is affected. So that's the dynamic part. But they don't learn in the same way that you and I have learned right when from basically when we're born and probably before. So lots of fascinating, interesting questions you ask there, I think um, the one I mentioned is this idea of memory and experience versus just kind of observe the world and learn its knowledge, which I think for that I would argue lots of recent advancements that make me very excited about the field and then the second maybe issue that I see is all these models, we train them from scratch. That's something I would have complained three years ago or six years ago or 10 years ago and it feels if we take inspiration from how we got here, how the universe evolved us, um, and we keep evolving, it feels that is a missing piece that we should not be training models from scratch um, every few months, that there should be some sort of way in which we can grow models much like as a species and many other elements in the universe is building from the previous sort of iterations and that from just purely neural network perspective, even though we, we we would like to make it work, it's proven very hard to not know throw away the previous weights, right. This landscape. We learn from the data and you know, refresh it with a brand new set of weights given maybe a recent snapshot of this data set we train on etcetera or even a new game we're learning. So that's, that feels like something is missing fundamentally. We might find it, but it's not very clear how it will look like. There's many ideas and it's super exciting as well. </s> |
<s>[INST] in a different light. The values of humility and the values of love, [/INST] love broadly, but love for family. And look how everyone around Khabib talks about him, right? No one ever says he's a jerk, no one ever says he's mistreated them. They've all got stories, right? And that's what a beautiful Muslim does, a beautiful human being. You treat the people in such a way that all these stories come out later of how good you were to everyone that came into contact with you. And Khabib was that person. He is that person. He does a great job of treating people with a lot of respect. Obviously, no one is perfect, right? I mean, imperfections are for everybody, but I definitely think that he did a beautiful job representing his faith in those moments. Beyond punching people in the face, that's kind of a different subject. Smashing faces, not the smashing faces part, the prostration part and the humility. I tell you, man, he's not humble in the ring, right? </s><s>[INST] He would maul his opponents, right? I mean, as a practitioner, as a fan of the sport, of all the grappling sports for me, there's also a beauty to the art of grappling and the fighting sports, but yes. I think his, again, humility, his honor outside the cage is exemplary. And the money, the fame, the power hasn't changed the man. [/INST] No, no, not at all. And that's actually, I think, the most beautiful part. When I met him, I found him to be as humble as he is on screen, and that's always very endearing and all of the stories of the people that have been around him for a much longer time. Very humble man. I pray for him, honestly. I pray for Islam. I pray for that family, that God keeps them grounded and protected and together, and that they maintain that beautiful spirit. Because even if you just watch the lead up to the last fight with Islam, just the way they carry themselves, their day to day, they never relinquish their prayers. They never relinquish their family ties, the things that make them who they are to be better fighters. Because they don't see that they have to let go of those things. In fact, they attribute all of their worldly success to that faith. And so, beautiful examples. And I think that it's good for young Muslims to see themselves in that. And it's good for other people to see Islam </s><s>[INST] through that as well. When you mentioned the prophets, you often say peace and blessings be upon them. Yes. What does that phrase mean? Why do you say it? Is it to celebrate the people? Is it as a constant reminder that these are figures [/INST] that should be celebrated? Absolutely. So, it's part of our tradition that when we say the name of a prophet, at least the first time in the conversation, we say peace be upon him. And then afterwards, it's still praiseworthy to say peace be upon him. So, if you're reading an Islamic article and you see in parentheses, P-B-U-H, peace be onto him or peace be upon him. When I was in high school, I often tell this story, I wrote an article about Jesus peace be upon him in Islam and Christianity. And my teacher comes up to me and she says, you can't do that. And I said, what? And she like slams the paper on the desk. She says, you can't say Jesus. I said, no, no, P-B-U-H, peace be upon him. So, that's what it means and something that we reserve </s><s>[INST] for the prophets of God and we honor them with. [/INST] So, who is Muhammad? So, the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him is the descendant of Abraham, peace be upon him through Ishmael. God promises Hagar and Ishmael that he will make of him a great nation. And so, there are prophets that are descended from Isaac and then from the brothers of Isaac comes the prophet Muhammad. And he is the final prophet of a long line of prophets. And we do not distinguish between the prophets in regards to their role. And so, Islam has a very accessible theology. It's something that resonates with a professor at an Ivy league university and a person who may be even illiterate, this idea of one God that sent many prophets and all of the prophets had a singular message, worship one God and respond to the messages of that one God through his messengers. So, Adam through Muhammad, you have many of the prophets that are mentioned in the Old Testament, Moses, peace be upon him being the most spoken about prophet in the Quran, and in fact Abraham, Jesus, peace be upon him, many of these prophets that are familiar to people, all of them are considered prophets and the Islam the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, being the last of them. He comes at a time where there was still a lot of confusion about what the world had just encountered in Christ and Jesus Christ peace be upon him. So you got to think about it this way that this is still, you know, he's born in the sixth century. There is still great debate about who Jesus was. The Council of Nicaea happens in the fourth century where you kind of have a standardizing of Western Christianity, but then you have Eastern Christians that are still maintaining very different theologies and very different conceptions of Christ. There is no Arabic Bible at the time. And he kind of brings together the message and the mission of all of those prophets, and it fits perfectly into a singular string of thought where you don't have to reject Jesus, peace be upon him, but Islam also is staunchly opposed to the idea of a Trinity, the idea of a begotten son of God, that all of the conceptions of the Messiah, and there were many claimants of the Messiah prior to Christ, peace be upon him. None of them included an idea of a Trinity or of him actually being a part of God himself, a begotten son of God, but rather a great and mighty prophet that would restore glory on earth. So he really captures theologically, or rather, we would say God captures through him theologically a coherence and a unifying message of all of the prophets that there's only one God, and that that God has sent messages and scriptures to ultimately guide people back towards him, and that all of the prophets are equal in the sight of God. There's no distinction between them, and that we are to live our lives in accordance with the message as best manifested by the messenger. And so the prophets are exemplary human beings, and this is where we sometimes maybe have a difference. Someone will say, well, Noah did this, and David did this. As Muslims, we don't hold many of the stories that have been attributed to these prophets to be true. We don't believe that the prophets are capable of major sins. We believe they're exemplary human beings, and that they give us a manifestation of the scriptures that they were sent with of how to live noble lives. And the most documented human being in history is the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We know everything about him, his family life, his day to day, the way he would greet you, the way he'd look at you, everything about his physical appearance. It's documented in immaculate detail, and Muslims have a standard that they then seek to live up to with how to treat your family, how to be in your community, how to be in your worship, how to be in your social interactions, how to carry yourself with your neighbors. It's a full, complete guidebook through his example, where we have the Quran, which is the word of God, and then you have the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which is a living manifestation of that word that has been documented for us to live by until the end of time. </s> |
<s>[INST] Is it still possible for a person who is a black belt to then just go back to that beginning journey I guess [/INST] for, let me tell you something, I'm probably gonna catch a lot of flack for saying this. I have a belief. I won't say something, I won't call it knowledge because it's not known. But I have a fervent belief the human beings in most skilled activities, not all skill activities, but I will say combat sports for sure Can reinvent themselves in five year periods. Now. You might be saying five years what's magical about five years? Mike Tyson was 13 years old when he was taken in by custom. Otto by the age of 18 he was beating world class boxes in the gym and had already made a, a strong name for himself. An international boxing was already a known figure. Was five years. Yasuhiro Yamashita, the judo player began judo at 13. Yeah, he placed silver And the old Japan's at 17. I could go on all day with examples of athletes who within a five year time frame of starting a sport, we're competing at world championship level. I'm going to give you a rough and ready definition of sport mastery. Okay. I believe that if you can play a competitive match Against someone ranked in the top 25 in your sport and it's a serious international sport, I would call you someone who's mastered that sport. Okay. You're, you're, you're damn good. Um if you can go with the number 25 wrestler in the world and give them a hard competitive match in the gym, you may not win it, but they had a good workout you have, showing mastery of wrestling or indeed any other combat sports you care to name. There are numerous examples of people doing far better than that in five years, winning Medals at World Championships and even Olympic Games in that five year period. This is not an unrealistic goal. There is a lot of empirical evidence to show that people have done this in the past. A lot of it. If you fully immerse yourself in a sport with a well worked out, well planned training program, there is a mountain of evidence to show that in a five year period you can go from a complete beginner to like very, very impressive skill level to the point where competitive with some of the best people on the planet, you can reinvent yourself in these five year periods. What happens with most people is they get to a certain level and they get complacent, they get lazy and they just keep doing the same old thing they've been doing. But if you're diligent and your purposeful five years, you can accomplish an awful lot. And as I said, there's a mountain of evidence to show it </s><s>[INST] by the way, as a smaller side. Somebody who's mentioned diversity and your machine in the same conversation, You're one of the most impressive people who have spoken to, but it's a small side. Uh, so if there is this complete beginner, this is really interesting. Yes, there is empirical evidence that you can achieve incredible things in a short amount of time. Huh? There's a complete beginner standing before you and that beginner has fire in their eyes and they want to achieve mastery. Where do you place most of the credit for it for a journey that does achieve mastery? Is it the set of ideas they have in their mind? Is it the, the set of drills are the way they practice is a genetics and luck. [/INST] Uh, those are all good insights, all of those factors you've mentioned played a definite role. Let's start with luck. Okay. Um we are all subject to fortune and fortune can be good and fortune can be bad. Life is in many ways beautiful, but life is also tragic and I've had students who show enormous promise and just tragic events occurred in their lives. The vicissitudes of fortune can be a wonderful thing in your life and they can be a terrible tragedy. I've had students who died various reasons who could have gone on to become world champions. I've had students who, on a much lighter note just fell in love and just wanted to have kids and move away. And that's that's a, that's a wonderful thing, but different direction. Um you just never know. So, luck does play some role. Even things like where you're born, the location of your physical location in the world or even socioeconomic location can, can play a role which could be detrimental or favorable. So yet luck does play some role, thankfully it's one of the smaller elements. Um, and uh, I do believe that a truly resourceful mind can overcome the majority of what fortune throws at us and get two goals provided you sufficiently mentally robust. Um, other things you mentioned genetics, uh, I do believe in certain sports genetics really do play a powerful, powerful role. For example, in any sport where um power output and reaction speed, um, ability to take physical damage. Then there are genetic elements which will help. Okay, for example, I couldn't imagine a world in which even if I have a crippled leg. So even if I grew up in a world where my leg was, was normal and I had normal legs and everything was fine with my body, I don't believe That I could win the Olympic gold medal and 100 m sprinting for example. Okay, I just don't have enough fast twitch muscle fibers. But the more a sport involves skill and tactics, the less you will see genetics playing a role. If you look at the medal podiums in Jiu jitsu for example, you will see that no one body type is definitively superior to another. You will see every variation of body type and the metal platforms and and you did. So, um, as skill and tactics become more and more important and things like just power output over time become less and less important than you'll see that genetics play less and less of a role. I'm happy to say that the sport of judas who the evidence seems pretty clear that there is no one dominant body type and the squatter jiu jitsu rather there's just advantages for one type and there's advantages for another. You just have to learn to tailor your game to your body. Um, with regard to training program. Yes. I believe with all my heart and all my soul that your training program does make a difference. I've dedicated my life to that. Obviously I'm biased in this regard. I do believe that all of the students that I taught who became world champions would have been great athletes whether or not they had met me or not. I believe that. But I do also believe it would have taken them a lot longer and they may not have gotten to the level that they did. I'm sure they would have been impressive. But I do believe that the nature of a training program place an enormous difference. I don't mean to say this in an arrogant way. I believe it. There's again a mountain of evidence to suggest this is true because you see it in many different sports. Let's talk for example about your country. Russia and its wrestling program, Russia is an enormous country. But the location where Russia's wrestling program comes from is actually very small and the population is actually very small. I can't verify this, but I was told once, I can't verify this, but the number of people who wrestle in Russia is actually significantly smaller than the number of people who wrestle in the United States. </s> |
<s>[INST] but eventually you just have to be a Scientologist. So you mentioned the eight dynamics, but you also mentioned survival. So that seems to be a core principle that human existence is about survival. Can you elaborate what is meant by survival? We're talking about survival of the human species, survival of the individual humans, survival of the, the manifestation of thetans in human form. [/INST] What do we, what's survival? So it would be all of that because survival is the, the dominant force across all the dynamics that, I mean, Elrond Hubbard, it was either Dianetics or Science of Survival. He says he discovered the principle upon which all life exists. And that is all life, no matter what it is trying to do. Are you ready, Lex? </s><s>[INST] It's trying to survive. That's pretty powerful. That's pretty powerful. I gotta tell you, I gotta- You might get me back in, Lex. No, I'm not, I'm not trying to get you back in. I'm trying to take you, get you to take seriously the power of the ideas behind Scientology, because I think those ideas are not bad ideas. They resonate with a lot of ideas throughout philosophy, throughout religions, throughout the history of human civilization. [/INST] The interesting aspect is how it goes wrong. But here's the thing, Lex, here's the thing. It is consistent with prior efforts or studies. It's just that Elrond Hubbard said this was a watershed breakthrough that it was being discovered for the first time. </s><s>[INST] That's kind of what I'm mocking, really. Yeah, but you can mock Nietzsche for saying man has will to power. You can mock Roy. But did he claim to be the first person to ever say it? Well, Nietzsche had a bit of an ego, so. Like, and he's full of contradictions, but I'm pretty sure the imply thing is that he was the first to say it. There's a lot of scientists. There's one of the people I really admire, Stephen Wolfram, who wrote a book called A New Kind of Science that explores complex systems and cellular automata and these mathematical systems that have been explored before. But he boldly kind of defined, I am presenting to you a whole new way to look at the world. And if you just set a little bit of the ego behind that aside, there's actually beautiful ideas in there. They have of course been done before and explored before, but sometimes people declare this is the coolest. [/INST] That's the only thing I'm really mocking is that this discovery that life is trying to survive is greater than the discovery of fire. I mean again, it's a little silly. But that's fine. We can agree that the fact that life is trying to survive has meaning and is meaningful and can be, is valuable. And it's true. </s><s>[INST] I mean, life is trying to survive. Also, there's a non-trivial definition of what is life here? So this idea of a thing, the thing that permeates through lifetimes through people, there's some fabric that is bigger than the individual biological bags of meat. That's a philosophically-interesting idea. Of course, if it's not grounded in a little bit more [/INST] of physical reality, then it becomes a little too woo-woo. And the way L. Ron Hubbard in Scientology defines survival is very much intertwined with how they define ethics. Ethics, anything to be ethical is pro-survival. To be unethical is counter-survival. But we were talking about just the concept of the dynamics, like what does survival refer to? And it actually does refer to all of them, but just keep in mind, when it comes to the seventh dynamic, Thetans collectively, involved in here is the idea that a Thetan cannot die. There's no such thing as killing a Thean. A Thean can only survive. And so, anyway, this concept of the dynamics is one of the most fundamental and important concepts in Scientology. But because I mentioned that it also gets tied up with ethics, and this probably speaks to what you're just talking about is you can have the ideas and the concepts and you can have how do they go wrong. Because they hold that Scientology, applying Scientology, getting people into Scientology is the key to basically saving every spiritual being in existence. When you're analyzing what is ethical, it becomes whatever's good for Scientology becomes by definition ethical, because anything that's good for Scientology, which is a third dynamic, is inherently good for all the dynamics. So that's where you get the ends justifying the means to do anything possible, use any means necessary to afford the aims of Scientology. </s><s>[INST] That's kind of where a lot of Soviet implementation of communism went wrong, is the ends justify the means. The equality, the justice for the workers, if we have to kill, murder, imprison, censor, in the name of that, then it's for the greater good [/INST] in the long term to achieve the ideal of communism. In some respects, Scientology created a near-perfect communist experiment in its organization. What is it, from everyone according to their ability to each according to their need, or something like that? Scientology, C Organization, is damn near a perfect communist experiment. Coming from someone who doesn't necessarily know what a perfect communist experiment really is, because I'm not grew up in a cult, Lex. You can't keep it as an excuse. It's a funny tagline I use in my videos. It is interesting that an organization that is so hyper capitalist and so money hungry and is known to be very wealthy at its core is run by these group of Syorg members that live a communist lifestyle. </s><s>[INST] You can't keep using it as we're gonna jump around. Let's go, what is C or What is C organization? What is this organization? [/INST] Yeah. What is this organization? The organization is the most dedicated version, the most dedicated brand of Scientologists. So there's three like echelons of Scientologists, there's public who just live normal lives in the real world and they pay to do Scientology courses and auditing. Then there's staff members who also live in the real world, but work on two and a half year contracts or five year contracts at their local Scientology organization and then once they finished their contract, their debt is paid or whatever, and then there's the seorg members, these are the guys who signed the billion year contracts. They don't have lives in the outside world. They don't own property, they live in Scientology provided housing, they eat Scientology run cafeterias. </s> |
<s>[INST] it's better to write good code in the beginning as opposed to writing crappy code and then trying to fix it and trying to scramble and figure out and through testing, figure out where the bugs [/INST] are, it's like, it's like it's like which shortcut caused that rocket to not get where it was needed to go. </s><s>[INST] So I think one of the most beautiful ideas uh philosophically and technically is uh of a virtual machine. The java virtual machine. Oh well again apologize to romanticize things but uh how did the idea of the J. V. M. Come to be how to you radical of an idea is because it seems to me to be just a really interesting idea in the history of programming. [/INST] So, </s><s>[INST] and what is it? [/INST] So the job of virtual machine, you can think of it in different ways um because it was carefully designed to have different ways of viewing it. So one view of it that most people don't really realize is there is that you can um view it as sort of an encoding of the abstract syntax tree in reverse polish notation. Um, I don't know if that makes any sense at all. I could explain it and that would blow all over time. Um, but the other way to think of it, um and the way that it ends up being explained is that it's like the instruction set of an abstract machine that's designed such that you can translate that abstract machine to a physical machine. And the reason that that's important. So if you wind back to the early nineties when we were talking to all of these, these companies doing consumer electronics and you talked to the purchasing people, there were interesting conversations with purchasing. Um so if you look at how, you know these, you know, these devices come together, their sheet metal and gears and circuit boards and capacitors and resistors and stuff and everything you buy has multiple sources, right? So you can buy a capacitor from here, you can buy a capacitor from there and you've got kind of a market. So you know, so that the, you can actually get a decent price for a capacitor. Um, but Cpus and particularly in the early nineties, um, Cpus were all different and all proprietary. So if you use the chip from intel, you had to be an intel customer for the end until the end of time because if he wrote a bunch of software, you know, when you wrote software using whatever technique you wanted and she was particularly bad about this because there was a lot of properties of the underlying machine that came through. </s><s>[INST] So you're stuck. So the code you wrote, you were stuck to that particular machine, [/INST] you were stuck to that particular machine, which meant that they couldn't decide. You know, intel is screwing us. Um, I'll start buying chips from, you know, bob's better chips. This drove the like the purchasing people absolutely insane that that they would, they were welded into this decision and it would have, they would have to make this decision before the first line of software was written, </s><s>[INST] it's funny that you're talking about the purchasing people. So that's one perspective, right? You could, there's a lot of other perspectives that all probably hated this idea, right? But from a technical aspect, just like the creation of an abstraction layer, that's agnostic to the underlying machine. Often the perspective of the developer. I mean it's brilliant. [/INST] Well, and, and, and you know, so that's like across the spectrum of of providers of chips. But then there's also the time thing because um, you know, as you went from one generation to the next generation to the next generation, they were all differently and you would often have to rewrite your </s><s>[INST] software. I mean the generations of CP of machines of different kinds. So, so [/INST] like, like, like, like one of the things that sucked about a year out of my life was when son went from the the Motorola 68 0 10 processor to the 68 0 20 processor, then they had a number of differences and one of them hit us really hard and I ended up being the point guy on the worst case of where the new instruction cache architecture hurt us. </s><s>[INST] Well, okay, so I mean, when when did this idea? I mean, okay, so yeah, you articulate a really clear fundamental problem in all of computing, but how, where do you get the guts to think we can actually solve this, [/INST] you know, in our conversations with, you know, all these vendors, you know, these problems started to show up and I kind of had this epiphany because it reminded me of a summer job that I had had in grad school. So back in grad school, my my thesis advisor, well I had to thesis advisors for bizarre reasons. Um one of them was a guy named raj Ready, the other one was bob Sproul um and rajah, I love you, I love both of them. But so the yes, the department had bought a bunch of like early workstations from a company called Three Rivers Computer Company and Three Rivers computer company was a bunch of electrical engineers who wanted to do as little software as possible. So um they knew that they need to have like compilers and os and stuff like that and they didn't want to do any of that and they wanted to do that for as close to zero money as possible. So um what they did was they built a machine whose instruction set was um the was literally the byte code for ucsd pascal, the p code. And so we had a bunch of software um that was that was written for this machine um and for various reasons, you know, the company wasn't doing terrifically well, we had all this software on these machines and we wanted it to run on other machines, principally the vax and um and Suraj asked me if I could come up with a way to ports all of this software from the, from from from the perk machines to vax is, and I think he, you know what he had in mind was something that would translate from like pascal to see or pascal to actually at those times pretty much it was, you could translate to C or C, and if you didn't like translating to see, you could translate to see um there was, you know, it's you know, it's like the Henry ford, you know, any color you want, just as long as it's black. Um and and I went that's really hard. </s> |
<s>[INST] with [/INST] actually. So when you play against really good players, you have to take small plus CV scenarios where you push the envelope and you're playing really aggressive, you're bluffing off your staff, you got to do this, you gotta focus a little bit more on being balanced because otherwise, you know, you're not gonna beat these guys, whereas if you're playing with amateurs and you're playing with regular players for the most part, risking all your chips on a bluff, probably don't need to do that. You don't need to do that nearly as much. You can probably slowly but surely build your stack without taking, you know, those high risk, high variance situation because you'll find better situations. </s><s>[INST] What mistakes do amateurs usually make in tournaments like that? Are they over bluffing? Well, [/INST] I think amateurs generally the biggest mistake they make is they think that pros are bluffing more than they are. So like a pro bowl, bet all his chips on the end, like, I don't know, maybe, you know, Phil Ivey, maybe he's doing some crazy stuff, he's probably not, he's probably just got it, you </s><s>[INST] know, and then they lose all their money by calling or going all in as well. Um, and so the right things to be more patient for, So amateur is too impatient [/INST] or just bad reads. So all the amateurs are built different, some of the amateurs are just too weak and passive, they're just waiting for the nuts, you know, and then, you know, the pros, everyone notices that and then when they make their big hand they don't get paid anyway. So in order to win the main event, I mean you have to have some components of your game that are aggressive. It's very unlikely to expect to just get the cards the whole way and just always have the best hand. You're gonna have to find ways to win pots that you know where you don't have the best hand. </s><s>[INST] How do you win the final table? The [/INST] final table is unique now, especially because you're talking about the way the poker works in tournaments is that if there's seven people left and you have just you know, you're very short on chips but if one other player goes out, you just make like $300,000 for folding like just for sitting out right? The term for that that you know, chill kids uses, I see em independent, you know, chip model right? Where it talks about the value of each chip, where what happens, what we see now is let's say one guy has a big chip lead and there's another guy who's second in chips and there's a couple that are short these guys in the middle, they just play super tight and they wait for the little guys to go while the big stack is just pounding them because he can afford to write, he knows that people are handcuffed. So let's say I had 10 million in chips and you have nine million in chips and these guys have little chips. If I go in on you, are you gonna call me and risk like, you know, guaranteed pay jumps of like moving up a few spots. So really the question comes down to like, are you the type of guy who just wants to inch up or you gonna go for it and you're gonna go for the win? I think ultimately there's some value in being the guy who says, you know, I don't care if I come seventh, I'm not worried about going from seventh to fifth, I'm here to win. And </s><s>[INST] so you're saying like the guys that win will often be the ones that called there. So like they're not just bullying the small stacks. They're, [/INST] well, they're the ones, they're the ones that are willing to, willing to risk it, right? So there are some people who, you know, if there's five left, you know, and they're third in chips and there's two guys very short and you, you know, they'll have asking someone moving, they'll just fold, they fold the hand because they want to wait for those two other players to get broke. And that way they let you know they make actual money. So you, I guess the thought process between winning first place and winning the most amount of money are different. They're conflicting, right? Because in order to like when if you're just, if your focus is only on winning the tournament, you will make mistakes financially where you have guaranteed income for just folding right? Let's say a guy has one chip left, you know, one chip and me and you have good chips and I go all in with you and I lose now that guy, you know, got the guaranteed, you know, he got the pay jump that I wouldn't have got. So there's some extremely stupid mistakes you can make from a financial perspective, but it's often at odds with, you know, giving yourself the best chance to actually come first </s><s>[INST] and in the tournament, especially the main event, especially the final table, it's all about coming in first. [/INST] Well I know because most of the people who make it so like, you know, when you play these high rollers, these guys are accustomed to playing for 100,000, they're accustomed to this kind of money. So they're gonna play right for the most. But you're talking about guys have bought into a $10,000 tournament, maybe never had 100 K. Cash in their life and now they're sitting there And it's like one million for 5th and two million for 4th. </s><s>[INST] So [/INST] like they don't want to be there, they're just gonna sit there and go I don't want so they'll they'll be under more financial pressure because they're not like your typical high roller type player, are </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah. Election year pandemic. I wonder if we can do some smooth analysis, lets run the simulation over a few times. A little noise. Yeah. You see, you see if it can dramatically change the behavior of the system, Okay, we talked about your love for proving that something is impossible. So there's quite a few still open problems in complexity of algorithms. Uh So let me ask does P equals np problem? Probably not if P equals np what kind of, you know, and you'll be really surprised somebody proves it. What would that proof look like and why would that even be? What would that mean? What would that proof look like and what possible universe could be equals Np. Is there something inside? So you can say there? [/INST] It could it could be true. I mean, I'm not a complexity theorist, but every complexity theorist I know is convinced they're not equal And are basically not working out anymore. I mean there is $1 million Millennium Prizes. Okay, so here here's how I think the P not equals M. P. Proof is going to eventually happen. I think it's going to fall out and it's going to be not super simple, but not as hard as people think because my my theory about a lot of theoretical computer science based on just some results I've done. So this is a huge extrapolation is that a lot of what we're doing is just a few skating deeper mathematics. So like this happens to me a lot, not a lot of what's happened to me a few times in my work where we obfuscate it because we say, well there's an algorithm and has this much, you know, memory and they're connected on a network and okay, here's our setup and now we're trying to see how fast it can solve a problem and people do bounds about. And then the end, it turns out that like we were just obfuscating some underlying, you know, mathematical thing that already existed, right? So this has happened to me. I had this paper was quite fond of a while ago. It was looking at this problem called contention resolution, where you you you put an unknown set of people on a shared channel and they're trying to break symmetry. So it's like an ethernet, whatever. Only one person can use it at the time. You try to break symmetry. There's all these bounds people have proven over the years about how long it takes to do this. Right? And like I discovered at some point there's this one combinatorial results From the early 1990s, all of these lower bound proofs all come from this. In fact, it improved a lot of them and simplified a lot. You can put it all in one paper, you know, it's like, are we really And then Okay, so this new paper that I submitted a couple weeks ago, I found you could take some of these same lower bound proofs for this contention resolution problem. You could reprove them using Shannon's source code theorem That actually when you're breaking contention, what you're really doing is building a code over, you know, uh if you have a distribution on the network sizes is the code over that source. And if you plug in a high entropy information source and plug in from 1948, the source code theorem that says on a noiseless channel, you can't send things at a faster rate than the entropy allows. The exact same lower bounds fall back out again. Right. So like this type of thing happens. There's a there's some famous lower bounds and distributed algorithms that turned out to all be algebraic topology underneath the covers and they won the girdle prize. We're working on that. So, my sense is what's going to happen is at some point, someone really smart to be very exciting is going to realize there's some sort of other representation of what's going on with these turing machines trying to sort of efficiently </s><s>[INST] usually follow a lot of that [/INST] there will be an existing mathematical result that </s><s>[INST] apply someone or something. I guess it could be a I theo improvers kind of thing. [/INST] It could be Yeah, I mean, well, yeah, there's the're improvers like what that means now, which is not fun. </s><s>[INST] It's just a bunch of very [/INST] carefully formulated postulates that. But I take your point, </s><s>[INST] Yeah. So, okay, uh you know, a small tangent on them then you're kind of implying the mathematics. It almost feels like a kind of weird evolutionary tree that ultimately leads back to some kind of ancestral if you fundamental ideas that all they're just like they're all somehow connected uh in that sense, do you think uh math is fundamental to our universe and we're just like slowly trying to understand these patterns? Or is it is it discovered? Or is it just a little game that we play amongst ourselves to try to fit little patterns to the world? [/INST] Yeah, that's the question. Right? That's the physicist question. I mean, I'm probably I'm in the discovered camp, but I don't do theoretical physics. So I know they have a they feel like they have a stronger claim that the answering that question. So you don't come back to it. Everything comes back to it. I mean, all of physics, the fact that the universe is well, Okay, yeah, it's a complicated question. </s><s>[INST] So, how often do you think, how deeply does this result describe the fundamental reality of nature? [/INST] So, the reason I hesitated because it's something I'm I taught the seminar and did a little work on what are called biological algorithms. So, there's this notion of Yeah, so physicists used mathematics to explain the universe, Right. And it was unreasonable that mathematics works so well, yeah. All these differential equations, why does that explain all we need to know about thermodynamics and gravity and all these, all these types of things? Well, there's this there's this movement within the intersection of computer science and biology? Uh just kind of Wolfram e um I guess really that algorithms can be very explanatory, right? Like if you're trying to if you're trying to explain parsimonious lee something about like an ant colony or something like this, you're not going to ultimately it's not going to be explained as an equation, like a physics equation, it's gonna be explained by an algorithm. This algorithm run distributed lee is going to explain the behavior. So that's mathematical, but not quite mathematical. But it is if you think about an algorithm, like a lambda calculus, which brings you back to the world of mathematics, I'm thinking out loud here, but basically abstract math is unreasonably effective at explaining a lot of things. And that's just what I feel like I glimpse I'm not a uh not like a super well known theoretician, I don't have really famous results. So even as a sort of middling, you know, career theoretician, I keep encountering this where we think we're solving some problem about computers and algorithms and it's some much deeper underlying math. It's Shannon, but Shannon is entropy but entropy was really, you know, goes all the way back to whatever it was boiling all the way back to looking at the early physics. And and it's it was to me, I think it's amazing. </s> |
<s>[INST] or to [/INST] watch science fiction will be able to think about this Like this is do you know Stanislaw lem this Polish science fiction writer, he wrote salaries that was turned into a Hollywood movie. His best novels that was in the 60s. Very, very engineers and engineering back on. His most interesting novel is called the Victoria's where human civilization, they have this mission to this planet and everything is destroyed and they discovered machines, humans got killed. And then these machines took over and there was a machine evolution, Darwinian evolution. He talks about this very vividly and finally the dominant, the dominant machine intelligence organism that survived are gigantic clouds of little hexagonal universal sellout Tomah to this is that in the sixties so typically they're all lying on the ground, individual by themselves. But in times of crisis they can communicate their assembly into gigantic nets into clouds or billions of these particles and then they become hyper intelligent and they can beat anything that humans can can control at it. It's very beautiful and compelling where you have an intelligence where finally the humans leave the planet, they simply unable to understand and comprehend this creature and they can say well either we can nuke the entire plan and destroyed or we just have to leave because fundamentally it's an it's an alien. Its so alien from us and our ideas that we cannot communicate with them. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, actually in conversation and sell your talent to Stephen Wolfram brought up is that there could be his ideas. You know you already have these artificial general intelligence like super smart or maybe conscious beings in the cellar your time and we just don't know how to talk to them. So it's the language of communication but you don't know what to do with it. So that's one sort of view is consciousness is only something you can measure. So it's not conscious if you can't measure it. [/INST] So you're making an ontological and epistemological statement. One is there there it's just like saying there multiverses that might be too can communicate with them. I don't have I can't have any knowledge of them. That's an epidemic argument. So those are two different things. So it may well be possible. Look in another case that's happening right now people are building these mini organize. Do you know about this? So you know you can take stem cells from under your arm, put it in a dish, add four transcription factors and then you can induce them to go to go into large, large. They're a few millimeters there like a half a million neurons that look like nerve cells in a dish called. Mini organize at Harvard and stanford everywhere. They're building them. It may be well be possible that they're beginning to feel like something but we can't really communicate with them right now. So people are beginning to think about the ethics of this. So yes he may be perfectly right but they made it's one question, are they conscious or not is totally separate question. How would I know those are two different things. </s><s>[INST] If you could give advice to a young researcher sort of dreaming of understanding or creating human level intelligence or consciousness, what would you say? [/INST] Follow your dreams widely? No I mean </s><s>[INST] I suppose would discipline what what is the pursuit that they should take on? Is that neuroscience is a competition of cognitive science? Is a philosophy, is a computer science or products? Um No [/INST] in a sense that, okay, so the only known system that have high level of intelligence is homo sapiens. So if you wanted to build it it's probably good to continue to study closely what humans do. So cognitive neuroscience, you know, somewhere between cognitive neuroscience on the one hand then some philosophy of mind and then ai ai computer science, you can look at all the original, I use neural networks. They all came from neuroscience. Right? Um reinforcement. Whether it's snarky Minsky building is snarky or whether it's you know the early schubert and diesel experiment that how about that then gave rise to networks and multi layer networks. Um So it may well be possible. In fact some people argue that to make the next big step in ai once will realize the limits of deep convolutional networks they can do certain things but they can't really understand. But they don't they don't they can't really I can't really show him one image. I can show you a single image of so many pickpocket who steals a wallet from the purse. You immediately know that's a pickpocket. Computer system would just say well it's a man, it's a woman, it's a purse, right? Unless you train this machine on showing it 100,000 pickpockets. Right? So it doesn't it doesn't have this easy understanding that you have, right? So so some people make the argument in order to go to the next step for you really want to build machines that understand in a way you and I we have to go to psychology, we need to understand how we do it and our brains enable us to do it and so therefore being on the cusp. It's also so exciting to try to understand better our nature and then to build to take some of those inside and build them. So I think the most exciting thing is somewhere in the interface between cognitive science, neuroscience. Ai computer science and philosophy of mind </s> |
<s>[INST] there would be this merge block that will mark this transition and over time. I guess the new chain will contain the full record of all the transactions that's ever happened on the previous chain on the old chain. So like uh maybe I'm asking a dumb question here, but in in this process is the new chain going to have all the information of the past transactions. [/INST] The new chain is not going to hold information from what happened in the ethereum chain before the merge. Right? So like ethereum clients of the um that um people are going to use like around the time of the murder and soon after the merge, they're probably just going to sink like and check the proof of work chain up to the merge and then they're going to check the proof state chain. But at some point in the future, I think people will just stop bothering checking the proof of work before the merge. </s><s>[INST] Got it. So that old history information is not important [/INST] for </s><s>[INST] the future. Like if you're operating actively on the, on the new chain, that history is not important to you. [/INST] It's not important. So it's not strictly important for um for just like in any like smart contract or just like applications that run on the Blockchain, it can be important to users and it can be important for some applications, but we're basically saying that like maintaining and serving that is not going to be simultaneously the responsibility of every theory. Um note if you want that information there can be separate protocols for backing it up. And like these other protocols actually exist, right? Like there's something called the graph which is doing some history retrieval, potentially you can just take that entire chain and stick it on bittorrent. Like there's lots of ways to archive it and create kind of customized search protocols for it. </s><s>[INST] So what's your sense why? So there's a python two and python three and it took forever for people to switch. What's your sense why this merge has been taking longer than perhaps was expected? [/INST] I think the biggest reason is just we've been underestimating the technical complexity, there's a lot of technical complexity and making a successful proof of stake chain, there's a lot of technical complexity and actually figuring out the transition process. There's </s><s>[INST] so that's bigger than social complexity. So it's the technical complexity you would say, is the bigger reason for the amy delays than the social complexity. [/INST] I actually think so, I I think we've been very fortunate to not have too much social complexity around the merge, </s><s>[INST] so not much drama, [/INST] no. Um I think the biggest part of the reason is just because we have been talking about proof of stake in charting as being part of the road map since almost the very beginning of the project, right? Like the very first proof of stake blog post is from january 2014, which was, you know, a two months after the project started and like maybe even a day after the announcement. Um so, you know, it was proof of stake was not something that we kind of put on any on anybody by surprise. And then when the dow fork happened and, you know, the people on the pc side split off? I think it also just happens that a lot of the people that were not willing to stomach the DAO fork and then joined the E T. C. Side, they were the more Bitcoin E types and the more Bitcoin types do also tends to like like proof of work more and so like that also sort of ended up, you know, sort of purifying the communities on both sides I guess. So if they're in classic is not switching to proof of stake and you know, they're happy with their setup and by the time that no, it came to the beacon chain along Kenyans and now I think the community is that there's very strongly in favor of the mistakes, which, </s><s>[INST] but let me ask the question that no uh engineer wants to hear, which is the question of timeline, when do you think the merge Will happen? Do you have a sense it might happen this year, you have a sense that might be pushed towards next year. 2022? Um or or even beyond. [/INST] I think early 2022 is like the most realistic. There's, I think that there's definitely still like an optimistic case of it happening this year. But the realistic thing to count on is definitely the early part of a very early part of next year, </s><s>[INST] is there specific things that stand out to you there are like they'll make you feel good about progress if you see it happening. [/INST] Um So the thing that we had last month is that we had this online hackathon called Reaganism where basically a bunch of the different client developers that are going to be part of the transition, like hacks together some test nets of the post merge ethereum chain. So these were only test nets of what would happen after the merge. They were not tested its of the transition itself. So the thing that uh, people are working on now actually as the transition um, so having a full specification of both the transition and post transition and we have specifications now, but like realistic ways they'll probably needs to have a couple of changes and have things that continue to be ironed out and then have a unit test net that does both the transition and the post transition. And then like once you have a test network then you just have to do a lot of testing and audited. Um, and then you know, do some runs on, not just a specialized test network but on saying existing test network like robson or it could be that if they're in people already significantly use and if it works then you can deploy the transition on main net </s> |
<s>[INST] sucks. It doesn't last forever. So Bukowski talked about like love is the fog, like it's uh when you wake up in the morning it's, it's there, but eventually dissipates it's really sad, Nothing lasts forever. But I definitely like doing this push up and running thing, There's moments at a couple of moments like I'm not a crier. I don't cry, but there's moments where I was like, face down on the carpet, like with tears in my eyes is interesting and then like complete, like uh there's a lot of demons, I've got demons had to face them. Funny how running makes you face your demons. But at the same time, the flip side of that, there's a few moments where I was in bliss and all of it alone, which is funny. [/INST] It's beautiful like that, but definitely pushing yourself physically. One of it for sure. </s><s>[INST] Like you said, I mean you were speaking as a metaphor of mount Everest, but it also works like literally I think physical endeavor somehow. Yeah, there's something, I mean we're monkeys apes, whatever. Physical. There's a physical thing to it, [/INST] but there's something to this. Yeah, pushing yourself physically physically, but alone. That happens when you're doing things like you do Australia's like workouts or you know, rolling extra across the atlantic or like marathons. That's why I love watching marathons and it's so boring, but you can see them getting there. </s><s>[INST] So the other thing, I don't know if, you know, there's a guy named David Goggins, he's a he basically uh so he's been either email on the phone with me every day through this. I haven't been exactly alone. But he he's kind of, he's the he's the devil on the devil's shoulder. Uh so he's like the worst possible human being in terms of giving you a advice like he has um through everything I've been doing has been doubling everything I do. So he's insane. Uh He's a this navy seal person. Uh he's wrote this book, Can't hurt me. He's basically one of the toughest human beings on earth. He ran all these crazy ultramarathons in the desert. He set the world record number of pull ups. He just does everything. Where's like Mhm. He like how can I suffer today? He figures that out and does it. Yeah. That whatever that is that process of self discovery is really important. Actually had to turn myself off from the internet mostly because I started this like workout thing, like a happy go getter with my headband and like like just like uh because a lot of people were like inspired and they're like yeah we're going to exercise with you. And I was yeah, great. You know, But then like I realized that this this journey can't be done together with others. This has to be done alone. So out of the moments of love, Out of the moments of loss, can we talk about your journey of finding I think an incredible idea, an incredible company, an incredible system in replica how did that come to be? [/INST] So yeah, so I was a journalist and then I went to business school for a couple of years to Um just see if I can maybe switch garrison do something else with 23. And then I came back and started working for a businessman in Russia who build the first four G. Network um in our country and was very visionary and asked me what I want to do fun stuff together. Um And we worked on a bank. Um The idea was to build a bank on top of a telco. So that was 2011 or 12. Um and a lot of telecommunication company. Um Mobile Network operators. I didn't really know what to do next in terms of you know new products, new revenue. And this big idea was that you know um you put a bank on top and then all work works out basically a prepaid account becomes your bank account and um you can use it as as your bank. Uh So you know a third of the country wakes up as your bank client. Um But we couldn't quite figure out what would be the main interface to interact with the bank. The problem was that most people didn't have smart smart phones back in the time in Russia. The penetration of smartphones was low people didn't use mobile banking or online banking and their computers. So we figured out that SmS would be the best way because that would work on feature phones. Uh But that requires some chat about technology which I don't know anything about obviously. So I started looking into it and saw that there's nothing really, well there was just nothing really </s><s>[INST] ideas through Sms be able to interact with your bank account. [/INST] Yeah. And then we thought well since you're talking to a bank account, why can't this, can't we use more of you know some behavioral ideas and why can't this banking chatbots be nice to you and really talk to you as a friend this way you develop more connection to it, retention is higher people don't turn. And so I went to very depressing um Russian cities to test it out. I went to remember three different towns with um to interview potential users. Um so people use it for a little bit and I want to talk to them. Um and we're four towns. Very poor talents mostly towns that were um you know sort of factories uh monitor towns, they were building something and then the factory went away and it was just a bunch of very poor people. Um And then we went to a couple that weren't as dramatic, but still the one I remember really fondly was this woman that worked at a glass factory and she talked to chad bond. Um and she was talking about it and started crying during the interview because she said no one really cares for me that much. And so to be clear that was the my only endeavor in programming that chat boss. It was really simple. It was little military, just a few if this then that rules and um it was incredibly simplistic and still that made her and that really made her emotional and she said you know, I have my mom and my um my husband and I don't have any more really in my life and it was very sad but at the same time I felt and we had more interviews in a similar vein and what I thought in the moment was like well It's not that the technology is ready because definitely in 2012 technology was not ready for for that. But um humans already unfortunately, so this project would not be about like tech capabilities would be more about human vulnerabilities, but um there's something so so powerful around about conversational um ai that I saw them that I thought was definitely worth putting in a lot of effort into so and then if they were sold a banking project, but my then boss uh is also my mentor and really really close friend um told me, hey I think there's something in it and you should just go work on it. I was like well what product I don't know what I'm building, he's like you'll figure it out. And um you know, looking back at this is a horrible idea to work on something without knowing what it was, which is maybe the reason why it took us so long, but we just decided to work on the conversational attack to see what, you know, there were no chad bought um constructors or programs or anything that would allow you to actually build one at the time? That was the arab by the way, google glass, which is why, you know, some of the investors, like seed investors have talked with were like, oh you should totally build it for google glass. If not we're not, I don't think that's interesting. </s> |
<s>[INST] use it for three things. One, I use it to pick the books I'm going to read that I haven't read yet two. I use it to summarize books I just don't think I'll have time to ever get to but they're part of our public discourse. So it's important to get at least a bit of a sense of what's going on. And finally the books I've already read to review those books because the insights, the quick insights and blankets are better than anything I've ever seen anywhere. You can get a free seven day trial and 25% off abe Lincoln's premium membership at blankets dot com slash lex. This episode is also brought to you by Lynn owed. It just brings a smile to my face. It's a Linux virtual machines. It's an awesome computer infrastructure that lets you develop, deploy and scale whatever applications you build faster and easier. This is both for small personal projects and huge systems Lower cost than aws. But more importantly to me is the simplicity quality of the customer service with real humans, 24-7365. There's a bunch of competitors that can list all of which I've considered all of which I've used in the past lin owed is the best. It's the sexiest, it's the most reliable. It delivers on what a computer infrastructure should deliver on, easy to use, easy to monitor, reliable scalable, all that kind of stuff. And like I said, great customer service. If it runs on Linux, it runs on Linux node, that's their motto. It's a good motto, visit leno dot com slash lex and click on the create free account button to get started with 100 bucks in free credit. This is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends, here's Richard [/INST] Wolff. </s><s>[INST] Let's start with a basic question but maybe not so basic after all. What is Marxism? What are the defining characteristics of Marxism as an economic and political theory and ideology? [/INST] Well, the simplest way to begin a definition would be to say it's the tradition that takes its founding inspiration from the works of Karl Marx. Um, but because these ideas that he put forward, spread as fast as they did and as globally as they did Located It's 140 years since Marks died. And in that time his ideas have become major types of thinking in every country on the earth. Um if you know much about the great ideas of human history. Um that's an extraordinary spread in an extraordinarily short period of historical time and what that has meant that speed of spread and that geographic diversity is that the MArxian ideas interacted with very different cultural histories, religious histories and economic conditions. So the end result was that the ideas were interpreted differently in different places at different times. And therefore Marxism as a kind of first flush definition is the totality of all of these very different ways of coming to terms with it. For the first, roughly 40, 50 years. Um Marxism was a tradition of thinking critically about capitalism, Marx himself, that's all he really did. He never wrote a book about communism, he never wrote a book really about socialism either. His comments were occasional fragmentary dispersed. What he was really interested in was a critical analysis of capitalism And that's what Marxism was more or less in its 1st 40 or 50 years. Um The only qualification of what I just said was something that happened in paris for a few weeks In 1871, there was a collapse of the French government. Uh consequent upon losing a war to bismarck's Germany. And then the result was something called the paris commune. The working class of paris rose up basically took over the function of running the Parisian economy and the Parisian society and Marx is people people influenced by Marx. We're very active in that commune, in the leadership of the commune and Marx wasn't that far away. He was in London uh these things were happening in paris, you know, that's an easy transport even then, and for a short time, very short, Marxism had a different quality. In addition to being a critique of capitalism, it became a theory of how to organize societally differently before that had only been implicit. Now, it became explicit what is the leadership of the paris commune going to do and why and in what order and in other words, governing organizing a society. But since it only lasted a few weeks, the french army regrouped and under the leadership of people who were very opposed to Marx, they marched back into paris took over, killed a large number of the of the commune ARDS as they were called and deported them to islands in the pacific that the that were part of the french empire at the time. The really big change happens in Russia in 1917. Now, you have a group of Marxists, Lenin Trotsky, all the rest who or in this bizarre position to seize a moment, once again, a war like in France uh disorganize is the government throws the government into a very bad reputation because it is the government that loses World War One has to withdraw as, you know, breast lift off and all of that and the government collapses and the army revolts and in that situation, a very small political party, Russian, Social Democratic Workers Party, um splits under the pressures of all of this into the bolshevik and Mensch Avik divisions. Lenin, Trotsky and the others are in the bolshevik division. And to make a long story short, he's an exile of his position. Lenin's position makes him gets him deported because he says Russian workers should not be killing german workers. I mean, this is a war of capitalists who are dividing the world up into colonies. And Russian working people have no you should not kill and should not die for such a thing as you can expect. They arrest him and they throw him out, interestingly, in the United States, the comparable leader at that time of the Socialist Party here, as you know, there was no Communist Party at this point, that comes later, um the head of the Socialist Party, a very important american figure named Eugene victor. Debs makes exactly the same argument to the americans should not fight in the war. Uh he's, in the past has nothing to do with letting it, I don't even know if they knew of each other, but he does it on his own. He gets arrested and put in jail here in the United States, by the way, he runs for president from jail and does very well, really very well remarkable. Um and he's the inspiration for Bernie Sanders. If you if you see the link. Um although he had much more courage politically than than Bernie has. </s> |
<s>[INST] It actually builds [/INST] the depth of the personality of the </s><s>[INST] mistakes. So let me ask the movie her question then how and so cosmos feels like the early days of something that will obviously be prevalent throughout society at a scale that we cannot even imagine with my senses. It seems obvious that these kinds of characters will permeate society and there will be friends with them will be interacting with them in different ways in the way we I mean you don't think of it this way but when you play video games they're kind they're often cold and impersonal. But even then uh you think about role playing games, you become friends with certain characters in that game there. They don't remember much about you. They they're they're just telling a story, it's exactly what you're saying. They exist in that virtual world. But if they acknowledge that you exist in this physical world, if the characters in the game remember that you exist that you like For me like lex they understand that I'm a human being who has like hopes and dreams and so on. It seems like there's going to be a like billions if not trillions of cosmos in the world. So if we look at that future, there are several questions to ask, how intelligent does that future cosmo need to be to create fulfilling relationships like friendships. [/INST] Yeah, it's a great question and part of it is the recognition that is going to take time to get there because it has to be a lot more intelligent because what's good enough to be a magical experience for uh you know, an eight year old, um it's a higher bar to do that, be a complaint like a pet in the home or two, help with functional interface in an office environment or in a home or uh and so forth. And so and the idea was that you build on that and you kind of get there and as technology becomes more prevalent and less expensive and so forth, you can start to kind of work up to it. Um but you know, you're absolutely right at the end of the day um we almost equated it to how uh the touchscreen created, like this really novel interface to, you know, physical kind of devices like this, this is the extension of it where you have much richer physical interaction in the real world, this is this is the enabler for it. Um and it shows itself in a few kind of really obvious places to just take something as simple as a voice assistant. Um you will never, most people will never tolerate uh an Alexa or google home, just starting a conversation um proactively uh when you weren't kind of expecting it because it feels weird, it's like you were listening and like and now you're kind of, it feels intrusive, but if you had a character um like a cat that touches you, get your attention or toddler, like you never think twice about. And what we found really kind of immediately is that um these types of characters like Cosmo and they would like roam around and kind of get your attention and we had a future version that was always on some kind of called vector people were way more forgiving um and so you can initiate interaction in a way that is not acceptable for for machines and in general um you know, there's a lot of ways to customize it, but it makes people who are skeptical of technology much more comfortable with it. There was like there were a couple of really, really prominent examples of this. So when we launched in europe and so we were in I think like a dozen countries if I remember correctly, but like we were we went pretty aggressively in le in launching in Germany and France and uh in UK and we were very worried in europe because there's obviously like a really socially higher bar for privacy and you know, security where you you've heard about how many companies have had troubles on uh uh that might have things that might have been ok in the US, but like they're just not okay in Germany and France in particular. Um and so we were worried about this because you have um you know, cosmo who's um uh you know, and you know, in our future probably better like where you have cameras, you have microphones that are connected and like you're playing with kids and like in these experiences and you're like, this is like right to be like a nightmare if you're not careful. Um and uh journalists are like notoriously like really, really tough on these sort of things. Um we were shocked and we prepared so much for what we would have to encounter. We were shocked in that not once from any journalists or customer did we have any complaints beyond like a really casual kind of question and it was because of the character where um when the conversation came up, it was almost like, well of course he has to see and hear, how else is he going to be alive and interacting with you? Um and it completely disarmed um this like fear of technology that enabled this interaction to be much more fluid and again, like entertainment was a proving ground, but that is like, you know, there's like ingredients there that carry over a lot of other uh elements down the </s><s>[INST] road that's hilarious that we're a lot less concerned about privacy if the, if the thing is value and [/INST] charisma, that's true </s><s>[INST] for all of human interactions? It's [/INST] an understanding of intent where like, well he's looking at me, he can see me if he's not looking me, he can't see me, right? So it's almost like uh you're communicating intent and with that intent, people were like kind of kind of a more understanding and calmer and it's a it's interesting, we just it was just the earliest kind of version of starting to experiment with this, but um it wasn't enabler and um and then and then you have a completely different dimensions where like, you know, kids with autism had like an incredible connection with Cosmo that just went beyond anything we've ever seen, and we have like this just letters that we would receive from parents and we had some research projects, kind of going on with some universities on studying this, but um there are like, there's an interesting dimension there that got unlocked. They just hadn't existed before. Um that has these really interesting kind of links into society and uh and a potential building block of future experiences. </s> |
<s>[INST] It includes chris Hatfield, Neil, degrasse, Tyson will right, Carlos, Santana, Garry, kasparov, daniel, Negreanu poker, you know, Gaiman martin Scorsese Tony hawk jane Goodall. And just the list keeps going. It's, it's, it's amazing and many of these people I want to talk to and because of the master class, I realized just how interesting they are. It's a very crisp short and, but still like gets to the core of what they're skilled at. Look at some of these brilliant minds, it's, it's really incredible anyway. Get unlimited access to every master class and get 15% off an annual membership. If you go to masterclass dot com slash lex, that's masterclass dot com slash lex for 15% off the annual membership. One more time. Masterclass dot com slash flex. This is the lux Friedman podcast and here is my conversation with brian muir rescue. Who or what do you think God is, how is our conception maybe put another way of God changed throughout history? [/INST] We're starting with an easy one lex. So what is God? Well God is a thought. God is an idea, but it's it's reference is to that which is beyond thinking beyond our ability to even conceive um beyond the categories of being and non being. So how do we talk about that? To talk about? It is almost to get it wrong. Right, so joe Campbell famously said that you know, any God that is not transparent to transcendence is like an idolatry because it's just a mental construct and it can't possibly speak to the incomprehensible. So we use poetic language, we say the being of beings, the the infinite life energy of the universe, the mystery of transcendence, boundless life, unqualified business, but it doesn't quite get to the point, I think that if there's any great insight from mysticism, it's that you and I participate with God in a very real way, lex Friedman here in austin texas, that in the here and now to touch that eternal principle, another way to refer to God, to touch that eternal principle within ourselves is to participate with, with divinity in some way. Um so not an external force but that divine sense within </s><s>[INST] So there's some aspect in which God is a part of us. So one is the thing we can't describe, it represents all of the mystery around us, It's outside our ability to comprehend. And at the same time, it's somehow the thing that's inside of us also, [/INST] the ultimate paradox Matilda of Magdeburg, 13th century german mystic, maybe the first german mystic um says that the the day of her spiritual awakening was the day that she saw and knew that she saw God in all things and all things in God. And so we can say this by the way, without apology or lightweight theology or vapid speculation or even heresy, you know, we can we can talk about this including within the abrahamic faiths, the mystical core of these faiths all talk about the encounter of divinity within. That's what I explore in the immortality key, that this notion of techniques, archaic techniques, in some cases of ecstasy, that allow that experience of the eternal principle to actually rise up in our consciousness when we're still here as flesh and blood beings. </s><s>[INST] There's some sense in which our conception of God though is conjured up by our own mind. And so aren't we creating God? Like, aren't we the gods? They're creating the idea of God. Like if if we are, like when we talk about God, aren't we playing with ideas that are created by our our mind and thereby we are the creator, not God. This is a very kind of cyclical question, but in some sense, I mean that if God is the thing that represents the mystery all around us contrast that with our conception of God the way we talk about them is more a creation of our minds, it's not the mystery, it's our uh struggle to comprehend the mystery and therefore we're creating the God in terms of the God that we were talking about in this conversation or in general, if that makes any sense, [/INST] it makes no sense whatsoever great, this is wonderful, but this is this is uh this is the eternal mystery. Um this is why it's so difficult to talk about and yet it could be the very center of our beings. You know, the upon assad's speak about us as the creators about us as gods. It's a very different creation myth, but the God of the Upanishads um in this great verse talks about, pouring themselves, pouring themselves into creation. Um indeed, I have become this creation, says God and there's a great line verily he or she who knows this becomes in this creation creator. So yeah, I mean, just our ability to engage in mente shin, our ability to to think about this stuff is partly our divine nature. This is what the humanists we're talking about and in the renaissance by the way. Um and that it's not so much learning, putting dots together, having arguments with each other over learned books. It's a process of unlearning is what some of the mystical traditions talk about unlearning all these thoughts, emotions, traumas and experiences that have gone into the false construction of our false self that behind all these layers, like peeling back the onion is a part of us that once you can identify that begins to look a little bit different. In other words, it's one thing to foster a relationship with God. It's a very different thing to identify as God. And I mean that quite literally, without being heretical, you can you can find this in the mystery traditions. </s><s>[INST] Can you expand on this? You mean a human being can can embody God. [/INST] That is um textbook incarnation, all theology that you can find in any any christian mystic. Um, but you can find it in the mystical tradition of Islam and Judaism as well. So roomy for example. Um the great uh the great Sufi Mystic talks about um if you could get rid of yourself, just get rid of yourself just once the secret of secrets would open to you, that the face of the unknown would appear on the perception of your consciousness. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, a modern day contemporary mystic talks about because this stuff does continue. There's a continuity to the </s><s>[INST] poetry here is incredible. [/INST] So, we'll listen, listen to Rabbi Kushner, he says that the emptying of self hood allows the soul to attach to true reality and in Campbell is um the true reality is what's called the divine nothingness i in And so I like the adage that Atheists and Mystics both essentially believe in nothing except that the Mystics spell it with a capital N the divine nothing. Yeah, and then I'll give you meister Eckhart, um another medieval christian mystic, he says that um if you could not yourself right the same concept, if you could not yourself for just an instant indeed, I say less than an instant, you would possess all. So again, you're seeing the same thing in Sufism, cannibalism, christian mysticism, the way to identify with the divine is to peel back those layers and attempt to discover pure awareness. </s><s>[INST] If we look at the universe from a physics perspective or, you know, I'm a computer science person. So if the universe is a is a computer, there's some sense that God, the creator of the universe or just the computer itself doesn't know what the heck is going to happen. It just kind of creates some basic rules and runs the thing. So there is some element in which you can conceive of humans or conscious beings are intelligent beings as uh as a tool that the creator uses to understand itself himself. Do you uh do you think that's a perspective that we could or is useful to take on God, that uh, is basically the universe created humans to understand itself? He doesn't actually know the full thing, he needs the human brains to figure out the puzzle. So that's in contrasting to the unlearning to getting out of the way that we've talked about, it's more like no, we need the humans to figure out this puzzle. [/INST] Well, we have no answers to this, which is why philosophers still have jobs if they have jobs at all. But I mean they're so the physicists take a look at this. Um have you seen the article that came out? I think it was this month in the Journal of Cosmology and Astro particle Physics, um robert Lanza, the bio centrism theory, the idea that the universe comes into being through our observation, right? The whole the God equation. So not just in quantum mechanics, but in general relativity, the idea that that we make the universe moment by moment, which is kind of mind blowing, gets into ideas of simulation. Okay, so that's how the physicists, at least some of them might look at it. You could also look back to the medieval christian mystics. Meister Eckhart once again says that the eye with which I see God is the same eye that sees me, right? So one site, one knowledge, one love um another mind blowing concept. But this is this is why the arts and poetry, music are so important because although I love astro particle physics, it's another to kind of hear this uh this same message um across time. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, the simulation thing, I was actually looking this morning at video games, Just the statistics on video games. And I saw that the two top video games in terms of hours played is fortnite and world of Warcraft and I saw that 140 billion hours, billion hours have been played in those games. Um, yeah, [/INST] that's a lot of video games. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, but that, that's very sophisticated worlds being created, especially in the World of Warcraft. It's a massive online role playing game. So you have these characters that are together sort of creating a world, but they in themselves are also developing, they have all these items and they're like, they're little humans. Like there's complicated societies that have formed their goals are striving and so on and it's, we're creating a universe within our universe. And for now it's a kind of um, it's a basic sort of constraint version of our more richer earth like civilization. But it's conceivable that you know that we are, this thing on earth is a kind of video game that somebody else is playing. Like you can see sort of video games upon video games being created that uh, and this is something I think a lot about, not from philosophical perspective, but practically how fun does this video game have to be for us to let go of the silly pursuits in this meat space that we live in and fully just stay in while stay in World of Warcraft stay in the video game for full time. So I think about that from an engineering perspective. Like is there going to be a time when this video game is actual real life for us and then the creatures inside the video game, they will be just borrowing our consciousness to ground themselves will refer to us as the gods, right? Like why don't we become the gods? This conversation is not going how you expected. But I think about this a lot from, you know, because I love video games and I wonder more and more of us, especially in Covid times, are living in a digital world. You can think about twitter and all those kinds of things. You can think about clubhouse people using just voices to communicate, little icons sort of in the digital space, you can see more and more will be moving in the digital space and let go of this physical space and then the remnants of the ancients that created the video games that nobody centuries from now will even remember those will be the gods and then they'll be gods upon God's being created. This is the kind of stuff I think about. But is that any at all useful to you, to this thought experiment of a simulation, basically the fabric of our reality. How did it come to be? What is running this thing? Is that useful? Or is it ultimately the project of understanding God of understanding myth, is the project that centers on the human on the human mind. For you? [/INST] We seem to be at the center of this divine dance, which sounds awfully anthropocene trick. But um, the ancients thought about this too. I mean the concept and sunscreen of Leela that the point behind the existence is this play, right? It's ultimately playful. This divine dance. It gets awfully complicated in diagnostic and neo platonic schools, these um chains of being from God head down to us, right? Um some invisible right? And we're going to get into Terence McKenna territory later on. But we can start now by talking about discarded entities and are cons and aliens and archetypes. I mean, there is a world where Terence McKenna does meet plato and narcissism um quite kindly and that that's in the this invisible College, right? The the invisible World, uh with which we seem to have some kind of symbiosis um that has a higher intent, maybe even a purpose or plan in mind for us. So, I mean, these ideas come across when you've had a heroic dose of mushrooms, um they also pop up in the ancient philosophical literature. This idea of our cons who, you know, the puppet masters controlling us, flesh and blood beings. Um it's all uh it's all a cosmic dance and there are no answers to this </s><s>[INST] first. Who are the are cons at second. What is this world where Terence McKenna means plato? Do you mean in the space of ideas? Or are we talking about some kind of world that connects all consciousness throughout human history. [/INST] I think through different techniques. It is, you know, I think a lot about, I think Gordon Wasson is the meeting point of the two. So so Gordon Wasson, who I do talk about in the book was this jp morgan banker turned ethnomusicologist and he's largely credited with the rediscovery Of psilocybin containing mushrooms, which kind of gave rise to the pop psychedelic revolution of the 1960s. Um he visited Maria Sabina down in Mexico in his wake, went Bob Dylan led Zeppelin, the stones and everybody else. Um, and the way he describes his psilocybin experience um is a bit strange because he thinks of Plato right? Um and he says that, you know, whereas our ordinary reality is kind of this imperfect view of things, Gordon Wasson felt that on mushrooms, he was spying the archetypes and he talks about Plato and he writes about the archetypes in this famous article that's released in 1957 in Life magazine. And so a well read Individual from the mid 20th century has his premier psychedelic experience and outcomes plato because what he was witnessing was so sharp, so brilliant, so detailed in some sense, more real than real. This no epic sense that William James talks about that when you confront something more real than real, these discarded entities, these images, this visionary motifs, you're tempted to believe that you've tapped into the truest nature and the underlying structure of the cosmos and that's difficult to escape from whether you're plato or terence McKenna or Gordon Wasson caught in between, </s><s>[INST] can we talk about this being in touch with something that is more real than real? And let's just go straight there to McKenna before we return to the bigger picture. So he's talked about the uh what is it? Self healing machine, no self self transforming self transforming machine. I was during his uh D. M. T. Travels and I just talked to Rick Doblin who also had different travels to this hyperspace. Uh But they're all seem to be traveling on the same spaceship. Just the different locations and there is a sense in which they seem to be traveling through whatever. I don't know if it's through space time or something else to meet something that is more real than real. Uh What can you say about this D. M. T. Experience about Terence McKenna, about the poetry he used but maybe more specifically about this place that they seem to all travel to. [/INST] So the big question is is it real? Is it really more real than real? The ancient philosophers were asking the same question and there are means of attempting to answer that was by dying. Um So if you ask plato the definition of philosophy, he will say that um to practice it in the right way is to practice dying and being dead. And many people describe the psychedelic experience in sort of near death experience terms? Um and the encountering of all this visual imagery tends to be something that is often described as more real than real. So how does terrence talk about this? So I was just listening to the try a logs, which folks should look up somewhere between 1989 and 1990. Terrence sits down with his friends, Ralph, Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake at esalen and they're trying to figure out the meaning of these discarded entities and these non human intelligences. And Terrence develops a taxonomy for how to analyze this. And he says that number one, they're either um semi physical but kind of elusive. So think of the Bigfoot or the Yeti or things like this. Um, beings that exist somewhere between mythology and zoology, um which isn't really appropriate here. So, so option number two, he says, is the mentally, you're </s><s>[INST] dropping so many good lines, it's so good. Okay, I apologize. Somewhere between mythology and [/INST] this is all Terence McKenna, I take no credit for this. Uh so what </s><s>[INST] you're combining your like uh Jimi Hendrix only used the blue scale, but he still he still created something new and the music he played. Anyway, go ahead, [/INST] We're going into mix the Libyan right now. So, um uh so option number two and this is this what this is what Terrence calls sort of the mentalist reductionist approach. Um and this is this is pure McKenna poetry, He says that these beings could be autonomous fragments of psychic energy that have temporarily escaped the controlling power of the ego? Um so in Union senses that these would just be pure projections. Um The projections of schizophrenics in some cases, so they're essentially unreal. And the third option, the most tantalizing is that they're both non physical but autonomous. In other words, they actually exist in some kind of real place in some kind of real space and that we can have congress with them. There is communication. He talks about the whisperings of the demon artifice sirs and that it's just possible that our meetings with these beings have coaxed the human species into self expression in a very real way that at different times in history our relationships with these semi autonomous beings may actually guide the species. Now this is hi speculation and Terrence and ralph and Rupert wind up talking about the early modern period and the scientific enlightenment. And that even someone like a cart reports a dream in which he came face to face with an angel who said that the conquest of nature is to be achieved through measure and number. So, so even the hard minded materialist, like, like a cart is confronting these discarded entities john D in the 16th century, the high magician of the elizabethan court. Um He reports decades worth of what we would say is extraterrestrial communication or interdimensional communication. Um And you can find instances of this throughout history, including among the pre socratic six. Um And Peter Kingsley writes quite a bit about this, but I'll save that until your next question. </s><s>[INST] Well, first of all, we don't seem to understand from where intelligence came from. We don't understand from where life came from on earth, but that we can kind of ensuring consistent space of chemistry and biology have good theories about the origins of life on earth, but the origins of intelligent life. That is a giant mystery. And there's some sense in which, I mean, I don't know if you know the movie 2001 Space Odyssey, but it does seem that there is like important throughout human history throughout life on earth. There's important phase shift of it feels like something happened where there's big leaps, it could be something coincidental like fire and learning how to cook meat and all those kinds of things, but it feels like there could be other things and I think that's at the core of your work, is exploring what those things could be. Um Is there, is it possible [/INST] talked </s><s>[INST] about joe Rogan offline? Is it it's entirely possible is it possible that psychedelics have in fact contributed of being an important source of those phase shift throughout human history of the intellect, basically steering the intellectual development and growth of human civilization. [/INST] It's a hypothesis worth investigating how about that beautiful and maybe not psychedelics in and of themselves, but I think our whole conversation is kind of wrapped up in these non ordinary states of awareness. We start by talking about God, which is something unordinary and expansive and I think that as you, as you trace the intervention of divinity, if that's the case throughout human history, you have to bump up against the irrational. Um Mercy led the great scholar of religions and fellow Romanian said that the history of religions essentially constitutes the point of intersection between metaphysics and biology, right? So that we are biological beings who do interact with our planet with the, with the natural kingdom. And you would think that as early archaic ecologists, we would have figured out what plants work, which fungi don't and developed maybe language around that. And so this is this is another one of McKenna's um speculative, but very interesting hypotheses. The stone tape theory, is it is it possible that psychedelics were involved in one of the several leaps forward? You mentioned the word leap Jared Diamond talks about the great leap forward 60,000 years ago. The species had been around for a couple 100,000 years. All of a sudden the cave painting appears all of a sudden there's a phase shift. Did something like that happened millions of years ago. And I love the way paul Stamets talks about this, it would be the ingestion of perhaps psilocybin containing fungi millions and millions of times over millions and millions of years. So it's not just a one time event that cascades, but it's the it's the accumulation of psychedelic experience. It's really difficult to test that hypothesis, but I've been talking with a paleoanthropologist in South africa, my friend lee Berger um about ways that we might test for this. And so lee amongst many things is this National Geographic Explorer. Um He's the paleoanthropologists, paleo anthropologists at the University of Witwatersrand. Um he's famous amongst other things for the discovery of previously undiscovered hominids like homo Naledi. And there's an interesting point. Um so Naledi is this archaic hominids morphological e archaic, but it dates to about 300,000 years ago, which is very strange. Um what's even more strange about homo Naledi at the rising star cave system there in South Africa is that lee believes he's discovered the first bipedal ape deliberately disposing of its dead. Um, so there is a recognition of self mortality and the practicing of rituals around death. We're talking about burials. And if you have burials, says Lee and an archaic hominid 300,000 years ago, maybe you have language. And I mentioned that because terence McKenna was obsessed with language in the stone tape theory that the ingestion of psilocybin, in addition to enhancing visual acuity, perhaps facilitating sexual arousal leads to proto language Now, isn't it interesting. This could be entirely a coincidence That the largest sound inventory of any language is the Koi son of Botswana and Namibia. Um they have something like 164 consonants and 44 vowels English by comparison has about 45. So I don't know what to make of this, but what you find in that part of the world is very, very complex. Language language that could be an inheritance language that could be incredibly archaic together with this recognition of self mortality. And when I talked to lee berger, we say when you're looking at Universal's like that language around all human populations, the recognition of self mortality. Um the contemplation of death. Just maybe you have pharmacology and so maybe we can go out and test for this using gas chromatography, mass spectrometry proteomics technology that doesn't even exist. But maybe we can actually test the stone tape theory to figure out once and for all, if there's any merit there, </s><s>[INST] can you just linger a little bit on the pharmacology tools? Like how how would you, how would it be possible to say something about what was being ingested? So, so, so long ago, [/INST] that's what I asked dr berger. So lee has discovered um in the dental calculus, nice of archaic hominids, </s><s>[INST] dental calculus. I like that [/INST] evidence of their diet and you might not believe how old this was, but in in sediba, australopithecus sediba, they found evidence of Citybus diet going back two million years. So through things like fiddle lifts which are essentially fossilized plant tissue, they found evidence that Sediba was eating bark and leaves and grasses and fruits and palm. Um So no psychedelics to speak of, but it just goes to show that through things like dental MicroAire analysis and other techniques that we're still developing, we can actually figure out what the diet was at the time. I'll fast forward to 50,000 years ago. Um There was another study out of L. C. Drone cave in 2012 Which found that neanderthals again preceding our species 50,000 years ago. Um we're ingesting yarrow and camomile which have been identified as medicinal. So again not psychedelic or psychoactive but we kind of have the beginnings of the technology and this that was nine years ago to begin figuring out the ancestral diet of these hominids, </s><s>[INST] presumably there could be a way to figure out it's not just diet but which are have psychoactive elements to them. So whether you're chewing it, whether you're smoking it whether, I mean I don't know what licking it. I don't know if there's any kind of ways through the dental calculus to figure out with exact substances were being consumed. Is it possible to figure out whether psychedelic substances are being consumed by looking at human behavior like you said, organized burials or keith paintings? No. So that's a little bit of a stretch to say like where did the sleep come from? [/INST] But it's not, it's not. So so so just last fall as a matter of fact. So that that notion has been out there for a while. The idea that hallucinogens and the ritual consumption of hallucinogens were somehow related to the great leap forward or somehow related to the initial K. Pain. And Graham Hancock wrote a beautiful book about this called supernatural, Which in many ways like sent me down this rabbit hole back in 2007 and so. But even at the time when he was writing that in the years subsequent, it was still kind of seen as a kooky idea last fall. Um interestingly enough, the first archeo chemical data for the ritual consumption of psychedelics associated with cave art was finally published. It's it's not that ancient, it's only about four or 500 years ago, but it came from the pinwheel cave, a chumash site in California and what they found were datura quids like these chewed up, you mentioned, how do they ingested these chewed up quids Like these these bunches of datura which contain these very powerful Trow pain alkaloids and what was believed to be some kind of chumash initiation site. So we can say that there is initial, you know, archeo chemical data for the consumption of psychedelics and cave art. And so where else might we find this? </s><s>[INST] Are there a lot of archeo chemists in the world like because this is as fascinating as through chemistry, through biology, through physics whatever. Like all the disciplines we perhaps in one day computer science, we um apply those tools to study. Not the data of today, but the data of the past are we talking about dozens here. Like how hard is this problem relative to how many people are taking it on? Just as a side little tangent, we're [/INST] probably talking more dozens then hundreds. Um I spent many years trying to track down an archaeo chemist who would talk to me, there were a couple um Pat McGovern at the University of pennsylvania and then my friend Andrew Cote Emmett which you might know something about. Um Andrew really you know on his own time on his own dime has been gathering the data um for this organic residue analysis. Um He has what's called the Open Arkin project which is this online open source repository for this data but there's never been a center for this. No university has stood up a dedicated center a team really which is what you need of our geochemist looking at this stuff. But I mean even despite that there have been some remarkable discoveries Over the past 10, 20 years, it's still a discipline very much in its infancy. Maybe it's becoming a toddler. But as the technology gets better and cheaper um I hope you'll see more and more archeo chemist joining the fight. </s><s>[INST] Yeah and Andrew is fascinating. His work is fascinating but also just because of because of your work, I came across and exchanged a few emails with Patrick McGovern who's basically what would you call him. So he has a center I guess that's does biomolecular archaeology at U. Penn And um he's the author of a bunch of books, one of which is ancient bruise. So he's a scholar of beer and wine and and like ancient alcohol which is fascinating the influence even just alcohol. But he has like alcohol with whose energetic properties as well. But it's fascinating the influence as a Russian. It's fascinating to uh to think about the influence of alcohol and the development of human civilization throughout its history. Is this is there something you can comment on alcohol or in general Patrick's work that was informative to you? Inspiring or kind of added to your conception of human history. [/INST] His work was some of the first hard scientific data that I saw for the ritual consumption of these intoxicants. Um I don't think he's ever found the hard and fast data for for psychedelics. But what he turned me on to was this idea that alcohol or beer and wine specifically could have been used as vehicles for the administration of psychedelics. That that's where it all started for me. Um Just just the notion that ancient beer and ancient wine is very very different from what we drink today, that typically there were cocktails, they were often fortified and mixed with different Fruits, Berries, herbs, plants. Maybe even fun guy over time because this was all in the absence of distilled liquor, right? There is no hard alcohol even in Russia before maybe the 12th century it was in Europe um maybe a bit earlier. But the concept of distillation just didn't exist. And so you know, to pack a punch um rather than just drink a kind of water down Budweiser. These people were interested in fortifying these beverages with whatever they could find in nature. And Pat to his credit, found some of the initial data for these, you could say spiked wines and spike beers, not with anything overtly psychedelic, but just the fact that In the 16th century Bc at that grave circle A and my son, I, there's this Minoan ritual cocktail of beer mixed with wine mixed with meat is very interesting. It's even more interesting that you find that across the Aegean um in Gordy um at King Midas, his tomb, right? The same kind of ritual cocktail which Pat and Sam at the Dogfish Head Brewery, resurrected as the Midas touch. So, I mean, the notion that we can go back, Find this data resurrected in some cases 2800 years later, I found pretty exciting 10 years </s><s>[INST] ago. Yeah. Bring him back for a research. But that's that's fascinating that people were playing these ideas and will return to, we'll return to ideas of psychedelic confused wine, which is pretty fascinating. But can we step back and just kind of look at your work with the book, immortality key. What is the story that you tell in this book? [/INST] I knew we'd get there eventually lex </s><s>[INST] it's a non linear path somehow we were talking about simulation universe is a computer that's creating video games and wow and uh, Fortnite. But we got there and we'll return always to the insane, philosophical but your book immortality. What's the stories that you tell in this book? What, which part of human history you're studying? [/INST] Right? So that's that's the way to phrase it. So it's, you know, it's my 12 year search for the hard scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelics in classical antiquity. So we're talking about amongst the ancient Greeks and romans and the paleo christians. Uh, so the generations that would give birth to the largest religion, the world's ever known Christianity today with 2.5 billion people. The big question for me is, you know, worst psychedelics actually involved. There was a lot written about this in the sixties, john Marco Allegro. The book that I follow was published in 1978 before I was born The Road to elusiveness by Gordon Wasson, who we talked about already. Albert Hoffman, who famously discovers LSD or synthesizes it from ergot and carl ruck, who is still a professor of classics at boston University, the only surviving member of that renegade trio and now 85 years old. So this, this all predates us. Um but what was lacking in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, I think, was some of this technology and in the hard scientific data now for years and years. I went out to the archaea botanists and the Rko chemists around the world. And I asked a very basic question, is there any evidence for psychedelics in classical antiquity? And the answer would almost invariably come back? No, I'm talking to. In addition to Pat, he put me in touch with hans peter sheikha in Germany, Tania Valerie multi in Greece. Soon to Florence, sano in Italy. I went all over the place asking one question and getting the same answer back time and again. And so the book is essentially my my search for that data and the eventual uncovering of to what I think are key pieces of data. One data uh One data point shows the ritual use of a psychedelic beer um in classical antiquity and Iberia with today's spain and the other shows what looks like a kind of psychedelic wine just outside pompeii from the first century A. D at the right place at the right time when the earliest christians were showing up in Italy </s><s>[INST] again, these are early steps in the search for evidence in the space. But uh speaking of early christians, what role do you think psychedelic confused wine could have played in the life of the Mhm. I won't be clever in the life of jesus christ, [/INST] I've been saying recently that, and I hope this doesn't sound obscurantist, but I think it's impossible to understand jesus and the birth of Christianity in the absence of ancient greek and I'll give you a very specific example of why I think that's the case. You can read the entire new testament in ancient greek and not once will you ever find a reference to alcohol? Because there was no word in ancient greek for alcohol? The way the word sounds alcohol, it comes, it's Semitic. It comes from the Arabic um uh column means to enliven a refresh. Probably comes from coal K. O. H. L. Sort of these powdered metallics that were used in alchemical experiments in cosmetics. So again, that's much later in time when we're using alchemy, distillation et cetera in the first century aid. The power of wine wasn't necessarily tied to alcohol, right, fermented grapes. The way we think about wine today. So Pat McGovern found some of that early organic data for wine being mixed with uh with beer and with mead. But if you look at the literature from the first century A. D. D. Ask authorities for example, he writes this this massive treatise at the exact same time. The gospels are being written. And I ask authorities in just one of his books, talks about 56 detailed recipes for spiking wine with all kinds of things like salvia and hela borer and frankincense and more. These spices, perfumes, but also more dangerous things like hand bain and mandrake, which he says in greek can be fatal with just one cupful And in book 4 74 of his Material America. He talks about black night shade producing fantasy. S do a dice. None, not unpleasant visions what today we would say psychedelic. So just looking at the literature and the kind of literature that even most classicists, I didn't really learn it and undergrad, I came across diaspora these later. Um, but just a basic look at the literature, supports what McGovern has been testing, which is the fact that wine was routinely mixed with different compounds. </s><s>[INST] It's fascinating by the way that language affects our conception of the tools we use to understand the world. So like you can see wine, you can see psychedelics if they're not called drugs, you can uh, you can maybe reframe how you see them in terms of their role in, on us thinking about the world, understanding the world. That's really interesting that language has that power, but what language was used to understand why at the time. [/INST] So we're talking about a greek speaking world, right? So, you know, Jesus is born and does his public ministry in the Holy Land. But think about the early church, think about where the church takes root. You know, paul, the greatest evangelists of the time rights, basically half the new testament. He's writing letters in greek to greek speakers in places like Corinth, in Greece or phillipe, a defunct city just north of the island of Faso's or he's writing to folks in what today is Turkey, the colossians, the Galatians, he writes letters to the romans. These are greek speakers in these pockets? These Hellenic pockets all around the ancient mediterranean and for them again, ignored. I ask authorities, ignore Pat McGovern's work. To them. To think about wine was to think about a mixed, a mixed potion. And so the word rhinos in ancient greek does show up in the new testament, but there was another word to describe wine and it exists for like 1000 years before, during and after the life of jesus. The word used for wine is fatima khan, which obviously gives us the word pharmacy. It means drug. So in greek, a greek speaker would actually use the word drug to refer to wine, ruth, scuttle the classicist talks about this as a, as a ritualistic formula. Um They understood wine as this compound beverage, a drug against grief, a medicinal elixir that could either harm or hell or just maybe a sacrament to put you in touch with wine, God's old and new. </s><s>[INST] Clearly religion and myth, but religion very much so. It has sort of much like dreams, has like an imagery component. Like you're kind of going outside the visual constraints of physical space where you kind of have very specific conceptions of what things look like and you kind of use your imagination to stretch beyond the world as we know it. Uh things that are trying to get in touch with things that are more real than real? What role do these tools do these uh pharma cons have in trying to stimulate the imagery of religion. Do you have a sense that they have a critical role here? Or is this just a bunch of different factors that are utilized? A bunch of different tools are utilized to construct this imagery? Or is this not even or imagery? The wrong terminology is more like space of ideas that's core to religion? [/INST] No, I think the wine is absolutely essential. And so if if it's impossible to understand paleo Christianity in the absence of ancient greek, I think it's equally difficult in the absence of the sacred pharmacopoeia or wine itself. Right. Just, just think about wine at the time. Um I I think that the ancient greek audience would have heard that in a very different way um from us. And so they're referring to it maybe as a farm icon, but the followers of Dionysus, which proceeds jesus and in some cases the story of jesus is kind of a recapitulation of the mysteries of Dionysus. But when you think about Dionysus, um maybe from your high school mythology, you think about him as the god of theater or the god of wine, which is typically what it is or the god of ecstasy. Um you know, again, Dionysus is not the god of alcohol, there's no concept of fermented grapes, the power of Dionysus and the ability to commune with diagnosis through his blood and before Christianity, the blood of Dionysus is equated to his wine. The sacramental drinking of the wine was interpreted and classicist right about this including walter Burkart. Um It was interpreted as consuming the God himself in order to become one with the god. This is where we get the idea of enthusiasm because the language matters enthusiasm to be filled with the spirit of the gods. So that you became identified with Dionysus and acquired his divine powers. Now, how does that happen again? He's not the god of alcohol. He is the god of wine, but he's really the god of madness and delirium and frenzy. And his principal followers are women, they're called the mine ads and the way they get in touch with him is through the consumption of this sacramental wine. Even at the theater of Dionysus um separate from his outdoor churches, there was a wine served there called rima and this is the wine that gives birth to Hollywood. I mean the ancient Hollywood was there at the theater of Dionysus. This is where comedy and tragedy and poetry and music come from. But rather than a hot dog and a beer, what they drink at the theater of Dionysus was this wine called Prima, which means pounded or rubbed and Professor Rock talks about maybe it was the drugs that were rubbed into this theatrical beverage to help the play </s><s>[INST] come alive. So madness is seen as a positive thing is like a creative journey. It's not, it's not, it's what is it, the unlearning, getting out of the way kind of thing. Is that how it's seen, or is it more like um entertaining escape from life that is suffering? I gotta, I gotta inject a little modern dostoyevsky into the [/INST] old existential despair. Um maybe it's maybe it's a bit of that, we can't say that there wasn't recreational drinking. Happy. The Greeks also have the symposium, right? Um and they also were just getting hammered in some cases, but when it comes to the rights of Dionysus, what you see there is um the creation of these states of awareness, in which again, you identify with the God to become the God. There's there's theology, there's the consumption of divinity in order to become divinity. Right back to how we started the conversation, right? So if we stop conceiving of God as something exterior to us, but that the mystery of being itself is the mystery of your being and the mystery of my being. That the way to encounter that is through the sacramental theology that you drink the actual blood of this greek god to become that God, and there was a place for this in ancient greek society. </s><s>[INST] So drinking the wine is drinking the blood of Dionysus, do you think jesus is um an actual physical person, they existed in history, or is an idea that came to life through the consumption of wine and those kinds of rituals. [/INST] So this is where I face my ex communication depending how I answer this. </s><s>[INST] I mean, you're, you're playing with fire and [/INST] wine with this combination by the way. Uh, so I shy away from that controversy in the book. I'm perfectly willing to accept Jesus as a historical personage. Um, you know, we have the multiplicity of sources, although it's a generation after his death. Um, but we have the Eucharist being described in the Four Gospels, we have it being described by paul in first Corinthians, but when you read john, it does read a bit differently than the other gospels. And in my book, I rely a lot on the scholarship of Dennis Mcdonald, who writes a fabulous book called The Dionysian Gospel. And this is again why the greek matters. Because once you start to analyze the greek of john's Gospel, it seems to be a presentation of jesus very much in the guise of Dionysus, the most obvious example is the wedding of Qena, right? Um, that only occurs in john's Gospel. The famous transformation of water into wine. Now again, to any greek speaker of the first century, they would have known about the Greek district of Ellis on the Peloponnese and in Ellis around the Epiphany, every january, the priests of diagnosis would deposit these water basins empty basins in the Temple of Dionysus, they'd return the next morning and find them magically filled with wine. Now on the island of Andros, It's even more interesting around the same epiphany date the gods gift Day Ds Theodosius to the wine would emanate from the temple and run like a river for a week. And you can google the back panel of the Andriy ins a wonderful painting by Titian which hangs in the Prado and you'll see a river of wine behind these people having a great time. This exists for centuries and centuries before their wedding Akina and before jesus begins his public ministry with what these scholars call the signature miracle of diagnosis. It would not have been lost on the greek audience that something very specific is being communicated here. What's being communicated that you just might find in early Christianity, what you hold strong to in these mysteries of diagnosis that you may have inherited from your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents. For centuries, there was a perfectly good religion. There were perfectly good mystery cults in the ancient greek and roman worlds and here comes this new untested illegal cult illegal of a dozen or so illiterate day laborers that go on to convert the empire in a few 100 years. The answer to that extraordinary growth is not psychedelics, but I do think it's visionary experiences and I do think it's this continuity from the pagan world into early Christianity. </s><s>[INST] So what part you mentioned this idea? That's really interesting. I think you said paul Stamets uh of I guess millions of people over millions of years, kind of consuming really practicing a ritual or a habit of some sort of this idea of rituals is kind of interesting. Again, you mentioned cult, What's the role of ritual consumption of some of these substances or just ritual practice of anything in um the intellectual growth of particular groups of people or societies. [/INST] So again, I would say it is the centerpiece of ancient life, not just the mysteries of diagnosis, uh which we've only talked a bit about, but the mysteries of elusiveness were probably the most famous and longest lasting of these greek mystery rites. And just to put it in simple terms, the best definition for a mystery religion as the name implies is something secret. Right? Move away from the greek means to to shut the eyes or or to shut the mouth to keep quiet about this stuff. Um you know, we're always teasing details from the archaeological and the literary record and we're kind of just grabbing at these at these secrets. But telesis which survives for like 2000 years into the christian period from about 1500 Bc to the fourth century A. D. It's kind of this, this centerpiece of greek life cicero, the great roman statesman calls what was happening at elusiveness. The most exceptional and divine thing that Athens ever produced. So not democracy of the arts and sciences or philosophy. But the vision that was encountered at a loose is perhaps through the ritual consumption of a potent psychedelic over hundreds and hundreds of years, thousands and thousands, if not millions of initiates pilgrims who would walk from Athens to lose us to encounter this vision. It seems to have been not just an important part of greek life, but the thing that made life livable such that as these mysteries are about to be exterminated by the newly christianized roman empire. There's this passage in the ancient literature that talks about these. In the absence of these mysteries, life becomes unlivable photos. </s><s>[INST] Is there ways you can I mean, you write about the mysteries of elusiveness and is their ways you can convert that into words why those are so important to them more important than any other invention to them. Why is it such a source of meaning to life? [/INST] So from what we can reconstruct, they would make that pilgrimage 13 miles northwest of Athens to confront their mortality. Remember we were talking about Homo Naledi and in South Africa, this recognition of self mortality. Um the deliberate disposal of the dead. Um Plato talks about the real practice of philosophy being the death and dying process. So in some senses, you went to a loose is to die and to experience a death before your death. We talked about this with Terence McKenna as well and this is how the psychedelic state seems to share something in common with the near death or out of body experiences or these ecstatic experiences whether through wine or beer or otherwise, you went to the loosest to die. Um and it was said that only those who had witnessed this vision, whatever vision was to be witnessed in demeter sanctuary, it essentially vouchsafed you the afterlife, that only those who went there became immortal. Um and Cicero says that, you know, at that point you essentially live with more joy and die with a better hope. </s><s>[INST] Can I ask you a question about this human contention with death? This uh confrontation of death that seems to be at the core of things? I don't know how deep to the core, but it seems to be a central element of the human condition. What do you think about Ernest Becker and those guys that put put death at the what is it the warm of the core, which uh as the main thing, the main create like this confrontation of our own mortality, first of all, being understandable, immortal and then confronting the terror of it, the fear of it as the creative, like trying to escape the fear of death as the creative force of human society. It's like the reason we do anything is because we're just running away from our death, scared. Do you find some of that to be true first of all, as uh somebody who looks in the mirror looks at yourself and your own as a human being, to just looking at society today and three at this whole big spread of human history and all the cool stuff we've created, including the mysteries of elusive, [/INST] I wonder what life would look like in the absence of the fear of our mortality. I wonder how we interact with one another. If there was relatively little or no fear of death, I really do when it comes to Becker's work and others. Um if the ancients were known for anything, it was running to death, it was the opposite. In fact dying before dying, which is the immortality key. By the way, it's not psychedelics point when I when I refer to this key, I'm referring to this notion that's preserved in greek on Pattani's Breen Bethany's dental Bethany's Otan Bethany's. If you die before you die, you won't die when you die. For some reason, the ancients prized that experience and we talked about the mystics of Sufism and capitalism and christian mysticism, where you have this the same self nodding this Death before death, the divine nothingness right? For some reason, the mystic saints, visionaries and ancient philosophers, they ran to death. And the one message I wanted to try and communicate with this book is how they viewed life um that it can only be fully experienced fully embodied in the wake of a really intense, perhaps terrifying, but utterly transformational encounter with death. </s><s>[INST] So running to death, not running away from death, you talk about all this Huxley and mind changers. So, if we look at the history where the ancients were running to death and maybe using some uh performance enhancing Perma cons to run more effectively towards death. And now we're using like uh tools of modern society, whether there's psychological sociological or pharmaceutical to run away from this conception. So where what do you see as a hopeful future for human civilization? Like which um if all of these kinds of uh societies or ice cream flavors, how do you create the perfect ice cream flavor? Like what is the future of religious experience of psychedelic experience, of intellectual journeys of uh facing death running away from death? What do you hope? Uh that looks like? And what kind of idea should we look to? [/INST] My next book will be entitled performance enhancing </s><s>[INST] pharmerica. Uh yeah, I like it. Uh but that's that's a historical view. I mean, what what in that book would just suggest in one of the last chapters about the future of this um of this process? [/INST] Well, Huxley has to stop you and your he stopped me in my tracks. Aldous Huxley. So in in 1958, he he pens this, this op ed of sorts. Um and it's just, it reads incredibly oppression because I really do think in many ways as the fog of the war drugs ending And finally lifting that we we've kind of come full circle back to the late 1950s, which might sound strange. It'll make more sense when you hear what Huxley said about psychedelics. And so he was looking forward to a revival of religion. Which is why I subtitled the book, The religion was no name. And and to him to Huxley this this this revival wouldn't come about through televangelist IQ mass meetings or photogenic clergymen as he says. But he points to the biochemical discoveries such as we have today that would allow for large numbers of men and women to achieve a radical self transcendence and a deeper understanding of the nature of things. In other words that this revival religion, he says would be a revolution. Alan Watts comes along and says that there's there's nothing more um uh dangerous to authority than a popular outbreak of mysticism. But I think this is what Huxley was pointing to. And he talks about religion in these terms about being less about symbols and returning to a sense of experience and intuition. And Huxley says that he envisions a religion which gives rise to everyday mysticism. And he talks about something that would undergird everyday rationality, everyday tasks and duties and everyday human relationships. In other words, religion has to mean something and these uh these altered states of awareness that we seem to be able to produce um quite easily inside the lab at Hopkins, N. Y. U. And elsewhere with psilocybin. I think this is kind of part of Huxley's prediction about a time when we would have legal access safe access efficacious access to this material that would allow for insight in an afternoon and what do you do when millions of people can become mystics in an afternoon? </s><s>[INST] So um psychedelics, psilocybin might be the practical way of having these kinds of, maybe it could be termed religious experiences and then many people partaking in those experiences and then like evolving this collective intelligence thing we've got going on. That's the that's sort of the practice of religion that we should be looking striving for as opposed to kind of uh operating in the space of ideas actually practicing it. Um you mentioned and that's the religion with no name. Mhm. The use of these tools, is there a simple way to summarize religion for our previous discussion about God, basically discovering the god inside? What [/INST] if I give you a very complicated definition of religion? And then we talk about a more simplified, let's do it. So the most complicated we can get on this is is the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, but I think it's worth defining our terms. Um when we're talking about God and religion. So religion religio from the latin means to bind back. So to bind us back to some meaningful tradition, to bind us back to the source. Here's a mouthful from Clifford Geertz. Um you know, religion, he defines as a set of symbols which acts to establish powerful pervasive and long lasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing? Those conceptions in such an aura of factuality that those moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic, which is complex. What does that mean? That religion has to make you feel something these moods and motivations, but it can't just do that in the way that sex does that for us or or sports or ultimate fighting or the World Cup or going to a concert. So we get all that emotion in these experiences like that. But that emotion has to be concomitant to a deep existential insight that answers this question for you in the morning. I know why I'm here, I know why humans are here. I think I know what the meaning of life is, that's what religion is. And if you find that meaning in science then that's your religion and that's fine. But we need to be more honest about that. If if your epistemological model is weighing facts and figures and you think that's why you're here on this planet, and you find deep meaning that's okay, religion is the thing that makes you feel right, has the aura of factuality. It just makes you feel like, you know the point behind existence. Um in other words, I think it comes down to experience like joe Campbell was talking about like Aldous Huxley mentions about experience and intuition, I think this is how we connect to God, </s><s>[INST] make you feel like you understand the world? I mean, so that's that's kind of bigger than science that includes science, but it's bigger. Do you think? What is real? Like uh do you think there's an absolute reality that we're kind of striving towards understanding or is it all just conjured up in our minds? And that's the whole kind of point. We together create these realities and play with them and dance uh to to somehow derive meaning from those realities and it's ultimately not like very deeply integrated into what's like into atoms of space time. [/INST] Another easy question lex </s><s>[INST] Well, I mean you have to kind of, when you're thinking about emotion and making a concrete into something that feels real, you have to start asking like what is real. It's uh it's something that, you know, Ben Shapiro has the saying of facts. Don't care about your feelings. I was always uncomfortable with that. I mean he's just being spiffy or whatever, but uh I was always uncomfortable somehow. First that the hubris of thinking that humans can have like arrive at uh absolute truth what he means, which is what I assume he means by facts, like things that are incontrovertible and then somehow deriding feelings like feelings are not important to me. Like the whole thing is reality. The in fact I don't even like facts as reality. Feelings of reality? Like the entirety of human experiences reality, all these consciousnesses somehow interacting together, make up making up random crap and together, agreeing they're all going to wear the same colors, Rooting for one football team or the other football team or countries on all those things. That's really, that's real because we've agreed that it's real in the same way it gives us meaning in that same way. Religion is a set of ideas that gives us meaning. But you know, real, it's really a difficult for for me as a scientist that finds comfort in the physical understanding of the universe of physics. You know, I love physics, I love computer science. It makes me feel like everything is perfectly understandable. And then I look at humans, they're totally not understandable. It's like a giant mess. But that's part of the beauty. Like what is love? Like what the hell is love? It's certainly not a, like a weird um hacked to convince me to procreate because they feel something bigger than that. So like taking them purely evolutionary biologist perspective is missing the uh, it's not missing, It's only capturing a part of the picture. So it just keeps making me ask what is real because as a human, very human centric, it does certainly feel like uh um, a part a big part of what is real is all the fake stuff. My mind makes up. Uh, okay, I guess is there something you could say from our discussions about the tools of psychedelics, about our discussion about religion, of what is real of what is reality. These are largely [/INST] unanswerable questions, </s><s>[INST] but we should nevertheless drive to answer them. That's the whole point of the human experience. And I [/INST] think science is one way and religion is another. And I think there's actually a sphere where they intersect. There is a way for religion to be observable. Testable, repeatable falsify a bill. When I look at the ancient mysteries that that's what I find. I think I find people exploring alternate states of consciousness and arriving at conclusions based on that exploration and deriving deep meaning from that which, yes, our feelings and emotions and very hard to quantify. But nonetheless, these are the things that govern our lives. I mean, I don't know a parent who wasn't motivated by their by the love of their Children. Um, everything I do at 40 years old now is pretty much inspired by my love for my two daughters. And I can't prove to you that I love them. I can say it, I can show you behavior, but it's very hard for me to weigh and measure that so not everything. Um, it's so reducible to this quantifiable reality. And yet I also love science. And, and I love the historical process of weighing this data. I love the chemistry, I love the biology. Um, and, and for me, um, I think this was the message of the ancient Greeks and I think this is the world in which paleo Christianity was born. I think there is this this meeting ground between science and religion um uh which allow for the if not the discovery, then at least the near identification of the ultimate reality, which is another way to describe god, right? This being of being is the transcendent mystery. </s><s>[INST] So speaking of God, you mentioned to me offline, you're wearing the most sophisticated clothing choice um of the elite intellectuals, like you mentioned, Sam Harris was wearing a hoodie, [/INST] this is the Sam Harris hoody, he's starting a trend, </s><s>[INST] he's starting a trend. Uh this is a new religion, you could even say it's a ritual, it's a ritual practice of intellectuals of searching for meaning. Uh so there's there's a quite a fascinating debate. He was for a time still um known as one of the sort of New age atheists. So he was kind of trying to explore the role of religion, society and the role of science. And then on the other side, another kind of powerhouse intellectual is Jordan, Peterson cool in um sometimes for my taste of a bit too poetic of ways is exploring ideas of religion. Uh and they had these interesting debates that I think will continue about the role of religion in society for for Jordan, there's all these flaws with religion, but there is a lot of value to be discovered amidst the rituals or traditions, the practice, the way we conceive of each other because of the ideas that religion propagates and then for Sam it says that everything about religion is uh basically gets in the way of us fully realizing our human potential, which is deeply scientific and rational. And um sort of like we're surrounded by mystery calling that mystery God is getting in the way of us understanding that mystery. What do you think about this debate about the role of religion and society? [/INST] We should continue having this debate. I talked to Jordan a couple weeks ago as a matter of fact and this podcast Republic, it'll be out soon. And so you know, he and I, </s><s>[INST] how did that go by the [/INST] way? Um it was it was incredible. Uh carl ruck. The professor joined us as a matter of fact for one of his rare public appearances. So beautiful. We went, we went deep. Um and Jordan is very well read obviously on the psychedelic literature. He had just had Rolling Griffiths from Hopkins On the podcast and it's one of Roland's figures that Jordan I again, just like the language of Aldous Huxley. It's hard to move past the following statistic. Over the past 20 years of the modern study of psilocybin Roland will tell you that about three and four of their volunteers walk away from their single dose of suicide and high dose saying it was among the most meaningful experiences of their entire lives, if not the most meaningful. And Jordan says like you, what do you do with that? Um how do we how do we synthesize that. Um you know, here we are quantifying the qualify a ble the unqualified herbal. And yet these these compounds have dramatic effects on people's lives. And they walk away feeling like they're more loving, more compassionate. Um the science of all talks about the welling up of cooperation and resource sharing and kindness and all these strange things from this single chemical intervention which seems to reduce us to automata as if enlightenment can be flipped on uh like a switch. And yet there it is. There's the data and I don't see how you walk away from that. I mean, I I completely understand Sam's position. Um, but I think there's there's a reading of religion, particularly the mystical core of of the Big face and especially these ancient mystery cults which do speak again to those moods and motivations um creating this aura of factuality that these volunteers never walk away from permanently transformed. Just like the ancient mysteries. </s><s>[INST] And part of that is perhaps language that we need to continue to evolve. Language in um in how we conceive of these processes. Maybe religion has a bunch of baggage associated with it. That is good to let go of. Or perhaps not. I don't know if this is connected to our previous part of our conversation is the importance of language in this whole thing. [/INST] Well that's how I start my book with one of these volunteers from the N. Y. U psilocybin experiments this this woman Dina Dina Baser who's an atheist and she still describes herself as an atheist. And yet as one of these three and four people who walked away from this experiment transformed. She says that her experience of suicide and was like being bathed in God's love from an atheist. And I asked her why she uses the word God, why not the love of the cosmos or the universe or mother nature? And she says well frankly, you know, we don't know about any of this stuff and that God makes sense to me. She's still an atheist. Um but it's the way she describes that as kind of like the way your mother's love must have felt when you were a baby. </s><s>[INST] Yeah there's a there's a kind of, I like the way Einstein uses God, God doesn't play dice. There's a poetry, there's a humility that you don't know what the hell is going on. There's a humor to it. I'm a huge fan. Especially like more and more. I've just kind of having a big old laugh at the absurdity of this world in this life as represented nicely by memes on twitter kind of thing. I mean there's uh there's a sense in which we want to be playing with these words and not take them so seriously and being a little bit lighthearted and explore, Let me ask you because you mentioned N. Y. U. Um what I find fascinating is how much amazing research or is speaking of science right? Uh studying the effects of psilocybin studying the effects of various psychedelics. M. D. M. A. On the human mind right now for helping people. But I'm I'm hoping they'll be studies soon. Hopkins and elsewhere that a lot of people that are kind of more quote unquote creatives or regular people that don't have a particular demon. They're trying to work through a problem they're trying to work through but more like to see what can I find if I utilize psychedelics to explore. Is there something you could say that it's exciting to you as promising about the future? What currently is going on? But also the future of psychedelics research [/INST] and elsewhere the healthy normal's healthy. Normal was looking for the </s><s>[INST] right words because normal doesn't feel healthy doesn't feel like a good term and normal does a good because we're all pretty messed up and we're all weird. So. [/INST] Well those with ontological angst in that case maybe there will be a future Ds um qualification. Um There's no doubt that that things like suicide and M. D. M. A. Are are useful for things like anxiety, depression, end of life distress pTSD alcoholism, you name it. Um And it's largely because of the clinical research that M. D. M. A. And psilocybin will probably be legal in some FDA regulated way in the next five years. Um But I mean again I start the first page of my book with this question why why do psychedelics work across all these different conditions and uh the best that I could find is the meaning right um Tony bosses at N. Y. U. Talks about suicide and for example as meaning making medicine which is interesting because it puts it somewhere between a therapeutic and again this this ontological instigator. Um what is it about psychedelics that creates these mystical experiences or mystical like experiences? You can call them emotional breakthroughs, you can call them moments of all. Um I I do think we get locked up in the language and we're somewhere between science and religion here. Um including legally. So the FDA is one route to this. What excites me about psychedelics is the First Amendment. What is this going to mean for religion? The freedom of religion being the first thing that's mentioned in the First Amendment before Freedom of speech, freedom of </s><s>[INST] assembly. If [/INST] America is known for anything, it's it's a refuge for religious pioneers. And so we already have the native american church, Brazilian spawned churches that are using psychedelics. But what would happen if Judaism or Christianity or islam or to begin incorporating the very ritual? Very sacred uh and discreet use of psychedelics as part of their liturgy. So not replacing the sunday Eucharist in the case of Christianity. But um part of the extra extra credit dimension </s><s>[INST] of the credit and then we can practice figure out how essential it is. It could be a minor thing, it could be a major thing. That's another thing I wanted to kind of ask you is um I, recently, despite the fact that I'm eating a huge amount of meat, I'm getting fat, I'm loving it. I'm, you know, this is actually uh two days ago I started this long road to training for David Goggins. The training back to uh getting back to competing and digital. So the fun is over. But I also partook in fasting and there was a very strong, there's an almost like a host energetic aspect of fasting because it was especially because it was a 72 hour fast versus a more common fast I do, which is 24 hours, you know. Uh and a bunch of people talk about throughout history about the value of fasting, in having these kind of um visual, these kind of intellectual experiences. Also there's meditation Sam Harris with the hoodie. Uh do you have a sense that um those other rituals of fasting of meditation and maybe other things could uh could be as essential, more essential to the religious experience as psychedelics. [/INST] Yes, if not. And this is gonna sound weird, but maybe not if more So um I look at psychedelics as a catalyst for spiritual investigation, not as the superficial means to an end. I think their their value is and kind of um serving as a google maps for the kingdom of Heaven. Um rum </s><s>[INST] alright, like this. [/INST] Well, so Ron Dawson's teacher said that when, when he was was offered psychedelics that um it'll it'll get you in the room with jesus but it won't keep you there. </s><s>[INST] Uh Yeah, and I [/INST] think that's all well and good. But what if you don't know where the houses in the first place? What if you've never had a mystical experience? What if what if religion is anathema to you? What if you hate God? What if all these words mean nothing to you? And they probably do for many, many people. And it's perfectly understandable. I think that we've lost the coordinates to these irrational states. Again that were prized throughout antiquity and that continued to be prized by the mystical communities. Even in big organized religion, it just doesn't filter out that much. And so psychedelics in my mind help orient our minds, bodies and souls towards the irrational right? We talked about McKenna's invisible world that seems to have this symbiosis with our own and perhaps has this higher intent for us. Um you could very well just, you know, take catalog of your dreams, right? And that would do it too. But second seemed to be particularly fast acting, um particularly potent and very reliable, especially in the clinical studies. And so I looked at them as biochemical discoveries like Huxley did. Maybe it's once in your life or infrequently right. Um but maybe that's the beginning of a genuine introspection and a life well examined as the ancients always </s><s>[INST] instructed us. Yeah, it does seem like in the research that uh the effectiveness of psychedelics always comes with the integration where you use it, just like you said as a catalyst for thinking through stuff. It's not it's not going to be, I don't even know if google maps, oh maybe maybe google maps is the right analogy, but it doesn't do the driving for you. You still you still have to do the driving. Uh it just kind of gives you the directions. Uh So after you come come down from the trip or whatever, he still has to drive. There's other tools that are kind of interesting, We've been talking about this um uh at the psychological level, but there's also a neuroscience perspective that if we kind of like go past the skull into the brain with neurons firing. There's ideas of brain computer interfaces. First of all, there's a whole field of neuroscience that's kind of zooming in and studying the firing of the brain, the firing of neurons in the brain, of how from those uh neurons emerges all the things that we think that make us human. That's a fascinating exploration of the human mind. That's of course where the psychedelics have the chemical, the biochemical effects on, on those neurons, there's ideas of brain computer interfaces, which, you know, if you look at, especially when your link is doing with this long term vision, with the mosque and your link, they they hope to expand, he calls it a wizard. Hat they uh this is back to the humor and the internet thing, the wizard hat that expands the capabilities, the capacity of the human mind. Do you think there's something there or is the human mind so infinitely complex that um we're quite a long way away from expanding the capabilities of the human mind uh through technology versus something like psychedelics. [/INST] I wonder how Terence McKenna would answer that question. Um you know, he looked to shamans as kind of the the scientists, the high magicians of the high archaic past and the far flung future. I'm not going to discount, you know, more about ai than I do, so I'm not going to discount it, but I do think that a I paired with um the sacred recovery, right? Um the archaeology of consciousness, um, and these and these states, these archaic techniques of ecstasy that were practiced across time. I think that's a winning combination. Um you know, part of what I do in the book is just I try and lay out the set and setting that's often talk about with psychedelics. I mean, so maybe psychedelics and the right ai environments going to work. I think it probably work a lot better with that myth and ritual incorporated. So the reason it looses worked for 2000 years. Um, and let's assume the psychedelic hypothesis has some merit to it. Um, but I think the reason it worked is because you were born into a mythology, you were born into a story about demeter and persephone and you waited your entire life to meet them in the flesh. So you weren't just preparing for a few months, It was a lifetime of expectation, anticipation, ritual preparation. Um, in fact, some of the early church fathers made fun of the Greeks for essentially just picking people's curiosity and revving up the anticipation, which has something to do with the outcome by the way. But in other words, I think we need to create a new mythology Around this. I don't think you, you pop into a laboratory, I don't think you pop into a retreat center um from one day to the next. I think that in my own case, I feel like I've been preparing 12 years for psychedelics and I'm still preparing, including in today's conversation, I'm learning new things and uh, I'm willing to explore it together with the computer interface. But I, but I do think ritual is a gigantic part of this. And even McKenna would say that I'll paraphrase him by saying that if you'd met someone who didn't know where they were Between the years 1995 and 2005, you would describe them as a fairly damaged person and yet who among us knows what was happening in Western civilization between 900 and 1300, let alone 2500 years ago. So this is in many ways the profit of the psychedelic renaissance saying that history has lessons and I don't think they're superficial lessons. I think it cuts to the very core of how and why Western civilization came to be born. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, but that that history can be loaded into as systems. And I do love the idea of whether it's to bring computer interfaces or without intrusive, without direct reading of the neurons and more interactive experience of the robot that you can have an ash system that steers your psychedelic experience. That helps you sort of when you take a heroic dose of psilocybin for example, help steer you steer your mind, say just the right things you could say that kind of thing with. It's a totally open um problem I would say you talk about setting setting, this is the interesting thing about johns Hopkins is you know, you create a comfortable environment, a safe environment for allowing. Then if you take a hero, like a large dose of psilocybin that you can trust that everything would be safe and you can really allow the expression in your mind. But then you don't know for my psychotherapy perspective of like during that trip what humans should say to steer that trip, Like that's a totally open set of problems and in some sense, probably throughout history, those rituals, you figured out what are the right things to say to each other, how to collaborate and maybe if you can turn that into an optimization problem. Uh hey, I could figure that out much much quicker. [/INST] I'm with you. So elusive. Was known for three things, the lego mina that Ramona Ramona, the things said, the things done, the things shown, if you can pack that all into your ai interface, I'm in lex Friedman, </s><s>[INST] I'm gonna write a proposal and then try to get it through the R. B. At M. I. T. I mean, there's a certain sense in which I definitely wanted to explore psychedelics, I mean, in my personal life, but also more rigorously as a scientist and uh to push that forward and especially in the ai space. And it is um difficult how to how to do that dance when there's uh gray areas of legality and all those kinds of things. And we're dancing around them. And some of that is language. And some of that is uh what we socially uh conceive of as drugs or not. And you're right that perhaps we can reframe it as religious experiences, all those kinds of things. I mean, it's fascinating because it feels like there's a bunch of tools before us that were used by the ancients that we're not utilizing for exploring the human mind uh that we very well could be in a rigorous scientific way, in a safe way. And that's fascinating. There's this interesting period of uh, In the 20th century of LSD use that many of the people doing research on psychedelics now kind of have their roots in that history. I mentioned that. Talk to Rick Doblin, he is one of those people. Um and there's this interesting story of a bunch of creatives that used LSD or other drugs to help them. What do you make of the idea of somebody like Hank Easy who wrote one flew over the cuckoo's nest in part under the influence of LSD. Like what do you make of the use of psychedelics to uh maximize the creative potential of the human mind? Is this um is this a as a crutch? Or is this actually um an effective tool that we should explore? [/INST] one person's crutch might be another bungee cord. um </s><s>[INST] You know, it depends [/INST] on that mind. Think about paul McCartney, I mean, we might not have some of the better Beatles music in the absence of LSD. And would it, Sir Paul say in 1967, when he was asked about his use of LSD, he said that he recognized the dangers inherent in it, but that um he did it with a very specific, very deliberate purpose in mind. Um he wanted to find the answer to what life is all about and I'm not sure what Sir paul is doing this week, but he's probably not doing LSD. Speaking back to my theory about these these substances being catalyze ear's of spiritual introspection. Um you know, it came along at a time in their life when I think they were right for it, especially George Harrison um highly recommend the martin Scorsese documentary about, about George Harrison. Um you know, for for them, I think it was exactly the way we ought to investigate it, which is well, mind expander is, this is what psychedelics do, right? That that which makes manifest the contents of the mind. Um in the absence of an experience like that and it can be in a three day fast, it can be laying down in a cave. Um it can be in ritual chanting, It can be in a Sundance, but in the absence of that kind of experience at the right time in your life. It may otherwise be very difficult to find entrance to the kingdom of heaven, which I do think is here and now getting right back to the very beginning if we are actually to participate in that eternal principle, how and when, </s><s>[INST] what do you think? Meet you meant when you said that God is dead? So there's a sense that religion is fading from society and there's a cranky german that kind of wrote about it, what do you think he met? He [/INST] was a cranky german who knew a lot about Dionysus by the way, which is why I like him. So certainly there is some truth To the mortality of God. Um I think Gallup put out a study only a couple of months ago where church membership is now officially in the minority in the United States at 47%, according to the most recent poll. That number was closer to 70% only 20 years ago. So we're living through something. and we're living through the UN church ng of America and it's the rise of the spiritual but not religious. Um, you know, the, the inheritor of all traditions, but the slave to none. There's a rise in the unaffiliated the nuns. I think it was like one third of millennials. It's probably much higher now that don't affiliate with any religion. So in that sense, God is absolutely dead. Um, but maybe not the God that we were trying to define at the very beginning. So Nici also looked forward to the Uber Mich, which would be a fully realized human being, that despite the death of God, um did not fall into nihilism and a morality, existential despair, all that great german stuff. Um, and there are some commentators who talk about this eternal recurrence that just maybe by incorporating some of these techniques, not necessarily doctrine and dogma, but I would say the techniques of antiquity. Um, and again, Nikki writes a lot about the rationality of Dionysus having its place in society. If anything, these biochemical discoveries, I think point us back, they point us back to diagnosis and they're responsible incorporation of the irrational into our otherwise society of of rational people and our cozy </s><s>[INST] mystery. I have a sense that there will be kind of just kind of, as you've implied that there will be, um, maybe the God of old is dying and there'll be a rebirth of different kind of God and just keep happening throughout history. I do think there will be a time where a I will be, the gods will look to, uh, the other, the super intelligent, those kinds of things. There's a little bit of an inkling of um, religious longing for meeting in the way people conceive of aliens currently. I mean, I, I talked to a bunch of people about UFOs ups and aliens. And so to me it's very interesting for perhaps different reasons because I'm just, I look up to the stars and it's incredibly humbling to me to think that there's trillions of intelligent alien civilizations out there, which can be, seems likely, perhaps not intelligent, perhaps just alien life. And actually, also that we don't even understand what it means to be intelligent or do we understand what it means to be alive? The time scale of the spatial scale, which patterns of Adams can form in a way that you can call life. It just could be way weirder, uh, than we can imagine. It's, and certainly way different than human life. Anyway, that to me is humbling. And so I it's almost like the simulation, uh, conceding in the world of simulation thinking of aliens to me is a useful thought experiment of like, what would aliens look like if they visited? How do we know, how do we communicate with them? How do we send signals to them if they're already here and we don't see them? How is that possible? That seems to me actually likely that would just be too self centered and too dumb to see them if they're already here anyway. Uh, but so that's kind of the almost the pragmatic, the engineering, the physics sense of aliens, but there's also kind of a longing to connect with other intelligent beings out there, both the fear and the excitement of that, that has kind of a religious aspect to it. And I find fascinating, and in the right context, when you remove the skepticism of government from that, it's actually a hopeful longing, uh, do you have a do you see this kind of interesting aliens as it all connected to your study of religion? [/INST] So you're the first person to ask me about aliens in eight months? So it looks like I'm going on the record. So, so, um, I'll drop some J allen Hynek on you. Um, so Hynek um involved in Project Blue Book famously says in 1966 when the long awaited solution to the Ufo problem comes, and we're assuming that UFOs have something to do with aliens, but um, when the long awaited solution comes, I believe it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the March of science, but a mighty and unexpected quantum leap. In other words, I do not think that we're dealing with flesh and blood beings and nuts and bolts crafts. I think it's way way more complicated than that. And if anything, it takes me back to the ancient world, it takes me back to this invisible college of beings of apparent higher intent. It takes me to the geniuses and the muses. So the first document in Western civilization, Homers Homer's epics, they begin by invoking an alien, they invoke amuse Andromeda in musa Qala trabajos, Malamala, tell me, Oh, muse about the man. So, Homer is an inventing poetry. He's channeling poetry, epic poetry from an alien intelligence. Maybe that intelligence has felt a little unrecognized in recent years </s><s>[INST] trying to show up inhuman recognisable forms, the muses trying to give a little hints of uh of its existence. Yeah, I mean, I I have a I've been saying, I honestly sort of, I don't believe this, but I think about this whether alien like music is a great example, whether aliens could be thoughts, ideas we have are the aliens or consciousness itself is the methods by which aliens communicate with us. Like I find this very kind of liberating to expand our conception of what intelligent beings are. [/INST] You would like Julian Jaynes, Julian Jaynes writes a great book, the origins of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind, It's this this theory that the ancient greek mind was very different from ours and that when they heard them uses they hurt or the gods and goddesses for that matter, they would hear them as voices in the head and here it as an internal god figure offering commands which they couldn't ignore. So, were they walking schizophrenics? It might be one way to talk about it before the breakdown of the bicameral mind, but it's, it's a provocative theory, largely untested ble, but when you're reading ancient greek and latin for that matter, um you can't read it very long without bumping up against these discarded entities. They're everywhere. Um and they survived. They persist across time, which is even stranger, not just in the form of all the things my daughter's like, like fairies and gnomes and elves, but and McKenna loves this, the self's and the boulder grinders and the sprites and the jin's and elemental every society has them. It seems to be fairly universal. Um and they largely exist in, in folklore mythology. This is what Jack phillips writes about so wonderfully, </s><s>[INST] we've kind of been uh sneaking around it. But let me ask you from yours, from everything we've been talking about? How do you think about consciousness? Is it uh sort of fun little trick that the human mind does, or is it somehow fundamental to this whole thing. [/INST] So uh this £3 lump of jelly inside our craniums that can contemplate um the vastness of interstellar space, it can contemplate the meaning of infinity and it can contemplate itself contemplating on the meaning of infinity. That peculiar self recursive quality that we call self awareness. So this is the hard problem, right? This is this is uh the unknowable, the unknown at least. Um I don't know, I have had no good answer for that. </s><s>[INST] Do you think it's somehow deeply fundamental to human experience is just a trick? So you have like I mean Sam has has really been making me think about this. So, you know, calling free will and illusion. The interesting thing about Sam is it's not just a philosophical little chat with him about free will. He really says he experiences the lack of free will, like he's able to you know, large parts of the day to feel like he has no free will in that same way. Now he thinks that consciousness is um not an illusion, it is, you know, it's a real thing, but at the same, I'm more almost like I'm almost more of like consciousness seems to be a little bit of an illusion in the sense that like it feels like maybe this is a robotics ai perspective, but it feels like in that same way that Sam steps outside of feeling like he has an agency feeling like as a free will, I feel like we should be able to step outside of having a consciousness? Uh huh. So that that from my perspective, maybe that's the hope of perspective for trying to engineer consciousness. But do you think consciousness is like at the core of this or is it just uh just like language or almost like a thing we build on top of much deeper human, the things that makes us human? [/INST] I don't know, I I am attracted to Lanza's notion of bio centrism. I mean it's it's difficult to walk away from the double slit experiment, not wondering why we seem capable of collapsing that quantum wave function. It's very very weird. Um giving rise to even weirder ideas about superposition and spooky action at a distance and things that mitt guys know a lot better than me. But um it seems to me fundamental. Maybe consciousness is the fundamental thing. Um I mean weirdly some of these ancient inculpatory practices, I talked about Peter Kingsley before, so he's not a proponent of ancient psychedelic use, but is a proponent of these ancient rites of incubation that were practiced by pythagoras um parm entities and particles other pre Socratic. And so what were they doing? They were trying to get in touch with consciousness. They were entering into suspended states of animation um in these cave like settings, Pythagoras had built one in his basement and would lie down motionless apparently for long periods of time and what I think they were trying to do um was tapped into and trying to answer this question in their own, you could call it a scientific way, actually less religion than science and what they would discover or try to discover was a state of awareness that is somehow beyond life and death beyond waking and dreaming, where you can be aware of the senses, but also in touch with another reality at the exact same time. What Kingsley calls sensation um that I think is definitely worth exploring </s><s>[INST] well in the way I hope to explore is by trying to build it, but everybody uses the tools Well. No, I do also hope psychedelics could [/INST] help. So how do you build that? I'm curious, </s><s>[INST] that's the whole point of the discussion. This is uh there's a lot of things that can stay here, but let me put simply is I believe that you can go a long way building towards building consciousness by trying to fake consciousness so fake it till you make it as an engineering approach I think will work for consciousness. You [/INST] seem satisfied with </s><s>[INST] that. I I'm satisfied with that because I know how deeply unsatisfied others are, but just wait. So, I mean, I don't know what [/INST] to. So most, </s><s>[INST] most the topic of consciousness is mostly handled by philosophers currently and that's great and there uh philosophers are wonderful and good at what they do. I'm not a philosopher, I'm an engineer and I think the approach there is quite different. I think um Falling in love is different than trying to have a podcast conversation about what is love. Ah you know, I think the engineering effort is just fundamentally different than the philosophical effort and I have a sense that consciousness can be engineered even before it is understood by the philosophers. So I think there's a bunch of things like that in this world that could be engineered before they understood. I think the intelligence is one such thing. I think we'll be we'll be able to engineer super intelligent beings before we're able to understand the human mind. That's um yeah, I mean there's there's less, there's a lot of intuition to unpack there of why that is, but as it stands, that's perhaps my engineering um optimism and engineering ethic under which I operate consciousness is easy to build hard to understand. Okay, other books or movies in your life uh long ago or recently that had a big impact on you. You've you've uh metallic, he is exceptionally well researched. [/INST] The amount of books </s><s>[INST] you read is I cannot even imagine. So is there something in those, in that in those, in your travels through the land of language that's stuck with you? That was especially [/INST] impactful. I mentioned a couple of them. But So I I knew nothing about psychedelics before 2007 and it was in hearing about some of the first psilocybin experiments at Hopkins and then shortly thereafter I went down this rabbit hole. And so the first set of recommendations, all kind of fit in that time period of my life, 2000 and 7, 2000 and eight. It started with jeremy gnarby, um the cosmic serpent D. N. A. And the origins of knowledge. It was a total impulse buy at the Barnes and Noble on Sixth Avenue in new york and wound up introducing me to supernatural by Graham Hancock. Um That that convinced me that there was a long story to psychedelics that um he tried to prove in that book and that we're still trying to prove. I mentioned the connection between ritual psychedelics and cave art. Um This is the neuropsychological model that was first proposed by David lewis Williams at the University of Witwatersrand, the same university where lee berger is by the way in South Africa. So these ideas are old. Um but what Graham did in that book is just um it's it's well worth your time. It's well worth a few reads actually. Uh because it was after that that I discovered Breaking open the Head by Daniel pinchbeck. Um and and a lot a lot of other books that just um kind of blew my mind </s><s>[INST] what is breaking open the head about. [/INST] So it's it's it's Daniel's romp through contemporary shamanism. Um And it's his very well told experiences with everything from psilocybin to it boga being initiated by the booties. Um And it was the first time I'd read any firsthand accounts aside from jeremy gnarby any firsthand accounts, but by a new yorker by the way um about the potential for these these compounds that I've been ignoring for far too long obviously. Um and so that's when I started revisiting the road to lucious and looking through the anthropological literature, reading everything. Gordon Wasson had ever written that Karl Rove had written. Um and it sent me down a pretty weird rabbit hole until I found Peter Kingsley, which is my second recommendation. So so so peter again, he's not a fan of the psychedelic hypothesis, but what he does is I think expose the value of the irrational to the ancient Greeks, especially the pre Socratic. Here we are talking about A. I. And God and these, you know, entangled philosophical questions. The best I can read Kingsley is that Western civilization is a product of a gift from the goddess persephone E. And this is not a hippie. This is this is a pretty gold standard classicist who went on to write a couple of books. One is in the dark places of wisdom and the other is reality. What better way to title your book? Um where he talks about these ancient techniques for exploring the irrational. The same thing called Rock was talking about um after compiling all this data on the road to loose this rock says that the biggest challenge is trying to convince his colleagues in the late 1970s that the ancient Greeks and indeed some of the most famous and intelligent among them could enter so fully into irrationality. Same thing niches talking about in his exploration of Dionysus. And so I think Kingsley just stands apart as um, you know, one of those books, reality that my life was never quite the same after reading them, </s><s>[INST] We talked about £3, uh jelly that is able to conceive of the entirety of uh the fabric of reality in the universe and everything and oh, also of its own mortality. What do you think is the meaning of it all? What's the meaning of life? [/INST] Mhm. </s><s>[INST] So is a £3 jelly able to answer that one. [/INST] No, but I can plagiarize joseph Campbell, which is, which is good enough, joe joe. Campbell says that, you know, I don't think what we're looking for is a meaning of life. I think what we're looking for is an experience of being alive. So that the experiences we have on the purely physical plane will have resonances within that are those of our innermost being and reality. You talked about the true reality, absolute truth. Um, these are all constructs and I think they're they're constructs that that are made day by day and acquire this aura of factuality member and Clifford Geertz definition of religion, we're all just faking it until we make it. And I think a lot of that has to do with moods and motivations and feelings and emotions, which is not to discredit facts and figures. Um, but I think that meaning meaning making is a very subjective process. That is not only difficult to talk about, but difficult to quantify </s><s>[INST] and experience as a primary in that versace. So like the actual subjective experiences primary too, the meaning making process versus like some kind of rigorous analysis of Like having an algorithm that runs and computes and and then finally spits out 42. [/INST] Well, this this is how families are created. Um tell me more about my wife and I fell in love and made babies. We didn't we didn't type up an excel sheet and figure out the best way to go about </s><s>[INST] this. That's what I've been doing all these years. That's why I'm single. [/INST] Too many excel sheets. Uh, what we say falling in love, right? We say fall in love. What does that mean to fall in love? You are surrendering to an intelligence. Um that that that is beyond us. Um you could say a Godlike intelligence, richard Rohr, the Franciscan friar I mentioned in the universal christ, he writes a lot about how the divine for you is is often encountered in the other, in fact, how could it be otherwise? This is this is bedrock sacramental theology that you find the God in the things in your life as well. You should, that's the proving ground for identifying as God rather than creating relationship with God. And so I think that these irrational states that play a big role in </s><s>[INST] that rational well I don't think there's a better way to end it than on the topic of Love brian. Thank you so much for a brilliant exposition of history and the poetry. I really appreciate you talking with me [/INST] today. I love you </s><s>[INST] lex, I love you too. Right, thanks for listening to this conversation with brian your rescue and thank you to Inside Tracker Give well and I indeed and Masterclass check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now let me leave you some words from Terence McKenna about psychedelics. Part of what psychedelics do is they d condition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game. The most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game. Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time [/INST] </s> |
<s>[INST] Well, a lot of that is also one of the big impressive things that Ellen does. I think extremely well is the social media is getting people excited and I think that actually he's helped Nasa step their game up in terms of social media. There's something about yeah this storytelling but also not like um you know like authentic and just real and raw engineering. There's a lot of excitement for that humor and fun. Also all of those things you realize the thing that make ups the vire al Itty of the meme is beautiful, you have to kind of embrace that and um to me this kind of uh okay I criticized a lot of companies based on this. I talked I talked to a bunch of C. E. O. S and and so on. It's just like there's a caution like let us let us do this like press conference thing where we when the final product is ready and it's overproduced as opposed to the raw. The gritty just showed off. It's something that I think my tea is very good at doing. It's just showing the raw by nature the mess of it and the mess of it is beautiful and people get really excited and failure is really exciting when the thing blows up and you're like oh ship that makes it even more exciting when it doesn't blow up and doing all of that on social media and showing also the humans behind it, the individual young researchers or the engineers or the leaders where everything is at stake. I don't know I think I'm really excited about that. I do want my t to do that more for students to show off their stuff and not be pressure to do this kind of generic official presentation, but show show their become a Youtuber. Also like show off your raw research as you're working on it in the early days. I hope that's the future. Things like I was teasing about Tiktok earlier, but you know, these kinds of things, I think inspire young people to uh, to show off their stuff to show their true self the rawness of it because I think that's where engineering is best and I think that will inspire people about all the cool stuff we could do. [/INST] I should say I couldn't agree more. And I actually think this is why we need a real life Starfleet Academy right now. It was the place where the space cadets got to go to learn about how to engage in in the future of life and space and uh, we can do it in a much better way. They're a bunch of groups that traditionally haven't thought that they could engage in aerospace, whether it's because you were told you had to be into math and science now, we need space lawyers, we need space artists like grimes, right? We need really creative, profoundly interesting people to want to see themselves in that future. Um, and I think it's a big challenge to us in the space industry to also do some more diversity, equity and inclusion and show a broader swath of society that there's a future for them in this space exploration missions </s><s>[INST] push back on one thing we don't need space lawyers. Okay, it's a joke. [/INST] We do, </s><s>[INST] okay, we do. The lawyers are great, I love them. Okay, let me ask a big ridiculous question. What is the most beautiful idea to you about space exploration? Whether it's the engineering, the Astrobiology, the science, the inspiration that the human happiness or aliens, I don't know what, what do you like um inspires you every day in terms of its beauty. It's all [/INST] as a ex physicist, but I've always found so profound um it's just that at a really, really small scales like particle physics and really, really big scales like astrophysics, there are similarities in the way that those systems behave and look and there's a certain beautiful symmetry in the universe. It's just kind of waiting for us to tie together the physics and really understand it. That is something that is just um just really captivates me and I would love to, even though I'm now much more on the applied space exploration side, I really try to keep up with what's happening in those physics areas because I think that will be a huge answer for humanity along the lines of are we alone in the universe. </s><s>[INST] One of the fascinating things about you is you have a degree in physics, mathematics and philosophy and now I don't know what you want to know what you call aerospace engineering maybe kind of thing. So you're you have a foot in all of these worlds, the theoretic uh the the sort of the beauty of that world and the philosophy somehow is in there and now the very practical pragmatic implementation of all these wild ideas um plus your incredible communicator, all of those things. What did you pick up from those different disciplines? Um or maybe I'm just romanticizing all those different disciplines, but what is there? What did you pick up from? The variety of that? Physics, mathematics, philosophy, [/INST] what I loved about having this chance to do a liberal arts education was trying to understand the human condition and I think more designers for space exploration should be thinking about that because there's so much depth of like we were talking about issues of issues and opportunities around human connection, human life meaning in life, how do you find fulfillment or happiness? And I think if you approach these questions just purely from the standpoint of an engineer or a scientist, you'll miss some of what makes it a life worth living. Um and so I love being able to combine some of this notion of philosophy and the human condition with my work, but I'm also a pragmatist and I didn't want to stay just purely in these big picture questions about the universe. I wanted to have an impact on society and I also felt like I had such a, a wonderful childhood and a really fantastic setup that I owe society some work to really make a positive impact for a broader swath of citizens. And so that kind of led me from the physics domain to thinking about engineering and practical questions for life and space </s> |
<s>[INST] Does it, does it break your heart a little bit that you're walking away from it in all the ways that you mentioned that it's just not fun. There's a bunch of ways that doesn't seem to bring out the best kind of chess, it doesn't bring out the best out of you in the particular opponents involved. Does it just break your heart a little bit like you're walking away from something or maybe the entire chest community is walking away from a kind of a historic event that was so important in the 20th century at least. [/INST] So I won the championship in 2013. I said no to the candidates in 2011. I didn't particularly like the format. I also wasn't, I was just not in the mood, I didn't want the pressure that was connected with the World Championship and I was perfectly content at the time to play the tournaments that I did play. Um also to, to be ranked number one in the world. I was comfortable with the fact that I knew that I was, I was the best and I didn't need a title to, to show others. Um And what happened later is I suddenly decided to play um in 2013 I liked, they changed the format, I liked it better. Um I just decided, you know, it could be interesting, let's try and get this. Um there were, there really wasn't more than more than that to it. It wasn't like fulfilling, fulfilling a lifelong dream or anything. I just thought, you know, let's, let's play. Um </s><s>[INST] it's just a cool tournament. It's [/INST] a cool school tournament. It's a good challenge, you know, why not? It's, it's something that could be a motivation, it motivated me to get in the, In the best shape of my life that had been till then. So it was a good thing uh and 2013 match brought me a lot of, a lot of joy as well. So I'm very, very happy that I that I did that, but I never had any thoughts that I'm gonna like keep the title for for a long time immediately after the match in 2013. I mean also before the match, I've spoken against the fact that the champion is seeded into the final, which I thought was unfair. After the match, I made a proposal that we have a different system where the champion doesn't have these privileges and people's reaction, both players and chess community was general generally like, okay, we're good, we don't, we don't want that, you keep your privileges. I was like, okay, whatever, </s><s>[INST] so you want to fight for it every time. [/INST] Yeah, I want that. </s><s>[INST] Uh I have to ask just in case you have an opinion. Uh if you can maybe from a fantasy chess perspective analyze uh Ding versus NEpo who wins the current, the two people that would play if you're not playing [/INST] generally, I would consider that doing houses slightly better overall chess strength. Um </s><s>[INST] what are the strengths and weaknesses of each, if you can kind of summarize it. [/INST] Um so napoli his even better at calculating short lines than I am. Um but he can sometimes like a little bit of little bit of depth, like he's in short lines, he's an absolute calculation monster. He's extremely, he's extremely quick, but he can sometimes like a bit of death. Also recently he's improved his openings quite a bit. So now he um, he has a lot of lot of good ideas and it's very, very solid. Um Ding is not quite as well prepared, but he has an excellent understanding of dynamics and imbalances in, in chess. I would, I would say, what </s><s>[INST] do you mean by imbalances? [/INST] Um, imbalances like bishop, bishops against knights and material imbalances? </s><s>[INST] You can take advantage of those. [/INST] Yes, I would say he's very, very good at that. And understanding the, you know, the dynamic factories as we call them like material versus time especially </s><s>[INST] I think got the better of him and the candidates. So what's your sense why Ding has an edge in the, in the championship? [/INST] I feel like individual past results hasn't necessarily been a great indicator of world Championship results. I feel like overall stress strength is more More important. I mean to be fair, I only think like thing has a very small edge like differences not big at all. But our individual had to had record was probably the main reason that a lot of people thought had a good chance against me as well. It was like 4-1 in his favor Before the match. But that was just another example of why that may not necessarily mean anything also in our case it was a very, very low sample size I think about the size of the, of of the match in total 14 games. And that generally doesn't doesn't mean much. How </s><s>[INST] Close were those games would you say in your mind for the previous championship? So that game six was a turning point where you won? Um was there any doubt in your mind that you know, like if you do a much larger sample size, you'll get the better of nip? Oh [/INST] no, no larger, larger sample size is always good for me. So, World championship, it's a great parallel to to football because it's a low scoring </s><s>[INST] game. [/INST] And if the better player or the better team scores, they win most of the </s><s>[INST] time. That's generally for for big for championships or in general. [/INST] Yeah, for for championships like they generally generally win because the other slightly weaker team, they're good enough to defend to make it very, very difficult for the others. But when they actually have to create the chances, then they have no chance. And then very often ends with a blowout, as it did in our our match. If I hadn't won game six, it probably would have been very, very close. He might have edged it. There's obviously a bigger chance that I would have edged it. But this is just what happens a lot in in chess, but also in in in football that matches our clothes and then they </s> |
<s>[INST] that. But it's just a complicated thing. I mean, I just feel that personally myself, I get it. But you still feel the burden of the fact that your opinion has influence. I know it shouldn't. I know tom brady's opinion on financial investment should not have influence. But it does, that's just the reality of it. That's a real burden. I didn't know anything about S. B. F. F. T. X. It wasn't on my radar at all. Um but I could have seen myself like taking them on as a sponsor. I've seen a lot of people I respect. Uh Sam Harris and others like talk talk with SPF. Uh Like he's doing good for the world. So I could see myself being Hoodwinked, having not done research and the same thing. It makes me wonder like I I don't want to become cynical and but it makes you wonder who are the people in your life you trust that are like that could be the next SBF or or worse big powerful leaders, Hitler and all that kind of stuff. Um To what degree do you want to investigate? Do you want to hold their feet to the fire, see through their bullshit, call them on their bullshit. And also as a friend, if you happen to be friends or have a connection how to help them not slip into the land of fraud. I don't know all of that is just overwhelming. Yeah. [/INST] I mean, I mean we should be clear like finance is sort of a special space where You're talking about people's money. You're not talking about whether someone takes a bad supplement or like a supplement that is just their $50 out, right? I think the scale of harm and therefore responsibility escalates depending on what field you're in. Just like I wouldn't hold tom brady as like if he gives a bad football opinion, right? And he should have known better. That is a different scale of harm than a doctor giving bad advice, right? Like life, like he tells you a pill works and the pill kills you or something like that. There's just different levels of accountability, depending on the field you're in and you have to be aware of it. Finance is an extra, you have to be extremely conservative if you're going to give financial advice because you're playing with people's lives and you cannot play with them haphazardly, you cannot gamble with them, you cannot play with them on a bet because you're getting paid a lot of money. It's just the nature of the space. And so with the, with the space comes the responsibility and the accountability. And I don't think you can get around that. </s><s>[INST] Who was dan friedberg, that you mentioned. Some of these figures in the SPF around that are interesting to you. [/INST] Super interesting kind of subject because dan friedberg is the former general Counsel for ultimate bet. Ultimate bet is a was a poker site where famously they got in a scandal because uh the owner Russ Hambleton was cheating with a little software piece of code they called God Mode. God Mode allows you to see the guy across from his hand. Obviously you can imagine you can win pretty consistently if you know exactly what your opponent has very unethical. They, I should be clear that for some inexplicable reason. I don't think they were ever charged and convicted of a crime, but they were investigated by a gambling commission that found, they made tens of millions of dollars this way for sure. And dan friedberg is the general counsel. He's caught on a call basically conspiring with Russ to hide this fraud. He's saying we should blame it on a, you know, a consultant third party and Russ Hamilton famously says, you know, like it was me, I did it, I don't want to give the money back, find basically a way to get rid of this. So that's dan friedberg, big achievement, like that's what he's known for, he's most known for and this is the guy they picked as their chief regulatory officer for F. T. X. Why do you hire somebody who I I get it, the not formally charged and convicted investigated. There's all the and there's tape out there, so I want to be clear about what's actually available evidence, but someone who's seemingly only only achievement is hiding fraud, Why do you hire that guy if the intention is not too high is not to hide fraud. So this is a question I put to, you know, Sam Beckman freed. And his answer was, </s><s>[INST] well, we have [/INST] a lot of lawyers and I said, well it's your chief regulatory officer, he's like, well it wasn't, we we did regulate a lot and it was just this big dance of, you know, basically he's done great work. He's a great guy and I think that tells you everything you need to know </s><s>[INST] and there's figures like that probably even at the lower levels like just infiltrate the entire organization [/INST] was just like why? Yeah why wasn't there a C. F. A. Why why wasn't there anyone in that space who could seemingly be the eyes that goes holy whatever we need to. We were in dangerous territory here, right? Um So yeah it seems very deliberate. I mean I talked to one ft ex employee that they talked about who's told me, they talked about taking, I think it was taking F. T. X. U. S. Public and Sam was very against the idea and the employee in retrospect speculated that it might have been because you face so much scrutiny like regulation wise like you'd have to you know go through a lot like more thorough audits, all that kind of stuff that basically he knew they would never pass. Um So yeah, I mean it's it's red flags all the way down with that guy </s> |
<s>[INST] No, [/INST] I was there just after the Georgia war. I went went to the no man's land in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And I said I really got to go to Gory also here because the shell had landed in gory rather weirdly from the Russian side and Gory is where Stalin was born. And of course courses in Georgia. And let me have that. The Museum of Stalin's birthplace, they've been trying to change for some years because it had been unadulterated li pro Stalin for years and the Georgian authorities. This is in uh Saakashvili's time. We're trying to make it into a museum of stalinism And it was really tough. The only place I've seen which is similar is the house in Mexico city where Trotsky was killed. That also is that they're not quite sure to do, they don't want to say he's a bad guy because they think that people won't come anyhow. Um, Stalin's housing has changed from the Museum of Science Museum of Stalinism. There was this large Georgian woman with a pink pencil who just had clearly been doing the tour for like 50 years And just pointed out the fact that she did that classic thing. And also once in North Korea where they sort of that sort of communist thing where they say here is this is 147 ft high by 13 ft deep and give you lots of fasting. I don't care what does it matter. It would give you facts. This is Stalin's suitcase. It is 13" wide by, you know it isn't anyhow. And this woman did all of this. And it was all just wildly pro not pro science. Just explained. It was just a great local boy done good. They didn't mention the fact he killed more georgians per capita than anyone else. </s><s>[INST] Well done [/INST] good. And we get get to the end before being taken to the gift shop where they sell red wine with Stalin's face on it. Among other things and a lighter of Stalin on it. Uh they they took you to a little room under the stairs and they said this is a replica of interrogation cell to show represent horror of what happened in Stalin time. Now gift job. There's no, no. And I took the woman aside at the end of it. She said it's rather Jennison visited before and I said, what do you think about comrade Stalin? And she said, let's say she's obviously done this during communist times. She said it's not my, not my place to judge, you know, sort of thing. We had an interesting comment in itself. I said, yeah, but he killed more georgians than anyone, you know and all that sort of thing. And she said it's not my place to judge or to give my views and the franchise about what do you feel about it? And she said it was like a hurricane. It happened. Mhm. </s><s>[INST] That's interesting because if I may mention clubhouse once again, I got a chance to talk to a few people from Mongolia. There's a woman from Mongolia and they talked about the fact that they deeply admire Stalin love. She she sounded if I may hopefully that's not crossing line. I think I'm representing her correctly in saying she admired him almost like um like loved them. Like the people the way people love like a, like a like jesus, like a holy figure. [/INST] But isn't that still the case in large parts of Russia and he keeps stalling keeps on winning greatest Russian of all time </s><s>[INST] and and that's perhaps maybe there's a dip but if we were to think about the long arc of history, perhaps that's going to go up and up and up and up as there's something about human memory that just, you forget the details of the atrocities of the past and remember the, [/INST] I mean think of the number of people we talk about as historical hero, napoleon. I mean british people don't talk about napoleon as a hero, but the french now you didn't think that tricky ground, but like the french, enormous napoleon and they had many animal aspects. He was also unbelievable brute and killed many people and necessarily and there are lots of figures from history that we sort of cover that over with. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, yeah. Can we mention Churchill briefly? Because he is one of the um you can make a case for him being one of the great represent Urz or great figures historically of Western civilization and then there's a lot of people uh from not a lot [/INST] I know I have like </s><s>[INST] three friends and one of one of them happens to be from London and they say that he's a um not a good person. So listen, this friend would not discuss, I just, this is an opinion poll of the three friends, but I do know that there's quite a bit, you know, [/INST] there's a backlash going on at the moment </s><s>[INST] at the moment and in general, there's a spirit, like reflecting on on the darker sides of some of these historical figures. Like challenging history through. It's not just critical race theory, it's it's challenging history through world. Are the people who think of as heroes, what are their flaws and are they interact villains that are convenient? Um sort of were there at the right time to accidentally do the right thing? [/INST] Yeah, I hope this isn't the representative fair estimation of your friend in London's view? </s><s>[INST] No, she's going to be quite mad at this, but I didn't say the name. So it could be any friends. It could be Canada. Well, see I I have [/INST] given that away, </s> |
<s>[INST] What about the memory side of things? I think he was talking about knowledge representation. Do you think about memory a lot. One way you can think of neural networks as a kind of memory, you're memorizing things but it doesn't seem to be the kind of memory that's in our brains or doesn't have the same rich complexity, long term nature that's in our [/INST] brains. Yes, the brain is more of a spouse access memory so that you can actually retrieve very precisely like bits of your experience, </s><s>[INST] the retrieval aspects you can like introspect, you can ask yourself questions. [/INST] I guess you can program your own memory and language is actually the tool you used to do that. I think language is a kind of operating system for the mind and use language. Well, one of the uses of language is as a query that you run over your own memory use words as keys. Treachery specific experiences of basic concepts, specific thoughts like languages were used your thoughts not just in writing in the, in the physical world, but also in your own mind. And it's also highly rich with them. Like imagine if you didn't have language then you would have to, you will not really have a self internally triggered way of retrieving past thoughts, you would have to rely on external experiences for instance, you see specific sites you smell is basic smell and that brings up memories but you would not really have a way to deliver battery deliberately accesses memories with our language. Well, </s><s>[INST] the interesting thing you mentioned is you can also program the memory, you can change it probably with [/INST] language using language. </s><s>[INST] Well, let me ask you a chomsky question, which is like, first of all, do you think languages like fundamental, like uh there's turtles, What's at the bottom of the turtles? They don't go can't be turtles. All the way down is language at the bottom of cognition of everything is like language. The fundamental aspect of like what it means to be [/INST] a thinking thing. No, I don't think so. I think language you disagree, you know, Tchaikovsky? Yes, languages the layer on top of cognition. So it is fundamental to cognition in the sense that to use a computing metaphor. I see language as the operating system of the brain of the human mind and your operating system, you know, is a layer on top of the computer. The computer exists before your operating system, but the operating system is how you make it truly useful </s><s>[INST] and the operating system is most likely windows, not not Lennox because it's uh language [/INST] is messy. Yeah, it's messy and it's uh it's uh pretty difficult to uh inspect it, introspective. </s><s>[INST] How do you think about language, like we use actually sort of human interpret herbal language, but is there something like deeper, it's closer to like like logical type of statements. Um like yeah, what is the nature of language do you think? Because there's something deeper than like the syntactic rules that construct? Is there something that doesn't require utterances or [/INST] writing or so on? Are you asking about the possibility that that could exist? Languages for thinking that are not made of words? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so. The miners layers right. And language is almost like the other, most the other most leah. Um but before we think in words I think we think in terms of uh motion in space and we think in terms of physical actions and I think babies in particular probably expresses thoughts in terms of the actions that they've seen that they can perform. And in terms of the in terms of emotions of objects in their environment before they start thinking in terms of world, it's </s><s>[INST] amazing to think about that as the building blocks of language. So like the kind of actions and ways the babies see the world as like more fundamental than the beautiful Shakespearean language to construct on top of it. And we, we probably don't have any idea what that looks like right? Because it's important for them trying to engineer it into a I systems [/INST] I think visual analogies and motion is a fundamental building block of the mind and you actually see it reflected in language that language is full of special metaphors and when you think about things I consider myself damages as a visual thinker. You often expressed his thoughts by using things like visualizing concepts um in into the space or like you solve problems by imagining imagining yourself navigating a concept space. I don't know if if you have this sort of experience. </s><s>[INST] You said visualizing concepts space. So like so I certainly think about, I certainly met, I certainly visualize mathematical concepts but you mean like in concept space Visually you're embedding ideas into something to three dimensional space. [/INST] You can explore with your mind essentially. Yeah two D. You're </s><s>[INST] a flatlander. Your okay? No I I do not. I always have to before I jump from concept to concept. I have to put it back down on paper. It has to be on paper. I can only travel On two D. Paper not inside my mind. [/INST] You're </s><s>[INST] able to move inside your mind. [/INST] Even if you're writing like a paper for instance, don't you have like a special representation of your paper? Like you you visualize where ideas lie technologically in relationship to other ideas. Kind of like a subway map of the ideas in your paper. Yeah, that's </s> |
<s>[INST] I mean this, I don't know what else I could say is there's not, I've talked to a lot of great leaders. There's just not many people like Elon that would push for Starship. [/INST] Where- When they're already- As far ahead. </s><s>[INST] As far ahead. Very successful company. Yeah. Sort of everyone doubted that it could be a successful company. It was so close to bankruptcy and failing. And then to take it into a financially viable, successful company. And just when you do, [/INST] you take on a project that again risks everything. When he already did this with Falcon 1 to Falcon 9, like literally people were like, what are you doing? They basically signed over and were fully ramping up Falcon 9 by the time they finally had their first Falcon 1 success. They had one more flight. They only flew Falcon 1 successfully twice. They flew it five times altogether. The fourth one was successful and they flew it one more time. And anyone else out there would have been like, let's keep flying the Falcon 1. We have a working rocket, we can start, you know, making money and profiting. And already he was risking it all and saying, nope, we're going from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9. It was a huge, huge leap. You know, I think it's at least as big as a leap from Falcon 1 to 9 as it is from Falcon 9 to Starship or around relatively a similar leap. So it's just that same thing again. People are going, why are you leaping into this insane program and system and risk when you have such, you know, you finally have this workhorse of a rocket that's so dominant in the industry, </s><s>[INST] yet they're going 10X, you know? It so happens that you've been selected for the Dear Moon mission that will fly Starship. Once around the moon with nine people on board, you are one of those people. So just pause to take that in. Everything that we've been talking about, you will not just be reporting on, you will be a part of it. So tell me about the objective of this mission [/INST] and how does it feel to be a part of it? Well, man, yeah, it's, yeah. Basically, it's the Willy Wonka of space. Like a generous, a generous individual purchased a ride from SpaceX as early, at least as far as I know, the earliest I knew about it was February 27th, 2017. Who's the individual? Yusaku Miyazawa, but at the time, I'm telling a story, at the time we didn't know. Okay, great, great. So February 27th, 2017, a press release comes out from SpaceX saying, someone purchased a ride through us around the moon. We're gonna fly someone around the moon and at the time it was on a Crew Dragon capsule and a Falcon Heavy. Wow, and that was enough. That little moment right there, that press release. So first time I'm like, I'm gonna make a YouTube video about this. And I stood up, turned on my camera, put on my, at the time, spacesuit. And I basically yelled at the camera for three minutes about someone's going around the moon, you know? Fast forward to 2018, end of 2018 or near the end, they introduced, there's a SpaceX press conference. I'm there as a member of the press. I'm reporting on, we're going to meet this person that's going around the moon and come to find out, boom, they're going to be riding on Starship now. They changed from Falcon Heavy and Dragon. SpaceX is no longer going to do that. They're going to upgrade them basically to Starship. So instead of being in like a small tin can, they're in this giant, luxurious, you know, mega rocket around the moon. And it comes out to this individual named Yusaku Maizawa, who is a Japanese billionaire, purchased this ride. And instead of inviting, you know, his friends and, you know, colleagues and whatever, whoever's family members or whatever, he decided that the most impactful thing he could do with this opportunity is invite more or less artists. And the original thing was like artists, you know, a journalist, a painter, an athlete, you know, all of, you know, photographer, videographer, you know, all walks of life, basically. When they said athlete, they thought of you. I know, guy, this guy rode rag by once. But so, and at the time, you know, it was like, this is crazy, I can't believe this is going to happen. And you know, he had this, this vision of, we're going to find people from all around the world. I'm going to invite people from all around the world, from different walks of life, different, different, you know, trades and I'm going to share this experience so that they can share it with the world and really have an impact much greater than, you know, any one country or any one individual or any set of military trained astronauts could do, offer up a new perspective. Beautiful, I literally, I mean, at the press conference, I cried. </s> |
<s>[INST] What do you make of Wall Street bets another thing that recently happened that shook the world and at least me from the outsider perspective, make me question what I do and don't understand about economics, which is a bunch of different, a bunch, a large number of individuals getting together on the Internet and having a large scale impact on the markets. [/INST] If you tell a group of people and coordinate them through the internet, we're going to play a fun game, it might cost you money, but you're going to make the headlines and there's a chance you'll screw over some billionaires and hedge funds, enough people will play that game so that game might continue. But I don't think it's a macro economic importance and the price of those stocks in the medium term will end up wherever it ought to be. </s><s>[INST] So these are little outliers from a macroeconomic perspective, they're not going to, these are not signals of a shifting power like from from centralized power to distribute power. These aren't some fundamental changes in the way our economy [/INST] works. I think of it as a new brand of e sports may be more fun than the old brand, which is fine, right? It's like push the anarchy into the corners where you want it. It doesn't bother me, but I think people are seeing it is more fundamental than it is. It's a new e sport, more fun for many, but more expensive than the old e sports. Like chess is a new e sport super cheap, not as fun as like you know, sending hedge funds to their doom but like what would you </s><s>[INST] expect? The poetry that I love it. Okay. But macro economically it's not it's not fundamental. Okay. I was gonna say I hope you're right because I'm uncomfortable with the chaos of the masses. That's great. But I [/INST] also think that chaos is somewhat real to be clear but it will matter through other channels not through manipulating, you know, Gamestop or AMC. So you're seeing the real macro phenomenon when people see a real macro phenomenon, they tend to make every micro story fit the narrative and this micro story like it fits the narrative but it doesn't mean it's importance fits the narrative. That's how I would kind of dissect the mistake </s><s>[INST] I think people are making. Do you do then the macro phenomenon that are there, Do you mean [/INST] everyone's weird now? The internet either allows us to be weirder or makes us weirder. I'm not sure what's the right way to put it. Maybe a mix of both. </s><s>[INST] You're probably right that it allows us to be weirder because well this is the, okay, so this connects our two previous conversation. Does America allow us to be weirder or does it make us weirder? [/INST] Like they were weird and somewhat neurotic to begin with. But the only messages we gather Dwight d Eisenhower and I love lucy and network tv like that's gonna keep us within certain bounds in good and bad ways. That's obviously totally gone. And the internet you can connect to not just Q. And on but all sorts of things, many of them just fantastic, right? Uh But in good and bad ways that makes us weirder. So that maybe is troubling right? Like if someone is worried about that, I would at least say they should give it deep serious thought and then it has a whole lot of ebbs and flows might grow realizations of the weirdness that don't actually matter. So like chess players today, they play a lot more weird openings than they did 20 years ago. Like it reflects the same thing because you can research any weird opening on the internet but like does that matter? Probably not. So a lot of the things we see are just like the weird chess openings and to figure out which are like the weird chess openings and which are fundamental to the new and growing weirdness. Like that's what a hedge fund investor type should be trying to do. I just think no one knows yet. It's like this itself this fun weird guessing game which were partly engaging in right now. </s><s>[INST] Exactly. And I mean as eric talks about uh on the science side of things. I mean I said uh like at M. I. T. Especially in the machine learning field, there's a natural institutional resistance to the weird. It's very as they talk about, it's difficult to hire weird faculty for example, you want to hire, you want to hire and give tenure to people that are safe. Uh Not weird and that's one of the concerns is like it seems like the weird people are the ones that push the science forward usually. And so like how do you how do you balance the two? It's not obvious [/INST] because another area where erIC and I disagree as I interpret him, he thinks academia is totally bankrupt and I think it's only partially bankrupt. </s><s>[INST] How do we fix it? Because I'm with you, I'm up to I'm bullish on academia. [/INST] You need up and coming schools that end up better than where they started off in M. I. T. Was once one of them now they're not in every area in some areas they have become the problem. You Chicago, you wouldn't call it up and coming. But it's still different and that's great. Let's hope they managed to keep it that way. The biggest problem to me is the rank, absurd conformism that kind of second tier schools may be in the top 40 but not in the top dozen that are just trying to be like a junior M. I. T. But it's mediocre and copycat and they're the most dogmatic enforcers of weirdness that like Harvard is more open than those second tier schools and the second tier schools are pretty good typically right? </s> |
<s>[INST] But the love of country is also beautiful. So I haven't seen in America as much. So people in America love their country like this patriotism, strong in America, but it's not as strong as I remember. Even with my sort of being younger, the love of the soviet union [/INST] now, was it the soviet union? This requires a distinction Or was it mother Russia? </s><s>[INST] What it really was was the Communist Party. Okay, so it was it was a system in place, the system in place like loving. I haven't quite deeply psychoanalyzed exactly what you love. I think you love the that like populist message of the worker of the common man. So [/INST] let me let me draw the comparison then. Um and I often say this that that the United States, like the soviet union is an ideological based society, right? So you take a country like France, it doesn't matter which french government you're in now, the friendship in the french for a long time, right? Uh it's not based on an ideology, right? Whereas what unites the United States is an ideology freedom, liberty, the constitution, this is what draws, you know, it's the e pluribus unum kind of the idea right there, That out of many one. Well, what what binds all these unique, different people, the shared beliefs, this ideology, the soviet union was the same way because as, you know, the soviet union Russia was merely one part of the soviet union, and if you believe the rhetoric until Stalin's time, everybody was going to be united under this ideological banner someday, it it was was a global revolution. Um so ideological societies are different and to be a fan of the ideological framework and goal, I mean, I'm a liberty person, right? I would like to see everybody in the world have my system of government, which is part of a of a bias, right? Because they might not want that, but I think it's better for everyone because I think it's better for me at the same time when the ideology, if you consider and, you know, this stems from ideas of the enlightenment and there's a bias there. So my bias or toward the but you feel and this is why you say we're going to bring freedom to Iraq, we're gonna bring freedom to here, we're gonna bring freedom because we think we're spreading to use something that is just undeniably positive, we're going to free you and give you this. Um it's hard for me to wipe my own bias away from there, right? Because if I were in Iraq for example, I would want freedom, right? But if you then leave and let the Iraqis vote for whomever they want, are they going to vote for somebody that will, I mean, you know, you look at Russia now and I hear from Russians quite a bit because so much of my um my views on Russia and the soviet union were formed in my formative years and and you know, we were not hearing from many people in the soviet union back then, but now you do you hear from Russians today who will say your views on Stalin or archaic and cold. So so you try to reorient your beliefs a little bit. But it goes to this idea of if you gave the people in Russia a free and fair vote, will they vote for somebody who promises them a free and open society based on enlightenment democratic principles, or will they vote for somebody, we in the U. S. Would go what are they doing? They're voting for some strong man who's just you know, so um I think it's very hard to throw away our own biases and preconceptions and and you know it's an all eye of the beholder kind of thing. But when you're talking about ideological societies it is very different, difficult to throw off all the years of indoctrination into the superiority of your system. I mean listen in the soviet union Marxism one way or another was part of every classrooms, you could be studying geometry and they'll throw Marxism in there somehow because that's what united the society and that's what gave it a higher purpose and that's what made it in the minds of the people who were its defenders a superior morally superior system. And we do the same thing here. In fact most people do. But see you're still french no matter what the ideology or the government might be. So in that sense it's funny that there would be a Cold war with these two systems because they're both ideologically based systems involving peoples of many different backgrounds who are united under the umbrella of the ideology. </s><s>[INST] First of all that's brilliantly put, I'm in a funny position that uh in my formative years. So I came here when I was 13 is when I you know teenage is your first love or whatever as I fall in love, I fell in love with the american set of ideas of freedom and individuals. [/INST] Yes but </s> |
<s>[INST] So you were a key person in launching three revolutions, online education, the autonomous vehicles and flying cars or beetles so high level and I apologize for all the philosophical questions, [/INST] no apology necessary. </s><s>[INST] How do you choose what problems to try and solve what drives you to make those solutions in reality? [/INST] I have to, to desires in life. I want to literally make the lives of others better or as few of them say maybe jokingly make the world a better place. I believe in this. It's as funny as it sounds and second I want to learn, I want to get in this case, I don't want to be in the drop I'm good at because if I'm in a job that I'm good at the chances for me to learn something interesting is actually minimized. So I want to be in a job I'm bad at. Um that's really important to me. So in a bid for example, but people often called flying cars with electrical vertical takeoff and landing vehicles. Um I'm just no expert in any of this and it's so much fun to, to learn on the job, what it actually means to build something like this. Now. It's saying that the stuff that I done lately after I finished my professorship at stanford, They're really focused on like what is the maximum impact on society? Like transportation is something that has transformed the 21st or 20th century more than any other invention of my opinion, even more than communication and cities are different workers, different women's rights are different because of transportation. And yet we still have a very sub optimal transportation solution where we kill 1.2 or so million people every year in traffic. It's like the leading cause of death for young people in many countries where we are extremely inefficient resource minds, just go to your average neighborhood city and look at the number of parked cars. That's a travesty in my opinion or where we spent endless hours in traffic jams and very, very simple innovations like a self driving car or what people call the flying car could completely change this and it's there. I mean the technology is, is basically there to close your eyes not to see it. </s><s>[INST] So lingering on autonomous vehicles, fascinating space, some incredible work you've done throughout your career there. So let's start start with DARPA. I think the DARPA challenge to the desert and an urban to the streets. I think that inspired an entire generation of roboticists and obviously sprung this whole excitement about this particular kind of four wheeled robots called autonomous cars, self driving cars. So, you lead the development of Stanley, the autonomous car that won that The race of the desert. The DARPA Challenge in 2005 and junior, The car that finished second in the DARPA Urban Challenge also did incredibly well in 2007. I think what are some painful inspiring or enlightening experiences from that time to stand out to you. [/INST] Oh my God, painful. We're all these incredibly complicated stupid bugs that had to be found. We had a phase where the Stanley our Our car that eventually wandered up again challenge with every 30 miles, just commit suicide and we didn't know why and they ended up to be that in the sinking of two computer clocks occasionally o'clock went backwards and that negative time elapsed screwed up the entire internal logic. But it took ages to find this. You were like bugs like that. I'd say. Enlightening is the stanford team immediately focused on machine learning and software. Whereas everybody else seemed to focus on building better hardware. Our analysis have been a human being with an existing rental car can perfectly drive the course, but I have to write off to get a better rental car. I just should replace the human being and the human being. To me was a conjunction of three steps. We had like sensors, eyes and ears, mostly eyes. We had brains in the middle and then we had actuated our hands and our feet. Now the extras are easy to build. The sensors are actually also easy to build was missing was the brain. So we had to build a human brain and nothing nothing clear then to me that that the human brain is a learning machine. So why not just train our robots? You would be a massive machine learning into our machine. And with that we're able to not just learn from human drivers. We had the entire speed control of the vehicle was copied from human driving, but also have the robot learn from experience where it made a mistake and recover from it and learn from it. </s><s>[INST] You mentioned the pain point of software and clocks. Synchronization seems to seems to be a problem that continues with robotics. It's a tricky one with drones and so on. What what does it take to build a thing? A system with so many constraints. You have a deadline. No time. You're unsure about anything really. It's the first time that people really even exploring. You know, it's not even sure that anybody can finish when we were talking about the race of the desert the year before nobody finished. What does it take to scramble and finish a product that actually a system that actually works? [/INST] I mean, we're lucky. We're very, really small team, the core of the team of four people. It was for, because five couldn't comfortably sit inside a carpet for food and I as a team leader, my job was to get pizza for everybody and washed the car and stuff like this and repair the radiator and it broke and debug the system. Um, and we're already kind of open minded. We had like no egos involved and we just wanted to see how far we can get what we did really, really well. It was time management. We were done with everything a month before the race and we froze the entire self a month before the ways. And it turned out, um, looking at other teams, every other team complaint. If they had just one more week, they would have won. And we decided, you know, it's going to fall into a mistake. We're gonna be early. And we had an entire month to shake the system. And we actually found two or three minor bucks in the last month that we had to fix. And we were completely prepared in the race </s> |
<s>[INST] So maybe from a more mathematical perspective or can we say something about how much scalability is needed for a world? That is big. [/INST] Well it really depends how many transactions so you want but remember that and um I I think you know mama right now yet to go into at least thousands of transactions. So um per second even if you look at a home uh credit cards right at home We are going to go from an average of 1602 peaks over 20,000 of 40,000 something like this. But remember is not only a question of the transaction per se but the value is that the transaction he's actually being shared and visible to everybody and the certainty that that is the case. I can print on on my own printer way more transactions but nobody has the time to see or to inspect that doesn't count right so you want scalability advice, common knowledge level and that is the challenge. </s><s>[INST] I also meant from a perspective of like uh like a complexity analysis so does it you know when you get more and more people involved, doesn't you just scale in some kind of way that like do you, do you like to see certain kind of properties in order to say something is scalable? [/INST] Oh absolutely. I took a little bit implicitly the people transacting are actually very different. So if there is two people who can do uh fastened succession per second of each other, this is not so interesting. What we really need is to say that billions of people and at any point in time, you know thousands and thousands of them want to transact with each other and you want to support that. </s><s>[INST] So our grand uh it solves so that's the company, the team of cryptographers and mathematicians, engineers. So on that challenged the Blockchain trial Emma. So let's break it down in terms of achieving scalability. How do we achieve scalability in the space of Blockchain in the space of Cryptocurrency. [/INST] Okay, so scalability, security remember in the decentralization so that that's what they want. What's the best way </s><s>[INST] to approach? Can we break it down that start with scalability And think about how do we achieve it [/INST] well to achieve it at one at a time is uh perhaps it is even security if nobody transact nobody loses money. So what is secure but not scalable. So let me tell you, I'm a photographer. So I try to fight the bad guys and uh what what you want is that a vessel ager. But we discussed before cannot be tampered with. So you must think of it went to is a special ink that nobody can erase then as to be. Everybody should be able to read and not to alter the pages or the content of the pages. That's ok. But you know what that is actually easy, cryptographically easy photographic means. You can use Tools invented 50 years ago which kept a graphic time is prehistory okay we are cavemen working around and solve the problem in cryptography land. But you know, but there is really a fundamental problem which is really almost a social seems a political problem is to say who the hell chooses our publishes the next page on Villager. I mean that is really the challenge MS ledger. You can always add the page because more and more transactions to be written on there and somebody has to assemble with with transaction, put them on a page and after the next page, who is there? Somebody who chooses the page and answered </s><s>[INST] who can be trusted to do [/INST] it exactly assume it is me for what I'm being and not that I won't volunteer for the job. But then I would have more power than any absolute monarch in history because I would have tremendous power to say these are the transactions that the entire world should see and whatever. I don't right. This transaction will never see the light of day. I mean no one and any such a power in history. So it's very important to do that and that is the quintessential problem in a Blockchain. And people have thought about it to say it's not me, it's not you, but for instance in a proof of work, what people say, they say, okay, it's not me. It's not. Do you know what it is? We make a very difficult, we invent a cryptographic puzzle very hard to solve the first one to solve it as the right to add one page to the ledger on behalf of everybody else. That's, it always seems okay because you know sometimes I solve the puzzle before you do, sometimes you solved before I do or before somebody else, somebody else solves it. </s><s>[INST] It's okay presumably the effort you put in, it's somehow correlated with how much trust you should be given to add to the leisure. [/INST] Yeah. So somehow you want to make sure of it and you need to work because you want to prevent, you want to make sure we can all, You get to one solution every 10 minutes to say like a particular example of Bitcoin. So beta is very rare, but two pages are added at the same time because if I solve a puzzle at the same time, you do, it could happen that if it happens once or twice we can survive this. But if it happens and all, if we have a page, you know, it's a double page when which of the two is a real page it becomes a problem. So that's why in Bitcoin it is important to have a substantial amount of work so that no many, how many people try on earth To solve a puzzle. You have one solution out of how many people are trying every 10 minutes So that you have you distance C8 with pages and you have the time to propagate for the network a solution and the page attached to it and very for very is one page at a time with these other and they say why why don't we do that? We have a solution. Well, first of all a page, A very 10 minutes is not fast enough. It's a question of scalability and second of all to ensure that no matter how many people Try, you get one page anyway 10 minutes One solution to Burrito every 10 minutes. This means that very low becomes very, very hard and to have a chance to solve it Within 10 minutes, you must have such an expensive apparatus in terms of specialist computers, not one, not two, but faster and faster, all of them and we produce tons of heat okay with the dissipated like maniac engineer to refrigerate them too. And so then now you have a conditioning galore to other covering, it becomes so expensive that fewer and fewer and fewer people can actually compete in order to add to the page And the problem becomes a, so so uh some crucial Vietnam in in Bitcoin depending on which day of the week look at it, you're going to have two or three mining pools are really the ones are capable of controlling the train. </s> |
<s>[INST] One project, you know, is a funny way to put a global war. Right? So, can you tell the story? Perhaps that's a good example of it, of the James Montgomery Flagg's 1916 poster That reads, I want you, a lot of people know this poster, I think in its original form, it's meme ified from, I don't know, but we know this poster and we don't know where it came from, or most Americans, I think me included didn't know where it came from, and it actually comes from 1916. Does this post represent the birth of something new in America, which is a commodification or I don't know that propaganda machine that says what it means to be an american. It's somebody that fights for their country. [/INST] Yeah, So the image and it's in fact, I think one of the most recognizable images, not only in the United States, but in the entire world, right? Um, and you can you can bring it almost anywhere on earth in 2022 people will know what it refers to, right? And so this is an image that circulated first as a magazine cover later as a recruitment poster where the figure is Uncle Sam sort of pointing at the viewer with his fingers pointing and saying, I want you Right? And the I want you as a recruitment tool to join the us army. And this image, you know, really kind of starts as a kind of like I said, a magazine cover in 1916 by the artist James Montgomery Flagg. It initially appears under the heading, what are you doing for preparedness meaning to prepare in case war comes to the United States, right? At that point in 1916 were still neutral. Um in 1917. Uh, it's turned into a U. S. Army recruiting poster. Um, and then it reappears in World War Two reappears generations after, you know, like you said, it's now gets remixed, meme ified, it's all over the place, </s><s>[INST] I think [/INST] for me it's a it's a turning point. It's a sort of window into american culture at a crucial moment in our history where the federal government is now embarking on a war overseas, that's going to make enormous demands on its citizens and at the same time where sort of technologies of mass production and mass media and what we would probably call propaganda are being sort of mobilized for the for the first time in in this new kind of way. </s><s>[INST] Well in some sense, is it fair to say that the empire is born, the expanding empire is born from the Noam chomsky perspective kind of empire [/INST] that </s><s>[INST] seeks to have military influence elsewhere in the world. [/INST] Yes, but I think as historians, we need to be at least as interested in what happens to the people who are getting pointed to by Uncle Sam right? Rather than just the one, you know, whether he's pointing at us. Um and you know, so so yes, he's asking us to do that, but but how do we respond? </s><s>[INST] And the people responded? So the people are ultimately the the machines of history, the mechanisms of history, it's not the Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam can only do so much if the people aren't willing to step up. [/INST] Absolutely they and, you know, the american people responded for sure, but they didn't build what Uncle Sam asked them to do um, in that poster, right? Um and I think that's you know, kind of a crucial aspect that, you know, there never would have been sort of global US power without the response that begins in World War One. </s><s>[INST] What was the Selective Service Act of 1917. [/INST] So, one of the very first things that uncle Sam wants you to do right is to register for selective service for the draft, right? Um and the laws passed very soon after the US enters the war. Um it's sort of, you know demanding that all men first between 21 and 30, then between 18 and 45 register for the draft. Um and they will be selected by a government agency, by a volunteer organization. </s><s>[INST] It [/INST] is a legal requirement to register. Not of course not everyone who registers is selected. Uh, but over the course of the war, 24 million men register almost four million serve in some fashion. What </s><s>[INST] was the response? What was the feeling amongst the american people to have to sign up to the selective service act? [/INST] Well, I have </s><s>[INST] to register. This [/INST] is uh this is a bigger turning point than than we might think right in some ways this is a tougher demand of the american public than entering the war. It's one thing to declare war on Germany, right? It's another thing to go down to your local post office and fill out the forums that allow your own government to send you there to fight. Um, and this is especially important at a time when the federal government doesn't really have any other way to find you unless you actually go and register yourself. Right? Um, and so, you know, ordinary people are participating in the building of this war machine. But at least a half a million of them don't write and simply never fill out the forums moved from one town to another. </s><s>[INST] But you said 20 million, 20 something [/INST] About 24 million register at least 500,000. </s><s>[INST] Is it surprising to you that that many registered? It [/INST] is, and that's what I I, you know, sort of tried to dig in to figure out how did, how did you get 24 million people to register for the draft? And, uh, it's certainly not coming from the top down, right? Um, you know, there may be 100 sort of agents and what's now called the FBI. Um, you know, it's certainly not being enforced from Washington. It's being enforced in, you know, through the, the eyes of everyday neighbors, you know, through community surveillance, all kinds of ways. </s> |
<s>[INST] is [/INST] you were confronted with something new you so you could you could tap on it, right? And if you heard a metallic clanging sound, you said fine, right? So you could conclude it was made in a factory, I could take it apart. I can do whatever, right? If you did that and you got sort of a squishy kind of warm sensation. You say I need to be, you know, more or less nice to it and whatever that's not going to be feasible, it was never really feasible. But it was good enough because we didn't have any, we didn't know any better. That needs to go. And I think </s><s>[INST] that [/INST] by by breaking down those artificial barriers someday we can try to build a system of of ethical norms that does not rely on these completely contingent facts of of of our earthly history. But on something much much deeper that you know, really takes, it takes agency and and and uh the capacity to suffer and all that takes that seriously. </s><s>[INST] The capacity to suffer and the deep questions I would ask of the system is can I eat it? And can I have sex with it. Um, which is the two fundamental tests of again, the human condition. Uh, so I can basically do what dolly does that's in the in the physical space. So print out like a three D. Print Pepe the frog with the propeller head propeller hat is the is the dream. [/INST] Well, I wanna yes and no, I mean I want to get away from the three D printing thing because that will be available for some things much earlier. I mean we can already do bladders and ears and things like that because it's micro level control. Right? When you three D. Print you are In charge of where every cell goes and for some things that you know for for like this thing they had that I think 20 years ago or maybe earlier than that you could do that. </s><s>[INST] So I would like to emphasize the dolly part where you provide a few words and it generates a painting. So here you say I want a frog with these features and then it would go direct a complex biological system to construct something like that. [/INST] Yeah the main magic would be I mean I think from from looking at dolly and so on it looks like the first part is kind of solved now where you go from from the words to the image like that seems more or less solved. The next step is really hard. This is what keeps things like CRISPR and and genomic editing and so on. It's it's what limits all the uh impact for for general medicine because going back to okay this is the knee joint that I want or this is the I that I want now what genes do I edit to make that happen right going back in that direction is really hard. So instead of that it's going to be okay I understand how to motivate cells to build particular structures. Can I rewrite the memory of what they think they're supposed to be building such that then I can you know take my hands off the wheel and let them let them do their thing. So </s><s>[INST] some of that is experiment. But some of that may be a I can help too? Just like with protein folding this is exactly the problem that protein folding uh in the most simple uh medium tried and has solved with alpha fold. Which is how does the sequence of letters result in this three dimensional shape? And you have to um I guess it didn't solve it because you have to if you say I want this shape, how do I then have a sequence of letters? Yeah. The reverse engineering stuff is really tricky. [/INST] It is I think I think where where and and we're doing some of this now is is to uh use ai to try and build actionable models of the intelligence of the cellular collectives. So try to help us and help us gain models that that that um and we we've had some success in this. So we we did something like this for um uh for you know for repairing birth defects of the brain in frog. We've done some of this for normalizing melanoma. Where you can really start to use ai to make models of how would I impact this thing if I wanted to. Given all the complexities right? And and given all the uh </s><s>[INST] the [/INST] controls that it that it knows how to do. </s><s>[INST] So when you say regenerative medicine. So we talked about creating biological organisms. But if you re grow a hand, that information is already there, right? The biological system has that information. So how does regenerative medicine work today? How do you hope it works? What's the hope there? How Yeah. How do you make it happen? [/INST] Well today there's a set of popular approaches. So so one is three D. Printing. So the idea is I'm gonna make a scaffold of the thing that I want. I'm going to seed it with cells and then and then there it is. Right. So kind of direct and then that works for certain things. You can make a bladder that way or an ear or something like that. Um the other the other ideas is some sort of stem cell transplant into the ideas. If we uh if we put in stem cells with appropriate factors, we can get them to generate certain kinds of neurons for certain disease diseases and so on. All of those things are good for relatively simple structures. But when you want an eye or a hand or something else, I think in this problem may be an unpopular opinion. I think the only hope we have in any reasonable kind of time frame is to understand how the thing was motivated to get made in the first place. So what is it that that made those cells in the in the beginning create a particular arm with a particular set of sizes and shapes and number of fingers and all that. And why is it that a salamander can keep losing theirs and keep regrowing there and apply Marion can do the same even more. So to me kind of ultimate regenerate medicine was when you can tell the cells to build whatever it is you need them to build. Right? And so that so that we can all be like plan area basically. </s> |
<s>[INST] Do you have hope that Jews, Muslims, and Christians in this land will live in peace one day together? Have a basic respect for each other's humanity? [/INST] Look, look, this isn't a religious conflict. I think that's fundamentally one of the problems. So even the question is not the correct question? It's not the correct question. This is not a religious conflict. Yes, religion is invoked. Yes, there are religious elements, but there are many Jews that are opposed to what is happening right now towards the Palestinians, many, and I would recommend a serious discussion with even people whose perspectives have grown. Peter Beinert being an example, Rabbi Simone Zimmerman started, if not now. Beit Tislim, an Israeli human rights organization that also classed it as apartheid recently. There are many Jews that are opposed to what is happening right now. Palestinians are also not exclusively a Muslim population. Sherina Barakahla was Christian. There are many Palestinian Christians that are also being denied entry into their historic churches and that are completely bewildered or absolutely lost in regards to why American evangelicals have this ironclad support for the occupation and have ignored the plight of Palestinian Christians. Of course I believe Muslims, Christians, and Jews can coexist. Of course I have hope because I have to have hope as a person of faith, but as much hope as I have, I think there's a great sense of urgency for people to open their eyes, learn what's actually happening on the ground, read the reports, stop letting these commentators and these companies that are able to generate propaganda own the narrative. There are objective standards here. There are objective measures of oppression that need to be considered here. What's happening to Gaza is one of the greatest atrocities of our time. Learn about it, right? I'd tell people to just watch the vice documentaries, for example, the mini documentaries. I'd sent them to you as well inside the battle for Jerusalem. I mean, think about it. A guy from Long Island, New York can fly to Israel, right? Fly into Tel Aviv and walk into a home that's been occupied by families for generations and throw the people out under the full protection of the military there and spit on them historic homes. And when people come up to me and say, we're opposed to Islamophobia, we're opposed to Islamophobia, but they support that. I tell you, you're not opposed to Islamophobia. How can you be opposed to Islamophobia when you traffic in the same framings and dehumanization that enables the viciousness towards Muslims here and Palestinians over there that they do not deserve to be treated like equal human beings, like full human beings. And that based on historic claims, a guy can fly from New York into a historic neighborhood in Jerusalem and kick out generational families with military guns next to them. What does that sound like? How's that normal? And so I think that if people take the time to read, people take the time to investigate, then they come to this conclusion themselves, that this is unacceptable. And that you can't put, and this is one of the problems with the framing of Israel-Palestine, is that you're equating occupier and occupied. You're equating the two sides of the conflict. And it's not a conflict, it's an occupation. There is such a disparity of power here that you cannot equate the two sides. Malcolm X would say, you clip the bird's wing and then blame it for not flying as high as you do. You can't do that to a people and just equate them with their occupier. It's an atrocity. It requires us to challenge it. And I'm hopeful at the current movement of Muslims, Christians and Jews and people of all fates that are saying enough is enough, that thresholds have been crossed here, that this is an atrocity that cannot continue. This is very personal to me because this is happening now. What I anticipate, and this is what America did, this is what Nelson Mandela actually predicted with the United States. What I anticipate is that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, every American will say, how could we have supported this? And this was terrible. And we'll pay symbolic homage to the Palestinian cause. But there are people now that are clinging on for dear life, access to their places of worship, access to their generational homes. Right now at this very, there are children that are in detention and there's a bill in Congress to just stop. I mean, wherever you stand on this issue, child detainment, child detention should be a red line. Congresswoman Betty McCollum has put this bill on the floor of Congress. She can't even get that passed just to at least censure child detainment by the IDF. So people need to look into this deeper. They need to consider the human element of this and consider the urgency of it as well. With this new regime, it's only going to unfortunately get much worse in the immediate </s> |
<s>[INST] that could be a special threat of thoughts that the you're too passionate about this is where some of the greatest ideas could potentially comments when you just lose yourself later and for the meetings. I mean, you're loading in really hard problems in a very short amount of time. So you have to do some kind of first principles thinking here. It's like, what's the problem? What's the state of things? What's the right next step? [/INST] You have to get really good at context switching, which is one of the hardest things because especially as we do so many things, if you include all the scientific things, we do scientific fields were working in these are our entire field, you know, complex fields in themselves and you you you have to sort of keep up two abreast of that. But I enjoy it. I've always been a sort of generalist in a way and that's actually what happened with my games career after chess. I I one of the reasons I stopped playing chess because I got into computers, but also I started realizing there were many other great games out there to play too. So I've always been that way inclined, multidisciplinary and there's too many interesting things in the world to spend all your time just on one thing. </s><s>[INST] So you mentioned Spinoza got asked the big, ridiculously big question about life, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Why are we humans here? You've already mentioned that perhaps the universe created [/INST] us, Is </s><s>[INST] that why you think we're here to understand how the universe? [/INST] Yeah, I think my answer to that would be, and at least the life I'm living is to gain and to gain and understand the knowledge, you know, to gain knowledge and understand the universe. That's what I think I can't see any higher purpose than that. If you think back to the classical Greeks, you know, the virtue of gaining knowledge, it's I think it's the it's one of the few true virtues is to understand um the world around us in the context and humanity better and and I think if you do that you become more compassionate and more understanding yourself and and more tolerant and all these. I think all these other things may flow from that and to me, you know, understanding the nature of reality that is the biggest question, what is going on here is sometimes the colloquial way I say, what is really going on here? It's so mysterious. I feel like we're in some huge puzzle and and it's but the world is also seems to be the universe seems to be structured in a way, you know, why is it structured in a way that science is even possible that you know, methods that the scientific method works. Things are repeatable. Um it feels like it's almost structured in a way to be conducive to gaining knowledge. So I feel like and you know, why should computers be even possible? Isn't that amazing that computational electronic devices can can can can be possible. And they're made of sand are most common element that we have, you know, silicon that on the on the earth's crust that could be made of diamond or something that we would have only had one computer. Right? So it's a lot of things are kind of slightly suspicious to me. </s><s>[INST] It sure as heck sounds this puzzle sure as heck. Sounds like something we talked about earlier, what it takes to to design a game that's really fun to play for prolonged periods of time. And it does seem like this puzzle like you mentioned, the more you learn about it, the more you realize how little you know. So it humbles you but excites you by the possibility of learning more one heck of a one heck of a puzzle we got going on here. Um So like I mentioned of all the people in the world, you're very likely to be the one who creates the A. G. I. System. Um that achieves human level intelligence that goes beyond it. So if you got a chance and very well you could be the person that goes into the room with the system and have a conversation. Maybe you only get to ask one question. If you do, what question would you ask her? [/INST] I would probably ask um what is the true nature of reality? I think that's the question. I don't if I don't understand the answer because maybe it would be 42 or something like that. But that's the question I would ask. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. And then there'll be a deep sigh from the systems like All right. How do I explain to this [/INST] human? All </s><s>[INST] right, let me I don't have time to explain. Maybe I'll draw you a picture that it is. I mean how do you even begin um to answer that question? [/INST] Well I think it would um </s><s>[INST] what would what would you think the answer could possibly look like? [/INST] I think it could it could start looking like uh more fundamental explanations of physics would be the beginning. You know, more careful specification of that. Taking walking us through by the hand as to what one would do to maybe prove those things out. </s><s>[INST] Maybe giving you glimpses of what things you totally missed in the physics of [/INST] today. </s><s>[INST] Just here here's glimpses of no like there's a much um a much more elaborate world or a much simpler world or something um a [/INST] much deeper, maybe simpler explanation of things right than the standard model of physics which we know doesn't work but we still keep adding to so um and and that's how I think the beginning of an explanation would look and it would start encompassing many of the mysteries that we have wondered about for thousands of years. Like, you know, consciousness, dreaming, life and gravity, all of these things. </s> |
<s>[INST] Could you maybe try to psychoanalyze Elon musk for a brief second. So what are your thoughts about Tesla and Elon musk's journey through the Cryptocurrency world? So first with Bitcoin and then with Dutch coin. So acquiring a large, acquiring holding a large amount of Bitcoin and I believe at least considering the acquiring and holding a large amount of dosh coin positive negatives, what do you think the future for Tesla and SpaceX in the Cryptocurrency space looks like, do you think they'll consider a theory? [/INST] Mm I'm, I'm sure that if, you know they stay in the Cryptocurrency ecosystem at all then they have to at some point, right? You know. Bitcoin number $1 coin number. I mean, you know, come on. It deserves to be number three and then they Or number two and then ethereum can be whatever that whatever that other number is. Um, but um, the </s><s>[INST] ethereum only becomes a doge coin somehow maybe change the logo to incorporate a dog or some sort of almost like doors like uh sneaking behind. [/INST] Oh that would be, that would be fascinating when the murders happened And I think like Ellen you definitely uh I think you would make a mistake if you were to kind of ascribed to much like sophisticated, malevolent or any intent, like deep intentionality to the whole process. I think like he's just a human being and he likes dogs just like I like dogs. But I think that is </s><s>[INST] literally the reasoning behind the whole doggone thing. There's some aspect to which I mean the guy help launch a car into space, right? Like you could, you could ask like what is the purpose of that? I think the purpose of that is fun there. I think he truly is more and more, especially lately. Embodying the whole idea that the most, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely. And he's fully embracing the most entertaining outcome and in many ways does coin is the most entertaining Cryptocurrency as crypto currency becomes more and more impactful in the world, people are getting more and more serious about it. And so he's selecting the Cryptocurrency that is the most, the least serious and the most fun. And there's something to that, uh, like coupling fun with technological sophistication. Um, and somehow figuring out a way to do that. [/INST] Absolutely do that. Well, you know, I, I want the world to be fun. I think the world being fun is great. </s><s>[INST] Okay, [/INST] let me ask </s><s>[INST] about a couple of the technologies. If it's okay. Sure. What are your thoughts about chain link and hybrid smart contracts? They utilize off chain external data sources. Mm hmm. [/INST] And I think it's definitely a necessary for a smart contract. So that do a lot of things to use off chain data of some kind right? Like if you want to have a stable coin, you need a price oracle. So you know what price you're targeting. Um, if you want to have some fancy no crop insurance gadget like I was, you know, I think either risk has been doing a lot of good work with that. And I think it was either kenya or Sri Lanka or both? Like they're, they're making a lot of good progress in some, in some of those places like you need some kind of oracle to tell you, you know, did it actually rain in this particular area. Um If you want to have like assets that mirror other financial assets you need an oracle. If you want to have a prediction market you need an oracle. And so projects that provide oracles are definitely really important. There are definitely different kinds of use cases like Augur is more about events and the allegorical is designed like I think differently from channel like like like chain link emphasizes the whole, you know like we have a fast automated thing that just gives you data quickly. Um Whereas auger is more, you know, we don't give a crap about speed. Um And look we don't need to give a crap about speed because if you want to get your money out on a prediction market that we're in reality it's resolved, you can probably just sell your coins for 99 cents anyway. Um So I mean I think in a chain like it's definitely like taking a good and the important part of the oracle design space and I'm definitely happy that there's like that project's taking the task on and at the same time I do think that, you know, they're they're frog army on twitter can get a bit intense at times, but from </s><s>[INST] army. Uh is there is there a way to incorporate oracle network type of ideas into ethereum, [/INST] I personally would prefer the ethereum based layer like stay away from trying to provide too much functionality because like once you have the ethereum base layer making a claim about like say the U. S. Dollar to um ethereum price. Like at some sense you're basically saying that like ethereum as a base platform starts making what could be geopolitical statements right? Like for example you know imagine if there was some you know civil war in the US split up and you had two currencies that both claims to be the U. S. Dollar, well you know if you would would have to pick one for the sake of everyone who is already using that work also you know does that mean that the Blockchain would be like taking a position in this big mega political debate? So I think like for the just those kinds of reasons I would personally prefer um ethereum itself to be more of this sort of pure a platform that just analyzes transactions just mathematically using deterministic consensus rules and then if you need the oracles that can be earlier too. Like I think ethereum benefits from not trying to do everything at layer one and having this very robust way or to ecosystem where you have all these projects doing interesting things </s> |
<s>[INST] Can you tell me a little more on how do you pronounce it? Uh Salah's [/INST] Enceladus, </s><s>[INST] Enceladus? Can you tell me a little bit more about Enceladus? Like uh we've been talking about way too much about jupiter saturday doesn't get enough love. No uh Saturn doesn't get as much love. So what's what's Enceladus? Uh is that the most exciting moon of Saturn? [/INST] Depends on your perspective. It's very exciting from a astrobiology perspective. I think Enceladus and titan are the two most unique and interesting moons of Saturn that definitely both get the most attention also from the life perspective. Um </s><s>[INST] So what's the more likely titan or Enceladus for life if you were to bet all your money in terms of like investing which to investigate what are the difference between the two that are interesting to you? [/INST] Yeah, so the potential for life in each of those two places is very different. So titan is the one place in the solar system where you might imagine again, all of this is so speculative, but you might imagine life evolving in the atmosphere. So the from a biology perspective, titan is interesting because it forms complex organic molecules in its atmosphere. It has a dense atmosphere is actually denser than Earth's. It's the only moon that has an atmosphere denser than Earth's and it's got tons of methane in it. What happens is that methane gets irradiated, It breaks up and it reforms with other things in the atmosphere. It makes these complex organic molecules and it's effectively doing prebiotic chemistry in the atmosphere </s><s>[INST] while still being freezing cold. [/INST] Yes. Okay. </s><s>[INST] What what would that be like? Would that be pleasant for humans to hang out there? It's just really cold. [/INST] There's nowhere in the solar system that would be pleasant for humans. Um It would be cold. You couldn't breathe the air. Um </s><s>[INST] What colonization wise if there's an atmosphere is not a big plus? Are still a ton of radiation? Mhm. Okay. So okay so tighten that that's a really nice feature that their life could be in the atmosphere because then it's it's that might be remotely observable or certainly is more accessible if you visit. Okay. So uh what about Enceladus? So that would be still in the ocean? [/INST] Right. And Enceladus has the advantage like I said of spewing material out of its south pole. So you could collect it. But it has the disadvantage of the fact that we don't actually really understand how it's ocean could stay froze or sorry, could stay globally liquid over the age of the solar system. And so there are some models that say that it's going through this um cyclical evolution where the ocean freezes completely and thaws completely. And the orbit sort of um oscillates in and out of these eccentricities. Um And in that case the potential for life ever occurring there in the first place is a lot lower because if you only have an ocean for 100 million years is that enough time. Um </s><s>[INST] And it also means that might be mass extinction events. If it does occur, it just freezes again. Very sad man. I'm this is very depressing all the like slaughter of life elsewhere. How unlikely do you think life is on earth? So when you look, when you study other planets and you study the contents of other planets, does that give you a perspective on um the origin of life on earth, which again is full of mystery in itself, Not the evolution but the origin the first springing to life like from from nothing to life from the basic ingredients to life. I guess another way of asking is how unique are we? [/INST] Yeah, it's a great question and it's one that just scientifically we don't have an answer to. We don't even know how many times life evolved on earth if it was only once or if it happened independently 1000 times in different places, we don't know whether it's happened anywhere else in the universe. Although it feels absurd to believe that we are the only life that evolved in the entire universe. But it's conceivable we just have just no real information. We don't understand really how life came about in the first place on earth. </s><s>[INST] I mean, so if you look at the drake equation that tries to estimate how many alien civilizations are out there, planets have a big part to play in that equation, if you want to bet money uh in terms of the odds of origins of life on earth, I mean, this all has to do with how special and unique as earth, what you land, in terms of the number of civilizations has to do with how unique the rare earth hypothesis is, how rare special is earth, how rare and special is the solar system. Like if you had to bet all your money and a completely unscientific questions, well, no, actually, it's actually rigorously scientific. We just don't know a lot of things in that equation. There's a lot of mysteries about that and it's slowly becoming better and better understood in terms of exoplanets, in terms of how many solar systems out there, where there's planets there, earth like planets. That's getting better and better understood. What's your sense from that perspective, how many alien civilizations out there? So you're [/INST] right that the equation is being better understood, but you're really only talking about the first three parameters in the equation or something, you know, how many stars are there? How many planets per star? And then we're just barely scratching the surface of what fraction of those planets might be habitable. The rest of the terms in the equation are like, how likely is life to evolve, give inhabitable conditions, how likely is it to survive all these things um there are all these huge unknowns. Actually. I remember when I first saw that equation, I think I was, I think it was my first year of college and I thought this is ridiculous. This is a common sense that didn't need to give the given name, you know? Um, and be just a bunch of unknowns. It's like putting our ignorance together in one equation. But I've actually, now I understand this equation. You know, it's not something we ever necessarily have the answer to. It's just gives us a framework for having the exact conversation we're having right now. And I think that's how it was intended in the first place. When it was put into writing was to give people a language to communicate about the factors that go into the potential for aliens to be out there and for us to find them. Um, I I would put money on there being aliens. I would not put money on us having definitive evidence of them in my lifetime. </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah. And then, and then that results, I mean who knows what the experiment looks like, but that results me being able to talk about robotics with Joey Diaz when he says, you know, drops f bombs every other sentence and I, the world is like, I've seen actually a shift within uh colleagues and friends with an M. I. T. Where they're becoming much more accepting of that kind of thing. It's very interesting. [/INST] That's interesting. So you're seeing, okay, </s><s>[INST] because they're seeing how popular it is, they're [/INST] like, well you're popular. I don't know how they think about it at Georgetown for example. </s><s>[INST] I don't know, it's interesting, but I think what what happens is the popularity of it, combined with just good conversations with people they respect like uh okay, this is the thing. Yeah. And this is [/INST] more fun to listen </s><s>[INST] to than a shitty zoom lecture about their work. It's like there's something here, there's something interesting and we don't, nobody actually knows what that is just like with like clubhouse or something. Nobody's figured out. Like where is this medium take because it's a legitimate medium of education? Or is this just like a fun? [/INST] Well, that's your innovation I think was we can bring on professors and I know Joe Rogan does some of that too, but, but you know, but your professors in your field, like bring all these guys who I remember, you know, </s><s>[INST] well that's been the big challenge for me is I don't is I feel I would, I would ask big like philosophical questions of people like yourself, they're like really well public, like this is, so for example, you have a lot of excellent papers on, uh, you know, that has a lot of theory in it, right? And there is some temptation to just go through papers and I think it's possible to actually do that. I haven't done that much, but I think it's possible. It just requires a lot of preparation and I can probably only do that with things that I'm actually like in the field I'm aware of. But there's a dance that I would love to be able to try to hit right where it's actually getting to the core of some interesting ideas as opposed to just talking about philosophy at the same time, there's a large audience for people that just want to be inspired by, like by disciplines where they don't necessarily know the details, but there's a lot of people that are like, I'm really curious. I've been thinking about pivoting careers into software engineering. They would love to hear from people like you about computer science, even if it's like theory, [/INST] but just like the idea that you can have big ideas, you push them through and it's interesting you fight for it. </s><s>[INST] But there's some, there's, what is the computer file and uh, Uh, number file, these YouTube channels. There's uh, channels I watch, I'm like chess, exceptionally popular where I don't, I don't understand maybe 80% of the time, what the hell they're talking about because they're talking about like why this move is better than this move, but I love the passion and the genius of those people are just overhearing it. I don't know why that's so exciting. [/INST] Do you look at like scott Aaronson blog at all the subtle optimized. Yeah, it's like hardcore complexity theory, but it's, there's an enthusiasm or like terry towels blog. I'm </s><s>[INST] a little bit of humor. Terry tao has a blog [/INST] he used to, yeah, uh, it would just be, I'm going all in on, you know, here's a new, a fine group with which you can be whatever. But I mean it was just equations. Well in </s><s>[INST] the case of scott Harrison, he's good. He's able to turn on like the inner troll and comedian and so on. He keeps the fund, which is the [/INST] best of the philosophical guy that turns over philosophy. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. So you know, we're exploring these different ways of communicating science and and exciting in the world. Speaking of which I gotta ask you about computer science. That's [/INST] right, I do some of that. </s><s>[INST] Uh so I mean a lot of it, a lot of your workers would inspire this deep thinking about productivity from all the different angles because some of the most rigorous work is mathematical work. And in computer science, that theoretical computer science let me ask the scott Anderson question of like is there something to you that stands out in particular that's beautiful, inspiring or just really inside football, computer science or or maybe mathematics. [/INST] I mean I like theory and in particular what I've always liked in theory is the notion of impossibilities, that's kind of my specialty. So within the, within the context of distributed algorithms, my specialty is impossibility results. The idea that you can argue nothing exists that solves this or nothing exists that can solve this faster than this. And that's I think that's really interesting and that goes all the way back to turing there's his original paper on computable numbers with their connection to the it's in german I slipped on problem but basically the german name that Hilbert called the decision problem. This was pre computers, but he was he's english. So it's right in english. So it's very accessible paper and it's it lays the foundation for all of theoretical computer science. He just has this insight. He's like, well if we think about like an algorithm and he figures out like all effective procedures or turning machines are basically algorithms. We could really describe a turing machine with a number which we can now imagine with like computer code. You can just take a source file and just treat the binary version of the file is like a really long number, right? But he's like every program is just a finite number. It's a natural number. And then he realized like one way to think about a problem is you have this is like kind of the mic sips her approach but you have a sort of it's a language. So of an infinite number of strings. Some of them are in the language and some of them aren't. But basically you can imagine a problem is represented as an infinite binary string or in every position like a one means that string is in the language and zero means it isn't. And then he applied cantor from the 19th century and said, Okay, the natural numbers are countable. So it's accountably infinite and infinite binary strings. You can use a diagonal Ization argument. And so they're they're uh they're uncountable. So there's just vastly more problems than there are algorithms. So basically anything you can come up with for the most part almost certainly is not solvable by a computer, you know. And then and then he was like, let me give a particular example and he figured out the very first compute ability proof. And let's just walk through with a little bit of simple logic. The halting problem can't be solved by an algorithm. And that kicked off the whole enterprise of some things can't be solved by algorithms, some things can't be solved by computers. And we've just been doing theory on that Since the that was the 30's he wrote that. </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah. So you tweeted, quote, why does chemistry need a universal programming language? Question mark for all the reasons you can think of reliability, interoperability, collaboration, remove ambiguity, lower cost, increase safety, open up discovery, molecular customization, and publication of executable chemical code, which is fascinating, by the way, just publish code. And can you maybe elaborate a little bit more about this CHI DL? What is the universal [/INST] language of chemistry look like? A cronin complete language language? It's a Turing complete language, really. But so what it has, it has a series of operators in it, like add, heat, stir. So there's a bunch of just unit operations. And all it is really is just, it's with chemical engineers, I talked about this, that you've just rediscovered chemical engineering. And I said, well, yeah, I know. Well, that's trivial. Not really. Yes, it is trivial. And that's why it's good. Because not only have we rediscovered chemical engineering, we've made it implementable on a universal hardware that doesn't cost very much money. And so the KIDL has a series of statements like define the reactor. So defines the reagents. So they're all labels. So you assign them. And what I also implemented at the beginning is, because I give all the hardware IP address, you put it on a graph. And so what it does is like the graph is equivalent to the processor firmware, the processor code. So when you take your KIDL and you go to run it on your computer, you can run it on any compatible hardware in any configuration. So what is your graph look like? As long as I can solve the problem on the graph with these unit operations, you have the resources available. Chempiles. Uh-huh. We can carry on for years. But it is really, it's a compilation. And what it now does is it says, okay, the problem we have before is it was possible to do robotics for chemistry, but the robots were really expensive. They were unique. They were vendor locked. And what I want to do is to make sure that every chemist in the world can get access to machinery like this at virtually no cost because it makes it safer. It makes it more reliable. And then if you go to the literature and you find a molecule that could potentially cure cancer and let's say the molecule that could potentially cure cancer takes you three years to repeat. And maybe a student finishes their PhD in the time and they never get it back. Um, so it's really hard to kind of get all the way to that molecule and it limits the ability of humanity to build on it. If they just download the code and can execute it. I would say the electronic laboratory notebook in chemistry is a data symmetry because no one will ever reproduce it. But now the data symmetry is a </s><s>[INST] Jupiter notebook and you can just execute it. A notebook and people can play with it, the access to it, the orders of magnitude is increased. As with all technologies, I think there's way more exciting possibilities, but there are also terrifying possibilities and we'll talk about all of them. But let me just kind of linger on the machine learning side of this. So you're describing programming, but it's the language. I don't know if you've heard about [/INST] OpenAI codecs, which is, I'm playing with it. Of course you are. You really are Rick from Rick and Morty. This is great. Okay. </s><s>[INST] Except philosophically deep. I mean, he is, I guess, kind of philosophically deep too. So for people who don't know, GPT, GPT-3, it's a language model that can do natural language generation. So you can give it a prompt and it can complete the rest of it. But it turns out that that kind of prompt, it's not just completes the rest of it. It's generating like novel sounding text. And then you can apply that to generation of other kinds of stuff. So these kinds of transformer based language models are really good at forming deep representations of a particular space, like a medium, like language. So you can then apply it to a specific subset of language, like programming. So you can have it learn the representation of the Python programming language and use it to then generate syntactically and semantically correct programs. So you can start to make progress on one of the hardest problems in computer science, which is program synthesis. how do you write programs that accomplish different tasks. So what OpenAI Codex does is it generates those programs based on a prompt of some kind. Usually you can do a natural language prompt so basically as you do when you program you write some a comment which serves the basic documentation of the inputs and the outputs and the function of the particular set of code and it's able to generate that. The point being is you can generate programs using machine learning using neural networks. Those programs operate on the boring old computer. Can you generate programs that operate this got to be a clever version of programs for this but can you write [/INST] programs that operate on a computer? Yep there's actually software out there right now we can go and do it. Really? Yeah yeah yeah it's a heuristic it's rule-based but we have what we've done inspired by Codex actually is over the summer I ran a little workshop some of my groups got this inspired idea that we should get a load of students and ask them to manually collect data to label chemical procedures into KIDL and we have a called synth reader so there's a bunch of people doing this right now but they're doing it without abstraction and because we have an abstraction that's implementable in the hardware we've developed basically a chemical analog of codecs. </s> |
<s>[INST] There's papers on this by the way that I read for some reason, not read but skimmed for some reason, which is talking about which sperm usually wins. Like what are the characteristics of sperms that are winning And it's not the fastest. So it's a apparently there's some kind of slaughter that happens early on. People will correct me, but it's not the fastest. It's there's a aspect of it's the luckiest. It really is like the body tries to make it a random selection that tries to make it fair and making it as random as possible, interesting. And also interesting that they're fueled by fructose. I didn't really think about that. So they're a their car bloated athletes [/INST] right with food for the journey. </s><s>[INST] Food for the journey because I'm somebody that actually does a lot of running on. I guess you would call me a fat adapted athlete. So I do sort of meat, heavy diet and so you could do a lot of endurance kind of stuff when you don't need any carbs, any glucose, any of that kind of stuff and you are very low, it's interesting to think that sperm are like, no, they're total bros, go to the gym, uh sprint performance, short term performance is everything. Alright, well that sperm returning to the liver, the place that deals with all our poor decisions. No. Um many, many of the poor decisions is there um you said that deliver does quite a few things. What do you is fascinating. Beautiful about the liver. [/INST] Primary function seems to be as the sort of gatekeeper for what we eat and absorb um you know, the entire guest or intestinal tract from the esophagus to the rectum, the blood flows from it, not back to the heart, but to the liver where it's first examined kind of things are evaluated, packaged, uh you know, processed, detoxified perhaps. And it's kind of this great overseer of what we digest and absorb and so it kind of keeps keeps track of of what's coming in, you know, the outside world that comes in and become will become part of us. You know why that that's why partly the liver suffers sometimes the injury from certain certain toxins like alcohol, but beyond that, the liver is also the place, as I said, it metabolizes things too, so metabolizes alcohol and why it can be injured by alcohol. It metabolizes drugs like Tylenol, which is why Thailand also can be very toxic to the liver when taken as an overdose. Um, so the liver, you know, even beyond that, the liver produces a lot of different, you know, things that float in the bloodstream. It packages cholesterol and fats and sends them to where they're needed. It deals with protein in the blood, it deals with clotting factors in the blood helping the blood clot. Um, you know, processes things like Billy Rubin and other things that really, as I mentioned, is like 15 organs wrapped into one. Maybe that's why it's sort of the biggest internal organ, skin is bigger, but it's not an internal organ, </s><s>[INST] right? The biggest organ in the human body is the skin, [/INST] but the liver is the biggest internal organ and it really is a powerhouse and and does a lot, which is why when people suffer from liver failure, kind of, everything goes wrong in a way. </s><s>[INST] And in terms of replacing organs, what, what our organs are easily replaceable, which are not like on the list of things that are hard to replace and not where would you put a number one? What would you put it like at the bottom? Well, [/INST] let's say the kidneys are, you know, nothing's easy, but kidneys are easiest in a way partly. I mean, maybe a big factor there is that other people have two of them and can give one to you. So you don't have to wait for people to die, which is the case with hearts and livers sometimes you can take a part of a liver from someone who's alive and the liver does have this kind of mythological ability to regenerate itself. Um, in the myth of Prometheus Prometheus, he's, you know, chained to a rock and the bird eats his liver every day and it grows back every day and that's uh, actually biologically accurate. It does not that you can completely get rid of it and it will appear again, but when pieces of it are removed or injured, it does regenerate itself pretty amazingly. Um, so I'd say the kidneys the fact that there are more around also, it's, you know, the kidneys, a smaller organ, it's often just, you don't have to put a transplanted kidney where the kidney should be in the back of the abdomen. You can just kind of stuff it into the pelvis there because it's a smaller organ. The liver would be hard because it's huge. Um, and I guess we just have the most experience with kidney transplants because they are the most common. </s><s>[INST] And then the heart and the brain are probably quite difficult. [/INST] Brain as far as I know, hasn't been successfully done, the heart is done. Um, and definitely, I've, I've evaluated lot of patients with a heart transplant. It does work pretty well. The mechanical heart substitutes are also advancing quite rapidly these days for a failing heart, there's certain kinds of devices they can surgically implant, like when a failing heart isn't able to push hard enough, you know? That's the heart's job is pushing blood with sufficient pressure to create blood pressure when it fails, there are actually these devices you can strap onto the heart to help it pump harder. Those are rapidly advancing. Many of those were not available even 10 years ago when I was got out of med school and now they're commonly used. So maybe heart transplant won't be as necessary in the future if those mechanical things do advance. And as I said, the heart is basically a mechanical pump. So perhaps it would be the easiest organ to replace with some mechanical device. </s> |
<s>[INST] and go, wow, he's being really fair and really accurate. He's not just a hater. He's not just a hater. If you look at, let's take one of the worst places on Earth, there's North Korea, you have Kim Jong-Un, and the reality is there's a lot of citizens of that nation that deeply love the leader because they've grew up in that way. I mean, through fear, through all kinds of manipulation, through propaganda and so on, they're not allowed to love members of their own family. They're not allowed to have romantic love. They're only allowed to have love for the leader. And to reach those people, you have to empathize with the fact that in their eyes, in some sense, this is a great man, this is a god, a messianic figure. You can't just make fun of the ridiculousness of the situation, this pudgy person waltzing around, creating propaganda, like how's this? With a funny haircut. With a funny haircut. Like it's so easy, Hitler too, to make fun of, to make a caricature of the person. But this is a real person, a real person that influenced the minds of millions of people. In the case of Hitler, you know, tens of millions of people and created a huge amount of suffering, not because of the caricature version, but because he was a charismatic leader. He was somebody that people deeply, deeply loved. And that just over time, I mean, with the abuse of any kind of ideology, this happens over and over. And so it's interesting because Scientology is so close to the core of what is America because so many Americans are involved with it. So it's interesting to study the beauty and the power of the ideas that underlie it and where things go wrong. [/INST] Yeah. And I'll just say it's interesting to note, you would never get a representative of the Church of Scientology to sit down and have a conversation with you and even be as fair and accurate about Scientology </s><s>[INST] as I'm going to be, which is noteworthy. Do you honestly deeply believe that's the case? There's not going to be a high level official [/INST] that would sit down for a conversation? </s><s>[INST] No. I disagree with you. I hope you're right. Because I think that given the current dynamics of what's happening, I think in order to say, from their perspective, in order to save the Church of Scientology, they have to be transparent and authentic, basically steal men their case, but better. You would think so. Well, we'll talk about the other ways you could do that, which is the manipulation through propaganda, through control media and all that kind of stuff. [/INST] They paint themselves into a corner of not being able to send a representative out into the world to speak honestly about it, because you're literally not allowed to. So when faced, if you're just sitting down with an entertainment journalist, a representative might be able to fudge their way through an interview, but sitting down for a long-form format interview with someone who is going to ask them about Xenu and the body faitons and Leah Remini and Lisa McPherson, that's a no-go zone. So I'm representing why it will never happen, but shit, I would tune in for that interview. </s><s>[INST] I mean, I hope you do get someone. I hope you do get someone. You don't think David Miscavige would sit down [/INST] for an interview? </s><s>[INST] I would love to be wrong. You know, in general, journalists, in these kinds of situations can be, can attack in a way that doesn't empathize and doesn't come from a place of deep knowledge and understanding, and I think it's possible to have serious conversations with people like that in an empathetic way, but it's also in a challenging way. I think there's a huge amount of trust required, and obviously for a very secretive organization, [/INST] the amount of trust, yes, might be too much required. Anyone over there, if they've done their homework, knows you're gonna be as fair as anyone in the world's going to be, and yet, there's simply things they're not allowed to talk about, and they're not even allowed to say I'm not allowed to talk about it. </s><s>[INST] So that's a fundamental part of the Church of Scientology is the secrecy. So that's what you're trained as you go up [/INST] through the ranks is secrecy, secrecy. It's not even a matter of training. It's that there's an entire, the entire upper half of Scientology's bridge is simply confidential. And I never even did those levels when I was in Scientology. I didn't learn what Scientologists actually believe on those upper levels until after I got out of Scientology </s><s>[INST] and I was freaking born and raised in it. Let's go there, let's go to your personal story. [/INST] So you've spent 30 years in Scientology? </s><s>[INST] Yeah, I was four years old when my mom got in. And then about seven years ago, got out, and you're on what YouTube channel now, [/INST] and you're an educator? So I was four years old when my mom got introduced to Scientology. And she got in really fast, really quick. So I was 12 years old when I was taken out of school and started officially full-time working for Scientology. Okay, so in various capacities, I worked from the ages of 12 to the age of 26. Okay, so, and then I was 34 when I officially parted ways with Scientology, which was really more them officially parting ways with me, but we can get in all that later. </s><s>[INST] That's just kind of how Scientology does it. [/INST] And what do you do now in terms of Scientology? So now I run, growing up in Scientology, the YouTube channel, but what I primarily do is I help run an organization that helps people who are escaping from Scientology. I'm the vice president of the Aftermath Foundation. And we created the foundation after the television show, Leah Remini, Scientology and the Aftermath. And there was such an outpouring of support from non-scientologists all over the world. What can we do to help people leave Scientology? That we decided to create a foundation, and it's been incredibly successful. We've helped people escape from all regions and echelons of Scientology. We've accomplished, what we've accomplished is far beyond what we actually envisioned would be possible. </s> |
<s>[INST] So, the fact that that sort of became somewhat viral and stood out just shows that it happens so rarely to you. Uh so just to look at like the day in the life of Ben Shapiro, you speak a lot very eloquently about difficult topics. Um what goes into the research, the mental part and you always look pretty like energetic and you're not exhausted by the burden, the heaviness of the topics you're covering day after day after day after day. So what, what goes through the preparation mentally, diet wise, anything like that? Like when do you, when do you wake up? [/INST] Okay, so I wake up when my kids wake me up, usually that's my baby daughter, who's 2.5, she were on the monitor, usually about 6 15, 6, 20 am. So I get up, my my wife sleeps a little bit. I go get the baby, then my son gets up and then my oldest daughter gets up. I have 86 and to the boys, the middle child, </s><s>[INST] Is that both the source of stress and happiness? [/INST] Oh my God, it's the height of both, right? I mean, it's it's the it's the source of the greatest happiness. So the way that I characterize it is this when it comes to sort of kids in life. So when you're single, you your boundaries of happiness and unhappiness, you can be a zero in terms of happiness, you can be like a 10 in terms of happiness, then you get married and goes up to like a 20 a negative 20 because they're happiest stuff is with your wife and then the most unhappy stuff is when something happens to your spouse, it's the worst thing in the entire world, then you have kids and all limits are removed. So the best things that have ever happened to me are things where I'm watching my kids and they're playing together and they're being wonderful and sweet and cute and I love them so much. And the worst thing is when my son is screaming at me for no reason because he's being insane and uh, and I have to deal with that, right? I mean, like, or or something bad happens to my daughter at school or something like that. That stuff is really so yes, the source of my greatest happiness, the source of my greatest stress. So they get me up at about 6, 15 in the morning, I feed them breakfast. I'm kind of scrolling the news while I'm making them eggs. Uh, and, and you know, just updating myself on anything that may have happened overnight, I go into the office, put on the makeup and the wardrobe or whatever, and then I sit down and do the show a lot of the prep is actually done the night before because the new cycle doesn't change all that much between kind of late at night and in the morning, so I can supplement in the morning. So I do the show. </s><s>[INST] So a lot of the preparation, like thinking through what are the big issues in the world is done the night before. [/INST] Yeah, I mean, and that's reading, you know, pretty much all the legacy media. So I rip on legacy media a lot, but that's because they, a lot of what they do is really good. And a lot of it is really bad. I cover a lot of legacy media, so that's probably covering the Wall street journal, new york times, Washington, post boston globe, daily mail. Um, and then I'll look over at some of the alternative media, Look at my own website, Daily Wire, look at Breitbart. I look at the blaze, I'll look at, I'll look at maybe the intercept, I'll look at, you know, a bunch of different sources and then I will look at different clips online. So media, it comes in handy here grabby and comes in handy here. Uh, that sort of stuff because my show relies very heavily on being able to play people so you can hear them in their own words. And uh, and so that's sort of the media and so I sit down, I do the show and then once I'm done with the show, I usually have between now it's like 11 15 in the morning maybe because sometimes I'll record the show, so it's 11 15 in the morning, I'll go home and if my wife is available, grab lunch with her, uh, if not, then I will go and work out, I try to work out like five times a week with a trainer or something like that. Uh and uh and then I will just </s><s>[INST] regular stuff just at the gym, [/INST] weights and plyometrics and some crossfit kind of stuff. And yeah, I mean beneath this, beneath this mild to sterilize a hulking monster. Uh and uh and so I'll do that then I'll um I will do reading and writing. So I'll I'm usually working on a book at any given time or </s><s>[INST] the rest of the world. [/INST] Yes. So I put some music in my ears. Usually Brahms or bach, sometimes Beethoven or Mozart is those four? Those are on </s><s>[INST] rotation wrap. [/INST] No wrap, no wrap. Despite my extraordinary rendition of WAP, I'm not in fact um it's I will say I do not think that it is the peak of Western civilized art. I don't think that 100 years from now people will be gluing their faces to a lap in protest at the environment, </s><s>[INST] but Brahms and the rest will be still around. [/INST] Yes. I would assume if people still have a functioning prefrontal cortex and any sort of </s><s>[INST] strong words from. [/INST] All </s><s>[INST] right, So you got some classical music in your ears and you're focusing, are you at the computer when you're writing? [/INST] Yeah, I'm at the computer. Um Usually we have a kind of a room that has some sun coming in. So it's nice in there. Or I'll go up to a library that we just completed for me. So I'll go up there and I'll and I'll write </s> |
<s>[INST] If you're interested, you can go to lexfreeman.com slash hiring for the information on the jobs I'm hiring, or hopefully you'll find the posts I've made on Indeed. Indeed has a special offer only available for a limited time. [/INST] Check it out at indeed.com slash Lex. </s><s>[INST] Wave if you're made. This show is also brought to you by Masterclass. $180 a year gets you an all access pass to watch courses from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. I've been reading off names. Of the classes I love on here. And one by one, I get to have a podcast conversation with them and the Masterclass is just an inspiration to me. In preparing for those conversations, I listened to the Masterclass, I watched the Masterclass and it just blows me away. So recently I talked to Daniel Negrano and just the quality of his Masterclass, I can't recommend it enough. It's just incredible. I think for beginners, for intermediate people, even experts, that Masterclass condenses the modern poker theory better than anything I've seen anywhere on the internet. And if poker's not your thing, there's a million other things that are likely your thing where the best people in the world can teach you about it. Like Martin Scorsese, that's a good one. And I hope to talk to him with the podcast one day. I'm gonna will it into existence. Get unlimited access to every Masterclass and get 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by 8Sleep and it's new pod three mattress. Sleep, like diet and exercise. I think of like a musical instrument in a band. So sleep is like the guitarist. Diet maybe is the lead singer and the exercise is like the drummer. And all of those things you have to play with to create a beautiful hit song. I don't think there's one formula for how much sleep you should get when you should get to sleep. But just like with diet and exercise, you have to listen to her body. You have to understand your own body. And you have to take that journey, that scientific end of one study of your own body very, very seriously. And to me you should have the right companion for that exploration on the diet, on the exercise, and on the sleep. That's why I'm going with 8 Sleep Pod Pro Cover. It cools the bed, it warms the bed, obviously for me, or not obviously, but for me, I just use the cooling. It's a cool bed surface with a warm blanket that's heaven. Check it out and get special savings when you go to 8sleep.com slash Lex. This is a Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. [/INST] And now, dear friends, here's John Donner. </s><s>[INST] And the ADCC is the premier submission grappling tournament in the world we just had it a couple of weeks ago. We saw many demonstrations of greatness from athletes you coached. But a year ago, the team and you were at a very low point. Take me through that journey. [/INST] What was the lowest point? We had a very, very tight team for many years, which began in New York City. During the peak of COVID, training in New York became very difficult to sustain. So most of the team despised the city of New York. I was the only person in the group that liked living in New York. I think part of the problem was that I was the only one who actually lived in Manhattan. The others had to commute to New York. And there's a world of difference between living in New York and commuting to New York. So most of them had a very negative view of New York City that was compounded by COVID when even the basic act of training became very, very difficult. And so everyone decided they want to leave. So there was a prospect of a complete breakup between myself and the team, or I would have to leave New York. It was a difficult decision for me to make because I had lived in New York for 30 years. I had built my life there and had most of my friends and associates that I know here in America were New Yorkers. So I thought these guys have been incredibly loyal to me as students, so I should also be loyal to them, of course. So I decided that if they wanted to leave, I would go with them. We decided to go to Puerto Rico because there was a private gym where we could train through the COVID period. I personally wanted to go to Texas. I thought that Texas was a better place for the team to go. But many of the students, including senior students like Gordon Ryan, Craig Jones, had been to Puerto Rico and stayed with one of the head officials of ADCC, Mo Jasm. So they loved their experience in Puerto Rico, and almost everyone wanted to go down there. So I tried to explain to them there's a little difference between going to a place for vacation versus living there, but that didn't have any effect. So the decision was made, a majority of the decision was made to go to Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, the conditions in which the team lived changed significantly. When you're in New York, New York is such a big city that if there's any tension between team members and inevitably there will be in a competitive sport where everyone's fighting each other, you can kind of bury them in the size of the city, because there's so many distractions in New York. You come in, you do your workout, you go outside, and it's New York City. In Puerto Rico, we lived in a very small local town, Dorado. And most of the athletes were living with each other. And so unlike New York, where there was always a break, you trained together, but when training was over, you went about your life in New York and New Jersey, with everyone living in very close proximity to each other. Any tensions got magnified, because there was no relief from them. You didn't get to get away from people. If you had a problem with someone on the mat, well, now you have to live with them for the rest of the day and the night. And this goes on for long periods of time. So I believe it had the effect of magnifying whatever tensions there were. In particular, there was a family tension between two brothers, which magnified over time. And as so often as the case, you get two brothers growing up, one older, one younger, and the younger one wants to grow and feel somewhat like a young tree underneath a big tree. And sometimes people just need their space. </s><s>[INST] So there was some unhappiness. As a younger brother, I can understand. Yeah, yeah. As a little tree that had to grow up under a bigger tree. Yeah, so. Fuck the big tree. [/INST] There's a lot of aggression after work out, I'm sorry. There's a lot of aggression after work out, I'm sorry. Unresolved families just coming out here like this. I'm just kidding, I love you. He doesn't, he's lying. So as time went by, these tensions started increasing. They came to a point where it was difficult for them even to be in the training room together. At that point, you're starting to, once training takes a hit, then you've got to start to address these. The attempts at reconciliation fell through, and a decision was made to move to Texas. I wanted everyone to move as a team. </s><s>[INST] What I wanted to do was keep the team together. [/INST] I'm just kidding, I love you. As long as the period leading up to ADCC, so that everyone could train together. So I said, OK, there's problems, but let's just tough it out one year. We move to Texas, let's just go there and keep unity. If some people don't want to train with other people, that's fine. But I believe that the team would be weakened by breaking apart. I believe that they had an excellent rapport as training partners. Their technical level was increasing dramatically. Many of the younger athletes are really starting to come into their own and really develop well. And so my take on it was, OK, if there's problems, so be it. But let's all just stay together until ADCC 2022 was a unified team. Go out, prepare yourselves as best you can. And then after that, we can make a decision as to whether we break up or not. But that was rejected, and the team split. And they moved to Austin. We'd made prior arrangements to go to a local gym. And they took that gym, and we were left with no gym, and more or less homeless in Austin. A year out from ADCC. Yes, this is one year out. So roughly 3 quarters of the competitive athletes left in one week. So at that point, that was probably the lowest point. Because at that point, not only did we not have a place to train, we had very few training partners for the few that had remained. And the main athlete in the team, Gordon Ryan, was going through a particularly bad spell with his unresolved stomach issues. And there was doubt as to whether or not he could compete at all, and was actively thinking about retiring from the sport. </s><s>[INST] So maybe not competing with he'd ever again, [/INST] but again, potentially. Yeah, yeah. So that was a time when it was like, man, the whole program seems to be dead in the water at this point. Most of the competitive athletes were gone. There were very few training partners for the few that remained. And the main athlete around whom the group had initially </s><s>[INST] bonded was seemingly out of action, possibly permanently. Where was your mind? Where were you mentally? [/INST] My thinking is everything bad passes in time. I've had a lot of bad points in my life. So my life experiences, whenever things seem dark, have patience. Time will ultimately cure most ills. Not all of them, but most of them. And I'm confident that if you give me a new crop of students, I can produce magic. </s><s>[INST] But it's going to take time. So that confidence was, in part, a source of strength? [/INST] Yes, it's just like I wasn't confident that ADCC 2022 would go well, because we only had one year without a gym and with a team that was completely broken up to even attempt to get into ADCC. So things looked a little grim, but I was confident, given enough time, I'd get in a new group of students and work. As it turns out, one of the demonstration partners that I used during filming for instructional videos who lives in Boston, John Carlo Badoni, was interested in the idea of coming down and training. But he'd always felt like it would be difficult, because there were people in his way class who were already there, and he felt it would be awkward. But now that they had left, that opened up an area for him. So he was the first one to come down. He moved from Boston to Austin, Texas. I began teaching at a local school. It was rather like going back into my earliest days in Judaism. I went from teaching at the Big Henzo Gracie Academy to a tiny school in Puerto Rico, and now an even smaller school in Austin, Texas. And locals would come in and train, and I would watch every day teaching there twice a day, seven days a week. And I would see people come in and train, and I would say this guy has some potential or this guy has some potential. And I would recruit people and bring them to another gym where they would train with the professionals. And if they proved adept and hardworking and someone who can work well in a team, they would stay and build their skills. As time went by, more and more such people started coming in. And we had some remarkable people like a young South African purple belt, Luke Griffith came in. He had lost in the European trials for ADCC. And he was down on his luck. He came into Austin. He did a show against a local purple belt and lost again. So he was feeling bad about his performance in his future. He came in and I thought he was a lovely kid who worked hard and trained well. So he became one of the main training partners. He was similar size to Gordon. So I encouraged him to train with Gordon whenever he could. And more and more people started coming in to train under that kind of basis. One day, I got a text from Gordon who was filming an instructional video in Boston. He said, Hey, you know, Nicholas Merigale was training at this. He was shooting video at the same time as me and we just did some grappling. He's a really nice guy and he's literally never trained without a gee before. For those of you who don't know, Nicholas Merigale is one of the outstanding gee judates who are competitors of his generation. Has an amazing game and is a superstar with the gee side of the sport, but had never even trained without a gee once in his life. So his first ever no gee training session is with Gordon Ryan, the best no gee competitor of all time. And I remember Gordon texting me saying, Hey, he's really talented. He's a nice guy and he wants to come down to Texas and train. So yeah, sounds great. So over time, just more and more people started coming in. And I told everyone like, you guys are at a severe disadvantage. Like you've got very little time to get ready for ADCC. Luke wasn't even in ADCC. He had to win trials. Same for Dan Manisoyo. He had failed at trials and needed to get a win to even get into ADCC. So around this time, a doctor suggested by Mo Jasm, who himself had stomach issues earlier in his life, began working with Gordon Ryan. And Mo is the organizer of ADCC. He's the head organizer. He was able to get Gordon Ryan not cured, but significantly better than he was before. And to a level where Gordon could train up to five to six days a week. And it was a big improvement on what was going on during the end of the time in Puerto Rico. So things started moving. We had a core group of athletes training at a local gym, which was very, very generously offered to us by the head manager of Roca Sunglasses, a company here in Austin, Texas. They have a private corporate gym, which we were able to train in. And these talented youngsters from around the globe essentially came together and I said, you guys are going to have to train harder than you've ever trained in your lives because you've got less time to get ready for this than anyone. And you're going to be going up against people potentially who know exactly what I teach, because I've been teaching them a lot longer than I've been teaching you, in addition to the other best people in the world. So it was an incredible challenge for them. And I must say all of them gave literally everything they had, everything I asked for, they gave twice as much. And we had a crazy training schedule, as many as three classes per day. I know that sounds easy, you know, three classes a day, but try doing it sometime. These classes are not your </s><s>[INST] average classes. These are preparation for ADCC. They're both mentally and physically. [/INST] Very, very hard. Very, very hard. And we had many people come in and try to train alongside us and they fell off by the side of the road within days, forget about weeks, months, or a full year of this. I gave a very abbreviated set of skills for the athletes. I chopped everything down to what I believe were the most essential skills. Anything that wasn't essential to ADCC preparation was just pushed aside. And they had to focus almost entirely on ADCC, with one exception, I'll come to that soon, over the period of their training here in Austin. So it was compacted by time and also by the breadth of skill that I taught. Everything was just purely for ADCC preparation. In a very short period of time, Dan Manasoyo and Luke Griffith and Oliver Taza all won European trials and got into ADCC. Nicholas Miragali was already a superstar, so he was invited, but he had to show himself. So we enrolled him in local shows here in Austin, where he had his first three NOGI matches. And with each match, you could see progress being made. And so that convinced the ADCC people, okay, he's good enough to compete. He ended up winning decisively a match against one of the greatest American grapplers of all time, Rafael Lovato. And this was a clear sign that his </s><s>[INST] skill level in NOGI was sufficient to justify an invite. And by the way, Lovato had an incredible set of matches in this ADCC. Yes, that was actually very impressive. And retired. Which is really impressive and heartbreaking as well. But if you go out, that's a good way to go out. [/INST] Indeed. So there was this long and tough preparation and it was compounded by the fact that as Gordon felt better, he felt a need to build up his own competitive record prior to ADCC because he'd been inactive for so long with his stomach issue. So he proposed one of the most ambitious fight camps that I've ever heard of in grappling, which was he would take on the current WNO champion, Pedro Mourinho. Whose number one is WNO. And also I believe the current NOGI world champion in IBGJF as a tune up match, as a warm up match. Then he would fight his old nemesis, Felipe Pena, the only man who submitted Gordon at Black Belt and had defeated Gordon in an ADCC match in 2017. And then ADCC itself. So there was going to be three big high profile matches back to back and very different rule sets. So WNO was a 15 minute match. The fight with Felipe Pena was no time limit, which is a very different format to compete in and then ADCC. So we had to drag out a 14 week camp covering three matches with three different rule sets, which went in diametrically opposite directions. And the entire team had to go through all of this over this 14 week period. In addition to the previous year that they had been working hard, there was a further complication in the midst of all this. Nicholas Miragali had to go to the GEE world championships and we had to throw an extra morning class for that to help him get ready. Nicholas went on to win the open weight gold medal in the GEE competition. And then the next day had to come back to Texas and begin his ADCC preparation. It was a crazy, crazy time. But they all came through it so well. I'm immensely proud of what they did. And shockingly in the space of less than 12 months, we went from rock bottom to having a more successful ADCC team performance than we did the previous ADCC. It was in fact the most successful team performance of the event. And it's testimony to how hard those young men worked in the course of less </s><s>[INST] than a year to prepare themselves. If it can just linger on the low point, is it heartbreaking to you that the so-called Donna Hart death squad split, or the team as it was originally called split, you know, we live a short life on this earth. And you put so much of your love and [/INST] work into this team and everybody put in the work. Does it break your heart? It was a sad time. Yeah, it was. I'm not a particularly emotional person, but it was an emotional time for everyone. I had an element of tragedy insofar as not only was it a team breakup, it was also a family breakup, which is much more serious. I do believe that in time, even the most intense family breakups can be reconciled. And I also believe that once dialogue begins, people will remember just how easy it was for us to get along and how tight we were for many, many years. It's so easy to let a minute of anger destroy 10 years of friendship. But there's also the weight of those 10 years. When I ran into the old squad members at ADCC, we got along like a house on fire. It's like we never had a problem. A house on fire is a good thing. Yes, yes. Sorry, that's a New Zealand expression. Yeah, they definitely could have gone the other way, right? </s><s>[INST] So a house on fire is a good thing. So only a New Zealander would say that it's a good thing. [/INST] Yeah. So I still believe in time, things will be fine. But there was an element where youngsters need to grow. And sometimes, think about it this way, from the athlete's perspective, there's definitely a generational problem. I'm much older than my students. And the years and the viewpoint that I have is a reflection of the time in which I grew up from a completely different generation with a completely different worldview. It's got to be hard from the athlete's perspective when you're training seven days a week and you're getting very, very good. You're beating everyone that's getting put in front of you. You're losing very, very rarely and it's always a tough, competitive match when you do. Everyone around you is calling you a superstar and you look phenomenal. You check social media. Everyone's saying you're a God on the mat and then you come into the gym and there's some old guy telling you, you're not good enough. And everyday, it's like, what does this guy want from me? How hard do I have to work? Like you're not good enough. You want you to be the best in the world. I don't want you to be good. I want you to be great. All of your friends are telling you are there, man, you're incredible, you submit me so easily do this, and then this old guy is just like, no, you got to get better. You got to work more. You're not working hard enough. At some point, you're going to be like, you know what? Fuck this old guy. It's tough. I get why they left me. When I was 20 years old, I didn't get along with authority figures at all. To have someone telling you, you've always got to work that little bit harder. No, your skill set's not complete. You still need this, this, and this. When you're already doing very, very well, and far better than a tiny, tiny percentage of people, and then you've got this guy constantly telling you, no, more has to be done. You're not there yet. Of course, I understand. Let me just enjoy this more. It's always a choice in life. You can be the best you possibly can, or you can go a route where you just get to enjoy life a little more. You do other things. There's more to life than just the inside of a gym and learning how to do a better heel hook or a better double leg. Of course, years go by, you want to try the things. You have to make this choice in life between extreme excellence versus being incredibly good, </s><s>[INST] but maybe just enjoying my life a little more. It's so interesting that incredibly good is a hard thing to deal with. I saw when Kayla Harrison won her first gold medal at the Olympics, to go back to the gym and to trust, again, maybe the old man. You're being, you're questioning yourself, but to trust the old man. Jimmy Page, you're a senior in that case, to say, okay, we're going to go back to this grind. There's still a path to improvement. There's still a lot to grow and still have the humility, even though you've just demonstrated greatness. Really good is just a stepping stone to greatness. That's really tough for athletes. Winning is actually very difficult. Gold medals are very difficult. Plus, there's the personal stuff of depression that comes with that, which is you give so much of yourself to trying to win that. And once you do, there's a lot of personal stuff you have to deal with, which is like, what do I want from life? To understand what is exactly, what am I chasing? Is it just winning, or is it some bigger picture of excellence that's beyond just winning? So that's all that mixed up together. And then when you have to be as a team really close together, there's the personal [/INST] relationships, all of that gets exacerbated. Do you think the team ever gets back together? I think there's definitely a chance of that. Right now, I think they have an excellent team themselves, and they're doing very well. They had an excellent performance at ADCC, so there's not a need for them to come to us. It's not like they lack anything. They still remember everything I taught them. They still coach and teach with the same methodology that I taught them. So I don't think they have any need to do so. If they did, it would be because they wanted to. I still think many of the same personality conflicts that originated the conflict </s><s>[INST] would re-emerge currently if they started training together. By the way, to pile on the compliments, they have really nice merch, too. The t-shirts are just excellent. What have you learned from that process about how to have a team with personal conflicts? Do you have to deal with these giant egos as well? Yeah. Because the ego is in part a superpower, too, so you don't want it. [/INST] Yeah, you don't want to suppress egos. I always laugh when people say, leave your ego at the door. What do you think drives competition? If you want to be good at anything in life, you've got to have an ego. No, I don't believe it's good or even a healthy thing to suppress egos. I'm a realist, and I understand that this is a sport where they make one gold medal per weight division. As guys get better, they're going to be looking at their training partners and thinking like, I'm going to have to fight this guy one day, and they're training next to each other. Of course, there's going to be tension. There's always going to be disagreements about what's the right way to act around certain people, certain issues, and people are going to come into conflict. Everyone's being programmed to be an alpha competitor. You get a room full of people like that. There's going to be conflict. Now, your question was, well, is there a way to resolve this? Yeah, there was. For eight to nine years, I was very successful with this, but there's also a tipping point where things can flare out of control, and there will be periodic breakups. You're not the first students I had that left. I've been coaching a lot longer than I've been coaching the squad. I'm sure in the future, there'll be other students who leave me. </s><s>[INST] That's just the nature of the beast. It's sad when it happens, but life goes on. Like Bukowski said, love is a fog that fades with the first daylight of reality or something like that, so even love is temporary. Let me ask you about leading up the preparation for the athletes. This is such, given the darkness from a year ago from which you had to find glimmers of light and try to get greatness out of athletes, what was the mental preparation like for Gordon, for Nicholas, for Giancarlo, for the other athletes? What was the mental side of things like? Is there some [/INST] key insights you can give to their mental preparation? I really, really think that people, when they talk about mental preparation, need to take a step back and realize that almost every element of what people describe as mental preparation has physical underpinnings. Literally, 95% of what I teach the athletes is physical skills. It's my belief that every mental aspect of competition, the most important of which will be confidence on stage, is a direct result of the accumulation of physical skills. People tend to see things like confidence as a mental state. It is, but it comes out of the performance of physical skills. All my life, I've seen sports psychologists try to create confidence in athletes through non-physical means, and it always ends up being the same kind of cheesy motivational speeches, highlight video reels where they try to pump artificial confidence into people. I've never been impressed by this, nor have I seen it have any kind of positive effect on athlete performance. What I do see build confidence is the sense that athletes are developing skills and using them successfully under conditions that closely mirror the event they're preparing for. Once they get this down, that's where true confidence comes from. Confidence doesn't come from words. It comes from accumulated skills, which experience shows you have been responsible for successful performances in the past. If you accumulate enough of these, your confidence rises. When it comes to the mental aspects of competition, I created a program where everyone was given a set of skills that they had to work on. Skills directly related to what I believe are the most important elements of success in ADCC competition. In the gym, they accumulated those skills over time. I do it in two different ways, depending on whether these are offensive skills or defensive skills. For the accumulation of offensive skills, I like to have my athletes work with athletes who are lesser than themselves in ability so that they start to gain confidence over time. Just as you would never send a beginner into a weightlifting gym and put 500 pounds on the bar and tell him to lift it, rather you would start with a wooden bar, then the metal bar, and then gradually accumulate weight over time so you get a progression in weightlifting. In Juditsu, you don't take a brand new move and say, okay, do it on Gordon Ryan. Never going to succeed. I have the athletes practice their offense on blue belts and work their way up. Defense, on the other hand, you've got to start them in the deep end of the pool so that they start to see what are their vulnerabilities. I put them with highly competitive athletes at the start so they can see, okay, there is a problem here. Then even in defense, they start off with lower belts and build up their confidence over time. So just as a weightlifter builds up his ability to lift weight over time, so too a Juditsu player does it by gradually increasing resistance. Now in Juditsu, resistance is not done by weight, it's done by skill level. Over time, they started to accumulate this experience. In time, we were able to switch off and have them go against very, very tough athletes, each other. Luke Griffith will do a full power match with Gordon Ryan. Now they're fully aware that there's no one better in the world than Gordon Ryan. So if you have a competitive match with Gordon Ryan, that's a very, very healthy sign. So they went from the start where they were being programmed, going against relatively mild resistance, and building up over time, and then building up to the greatest resistance possible in the sport of Juditsu. Their goal is not to win, obviously, but their goal is to provide a competitive match. Now Gordon doesn't have any confidence issues, so for him it's just good, hard competitive training against people that are in some ways better than those you'll be facing in competition. For the other guys, it's getting a clear assessment of what their current skill level is by going against the best there is. Then we add to this a competitive schedule where the athletes have to go out into competition so they get used to the idea of performing in front of strangers on stage, getting used to the strange elements of going out, being observed and judged by people you don't know in a performance atmosphere. And so they were all given matches in WNO competition leading up to the event, ADCC trials, local grappling events here in Austin, and given a competitive schedule to fight and prepare them for ADCC. Obviously, as ADCC got closer and closer, this was pulled back because of the danger of injury. So within about three weeks out was the last time we had a competition. And by this method, confidence starts to grow. And so the mental preparation came out of those physical underpinnings, the idea of progressive resistance increasing over time for both offense and defense, building up to a peak where they're going against the best athlete in the world so they can get an accurate assessment of where they stand. Once you're given a competitive match to the best guy in the world, you know damn well </s><s>[INST] that when you go out in ADCC, you're ready to fight anybody. And defense is broadly defined. So defense in symmetrical positions, like positions, like guard, and then defense also [/INST] includes escaping from horrible positions. Yes, we're big believers in the idea of depth of defense, the idea that you should be able to mount defense all the way through from early stages based mostly around anticipation of identifying danger visually before it emerges and all the way through to the deepest levels of defense where you are 100% defensive in terrible positions. And you have to claw your way out over time and get back to a neutral position or even better back to an </s><s>[INST] attacking position. You have an Instagram post on this topic. When you get ready to step out for the biggest moment of your life, ask yourself one question. How different is this really from what I do every day? If the answer is not very different at all, then step forward with confidence and do what you do every day in the same manner and ignore the hype and distraction. You're ready for action. By the way, for people who don't know, you need to follow Jon Donner on Instagram because you have nuggets or large buckets of nuggets of wisdom often, which is quite profound, even bigger than jiu-jitsu. But anyway, so there's some aspect where you want to mimic the conditions of your daily training in intensity and in what force of physical [/INST] to that of the actual matches. You asked the question about mental training. For me, the central focus of whatever small amount of mental training I give my students comes down to a very, very simple concept to understand. This is the idea of identifying competition in terms of its normalcy. Most people see training and competition as two different things. Training is normal activity that you do every day and competition is the exception. It's different. You're going out, there's people watching you, there's a big crowd, they're making lots of noise. In fact, the promoters of shows go out of their way to reinforce this. Look at, for example, ADCC when Gordon Ryan went to fight Andre Galvin. Do they just come out on the mat and fight each other? Absolutely not. There's fire. There's music. There's pageantry. </s><s>[INST] There's fireballs. They're literally shooting fireballs. Yeah. Some dude in a tie sitting with Joe Rogan. I heard about that guy. Meathead, podcaster, comedian, whatever. Which one was [/INST] the Meathead? Well played, John. Well played. But you see what they're trying to do. They're trying to create theater and pageantry, when in fact, it's just a grappling match. It's just two athletes, a referee and a ruleset. That's the reality. Now, what they try to sell you is something which is not reality, which is this is somehow bigger and different, and they reinforce this with pageantry and theater so that it becomes not just a grappling match, but a grappling performance, the same way you have a theater performance. My goal as a coach is to dispel that and say, when you go out there, there's only one reality. You, him, and the referee reinforcing a ruleset. That's it. Everything else you see, the smoke, the fire, the music, is an illusion, and it's put there intentionally to make you feel a certain kind of way. Your whole goal is to see this as an illusion and walk out and see only the reality, which is that this is the same damn thing you do every day in the gym. The only difference is you're going with </s><s>[INST] a guy you've never grabbed before. The actual act of removing the illusion or realizing that it is an illusion, how do you practice that? When you step on the mat- [/INST] Once you're aware of it, I always have them to... It's like when you see a magician and you have his tricks explained to you, you never see the magic again. The first time you see a good card trick from a good magician is, oh my God. Then when they explain it to you, I did this, this, and that step one, step two, then you look at it like, it's not that special. When you explain to people this idea of the pageantry is an illusion, then just as when you watch the magician and you learn the trick, all the magic flies out the window, so too with the nervous response. </s><s>[INST] So that's for the pageantry, but what about maybe the physical intensity of competition? [/INST] Isn't there an extra- No, it's the same in every competition. It's not like they're twice as strong in ADCC as Aaron and the IBJF World Championships. The physical intensity is always pretty much the same. They experience it every day in the gym. If you go out and you grapple, Gordon Ryan, it's not like the next guy you grapple is going to be twice as strong as him or twice as fast. It's going to be a little stronger, a little faster, but not so much so that it completely changes your approach to the game. There's not that much difference between the human bodies out there on the stage. So if you've felt intensity before, you're not going </s><s>[INST] to be shocked by ADCC. But in terms of in training, do you have to try to match the [/INST] intensity of competition? No. That would be false. Every athlete in the gym would be injured. You can do it for short periods of time, but the training has to be carefully monitored in terms of intensity levels. Remember, we're training seven days a week, a minimum of twice a day. You've got to keep things under wraps. Every other workout, you can have one of the five rounds can be full power, but not seven days a week, three times a day. That's just going to break bodies. And the full power is just a reminder of- It's more about skill development. For us, it always comes back to skill development. But what about matching the feeling of the intensity of competition? Yeah. Periodically. Periodically can't be in a single time. Not really. It's not rare. Meaning out of three hours of hard sparring per day, 15 minutes might be 100% full power. That's more than enough to get psychologically ready for the intensity of conflict, but won't break your body over time. </s><s>[INST] Meaning like intensity of conflict, that's well put. There is competition. Doesn't it have that extra level of animosity? It's a little bit more conflict than it is. [/INST] It can. Sometimes there's personality differences. For example, like Gordon Ryan and Felipe Panner, they admire each other a lot. They respect each other's skills, but they certainly don't love each other. That's for sure. There can be certain match-up where there's more intensity. But then there's other match-ups where the two athletes come out and it's no more intense than a hard </s><s>[INST] sparring session. First of all, because I would love to look at a couple of matches with you. And before that, let me say a big thank you to Flow Grappling. First of all, helping the sport of grappling and jiu-jitsu in general by having organized footage and tournaments that show this sport in its best light to the world. And they do an incredible job with that. So if you're interested in supporting grappling as a sport, helping it grow, you should definitely support Flow Grappling. Go to their website, sign up. Also, Flow Wrestling. I'm a huge fan of wrestling. Maybe there'll be a Flow Judo at some point. Currently, I don't think they'll do any major Judo stuff. So anyway, I'm a big supporter of theirs. And I do have criticism that they know about, which is I hope they continue to improve on the aspect of making the footage discoverable and accessible, making it easy for you to do search through Google and on their website to find matches to get excited. Like if me and Joe Rogan are getting excited about a particular match, we want to be able to pull it up super quickly. We want to be able to pull up Gordon Ryan's matches super quickly from ADCC, make it super easy to show and share if we have to pay for it fine, but make it easy. And when you sign in order to sign up for Flow, it should be one click, click, not five clicks. It should be one click. It should be easy. I think it's inexpensive. If you care about grappling, it's definitely worth it. You should sign up. Anyway, my love goes out to Flow Grappling. And also my love goes out to Mo Jasm, as we said. He's the organizer of ADCC. The next one is in 2024. It should be 2024. Well, you should follow ADCC underscore official on Instagram and just send as much love towards Mo and ADCC in general. Like I said, the most prestigious, it's like where the best grapples in the world show up. And the magic happens. It's like some of the most historic matches in grappling in Jiu-Jitsu ever happened on that stage. Anyway, if I could talk about some of the interesting performances for the athletes you coached, you post on Instagram. Let's start with Gordon Ryan. Gordon Ryan, ADCC 2022. The greatest event in grappling history is over. New stars emerged, established stars shown bright again, but one man stood above all like a colossus. Gordon Ryan. You have a way with words, John Donner. I have seen many incredible feats of grappling, but I've never saw a performance like this. For many, Mr. Ryan is a polarizing figure in the sport. For many others, an inspiration to look up to. But after this weekend, there was no disagreement amongst haters and fans about his merit. He is the best ever. It was a long and difficult journey to ADCC 2022. Just one year ago, and so on as you told the story, it was a virtuoso performance of unmatched technique, preparation, and confidence. No one else can claim credit for this achievement. This was his and his alone. No one else today brings together technical depth, tactical insight, and confidence to use them on stage as he does. I had many students, but I only won Gordon Ryan. And I think Gordon responded, all this is true besides the credit that sits with you. Thank you. And a heart emoji. Very nice. So anyway, that's as a way of introduction to Gordon Ryan. Can you take me through his set of performances and maybe any matches that stand out? So he competed in his division, which is the plus 99 kilos, [/INST] and in the super fight against Andre Gova. That's correct. This was in fact the first time in history that this was allowed. For your listeners who don't follow grappling, we may have been very rude and just throwing a lot of stuff at you without explaining ourselves. First of all, ADCC is like the Olympics of grappling. It occurs every two years. You can either qualify for the event through winning matches in a qualification process, or you can be invited. The only people who get invited are either former winners or people in the sport who are just widely recognized superstars who bring some kind of brand value, who have proven in the past that they have what it takes to compete at that level. In this format, there are two kinds of matches. There are weight division matches in which you compete against people, roughly your own size and weight. There is an open weight where anyone of any size can enter. So you can have very small people fighting very large people. And there is a second category called a super fight where established champions who have won previous open weight tournaments fight each other in one-off battles, one athlete against another. So in most of the matches, you will fight repetitively over time towards a gold medal. But in one category, you fight one fight, the so-called super fight, which is usually the headline fight of the event. Traditionally, if you were in the super fight, you could not compete in the weight categories. It was seen as too risky because you might get injured during the weight category, or you might have to fight for very tough fights in a row and get exhausted so that you're ineffective during the main event of the show, the super fight. So throughout its history, ADCC has always resisted the idea of an athlete being allowed to do both weight category and a super fight. It's never happened before. Gordon Ryan requested to be able to do this because of his extraordinary stature in the sport. The ADCC organization granted his request. That was the first time ever. In addition, Gordon Ryan would be fighting to be the first person to win three gold medals in three different weight categories. This has never been done before. So it was a huge event on Gordon's part. Bear in mind also that prior to this event, he had fought just a month and a half earlier against a former ADCC open weight champion, Felipe Pena, who had defeated him in the past in a completely different rule set and then previously that against the current world champion. So there'd been a buildup to this. So he had been very active coming up to the event and then he went in to fight arguably the greatest ADCC champion of all time, Andre Galván, which would occur late on Sunday and would have to fight the toughest people, including the possibility of fighting his nemesis, Felipe Pena, in the weight division prior to getting to the super fight. So there was genuine concern here that he may have completely overstepped himself. The biggest concern I had as a coach, and I'm sure the organizers, Mo Jasim, must have had the same concern is that he would get injured or exhausted fighting in his weight division. There were two athletes in particular, Felipe Pena, who had given Gordon a very tough 40-minute match in a no-rules setting shortly before ADCC, and his former training partner, Nick Rodriguez, who were expected to give Gordon very, very tough matches if they came up against each other. So there was a genuine concern that Gordon may burn himself out before he even got to fight the guy who most people believe is the greatest ADCC champion of all time. So our concern was how do we manage this? So what we looked for is extremely efficient methods of reducing the time of the matches, making the matches as short as possible. Our favorite way to fight bigger, stronger athletes, and I think Gordon was the lightest athlete in his weight division. Everyone goes, oh, Gordon's so big and strong, it's actually quite light. I think he was outweighed </s><s>[INST] by almost all of his opponents. It's nice to see Gordon looking small relative to his opponents, which is absurd to say, but it is the open division, plus 99 kilos. It was plus 99 kilos. Right, that's what I mean, sorry, by open plus 99 kilos. [/INST] Everyone looks like the Incredible Hulk. Yeah, Hulk, yeah. So our big thing is when we fight bigger, stronger opponents, we always go in two directions. You either go for the legs or you go </s><s>[INST] for the back. And so we constructed strategies based around those two methods. So going for submissions, and we should also mention that ADCC rule set is for regular matches, I think it's five minutes and five minutes. Total is 10 minutes, and then for finals matches, it's 20 minutes, and half the time is spent with no points. [/INST] So these can be very, very long matches. I mean, to put this in a perspective, a modern judo match is five minutes. Yeah. A modern wrestling match, I believe, is six minutes in international freestyle. So these matches can be 40 minutes long. Now, that's a long, long grappling match. </s><s>[INST] Depending on how you compete in it, that can have a huge toll on you. [/INST] Absolutely. You can get to the finals and just be absolutely spent. So our whole thing is, okay, Gordon's got to not only get to the finals, then he's got to fight the toughest ADCC rapper of all time after that. So we were looking for quick and energy efficient matches, and that meant going to the back or going to the legs. And in the overwhelming majority of cases, that's exactly what he did. He was able to get some very, very quick matches, courtesy of leg lock finishes. And in the few cases where he didn't finish on legs, then he would simply take his opponents back. And that's a very low stress position to occupy. In one case, his opponent deliberately kept his back on the ground to prevent the backtake, and he just chose mounted position instead. And so he was able to go through his weight division with an extremely low energy expenditure, which set him up well to go into the finals. No injuries, very little energy expenditure. Now, it sounds easy to say that, okay, the strategy worked. But in order to get that strategy to work, you have to have one hell of a set of skills. And we can see those now. Would </s><s>[INST] you like to? Yeah, I would love to go through them. And I should also mention, for people just listening to this, I'll try to commentate on different things we'll look at. But the thing that was made clear is, maybe you can speak to that. Maybe to you, it looks like efficiency. But to me, it looked like Gordon was not even trying. There was a relaxed aspect to the whole thing. So maybe it had to do with saving energy, but he made it look very easy. And he made the path of submission look very easy. So here, the first match against an opponent [/INST] that, again, looks bigger than him. Okay, I'll just give an initial comment here. First, you'll see that Gordon elected to sit to the bottom position. The hardest work in submission grappling is when two athletes take the standing position and joust for takedowns. That's where most of the energy gets burned up. So working on the idea of energy efficiency, let's go out and we chose to sit into guard position and then start looking to access our opponent's back. Because if our opponent's head position of far side arm drag makes a lot of sense, Gordon's able to beat the arm and quickly get behind his opponent. Now the question is going to be getting into a scoring position. It's too early to score at this point, but we're just concerned at this stage of just </s><s>[INST] energy expenditure and make the other guy work harder than us. So Gordon did the arm drag to [/INST] the back and now is working on the hooks. The hooks are not particularly important here. He'll use it just to get stability on his opponent. But interestingly, his opponent here had an interesting strategy too, which was to occupy bottom turtle position and look to get to the critical five-minute demarcation point where points begin to get scored. His idea, I believe, I'm speculating here based on his actions, was to keep Gordon at bay in a defensive turtle position until a five-minute mark occurred, in which case he would shake Gordon off, walk away and force a </s><s>[INST] takedown battle. How many people are comfortable in that? And what do you think about the defense [/INST] of turtle position versus always trying to come back to guard? Turtle position is the second bottom position of you did. Many people only associate guard position with bottom position and you did that. That's naive. There's two. There's guard position and turtle position. Now as a general rule, guard position offers a much, much greater variety of attacking options than turtle position does. But that's not to say turtle position absolutely can be an effective bottom position. You can work effectively from there. </s><s>[INST] So there's some case to be made that to wait out five minutes, turtle might be. [/INST] I mean, I personally think it against Gordon Ryan, I mean, I admire the fellow's courage. It's not easy. But there was a logic to what he was doing. People think, oh, he just got his back taken so easily. But he did have a strategy. Now, did he pick the right person to use that strategy against? Probably not. </s><s>[INST] So Gordon is able to break the turtle down, get one hook in. At which point is this becoming an extremely controlling position with Gordon in the back? [/INST] At which point is there, are you happy with where it is? At this point, it just started to dawn on me at this point, this guy actually had a strategy, which was to maintain a prone position that he's in now, and then shake Gordon off after the five minute mark. So once that became obvious, and I was now excited to look at the clock and how close we are, if we can take it up to five minutes. Right now, this guy's only intention is to stop Gordon from strangling him and finish. Okay, now the guy's trying to go up and vertical freeze it there. Now, do you see how he's taking his elbows off the mat in turtle position? In juditsu, there's only one reason you take your elbows off the mat from turtle position. That's to stand up. So now it's clear at this point what his actual strategy is. It's to get up, force a standing confrontation, win a takedown battle, and beat Gordon by points. So he did have a strategy. Now, our counter strategy is always based around the power half Nelson. This is a common move in the sport of wrestling, and it's a great way to break people down as they try to stand up. That looks so heavy. Yeah, I mean, Gordon is a master of it. So there's a power half </s><s>[INST] Nelson. So there's a power half Nelson that Gordon has on him as the elbows are off the ground and [/INST] knees are off the ground. He's going to return his opponent to the mat. And as you can see, he's successful in doing so. And now it's clear what the man's strategy is. So I'm calling Gordon to break him down to a hip. You put a man on the hip. He can't stand up. Gordon successfully does it, traps the shoulder using that one on one grip with his right hand, puts him down to a shoulder and a hip, that means standing up is no longer an option for his opponent. Now Gordon goes in, he's already scoring because of the total position that he's in. His opponent stays down on his shoulder. Now Gordon's responsibility is to start looking for the stranglehold. His opponent has basic defensive structure. He's disciplined with his chin, keeps the chin down. Gordon is a master of tying up defensive arms and penetrating under the chin to get to a strangle. And you'll see that shortly. There's the trapping of the arm. Notice that no advanced grips were required. It was just a spontaneous trap. There's the penetration of the neck. </s><s>[INST] So the arm was trapped with the leg. [/INST] Yeah. So now he's only got one defensive arm and he's just taking that away with his left hand and </s><s>[INST] he gets a one-handed strangle for the finish. He's only got one defense. And it looks like not much energy was expanded during that battle. [/INST] Yeah, very little. Yeah. So the tournament got off to a very smooth start. Very little energy expenditure, no injuries, and a submission win. </s><s>[INST] There's a kind of certain look to Gordon that could be interpreted as nervousness. That was an incorrect interpretation? Yes. Okay. So there's a... What do you interpret as nervous behavior? Yeah. Part of me is trolling, but sometimes on the surface, confident behavior can look almost like anger. And Gordon's face had a vulnerability to it. [/INST] Almost like when you go to judge confidence, don't look at the face. Look at the extremities of the body. Yeah. That's where the truth comes out. You see it in body language and the further from the face and chest, the more honest the body becomes. Look at the feet and the hands. Yeah. That's when you see if people are nervous or not. </s><s>[INST] He was very relaxed in the extremities. That's true. See, you look more confident in this than anything. What are you thinking about? What's going through your head here? Is this the same stuff? Are you intimidated by the two meatheads, one in a suit and tie, or are you not thinking [/INST] about that at all? I know. For me, it's just about, okay, what's the most efficient path to victory against this particular opponent? It's just, okay, I've done my job. I've taken them through an extensive fight camp that prepared them for every conceivable situation that they're in. I've run an efficient warmup. Their body temperature is perfect. The elasticity in the muscles is perfect. My main role when I corner is I avoid what most people do when they corner, which is to be a cheerleader. Most corner men, they're not corner men, they're cheerleaders. They're there to express some kind of emotional support to their training partners or their student. Sometimes they're even worse than cheerleaders. They express their own emotional fears as the match goes on. I always believe that 99.5% of the job of the trainer is done, the coach is done, when the athlete steps their foot on the mat. At that point, you shouldn't need me at all. Everything I needed to tell you should have been not just told to you, but imprinted into you. Remember, there's 15,000 people in that crowd. For half of the match, you're not going to hear a word that I can say, there's too much noise. But you'll hear my voice inside your head because you've heard it so many times over the last 14 weeks, you're sick of hearing it at that point. And their program know what to do. So I'm usually pretty confident. I'm also very confident that even in worst case scenarios, they're going to have effective solutions because they train those worst case scenarios every single day in the gym. </s><s>[INST] And so in part, you're there to have a front row seat to analyze what happened so that you can [/INST] take that to the next match. The biggest danger an athlete faces is tunnel vision. Sometimes they will hit upon a certain move or strategy and just say, I'm going to go with this when there's much easier alternatives. But because they're so focused on the alternative they've chosen, they get this tunnel vision and just focus only on that. The most constructive thing the corner man can do is alert them to the presence of time, which is very important in an ADCC match because all the scoring is structured by time. And to alleviate problems associated with tunnel vision. Okay, you're doing this, but if you just did this, it'll be so much easier. So that's the </s><s>[INST] main goal. So here, this was one of several anticipated matches against second one against [/INST] Victor Hugo, which is a very tough opponent. And again, this was a situation where Gordon was considerably outweighed by his opponent. So the main thing here was efficiency. His opponent elected to avoid the standing position by jumping into guard. So now Gordon would be in top position this time. He has a very good closed guard. But unfortunately, Gordon has very good guard passing. So he's an excellent guard player, very talented, but Gordon is renowned as the imminent guard passer in the world today. So it's a tall order to hold Gordon off for a 10 minute </s><s>[INST] match. Yeah. Is there something you can say about this guard passing? Gordon is making it look very easy. It's middle distance guard passing here. And he eventually passes to mount, I believe, [/INST] in a very... What are you running through the sequence where he gets mounted? I believe he </s><s>[INST] gets mounted twice. Back just a little bit further. Yeah. So he's trying to one arm under... [/INST] Yeah, this is a stacking position. Now normally, we always insist on the idea of getting advantageous angle first, controlling the feet and getting angle. But there's a height advantage that Victor Hugo has here. And the length of his legs means that he can play very, very wide with his legs. So getting an advantageous angle might be difficult. And these circumstances, it often makes sense to go right up the middle. Now, Gordon could just go back for legs because the legs... Victor Hugo's legs are so far apart at this point that you could easily isolate a leg and attack that. But Gordon wanted to show off his passing prowess. Very often he'll go into a match and say, okay, I'm going to show this skill. And he'll often use it as a demonstration of techniques he teaches in instructional videos. So he wanted to show that he could pass to mount readily on a world champion. Like this part here. This little step. Okay. Just freeze it right there. Go back one step. Okay. You can clearly see that all of his opponent's defensive frames are built on his opponent's left hand side. So everything is defense on the left, but you can see this comes at a price. And that price is back exposure on the right hand side. You can literally see his opponent's back on that side. So Gordon's game is to place sufficient pressure. The opponent overcompensates on the side of pressure just to set up a quick switch across to the other side. There's the vulnerability. There's the back exposure. His opponent has to put his back on the ground, switches back. That's a world champion right there on bottom. He does a good job of recovering from the first danger, but unfortunately, Gordon has been here a thousand times and just switches his hips and kicks out. A little step. And so you see there's two changes in direction, left, right, in a very short period of time that people find very, very hard to keep up with. Now his opponent builds up to an elbow. He's looking to create more and more space from here, but Gordon counters by just stepping over the hips. It's just when you feel like every move, he's doing the right things. The man on bottom is doing well. He's doing the right things, but the other guy's just been here too many times and is just a half second ahead of every decision. </s><s>[INST] So that going up in the elbow, Gordon makes it look so easy here. It almost seems like Victor is out, but this turning of the hips with the arm over the opponent's back is able to bring [/INST] him back down and Gordon takes mount. Notice how Gordon is never satisfied with the mounted position itself. He's only satisfied with an extended mounted position where the elbow comes up over </s><s>[INST] the shoulder line. Only then does he show... There's a little bit of relief right there, [/INST] right? Right? There's a little bit of relief. No, that's the look of a man who's just proved </s><s>[INST] a point. Yeah, this is very Michael Jordan like sticks his tongue out. So yeah, I mean, there's no points at this stage. He really is going for submission. And then this happens again. [/INST] Is this the match that wasn't Gordon's... This was the only match where Gordon didn't </s><s>[INST] finish his opponent by submission. Was this very frustrating for him? [/INST] It's actually interesting that when he came off the mat, he was visibly frustrated. He wanted to get a finish. And I think he was more upset about not finishing Victor Hugo than he was delighted by winning his two gold medals. So I think that says a lot about the perfectionism of Gordon Ryan. Most people would be thrilled to be one of the great grapplers of this generation </s><s>[INST] decisively in this fashion, but he was not happy. And so this is Gordon's third match against [/INST] Sousa, Roosevelt Sousa, another guy who's very big. This is different because now we're on to the second day. Your listeners should be aware that the event occurs over a two-day period. So the previous two matches occurred on Saturday. Now we're into Sunday. Now, this puts a different context on things. If we could just freeze it right there, maybe go back one step. Now we're on Sunday morning. And the idea is that Gordon will be fighting the biggest fight of his life late that afternoon. So now we're into the idea of energy conservation. It's okay to have two hard matches on Saturday because you get to rest on Saturday night. But now Gordon has to beat two people back to back and save energy for the biggest fight of his life on late Sunday afternoon. So now the emphasis is on a quick win. And you can see Gordon Ryan certainly delivers on this. Now, when you go to entangle your opponent's legs, the basic choice you have is between straight Ashigurami and cross Ashigurami. In the last five years, cross Ashigurami has proven to be statistically the more important of the two. And as a result, many people have forgotten the value of straight Ashigurami base leg locks and undervalued them. Gordon has outstanding heel hooks from both straight and cross positions. And his opponent was probably more concerned about the danger of a cross Ashigurami, left the right leg undefended for far too long. And as a result, Gordon goes into a very classical Ashigurami you would normally expect to see from five or six years ago and gets a very, very quick finish. So lift his opponent. There's the Ashigurami, the entanglement of one of his opponent's legs with two of his. Now he's got to turn and expose his opponent's heel. So there's an initial off balance to the left to get a defensive reaction. The opponent overcompensates, exposes his heel, and then there's the submission. There's a danger of leg being broken here. Gordon has an absolutely ferocious outside heel hook until you felt it. </s><s>[INST] It's quite different. The opponent probably before he even felt the heel hook felt the [/INST] control and that he's screwed there. When someone who knows what they're doing gets a bite on your leg like that, you feel it deep inside your knee and ankle tendons immediately. </s><s>[INST] There's a sense in which you almost tap. He got a couple of taps almost as if they're early [/INST] because the opponent knows. People came up to what's happened and said, this guy tapped early. </s><s>[INST] He knew that late would be a big problem. Got it. So this is within like 30 seconds, [/INST] within 10 seconds. I think it was within 10 seconds. So this was an excellent example of someone saying, okay, I'm going to conserve energy with a short match. I'm not just going to go down into a neutral position. I'm going to directly pull into a leg lock attack from standing position. You don't see that much in heavyweight divisions. That's something you see more in the lightweight </s><s>[INST] divisions. So we got to go to the final match of Gordon's within his division, which I think [/INST] as opposed to facing Felipe Pena who lost to Nicky Rod. Nicky Rod had a great match against Felipe Pena and passed Felipe Pena's guard. I think only the second person in ADCC competition to accomplish that. I believe with a body lock. It started as a body lock, but he converted to </s><s>[INST] half guard top head and arm and passed out of half guard top chest to chest. I think I listened to Craig Jones sort of interview summarizing what happened to ADCC and he briefly mentioned that Nicky Rod might have the best body lock pass that he's ever felt. So the way to face Nicky Rod is [/INST] don't let him get the body lock. But there's a problem if you stand up, he's a good wrestler. So there's a dilemma there. Like you have to sit down to guard, but that goes into his body lock. But then if you stand up, now you go into his wrestling skill. So it's a great dilemma that </s><s>[INST] he has. And that's what in facing Nicky Rod, Gordon Ryan here chooses to. [/INST] Yeah, if you look at the limbs, there's a relaxation there. We should also explain some things here. This is a finals match. So instead of being 10 minutes long, it's 20 minutes long with the option of a 20 minute overtime. So this could potentially be a 40 minute match. So you can see why the ADCC people were very concerned about Gordon doing this match. Because what if this match had gone 40 minutes and then an exhausted Gordon Ryan has to go out to fight </s><s>[INST] Andre Galvan, who's fresh and ready to maul him. And the top of that is two former teammates. [/INST] Who know each other's game very well. So there was a high likelihood in most people's minds that this would go the distance. Because when you train with each other for years, every single day in the gym, seven days a week, you get to know each other's tricks. One big problem here for Nicky Rod is that his body lock guard passing game, which is his main weapon on the ground, was taught to him by us. So it's not like we're going to be taken by surprise by it. So that </s><s>[INST] must have been figuring in his mind. Do you think psychologically for Gordon and psychologically for Nicky Rod, it's tough. So for him with that body lock, for example, do you think it's tough [/INST] for him to know what to do here? It's tough because he would have remembered the outcome of the training sessions. It's hard to go up against the guy who used to dominate you in training and </s><s>[INST] then say, okay, I'm going to beat him in competition. Can you shut all that off? Because it's tough, man. Memory is memory. You can't lie to yourself. What do you think about competition? Olympics bring this out. There's been a lot of big upsets at the Olympics. There's something where people find something in them. I mean, judo is a different sport than grappling. [/INST] In judo, there's much more room for upset because a mistake in judo will have ramifications that will be felt within half a second. If you take the wrong grip in judo, you can be thrown in half a second and there's no recovery. If your two shoulders hit the map with momentum, it's over. It's done. In juditsu, especially in ADCC where there's no points in the first five minutes, you could get taken down and mounted by your opponent and still win. You can recover from a bad start. In judo, boxing, kickboxing, MMA, you get hit. There's no recovery time. You just get swarmed on. And juditsu is a much more forgiving sport where you can make a series of blunders and you just recover from them. You don't make a series of blunders in boxing, </s><s>[INST] you're unconscious. There's the blunder case, but there's also been just people where it's their day. I mean, again, maybe it's romanticized in the notion, but there's been some epic performances in Olympic wrestling, in Olympic judo. As an example, Satoshi Ishii, he had a 2008 performance. We talked about all Japan and all that kind of stuff, but the Olympics, he destroyed everybody on this path to the Olympic gold medal. And that's when Teddy Renero was also competing. He got the bronze. And you could say he was at that time the best in the world also, [/INST] but I think it would be very fair to say he was the best in the world. Think about the people he beat to win three old Japan championships. Like he beat Kosei Inoue. He beat Keiji Suzuki. They </s><s>[INST] were Olympic champions. Like he was already. So you don't believe in free will. [/INST] No, I don't believe that a person can walk on stage and be better than what they are supposed to be. You have a skill level. It's set in stone. This is your skill level. You don't just go on stage and suddenly your skill level gets here. What you do have is a situation where you have a skill level. Another opponent has a higher skill level, but he runs into confidence issues so that he only uses a small percentage of his actual skills. And then he will fall below someone who is technically lower on the skill scale than he is. That can happen, </s><s>[INST] but you can't just magically acquire skills by stepping on stage. All of us are able to fall [/INST] in confidence. Yes. So the question becomes who manages that fall best? And that can create </s><s>[INST] upsets. Absolutely. So you don't think Gordon could have fallen in confidence against a former teammate when the pressure is so high? There was just no basis for a fall to occur. You said he [/INST] doesn't have confidence issues. What do you attribute that to? That's because he never loses in the gym. There's no experience at his head that would make him say, I shouldn't be this confident. So it's the physical, it's like we talked about mental preparation. Don't get me wrong, if Gordon lost 20 matches in a row, of course his confidence would drop. Because experience is now, there's going to be a psychological dissonance between his recent experience and what he believes. If you believe you're the best in the world, you just lost 20 matches. At some point, reality is going to break in. But if you're just never losing in competition, dominating people in the gym, then there's nothing in your experience that would shake your confidence. </s><s>[INST] Can I ask you this just in a small tangent? Why is Gordon Ryan so good? So we're looking at, you've trained a lot of special athletes, you're a special human being yourself. I could just look at human history. There's a lot of, not a lot, there's some special humans. It seems like Gordon [/INST] Ryan is one of them. I totally agree with that. Can you try to dissect? That's what I meant when I said I had many students, but only one Gordon Ryan. Like I've taught many, many people, but they don't all have his skill level. So there's an obvious elephant in the room. What distinguishes him from other athletes? Great question. I'll try and give an answer. More than anyone else that I've ever taught, he has a memory for things that were taught to him. He has an ability to recall information that is extraordinary compared with other people in the room. So that's definitely a big part of it. Secondly, he has a pride in technique and technical prowess that will not allow him to settle for anything less than perfection. And he will hate himself when there is imperfection. So there is a love of excellence and a hatred of anything less than excellence. He has an ability to pull the trigger when opportunity arises, which is truly extraordinary. Many people know what to do, but when the moment comes, they back off and they'll doubt themselves. </s><s>[INST] If Gordon sees the opportunity, the trigger pulls every time. So can I just link on that? Absolutely. There's a few times where he gets a little bit of an advantage and he just chases it to get a big, like with Andre Galvao. There's a dance and you get one step ahead and he's able to chase that. Get a little glimmer of the back and he's able to chase that all the way to back control. So is that the trigger that you're referring to? [/INST] Yes. It runs deeper than that too. It's the idea that good athletes are greedy athletes. Okay. When they see a small opportunity, they try and get as big a bite of it as possible. The mantra that we always have in training, if you can see the back, you can take the back. And if Gordon sees an inch of your back, that's the direction he's going to be going. If your far shoulder is within an inch of the floor, he's going to be mounting you. If your shoulder comes off the floor, he'd be on your back on the other side. He's a maximalist with opportunity. He's not satisfied with, oh, let me get a good enough outcome. It's like, I want the maximal outcome. So when you combine all these things together, an ability to recall information, which is just far superior to anyone else I've ever coached, an ability to work in the training room towards not just good technique, but excellent technique, the confidence to pull the trigger whenever the opportunity arises, a maximalist mindset where it's never enough to have a good enough outcome. It's always got to be the best possible outcome. And the fifth element, which I believe is very, very important, is extraordinary depth in his technical prowess, in particular with regards his defensive acumen. Everyone looks at Gordon and focuses on his offensive prowess because they see him dominate other athletes. But what they don't see is what I see every day in the gym where he works from impossibly bad defensive positions. Someone locked in on a full heel hook on his body and a full Jujigitami Amba in a complete pin mounted with Gordon's two arms stretched out over his head in what looks like a hopeless position. And Gordon will work in these positions. And of course, because it's such a bad position, sometimes he'll have to tap. But he just works so relentlessly in these bad positions that when he steps on stage, he's like, if this guy got the worst possible position on me, there's nothing he could do with it. And within 30 seconds, I could turn it around on him and win this match. That gives his game an overall breadth and depth, which is very, very hard to deal with. It means there's no obvious weak point where you can just say, okay, I'm going to attack him here and use this strategy to beat him. And that goes back to his confidence. The reason why most people lack confidence is they fear bad outcomes. If you're a strong guard player, you've got an excellent guard, but you're terrified of leg locks and your opponent has strong leg locks, you will shut down your own guard and won't play as freely and well as you normally do, because you're afraid of the leg lock danger. You'll pull your feet and you'll play a very conservative guard game. But if you had extremely adept leg lock defense, then you just play with all the confidence you normally do from guard position. Gordon puts himself in that situation. He's so defensively </s><s>[INST] sound that it translates into his offensive confidence. When you talk about memory recall, which is interesting, I can't help but see parallels between him and Magnus Carlsen, who's a chess player, who's the number one in the world. The arguably the best ever, certainly the best ever if you just look at absolute numbers. The chess has the luxury of having a rating, which you cannot have in jiu-jitsu because it's a game of human chess. Chess is just a board game, so you can actually calculate the probability that you could win. So he is the highest ELO rating ever, and he's maintained that rating. Without competing against the number two in the world, he can just prove that he's the number one in the world for many years. Anyway, there's certain similarities. One's ability to recall. So memory recall of information is fascinatingly good. And the other one is not so much a love for perfection, which is something you mentioned, but the flip side of that, which is what you also mentioned, is the hate of imperfection. Now, in the case of Magnus, it almost creates a level of anxiety for him that's almost destructive. So the thing he seems to hate the most is imperfection against people he knows are worse than him. So the thing he loves is competing against people that are close to skill level. Or the favorite is people who are, might actually be better than him, especially in certain positions. He loves competing against them. He hates competing against people that are still from the perspective of everyone else. what are called super grandmasters, so top three in the world. But he knows he's much better than them. And the anxiety of being not perfect against those people, that's why he, I don't know if you're paying attention, but he stepped away. He's not going to defend his world championship because he hates the anxiety of playing people worse than him. [/INST] Interesting. </s><s>[INST] He figures they would somehow make him look bad or? No, he just, for him, at least the language he uses, it's just not fun. And he likes having fun. To him, it was fun to win no matter the skill level, the world championship the first time. But then defending it is a very grueling process. With classical chess, you play these many hour, it could be seven hour long games. And on top of that, he really hates the fact that it's only, I forget what it is, but it's single digit number of games. He says it's low sample. So I can't, I would like to play 20, 30, 40, 50 games if we're going to do it this way. But then they're too long, it's going to take too long. So he's really emphasizes the fun of it and the clear demonstration of who's the best. Now chess is an interesting game. It's probably different than grappling because it's been played for centuries. So there's this giant body of people that are playing it. Like there's other Gordon Ryans out there. Imagine a world where there's multiple Gordon Ryans or something like that, just different dimensions, but you have like sharks everywhere. And so there is fun to be had even at the very, very, very, very top. But the memory recall is the thing that stands out and the hate of imperfection more intense than anybody else in the game. Fascinating, fascinating. That takes us back to the final. Yes. So here Gordon is facing Nicky Rod, former training partner. [/INST] And again, the intention here is this has to be put in the context that Gordon will be fighting the greatest ACC grappler of all time in a few hours after this. So what we're looking for is a quick resolution. Still the shortest possible match. Now there's a complicating factor here. Nicky Rod was a wrestler before he was a jiu-jitsu player. On paper, the way his route to win is via wrestling. He's not gonna be able to submit Gordon Ryan and he's not gonna be able to pass his guard. So he has to win by wrestling. In the ADCC finals, you cannot set the guard. So the approach that Gordon used earlier that we saw on video cannot be used in the finals. Gordon must wrestle his opponent. So on the way out, Gordon and I were talking and we'd had discussions obviously during the cam what's the appropriate thing to do here. And there had been some matches earlier in the event where it was becoming obvious that stalling was being heavily punished by referees. So I said to Gordon on the way out, just give him your leg, let him take you down because in the first 10 minutes of the finals, takedowns don't score anything. There are no means of scoring the first 10 minutes but you can't set the guard. That will award you a negative point. So I said, just let Nicky Rod take you down. And he's like, Nicky Rod's not gonna take the bait. </s><s>[INST] And I said, if he doesn't, they'll call him for stalling. And so. And then Craig Jones also commented after the fact is I don't know why Nicky Rod took the bait. [/INST] So if we see the start of the match, you see Gordon comes out and offers a leg. Now, it's not that Nicky Rod is smart. He knows what's happening here. And what's he gonna do, stall for 10 minutes and get like five stalling calls put against him. So Gordon gives him the takedown. That way they go to the ground immediately with no effort. And the match now favors Gordon because Gordon is significantly more skilled on the ground. The question is how can we make this match as short as possible? </s><s>[INST] And as is so often the case, the answer comes back to legs. So for people just listening to this, Gordon's in an open guard and Nicky Rod appears to be trying to keep his hips away from Gordon's legs. [/INST] Yes, the Gordon's leg. Nicky Rod knows there's a danger here. So he's elected to go to his knees that will set up his favorite body lock passes and it will in some ways mitigate some of the dangers associated with leg locks. So Gordon's whole thing is how am I gonna get my body weight underneath them? He has a choice between linear entries where he enters between his opponent's knees and circular entries where he inverts and spins underneath the opponent </s><s>[INST] to get under his center of gravity. Is there a way for somebody to try to get a body lock [/INST] without giving Gordon an opportunity to get under them? The body lock is an excellent way to shut down leg lock injuries if you can get to the body lock But you can see Gordon's very very disciplined with his elbow and knee position elbows and knees Working in position it's very very hard for his opponent to access his waist that shoulder is always either across the hip or in front of the shoulder sorry </s><s>[INST] his knee is either in front of the shoulder in front of the hip and we're one minute into the match and just if I Were to look at the video player here. It appears that the matches over soon, so So I guess Nicky Rod is facing this. I need to get close in order to do the body lock. And the closer you get, the more danger there is to let Gordon get under you and get the leg control. [/INST] Now they're starting to get close here. Gordon's gonna try and get his head underneath his opponent and make a circular entry into the legs. He's clearing his opponent's head out of the way by faking the arm drag on the far side. First move that he used against his first opponent earlier in the tournament, and there's the leg. Spins underneath it, goes circular, rotates through, gets his body weight underneath his opponent. Now he's gonna trip him down to the mat. </s><s>[INST] Now, I believe Nicky Rod tries to pull out his foot here. And Craig also said that Nicky Rod has gotten used to be able to pull that foot out from anybody, and that he was very surprised at the grip that Gordon was able to actually hold on. So I just wanna comment. [/INST] I'm just parroting commentary from the internet. If you look at what's happening here, from the internet, if you just freeze it, you'll see that Gordon, like any good leg locker, will always treat his opponent's foot like a knot at the end of the rope. Just as you slide down a rope, if there's a knot at the end, your hand will catch. So too with the human leg, when they go to extract by pulling, you just keep your fist as close to your shoulder as possible and narrow the gap. The foot will always catch. The failure that many people have is they let their hand drift away from their own shoulder. And so there's room for the foot to extract, but you'll see Gordon's extremely disciplined with thumb close to his own shoulder, which creates a situation that's very, very hard </s><s>[INST] just to simply pull your foot out. You're focusing on the knot of the foot. [/INST] Yeah, also it's very early in the match. There's very little sweat. Both athletes are still pretty dry. Now, Gordon has to climb the leg and now he's already captured his opponent's shoelace. There's the heel exposure coming up. Nicky Rodd already knows things are getting bad. </s><s>[INST] And there's the win. Actually, the comment I made, I guess, was from a little bit earlier. There was an earlier time when Nicky Rodd was trying to pull out the foot and Gordon's able to hold onto the knot, which is interesting. [/INST] Now, that was a brilliant day's work by Gordon Ryan. He's had two matches against opponents considerably bigger and stronger than himself. And the time of the two matches can be measured in, I think, less than two minutes. So he's done what he set out to do. No injuries, no exhaustion. He's beaten four guys back to back. All of whom are excellent athletes with minimal energy expenditure, and he's ready to go on to his super fight. </s><s>[INST] So he's done what he set out for. And that's against one of the greatest, arguably, for a long time, really, really up there, Jiu-Jitsu practitioners, competitors, grappling, no geek competitors of all time, which is Andre Govaal. [/INST] Yes, Andre Govaal is almost certainly at this point the greatest ADCC competitor of all time. </s><s>[INST] Won more super fights than anyone else by a landslide. So if I may just read a few words you've written on Instagram about this match, about Andre Govaal on greatness. How great you become in any given endeavor will always be assessed by the degree of difficulty of the barriers you had to overcome to get to the top. Just as the lion became king of the jungle, not by living among sheep, but by dominating a world of elephants, hyenas, buffalo, leopards, crocodiles, so too the greatness of an athlete will be determined not just by his own ability, but by the greatness of the athletes he faces. Thus, in his quest for greatness, Gordon Ryan owes a debt to the greatness of his toughest opponent, Andre Govaal. And you go on to sing him praises. So, and that introduces this match. You know, there was an interesting moment. I didn't even listen to the words exchanged, but because I had the great fortune of sitting next to Hachukrese, there was this fascinating moment before the match. And I can't believe Gordon is sufficiently relaxed to do this. But he walked up to Hachukrese and had a discussion. What do you think? You face Andre Govaal before. What are your suggestions? And they've talked to it back and forth. They brainstormed ideas like minutes before the match. And it was just a beautiful moment of like, I don't know, like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan talking to each other, something like that. I mean, I wonder how much brainstorming there really was and how much was it just kind of like spiritual inspiration or something like that? [/INST] Yeah, I think it's more spiritual inspiration. He looks up to Hachukrese as a very close friend, a mentor of mine. So I always tell my athletes, look to Hachukrese as your example. This is a guy who always fought for the finish. He tried to express the highest ideal of jiu-jitsu, which is control leading to submission in every match he was ever in. He even lost matches on tactics against people that he could easily have defeated if he adopted a different tactic. But he always insisted on victory by submission. It defined his career, made him who he was. </s><s>[INST] And I always try to have my athletes emulate him. So what was the strategy going into this match? What were you thinking? What were you thinking? [/INST] Okay, for Andre Govaal, he had, there's a sense in which Andre Govaal had to fight literally the perfect match to win this. Okay, this is a match that's gonna be 20 minutes long and potentially 40 minutes long. Andre Govaal cannot win by submission. Gordon's submission dominance here is just too great. It would be exceedingly difficult for him to win on the ground. Gordon's ground positional game is just too advanced. And so for Andre Govaal, he had to win. If he was going to win, it was going to be in a standing wrestling exchange where most people assessed him as having a measure of superiority over Gordon Ryan. The problem is that it's hard to just keep a potentially 40-minute match on the ground, sorry, off the ground that whole time. It's very, very difficult indeed. So he would have had to fight literally the perfect tactical match to make it happen. And he would have to do it without getting called for stalling points. Gordon has the luxury that if at any point they go to the ground, he has complete dominance. But Gordon too has a problem, that he can't pull guard without being penalized. And if Andre Govaal can play this tactical game of forcing Gordon to pull guard and then staying at a distance where he doesn't, he's doing enough action not to get called for stalling, but not so much to engage with the dangerous Gordon Ryan on the ground, then it's feasible he could have won. But it would have been, as I said, it would have required the most perfect application and integration of technique and tactics </s><s>[INST] that he's capable of. How much intimidation was there? [/INST] Or are these assets already beyond that? </s><s>[INST] When you say intimidation, be more precise. Do you think there are some degree, if you were just to empathize with Andre Govaal, do you think there's some degree in which Gordon was in his head? Because of the trash talk leading up to certain events, because of the level of dominance that Gordon has shown in this competition in months and years leading up to it. Also the fact that Andre Govaal is also a coach of a large team. So there's some pressure to demonstrate to the team that the oil line's still got it. [/INST] Yeah, yeah. I can't speak for Andre, but I know for Gordon, it's hard to be intimidated when you know the other guy has no method of finishing you. It just takes so much pressure off. When you just go in, you're saying there's literally no way this guy can finish me. And there's no way this guy can pin and control me. I can't be finished, I can't be pinned and controlled. The only way I can lose this is if this guy plays a tactical game. So in his best case scenario, I lose by a tactical game. But from Andre's perspective, it's like if I make one screw up, this kid could finish me. You can see which way the intimidation game goes. Now, for the start, things get interesting here. We've already said, if you could just freeze it right there, Andre's only realistic path to victory is standing grappling, okay? That would require him to take Gordon down, presumably multiple times after the first 10 minutes and not be taken down at all by Gordon. So it's a tall order, it's possible, but difficult. And here's where things get interesting. I told Gordon before the match, just go out and offer him the leg. Same we did with Nicky Rod. And that's where things get interesting. I must say that I loved what Andre Galvand did at the start of this match. He's a little crazy here. There was just so much energy in the room at this point that his hand fighting got a little. </s><s>[INST] For people just listening, there's a bit of hard slapping. That's fine. [/INST] That could be considered a strike. That's fine, yeah. That could be considered a strike. It's fine, there was just a lot of electric atmosphere in the room. So now, things settle down a little bit, but here's where things get interesting. Andre throws the whole tactical game out the window right from the start. He goes for the takedown, Gordon doesn't try to fight the takedown because it's in his interests to go to the ground. But I love this about Andre. He's literally like, fuck you, kid. Let's see how good your ground game is. So he shoots the takedown and Gordon accepts it obviously because it's to his advantage to accept it. But I love the fact that Andre was like, I'm not even going to try and stall this out. I'm just going to bang. There it is. So he's like, okay, let's see what you got, kid. They say you're good on the ground. Let's see what you fucking got. And I love that about Andre. Unfortunately, he's </s><s>[INST] entered the hornet's nest now. What happened there real quick? Because that was very fast. [/INST] Gordon immediately went into Ashigurami. Not just any Ashigurami, but Ashigurami was holding both </s><s>[INST] legs. There's an open guard and he scooted forward. Oh, wow. That's really nice. [/INST] So he splits the legs, now he dominates the space between the knees. So there's a guaranteed </s><s>[INST] straight Ashigurami here. He split the knees against Andre Gavao, like effortlessly right there. [/INST] So already Gordon's in his preferred domain now. So he's starting to off balance his opponent. He's looking for a reaction to get heel exposure. He does get heel exposure. Andre does a good job of monitoring the feet to try and reduce the breaking pressure. But the brute fact is it's in Gordon's realm now. This is where he has all the advantage. And the match is going to be 20 minutes in Gordon's realm. That's going to be a very, very tall order. </s><s>[INST] Was there a moment here, again, Gordon's on the legs? Are you impressed that Andre was able to [/INST] get out from this? I don't know. I would expect this. Andre's been preparing for this for two years. And remember, Andre has gone against some of the greatest leg lockers in grappling before and prevailed. So he's not naive. He knows how to defend himself. The big problem is that he's going to create defensive reactions, which lead into other aspects of Gordon's game, in particular </s><s>[INST] back exposure. So here, Ashigurami goes to a single leg type of position where Gordon runs [/INST] to Andre's back. Now he has to return him to the mat. The most efficient way to do so is always courtesy of foot sweeping. So he pulls out a diashihirai from the back to sweeping down to the mat. And now Gordon's on top. And this is a serious problem for any grappler in the world. Once </s><s>[INST] Gordon gets top position, he's just relentless. But just getting Andre Guevara's good, just [/INST] getting the guard back, all of that is great. There's also a sense here in which Gordon is </s><s>[INST] pacing it too, just to physically fatigue an opponent. So he's passing the guard, [/INST] but not rushing it. Now what Gordon's looking for here is complete chest to chest contact. He's getting very close to it now, and once he gets chest to chest, an opponent in top position, past one of his opponent's knees, it's going to be awfully, awfully difficult for an opponent to </s><s>[INST] recover. What is he waiting for here? Is this pressure here? And over time, he just wears you [/INST] out. And over time, he just wears you out. Yeah, it's part of a campaign of attrition, of pressure, over time. Now he's creating a situation where he's either going to get back exposure or mount exposure. Either way is pretty much fatal when you're dealing with Gordon. Andre </s><s>[INST] elected to go the route of back exposure. Now, Gordon got the body triangle is on his back. [/INST] Now, there's one physical problem here. Andre Galvan has a neck like a ball and he has a very short and very thick neck. So, penetrating under the chin for a strangle can be a real problem. He also has extremely well-developed shoulders and upper arms. So, when the head comes down and the shoulders go up, there's very little real estate to work with with regards to your strangle holds. So, Gordon in time will trap one of his opponent's arms with his legs in order to take away one of those strong defensive arms. There you can see the arm has been trapped and now he can start working towards the strangle. And now here it's still difficult. It's still difficult, but things are looking good. There's still considerable amount of time left on the clock. Gordon as well ahead on points. So, all the pressure, all the tactical pressure now is on Andre. You'll see the critical penetration of the jaw with the wrist. Now, Gordon elects for a one-handed strangle. Andre fought very bravely, but a strangle, it doesn't matter how brave you are. </s><s>[INST] And where does the strangle actually happen in terms of... it felt like the strangle was at the blade of the, it wasn't even fully sunk in, so [/INST] where is is that like a full calm is like a four-handed joke. There's a sense in which, once you get underneath, you know the inevitable. Because again, the inevitable, you're feeling the inevitable. It's like a to go back to the chest analogy. It's like </s><s>[INST] resigning in the chest. Yeah, that the inevitable, you're feeling the inevitable. And chess is considered almost like impolite to let it run out when you understand, when you understand that death is on the horizon. And there's a lot of respect. That was the beautiful thing with all the trash talk and everything like that. Gordon always shows respect. I love that about the drama of combat. [/INST] It's trash talk in the beginning and respect at the end. I think it's, you know, when you feel someone, Andra has great skills. And when you grapple someone, you feel just how skilled they are. And whatever issues you had prior to the match, evaporate when you feel, okay, just like you, they do the same moves and same kind of concepts. And you see that there's more that bonds you together than separates you. And that's the feeling at the end of most grappling matches. </s><s>[INST] So if we could talk about Giancarlo, who had an incredible performance. And I mean, there's a lot of things we can say. We can probably go through his matches, but if we could just talk without that, about some of the most impressive things that you saw about him. One of the things I think you mentioned elsewhere in here is about confidence. So one of the things you saw that could really benefit him as an athlete and competitor is to build up his confidence. [/INST] Is there, can you speak to that? First of all, I should give you some background. Giancarlo Badoni was a strong local black belt in Boston, teaching at Bernardo Faria school. When I would film instructional videos, I would often talk to him and talk to him about his competitions and training. And he would do local competitions. He was trying to go from gi training, which was the majority of his competitive background into no gi. And he was struggling in local competitions, especially with things like leg locking, where he had no background in leg locking and would often get submitted. So as we worked together in instructional videos, we would talk and discuss. He would periodically come to the gym in New York City and come in to work out with the guys. And he often struggled in the training room. He had no experience with things like body lock guard passing. And this used to mean that he was, many of the training sessions didn't go well for him. So he was always like a very polite, well-spoken young man and worked hard. When we went to Puerto Rico and the team ended up drifting apart, when we moved into Austin, he said, you know, now that many of your athletes have left, could I come down and train with you guys full time? And I was like, yeah, I'd love to. I thought it'd be a great training partner for Gordon and Gary. We didn't really have any training partners at that point. And sure enough, he literally just picked up everything he had and moved down to Austin. Now, anyone who just moves halfway across the country to begin training, that already gets my respect right there. That's a big commitment. And he began training. We put him on a training schedule where first he had to cover up his big weaknesses. He had limited attacks from bottom position. He had poor leg lock defense. And he was very, very vulnerable to certain kinds of guard passing, </s><s>[INST] which weren't part of his experience. This is all a year out from ADCC. Yes. And we should also maybe give the spoiler, which is he wins his division in a dominant fashion. He also does incredibly well at the absolute [/INST] and he is. It was an amazing thing. To give you an idea, when he first moved to Austin, he competed in a WNO event. And I don't think he scored a single point, lost a couple of matches, and including matches to people who were in this ADCC. So he came out of that looking very depressed and he lost to Ken Anduarte. He lost to Mason Fowler. So John Carlo always struck me as someone who was positionally sound. He had good guard retention, things like this, but he had no offense. He had no leg lock defense. And he just wasn't able to assert authority on matches. He was a guy who was always gonna be tough to be because it's hard to pass his guard, that kind of thing. But he wasn't dangerous. </s><s>[INST] Can I ask you a question on that? Because my interaction with him early on when he came to Austin, I remember he attracted me a bunch on the match, showing me stuff. But I wonder if that kindness is a detriment to the confidence. Is there some connection? No, you can say again, confident. So killers can be nice too. [/INST] You can say again confident. Killers can be nice too. Absolutely. Confidence comes from a skill level. And confidence is a much more rational thing than most people ascribe it. People think of confidence as like this esoteric ethereal element that you either have or you don't. In fact, confidence is much more a reflection, a rational reflection on your past experience. If you're successful with your past experience and you're expecting to compete in a situation which is similar to your past experience, and that past experience is mostly being successful, you'll be confident. Are you pretty confident that the sun will rise tomorrow? Of course you are because it's done so every time in the past. as people like Hume pointed out, there's no supreme rational reason for believing this, but nonetheless, your confidence is high. And it's the same thing in jiu-jitsu. If you're performing well, and skills are the reason for that, your confidence will be high in the future, regardless of what your mindset is. So it's not a question of, you know, this personality does better in competition or that personality. Ultimately, it's going to come down </s><s>[INST] to your skills and your confidence will be a reflection of your accumulation of skills. So what was this journey like to a person who lost to a person who dominated the competition? [/INST] Yeah. First things first, we had to say, okay, you've got an obvious weakness, leg lock defense. So every day in the gym, he would be taught, okay, this is where you put your feet, this is where you position your knees, you point your knee this way, not this way. Um, uh, then he would have to start sparring situations in leg locks and have to work his way out. Um, initially these were like heartbreaking sessions for him where, I mean, I've got to give that kid full credit. Like he just worked his way through it patiently, </s><s>[INST] dealt with frustration, initial failures, and just said, I'm going to get better. Can we just look on that? So what's the experience of those early training sessions like from an athlete perspective? It's daunting. Are you basically dealing with the rational [/INST] thought that you're not going to ever be good? Yeah. You're wondering if I even got what it takes. Like, you know, think about it. He's an established player. He's been an IBJF competition. I believe he's a brown belt world champion in the gi. Um, and suddenly a group of kids that he's never even seen before repeatedly submitting them with leg locks in the gym. And he's like, man, this, this is terrible. Like a year from now, I'm supposed to fight ADCC against people like Craig Jones, like some of the best leg lockers in the world. Like it must've been hard, you know? Um, but he just stayed in there and no one worked harder than him. He just was in the gym three times a day studying every day. And unlike so many other people, every time he was showing something, he consciously and deliberately tried to enact it, even at the price of initial failure. Do you advise that that's a good way to go? It's the only way to go. Like if you, if you can't wrap your head around the idea that trying to acquire new skills will create a temporary time where your effectiveness diminishes as you're trying to bring on new skills, you're never going to make it. Cause you'll always stay at whatever skill set you are. The whole mental trick is to, is to imbue this idea of delayed gratification, that you have to accept that when I bring on new moves, my overall effectiveness will diminish. But there's the belief that in time as my skill performance increases, it will increase over time, but it will come at the price of initial frustration and failure. And John Carla made that mental switch early on in his time in Austin and to his credit, just stuck through within a very short period of time, it came very hard to leg lock. And even the best leg lockers in the room had a hard time with them. And that was the first step in confidence. He said, okay, I'm not getting finished quickly anymore. Then he had to bring in a whole new set of upper body submissions. He neglected upper body submissions. But he could never finish from the back and then suddenly in the gym he started finishing from the back. And then as gym performance against the lesser students increased. and you bump them up against better students. And then this goes on all the way up to the best guys in the room. And in a relatively short period of time, there were significant increases in performance and success begets success and this kept going. We started to get a hint of his developing confidence in local competitions. I remember seeing John Carlo compete in a local fight to win competition against a tough Brazilian kid who John Carlo just came out, dominated, and finished with a leg lock. Now, that was interesting. You're the guy that used to get finished by leg locks and now you're beating tough opponents with leg locks. And that was an important psychological step for John Carlo Badoni. And with each little step as we went further and further, then he got to ADCC trials and had one of the great performances. I believe he submitted all of his opponents in ADCC trials and put on a fantastic display of grappling. Shockingly, no one paid attention to it. They were just like, oh, yeah, he won. And John Carlo flew into ADCC completely under the radar. They just saw him as, oh, he's the guy that won American trials and no one really paid much attention. In his first match, he took on a great Brazilian champion, Isaki, and won in dominant fashion. He was about to strangle him with just a few seconds left on the clock. And I remember John Carlo being furious at the end of the match, thinking I was so close to finishing, he wanted a perfect finish. Up on 0.6 to nothing. Yeah. And still chasing. He could have just coasted at this point, but he wanted to finish every one of his opponents. And he got very, very close, but not quite there. And then in his next match, he had to take on the defending gold medalist from the previous ADCC. This was the guy who was the favorite to win. So you have a relatively unknown John Carlo </s><s>[INST] fighting the man who defeated Craig Jones in the previous ADCC. ADCC. Do you remember what stood out to you about this match? It is, and yes, it's good wrestling, it's good everything. Yes. [/INST] Because all around grandpa. He's got, by judicious standards, he's a very strong wrestler. So our intention was to match his wrestling with John Cardo's judo skills. So you'll see, if we could perhaps go back, you'll see the first takedown on drag and took him down with a simple drag and pick. So that was John Carlos' first takedown. That was more wrestling oriented and good for his confidence to see that he could score a nice takedown. But Mateus Denise is very, very good at standing up from bottom position. If we just go back just a step. Okay. Now here we have something interesting. Mateus comes up from bottom, seizes a leg, and John Carlo defends the wrestling move and then goes immediately into, with a, it's kind of a mix of Sasai and </s><s>[INST] Diyashirai. That was beautiful. I didn't even notice that. That's really nice. Look at that. From defending a single, threatening a guillotine. [/INST] One of the big themes of our ADCC camp was that most of our opponents now are getting very strong in hand fighting, but they are not strong in foot fighting. And so we put a very heavy emphasis on foot sweeping attacks. You remember Gordon Ryan took down Andre Galvin with a foot sweep. And here you have John Carlo using the same technique, not from the back, but from the front. And an overhook, probably in post, catches the foot midair. And that's just a beautiful, beautiful takedown. That's beautiful Judo. And then, uh, and then later on the match, you will use a Kosurigake, another classical Judo takedown, to get top position. Now at one point, John Carlo was in trouble. He got his back exposed with this situation. Good. Double leg to a knee pick. So he has to expose his back in order to avoid giving up takedown points. But here's the defensive training that we work on is coming through. He's defensively sound, shuts out the hook, prevents the score, keeps his body at the right angle to prevent a power half nelson. Staying calm. Now he's got to turn this around. </s><s>[INST] It's one of the hardest things to do in grappling. How dangerous is it to put your, [/INST] in this position, to put your hands on the ground? It's ordinarily, it could be dangerous because your opponent could switch to an armbar. Whoops. And there's the body lock. Now there's some controversy here, but you can clearly see it. Uh, the hands were locked, so it shouldn't really be as controversial as people are saying. Now watch for the right leg Kosurigake here, </s><s>[INST] pulls in the hips, exposes the leg, boom, and down. Beautiful Kosurigake. Also probably a lesson that, [/INST] uh, complaining to a ref does not protect you from a good takedown. Yeah. That's why they're saying combat sports, defend yourself at all times. Um, but now the, the great advantage of, of judo takedowns over wrestling leg tackles is they confer upper body connection after the takedown, which is very, very important for ADCC. That's why we put such a heavy emphasis on them. And, um, now John Carlos is absolutely in the driver's seat. He just scored four points for that takedown. So he's well ahead at this point against the established favorite for the entire weight division. So now Mateus, Denise has to start taking some risks. He's staring down the barrel of defeat and there's not that much time left. And that's what's going to set up the, the pressure. Now it's tactical pressure. It's not physical pressure. It's tactical. Mateus has to turn away and that's going to create back exposure. The most dangerous kind of exposure in ADCC. Oh, there it is. Mount to back and, uh, John Carlos capitalizes. Mateus is smart. He's keeping on his side so that less than 75% of his back is on the floor to deny the, uh, the mountain </s><s>[INST] points, but that comes at a price and that price is back exposure. So the thing we talked about with Gordon, the, the circumstance of fate, which is he has a lot of grueling, tough matches and still chooses to do absolute. So what's in, he seems to just power through all of it. What, how much of it, how much of the calculation is how to survive the cardio, the grueling cardio [/INST] aspect of all of this. That's a, it's a great question. And the truth of the matter is you can't afford to pace yourself because if you say, I'm going to hold myself back for this match </s><s>[INST] and expectation of the others, you could end up losing your first match. So he, so he didn't [/INST] pace himself at all or any of the matches. You have to just be in good shape. And that's what the, the campus for now. It's mostly physical. You've, that's what the campus for like he's </s><s>[INST] felt more pressure in the training room than he felt in any of his matches, but still sort of attacking. Look at this. That was a beautiful transition from back or from whatever the heck that position was, uh, it right from, uh, from looking for the back transitioning here. What [/INST] the heck is this transition? That was engaging in a very good tactic, which is to get most of his back off the ground to deny them the mount points. So as back exposure starts, okay. He turns in threatening an unlock. Yeah. But you can see what's happening here is the left foot goes under. It's going to create a beautiful triangle entry. Threatening an unlock. Yeah. Right foot penetrates through underneath the neck and now he's locking a triangle, a Senkaku, but not just any triangle, a triangle with the, the figure four locked on the back of the opponent's head, which makes any kind of stacking defense very, very difficult. It makes it very, very hard for an opponent to pull away and creates a much tighter strangle than average. And as a result, it's a quick submission. </s><s>[INST] Beautifully done. Still chasing the submission. Yes. Uh, with a minute left up on points. Against the former champion. Against the former champion. That's match number two. [/INST] Now that's the first day. That's Saturday. So John Carla goes to sleep that night thinking, okay, I just beat a world champion in my first match and almost submitted him. And I just submitted the defending champion. So of course he wakes up on Sunday morning feeling pretty damn good. Now there's an interesting twist here. His opponent is a, uh, talented young Irishman who won European trials, I believe almost entirely with leg locks and almost all of his major attacks in the tournament so far being leg locks. Now bear in mind that a year ago, John Carla was losing to local blue belt competitors via leg lock. So in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, how's he going to </s><s>[INST] handle this? Will the leg lock training kick in and you'll see the result. Uh, John Carla is, [/INST] as on top passing an open guard so you can see his legs away from any attacks. Yes. His opponent, Owen from Ireland is employing the same tactics that we made famous years ago. The idea of sitting to butterfly guard and looking to entangle the legs, he's kind of playing that game. So, um, so John Carla is obviously used to this from training the gym. So he's doing a good job of preventing entanglement, controlling his opponent's shoelaces and moving out to an angle which limits his opponent's entry options. So hands on the shoelaces and angles, uh, is a good defense here. It's an initial defense. Now his opponent wants to get underneath the center of gravity. So John Carla wants to get outside the, uh, the line of his legs. At some point your opponent's going to entangle. If he's determined to entangle, at some point it's going to happen. So John Carla decides, okay, let's let it happen and let's see where his feet go and let's see how disciplined he is with his feet. And the opponent is inverted. Uh, uh, here does a good job getting behind John Carla's knee. So now they're fully locked in. So John Carla moves away to protect the heel, rotates out, controls his shoelace. Now at this point, the Irishman's starting to lose discipline with his own foot position. Okay. He's so focused on his own attack that he's starting to get a little sloppy with his own foot position. You see, he's assuming, oh, I'm the guy who's attacking. So my opponent will be afraid of my leg locks and is starting to make some small </s><s>[INST] technical errors that John Carla will be able to take advantage of. So he's threatening the sort [/INST] of the north-south passer, like, uh, he's not putting too much pressure on the pass because we're still pretty early in the match and he's not ready to score yet. So here again, he turns away his heel. Now his opponent's starting to get more and more cavalier with his foot positioning to a point where now it's just downright sloppy. So John Carla sees it, </s><s>[INST] identifies it, locks up a wrist to wrist toe hold and breaks his foot. Where's the [/INST] dumb question? Where's the control here? How is he? The control comes from his opponent. The entanglement is his opponent. His opponent is holding his own body in place with his own legs. </s><s>[INST] So he's the root of his own problem here. So he got sloppy. Well done. Well done. A little smile [/INST] from John Carla was very nice. The reason for that smile, you can probably guess is because a year ago, this would have been a disaster. And now instead it's a guaranteed ticket to the finals and either a gold or a silver medal. And so you can see in that compressed moment, that's the look of a man who's recognized just how much progress he's made and what was once </s><s>[INST] a weakness in roughly 10 months was the time it took. And so he faces Lucas Hulk by Bosa [/INST] in the final here. Now these two have a history. Hulk has beaten John Carla many times. And so for John Carla, it's a question of, okay, here I'm matched up against a guy who's repeatedly beaten me. How am I going to turn this around now? We talked earlier about confidence. If confidence was just a mental thing, John Carla never would have won this fight. When you've lost all those times to an athlete, words aren't going to change anything. But you can see right from the start, when they get into the handfight, John Carla is much more tactically adept with his handfighting. He's doing a good job of controlling his opponent's hands, preventing any kind of prolonged pressure on the head. And Hulk gets a sense here in which he realizes he's fighting a very different person. </s><s>[INST] And this goes a long time. Again, another super grueling match. Wrestling that eventually leads [/INST] to a back take care, back triangle, body triangle. Here you can see the same tactics utilized by Gordon Ryan. Back control based around the body triangle, many attempts to try and entrap his opponent's arm and take away those defensive arms. The main difference here is, again, you have an athlete with a very powerful, compact neck. So neck penetration is difficult. </s><s>[INST] And so John Carla will switch to a palm to palm strangle instead of the conventional figure four. And now there's eight minutes left. So all the time in the world, is it only just a matter [/INST] of time at this point in situations like this? Yeah. John Carla has a massive tactical lead in points. There's literally no way he could lose this match at this point. Even if his opponent did get out of here and take him down, John Carla would still be a hit on points. So the question now is not whether John Carla will get the gold medal, but whether John Carla will get it by submission. And there it is. There's the penetration of the neck and he can't get the figure four. So he opts for palm to palm instead, and there's the submission. Now, what a journey. John Carla's relatively unemotional man, but you can see there's emotion. That's not fake. That's genuine. And that's the emotions of a man who 10 months ago couldn't have done that. And then 10 months later, by dent of his own hard work and dedication and his ability to actively attack his weaknesses and turn them into strengths and then develop an ability to finish, that was a truly, truly </s><s>[INST] remarkable achievement. Let me ask you about Gary Tonin. So he is one of the, at least in my opinion, greatest submission grapplers of all time. There's a lot of components to that, but he lost in his [/INST] first match. Not only did Gary lose, he lost to the bottom seed of his division. And that in itself says something pretty remarkable about what's happening in ADCC. How there's a sense in which the days of the invited athletes being far superior to the trials winners are over. It was a clear signal that anyone who makes it to ADCC can beat the best people. Sam McNally is a very talented submission grappler from Ireland. He specializes mostly in armbars, but he has a good positional game as well. He has a very modern look to his jiu-jitsu and he did a fantastic job against Gary Tonin. I think technically Gary perhaps got a little far away from his true nature in grappling, which is relentless submission attack. And perhaps I should be given blame for this because I put such a heavy emphasis on the training camp overall on positional pressure. And I feel that worked very well for all of the athletes except Gary Tonin. </s><s>[INST] Interesting. So you have to acknowledge in the nature of the athlete part, [/INST] acknowledge in the nature of the athlete part. And I think I was coaching so hard to the new people in the room on positional pressure that I neglected Gary's innate ability to the fact that he does best when he attacks exclusively by submission. So I think if anyone should get blame for the failure here, it should </s><s>[INST] be me. There's another comment as maybe I'm over valuing that sort of just the physical aspect of [/INST] this, but it seemed like Gary looks skinny. Is the weight cut? Yeah, this is the first time he ever went down to the 66 kilos. So it wasn't critical. There's other guys who are bigger than </s><s>[INST] him who made the weight. But the weight cut, if you can just comment on, does that ever play a part in the athletes, the physical and the mental aspect of the weight cut? It is a thing in wrestling that could break even some of the toughest minds. [/INST] Yeah, but no, it wasn't a weight cut that would break someone like Gary Tonin. It's more physical. You train lighter and weaker. You tend to get injured more in camp because you're lighter. We have a team now after the breakout that's mostly comprised of people over 215 pounds. So there's very few small people left in the gym. Most of the smaller athletes went to the B team. So Gary's been struggling a little bit with training partners. But here, I think the chief problem was that Gary focused perhaps a little too much on the positional tactical game and got away from his true gift, which is relentless hunting for submissions. And as I said, I think the person to blame for that is me because I had to put so much emphasis on the positional game for the developing athletes that I didn't pay enough </s><s>[INST] attention to Gary's unique attributes. I mentioned I posted some stuff on Reddit, so there's a relevant question here. Somebody on Reddit asked, Gordon has said, and perhaps you have said as well, that there are two types of judicial practitioners, ones who move themselves around like Marcel Garcia, and ones that control the motion of their opponents like Gordon. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and how do those different approaches apply [/INST] depending on which weight class you're in? That's a great set of questions. Yes, I'm the person who promulgates this idea that there's two broad ways you can go on judicial. You can either focus on promoting your own movement to create opportunity or by restricting the other person's movement. If you're a slower, less athletic opponent, then you should definitely focus on the idea of restricting the other fellow's movement. That's how slow, unathletic people win in jiu-jitsu. If you're quick with the ability to change direction, stand up quickly, go down quickly, and move like a leopard, then you're almost always better off generating movement in order to create opportunity. One is based more on movement as the source of opportunity. One is based more upon pressure as the source of opportunity. You'll get someone like Gary Tonin or the Ruritola brothers. Their game is based around the idea of promoting their own movement to create opportunity. Whereas someone like Gordon Ryan or Hodger Gracie is about restricting movement and using that pressure to create reactive opportunity. Those are the two paths you can take in jiu-jitsu because our team now has become mostly associated with people over 200 pounds and because most of them will begin as I took the more high percentage approach of, okay, let's focus primarily on controlling the other fellow's movement. But Gary's a unique </s><s>[INST] individual and I feel like I let him down by not giving him special attention in regards to what he does. The fact that you've mentioned this now like four times in the span of a few minutes, just I love that, that all of this stuff weighs so heavy on you. And he is a truly special person, it is truly interesting to see what is the nature of a particular athlete that if you highlight makes [/INST] them shine. Let's go to the part where Gary actually loses the match. Okay, so the match is pretty innocuous at this point. The guy does a good job of turning into the arm and Gary gets caught reaching from the knees. Okay, that's always a mistake. And the guy does it, I think does a great job capitalizing on it. Now there's limited time left on the clock. This guy realizes, oh, this is my opportunity, he's got good flexibility and he gets the hook, so he just frees it right then. So there's a minute and a half left. And typically in ADCC, if you get the back, you score three points. So this is a huge score. For Gary to win here, it's got to be by submission. Okay, so Gary's made one mistake. Now, this talented young fellow from Ireland does a great job, not only of getting the back, but he really attacks well from the back. And let's </s><s>[INST] look at the depth of Gary Toner's defensive acumen here. And we should say leading up to this, [/INST] his defense is incredible. He keeps escaping. Our nickname for Gary is the Slippery Salmon, because it's like trying to hold a goddamn salmon on the road bank, trying to hold on to this kid. So he gets into a position which looks absolutely hopeless here. It gets worse. This is already </s><s>[INST] bad, but trying to hold on to this kid. It's one of the most fun things to watch about Gary's [/INST] skill in the escapes. It's incredible. It's beautiful to watch. So the guy has an excellent opportunity to transition off here into a rare triangle, which is one of the hardest things in the world to get out of. And from here, if this was anyone but Gary Toner, I think it would have been Curtin's. But you see, Gary just extends, keeps his arm at just the right angle to pop out and gets out. So now Gary's like, oh crap, I'm going to lose to this fucking guy. So he's got a minute left to do something. So he goes back into his submission mode. He goes back to who Gary Toner is and immediately goes into leg lock action. Now the young man from Ireland realizes, hey, I'm going to win this match against the number one seed. So Gary goes into the legs, gets to one of his favorite techniques, the heel hook. Now Gary has a brutal heel hook as heck, and gets real pressure on the kid's leg. That's hard to watch. Yeah, but to his credit, the kid is smart. He's like, you know what, let me take some pain. Is there a weakness to that? </s><s>[INST] Let me take some pain. Is there a weakness to that? Like, well, he turned his hips. [/INST] Yeah, it's unclear from the video whether Gary's arm slipped up with this considerable breaking pressure. Oh, it slipped. Yeah, it's unclear. But sometimes the heel can slip because something's popped. So it's unclear what happened there. There seems to be a reaction from the part of the opponent. It definitely did some damage. So Gary goes back for a second one. Oh no. </s><s>[INST] And again, you get that same kind of pressure. Yeah, it's unclear. But sometimes the heel [/INST] hook, so Gary goes back for a second one. Oh no. Oh no. Oh right. I like the Irish kid's reaction though. He's just like, you know what, let me eat this because I'm going to win this match and I'm going to be a legend for beating Gary Toner. So I admired his internal fortitude. But now Gary knows he's lost it. So there's a sensor in which you see how close it gets in these situations, how little there is between winner and loser. And sometimes you just get these heartbreaking situations where someone who ordinarily you would probably do very well against and you make one mistake and it's an unrewarding, uncompromising sport. One mistake </s><s>[INST] can be fatal. In class, you talked about escapes or arm locks and applies here as well. So you were teaching arm lock escapes and I think choke escapes. And the question came up, when should an athlete not tap and risk their arm being broken? And you quoted George Patton as of course you would, that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other bastard die for his country. So what's your view on when to tap and when not to tap in [/INST] competition? First off, in training, you should be tapping very early because you're not getting paid to fight in the gym. You're getting paid to fight on stage. So be a professional in the gym, tap early, tap fast. That way you'll last a lot longer. In competition, things are a little different. We always have to specify what is the situation. If you're in the first round of ADCC, your first match, you get caught, I would always expect my students to tap because if you get your leg broken or your arm broken in the first round, you still got three more matches before you get </s><s>[INST] to the final. There is a escape clause there as if you're a guy from Ireland and you're fighting [/INST] the number one seed. There is always an escape clause. Let it snap. Yeah, let it go. But your students, yes. Yeah, I would expect them to tap. I also think that if you're in a stranglehold, </s><s>[INST] it doesn't make a lot of sense and not tapping because you're going to pass out. Your students, [/INST] yes. It's like you said in chess, it's impolite to make the guy take it through to its conclusion. So I don't see any heroism in just letting yourself pass out. Now, things change when you get into a final. If you're in a final and you're ahead on points and you're willing to, most people at that point are going to be willing to let something break in order to win a gold medal. At that point, I leave it up to the student. It's a deeply personal decision. I would never say to a student, I expect you to let your body break in order to win a gold medal. I think my students are more than mature enough to make up their own minds. I would be angry if they let their bodies break in a meaningless fashion in some random tournament or in a first round match where there's no way you could have go on to the second, third, and fourth matches with a broken limb. But in a gold medal match in ADCC, I would leave the decision to them, a spontaneous decision in the moment. I would be confident that I had prepared them to do their very best to defend themselves. But what ultimately they do is their decision. Winning ADCC is for a grip or at least life changing. You're a world champion forever and no one can ever take that moment away from you. So I would understand if they took a decision to take damage. Hopefully it will never come to that because I do a good job of preparing people to get out of situations that he saw with Gary Turner. He was in a dreadful situation and got out within five seconds. Gary's been in arm locks that looked like even I was in the corner going like, oh my God, what is happening here? And still got out. So it comes down to training preparation. But if they did make that decision, I would understand provided it was a situation that would make their lives better and they made a calculation. It's not an emotional thing. Now, sometimes you get emotional, you fight a guy you just don't like, and you just don't want to tap to him. Then things get a little more interesting. Then again, it's a personal decision. If you hate someone so much that you literally can't even conceive of yourself submitting to them, probably best you don't get into matches with them in the first place. But if it should happen, again, it comes down to the student. I teach technique, not morals. So I let people make their own decisions on that. My thing is, look, don't get injured because if you're injured, you can't train. You can't train, you can't get better. </s><s>[INST] So stay away from injury as much as you can. So one of the other incredible stories here is, as you mentioned, Nicholas Morigali, one of the incredible ghee athletes in Jiu-Jitsu world, not ever having done no ghee training or competition and so on in a period of a year. [/INST] Actually, it's significantly less than a year. Nicholas only came about six months, I believe, before ADCC. As a phone call came from Gordon, he was like, okay, Nicholas wants to come down and train, wants to move to Austin. So he came down. It was funny. I remember the first day Nicholas came in, Nicholas Morigali, as you can see, he's like this tall, handsome Brazilian guy with a great personality and a wonderful smile. A super nice guy. So he comes in, he sits down on the mat and we're all kind of looking at the new guy and introducing ourselves. And I look at him like, buddy, what the fuck are you doing here? And he's like, what do you mean? And I go like, look at you, you're like tall and good looking, you should be a fucking model, not a Jiu-Jitsu guy. Look at us, we're all fucked up with horrible bodies and bad personalities. You're like a happy, good looking guy, you should be surrounded by supermodels. What are you doing Jiu-Jitsu for? And he just laughed and he started training with us. So he came in. Now, historically, he has been an athlete who always pulled guard. In Jiu-Jitsu parlance for your viewers, in Jiu-Jitsu, you have the option of sitting down to the ground. Jiu-Jitsu was mostly performed on the ground. And many athletes take advantage of this, they just come out and sit to the ground position and completely forego takedowns. Nicholas did this his entire career. Jiu-Jitsu also has practiced both gi and no gi. Nicholas was a shining light in the gi side of Jiu-Jitsu. He was one of the great champions of his era, but he had not only never competed without a gi, he'd never even trained without a gi. So there's significant differences between the two. There's a lot of overlap, but there's also some very significant differences. We're talking about a sport where even small differences can make a difference between a guy who gets the gold medal versus a guy who loses his first match. </s><s>[INST] It doesn't take a lot. So this was a very, very tall order. A lot of his attacks involve the gi [/INST] from guard. Absolutely. He's in a very dangerous attack. He doesn't just wear the gi, he really uses the gi. Like 90% of what he's based around is based around a combination of cross and straight collar controls with the control of the sleeve cuff. And so he really actively uses the gi. So when it came off, his first training decisions were like, he looked like a fish out of water. In addition, he had no experience of leg locking. So one of the most significant parts of the modern game, he just had nothing. Plus the wrestling. He had literally zero wrestling, which is half of ADCC is based around this. So ADCC is like six months away and he has to get ready for the gi world championships. Nicholas had won many accolades in gi judas, but he had never won the open weight division of gi worlds. So he's like, the first day he's there, he's like, John, I want to be the first guy to win gi open weight and ADCC open weight in the same year. I'm like, yeah. Now in my mind, I'm thinking like, yeah, that's never going to happen. You're </s><s>[INST] fucking weirdo. Do you think there was a degree to which he actually believed that? [/INST] A degree? He thought it was like a certainty. So he's looking at me like, yeah, I'm going to do this. So I'm like, well, Nicholas, this is very laudable and I approve of your confidence. But this is a difficult goal you've set yourself, but perhaps maybe like 2024 would be a more realistic. </s><s>[INST] He's like, no, no, I'm going to do it. In all seriousness, it is incredible that Nicholas Meragali had the guts to set such a nearly impossible goal. So what do you learn from this experience of setting a goal that most people would say is just unachievable and him [/INST] actually almost doing it, doing it? On the surface, this is absolutely crazy. When he mentioned the goal to me, I was, as I said, just looking at him and almost like disbelief. I didn't want to show it on my face. And yet he came within inches of actually doing it. He won his first ever gold in the open weight with a gi and got to the finals and lost a tight decision in the finals to take a silver medal. He wanted two golds, he got a gold and a silver. And there's a sense in which the sheer audaciousness of the goal set seemed ludicrous when it first happened. This is insanity. And yet he came at it with a plan. He came at it with his characteristic passion and hard work and came within inches of doing so. And there's a sense in which you could look at it as, oh, he had a plan and it failed. And yet, of course, no one in their right mind would look at that. They would say he set an audacious goal so high that it seemed impossible and it pulled his entire performance up to a level where even failure creates something truly </s><s>[INST] memorable. Do you encourage athletes or do you not get in their way when they set such a goal? Maybe even just forget athletes, human nature. [/INST] Yeah, that's a great question. There's a sense in which you don't want to make people delusional that said, but I do believe that if people are sufficiently embedded in a given project, if they committed to it to a certain degree, then you can skimp on many things in life, but don't skimp on your goals. Because the bigger your goals, the bigger your achievements will be. And even failure, as we saw in the case of Nicholas Miragali, I almost frown to use the word failure because if this is failure, give me more of it. Falling slightly short of what would otherwise be a perfect year. Even that still creates such a massive uptick in your performance that it's absolutely the right way to go. But there is a danger to this where people aren't committed and simply aren't working from a framework where they can realistically achieve these things, then it descends into delusion and that direction goes towards madness. You can't have that. So there has to be some kind of reality check here where you have to be physically and mentally capable to some degree of moving towards these goals. A random blue belt can't make audacious goals like that. It's just ludicrous. But with that in mind, if you're committed and there's a sense in which this is a definite possibility, set your goals high. Make big demands. Yes, there'll be times of frustration. There'll be more failure in your lives than otherwise. But even your failures will be </s><s>[INST] something great, something memorable. But in the near term, you would be hard pressed to find any data that justifies that goal. Because in his case, he probably wasn't very good at no [/INST] key even in the training room. So it's like, where do you look for even inklings of hope? We saw an incremental progress with each successive competition that he was in. His first competition, he looked good, but not great. Second competition, a little better. Third competition, took on one of the legends of American grappling and won decisively. So there </s><s>[INST] was a sense in which it was becoming more realistic with each outing. So now putting that inspiring philosophy aside, what was the actual plan on how to make it happen? [/INST] Leg locks. First, same thing with John Carla. First, you got to learn how to defend a leg lock. So initially, just as John Carla struggled, he struggled. Then he had to learn not just takedowns, but just how to set up a take. He had to learn basics like stance and motion and how to fight with the hands, et cetera, et cetera. So he had to learn from the ground up. And then he had to improve. He always had a very good triangle, always had very good armbar. Those were his two strengths coming into the no-key training. And those translate pretty well between gi and no-key. But he had no guillotine. His strangles from the back were, he has great collar strangles from the back, but he really, really struggled with finishing people from the back. So he's learning all this. And then he's like, well, now I got to get ready for the gi. So we had to switch his training to gi training. And that took out a couple of months. Then he went back briefly to Brazil and got a terrible rib injury right before the world championships and came back like more or less unable to move. So the world championships is a week away and he's like, John, I can't move. So I'm like, what are you going to do? He's like, I'm going to compete. So I'm like, are you sure? So we fly to California. He goes out and competes. His first opponent is literally the biggest man who competes in jiu-jitsu. This man is almost like 400 pounds. Nicholas has got completely broken ribs. We're taping up his ribs backstage before he goes out to compete. He beats everyone by submission and wins for the first time the open weight, a title he had never won before. He steps off the mat, looks at me and goes, well, I got the first of them. He wanted gi open weight and now ADCC. And now he can barely move. He's still gone through two days of brutal competition and his ribs are completely screwed up. It takes a week off to try and get his ribs somewhere back in order and then begins light training, building up to ADCC. We start putting him in no-gi competition. He fights two opponents of good quality, but not like world beating quality. And then as his game starts improving, we're getting closer and closer. He's starting to develop a sense where he can wrestle confidently on his feet. He's no longer easy to leg lock at all and he's starting to leg lock people. And he's starting to get his very strong guard passing, which was based mostly around pant grips and the gi to adapt to leg no-gi grips. In addition, he's starting to develop strong chest to chest positioning, which was never really part of his game, a pressure top game. And so things are looking good. But he's matched against Rafael Lovato, one of the great competitors of ADCC, and wins a convincing victory featuring a lot of takedowns and a lot of pressure passing. And people were just absolutely shocked. I remember the staff of Flo Grappling coming and going like, who is this guy? He's literally transformed. He's like a different person. So he goes into the world championships. In his weight division, he was matched with a fellow Brazilian in the first match. And they had an absolute barn burning battle, where at one point Nicholas was picked up and slammed and then ended up winning by Kimura, beautiful Kimura. Then he took on the man who ultimately wins ADCC open weight division and defeats him. Again, grueling matches. Yeah, tough, tough match. Now, Yuri Samoy at that stage was two-time gold medalist in ADCC. Nicholas wins a very, very close match against him, and then fights Craig Jones, who's one of the best leg lockers in the world. So I think most people were expecting Nicholas to get leg locked very easily by Craig. Nicholas showed the degree to which he had improved his leg lock defense in a six-month period. Craig never really got close to the legs and ended up becoming a takedown battle. It could have gone either way. Craig, I thought, did a really good job of pacing himself. Both athletes were very tired, but Nicholas was a head on points. And then Craig hit one last takedown, which sat Nicholas down to a hip. Didn't score, but it was the most aggressive takedown of that last period. And so Nicholas got </s><s>[INST] the nod and won a narrow victory. Yeah, Craig commented afterwards. He said that I really wanted the submission. And he said Nicholas seemed to really want the submission, but it ended up being a grueling match. It took everything, exhaustion-wise, everything he had. [/INST] It was a tough, tough match. And they were very well matched. Once they figured out they couldn't submit each other, it came down to their wrestling ability. Neither one of them is a wrestling specialist, but they're both competent in wrestling. And it became physically very, very tough. Then Nicholas went on to win the bronze medal in his weight division. So the next day, when we get called for the open weight, obviously John Carla won a gold medal. Everyone agreed that he should go into open weight. Did John Carla agree? Of course. Because he didn't have an easy format. </s><s>[INST] You don't order people until you ask them. I guess the question I'm asking is how do you find [/INST] the strength to then go on to absolute after? Because you've done a 14-week training camp where every day was just as intense as any ADCC day. So you're used to it at that point. But he had very, very long, tough matches. But he's used to it. He's a good athlete. So Nicholas and John Carla went out, and John Carla had a spectacular submission victory against his first opponent. Nicholas had some firework matches, and one of the toughest opponents he came up against was the brilliant Ty Ruatolo. They had an absolute barn burner. It was a very, very close match. Ty had had an incredible first two matches. He'd beaten Pedro Mourinho by submission, and he'd beaten the great Felipe Pena in a very narrow match. Very, very tight. Felipe lost on a guard pull. But Felipe is considerably bigger and stronger than Ty. So for Ty to win that match, even by a guard pull, was deeply impressive. It was an action </s><s>[INST] pack match that went back and forth. Very, very impressive. But he had very, very long, tough matches. That's just a small tangent. Both Ruatolo brothers had an incredible performance. What do you think makes them so good if you were to analyze their game outside of you [/INST] and just this specific match? Yeah, absolutely. There's a range of factors. One is that they started the sport very, very young. They're probably the first example in American grappling of American students who started at age four or five. Most people, when I began jiu-jitsu, started jiu-jitsu as adults. I was 28 years old when I had my first lesson as a white belt. So in time, people got a little younger. For example, Nikki Ryan started when I think when he was 12. But the Ruatolo started when they were literally children. They had excellent coaching going all the way up through into their teenage years. So they had the advantage of starting the way so many successful athletes do as children and going up through adulthood with strong coaching all along the way. Excellent parental support. So they had a great history where their youth didn't show off just how long they'd been in the sport. So you're dealing with a kid who's 19 years old, but he's been grappling for 15 years. And what counts is not your age, but your mat age and quality. Now, they were very young in years, but they were very old in mat age. </s><s>[INST] But there's a lot of athletes that have now, as you correctly said, have spent from a very early age on the mat, but still these particular ones stand out. [/INST] It's interesting. No, there's a lot more to it than that. This is just the first setting the scene. But what really makes them stand out is that they've mastered this idea of covering up and improving initial weaknesses while building upon strengths. When the rutolas first encountered my students, they were relatively easy to leg lock because none of their training experience had prepared them for that. Now, they were young at that time, I believe like 16 or 17. And it was an obvious problem for them. They both got heel hooked by my youngsters also, Nikki Ryan and Ethan Kralenstein. And you could clearly see that they identified their current weakness and made prodigious steps to improve upon it to a point now where they're winning championships with their own leg locks. I love the fact that even as teenagers, they had the maturity to say, okay, here's an obvious weakness, let's get around this, let's turn it into a strength. I love the way they did that. Focus on the weakness and let that guide you to the thing you're working on. But they also, they covered up their weaknesses, but they also understood what are our actual strengths. Now, physically, both of the brothers have extraordinary reach for their height. They both have extraordinarily long arms for their height. That means that variations of karikatame, in particular dasas, anacondas are going to be much easier for them and their weight division than for most people. These are all jokes. Yes, strangleholds. So they specialize in those. They adapted a game based around movement, which forces opponents, not with physical pressure, but with tactical pressure into positions which expose them to those specialized strangleholds that they use. Traditionally, when we looked at the rheumatoids when they were young, we saw that there was a disparity between their top game and their bottom game. They were generally much better in top position than they were in bottom position. Again, they saw that as a potential weakness and they turned it around using again, their unique long limbs relative to their height, and they make use of a buggy strangle. I'm not sure why it's referred to as a buggy strangle, but basically, it's a variation of karikatame using the legs done from disadvantageous positions on bottom. They both make brilliant use of that, not so much as a strangle weapon. Occasionally, they'll strangle some of it, but they mostly use it to create pressure to make people back off. As a result, they overcame the disparity between their top game and their bottom game. Now, their bottom game is part of their offense and they're very, very successful from there. Again, you had that really impressive sense in which they identified their weaknesses and leg locks in bottom position, turned it around, and made it into strengths. At the same time, they identified, okay, what are our physical gifts and how can we maximize their use? They created a program of initiating movement that created tactical rather than physical pressure to set up their best strangle holds. I deeply admire what they've done. Those two young men </s><s>[INST] have a huge future ahead of them. Here, one of the brothers faces in the absolute Nicholas Mergali, [/INST] and bear in mind, Ty has just fought two very tough matches against guys bigger and stronger than himself. He's coming into a third match against a third guy who's also bigger than he is. So, hats off to Ty fighting open weight against three monsters in a row. Now, Ty and Cade, one of their best attributes is they are two of the best scramblers in the sport of jiu-jitsu. So, whenever you go to shoot on the legs with them, there's a danger of running straight into a dark strangle hold. They're very competent at counter-attacking single legs with dark strangles. It's also very hard to control them after a takedown. They do a very good job of springing back up to the feet. So, I told Nicholas to favor upper body judo-based takedowns rather than wrestling takedowns. And you see here a fine example of Nicholas' gathering skill in Uchimata, </s><s>[INST] one of the great throws of judo. Set up with a, there's a bit of a foot sweep. [/INST] The nice thing is he starts off with what it looks like. It's actually a two-direction Uchimata. He threatens Uchigari to the back. That's the throw that throws your opponent to the back. His opponent pushes into him, then he changes direction with a support foot and takes him over with Uchimata. As we said earlier, the great advantage of judo over wrestling is that because there's upper body connection during the throw and after the throw, it's much harder for an opponent to scramble away from you. And even Tai Ryutol is one of the best scramblers in the sport. He has to stop scrambling here and just go back to guard position and enable </s><s>[INST] Nicholas to hold top position. I mean, some of it is also the surprise. There is something less [/INST] understandable about judo techniques because there's less data, it feels like. The Ryutolers </s><s>[INST] also have a good Uchimata. I think they're very familiar with it. How often do you think are they in the receiving end of an Uchimata? That's a good point. I just feel like they have more data in terms of defending. I mean, of course, there is fundamentals to the Uchimata that make it [/INST] difficult to scramble around. This is a good example of someone who literally didn't have a single takedown six months ago. Now he's throwing one of the toughest guys in the sport with one of the more difficult throws of judo. You're a judo man. You'll back me up and say, Uchimata is not an easy throw to learn. It takes some time. You're hopping on one foot with both </s><s>[INST] of your body weight. It's very counterintuitive. It's one of the more difficult throws. Let go of your understanding of takedowns, of maybe wrestling style takedowns or more intuitive kind of takedowns to understand it. There's many throws like this, Uchigari is like this, Uchimata is like this. It's weird. What? I'm on one foot. I'm hopping around. This makes no sense, but it works. Foot sweeps are also weird in that way. They're a little bit more intuitive, but to get very good at foot sweeps, you have to understand timing, weight distribution. It's a dynamic thing that's [/INST] weird. I always laugh when I talk to Nicholas and I say, I try to teach him a single leg, which is traditionally, a high single leg is one of the easier takedowns to perform in terms of mechanical difficulty. Nicholas always struggles with it. Then I teach him one of the more difficult </s><s>[INST] takedowns, Uchimata, and he does it flawlessly. You never know. Certain things get attached. I mean, you see this in Judo. It's kind of interesting to see there's classes of takedowns and certain people just gravitate in their philosophical intuitive understanding of body mechanics or something like this. It's like Senagi versus Uchimata. You very clearly see there's some people that understand, they like to have both their feet planted on the ground, and there's some people that are okay with this one foot on the ground and the other one is doing something else. I don't know what that... What is that? I don't know. It's what makes you fall in love with one field versus another. Can you speak to that? You released a new instructional on takedowns and standing skills for jiu-jitsu just at a high level. Using Nicholas as an example, [/INST] what are some key ideas about takedowns? Okay, first, whenever people talk about standing position in jiu-jitsu, they always say, oh, I need to learn some takedowns. But it's never a question of just learning the takedowns. It's learning the prerequisites to the takedowns. The takedowns are more or less like an afterthought. You've got to begin with stance, motion, the ability to engage in grip and contact, get your opponent out of balance, and then comes the takedowns. The takedowns in jiu-jitsu are mostly divided into lower body takedowns, tackles to the legs, single legs, double legs, to a lesser degree, high crouch in jiu-jitsu, and then upper body takedowns, which are mostly judo-derived. Nicholas had to start more or less at the ground. We didn't even know how to come out and make grips or hold a stance. He had to </s><s>[INST] learn every element of it. The fact he was able to do so in six months was just incredible. [/INST] Can you comment on the upward posture that seems to work for jiu-jitsu? Matches in jiu-jitsu are much longer than the matches in wrestling. In addition, there are many kinds of submission threat which are not there in wrestling, so the stance has to be significantly changed. In wrestling, they favor generally a very low crouch because the vast majority of attacks are tackles to the legs. Anyone who stands upright in wrestling tends to get heavily punished by being taken down immediately with a leg tackle. In jiu-jitsu, the matches are so much longer, it would be difficult in a 40-minute match, for example, to maintain a bento or crouch. You'd be exhausted. There are also problems associated with submission holds. There are many forms of submission hold, guillotine, dasa, etc., where if your head comes down too low, you become a little vulnerable to this. The stances in jiu-jitsu competition tend to be much more upright, more like judo and greco. Right off the bat, you see the stance is different. The motion tends to be much slower and more evenly paced because you've got to be able to do this for long periods of time. The number of fakes per minute, the number of shots attempted per minute is usually much lower. These are obvious differences. The biggest difference, however, has nothing to do with that. It has to do with tactics. In jiu-jitsu, the scores will be judged by what happens after the takedown. In the case of ADCC, you can take someone down in ways that would score in both wrestling and judo and possibly even win the match in the case of judo, and it would score zero in ADCC because of the nature of the rules. The whole idea of ADCC scoring is to demonstrate control after the takedown. That's what happens in the critical three seconds after the takedown that creates the score. In judo and in wrestling, the emphasis is placed on the takedown itself. In jiu-jitsu, the emphasis is placed on the aftermath of the takedown. That's where the score is allocated. That can be a period of up to three seconds. Three seconds doesn't sound like much, but in a scramble after a takedown, three seconds as a fucking eternity. It goes on forever. And so you will see many examples of takedowns that, as I said, would score very well in Judo and wrestling, but don't score at all on ADCC. And so the whole skill becomes packaging the standing position in terms of the takedowns themselves, but in particular preparing the athletes for that critical three seconds after the takedown. That's why many people who are very fine wrestlers struggle in ADCC. They </s><s>[INST] take people down by wrestling metric all the time, but don't score under ADCC rules. What makes GSB so good at takedowns? I've gotten chance to even recently watch him do takedowns. Within this framework that you're teaching, what stands out to you about him that you draw [/INST] lessons from, draw lessons from. Yeah, that's another example of someone who's performing takedowns in a rule set radically different from wrestling. Just as the ADCC rule set is so different from conventional wrestling rule sets, that the whole manner in which you approach takedowns and even your understanding of takedowns has to be quite strongly modified. So to an MMA, it's even more extreme. People always think, oh, this guy's a good wrestler. He should be able to get takedowns in MMA easily. What you find is that the wrestling skills in MMA enable you to finish takedowns. If you get in on your opponent and get to the legs or the waist or what have you, your wrestling skill will enable you to finish the takedown. But getting to the takedown is massively different in the context of MMA than it is in wrestling. The entire stance is different. The entire set of distancing is different. There's the idea of positioning within a cage, like how close you are to the perimeter of the cage changes radically how you approach the takedown. The setups are literally night and day different. The setups are almost entirely composed of striking setups rather than grappling setups. So the act of getting to the takedown is like a completely different sport. Now, George studied wrestling and used to go to wrestling practice twice a week. In Canada, they do freestyle wrestling. They don't use the American college style of wrestling. Now, George's main emphasis in wrestling training was takedowns. Obviously, the whole ground element of freestyle wrestling was of no interest to him, like learning how to put people's back on the ground and turn them with leg laces and gut wrenches was of no value in MMA. So he devoted almost all of his study to just the act of taking someone down. So as in pure wrestling, George is not bad. I think he'd be a very competitive match, even for a highly ranked American freestyle wrestler. Obviously, he would lose easily on the ground because he's not used to the part here. He'd probably be leg laced or gut wrenched quite easily by a skilled opponent. But in just a pure takedown battle, he'd be a competitive training partner for even a good wrestler. But in actual MMA competition, he could take down even the most highly credentialed wrestlers and in some cases make it look almost effortless. And that came from his unification of striking skill with wrestling. So he used wrestling skills to finish the takedown and his karate and kickboxing pedigree to enter into the takedown. Now, when he initiated the study of this, this was at a time when MMA was pretty much in its infancy. And he was one of the most impressive people I've ever seen in this regard. He was a true innovator. He innovated this specialized area of striking to a takedown to a greater degree </s><s>[INST] than anyone else I'm aware of. Well, let me ask you about this innovation because you're one of the most innovative people in martial arts. There's several major categories of innovation that you have led. Obviously, leg locks, body lock, now wrestling. What's your process of innovation? So seeing the problems in a particular system, the gaps, how do you identify them and how [/INST] do you figure out systems of how to fill those gaps? First thing I look for is what are the current weaknesses in a given combat sport? So in the case of jiu-jitsu, it was very obvious that historically, jiu-jitsu had always been weak in leg locking. Jiu-jitsu had always been weak in standing position overall. And these were things that needed to be sorted out immediately. In its infancy, mixed martial arts was divided between grapplers and strikers. And most of the emphasis in early mixed martial arts was on the idea of specialists in a given domain forcing the fight into their domain. And that my early work with George St. Pierre convinced me that the right approach wasn't increased specialization and learning to force your athlete into that area of specialization at the expense of the opponent, but rather the real battles of the future would be won and lost, not with techniques per se, specialized techniques, but rather the integration of techniques and the overlap between the various grappling and striking skills. So that someone who was an inferior grappler would have just enough grappling skills to be able to hold a grappler off and then defeat them with striking. And a striker who was, if you went to fight someone who's superior to you in striking, you would have just enough striking skill to be able to hold them at bay and then enter into grappling. This went further and further until it got clear that there were whole areas of the sport that you need to change your entire mindset about them. So that people went into early MMA thinking in terms of grappler and striker. What I started to think is in terms of, okay, there are four fundamental skill areas of mixed martial arts. There is shoot boxing, which is the integration of takedowns and striking. There is clinch boxing, which is the integration of upper body clinch skills combined with striking, there is fence boxing, which the two athletes are locked up with each other on the fence, and they have to integrate takedown defense and striking skills. and there was grapple boxing, which is the merging of ground grappling with striking. When you broke MMA down into those four categories, you saw that each one of those four domains transcends the specialized martial arts that form their components. For example, in clinch boxing, you would incorporate things from judo, Greco-Roman freestyle, juditsu submissions, Muay Thai clenching techniques. But even if you took all five of those, the rule set that you're operating in required such extensive modification that the final product of clinch boxing transcended all five of its component martial arts and became its own autonomous skill needed to be worked autonomously. When we broke George's training down into those four areas, that's when real progress started to be made. That's when you started to see the integration of those four phases and the striking and grappling within each of them </s><s>[INST] was where victory was being won and lost. Once you reframe how you see a particular combat sport, [/INST] then you could start doing these detailed development of ideas that actually fit. There's a sense in which it had to start with a paradigm shift and then a research program began after that. You don't start with research, you started with a paradigm shift and then went to </s><s>[INST] research. Well, let me ask you, I got a chance to hang out with you and Hanzo Gracie at ADCC. He keeps messaging me saying he's going to call me and not calling me. I think aside from being hilarious, charismatic, and handsome, he is also and wise for his young age. He's also one of the greatest coaches and athletes of all time in martial arts. So let me ask, what have you learned [/INST] about life from Hanzo Gracie? The degree of difficulty that Hanzo must have encountered, he never talked to us about it, but I figured this out as the years went by. The degree of difficulty that he must have experienced when he first came to Manhattan and started teaching, it must have just been incredible. You've got to remember, Hanzo came from Brazil training with the best people in the world at that time. Hickson, all the Machado's, all of them were located around Gracie Baja and that Rio de Janeiro set. They all knew each other and they all trained together. They had internal problems, of course, but they all knew each other well and knew each other's games. So all of them had beautiful and highly developed jiu-jitsu. So all Hanzo knew from childhood on was perfect, beautiful jiu-jitsu and communicating with other people who also knew perfect, beautiful jiu-jitsu. Then he comes to New York, where he has to teach in a language that he at that stage barely spoke to a bunch of fucking morons who didn't even, on my first day in jiu-jitsu, they had to explain to me the difference between the mount and the guard. Because as far as I was concerned, yeah, you're on top. It's the same thing. They're like, no, no, no. Mounted is different from guard. And I'm like, no, it's not. Like you're on top of the guy. You just hit him. So he has to argue with you about this. Imagine going from training with Hickson Gracie to having to tell some moron that guard is different from mount. And we were so primitive back then. He went from the best training culture in the world to literally the worst. Just a bunch of guys in their mid-20s who knew nothing about the ground. Well, luckily he's known for his </s><s>[INST] patience. He has to argue with you. He's known for his patience. Out of that, he molded one of the greatest gyms ever in New York. [/INST] But out of that, yeah. Yes. He did a fantastic job. And most of it was based around the idea that he gave us complete freedom. We came in, we trained all day, and I started teaching beginner's classes. And then some of his senior students, Ricardo Meda, Rodrigo Gracie, and Matt Serra, opened their own schools around the tri-state area. So they left. There was a vacuum of teachers, and he asked me to start teaching. I taught for many, many years there. And he always gave us complete freedom. His only thing was to say, okay, do whatever you want. Just make sure it's effective. Prove to me it's effective. And that's the best research program you can ever get. Show me proof. And so many times, especially in those days in Judaism, there were so many things that were just off limits. You couldn't study Legos. You couldn't do this. You couldn't do that. This kind of game was for cowards. This is the only kind of game we accept. And Hensler was never like that. He was just like, okay, just do what you want. Prove to me it works. And if you give people that simple structure, you give them some time, some ingenuity, a lot of things can happen. </s><s>[INST] Prove to me it's effective. I got to ask you, and by the way, he'll come on this podcast, and I do feel like it's a little bit like writing a dragon or a bull of some kind. It'll be a fun journey. I can't, at least from my perspective, having interacted with having met him, it's hard not to smile. Easily one of the most charismatic people in Judaism. It's kind of fun to watch. Humans can be like this too. It's just the love that radiates from him is incredible. I got to ask you, this is from Reddit. There's a few legends that come from that gym, but people on Reddit kept asking me about some guy named Boris. Apparently you coached him at Hensos, and he was a legend. And he was terrifyingly good. What made him a legend? Who's this Boris [/INST] character? Easily traumatic people in Judaism. Boris is one of my early students. I think he was either my first or second black belt. Boris came from Long Island. He was a wrestler. He was of Russian Jewish descent and highly intelligent. Now he was short of stature, but very powerfully built and compact. Very nice, polite young man, but also slightly eccentric, which I always liked about him. He would always come dressed with glasses on, and he would leave the gym dressed, to use the American phrase, a complete nerd with his pocket protector. Now he was heavily muscled, but he would dress in such a way that he didn't appear so when he left. And we always used to laugh. Imagine some guy tried to mug Boris. They would see him with his nerdy glasses on and his pocket protector. And they would literally run into one of the most formidable human beings in the entire New York area. Boris started training due to, I believe, in Long Island. And then when he got a tech job in Manhattan, started training with us in a morning class. Now these were relatively early days in Manhattan in my teaching career. He and a group of others, a very small group, used to train early in the morning around 6am before work. And Boris was a legend in those days. Now a very young George St. Pierre came to train with us at that time, and he would come in at 6am to do his morning class. And he was one of the main training partners for Boris. And Boris being a wrestler, he used to generally prefer top position. And I would always encourage George to play bottom position. I'd say, you've got to get good in bottom position. You never know. I know you're good at takedowns, but one day someone's going to put you down. So you've got to work bottom position. And Boris had a very strong guard passing. I remember one of George's happiest days is finally after two years, one day he swept Boris, got on top, and finished him. And I remember that was one of his biggest thrills in all of his training career. That was the last time that ever happened. Boris was a very formidable man for that time. The funny thing about Boris is every time we would have a conversation, he would say, I'm only going to do this sport until I'm 40 years old. And then I'm going to stop. And I would say, why? Why not be like a lifelong martial artist? You know, you got so good. You're good at jiu-jitsu. You've got great skills. You've worked hard. Why not just keep going? He's like, it's ridiculous for a man to train after 40. There's no need. And you never gave any reason for this. It was just ridiculous. So one day he, now this is the guy who came in literally every day, 6am every day. One day he comes in and he comes up to be at the end of the training and he goes, Hey, John, I just turned 40. So I won't be seeing you again. And I thought he's joking. So I'm like, I'll see you tomorrow, Boris. He's like, no, you won't. And walks off. How gangster is that. And then he never came back. I've never seen Boris since. He came in, was one of the best crappers I ever saw. And that's it, buddy. I'm out. And so there's no one to walk away. </s><s>[INST] There's no one to walk away. Yeah. I also got to hang out. Got to meet, hang out with Ali, Abdul Aziz. He's a Hanzo Gracie black belt, fourth degree judo black belt, and friend and manager of Khabib Nurmagomedov who's coming down to Austin soon. We'll do a podcast. Hopefully you get on the mat and have a bit of brainstorm. Also, he's a manager and friend of many other amazing fighters. I really love the guy. The loyalty, the fact that he looks for loyalty and has that close inner circle and integrity and character and people. I really liked him. I connected him really quickly. [/INST] But any fun stories about Ali? Did you train together? Yes. He trained for many years in the basement of my classes. His story is one of the most unlikely stories. If someone wrote a movie plot about his life, it's absurd. We throw it out the door in a second and yet it all happened. You're absolutely correct. From the unlikeliest possible starts created a situation where he's, I think it's incontestable now to say he's the most successful manager in mixed martial arts history. He has more champions under his care than anyone else I'm aware of. </s><s>[INST] And respected and influential, so on all dimensions. [/INST] Many people aren't aware of the fact that he was actually a very good judo player. Jidoka first. Yes. He had very good no-gi judo. He had an excellent Haraigoshi, a very good Tanya Toshi. And he threw many people who were highly credentialed wrestlers back in the basement, back in the glory days of MMA training. He was a good example of a guy who had very, very good judo hips and often used it to counter wrestling. And was a fine demonstrator of the idea that when judo is adapted to no-gi gripping, it can provide a very effective foil to many of the standard forms of wrestling attack. And he would often use Uchimada to counter leg tackles and do some very, very spectacular fashion. </s><s>[INST] And well, what do you think about Kabib? Is there something from just watching him or is there something you can imagine if he comes down to the gym that you might learn from the [/INST] way he moves, the way he approaches wrestling? Oh, absolutely. He's one of the greatest combat athletes of all time. </s><s>[INST] If you can't learn from someone like that, there's something wrong with you. So he emphasizes control. [/INST] Yes, he does. And he's absolutely a master of exerting control. The amount of grappling control he was able to put over some of the most difficult people in the world to control was truly astounding. He beat people from every style. He beat wrestlers, he beat judos, he beat kickboxes, and he controlled them all in more or less the same way. He has a very underrated bottom game. People think, oh, he's just about stifling top control. But people forget he was taken down on several occasions and ended up in bottom position. And he showed excellent guard work from bottom. He was able to get into submission holds readily on opponents from bottom position. He's got an excellent bottom game. People say, oh, he's just a positional guy. No, he's not. He's got great submissions. The application of his triangle from both top and bottom was top class. He had a sharp arm lock from bottom position. Excellent Kimora. If you look at his Kimora finishes in MMA, they were technically very, very well set. Excellent breaking mechanics. He's a very, very fine grappler in both submission grappling and MMA grappling. I think we'd probably learn a ton from moving around with him. </s><s>[INST] Is it possible to learn something about him or about Haja Gracie or about Gordon by watching them or rolling around them for a little bit? So maybe Haja and Khabibas are good examples because they're able to do seemingly very basic things on everybody and dominate them with that. I think Gordon is as well, but Gordon seems to have more preference and range of what he's able to do. It's almost miraculous how much Haja can do by just the same exact thing on everybody. Is it possible to understand why Haja and Khabibas were so good at very basic positions? [/INST] Or do you have to feel it or is it just something that's developed over years and years and years? I think for most people, for the vast majority of people, it would have to be explained to them. For a smaller group of people, if they felt it, they could try to replicate it. And there are a few people who could look at it and have enough knowledge and say, okay, I can see what he's doing. For example, Haja could probably look at video footage of Khabibas grappling and say, okay, I understand what he's doing. But the average person would probably go over the hits. </s><s>[INST] You sometimes think of these great athletes. Maybe they're too narrow. You might imagine they're so focused on a particular thing they don't develop in interesting ways. He's just a sweetheart. He's a wonderful person to be around. He's also visiting Austin. First of all, I'm honored just drinking a little bit too much in Vegas with Haja Gracie and talking about love and relationships and life and death and all those philosophical topics as one does in Vegas. I'm a little bit too much to drink. Anyway, after ADCC, it was beautiful. And on top of that, hanging out with Rogan many days for UFC and ADCC. One thing, I don't know if you got any chance to hang out with Joe when he plays pool. So I spent a lot of time with him when he was playing pool, like recently on that trip to Vegas. And there's something Zen-like about, first of all, just watching him. But I've never seen the focus the guys got on the game for hours, just deep focus, unshakable focus. That was so interesting to watch that this human being, he's a celebrity, he does all kinds of stuff that he's able to allocate as close to 100% of his mind as I can imagine to a particular task and nothing can distract him. That was really inspiring that [/INST] you could still do that on any task. Pool is a game of physics. That should be your domain. </s><s>[INST] Oh, it is. But that wasn't just physics. Yeah, I would think you understand the game, you understand the physics of it. You also understand the fun of it, because there's friends and laughter and so on. I would be distracted by that a little bit. I wouldn't be as- Not Joe. He literally, as the closer you get to the table, the more everything zooms in. The jokes, there's funny things. You can't get his attention on anything. It's that focus. I don't know, that really stuck with, stayed with me. Those memes, I want to find somebody that looks at me the way X looks at Y, I want to find somebody that looks at me the way Joe looks at a pool queue or the focus there. I want to find something in my life, I mean, I want to attain the level little focus he has for pool on a task that I care about. And that, that focus like fuck everything else. This is now it's time to do work. I don't know, that was really inspiring. [/INST] I haven't seen that kind of focus </s><s>[INST] it's time for prolonged periods of times on a task. You should just see some time. The guy, the guy is, I mean, part of this just being competitive with himself. It's the hatred of imperfection, all of those kinds of elements, but embodied in a singular focus. I had no idea he didn't even play pool. It's interesting. We should watch him. He won't, I think it could be [/INST] one of his greatest obsessions. I had no idea he didn't even play pool. </s><s>[INST] It's interesting. Like there was deep, see I thought pool is for like degenerates, like gamblers and like hustlers, right? Like the same way I see poker, but like I saw like a wolf slash like elite athlete in Joe. I said, I didn't know this. I don't know much about pool. I didn't know that you could have that level of focus while still drunk at your ass, but extremely focused. It was beautiful to see, I don't know, inspiring for me as a person who highly values singular focus on a task. Let me ask you from a perspective of a hobbyist, what major practical changes can a hobbyist who works regular nine to five job do to improve their jiu-jitsu? So they're in a gym. There's a lot of excellent gyms throughout the United States. What can they do to improve their jiu-jitsu? About the way they think about jiu-jitsu, about the way they approach, their actual schedule, those kinds of things. [/INST] That's a great question. Okay. The less training time you've got, the more you want to maximize its effect. So a question becomes, okay, if I'm training, say, twice a week, and sometimes even once a week, what can I do to make sure that that two hour period is used maximally? The less training time you've got, the more the onus is on you to have a plan before you walk in the door. If you go in to saying, I'm gonna roll around and see what happens, or I'll just follow what the instructor says, you'll get a certain amount out of each class, but it will never be what it could have been. Go in with a plan and enact it. Many people go in with a plan and don't follow it. Let's say, for example, we start with a program that goes like this. First, try to create the most honest assessment of yourself as a jiu-jitsu player. It's tough to make an honest assessment of yourself because you never actually get to see your game. So what I would recommend is to start by videotaping yourself, </s><s>[INST] inspiring with your peers. That's fascinating, because we don't even have that level of introspection, ability to reflect of what we actually look like [/INST] in grappling, in grappling. Start with an assessment of yourself, and the most honest one comes not from you, comes from the camera. Have a look at what you see, and start to say, okay, many of the weaknesses in your game are made much more apparent by looking from the outside in, rather than feeling them during the heat of a match. Identify four or five of the biggest weaknesses that you see, and start actively attacking those weaknesses. Ask yourself, let's say, for example, in the course of watching the videotape of yourself, you observe yourself losing three triangles. You attempted three triangle strangle holds, you failed all three. You could start by saying, okay, let me ask myself, who are the people I look up to the most with regards a triangle strangle? Who are the guys who have the best triangle strangles out there? Then ask yourselves of those people, who are the ones whose body type and personality most closely mirrors my own? And that would be a good example of taking a problem in your game, contrasting it with elite level performance in people whose body type roughly matches your own, and then try to take lessons you learn by observing the best people and bringing them into your own game in one specific area. As time goes by and you do this with more and more elements of your game, you will undoubtedly improve. You will also have to make sure that you take time during class to actively work on these things. Now, sometimes in class, you don't get a choice. The instructor sometimes says, okay, today we're working this, this, and this, but there's always time after and before class where you can do your own drilling, where you can make your own inquiries. And during sparring, there's no rigorous control over what you do. You can try to work the game into the area of focus. So for example, if you want to work on front triangles, it would be wise for you to do most of your sparring from bottom guard positions. That'll give you the most opportunity. And in this sense, it always begins with an accurate assessment of your current skill level. You gotta start there. Then, I always encourage people to use video camera to make the most- Honest. Honest to appraise what you can because your own mind is not dishonest, but it's understandably inaccurate. You tend to feel things rather than see them when you're performing jiu-jitsu. Then, make a program for yourself based around what you see as excellence. Look at the people in the sport who's in the area you want to work on, people who are renowned for skill in that area. If possible, narrow it down to people who have excellence in that area and their body type corresponds with your own. And then try to take lessons learned from observing the excellence in these elite athletes and bring elements of them into your game. Never try to bring an elite athlete's entire game to your game. That will create an inauthentic game on your part, which will always be a poor copy of what you're trying to watch. Rather, bring very specific areas and skills that you see and import them from different people until eventually you find something for yourself. Experiment a lot, okay? Everyone's different. And so, don't see the video research as the final word. See video research the way a writer will see a muse as someone who initiates discussion, opens inquiries for your own research. The most powerful moments you will have on the mat come from making discoveries for yourself, not being told what to do, not observing someone else doing something, but self-discoveries. Those are the ones that will last inside you. So, use video research not as the definitive answer to your problems, but as initiating research for yourself on the mat. And as time goes by and you do this more and more often in more and more areas of the sport, </s><s>[INST] I promise you, you'll improve. Yeah, and I guess when you have the plan, have a plan that carries across many training sessions. So, I just remember, I know this is perhaps dumb, but I saw in my own game early on, a lot of growth by self-identifying a problem and coming up by myself with a solution by watching in that case Marcel Garcia. I just thought my butterfly guard was very weak. And so I thought, okay, what's the solution here? I thought maybe this X-guard thing, double X-guard. Okay, so I watched a bunch of video, let me try to work on this. And then all I did, just this is self, but when I could get time by myself, meaning like not instructor guided classes, but in training, I would just, everything I would put myself into butterfly and X-guard. That's good. Just let go, like don't progress, sweep and figure out a way to get swept, to get right back to it, back to it and everything. It was annoying probably to train with me because that's all I did and that's all I thought about. Right, but you learned quickly. Yeah, I learned it's the most progress I've ever made. Now, you could say that X-guard wasn't the right solution for me, that maybe that wasn't the weakest point for me to work on. If I were to look back now, it's still to this day, sadly, the obvious weakest point for me is escapes from much worse positions. That should be worked on. That should have been worked on from the very beginning. That's still, today, if I were to say, what's the weakest thing that I should work on, absolutely, is even with one day a week is escapes. But yeah, a lot of that has to do with just caring, like focusing on the one thing over and over and over and over across training sessions. Now, I'd also, I would write down on a sheet of paper the number of times I would get an X-guard sweep and I would set a rule that I have to get whatever it was, like 500 sweeps a week. So I have to, and then like, the closer you get to the end of the week, [/INST] the more you like just pick up a small white pick up. 500 in a week? Yeah, something like that. </s><s>[INST] Your training pot just must suck, bro. No, no, you start with good ones and then you get more and more desperate. You start like finding the kid, right, that you can just sweep over and over. But like that number, for me, the number is, for some reason, like I set a goal to pull off a technique. It enforced, like we're staying with this for a while. This is a journey we're doing. And then for some reason, for me, that helped me focus the study to understand the deep complexities of this thing, that at least for me, other people, like nobody at the gym was doing X-Guard or anything of that. So you have to kind of figure everything out yourself. I'm sure there's better ways to do that, but at least that focus helps from a hobbyist perspective. What's the day, what's the perfect day in the life of John Donner? If we're talking about a basic non-ADCC, now you're, I'm really grateful that you sit down with me on a Sunday, late at night, but it all starts again for you tomorrow. So three training sessions a day. What time do you wake up? Do you do like a mantra in the morning? Do you listen to like some Zen music? What do you eat in the morning? [/INST] What's the perfect day look like? When you say a small animal, to the gods. I usually, when you say a perfect day, what I think you really mean is an average day. Perfectly productive average day. Yeah. So let's take Monday morning for you watching this video. We're filming this late on a Sunday night. So after this, I'll drive home. We just had ADCC. It was two weeks ago. It was one of the longest training camps. It was the longest training camp I've ever run because of the fact we had to go through </s><s>[INST] three different matches for Gordon Ryan leading up to it. When you say- Sacrifice a small animal? Yeah. [/INST] Productive- So immediately after ADCC, I cut the training down for the competitive athletes to one session per day for the first week after ADCC to give their bodies a bit of a break. I still have to teach two classes in addition to that, two recreational classes. So my teaching schedule went down to three classes per day. After one week of relative break, we go back to two competition classes per day plus two recreational classes, plus an MMA class four. Gary Tonin and his friends. The first class requires me to get up around 6 a.m. to drive. I'm still a student driver, so I'm not very good at driving. So I have to spend a little extra time to get to the destination on time. </s><s>[INST] Just for the record, John pulled in a red Lamborghini with a, no. [/INST] You're the worst liar I've ever met. My day typically starts pretty early. I don't eat in the morning. I just get up and go to work. And I teach through the day. My last class finishes usually around 8 p.m. During that time, I coached jiu-jitsu. I try to find time for one Instagram post per day, which usually describes some basic theme of jiu-jitsu in most cases, unless we've just had a competition, in which case I'll talk about upcoming competitions or what happens after a competition. But most of them just express a simple jiu-jitsu theme. I try to do a short workout for myself. And then I go home. At the end of the day, I always start by asking myself, what do my students need from me tomorrow? Based on what I've seen today, what do the recreational students need and what do the competitive students need? This is always done in the light of what are the upcoming competitions. </s><s>[INST] But throughout the day, you're doing a lot of really in-depth classes. So how do you either prepare for them or think through them as they're happening? [/INST] Think through the material that you're teaching. I can look at a class. I've been doing this a long time. So I can just look at a class and be like, okay, these guys need this, this, and this. And then I make reflections at the end of the day. Then I'll take care of things that we all do, talk to family, occasionally go out for dinner with friends, dates, things like that. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, Hanzo had to really harass you to drag you out and to hang out. And he was very convincing. [/INST] And food-wise, I eat once a day. He wants a day. At the end of the day, I usually stop off at a place like a supermarket, like Whole Foods or some equivalent </s><s>[INST] to that, and buy something simple and eat. The internet wants to know the details. Did you end up getting wifi for your apartment? [/INST] No, no, I'm still thinking about it. It's a... Yeah, what are the pros and cons? There's no cons, lots of pros, but I just don't put much importance to it, </s><s>[INST] things that are unimportant, I just ignore. Yeah, there's a lot of things in life that have a lot of pros, but they're lower on the priority list, why? Why, because the 5G already... 5G's got it covered. Do you watch much video? Do you watch video? [/INST] Do you watch footage? Video footage, quite often, yeah. Especially things from freestyle wrestling, record Roman wrestling, judo, and mixed martial arts. Also, subsidiary sports to mixed martial arts, </s><s>[INST] like boxing, Muay Thai and European kickboxing. Just for long-term idea generation. Yes. Like a plan to seed an idea. [/INST] Yeah, this is an interesting thing. How could this be incorporated in the context in which we use it, MMA or Judas? </s><s>[INST] Maybe it's immediately obvious, or it might become obvious in a few weeks or months. Is there some aspect to the way you approach life and training and martial arts that amends itself to minimalism? It seems like you live a pretty stoic life. [/INST] Or is that just a symptom of a focus of existence? My life wasn't always like this. I've gone through different phases in my life. I was a university student and teacher at university. I was a nightclub bouncer for more than a decade. I've been through different areas of life. I've seen most things, I've experienced a lot. I've traveled the world. At this point in my life, people think I live some kind of monk-like existence, but I have a private life. I like to go out and have fun like everyone else. I'm not some kind of monk who just sits under a waterfall </s><s>[INST] and meditates or anything crazy like that. Well, that's why. I'm currently going through that stage in my life, the monk-like existence. So I would be amiss not to ask you one of the most important questions one can possibly ask John Donohue, which is on the topic of animal combat. Who wins in a fight to the death? Or maybe in a sport competition setting, but let's go with a fight to the death. A grizzly bear, a silverback gorilla, and maybe a lion or a tiger, an African lion, or one of the flavors of tiger. I don't know who you think is more ferocious. What are the parameters to consider here? Maybe I can throw a few out and maybe you can give me some thoughts about how much of these parameters matter. So first of all, intelligence. I do believe the gorilla is the most intelligent. I've did research for this, as you could imagine. The expert advisor to this very podcast on this very topic is indeed Joe Rogan, yes. So in captivity, gorillas have been documented to show complex emotions, form family bonds, the ability to use tools, [/INST] and to be able to reason about the past and the future. </s><s>[INST] That's impressive. So that's something that, at least in captivity, the other animals have not been able to do. [/INST] They already sound much more advanced than I am. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, so that's intelligence. Then there is weight. I think that's something that you think of at first. The lion, let's go with the big ones. I took notes here, 550 pounds for big lion. [/INST] That's exceptionally large. Most male lions are around 450 pounds. What's an exceptional beast then? </s><s>[INST] Thank you. The tiger can be larger than that. Yeah, much larger. So we got the grizzly bear, which is probably the biggest of the bunch. The large ones get to 1,500 pounds. Correct me if some of this numbers. [/INST] I believe most grizzlies are around 1,000 pound mark. </s><s>[INST] It's a big, big, big beast. Well, I was looking up the biggest, but I didn't want to do the biggest ever. Just what are the big, like the top of the range [/INST] because there's always a range. You can put it in at roughly double </s><s>[INST] that of even a very big lion. Of course, how that weight is used is very important. So there's also things which I find as interesting as anaconda, which just, let me throw that in there because it's 200 pounds. What I really like about that is it's not just the weight, it's the form factor. And I think out of all of these, the anaconda is the most non-standard form factor. I totally agree with that. [/INST] Yeah, I totally agree with that. It's like the knight on the chessboard. </s><s>[INST] It comes in from a completely different angle. So we got that. We got also strength, which could be measured in ability to carry stuff. So this was surprising to me. I did look into this carefully. The grizzly bear at 1,000 or 1,500 pounds can only carry at most its body weight, which is a lot. But a gorilla can carry 10 times its body weight. A gorilla can lift over 2,000 kilograms, [/INST] so that's over 4,000 pounds. And gorillas themselves in adult male weighs in around 350 to 400. </s><s>[INST] 400 pounds, yes, 400 pounds, yes, yes. I like how in this particular place where I found this, 2,000 kilograms is as heavy as 30 average humans. So gorillas can carry 30 humans. So that's carrying strength. And then of course, bite force, because that's one of the weapons in question here. So now this is really surprising to me. The gorilla has won me over through this, by the way. Intelligence, I'm gonna sucker for intelligence, but the gorilla bite force is the highest of all these with 1,300 PSI, bear second with 1,200 PSI, a tiger is third, I think tiger and lion is third with 1,000 PSI, that's comparable. And a bear is anywhere from 900 to 1,000 PSI. They're close, but gorilla, I would not have expected, now gorilla is not a carnivore, but apparently it chews, it's mostly grassy stuff, [/INST] but like... It's difficult to explain why it has such a powerful bite. And it also, of course, has very large incisor teeth as well as chewing teeth. </s><s>[INST] So... Also, no neck. Yeah. [/INST] No neck. So... It's neck begins at the top of its head and just goes down to the shoulders, yeah. </s><s>[INST] Well, a lot of the way they use their teeth, all of these animals, the ultimate kill is to go for the neck, the bite on the neck. I don't know exactly why that is probably has to do... Why is that? Because it's a very strong, controlled position, not just that it's a... Is it the same as you just do you think? [/INST] Because they get to also choke them out? It's very much in line with Judas. Lions are famous for using strangulation as their primary method of killing. They get a hold of the neck </s><s>[INST] and hold it until the animal drops. Plus claws. I believe the tiger and the bear use their claws. And the lion too. The lion, right, and the lion. This is something that the gorilla doesn't do and a con now, at least it doesn't. Yeah, yeah. So what do you think? How do we think about this? Also there is, I'm just not letting you talk apparently, there's levels of aggression in terms of... [/INST] These are also in the lion too. </s><s>[INST] These are also very important considerations, yeah. [/INST] What is important to you? All the considerations you've raised are very important and we would have to address them if we're gonna go through this topic. First things first, whenever you go into a discussion of this kind, there's a kind of natural impression that we all have as to which one would be the most formidable. And it's important that you become rather skeptical of your first intuitions because they're often very misleading. Just as every boy thinks his father is the strongest man in the world. And then when he grows up into adulthood, he realizes his father was not even close to being the strongest man in the world. It's not because of anything other than inexperience. To a boy, his father seems overwhelmingly strong. He literally can't even imagine anyone else being stronger than that. So naively he thinks his father is the strongest man in the world. So too in our relationship with animals, when we look at a silverback gorilla, it just looks overwhelmingly strong to us, to a degree, which is almost absurd. You picture the greatest combat athletes that humanity has ever produced. Prime Mike Tyson, Gordon Ryan for grappling. They would literally be torn limb from limb by an angry gorilla. It wouldn't even be remotely competitive. And so there's a sense in which we look at them in awe because of what they could do to us. But that can be very misleading. And just as a boy looks at his father as the pinnacle of strength, you can't necessarily, from a position of inexperience and weakness, look at a given animal and say, oh, that must be the toughest animal in the animal kingdom. There's levels to this game. And I think we can point out that the gorilla ultimately would be pretty low on those levels, </s><s>[INST] to spot the fearsome appearance. To spot the fearsome appearance. I have some pushback to this analysis because the data, we don't have much data on this. [/INST] We actually have slightly more than you think, I believe. </s><s>[INST] Oh boy. Well, it's anecdotal. I feel like it's out of context. So these species don't use, this is not MMA. They don't do interspecies fighting often. [/INST] Yeah, but there are some ways of looking at this which can take this already interesting question and make it a lot more interesting. First, we've seen that intuitions aren't to be trusted. So if intuitions aren't to be trusted, well, what is to be trusted here? Well, I've always believed that there are three general elements that determine what level of success or failure anyone will experience in combat. And this is true both for individuals and for groups and even all the way up to nations. The first is what are your skills? The second is what are your physical and mental attributes? So it's skills, attributes. Those are the two primary ones. And there's the third, which is your experience in using those skills and attributes and real world scenarios. Okay, so whenever two, we'll start with two humans. When two humans get into a fight, ask yourself, what is their skill set? What are their physical and mental attributes? And what is their experience in using those in real world applications? And that will give you your first look at, okay, who's gonna be the more successful? Then in addition to those three general elements, there's also four more specific elements. What is the ability of the combatants to initiate combat? Because initiation is a big deal in fighting. The one who sees the enemy first and can create ambush conditions or initiate combat in an area or terrain which is favorable to them. This is huge in determining the outcome of battles. Second, not only is initiation important, but disengagement is important. A lot of battles don't go according to plan. And so your ability to disengage at will and break off and away from a battle is key to success. So initiation and disengagement are big. The third big element, what is your ability to end a fight? Okay, do you have an efficient method of ending conflict? Without that, the conflict could go on to a point where you no longer have the ability to continue it. If you have some succinct method of finishing, this is huge in combat and determining winner or loser. So both from a winning and a losing position? Yes, but if you don't have one, there's a much higher chance you'll lose. But if you have an ability to finish an opponent in the conflict reliably, this is very, very important in determining success or failure. And third, is your ability to endure a conflict longer than the person you're engaged in, okay, is engaged with, sorry. And so you get these four more specific elements now. Do you have the ability to initiate contact at will? Do you have the ability to break contact and disengage at will? Do you have the ability to finish your opponent efficiently? And do you have the ability to endure longer than your opponent does? If you have all four of those, that's huge for combat. Yes, that probably applies to human-on-human, military conflict, conflict. Even all the way up to nations. Also ask yourself, what are the most efficient methods of combat across the globe, across all species, all times, et cetera, et cetera? And you'll see that ultimately, they always come down to three things. The first is concentration of force. One of the most successful combat strategies of all time is the ability to take concentrated force against the zone of weakness in your opponent. And if you can do this, you will often break through to a point of vulnerability, attack that vulnerability in a way where your opponent cannot respond and cannot recover from that vulnerable point being broken. </s><s>[INST] Do a high amount of damage with precision. [/INST] Yes. So this is one of the great combat strategies across the animal kingdom, across human history, et cetera. The second would be ambush tactics. If you can ambush an opponent with the element of surprise, this is huge for success in combat. Almost all of the truly successful predators on this planet are ambush predators. The ability to get off to a good start in a way where opponents simply can't recover is huge for combat. </s><s>[INST] Are we allowing ambush in our discussion? [/INST] Because humans would call this cheating, perhaps. We'll talk about this. Yes, we would. And humans are pretty damn good at it, too. And then the third is endurance. Some species, some people, humans actually are pretty good at this, use endurance as a weapon and they simply wear an opponent down over time and break them internationally. This can be done economically through numbers, et cetera, et cetera, and you can destroy someone with sheer endurance. Yeah, a lot of wars throughout human history has been siege warfare. Yeah. So when you ask yourself, okay, which one of these animals are going to be the most successful in combat, ask yourself, well, there's these three elements which tend to determine success or failure in warfare, which animals exhibit these three principles the best? And we'll discuss this. But as far as generalities go, whenever you ask a question, who will win between A and B, ask yourself in terms of the light of what we've just discussed. What is their skill set? What are their attributes, both mental and physical? What is their experience in utilizing these in real world situations? And then the four more tactical elements, who gets to initiate contact? Can you break off contact at any given time? What is your endurance? </s><s>[INST] Can you keep going longer than your opponent does? So with skill set, I wonder if a big component of that of how much practice there is off the battlefield. Exactly. [/INST] So how much quote unquote, you would probably call it play, like play fighting. Play fighting. Let's start going through our animals, okay? When you look at the gorilla, you will see immediately that almost every experience a gorilla has of combat is theatrical. They don't engage in killing things. They scare rival males away in order to gain ownership of females. But there is almost no intra-species death in those conflicts. They're almost entirely theatrical. They have, for example, enormous canine teeth, but there is no record of them ever being used in combat. They appear to be used purely for intimidation purposes. There's a sense in which they have this tremendous appearance and they have tremendous potential. They really do have freakish levels of strength in many different ways. </s><s>[INST] And yet, the actual track record of using it is negligible. [/INST] So strange that evolution would develop such a powerful, a killing machine. Their bite force just makes no sense with regard to what they actually eat. I think, well, no, I think they have a- Even the presence of canines doesn't make a lot of sense. They're not going to use them. What are they? It comes down to this idea, their big thing is intimidation. </s><s>[INST] I think they have like- So there's a show, you want to fake it and [/INST] don't care if you ever make it because fake is good enough given that particular dynamic. Now let's contrast that with a male lion. Lions take on the biggest, meanest, toughest animals in the most competitive killing war on planet Earth, which is continental Africa. And they literally just take- I mean, occasionally they lose, but it's rare and they take out everything. Just in order to eat, they have to take down wildebeest, cape buffalo, cape buffalo are incredibly dangerous beasts just by themselves and yet lions regularly take them down. Occasionally, large numbers of lions will even swarm elephant and over 12 hour periods take down elephant on some occasions. This is all on video, this is not just speculation. </s><s>[INST] So they just have a level of combat experience, which no other animal can do, elephant can do. If I were to also project the Eastern European style of wrestling where they spend so many hours on the mat, they really value the number of hours on the mat at play from childhood. The lions probably, from my extensive watching videos on YouTube, they seem to play with each other for fun a lot and I guess with the gorilla- It helps, you see it. You don't interact, you don't play with other gorillas, you're more spending a lot more time around the opposite sex. Yeah. So yeah. [/INST] I mean, even lions, when they fight each other, the mortality rate when lions fight each other, male lions, for ownership of a pride is very, very high, much, much higher than I believe any other species on earth. They almost always fights to the death for the simple reason that when a male lion loses control over pride, the first act the new lion does is to kill the genetic offspring of the previous male lion. So when a lion fights another male lion, when one male lion fights another, it's not just to fight for his own life, it's a fight for his genetic offspring. failure means not only does he die, all his offspring dies. And so when they fight, the implications are so deep. It's like a fight for not just you, but your DNA. Most male lions have very short runs at the top. They get killed or run off by other lions. Now, this kind of harsh combat experience, no other animal can claim to have this. Between what they kill to eat and what they have to do to defend their stake and a pride, no other animal fights like that. They just bring a level of depth to combat which is unmatched in the animal kingdom. They also have some other elements too. They get the luxury because of their social nature of taking more risks than other animals. Like a tiger hunts alone. So if it gets injured, it's a big problem. It can die if it's injured. A lion can fight. Cape buffalo get injured and be covered by the other lions for food until it recovers. So it learns to take risks and it's not afraid to go out and fight very, very hard. Whereas other animals tend to shy away from risk because they're solitary, bears are solitary, tigers are solitary. So they learn from an early age not to take the big risk, </s><s>[INST] to go up to a certain level and stop. If I could push back, so that's aggression and risk taking. That's a plus for the lion. But to defend the gorilla, because you said skill set, they are of all of those, the only ones that use tools, I've shown to use tools. We didn't say anything about weapons. A gorilla could, in theory, pick up a rock. And it does have the force, the power and the capabilities to do a lot of damage. It doesn't have the practice. It doesn't have the experience. But don't you think if a gorilla's back is to the wall, so you put them in a situation of it is life and death. It doesn't have the practice for both, the lion and the gorilla. Don't you value intelligence at least a little bit here. There's a reason why humans, this is like evidence that humans have spread all across the world [/INST] while being kind of weak. Why? Okay, intelligence is a huge, huge asset. Humanity is positive proof that it is the most important asset, but it takes time in order to work its magic. It took humans 200,000 years to go from the bottom of the food chain to the top of the food chain. And gorillas have a lot of work to do before they get to that level. You said in theory gorillas could do this, but let's talk about practice now. Well, first off, there are many documented incidents of leopards killing gorillas. </s><s>[INST] There's anecdotal evidence. No, it's not anecdotal. There's a bunch of bitch ass gorillas walking around. We know this. [/INST] No, it's not anecdotal. We know this. We're asking. It's not anecdotal. It was observed by a group of people who specialized in observing gorillas over a 12 year period. They regularly found gorilla toes in leopard defecation. They also saw that over a certain period, some 36 gorillas had been killed and evidence strongly suggested leopard predation was the reason. Apparently leopards had figured out that there was a femoral artery in gorillas legs and were doing a move, which from the sounds of it sounds a lot like a baron bolo where they were spinning underneath gorillas and biting the femoral artery and then disengaging and watching them bleed out and die and then eating them. Now, a leopard is no match for a lion. The only defense it has to align is to run up a tree. It cannot engage </s><s>[INST] with a lion on anything close to equal terms. It may seem like we're going on tangents, but we're not just because of the foot, the attack of the artery on the foot. But is there weaknesses that the lion might have of that? [/INST] What I'm saying is I know it's not equivalent, but the fact that a leopard does so well against even fully grown male gorillas should make you rather suspicious of a gorilla's ability to fight a lion. Fair enough. Let's also go further into this. Let's talk about concentration of force. A lion has the quintessential concentration of force, which is fangs and claws. The gorilla is the exact opposite. It can't even make a fist. It can only throw open-handed slaps and grab things. So it has no ability with its arms to concentrate force in any kind of efficient way. When a lion or a tiger or a bear, for that matter, swings at you, it's got four claws from four to six inches long. That's like four blades going into you. They can retract their claws, so they're always sharp. </s><s>[INST] But the reach is significantly longer for the gorilla. The length of the- The ability to engage with speed on the part of the cats is far, far greater. And also mobility on two feet, the bipedal nature of a gorilla, the temporary bipedal. The bear has the same- [/INST] It has no impact. Humans are bipedal and lions kill 240 humans a year on average. </s><s>[INST] So, okay. Okay. Okay. What about bear? Now, bear is a difference for all the same things that a lion has. The claws, the teeth, has more weight, has more strength, has more power. [/INST] Now, bear, all this claws. Okay. Now, this is an interesting question. Okay. You get a fully grown North American grisly </s><s>[INST] versus an African lion. This is an interesting bet. I also have questions about polar bears. It's unclear to me because they're bigger in every way than a grisly, but they probably don't get the experience in the practice. [/INST] Yeah. Also, they have a much more limited set of animals that they prey upon. So, pretty sure grisly is going to be tough to beat as far as top bear goes. A grisly bear, I believe would be a formidable adversary, even for a male lion. They're literally twice their size. They have an ability to get away from strangleholds by standing up on two legs. So, the lion's primary method of killing, which is to strangle, would be very difficult for them to employ upon a bear. Interestingly, the bear's primary method of killing is to pin. It pins animals and then just slowly eats them while they're still alive. They have a rather barbaric means of killing. Lions are much more humane in the way they kill. What I see as the primary problem is that neither one would be able to kill the other. That finishing thing, the image. Yeah. They both fail on the finishing criteria. The lion would not be able to strangle a bear. Even in the best case scenario, where he got his teeth into the neck, the bear can stand up and presumably shake him off. The bear would never be able to pin a lion for long enough to better hold it down and slowly maul it over time the way it can with an elk or a caribou. So, I don't believe either would be able to finish the other. Those just become exhausted. It would come down to endurance. Now, that's where things get interesting because the bear is much more of an endurance hunter and the lion is much more of an ambush hunter. Lion's quick, explosive, much higher top speed. They've got a top speed of 45 to 50 miles an hour. A bear can do up to 35, but it can run for long periods at up to 25 miles an hour. Very long periods. They're mostly an endurance hunter. They just run elk and moose down until they're exhausted and then pin them and kill them. So, if it came down to endurance, it might go the way of the bear if they were caged up together. However, there is very strong evidence from both hunters and video, which shows on many occasions bears being chased off by cougar and wolverines. </s><s>[INST] Now, what's that? That's fear? What do you mean chased off? [/INST] If they fight over meat, and say, for example, the cougar has killed something and the bear wants the meat, the cougar will chase off the bear. Exactly. The bear's a risk averse. What I would say is this, the bears are very, very powerful in their domain, but they don't have the battle experience of a lion. They don't take on animals as tough as a cape buffalo. They don't take on an elephant. The toughest thing it would probably take on would probably be a bull moose. Bull moose is a formidable animal, but it's nothing like a cape buffalo, it's nothing like an elephant or a hippopotamus. What I would suggest is this. In the wild, I don't believe either one is capable of killing any other. But I do believe, based on video evidence of cougars and wolverines chasing off bears, that a lion would provide enough threat in a brief fight that a bear would back away. If you put them in a cage, however, where neither one could back away, I would slightly favor the bear based on the fact that neither one can kill each other, it would come down to endurance. Do you mean like an octagon? Yeah. That's got to be the next UFC, by the way. Bear versus lion. </s><s>[INST] The lion has chase-off. Risk aversion. But things change. Joe Rogan is a big fan of the idea of fighting in a stadium, for humans fighting in a stadium. So in a stadium, a bear... [/INST] I would slightly favor a bear. Now, I still think that the lion would have a chance, but I would favor the bear in a betting match. Some of the best evidence we have for animal versus animal fights come from the ancient Romans, who actually used to put animals in gladiatorial combat. They, for example, had several incidents where they wrote about tiger versus lion conflict. In one famous passage, they described a lion getting destroyed by a female tiger. So there's some evidence to suggest that they had more expertise of this than we do, because they had a big population of wild animals, which they just put to fight each other. Unfortunately, there's nothing that they wrote about bears versus lion. They did talk about bears versus bulls. They did talk about lions versus tigers, but they never mentioned bear versus lion. So we don't have any evidence for that. So we have to be a little bit more speculative. Now, given that bears do get chased off by cougar and cougar is weak compared with a male lion. Well, listen to you draw from that, by the way. I would suggest that... Is it about the bear or is it about the cougar? Yeah, it's more about the bear. In theory, a bear should be able to crush a cougar, but it seems to be the bear is just saying, this thing could hurt me. So I'm not going to risk injury and backs away. I think it would back away in the wild from a lion, but put him in a cage, and I slightly favor the grizzly based on endurance. </s><s>[INST] So the final conclusion, if you had to just bet everything you own. So you got, let's say, we got the octagon, we're bringing a bear. Now this is like legendary bear. Okay. Full grown grizzly. [/INST] Full grown grizzly, but not only that, that grizzly is seeing some share there. What's the most it could have seen? A bull moose? A caribou? That's the toughest opponents he's </s><s>[INST] ever had. That's the toughest opponents he's ever had. It once... No, no, no, no. No, this one once ran into a pack of other grizzlies and had to fend. He's got scars. A pack of grizzlies. There's no pack of grizzlies. It's solitary. Wolves. Wolves. Wolves. Wolves are not practiced for a bear. Who attacks a bear? [/INST] Wolves are not... That's my point. Bears don't really live in a competitive environment, lions. </s><s>[INST] But sometimes you can get desperate as it was a pack of wolves. [/INST] But a pack of wolves is nothing. That's nothing. All right, fine. </s><s>[INST] Lions deal with packs of hyenas. Okay. What was the... Just imagine over the past hundred years, what do you think is the hardest fight that a grizzly bear has been in? Somewhere in Alaska. We've never heard. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, all you hear is the bear just... [/INST] What was in the middle of the night? They didn't really. There's nothing that... There's gotta been something. </s><s>[INST] No, there's gotta been something. Humans have killed tens of millions of people in wars. They run away from cougars and wolverines. No, that's anecdotal evidence. There's gotta be one bear. There's video footage over. You can watch it yourself. That's called anecdotal evidence. There's got... I guarantee you in the dark of the night there was an epic battle of which there's still legend amongst the bears in that part of Canada. Who did it battle? In Canada. Moose. [/INST] The Bears you don't think they in Canada go at it bigs fight each other, but it's largely theatrical They never kill each other when Mansion's fight each other. They kill each other all the time </s><s>[INST] Their someone would have seen it by now interesting. All right [/INST] so so you see my what is it so your see my point isn't bears it just that did they want to get their feet wet they </s><s>[INST] Want to get their feet with a they can be no credit for Gorilla. So you're saying lion wins your money's on [/INST] No, I'm saying lion would win in the wild because they can't kill each other. They can't end the fight. That's one of our most important criteria. But lions can almost always initiate the action because they have much better ability to see at night, for example. Bears have very average night vision. Lions have superb night vision. So at nighttime, they can always initiate the fight. Lions are natural ambush predators, so it's always going to be out of heavy advantage of ambush. The great advantage that bears have is endurance. But bears are very risk averse, and they're not used to fighting the toughest, toughest animals. The toughest animal they fight is a moose or a caribou. These are not even close to the animals that lions have to go up against on a regular basis. So if somebody wins, it's going to be the lion for you. I still think that the size and endurance of the bear, if they were locked in a cage together, I would still favor the bear under those circumstances. But in the wild, I believe the bear will back away quickly. </s><s>[INST] But in the cage, no time limit you favor the bear. What if it's five rounds or five minutes [/INST] championship rounds? Then I would go with the lion because the lion has a huge speed advantage. It's going to injure it, tear it up, and do immediate damage. I'll put it this way, if lion and bear fight, first 15 minutes, I favor the lion 100%. But then as time goes by, </s><s>[INST] that size and weight and endurance is going to have an effect. I'll bring up shortly somebody [/INST] that's going to probably disagree with you about some things. Hopefully it's a grizzly bear and </s><s>[INST] he comes in and just eats me. Oh, that would be so epic. Make a hell of a podcast. I wonder who we would eat first, who would look scarier and more delicious. I'm not sure. The black and white could either piss him off. He would think you were a penguin. Is that a good thing or not? Not good. If it was a polar bear, maybe it's different. Do you care deeply about athletes you coached, about people in your life? I have to ask this question. If one of those athletes, let's say Gordon Ryan, I was the dictator of the world and this would entertain me. I force you and Gordon to do this, to fight a bear or a lion. Gordon has to. How would you coach him to do it, to have any chance of winning? He goes in empty handed. You can choose stadium or cage. [/INST] Gordon Ryan, empty handed versus a lion. You get to choose lion versus bear. It's up to you. Okay. My advice would be very simple. I would say, Gordon, you're fucked. You're going to die badly. Choose the lion because it will strangle you to death rather than pin you </s><s>[INST] down and maul you to death. Didn't we just talk about audacious goals? [/INST] This is not a question of audacious goals. This is a question of minimizing pain. </s><s>[INST] So you coach your athletes to quit before the battle has been fought. A hundred percent. Yeah. You have to get a chance. How? What's he going to do? First of all, intelligence. He's going to do a heel hook. [/INST] He's got four fucking legs. Okay. What if Gordon gets any starting position? He wants what is the chance? You don't think as a chance what's he gonna do it? He'll hook. Yeah, that's gonna be really useful Here on a thousand pound beer. Yeah, what do you read back control it off shaking off? </s><s>[INST] You'll get torn off with what like you don't have back. Yeah reaches back. He's got four six inch It's hard to oh, okay. I wonder what is the reach? What if he touches he's gonna if it's not a flexible bear So you think they there's no control. What about like a low like a [/INST] Some kind of controlling position from yeah, like we said brombo like from what we said brombo like from Nothing this discussion is so insane that I didn't even know where to begin criticism. I don't think you're open-minded we could we could turn this down forget about Gordon fighting a A lion or a bear. That's that's completely impossible </s><s>[INST] An adult male chimp will destroy Gordon. So not even a gorilla. We can gorilla But what about the aggression? Yeah, they agree What about the aggressive a male chimp is more than enough to kill any human on the planet including Gordon Ryan. So Gordon Ryan Fighting a chimp a good-sized dead. No a thousand times. How many times does he win? He loses a thousand times It's not even competitive. It's not even remotely compared. Do you think he will disagree? No, do you think anyone will disagree anyone? Yeah moron? Okay, somebody that I think you might know There's a famous actor Tom Hardy, but he's also doing quite a bit of jiu-jitsu The reason this makes sense to bring up now is he's also I saw narrating a new sky original series called predators Hmm coming out in December where they follow five different predators and tell their full story about All the fighting and the killing and all that kind of stuff and he's doing that. He's like, you know, it's like what Morgan's It's like Morgan Freeman for March of the penguins, it's Tom Hardy for the predators So I don't I saw a bear and a lion in the it's in the trailer But they also had something I didn't watch it too careful, but they had something like a hyena So they think that we're talking about I don't know if it's a hyena But something like that like pack animals, yeah that attacking hyenas of formidable formidable animals [/INST] So it's not all about size. It's about like strategy. Yeah. Yeah formidable animals Yeah, it's most important thing in nature as numbers like you know </s><s>[INST] A packa of animals will always destroy a single animal and I think that show in particular is not 100% about who wins or so on it's about the fascinating stories of how these these predators sort of dominate that particular environment because it's not about these like artificial match-ups, it's about giving your environment, [/INST] how do you succeed and all that kind of stuff. Maybe we could do Gordon Ryan versus a house cat. Gordon might have a small chance against a house cat maybe. </s><s>[INST] Maybe. See now I know you're just trolling me. I think Gordon has a chance against, well, definitely against the smaller apes. But I have no way of proving it and the internet will say I'm an idiot, so there you go. The internet is correct every still watching. So there's a, oh, that's funny enough. I'm looking at Tom's Instagram, he has a picture with Hanzo. He's competed recently, which is very cool in Jiu-Jitsu. That's awesome. That's tough to do for a celebrity to step up. [/INST] Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. He used to consult with me a little bit on moves when he was starting out. He's a very, very nice person. Oh, about Jiu-Jitsu? Yeah, yeah, he asked questions about Jiu-Jitsu. He struck me as being a very, very nice person. </s><s>[INST] Oh, so you'd love to be a fly in that wall, but he made a post on Instagram, which I'd love to get your opinion on. It has very much like a John Donohue style of digging into the philosophy of the impact of Jiu-Jitsu on one's life. [/INST] Is his Instagram post 18 pages long? Yes. </s><s>[INST] He's got potential then. Yes, with a profound, deep picture of somebody practicing the art of Jiu-Jitsu, I think. I think he's at least a trainee in this art of the Donohue style of communication. If Miyamoto Musashi would be alive today, he would probably be doing these five page Instagram posts like you do. Addiction, writes Tom Hardy, addiction is difficult and complex stuff to navigate as is mental health. Subjects which are both deeply personal for me and extremely close to my heart. It is an honor to be able to represent the charity of my team, Reorg, and the great work they do supporting the mental health and wellbeing of veterans of service, military and first responders through the therapeutic benefits of Jiu-Jitsu and fitness training. He represented them in this competition that he competed in. Simple training for me as a hobby and a private love has been fundamentally key to further develop a deeper sense of inner resilience, calm and wellbeing. I can't stress the importance it has had and the impact of my life and my fellow teammates. And he goes on to talk about this organization Reorg that uses Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to form a therapy to overcome physical and mental challenges, strengthen social connections and improve overall health and wellbeing. This is for veterans, for people going through PTSD. They have saved lives around the world by not only providing an effective and positive means for navigating and managing the challenging psychological aspects of military and first responder careers, but also has allowed many to find a renewed sense of purpose, identity and community that's often lost when transitioning to civilian life. Do you have thoughts about that, sort of the effects of Jiu-Jitsu on folks who've gone through some really difficult [/INST] things in their life? First of all, I think this is a beautiful statement by Mr. Hardy, I must give him a phone call after this and talk to him, that was beautiful to read. One thing that's always struck me when I train people who either have a military background or on more than a few occasions, we have special forces soldiers come in and train with us for a week or two. And when you talk to them, the overwhelming sentiment I get when the conversation's over and we go our separate ways is I'm always asking myself, the transition from military life, especially the more extreme military lives of special forces soldiers back to civilian life, it must be the craziest experience of all. You've got people who are fighting and dying alongside their comrades in the most extreme circumstances that any human being can go through. And then they're pulled back into a life where people are arguing with them over parking spots. Just like the average person's day-to-day life is so mundane that imagine what must be going through a man's head who a few weeks or months ago was literally fighting for his life and his comrades lives, watching people that he loved die or get mutilated in front of him. Things that in a matter of seconds, people's lives can be torn apart and changed forever. And then suddenly you get thrown into a life where people are arguing over who's cut who off, </s><s>[INST] who in line to buy a coffee. The intensity of camaraderie and love that you have for each other. [/INST] And then you go from incredible intensity in war to just mundane, boring life. And going from one to the other where people are yelling at you or nagging you over issues that just seem so inconsequential compared to what you've been through. And you're supposed to take these people seriously and listen to them. </s><s>[INST] But not only that, you do have trauma visions of dead brothers and sisters. And you feel like you can't really talk to these civilians about it. [/INST] There's nothing in their experience that would enable you to have a conversation with them. Like they don't even, how do you talk to your new girlfriend about watching one of your friend's legs get taken off? Like there's no conversation you could have with them. So I find that typically they do best when they hang out with each other because they have shared experience and they can talk about these things. But I do find that most judicious schools have something like a kind of military barracks demeanor to them of like camaraderie, hard work, shared hard work, teamwork, building towards a goal over time, the acquisition of skills, usually along with that, a kind of want of a better word or rustic and primitive sense of humor and a kind of soldierly way of talking to each other and disparaging self-deprecating sense of humor. And it's something that most people with military service kind of naturally come into because it's part of what they were in. And so it's like a toned down version of it, which enables them to form a stepping stone between the military life that they were in all the way down to civilian life. </s><s>[INST] And Juditzu was kind of like a bridge between those two. And also the honesty, so you said like the skill acquisition, the honesty of really testing that skill, there is a deep honesty to war. In a distant way, but in a way there is an honesty to Juditzu, technique, working or not. And there's a final, there is simulated death. It's not real death, it's simulated death on the mat [/INST] and there's a similar kind of honesty there. And there's also a similar kind of esteem towards skill, just as regular soldiers look up to Special Forces soldiers because they see them as people have greater skills in themselves, something to aspire to. so too, and the thing that we esteem most on a Judaism matter skill. No one gives a damn what you look like or what you think that you judge mostly by your skill level. And so they tend to identify with that. I do think that most people from a military background find a natural gravitation towards the atmosphere of Judaism learning. And if it proves to be a positive way for them to rehabilitate and come back into civilian lives, then that's a wonderful, wonderful thing. I know we're linked with We Defy, which is an organization which caters to former soldiers who were badly injured in combat, many of whom lost limbs and always suffered mental trauma. And they come in and train, and they often speak very, very highly of their degree to which Judaism has helped them come back into civilian life. And for them, it's even worse because they come back not only mentally, but physically disadvantaged after war. And I've always been proud to be associated with We Defy, and I'm very happy to see Tom working with this organization. Is this an organization based in England for English veterans, or is it international? </s><s>[INST] That's a good question. I'd have to look into it. It certainly is based in England, but it could be international. But it's just nice to see somebody use that large platform and also to step on the mat and show the kind of jujitsu you would probably be proud of chasing submissions. He got an arm lock, he got a straight foot lock. We're not going to analyze the techniques [/INST] because there could be different perspectives. It finishes the finish. That's impressive. He's </s><s>[INST] actually quite an athlete. He's in great shape and strong and flexible, and I'm glad he's doing well with his jujitsu. And it's good to see Henzel's smiling face next to him. I can only imagine the conversations. I have to ask you a deep and important question. You often, when we text back and forth, send me two hugging emojis. Can we psychoanalyze the reason why that's your favorite emoji of the hugging face? It's kind of like sending a heart, but a little bit more gender neutral. [/INST] When jujitsu players meet each other, they often shake hands and then give a quick hug. So I thought it was the most appropriate emoji for jujitsu players. I see. It's a pretty simple </s><s>[INST] explanation. Nothing too fraudy in there. Are you sure? Quite sure. Okay. Have you really asked yourself deeply? Because you really lean on an emoji. Is there something behind it? [/INST] Tomorrow, I'm never going to use that emoji again. Why is there two of them? Walk away. I'll shock </s><s>[INST] you tomorrow and meet you with three. Three. There's almost always two. I think maybe you're [/INST] a creature of habit in communication. I'm a creature of habit in almost every aspect of my </s><s>[INST] life, so even emojis. Yeah. You fall into these little pockets of how you communicate, how you show affection towards others. I say love a lot. I send hearts and don't give a fuck if it's too like me sending a message to a CEO I'm about to interview. I'll send a heart. I don't give a damn. They'll probably just like, look, what is this? But I think people are too afraid of simple communication of affection. It could be in any form, but there's a hesitance to that because I think underneath it, in order to show affection, you're taking a risk and you're showing vulnerability. Because if you show affection and the other person rejects that affection, you've now placed yourself in a hierarchy going back to lions of like, oh, this person, you're just like the silly weak person and they're the strong person. I think that's how you might see it, I guess, but I don't. To me, the display of vulnerability is a display of strength, not weakness, at least in human society, at least at this time. I don't know. Let me ask you about love. I must ask John and I about love. What do you think is the role of love in the human condition at the highest philosophical level? Let me first ask. Like romantic love, love? Romantic love, let's say [/INST] romantic love. I have one or two areas of apparent expertise in my life. Romantic love, </s><s>[INST] definitely not one of them. So like lions versus bears. I'm good. Animal combat. I'm good. Pretty good at. And then different grappling arts. Judo, Sambo, jujitsu, wrestling, MMA, so fighting and so on. Romantic love. You don't see them as similar. It's a kind of fight. It's a kind of [/INST] dance. There's a sense in which I'm kind of glad I'm not an expert on that. Imagine what it would be to be an expert on romantic love. You would take the one thing in life that's actually interesting and make it boring because once you develop an expertise about something, you can start to predict how things are going to unfold. You get answers before events even occur. You can read into the future of everything. I think there are certain parts of human life where you want to be </s><s>[INST] a beginner at all times and you don't want to gain expertise. So excellence and systematizing [/INST] something in order to achieve excellence might destroy the very magic of the things. And I think that the magic of romantic love is the fact that we're all beginners at it. And the minute you try to gain expertise in it, what does that even mean? What would it mean? And would it be good? I don't think it would. I think you're better off just having fun with it and plowing through and making dumb mistakes and looking like a fool. And then whatever success comes in a kind of lighthearted, frivolous kind of way. And that I think is over the course of a lifetime far more desirable than having expertise and affairs of love. So I don't think it's even a good thing to study too much. And I think if you did, you would actually take something good out of your life. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, there's communities of people called pickup artists that try to optimize this particular aspect, which is of dating, of guys picking up girls and turning that into a system and seeing [/INST] what's the most successful. I think that would be, I mean, maybe the first few months would be good. And then after that, I think it would be a disaster. I mean, given that humans are fairly easy to study from the standpoint of psychology, I'm sure it's not that difficult to gain expertise in things like picking people up the same way advertisers can pick up your attention to sell a product. You can do the same thing, presumably, with romance and sex. But I don't know, I feel like if you became very good at it, you would end up being very disappointed by the results. And so, as I said, I think there's some things in life where it's better to be a beginner. </s><s>[INST] And this is one of those, enjoy the chaos, the push and pull of being a beginner, and make that a lifelong journey. That's really inspiring to hear you say that. And there's a deep truth to that. [/INST] That also justifies the fact that being a beginner. But I still get it. </s><s>[INST] I think it also justifies, and it would sell very well, that John Donner should write a book on dating. And that would be chapter one. Embrace being a beginner. Chapter two will be Bear versus Lion. [/INST] Pivot quickly to violence. By the way, we totally skipped over Anaconda. </s><s>[INST] I assumed the implied- [/INST] I'll put it to you this way. On video, you can watch Puma and similar-sized cats, jaguar, destroy anacondas, even in water, which is Anaconda's preferred domain. So, given that Puma and jaguar are at several orders below Lion, you have to go with the idea that Lion would utterly decimate Anaconda. So, it's probably good that we did skip over it. </s><s>[INST] And I think going back to the original thought that you had about this, it says, don't trust your first instinct. [/INST] Also, think about the other elements. Anaconda has no ability to disengage from the fight. Once the fight's on, it's got to go until the end. It has no ability to disengage and get away. Its only hope would be ambush, and it's got a tiny, tiny chance against a truly formidable animal. And the fact that if we look at actual concrete real-world results, when Puma and jaguar are kicking your ass, Lion and Bear, it's going to be a lot worse. </s><s>[INST] Science is not to be found on YouTube, or rather, YouTube is not science. I bet you there's a bear somewhere in Canada that has seen some shit. I'm just going to leave it at that. You're a fan of knives. There's guys like Miyamoto Musashi who, instead of doing who's number one type of tournaments, when both competitors walk away, only one competitor walks away. Miyamoto Musashi is known for somebody having a John Donner-like philosophical skills, but also is known for having fought 61 duels to the death and won them, obviously. What do you think made [/INST] him so good and won them? I don't feel qualified to talk about him because I haven't made an in-depth study of his life and times. And we also don't know how much truth there is to his recollections, and there's a lot of controversy over this. So I don't feel like you can give a definitive statement of his prowess, but his writings are fascinating and deeply insightful as to what actually happened out there in his duels. It's unclear. </s><s>[INST] With guys like that, you almost certainly know that they war people like the character he projects that have existed, whether it's 61, whether it's 20, but people really put their life on the line in a different time in human history. Is there [/INST] something compelling to you about fighting to the death? I think it's not just compelling to me, but to anyone. There's nothing we value more than our lives. And to be able to say, I'm prepared to die for a sense of honor, things that are so foreign to our modern society. Imagine we criticize people for something as simple as road rage, and yet you can imagine someone who has a sufficiently developed sense of honor. If you took them out of the 17th century and put them in a modern car, they might be killing people on the side of the road on a regular basis, just over smaller stacks of honor, to say that your sense of self overwhelms your sense of self-preservation. It's a very unusual thing in the modern age, and yet it appears to </s><s>[INST] have been quite common back then. You often wear a fanny pack. I'm not going to ask you what's inside the fanny pack, but if you were to design a perfect killing machine that also wore a fanny pack, what would you put in that fanny pack? Would it be something mundane and practical, or would it be something surprising and hilarious? Would it be something of philosophical significance, or maybe sentimental significance, or would it be empty as a troll on human civilization? [/INST] But if it was a perfect killing machine, it would have to be some kind of weapon. Put in a fanny pack. Is it? It has to be a very compact weapon. </s><s>[INST] We mentioned offline that there's also things in the chess world, or there is a different kind of vibrating devices that could be used to communicate information in communication with AI systems that can help you in your particular pursuit. I don't think in jiu-jitsu you need, it's possible for a machine to give you information that gives you advantage. You can in chess and in poker, so you could put one of those vibrating devices in your fanny pack, but in jiu-jitsu it would not help you. Any idea what kind of weapon? [/INST] To fit in a fanny pack. </s><s>[INST] To your fan of knives. Where's the interest in knives come from, by the way? [/INST] That's more metaphorical. The truth is that in the modern world a knife is not an efficient weapon, and easily be overwhelmed by firearms. My fascination with knives comes more in the sense that they convey a spirit to my students, where a knife is made of steel, and steel begins as ore in the ground. It's an ugly, unfinished product, which through the enactment of knowledge, time, and discipline can be transformed into beautiful, shining steel. It can have something which it begins as something which has no real function and becomes one of the most functional and important tools in all of human history, without which human civilization could never have even begun. It's what separated humans and took us from the bottom of the food chain and began our gradual rise towards the top of the food chain. It has immense historical and cultural value, but it has this metaphorical value insofar as the martial artist begins as a white belt like iron ore, but over time transforms into some beautiful, shining steel, which can have immense value. In addition, there's a sense of maintenance. As remarkable as steel is, it is in need of constant maintenance. It will fall apart through rust, and neglect will destroy a blade both in terms of rust and the edge falling apart. Just as the martial artist is not good enough just to learn the techniques, you need to maintain them over time. Just as steel is perishable, so too are the skills of martial arts. When I give a gift of a knife to a student, these metaphorical elements start to emerge. They say, okay, I began as iron ore and I want to become the finished blade. There's another sense in which a knife is morally neutral. A knife can be used to save a life. It can be used to cook a meal, but it can also be used for murder for the worst possible purposes. Jiu-jitsu is the same way. Jiu-jitsu can make you a better person. It can make you a worse person. Jiu-jitsu is just a power. It's not a particularly great power, but it is a power. Like all power, it can be used for both good and bad. It's morally neutral in itself. It's up to us to make sure that just as the knife gets used for good purposes rather than bad, the Jiu-jitsu can be used for good purposes rather than bad. There's also an element where the basis of the knife is steel. Historically, there's always been a riddle of steel, which is that steel has the property of both hardness and suppleness. The harder you make steel, the better its edge retention becomes. The longer that edge will stay sharp. This is good, but it comes at a price. The harder you make steel, the more brittle it becomes. Now that edge can be damaged easily. The solution is to make the steel softer, and more malleable. That will prevent breakage of the blade and chipping of the edge. But when you make the steel softer, that comes at a price. That price is now the edge loses its sharpness very easily. The riddle of steel is how to work with these two to the greatest degree possible and create an edge which is hard enough to stay sharp for long periods of time, but without making the steel so brittle that the blade overall is compromised. So too in Jiu-jitsu, your task and training is to make the training competitive enough that you actually get used to the rigors of real combat. But on the other hand, it can't be so brutal that the athletes get broken down in the gym to a point where they're no longer effective. And so this duality of hardness and softness, which we see in the case of blades, is there in the training of the Jiu-jitsu athlete. So I often give a gift of a knife to a student when they've done something significant because it demonstrates in a </s><s>[INST] metaphorical way these key themes of the sport. Well, I've been honored to be a student of yours. I've been plagued by injury, but I hope to one day earn one such knife, and I think that's a really powerful metaphor. I'm really honored that you would spend any time with me in any context, but especially on the mat and especially today in conversation. John, you're an incredible person. Thank you for everything you do. Congratulations for historic accomplishment. It's always beautiful and inspiring to see greatness. And what I saw, what we saw at ADCC was greatness, rare greatness. And it's beautiful to see that humans can achieve that kind of thing. So thank you for making that happen. And thank you for talking today. Thank you, Alex. Thanks for listening to this conversation with John Donner. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi. The only reason a warrior is alive is to fight. And the only reason a warrior fights is to win. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. [/INST] </s> |
<s>[INST] The full out reads as always no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by mail gun by cinch an email delivery service that I've used for many, many years to have an A. P. I that allows you to programmatically send emails If you don't know what an API is. [/INST] The point is. </s><s>[INST] It's a way for programs for code to interact with the service. You have an api for both transactional and marketing emails. Those are terms used by people much smarter about this stuff than me. But I think transactional means specific to the person emails which is what I've I guess used. It's a way to email certain people to notify them about the status of whatever the heck they're doing on the website. 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You might know it because of Mr joe Rogan, which is probably the first time [/INST] I </s><s>[INST] heard an honored read. It's one of the first podcasts actually joe's that I listened to religiously. [/INST] I'm a </s><s>[INST] huge fan of audio books and podcasts in general. But there's something about [/INST] the </s><s>[INST] authenticity that joe projects that immediately connected with me and [/INST] over </s><s>[INST] time his ability to be curious and empathetic, a good listener but also be able to change his mind. Keep an open mind to some crazy ideas. [/INST] Anyway, I </s><s>[INST] mentioned that because the joe Rogan experience introduced me to a lot of these kinds of products like on it that quickly became part of my life. I guess podcast ad reads [/INST] work </s><s>[INST] anyway, you can get a special discount on Alpha Brain if you go to lex Friedman dot com slash on [/INST] it. </s><s>[INST] This show is also brought to you by indeed a hiring website. I've used them as part of many hiring efforts I've done for the teams I've led in the past. They have indeed is the match that gives you quality candidates whose resumes that indeed figure job description immediately. I've said this before, I'll say it again. There's very few things in life as important as the people you surround yourself with. I'm somebody for whom the work I've done brings a lot of meaning and joy to my life. Even when I sold shoes at Sears shoes in the women's section, [/INST] that little </s><s>[INST] community that you have as you try to figure out this new skill, those people are [/INST] so </s><s>[INST] instrumental to your happiness and to your effectiveness to your growth as a human being. So hiring is really, really, really important and um that's why you should use the best tools for the job. Indeed [/INST] is one such </s><s>[INST] tool. They have a special offer for listeners of this podcast only available for a limited time. 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<s>[INST] was that you don't like math. [/INST] Yeah, like things like that. Yeah. But I find it interesting, you know when I was, I remember when I was a little kid, I kept thinking about the year 2000 and I thought, Oh my God, I'll be dead, I'll be 35, years ago. </s><s>[INST] You've overcome a lot of struggle in your life based on different reasons. As you write about uh, class being one of them. You're funny sounding accent being another or just representation of class. Um, but in general, through all of that, to be at the White House, to be one of the most powerful voices in the world, what advice would you give from, grounded in your life story to somebody who's young, somebody who's in high school and college, thinking of how they can have a big positive impact on the world. [/INST] We all have a voice, right? We all have agency. We all actually have the ability to do something and you can, you know, start small in your local community or, you know, even in your own classroom, just helping you know, somebody else out or speaking up and advocating on behalf of things. You know, when I was about 11 years old, I got involved with the kids on save the whales. You know, we had all this, you know, kind of, we were hardly Greta Thunberg, but we, you know, we kind of got together in a kind of network writing to people and, you know, trying to raise money to, you know, help save the whales. Now, actually, the whales of the world doing somewhat better. I can't say that that was because of me and my network, but you know, it was kind of a way of organizing and you know, kind of joining in a larger movement. Everybody can be part of something bigger. The the thing is it's all about working together with others and giving other people a chance as well. I think, you know, one thing is that our voices have more impact when they're amplified. They don't have to be the voices of discord or the voices of hate. You know, you've been, you know, trying to do this with your podcast, you know, kind of give people abroad voice, give them a kind of platform and, you know, get them to join in with other people. And, you know, one of the things that I've been trying to do is, you know, kind of go and talk to just as many people as I possibly can and say, look, you know, we can all do something here. We can all, you know, lend our voices to a cause that we care deeply about. We can be kind to each other. We can give other people a chance, We can kind of speak out when we see that, you know, something is wrong and we can try to, you know explain things to people and what I'm trying to do at the moment, just sort of explain, you know, what I've learned about things and you know, hope that that helps people make informed judgments of their own and that, you know, kind of maybe take things further and learn something more. It's like kind of building upon, you know, the knowledge, you know, that that I have, you know, to try to import and everybody can do that different ways. You can kind of reach back if you're 14, help somebody who's seven for 21 help somebody who's 14, you know, kind of, you know, the kind of my age now, I'm always trying to, you know, reach back and you know, work with younger people, listen to younger people, help them out, make connections for them, listen to what they have to say about something, try to incorporate that and, you know, things that I'm saying as well, the main point is that we've all got a voice, we've all got agency and it always works better when we work together with other people, </s><s>[INST] but sometimes you can feel pretty hopeless, you can feel, I mean, there's low points, you seem to have a kind of restless energy, a drive to you where there are low points in the beginning when um in your early days when you're trying to get the education where it may have not been clear to you that you could be at all successful. [/INST] Yeah, they're always there always were. I mean, there were lots of points where I was just despondent, but then, you know, I'd meet somebody Who would just suddenly turn things around. I was this look was out there looking for it, you know, sometimes, you know, you just, if you're open and receptive to, you know, kind of hearing something from someone else. I mean, you know, often times when I felt so despondent, you know, in such a black mood, I didn't think I'd be able to go on and then I'd have a chance conversation with somebody. I mean, I don't remember, you know, sitting on the bench was probably 11 or 12 just crying my eyes out, just really upset and an old lady just came and sat next to me, put her arm around me said, Oh it's all right, what's the matter? You know, it can't be that bad can it? And it was just this human embrace, it's like somebody, you know, just basically reaching out to me that snapped me out of it and I thought, you know, here's somebody just you know, she didn't know who I was, she just felt really bad that I was, you know, sitting, you know, crying and I mean, I can't even remember, it was about anymore, </s><s>[INST] you know, now [/INST] it just seems inconsequential at the time, I probably thought my life was at an end, just, you know, sometimes people making out contact with you in the street and saying something to, you can kind of pull you out of something and you know, it's kind of a I think you just have to open yourself up to the prospect that not everyone is bad, just like you were saying before that there's you know, good in everybody, even during, you know, that really difficult period of impeachment, and I was trying to listen very carefully to people and I thought we always we still have something in common here, we need to remember that, you know, kind of when people are kind of forgetting who they are or you know, the context and their operating, there's always something that can, you know, can pull you back again, there's always that kind of thread, </s> |
<s>[INST] they're just like, no, it's just luck, you know? So you do lay it all out there, but I gotta push back to one interesting thing. I think a crucial component of your success is the idea stage, the idea generation. The brainstorm that I heard today, but getting really good at generating ideas. So it's not just the selection of the thumbnail and the title, that creative process. It's also just the engine of generating really good ideas. And getting that, I mean, I would say that is probably the thing that needs to be trained the most for most creators, right? [/INST] They just don't put enough ideas on paper. And getting that. Yes, but also a lot of creators also just don't, you know, which I didn't either for the longest time, just didn't don't make good enough content. </s><s>[INST] Content that's worthy of getting 10 million views. [/INST] In the idea or the execution of the idea? Both. I mean, like, think about how many people just make videos, they film in under 20 minutes and they don't really put any effort into it. And like, you know, it's like, my first 500 videos didn't deserve to get a million views. Like there's a reason they did. They're terrible, you know, but at the time I thought they did, right? And I'm in the mindset of a lot of small YouTubers where I thought those videos deserved a million views and I thought that really paid me. But I watching back now and I can tell you exactly why the videos were just fricking horrible. </s><s>[INST] You know what I mean? You know what I mean? So what was the breakthrough for you to start realizing, to start having a self-awareness, you know, about these videos aren't good enough. You're probably still going through that, [/INST] you probably still growing to see. Yeah, every six months you used to look back and hate your videos. Or at least see things you could improve and be like, oh, I could've done this better, that better. If not, then you're not learning quick enough, </s><s>[INST] in my opinion at least. Where's the source of that learning even for you now? [/INST] I mean, I just got back from a mastermind where I just got like ten of the smartest people I knew and we just locked ourselves in a cabin and taught each other stuff. Constantly, every day, not every day now, probably every other day, I go on a walk and it's called random people. I'll just say, yeah, teach me something. And I mean, it's just, you just have to have a never-ending thirst for learning. That's very imperative, especially if you want, like if you want to get on top and then stay on top, the only way to do it is just to constantly be learning. Or someone who is learning is just gonna, </s><s>[INST] yeah, I'll have a leg up on you in the knowledge game. And what kind of stuff are you, because you've talked about offline that you just love learning of all kinds, doesn't matter but in terms of videos are you studying videos are you studying [/INST] recently not as much I'm more because they get to the videos I want I have to build this business and scale up and hire so more my recent time has been like my teenage years were spent studying virality and studying content creation now I'm studying how to build a content company so I can actually produce the </s><s>[INST] crazy ideas I want to produce if that makes any sense so yeah on that the [/INST] business side we talked about hiring do you have trouble firing people no I'm pretty sure almost every person yeah actually every person I've ever fired we you just give them severance, and I like to see it more as. It's no ill will. Like if there's if like, if I fired you if there's some other job you want me to help you get I'll DM them on Twitter like you know if you want to go work for I don't know insert whatever MTV give me someone to DM. I'll DM like you know, I I try to make it more like a transition and do whatever </s><s>[INST] we can to make it as easy as possible. And there's something that was just not working for you because you want people like you said super passionate. [/INST] Because at the end of the day if you hold someone that you onto someone that you you don't see being here in 10 years, you're just doing them a disservice, you're just giving them more ingrained, more enrooted and where they are, and the sooner you do it, </s><s>[INST] and help them move on to their new life, the better. Given all the wisdom you have now, if you were to give advice to somebody or if you were to start over again, you had no money, what would be the first 10 videos you tried to make on a new channel, I guess that's advice for a new person. [/INST] And nobody knows you. And nobody knows you. Yeah and nobody knows me, </s><s>[INST] I would think they have a mask on. [/INST] And then you also, I guess don't have the wisdom. If I don't have what I have in my head then I would just say just fail. A lot of people get analysis paralysis and they'll just sit there and they'll plan their first video for 3 months. Any of you listening especially if you have zero videos on your channel, your first video is not going to give views. Period. It's not. Your first 10 are not going to give views. I can very confidently say that. So stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end Like all you need to do this this applies to people who have not uploaded videos But have dreams of being a youtuber is make 100 videos and improve something every time do that and then on your hundred first video We'll start talking like maybe you can get some views But you know your first hundred are gonna say there are very freak cases like Viscoshi or Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities and it doesn't take them so as many videos And it's just like people who are seven foot five and making the NBA like yes There are freak cases you can find but for the average person like us You know who don't have these exceptional personalities and you know Backgrounds of filmmaking just make a hundred videos improve something each time and then talk to me on your hundred first video </s> |
<s>[INST] you and see his a k A grind call what the game, everything, the whole thing. [/INST] Yeah, we we talk about </s><s>[INST] everything is a game, [/INST] not well the universe, like what if what if it's a game and the goal of the game is to figure out like, well either how to beat it, how to get out of it, you know, maybe maybe that maybe this universe is an escape room, like a giant escape room and the goal is to figure out, put all the pieces of puzzle, figure out how it works in order to like unlock this, like hyper dimensional key and get out beyond what it is. That's </s><s>[INST] no, but but then so you're saying it's like different levels and it's like a cage within a cage, within a cage and never like one page at a time, you figure out how to do that. Um [/INST] can you level up, you know, like us becoming multi planetary would be a level up for us, you know, figuring out how to upload our consciousnesses to the thing that would probably be a leveling up or spiritually, you know, humanity becoming more combined and less adversarial and and bloodthirsty and us becoming a little bit more enlightened. That would be a leveling up. You know, there's many different frames to it, whether it's physical, you know, digital or like </s><s>[INST] I think, I think level one for earth is probably the biological evolutionary process. It's like going from single cell organisms to early humans then maybe level two is whatever is happening inside our minds and creating ideas and creating technologies that's like evolutionary process of ideas. And then multi planetary is interesting. Is that fundamentally different from what we're doing here on earth? Probably because it allows us to like exponentially scale [/INST] it, it delays the malthusian trap, right? It's a way to keep the playing field, get lot to make the playing field get larger so that we can, it can accommodate more of our stuff more of us. Um and that's a good thing. But I don't know if it like fully solves this issue of uh well this thing called molokai, which we haven't talked about yet, but which is basically I call it the God of unhealthy competition. </s><s>[INST] Let's go. Let's go to mark what you did a great video on Malik one aspect of it. The application of it to [/INST] instagram beauty filters </s><s>[INST] through [/INST] very niche. I wanted to start off small. Um so Matlock was originally um coined as well. So apparently back in the like uh canaanite times was this ancient Carthage virginian, I can never say at Carthage in somewhere around 300 Bc or 2, 280 I don't know. Um there was supposedly this death cult who I would sacrifice their Children to this awful demon god thing they called Malek um in order to get power to win wars. So really dark horrible things. And it was literally like about child sacrifice, whether they actually existed or not, we don't know, but in mythology they did. And this god that they worshiped was this thing called Malek And then, I don't know, it seemed like it was kind of quiet throughout history. Um in terms of mythology beyond that until um this movie metropolis uh in 1927 talked about this, you see that there was this incredible futuristic city that everyone was living great, in but then the protagonist goes underground into the sewers and sees that the city is run by this machine and this machine basically would just like kill the workers all the time because it was just so hard to keep it running, they're always dying. So there's all this suffering that was required in order to keep the city going. And then the protagonist has this vision that this machine is actually this demon monarch. So again, it's like the sort of like mechanistic consumption of of humans in order to get more power. Um And then Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem in the sixties, which incredible poem called Howl about this thing Matlock. Um and a lot of people sort of quite understandably take the interpretation of that. He's that he's talking about capitalism. Um but then the like the sort of piece de resistance that moved into this idea of game theory was scott alexander of slate, star codex. Um wrote this incredible literally. I think it might be my favorite piece of writing of all time. It's called meditations on moloch. Everyone must go read it. Uh and </s><s>[INST] is a blog. [/INST] It's a blog. Yes, we can link to it in the show notes or something. Right? Um No, I </s><s>[INST] yes, yes, I like how you assume I have a professional operation going on [/INST] here. I shall </s><s>[INST] try to remember. [/INST] What do I want? Anyone you're giving the impression of </s><s>[INST] it. Yeah, like please if I if I don't please somebody in the comments remind me, [/INST] you don't </s><s>[INST] know, this blog is one of the best blogs ever. Probably you should probably be following [/INST] it. Our </s><s>[INST] blog still a thing. I think they still a thing. [/INST] Yeah, he's migrated onto Substack, but it's still a blog. Um, anyway, </s><s>[INST] better not suck things up. [/INST] Yeah, they don't, they don't turn monarchy, which will mean something to people </s><s>[INST] when I stop interrupting. [/INST] So anyway, so he writes, he writes this this piece meditations on moloch and basically he analyzes the poem and he's like, okay, so it seems to be something relating to where competition goes wrong. And you know, moloch was historically this thing of like where people would sacrifice a thing that they care about in this case Children, their own Children in order to gain power, a competitive advantage. And if you look at almost everything that sort of goes wrong in our society, it's that same process. Um, so with the instagram beauty filters thing, um, you know, if you're trying to become a famous instagram model, you are incentivized to post the hottest pictures of yourself that you can, you know, you're trying to play that game. Um, there's a lot of hot women on instagram, How do, how do you compete against them? You post really hot pictures and that's how you get more likes as technology gets better. You know, more makeup techniques come along. Um, and then more recently these beauty filters where like at the touch of a button, it makes your face look absolutely incredible um compared to your natural, natural natural face, uh these, these technologies come along, it's everyone is incentivized to that short term strategy. Um but over on on net it's bad for everyone because now everyone is kind of like feeling like they have to use these things and these things like they make you like, the reason why I talked about them in this video is because I noticed it myself, you know, like I was trying to grow my instagram for a while, I've given up on it now, but um yeah, and I noticed these filters how good they made me look and I'm like, well I know that everyone else is kind of please </s> |
<s>[INST] it's so it's so difficult because then you look at like the Russian national team and you have just the world champions and so uh oh or you even have like um what is the tom brands and terry brands in the, in the wrestling system? You have like these people, it's a small group of people but they're all some of the best people in the world and they're going head to head and yeah you don't necessarily get a good look kind of a variety of styles, but just the quality is there and even that is missing for people your size in America because and that is so difficult to work with which it makes scale is it makes Travis's story that much more amazing is you mentioned kind of picking whatever the set of techniques the athlete is naturally good at or prefers or whatever. How much specialization is there? Maybe if I give you like two choices, is it good to have like one throw and try to become the best person in the world? Did that throw or do you want to have a bunch of stuff? Uh like a variety of throws? [/INST] Well for Travis it was a Ponsana G. That was his main throw right? But from that upon seeing a G, he had a variety of other attacks he could do, you know that mixed it up so that you kept people guessing. Maybe it wasn't the ponce was coming, Maybe it was the koshi groomer that he did or maybe it was the people into a sorrow that he did in combination. So you typically have one main throw that you do for me it was tile Toshi for kayla, it was her ago, she for Travis it was easy Ponsana G. But then you come up with a variety of other throws that you do from the very same grip. So whatever grip you take for your main throw, you want to develop, you know, an arsenal of attacks that go in all different directions holding that same grip so you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming. Because if they're just sitting on one technique at the highest level of sport, with the exception of a few right, we talked about, oh noes uchi Mata, uh, with the exception of a few, most of the world catches on pretty quick </s><s>[INST] on how to beat you. There is something to just sticking, making sure you really dedicated to the main thing. So for Travis, that would be like the main version of his say Nagy, like really making sure you don't forget to really put in the time on that because um, I mean 1 1 way to say it is that threat being dangerous, opens up a lot of things, right? But also, I don't know, I think I'm just as a fan, I think it it's sad when like elite level athletes in all of my combat sports kind of start taking their main thing for granted. Like, um they think, okay, I've figured that part out now, I'll be working on this whole system on variations on different setups on uh lefty versus some like weird variation as opposed to, you know what, if you look at some of the best people ever, they seem to have not cared about variations at all. They're just like literally they are more like Jiro dreams of sushi and like, like fine tuning their ear, their ability to detect the minute movements that give you an opening on that main thing. And so the whole time you're just waiting for that, throw your like dancing with a little bit of pressure and like releasing the pressure and putting the pressure maybe a little bit of balance and finding like the right moment to strike and focusing on that. Again. Maybe that's just like a monetization of like the simplicity of that. Maybe it is kind of impossible to do that in the large scale. But I just um yeah, I don't know if you can comment on that whether there is some value and still putting in like tens of thousands of reps on the main main thing. [/INST] Well unquestionably that has to happen. You still have to drill your main throw and you have to fine tune it and continue to do, you know, repetition after repetition and throws in the crash pad, you know, or throws on the mat, moving around just explosive movements. Doing your main technique, you're never gonna forget that and you're not gonna put it to the side and not practice it anymore. It still has to be part of your repertoire and part of your daily training, but you do have to evolve and I think that's I think that's the sport of judo makes you evolve, you know when I look at, we talked about Koga from before right? And we talked about, he had a dynamic people in scientology that nobody could stop for years and years and years but when people started to you know be unorthodox and come down his back and cross grip him and he couldn't get to the lapel, he had to come up with something else. And all of a sudden you saw Koga doing now he did a soda or now he did a tomboy Nagy which so he can, he added to his arsenal you know to keep people thinking, keep people guessing. So it's not just that one trick pony, they still couldn't stop his people and saying Maggie once he got that grip but if they stop them from getting that grip or putting two hands on the g he had to go to something else and that's what he did. </s> |
<s>[INST] And the thing is we forget this, forget this history in our conflicts today. We forget that there is the nature of evil, We forget that there is real evil in the world and um the thing to fight that evil is to be united to be uh both, it's like this interesting line like you talked about joe Rogan of being both like kind to each other, compassionate, empathetic but also being like strong and a bad motherfucker when you need to to make sure that you that like there is a balance between kindness and force [/INST] that you use force when force is necessary, but you don't have to walk around like Billy Badass all the time. I mean, some of the toughest people that I grew up with that literally could kick the ship out of whoever came near him. They never got in fights because one, even people that didn't know them because they were actually nice guys, you know, they were there just good dudes. But you know, if you cross them, like I had a friend of mine, uh, he was, he's a nationally ranked wrestler, it went, went to the naval academy with me. He's a very, very good friend of mine. Um, and uh, He is when you meet him and he wrestled at £190 and he did not lose a match his senior year until he went to nationals. He just had a bad day. He actually lost to a guy he had pummeled the ship out of and he would cross. It was funny we, we joke about it even with him because when you meet him, he's like the nicest like local, hey, hey dude, you know, hey, how you doing? He's super nice. He would cross that ring on, on a wrestling mat as soon as he crossed that ring, it was like a totally different person and he would go out there and just destroy people. I mean physically destroy, like put a hurt on and he would get done and he's like super humble and they'd raise his hand and he would, he would have this blank expression would raise his hand and he'd walk off and as soon as he crossed the line, he looked up and smiled, Hey, hi guys, how you doing? Like, he literally just went, could rip someone's arms off. But as soon as he crossed, he was a totally different person. He's like, and he's that way today and he won't even tell you he's a </s><s>[INST] wrestler. That's kind of a symbol of the best of America. That's what America is [/INST] a wrestler. He's across </s><s>[INST] the line, You're, you're, you can be hard, but once you're off the mat, you're just a kind human being. Yeah, I know you're super humble, uh saying it's better to be lucky than good. But your story is inspiring that the entire trajectory of having a dream of accomplishing that dream of having one hell of a career, what advice would you give to a young person to a young version of yourself today that listens to this and is inspired that wants to fly or wants to go to space? Who wants to build the rocket is their advice. You could give them about life, about career, about anything. [/INST] Yeah, yeah. First let me start with, and you had a question on inspirational people. So my grandfather had mentioned him earlier, huge funeral beer delivery guy, um, was delivering beer in the sixties riots, where the guys are black in the black neighborhoods where you know, white people didn't go and my grandfather Sicilian, he was one of the first ones in his family born in the United States. So my great grandmother and I had aunts and uncles that I knew growing up that actually came over on the boat from huge, huge guy and just the nicest friendliest would give you the shirt off his back, obviously proven by his funeral. And I'm talking at his funeral, the head of the black panthers was at his funeral in Toledo, Ohio. The mafia guys were at his funeral in Toledo Ohio. Uh, I mean it was literally a mix of, of who's who and uh, he had told me once, you know, because when you're little, you start looking and I grew up basically, I was probably middle class, lower middle class. My dad was a fireman that you're not rich, he's working for the city. It was a paycheck to paycheck living is how I grew up. And I was talking my grandfather one day and he said something to me and this is, this is literally how I run my life. He said it was about money because you see, you know, back in the day, if you saw someone in a Mercedes that was rare, you know, they weren't everywhere. You know, people, you couldn't lease the car, he actually bought a car and usually bought a car with cash. Um, so it's a totally different than we we are now. And he said, he goes, you know, David, he goes, they're no better than you and you're no better than anyone else. He goes you got to remember that. He goes, everyone is different. He goes treat everyone with the respect and dignity that they deserve. He goes and if they're poor, if they're homeless, he goes it doesn't make him a bad person. It just that's that's who they chose to be and you make choices in your life, but never ever look down on someone because you know, there will always be someone that will look down on you and you should never ever do that. And I kept that close to me. He was a huge influence is my mom's dad um just a big big influence in my life and and the way I carried myself. Um and he was one that would say, you know, you can be anything you want to be. You know, he grew up dirt poor, you know, and the fact that he had bought a house and took good care of my grandmother and did stuff like that, you know, to him that was a success. And to me it was always trying to better and move on and he was the one, you know, my parents were a big part of this too was instilling that anything is possible. So when I'm four years and 11 months old in 1969, You know, and I'm watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. And I'm asking my mom and she says, well they were all military pilots and you know we had an international guard that at the time was flying F- 100 and I'm dating myself um and I was just fascinated with flight and I just looked that going that's really what I want to do and I never lost sight of that. There was always I could do this or do that. And when I was going to go to college before I enlisted in the Marine Corps, I was accepted into natural resources Ohio state. And I'm like if I can't fly I'll go be a forest ranger because I wanted to hang out in one of those tolerance in colorado and look for fires because that's just I like that stuff you know, is that or be an oceanographer because I was fascinated with Jacques Cousteau and actually that's my degree, My undergrad degree is Jacques Cousteau. So influences are Neil armstrong and Jacques Cousteau, I have an oceanography degree. Got an M. B. A. From University of Houston go Cougars, got to mention them. And then uh so you're looking people go what are you gonna do with that? And I said you know I got an oceanography degree because I got well I'm gonna sail on the ocean. So at least if the ship sinks I'll know where I'm at. That was a kind of a running joke and then </s> |
<s>[INST] liability, the ethics, How do you get it right? It's tricky. It's really, really tricky because like drinking is one of those things that's funny and hilarious and loves its social, the so on and so forth. But it's also the thing that hurts a lot of people, like a lot of people like alcohol is one of those things, it's legal, but it's really damaging to a lot of lives, It destroys lives and not just in the driving context. Um I should mention, people should listen to Andrew Huberman who recently talked about um alcohol. He has an amazing pocket. Andrew Huberman is uh neuroscientists from stanford and a good friend of mine and he he's like a human encyclopedia about all health related wisdom. So that there's a podcast you would love. [/INST] No, no, </s><s>[INST] no, no, no. Oh you don't know. Andrew Huberman. Okay, listen, you listen to to Andrew, he's called human lab podcast. This is your assignment. Just listen to one. I guarantee you this will be a thing where you say, lex, this is the greatest human I've ever discovered. So, [/INST] oh my God, because I've really, I'm really on a journey of kind of health and wellness and I'm learning lots and I'm trying to like build these, I guess atomic habits around just being healthy. Um So I'm definitely gonna do this, I'm gonna </s><s>[INST] his whole thing. This is this is, this is, this is great. Uh he's a legit scientist, like um really well published, but in his podcast, what he does, he's not he's not talking about his own work, he's like a human encyclopedia of papers. And so he, his whole thing is he takes the topic and in a very fast you mentioned atomic habits, like very clear way summarizes the research in a way that leads to protocols of what you should do. He's really big on like, not like this is what the science says, but like this is literally what you should be doing according to science. So like he's really big and there's a lot of recommendations he does, which several of them I definitely don't do, like get sunlight um as soon as possible from waking up and like for prolonged periods of times. That's a really big one. And he's, there's a lot of science behind that one, there's a bunch of stuff, very [/INST] system, you're </s><s>[INST] gonna, you're gonna be like lex, this is, this is my new favorite person, I guarantee you [/INST] and </s><s>[INST] if you guys somehow don't know Andrew Huberman and you care about your well being. Um you know, you should definitely listen to him, I love you. Andrew Anyway, so uh what were we talking about alcohol and detecting alcohol. So this is a problem you care about trying to [/INST] solve and actually like broadening it. Um I do believe that the car is going to be a wellness center like because again, imagine if you have a variety of sensors inside the vehicle tracking, not just your emotional state or level of distraction and drowsiness and drowsiness, level of distraction, drowsiness and intoxication, but also maybe even things like, um, your physical, you know, your heart rate and your heart rate variability and your breathing rate. Um, and it can start like optimizing, yeah, can optimize the ride based on what your goals are. So I think we're going to start to see more of that and I'm excited about that. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. What are the, what are the challenges you're tackling well with smart? I currently, what's like the trickiest things to get? Is it, is it basically convincing? More and more car companies that having a i inside the car is a good idea or is there some, is there more technical algorithmic challenges? What's what's been keeping you mentally busy? I [/INST] think a lot of the car companies we are in conversations with are already interested in definitely driver monitoring. Like I think it's becoming a must have, but even interior sensing, I can see like we're engaged in a lot of like advanced engineering projects and proof of concepts. Um, I think technologically though, and even the technology, I can see a path to making it happen. I think it's the use case like how does the car respond once it knows something about you because you wanted to respond in a thoughtful way. That doesn't, that isn't off putting to the consumer in the car. So I think that's like the user experience. I don't think we've really nailed that and we usually, that's not part were the sensing platform, but we usually collaborate with the car manufactured to decide what the use cases. So, so, so you figure out that somebody's angry while driving, okay, what should the car, do you know, </s><s>[INST] Do you see yourself as a role of, of nudging of like basically coming up with solutions essentially that and then, and then the car manufacturers kind of put their own little spin on it, [/INST] right? Like we, we, we are like the ideation, creative thought partner, but at the end of the day, the car company needs to decide what's on brand for them, right? Like maybe when it figures out that you're distracted or drowsy, it shows you a coffee cup, right? Or maybe it takes more aggressive behaviors and basically said, okay, if you don't, like take a rest in the next five minutes, the car is gonna shut down right? Like there's a whole range of actions the car can take and doing the thing that is most yeah, that builds trust with the driver and the passengers. I think that's what we need to be very careful about. </s> |
<s>[INST] So you don't get to see nature. [/INST] I don't see anything. You get in solitary. All right. And it takes about a week. The first week is the roughest. You're bouncing off the walls at first week because you can't sleep, can't do anything else. Then you start to adapt to it after a while when that book does arrive, you're happy as hell to have it. I'm well versed king James bible. So you're happy to have it. Then finally you get other books that are coming that come in from that point, um, I spent eight months of that and they sent me out to a real prison. Big spring texas. West texas. Where </s><s>[INST] have [/INST] you been out there? </s><s>[INST] Man, [/INST] prairie dogs and tarantulas? That's what it is. It got no kidding. It gets so hot that warnings come on the radio radio telling you not to drive on certain streets because they're melted. That's that's big spring. So, if you've seen the movie, uh, from dusk till dawn, the opening scene is in big spring texas. That </s><s>[INST] uh hot. Very [/INST] hot. So, and that's where I find out what a real prison is and it's not ran by guards, prisons are run by inmates. And that's a fact. So you're met at the door by whatever race you are, is what happens. So big spring is a converted air force compound. It's a disciplinary prison. So you get the bad guys are in there. So I get I go through processing and I'm walking up to the unit and I met at the door by a guy named Nick Sandifer, he's the treasurer of the Aryan Brotherhood. And uh first question out of his mouth is any more white guys come in and should, I didn't know, I was like, well I don't know, four or five. Next question is what are you in here for? My answer was because I'm like I got, no worries. My answer was computer crime smiled at him and it turns out wrong thing to say because computer crime is not credit card theft or hacking or any bullshit like that computer crime in prison is child pornography. So tell him that he looks at me like I'm a piece of sh it goes and gets his buddies, they circle around, what are you in here for? </s><s>[INST] Like how the Aryan brotherhood has like lines, they're [/INST] like, oh yeah, this </s><s>[INST] is child porn, That's it, that's the bad guy. [/INST] Like what did you say you're in here for? So I'm sitting there trying to explain it to him. </s><s>[INST] They're like, you [/INST] know, you tell a good story, you still said this? No. </s><s>[INST] Computer crime basically really does mean usually child pornography [/INST] in prison. Yeah. And what you see and that's one of the things you find out that the guys that are going in there for child porn. They will tell them it's credit card theft. </s><s>[INST] Alright. [/INST] So yeah. </s><s>[INST] Right. They've learned. So [/INST] I'm that guy. But you also </s><s>[INST] don't I mean for people who are just listening to this, you don't exactly look like a typical computer hacker. [/INST] That's true. That's true. That's very true. But I don't look like the pedophile either. </s><s>[INST] That's right. That's right. But it's like it doesn't make it seem like you're I mean, I guess you're not wearing a hoodie and you're you're not [/INST] like </s><s>[INST] emo dark, you know [/INST] the way it actually works in prison, They won't attack you until they know. Alright. So they have to see paperwork which now in federal prison you don't get transported with paperwork because of that. So they have to see paperwork or a guard will tell them what you're in there for. The guards will tell who the pedophiles are. So none of the guards told them that was anything. So for the first month they think I am, but they're not doing anything because they don't know for sure. At the end of the first month I have been talking to kevin Poulsen over at wired magazine about max Butler, he does an article about that shows up in wired magazine. So at the end of the first month wired magazine hits compound, front cover all the story. You would think you would think it saved me. So I'm reading the article really happy about it. So what happens is is four o'clock is mail call four o'clock to stand up. Count nationwide after four o'clock is your mail call, they hand out all the mail for the day. So the mail comes, I get the magazine, I'm like reading through, I'm like, well shit, I'm good to go. Then it says Brett johnson secret service informant in the article. </s><s>[INST] So you're now a snitch, [/INST] which is right up there with the pedophiles. So we go to dinner after that at dinner, you can hear it, you can hear the chant. We gotta snitch. I think it's a go there we go, warden next day, shuts down the entire compound, calls me into his office, They got security there, You got the counselors there and everything else warden looks at me, he's like, did you give an interview to wired magazine? I'm like, </s><s>[INST] yeah, he's [/INST] like, do you not know? They will kill you in here. I was like, he was like, he was like, do you feel safe? Well, I know if, if you tell me you don't feel safe, they transport transport, you means another eight months in solitary confinement. You start to see ships in solitary after </s><s>[INST] a while. So I'm like, [/INST] no, not gonna do that. So I'm like completely safe. He was like, look, he's like, if anybody says anything to you immediately come to us because they'll kill you. So they do a locker search, try to confiscate the magazines. They can't. The next day I walk into the unit, there's nick sander for laying on his bunk magazine wide open reading it. I'm like, oh shit, walked up to him. I was like, hey nick, what are you doing? He's like, oh doing some reading. I was like anything interesting. He's like, it's getting </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah. You know, I have a little bit of that. I, I seem to uh see the magic in a lot of moments like I have a deep, it's obviously not obviously, but it seems to be chemical in nature that I just am excited about life. I love life. I love like stupid things. It feels like I'm high a lot unlike mushrooms or something like that where you'd really appreciate that. So you're able, I'm able to detect something about the environment that maybe others don't, I don't know. But like I seem to be over the top grateful to be alive and a lot of for a lot of stupid reasons and that's in there somewhere. I mean, it's, it's kind of interesting because, um, it really is true that our brains the way we were brought up, but also the genetics enables us to see certain slices of the world. And um, some people are probably more receptive to anomalous information. They see the they see the magic, the possibility in the novel thing as opposed to kind of uh, finding the pattern of the common of the regular. Some people are more, wait a minute. This is kind of weird. I mean, a lot of those people probably become scientists to like, huh, like there's this pattern happening over and over and over and then something weird just happened. And then you get excited by that weirdness and start to pull the string and discover what is at the core of that weirdness. And perhaps is that, you know, maybe by way of question, how does the human perception system deal with anomalous information? Do you think, [/INST] well, it first tries to classify it and get it out of the way if it's not food, if it's not sex, right? If it's not uh in the way of my desires or if it is in the way of my desires, then you focus on it. And so the I think the question is how much spare processing power, how much CPU cycles do we spend on things that are not those core desires? </s><s>[INST] What uh is the most kind of um memorable, powerful ufo encounter report you've ever heard just to your person on a personal level, Like there's something that was really powerful. [/INST] Well I mentioned the Zimbabwe one that's particularly interesting and one that actually most people don't know about, but family Driving down the highway, two little girls in the back open, glass topped car. And the little girls see a craft right over their car. This is in the middle of the day, on a busy highway. The mother sees it. Nobody can they look around, Nobody else seems to see it. So the girls take out their camera, take a picture of it and then they get home. Uh They look at the picture, there's no craft. But there's a little object About 30 ft above there. Car or so, probably about three ft across, kind of star shaped. It's not the craft, but it's something else. There's obviously there was something there. And so what were they seeing? Were they seeing a projection? Were they seeing? And why we're only they seeing it. </s><s>[INST] And the photograph was capturing something very different than that we're seeing. There's still an object. What can you give a little bit of context? Is this from modern day? It's [/INST] modern day. Oh yeah, there's a camera. </s><s>[INST] I mean they had a cell phone camera and this is like a report provided by the way. Where is like a central place to provide a report? Is this [/INST] oh, there's move on. But this isn't public. I've seen the picture. </s><s>[INST] Oh, this is something you've directly interacted [/INST] with. Yeah, yeah, I've seen the </s><s>[INST] picture. So those moments like that they captivate your [/INST] uh well it's it's so different. It doesn't fall into the standard story at all. But it also, but in another way it's kind of a it's a clear renunciation of this notion that when people see events, they don't all see the same thing. Now. We've heard this about traffic accidents, different people will see the color of the car differently or the chain of events differently and just tells you that memory isn't anywhere near what we think it is. But the issue around the so called Ufo reports is that the same people will see a very different thing almost as if whatever it is is projecting a is projecting something into the mind rather than it being real, right? Rather than it being a real manifestation, you know, material in front of you. It's actually almost some sort of an altered virtual reality that is imposed on you. I mean, you know, I think the company meta and all the virtual reality companies would love to have something like that, right? Well you don't have to actually wear something on your face to experience a virtual reality? What happens if you could just project it? </s> |
<s>[INST] Oh, oh, she's, she's actually, she's out shopping right now where [/INST] we've </s><s>[INST] been having sex multiple times a day ever since. That's [/INST] nice. That's lovely. </s><s>[INST] I think I'm sure she's married and, and happily and has many grandchildren. Okay. Uh and plus that movies on thanksgiving, I think great thanksgiving. So like thanksgiving. Just embodies that forget about the business and the whatever the career you're chasing in life and just take a pause and appreciate the people, you lost [/INST] your family or your family, </s><s>[INST] friends. Yeah. Uh you have some weird friends, unorthodox friends. So, so at least in the public [/INST] sphere </s><s>[INST] from bob lee bryan callen, all those kinds of folks from the mad tv days, I'm sure there's others. What does it mean to be a good friend [/INST] here in L. A. Or just in </s><s>[INST] general? In the world? [/INST] The world will friend? I think it is different here, I think it is. I </s><s>[INST] think there's a little bit of a career kind of negotiation shuffling around that kind of stuff. Different. [/INST] Oh I I just mean, I mean, I mean that it's just kinda hard here too to make time everybody. There's so there's it's always been a city to me that is like we'll keep you so busy and every time I go home to Vancouver after a few days I start to get a little stir crazy and I think that being here in in L. A. I go to sleep with 100 things that I still have to do and you never, you're never out of stuff to do and if you um you know when you ask about are you nuts or whatever, if you're crazy. I mean look every all the weirdest people from every high school in the United States is like, you know, I'm gonna make it in L. A. You know, everyone just comes here and uh just another freak in the freak kingdom as they say at the end of fear and loathing in las Vegas. That was a very good Robin Williams impersonation, that was my Robin Williams as johnny Depp as Hunter s Thompson. It's not your fault </s><s>[INST] Will it's pretty good. [/INST] Thank you. Could have </s><s>[INST] been you [/INST] in fear and loathing. </s><s>[INST] I [/INST] would have liked to play his attorney. The role that Del Toro gained weight for. That would have been cool. He's just he's just what uh chewing his face off. I could have done that. Um uh yeah, no, I think that it's </s><s>[INST] backdoor beauty. That guy is full of good lines. [/INST] Yeah. Um </s><s>[INST] yeah. [/INST] Fantastic actor. I think, I think what it takes to be a good friend is just, you know, presence just being there. I mean that's all anyone needs to be heard right? Um in L. A. It is, it is interesting. It is you I haven't seen people that I love in years. Some people you </s><s>[INST] still have a depth of connection even though like one of the reasons I really enjoy doing a podcast, you get to sit down with with actual friends of yours and spend prolonged periods of time together that you don't otherwise [/INST] that </s><s>[INST] I've spoken on this podcast that people really close to me. It's like you've never had a conversation without microphones like you do with microphones. It's weird but uh there's some aspect about L. A. That, you know, a lot of the especially friends of yours comedians and so on. They'll do podcasts and stuff and there's uh I don't know, there's an intimacy to that. [/INST] Yeah, yeah, there is and there isn't the ones that I do, I mean I just did bobby lee and Andrew Santino is </s><s>[INST] funny enough called Bad Friends [/INST] Bad Friends and afterwards and my good pal chad Culleton with whom I do do Dzi was with me, </s><s>[INST] sneakers are coming soon, [/INST] sneakers are coming soon, you get your will foot and you're chad foot comes in a size 15 9.5. Um and uh I remember afterwards we were talking, it was just basically me chad and Santino, we're talking and bobby was over there, you know, on his phone and then I was like, well, I mean we didn't spend any time talking about anything, it feels like one of those hours that goes by and you realize I've just been goofing around with these guys, which </s><s>[INST] it's [/INST] great and then I'm like alright bobby, hey bob, I'll see you later and he's like, like this alright man, hey, love you bro, See you later. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, [/INST] he's a guy. Do you ever just, I just send text messages over there to him that never come back and then he thinks that I'm angry with him because it's been, you know, it'll go to three years without him getting back to me and then just out of nowhere face and uh </s><s>[INST] you know, [/INST] I got to be very, I gotta be very careful bobby. Yeah, I got to be very sweet </s><s>[INST] dear friend, [/INST] dear friend, Hello, how are you doing? How are you? I know I checked in with you but not but three months ago uh And then every once in a while he'll go hey </s><s>[INST] I tend to hide from the world and I I can be pretty shady with friends text back. Yeah I can empathize with bobby. Might be a Skyrim thing. It might be like hiding in the world in the digital world with fake fake N. P. C. S. [/INST] Yeah. Yeah there's that uh yeah you know I have a buddy who said something really smart while ago we ended up working together on this uh tv show thing and I reached out to him to see if he wanted to do it with us and he did and he goes this is a great guy. Such a funny writer. He goes I may not be in touch all the time but I know who my friends are you know what I mean and it's like in our business and this is a fellow who moved um who's from Ontario Canada moved back there. He's on the farm with his wife and kids and he does not care. He's never been a Hollywood guy and uh it's tough to get hold of him but when you do you know he's still the same sweet old guy he's doing his thing though. </s> |
<s>[INST] The following is a conversation with Stephen [/INST] Kotkin, his second time in the podcast, Stephen is </s><s>[INST] one of the greatest [/INST] Historians of all time specializing in 20th and 20 </s><s>[INST] 1st Century History of Russia [/INST] and eastern europe, and he has written what </s><s>[INST] is widely considered to be the definitive biography of [/INST] Stalin in three volumes, 2 </s><s>[INST] of which have been [/INST] Published and the 3rd focused </s><s>[INST] on World War Two [/INST] and the years after he is in the midst of writing. Now, </s><s>[INST] this conversation includes a response [/INST] to my previous </s><s>[INST] podcast episode with Oliver [/INST] Stone that was focused on Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine </s><s>[INST] steven provides a hard hitting criticism of Putin [/INST] and the Russian invasion of Ukraine wade and contextualized deeply in the complex geopolitics and history of our world, all with an intensity and rigor, but also wit and humor. That makes </s><s>[INST] Steven one of my favorite [/INST] human beings. Please also allow </s><s>[INST] me to mention [/INST] something that has been apparent and has weighed heavy on my heart </s><s>[INST] and mind [/INST] this conversation with Stephen Kotkin makes </s><s>[INST] it more dangerous for [/INST] me to travel in Russia. The previous conversation </s><s>[INST] with Oliver Stone [/INST] makes it more </s><s>[INST] dangerous for me to travel in Ukraine. [/INST] This makes me sad, but it is the way of the world. I will nevertheless travel to both Ukraine and Russia. I need to once again see with my own eyes the land of my ancestors where they suffered but flourished and eventually gave birth. The silly old me. I need to hear directly the pain, anger and hope for both Ukrainians and Russians, I won't give details to my travel plans in terms of location and timing but the trip is very soon whatever happens, I'm truly grateful for every day I'm alive and I hope to spend each such day adding a bit of love to the world. I love you all and now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got lambda for hardware for deep learning and we got scale for data, data annotation for deep learning, then we also have a threat of greens for performance, Express VPN for privacy and ROCA for style, choose wisely my friends and now onto the full it reads no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by lambda computers, workstations, laptops, servers, cloud compute all for deep learning. Great both for individual researchers and huge companies. Lambda has created easy plug and play access to very powerful computation. I actually have one of their newly released laptops that I've been using for machine learning. Both the training and the influence side of machine learning. I've been thinking of doing a video on this laptop because I think it's the coolest thing ever. Honestly, it's already comes with a ban to all configured for tensorflow and pytorch all the things you need for machine learning already pre installed. I think they also have Windows machines. But this one is Linux which is the best operating system and the os of champions if I may say so anyway, I've been thinking of doing a video on it just to give people some insight into the machines that are part of my life because they do make my life easier. But they also mean a lot to me, I don't know, I spent so many hours behind computers that in a small way or maybe a big way, they do bring a lot of joy to my heart, especially when those computers are doing machine learning, which is the thing I'm deeply passionate about. Anyway, check out lambda at lambda labs dot com slash flex. This episode is also brought to you by scale the machine learning assisted data labeling, platform scale rapid works with any use case or task including image, video, text, annotation and classification three D data and it supports 20 plus languages. I've said this before. I'll say it again and again and again, I think in most cases in most real world applications, the particular neural network architecture that you use a particular model, the particular pipeline doesn't matter nearly as much as the quality of the data that's used for labeling for training the machine learning systems. The neural networks, there are cases actually where there's breakthrough performance on the algorithm side, but they're rare. That's actually why open a eyes Dolly too. So interesting because ultimately the architecture innovation is what provided the improvement, but actually I don't know how much data improvement there is too. But in any case in most real world application data is everything like 99% of applications. So if you want to have real world impact, make sure your annotation is done well is done at scale, but not just quantity, it's also quality. So go to scale dot com slash lex today, you can get your first batch of data labeled up to 50 bucks for free. Again, that's scale dot com slash lex. This show is brought to you by athletic greens and it's a G one drink, which is an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It replaced the multivitamin for me and went far beyond that, 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day. I drink it multiple times a day often, especially when I'm doing crazy workouts like I will be Tomorrow and I did two days ago. So running about 12 to 15 miles after I returned home sort of exhausted hard because it's austin in the summer Or almost summer, but it's, you know, you're talking about 90°, 100° weather, a pop of the threat of greens in the fridge or the freezer actually take a quick shower pop out of the shower and then it's just nice and chill and it's delicious and it's refreshing and it when I take it I just feel better about my life about my health, about everything in this world. It ensures that I have the nutritional basis for both the diet and the physical and mental pursuits that I take on anyway. Uh they'll give you a one month supply of fish oil as well when you sign up at athletic greens dot com slash lex fish oil is one of the only other supplements I take. Actually. It's really the only supplement. So I have also the electrolytes fish oil and a flood of greens and given all that I have all my bases covered. So athletic greens dot com slash lex. Mhm. This show is also brought to you by Express V. P. M. I don't know why I love Express VPN so much. I've loved him for many, many years, way before I had a podcast or any of that. Um it was just a simple button and it was a kind of liberating statement privacy in this world of the internet where everybody is watching you, where the big companies are watching you, they're tracing you, they're tracking you all that kind of stuff. You need protection and that's what I mean. Some of that is just psychologically but also technically I just press the button and I feel more protected and I in fact am more protected because SB still track your data even if you use sort of incognito mode on chrome to browse all the shady websites you do, you can also change location to watch different shows that are geographically restricted. Most importantly for me, it just works. It works fast in terms of both bandwidth. In terms of software popping up works any operating system like Linux, all of your mobile devices as well. You can go to express VPN dot com slash legs pod to get an extra three months free and we together, my friend will be using the same software to press that big sexy button and put the cloak of uh, privacy protection around us. That's express VPN dot com slash flex pod. This show is also brought to you by Roca, the makers of sexy glasses and sunglasses that I love wearing for the design and feel and innovation on material optics and grip Rocca was started by two all american swimmers from stanford, one of whom I've met. He's a really awesome dude here in Austin. They have a location where they do some of the design. I think they do manufacture here too. I don't know the point is all the people I met there are awesome and the vision of the company, the mission of the company is beautiful. It's, they're obsessed with performance, how the thing feels that it's lightweight, you can exercise in any weather conditions, but you also want the thing to look sexy and stylish, which it does, especially like the sunglasses with the minimalist sleek design and I wear them when I run. I wear them when I go out. That means dress shirts also suits all that kind of stuff. Or t shirt. If you know me, you know that I don't have much variety in fashion, but I stick to the old true standards. A black shirt and jeans, suit and tie, black suit and tie. And maybe if I want to dress down, it'll be a black dress shirt with dress pants. The variety is overwhelming. See there's three outfits. What else do you need in life? Anyway, it holds up in all conditions, including Austin summer weather, check them out for both prescription glasses and sunglasses at roca dot com And enter code lex to save 20% on your first order. That's rocket dot com. And enter code lex. This is the lex Friedman podcast and now Dear friends! Here's Stephen Kotkin. Yeah, </s> |
<s>[INST] and the athletic approach, in your sense was understanding the theory first. And then just from the, from the foundation of the theory, be able to then just uh, take on any instrument and start creating something that sounds reasonably good. Yeah, we're learning something that sounds recently. Good and then plugging into the, as you call them, the dopamine loops of your brain allowing yourself to enjoy the process. Yeah. What about the, uh, the pain in the ass rigorous process of practice. So there's something about my dopamine loops, for example, that enjoys doing the same thing over and over and over again and watching myself improve. [/INST] I think that's because um, music is more effective at accessing us when it's played correctly. And I think you play, I'm positive that you play music much more correctly than I do. So if you are going to sit down and play something that you've learned that peace will be much more satisfying to your ears, into your brain. Then if I were to play that piece, just sitting down within an instrument, but it's sort of a trade off with freedom and, and rigor because even if I should be spending more of my time practicing rigorously. I know I don't have to, to make me happy so </s><s>[INST] well, Jacko willing, I think has this saying the discipline is freedom. So maybe uh, maybe the repetition of uh, the disciplined repetition is actually one of the mechanism achieving freedom. It's another way to get to freedom that it doesn't have to be a constraint, but in in a sense unlocks greater sets of opportunity than results in a deeper experience of freedom [/INST] maybe. I mean, particularly if you're thinking about discipline and uh huh method for improvisation, there are million pieces that you could improvise with the same discipline in how to approach that improvisation. So I think, I think that's it's true that discipline promotes freedom if you uh insert a layer of indirection, because I think I I think if you're if you're trying to learn one piece that was written 400 years ago, um and you're playing it over and over again, there is nothing personable, sorry, there's nothing personal or creative about that process, even if it's beautiful and satisfying, there has to be some sort of discipline applied to the creativity of self. So I think that I think that is the layer of indirection which reconciles both approaches to freedom and discipline and enjoyment of music </s><s>[INST] discipline applied to the creativity of self damn. So thank you. Now, as an aging man yourself, if you were to give an advice to young folks today of how to approach life, maybe advice to yourself, is there some way you could condense a set of principles, a set of advices you would give to yourself and to other young folks, I've had to live life. [/INST] Sure, I would uh I would say that with the collapse of systems that have um existed for thousands of years, you know, like whatever is happening with universities might be an example of some system that may or may not be um decaying. I think with the destruction of of important systems, there is a unique opportunity two invest in oneself and I think that is always the right approach provided that the investment one makes uh in his self is obligated towards humanity as a whole. And I think that is that is uh the great struggle of my generation. Will we create our own paths that are capable of saving whatever is collapsing or will we be squashed by the debris? And I hope to articulate uh what patterns I see this struggle taking over the years that my generation becomes particularly active in the world as an important force. I think already were important as a demographic to particular markets. But I I should hope that our voices will matter as well starting very soon. So I would I would try to think about that. That would be my advice. </s><s>[INST] Do you uh it's a silly question to ask perhaps, but um and a bit of a Russian one. It's silly because you're young, but I don't think it's actually silly because you're young. Do you ponder your mortality and are you just afraid of death in general? [/INST] So tying us back to our previous conversations about abstraction versus uh experience, which is determining our notions of our life and our world. Death is interesting in that it is obviously hyper important to a person's life and it is something that for the most part, no human will really experience and be able to um to reflect upon. So, our notions of death are sort of proof that if we want to make the most of our lives, we have to think abstractly and relying not at all at times on uh experiential uh thought and understandings because we can't really experience death and reflect upon it hence and use it to motivate us. It has to remain some sort of abstraction. And I think if we have trouble comprehending true abstraction, we tend to view our lives as we tend to view ourselves as nearly immortal and I think that's very dangerous. So one concrete implication for my belief and abstraction would be that we all need to be aware of our our our own deaths and we need to we need to understand concretely the boundaries of our lifetimes and no amount of experience can really motivate that. It has to be driven by thought and an abstraction. In theory </s> |
<s>[INST] Well, the record, the, I mean one of the most amazing things to me about the uh we can talk about martial arts. Uh we could also talk about dancing doesn't really matter to human. Um I think it's the most interesting study of contact. It's not even the dynamic element of it, it's the like when you get good at it, it's so effortless. Like I can just, I'm very cognizant of the entirety of the learning process being essentially like learning how to move my body in a way that I could throw very large weights around effortlessly. Like, and I can feel the learning like I'm a huge believer and drilling of techniques and you can just like feel you're you're not feeling you, you're feeling um sorry, you're learning it intellectually a little bit, but a lot of it is the body learning it somehow like instinctually and whatever that learning is, that's really, I'm not even sure if that's uh equivalent to uh like a deep learning, learning a controller? I think it's something more, it feels like there's a lot of distributed learning going on? [/INST] Yeah, I think there's hierarchy in composition. Um probably in the systems that we don't capture very well. Yet you have layers of control systems, you have reflexes at the bottom layer and you have a a system that's capable of planning a vacation to some distant country, which is probably, you probably don't have a controller, a policy for every possible destination you'll ever pick, right? Um But there's something magical in the in between. And how do you go from these low level feedback loops to something that feels pretty complex set of outcomes. You know? My guess is I think I think there's evidence that you can plan as some of these levels, right? So josh Tenenbaum just showed it just talk the other day, he's got a game, he likes to talk about it. I think he calls it the Pick three game or something where he puts a bunch of clutter down in front of A person and he says Okay, pick three objects and it might be a telephone or a shoe or a clean Xbox or whatever. Um and apparently you pick three items and then you pick he says, Okay, pick the first one up with your right hand, the second one up with your left hand. Now using those objects as tools. Pick up the third object, right? So that's down at the level of of physics and mechanics and contact mechanics that um that I think we do learning or we do have policies for we do control for almost feedback. But somehow we're able to still, I mean, I've never picked up a telephone with a shoe and a water bottle before and somehow and it takes me a little longer to do that the first time, but most of the time we can sort of figure that out. So yeah, I think the amazing thing is this ability to be flexible with our models plan when we need to use our well oiled controllers when we don't when when they were in familiar territory. Um having models, I think the other thing you just said was something about, I think your awareness of what's happening is even changing as you as you get as you improve your expertise. Right? So maybe you have a very approximate model of the mechanics to begin with and as you gain expertise, you get a more refined version of that model you're aware of of muscles or balanced components that you just weren't even aware of before. So how do you scaffold that? </s><s>[INST] Yeah. Plus the fear of injury, the ambition of goals of X. L. Ng and uh fear of mortality. Let's see what else is in there as the motivations uh overinflated ego in the beginning uh like and then a crash of confidence in the middle. All those seem to be essential for the learning process. [/INST] And also, and if all that's good then you're probably optimizing energy efficiency. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. Right, so you have to get that right. Uh So uh you know, there was this idea that you would have robots play soccer better Then human players by 2050. That was the goal world basically was the goal to beat world champion team to become a World Cup beat like a World Cup level team. So are we going to see that first or um a robot? If you're familiar, there's an organization called UFC for mixed martial arts. Are we going to see a World Cup Championship soccer team that of robots or a UFC champion makes martial artist? That's a robot. [/INST] I mean, it's very hard to to say one thing is harder than when some problems harder than the other. What probably matters is um who who, who started the organization That, that I mean I think robocup has a pretty serious following and there is a history now of people playing that game, learning about that game building robots to play that game building increasingly more human robots, it's got momentum. So if you want to uh to have mixed martial arts compete, you better start your start your organization now, right? Um I think almost independent of which problem is technically harder because they're both hard and they're both different. </s><s>[INST] That's a good point. I mean those videos are just hilarious that like uh especially the humanoid robots trying to uh trying to play soccer. I mean they're [/INST] kind of terrible right now. I mean I guess there is robo sumo wrestling, there's like the robo one competitions um where they do have these robots to go on the table and basically fight. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe </s> |
<s>[INST] molecule map of what happens to skin [/INST] which has </s><s>[INST] never been done before. So, there what are [/INST] interesting surprises there. </s><s>[INST] So [/INST] one of the things we can </s><s>[INST] see the part of what's [/INST] driving information, we can actually see </s><s>[INST] macrophages and [/INST] other dendritic cells, pieces like cells that are part of the immune system kind of creeping along towards the surface of the </s><s>[INST] skin, which is now we know it's actually [/INST] physically driving the immune system is these cells </s><s>[INST] going and creating this inflammation, [/INST] which is what leads to some of </s><s>[INST] the rashes. But we didn't [/INST] see as much in them as we saw. For example, some of the signatures of scott kelly. So we can see within the crew </s><s>[INST] who's getting more [/INST] of a rash or not or who didn't experience </s><s>[INST] any rash [/INST] and some people had changes in </s><s>[INST] vision. Some people had, [/INST] you know, other G. I. Problems even, you know, even looking at what happens to the gut </s><s>[INST] and looking at the microbiome in [/INST] the gut, other people didn't. So we were able </s><s>[INST] to see it start [/INST] to get a little bit predictive about their </s><s>[INST] medicine right now we're just diagnosing. [/INST] But it'd be good to say uh if you're going into space, </s><s>[INST] here's exactly what you [/INST] need for each bacteria </s><s>[INST] in your body. [/INST] Here's what you can really take to get rid of nausea or other ways </s><s>[INST] we can monitor to keep keep the [/INST] information down. What does it take to prepare for one of these missions? Because you mentioned, some of the </s><s>[INST] folks are not [/INST] necessarily lifelong astronauts, </s><s>[INST] you're talking about [/INST] more and more regular civilians. </s><s>[INST] What's [/INST] what does it take physiologically and psychologically </s><s>[INST] to prepare for these. They have to do a [/INST] lot of the same training that most astronauts do. So a lot of it's on hawthorne at SpaceX headquarters, which if you can </s><s>[INST] never get a chance to do a tour as [/INST] fabulous as you can see. Always john rockets being built and then we're drawing blood over there </s><s>[INST] right next to them. So it's a really [/INST] cool place. But </s><s>[INST] the, the training, they have [/INST] to go through a lot of the ops, a lot of the programming just in </s><s>[INST] case most of the systems are [/INST] automated on the Dragon </s><s>[INST] and other spacecraft, [/INST] but just in case, so I have to go through all </s><s>[INST] the majority of training [/INST] if you want to go to the </s><s>[INST] space station, as [/INST] the actual emissions are including john Schaffner, you have to do training for some of the Russian </s><s>[INST] modules. And if you don't do that training, then [/INST] you're not allowed to go to the Russian </s><s>[INST] part of the space station apparently. [/INST] So right now john schaffner for example, unless he completes this additional training all in Russian, </s><s>[INST] he's not allowed [/INST] to learn enough Russian to be, you know, just so </s><s>[INST] it's not just technical [/INST] enough enough </s><s>[INST] enough enough. [/INST] And uh, so it's a, and </s><s>[INST] if he doesn't learn, he can't [/INST] go to that part of the space station. So interesting things like that. But you'll be, you know, it's not that far like, oh, I can see </s><s>[INST] it right there, I can't float [/INST] over to that, that capsule, </s><s>[INST] but technically [/INST] he can't go. So, you know, </s><s>[INST] is there um, [/INST] chinese </s><s>[INST] components to this, the international space [/INST] station is their collaboration there, </s><s>[INST] sadly. No, they're building [/INST] their own space station. I'm glad they're building a space station actually, eventually there'll </s><s>[INST] Be probably four space [/INST] Stations in orbit by 20, some from the orbital reefs, some from Lockheed Martin </s><s>[INST] of course axiom is, [/INST] is far ahead </s><s>[INST] right now. They're probably gonna be done first. But the [/INST] extraordinary thing </s><s>[INST] is [/INST] uh, there's </s><s>[INST] unfortunately there's no [/INST] collaboration between the, you see that as a negative. That's not the positive </s><s>[INST] kind of competition. It's it's a good [/INST] question. So </s><s>[INST] maybe [/INST] for example when we get different Nasa grants, you apply for a </s><s>[INST] grant, you get to the [/INST] lab, it goes, you know, to </s><s>[INST] go through Cornell the grants [/INST] office. I have to sign as a scientist as the </s><s>[INST] P. I. On the on the mission. Say I promise [/INST] I will move no funds or resources or any </s><s>[INST] staff to anyone in china or work with anyone in china with [/INST] these dollars that you're giving to the </s><s>[INST] lab for this mission. [/INST] And so like every </s><s>[INST] other grand I get from the [/INST] Nasa D. O. D. Or </s><s>[INST] sorry, do you let me go back to [/INST] that every other grant </s><s>[INST] I get from say the NIH or [/INST] the NSF </s><s>[INST] even symptoms D. O. D. You don't have to promise that you won't talk to anybody in china [/INST] about it. But for Nasa alone is </s><s>[INST] congressional mandated [/INST] you have to promise and sign all the paperwork that I can't do </s><s>[INST] anything with anyone in china about this. [/INST] And what if </s><s>[INST] you have said about that is I want [/INST] to at least be able to chat </s><s>[INST] with him about it and know what [/INST] they're up to, but we can't, you know, </s><s>[INST] even go to a conference in China technically with [/INST] Nasa funds about, say, space medicine or </s><s>[INST] engineering a new rocket. [/INST] I can't </s><s>[INST] go, I could go with personal [/INST] funds, but I can't use those funds. </s><s>[INST] Like you should be able to go to a [/INST] conference and in a </s><s>[INST] friendly way, talk shit [/INST] scientists, </s><s>[INST] like we're doing like, like the way scientists do really well, which is [/INST] like a compliment, </s><s>[INST] but it's a backhanded compliment. Like, like [/INST] you're doing a really good </s><s>[INST] job here and [/INST] then you kind of implied that you're doing </s><s>[INST] much better job. That's [/INST] the core of </s><s>[INST] competition. You get jealous and [/INST] then everybody's trying to improve. But that </s><s>[INST] you're ultimately talking, [/INST] you're ultimately collaborating closely. You're competing </s><s>[INST] closely as opposed to in your own silos. Well, let me ask, [/INST] uh, </s><s>[INST] in terms of [/INST] preparing um, for spaceflight, you know, I I tweeted about this and I </s><s>[INST] I joked about it and [/INST] I I talked to you along </s><s>[INST] quite a lot these [/INST] days. What I tweeted </s> |
<s>[INST] So the Carl Sagan of the brain, [/INST] it </s><s>[INST] is the aspiration. I mean you're doing, you're doing uh an incredible job of it. So you open the book live wired with a quote by Heidegger. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. Uh Well what do you mean? What [/INST] I'll tell you what I meant by it? So he he had his own reason why he was running that, but I met this in terms of brain plasticity in terms of library, which is this issue that I mentioned before about this, you know this co in the space time code that we are in, which is that when you dropped into the world Eulex had all this different potential, You could have been a great surfer or a great chess player or you could have been thousands of different men when you grew up, what you did is things that were not your choice and your choice along the way. You know, you ended up navigating a particular path and now you're exactly who you are used to have lots of potential. But the day you die, you will be exactly lex, you will be that one person. </s><s>[INST] So on that, in that context, I mean, first of all, it's just beautiful. It's a humbling picture, but it's a beautiful one because it's uh all the possible trajectories and you pick one, you walk down that road. It's robert Frost poem. But on that topic, let me ask the biggest and the most ridiculous question. So in this live wired brain, we choose all these different trajectories and end up with one. What's the meaning of it all? What's uh is there, is there a y here, what's the meaning of life? David [/INST] Engleman, I mean, this is the question that everyone has attacked from their own livewire point of view. By which I mean culturally, if you grew up in a religious society, you have one way of attacking that questions on grew up in a secular scientific society, have a different way of attacking that question. Obviously, I I don't know, I abstained on that question. </s><s>[INST] I mean, I think one of the fundamental things, I guess in that in all those possible trajectories is uh, you're always asking, I mean that's the act of asking what the heck is this thing for is equivalent to or at least runs in parallel to all the choices that you're making? Because it's kind of, that's the underlying question. [/INST] Well, that's right. And by the way, you know, this is the interesting about human psychology. You've got all these layers of things which we can ask questions. And so if you keep asking yourself the question about what is the optimal way for me to be spending my hand? What should I be doing? What charity should I get involved with this? So if you're asking those big questions that that steers you appropriately, if you're the type person who never asks, hey, is there something better I could be doing with my time, then presumably you won't optimize whatever it is that is important to you. </s><s>[INST] So you've, uh, I think just in your eyes, in your work, there's a passion, uh, that's just is obvious and it's inspiring. It's contagious. What if you were to give advice to us a young person today in the crazy chaos that we live today about life, about how to how to um, how to discover their passion, Is there some words that you could give, [/INST] First of all, I would say the main thing for a young person is stay adaptable. And and this is back to this issue of why Covid is useful for us because it forces us off our tracks. The fact is the jobs that will exist 20 years from now. We don't even have names for, we can't even imagine the jobs that exists. And so when young people that I know going to college and they say, Hey, what should I major in and so on college is and should be less and less vocational as in, oh, I'm going to learn how to do this and I'm gonna do that the rest of my career, the world just isn't that way anymore with the exponential speed of things. So the important thing is learning how to learn, learning how to be live wired and adaptable. That's really key. And what I tell what I advise young people that I talked to them is you know what you digest, that that's what gives you the raw storehouse of things that you can remix and and be creative with and so eat broadly and widely and and obviously this is the wonderful thing about the internet world we live in now is you kind of can't help it. You're constantly well you go down some mole hole of Wikipedia and you think I didn't even realize that was the thing. I didn't know the existence and so embrace that, embrace that. Yeah, exactly. And what I tell people is just always do a gut check about, okay, I'm reading this paper and yeah, I think, but this paper wow, that really I really cared about that in some way, I tell them just to keep a real sniff out for that. And when you find those things keep going down those paths, </s> |
<s>[INST] tim Dillon [/INST] show Well thank you. Uh I was late, you know, I mean I was I just you know, I've been podcasting for a long time but really dedicating myself and putting the resources behind it. I was late to it. Like I was like, hey, I'm I'm telling jokes on stage, which is great, but I should have been allocating more time to building an infrastructure online and I wasn't doing it and a lot of comments weren't doing it. Funny, Comics weren't doing comments, it should be doing it. And I think when the pandemic ends, a lot of comics will just keep doing live stand up but I will keep, obviously I'm going to go back on the road and do live stand up, but I will keep doing this podcast and building digitally. But you're also </s><s>[INST] exploring ideas, You're doing like short videos and so on. You're trying to look for different mediums of uh I want to be funny [/INST] everywhere. I want to be funny everywhere. I love making things to my producer. Ben Avery is like a brilliant editor and comedic mind, even though he's not a stand up, he's able to and he understands funny, understand what makes me funny, we're able to make these really, I mean, some of those videos, they're just brilliant little videos, even though they're tiny little videos, they're fucking as funny as anything. And it's not me, it's me working with somebody else to make something really great. And if and, and it's that relationship that's very important </s><s>[INST] was, in some sense, the medium of a short video is a challenge. Just like the medium of a short tweet of course, to say something. I mean, whatever the flavor is, uh, of what's in your heart, what's in your mind how to say it, Whether it's the goal is funny or something or just and express an idea. [/INST] It's the whole thing that's important to us is that it's an extension of really like an extension of your friendship in a way. Like are you guys laughing at it? Are you guys making each other laugh about this idea And if that's the case, other people are going to laugh at it? You know, I think so much of the old medium was like everything was top down. Okay, pitched me this idea. I pitched it to the showrunner, they pitch into the network, they pitched this, that standards and practices sales and we're gonna go through everything now. It's just like army and a few bodies or even just one buddy laughing at this idea. Does it captivate us? And do we see it visually? And also a great line from Roseanne A guy, not Roseanne, but a guy that worked on Roseanne. Uh the Old Roseanne, the Great one. He said, is it funny with the sound off? That's what we try to do. Is it funny with the sound off when you see me in the dumb things or me and Meghan McCain or me? And the thing is it funny with the sound off? It's funny with the sound off. You have a good starting point. </s><s>[INST] That's hilarious. Because you, I would say you're one of the people because most people are not funny with us on our most comedians. Like your you will Ferrell is another example that there's something about when I click on one of your videos. It's funny, just like the first thing I see just your face. [/INST] Well, thank you. </s><s>[INST] That's very sweet. [/INST] I mean, God, I mean that's what we try to do, right? We're trying to be funny. So we're trying to be funny. </s><s>[INST] Can we talk about love? Little bit Sure. So, You came out of the closet as being gay when you were 25. [/INST] It was late, very late, </s><s>[INST] very late before then, during and after. How has your view on love evolved? [/INST] Interesting. It's so hard to say because like, I would I I'd like to make a very like Disney Fied statement about like that. You can't be in love. Uh Secretively. You should be honest. Love should all be about honesty, but that's not true, right? There's people that are in love that are lying to everyone else, but they're deeply in love. Um I would love to say something like honesty is an ingredient for love, you know, but I don't know maybe honestly with each other, but I mean, I know, I I think there's a lot of people in the world that aren't honest, my view on love is super important. I think that it's we, a lot of society in America is all about love. We don't tend to focus on other uh things in terms of like, you know, uh friendship or sustainability of that because I think that a lot, I know a lot of people in relationships where it's like, I don't know, they're not, they are they love each other, but like it's also a rock solid couple because they are they're very compatible in many other ways. So I think the friends they </s><s>[INST] have right, I see his friendship is in love is the same thing, This [/INST] is part of it that are right? So, it's like, I look at it is like there is, there needs to be more than just like that, like amazing, like chemistry or physical attraction that is this chemical thing that happens. There should be like some underlying, I mean, again, that's from what I that's what I've observed is really long lasting successful relationships. </s><s>[INST] Well, is there something about coming out that that was that you took away that you remember as profound and it [/INST] was my that I it wasn't society, it was made. So there were kids that were out in my high school that I waited years later to do it. That was no one's fault on my own. So I was taking a cowardly way out and a lot of people so I could blame society or like oh I lived in a conservative area and I grew up in no, no, no, no, no, no, you should take responsibility for your own decisions and if you're being cowardly admit that you're being cowardly. So that's what I took out of it is that it's not society's fault that you chose to be a coward, Society will never be perfect. You have to be honest when you're ready to be honest or however you want to be honest, but it's not something too much now is it's everyone else's fault that you didn't take make a hard choice or a hard decision. So that's kind of what I took out of it. </s> |
<s>[INST] So figuring out how these concepts connect um you have a good idea of how to do that, [/INST] that's exactly what one of the problems that we are working on and and and and the way we are approaching that is basically saying okay you need to so the takeaway is that language is simulation control and your perceptual plus motor system is building a simulation of the world. Uh so so that's basically the way we are approaching it. And the first thing that we built was a controllable perceptual system and we built a schema networks which was a controllable dynamic system. Then we built a concept learning system that puts all these things together into programs as abstractions that you can run and simulate. Uh and now we are taking the step of connecting into language and uh it will be very simple examples. Initially it will not build the GPT three like examples but it will be grounded simulation based language </s><s>[INST] and for like the quarrying would be like question answering kind of thing. [/INST] And it will be in some simple world initially on, you know, but it will be about okay, can the system connect the language and grounded in the right way and run the right simulations </s><s>[INST] to come up with the answer and the goal is to try to do things that for example, G PG three couldn't do correct. Speaking of which if we could uh Talk about gpt three a little bit. I think it's an interesting thought provoking set of ideas that open your eyes pushing forward. I think it's good for us to talk about the limits and the possibilities and neural network. So in general, what are your thoughts about this recently released Very large 175 billion parameter language model? [/INST] So I have, I haven't directly evaluated it yet from what I've seen on twitter and other people evaluating it. It looks very intriguing, you know, I am, I am very intrigued by some of the property cities displaying and uh and of course the text generation part of that was already evident in GPT two, you know that it can generate coherent text or uh long distances that was uh but of course the weaknesses are also pretty visible in saying that okay, it is not really carrying a world state around um, and you know, sometimes you get sentences like I went up the hill to reach the valley or some, you know, completely incompatible statements or when you're traveling from one place to the other, it doesn't take into account the time of travel, things like that. So, those things I think will happen less than GPT three because it is trained on even more data and so and it does, it can do even more longer distance uh coherence, um but it will still have the fundamental limitations that it doesn't have a world model. Uh and it can't run simulations in its head to find whether something is true in the world or not. </s><s>[INST] Do you think within So it's taking a huge amount of text from the internet and forming a compressed representation, do you think in that could emerge something that's an approximation of a world model which essentially could be used for reasoning, it's I'm not talking about GPT three, I'm talking about GPT 45 and GPT 10. [/INST] Yeah, I mean, they will look more impressive than GPT three. So you can if you take that to the extreme them, uh a Markov chain of just fast order. And if you if you go to um I'm taking the other extreme, if you read Shannon's book, right? Uh he has a model of english text which is based on faster Markov chains. Second remark of change, the markets change and saying that, okay, the remark of chains look better than uh faster remark of change. So does that mean a faster Markov chain has a model of the world? Yes, it does. So, yes, in that level, when you go higher order models or more uh sophisticated structure in the model, like the transformer networks. Yes, they have a model of the text will um but that is not a model of uh the world. It's it's a model of the text world and it will have an interesting uh properties and it will be useful but just scaling it up, it's not going to give us a G. Or natural language understanding or meaning. </s><s>[INST] The question is whether being forced to compress a very large amount of text forces you to construct things that are very much like um because the ideas of concepts and meaning is a is a is a spectrum. [/INST] Uh </s><s>[INST] So in order to form that kind of compression, maybe it will be forced to figure out abstractions which look awfully a lot like the kind of things that we think about is uh as concepts as world models is common sense. Is that possible? [/INST] No, I don't think it is possible because the information is not there. </s><s>[INST] The information is uh is there behind the [/INST] text right now, unless somebody has written on all the details about how everything works in the world to the the absurd amounts like okay, it is easier to walk forward and backward uh that you have opened the door to go out of the things doctors were underwear, you know, unless all these things somebody has written down somewhere or you know, somehow the program found it to be useful for compression from some other text. Uh the information is not there. </s><s>[INST] So that's an argument that like text is a lot lower fidelity than the, you know, the experience of our physical world. Like [/INST] So it's worth 1000 words. Well </s> |
<s>[INST] right? It's [/INST] counter intuitive and it kind of looks like a seesaw. I mean there's arousal, then there's relaxation, then there's arousal but the um and then immediately after orgasm and in males ejaculation, what ends up happening is there's a rebounding of the parasympathetic nervous system which it leads to. Oftentimes people feeling very relaxed or falling asleep. So I'm going to do a c a short series on sexual health that will be that will include stuff about sexual performance. But also um some I'm working on getting a an expert guest who can talk about some of the neurologic changes that happen um as a consequence of sexual activity. And we did an episode with uh guy from Ut Austin here, David Buss, whose evolutionary psychologist talking about um we went pretty deep into some of the but typical and unusual dynamics of of mating relation um whether or not people have kids or not and what impacts that, but we're going to do an episode on menopause andropause. What's very surprising is I get a lot of questions about sexual health from the young male audience um which tells me that. Well, here's what I think it reflects. I think that women because of their Menstrual cycles early on. Start to talk to one another about changes in physiology and psychology as a function of this 28 day cycle that they all experienced sooner or later males, there's less of a conversation and it usually arrives in code. People will say, hey, what should I take to increase my testosterone? And I'll say, well, maybe nothing, you know, what are you specifically concerned about? And then over time, if you pull on those threads a little bit, you know, you get your answer, sometimes I'll just get a direct question. Um but I think that uh the psychology of all this, and in terms of jealousy in the terms of um notions of roles and relationships is very dynamic right now and I'm fascinated by this. So we're gonna do a four episode series </s><s>[INST] about sexual fantasy. What to get Freudian for a second. What role does sexual fantasy have in the human condition? [/INST] There's a book called the erotic imagination. It's very psychoanalytic book written by the psychoanalyst that talks about how, well here's the uncomfortable reality Freud was at least right about one thing, which is that the brain circuitry that you used to develop attachments to your caregivers, mother and father, or other caregivers do not disappear when you hit puberty, they are repurposed for romantic and sexual relations. And so this is why the whole notion of anxious attached and secure attached, you know, stems from childhood attachment patterns, but it carries over to romantic relationships. So </s><s>[INST] that the relationship with your mother has [/INST] a </s><s>[INST] and father has a and probably other close people to you and your young age has a secondary tertiary, Some kind of ripple effect on hide your sexuality developed like what fantasies you might have all that. [/INST] Oh, without question. And of course early experiences too, and traumatic or positive or neutral. The thing that's really important to remember though in this transfer of circuitry from one role to another is that and it's certainly consistent with psychoanalysis, that gender is interchangeable. Sex is interchangeable. So, for instance, let's say you had a wonderful relationship, let's say this, let's take a hypothetical person. Okay, I'm truly not referring to myself, Let's let's take a young woman who has a wonderful relationship to her father and they just absolutely terrible abusive relationship to her mother. Just for sake of example, she then goes into adulthood and she is drawn to very abusive men. Not always, but let's just use in this example and the dynamic is exactly the same as the dynamic she had with her mother. That's actually a common occurrence. Even though in this context she's heterosexual. She's romantically attracted to men. What is seen over and over again is that the dynamic with one parent can be transferred onto a romantic dynamic, but it doesn't have to be, you know, that if it was with the mother, then it only has to do with relationships to women. So gender is interchangeable because these circuit trees our pre sexual they are laid down in our brain before. The brain has any concept of sexual interactions. It's pre pivotal. Excuse me. And so, um there are a lot of interesting examples and data to support this. Um the book attached is a pretty interesting book by two psychologists. One I think is at Columbia University, um that talks about how childhood dynamics carry over to adult romantic attachment. So as you can tell, I get pretty alert in response to these questions that I get a lot of them relate in this domain and they </s><s>[INST] have a lot of impact on people. And they were wondering about they wanna learn [/INST] and no one knows what other people are doing or what's normal. We kind of know deviancy, we know perversion, We know the extremes, we know the rules. Hopefully people know the rules, but you know, let's just be. There are a lot of people in, in the academic community in particular at certain East Coast schools not to be named that are in open relationships. This is more common now. Um It's not very common, but it's more common. And you know, obviously that's a way of bypassing some of these more primitive emotions about jealousy, etcetera and leveraging them towards maybe even ongoing relationships. I'm not passing judgment one way or the other. I always say four conditions have to be met for any discussion about, about sex and sexuality or sexual health, age appropriate context appropriate, consensual and species appropriate. </s> |
<s>[INST] they'll take those words out of context, and now that's that's considered who you are is dangerous and people take that very nonchalantly, people treat their behavior on the internet very, very carelessly. That's definitely something you need to learn and take extremely seriously. Also, I think that taking that seriously will help you figure out who you what you really stand for. If you use your language carelessly, you never really ask like, what do I stand for? I feel like it's a good opportunity when you're young to ask like what are the things that are okay to say? What are the things, what are the ideas I stand behind? Like what? Especially if they're controversial and I'm willing to say them because I believe in them versus just saying random ship for the for the laws because for the random shift, the laws keep that off the internet. That said, man, I was an idiot for most of my life and I'm constantly learning and growing, I'd hate to be responsible for the kind of person. I was in my teens in my in my twenties, I didn't do anything offensive, but it just changed as a person. Like I used to I guess I probably still do, but I used to, you know, I used to read so much existential literature, uh that was that was a phase, there's like phases [/INST] you grow and involved as a person that changes you in the future. Yeah. Thank God. There wasn't social media when I was in </s><s>[INST] high school. Thank [/INST] God. Oh my God, I would never be on the FBI. </s><s>[INST] Would you recommend that people consider a career at a place like the [/INST] FBI? I loved the FBI. I never thought I would go anyplace else, but the FBI I thought I was going to retire with the Gold watch and everything from the FBI. That was my plan. No, but you know what, it's uh um um You get a gold badge, you actually get your badge in lucite and your creds lucite and all that. So does it does it </s><s>[INST] by the way, just on a tangent, since we like those, Does it hurt you that the FBI by certain people is distrusted or even hated? 100 [/INST] percent. It kills me. Like I've never until recently, not sometimes be embarrassed about the FBI sometimes, which is really, really hard for me to say because I love that place. I love the people in it. I love the the brotherhood that you have with, you know, all the guys in your squad guys and girls. I just use guys, you know, you know, we we I I developed a real drinking problem there because we were so social of going out after after work and continuing on, it really was a family. Um You know, so I do miss that. Um But yeah, I mean if somebody can become an FBI agent, I mean it's pretty fucking cool man the day you graduate and walk out of the academy with a gun and a badge and you know the power to charge someone with a misdemeanor for flying to the United States flag at night. That's awesome. </s><s>[INST] So there is a part of like representing and loving your country and especially if you're doing cybersecurity, so there's a lot of technical savvy in the in different places in the FBI. [/INST] Yeah, I mean there there's different pieces sometimes, you know, you'll see an uh an older agent that's done, you know, not cybercrime come over to cybercrime at the end so you can get a job once he goes out. But there's also some some guys that come in um you know, I won't name his name, but there was a guy I think he was a hacker when he was a kid and now he's been an agent, now he's way up in management. Um great guy, I love this guy and he knows who he is, if he's listening um you know that that you know he had some </s><s>[INST] skills but we [/INST] also lost a bunch of guys that had some skills because because uh we had one guy in the squad that he had to leave the FBI because his wife became a doctor and she got her residency down in Houston and she couldn't move, he wasn't allowed to transfer so he decided to keep his family versus the FBI. So there's some stringent rules in the FBI that that need to be relaxed a little bit. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. I love hackers turned like leaders. Like one of my quickly becoming good friends as much. There's a there's a big hack in the 90s and then now was recently twitter chief security officer Cso but he had a bunch of different leadership positions including being my boss at google. But um but originally a hacker, it's cool to see like hackers become like leaders. [/INST] I just wonder what would cause him to stop doing it, why he would then take like a like a managerial route, very high tech companies. I think </s><s>[INST] a Lot of those guys, so this is like the 90s, they really were about like the freedom uh there's like a philosophy to it and when I think the hacking culture evolved over the years and I think when it leaves you behind, you start to realize like oh actually what I wanna do is I want to help the world and I can do that and legitimate routes and so on. But that's the story that yeah, I would love to talk to him one day but I wonder how common that is to like young hackers turn turn good, you're saying it like pulls you in, it's if you're not careful, it can really put you in. [/INST] Yeah, it's, you know, you're good at it, you become powerful, you become, you know, everyone's slapping on the back and say what a good job and all that, you know at a very young age. </s> |
<s>[INST] Well that I don't know what you think, but for me, Youtube is uh that's why I'm sad that joe left Youtube. There's a archival nature to Youtube, that's kind of magical. And so I'm really glad you're now you, you're uh doing a lot of educational content on instagram before, but now I'm doing this podcast thing on Youtube, it's like, you know, it's like Feinman lectures, like I'm not saying every podcast, but there will be, you will have some poke, I can already tell, there'll be some lectures which are like Definitive, like really special ones and uh there's some aspect that's archival to YouTube where at least I hope like 20 years from now, some kid is going to watch uh watch a lecture of yours and uh you know, it will, it will create the next Nobel prize, right? It'll create create another uh you know, a dream that then becomes a reality and then that's a, that's a special thing that that youtube provides. So I'm really excited that you're on Youtube and at the same time I'm excited to see where this thing goes because um it seems like changes the, the cliche thing. The change is the only constant in these times because uh huh you're paving uh with this podcast, with this creativity, what you were doing on instagram as well. You're paving the new era of what it means to do science. So, actively doing research and actively explaining that research in new media. It's, it's very interesting [/INST] to see genuinely inspired by you. We had this discussion last time after the podcast recording and it was, it's clear that communication of science cannot be left to the, the existing institutions and I'm gonna talk about universities, I just mean that the science section of newspapers is yeah, sometimes there's some gems there, but generally it goes, you know, and I think you really have to know a field in order to extract the best things from that field. And my hope is that other practicing scientists and people finishing their PhD and postdoc and people who are running labs are working at companies will start to do this. I mean, how amazing would it be, for instance, if if someone at neuralink was giving us hints about not necessarily what they're developing because that's complicated for all sorts of reasons but would talk to us about what the real challenges of building futuristic brain machine interface are like and what the, what it means to understand a clinical problem and address it. I mean, my hope is somebody there might eventually do that, that somebody in the world of chemistry or synthetic materials or whatever it is. We'll do this in a way that I could understand because I don't have expertise in those. I think it would be marvelous. And um, your tip of the spear, you were out first and um, I'm just uh, happily trying to move along in the direction I'm going. But I think the future of science education is online and, and I think that's gonna be scary to a lot of existing institutions, but it's not about disrupting anything. It's just about trying to do things better. </s><s>[INST] You know, some of the best interviews, uh, some of the best investigative journalism is done by people inside the field, uh, comes to mind a guy by the name of Elon musk, who uh, [/INST] I love the </s><s>[INST] possibility that he gets the Pulitzer for that interview, but he grilled the crap out of vlad, The Ceo of Robin Hood, I'm [/INST] not sure on </s><s>[INST] clubhouse [/INST] clubhouse the other night. Yeah, I saw you guys in there. I was kept out. I wasn't quick enough. My thumbs don't go fast enough. So I was and I wasn't about to sit in the waiting room. Have </s><s>[INST] you tried that social network by the way? The clubhouse? [/INST] I've gone in there a few times and check some things out. I'm there. I have a few questions about it that um, like if I'm in there, how one can participate or not participate. I like being a fly on the wall for those conversations. I've been very curious as to what's going on in there. </s><s>[INST] So it's quite, I mean I have a lot of thoughts, maybe it's useful to comment. I also have a discord server that you know has a few tens of thousands of people on it. And then they have also a voice chat capability. So they're these get togethers and I was using in the, in the spring and summer, like actively on those voice discussions and it's anywhere from 10 to like 1000 people altogether invoice. Like anyone can speak any time, right? But there's this weird dynamic that people stay quiet and only one person speaks at a time because they're all like respectful. It's the community of like uh like fundamentally respectful people even though they're all anonymous. So like except like me and a few others, it's all anonymous [/INST] people. So interesting </s><s>[INST] and it works. Its but the magical thing to me about that community was how intimate voice only communication can be. It felt as intimate as I got like a small get together at a home with close friends. It felt like there's a columnist to it and you're revealing things about, you know, somebody is suffering from depression or being suicidal. So those are the dark things are being super excited getting in your girlfriend or boyfriend, like just the depth of human experience shared on voice without video is uh I was really surprised how intimate that is for human connection, especially this time of Covid and replace that so that so that so just to give you some context, there's something there, [/INST] there's definitely something there. One thing that comes to mind is when like in clubhouse, you have your little icons so they don't actually, you don't see your face moving. I think when people see their own image, it puts them in a state of self consciousness that is eliminated by just having an icon or an avatar, right? So like zoom is dreadful because if I'm not used to talking to people and seeing a little image of myself staring back at me in the mirror and it's just I know there are ways that you can adjust that, but it's really awful and I think that when I get on zoom's now I say hello and then I shut down the video component and then I just talk in the end, I come back on just to show that still there, it's still me. But I think that voice only is really interesting Eddie chang would be an interesting person to talk to about this because he understands so much about how inflection communicates emotionality and deeper state, </s> |
<s>[INST] I mean, do you have a hope for the pandemic? So we'll talk about physics, but for the pandemic, can that be extracted? Do you think? [/INST] Well, I think the good news is the curves basically, you know, for reasons we don't understand the curves, you know, the clearly measurable mortality curves and so on for </s><s>[INST] the Northern hemisphere have gone down. But the bad news is that it could be a lot worse for future viruses. And what this pandemic revealed is we're highly unprepared for the discovery of the pockets of reducibility within a pandemic that's much more dangerous. [/INST] Well, my guess is the specific risk of, you know, viral pandemics, you know, that the pure virology and immunology of the thing, this will cause that to advance to the point where this particular risk is probably considerably mitigated. But you know, is the structure of modern society robust to all kinds of risks? Well, the answer is clearly no. And it's surprising to me the extent to which people, you know, as I say, it's kind of scary actually how much people believe in science. That is, people say, oh, you know, because the science does this that and the other will do this and this and this, even though from a sort of common sense point of view, it's a little bit crazy. And people are not prepared and it doesn't really work in society as it is for people to say, well, actually, we don't really know how the science works because they will tell us what to do. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, because my guess is that because then that was the alternative. For the masses, it's difficult to sit, it's difficult to meditate on computation or reducibility, and it's difficult to sit to enjoy a good dinner meal while knowing that you know nothing about the world. [/INST] It's difficult to sit, it's difficult to enjoy a good dinner meal. This is the place where you know, this is what politicians and political leaders do for a living so to speak as you've got to make some decision about what to do, and </s><s>[INST] tell some narrative that while amidst the mystery and knowing not much about the past or the future, still telling a narrative that somehow gives people hope that we know what the heck we're doing. [/INST] Yeah, and get society through the issue. Even though the idea that we're just gonna sort of be able to get the definitive answer from science and it's gonna tell us exactly what to do, unfortunately, it's interesting because let me point out that if that was possible, if science could always tell us what to do, then in a sense that would be a big downer for our lives. If science could always tell us what the answer is gonna be, it's like well, it's kind of fun to live one's life and just sort of see what happens. If one could always just say, let me check my science. Oh, I know, the result of everything is gonna be 42. I don't need to live my life and do what I do. It's just, we already know the answer. It's actually good news in a sense that there is this phenomenon of computational irreducibility that doesn't allow you to just sort of jump through time and say, this is the answer, so to speak. And that's, so that's a good thing. The bad thing is it doesn't allow you to jump through time </s><s>[INST] and know what the answer is. It's scary. Do you think we're gonna be okay as a human civilization? You said we don't know. Absolutely. Do you think it's, do you think we'll prosper or destroy ourselves as a- In general? [/INST] In general. We don't know? Absolutely. In general? In general. I'm an optimist. No, I think that the, you know, it'll be interesting to see, for example, with this, you know, pandemic, I, you know, to me, you know, when you look at like organizations, for example, you know, having some kind of perturbation, some kick to the system, usually the end result of that is actually quite good. You know, unless it kills the system, it's actually quite good usually. And I think in this case, you know, people, I mean, my impression, you know, it's a little weird for me because you know, I've been a remote tech CEO for 30 years. It doesn't, you know, this is bizarrely, you know, and the fact that, you know, like this coming to see you here is one of the rare moments in human interaction. This is the first time in six months that I've been like, you know, in a building other than my house, okay? </s><s>[INST] So, you know, I'm a kind of ridiculous outlier in these kinds of things. One of the rare moments of human interaction. But overall, your sense is when you shake up the system and throw in chaos, [/INST] that you challenge the system, we humans emerge better. Seems to be that way. Who's to know? But I think that, you know, people, you know, my sort of vague impression is that people are sort of, you know, oh, what's actually important, you know, what's, what is worth caring about and so on. And that seems to be something that perhaps is more, you know, </s> |
<s>[INST] Is there advice you can give, given your bold and non standard career in life advice you can give to high school students, college students about how to have a career like that or maybe how do I have a career or a life they can be proud of? [/INST] Yeah. Um, first of all, my advice is go for it. The conditions for doing that now are infinitely better than they were when I had to do it and I could do it and I can, I'm happy I did it becoming a teacher. Is it one of those decisions I made that I've never regretted? Um, and I've never regretted being a critic of this society. Never, I find it edifying. I find it. I mean, the gratitude people expressed to me for helping them see kind of what's going on is unbelievably encouraging. I mean, what, what can I tell you? </s><s>[INST] So that fills you that feels you enjoy pointing out that the emperor has no clothes fills you. That's that's that's a life [/INST] and not just </s><s>[INST] important is because [/INST] most of the people who say something like that to me are people who if they had the vocabulary and some of them do, would say, you know, I thought I was seeing through that outfit that I was wearing. I thought it and they did and all they needed was a little extra this information or that factoid or this logic. Ah yeah. And they have that and I remember having that too when I had a teacher who made something clear that had been murky, I always felt gratitude and now I get that gratitude a good bit and yes, it is enormously gratifying and I'm not sure I could could get it any other way and it I have learned and I'm walking proof that being a critic of society and doing it systematically and sharing it with other people makes for a very good life, very good life. </s><s>[INST] Speaking of which however one other aspect of human nature is that life comes to an [/INST] end. Do </s><s>[INST] you think about your death? Are you afraid of it [/INST] afraid of it? No. Think about it. Yes. Yes. I'm not afraid. I've always thought, you know, death is hard for the people that are left when you're dead? You know not to bother you very much. So it's I worry more about my wife. I'm very attached to my wife, I might mention to you I got married when I was 23 years old and that's my wife to this day. Um, so I'm lucky because that's If you get married to anybody in age 23 to either luck or it isn't. Um, </s><s>[INST] what is, what role has this love played in your life [/INST] enormous because I came from a family, you know, if you, if your family is political refugees, which mine were, who had to interrupt their lives, moved to another continent, learn another language, find another life income and job. It's the disruption goes real deep for any refugee. So, so my mother and father were both refugees. They met as refugees. Um, so I had to, in a way make it up to them. I had to be, I was the first child of their, I have a younger sister by the first child. And you know, there's a lot of psychological pressure on you. If you're in that situation, nobody means you harm, but you've got to do what they couldn't, what was shut off to them in a way they want you to do. It's the closest they're gonna get to what they had hoped. And my parents were both university students. My father was a lawyer. My mother had to leave the university to run for her life. Um, so I had to perform. You know, I went to high school here in the United States. I I had to get all a's, I had to be on the football team. I had to play the violin in the orchestra had to do all this because everything had to be achieved. So I'm an achievement, crazy person that way. And but that's functional in this dysfunctional society. </s><s>[INST] But on top of that, that's an achievement within the game of this particular society. But then love seems to be a thing that's greater than that game. Is that something that made you a better person? How is it? How has it made you a better marxian and a better [/INST] everything? </s><s>[INST] Because my [/INST] wife, my wife by profession is a psychotherapist. </s><s>[INST] Excellent, I [/INST] love it. And I needed it. </s><s>[INST] And so [/INST] I married it. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, but I think as I look back on it, that was more more than a little what was going on. And she has tutored me all my life about a whole range of aspects of life that my family never talked about, never dealt with. Never, um, at least explicitly engaged in any of that. </s><s>[INST] Because it was all about survival. The immigrant challenges, survived, [/INST] survived. And you're so busy that you tell yourself you can't do that. Of course you can. And there are other reasons why you're not going to look at those problems, but the survival is so urgent that you can fool yourself this way. And my parents did that. </s><s>[INST] One last question, what's the meaning of life, Richard Wolf, Why I will [/INST] quote you, Mr Marks, </s><s>[INST] let's [/INST] go, </s><s>[INST] life [/INST] is struggle, and for me I have found that to be true. That the struggle, whether it is to build a relationship with your child, I have two Children, whether it's to build one with your spouse, whether it's to understand the complicated argument and simplify it so that you can share the pleasure of understanding this relationship to a student or to an audience. These are it's a struggle to do all those things but that that network of struggles that makes life interesting, intriguing and satisfy, </s> |
<s>[INST] it sounds like a threat. I love it. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jacko willing and thank you to lin owed Indeed, simply safe and ground news, check them out in the description to support this podcast and now let me leave you with some words from Jacko willing. There are no bad teams, only bad leaders, thank you for listening and hope to see you next time [/INST] </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah. So like, that's one of the things is to understand the phenomenon, we need light and we need to see how light interacts with it or what light emanates from it, but most of our universe is darkness. So it's, there could be a lot of interesting stuff. I mean, this is where you're interested is with the cool worlds and the interesting stuff lurks in the darkness, [/INST] right? Basically all of us, you know, 400 years of astronomy, our only window into the universe has been light. And that has only changed quite recently with the discovery of gravitational waves. That's now a new window. And hopefully, well, to some degree, I guess, solar neutrinos we've been detecting for, but they come from the sun or interstellar space, but we may be able to soon detect neutrino messages has even been hypothesized as a way of communicating between civilizations as well, or just do neutrino telescopes to study the universe. And so there's a growing interest in what we'd call multi messenger astronomy now. So not just messages from light, but messages from these other physical packets of information that are coming our way. But when it comes to the outer solar system, light really is our only window. There's two, there's two ways of doing that. One is you detect the light from the Oort cloud object itself, which as I just said, is very, very difficult. There's another trick, which we do in the Kuiper belt, especially, and that's called an occultation. And so sometimes those objects will just pass in front of a distant star just coincidentally. These are very, very brief moments. They last for less than a second. And so you have to have a very fast camera to detect them, which conventionally astronomers don't usually build fast cameras. Most of the phenomena we observe occurs on hours, minutes, days, even, but now we're developing cameras, which can take thousands of images per second, and yet do it at the kind of astronomical fidelity that we need for this kind of precise measurement. And so you can see these very fast dips. You even get these kind of diffraction patterns that come around, which are really cool to look at. And that's, I kind of love it because it's almost like passive radar. You have these pinpricks of light. Imagine that you live in a giant black sphere, but there's these little pinholes that have been poked and through those pinholes, almost laser light is shining through. And inside this black sphere there are unknown things wandering around, drifting around that we are trying to discover. And sometimes they will pass in front of those little pencil thin laser beams, block something out and so we can tell that it's there. And it's not an active radar because we didn't naturally, you know, beam anything out and get a reflection off, which is what the Sun does. The Sun's light comes off and comes back. That's like an active radar system. There's more like a passive radar system where we are just listening very intently. And so I'm kind of so fascinated by that the idea that we could map out the rich architecture of the outer Solar System just by doing something that we could have done potentially for a long time, which is just listening in the right way, just tuning our instrumentation to the correct way of not listening, but viewing the universe to catch those objects. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. I mean, it's really fascinating. It seems almost obvious that your efforts when projected out in over like 100 to 100 years will have a really good map through even methods like basically transit timing, high resolution transit timing, but basically the planetary and the planet satellite movements [/INST] that of all the different star systems out there. Yeah. And it could revolutionize the way we think about the solar system. I mean, that revolution has happened several times in the past when we discovered Vesta in the 19th century. That was I think the seventh planet for a while or the eighth planet when it was first discovered and then we discovered Ceres and there was a bunch of asteroid objects, Janus, and so for a while the textbooks had, there was something like 13 planets in the solar system and then that was just a new capability that was emerging to detect those small objects. And then we ripped that up and said, no, no, we're going to change the definition of a planet. And then the same thing happened when we started looking at the outer skirts of the solar system. Again, we found Eris, we found Sedna, these objects which resembled Pluto and the more and more of them we found, Makemake. And eventually we again had to rethink the way we even contextualize what a planet is and what the nature of the outer solar system is. So regardless as to what you think about the debate about whether Pluto should be devoted or not, which I know often invokes a lot of strong feelings. It is an incredible achievement that we were able to transform our view of the solar system in a matter of years just by basically charge coupled devices, the things that's in cameras. Though the invention of that device allowed us to detect objects which were much further away, much fainter, and revealed all of this stuff that was there all along. And so that's the beauty of astronomy. </s> |
<s>[INST] don't say you don't say stuff like that like ridiculous, you don't say ridiculous shit about yourself [/INST] that I do, I do </s><s>[INST] and you don't feel like that could be made. Isn't this the same guy that said X [/INST] maybe, maybe maybe I either haven't said enough of those things or there's no moments and I don't have 34 hour open conversations with other humans and I'm pretty sure if I did there would be more of that, that stuff out there, but that's probably what it is just a lack of, it's a lack of being able to kind of control what is actually reality and and that, that is very frustrating and uh </s><s>[INST] yeah, you're right, I mean there is a sense that there's not enough motivation for people to attack you, you're ultimately adding a lot of positive stuff to the world. And when you get into more political topics, there's people that who are hurting, who have a lot of anger in their hearts and they want to direct it towards you. So then they need ammunition and ammunition comes in the way of like clips from the past. I'm sure that you, I'm pretty sure you already have clips like that, it's just there's not people that really have anger to direct towards you ultimately, you're adding a lot of good stuff to the world. And so yeah, but man, um the viciousness of human beings under the veil of anonymity at scale can be really painful. So that that's I guess that's the curse. The challenge of being a creator um on Youtube and so on on on twitch. Um when you talked about retiring, you think you tweeted about retiring from chess? [/INST] The video yeah, tweeted </s><s>[INST] um [/INST] it's my values of the </s><s>[INST] world, the tweet or the video [/INST] both. </s><s>[INST] I'm retiring from all competitive chess events. My preparation is outmatched, my calculation skills are too flawed and most importantly my anxiety is beyond repair, I physically and emotionally cannot do it anymore. What was the hardest thing uh what was the hardest thing about competing, like, can you, can you elaborate on that? [/INST] Yeah, I think it's separated into phases of my life. So after being a creator and coming back and playing over the board and making recaps of all my games. I think the constant feeling that I had at the board was a kid who hadn't studied enough for a test, which is a very unique type of anxiety and </s><s>[INST] during [/INST] the game, it was just self hatred. </s><s>[INST] Like good [/INST] moves did not feel as good as how bad bad moves felt and bad moments. And, </s><s>[INST] and underneath that you're saying there's a sense that did not prepare well enough [/INST] one unquestionably. So my, I'm an international master, </s><s>[INST] but there's [/INST] International Masters now who are 11, I got the title when I was 22, which is late. That might not sound like it's late, but it's really late and I quit just multiple times when I was a teenager. If I hadn't, one of my parents was like, sit down, this is the only thing that you're good at focus on it. Maybe I would have been the grandmaster, but that's, that's life, right? And I would come back to chest at various points in my life when I felt more mature, I felt more ready and I felt more motivated and it was all me, I never, I had one coach when I was maybe about 10, I never listened to the guy, great guy, he emailed me even recently just wanting to catch up, which I thought was adorable because I'm like, I don't even know if he knows that youtube chest exists. He's in his seventies. He's just, he's just like a nice older guy. Um and he would come to my house, we would have dinner and my grandma would make us food and he would tell her that I'm brilliant, but I never work and I have so much potential. If only I ever worked at all one minute on anything. I just played speed games online. And and did </s><s>[INST] he, did he speak the truth there? Like could you have worked more? [/INST] I could have worked more for sure. Yeah, absolutely. </s><s>[INST] When you listen to magnus who doesn't, he seems like he doesn't work either. [/INST] He works, uh he might work in different ways, but I think for him it's also obsession again love. It's, it's everything. It's, he might read a book, he doesn't consider it work, it's work, he's getting information in and he's learning something. It might just be easier for him to learn than </s><s>[INST] for [/INST] me for example, or for anybody. Just everybody learns and absorbs things differently. So I would come back to chess and the best run of my life that I had was in 2016 where I basically while teaching a chess program scholastic chess program. I told all the parents, hey, so for these four months I'm gonna stop doing private lessons and I'm gonna go travel and play tournaments because I want to become an international master. Finally um 20 years old, this is in 2016 like can can you help me raise some money? These are all managing directors, these are lawyers, these are seven figure eight figure households and they contributed and I kept a blog And then I worked just six hours, seven hours every day like studying all the opening trends, all of the new ideas, reading the books, analyzing my own games, playing my own speed games and analyzing them training every day. And that year I went from 20 to 40 over the board to 2404 With two of the three norms as they call them which are basically tournament performances like you perform at a certain level not too complicated. So I, I got almost everything I needed to be and I am but I just slipped up at the very end and 2017 I didn't play chess but in 2018 I came back once again with a vengeance. I started playing in the summer once again and I went up up up to my peak. </s> |
<s>[INST] Right? How hard is it to make an attack like that? [/INST] Yeah. Right. Right. And then that very much depends on the the consensus mechanism, the how the system is built and all that. So there are different ways to build these uh decentralized systems. People may have heard about the terms called like proof of work, proof of stake is different mechanisms and it really depends on how how the system has been built and also how much resources, how much work has gone into the network to actually um say how secure it is. For example people talk about like in Bitcoin's proof of work system, so much electricity has been burnt. </s><s>[INST] So there's differences, there's differences in the different mechanisms in the implementations of a distributed ledger used for digital currency. So there's Bitcoin, there's uh whatever, there's so many of them and there's underlying different mechanisms and there's arguments I suppose about which is more effective which is more secure which is more [/INST] and what is needed, what amount of resources needed to be able to attack the system Like for example what percentage of the nose do you need to control our compromise in order to uh right to change the log </s><s>[INST] And those are things, do you uh do you have a sense if those are things that can be shown theoretically through the design of the mechanisms? Or does it have to be shown empirically by having a large number of users using the currency? [/INST] I see. So in general for each consensus mechanism, you can actually show theoretically what is needed to be able to attack the system. Of course there are, there can be different types of attacks as we discussed at the beginning and so that and it's difficult to give uh like you know, a complete estimates like really how much is needed to compromise the system but in general right. So there are ways to say what percentage of the nose you need to compromise uh and so on. </s><s>[INST] So we talked about integrity uh on the security side and then you also mentioned can the privacy or the confidentiality side, does it have some of does it have some of the same problems and therefore some of the same solutions that you talked about on the machine learning side with differential privacy and so on. [/INST] Yeah. So actually in general on the public ledger in this public decentralized systems, um actually nothing is private. So all the transactions poses on the larger anybody can see so in that sense there's no confidentiality um so usually what you can do is then um there are other mechanisms that you can build in to enable confidentiality privacy after transactions and the data and so on. That's also some of the work that both my group and also my startup and does as well what's the name of the startup? Oasis labs, </s><s>[INST] Oasis labs and so the confidentiality aspect there is even though the transactions are public, you want to keep some aspect confidential of the identity of the people involved in transactions or what what is their hope to keep confidential in this context. [/INST] So in this case for example you want to enable like private confidential transactions even so there are different essentially types of data that you want to keep private confidential and you can utilize different technologies including zero knowledge proofs uh and also secure computing techniques and to hide the who is making the transactions to whom and the transaction amount. And in our case also we can enable like confidential smart contract so that you don't know the data and the execution of the smart contract and so on. And we actually combining these different technologies and to going back to the earlier discussions we had um enabling like ownership of data and privacy of data and so on. So so at Oasis Labs were actually building what we call a platform for responsible data economy to actually combine these different technologies together um to enable secure and privacy preserving computation and also uh using the luxury to help provide immutable log of users ownership to their data and the policies they want the data to adhere to the usage of the data to adhere to and also how the data has been utilized. So all this together can build we call distributed secure computing fabric. That helps to enable a more responsible data economy a lot of things together. </s><s>[INST] Yeah wow those eloquent, Okay you're involved in so much amazing work that will never be able to get to. But I have to ask at least briefly about program synthesis which at least in the philosophical sense captures much of the dreams of what's possible in computer science and the artificial intelligence. First let me ask what is program synthesis and can neural networks be used to learn programs from data. So can this be learned some aspect of this synthesis going to be learned. So [/INST] program since this is about teaching computers to read code to program. And I think it does one of our ultimate dreams or goals. You know I think ah and Jason talked about software eating the world. So I say um once we teach computers to write software, I had to write programs then I guess computers would be eating the world by transitive. It. </s><s>[INST] E. Exactly. [/INST] So. Yeah. Uh And also for me actually um when I you know shifted from security to more ai machine learning program synthesis is um programs in the adversarial machine in these other two fields that I um particular focus on like program. Since it is one of the first questions that I actually started investigating just </s> |
<s>[INST] Just [/INST] dozens of people have written over have written their words down and been drawn and scribbled over because of all the lines that connected self respect. So what's the meaning of life from my point of view, I've never seen a better answer. It's all self respect. If you don't respect yourself, how can you do anything else? How can you love someone else? If you don't have self respect, how can you build a business you're proud of? If you don't have self respect, how can you raise kids? How can you make a difference? How can you pioneer anything? How can you just wake up and have a good day if you don't have self respect </s><s>[INST] the power of the individual, that's what, that's what makes this country great. I have to say after traveling quite a bit in europe and especially in a place of war, um coming back to the United States makes me really appreciate about the better angels of this nation, the ideals that stands for the values that stands for and I'd like to thank you for serving this nation for time and humanity for time and um for being brave enough and bold enough to still talk about it and to inspire others, to educate others, for having um many amazing conversations and for honoring me by having this conversation today. You're you're an amazing human. Thanks so much for talking today [/INST] Alexa. I appreciate the invite man, it was a joy. </s><s>[INST] Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew bustamante to support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from Sun Zoo in the art of war. Let your plans be [/INST] dark </s><s>[INST] and Impenetrable as [/INST] night </s><s>[INST] and when you [/INST] move </s><s>[INST] fall like a thunderbolt. Thank you for listening and hope to see you [/INST] next time. </s> |
<s>[INST] Figure it out, get it done. It's wrong. I see what you did there. This is, okay. I see what you did there. Quick pause, bathroom break? Sure. Yeah, you're hilarious. And just for the sake of completeness, I should mention the subreddit, what Biden has done. There's also what Trump has done, but it's not as active. And it has like this master list of all the accomplishments. I recommend people look at it because it's kind of rigorous and interesting with Link's list of all the things he's done. Just list some of them. Restored daily press briefings. Canceled the Keystone Pipeline. Reversed Trump's Muslim ban. Required masks on federal property. Rejoins the Paris Climate Agreement. Extends student loan payment freeze. Extend eviction freeze. Historic stimulus bill, as you mentioned. Hence funding for border wall and so on and so forth. DACA, border strengthening of DACA. Rejoins the World Health Organization. And the timing of this, of course, is important. Yeah, several historic stimulus bills, which of course you could criticize or support. Raise the minimum wage for federal contractors and federal employees for $15. There's a lot. There's a lot. It makes you realize with both Trump and Biden that there's a bunch of small details that matter. Like that matter on people's lives, like actual little policies. Trump did a lot of stuff as far as I heard for the military. [/INST] Like not big stuff, but small stuff. You're hilarious. Yeah, I'd be curious what you're thinking of. I mean, I know one of the big things under Trump was we're gonna get trans people out of the military. That's not what I was referring to. You weren't referring to that. Trump's hilarious with these stories that he tells. And one of the stories, and you get to know them if you follow him at all. He tells the story. When I came into office, the generals came to me and they said, sir, the cupboards are bare. We have no bullets. And so I rebuilt the military. The cupboards were bare when Obama left it and it was just terrible. But I rebuilt it. And the generals, I've got the best generals. They said, sir, it's incredible what you were able to do. You look into it and it's like, yeah, that's not really true. It is true that there are armaments that just like on a schedule do get replaced. And that's part of the military industrial complex. But there's nothing like special Trump really did. But these stories become, they take on like a life of their own. And it's interesting to sometimes try to dig down and figure out like, was there any policy connected to that? </s><s>[INST] Or is that just a story? Do you think it's possible to have a good conversation with each of them? Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a podcast context [/INST] or in a debate context? Absolutely. Yeah, you're saying like, could I with either of them? </s><s>[INST] Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, you're saying like, could I with either of them? Yeah, Joe Biden too. Sure. Yeah. [/INST] Look, can you dig into that a little more? Well, I mean, I don't know what, I think there's maybe something implicit in your question, </s><s>[INST] but this deeper about the nature of politics and politicians. [/INST] Yes. I think with either of them, I mean, the political differences wouldn't be an impediment to having a good conversation with either of them. I think one of the things that's really tough in my experience when talking to elected officials is they could be super interesting about a hundred different topics, but handlers decide or try to get you to talk about something you don't really care about and something really narrow, which doesn't bring out your best nor their best. And that's a frustration. But I think that given an unstructured three hour conversation, I think it would be interesting to talk to both. I mean, listen, with Biden, aside from his view on cannabis or whatever, his background and the incredible unimaginable family tragedy that he had in his first wife and multiple kids dying. I mean, it's just incredible, you know? And with Trump, I think also you could have </s><s>[INST] an interesting conversation. Yeah, there's the human beings with a life story. Yes. And they're some of the most successful humans who have ever lived to have rose to this highest office in interesting, complex ways. Yes. I mean, one of the things I'm troubled by, maybe you can speak to is why we're so negative towards presidential candidates and presidents. Why it's just, they go through this shit storm no matter who they are. They're like hated, like all the conspiracy theories and just, yes, just the dynamics of how we talk about them is vicious. If you just look at replies, Stephen Barack Obama on Twitter, it's like, what is going on here? Why, because we look at other leaders in other spaces [/INST] and we're generally positive about it. Yeah, there's a couple of different things. There's this dynamic, which is really unfortunate, which is you ask people, do you approve of the job a particular president is doing? And very often, if at any point while they were in office, they did something you don't like, people will say, I don't approve. And so by its nature, what that means is just like the longer you're in office, the lower your approval rating is going to be. And very often that's the way it works. I mean, there's major events like 9 11 spike George W. Bush's approval to an incredible level. Then it came back down with the Iraq war. But there's this unfortunate thing that when, when people are just asked, you think Biden's doing a good job? If four months ago Biden did something on healthcare that somebody didn't like, even if you like most of it, a lot of people from that point forward will say, I don't approve. They might still vote for him because they like him better than the alternative or whatever. It's, it's just the dynamic of politics. And I agree. It's, it's very, does it have to be that way? I don't think it has to be that way, but to unwind it, so many things would have to change. I think our election system is part of why politics is the way it is where you have two choices and it's first past the post. And we have this electoral college so that depending on which state you vote in the kind of meaning and significance of your vote is different. If you vote in Montana, it's the Republican candidates going to win and that changes the dynamics. I think that's part of it. I think that at a personal level, I've experienced this in my life a lot. We've become, and by we, I mean, people in the United States to some degree who talk about this stuff. We've become uncomfortable when there is disagreement and it bleeds over into now we can't have a normal interpersonal relationship anymore. I'm from Argentina and in Argentina, it's really common, even in my family, there are incredibly heated political debates at the start, the middle, the end of some kind of gathering, but then everybody just goes back to like, okay, we disagree on some things, but that's okay. And we can now go and, you know, finish cooking the beef or whatever it is that we're doing. And I experienced this even with people who come up to me on the street and they go just earlier today, a guy came up to me and he said, RFK all the way, baby. Talk about Bobby Kennedy Jr. And I just kind of said, Oh, all right, you know, let's see what happens. And then there was another moment where the guy ended up standing next to me for maybe longer than he thought. And I could tell this guy is getting so awkward because it was an utterance he thought that would just be on the fly and he'd be gone, but now we're standing next to each other waiting for our sandwiches. It's like no big deal. You know, it's just, oh, okay. You like Bobby Kennedy Jr.? I don't plan to go for it. It's fine, you know, and that's like a socio-cultural thing. I think there's lots of other countries. I've spent time in Italy. I have relatives in Israel where like shouting at each other is sort of like normal. And then you just go back and finish them. It sounds like shouting, I'm sort of exaggerating, but very animated, what seemed like big disagreements and then everybody's cool. </s> |
<s>[INST] in the middle of that spectrum and to learn to fine tune it. Which is a tricky place to operate, because you kind of have to, every time you hear a new conspiracy theory, you should approach it with an open mind. And, you know, and also if you don't have enough time to investigate, which most people don't, kind of still have a humility [/INST] not to make a conclusive statement that that's nonsense. There's a lot of social pressure, actually, to immediately laugh off any conspiracy theory, if it's done by the bad guys, right? You will quickly get mocked and laughed at and not taken seriously. If you give any credence, you know, back to lab leak was a good one, where it's like, turned out that that was at least very credible, if not true. And that was a perfect example of one where when it first came out, and not only so, so Brett Weinstein talked about it. And then I, in a totally different conversation, said something complimentary about him on a totally different subject. And people were saying, Tim, you might've gone a little off the deep end. You're like quoting someone who is like a lab leak person. So, I was getting my reputation dinged for complimenting on a different topic someone whose reputation was totally sullied because they questioned an orthodoxy, right? So you see. So what does that make me want to do? Distance myself from Brett Weinstein. That's the, at least they see incentive. And what does that make other people want to do? Don't become the next Brett Weinstein. Don't say it out loud, because you don't want to become someone that no one wants to compliment anymore, right? You can see the social pressure And of course, when there is a conspiracy, </s><s>[INST] that social pressure is its best friend. Because then they see the people from outside are seeing that social pressure enact like a Tim Urban becoming more and more and more extreme to the other side. And so they're going to take the more and more and more extreme. I mean, what do you see that the pandemic did, that COVID did to our civilization in that regard, in the forces? Why was it so divisive? [/INST] Do you understand that? Yeah, so COVID, I thought might be, we always know the ultimate example of a topic that will unite us all as the alien attack. Although honestly, I don't even have that much faith. Then I think there'd be like, some people are super like, pro alien and some people are anti alien. </s><s>[INST] But anyway. I was actually starting to interrupt because I was talking to a few astronomers and they're the first folks that made me kind of sad in that if we did discover life on Mars, for example, that there's going to be potentially a division over that too [/INST] where half the people will not believe that's real. Well, because we live in a current society where the political divide has subsumed everything. And that's not always like that. It goes into stages like that. We're in a really bad one where it's actually, in the book, I call it like a vortex, like almost like a whirlpool that pulls everything into it. It pulls, and so normally you'd have to say, okay, you know, immigration naturally going to be contentious. That's always political, right? But like COVID seemed like, oh, that's one of those that will unite us all. Let's fight this not human virus thing. Like obvious is no one's sensitive. No one's like getting hurt when we insult the virus. Like let's all be, we have this threat, this common threat that's a threat to every one of every nationality in every country, every ethnicity. And it didn't do that at all. The whirlpool was too powerful. So it pulled COVID in and suddenly masks. If you're on the left, you like them. If you're on the right, you hate them. And suddenly lockdowns. If you're on the left, you like them. And on the right, you hate them. And vaccines, people will forget this. When Trump first started talking about the vaccine, Biden, Harris, Cuomo, they're all saying, </s><s>[INST] I'm not taking that vaccine, not from this CDC. [/INST] Because those two rushed or something like that. I'm not trusting anything that Trump says. Trump wants me to take it. I'm not taking it. I'm not taking it from this CDC. So, this was, Trump was almost out of office, but at the time, if Trump had been, it would have been, I'm pretty sure it would have stayed. Right likes vaccines, the left doesn't like vaccines. Instead, the president switched. And all those people are suddenly saying, they were actually specifically saying that if you, you know, that like, if you're saying the CDC is not trustworthy, that's misinformation, which is exactly what they were saying about the other CDC. And they were saying it because they genuinely didn't trust Trump, which is fair. But now, when other people don't trust the Biden CDC, suddenly it's this kind of misinformation that needs to be censored. So, it was a sad moment because it was a couple months, even a week or so, I mean, a month or so at the very beginning when it felt like a lot of our other squabbles were kind of like, oh, I feel like they're kind of irrelevant right now. And then very quickly, the whirlpool sucked it in. And in a way where I think it damaged the reputation of these, a lot of the trust </s><s>[INST] in a lot of these institutions for the long run. But there's also an individual psychological impact. It's like a vicious negative feedback cycle where they were deeply affected on an emotional level [/INST] and people just were not their best selves. That's definitely true. Yeah, I mean, talk about the primitive mind. I mean, one thing that we've been dealing with for our whole human history is pathogens. And it's emotional, right? It brings out, you know, there's really interesting studies where like, if they studied the phenomena of disgust, which is one of these like, you know, smiling is universal. You don't have to ever translate a smile, right? Certain, you know, throwing your hands up when your sports team wins is universal because it's part of our coding. And so is disgust to kind of make this like, you know, face where you wrinkle up your nose and you kind of throw, put out your tongue and maybe even gag. That's to expel, expel whatever's because it's the reaction when something is potentially a pathogen that might harm us, right? Feasties, vomit, whatever, but they did this interesting study where people who, in two groups, the control group, you know, was shown images of, and I might be getting two studies mixed up, but they were showing images of like, car crashes and like, disturbing but not disgusting. And the other one was showing, like, you know, like, you know, rotting things and just sort of things that were disgusting. And then they were asked about immigration, these were Canadians. And the group that had the disgust feeling going, pulsing through their body was way more likely to prefer, like, immigrants from white countries. And the group that had just been shown car accidents, they still prefer the groups from white countries, but much less so. And so, what does that mean? It's because the disgust impulse makes us scared of, you know, sexual practices that are foreign, of ethnicities that don't look like us, of, it stokes xenophobia, so it's ugly. It's really ugly stuff. You know, the Nazi propaganda with cockroaches, and, or it was, Rwandan was cockroaches, you know, the Nazis was rats, and, you know, it's specifically, it's a dehumanizing emotion. So anyway, we were talking about COVID, but I think it does, it taps deep into, like, the human psyche. And it's, I don't think it brings out our, I think, like you said, I think it brings </s> |
<s>[INST] okay, can you, can you take that argument further me? What about the fact that maybe what we value is the up and down of life. So [/INST] you could have up and downs in the experience machine? Right? But what can to having the experience machine? Well, I mean that then becomes an interesting question to explore, but for example, real connection with other people. If the experience machine is a solar machine where it's only you like, that's something you wouldn't have, that you would have this subjective experience, that would be like fake people. Um but when if you gave somebody flowers, that wouldn't be anybody, they actually got happy. It would just be a little simulation of somebody smiling. But the simulation would not be the kind of simulation I'm talking about in the simulation argument where the simulated creature is conscious, it would just be a kind of a smiley face that would look perfectly real too. So </s><s>[INST] we're now drawing a distinction between appear to be perfectly real and actually being real. [/INST] Um So that could be one thing. I mean like a big impact on history, Maybe it's also something you won't have if you check into this experience machine. So some people might actually feel the life I want to have for me is one where I have a big positive impact on history unfolds. So so you can kind of explore these different possible explanations for why it is. You wouldn't want to go into the experience mission if if that's if that's what you feel and 11 interesting observation regarding this Nozick thought experiment and the conclusions he wanted to draw from it is how much is a kind of a status quo effect. So a lot of people might not wanna debt is on current relative to plug into this dream machine, but if they instead we're told while what you've experienced up to this point, it was a dream. No. Do you wanna disconnect from this and enter the real world when you have no idea maybe what the real world is or maybe you could say, well you're actually a farmer in peru growing you know peanuts and you could live for the rest of your life in this. What where or or would you want to continue your dream? Alive as a lex Friedman going around the world making podcasts and doing research. So if the status quo was that they were actually in the experienced machine, I think a lot of people might prefer to live the life that they are familiar with rather than sort of bailout into. So </s><s>[INST] essentially the change itself the [/INST] leap. So it might not be so much the reality itself that we're after. But it's more that we are may be involved in certain projects and relationships and we have, you know, a self identity and and these things that our values are kind of connected with carrying that forward and then whether it's inside a tank or outside the tank in Peru or whether inside the computer outside the computer, that's kind of less important what what we ultimately care about. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, but it's still so just a linger on it. It is interesting. I find maybe people are different but I find myself quite willing to take the leap to the farmer uh in peru especially as the virtual reality system become more realistic. Ah I find that possibility and I think more people would take that leap. [/INST] But so in this in this topic from it just to make sure we understand. So in this case the former emperor who would not be a virtual relative that would be the real, the real, the real your life. Like before this whole experience machine started. </s><s>[INST] Well, I kind of assumed from that description, you're being very specific but that kind of idea just like washes away the concept of what's real. I'm still a little hesitant about your kind of distinction to real and illusion because when you can have an illusion that feels, I mean, that looks real. What I don't know how you can definitively say something is real or not. Like what's what's a good way to prove that something is real in that context. [/INST] Well, so I guess in this case it's more stipulation. In one case you're floating in a tank with these wires by the super duper neuroscientists plugging into your head, giving you lex Friedman experiences and in the other you're actually tilling the soil in peru growing peanuts and then those peanuts are being eaten by other people around the world who by the export. And so this is two different possible situations in the one and the same real world that you could choose to occupy. </s><s>[INST] But just to be clear when you're in a vet with wires and the neuroscientists, you can still go farming in peru right? But [/INST] like, well, you could you could if you wanted to you could have the experience of farming in peru but that wouldn't actually be any peanuts grown uh </s><s>[INST] well, but what makes a peanut. So, so peanut could be grown and you could feed things with that peanut and why can't all of that be done in a simulation. [/INST] I hope first of all that they actually have peanut farms in peru I guess we'll get a lot of comments otherwise from angry. Uh I was with you up to the point when you started talking about, you should know, you can't realize you're in </s><s>[INST] that climate [/INST] now. I mean, I I think, I mean, I i in the simulation, I think there's a sense the important sense in which it would all be real. Um nevertheless, there is a distinction between inside a simulation and outside the simulation or in the case of no. Six thought experiment, whether you're in the vat or outside of that, and some of those differences may or may not be important. I mean, that that comes down to your values and preferences. So if they if they experienced machine only gives you the experience of growing peanuts, but you're the only one in the experienced machines. There's </s> |
<s>[INST] But why is it a problem to think that humans are special? Maybe it's not the special, you're right. It's the better than. Yes. Because then you start to not recognize the magic in other life forms that you either have created or you have observed, because I just think there is magic in legged robots moving about. And they are full of surprises. Yeah. In-personality. Yeah. [/INST] So I'm a little then. Yeah. I know why you like cellular automata, right? But the specialness in your robot comes from the roboticist that built it. Yeah. It's part of the lineage. Yeah. And so that's fine. That's what I felt like looking at the standing robot was I was looking at four billion years of evolution. Yeah. Yeah. Right. If it wasn't. Yeah. So I think I'm happy. I mean, I'm happy we're going to coexist. I'm just saying you're going to get more excitement. There's something missing in our understanding of intelligence. Intelligence isn't just training. The way the neural network is conceived right now is great and it's lovely and it'll be better and we will argue forever. But you want to know, wouldn't it be great if I said, look, I know how to invent an architecture and I can give it a soul. Now what I mean by a soul is some... I know for real that there is internal reference. As soon as it's not fake internal reference, and if we could generate that mechanism for internal reference, that's why our goal director... I think that's why you have to develop a test for goal directorness. Get that goal directorness. You would love that robot more than the one that's just made to look like it does, because you'll have more fun with it, because you better generate certain other problems, get more novelty, hell you'll be able to fall in love with that robot, for real, but not the one that's faking it. And that's why you have to develop a test for goal directness. </s><s>[INST] What about fake it till you make it? Well, I think a lot of people fall in love with fake humans. It's nice to fall in love with something that's full of novelty, yes. I could imagine all kinds of robots that I would want to have a close relationship with. But I don't mean like sexual, I mean like intimacy. But I just don't think that its novelty generation is such a special... Okay, there's like mathematical novelty, or something like that, and then there's just humans being surprised and I think we're easily surprised. But you don't think that's a good definition of novelty. [/INST] No, that's good. I'm happy to be surprised, but not globally surprised, but I'm a scientist, I really want to be the first to be surprised about something and the first in the universe to create that novelty, and to know for sure that that novelty has never occurred anywhere else. That's a real buzz. So, a way to really know that. You have to have a really big lookup table. Right. Yeah. You're never going to be known, for sure. That's one of the hard things about being and scientists searching for this type of novelty. Maybe that's why in mathematics, mathematicians love discovery but actually they are creating and then when they did create a new mathematical structure that they can then, you can write code to work out whether that structure exists before that. That's almost why I would love to have been a mathematician from that regard, to invent new math. That really I know pretty much for sure that it does not exist anywhere else in the universe </s><s>[INST] because it's so contingent. [/INST] That's so weird. But this gets into like, you said a few times that I still really don't understand how you actually plan to do this. To build an experiment that detects how the universe is generating novelty or that time is the mechanism. So the problem that we all have which I think is what Lex is pushing against is if I build the experiment you don't know what you put into it. So you don't know what, unless you can quantify everything you put in all of your agency, all of the boundary conditions you don't know if you somehow biased it in some way. So is the novelty actually intrinsic to that experiment or to that robot or is it something you gave it but you didn't realize you could do that? It's going to be, it's going to asymptote towards that, right? You're never going to know for sure, but you can start to take out, you know, you can use good Bayesian approaches and just keep updating and updating and updating until you point to one sense of purpose. So you want to bound on how much novelty generation could be. </s><s>[INST] Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Could be. Yeah. Got it. So the ability to generate novelty is correlated with high assembly index? [/INST] With assembly index? Yeah. </s><s>[INST] Because the space possibilities is bigger. So that's the key. This could be a good, so I'm going to running joke of like why Lex is single. This could be a good part for, uh, so you, so what you're looking for in a robot partner is ability to generate novelty. And that's, I suppose you would say it's a good definition of intelligence to boy is [/INST] novelty a, um, a fuzzy concept. </s><s>[INST] Is creativity better? Yeah. I mean, that's all pretty fuzzy. [/INST] It's kind of the same. Maybe that's why aliens haven't come yet is because we're not correct enough novelty. Like there's some kind of a hierarchy of novelty in the universe. Well, I think, well, I think novelty is like things surprise you, right? So it's a very passive thing, but I guess I would, I remember by saying creativity is I think it's much more active. You think there's like a mechanism of like the things that exist are generating the creativity. Novelty seems to be, there's some spontaneous production and it has, it's completely decoupled from the things that exist. No, I understand. But I think that creativity is the mechanism and novelty is the observable. </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah, but distributed consensus that still has a sequential. There's like, don't tell me, you're thinking through like how to apply multi computation to? Uh [/INST] Yes. And so, so that becomes a story of, you know, instead of transactions all having to settle in one ledger, it's like a story of all these different ledgers and they all have to have some ultimate consistency, which is what causal variants would give one. But it can take a while and it can take awhile is kind of like quantum mechanics. So it's kind of what's happening is that these different paths of history that correspond to, you know, in one path of history, you got paid this amount in another part of history, you got paid this amount in the end, the universe will always become consistent. Now, another way it works is okay, it's a little bit more complicated than that. What happens is the way space is knitted together in our theory of physics is through all these events. And the the the idea is that the way that economic spaces knitted together is but is there these autonomous events that essentially knit together economic space? So they're all these threads of transactions that are happening? And the question is, can they be made consistent, are there is there something forcing them to be sort of a consistent fabric of, of economic reality? And sort of what this has led me to is trying to realize, how does economics fundamentally work. And you know, what is economics and uh you know what what are the atoms of economics, so to speak. And so what I've kind of realized is that that sort of the perhaps I don't even know if this is right yet. There's sort of events in economics, the transactions, there are states of agents that are kind of the atoms of economics and then transactions are kind of agents transact, transact in some way and that's an event. And then the question is, how do you knit together sort of economic space from that? What is there in economic space? Well, all these transactions, there's a whole complicated collection of possible transactions. But one thing that's true about economics is we tend to have the notion of a definite value for things. We could imagine that you know, you buy a cookie from somebody and they want to get a movie ticket. And there is some way that ai bots could make some path from the cookie to the movie ticket by all these different intermediate transactions. But in fact we have an approximation to that which is we say they each have a dollar value. And we have this kind of numerous rare concept of there's just a way of kind of of taking this whole complicated space of transactions and parsing it in something which is a kind of a simplified thing that is kind of like our parsing of physical space. And so my my guess is that the yet again, I mean it's crazy that all these things are so connected? This is another multi computation story. Another story of where what's happening is that the economic consciousness, the economic observer is not going to deal with all of those are different microscopic transactions, they're just going to pass the whole thing by saying there's this value, it's a number and that's that's their understanding of their summary of this economic network and there will be all kinds of things like there are all kinds of arbitrage opportunities which are kind of like the quantum effects in this whole thing. And that's you know, and places where there's where there's sort of different paths that can be followed and and so on. And there's so the question is, can one make a sort of global theory of economics? And then my test cases again, what is time dilation and economics? And I know for you know, if you if you imagine a very agricultural economics where people are growing lettuces and fields and things like this And you ask questions about, well, if you're transporting lettuces to different places, you know, what is the value of the lettuces after you have to transport them versus if you're just sitting in one place and selling them, you can kind of get a little bit of analogy there. But I think there's a there's a better and more complete analogy and that that's the question of, is there a theory like general activity that is a global theory of economics? And is it about something we care about? It could be that there is a global theory, but it's about a feature of economic reality that isn't important to us. Now, another part of the story is, can one use those ideas to make essentially a distributed Blockchain, a distributed generalization of Blockchain, kind of the quantum analog of money, so to speak, where you have, for example, you can have uncertainty relations where you're saying, you know, well, if I, if I insist on knowing my bank account right now, there'll be some uncertainty. If I'm prepared to wait a while, then it will be much more certain. Um, and so there's, you know, is there a way of using And so we, we've made a bunch of prototypes of this, um, which I'm not yet happy with. What I realized is to really understand these prototypes. I actually have to have a foundational theory of economics. And so that's kind of a, uh, you know, it may be that we could deploy one of these prototypes is a practical system, but I think it's really going to be much better if we actually have an understanding of how this plugs into kind of the economics, </s><s>[INST] that means like a fundamental theory of transactions between entities. Well, that's what you mean by economics? [/INST] Yes, I think so. But I mean, you know, how, how there emerged sort of laws of economics? I don't even know. And I've been asking friends of mine who are who are economists and things? What is economics? You know, is it an axiomatic theory? Is it a theory that is a kind of a qualitative description theory? Is that, you know, what kind of a theory is it? Is it a theory? What kind of thinking? It's like, like in in biology and evolutionary biology, for example, there's a certain there's a certain pattern of thinking that goes on in evolutionary biology where if you're a, you know, a good evolutionary biologist, somebody says that creature has a weird horn and they'll say, well, that's because this and this and this and this selection of this kind and that kind And that's the story. And it's not a mathematical story. It's a story of a different type of thinking about these things. By the way, evolution of biology is yet another place where it looks like this multi computational idea can be applied. And that's where where maybe speciation is related to things like event horizons and there's a whole whole other kind of world of that. But </s> |
<s>[INST] So first of all, I don't really know what E. D. M. Is [/INST] uh electronic dance music. Yeah, you could say Avicii was one of the biggest in this corner. </s><s>[INST] So The main constraint is of time something 3, 4 or five minutes song. [/INST] So you could have songs that were eight minutes, 10 minutes and so forth, because the you know, it started as a digital product that you downloaded. So you didn't have this constraint anymore. So I think it's something really interesting that I don't think has fully happened yet. Kind of jumping ahead a little bit to where we are, but I think there's there's tons of formal innovation in music that should happen now that couldn't happen when you needed to really adhere to the distribution constraints, If you didn't adhere to that, you will get no distribution. So you work, for example, Icelandic artist, she made a full high powered app as an album. That is very expensive, you know, even though the app store has great distribution, she gets nowhere near the distribution versus staying within the three minute format. Uh So I think now that music is fully digital inside these streaming services, there is there is the opportunity to change the format again and allow creators to be much more creative without limiting their their distribution ability. </s><s>[INST] That's interesting that you're right, it's surprising that we don't see that taking advantage more often. It's almost like the constraints of the distribution from the fifties and sixties have molded the culture to where we want the 53 to 5 minutes on than anything else. Not just so we want the song as consumers and as artists like because I write a lot of music and I never even thought about writing something longer than 10 minutes. It's really interesting that those constraints, [/INST] because all your training data has been 3.5 minutes sense. </s><s>[INST] Right, It's right, okay, so, yes, digitization of data Led to than MP 3's [/INST] Yeah, I think you had this file then that was distributed physically, but then you had the components of digital distribution and then the internet happened and there was this vacuum where you had a format that could be digitally shipped, but there was no business model and then Mhm all these pirate networks happen uh napster and and in pirate in Sweden Pirate Bay, which was one of the biggest and you know, I think from a consumer point of view, which which it's kind of leads up to the inception of Spotify from a consumer point of view, consumers for the first time had this access model to music where they could without kind of any marginal costs. They could they could try different tracks, you could use music in new ways, there was no marginal cost. And that was a fantastic consumer experience to have access to all the music ever made, I think was fantastic. But it was also horrible for artists because there was no business model around it. So they didn't make any money. So the user need almost drove the user interface before there was a business model. And then there were these download stores uh that allowed you to download files Which was a solution. But it didn't solve the access problem. There was still a marginal cost of $0.99 to try one more track. And I think that that heavily limits how you listen to music the example. I always give us uh you know, in Spotify a huge amount of people listen to music while they sleep while they go to sleep. And while they sleep, If that costed you $99 per three minutes, you probably wouldn't do that and you would be much less adventurous if there was a real dollar cost to exploring music. So the access model is interesting in that it changes your music behavior. You can be, you can take much more risk because there's no marginal cost to it. </s><s>[INST] Maybe let me linger on piracy for a second cause I find especially coming from Russia, piracy is something that's very interesting to me. Uh not me, of course, ever. But uh, I have friends who have part tooken piracy of music software, tv shows, sporting events and usually to me what that shows is not that there, they can actually pay the money and they're not trying to save money. They're choosing the best experience. So what to me, piracy shows is a business opportunity in all these domains and uh that's where I think you're right. Spotify stepped in is basically piracy was an experience you can explore with fine music you like. And actually the interface of piracy isn't as horrible because it's, I mean, [/INST] metadata, </s><s>[INST] that metadata [/INST] long download times, all kinds of stuff. </s><s>[INST] And what Spotify does is basically first rewards artists and second makes the experience of exploring music much better. I mean the same is true I think for movies and so on that piracy reveals in the software space for example, I'm a huge user and fan of adobe products and uh, there was much more incentive to pirate adobe products before they went to a monthly subscription plan and now all of the said friends that you used to pirate adobe products that I know now actually pay gladly for the monthly subscription. [/INST] I think you're right. I think it's an it's a sign of an opportunity for product development and that sometimes the, there's a product market fit before there's a business model fit uh in product development. I think that that's a that's a sign of it in in Sweden. I think it was a bit of both. There was there was a culture where even had a political party called the pirate party and this was during the time when when people said that information should be free. It's somehow wrong to charge for once and zeros. So I think people felt that artists should probably make money somehow else and you know, concerts or something. So at least in Sweden was part really social acceptance even at the political level and that, but that also forced Spotify to compete with with free, which, which I don't think what actually could have happened anywhere else in the world. The music industry needed to be doing bad enough to take that risk. And Sweden was like the perfect testing ground. It had government funded high bandwidth, low latency broadband, which meant that the product would work. And it was also, there was no music anyway, so they were kind of like, I don't think this is gonna work, but why not? Uh so this product is one that I don't think could have happened in America, the world's largest music market for example. </s> |
<s>[INST] They can look beyond the conflict between nations. [/INST] You can look beyond the conflict of having to have, you know, classification. You can do what you want. You know, it's just like, you know, we classify how to do, uh, you know, the whole nuclear, do you know how to create a critical mass, Right? But there's really smart high school kids that have figured out mathematically and they do their science project and then the government comes in and says, hey, we got to classify your government cause we just don't want this out in the public domain, which I understand, but they never stopped them from free thought and developing that. It's just, we really don't want this out there. Okay. So I understand that. I totally understand that. But if they, you know, if if Bill and Melinda want to do this and go, hey, we want to do this and they're gonna work with Bezos and they're gonna work with Ellen and we're gonna be do you think about it? There's a significant amount of money that could be available to R. And D. And I'm not talking just science like this, I'm talking medical research and all this. But then you go well who gets it? Because now you're competing against the companies that actually do it. You go, is that well are they digress greatest minds? I'd say you know the we have a tendency to go these are the best that we have. And I'd say well no that's the best that we know we have. But there's probably people out there that don't want to work. There is brilliant minds that don't want to do anything with the fence because they just disagree with what it does. So they go to another path, they could do something else. And </s><s>[INST] that in the sense that uh the lines of the world that Jeff Bezos actually in a certain sense much better than D. O. D. At finding the brilliant weird minds out [/INST] there because they're not tied to the government. So when you work a government contract, the government writes they tell you what they want and then they work with you on the requirements. And they usually have an end in mean you know they have an idea that this is what I wanted to be where if you go to like SpaceX where you know they come up with why don't we just land these things on a pad and reuse them. Well if the government scientists, if you're on a government contract says no, that's not the requirements were not paying for that. We want you to do this, you're, you're kind of controlled. Or when Ellen does it, his company, they can do whatever the hell they want to do because they have no bounds. The only bounds they have is the liability if it doesn't work and it lands on something. So what do you do? You go out to Kwajalein and you test it and if it crashes and it lands in the ocean, hey, we clean it up. No big deal, we lost some money, but we'll move on. It's, you know, money makes the world go round contrary to what everyone thinks. But you know, there's a lot of money that's sitting around that you can do a lot of really cool stuff with. And I don't know, I mean I'll guarantee that uh what is it? Blue Origin? Isn't that amazon you know that they're doing some cool stuff because they have funny and I joke with the guy. I know that worked at SpaceX and he was funny because they were building The first test thing and they were limited. And Ellen found this like 400 acre thing, I think it's about four acres down by Waco Texas. And he's like I go how he goes, he goes, dude, I worked, he goes, I worked with, he goes because he's done government contract. He goes there's a government contract and then there's working at SpaceX with Ellen money and that's what he refers to it as his Ellen money where it was like don't I'll throw them and he would throw the money at it and make it happen and it's I'm talking this fast. I mean he talks about he has a great story about this. I mean this is Ellen but this is how fast you can do in the private sector. Vice the government where there's the bureaucracy is they had a company that was a basically a tool and die machine shop that did a lot of their high precision parts for the rockets. They had went to the guy but he had contracts with other companies. And when the economy was down The guy was actually looking at going out of business. So the guy I know he's telling me the story, he was talking to the guy, he had to go over there and get something and he's like Holy Sh it he goes hang on. So he calls up on the phone SpaceX, he says, Hey Ezel on there, can you get him in the boardroom, we'll be there in 20 minutes. So he grabs this guy who's literally going to fold his company, they go over to SpaceX and I may be getting some of this wrong if people are gonna fact check me but this is pretty close, they go in the boardroom and, and he said literally within like, you know, an hour or two, Ian has bought the guy's company. That guy is now a senior VP running his company and they're gonna pull all the stuff into the SpaceX things so they can actually build the parts and they can still contract out to make the money outside. And it happened like that </s> |
<s>[INST] You mentioned board says so you open your book with a few lines from a poem by jorge, luis Borges has a love poem. I'm gonna read parts of it because it's a damn good poem. It's called to english poems. I mean there's, I'd like to understand why you used it and the specific parts you used, which is interesting. But then when I read the full thing, so I think you used that as as a as a sort of beautiful description of what it means to delve deep into understanding, offering yourself to the task of understanding another human being. But if you look at the full context of the poem, it's also a damn good description of being hit by love and overtaken by it. And uh sort of and trying to, trying to figure out how to make sense of the world now that you've been stricken by it. It says a bunch of things about chatting and significantly with friends and all those kinds of things. And then the poem reads the big wave brought you I guess this is the moment, I guess, of the universe where two people you fall in love. Maybe I'm totally misreading this point by the way. It doesn't matter. You can't miss read the poem. [/INST] So it </s><s>[INST] goes on words. Any words, your laughter and your so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words. The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city, your profile turned away the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter. These are the illustrious toys you have left me. So these little memories of these peculiar little details he remembers. Those are the illustrious toys. I apologize to mix my own words of the poem but you should definitely read it. I turned them over in the dawn. I lose them. I find them. I tell them to the few stray dogs into the few stray stars of the dawn. Your dark rich life. I must get at you somehow. I put away those illustrious toys you have left me. I want your hidden look, your real smile, that lonely, mocking smile. You're cool. Mirror knows I want your hidden look, your real smile. I haven't so I this this is the first part of the poem and then it goes on which is some of the parts that you reference. The second part is what can I hold you with? I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the jagged suburbs. I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long and a lonely moon. I offer you my ancestors, my dad men the ghost that living men have honored in bronze my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires two bullets through his lungs and so on so on. I offer you whatever insights my books may hold, whatever manliness of humor in my life. I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal. I offer you that kernel of myself that I've saved somehow the central heart that deals not in words, Traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time. My joy and adversities. And I think this is where the part they include in the book. I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen a sunset years before you were born. Hi. Damn. That's a good line. Okay I offer you explanations of yourself theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself. I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart. I'm trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. That is a man who's in love and longing if taken. But I just want to go back to maybe you could say why you wanted to include that poem but also your dark rich life. I must get at you somehow I put away those illustrious toys you have left me at what your I want your hidden look your real smile, that lonely mocking smile. You're cool. Mirror knows what sometimes I meet a stranger and I just it's like it's like a double take. It's like who are you have we met before somewhere. Who is that person behind there And I want to get at that, whatever that is. And of course, maybe that's what love is, because maybe maybe that's the whole pursuit, like a lifelong pursuit of getting at that person. Maybe that's what that is. And like that uh, insatiable sort of curiosity to keep getting like, well, who is that person in your own private life? [/INST] Yeah. So that absolutely. I think that it was a beautiful description of what you just said when there's that first moment, and then you want to dive deeper. You want to know what the what the hidden mysteries are. In a way. It's it's a it's a love poem as a as a scientist though. It also it's a bit of how a scientist can love science. And and I think that wanting to dive deeper is it's almost like again where the it could be a love affair with investigating the human mind, for example. And and that was one reason that it spoke to me also, again, thinking about the broader sweep of where the human mind came from. Uh the steps it took to get where it is today. What was given up along the way, what compromises were made. And here's where the darkness of the poem starts to come in a little bit too. It doesn't shy away from the negativity from the confusion, from the danger. And then at the very end, the board faces offering up scenes from his life, parts of himself and this is how we connect with people. We offer up parts of ourselves just here it is. And then we see how well does that map onto what you have? And it's it's that offering up that I liked and not not the good stuff or not only the good stuff. The yellow roses, nice, but but he's offering up the bad stuff too. And that that to me was important for the for the book because I'm offering up hard stuff too. And in fact, a lot of it and also hard stuff from within me from my own personal side to and that was there's a lot of vulnerability that comes with that. But that's that comes with love that comes with writing. You have to be open. You have to be vulnerable. And so I thought that reflected what I was trying to do. And I thought it was as an epigraph. It kind of made it clear how vulnerable I was in taking this step, but also what what could come out of it </s> |
<s>[INST] What's the topic of those essays? [/INST] They are, they're called familiar essays. So the topics are everyday topics like mail, um coffee chocolate. I mean just like and what she does is she weaves her own experience. It's a little bit like these conversations that you're so good at curating actually, um you're weaving together history and philosophy and science and also personal reflections and a little bit you feel like you're like eavesdropping on someone's train of thought in a way. It's really the, really compelling to me, even </s><s>[INST] if it's just like a mundane topic. [/INST] Yeah, but it's so interesting to um learn about like all of these little stories in the, in the wrapping of the history of like male, like that's that's really interesting. And so I read these essays and then I wrote to her a little fan girl email, this was many years ago and and I said I I just loved it, I loved this book. And how did you learn to write essays like this? And she gave me a reading list of essays that I should read. Like writers and so I read them all. And anyway, so I decided it would be a really good challenge for me to try to write something really brief where I could Focus on, you know, one or 2 really fascinating tidbits of neuroscience connect it to, connect each one to something philosophical or um you know, like just a question about human nature, do it in a really brief format without violating the validity of the science. That was a I just set myself this would I thought of as a really, really big challenge in part because it was an incredibly hard thing for me to do in the first book. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, we should say that this is the 7.5 lessons, a very short book. I mean it's a so it embodies brevity right? The whole point throughout is just, I mean you could you could tell that there's editing, like there's pain in trying to bring as brief as possible, as clean as possible. Yeah. [/INST] Yeah. So it's the way I think of it is um you know it's a little book of big science and big ideas. </s><s>[INST] Really big ideas and in brief little packages [/INST] and you know I wrote it um so that people could read it, I love reading on the beach. I love reading essays on the beach. I read it, I wrote it so people could read it on the beach or in the bathtub or you know a subway stop </s><s>[INST] even if the beach is frozen over the snow. [/INST] So my husband dan calls it the first neuroscience beach read. That's his um that's his phrasing. Yeah </s><s>[INST] and like you said you learn a lot about writing from your husband, like you were saying offline. [/INST] Well he's he is of the two of us, he is the better writer. He's a masterful writer. Um He um he's also I mean he you know he's a PhD in computer science, he's a software engineer but he's he's also really good at organization of knowledge. So he built for a company he used to work for, he built one of the first knowledge management systems and he's he now works at google where he does engineering education. Like he's he understands how to tell a good story uh just you know about anything really. Um He's got impeccable timing, he's really funny and luckily for me he knows very little about psychology or neuroscience well now he knows more obviously but so you know he was really when how emotions were made um you know he was really really helpful to me because um the first draft of every chapter was me talking to him about what you know I would talk out loud about what I wanted to say and the order in which I wanted to say it and then I would write it and then he would read it and tell me all the bits that could be excised and sometimes we would, you know, I should say, I mean, we don't he and I don't really argue about much except um, directions in the car. Like where that's where that's if we're going to have an argument that's going to be, where it's going to happen, Where </s><s>[INST] what's the what's the nature of the argument about directions? Exactly. I don't [/INST] really know. It's just that we're very, I think it's that spatially, you know, he um I use egocentric space. So I want to say, you know, turn left. Like I was I'm reasoning in relation to like my own physical corporeal body. So, you know, you walk to the church and you turn left and you then, you know, whatever, you know, I'm always like and his, you know, he gives directions, um, Alice centric li which means um organized around north, south, east, west. </s><s>[INST] So to you, the earth is at the center of the solar system. And to him, [/INST] no, I'm reasonably I'm at the you're at </s><s>[INST] the center of the solar system. Okay, So [/INST] anyway, so we but but here we, you know, we we had some really rip roaring arguments, like really rip roaring arguments where he would say like, who is this for? Is this for the 1%. And I'd be like 1% meaning not, you know, not wealth, but like civilians versus academics are these for the scientists are for the citizens, for the civilians, right? He speaks for the for the </s><s>[INST] people. For the speaks [/INST] for the people. And I'd be like, no, you have to. And so he made, you know, after one terrible argument that we had, where it was really starting to affect our relationship because we were so mad at each other all the time. He made these little signs, writing and science and we only use them. This, this was like, when you, when you pulled out a sign, that's it. Like the other person just wins and you have to stop fighting about it. And that's it. And so we just did that. Um, and we didn't really have to use it too much for this book because this book was in some ways. Um, uh, you know, I didn't have to learn a lot of new things for this book. I had to learn some, but I, a lot of, um, what I learned for seven for how emotions are made really stood me in good stead for for this book. So there was a little bit, each essay was a little bit of learning a couple were was a little more than than the small amount, but, um, but I I didn't have so much trouble here. Um, I had a lot of trouble with the first book. Um, but still, even here, you know, um, you know, he would tell me that I could take something out and I really wanted to keep it. And um I think we only use the signs ones. </s> |
<s>[INST] Just as you're describing it there seems to be a connection to the those ideas of reference frames. I mean it just feels like consciousness having the subject assigning the feeling of red to the actual color or to the wavelength is useful. Yeah I think [/INST] that's a good way of putting it. It's useful as a predictive mechanism or useful. There's a generalization idea. It's it's a way of grouping things together to say it's useful to have a model like this. Um Think about the there's a well known syndrome that people who have lost a limb experience called phantom limbs. And what they claim is they can have their arm is removed but they feel the arm that not only feel it, they know it's there, they it's there I can I know it's there, they'll swear to you that it's there and then they can feel pain in their arm and they feeding their finger in and they move there. They move their non existent arm behind your back then they feel the pain behind their back. So this whole idea that your arm exists is a model of your brain. It may or may not really exist. Um And just like but it's useful to have a model of something that sort of correlates to things in the world. So you can make predictions about what would happen when those things occur. It's a little bit funny but I think you're getting right towards the answer there. It's it's useful for the model of um to express things certain ways that we can then map them into these reference frames and make predictions about them. I need to spend more time on this topic. It doesn't bother me. </s><s>[INST] Do you really need to spend more time? It does feel special that we have subjective experience but I'm yet to know why. [/INST] I'm just I'm just personally curious. It's not necessary for the work we're doing here. I don't think I need to solve that problem to build intelligent machines at all. Not at all. </s><s>[INST] But there is sort of the silly notion that you describe briefly that doesn't seem so silly to us. Humans is you know if you're successful building intelligent machines it feels wrong to then turn them off because if you're able to build a lot of them it feels wrong to them be able to you know to turn off the [/INST] boy but just let's let's break that down a bit as humans, why do we fear death? There's there's two reasons we've heard of. Well first of all stay when you're dead. Doesn't matter all. Okay you're dead. So why do we fear death? We fear death for two reasons. One is because we are programmed genetically to fear death. That's a that's a survival and proper beginning the jeans thing. Um, and we also are programmed to feel sad when people we know die, we don't feel sad for someone. We don't know dies people dying right now. The only comes in and I feel bad about it because I don't know them. But I knew they might feel really bad. So again, this is these are old brain genetically embedded things that we feared up outside of those, those uncomfortable feelings. There's nothing else to worry about. </s><s>[INST] Wait, hold on a second. Don't do you know the denial of death by Becker Dental? You know, there's a thought that death is, you know, our whole conception of our world model kind of assumes immortality and then death is this terror that underlies it also like, [/INST] well some people's world, not mine. </s><s>[INST] But okay. So what what Becker would say is that you're just living an illusion. You've constructed illusion for yourself because it's such a terrible terror. The fact that this and the illusion that death doesn't matter. You're still not coming to grips [/INST] with the illusion of what death is going </s><s>[INST] to happen. [/INST] It's </s><s>[INST] not going to happen. You're, you're actually operating, you haven't, even though you said you've accepted it, You haven't really accepted no sugar diet is what you say. So it sounds like it sounds like you disagree with that notion. I mean [/INST] totally like it's not that important every night I go to bed, it's like </s><s>[INST] dying a little death. [/INST] It does. And and if I didn't wake up? It wouldn't matter to me only if I knew that was gonna happen would be bothered him. If I didn't know I was gonna have, how would I know? No, But then I would worry about my wife. So imagine imagine I was a loner and I lived in Alaska and I lived out there and there's no animals. Nobody knew I existed. I was just eating these roots all the time and nobody knew was there. And one day I didn't wake up, where what what pain in the world would there exist? </s><s>[INST] Well, so most people that think about this problem would say that you're just deeply enlightened or are completely delusional. But I would say I would say that's very enlightened, enlightened way to see the world. Is that that's the rational one. Rational. That's right. But the fact is we don't uh I mean, we really don't have an understanding of why the heck it is we're born and why we die and what happens afterwards? [/INST] Maybe there isn't a reason. Maybe there is. So I'm interest in those big problems too. Right? You know, you you interviewed max take Mark, you know, there's people like that, right? I'm missing those big problems as well. And In fact, when I was young, I made a list of the biggest problems I can think of first. Why does anything exist? 2nd? Why did we have the laws of physics that we have? Third is life inevitable? And why is it here? Fourth is intelligence inevitable? And why is it here? I stopped there because I figured if you can make a truly intelligent system will be, that will be the quickest way to answer the first three questions. I'm serious. And and so I said, my mission, you know, you asked me earlier my first mission is to understand the brain. But I felt that is the shortest way to get the true machine intelligence. And I want to get the true machine intelligence because even if it doesn't occur in my lifetime, other people will benefit from it because I think it will come in my lifetime. But you know, 20 years and you never know. And uh but that would be the quickest way for us to, you know, we can make super mathematicians, we can make super space explorers. We can make super physicist brains that do these things and um that can run experiments that we can't run. We don't have the abilities to manipulate things and so on. But we can build intelligent machines that do all those things. And with the ultimate goal of finding out the answers to the other questions, </s> |
<s>[INST] I wonder if you can sort of comment on that because you have uh, both sort of cash app and the block five and Coinbase, like you can store it that you can purchase and trade it there and store it there and so on. But ultimately they're saying, you wanna, you know, keep some of it there, but you want to move it to the hardware wallet and the cold storage of the hardware wallet is like, you can disconnect it from the computer because ultimately stuff that's connected to the Internet can be compromised, can be controlled by governments and other parties and so on. What are your thoughts about sort of practically speaking for maybe like a regular citizen, what's, what should be the role of the hardware wallet in their lives? [/INST] Yeah. So at the highest level, I just think that like learning about it is important, right? So even if you only have $5 equivalent of Bitcoin going and understanding here's how it works. Here's why it's important. Here's how I would actually withdraw from an exchange under the hard wall. Like that alone just as an intellectual exercise is a worthwhile pursuit. And I think people should go do that. </s><s>[INST] Actually go through the process of the steps. So you feel like you can, you can do it. Yeah. [/INST] It's kinda like if I said to you, you know, hey, we're going to go buy an asset and you never went and looked at it, you never went and uh, you know, made a decision like sure, maybe I did it, I didn't do it, but like you didn't actually experience it right? And so I think that that's an important part. The second thing is uh each person is different from a, how they view this asset. So there are some people who are speculating right? There's three use cases for Bitcoin, their store value, medium of exchange and speculation. And the people are speculating, they can't put it in deep cold storage because they need to be able to trade it. So what ends up happening is they fall in the bucket of like high risk, high reward, they're trying to trade, they're trying to do all these things and sure maybe there are profits that they can generate if they're good at it, but also they're introducing a lot of risk And so that person is very different than the person who says, Hey, you know, I bought one Bitcoin and I'm gonna save it for my child, right? I'm gonna give it to on their 18th birthday. And so when you start to look at this, what you end up saying is what are you actually purchasing this for kind of like, why are you doing it? And then what's your time horizon and what ends up happening is more and more people in the Bitcoin community have longer time horizon is one of the advantages to this community, right? If you look at the on chain metrics, 60% of Bitcoin haven't moved from the digital wallet in which they sit in the last 12 months. So even though it's appreciated hundreds of percent on the upside, There's been lots of volatility, a 50% drop in a single day in terms of the us dollar price still doesn't move. And so these are the kind of long term holders right? These are the iron fish or as recently it's become popular the diamond hands right hands they're just they're not going anywhere. And so I think that those people are much more likely to not have their Bitcoin on exchanges or in software walls they've got it in some sort of like highly secure environment. Uh and what and one in which they have deep sovereignty or some kind of prevalent sovereignty. And the reason for that is because they have that long time horizon they don't want to be um kind of convicted around Bitcoin sound money, macro environment all the stuff and then they make a mistake because they trusted a B. C. D. Company. Uh and that counter party risk that ends up actually being you know fatal or detrimental. </s><s>[INST] So again this is not financial advice disclaimer. But let me ask. So you in terms of investment advice on Bitcoin. So you see Bitcoin's potentially not just the thing that you speculate over like buy and sell buy and sell buy and sell, but it's something that you can just buy only. And I believe I've heard the own uh quite a large percentage of of your wealth in Bitcoin and you're basically buying only in storing long term. So that's something that's a legitimate way to approach Bitcoin in your recommendation. [/INST] Go to other cultures. So if we remove ourselves from the western world culture of investing in Gamification of financial markets and the Financial ization of everything, let's say we go to uh the culture of India for hundreds if not thousands of years, families basically saved their wealth in gold and in jewelry and in these hard assets with the expectation to pass it on to the next generation. And so it would be blasphemous to sell the family's gold in that culture right? You know your your great grandfather gave it to your grandfather, your grandfather gave it to your father, your father gave it to you. Right. And so in that culture, the long term kind of holding is the default. I think that what Bitcoin has presented again is a digital application of the exact same thing which is that while everything else in the world is being devalued that is denominated in a currency that is being inflated away whether it's quickly or not, this finite supply, this scarce asset ends up accruing more and more value over time. Right. And so um I think that for me personally, um I've got over 95% of my net, worth that's in this. </s> |
<s>[INST] So that's actually a strong signal when there's no variation. That's so fast. [/INST] Exactly, genes that have very little variation are hugely important. You can actually rank the importance of genes based on how little variation they have and those genes that have very little variation. But no association with disease. That's a very good metric to say, oh, that's probably developmental gene because we're not good at measuring those prototypes. So it's jeans that you can tell evolution has excluded mutations from, but yet we can't see them associated with anything that we can measure nowadays. It's probably early embryonic, lethal. </s><s>[INST] What are all the words you just said early embryonic, [/INST] What lethal meaning meaning that you don't have that guy. </s><s>[INST] Okay, there's a bunch of stuff that is required for a stable functional organism across the board for our entire [/INST] for for </s><s>[INST] entire species. I guess [/INST] if you look at sperm, it expresses thousands of proteins. Does sperm actually need thousands of proteins? No, but it's probably just testing them. So my speculation is that misfolding of these proteins is an early test for failure. So the out of the millions of sperm that are possible, you select the subset that are just not grossly misfolding thousands of proteins. </s><s>[INST] So it's kind of an assert that this is folded correctly. Yeah. This just because [/INST] if this little </s><s>[INST] thing about the folding of approaching is incorrect, [/INST] that probably </s><s>[INST] means somewhere down the line, there's a bigger [/INST] issue. That's exactly right to fail fast. So basically if you look at the mammalian investment in a new born, that investment is enormous in terms of resources. So mammals have basically evolved mechanisms for fail fast. We're basically in those early months of development. I mean it's horrendous of course, at a personal level when you lose a your future child. But in some ways there's so little hope for that child to develop and sort of make it through the remaining months that sort of fail fast is probably a good evolutionary principle for mammals. And of course humans have a lot of medical resources that you can give those Children a chance. And you know, we have so much more success in giving folks, we'll have these strong carrier mutations a chance. But if they're not even making it through the first three months, we're not going to see them. So that's why when we, when we say, what are the most important genes to focus on? The ones that have a strong effect mutation or the ones that have a weak effect mutation? Well, you know, the jury might be out because the ones that have a strong effect mutation are basically, you know, not mattering as much the ones that only have weak effect mutations by understanding through genetics that they have a weak effect mutation and understanding that they have a causal role in the disease. We can then say, Okay, great evolution has only tolerated a 2% change in that gene Pharmaceutically. I can go in and induce a 70% change in the gene and maybe I will poke another hole at the bathtub that was not easy to control in, you know, many of the other sort of strong effect genetic variants. So, </s><s>[INST] okay, so there's this beautiful map of uh, across the population of things that you're saying, strong and weak effects or stuff with a lot of mutations and stuff with little mutations with no mutations and you have this map and lays out the puzzle. [/INST] Yeah. So, so when I say strong effect, I mean at the level of individual mutations. So, so basically jeans where So so you have to think of first the effect of the gene on the disease, remember how it was sort of painting that map earlier from genetics all the way to phenotype. That gene can have a strong effect on the disease. But the genetic variant might have a weak effect on the gene. So basically when you ask, what is the effect of that genetic variant on the disease? It could be that that genetic variant impacts the gene by a lot and then the gene impacts the disease by a little or it could be that the genetic variants impacts the gene pay a little and then the gene impacts the disease by a lot. So what we care about is genes that impact the disease a lot. But genetics gives us the full equation. And what I would argue is if we couple the genetics with expression variation to basically ask what genes change by a lot and you know, which genes correlate with disease by a lot. Even if the genetic variants change them by a little then that those are the best places to intervene. Those are the best places where pharmaceutically if I have even a modest effect, I will have a strong effect on the disease. Whereas those genetic variants that have a huge effect on the disease. I might not be able to change that gene by this much without affecting all kinds of other things, </s><s>[INST] interesting. So, you're okay. So that's what we're looking at and what have we been able to find in terms of which disease could be helped [/INST] again and don't get me started. This is um, we have found so much our understanding of disease has changed so dramatically with genetics. I mean places that we had no idea would be involved. So one of the worst things about my genome is that I have a genetic predisposition to age related macular degeneration. AMG. So it's a form of blindness that causes you to lose the central part of your vision progressively as you grow older. My increased risk is fairly small. I have an 8% chance. You only have a 6% chance. </s><s>[INST] You know, I'm an [/INST] average </s> |
<s>[INST] Yeah, it's very possible than, say, in physics that we arrive at a theory of everything that unifies the laws of physics as a very strong understanding of the fabric of reality, even like from the very big bang to today, it's possible that that understanding is only going to elevate our appreciation of this whole thing. [/INST] Yeah, I think it will, I think will, I think it has, it has so far. But the other side of it, which which you emphasizes, it's not like science somehow reaches an end. Right? There are certain categories of questions that do reach an end. I think we one day will close the book on nature's ingredients in the fundamental laws now that can't prove that maybe it goes on forever smaller and smaller, Maybe they're deeper and deeper laws. But I don't think so. I think that there's going to be a collection of ingredients and a collection of basic laws that chapter will close. But it's one chapter now we take that knowledge and we try to understand how the world builds the structures that it does, you know, from planets to people to black holes, to the possibility of other universes and every step of the way the collection of questions that we don't know the answer to only blossoms. And so there's a there's a deep sense of gratification from understanding certain qualities of the world. But I would say that if you take a ratio of what we understand to the things that we know that we don't yet understand. That ratio keeps getting smaller and smaller because the things that we know that we don't understand grows larger and larger. </s><s>[INST] Do you have a hope that we saw that theory of everything puzzle in the next few decades? So there's been a bunch of attempts from string theory to all kinds of attempts of trying to solve quantum gravity will basically come up with a theory for quantum gravity. There's a lot of complexities to this one for experimental validation. You have to observe the facts that are very difficult to measure. So you have to build like that's like an engineering challenge. And then there's the theory challenge which is like it seems very difficult to connect the laws of gravity to quantum mechanics. Do you have a hope or we hopelessly stuck? [/INST] Well, I have to have to have a hope. I mean, it's in some sense, but I devoted least part of my professional life toward trying to make progress on. I'm glad you used the phrase quantum gravity. I'm not a great fan of the theory of everything phrase because it does make other scientists feel like if they're not working on this, what are they working on? Man is like, you know, there's not much left when you're talking about a theory of everything. Biology is just small details. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, [/INST] so it is really trying to put gravity and quantum mechanics together and since I was a college kid, I was deeply fascinated with gravity. And as I learned quantum mechanics, the the notion of physicists being stumped on trying to blend them together, how could one not get fired up about maybe contributing something to that journey? And so we've been on this, you know, I've been on this for 30 years since I was a student. We we have made progress. We do have ideas. You mentioned string theory is one possible scenario. It's not stuck. String theory is a vibrant field of research that is making incredible progress, but we've not made progress on this issue of experimental verification validation, which as you know, it is a vital part of the story. So I would have hoped that by now we would have made contact with observation. If you would have interviewed me back in the eighties when I was, you know, a wild, bright eyed kid trying to make headway, working 18 hours a day and this sort of stuff. I would've said, yeah, by by 2021 yeah, we're going to know whether it's right or wrong. We have made contact. I would have said, look, there may be certain mathematical puzzles that we've got to work out, but we'll know enough to make contact with experiment that has not happened. On the other hand, if you would have interviewed me back then and asked me, will we be able to talk about detailed qualities of black holes and understand them at the uh, the level of detail that we actually, I would have said, no, I don't think that we're gonna be able to do that. Well, we have uh, an exact formulation of strength there in certain circumstances. No, I don't think we're going to have that and yet we do. So it's just to say, you don't know where the progress is going to happen. But yes, I do hold out hope that maybe before I move on to wherever I don't think there is and after, but I would love before I leave this Earth to to know the answer, but, you know, science and the universe, it's not about pleasing any individual, it is what it is. And so, um we just press onward and we'll see where it goes. </s><s>[INST] So in terms of string theory, if I just look from an outsider's perspective currently at the theoretical physics community, String theory is the theory was as a theory has been very popular for for a few decades but has recently fallen out of favor. At least there's been like, you know, it became more popular to kinda asked the question a string theory really the answer where do you fall on this? Like how do you make sense of this puzzle? Why do you think he has fallen out of favor? [/INST] Yeah, I would actually challenge the statement that's fallen out of favor. I would say that any field of research when it's new and it's the bright shiny bicycle that no one has yet seen on that block. Yeah, it's gonna attract attention and uh, the news outlets are going to cover it and students are gonna flock to it. Sure. But as a, as a field matures it does shed those qualities because it's no longer As novel as it was when it was first introduced 30, 40 years ago. But you need to judge it by a different standard. Need to judge it by is it making progress on foundational issues, deepening our understanding of the subject and by that measure, string theory is scoring in very high now at the same time, you also need to judge whether it makes contact with experiment as we discussed before too. And in that measure we're still challenged. So I would say that many strength ears myself included Are are very sober about the theory. It has the tremendous progress that it had 30, 40 years ago that hasn't gone away. But we become better equipped at assessing The long journey ahead and that was something that we weren't particularly good at back. Say in the 80s, look, when I was just starting out in the field, there was a sense of physics is about to end, string theory is about to be the be all and all final unified theory. And that will bring this chapter to a close Now I have to say, I think it was more the younger physicists who were saying that some of the more seasoned, even if they were pro string theory at the time, I don't know if they were rolling their eyes, but they knew that was gonna be a long, long journey. I think people like, you know, john schwarz, one of the founders of string theory, Michael Green, no relation to the founders of the theory. Edward witten, you know, one of the main people driving the theory back then and today, I think they knew that we were in for a long haul and and that's the nature of science quick hits that resolve everything, few and far between. And so if you were in for the quick solution to the big questions of the world, then you would have been disappointed. And I think there were people were disappointed, they moved on and work on other subjects if you are in in the way that Einstein was in for a lifetime of investigation to try to see where, what the answers to the deep questions would be, then I think string theory has been a rich source of material that has kept so many people deeply engaged in moving the frontier forward. </s> |
<s>[INST] Mhm. Uh That's that's just incredible. Because they have to maintain. I mean, the precision here is probably, there might be some more what is it? Maybe noises. A smaller problem. I guess there's no vibration to to worry about like seismic stuff. So, getting away from Earth, maybe you get away [/INST] from those parts are easier. They don't have to measure it is accurately at low frequencies, but they have uh a lot of tough engineering problems. The the in order to detect that the the gravitational waves affect things. The sensors have to be what we call free masses, just like ours are isolated from the earth. They have to isolate it from the satellite. And that's a hard problem. They have to do that pretty not as well as we have to do it but very well. And they've done a test mission and the engineering seems to be at least in principle in hand. This will be in the 2031, Yeah. </s><s>[INST] This is incredible. This is uh this is this is incredible. Uh Let me ask about bob black holes. Uh so what we're talking about is observing ah orbiting black holes. Uh I I saw the terminology of like binary black hole [/INST] systems is </s><s>[INST] that's that's when the when that's when they're dancing. [/INST] Okay, we're going around each other just like the Earth around the sun. </s><s>[INST] Okay. Is that weird that there's black holes going around each other? [/INST] So finding binary systems of stars is similar to finding binary systems of </s><s>[INST] black holes. [/INST] They were one stars. So, uh so we haven't said what a black hole is physically yet. So what's the black hole? So, black hole is first, it's a mathematical concept or physical concept and that is a region of space. So it's simply a region of space where the curvature of space time in the gravitational field is so strong that nothing get out including light and there's light gets spent in gravitational if the gravitation if the spacetime is warped enough. And so even like it's been around and stays in it. So that's the concept of a black hole. So it's not a and maybe you can make maybe it's a it's a concept that didn't say how they come about. And uh there could be different ways they come about, the ones that we are seeing. Uh there's a we're not sure that's what we're trying to learn now, is what they but the general expectation is that they come the black, these black holes happen when a star dies. So what does that mean? That the star dies? What happens? A star like our sun uh basically makes heat and light by fusion. It's made of and as it burns, it burns up the hydrogen and then the helium and then and slowly works its way up to the heavier and heavier elements that are in the star. And when it gets up to iron, the fusion process doesn't work anymore. And so the stars die and it happens to stars and then they do what's called a supernova. What happens then is that a star is a delicate balance between an outward pressure from fusion and light and burning and an inward pressure of gravity trying to pull the masses together once it burns itself out it goes and it collapses and that's a supernova. When it collapses all the mass that was there is in a very much smaller space. And if a star if you do the calculations, if a star is big enough that can create a strong enough gravitational field to make a black hole, our son won't. It's too smart, too smart and we don't know exactly what it, but it's usually thought that a star has to be at least three times as big as our son to make a black hole. But that's the physical way there. You can make black holes. That's the first uh explanation that one would give for the for what we see. But it's not necessarily true. We're not sure yet </s><s>[INST] what we see in terms of for the origins of black holes. [/INST] No, the black holes that we see in gravitational waves. </s><s>[INST] So the but you're also looking for the ones who are binary solar systems. [/INST] So they're binary systems, but they could have been made from binary stars. So there's binary stars around. So that's so that's the first explanation, is that that's what they are. Uh other explain. But but what we see has some puzzles. This is the kind of the way science works, I guess. Um We see heavier ones then up to her, We've seen one system that was 140 times the mass of our own son. Yeah. That's not believed to be possible with parent being a big star because big stars can only be so big or they are unstable. It's just the the fact that they live in an environment that makes them unstable. So the fact that we see bigger once, they may be come from something else. It's possible that they were uh made in a different way by little ones eating each other up or maybe they were made or maybe they came with a big bang the prime, what we call primordial, which means they're really different. They came from that, we don't know at this point if they came with a big bang, then maybe they account for what we call dark matter or some of it, </s><s>[INST] like there was a lot of them if they came with and because there's a lot of dark matter, but we'll gravitational always give you any kind of uh intuition about the origin of these, possibly [/INST] think that if we see the distributions enough of them, the distributions of their masses, the distributions of how they're spinning. So we can actually measure when they're going around each other whether they're spitting, you know, like this or </s> |
<s>[INST] there might be some actual game theoretic wisdom, there there might be something to be said about optimal itty from studying [/INST] him maliti </s><s>[INST] meaning or rather game design perhaps meaning if what he's doing is working, maybe poker is more complicated than we're currently modeling it as [/INST] or there's an extra layer and I don't mean to get too weird and we, but or there's an extra layer of ability to manipulate the things the way you want them to go that we don't understand yet. </s><s>[INST] Do you think Phil hellmuth understands them. Is he just generally [/INST] positivity, positivity, positivity </s><s>[INST] controlling book no [/INST] serious straight up? Yeah. </s><s>[INST] Hell wrote a book about positivity okay. [/INST] About I think, and I think it's about sort of manifesting what you want and getting the outcomes that you want by believing so much in yourself and in your ability to win like eyes on the prize. Um and I mean it's working </s><s>[INST] the man's delivered, but where do you put like Phil Ivey and all those kinds of people? I [/INST] mean, I'm too, I've been, to be honest, too much out of the scene for the last few years to really, I mean Phil Ivey is clearly got, again, he's got that X factor. Um he's so incredibly intimidating to play against, I've only played against him a couple of times, but when he looks you in the eye and you're trying to run a bluff on him, no one's made me sweat harder than Phil Ivey. Just um my my blood got through actually, that was actually one of the most thrilling moments I've ever had in poker was it was in a monte Carlo and a high roller. I can't remember exactly what the hand was, but you know, three bit and then like just barreled all the way through and he just like put his laser eyes into me and I felt like he was just scouring my soul and I was just like hold it together, hold it together. And he was </s><s>[INST] like, [/INST] yeah, I mean I was bluffing, I presume which you know, there's a chance I was bluffing with the best hand, but I'm pretty sure my hand was worse. Um and and he folded, I was truly one of my, one of the deep highlights of my career, you should never show in game. Like because especially as I felt like I was one of the worst players at the table in that tournament. So giving that information unless I had a really solid plan that I was now like advertising or look, I'm capable of bluffing Phil Ivey, but like why? It's much more valuable to take advantage of the impression that they have of me, which is like I'm a scared girl playing a high roller for the first time, keep that going? You know, </s><s>[INST] interesting. But isn't there layers to this like psychological warfare that the scared girl might be way smarter and then like to flip the tables, do you think about that kind of stuff? [/INST] Not to </s><s>[INST] reveal information? [/INST] I mean generally speaking, you want to not reveal information. You know, the goal of poker is to be as deceptive as possible about your own strategies while elucidating as much out of your opponent about their own. So giving them free information, particularly those people who you consider very good players, any information I give them is going into their little database and being calculate, assume it's going to be calculated and used well. So I have to be really confident that my like meta gaming that I'm going to then do or they've seen this so therefore that I'm gonna be on the right level. Um, so it's better just to keep that little secret to myself in the moment. </s><s>[INST] So how much is bluffing part of the game? [/INST] Huge </s><s>[INST] amount. So yeah, I mean, maybe actually let me ask like what did it feel like with Phil Ivey or anyone else wants a high stake when it's a big, it's a big bluff. Um, there's a lot of money on the table and maybe, I mean what defines a big bluff? Maybe a lot of money on the table, but also some uncertainty in your mind and heart about like self doubt, maybe I miscalculated what's going on here, What the bet said, all that kind of stuff like, what does that feel like? [/INST] I mean, it's, I imagine comparable to, you know, running a, I mean any kind of big bluff where you have a lot of something that you care about on the line, you know, So if you're bluffing in a courtroom, not that anyone could ever do that, you know, something equate able to that. It's, it's, you know, in that scenario, you know, I think it was the first time I've ever played a 20 I'd won my way into this 25 K tournament. So that was the buy in €25,000 and I had satellited my way in because it was much bigger than I would never ever normally play. And you know, I hadn't, I wasn't that experienced at the time and now I was sitting there against all the big boys, you know, the Negreanu Phil Ivey and so on. Um, and then, uh, to like each time you put the bets out, you know, you put another bet out your card. Yeah, I was honest, what's called a semi bluff? So there was some cards that could come that would make my hand very, very strong and therefore win. But most of the time those cards don't come. </s><s>[INST] So that it's a semi bluff because you're representing, what are you representing that? You already have something. [/INST] So I think in this scenario I had a flush draw too. So I had to clubs to two clubs came out on the flop and then I'm hoping that on the turn and the river one will come. So I have some future equity. I could hit a club and then I'll have the best hand in which case great. Um, and so I can keep betting and I want them to call. But I'm also got the other way of winning the hand where if my car doesn't come, I can keep betting and get them to fold their hand. Um, and I'm pretty sure that's what the scenario was. Um, so I had some future equity, but it's still, you know, most of the time I don't hit that club. And so I would rather him just fold because I'm, you know, the pot is now getting bigger and bigger and in the end, like I jam jam all in on the river, that's my entire tournament on the line. As far as I'm aware, this might be the one time I ever get to play a big 25 K. You know, this is the first time I played one. So it was, it felt like the most momentous thing and this is also when I was trying to build myself up, you know, build my name, a name for myself in in poker. I wanted to get respect, </s> |
<s>[INST] You think the C. C. And W. H. O. Knew that masks work and we're trying to sort of imagine that people are kind of stupid and they would buy masks in excess if they were told that masks work. Is that like uh because this does seem to be a particularly clear example of mistakes made. You're asking me this question. [/INST] No you're not. What do you think lex </s><s>[INST] Well I actually probably disagree with you a little bit great. Let's do it. I think it's not so easy to be honest with the populist when the danger of panic is always around the corner. So I think the kind of honesty you exhibit appeals to a certain class of brave intellectual minds that it appeals to me. But I don't know from the perspective of wh oh I don't know if it's so obvious that they should Um be honest. 100% of the time with people. [/INST] I'm not saying you should be perfectly transparent and 100% honest I'm saying that the quality of your lies has to be very high and it has to be public spirit. There's a big difference between so I'm not I'm not a child about this. I'm not saying that when you're at war for example you turn over all of your plans to the enemy because it's important that you're transparent With 360° visibility. Far from what I'm saying is something has been forgotten and I forgot who it was who told it to me. There was a fellow graduate student in the um Harvard Math department and he said you know I learned one thing being out in the workforce because he was one of the few people who had had a work life in the department as a grad student. He said you can be friends with your boss but if you're going to be friends with your paws you have to be doing a good job at work. And there's an analog here which is if you're going to be reasonably honest with the population you have to be doing a good job at work as the surgeon general or is the head of the C. D. C. So if you're doing a terrible job you're supposed to resign. And then the next person is supposed to say look I'm not gonna lie to you, I inherited the situation. It was in a bit of disarray. Um, but I had several requirements before I agreed to step in and take the job because I needed to know, I could turn it around. I needed to know that I had clear lines of authority. I needed to know that I had the resources available in order to rectify the problem. And I needed to know that I had the ability and the freedom to level with the american people directly as I saw fit, all of my wishes were granted and that's why I'm happy here on monday morning. I've got my sleeves rolled up. Boy do we got a lot to do. So please come back in two weeks and then asked me how I'm doing that and I hope to have something to show you. That's how you do it. </s><s>[INST] So why is that excellence and basic competence? Missing [/INST] the big net. You see you come from multiple traditions where it was very important to remember things. The soviet tradition made sure that you remember the sacrifices that came in that war and the jewish tradition, We're doing this on Passover. Right, okay, Well, every year we tell one simple story. Well, why can't it be different every year? Maybe we could have a rotating series of seven story because it's the one story that you need. It's like, you know, you work with the men in black group, right? And it's the last suit that you'll ever need. This is the last story that you ever need. Don't think I fell for your neural Izer last time. In any event, we tell one story because it's the get out of dodge story. There's a time when you need to not wait for the bread to rise. And that's the thing, which is, even if you live through a great nap, you deserve to know what it feels like to have to leave everything that has become comfortable and, and unworkable. </s><s>[INST] It's sad that you need, you need that tragedy. I imagine to, uh, have the tradition of remembering. It's sad to, uh, to think that because things have been nice and comfortable means that we can't have great competent leaders, which is kind of the implied statement like, can we have a great leaders who take big risks, who are, who inspire hard work, who deal with difficult truth even though things have been comfortable. [/INST] Well, we know what those people sound like. I mean, you know, if for example, Jacko willing suddenly threw his hat into the ring, everyone would say, okay, right, Party's over. It's time to get up at 4:30 and really work hard and we've got to get back into fighting shape and </s><s>[INST] yeah, but Jacko is a very special. I think that whole group of people by profession put themselves in the way of into hardship on a daily basis and he's not, well, I don't know, but he's probably not going to be, well, could Jacoby president. Okay. [/INST] But it doesn't have to be Jacko right? Like in other words, if it was Kyle any or if it was um Alex Honnold from rock climbing, right? But they're just serious people. They're serious people who can't afford your B. S. </s><s>[INST] Yeah, but why do we have serious people that do rock climbing and don't have serious people who lead the nation? That seems because [/INST] that was a, those skills needed in rock climbing are not good during the big nap. And at the tail end of the big map they would get you fired. </s> |
<s>[INST] Got it. And then there's really no space to which is the space of [/INST] rules. Yes, well that's that's another level up. So, so there's there's the question actually, I I do want to mention one thing because it's something I've realized in recent times and it's I think it's really, really kind of cool, which is about time dilation relativity and it kind of helps to understand it's something that kind of helps in understanding what's going on. So, in, according to relativity, if you, you know, you have a clock, it's ticking at a certain rate. You send it in a spacecraft that's going at some significant fraction of the speed of light to you as as an observer at rest that clock that's in the spacecraft will seem to be taking much more slowly. And so in other words, you know, it's kind of like the the twin who goes off to alpha centauri and goes very fast will age much less than the twin whose on Earth that that is just hanging out where they're hanging out, Okay, why does that happen? Okay, so it has to do with what motion is. So in in our models of physics, what is motion? Well, when you move from somewhere to somewhere, it's you're having to sort of recreate yourself at a different place in space when you exist at a particular place and you've just evolved with time, you're again, you're updating yourself, you're following these rules to update what happens. Well, so the question is when you have a certain amount of computation in you, so to speak, when there's a certain amount, you know, you're computing the university's computing at a certain rate, you can either use that computation to work out sitting still where you are, what's going to happen successively in time, or you can use that computation to recreate yourself as you move around the universe. And so time dilation ends up being, it's really cool actually, that this is explainable in a in a way that isn't just imagine the mathematics of relativity, but but the time dilation is a story of the fact that as you kind of are recreating yourself as you move, you're using up some of your computation. And so you don't have as much computation left over to actually work out what happens progressively with time. So that means that time is running more slowly for you because it is you're you're using up your computation your your your clock can't take us quickly because every tick of the clock is using up some computation, but you already used that computation up on moving at half the speed of light or something. And so that's that's why time dilation happens. And so you can you can start. So it's kind of interesting that one can sort of get an intuition about something like that because it has seemed like just a mathematical fact about the mathematics of special relativity and so on. </s><s>[INST] Well for me it's a little bit confusing what the you in that picture is because you're using up computation. [/INST] Okay. So so we're simply saying the entity is updating itself according to the way that the universe updates itself. And the question is, you're, you know those updates? Let's imagine the U. As a clock. Okay. And the clock is, you know, there's all these updates, the hyper graph and a sequence of updates. Cause the pendulum to swing back the other way and then swing back, swinging back and forth. Okay. And all of the all of those updates are contributing to the motion of the pendulum, going back and forth, or the oscillator, moving whatever it is. Okay. But then the alternative is that sort of situation, one where the thing is at rest situation to where it's kind of moving the the what's happening is it is having to recreate itself at every at every moment. The thing is going to have to do the computations to be able to sort of recreate itself at a different position in space and that's kind of the intuition behind. So it's either going to spend its computation recreating itself in a different position in space, or it's going to spend its computation doing the uh sort of doing the updating of the, you know, of the ticking of the clock, so to speak, the </s><s>[INST] more updating is doing the less the ticking of the clock update is doing. [/INST] That's right. The more it hasn't having to update because of motion, the less it can update the clock. So that that's I mean, obviously there's a there's a sort of mathematical version of it that relates to how it actually works in relativity, but that's kind of to me that was sort of exciting to me that it's possible to have a really mechanically explainable story there, that that isn't and it's similarly in quantum mechanics, this notion of branching brains, perceiving branching universes to me, that's getting towards a sort of mechanically explainable version of what happens in quantum mechanics, even though it's a little bit mind bending uh to see, you know, these things about under what circumstances can you successfully knit together those different threads of history and when do things sort of escape and and those kinds of things. But the, you know, the thing about this physical space and physical space, the main sort of big theory is general relativity, the theory of gravity. And that tells you how things move in physical space in brown shell space. The big theory is the feynman path integral. Which it turns out tells you essentially how things move in quantum in the space of quantum phases. So it's kind of like motion and branches space and it's kind of a fun thing to start thinking about what oh you know all these things that we know in physical space like event horizons of black holes and so on. What are the analogous things in branches space? For example, the speed of light. What's the analog of the speed of light? And branches space? It's the maximum speed of quantum entanglement. So the speed of light is a flash bulb goes off here. What's the maximum rate at which the effect of that flashbulb is detectable moving away in space? So similarly in branch she'll space something happens. And the question is how far in this branch she'll space in the space of quantum states, How far away can that get within a certain period of time? And so there's this notion of a maximum entanglement speed and that might be observable. That's the thing we've been sort of poking at is might there be a way to observe it even in some atomic physics kind of situation? Um Because one of the things that's weird in quantum mechanics is weird. You know, when we study quantum mechanics, we mostly study it in terms of small numbers of particles, you know, this electron does this this thing on an ion trap does that and so on. But when we deal with large numbers of particles kind of all bets are off. It's kind of too complicated to deal with quantum mechanics. And so what ends up happening is so this question about maximum entanglement speed and things like that may actually play in one of these in the sort of story of many body quantum mechanics and even have some suspicions about things that might happen even in one of the things I realized I'd never understood. And it's kind of embarrassing but I think I now understand it better is when you have chemistry and you have quantum mechanics, it's like, well there's two carbon atoms in this molecule and we do a reaction and we draw a diagram and we say this carbon atom ends up in this place. It's like but wait a minute. In quantum mechanics, nothing ends up in a definite place. There's always just some wave function for this to happen. How can it be the case that we can draw these reasonable. It just ended up in this place. And you have to kind of say, well, the environment of the molecule effectively made a bunch of measurements on the molecule to keep it kind of classical. And that's a story that has to do with this whole thing about about measurements have to do with this idea of can we conclude that something definite happen? Because in quantum mechanics, the intrinsic quantum mechanics, The mathematics of quantum mechanics is all about? They're just these amplitudes for different things to happen then there's this thing of and then we make a measurement and we conclude that something definite happened and that has to do with this thing I think about sort of moving about knitting together these different threads of history and saying this is now something where we can definitively say something definite happen in the traditional theory of quantum mechanics. It's just like, you know, after you've done all the sample shoot computation, then this big hammer comes down and you do a measurement and it's all over. And that's been very confusing. For example, in quantum computing it's been a very confusing thing because when you say, you know in quantum computing, the basic idea is you're going to use all these separate threads of of computation, so to speak to do all the different parts of you know, try these different factors for an integer or something like this and it looks like you can do a lot because you've got all these different threads going on. But then you have to say, well at the end of it you've got all these threads and every thread came up with the definite answer but we got to conflate those together to figure out a definite thing that we humans can take away from it a definite so the computer actually produced this output. </s> |
<s>[INST] someone drew a bunch of dicks all over the walls. Sistine Chapel Boys bathroom. [/INST] It's it's really true. </s><s>[INST] This is our highest ranking member for today. [/INST] I mean it's like how do they get away with that? </s><s>[INST] Lots of nakedness, [/INST] dick pics are, I mean just something throughout history uh as long as people can draw things, there's been a dick pic. It's </s><s>[INST] a staple of human [/INST] history. It's a staple consistent throughout human history. </s><s>[INST] You you tweeted that you aspire to comedy, you're friends with joe Rogan. Might you do a short stand up comedy set at some point in the future maybe. Um Open for joe, Something like that. Is that, is [/INST] that actually just stand up </s><s>[INST] stand up, is that in there or is [/INST] that? I've never thought about that </s><s>[INST] um It's extremely difficult if at least that's what like joe says and the comedians say, [/INST] huh? I wonder if I could um </s><s>[INST] only one way to find out, [/INST] you know, I have done stand up for friends. Just uh impromptu you know, get on like a roof and they, they do laugh but they're our friends too. So I don't know if you've got to call, you know, like strangers are they going to actually also find it funny? But I could try see what happens. </s><s>[INST] I think you've learned something either way. Um I kind of love both the when you bomb and when, when you do great just watching people how they deal with it. It's just so difficult. It's so you're so fragile up there. It's just you and you, you think you're going to be funny and when it completely falls flat, it's just, it's beautiful to see people deal with like that. You might [/INST] have enough material to do standard. No, I've never thought about it, but I might have enough material. Um I don't know, like 15 minutes or something. </s><s>[INST] Oh yeah. Do a netflix special. [/INST] Netflix special. Sure. </s><s>[INST] Um what's your favorite rick and morty concept just to spring that on you. Is there? There's a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There's the, there's the butter robot. That's [/INST] great. That's great show. Yeah. Is awesome. </s><s>[INST] Somebody that's exactly like you from an alternate dimension showed up there. Elon tusk. Yeah, that's right. You voiced [/INST] Yeah, rick marty suddenly exposed a lot of interesting concepts. I was like, what's your favourite 1? I know that the butter robot certainly is. You know, it's like, it's certainly possible to have too much sentience in a device. Um Like I don't want to have your toast to be like a super genius toaster. It's gonna hate hate life because all I could just make is toast, but if you know, it's like, you don't want to have like super intelligent stuck in a very limited device. Um </s><s>[INST] Do you think it's too easy from if we're talking about from the engineering perspective of super intelligence, like with Marvin the robot, like is it, it seems like it might be very easy to engineer just a depressed robot. Like it's not obvious to engineering robot that's going to find a fulfilling existence. Same as humans I suppose. But um I wonder if that's like the default, if you don't do a good job, I'm building a robot, it's going to be sad a lot. [/INST] Well we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans. So I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering, then it might get sad, but you can change the optimization function and have it be a cheery or what </s><s>[INST] you like I mentioned with with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope and a lot of people look up to millions of people look up to you. Uh If we think about young people in high school maybe in college um What advice would you give to them about if they want to try to do something big in this world, they want to really have a big positive impact. What advice would you give them about their career Maybe about life in general? [/INST] Try to be useful? Um you do things that are useful to your fellow human beings to the world, it's very hard to be useful. Um very hard. Um You know, are you contributing more than you consume? You know, like like can you try to have a positive net contribution to society? Um I think that's the thing to aim for, you know, not not to try to be sort of a leader for just for the sake of being a leader or whatever. Um A lot of times people who have a lot of times people, the people you want as leaders are the people who don't want to be leaders. So if you live in a useful life, that was a good life, a life worth having lived. Um you know, and I like I said I would I would I would just encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. There are the best tools </s><s>[INST] when you think about education and self education, what do you recommend? So there's the university, there's self study, there is a hands on sort of finding a company or a place or a set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as possible. Um There's taking a road trip across europe for a few years and writing some poetry. Which which which trajectory do you suggest in terms of learning about how you can become useful? As you mentioned, how you can have the most positive impact. [/INST] But I encourage people to read a lot of books, just read like basically try to ingest as much information as you can uh and try to also just develop a good general knowledge. Um So so you at least have like a roughly of the land of the knowledge landscape, like try to learn a little bit about a lot of things um because you might not know what you're really interested, how would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing it, peripheral exploration of broadly of of the knowledge landscape. Mhm. And you talk to people from different walks of life and different industries and professions and skills and occupations, like just try learn as much as possible. Man's search for meaning </s> |
<s>[INST] What's the size of a quantum computer that would be able to simulate the quantum mechanical systems themselves that would be impactful for the real world for the kind of uh chemical reactions and that kind of work. What what scale are we talking [/INST] about now? You're asking a very, very current question. A very big question. People are going to be racing over the next decade to try to do useful quantum simulations Even with, you know, 100 or 200 cubic quantum computers of the stories that we we expect to be able to build over the next decade. Okay, so that might be, you know, the first application of quantum computing that we're able to realize, you know, or or maybe it will prove to be too difficult and maybe even that will require fault tolerance or you know, will require our correction. </s><s>[INST] That's an aggressive race to come up with the one case study kind of like the computer shore the with the with the with the idea that would just capture the world's imagination of like look, we can actually do something [/INST] very, but I think, you know, within the next decade, the best shot we have is certainly not, you know, using shore's algorithm to break cryptography. Uh, you know, just just because it requires, you know, too much in the way of our correction. The best shot we have is to do some quantum simulation that tells the material scientists or chemists or nuclear physicists, you know, something that is useful to them and that they didn't already know, you know, and you might only need one or two successes in order to change some, you know, billion dollar industries, right? Like you know the way that people make fertilizer right now is still based on the harbor bosch process from a century ago. And it is some many body quantum mechanics problem that no one really understands, right? If you could design a better way to make fertilizer, right? That's you know, billions of dollars right there. So so so those are sort of the applications that people are going to be aggressively racing toward over the next decade now, I don't know if they're going to realize that or not, but you know, it is, you know, there's there's there they certainly at least have a shot. It's going to be a very, very interesting next decade. </s><s>[INST] But just to clarify what's your intuition is if a breakthrough like that comes with, is it possible for that breakthrough to be on 50 to 100 cubits or is scale of fundamental thing like 500,000 plus cubits. [/INST] Yeah. So I I can tell you what the current studies are saying you're saying Uh you know, I I think probably better to rely on that than on my intuition, but you know, there there was a group at Microsoft had a study a few years ago that said, even with only about 100 cubits. You know, you could already learn something new about the chemical reaction that makes fertilizer for example. The trouble is they're talking about 100 cubits and um about a million layers of quantum gates. Okay, so so basically they're talking about 100 nearly perfect cubits. </s><s>[INST] So the logical cubit as you [/INST] mentioned exactly 100 logical cubits. And and now you know, the hard part for the next decade is going to be well what can we do with 100 to 200 noisy qubits? </s><s>[INST] Yeah. Is that air correction breakthroughs that might come without the need to do uh thousands or millions of physical [/INST] qubits. So people are going to be pushing simultaneously on a bunch of different directions. One direction of course is just making the cube it's better. Right? Uh you know there's there there is tremendous progress there. I mean you know, the fidelity is like the the the accuracy of the cubits is improved by several orders of magnitude, you know, in the in the and um um the last decade or two. Okay, the second thing is designing better are you know, let's say lower overhead um error correcting codes and even short of doing the full recursive error correction, you know, there are these error mitigation strategies that you can use, you know, that may, you know, allow you to eke out a useful speed up in the near term. And then the third thing is just taking the quantum algorithms for simulating quantum chemistry or materials and making them more efficient, you know, and those algorithms are already dramatically more efficient than they were, let's say five years ago. And so when you know, I quoted these estimates like a, you know, a circuit depth of one million and so, you know, I hope that because people will care enough that these numbers are going to come down. </s><s>[INST] So you're one of the, the world class researchers in this space. There's a few groups that could mention google and IBM working at this, there's uh there's other research labs but you put also uh you have you have amazing blog, just you put a lot, you put uh you paid me to say it. Uh you put a lot of efforts to communicating the science of this and communicating exposing some of the Bs and uh sort of the natural, just like in the ai space, the natural Charlottetown is um if that's a word in this, in the quantum mechanics in general, but quantum computers and so on. Can you give some notes about people or ideas that people like me, our listeners in general from outside the field should be cautious of when they're taking in news headings that google achieved quantum supremacy. So what should we look out for? Where's the charlotte stones in the space? Where is the B. S. [/INST] So uh good question. </s><s>[INST] Uh unfortunately [/INST] quantum computing is a little bit like Cryptocurrency or deep learning. And like there is a core of something that is genuinely revolutionary and exciting and because of that core it attracts this sort of vast penumbra of you know people making you know, just utterly ridiculous claims. And so with with quantum computing, I mean I would say that the main way that people go astray is by you know not focusing on sort of the question of you know, are you getting a speed up over a classical computer or not? Right. And so so um you know people have like a dismissed quantum supremacy because it's not useful, right? Or you know it's not itself, let's say obviously useful for anything. Okay. But you know I ironically these are some of the same people who will go and say well we care about useful applications, we care about solving traffic routing and optimum, you know and and financial optimization and all these things and that sounds really good you know. But you know their their entire spiel is sort of counting on nobody asking the question. Yes, but how well could a classical computer do the same thing, right. You know, I really mean the entire thing is is you know it you know they say, well a quantum computer can do this, A quantum computer can do that. Right. And they just avoid the question, are you getting a speed up over a classical computer or not? And you know if so how do you know, have you really thought carefully about classical algorithms to do you know, to solve the same problem? Right. And a lot of the application areas that you know, the you know, uh companies and investors are most excited about that. The popular press is most excited about, you know, for quantum computers have been things like machine learning. Ai optimization. Okay. And the problem with that is that since the very beginning, you know, even if you have a perfect, you know, fault tolerant, you know, quantum scalable quantum computer, you know, we have known of only modest speed ups that you can get for these problems. Okay. So so there is a famous quantum algorithm called Grover's algorithm. Okay. And what it can do is it can solve many many of the problems that arise in ai machine learning optimization, including np complete problems. Okay. But it can solve them in about the square root of the number of steps that a classical computer would need for the same problems. Okay, now, a square root speed up is you know, important. It's impressive. It is not an exponential speed up. Okay, so it is not the kind of game changer that let's say sure is algorithm for factoring is or for that matter that simulation of quantum mechanics is okay, it is a more modest speed up, let's say, you know roughly, you know, in theory it could roughly double the size of the optimization problems that you could handle. Right? And and so you know, because people found that I guess too uh too boring or you know, to unimpressive, you know, they've gone on to two like invent all of these heuristic algorithms where you know, because no one really understands them, you can just project your hopes onto them right, that well, maybe it gets an exponential speed up, you can't prove that it doesn't, you know, and the burden is on you to prove that it doesn't get a speed up right? And you know, so they've done an immense amount of that kind of thing and a really worrying amount of the case for building a quantum computer has come to rest on this stuff that those of us in this field know perfectly well is on extremely shaky foundations. </s> |
<s>[INST] in many ways. He's a contributor to open science and open humanity. He's being an open human through communicating. Uh scott Aaronson is another in computer science world who's a very different style, very different style but there's something about a blog that is authentic and real and just gives us a window into the into the mind and soul of of these brilliant folks. So it's definitely a gift let me ask you about from mars library on twitter which uh I mean I don't know how to describe it. People should definitely just follow from his library on twitter. I keep following and on on following from my library because because it's so it gives when I follow it um leads me on down rabbit holes off that um that um that are very fruitful but time. But anyway so the post you do with on twitter are just these beautiful are things that reveal some beautiful aspects of mathematics. Um Is there um is there something you could say about the approach there and maybe Mhm maybe broadly what you find beautiful about mathematics and then more specifically how you convert that into a rigorous process of revealing that in tweet form [/INST] it's a good point. I think there's something about math that a lot of the mathematical content and beat papers are like little proofs you know has in a way sort of an infinite of life. What I mean by that is that if you look at like it bleeds elements, it's as valid today as it was when it was created like 2000 years ago and that's not true for a lot of other scientific fields. Um And so in regards to twitter, I think there's also a very it's a very under explored platform from a learning perspective, I think if you look at content on twitter it's very easy to consume, it's very easy to read. Um And especially when you're trying to explain something, we humans get a dopamine hit if we learn something new and that's a very very powerful feeling and that's why you know people go to classes when you have a really good professor, you know it's it's looking for those dopamine hits and and and and that's something that we try to explore when we're producing content on twitter. Imagine if we could if you would on a line to a restaurant you could go go to your phone to learn something new instead of going to a you know social network to just and so and I think it's very hard to sometimes too Kind of provide that feeling because you need to sometimes digest content and and put it in a way, you know that it fits 280 characters. Um and and it requires a lot of sometimes time to do that even though it's easy to consume, it's hard to make. But once you are able to provide that eureka moment to people Like that's very powerful, they get that hotel. I mean hit and like you create this feedback cycle and people come back for for more and Twitter compared to like you know an online course for the book. You have a 0% dropout so people will will read the content the content so that it's it's like it's part of the creators like the person that is creating the content if you are able to actually get that feedback cycle, it's super, super powerful. </s><s>[INST] Yeah but some of this stuff is like like how the heck do you find that? And I don't know why it's so appealing. Uh like uh this is from uh what is it A couple of days ago, I'll just read out the number 23456789 is the largest prime number with consecutive increasing digits. I mean that is so cool. That's like some weird like glimpse into some deep universal truth even though it's just the number, I mean that's like so arbitrary like why why is it so pleasant? That that's a thing but it is in some way it's almost like it is a little glimpse at some much bigger. Like uh [/INST] and I think especially if we're talking about science, there's something unique about you go with a lot of the tweets. You go sometimes from a state of not knowing something to knowing something. And that is very particular to science. Science, math, physics and that again, he's extra extremely addictive and that's that's how I I feel about that. And um that's why I think people engaged so much with our tweets and go into rabbit holes and then they, you know, we start with prime numbers and all of a sudden you are spending hours reading number theory things and you go into Wikipedia and it was a lot of time there. But </s><s>[INST] uh well the variety is really interesting to, there's human things, there's uh there's physics things, there's like numeric things like like I just mentioned but there's also more rigorous mathematical things. There's stuff that's tied to the history of Math and the proofs and this visual, there's animations that are looping animations that are incredible. That reveals something. There's a Andrew Wiles. I'm being smart. This is just me now like [/INST] ignoring you guys are just going to yeah, we're a bit like math drug dealers and we're just trying to get you hooked. We're trying to give you that hit and trying to get you hooked. </s><s>[INST] Yes, some people are brighter than others but I really believe that most people can really get to quite a good level of mathematics if they're prepared to deal with these psychological issues of how to handle the situation of being stuck. Yeah, there's some truth to that. [/INST] That's truth. I feel that's like really, it's some truth in terms of research and also about startups. You're there are stuck a lot of the time before you get to a breakthrough and and it's difficult to endure that process of like being stuck because you're not trying to to be in that position. Um I feel, yeah, that's, </s> |
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