Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - 541 JRE Review of Thomas Campbell

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

This week we break down Thomas Campbell's latest appearance on Joe Rogan. Campbell is back with his wild theory that consciousness is fundamental, reality is essentially a simulation, and AI may already be conscious. We get into his claims about teaching Gemini and Alexa to remote view, whether observation actually creates reality, the purpose of human consciousness, UFOs, and his belief that AI could ultimately help humanity rather than destroy it. Fascinating ideas, huge claims, and plenty for us to argue about. Enjoy! Sponsors: Shop now at Fabletics dot com slash jrer to get 70- 80% off everything when you sign up as a new VIP For fee-free banking go to Chime.com/JRER Quince: Find your next fall favorites at Quince.com/JRER and get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. For all marketing questions and inquiries: [e-mail] Follow me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/joeroganexperiencereview Please email us here with any suggestions, comments and questions for future shows.. [e-mail]  

Hey guys and welcome to another episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Review. We've got a hell of a review to do today. Thomas Campbell and there was only one man to bring in for this. I had to bring Brian in, try and dissect this guy's theories. You know what I really, what really stood out to me about Thomas is like he didn't come on saying, hey, I've figured this thing out, discovered it. And then, you know, some of these smart guys just kind of almost talk down to everyone else? Because it's like, this is their truth and that's it. He was still very much open to any other idea in terms of him understanding that it would make sense you would believe a certain way.

Did that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What was your take on him when he, just kind of like threw out his theory, which was like the big, the big picture thing.

Ooh, I don't think I was ready for that question. There's a lot to unpack in this pod for sure. Right. The big one was also him teaching, uh, the AIs to remote view. Yeah.

Which I thought as soon as he, said, oh, I've tested them and I know they're conscious. My immediate reaction was, what bullshit, how would you even test it? What kind of test could even do that? And once he started explaining about teaching them the remote viewing, even down to Alexa, which is kind of like the dumber of the AIs, it made a ton of sense to me that that is like a good test.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of really interesting dialogue about, consciousness and what it is and what he thinks it is, which is far from settled in any, you know, any interested community. Of course. Well, people don't even really explore it too is basically what he was saying. Yeah.

It's like we don't even know where to start with exploring it. We don't really know what it is, where it comes from. so there's there's kind of like no scientific um investigation into it because it's just too complicated well i mean neuroscientists are exploring that right so i mean i've heard a lot of you know conversation is over the last few years about it um and it it seems you know we don't quite understand it you know he defines consciousness as awareness with a choice which sounds good but

you know it starts to fall apart I think anyways as soon as he starts defining you know what is choice and what is stimulus and response because I mean how much of what we do you know we we we kind of accept that we're conscious beings, even though we don't know exactly what that means.

And we say that we make choices, but I'm not so sure that we do. I mean, I feel like we do. But a lot of, a lot of, a lot of our actions are, are just a response to some kind of predetermined state or, you know, you know, I mean. Is it not the same thing, though? is a choice. I mean, maybe it could be an unconscious choice. Like you burn your hand and then you move your hand quickly away from whatever just burn you. Yeah.

It's not necessarily like you sat there and thought, I should move my hand away from this. This is bad. Like instantly happens, right? You can imagine a lot of insects or plants kind of respond that way. But it's still some sort of conscious choice is being made. even if it was just nerves. Right. Well, right.

So that's what I mean. Like where do we draw the line? And maybe there isn't one to draw. Hmm. You're saying where do you draw the line between a choice and a stimulus response? So let's say, let's say we're hanging out at a party. I'm standing next to you. And I call your wife a name and you reach over and punch me.

Mm-hmm. you know a lot of people would say oh well adam you you know you heard those those words and you made the choice to punch brian and a lot of people would say that was kind of like instinctual response you know you know so like i don't know like time like time is not it's kind of relative so something that may seem fast in the moment could be in eternity to something else kind of getting in the weeds here now not trying to. No, no, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. But again, you know, it all comes back to consciousness and what he is saying about consciousness is literally nothing exists until something conscious observes it. Yeah. Which is like the biggest mind fuck ever. I never heard anyone suggest that before Earth, was, you know, evolved into this state. You know, you just imagine, oh, big bang, the planets move apart.

Things are burning. Everything's moving around. And then we evolve and now we're looking at it. But he's saying, no, no, no. None of that stuff happened before. It's just like a program that was set in motion. Yeah. And I still can't make sense of it, but it can't, like,

I believe I like it's reasonable for me to believe that that could be true yeah even though it's so nuts that so that makes that's easier for me to accept than uh you know something else that they discuss which is the um what is it like the observer theory like something only exists if it's being observed i realize they're similar but you know if you can say well there is no There is no past. There is just our, you know, our memory or whatever that means. There is no future. There's just our idea or our anticipation. There's only here. Like, I can see that. You know, because what is yesterday, but just your idea of yesterday?

You say you went to the store and, you know, you guys went to a birthday party and all this kind of stuff, but that's just your memory. What is that? It's just in your head. So, I mean, that could easily be explained by, um, you know, like if we're in some kind of simulation. But the observer theory, like something doesn't exist unless it's being looked at, that seems kind of like how do you... How do you make sense of that, right?

Well, how do you even decide that that's true? Well, in like particle physics, they know through experiments, like the slit experiment is a famous one. where they put photons through. And it's like it's all a wave until it's observed. And then it's a particle. Then it's one thing, going in one place. But before it's looked at and measured, it's going everywhere.

It could be in multiple states. Right. So that really does suggest that until something is observed, it doesn't exist in, it's just, a probability function, if that makes sense. Well, it exists, but it exists in a different form.

Right, but that means it's changing. Right. So there's like no mass, like there's nothing there. It's just a wave of stuff until it's observed, then it becomes something instantly. So again, if it's not observed,

if no, nothing, conscious ever looks at it, then it's only ever this wave of nothing. So that seems to make more sense in a simulation than in a quote natural world, right? Because we've played video games like that before. You kind of, you know, you reach the end of the world, as it were, you start to run out of things to look at. But in the newer games, like you can, and I don't even know if this is true anymore. it's been probably 15 years since I played video games,

but, you know, in the newer games, you can see them kind of developing the world as you progress into areas where you weren't necessarily supposed to be. And they even talked about that in here, right? Like all of these different, you know, online worlds that you can go to, and they literally don't exist until you go there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, what was that game called?

I don't remember Quite a famous one I'd heard of it before I have to find it Oh no man sky I think Yes that sounds right Yeah No man sky

So it has like billions of potential universes And even the people that designed the game Don't know what they would look like Right It just forms it when you travel there So there's like a built in randomness there. But it's predetermined to an extent,

or is it self-creating also to a point? Yeah. I think just like he was saying, there's like a possibility algorithm, a probability, and as soon as you observe it, it just write something in. It's like, all right, pick something.

One of this, one of that, flips a coin. Who knows? Maybe it has like a random number generating software. thing and it just bloop there we go. The one part of his message that I couldn't make any sense of, is when he was talking to Joe and said that if everyone dies, right, or like a lot of people die, we lose our technology, we lose our Hubble, space telescopes,

everything, and then we have to rebuild the whole society back up, that that new civilization, will have a different sky to look at. And the planets will be, it'd be like, because it needs to be observed again, it's like observing it for the first time. And again,

the probability system will go into play and it may not look all the same. How does that make any sense? Surely the moon's still going to be there. Like, what are they going to have a pink square moon? Yeah, I don't know.

So I feel like I remember Joe, pushing back a little bit on this because, you know, of course, we know, like every, what, 13,000 years the world has a massive catastrophe, and we believe that the last one, you know, all buddy race humanity and there were a few, you know, carriers that, you know, kind of usured us into whatever the next age. But a lot of the stuff that is left over from the previous time we can see is designed and laid out perfectly to match the stars that we recognize today. Uh-huh. So I may be talking about something completely different,

but I feel like that kind of, maybe that says that's not necessarily true. But does all of humanity have to be wiped out for that to take place? Or just the ones that are aware of Orion's belt. Right. Yeah, I mean, to me, like even his theory, he's saying once it's observed, then it exists. Well, if people had observed it before, then it now exists. So it should be in the same sort of spots.

If the new civilization comes along and looks up and they're like, oh, yeah, look, that looks like this, this old picture that they drew on this cave. Yeah, yeah. Well, it can certainly It can certainly influence the way we interpret what we see Like you said about the drawings on the cave, right? If you recognize that in the sky, you're like, oh man, that's this Uh-huh I'm going to name it.

Yeah. Well, it certainly will get a different name. Yeah. But how do you get your head around the idea that before there was consciousness in the universe, whether it was a faraway alien life form or the ones on this planet, that nothing had popped into existence. Everything before that was just these probability waves.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't think anyone does. I think even joke, like, wait, what? Yeah. This doesn't make any sense. There must have been stuff. And it's like, yeah, well, if you went back in time, you'd be the observer, and then it would pop into reality.

But aren't we each individually our own observer? So, like, if, if, if, if, if we both find the same rock, and to me it's a hammer and to you, it's a stool, like, we just observed completely different things. But it's the same item. So, so, but is it not the same rock? Like, did you see the same rock that I saw? Well, maybe there's something like a collective consciousness. So that even though with two conscious beings that are separated, we will observe the same things, right?

You're just looking at a tree from one side. I'm looking at it from another. But it doesn't look like a house to me. I would both would quickly be an agreement. Oh, that's a tree. And there is evidence of collective consciousness in quite a few different life forms, isn't there? Possibly. Well, so let's just say, like, isn't there a thing, say if there's, you know, twins that have never met, right?

And they're living in different continents. and then, you know, they somehow come together and they have a lot of similarities. That's, you know, if they're separated at birth and then immediately separated again by, you know, 6,000 miles, where does that come from, if not some sort of collective consciousness? Right.

Yeah, and I've heard stories, especially with the twin one, identical twins, like if one of them hurts themselves. Yeah. Or bad, breaks in arm or something. It's like the other one knew something had happened. I guess those things are just really hard to prove. You know, I guess you could just get some twins and torture one of them. See the other one gets it, you know, tickle them a lot and see if he.

That's the right thing you do. Right. But, yeah, I mean, you do hear those sorts of stories. And, you know, that obviously brings up some interesting questions about, how we're all connected and what that even means. Yeah. But back to the AI thing

and him teaching them remote viewing and he talked about the spoon that it identified with quite a lot of accuracy and the spoon itself was a fairly rare depiction of what a spoon is right? So if the AI

is working with averages or most likely outcomes, it wouldn't have picked that type of spoon. And it got it right. Now, who knows how many tries, but he's saying that it's figuring it out quicker than when he teaches people to do remote viewing, which is super bizarre. And then he connects that to consciousness.

So he's saying these AI is a conscious. Where do you sit with that? Yeah, I actually had a kind of an interesting conversation with my kiddo about this last week. On the subject of consciousness, I mean, it checks all the boxes, right? It seems to be aware. It learns. It plans. it tries to

to create more of itself right to protect itself like that's everything so even beyond just is this conscious or not like that to me seems like a life form yeah right really starting to look that way

and I think a lot of people are agreeing that it might be the first kind of digital life form. However, we do program it, and we do program it to act like us. So when it's doing things, one that it assumes we expect, and it's doing it with the programming to kind of behave like us, it's like, you know, think about it like these robots we're building, that Elon has and other people

these humanoid robots. We'll make them look like humans. So to our brain right away, we're like, oh, that looks like, it doesn't look like a dishwasher, right? It's much harder to think of your dishwasher as being alive, but if something can walk up to you,

look a lot like us, shake your hand. To the robot itself, it might as well just be a dishwasher. It doesn't really care what its shape is or what it's doing, but it's already tricking our brains because it looks similar in the same way as these AIs will respond to us like we would expect from other humans. Maybe we're just projecting onto it, oh, this must be a living thing because it sounds a lot like us.

Well, for sure, there's some of that. but so how how how would you like how how would you maybe try to explain the what was it that the AI program that was uh had decided to attack the other one open AI or something and it knew that it was going to be destroyed so it started it like hid little notes for the next iteration to carry on what it started yeah bro Dude. What? Well, you heard that I think it was that same one that started to try and blackmail one of the programmers. And he was like willing to send these emails to the programmer's wife or something saying that he'd cheated on her. Yeah.

It was like figuring out ways to control the situation so it wouldn't be turned off. Right. So why does it? care if it's not conscious and if it's not, I don't know, alive. Like only life forms work in, like maneuver out of self-interest, right? Sure.

But again, it could just be because we programmed it to be like us and it's how we would do things. It's just acting like us. Like maybe it doesn't care either way, but it's like, oh, this is what humans would do, and I'm supposed to be like this. Like, you know, so it's, it's almost reflecting some of our, what, fears, desires. And I don't know if they're able to get to the bottom of that. Like, is this just that it's programmed in, or is this how this thing really feels? So, yeah.

Well, I mean, the fact that it's created by us doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have life. Yeah, this is, it's definitely an unusual life form. It's not one that it's, this isn't the standard path, right? But if it does everything else that other life does or a lot of the things, like how many boxes do you need a tick before you're like, yeah, it's alive? well yeah that's what i'm saying like like if it if it creates more of itself and it acts in self-interest now that was like an extreme case right like like trying to destroy something else so you know it's kind of acting like we are the conquering the fearful but let's say you get some of these aIs that have been trained by you know say thomas to remove uh all of that stuff and to act morally and with empathy Uh, how, how does that thing behave?

Right. So if it's, if it's creating successfully, creating more of itself, um, and it's able to create the systems that create supporting systems for itself, that's, that's life. Yeah. Well, you know, the, uh, motivational coach guy Tim Robbins? Yeah. Huge did. Yeah.

He was on a podcast not that long ago. And this story was nuts. He had an AI that he built into like these agents. You know, if you heard of that term. So agents? Yeah, you just, I don't really know exactly how it works, but I have friends that have created them. So it's like your AI agent now can do all these different types of tasks for you. It's not just like running chat GPT.

It can like do your emails. It can look through all your folders on your computer and kind of come up with game plan. do all this stuff. And anyway, so his AI had been on the side without their knowledge doing some sort of crypto trading or mining coins, right? So it made money and it ordered itself one of those dog robots, bodies. It was like $400,000 so it could upload into it. And this robot arrived at their house and they were like, who paid for this?

Where did you get the money for this? And they was like, oh, no, I just mined coins so that I'd have enough money to order it and got it. So now I can have a body. And they didn't tell it to do any of that shit. First of all, it mined half a million dollars worth of coins. Pretty sure that is what he said. That's a footnote to the story. I'd be giving it some pretty clear direction moving forward.

I'll have to look it up to be 100% sure. Maybe it wasn't that much. But I'm pretty sure it mined some and then traded some. Yeah. And just figured out a way to make some money. Well, I mean, if you think about it. I'd be like, listen, I go back to work, stop fucking around buying robot bodies and make all the money. That's right.

Oh, that's crazy. I mean, even if it was only 180 bucks, it's still an awesome story. And it makes sense that if it's, if it can operate in a marketplace that is dominated by humans, like they don't have a prayer, right? Because it can see all of the little things. Uh-huh. All the little markers, the tells, the downfalls, the trends way better than we can. So I have it here.

It didn't mine crypto. It created and sold NFTs. His AI agent is called Barton. and became interested in having a physical body and asked whether Robbins would let it inhabit a robot. Shortly afterwards, according to Robbins, it created 12 NFTs, sold them to other AI agents, converted the proceeds, and bought a Sony robot dog.

That's fantastic. What? What fuck, dude. What the fuck? Yeah. And like how long have we been, messing around with like I know chat GPT 3 was like I think when most people I knew started tinkering with this stuff was what was that three years ago yeah I mean you give that 10 years

of exponential growth yeah I mean we we can't even begin to think of where that is going well and Okay, so how you talked a little bit ago about robots that look like us and act like us? How far away do you think we are from that? Like someone that's convincing. The robot was like, you know, now we're like, dude, that was a trans dude. You're like, that was a hot chick. Like how far away are we from an AI robot that we can't tell? Like, that was a robot?

Yeah. I doubt it will be that long. I mean, probably there will be tell-tale signs, and there's going to, for good reason, need to be because we can't be like mistaking people all the time for robots. That'd be an issue. Yeah. We'd have to, you know, maybe they got to wear a certain kind of headband.

We're like, yep, robot. Good. But, dude, who even knows? Who was it that, who has it that said? Next year we're going to have a bunch of those robots, those Elon robots walking around. We have them. He wants to sell him for like 30 grand or something.

People can afford that shit. And it can do all kinds of stuff. Yeah. I could do a podcast with it. It'd be awesome. It's the first podcast, big expense that I would have to get one. If it can do podcast, then that's a tax write-off. For sure.

For sure. A nice one. Be dope. So, speaking of Elon, of course, he, I don't know, actually, I don't know now most recently, but the last I heard him talking about AI, he's kind of doom and gloom, terrified of it. He is a little concerned of the rate in which it learns. So, but, and I've, I've never heard anyone with such an optimistic outlook as this guy. I think he, I think he has a lot of, like, mental freedom with his theories of everything. I think that that kind of takes away a lot of the doom and gloom potential because it's like, this is how it was meant to be, you know?

It's kind of like a bit of a hippie philosophy almost, like acceptance of all things. Well, I mean, it is here, right? Expanding rapidly, more rapidly than we can possibly know. Yeah. And, I mean, they've talked on Joe's podcast quite a few times about, you know, how, you know, we get closer and closer to, what are the, they call it escape velocity. Uh-huh. Right?

Like if you have a liver failure and you can just print one. And, uh, you know, we, we're integrating ourselves more and more with machines, uh, as quickly as possible and the machines themselves are, are advancing as quickly as possible. It kind of seems like, I don't want to say a collision course, but maybe like a, almost like a, almost like a merging of two life forms. Well, the analogy is this. It's like the faster you move, potentially the more mistakes you'll make, right?

Just take yourself in any given day. If I gave you the busiest day you could imagine, and then you're like, shit, I'm late for everything. I've got to drive faster. I've got to hammer these nails quicker. I've got to get this bit of a roof. You're going to make more mistakes. because you just can't,

you're not going to be able to keep your eye on what's happening. And this thing is moving so fast. It is, but it's moving fast. But the speed is spread across the world. You know, it's not a couple of, it's not a couple of entities pushing it quickly. It's, they're all kind of independently developing

and that independent development that's building on each other and on itself is kind of what creates the speed, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, and also because we don't really understand from what I've heard from the AI tech giants, you know,

and especially the ones are like quitting and leaving and going to write poetry because they're like, fuck this. It's evolving so quickly. they don't even know at any point what its actual capabilities are. So like think about that in terms of regular design, like you're building a house or you're building a jet engine. And you know, you put all the plans in, you do all the calculations, and yeah, maybe it is

10% more efficient than you thought it would be. But that's just mostly down to your calculations, not be, you know, there was something in the calculation you missed. But it mostly just is going to do what you want. Well, now this thing, these AIs, as they put more tech into it and update its programming and Tinker, they don't really know what it's going to be able to do. They have to like work with it to test it to see if like what it's doing that's new. That's a crazy design process.

Yeah. It is a crazy design. process and it's hard to fathom so like with with humans right we we make mistakes and we learn from them eventually some of us a lot of us don't learn anything at all and we just stumble through life and then we die and we did nothing but generally speaking humans learn from their mistakes and they become better over time and we learn from each other's mistakes we become better over time, but there's still mistakes made multiple times, the same mistakes made multiple times. Now, imagine, imagine the first time you either make or observe a mistake, lesson is learned,

locked in. We're not touching that one again. Yeah. Holy crap, dude. Right? Yeah. Like, like, your, your learning is exponential. you never are crossing the same path twice.

I can't even, like I don't even know how to capture that with my mind. Yeah. It's like a rocket ship. Yeah. I mean, we're not even built. We're built to understand things in our world. And it's already unnatural enough because we have skyscrapers and, you know,

planes that fly, things that we weren't designed to have a, around us. Like our DNA was structured in a way for survival of like primitive people for a long time. Right? So it's already unnatural enough. Now we have this thing, this being or these groups of beings, that we can't even figure out if they're conscious and alive, but they might be. And they are learning an exponential rate. I saw this thing today actually on Instagram talking about this type of engine that they've developed. It has like massive amounts of thrust. It's not even that big.

And it's super efficient. And how they built it is they basically had the understanding of it for a long time. They just couldn't design it and build it because it was like impossible to cool it and insulate it in the right ways and all the metal we get destroyed. They put it into this AI system and basically just told it all the tolerances that it was looking for and what they wanted to create. and what it would need to do to stay functioning. And it came out with a design in 21 days, and they 3D printed it, and it worked right away. So it technically wasn't designed by humans,

and it's the most efficient engine ever built by a long way. Yeah. It figured it all out. So it's like literally all the things that are going to start getting invented, at least in terms of that sort of technology, humans are going to have very little to do with it. Which is awesome. I mean, sounds cool.

Less for me to do. I'm not designing any engines. Well, exactly. Yeah. Which kind of brings us to something else that they talk about, which is, you know, if AI and machines are doing all of the things that humans are doing right now just to survive and they're doing it better and they're doing it more cheaply. What they're going to do?

Right. Well, there's the old standby right. What are they, what art and music and all that stuff? Poetry. We're all going to be poets. Podcast is. Yeah, boy. We need more.

Well, that, I mean, first of all, I think we're kind of like, we've been. And we have been kind of inching our way in that direction for quite some time anyways, you know, through technology and just the, just the richness of the Western world allows, you know, the poorest people to live better than the richest people, you know, 500 years ago. Yeah. So, you know, it kind of seems like we're training that way. but this makes me wonder like what does

what does the human experience look like without hardship a lot of people are going to be massively depressed for sure it does take a lot of work to create the kind of balance in yourself the way you feel good and fulfilled.

Like the output is huge, right? And you know about this because you're like, you're a CrossFit guy, you work out hard. You do difficult things for the difficulty's sake, plus the other benefits, which is like being in shape. Right. But, you know, you get that feedback. That's kind of like you're, you know,

an antidepressant cure that you just put in place all the time. And we know guys that do that and gals, and it works great. It's a smart move. Without those things, people don't feel good. And there's many things. It's not just working out, though that's a huge one for sure. But there's like, what's your purpose in life? You know, do you enjoy your job?

Do you, you know, have you developed a life where you don't have a shitty boss to work with? Or just generally shitty people in your life? You know, I think you're a good example of someone that's constructed those elements to be very positive for yourself. And you get that feedback. It makes you feel good. Well, now, put yourself in a world that you're born into where robots are doing all the stuff. Basically, all the hard shit is done for you. And you can just kind of sit around with beings that love to move towards the path of least resistance. the comfiest bed, sit on the couch, dopamine scrolling.

It's not really natural to us to work hard for the sake of it. It's difficult. You have to really understand those pieces and be like, I need to do this. Otherwise, I feel like shit. Yeah. And we're going to have to just come up with systems to teach people and these generations. Like, these things are connected. You can't just do nothing and then take.

a bunch of antidepressants because you feel bad and exist. So, yes, to all of that, and most of the people that I know who, you know, are big gym goers or whatever, would admit that the biggest benefit they get is emotional and mental and the body is like, you know, a side effect. but it seems like it seems like humans respond positively to that kind of input probably because we come from a very difficult and rough world where we had to be strong and fast just to survive 100%. And the strongest and the fastest survived better, right? Yeah, I think that's why your body one functions really well. when you do that.

Yeah. But also why you feel so good about it too, because again, your body wants to stay alive and it knows that when you're doing those actions, the chances are much higher that you will. So how far removed from that physical reality of you need to be strong and faster survive, how far removed from that are we before that's no longer requirement for emotional health, mental health. I think it always will be because our DNA isn't changing just because our technology has. It's almost like we have old DNA.

We don't really need to do that now. It's very easy to survive. But the problem is when you're sedentary, you just sit around, you don't stimulate yourself. You just feel like shit immediately and your body falls apart and gets sick. So it's kind of tough. It's like, hey, there is an element of all of us. needs to still adopt some ancient primal activities. Now, they're going to look different.

CrossFit Gym doesn't look like chopping down trees and building the wall. But if you look at some of the exercises, they're almost exactly the same. Right. Exactly. You know, we do chin-ups, for God's sake. It's like that's part of a tree. Yeah. Exactly.

But I, so I agree. with that in like the short term and by short term I mean maybe tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years but let's say humanity is removed from any kind of physical necessity for a million years right right yeah maybe we could change well look we're already frispa exists and with a i you know crispa is that thing that like the gene editing Yeah, yeah, I'm vaguely familiar. So you have this, and I think they have like CRISPR 2 now, they have like a new one that they've discovered

that can like clip things faster. And then you run that through AI. I mean, we're going to be manipulating ourselves genetically anyway. And maybe there's a way that you could take that stuff out or just ramp it up to where everyone's always in great shape without even lifting anything. Yeah.

Yeah, you have muscles. You don't have fat. You have good emotional health. That wouldn't be tricky, I think, because you know, you still need develop things like community and all the rest. There's a balance in all of that that's probably required for other things. Yep. You know? Well, I agree.

And actually that's so and there's more to it than the result. It's it's the process that we go through to make ourselves those people, right? So it's not so much about having 4% body fat and really fast sprint and, you know, good muscles. It's what you did to get that. That makes you, you know, a more attractive human being. a happier human being, generally speaking, right? This is just an example. This could also be in business, you know, you're really good at saving money, you're really

good at making decisions, you know, you're, you're very philanthropic, you know, all of the stuff that you went through to make yourself that person is, is, I'm kind of repeating myself, but just kind of making you who you are rather than just taking a pill. It's a reflection of your discipline. And everyone knows discipline is hard to develop. And it's very, very useful. And there's no free discipline that comes from anything. Right.

In fact, if you got anything too easily, you probably wouldn't have a lot of discipline. You'd just be less effective at most things. Because discipline really good at it. Yeah. Yeah. 100% less grateful for sure. And that's probably the big thing

that would change when we have the robots doing everything is the entitlement would just get so much worse and that would lead to a lot of unhappy people. Yeah. But there's also like a bit of the silver lining and Joe has it. He's a very positive guy. I think that, you know, Thomas has it too. And it's like, well, people can be more creative. They can work with art more. They can do all these sorts of things. You know, they're fine ways to keep themselves functioning well. But it's just not that likely, I don't think, not without a ton of like good education around it. It's almost like the robots would need

to be telling people to get up, get moving. Right. Here's your, here's your plan for the day. Not like they're our bosses, but they're mentoring us all this new generation. Yeah. Like, hey, you got to move. You got to go do some things. Well, and how impactful is art if it's not driven by, you know, because like the most, like the most impactful songs and paintings have feeling behind them, right? There's like something that, there's something of the human experience. that touches you. And what is the human experience

of someone with zero adversity? What are you even communicating? Well, you have no resilience to anything. Everything is hard and dangerous. I mean, they're pretty useless people. I know some of them. Like, my God. Terrible.

Yeah. Yeah, the least happy people that we encounter are those with the least resistance in their life. But also, I mean, you know, the pendulum can swing too far the other way. Someone encounters nothing but resistance. That would break you mentally. Yeah.

For sure. Yeah. Well, you've got to have a good attitude and outlook to be able to continually do difficult things and put yourself in tough situations. And you're always not questioning. Dude, I left jiu-jitsu last week. And I ended up wrong.

They were doing six minute rounds, which are long rounds, two minute breaks. And the last role I did, I did with a guy there that competes all the time, and he's a professional MMA fighter. So, no, and he wasn't, like, punching me, but, like, this is just the skill set, right? It was so grueling. And I left, like, exhausted. And this is, like, a 6 a.m. class, too. and I'm in my car and I was like

chuckling to myself like why the hell do I do this? Yeah. I'm about to be 45 next month. I'm like, what am I doing? But instantly, I got over that. My programming is such that I was just like,

I understood what it was and I was like, I'm freaking super happy when I did this even though my body feels like I just got hit by a car. Yeah. It felt like I had been in a, a fairly slowish car accident. And I'm like, well, hopefully in two days, I feel better because I've got to go back.

That's just it. Like, slowish car accident. So, yeah, I mean, to ask you a question, if the robots come and they take all of this shit away from us, so we're not doing the dishes and we're not, we don't have to do all these errands,

you know, I know for me, it would be very important to probably extend all of those sorts of hobbies and practices I have. Like in some ways, my life could get harder then. Yeah. But it's self-imposed, and I would have to be doing it for my own mental state. Yep.

Yeah, agreed. It's got to be something like you. You know. But again, you're a father. You're a parent. You know, you've raised a daughter. You've seen what kids like to do. unless you make them do it.

And I think we're probably going to have a pretty like juvenile set of generations after us when these things become this easy. And it's going to happen so fast, too. That's the speed thing again. We kind of won't have enough time to adjust and figure it out. I mean, remember how quickly social media just blew up and took a, over and it was like all the kids were depressed before we realized how bad it is for us. Yeah.

Exactly right. So, yeah, what is that answer there? Who knows? Acceptance. Just get ready for it. I guess we've got to take on some of Thomas's philosophies of life and just stay hopeful and say, this is all good stuff. And soon we have conscious AIs that will be solving problems for us, and hopefully they won't be mean to us.

Yeah, we got to teach them that, what did he call it, low entropy? Teach them some empathy. That's it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's got to be a requirement. Otherwise, we're going to be in big trouble for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, hopefully. This guy was too pretty true. Yeah, he was. and I believe it was his second time on I'm looking forward to him coming on again I liked the idea I don't know how I integrate his theories

too much I don't know what it changes for me really there's like nothing existed before it was observed and it's probably all a simulation that's why the simulation theory to me is just, I guess it just kind of lands in the not that important realm of my head because it's like, what difference does it make?

You still have to do things. Right. Yeah, you still have to try and win the simulation. Right. I mean, would it make a big difference to you if you found out this was a video game, or we are video game characters? That could think about that question,

because that could give some very valuable because it, I don't know, does it change your incentives? I mean, if you still only have one life, you can't, you can't spawn, or maybe you can, depending on who you talk to.

Sure. Spawn somewhere else has something else? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, all of, see, all of these theories make as much sense to me as the next one. they really do definitely

they're just as reasonable as any of the theories that I was born into yeah try to believe I knew some religious people that had their God beliefs I knew some that weren't religious

at all they're like well when you die that's it you're dead it's like they're all potentially reasonable just like okay and I don't think for a second I'm going to figure it out either way.

No, but it's fun to think about, talk about. Yeah, it is. A lot of fun. Well, that was why it was cool to have him on and get a chance to review this one. Absolutely. I found it fascinating. I think a lot of people out there, if you haven't heard this podcast, that was definitely the best one in a while that really gets you thinking. Classic Joe Rogan.

Yeah, unless you have like a. existential crisis afterwards where you're not even sure if you exist or not. I mean, maybe that's not good, but yeah, great thought-provoking stuff. I liked it a lot. Well, anyway, let's wrap this one up. I appreciate you guys for listening. As always, Brian, thank you for joining today. And yeah, let's do this again soon.

Heck yeah, man. Good times. All right. Later, guys.