Lex Fridman Podcast - #358 – Aella: Sex Work, OnlyFans, Porn, Escorting, Dating, and Human Sexuality

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Aella is a sex researcher, writer, and sex worker. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - House of Macadamias: https://houseofmacadamias.com/lex and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex to get 1 month of fish oil - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off EPISODE LINKS: Aella's Website: https://knowingless.com/ Aella's Twitter: https://twitter.com/aella_girl/ Aella's OnlyFans: https://onlyfans.com/aella_girl/ Askhole card game: https://askhole.io/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:14) - Uncertainty (13:51) - Sex, power, and death (26:21) - Free will (27:46) - Consciousness (37:41) - Childhood (50:39) - Dancing (1:03:56) - Casual sex (1:06:10) - Camming (1:21:05) - OnlyFans (1:31:19) - Dating (1:47:11) - Escorting (2:05:12) - Emotion vs reason (2:13:17) - Love (2:20:50) - Polyamory (2:29:44) - Monogamy (2:36:14) - Sex fetishes (2:53:42) - Dominance and submissiveness (3:03:23) - Psychedelics (3:22:35) - Romance (3:30:05) - Body count (3:39:51) - Porn (3:43:10) - Mortality (3:45:46) - AI (3:56:26) - Rationalist discourse (4:00:18) - Meaning of life

The following is a conversation with Aela, a sex researcher who does some of the largest human sexuality survey studies in the world on everything from fetishes to relationships. She is fearless in pursuing her curiosity on these topics by asking challenging and fascinating questions and looking for answers in a rigorous data-driven way and writing about it on her blog knowingless.com. She's also a sex worker, including only fans and escorting, and is an exceptionally prolific creator

of thought-provoking Twitter polls. Aela and I disagree on a bunch of things, but that just made this conversation even more interesting. I like interesting people. In the full range of the meaning that the word interesting implies. I'm currently reading on the road by Jack Kerouac and will be remiss if I didn't mention one of my favorite quotes from that book that feels relevant here. The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,

the ziris of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. In the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes, ah. 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 House of McAdamiya's for Healthy Midday Snacks. My Midday Snacks.

Snacks anytime. I'll set a greens for a delicious daily multivitamin and inside tracker for bio monitoring. Choose wisely my friends. Also if you want to work with our amazing team or always hiring, go to lexfreedman.com slash hiring. And now onto the full laterates. 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 probably our most delicious sponsor. The sponsor that has given me a tremendous amount of happiness. Enjoy. Simple joy. Sitting alone sitting alone on a couch in a podcast room just eating macadamia snacks. They ship delicious high quality and healthy macadamia nuts directly to your door. Anyway this thing is delicious. It's healthy 30% less carbs than almonds. It's the only nut of the many nuts and I've researched this but they've also told me. That is rich in omega-7s, Professor Tim Noek's, who I should probably talk to at some point, things, mechidemia oil praises.

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This shows also brought to you by Letta of greens and it's AG1 drink, which is an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It too is freaking delicious and it too is a source of a lot of happiness every day, twice a day. In fact, I'm not religiously bringing in on the road with me the travel packs because I like to bring the happiness with me. It's actually really stressful for me to travel as it is for a lot of people. This is a recent discovery for me. One of the things that kind of makes it a lot better if I bring little trinkets that

remind me of home or little habits that remind me of home or little food items and so on. Athletic greens is that. I bring element electrolyte and athletic greens with me on the road and it just reminds me of home. Athletic greens are what I start the day with in terms of breaking my fast and putting in the fridge. It's delicious, it's refreshing, it's just a great mental boost for me. They'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at Athletic Greens.com slash flex. This show is also brought to you by Inside Tracker, a service I use to track biological data. It's interesting because this conversation with Aela is, in fact, about data, a lot of

data. A lot of data from, I think she has over 500,000 people that took a very extensive survey on their sexual preferences and all that kind of stuff. So basically, self-report information about your own understanding of your mind and body and so on. I mean, that's so powerful. That's so, so, so powerful.

Data in general is really powerful. For any kind of study. For medical studies, for psychological studies, sociological for any kind of study that includes humans, and it's nice to see ILA do this gigantic data set. But to figure out what you need for your body, for your life, for your diet, that should not be based, no matter how big the data set is, that should not be based on population data how big the data set is, that should not be based on population data, or it should only be in part based on population data, it should be hopefully in large part based on the data that comes from your own body.

And that's what InsideTracker is. One of the great folks that are taking a step forward in this thing that obviously represents the future, because special savings for limited time when you go to insidetracker.com slash Lex. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's A-Lum. I feel like this conversation can go anywhere. Is that exciting or terrifying to you? I think it's more exciting. The uncertainty exciting to you?

Yes. In conversations in general or just this one? I think conversations in general. Like, is anybody like out of certain T's really exciting? Maybe if the certainty is something new? I mean, novelty always comes with uncertainty, right? Almost always. I started trying to think of a counter example.

Immediately. Yeah. You're uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind. Like always, it's always a really bold for a T's. But if it's truly novel, that means you don't really understand it's outside the distribution. So therefore it's going to have a much more uncertainty. But you don't think of it as uncertainty. You think about it as something new, but it actually also tracks you because there's

a lot of uncertainty surrounding it probably. Like what is this new thing? Yeah, like annihilating the mystery, like that drive. What about the danger of it? I was just thinking of on the drive over because I was like, I'm like a little nervous like annihilating the mystery, like that drive. What about the danger of it? It's like part, I was just thinking of on the drive over because I was like, I'm like a little nervous about doing this podcast. And then I was like feeling into the unpleasantness of it,

like the like the fear of what if something goes terribly wrong. And then I was also feeling like, how much that feel like part of why it's exciting. Like if I knew that it was going to go great, I don't know. Does you actually imagine all the possible ways and you can go wrong? Not like all of them, but I was like, what if I say something really dumb

or like you ask me a question and I answer it in a way that makes me sound like less capable than I am. I'm like really afraid of being perceived as stupid or something. I was also thinking about this on the way over. Like a kind of risk of worse in some ways. Like I don't drive fast in cars because I was driving very carefully this on the way over. Like a kind of risk of worse in some ways. Like I don't drive fast, like driving fast in cars because I was driving

very carefully here because the roads are bad. And then I was thinking about I'm very like pro-risk in other ways, like being really exposed to like a wide variety of people who might hate you. And I think like from the outside that might look fine, but I think the monkey brain is really sensitive to lots of people yelling at you for whatever problems that you seem to have. So that's the big risk you're taking is putting yourself out there as an intellectual like through your writing and then a lot of people yelling at you.

Is that the worst embarrassment you've experienced? It's pretty bad, yeah. I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something out there that I failed to be properly skeptical of in myself and then people are like, oh, we caught this thing that you didn't catch. I think that's the biggest error. Yeah, from looking at your reading and listening to your interviews, you seem to be very defensive

and worried about being good scientists. Yeah, definitely. Well, you're like methodology. Yes. And funny enough, you get attacked on that methodology, even though I'm a fan of psychology, I'm like the academic psychology, and it's kind of disappointing often how non-rigorous their work is, how small the sample size and so on, and how big and ambitious, over-ambitious the proclamations about results is, especially with the news reports on it.

Now, you're both the researcher, the scientist, and the reporter, right? So that's what you have with the blog. Your sample size is often gigantic. The methodology is right there, the data is right there, you provide the data, and then you're like raw and honest with your interpretation of the day. I think there's an honesty, authenticity to it.

So I don't know, it's actually really refreshing. I don't know why people criticize it. I think this is what psychology is probably terrified about being transparent and transparent in that way is because they'll get attacked for their methodology. So they want to cloak it in a, you know, sort of layer of authority. Like I'm from this institution, it was peer reviewed, this kind of all these layers. And I'm also not going to share the data with you. And I'm also going to pretend

like most psychology studies and not replicable. I'm just going to pretend there's authority to it. I think it works a lot of people like from the outside, you're like, ah, the scientists with the white lab coats with credentials. Those are the people who are like doing science. And like doing sciences, you know, you have like fancy terms that other people don't really understand. And to be fair, I have a lot to learn.

I'm still like, I'm self-teaching. I'm like learning through people. Learning as I go. I'm definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff. But a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard. And a lot of what those people are doing in science is not that hard. And a lot of people like don't try to learn it because it seems so elevated. And this is one thing that really bothers me. I think like everybody can do science.

Like if you just have this aspect of curiosity and like you just really want to figure something out, you can go and start, you know, asking people questions, doing surveys, like writing down the answers. And then you can go learn how to look at that data in a way that gives you more information about the world. It's very simple and straightforward. If you just approach it humbly and earnestly, please let's figure this out together. But people are, I think, self-crippled in this because they view this as relegated to the domain of the experts and the know the fancy scientists. And I think

that makes me totally sad. You're almost attracted to the questions you're not supposed to ask. Oh yeah, also yes. We might contribute to the controversy. Not exclusively probably. Oh no. You're just not limited by like party or curiosity, asking questions that seem common sense. Like, some of the most controversial questions are around sex. It's like, everybody thinks and talks and does sex. I mean, it's the driver of human civilization. And yet, there's so little, like, rigorous discussion about the philosophical and the scientific questions around it. And it's like, it gets really weird to be able to discuss them.

It becomes tricky to discuss them. Yeah, it's super charged. Because everybody has a really strong opinion, whether pornography is damaging to society or how sex corresponds to gender or what kind of sexuality is acceptable. Can you have sexual preferences that in themselves are immoral?

People get very angry about it. Well, the sad part is they're not just opinionated that in themselves are immoral, people get very angry about it. Well, the sad part is they're not just opinionated, but most of us, our relationship with sex is, I think I guess I want to say not rigorous. I think it's very difficult to be rigorous about sex. I would consider sexual urges to be kind of elusive to introspection in a way that's a little bit disproportionate to a lot of other things.

You can introspect about how I want other people to like me and where my insecurities lie. Sex is one of those black box things. A really common thing is for people, if you have a fetish, you sort of check back in your childhood to see an event that corresponds to that fetish and then you develop a narrative, like, ah, this event in my childhood must have caused this fetish. And so I think it causes people to be biased towards a concrete coherent, causative way that events happen,

or that sexual fetishes happen. This is just one example of why I think it's really harder to be rigorous with introspection, because we can't avoid, you just want to tend towards making coherent narratives, which I think is not always the correct way to explain it. The narratives that are connected to childhood and so on and for the originates. Yeah, you've, I mean, we'll talk about fetishes because you have a lot of really interesting writing on that. Just actually zooming out. I should mention you tweeted, I wrote this down, you tweeted, I do not understand how to have normal conversations with people in person

I do not understand how to have normal conversations with people in person if I'm not on drugs. So I guess, let's both agree to not have a normal conversation, I guess, assuming you're not on drugs now. Or if you are, you don't have to talk. I feel like a very small amount of fun, but which is a new topic. I don't know if that counts. Well, I guess I'm on caffeine. Yeah. So we're both drugged up.

We go to have a normal conversation. We don't have to. What is normal anyway? What do you think is the primary driver of human civilization? Is it the desire for sex, love, power, or immortality, like avoiding the fear of death, constructing illusions that make us forget about our terror over mortality. So sex, love, power, death. This is a Twitter poll. This is a four option.

This is reality, not everything. Maps perfectly into a Twitter poll, but in this case, because there's four options and it is a small number of characters it does, but I'd like to think I'm more interested. You know what? I think your Twitter polls are fundamentally interesting. There's something about the brevity of a poll, limited to a set of choices, and having an existential crisis and searching for the answer, that's beautiful. That combination.

Well, this one's a big one. What do you think is behind it? Do you believe that there is one primary driver? Do you think that it can be understood in the terms of primary drivers? Yeah, I think maybe it's an engineering perspective, like trying to reverse an engineer the brain. I don't think we're equipped or understanding enough about the mind to get there. Yeah, like what's the primary driver of a tree? Yeah, well then it gets the question of what is life, what is the living organism?

Like to self-replicate probably. Yeah, well, then it gets the question of what is life, what is the living organism? To self-replicate probably. That's a very clean simplification, but I think life is more interesting than just self-replication. Yeah, but it sounds like there's a curiosity in you that you're trying to poke at, and I don't understand exactly what that curiosity is. So if I had to dedicate a thousand years to understand one of these topics, which one would be the most fruitful?

I guess is the indirect thing I'm asking. Fun? No, well, fun. To me, everything is fun. But I feel like, yeah. I mean, I'm with David Foster Wallace, the key to life is to make sure that everything's unborrable or to be unborrable or nothing is boring.

Everything is fun. Like everything. I literally sit. I honestly, because I don't think, I don't know where you got that glass, but that glass exists and I forgot it exists. It was really fun to me to know that now is there. What do you feel like really unpleasant things? Like if you're in like a deep agony.

Yeah, that's fun. Okay. That's fun, because it's like, I mean, yeah, heartbreak is like knowing that I'm capable of that. It like from, you know, we're all living in the gutter but some of us are looking up at the stars. So when you're in that gutter,

for some reason the stars look brighter, right? So like whenever you're going through a difficult time or whenever you see maybe other people being shitty to each other, it makes you like really appreciate when they're not. The contrast makes life kind of amazing. I'm reading a bunch of books, one of them is Brave New World,

where they remove the ups and downs of life partially through drugs but over sexualization and all that kind of stuff and I feel like you need that you need the ups and downs of life. The dark, you know, you need the dark to have happiness, to have a deeply intense feeling of affection towards another thing or a human being. Yeah, so everything is fun. But fun is also a weird word to define, because fun, I think for a lot of people, that's what I talk about love a lot. I think love is a better word than fun Because fun is like light-hearted Love is more intense Like I love that glass and the water that's in it because it's freaking awesome like somebody made that glass right like they and like not have many mistakes and like there's and the way bends late in interesting ways and the way water

Ben's light in interesting ways like the way water bends light in interesting ways Like I can see part of your arm to that water That's freaking amazing Everything is amazing I'm with the Lego movie anyway If but if like from a scientific perspective if I were to investigate sex I don't know why I put love in there. There's narrowed down the Twitter poll. Let's focus on the basics here.

Sex, power, or death, immortality. If I were to try to, like from a neuroscience, neurobiology perspective, or a reverse engineer through building AI systems that focus on these kinds of dynamics, exploring the game theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of dynamics, exploring the game theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of it, which one would get me to a deep understanding of the human condition?

That's the question. Sex. Okay. Nietzsche is the will to power. Freud and the bunch is all about sex. And then death lived just, lived barely, brilliant previous guests in this podcast. She's just released a video where on her bedside was the book, Denal of Death by Ernest Becker,

which of course she would have on her bedside. But that, his whole work is that everything is motivated by our trying to escape the cold harsh reality that we're going to die and we're terrified of it. One of the gifts and burdens for human beings is that we are cognizant of our own death, and that terrifies us. That's the theory. And because of that, we do everything we can. We build, we build empires to escape the fact that we're mortal.

Wouldn't this change quite a bit for religious people then who don't believe that they're going to die? Well, they created religion, the idea there to create myths, religions, you can create religions of all kinds like. Yeah, but if this is like one of the defining things that define civilization, then we should expect to see like massive differences between people who believe we're gonna die

and people who don't. Good, I love it. You think it like a scientifically here, but they have actually answers. Like there's a whole terror management theory where they do write psychology type papers and they do actual experiments. I can mention how their methodologies

are interesting. They prime with the discussion of death, like they take one certain set of people and have a conversation with them, and another set of people, they mention death to them before the conversation and see how that affects their, the nature of the conversation. It's really interesting because death fundamentally alters the nature of the conversation, just even priming, like reminding you that you're going to die briefly changes a lot of things. These kinds of priming papers usually not replicated. I just have like, I feel like I've heard a bunch of priming ones that... I think you have PTSD over psychology papers, not replicated.

I just did a priming experiment on my own and found it and have any effect. But again, can't you just give me a perilous statement summarizing an entire scientific discipline of tear management there? I don't know. I haven't rigorously looked at how good of it psychologically. I think it is interesting philosophical, the way Freud talked about the subconscious mind philosophically. It's an interesting discussion and then you have to get rigorous with each for sure. But the idea is that like it's not that religious people get rid of the terror of death. This is just one of the popular ways they create an illusion on top of it. That's that idea, like a myth that allows, that makes it easier for them to forget to escape that terror.

But everybody else does different, different methods. Like you feel your days with a capitalism has a whole, it's a whole religion of itself, like the rat race for getting more and more material possessions and so on. I mean, couldn't you argue in the opposite direction? Like, let's say a sum of the Christians here and we're like, ah, the atheist, you know, everybody has terror of hell and the atheist invent this mythology where, you know, actually evolution is true in order to escape their terror of hell. So it doesn't feel like a persuasive argument to me, but I used to be very, very

Christian and I did not have a tear of death. And then I lost my faith. And then I had a deep tear of death set in for a few years. And it felt very different to me. So for denial of death, I don't know if he says that it's actually possible without really a lot of work to get to the actual terror. Like, I think his claims that in early early early childhood development, that's when the terror is real. And then we aggressively construct systems around it, of the social

interaction to sort of construct illusions at the top of it. I'm doing a half-as description of this philosophy, but there is, like, it isn't interesting to simplify the human mind into underlying mechanisms that drive it Yeah, I was gonna say you're thinking seems kind of poetic like the way that you're sort of handling these yeah These concepts feel like more like aesthetically driven. I think this theme is gonna continue throughout this conversation As we talk about relationships and sex. Yes, for sure. I think so and I think this theme is going to continue throughout this conversation as we talk about relationships and sex. Yes. For sure.

I think so. And I think your thinking seems to be very driven by how can I construct an experiment to test this hypothesis? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah, but aren't there some things, especially they have to do with a human mind, that are really messy, really difficult to understand. There's so many uncertainties and mysteries around that we don't yet have the tools to collect

the data. Like, one of your favorite tools is the survey, is asking people questions, and then figuring out different ways to indirectly get at the truth, because there's flaws to the survey, you kind of learn about those flaws and you get better and better at asking the right questions and so on. But that's not, that's indirect access to the human mind. But do you think like poetic narratives are? I'm not like saying poetic narratives are bad.

Like I think that's like a cool way of like handling concepts. But I'm not sure that they are more rigorous. No, no, no. Okay. No, but like they might be the more correct, like philosophy might be the right way to discuss things that were really far from understanding. Yeah, I mean, they might be more useful shorthand. Yeah. Like morality, I don't think morality makes any sense, but it's really

useful shorthand to use when handling concepts in a lot of the time. Right. I got to think some morality. You could construct studies that ask different questions. Like, you know, just having worked with the Thomas vehicles a lot, the trolley problem gets brought up. And I don't know, you can construct all kinds of interesting surveys about the trolley problem. But does that really get at some deep moral calculus that humans do? It's sexy because people like right clickbait articles about it. But does it really get to like what you value more Five grandmas or like three children Whatever like they construct these arguments of like if you could steer a train if you could steer a autonomous car

Which do you choose? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it's possible with some of those to construct it Sometimes the fuzzy area there's some topics that are fuzzy and will forever be fuzzy, given our limited cognitive capabilities. There's a way of looking at things where it's like, for example, the childhood fetish thing that I was talking about, like, deploy to your fetish has come from. Like, you can develop a narrative where it's like, you know, I think this kind of thing is, you know, you're surrounded by feet when you're a child, this cost of foot fetishes. And this is like kind of a cool narrative.

And I think a lot of people's ideas about philosophy follow the same sort of thing. Like, what is the narrative that is cool? And I think this is useful for meaning making. Like I'm very pro meaning making. Like when you're talking about everything is fun because, you know, the contrast or whatever. I very much just described for that. I really enjoy that philosophy. I also find everything to be very delightful. But and this isn't like a question of truth, right? We're not like, where is the true delight that we're objectively measuring? I guess this is a frame, a poetic frame that you're using to

like sort of change the way the light hits the world around you. And that's super useful because it like makes you happier or something. Yeah, but also gets to the truth or something. Yeah, I guess if what is true? You had another question. What is truth? You've Actually to jump back you don't believe that free will is an illusion. So why does it feel like I'm free to make any decision I want?

It's a cool illusion. I think it's probably the gross sense of identity. It's a fun illusion. Oh. When you really meditate in your sense of identity, at least for me, it seems like it comes down to the sense of choice. Like, oh, I am doing the thinking. Like, what does it mean to do with thinking? It's like, ah, something in me has exerted agency over having this thought or not having

this thought. Like the sense of self really comes down to choice. And so when I say that, like, free will is an illusion, I also mean there's something like the self is an illusion. Identity is a trick of the light. But it's a really fun one. You think a lot about your identity. I have occasionally.

Yeah. Like you're really struggling with it. You're proud of it. I do too. It's not. We have different journeys. So. I really take a lot of delight in it.

I used to be very into deconstructing it. Like maybe you know, I did a bunch of way too much LSD for a while. And at that point, no ego. And now I'm like very ego. And I really enjoy having a lot of ego. I actually happen to know everything about you. Really? Like more than you do, it's interesting.

That's fascinating. Wait, could you solve my problems? Yes, all of them. I did thorough research. Okay What is consciousness then I? Actually wrote that as a quote. What is consciousness To remind myself so like how is that tying together with free will and identity and all that That's me the one is consciousness is like one of the biggest questions ever

I think I do think that people often get confused when talking about consciousness because I think people are referring to separate concepts and often like combating them into one thing. Like we asked the question, you know, is AI going to be conscious? I think this is kind of the wrong question. Like we can identify signs of consciousness. Like, ah, they seem to refer to themselves, but this is not necessarily a pre-consciousness in the same way that like dream characters acting exactly the way normal human do people do in your dream is not evidence that they themselves are conscious. So like signs of consciousness are not pre-fifconsciousness, but there is

something that we definitely know, which is like, I currently am conscious, I can tell because. Right. Like I like I'm like just directly observing my experience. Yeah. And so like there's one kind of consciousness, which is like just directly observing my experience. And so there's one kind of consciousness which is I am directly observing my experience. And that you cannot replicate it. Like I cannot observe two experiences. It is necessarily singular and it is necessarily certain.

Like you can make all the arguments you want. Like I'm still directly observing. It's not a thing that's subject to reason. Whereas our other thing is conscious. This is something that's replicable. Like, you can apply it to multiple people. It's something that's not certain, like almost definitionally not certain. Like, we don't actually know if there is, you know, an internal experience. So my argument is that like, when people are talking

about other things, having experience, they're using a different concept than the thing that they're actually looking at when they look at their own experience. I think they're two different things. Definitely not possible. No, if you understand the mechanism of consciousness, you'll be able to measure it probably, right? What are you measuring? I think there's a subtle difference. When you're asking the question, is this other thing conscious?

Yeah. The easy thing to measure is a survey, does this thing appear conscious? Yeah. And then the hard thing is you understand the actual mechanism of how consciousness arises in the physics of the human brain. You can do that in a dream, presumably. Like, if you had a very good dream or a very good simulation. Yeah. But we could then have somebody in a simulation or a dream where they go through and they fully understand, you know, they do all the tests and the tests come back exactly

that they would expect them to. But from the outside, we're like, well, this is misleading. They're not actually conscious. Like your dream characters aren't conscious, right? Probably. I don't know. Are you asking? Are you telling? I'm like appealing to an intuition. But it sounds like you're dragging towards the narrative. I don't, you, you did a poll about men and women and dreams. Yeah. Those are some kind of difference. I couldn't tell what the difference was except that more men and women. Quite a lot more women dream vividly than men.

Oh. Which I actually found my chaos survey. So I did a survey, maybe you know, I just had a people. I know everything. You do know, yes, I'm sorry. So as you clearly know. I'll try not to talk down to this conversation, because that's not. And I not only know everything, I know how your future looks like.

Really? And how everything future looks like. Really? And how everything ends, yeah. So you could probably win all the prediction markets on my life. Yeah. Cool. So we should also mention that you have like prediction markets. You have like votes. They, what's the site called again?

Manifold. Manifold. And one of them was, will I be on the Lex Friedman podcast? Yeah. And I voted. I invested everything I hoped into the guest. Is there such thing as insider trading on there? Is that goes against the terms of the?

No, I think insider trading is part of the information. So it's supposed to be. And then I realized it's actually public information that I voted because I think my face shows up. There's like, damn it. It's going to influence the... That's gonna influence the NFL. You could make the figure count, or it could be lying, right?

I could be, and then dump the stuff, whatever. I, you know, I tried to manipulate, somebody made a market like, is Aila going to post a poll, spelled P-O-L-E on her Twitter, like a photo, and I was like, I'm gonna manipulate this market. So I like fucked around with it, and I voted no, and then I accidentally posted a photo of a poll

without thinking. It's like a double poll. Oh, that's like sub-adtaj. I, yeah, accidentally posted a photo of a pole without thinking. Oh, that's like self sabotage. I accidentally fucked up my own market. That doesn't. That's like the reverse of insider training. Yeah. What we're talking about the women and the men and the difference, the vivid dreams and the markets, I forget what the market, oh, because I can, I can

perfectly predict your future. But then it's not fun. I like the role mass of unpredictability. And so I like to, even though I know everything, I like to forget everything. Yeah. Very Buddhist of you. Yeah. The river, no man, and the river ones, whatever, the footsteps, color of that ghost. That's one of my favorite questions. It's like, if you could press a button and have all of your wants fulfilled, anything that you want. So it's like such a rapid degree that you don't

really experience the one. Like as the one to rises, it then is like completed as immediately so that you are completely without want. Like would you would you press that button? 100% not. Yeah, I didn't think you would. No, no, no, because immediately everything starts being fun. The first is only fun the first time. But if you want it to be fun, but like what would be my source of fun? I feel like I would only fun the first time. But if you want it to be fun. But like, what would be my source of fun? I feel like I would have, like on day four, just to get off, I would need to like,

do like nuclear war. Cause they'll escalate quickly. I feel like if everything is possible, I assume you mean like something that like, is not just normal human thing. Yeah, magical world. Magical world. Then you start escalating really quickly.

I wonder, I'll probably do like, I want everybody to just fly into the air and hover in the air. That'd be fun. Everybody. And then you're like, oh, life is meaningless. Like why does, like you go, I feel like you get, no, actually that would be a really interesting experiment. Like what are the limits? Like are we all capable of becoming psychopaths, essentially?

Like, I like to believe not. There's a very hard limits on that. Like in our own mind, like a basic compassion. Cause I love being compassionate towards other human beings. And it's one of the things I think about, if you give me power, like a lot of power, like absolute power. And I think that's the power you mentioned is the scariest kind of power,

because it's like, it's not even power in this normal world. It's like magical power, where you lose, it's a dream world power, where you, like video game power, you don't even think of it as reality. You could just mess with the world. I feel like that's terrifying. Yeah, it basically be God. God, yeah.

But without like, I feel like the idea of God was like, and I keep things like functioning properly. And then you would probably, if you wanted to keep them functioning properly, then it would wrap it. Like you would never experience a time where you're like, oh, no, that was a mistake. Because as soon as you, like before you've been experienced that, the world would shift to, to match it. Oh, interesting. Now, I think I would actually, I take it back. I think I would regret the first time I heard somebody. So in my visualisation, it was like a video game where everybody's like NPC really dumb.

Now I think the first time I I witness pain from anybody, that's when I would stop. And I would probably run into that very quickly. Like even just the hovering, make a person hover and they're going to be probably really upset with the hovering, right? And so I'm going to be like, no, don't do that anymore. And then I'll probably go to honestly, I'll just return back to my normal life. Yeah, that's kind of what I feel like. Like if I had the power to do anything, I think I would probably want to have the life very similar to where I am now. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's, it's like with Uber, like it would probably more convenient to do certain things. But even then, like the struggle, like I got a flat tire, so I have to fix that. I can't even tell if the flat tire makes everything more beautiful. It's like, cool. I could do a normal manual thing. But also, it makes you appreciate your car, appreciate transportation, appreciate the convenience, the transportation, all of it. I know some people who would call this a bunch of copium, you're just sort of making do with what you have. We wouldn't go back to Amish times or pre-technology because to

in order to make ourselves appreciate things more. And so it seems like a hindsight reasoning, which I can appreciate that argument. But I don't know. I'm like, anyone who uses the sorry to interrupt the word copium in their, in their argumentation, I think it's sus. It's sus. Yeah. It's sus, my entire argument is now. No, I'm just kidding.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. I interrupt the rudely, the flow of thought. But you say, you don't think so, in part you disagree with that kind of argument. Yeah, because I think people have this idea that if you come to accept or find meaning in what you have now,

this is sort of at odds with trying to improve it. And I don't find this to be the case. I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part improve it. And I don't find this to be the case. I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part of it. Like I enjoy the fact that there's something like problematic going on because now I get the experience of like striving to make it go away. And like that in itself is where the meaning lies. It's not just that things are bad. It's that there's things are bad and we're trying to stop it and also. Exactly. If you combine that with a sense of optimism that the future can be better, that feeds into this productive effort of making things better.

Somehow makes the vision of the things that are better, more intense, having experienced shitty things. Yeah. So we talked about free will and consciousness and what drives human civilization. Question left unanswered. It's a homework problem for the reader. Okay. Let's.

I get like a scoreboard at the end, the amount of questions. The way the answer. Please successfully versus not. Like polls. Yeah. Can we talk about some practical things? Sure. Uh, so one of about some practical things? Sure

So one of the many amazing things I think if you use a researcher, but you've also been doing research in the field. Yeah, fieldwork. It's a thing. Good all of us. You're yeah, right. How did you get what's the the short and the long story of how you got into sex work? How did I get into sex work? Well, I mean, there's a whole like childhood thing where I was conservatively homeschooled. Do you wanna actually talk about your childhood?

I think it's interesting because you also worked in a factory so like your childhood is really fascinating and difficult, traumatic. So, and you've written about it, there's a lot of ways we could talk about it, but maybe what are the things you remember the good and the bad of your childhood, of your maybe interaction with your father? Yeah, my dad probably has narcissistic personality disorder and so it was very centered on very

controlling childhood. immensely so. We were homeschooled and pretty isolated from the outside world, like we didn't know anybody else who wasn't homeschooled, went through a program called growing kids God's way, which was very is like the kind of program where you're not supposed to pick up babies when they cry to train them that they can't manipulate the parents, because like baby crying was viewed as like, you're just teaching them from an early age that they're allowed to make the parents do what the kids want.

And they're very against the philosophy. So you know that combined with a narcissistic personality disorder, dad was pretty rough. So controlling. Super controlling. And developing and feeding the self-critical aspect of your brain. Yeah, very much. It was, you know, I was like lazy, but I was never going to accomplish anything alive. It was going to move out of the house and realize how good I had it at home, you know,

the classic stuff. He was very like logical and smart, though. And so he'd also like teach us logic stuff. I remember some of my earliest memories or him like giving me basic logic puzzles. Like, the dog has three legs, you know, how many dogs the four legs and I would mess up. And he was a evangelist, basically a Christian evangelist. So maybe like Bible study, five nights a week, I memorized I think 800 verses of the Bible by the time before I became an adult. Yeah, it was very patriarchal also.

So I was expected to become a housewife, basically. They're like, oh, you can go to college to meet a man and also to get a little bit of education so that you can help school your own kids. Like we were explicitly told that women were subordinate to men in regards to like making decisions when you're married. Our pastor's daughter was not allowed to leave home because she would be outside of the authority of a man. So when she got married, she was allowed to leave, because she was never allowed to live in a house

where she was not under a hierarchy. So this is like the kind of culture that we live. So there's a hierarchy, and the gender aspect of the hierarchy, this men at the top of the hierarchy. Men at the top. OK, but you're on psychology, your own mind. So most of that self-critical brain is bad, right? It was confusing because he told me that I was smart, but also that I would fail. But I,

I, but not smart enough, right? Like smart, but not smart enough. Smart, but like not virtuous or something. Okay. So there's, okay, right. There's always a, a, a flaw. There's always a flaw. I think a lot of it was a lot of the fucked upness of my brain came from feeling like I didn't have the authority to think because it was so like carefully like suppressed. Like my ability to like express or have any sort of power was just absolutely annihilated. Like systemically, like psychologically, they would do like psychological torture mechanisms to make sure that like I wasn't thinking on my own, or like being able to deviate from anything anybody ever told me.

To the degree that it's still engraved in me, like I once was a friend we were traveling and he wanted me to hop a turn style. It was like very late at night, the train was here and I could not physically force myself to do it. Like he was like yelling me like, come on, do it. Like, like, no, but I was trying so hard to make my body cross the line.

And it was just, it's like embedded in my physical being to like be unable to do stuff like that. It was just really annoying. Do you're not free to take action in this world? Yeah. Some of them. So that was, I think the most annoying part of the, my upbringing. Would you classify it as like suffering?

At the time, yeah, definitely. Well, it's confusing because like when I was a child, it was just painful in the sense that like things suck. But it was placed in a meaning framework, right? Like it is good, it is virtuous, to submit to your parents and do what they want. If they tell you to say goodbye to your best friend forever and never talk to them again,

you go do that without complaining. And so like I would go do something like that. And I would, like it like that. And I would, like it would suck. It really was like concretely painful, but it was also placed in this narrative, where I was like, feeling some sort of greater purpose. And so it's very confusing to refer to it as suffering, because there's so many painful things we do today that are placed in the narrative of greater purpose that like I think I would agree with, like I go get a medical procedure done, that sucks, but I'm like, ah, this is helping me in the long run.

But say if I got abducted to an alien planet, and they're like, by the way, all of those medical procedures you got done, you didn't have to get them done, those are totally unnecessary, then I might get really upset about it. Yeah, I would trust those aliens though, because they probably want to do different medical procedures. That's true.

I saw a thumbnail for a video that I'm proud of myself for not clicking on about a man who's claimed that he had sex with aliens. And I was like, I do stuff for not clicking on that. Because I was wondering, because I would probably watch it for like 20 minutes and then I should be doing work. Oh, I see. So like, and I'm actually happy because I get to imagine what all the different possibilities that could have been for that man who is.

Do you have like a really high resting happiness state? Yes, yeah. It's probably like a mushroom state. Yeah. Wow. Do you do mushrooms? I've done mushrooms before. It was very awesome. But more intensely awesome. But like, because I was just looking at nature, it makes nature even more beautiful, I think. But it's already pretty beautiful. I haven't done MDMA. People say that I should. It's very nice, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway. But I'm already, yeah. What did you call it? Resting happiness state. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but I'm already yeah, right. What did you call it resting happiness state? Yeah, I resting happening happiness. Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. But it's not like some of it is genetic that you're able to notice the beauty in the world and some of it is practiced where you realize focusing on the negative things in life. Like, unproductively, it just doesn't help your mind flourish. So, like, you just notice that. And it's like, I mean, I think people with depression learn that, or like, probably with

trauma too, is like, there's certain triggers. Like, if you're, if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of constantly know there's going to be triggers that will inspire, like, force're if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of consciously know there's going to be triggers that will inspire like force you to spiral down. And so just avoid those triggers. Some people have that would die at food and so on. So I just don't like whenever there's shady things happening or shady people, unless I can help unless I can somehow help like what? Why folks? Yeah. Anyway, uh, and somehow help. Like, what, why folks?

Yeah. Anyway, back to you upbringing. What, what was the journey of escaping that? I left home kind of early because my dad and I were not getting along by the time I was a teenager. But I still Christian for a while. And I lost my faith after I think I moved it away and I started having friends that weren't religious.

They're like warrant raised in this super conservative environment that I came from. And I think this was not conscious at the time. This is my hindsight story. But I believe that like being exposed to a culture in which I had the capacity to believe, like allowed my brain to actually seriously consider the thought that maybe all of this stuff was untrue, that I've been taught like 6,000 year

old earth and evolution is a lie, you know, macro evolution and all of this stuff. Because like when you're immersed in an environment like that, I don't think you actually have a choice. Like your brain has to believe these things because this is a survival thing. Like if you believe this, you'll be come, like if you believe the wrong thing, you'll be totally cast out. Even if they're not going to cast you out, you're going to be cast out in communion with others, because we were always told that you can't trust non-believers.

Really, they don't have a moral compass. I'm going to screw you over. I can't beat that. Everybody's going to outcast me internally. Anyway, I don't think I actually had the capacity to seriously question my faith, even though I thought that I was questioning it quite hard until I got into an environment where it was safe to do so. And once I started being able to make friends who were not really just like, oh, if I lose my faith, I'm still going to have some sort of community. And then at that time, I went through some questioning and then I lost my

faith. So in that given your friends giving the situation, you have you're now have the freedom to think essentially. Or at least the ability to think of something that was acceptable in the new culture. Without I mean, is there a danger of like adopting the beliefs of the new culture. So like there's some aspect of just being able to think freely which you weren't able to do when you were growing up, just to think, like, look at the world and wonder how it works, that kind of thing. But, I mean, you work it with in certain boundaries, like, there's certain basic assumptions,

and as long as you were following those basic assumptions, which is to be fair, it's like kind of what we're doing now. Like, we have, have I gone and done the personal research that like evolution is the thing that's going on? Have I looked at like the age of the stones? No, I haven't. I'm trusting other people. Yeah. Which I think is like a fair choice to make

given where I'm at right now. But you're also assuming like there's causality in the universe, time is real. Yeah. That like that first of all, the thing that your senses are perceiving is real. You're assuming a lot of things Yeah, I think like it's better just to become aware of the assumptions you're making like as opposed to not making those assumptions at all Like you have to assume something and I did it's very suspicious right that I went out of this very conservative culture

And now I well, I guess I don't believe things that are super in line with the current culture I think this is why I feel a little bit safer right now, because when I was Christian, I believe generally Christian things. But now I believe a bunch of things that people really hate, like I get canceled online all the time. I'm like, okay, this is a sign that maybe you're thinking independently, if you're able to think things that are completely at odds with the people around you. And to be fair, this is a little bit easier to do when it's like general culture,

but it's much harder to do with your peer group. Like the people that you trust, your friends, the people whose opinions you respect, like disagreeing with those people is very difficult and I'm not very good at it. Yeah, I do think that if you establish yourself as a person who can be trusted and is a good human being, you have a lot more freedom to then explore ideas that are different from your peer group. So those seem, if you separate the space of ideas versus some kind of like deeper sense of what this person is,

like that they're an interesting and trustworthy and good human being. Well, is there somebody that you respect to, you can say they're significantly smarter than you? And can you imagine believing an idea that you've heard them talk really distainfully about? Like how would you feel coming to me like I believe this thing that you find to be? Yeah, I do all the time. Oh yeah. Yeah, maybe braver than me. And to be fair, I support doing this. Like I try to do this, but I think like subconsciously, I notice that I'm

I don't do it as much. And so I'm suspicious of myself. I'm like, I, but I think subconsciously I notice that I don't do it as much. And so I'm suspicious of myself. I'm like, I wonder if I'm hiding to myself actual curiosity about things that might deviate from my peer group, because I notice that I'm not actually deviating with them as much as I do with the outside world. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, because I do see most people I interact with as smarter than me, but I also have this intuitive feeling that dumb people, which I consider myself being, have wisdom. So like in the disagreement, actually, I also believe in the power of conversation and

in the tension of disagreement. So I think I even just disagreeing from a place, from a good place, from a place of like love and respect for each other. I think I just believe in that. So it's not like individuals you're disagreeing. You're like working towards arriving at some deeper truths together. Right. Even if the other person is is smarter. Maybe that's maybe that's how I justify it for myself. I just am also a fan of conversations because like I've seen just listening to conversations. It seems like a great conversation more emerges from it than the sum of its parts, right?

Like somehow two people together can do like that dance of ideas and somehow create a cool thing. By the way, I enjoyed a video of you dancing at a bar drunk. There was in the bar drunk, it didn't look drunk, but it just did dancing. I was like ballroom dancing type of thing. I was like, yeah. Something like that. I've been doing a bit of tango dancing.

I like a. Argentine? Mm-hmm. Nice. I like stuff with the body in general, like wrestling or combat, like usually when there's attention, you have to understand the mechanics of how two bodies move when they're in conflict and dancing is similar.

Like you have to do rapid thinking, also rapid and intuitive physical thinking and that's my favorite kind of thing. Like a lot of exercises really boring to me because you can just do all your brains off. But something like bottom dancing or fusion dancing, like you have to constantly be figuring out do it while your brains off. But something like ballroom dancing or fusion dancing, like you have to constantly be like figuring out like it's a rapid puzzle. And that's so much.

What's fusion dancing? That's the video. It's a fusion dancing is like if you have any sort of dance background, you can come and you just kind of mix this together. Oh, you can have like people like ballet with people doing ballroom, with people doing blues. Cool. And then there's an interesting dynamic because there's, I don't know, maybe you can correct me, but there's a, that's very matter. There's usually a lead in the

follow. I guess most dancers have that. Yeah. And so that, but both have a different, like you both have to be quite sensitive to the other human being, but in a different way. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. So I like both that there is that definitive role, but also like it's not somehow that one is better than the other. There's an interesting tension between the two. Yeah. It's good because it's like a basic rule set that allows for a ton of expression. I've recently started to experiment with like reverse leading.

It's not like back leading. It's like, I don't know. Like sometimes I was like, so you can lead as follow. Oh, you can lead. Well, I'm typically following. I'll occasionally throw in a little lead here and there. But don't you kind of all, oh, I see.

But don't you hit hint at a lead when you're following? Like, don't you just buy the dynamics of your movement? You're not perfectly following. I mean, because it is like, the lead is listening to your body, right? Yeah. So like, you're kind of both figuring out what you do next.

That's true. I'm a very good follow though. Okay. So I'm like, I'm like, I'm an invisible follow. You do move. It's like, I, I'm not like, good at tech. I didn't know those existed like a perfect, like you see perfect. Perfect.

I really I do. I'm not great at technique and sometimes I'll fall over, but like with the following part, very good at it. Do you enjoy falling? Yeah, yeah, really nice. It's again, like it's a very fast, physical puzzle you have to solve. It's like typing, I really like typing. That's why I was inquiring about your keyboard earlier. Why are you like typing? It's like the very fast, like the really rapid response

was the reaction time. I like things that like have very fast reaction times, like games like that. But typing is not a reaction. Or is it the brain generating words and then you're like, cost typing a reaction? Well, okay, the sensation that I get when I am typing is the kind of thing that I'm trying to point at. So maybe maybe reaction time isn't the quite, I don't know what the term is, but whatever that thing is, like the thing where you have to like look at a word and then communicate it into your fingers. Yeah. It feels like dancing. Like you're responding. You're responding to your brain. Your fingers are doing their responding to the brain that generate the words. Yeah. Making your body do what your brain wants it to do, but like fast and precisely. Well, then you might not like this kinesis keyboard because it makes it easier to do that.

You probably like the struggle, right? No, well, I mean, it looks hard because it looks like it's high depression on the keys. No, it's, well, oh, I see. Yes, more than, more than like a laptop keyboard, but like, that you don't have to, one of the main things is, you don't have to one of the main things is you don't have to move your fingers at all. So like, so like, for example, a lot of people that I think they have a backspace up in the top right corner. So if you have to make mistakes, which is like, I mean, that's like so metaphorically, every mistake you have to like really hurt yourself for, you have to like stretch for the backspace.

Is it just that poetic narrative again? It's, it's a very good premise. It's like it emanates like a lot of your perspective. Everything. Yeah, no. Yeah, I don't, and I see it as a good thing, it's like a romantic element. Permiates my interpretation of the world, yes.

But you left home early. How did you end up working at a factory? I tried to go to college but failed. Couldn't afford it. Did you like it? I remember it just being really slow. I remember being shocked that the teachers didn't care. Like I was used to homeschooling. Yeah. And I don't know, like educate, just like it meant something. They felt like the people around me that were teaching me,

because we had like a mom's group also, like directly cared about what I was learning. And I would be able to ask questions and they would like really respond. What's a mom's group? And it was like homeschooling groups who were a bunch of moms who are homeschooling their kids, get together, and then teach each other's kids.

Oh, cool. Yeah. And they have different like interests and capabilities and so on. And they kind of... And sometimes if some of the kids are really good at something, you have the older kids teaching the other ones too. So it was very like everybody kind of figures out what they could go to and they share that skill set with everybody else. Which I think was a pretty great setup. Honestly, I think my childhood kind of sucked in a lot of ways, but home schooling was excellent for me, mainly because it just had so much free time. I just did two to three hours of school and then did whatever the fuck I wanted for the rest of the day. And I got to actually pursue skills that I was still useful for me to this day. Even in that constrained environment.

Like, I wrote, I've read fantasy books and I wrote so much. And now I'm writing a lot for my blog. What kind of fantasy books like sci-fi tape stuff? Classic like I read like Mercedes-Lake and the e-night and our solar queen and I don't know any of this. What is this? What is it? Is it a romantic thing? Is it like is it a romance? All the fantasy books like dragons and oh dragons. Yeah, you didn't mention Tolkien for the fantasy. I read Tolkien. Yeah. All right. Well, it's beautiful. So you you through all the dragons How did you end up in the fact that you try school? Yeah, I try school has dropped off a couple months and then I was like well, I'm poor and Uh, I was I was really take any job. I was like applying for super jobs and then I got a factory. I'm like, all right, it's just, because my parents know, no financial help at all.

They're like, you play yourself up by own bootstraps, you know? So, anyway, I went to work at a factory and that sucks ass. Do not recommend, we had to work up, wake up like 4 a.m., you know, work on weekends too. Fornocent lights, it was terrible. And so I did that for about a year and I was like, this is, I was trying to grip my teeth and be like, this is my life, right?

I didn't have high expectations for my life. I was just like, I thought like if you get a job where you don't have to be on your feet all the time, that's your living a good life. But, and then I got another job briefly, as a photographer, and then they fired me. I think I was 19 at the time. Fired you for, like,

I was just too young, and really, really bad at interacting with people in the outside world. Like I was pretty well socialized as a home scholar with other home scholars, but in the outside world, especially with all of the like hierarchy submission stuff beaten into me, like literally beaten into me, it was very difficult for me to interact with other people who were like older than me or had any sort of confidence at all. So they hired me to do photography for people

and then I was rapidly turned out that I was bad at this and so they fired me. But at that point, I'd left my factory job and I can't go back to the factory. So I had some savings and I slept on friends' couches and I tried various self-employment stuff. I'm like, maybe I can do product photography or something. But it's Idaho, you know,

nothing. And if you're like a 19 year old no experience in the outside world at all, it was really difficult. And so I had a friend recommend that I try being coming at Cam Girl. So that's how it started. What's what is what is Cam? What is being a Cam girl? Camming is like you talk to the camera live on the computer that you live stream. It's kind of like Twitch. And then people are typing in the chat like, huh, I do this stuff. And then the people can tip you money.

And then you can do things in response. Like, oh, if you tip me 100 tokens, you know, I'll take my shirt off or something like that. And like, what's the, what's site we're using at that time? My free cams. My free cams? Is that a popular site?

Yes, pretty popular. Okay. And how did, what were the next steps? Like did you enjoy it? Oh, well, it was the first time I had actual control over my life. And I made like actual real money. And so I just exploded into it.

I thought about it non-stop. I was streaming all the time. I was like coming with like new creative things. And the thing is like, I don't know. There's something about public school that I ended up living in a house of Cam Girls, full of other girls who had gone to public school. And I don't know if how much of his genetic or like just because I'm weird or is it because

of our upbringing, but I felt like I was much more fearless and much more weird and creative online than other people were. Not because they weren't awesome people, but because I think like public school, I got the impression based on them talking about it, that sort of like beats out any sort of deviance from you. Like more so than you're, because I got the, I got the, I mean, we had moral deviance

was beaten out, but like you could do whatever creative deviance was. Creative deviance wasn't so much. Like I didn't have other kids making fun of me ever. I didn't, I don't think I'd ever heard it insult about my physical appearance as a child or teenager once. So your father was basically saying you're not good enough was intellectual? Oh, no, that was like moral failing.

Moral, moral failing. Yeah, like I was not virtuous. Oh, wow. Like in various ways, like you know, like you're lazy and mostly the lazy part. Yeah. But I like, I have like ADHD or something. Yeah.

And it was, I was not good at it. I was a kid either. I would totally forget all the time. And is there some sexual repression aspect to that? Like, you know, how they say that there's, it's not just homeschooling, but just like a Catholic girl and so on, just because like there's moral, you're forbidden to do certain things.

Like there's a kind of liberating feeling of saying, like basically rediscovering your self, rediscovering your freedom by doing just diving head in, had first into sexuality, interior sexuality. So some aspect of that. Yeah, absolutely. It is some degree. I think that like people kind of model it slightly wrong.

Like I think there's just a truth to it. But when I first got out of the house, for me freedom was like going outside at 2 a.m. or like eating chocolate, you know, on days that I've previously wasn't allowed to eat chocolate. Like that was like a really intense expression of rebellion for me. And I think people like don't think of this. Like I got out a lot of my like intense rebellion through things that people don't typically consider to be rebellious at all. Like I wore a bikini. Yeah. Insane. I just walked around and in like, I could do this.

Yeah, basically. Yeah. And so like, this was most of that emotional processing for me. And I took me a couple of years from leaving home and all of that conservative culture into doing sex work. In the meantime, I was, I did try having sex with a lot of people, but this was mainly because I didn't know what the norms were. I didn't really understand.

I was just like, okay, take things logically, take things one step at a time. I'm like, okay, if the whole previous set about like how I'm not supposed to kiss somebody until the alter of marriage, if that's not the way that things were supposed to go, then what is the way things were supposed to go? And I was like, well, if I am aroused, I should go have sex with someone, right? Is there any reason not to? No. So I would go around asking I should go have sex with someone, right? Is there any reason not to? No. So I would just, I would go around asking random people to have sex with me.

Did you have any peer pressure saying like, that's not good or that is good or like any, did you feel any currents of society in any direction? Is probably, or you independently just thinking like, from first principles? I think, I mean, I mean, I'm not saying it was a totally a clean thing. I'm sure that I was experiencing society telling me this is bad. But you have to know, like, I mean, I'm not saying it was a totally a clean thing. I'm sure that I was experiencing society telling me this is bad But you have to know like I wasn't watching normal movies when I was a teen Like we watched Christian movies are the stuff that we watched was filtered like I watched the Titanic And I had no idea that Jack and Rose had sex because it was put through a filtered what did they yeah?

They went and you know, he painted her naked and yeah, yeah, there's a scene in a car On the ship on the ship. Yeah, I'm just they had like stories cars in storage and and there was a scene in a car on the ship. On the ship. There had cars in the storage and there's a hand. I watched it again later. I was like, I don't know the sex scene. Well, maybe were you also put through a filter version? No, maybe it's the filter I see.

Did the couple in the notebook also have sex? Because maybe for romantic movies, I focus on the romance. Maybe, right? And the sex scenes are always like weirdly filmed in these. Yeah. Because it's never, I mean, it doesn't, it feels more like romance and sex. I guess that's the main focus of this, right? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, anyway. So the head sex is good to know. They did. I'll go back and watch to fast check. You have your own filter on your brain and once you realize that there are some like the foundation of your beliefs were wrong then everything might be wrong and you kind of just doing first principles and principles basically. And again, like not totally separate from culture but also I think in general

I also have a predisposition and just be like you know, fuck what culture tells you. Just figure out what's right for you and do it. And so that mixed with, you know, the figuring things out from first principles. I did eventually figure out that I didn't like having casual sex with just anybody quite as much. So I stopped that, but took me out and figured that out. What's the negative of casual sex? It's just like not good.

I mean, if you like figure out the chemistry you have with someone better, then it can be a lot nicer. But I wasn't doing that. I was just like somebody I met and I'm like, you seem kind of cute. Okay. I didn't bother to try and develop any chemistry. I mean, I didn't. Chemist even outside of sex. Just chemistry, human chemistry. Yeah, basic. I would, I would, it's like kind of cringey, but I would like, I would like walk up to guys or send them messages. Like you like to have Quitis?

That's what I would say. You would say Quitis. I said that. I mean, it's kind of cute in a way. I mean, it's a girl asking you to get laid, so they probably didn't care that much. But I'm saying that I had a lot of rebellion out of my system by the time I started sex work. So for me, I'm sure it was somehow related because we were extremely

sexually repressed going up. I remember the day I learned I had a vagina, which was absolutely horrifying. Do not recommend figuring out you have another orifice in your body. But like, do you want to share the process of you figuring out the head of a giant? Just they told me I had a vagina. Oh, like intellectually, like there was somebody said, you have a vagina. And that, yeah. And that was horrifying to you. Yeah. I didn't know I had, because you weren't supposed to ever touch

or look at yourself ever. So I never did. It was serious, really disgusting. And so I didn't have no idea that what was going on in my general region. And so one day my mom sat me down. I think it was like nine or 10. And she was like, you have a,

there's another. What? And you're going to bleed out of it is what she told me. You're going to bleed out of it for a while. And I was like, what the fuck mom? I didn't know the word fuck was, but I would have said that if I had known.

What did you first learn the word fuck? Oh, I think I learned it when I was at a playground and it was written somewhere and I read it out loud. And then a kid next to me started giggling. Did you ever did you say fuck again for a while? No, I think the next time I said I swore the first time I was 18. Like intentionally said a swear word when I was 18. Did you feel good? It was like really nervous. It was like your first swear word. I. It's your first word word. I mean, Fox pretty good. Yeah, Fox pretty good. Yeah.

Okay, so that's Camming. I mean, what are the pros and cons of Camming? And how does only fans map into this? Did you switch to only fans at some point? I did, yeah. I came for like five or six years and I burned out eventually. What are the good aspects? What are the bad aspects of Camming? Well, the good aspects were that it's just your own terms.

You get to decide everything about it is under your control, which I loved at the time. I was like, I can work. When I want how I want any sort of expression I experimented and I was very successful. I was making around $200 an hour, which for that website at the time was like pretty good. I had elaborate routines as a mind. I would do like, just a bit of a mind and then dress up a chair and I would seduce the chair.

Oh, cool. Yeah, or like, it was, was there an artistic element to it almost? Yeah, I had like no, no, no, no, no, no, I was a mime. You don't. Oh, sorry. Right. Yeah, get us straight, dude. You know what I really appreciate about you is I'm asking some really dumb questions and

you're answering it in a very intelligent way so I appreciate that. All right. Did you ask the chair questions? I was in mind you fucking idiot. Okay, I'm sorry. It's true. But there's gnomes on the big gnomes, there's small gnomes. Like lawn gnomes.

lawn gnomes. And you said just the lawn gnomes on the chair, the gnomes sitting on the chair. There were some gnomes or small gnomes? Like lawn gnomes. lawn gnomes? And you used to do the lawn gnomes on the chair, the gnomes sitting on the chair. There were some gnomes on the chair. I did a photoset, which I submitted to Reddit, where I got abducted. I was like stripping, taking my clothes off, and then slowly the gnomes surrounded me in the background and then dragged me off.

And I did this as a photoset. And I- Potentially. I mean, I mean, I didn't feel consensual in the photos, but it was the, the last- Pot-Poster. Pot-Poster., but it was the intellectual not consigned with the norms. The it was very successful at it.

Basically, as a top person, not wild in the 11th top post, a full time. So which I think will probably just means it's like it's artistic. It's interesting. It's IG is fine. So it's really really well done. But it was really shocking to be that nobody else was doing anything creative with sex work.

Like for me, it was, it was like breathing. Like you're just doing sex in your board bored and like, what do you do? Arnold will try something funny. Like it's just the natural progression. And it felt to me like there was almost no competition. Like I would just be really creative and like immediately it was the top not say for post-order edit. Like well, I didn't even try that hard.

And so it's really shocking to me that other women who are doing this sort of thing. Is that still a little bit of the case? Like that there's not as much like, because for my sort of outside of perspective, that seems to be still the case. Like there's not, as you describe it, that's kind of cool. That's like almost like playing,

like having fun with sexuality almost. Yeah. And yeah, but that does require kind of thinking through, it's almost like a creative project, like a photography project or something like that. I don't know, it's like a little skit movie. It's interesting. It's this vibe of like how can you like bring

like vibrant novelty to whatever you're doing, anything you're doing. And I really like doing this with surface too. Like I've been doing a lot of standard surveys, but I'm also like experimenting with novel creative artistic surveys. I'm like, how do you ask a question in a way that's like beautiful and unusual and like a thing that's completely groundbreaking like nobody's ever like you always make everything so poetic and romantic is disgusting. No.

But yes, I think you do have that engine in your head, I guess, of creativity. Like, yeah, the way you ask questions, it's not trivial to do. Like for, it's actually very difficult to do. Like good survey questions. And I mean, we're joking, but like, yeah, almost like poetic, because you have to ask a question in a way that doesn't lead to the answer. Yes. Like, you have to, you have to kind of inspire them to think and then indirectly get at the truth. It's just very, it's an art form, honestly. Yeah, and also in a way where they don't misinterpret the question because it's amazing how any question you think, oh, this is the clearest question possible. No, you're wrong. It has to be even clearer.

Right, willingly or unwillingly, because you also have to defend against that question being criticized later when you publish about it. All of that, you have to think about it all. I think this might be my greatest strength. So I'm not very good at statistics. I'm not like a great at presenting data. But I think probably my greatest strength

is in fact survey design and like question phrasing. Because I've, I have, I have to use so many thousands of polls. And every single one I get people telling me like the way that they misinterpreted the poll. So it's like, it's like, you've become gone through fire. And then again, I am testing the phrasing

so all the time like what happens if you slightly shift phrasing and so I'll do the same question test over time to see how it changes and the way the framing affects the results. So the good and the bad of the cams, you said, good, what was it? I forgot, you mean the freedom. The freedom to be also be creative. Yeah. And that is just it was exhausting.

The site that I was on, the way that it it struck her is that you're ranking on the site and the amount of people that see you and the amount of money you are on you earn is affected by the amount of money that you earn on average over the last 60 days. So if you're streaming and nobody's tipping you, this means that you're going to be dropping down in the rankings, which is going to make it harder in the future. Okay, so the rich get richer in that site. Yeah, so it's very high pressure. Like if you're on, you need to be making money as fast as you can. If you want to continue to make money.

So that was really stressful. It was very mentally taxing. I would do it for a couple hours and just log off and be completely exhausted because you're just like on as hard as you can. And this is why I have a little PTSD around streaming. Like I've considered twitch streaming and I try a little bit and I'm like, I haven't fully integrated the fact that you don't have to be like

maximally entertaining every single second yet. You can actually just chill out and take it slow and nothing bad happens. Yeah. Yeah. You can just enjoy silence. Yeah. Did you feel lonely doing it? I mean, even just streamers feel lonely. I'm gonna do a house of Kim girls Did that make it better or worse?

They're great. I'm still friends with them to this day. Also, it was like a team almost like we're in this kind of together Yeah, so it was like working together and you know stream together and swap our clothes and stuff. It was great. That's what my idea is to. So that's my idea, yeah. And actually on a small tangent, maybe a big tangent, what do you think is it's the recent controversy of Andrew Tate and that he, I think in the past, ran a camping business and he's being accused

of sex trafficking. What do you think, like from your own experience, what do you understand about Injute? Is the good person, is it bad person? Is there something shady about his practices or not? I wish I could answer, but I don't know. I haven't looked into it at all. I've heard people talking about I just haven't bothered to go into it.

It is well known that like when I was doing it back in the day that Eastern European models had something different going on though. It was like a trope about, you know, there's the Eastern European models and then there's everybody else. Does there what, it's like darker or something? Like they do studios and they're lower quality. Which means what? Like a studio is, you go into like a warehouse and then they have set up a little, like things that replicate bedrooms. Yeah. But they're just like stalls.

And then you give, you rent out or you pay the studio percentage of your income. And you can tell when something looks like a studio is like a type of background. Yeah. If you're like watching an ethic, it starts to notice the patterns. So like the standards are lower there and the ethical boundaries are a little looser. Yeah. How far people are treated. It's uncle, we never heard anything about the the goal. So I just knew that it was like lower quality. Like, the goal seemed like they were less into it and like, carried less. How does this all interplay with sex trafficking? So, consensual versus non-consensual?

I would be shocked if there were never any non-consensual camming. I mean, I guess it's like if it were going to happen, surprised if it were in fact, Eastern European models. Based on this is outdated, this is, I'm just thinking of my stereotypes back when I came to life. Sure. So some of that is stereotyped versus collecting good data, right? Yeah, I haven't done data on Camgrol. It's hard, I mean it's hard, it's even hard to get that data. Right?

Yeah. Probably say a really important problem. There's a method that I'm trying that I really like. I designed a survey type which is like asking people who you know. Yeah. Like who do you, who do you know who's done this? And you tell me like, oh, do you know anybody who's a method that I'm trying that I really like. I designed a survey type which is like asking people who you know. Like, who do you know who's done this? And you tell me like, oh, do you know anybody who's a doctor? Do you know anybody who, you know, has had cancer

or like, smokes or? Personally, I mean, yeah, personally. Just do you know anybody? Yeah. And then if you ask a whole about a whole bunch of things, you can calibrate the responses. So like, if you're population, you know, 20% of them are doctors, and then you know the actual amount of doctors, then you can tell like how this is corresponding, like,

what is the visibility of doctors? So you can reconstruct the graph. Basically, yeah. And we can do this with sex trafficking. Of course, people are going to be like, well, sex trafficking is not visible. People, you don't know those. Like, well, then we can ask about other non-visible things that other people don't know that we do have data for.

Like homelessness or being in jail, or like, if you have been like sexually assaulted, a lot of people don't like talking about if they've been sexually assaulted. So you can do a whole bunch of things that are like similarly suppressed in knowledge in some way that we do actually have rates for. And then compare that to the graph when we ask people, do you know anybody who's in sex traffic? Yeah. So again, this is not perfect. I'm not saying this is I can't like. But you can infer things. You can infer things about that graph. But I'm saying we don't have good ways of measuring sex trafficking right now.

Anyway, I did a big deep dive in the research that we have sex trafficking in the Western world. And the actual, like, I read the study and like reports about the studies and it's really pitiful. We have terrible data. It's like, there's just like vague estimations made from one guy in a basement in the 80s.

That's like the basis for like one big study that like a lot of people report on. And so I'm like, okay, so the method I'm proposing, obviously, is not perfect. But like the bar is so low at this point. Well, I wonder also if there's a way to design a survey that gets at the victims of sex trafficking also, which is they presumably have public access to the internet. And I wonder how many of them are distinctly aware that they're victims. Like it's asking the question, when you're inside of a toxic relationship, are you inside of a toxic relationship? I mean, if the toxic relationship is truly toxic, sometimes your mind is fucked

with, right? You don't even know what's true. And so it's interesting if you can design surveys that break. Who can actively sex traffic? Yeah, who can break through that. So basically, get data on how many people are getting sex traffic directly. Oh, yeah, like if you don't frame it, like if you don't say the word sex trafficking, you're like, are you just in a situation where you would. And maybe through the survey, I mean, that's very matter, but through the survey helped them. You know, I did this, this is what started my relationship surveys. So I've done a series of relationships surveys, and that was because I knew somebody in a terrible relationship, and I was like, I bet if she took a survey where she answered questions about

her relationship, but at the end got a score that compared her to everybody else. She'd be like, oh, wait. Everybody else has much better relationships than I do. So that's why I started making the relationship surveys was exactly for that reason. Yeah, that's really, really, really powerful to know that you're not crazy for thinking this is a bad relationship. Right. I think the actual question is, could you do better if you broke up?

I think the thing that keeps most people in their relationships is like, this is the best that I can do. And like, this is normal. And if it were normal, I would say that they are right. Like if you live in a culture where everybody is abusing, they're people in their relationships, then yeah, you mean, what are you gonna do? Break up and then just be alone for the rest of your life.

Most people don't wanna do that. But now comparing yourself to the average is good. To know, to know to know No, your options are at least understand it because you know being normal is not always like this conversation is not always great Meaning this this conversation is anything but normal. Okay, and That was a tangent on a tangent about a niche passion, which is really fascinating that you're playing with those kinds of ideas of survey design. But back to Camming, so what were the cons? What were the negatives of Camming?

Oh, like the exhaustion of just like live, like the high pressure thing. That was probably the worst thing. So what about the interaction with different people, like the dynamics of the interaction with the fans, I guess. I had pretty great time. I mean, obviously wasn't perfect because it's the internet, but I don't know. There's, this is the thing that confuses me a lot

because a lot of women that I know complain about being harassed by men quite a lot. They're like, you know, men are always, you know, group and are asked, you know, you have to be paranoid in the club. People are like, they're always often on you and there's like Jesus Christ get away, and I do not have this experience. like maybe I do but I'm interpreting it

I don't know the things I don't know what causes me to have such a different experience from these women that are like really Feel really Hostile towards men and my guess is that there's some sort of like this very subtle signaling that we're accidentally doing We like no fault of our own. I'm not saying this is a virtue. I'm saying like maybe it's just genetic or the fact that I'm doing fault of our own. I'm not saying this is a virtue. I'm saying, like, maybe it's just genetic or the fact that I've fallen. The women are doing? The women are doing. Yeah. Like that. And it might be just something I'm completely accidentally through no intention, like, happening to signal the thing that is causing

men to not view me as like a desirable target or like a target at all. Well, what about the flip side? Maybe you're not sensitive to the, the, the creepy stare. Yeah, that also might be true. The dude who's like, as I'm dressing you with his eyes, that in a creepy way, that you're just not, you don't worry about it. Or you're not touched, the fear of that, the anxiety of that, the unpleasantness of that just doesn't hit you. I think that's also at least part of it, maybe all of it.

Yeah. I think there's some evidence for it. I think often, like, guys will do a thing to me and I'm just like, that's a thing, cool. I don't have any negative response whatsoever. That's call back to the tire, it's a thing, this is nice. This is that happened. What's good to know that can happen.

I was, I had like a homeless guy like, asked me to come back to my place baby and I was like, this is fun. Yeah. Like I'm like, do you want me to, I love asking men like, are you trying to get me to have sex with you? Just like saying it out front and they'll be like, well, I don't know if they usually they stop for me and they're like, well, uh, yeah, I mean, I would like to have sex and they'll be like, thanks for asking,

but I'm not interested in having sex with you. How, how do you have a good day? I walk away. And that's great. I don't know. I have no issues with that interaction. But maybe this is the kind of thing that other women would find to be really offensive.

So you have that conversation, and it doesn't turn into a threatening feel. No. Like with a homeless guy. No. I've never had that happen, though. But I think there's something. I think I'm doing something.

Again, this is kind of accidental. I'm just m like this, always. And I think I just happen to be like this, this is kind of accidental. Like I'm just, I'm like this always. And I think I just happen to be like this at people and they don't expect it. Like they don't expect me to be like really nice while explicitly asking them what their intentions are. Like directly putting my finger on the thing that like, oh, you're trying to have sex with me. And then also not judging them for it. Yeah. I think this like throws people off a little bit so they don't get aggressive.

Like, oh, you're autistic or something. Even the cloak of anonymity on the internet, you weren't getting specific. Yeah, I just think I'm just not reactive and maybe I'm giving off, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's both, maybe it's a feedback loop. So I had a pretty good experience.

I know not everybody did. Definitely people reported having antagonistic experiences, but when I was coming, I generally really liked people who were really nice to me, had a great time, made friends. So you also did only fans, as you mentioned, and I read on a website, so this is very investigative reporting

that on some months you've made over $100,000 on only fans, how did that feel? Great, really great. I mean like, well actually, because so much of your upbringing, you didn't have money. You had to struggle with the fact you're job and so on. Maybe a good person to ask can money by happiness. Well, I mean, I think you get like a resting set point of happiness, regardless of how much money you have, but money can by being less stressed, I would say.

Is there a lot of variation in the, in the basic rest happiness for humans in general? Like, is that a good thing to think about? I mean, they've done some studies, but again, like, again, I'm not sure. I haven't actually read the studies, so maybe they didn't replicate. We're like, they measured people before and after winning a bunch of money to see if their happiness was higher. I think it's by some measures it was and by some it wasn't. No, I mean, basically almost genetically, so nature nurture, but after year 18, is there

some stable level of happiness that all the environmental genetic factors combined to create so that everything that life throws at you has to face that happiness. You mentioned earlier that I seem to be happy with a lot of stuff. So maybe I have a certain level, do other people have a lower level, some people have higher level? Yeah, definitely. Is that a useful model of human beings? Or is it all ups and downs? Like, is it all, like, there's no stable. Like, I don't know.

Some people just are happier than others in general and other people aren't. But then you also have ups and downs. Like I'm sure you've experienced sadness, sometimes, and happiness the other times. Like if I actually were to integrate, so to have an integral into the, the area under the curve. The area under the curve.

I don't know if I'm different than other people. Maybe I'm just like really focused on the happy moments and maybe feel the down moments most intensely. And maybe that like, on average, it's all the same. Is that possible? I mean, maybe. I just, I don't know.

Like I remember when I was a kid, I'm my mom would call me Paulie Anna all the time. So I was like finding the good and everything. I'd be like, so we'd better have a mom. I was a really happy kid, yeah. Even in the harsh conditions. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think the harshness comes from the bad meaning,

like, and I had good meaning applied to it. You were a stoic. I was, yeah. With another book I'm reading next week, tune in. Marcus Arilis meditations All right Camming 100k so it felt good so It's crazy though, right you can just like

Take clothes off in a creative way with some gnomes and make a hundred thousand Yeah, I mean there's a lot more to it than that, but yeah. What was it? What's the... I mean, marketing. So, with only... With my free cams, I was unusual and that I decided to do outside of the website marketing. I'd like post on Reddit, right?

This was very unusual at the time, but like only fans of structured such that they'd have almost no internal discovery whatsoever. So if you want people to come to your page, you have to go out on the external websites that advertise for yourself directly, very different model. And so this is something I had already been doing and already had practiced in. And so I think I was like already quite advanced. Like I already had an account on Reddit

that was like seven years old at the time. Tons of like karma that means I could post in subreddits. I already been on Twitter for years, you know, like posting actively. So I already had like presences on all these other platforms that really helped with the conversion. Reddit and Twitter. Reddit, Twitter, FetLife, Instagram, TikTok.

And you were still advertising creatively. So like, there's like sexuality, but there's also like creative sexuality and ideas too. Yeah, like one of the really popular ones was, I like molested myself as a, as a mind using a, a, one arm through a jacket. And so the jacket looked like it was. The jacket looked like it's alive. And you know, and that one did really well. Did you like brainstorm with somebody like I recently got to hang out with Mr.

Beast and sit on a session of brainstorming different ideas. I just envision you with like a team brainstorming. All right, how about we try the MIME and the molesting thing? I don't know, it's too edgy. I wish I think the team would have been a lot more fun. But it was just me, like I had an apartment to look like kind of like this, you know, you just sit alone and you're like, well, that would be a good idea.

And I'd seen, you just collect ideas over time, right? Like, I'd seen somebody doing a version of the, like, this animated hand act, like, when I was a kid. And I'd just always stuck in my head. And like, one day I was like, I bet I could do that. And then when I was trying to think of ideas to do as a sex worker, I was like, I don't just try that. And then it turned out to be like, like, really, like quite a viral hit.

Is there, um, is there stuff like you mentioned to edgy? Like Mr. B's tries to keep it PG. Yeah. Do you try to keep it PG 13? Well, with the sex advertising stuff, I mean, it's sex advertising. So it's obviously not PG 13. I don't know these ratings. What is the movie on that? Family friendly. It is X. Like, the one that I'm describing to you at some point like you can see my boob As a boom is X a boob is I guess I thought hard I think you could show a boom BG 30. Yeah, maybe X is like if you got some sort of rhythmic motion going on Maybe that sound but the rhythmic motion not

You can have one or the other we can't have both You can have one or the other, but you can't have both. That's what we hit the X. Okay. Definitely not fail. I mean, with the sex advertising stuff, like guys like Vanilla Shit, guys want basic, hot girl. You can do something like kind of sexing creative, like getting abducted by gnomes, like the self-molestation, right?

But those are still pretty within the normal boundaries. What do you mean guys like vanilla stuff? I mean, most guys like vanilla stuff. What's vanilla stuff? Like, you'll talk about fetish fetishes. I think my origin window on what is vanilla is expanding quickly after following your work, but yeah. I actually have done a lot of studies on what is vanilla.

Like, I've done a couple different surveys where I ask people like how taboo is this thing and I've or like a rating from least to most taboo. The way I don't like I don't appreciate the beauty of vanilla ice cream. You don't? It is really good though. You eat vanilla ice cream. I eat vanilla ice cream, yeah. I think there's just so many more options. It's like the absence of creativity. I mean, if you put it in like some chocolate chips or something. Yeah, they already made a more interesting start. Okay, so what's vanilla?

And why do guys like vanilla? So hot girl doing hot girl things? What like, I'm dressing and then sex. Yeah. The thing that I found was most successful were frames where the man was framed as passive and the woman is active or like for example like oh you know we got assigned to the same bunk at the breeding school or something or like oh the last people on earth right or like oh no you know I like I desperately need somebody to like cure me with this disease and I need semen so it's like in any scenario where the guy just like finds himself such that the woman like desperately needs him for some reason and he doesn't have to do much. That is like typically one of the much more successful things. Like guys like women falling into their lap. What about the power dynamic?

So guys are less than the power dynamics than women are and you can do power dynamics as long as it's like handed to them. Some guys obviously, some guys are like very dominant and like prefer like having to work, but this is the minority. Like if you're trying to do make 100K a month and you're trying to appeal the widest group of people, the most effective advertising, you're not going to be making the most money by being like particularly submissive. So on the camera side, that's your unlike like a escorting or personal relationships you're trying to have an audience. You have a theater full of people.

Like with live camming? Yeah, with live camming. Yeah, it's like a live theater. Is that freaky out? There's just a bunch of people watching. I mean, how do you feel right now? I don't know their watch because it's not live. Yeah, that's true.

It's not live. It might as well be. They could be watching. I feel like there's just the two of us. I don't. And sometimes I imagine there's a third person. Like God. No, not God.

I usually imagine either a guy or a girl or a couple just sitting there for some reason. Usually on the beach and usually high or on some kind of like a marching. It's just like listening passively just kind of looking at the sunset. That's what I imagine. Well, that's really good. Yeah. I think it's useful. Like when I write my blog posts, sometimes I do terribly, but it's the most effective when

I imagine one person that I'm writing to to try to explain. And like having a high couple watching the sunset is maybe really lovely as a calibration. I have to say say it is pretty romantic because I've gotten a chance to meet couples that listen to podcasts together. I don't know why that seems like intensely romantic to me because you're not watching TV together. You're listening to a thing,

I guess sometimes they watch it, but you're listening to ideas together. I don't know. See, it seems like you're going through the same kind of thought process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really beautiful. I put it so it's like you're melding. You're thinking is following the same line for some of how podcast do that more than movies.

I think movies give you a lot more freedom to think about stuff. I feel like your thoughts are aligned. And like especially if the podcast is good, like if it's listening to like a Dan Carlin podcast about history, they you're like on a journey together. Is there's an intimacy to that? Anyway, but I've learned that there's couples do that, you know, hashtag relationship goes. Go ahead. That's what you want with your life with my, yeah. You should make an application. Application?

An application for dating you. I mean, maybe this is more of like my strategy and less yours, but you have like a wide enough audience that might work. It's not, okay, let's just go there. So you put together an application of like, people to have casual sex with you, I think.

You have had that. And also dating, yeah. And also dating and relationship. I'd love to, so what is in that application? Because like, you know, I'm sure there's quite a lot of people that would like to date you or to sleep with you, but finding the person, I mean, depends on what your goals I guess relationship would be an open relationship for you.

Yes. Right. Like for me, I guess it's more intensely selective because it's like a monogamous relationship and a committed one. Like, like I'm swinging for the, like for like long term. I'm not like weirdly obsessed with long term, but it's like, I would like to have one girl for the rest of my life. But finding that, I feel like applications

will not get to that. I feel like there's some aspect of the magic of the serendipity of it, of meeting people in strange places and so on. I just personally have noticed that like fame has not made that process easier. I mean, like if you could, you know, if there's two rooms and one of them, it's like a random population of hot women and the other one is a random population of hot women, but all of them definitely are monocupists and are looking for a long term committed relationship. Yeah. Like which room would you rather go into? Like if you're looking for a mate. Yeah, well, but see, I guess my are more that's that's a really strong point,

but my preferences are represent the majority probably right? Because most women want monogamous relationships. Yeah. So like it's I'm okay with either option. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because like statistically speaking. By really we can apply it to like a bunch of other things. Yeah, and I'm just this is just a problem if you have like high if you have a high volume to filter through and you like you don't know like it's a good of other things. Yeah, and I'm just, this is just a problem if you have like high, if you have a high volume to filter through

and you like, you don't know, like it's a good like initial filter. Like you can take it from like a thousand people to 20 people and then go to dates with them. But the filter is so anti-romantic. Like what? This is true, this is not the romantic narrative that you're very prone to.

If I feel like, how did you two meet? Well, she passed the three filters I set up and I mean, but it's also but also can you put into a Survey the things that you're interested in I mean, I definitely think about this a lot with hiring like like teams engineers and so on But with engineers, you're okay losing truly special engineers because you have to filter

because there's like thousands of applications. Like it feels like, it feels like I worry that you would miss the thing that actually, because so much of it is chemistry, so much of it is like the magic, you know. But the thing is you're missing it anyway. Like, yeah, you're missing it.

It's all you can just run it. And then in addition, try some of those people. And then but then go on the dates that you were going to go on with anyway, regardless. It's just the thing that helps like pull someone out of the crowd. Like this, I, I dated a guy from my survey. I'd ran the survey. I assigned point values to the questions. Yeah.

I wanted to date with like the top couple people. and then one of them was like, and I'm still dating him to this day. It was awesome. And I would never, I would never would have gone on a date with him without the survey. Can you, if from memory, or we can look it up, do you remember what kind of questions were on the survey? I asked a couple different categories. I asked about basic life stuff.

So what kind of relationships like monochrome versus polyamory? Do you want kids? Where you want to live? Basic things that you need to be compatible. And then I asked sexual compatibility, like various preferences. And then I had a section about personality. I tried to ask questions that would do

the most effective filtering. So what are ways that I can't give people what they need that maybe they really want? I'm not very outdoorsy and it's just very common a lot of people are being outdoorsy so I asked the question like how much do you value someone else that you're dating being outdoorsy if they might yes I was like okay we probably I should lie down for a couple man but that doesn't probably make that really difficult because can't they find somebody for the outdoorsy stuff? Yeah, they could. I mean, this isn't, but if you're going to have somebody, it's like nicer to have them be more compatible than less. But you were a little bit,

like in terms of sexual compatibility, you were able to, like yourself were enough to know what preferences you have. Like you can. I think so. I think that wouldn't help a lot with the escorting, like the escorting helped a lot with knowing my preferences. But there's like out of the giant pool of different preferences, you haven't help a lot with the escorning. Like, the escorning helped a lot with knowing my preferences. But there's like, out of the giant pool

of different preferences, you haven't like a subset that's clearly defined for you. Okay, like like dominant submissive. Yeah, power dynamics stuff. Power dynamics stuff. For that. Okay. In the not just sexual blame relationship too,

like that was that in the survey? I don't like the power dynamics in relationships. I didn't have to look. No, defining them in like making it clear in a survey? I don't like the paradigm in relationships. I didn't have to look. No, defining them in like making it clear in a survey, like asking a question about power dynamics in a relationship. I don't think I asked about power dynamics in relationships.

Okay. Because I just assume most people don't. And there's a lot of things that kind of like. Most people don't, you're putting together a survey, a systematic survey to understand compatibility, wouldn't power dynamics inside the relationships that naturally emerge often be part of the question or is that is that hard to question because it naturally emerges in the camera? Well, the thing is like a lot of questions sort of overlap in demographic and if you're making a survey you want to have the minimum possible

questions that give the maximum possible like filtering information. So wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. But that purpose of that survey wasn't to do a good research study. It was to select one subject that you could take. So this part of it's good. Like you want to most efficiently filter out. Because one, like you get more people taking the survey, the fewer questions you have, which is good for finding a mate. Like if you have 5,000 men take the surveys better than 1,000 men take. Don't you want men that would be patient enough

and dedicated enough to look? Yeah, but like what if you got like a high powered man who's like on his lunch break, right? So it's like, like a billionaire's too busy just flipping through. Yeah. And the guy that I did was, he took the survey, he was waiting for the pizza to come out of the oven.

And so it was important that it was short. And so he wanted me to finish it. And so he had a poor or literally pizza coming out. He was literally waiting for pizza and he saw the thing, it's like a guess I'll just fill the survey really fast and changed our lives. So romantic. It's for me, this is my kind of romance, I'm really into it. But you could be efficient with surveys by making sure your questions don't overlap. So for example, if somebody is very polyamorous,

they're very unlikely to be interested in a traditional man works in the job in the woman's stays home and raises the kids' kind of relationship. Because polyp people just generally don't do that. And so if I'm asking about polyamory, it's sort of kind of already covers a thing. And so if I have a whole bunch of questions, I can kind of try and gillate a bunch of implicit kinds of questions that I haven't directly asked about. So this is why I didn't ask directly about power dynamics because like from the rest of the questions that are in my survey, like I can pretty accurately predict whether or not you're going to be interested in power dynamics. I'm afraid, yeah, I'm trying to think as you're talking, I get it. That's really interesting that you did that. Also, maybe not for the effectiveness of finding a partner, but for just exploring the actual process of human sexuality of the search, this complicated optimization process

we're all engaging in on the landscape of happiness that seems to be not even a different true bull function. It's a giant nonlinear mess. Okay. But, like, for me, I don't think I would be able to design that survey. I would like, buy it too strongly. Like, I would probably prefer women

that have read Dusty F's gear, something like that. Like, that would be a filter for me, right? Yeah. But like, that's a horrible filter. Because there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of amazing people that have never, they don't give a shit about reading, or they don't give a shit about reading Russian literature, or they don't give a shit about, but they're amazing and passionate and creative and all

cut, and some other dimension that you might completely miss. But you were like, I wonder if there's any, basically, just saying compatibility, like hard lines that you know statistically is just going to be an issue. Yeah, I mean, you wait this a lot more. Yeah. But there's also like preferences. Like, if you have a woman who's totally equal and she's rather the thing that you like for two, it's another woman who's also identical, but like she hasn't rather the thing that you like, like you probably like very slightly prefer the one that I have. But you don't know if the identical, yes, yes, but like you can't through survey get the identical. Like you don't know. Sure, but you can kind of like, like do a whole bunch of weight. So like the person that like I ended up going on a date with,

he and did not answer like correctly to a lot of the survey questions, but he didn't have to. Like he was just overall. Overall the weights were like he just tended to be more in the direction. Was there a text-based fill-in like survey? But like, sorry, paragraph like. No, you ought to avoid that if you're dealing with like large amounts of data. No, why not? Because you have to feel, oh, oh, interesting.

Interesting. Like, I'm different. Just like, first of all, you do keyword searches. That's very fair. The second is all you do. You do machine learning models that, like, first of all, you can do crude metrics, like the length of how long they've written, right? And it could flag certain things. Yeah, it's actually pretty easy to I've looked at like for hiring, I've looked at like thousands of applications

really quickly. Like you can really, the human brain is really interesting, especially like if you visually highlight certain information for yourself, keywords or again, with machine learning models sentiment, you can highlight different parts that will catch your eye better than not. I can go through just a huge number of applications. Are you telling me if I learn machine learning, I can process dating survey applications better? Yes. No, like textual. Yeah, I can have them write things in.

Like this is like a new way of. That would be, yeah, that would be so really good. I think that would, so the really nice aspect of text input, like long form text input, multiple long form text input based on an interestingly phrased question, is you get to learn how to make a better survey. I think you would appreciate that.

Like you start to see how they're actually interacting with these questions. Like I asked certain questions like just to see how people think is it better to work smart or better to work hard? Or is it ever-ocated, but very close friend? Like I'll ask questions like this that don't really have a right answer, but I just want to see how they think, or is truth more important than loyalty? And I get their long form answer. And you get to see the reasoning process. Yeah.

The reveals so much, not just about the person, but about the kind of questions I want to actually be asking, they have nothing to do with truth or loyalty, but like how to get a good engineer with like very specific questions. But I think it's really useful to get text input. I have done text input usually with beta surveys. So I usually do beta surveys before I do the real survey. What's the beta survey? Like I do like a shorter version or it depends on what I'm doing, but like a different version of the survey that I have people take before I release. I use their information from the initial survey to inform the questions that I ask in the real survey.

And I haven't actually, recently, but I used to do a lot of like the text-based questions to see for similar, although I don't think I relied it on a quiet as heavily, and if I introduce machine learning, I think it would be a lot more efficient. I love that you're also doing like, you're writing scripts and stuff,

like you're doing some like, like you're doing it doing some like Like statistical analysis using Python mostly. Yeah. Yeah. I had to learn Python for This which is the best way to learn Python and the best reason to learn machine learning is to solve actual like It's probably I can't be motivated. I'm not motivated to learn something unless there's an actual curiosity I have and I have to learn it and to solve it I was trying to avoid learning coding for so long But eventually it was with my data set became too large. I couldn't work with it with anything else so Oh Python it is you know, it's also an interesting data set that you're probably interested in a little bit is like Twitter itself

Right, I don't know if you've I've played with the Twitter API a lot. Can you just get? That download that I'm just I'm stuttering now because I don't know if you've, I've played with the Twitter API a lot. Can you just get the download? I'm just, I'm stuttering now because the Twitter, you just download Twitter? No, there's a lot of Twitter. Twitter? So Twitter is a social network with a bunch of people. They're interacting a lot.

Like, there's like, I don't know, the numbers insane, the number of interactions. But there's different ways to interact, to get data from Twitter. There's streams, you can look at, but it depends on what you're interested in. You can do results for searches, you can look at individual tweets and get entire, which to me is super interesting, the entire tree of different conversations that they're applies, which might be very interesting for you, because it's much harder to ask rigorous questions, which you do with your polls,

but you could see how divisive certain things are. You're probably just like a sentiment. Like calibrators to figure out exactly what questions you should be asking. Yeah, and also highlight interesting anecdotal things when two people freak out at each other and just argue like a thread that goes on for like a thousand messages that you might never be

even aware of this happening, because Twitter doesn't like surface that. Like it would be, Twitter doesn't make it easy for you to like visualize what the hell is going on even with your own social network. Like if you post something that's controversial, it gets a large amount of attention. You can't clearly visualize everything that's going on. It's blurry amorphous.

You're just kind of looking through the fog at different replies. They have graphs of networks. They have the data for the graphs. Yeah, so you can do a reconstruction yourself. Oh, that's so cool. And then you have different levels of access in terms of how many queries you can do. That is really cool. And now because there's like Elon, there's a lot of sort of revolutionary stuff happening at Twitter, I think you could literally sort of push for innovation there.

Like there's a aggressive innovation happening. So in terms of requesting stuff for the API, you could do all that kind of stuff. I think Twitter is just a fascinating platform for the escalation. It sounds for studying for me. It's interesting. What makes for a healthy conversation? That term has been used, but it's interesting how conversation to me is fascinating, how conversations break down, and not like how the virality of drama or conflict or disagreement, how that evolves when a large number of people are involved, when a large number of misinterpretation of statements is involved in text-based, and with some anonymity thrown in,

I feel like there's a lot of study that you can be done there. I mean, to just probably not great at it, as it stands, because it's necessarily short, you can quote-tree things out of context, etc. But we should understand that. At a large scale, you should be able to study that kind of thing. Oh, yeah.

What was your casual sex survey? I actually haven't looked at it in a while. I think I just asked people about a whole bunch of fetishes because you don't want to be obvious about yours because when people are going to hijack it to try to tell you that they like what you like. So you want to be obscure. So how do you design a survey where you're testing for a thing

but you're still obscure about the thing you're trying to ask about? So you still see it as a survey. Yeah, yeah. Like an application. Because I think it tweeted saying, like, I'm thinking of just like showing up to send for this, going saying, is anybody open for casual sex? Something like this.

Am I a Mr. Render? Maybe escroding, I'm not sure. Oh, for escro-sized, I'm not sure. Which is similar. Like, I kind of used escording as the way to have casual sex now. Okay, so let's talk about escording. So you wrote about escording in your blog post.

escording was good for me. How did you get into escording? I was working at like a quit camping because I was burned out and I was like trying to work at a friend's startup and it was Hard for me. I don't it's difficult for me to work on projects that are not my projects And so I was like, hey, fuck it. I want to go back to sex work. I want to make more money But I don't want to Cam anymore because I'm burned out something like well, let's try I have a friend who's an escort I'm like, let's try that and so we had a call. She outlined the basics for me, and then I put up some ads and started working.

What's the basics of escorting? How's that work? If you want to get started escorting, so just say, I would like to. I would like to. We're going to want you to get some nice photos. So you probably have those. First of all, you assumed I haven't done it before.

How rude. How do you? Yeah, well, recreation, I would like to do a professional, I suppose. So if I wanted to do it, if I wanted to do it, I really wanted to step up my game. How would I do it? Yeah, well, you got the whole tutorial. Recreational escorted, I guess, just okay. Okay. Not meaning like, like, Okay, okay. Not meaning like selling products on Etsy versus doing a startup. Yeah.

Well, I mean, Escorty is kind of all, so selling products on Etsy. No, like selling a lot of products on it. Like I'm all you. You've like a dad. Yeah. Like a small handcrafted. It's a small handcrafted doll. Yeah.

That's funny. Was this mass manufacturer? Okay, if you want a mass manufacturer, you're asking. I just feel like I haven't been getting, you know, I've been undervaluing my services. And I would like to really step up. I think you could really just like grease some marketing gears

and be sure to. Yeah, I mean think you could really just like grease some marketing gears and be true to you. Yeah, I mean, so some of this is marketing. So like, I guess I want to like, no, is it similar to camming in that way? Like is it, you're basically advertising yourself and you're, like the marketing, they have all the creativity that you mentioned before,

all of that. Yeah, I found escrowing to be pretty easy because escrowing is not highly competitive. For example, camming is highly competitive because the thing that I outlined before, you know, the amount of money that you make determines your ranking. And you can also go and see other girls. You can see what they're doing. So if a girl figures that incredible strategy for making money, it's like two seconds before

that strategy, per little threats, and to everybody else. So it's very fast pace and really tough. But escrowing, you don't get to see what other girls are doing. You can look at their websites, but you don't know what they're doing with clients at all. You can look at their rates, but you don't know what their volume is. So you don't actually know what is successful

and what isn't very much. So I think there's much less evolution of marketing through this process. And so I came in with my aggressive marketing skills from the camgirl. I think that really helped. I did very well as an escrow. I just came in like made a fantastic website. I knew how to do the ads right. And what was the finding people? I guess it's also like finding the right kind of customer. Yeah. The right kind of client. I got like in a lot of trouble

for this recently in the sex workers fear because I said that if you raise prices, you're more likely to encounter clients that aren't going to abuse you. Like it's safer. Yeah. They did not, they said that I was being classist, you know, implying that poor people are more violent. But to be fair, if you are a guy and you wanna be violent towards a woman,

you're probably not gonna be paying her a lot of money. You're probably gonna be like, you're the kind of person likely who's going to haggle a lot, because you don't respect her. But anyway, that aside, it's a little pet peeve for me. Yeah, I just started charging 800 an hour and then pretty rapidly raised it to 1200 and then a while after that raised it to 1400.

Well, the interesting thing you mentioned in my extensive research, you used to do 1200 to 1400 an hour and then you said the year thinking of jumping back in at a rate of 2400 the first hour Yeah, and I think 900 each success of hour. That's interesting That's like that's I mean to me that's really interesting like the first like why it's like a lot of the first hour Yeah, oh, it's just because This depends on how you want to incentivize like a lot of the first hour. Yeah. Oh, it's just because it depends on how you want to incentivize like the amount of hours.

So if you have to pay a lot for the first hour, but not very much for the success of, you're more likely to buy like a longer period of time. And usually I find that clients who buy a longer period of time are nicer to you. I don't know how like a great theory for why that is, but there's more likely like take you didn't get to know you first, and I just enjoy that a lot more.

I enjoy like like knowing Like a date, you know, yeah, so it incentivized the the long-form date dynamic versus like Not that's really interesting That's really interesting. How does money Change the dynamic just basic human dynamic of interacting for free versus for money. I think about that a lot, just talking rich people. It's like you usually get paid for your time and you're doing this for free. What's the difference? Is there a difference really or no?

It depends a lot. When I was doing it full time, it was my only source of income. It changed quite a lot because I was really in some device to have repeat customers. So I'm like, okay, if I'm my primary interaction with you, it's like, have you hire me again. I'll do whatever that takes to make that happen. And so if I have to like laugh at jerks that I don't find funny or like, be like more adoring of your penis

than I actually genuinely feel, like that's one I'm gonna express. And obviously it's to some degree like titrated, you know, more adoring of your penis than I actually genuinely feel, like that's why I'm going to express. Yeah. And obviously to some degree, like, titrated, you know, like it's unpleasant to force yourself to like something that you don't. So like, I would actually like not see clients again that I didn't want to, but it's just some degree

there was a sort of self suppression going on, which I think is the way it works in any sort of customer service job. Like you want the customer to leave happy. So you just make sure that you are happy the whole time and you're like, ah, really enjoying the other person. But so recently, when I've kind of dabbled in it since baking money through other means,

where I don't need the money, it's more like a fun side thing that like I said, it's fulfilling the role of casual sex for me. So I don't have to do it. This is not my primary job. I just want sort of a good excuse to have sex with somebody and the money is like a great filter for me. So I don't have to do it. This is not my primary job. I just want sort of a good excuse to have sex with somebody and the money is like a great filter for that. And so in that case, I think so the money is a bit, yeah, okay, the money is basically a filter for somebody who's taking this interaction seriously. Yeah, it also, so there's an interesting psychological thing

where I have difficulty having casual sex with somebody because some part of my brain, which I assume is quite female, is doing some evaluation of status, and whether or not this is going to damage my reputation by having sex with them. So, like, if you found out that I went and like had random sex with a homeless man, you might be like, wow, that says something about Aila, like maybe she's, you know, trashy, or she just has no standards for who she's gonna fuck. But if, and so, some part of me is continually anxious. I'm like, does this mean I have no standards if I decide to have casual sex with you? Like, what are people going to think? And so if you introduce money, it takes away that anxiety.

I don't have to worry about it because it's like, oh, of course, Aila would have sex with that person. They paid her. Like, this is not an indication of the kind of mate that she can get. This is just an indication of like a business transaction. And this allows me to enjoy casual sex so much more when somebody pays me for it. To the degree that like I almost view it as a kink. And so I'm using it to replace casual sex now.

Occasionally, I'm like, it's paying me a little bit to erase things, I already, and I'll have a fun time. I mean, can you see dinner like that or something like that if the person pays for dinner? Or like, so if any money is involved, if it's a kink, then you can just use it. And you buy a coffee to Starbucks, it's like, all right. Right, but it has to be plausible.

Like, you have to like trick my brain into like having it actually be incentivizing for me. To coffees, like a couch, you know, or something? Yeah, like the homeless man bought me a coffee and then I sucked his dick. Like, that's not cool. All right, so I don't know. No shade of homelessness, by the way,

like I've been friends with a lot of them. I'm just using like some sort of stereotype of yeah. So you like it has to be plausible where you could trick your my interesting. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And so that's different. So now now with in this sort of frame, I am still like I'm accepting money, but still much more expressive of my actual preferences. So like I before when I would start escrowing full time, I was suppressive. And now, I'm like, you know, I'm doing this for me.

So we're going to make sure that I have a good time. And so I'm much more demanding. And then you're having more fun because you're not pretending, like laughing at a joke or something like that. That sounds terrible. Sounds like it. I mean, it's also social. I mean, I guess I would, what I do that,

like when you first meet people, like strangers and so on, there's some aspect of like, nice cities, but I don't know, intimacy, like real intimacy requires like getting past the nice cities. Like laughing at somebody's joke when it's not funny, feels like anti-intimacy. Yeah, but I laugh at so many jokes automatically. It's interesting, because I don't mean to.

I'm not trying to be fake. But if I'm in a group of people, and somebody makes a joke in every last, I laugh even before I'm checking within myself. Do I genuinely enjoy this joke? So it's like, I don't know. The degree that I am sort of just like a result of social programming in all cases,

that when I'm with a client, back when I was doing it full-time, it doesn't feel significantly different. It just felt like a different version of myself. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, to that degree, to the degree, you don't feel like you're going against your nature. Yeah, it was very rare that I actually felt like I was going against my nature. What about the market of how much to charge? So you 20, 2400, like how transparent is that market? Is there like a market? How much can you sell when you're charging that much? Yeah, no, like what

what are the competitors? Like if this, like what do you just think that what because you said it's a lot of is a bit more shrouded in mystery. I guess a more confidential like do you have some transparency to the the market? What the competitors are? So survey of escorts, only in mystery, I guess more confidential. Do you have some transparency to the market with the competitors? I think I have a survey of S-court, it's only like 130. I'm trying to... And the median was around like $300, I think, an hour. Oh wow. Something like that with a very long tail at the top end. I'm trying to remember what the... I also asked the market calculate the amount they made per month. I think it was like six or $7,000 a month. I needed double check that one, but I charge 50 bucks an hour.

Charge 50 bucks an hour. You should raise your rates. Yeah, nobody I give a really shitty hand job. All right. But usually the the rates are around like if you want a median escort in a big city, it's usually four to six hundred. A city. So the or sorry four to six hundred. In a big city, but like smaller cities you charge the right school lower That's so fascinating. What's like the most you've ever seen somebody charge? I I think I am you're like But at this point is because I'm post work like can, I can just put it in a state number. This like, like,

this the fact that you're sort of, like a sexuality expert, like a research and so on, like your mind is fascinating as well, and you're a bit of a celebrity, does that plan to it? Yeah. Or do you feel the celebrity now? Like when you're with people?

Yeah, absolutely. Usually if people are interested in hanging out with me, it's because of that. But that's different. Like I think besides the fun part, like this is a kink as opposed to this is a job. Like with this is a job usually the high end is closer to 2000 an hour.

Like the very high end. Have clients ever fallen in love with you? I think so, yeah. I think it doesn't, happens to me much less than most other people due to like the thing that I think we were talking about before. Which is what? Where like, you know, you give off vibes,

maybe like subconscious vibes. But they have fallen in love or not, but not as often. I think I, something about my signaling indicates that people should not fall in love with me because I don't think it happens very much. And it happens a lot with other women, but I know. But I have occasionally had, the thing is, it's hard for me because I try to be as vulnerable as I can

in a connection with a client. And I do really like some of them. I still remember some of them very fondly, and I'm like, I hope they're doing well. And some of them are really profound. One guy saw me because he found out he was dying of cancer and he was like, I don't wanna die without seeing someone.

I'm like, Jesus Christ, that's such a, I don't know, I'm very touched by many of the people that I saw. So there's like deep intimacy there. Yeah, I know that it's brief and I know that it's like kind of weird, but like there's like a really glimpsen to somebody's soul when you get to be intimate. And I think this is especially true for men because a lot of men don't have like a way to

be really vulnerable in front of anybody, but like if you're in bed with a woman that you find to be attractive, you can sort of let loose a little bit more. So they can become vulnerable in general quickly? Yeah, and I really like that. I like being as vulnerable as I can to match it. Like I'm not forcing myself or anything, but like, I just feel a new it and like, notice how like beautiful the person was and like, feel grateful for

being able to be in this intimate experience with them. And that was so wonderful. Does it ever hurt to say goodbye? No, but I think that's as unique to me because I like being alone a lot. Even with my friends who are like dearly, I'm like happy not seeing them. Because I don't like making facial expressions very much. But I do miss some of my clients. Wait, sorry. What does make facial expression have to do with saying goodbye?

Well, if you are not with somebody in person, you don't have to make facial expressions anymore. Oh, you can just think about them. Yeah, you can just sit there totally blank face and then have all of the emotions that you want. Are you telling me? Do you have this thing too? It's not a thing, but like you're on camera.

Yeah. So I feel feelings, but people usually want you, like social interaction as such that like you probably want me to show feelings on my face. Yeah, right? Good job. Yeah, there you go. So like I definitely, there could be just an introvert thing where you like have a vibrant inner world that you forget to show to the rest of the world. I'm also scared of social interaction and I just have a lot of anxiety about interacting with these eternal worlds. I'm kind of surprised to hear that because when you talked about finding the light and everything and everything is fun, I usually don't associate that with having not very much anxiety.

Well, because I have the... we mentioned that earlier, I just appreciate the beauty in the world when I observe it, but then when I'm interacting with others, I have a very harsh, self-critical aspect to my brain that says like, you're going to fuck this up, you're going to fuck up this interaction. You're going to fuck up the beauty that's there, if I'm sort of being fragile and vulnerable for a moment, one of the things I'm afraid of, I guess, so much love from people that listen or even like reach out, like you said through the survey, like women and so on. I'm afraid that, yeah, you know, you admire me because you don't know me,

but you won't admire me once you know me. So that's self-critical. But it's a silly, I mean, you get older, you're like, yeah, okay. Like, I'm able to step away and objectively look at myself and it's like, there's no, this is, you're fine, you're good. It's like, but it's still the part of the brain that you can't just shut off. This is like, what would fucking up in this conversation look like?

Like, it doesn't have to be rational, but I'm curious if there's a specific thing. A lot of it is just a feeling like an amorphous fear of failure, what it would actually look like. what it would actually look like. Maybe because we're talking about sexuality, me not being able to eloquently explain the world you I have, and why I appreciate,

I appreciate it. That would make me feel like a failure because that would make me feel like, maybe you don't know what you're doing, right? Because sex sexuality and not sexuality, but she's even romantic relationships are really important to happiness to the really important to me And I'm not sure like the conception of love I have romantic love is like fully Made rigorous so especially when I'm talking to you that thinks very rigorously about a lot of these topics, I'm not sure I've thought about them a lot. I feel them. I interact with the world in this base of feelings. Maybe I'm almost afraid to be very rigorous for these kinds of thoughts. And so I think the failure would be like I would be confronted with the fact that I can't explain

What makes me happy that could be a failure and that could be just a bunch of other failures another big failure is like Not I think you're a really brilliant person and a lot of folks I know no Admari your work as well, and so like for me not to Be part of highlighting that brilliance would be a failure, definitely. Like, because some other people might feel like notice the discrepancy or something? Yeah, with no, no, no, that's not other people, just my personal feeling. I see. My personal feeling.

And the other is like jokes, because we're talking about sex, right? So for me, it's fun to just joke around, but you also have to tread carefully because like it's a weird surface because like, you know, even I already feel bad about making a joke for 50 bucks for a hand job that's crappy by me. But I think,

I think sometimes you just gotta go for it. I went for it. I kind of flat in his face, but that's the thing of the conversation. I think there's this fear, if you become scientific about something, you'll figure out that your feelings are unjustified and then you'll experience this horrible thing where like, ah shit, I'm afraid of this, but I'm sort of being forced to by my logical mind to believe this thing. Which I don't think, I don't think this is true at all. I think, like, your feelings are there for a reason. Like, they're for a good reason. And like logic

or like rigorous analysis or something should be dedicated to figuring out why it's there. Not that, not by, not to like suppress it or tell it it shouldn't be there. What do you think is more important to just life, to reason versus emotion, not life, to what makes us human, I guess. My romantic narrative answer to this, which is not regress at all, is curiosity. Curiosity. Yeah. What is curiosity? That's such a middle. Curiosity is like both emotion and reason, right? Yeah. So it's like this pull, because reason is the tool you use to figure out the puzzle.

And then curiosity is the pull towards the puzzle. Yeah, because I don't like the world's use that pit, like emotion and rationality is opposite each other. They feel like beautiful parts of like cohesive whole. Yeah. Like if you're doing rationality to the extent where you're like suppressing some emotional reactions you have, then I think you're doing it wrong. You're like missing a big part of it.

Like it should be like integrated. It should be like part of like one unified flow. Like the things that you like if you want to be in a romantic committed relationship for the rest of your life, then this is like beautiful and good and the kind of like logic that you're using to make sense of the world should be fitted into that correctly. I think it's really cool. Like anytime you have sort of like an internal at odds thing with it, I think you're like using some sort of force to suppress one or the other. Like, oh, you've not allowed to reason about this or I'm not allowed to feel about that. And that feels harsh to me. And I think curiosity is the

solution. Like if you're if you're simply just calmly curious, oh, why do I feel like that? Let's go find out that's so cool, right? Like you didn't use logic and your feelings to like discover the answer. Do you sometimes, because you do this kind of technique, which is interesting,

and I've mentioned it to others, you'll sometimes step away from like a third person perspective and describe the feeling you're feeling. Or like even just the situation, you'll step out and talk about what is happening here. In the conversation itself. First of all, what is that? Do you find that to be useful? It's very interesting.

It feels raw and honest. The danger of it seems like you escape the actual experience of it though. So that's the trade-off. You make it intellectual, right? Is it though intellectual to do that? I mean, maybe it is. I don't mean to. No, maybe that's the wrong word. You can make it intellectual, but you can still continue the same flavor because you're not fully disengaging from the conversation. You're just creating an extra metal layer. I think exploring the emotional reaction to what's going on in the moment.

Yeah. In some way it's actually making it stronger or enriching it, like making a more, giving a more context, giving a deeper understanding. I think there's like a way of going meta that is a flinch move. Like, oh, I noticed that we're doing this thing. I'm gonna name it. And I think the thing that I described earlier, like when the homeless guy approached me

and asked, you know, can you go home with me? And I was like, oh, you tried to have sex with me right now. Like what I was doing was like a meta move. Like you're stepping outside, like, and like, okay, what is the purpose of this conversation and we explicitly identify it? And in that case, Like what I was doing was like a metamate. Like you're stepping outside and like, okay, what is the purpose of this conversation? And we explicitly identify it. And in that case, I think that is sort of like a flinch move. Like I'm not telling him my emotional response.

I'm not like being fully present. I'm like sort of identifying it as a way to subvert what's going on. And I absolutely think this is a possible thing. But I usually try to be aware of that myself. It depends on the purpose of what's going on. That guy, because that is actually, like a chest move you did,

you had a purpose for that chest move, but the flirtation is on. Like he could have, like, done a better move that would make you like curious. Like, huh. Like interesting, because you had an agenda with that, but he could have changed your mind. Like he could have, with a few words,

because you just created extra layers, extra entry points. If he'd gotten more meta, might've been like, okay, well, no, I am gonna sleep with you. Exactly. See, there is something, yeah, that's AIDS into the chemistry of the conversation

when you do that meta. I really enjoy it. It's like a rare, I forget, did you or not? I forget who, I've had a few people do that with me, like just in conversation. And I feel like you were involved somehow because I've met you before, somewhere. I don't know if we were,

or you were just in, or maybe it was just a couple parties together. Maybe it was just like a bunch of people that kind of play with the same, or like a conference or something. It's just a practice explicitly of people that kind of play with the same or like a conference. It's just a practice explicitly dedicated towards that. What's circling? Circling is like a thing they can do.

Yeah, I think we know we have some mutual circleers in our networks here. What's circling? I don't remember what's circling. I'm going to describe it horribly because it's like one of those things that's difficult to describe unless you experience it, like kind of like drugs. But it's something like you sit around, there's like kind of guidelines for the conversation where you talk about the present moment.

And you're like honest about your experiences as much as you can be. And if you don't wanna be honest, then you say, I don't wanna be honest. And you're like commitment to connection. So you're like, you're here to like actually connect with the other person, understand them, and be understood.

You're not supposed to like project. So if you're like having analysis about the other person, you own it, you're like analysis about the other person, you own it. I'm experiencing you as this, and then you check is the true. Or like- Are you supposed to be almost like converting it towards the thing you're thinking, like constantly?

If it feels right in the moment, you can. The thing is, it's very amorphous. It's almost like creating a magical sensation. I've seen some very good circles, really high skill circle. And I feel like I'm on drugs when that happens. It's very, very to see. Is it feel honest somehow? Yeah, very honest. Like, like right now in this moment, I feel like kind of like nervous energy because I'm talking you. And this is a unique situation. And like, I want you to think I'm cool. I want every listening to me to think I'm cool. But want every listed me to think I'm cool.

But I'm also having some sort of delight at being able to express in this way and like some admiration for how you like set up and built this thing that I can be a part of. And all of these things are sort of in my body right now is this sort of vibrating high thing. I remember like in the party setting because I've had to talk to a few people. I felt like it was going sexual very quickly. Okay, I don't know if you remember this, but the first time I met you, I didn't know who you were, I just heard, I knew I'd heard your name, like you just your name and I think I've heard people

discuss that. And I was in the middle of a very sexual conversation with another woman. Oh, you were. Yeah, I was. And you just like turned around and left very shortly afterwards. And I thought it was very, Oh, was that a listening unit on the conversation?

I think it was like, I was talking to her and you were just kind of like right there. And so we introduced ourselves and then we continued on with the conversation. You were like standing there and listening. Yeah. I don't think I would have left the cut. So it's funny. You probably interpreted it in a different way.

I interpreted it as you like not wanting to listen to like graphic sexual stuff. Was it like super graphic? I don't know. I was asking her about I was doing it. I was interviewing her about her fetish basically. Oh, yeah. I don't think I would have walked away from that. Okay.

I would have been like, you're just, oh, interesting, because I don't often see people having a deep interview about fetishes. Like I wouldn't even be, listen, I'm like, Jane Goodall here. Like, I'm not like, I'm not afraid of sexuality or something like that. I just have certain values in terms of like monogamy and so on. But I think sexuality is really beautiful. Yeah, I don't think, yeah, I can't imagine myself walking away from that conversation.

So many of us was like called you or something. I didn't remember exactly how it worked. I just remember thinking later on. Or maybe I thought I was intruding. Oh, maybe. Because I was kind of drunk. So I know I probably was very drunk. OK.

I would like to actually have footage of that conversation so we can actually interpret what actually happened because it's probably I mean It you know human interactions are funny like that. They can They can happen for all kinds of reasons Have you ever fallen in love with the client? No, I mean like in tiny ways like micro loves Like have you ever fallen love love? Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it means but probably the thing that other people say when they say fall in love is probably something I've experienced What do you think they mean? What is love?

I know no, it's a fantastic question I think so love is one of those words that refers to like a billion different concepts And I think we maybe should just taboo the term to have a better understanding of what we're referring to. Because there's things like feeling intense attachment. There's something feeling like soulfully aligned. There's like sexual attraction. There's like excitement.

Are you talking to me and saying we should taboo the term love in this conversation? How dare you? No. Okay. Romantic love. To make it flourish and to lots of other new definitions. Okay, thank you. For you. That was funny. It sounds like you're censoring the most important word. This is like 1984 all over again. Okay. Also on the book reading list.

Oh, okay. Listen, no, romantic love like a deep intimacy for somebody like a deep connection with the human being that is also, I mean, yeah, with polyamory it's tricky and your relationship with sex is also, sex is also tricky. So like what's the difference between a deep friendship and a, and a, a friendship that also has a sexual component? I'm being very confused about that one. I did a lot of LSD. I was like, what, the blind between romantic relationships and everything else kind of got blurred.

I was like, oh, I'm just like in intimacy. And some intimacies mean that you spend your life together more and have sex, but like the same basic thing is there. Like you're seeing someone for who they are. Do you think you can be, if you're heterosexual, do you think you can be really deeply close to friends with a guy and not have sexual relationships with him? I assume it's possible. Like if anything is ever possible and probably yeah. Like everything is possible. Time travel is possible. Quantum mechanics makes

every traveling fast on the speed of light is possible. According to general relativity, everything is possible. So you're saying there's a chance that the number is taught taught me that everything is possible. It's probably not super likely assuming that they are like attracted to each other. Yeah. And for somebody that has surveys and statistical analysis, we're interested in like what's the likely thing here? Yeah, if you say possible, statistical analysis, we're interested in what's the likely thing here, which is likely possible. If you say phospholates, anything's open. Did you just avoid answering the love thing?

I'd like to say about love. I just need to be precise. Yeah, okay. Let's be precisely in precise and continue. I'm sorry, it's my phone. It feels like a passive-aggressive suggestion that we shouldn't talk about love anymore, but we should continue. No, we should absolutely talk about love.

It's just the term is very confusing because it's like some people say the word love and the thing that they're thinking of is like, oh, the butterflies, like the sparkle thing that I get in my stomach when I think about my loved one. But I study relationships over time. I just really, like, I did a survey about it. And that sparkle goes away within like two to four years. But people still are loving their partner after that. So I'm like, okay, like when you say the word level,

what the fuck are we talking about? Yeah. That's why I get all the same page. Okay, so what are the different, so the butterflies, boy, I'd like to push back that I'm two to four years and the butterflies, but okay. I mean, statistically, not everybody. I butterflies don't give a fuck about statistics.

You ever heard of the like the butterfly wing causing like nuclear war? I need to describe that with your statistics. Okay, the butterflies, that's the basic infatuation in the chemistry of the initial interactions, sure, but a deep meaningful connection like that feels Like sexuality is a component of that like the kind of intimacy that's only possible when you're also sexual with another human being On top of that you have the butterfly and on top of that you have the friendship and on top of that, you have the butterfly, and on top of that, you have the friendship, and on top of that, you have like, what is that? That's a sandwich for the-

The love sandwich. The love sandwich. Okay, I'm down to calling a love sandwich. Okay, sandwich, which is called sandwich, L, L, S. Okay, what role does that play in the human condition? Like, He's asking about the human condition. It's an interesting phrase.

Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, this is like not a phrase that's common in my own thinking. Sure. Human condition is a good summary. And you know, what do you think? What do you feel when you, when I say something like that?

I ask very different kinds of questions in you. Sure. Yeah. Which is interesting. I'm trying to like figure out like what kind of brain that you have is like creating creating this category of question. Which is why I was thinking, there's something about a poetic narrative in there. Because it's very aesthetic. I think you have asked much more aesthetic questions than I do.

I don't even know what the word aesthetic means. Like artistic. I mean, I know what aesthetic means, but I also don't know what it means. It's kind of like the word love. Oh. Aesthetic perspective. Yeah. Well, but part of it in conversation, you don't want to ask a question that has an answer fully always. At least you have an example of a question that has what's the meaning of oh, does it has an answer?

Yeah. Like one that you say was like, oh, that's like a bad question because it has an answer. How many sexual partners you had in the last year? Oh my god. That's such a... Okay, I feel like we just got to some sort of crux about the kinds of questions that we like to answer. Sure. Because I would love that question. Okay, right.

Just asking of people. All right, but that's that really tell the story of what you felt over the past year. That's true, but then I could just tell you, okay, so by, but when you're saying the kinds of questions that you like, the ones that don't have an answer, by not an answer, you mean like not an answer where you can know that you're done telling it, is that? You can escape having to think by actually answering it.

I see. Yeah, the struggle is the place where we discover something, not the destination. Yeah. Consenture. Okay. It's working. Okay.

So what is the role of the love sandwich in the human condition? Okay. That's fine. I take that question, but it's just too much. You have to. I'm ready to do. Do you like love? Do you personally like love?

Do you like love? Yeah. I mean I I think I like this like part of me it feels like I'm good to show love for all things like what you're talking about the Class being beautiful. I felt that's like that feels like it feel like it rang something that like I have a The similar resonance in me for that. I would circle Right now. I feel like you're avoiding the love question. The love sandwich question. What's your own personal feeling towards loving another human being versus having sex with another human being?

I think, love is like one of the concepts that dissolved for me a long time ago. So I have difficulty directly answering it. But I have the experience. Will you describe the love sandwich? I feel like I have had that experience. I have it currently for some people. Also, like I'm dating people and I have that. So people who you date, you would describe sharing a love sandwich with them. Yeah. Okay. So how does, I mean, that's great to hear. So you're not you're afraid of love. No, not at all So can you describe to me Polyamory what is it?

What does it mean because it's like different terms? Yeah, you have a nice blog post about it Yeah, I have a personal definition of it which I readily admit is not shared by a lot of people But to me the definition of polyamory is simply not forbidding your partner from pursuing intimacy with others. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you have to pursue it. Personally, like, two people could be married and only have had sex with each other for 20 years.

And as long as they're like, you know what, if you ever want to go out and say to somebody else, you're welcome to do that. Well, the interesting thing you said is that doesn't mean they have to do it. They just have the freedom to do it. Yeah. It's the freedom that matters to me. It's called the polyamory post. Yes, so many good blog posts. People should just go look at your read your writing because it's really, really strong

and often backed by data, but also just the deeply honest look at yourself and your understanding of the world. It's nice. It's refreshing to be like with a lot of stuff I disagree with, but I feel like if I disagree with it, you'll be very open to arguing and kind of thinking through it. There's just the honesty that really is from the whole thing. Anyway, so yeah, it's interesting to mean, it would be interesting to kind of explore what polyamory, like how it works,

what are different versions? What is that freedom look like? What does that freedom feel like to be able to go see other people? Depends on you. Like, do you wanna go see other people? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. So usually for me, I tend to be pretty happy

with like one or a few people. And then occasionally, I like some novelty. So usually I'll go like, I host orgy sometimes. So I'll host an orgy and then I'll go have sex with people with the orgy and then that'll be good for the novelty for a while. Can I ask you about orgy's? Yeah. So how many people are in orgy? What's like a standard, we're having a Sunday picnic and it's an orgy. What's like a number of people on it at an orgy? Oh, it's a fact. I've been, I've always recently started hosting orgy's, but I have been to a lot of orgy's. I would say like the median is maybe 15 people. I like how you say median versus mean. Okay. Medians 15 people. What's the, what's a gender distribution usually? Usually about

even. It's like ideal if you can get more women than men and most of them. I've recently been hosting free use orgies or orgies where consent is assumed to be default when you enter. And of course, you can revoke it anytime. We're go over a whole bunch of roles to make sure it's very safe. You like have wristbands. So nobody's actually doing anything they don't want to. But in those ones, you have to have more men than women. I thought free use was like, consensual, like at any time, but it's at any time within the constraints of the building or something like that. Yeah. So at the orgies, it's like you buy entering, if you wear a wristband, then you are like

by default opting into consent. So people don't have to like do a thing where they negotiate with you and like, be like, is this okay? It's just a default is like, you just go for it. And if they want you to stop, they say the safer, like red don't have to do a thing where they negotiate with you. And it's just okay. It's just a default is you just go for it. And if they want you to stop, they say the safer, like red don't, and then you have to stop. And we do exercise in the beginning, people saying red to make sure

that everybody knows exactly what the rules are. What's your favorite safe word? Red. When I first started doing weird kinky shit, I was like, oh, let's make a safe word. And we picked the word foliage. I was like, that's goofy, right? And then but then it eventually came a time where I did actually, in fact, want to say the safer that I couldn't, I was like, in agony, I was like crying, like,

I can't make myself say this stupid word right now. Fully itch. So after that, I was like, right, it doesn't matter. I don't care. It's not funny. We're just going with very simple. How does an orgy compare sexually to like a one on one sexual experience? Like what is it same ball parker as a fundamentally different? I mean, the experience of both orgy's and one on one sex can be like really high variety.

Is it high variety? But you kind of, it's a little bit like you're having sex with someone, but you're surrounded by really realistic VR porn of other people having sex. Okay. And sometimes there's like three sums also, like maybe there's another person involved, but it's hard to like have a whole bunch of people on one in one cluster, because usually there's kind of different little clusters of people having their experience. Sure.

I was just part of a 10 woman or G. It was a total lesbian thing. And that felt like a writhing cluster. It was very nice. But typically you kind of separate out with like very small pods of people doing stuff. Okay. So back to polyamory. So what's the good, what does it take to manage? Do you have a main partner? If you're being polyamorous and you have it, you're dating multiple people.

Is there usually a main one for you personally? For me personally, kind of, yes. Like right now I kind of too that aren't, like I see roughly around, for me it's kind of just descriptive. Like if I just happen to be seeing you a lot more and I can invite a new more than you, like you're descriptively my primary partner,

but I don't usually have rules to protect that. I'm down with rules to protect it if you're like you're trying to build something. Like if I buy a house together, I'd be like, okay, we need to like whatever I really should do best. We have to do the thing we're both to build something. If I buy a house together, I'm like, okay, we need to, like, whatever our relationship is, we have to do the thing. We're both paying the rent for the house or the mortgage or whatever.

A lot of people do have primary sets, very common to have like, like, like, prescriptive hat. Like, I'm going to get married to you and you're not allowed to, like, have anal sex with anybody else. That's her thing. What about, like, the transparency and the communication they have to do? Yeah, I usually try to be super honest about it. Extremely, yeah.

I mean, I've learned over time that like even if it seems like a very small thing, you talk about the small thing. Because often I would just sort of have like a small twitch in myself. I don't know if I like that. But I think, okay, this is really minor. It's probably nothing. And I don't, if I talk about it, it's going to make it into a thing. And I just want to make it into a thing, you know? And I would, I've come to realize that it's worth making it into a thing. Because I can't predict at the time if like the small feeling I have is going to grow. And then when I grow it, now it's much more difficult to deal with.

So now it's like any little bit of jealousy I have, I'm immediately communicated. I'm like, ah, I'm the little jealousy right now. I don't hold that in at all. I used to be kind of like back when I first started being poly, I used to try to pretend that I was not a jealous person and that backfired quite a lot. That's really interesting. So you do still feel jealousy. Oh yeah, definitely.

And it's also interesting that you kind of recommend when there's a little bit of jealousy like to bring that to the surface. Yeah, just like excessively communicate. Even if it feels stupid. Like this is, I feel like a cliche. I feel like a stupid therapist training video. Like I just feel ridiculous sometimes

when I'm saying the things, but I've learned over time it's just important to just say the things. Because like, you know, the traditional geogelacy is exactly like you said, if you bring it up to the surface, like, it's going to sound like you're overreacting to everything. But you're saying like, still do it. Because you're basically, your brain blows stuff out of proportion. Yeah. And it's good to like be going through it with a partner. Like, I have a partner right now who's dating this other girl,

and he really likes her, and he went traveling with her and stuff, and I was like, I feel jealous about it. And I have to tell him that, and that way he can be with me in it. He holds me when I'm feeling jealous, and it's a bonding experience. But it's important for me that he's able to handle it.

I try not to date people who really freak out when I have negative emotions, because I want to be able to express that I'm upset by something they're doing without it being taken as a demand that they change their behavior. Right. So he has to be able to skillfully handle the interaction. Yes, we're like, cool. All right, you're jealous. Like, I'm not going to freak out about it.

I'm not going to change my behavior. I'm just going to be with you and that. We're going to sit in it together. I mean, it's some of that just insecurity that you should also just comfort, like, basically alleviate your insecurity, bring you back to a rational objective evaluation, right? My relationships, I love it when people do not reassure me. I like not being comforted, quite a lot. And so usually the people I date don't, I'm very gravitating. Like, it's one of the things people do to make me fall in love with them is if I say something

really terrible and they're just like, do not give me any comfort whatsoever. That's where my heart gets captured. So I typically have relationships where I'm like, my man, I'm so jealous and they just do not reassure me at all. And that's good because it doesn't give me an out. I have to deal with it myself. Right. They're still there to share it.

The other woman is better than me. Maybe that is an actual possible reality. And I don't want to be dealing with my life in a way where I'm like pretending, I'm only okay when that reality is not true. Would you like them to say that, that the other woman is better than you? Or that they prefer?

Or that they prefer? If they feel that. Yeah, I mean, they should say it in, according to themselves, like, oh, I prefer, like, I have a better time with her than I have with you than I would want to know that yeah and even though even though that might be painful to hear yes that which can be destroyed by the truth should be that which can be destroyed by the truth. What is that that you're ego or something like that? So your ego just generally grows and you like the destruction of it. Yeah, it's like a really accurate and that's not like a fun experience. Like I've had like guys be like, well, you're not as pretty as I'd like.

I'm just like, oh, you know, stabbed to the heart and... But then also like give me your number after. Yeah. Man, that's, oh well, that's, that's kind of beautiful. What do you think of monogamous relationships? Like philosophically. Can you maybe steal matter and make the case for monogamous relationships?

Can you understand the pros and cons of monogamous relationships? Yeah, I mean, depends on how you, if you're like, hey, you can do whatever you want, but you and I are gonna spend the rest. Like we just, you're 80 years old and like, oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together. We've never had sex with anybody else. I think that's like awesome. That's what you want, but you and I are going to spend the rest. Like, we just, you're 80 years old and like, oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together. We've never had sex with anybody else. I think that's like awesome.

That's what you want. That's great. I have like a little bit more problems with people doing that while also forcing their partner not to misbehave if they want to. Like, if you're like, oh, we only made it this far in our other situation because I forced my partner not to pursue an intimacy that she wanted to. Then I feel like a little like more like, I don't know if that's great. How do you know if it's a real want for an intimacy? Like checking out a attractive person while being inside of an ongoing relationship. Yeah, how do you score that? Does that bad that the person cannot pursue those feelings? I mean, it depends if they want to. Like, I often find people attractive if I don't want to pursue.

I mean, it depends if they want to. Like, I often find people attractive if I don't want to pursue. I'm also okay with people entering into agreements. Like, if you and I want to agree, like, I'm only going to enter this because I'm going to be so hurt if you pursue somebody else. So I'm not going to pursue anybody else. That seems fine to me. But I also extend that. Like, if somebody's like, I don't want you to have any friends, I'm going to feel really

insecure if you. And like, okay, like, if you want to enter that agreement, like, I feel the same way. Like, I think you should have the right to do it. If this is what you want. But I also kind of, I feel like a little weird about restricting your partner from doing things, you know? Oh, but I guess if you're honest about it, you should put it on the table. Yeah, I don't want you to have any friends. Yeah. I want you to sit in a box. Yeah, I think a lot. Yes, if you're like really on the, but then it there's like, it's a power dynamic that like you can be quite influential in a relationship and convincing your partner and it sure sounds like you're honestly agreeing

to a thing, but you're not really agreeing. That's the, I mean, part of that is the beauty of relationships, right? Like, it's messy, it can be messy. It's hard to know what you really want, right? I think that's mainly my complaint with monogamy. Like, I'm down with, like, conscious monogamy. But I think so many relationships are, like,

monogamous by default. The people, it's not actually right for them, but they just get into it because culture just doesn't give them another option. And they don't even ask themselves, the question is this right for me? Like, which, like, I'm a weird weird ass person who thinks a lot of weird shit, but I didn't even think about my polyamorous an option before I had heard that it existed.

Yeah. And I was only when I first met my first polyamorous couple. And I was like, oh, that's what I am. That's clearly the thing that I am. Yeah, it's funny because to me monogamy, it's not, it doesn't make sense for it to be a default. Like to me, monogamy goes against human nature. That's in some sense, like romance is a fuck you to the way the world works. Really?

Yeah, like it's a, like Romeo and Juliet romance, like traditional description of what romance looks like versus like, sure, there's like a million variations of that. But in my head, like this partnership that's for a long time together is a kind of, you know, like, I don't know, like true romance, you know, that movie, it's a really fucking good movie. You can't see it now. Okay, there's just like, you're together against the world.

Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's what close friendship feels like. It's like, right or die. Yeah. Like that. I guess it doesn't, it can be, it can span across multiple. You can have multiple partners in that way. Yeah, but I just don't see monogamy as like this, definitely not a default.

I would actually, like, honestly, would probably see polyamory as a not a default. I would actually like honestly would probably see polyamory as a more natural default. I mean, it gets depends on what you mean by default. Like most of human history has been sort of a weird mix. Like you get polygamy and monogamy or the kind of the main arrangements. But it's just like human nature. Like I.

Yeah, people are attracted to other people only want to. Yeah, especially in longer term relationships I I tracked and my relationships survey attracted the amount of cheating over time in a relationship like how long have you been in this relationship and how have you cheated? What's what what's the results of that men cheat a lot women to but men cheat about 30% more than women do I also asked men and women to predict if they think their partner has cheated. And people's predictions were about the same. So people roughly predicted that their male or female spouse hadn't cheated about the same rate, but men cheated much more than women. So who was more correct in their prediction though?

So men were more correct in their predicting women. And women were more off. Women thought men cheated much less than they actually did. But both of them were off, but the male gap was significantly more. So yeah, when you say monogamy is not default, I think you're really getting at something. Like human beings are just, especially in long-term relationships, difficult to only want one person. But to be fair, I think monogamy and commitment are very different. I think you'd be incredibly, I haven't known so many very long-term, super committed poly couples that live

lives that look very similar to the very romantic monogamous couples, like children, houses, like 20 years. And that works great for them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so much to like open your mind to in these kinds of conversations, these kinds of ideas, but I also like realize like some of the cake is baked. Like, I have some assumptions that are hard to break through. Like what? For myself. Like, it's difficult for me to imagine a polyamorous relationship for me that would work.

But I don't have enough data. I don't have a, like, I I've very little but like at this point it's like I haven't eaten pizza in like 20 years because I know I just don't there's a bunch of stuff I just eat low carb because it makes me feel good. But there's so many foods I haven't explored. It's just like, well, I know what I love. So, you explore every once in a while. Yeah, and you kind of figure that out. But at the same time, you're humbled by like even talking to you, looking at your data, like sexualities is a fascinating topic because it seems that we're very like we were talking about, very

afraid of this topic, like to be really honest with ourselves about it, the whole academic research is afraid of it, but it's so core to who we are, human beings. I got to ask you about this. I can't believe it took us long to get there, but one of your many fascinating services on fetishes. You're on a blog post about it. Probably several because it's a huge day. I'm still on progress. Yeah. So the one I'm referring to is on popularity and taboonis

of various fetishes. So what are some interesting takeaways? I got to pull up this graph because it's freaking epic. Yes, this is a big graph and it has tabooness as one axis and popularity as the other. Okay, for people who are just listening on the x-axis as tabooness. Yeah. Asked to rate how taboo society viewed the sexual interest and on the y-axis is percent of people

reporting interest, log scale. Oh boy, all right. So just some examples on the low taboonis and high popularity. There's a correlation here. I think you said it's 0.69. Yeah. Just not just hilarious.

Is it still 0.69? Are you tracking that? I haven't much to say. That was the most recent slide of this. Yeah. So like the last taboo stuff is more likely to be popular and the more taboo stuff is more likely to be popular and the more taboo stuff is less likely to be popular.

And on the like missionary position, fingering vagina, low jobs, late spanking, cuddling is more taboo than missionary. I think people are conceiving like, if you're like, I'm really sexually harassed by cuddling specifically. Sure. Then you're like, that'm really sexually roused by cuddling specifically. Sure. Then you're like, that's a little more weird than getting specifically roused by blow drops. You expect people to be roused by blow drops. So this was like getting at like as a fetish versus like an activity.

Yeah. It's a specific, like a concrete sexual interest. Like I'm specifically interested in this thing. Yeah. And so those are thighs and lips, different body parts, jaw lines. And then some of it is colored based on more female preference versus male preference. Like jaw lines is more female preference.

Being submissive is more female preference, light bondage. Yeah, more female. There's a lot of interesting ones. There's so much, okay. But then on the far side of that, I mean, it gets pretty dark. But even all along the way, like extreme bondage being at 50 taboones, pegging, pain, giving pain, sexual frustration, I suppose, as a kink.

And there's so many interesting ones to me, I just haven't even considered. I had to do so much research into fetishes to compile the list. There's some surprising options to you that you're like, okay, this is a fetish. Yeah, more confusing was what the fetishes are about, because I didn't want to overlap fetishes, so I had to look into them.

And I'm like, there's such interesting manifestations of core drives. Like you're really aroused by disgust. Like maybe you're very into rolling around in dirt, but you're not into rolling around ice cream. So I'm like, okay, I have to make those into two separate fetishes, you know? And like, I'm seeing like at the far end,

rodents, different types of incest, branding so it's like pain, sex with animals, I guess dogs, horses, receiving oral sex from an animal is high tabootness and pretty high popularity. Yeah, it's a quite a singly high popularity. I was really shocked by that one. I went and triple checked that number because I'm like, no way this about to people are reporting interest. Do you know which animal? Is there?

No, I didn't specify. I asked like which animals are erotic and then I separately asked like how erotic is it to Receive oral sex from your preferred animal This is so fascinating so I would Like when we just talk about the methodology of this This feels like deeply honest map of Humanity in a way we don, map of humanity. In a way, we don't usually map humanity.

Yeah. Like, cause it's so many, like your fetishes are so meaningful to each individual person. Yeah, that's what I love about this work. It's like nobody cares about you or someone's fetishes. You never get to express them. And if you have a more unusual fetish, people usually judge you. So it's like this tiny little pocket of like the

same thing, but it's so cool to me that like human braids could be oriented in such a way, like wound-facking, like somebody finds that so erotic and that's so cool. Yeah, and then they probably, and it should be explored like how did that come to be? You mentioned that we like the construct narratives that somehow was grounded in childhood, but maybe it's genetic. Maybe it has to do with, maybe you can actually form and unform that fetish very quickly. I don't know. Well, this is one of the things that I'm researching.

So in the big survey that I'm doing, I asked so many questions about childhood, all the ones that I think we have common theories theories about, oh, are you abused? Is it yelled at by a man or a woman, stuff like that? Are you really sexually repressive? Is it gender roles where you've expected to conform? A whole bunch of stuff. And then I asked, obviously, about a massive amount of fetishes.

And my simple size right now is 500,000 people. 500,000 people. Yeah, it's massive. And I have stayed for all of it. And the result looks like this not really correlated Nothing that I asked about in childhood nothing correlates with fetish preference later in life. It does correlate with onset lots of things that happen in childhood can Tritve like change like the the age at which it triggers. Yeah, so many fascinating blockposts yet a blockpost I think on

the age of fetish onset. And like you really nicely organized it by age, like reproduction as a fetish, I guess pregnancy at age of 17, about 16.9, toys and like anal beads is 15.5. Yeah, one of the interesting things I found, I mean, this data set is so huge, it's taking me a long time to go through it. So this is like snippets from what I remember and I was glancing through the data. So this part is not rigorous, but I seem to get the impression that if you are, if you a fetish occurs for you earlier, like you've much earlier onset, you're more likely to report being extremely interested into it.

So later onset means you're going to be like less into the fetish, but if it hits earlier, it's like, yeah, I didn't measure old fetishes at all. Like no longer, right? You used to, but it is no longer there. Interesting. One interesting thing that I don't understand is that, um, that a non-sus people seem to have more correlation between childhood experiences and fetishes. So I was saying that there's no correlation between childhood experiences. This holds for cis people. But trans people, especially trans men, there's a correlation. It doesn't mean they have absolutely higher rates of abuse or fetishes or anything, but I'm just saying that like for them, there does actually seem to be some sort of connection

between childhood experiences and sexuality later in life. And I don't understand why this plays to one group but not the other. I don't have a good theory for that. So usually you try, when you see something like that, you'll try to construct a theory and see if you can find, like, you keep that theory in mind, like a hypothesis of why it would be and then you ask further questions to try to elaborate. So can you maybe talk about the methodology of how you got the 500,000? Like what? Like how did this come to be? Yeah, this is, I like to go out of way to rich detail about this because I thought about this so much. Yeah. Because the question is how do you get a lot of people

to take a big survey? The longer the survey is the lower the response rate. And I really wanted to do one big comprehensive survey. So I could like check a whole bunch of correlations within it. Because it's more annoying and it's harder to get a lot of people to retake similar surveys to each other at a time. So I'm like, okay, I need to convince a very large number of people to take a lot of these questions. And even building the questions, that was really hard because I'm like, I can't need a comprehensive amount of fetishes. I can't ask everybody to answer for every single niche fetish.

I'm like, do you like ballgags? Do you like funnel gags? Do you like wife shrew gags or whatever? I'm like, you can't do that. Nobody's going to need to find a survey. Okay. I'm not good at it. I'm like, I ask questions. What's a wife shrew, but okay. I'm not doing the, I'm trying to refer to like, there's like a thing that like it was different types of gags. It's different types. Okay. Yeah, different. So I'm like, so what I need to do is I need to ask people a thing that like- Different types of gags, different types. Okay. Yeah, different. So, I'm like, so what I need to do is I need to ask people a question, like, are you in like bondage?

And if you say yes, then I'll go ask you all the bondage questions. Oh, I got it. Right, but then this seems simple, but then it's just exploded because I'm like, how do I categorize these fetishes? There's, like, if you're into splashing, which is-

What's that? Like, you like sitting in cakes, you like getting in mud, but basically like kind of messy sensory. Like is this a disgusting? Is it a humiliation thing? Is it a sensory thing? Like which category anyway? So it took me like two months of just agonizing over each fetish because you don't want to miss a fetish. You don't want to like have a really important thing that you accidentally put in the discussed category when it actually belongs in the humiliation category, you know?

Well, let me think about that because like you're still catching it, you're just miscategorizing it. Right. Because if you're into splashing, you know, this is clearly humiliation thing. So you say, yes, I'm into humiliation stuff. And then I don't ask you about splashing. Then I'm missing a whole data set of people because I've falsely categorized your question. You're going to miss stuff.

You're just picking what to what's less and less important to miss? Well, I'm trying to get people into the right question set. Sure. Because I can't ask you all the questions. I have to ask you a couple overarching questions to know what specific questions to ask you. And so those overarching questions have to be really, really well calibrated

so that I can accurately feed you into the right sub part of the survey. Awesome. And so that was extremely difficult. If I'm when I'm dealing with, I think it was like 850 fetishes. So I did a couple of things to spot check. I like I did a couple questions where I asked in the detailed

in the survey, but also the beginning of the survey just to see what percentage people I was capturing. But and then I scored the survey. So if you take it, I had other people answer preliminary surveys where they gave me data about how taboo the various fetishes were, and then I used that data so that when you fill out the survey, it's extremely comprehensive and you get data about exactly how taboo your interests are, and you get to score at the end. And I can give you an equivalent kinky character, which I also had people write a whole bunch

of fictional characters and some historical ones about like how kinky character which I also had people write a whole bunch of fictional characters and some historical ones But like how kinky they were so that I matched the Historic character kinky character to your score So that makes it like more fun like game fives a little bit and you can like you can brag about Like how people would share without those sure and a lot of the characters really goofy like like there's SpongeBob and Like Hitler's on there and you know, South Park characters. What is, what is, what King does Hitler have? I think he's like, he's around Marilyn Monroe,

which is like a slightly buff average. Oh, sorry. I thought there was like a two dimensional space somehow. So this is like literally from zero. Just how kinky yeah. So Hitler's a bot as a millionaire. Who is the most, what's the character for? Willianka. Is the most kinky. Most the how kinky yeah so here's the bottom is a man there man who's the most what's the character for the most kinky yeah I think like me captain america was the least kinky or something or gondi

come meanwhile but that's another conversation boy yeah so even viral and talk basically because people are like what I got this insane character and then It's the sample size exploded from for 40,000 to 500,000 Wow, so like all it took is that kind of incentive what did you like? First have to pay people for the service and And what about the demographic of the different people that took it? Mostly younger. So usually early 20s, predominantly female, like 70% female. 70% female.

Pretty like to rap solid and TikTok demographics pretty well. Oh, okay. I got it. That's interesting. Young people are probably better for this kind of survey, because there's probably a culture that's a little bit more honest about their sexuality. Yeah, most likely. I think people are incentivized to be honest when they're getting a true identity response out of it. Like, if you're doing it for money, you don't care. But like if you are invested in the result, you want to know what the The truth of the answers are then you actually It's possible that you also don't want to know the truth. Yeah Yeah, this is true. But, on average, hopefully, that doesn't... I mean, these are really difficult.

Like, what is there some interesting little quirks that people should know about, about your methodology that you've had to kind of solve to try to get to a really good service? So one of you said is the categorization to make it more efficient. Is there some for the analysis part? Yeah, so the graph that you were talking about is a binary. So it's like, and if somebody expressed even a little bit of interest,

then it goes into the graph. So it's like 80% of people expressed even a little bit of interest. So it's not representing degree of interest. It's not differentiating between them at all. So it's possible that like some fetishes have exactly the same amount of people like are at least a little bit into them,

but one of them it's very extreme interest and the others like vague and not very intense. So that's not reflected. I also like probably didn't represent the visual part right, like might not be intuitive, but. So you chose a log scale, but it was kind of spreads things out to mix it more and more clear. Because the linear was just so close to the bottom, you couldn't really separate it out. So there's obviously a selection effect that's possible that the identity results at the end impacted people's results a little bit.

But the thing is, I'm comparing it to what exists. What is the alternative? And right now, the research on this stuff is terrible. So it's like, I'm not saying my research is perfect, but it's at least it's something, it's something that's pointing us maybe in a direction that we might be able to do more research on. And you're making the data available.

Yeah, I'm doing it slowly because I ask about so many questions, it's not very anonymized. So I'm releasing the small sections of the data at a time. Yeah. Have you published in journals and stuff? No, I haven't. Have any interest in that or is your approach? I'm like, I haven't conflicted about it.

Like, it sounds cool because then I could be like, ah, ha, ha, I'm publishing the journal. I think people who are yelling about me who don't know anything about statistics on Twitter, like, then I can go shove it in their face. But then you're also giving in to the silly criticism, right? Yeah. Like, I don't, I want, I feel so passionate about extra science like science that you

can just do like I want to make science accessible like anybody can just go look and learn about the basics of like doing a survey or figuring out how to interpret information. Um, and doing doing a published journal feels like I'm betraying my cause a little bit. That's often behind a paywall. Yeah, it goes against the... I mean, I think you not publishing a journal is doing a big public service. Oh, I think it was the first time I've heard that. Thank you.

Oh, it's just coming from like on this topic, the elitism I see on the psychology side with the journals and academia, the positions and the institutions you come from, all that, that goes against, I think that's more useful for math and computer science and so on, where there's like clear, like, even then, even then, code is code, data is data, like a procedure should matter at all. Maybe for like biological experiments, like virology or something like that, it's good to be from a major lab that has a reputation for like going through all the procedures, like you know, you can trust. But here, like, you're dealing with a giant mess of humanity.

Like, it's beautiful to be transparent, to be raw, to be exploring it together with everybody as it's really beautiful. And people like have a lot of incentive to doubt the results. Like, a lot of the research I'm doing is to like, cis and trans people. Like, like, we don't have any data about trans sexuality. Like, not very good, at least. Um, and I'm really curious. I don't really have any data about transsexuality, like not very good at least. And I'm really curious, I don't really have an agenda about it, I think being trans is cool,

if you want to be trans, do it. And I have some skepticism about gender theory, but it doesn't come down to impact the way I think trans people should be treated, which I think is treat them, be fucking nice and human about it, I don't know. But when I'm talking about the thing, my conclusions are that transsexuality is really unique.

It's not like sister or cis woman or man sexuality at all. And to me, this is super cool, but a lot of people, this is very politicized right now. Like the data into transsexual preferences, it's so loaded, which is really sad, because I am very accepting of weird sexuality. Like, if you're new to a weird thing, I'm like, good for you, this is super cool.

Like, let's figure out how to make it so that you can explore the thing you're into without any stigma. But because there's so much stigma, like if you find it, one demographic is in a weirder sex stuff than the other. Like, it's hard to present that in a way that people don't weaponize.

So it's been really politically touchy subject here. Yeah, but you do it in a way that's not does it's not feel like it has an agenda, right? You're just exploring. Yeah. I feel pretty open to what I'm going to find. Like I often have no idea what the data is going to tell me. And I'm like, I pre-commit like I could say a B or C. And I'm like down to publish any of those findings. So you've put together an ask whole cart deck. A lot of awesome questions to ask at a party. Or anywhere, honestly, including on the podcast,

let me ask you one from that deck, is sex really about power. So what's the role of power dynamics and sex? If you have everything you understand, from the survey in terms of what people are turned on by, you've talked about like the preferences that women versus men have for like, submissiveness and dominance. And we've already talked about it a little bit, but like it's expressed more strongly. I already forget the results, but I feel like women have more preference to be submissive.

Yeah, this is one of the things that got me into researching fetishes to begin with, because I think I came across some data. I did like a brief survey where roughly around 60% of women report being submissive and 40% of men report being dominant. And this was really fascinating to me. I'm like, why is there this gap? Like, why do we not? Because I guess I have some priors that maybe this is an evolutionary thing. Like the submission dominant, like strong men, you know, like women would be like, oh, hot man, you know, men are like ravaging and stuff. I'm like, shouldn't this be a, in our genes, but there's a gap. What's the gap?

The gap is the dominant submissive gap. More women are submissives and there are dominant men. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, it's a pretty significant gap. And this is held up like it depends on what you're testing. I've tested a bunch of things. This is part of why I did this big survey. Nice. But it depends against again on like what kind of dominance you're measuring, but overall it's a roughly 40 to 60%. So when you say there's not many dominant men, then the meaning like they express like a desire to be dominant in the relationship. Yeah, or like in sexually sexually sexually in bed

So like if I ask questions like how much do you like being dominant in bed? Like men are less likely to answer strong yes to that question But if I ask are you like laid to be submissive like women are very much yes Really in that's expressive like that's that that that represents truth My guess wrong with men? I think there's some reflection of like a fat life. So, fat life is this website where people sign up and connect based on their fetishes. And you can kind of see it picked up in the forum post about how dominant men are getting

laid so much and some misiffs are always looking for a dominant. It's an unequal market. Holy shit. Yeah. This is great news. I didn't know this. That's interesting. Yeah.

So what does it reflect about modern societies? Is that like, is that, because you know, there's these trends about like decreased masculinity or that kind of stuff. Yeah. Is that reflect, is that submissive similar? I'm trying not to hold onto one theory, because I'm not sure. One is possible like decreasing testosterone levels. And testosterone seems to be, I have a little bit of other research, but I'm trying not to hold onto one theory, because I'm not sure. One is possible like decreasing testosterone levels. Stostroin seems to be, I have a little bit of other research,

but I'm still checking it out. That seems to indicate that higher testosterone you're more likely to be dominant. So if we're seeing decreased testosterone levels across society where it should be seeing a greater gap. This is so fascinating. Once again, this is like a super interesting way to look at humanity, because it is such an important part of humanity.

And so, like how many people are doing large-scale research like this? I feel like you're like at the top of the world. You're like world class at the top of the world doing research on this stuff. Yeah, I think I might have the biggest, most comprehensive fetish data set in the world right now. That's epic. Thank you. I'm really happy about it. I'm very proud. set in the world right now. That's epic. Thank you.

I'm really happy about it. I'm very proud. Yeah. And it's probably growing, but it's also enabling you to establish a name to where you, like a reputation to where people can go to, like trust you more and more, to do longer surveys, perhaps.

Like, maybe, I think the data analysis afterwards is very different from like the survey design itself. So I'm still very amateur at the data analysis. Yeah, but you can always catch up on that. I guess the data analysis does enable you to does teach you how to ask better questions in order to understand. Yes, it goes back and forth. Like as I'm looking at the data, it informs the way I want to phrase questions the next time. So women are more at least in private able to say that they would like to be submissive

and men even in private are not disproportionately saying they're not willing to be dominant. Yeah, so it's possible. If this is caused by decreasing testosterone levels, and this means that we're probably having less satisfying sex overall. Like we're becoming less and less sexual link compatible as time goes on. To be fair, I'm not sure that it is connected to testosterone levels. Like it's possible that this is just like a genetic thing. Like the gay uncle theory, like the ideas,

like maybe gay people evolved to like be sort of taking themselves out of the gene pool to be a, to be assistance. And like it's possible that like there's certain percentage of men sort of like quote unquote evolved to be submissive to take themselves out of sexual competition and to instead be like the monkey is revolving at the edge of the pack. It's a method of survival. Like so you stay out of the competition. Yeah, and I'm like a little sus about these kinds of evo psych theories.

So I'm not I'm just saying it because it's like one thing. There's a different ideas that are possible. Yeah, okay. So yeah, I'm not saying that it's definitely just a strong There's other things. It's also possible that it's culture people are definitely gonna bring that up based on my Survey though it doesn't seem to be any evidence of that like I asked about like how much pressure was put on you to be you know Agentee in your childhood like a lot of questions around this kind of thing and no correlation at all to dominance. Well, related to sexuality, I'm very uncomfortable right now, but nevertheless,

plow forward. In a dominant fashion. The blog post titled Rape Spectrum Survey Results. What are the key takeaways from that survey? I did the survey when I had a friend be like, hey, I had this confusing sexual experience, was it rape?

Somebody pressured her and she eventually stopped saying there was something. I was like, that's a great question. I don't know how people would consider this. I put a whole bunch of different gray scenarios into a survey and then asked people to rate how rapey they thought that scenario was. So you actually like little narratives that they get to rate. Like, you know, this person is on a date with this person, they get drunk and the other

person is not drunk. I try to keep gender neutral names for all of them. And you reduce them into a more concise description of the situation. Yeah. Like in this visualization, see, have this rape spectrum that's a result. Yeah. Where on top are things that are less likely to be considered rape by the people that took the survey and the bottom.

More likely, the, the likely is a stranger, forcibly assault someone who screams and fights the entire time that gets a hundred. What do we make of something that's not zero? It's like a 12 is what? How do we suppose interpret a 12 out of a hundred and a right? It's extremely low. Okay. It's like not zero, but it's just very close to it.

Having sex with an enthusiastic sex worker is a 12. That's the lowest one. And there's a few, I'll just mention a few that are lower. Like at that level have sex to make a partner happy in a relationship, lying about wealth hobbies in order to get laid. Person with Down syndrome eagerly has sex within your typical, not revealing being transgender until after sex and so on. I think you mentioned that there's some, like, that not revealing being transgender until

after sex, there's some differences amongst what men and women are stuff like that. I mean, I think there's still that men found more offensive than women. I'm trying to, I rather do a while ago. I mean, this is nuanced and difficult, right? It's because I think in a lot of public discourse, the word rape is pretty binary. Yeah, it's like either, either, is or is not rape. And so you had a friend who was like, this felt rapey. Yeah, she's like confused about how to interpret it. I think people, people look to the terms to know how to feel about something. Like have you ever like been through an experience you're like that was weird and then you tell it to somebody else and they're like, oh my god, you were assaulted. And then it totally re-contextualizes the thing that you've experienced.

And I think that this is clunky with the word rape because either you were raped or you're not. You either like have this entire context like thrust upon you or you don't. And we're really not nuanced about it at all. And so I would really like to have some sort of like, oh, that was like a 30% rapie just endured. Yeah. And I mean, there's probably other dimensions about how traumatic it is, how difficult it's to recover from all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, like people, it's a dangerous thing to assign a word to an experience, like even or to a relationship, like saying a toxic relationship. Yeah.

That can completely destroy your perception of that relationship. Yeah, absolutely. I remember this was the case with my childhood, like I talked about being very abusive, but I've talked about how, like, there was a good amount of meaning there so that I didn't process it as abusive at the time. And I remember after I got out of that house in that culture, people would tell me, oh, your child, it was really abusive. And I was really confused by that because it's a total re-contextualization of that narrative.

It's like the things that I went through were not good and virtuous and had meaning, but rather, these were like the results of parents who didn't love you enough or something. And even though the concrete things that happened to me did not change, like no facts shifted, the fact that like the interpretation of the facts shifted caused to me quite a bit of distress for a long time. I was like, oh my god, I'm a traumatized, like abused person, like I went through abusive childhood. And it was really hard for me, made it worse. Like it's crazy the power that terms have. I think we didn't talk about this, but how did you begin to overcome the trauma of your childhood?

You mentioned LSD, so it would drug the part of it. What was the mental journey of that? I was doing LSD quite a lot when I was 21. What was it like? By the way, I've never done LSD. It's very difficult to describe because it's like, like it changes sort of aspects about your environment that are invisible to you because they're so stable.

Is it like if you can compare it to like so cyber and it's very different? Oh yeah. It's like similar. I forgot that you just changed. Yeah, okay, that you probably know. You know, like the kind of shift that you have from cyber to shrooms is roughly similar.

It's like more clear, I think. Shrooms is more like embodied, but it's, LSD is much more intellectual roughly similar. It's like more clear, I think. Schroems is more like embodied, but LSD is much more intellectual for me. It strikes different people differently. I prefer Schroems a lot. I'm sorry, LSD, I prefer LSD a lot. Why is it not popularly take, like there seems to be a negative connotation to LSD

because like it seems to potentially have like a destructive effect. Like maybe Dose is just more difficult to get right or something like that. Does this exactly, so actually a long time ago did a survey on Schrooom's versus LSD. So I asked people and people had slightly stronger experiences on LSD overall. I remember but rated the experiences about is equally good. I think people like Schrooom's because it feels more natural quote unquote, but I think if you like fed somebody a shroom and like actually had the LSD molecule and they would have a they would think it felt very natural. But that's besides the point. I think people get kind of

incoherent on LSD in a way that feels really alienating. Like I consider LSD, my LSD use very heavy to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life, but I definitely was incoherent for a lot of it. Like talking about like we're all one consciousness, is love man, you know and feel like I'm going to go here So I think it's not in coherent but if you go around saying everything is love people are like this guy's kind of blasted out of his mind This podcast It's basically your LSD trip on that For a bunch of episodes. Yeah, I get this for sure. Oh, well, well, it's not just about love, but it's Yeah, I get this for sure. Oh, well, it's not just about love,

but it's about like talking in that way, about reality, about the world, yeah. Sure. Yes, like overfitting. You're the narrative that you make about the world become really vivid. And so you pattern match just really aggressively. Like everything is connected, and you come up with these explanations for things.

And I think I was very fortunate. So I like this theory about psychedelics, where you either like belief constructor you don't. So you take psychedelics and it sort of burns away a lot of your belief structure. And sometimes this happens and then you're like, I need to like invent something to fill in the gaps. So you're like, okay, I think that maybe time is an illusion.

So I must now believe that like we're actually in a time loop or like time travel is possible. So you experience time differently and then you come up with a different belief about time. Whereas other people don't do this belief construction at all, like you experience time differently and you sort of let yourself not have a belief. You're not like, okay,

and you're not developing any beliefs about time in its absence. You're just simply experiencing the absence of the concept of time. And so I don't have a lot of data to back this up in my anecdotal experience, because I've tripped side a lot of people. People either tend to belief construct or they don't.

And people who do not believe construct seem to get more out of their LSD trips. So if you can let a belief go without building anything in its absence, it's much more beneficial for you. And I think I just for some reason happen to have some brain that's constructed where I don't get a belief construction at all.

So, that's really interesting that belief construction is negative. What is it necessarily negative? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? I mean belief construction in a way that's like not like playing with frames, but rather committing to a different frame. So I like being able to play with ideas and be like, let's look at it this way or that way, that's awesome. But if you're like, okay, you know what?

I took L.C. and now I absolutely believe the cops are outside. And you're like, no, you're just like, you can't shift out of that, right? Your brain needs to fill in the gap. You're not allowed to have a gap, so you're not allowed to be flexible. And again, I don't think this is like a personal failing,

if I need, I think this is like literally probably genetic or like physical thing that's causing this. But do't think this is like a personal failing, if I think this is like literally probably genetic or like physical thing that's causing this. But do you think this possible beliefs that are like enlightening that you can stick to, like find a frame that like, I guess if you don't believe constructing you're escaping your previous beliefs, aren't you doing like just some, you're picking up a bigger frame.

Yeah, I mean, you're taking your beliefs as object, as opposed to being subject to them. Oh, got it, got it, got it, got it, got it. And some of that, I guess, is genetic and there's these categories of people, there's two categories that the experience LSD in different ways. Yeah. And you're one of those that are able to just let go. Yeah, I just think I had a good reaction. And I think a lot of maybe the negative stereotype of LSD comes from people who are belief

constructing or carry the belief constructing off of the LSD trip. So you take LSD and you're like, ah, I'm believing these insane things. And people from the outside see that and they're like, oh my god, this person took LSD and became stupid. It's very scary. What's frame control? Because that's been at the core of your trauma, at the core of your upbringing. What's frame control?

And also, side, frame control in general, because that's part of human interaction. Yeah, frame control is like a way of manipulating somebody else that is non-obvious. So there's a negative contention to that usually? Yeah, I mean, I think maybe I chose the term kind of poorly, because I think to some degree, people are always a little bit non-manipulating each other, but I think maybe I chose the term kind of poorly because I think to some degree, people are always a little bit diminuting each other. But I think it's generally obvious. Like, for example, if I disagree with you,

I want you to believe what I believe. But this is like an obvious thing that is like visible between. It's like an object on the table. It's like, here's the box where I want you to believe. What you want to do. The disagreement box. Yeah, so digress to it.

It's like, we're under a shared context where we understand that we're trying to move each other. Yeah. This is chill to me. I think this is cool. Yeah. We just all the time and it's important. But frame control is the kind of thing where you are trying

carefully to obscure the existence of that box. Yeah. You're like, oh, the thing that I'm doing, I'm like using tactics to try to influence what your reality is without us being both aware that this is what I'm doing. Yeah, I've been assuming you're doing that the whole time. No. Oh my God. I have to figure out how to read your facial expressions. I'm still learning.

There's none. There's not. You don't have any. I'm not even a chat GBT. I'm like GBT1 with my facial expressions. It's kind of off. This doesn't seem to match emotions, but it's kind of intelligent seemingly, but definitely not conscious. Anyway, so like negative connotation, manipulating, not being honest about the actual intentions of how you'd like

to control the conversation. And I think there might be a naive version of interpreting this where you're just like, oh, I'm trying to like subtly get you to, you know to believe like, oh, do you really think that's bad though? But this is not quite what I mean. I mean, there's like a couple like concrete things that are signs of frame control. Like one of them is pushing the painful update button, which is this thing where it's like, hey, if you learn this, it's going to be really painful. The truth is painful. And if you're realizing this thing about yourself, it's going to hurt. And this is a to be really painful. The truth is painful. And if you're realizing this thing about

yourself, it's going to hurt. And this is a sign that you're heading in the right direction. So if you frame all pain as a sign of virtue, and this means that pain that's a resulting as damage, is something you're going to ignore. So it's like this is a common like cults, right? This is for your own good. Oh, you know, you face of brave truth about yourself that you're like not quite as wise as I am. When really your brain might be trying to tell you protected things. Or like another one is like finger-trap beliefs, where the belief is constructed in such a way that doubting it lends proof to the belief. So a very common example is like Satan. Like the Christians are like, you know, Satan is going to try to make you doubt him. The existence

of he's going to sew doubt like maybe he's not actually real. And so if you believe in Satan and then you're like, okay, now I'm having doubts like maybe he isn't real, this is like, oh, this is exactly what I was taught to expect. Like I am doubting this belief because I was told, because like this is what Satan does and it's taken his evidence for it. So like the attempt to move away from the belief, like rebounds on you and like causes you to be more embedded inside of the belief. So it's like techniques like these, like very subtle things where like being inside of the system sort of just self-reinforces

the system is what I consider to be frame control. And have you met people that are really good at this kind of frame control? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So like you're saying that your father was like that? Yeah, to be fair, I'm not sure he was good at it because I was a kid. I think he's probably not very good at it actually, but when you're a child, being raised in a house where he works from home

and you're at homeschooled, it's just kind of what's going to happen. And to be fair, I do think that like strong frame control is quite rare. I don't think most people are kind of doing something like this, but not nearly to the degree that makes gives me the IK. I've met maybe like five or six people,

I think, who I really don't like because of those very subtle things that they're doing. Well, I think also I'm starting to kind of understand that there is people who are narcissists and sociopath and psychopaths out there. And I'm not even sure if people like that, because I think they get good at frame control, but I don't know if they're aware they're doing it.

Oh yeah. Which makes me also nervous about myself. Like, am I doing frame control? Yeah, that's one of the big things. It's like, typically people, you can't think about incentive. Like, you can't think about, oh, is this person trying to do it or not? Yeah. It's like not the quite, not the way.

You have to look at one of the effects. You're just programmatically looking at the effects. And then you also have to do that with yourself when you have interactions with others. It's like very much like, are you, like, how much space are you making for the other person's reality here? Like, are you giving power to the other person? Because a big aspect of frame control is you're carefully rerouting the power to yourself. You're like, I am the person who knows.

Like you're having pain in your beliefs because you're updating towards the things that I believe. It's just like a gravity well. But if you're setting up the gravity well of your interactions, such that you're making sure you're giving the other person power over the shared reality you inhabit, I think it's a really good sign that you're not doing frame control. So if you're making room for them, yeah, okay, unless we're talking about embed,

then it's all general relativity from there and black holes and stuff. Frame control, bed frame control. Bred frame control. It took me a long time to get a bed frame just I'm saying. Wow, but you were a suit though. Yeah, so frame control in the streets, no frame in the sheets. I don't know what the funny thing is to say. There you have it. So the LSD helped you escape the frame So the LSD helped you escape the frame of, can you elaborate what was the frame that was holding you back from the frame constructed by your child that experienced, that was holding you back as an intellectual as a thinker as a free being in this world?

I was really fucked up. Like after I left home and I absorbed the external narrative that I had been abused, which technically is true. I'm not saying I wasn't, but like I absorbed this narrative. And I just remember having like this burning coals in my chest at all times. Like if I had to call out of my factory work when fathers stay happened because I was spending the whole day sobbing because everybody's talking about their fathers,

like I was really messed up. And it is because I held spending the whole day sobbing because everybody's talking about their fathers. Like, I was really messed up. And it's because I held this important thing, this idea, this frame, that I had been deeply wronged. Like, there was a correct way of being, and the world had violated that. Something should not have happened. Like, my father should have left me. And it was like this, this, like,

the shearing in the nature of reality. And that was really agonizing to have. And LSD really messes with frames a lot. It takes like what you think is normal and really screws with it. And I don't know how to see like several times before, but there's one LSD trip where I went through my entire childhood in my head

because LSD like really makes your memories quite vivid. Like anything you visualize, it's like you're in it. And so I just went and very carefully, deliberately went and remembered every single memory that I could have that was really painful for me. Like the times that I lost friends and all the things I valued in like being broken because like my parents, especially my dad would refer

to like breaking me like explicitly, we're gonna break your will. And so all these times where I was like, they had successfully broken my will over and over and it was horrible. I was just like sobbing, tear-stripping down my face. And then I like, work through my whole shot.

I got to the end. And I'm gonna tear up, because I was talking about this. It's just like the sensation of like being free from that for the first time is so incredible. Like, I remember being outside of my house and being able to like go where I wanted and think what I wanted and it was just so blissful and I was soaked in this gratitude on this trip. Just like vibrating with complete joy for everything. Like I was just

looking around like I could touch anything. Like I could cry if I wanted to. I was in a lot of cry. I was in a lot of press. I was trying to, I got to press as a child and my parents were like, if you keep being depressed, we're gonna like foresee to scrub the whole house.

Like just like the ability to have a feeling was so thrilling. And I was so grateful for this. I was like, I would do anything to give this experience to someone else. I would do anything, even if it was like putting them through what I went through. Then with that realization, I was like, oh, it was worth it. The thing that I went through was worth it for this. I would do it again to be able to have this deep gratitude for what I have now.

Then that shifted the meaning frame. Because before the meaning had been something something had shared, something that accident have happened. But now it was like the exact right thing had happened. So it's almost a gift. Yeah. I was like, I would not give up my childhood. I would do it again.

And I believe that to this day. For the moment of discovering that freedom. Yeah. Because like everything now, my whole life is in contrast to that. And it's awesome. It's fucking great. I'm really thrilled about it. Do you, is there part of you that hates your father still? Kind of like I don't want a relationship with anymore. After that, there was some forgiveness.

Like I had this burning, I would have nightmares about, you know, him killing me or something. And after that, it kind of stopped. Like the fire in my chest went away permanently after that trip. It was so fast. It was like, before I was fucked up after that trip, I woke up the next day and I was clean. It was really severe. And I definitely don't want to be around him still.

Like he still triggers the fear in my body, but I don't have that hang up anymore. I'm like, I'm over it. Like I've let go. He's his own person. Like, ultimately, he didn't get to decide who he was in the same way that I didn't get to decide who I was.

So that's almost like a kind of, at least, intellectual forgiveness, yeah, for him? Yeah. And that, so that trip just took you through your whole, were you alone, by the way, when you're doing the trip? Uh, yeah, I had roommates, but the trip was mostly alone. I had somebody else who was like sitting in the room

but they were interacting with me. So you're sitting there, experiencing all of this. What's the timeline, like, how long does it take to go through your whole childhood? I don't remember. I mean, time's really messed up when you, when you do that. I was listening to the soundtrack of the fountain,

which is excellent. Yeah. I listened to that a, when you did that. I was listening to the soundtrack of the fountain, which is excellent. Yeah. That's about a lot when I did LSD. I know it's probably a couple hours. That's amazing. I mean, it's like, it would be, it's just like a vivid experience of your childhood. Yeah. I went back moment trauma by trauma. And it's good to experience it purely. Like, it just is what it is. It's just is grief. Like it is loss. And you just are in it without having to make it be anything. And it's so interesting that you can I mean work through that. So for a lot of us, for a lot of human beings like childhood is full of those kind of mini

traumas, big or small. And like working through that, it feels like what a lot of life is about is trying to work through that. And it feels like you have to kind of relive it. I guess that's what therapy is about in part, and be able to vocalize it. Yeah. This is why I feel really confused about the concept of trauma. Like people use this word so much like are you traumatized? And I understand why, like, I'm this why I feel confused confused about the concept of trauma. People use this word so much like are you traumatized? And I understand why, this is why I feel confused about it, but part of me is like, I wonder by using that term,

we're creating the trauma in people. They were using the frame where the thing that happened to you was not supposed to happen. Yeah, maybe there needs to be a different frame. Now I agree with you, I've just, I've made friends with and talked to the guy named Paul Conty. He wrote a book on trauma. He's an incredible brilliant psychiatrist.

Yeah, he's probably agrees with you kind of. Oh, that's cool. I should read it. Yeah, you should. Maybe you can talk to these are fascinating. He would be interested in the psychiatrist perspective is really interesting because you've been doing kind of an in-person survey because you've done so many patients. He's just talking to him, is fascinating because if I describe my experience or somebody

else's experience, I could see his brain mapping it in interesting ways to the tens of thousands of like data points he has in his head. And it's like, of course, that's what doctors do, but it's cool as the doctors basically the doctor of the mind. And have like an actual like qualitative data and be able to, I mean, that's where the poetic stuff comes in. Ultimately as a psychiatrist, you're exploring the human mind with a bit of a sort of romantic element.

Yeah. You can't be really systematic about it, but it does seem like frame or not, be able to just talk through the experiences you had. Mm-hmm. It's really powerful. What about it is appealing? Is it just like being able to revisit it with new eyes? No, I don't know exactly. It just seems to work for people. I don't know if it's appealing. It just seems like

almost acknowledging to yourself the things happen. Like I've said, I think I've said this before. My brother who I love very much, I try to set me on fire a few times. And I think to me, it's funny, but I wonder if I didn't talk about it, like if that would be traumatic, maybe like talking and laughing about it, because it was traumatic to me at the time. I was like, I love you.

Why are you setting me on fire? But it's what kids do when they're like, yeah. I was like, whatever, it's what boys do. Like it's's they're crazy It makes total sense. It was probably funny and from his perspective But yeah, I wonder I want to bring that to the surface of that that helps and maybe LSD allows you to Or different drugs depending on the person allows you to more vividly bring it to the surface and then Depending on your genetics be able to find a better frame.

Hmm. That's fascinating. Human mind is freaking fascinating. All right. What's romantic to you, by the way? I'm not a big romance person. What is? So you're not like, so to you romantic is like objective analysis of the interactions between humans. A little bit like I do find kind of the survey process that I did to be romantic. Uh, when I, the guy that I asked out who I'm still dating,

I was like, Hey, you squirted like how my survey, you want to like go eat food or something and he's response was like, you want to try doing three days in an Airbnb as our first date and I was like yeah and that was romantic like the bold leap into leap into a really intense date. I think you mentioned I think you mentioned something also must have been a tweet or something like that where if you if people want you to show up to a thing, give the time, the location, the dress code, and not no pressure for you to be there, but show up if you want. That was your specification.

It's a great memory, yeah. And then I think you said that you did that for some castle in South of France. I did, for like some castle in South France. I did, yeah. That was in my early funnies. My friends at home were taking prediction markets on whether or not I was going to get abducted and killed. Yeah.

What was it like? I mean, what, what, you've traveled quite a bit. Like do you take these giant risks? What's, what's with that? I think I used to more when I was younger with the traveling. I think I'm like a little traveled out now, but like my first one, I moved out of Idaho for the first time in my mid-Australia.

I just kinda eat it myself across the globe. So I wish verb, did you use? Yeah, eat. It's like, eat to yot, yatted, eat. So do people, is this like slang? Is this like, urban dictionary? Is this actual, or is it? Yeah, you have to like feel into the word.

Like if you take a thing and you just like curl it really hard, you just not feel like a eat, moot motion. Okay, so you eat it. So it was aggressive. So across the globe, you didn't even stop in. Just hurled myself, yeah. It only along the way. As kept eating myself in various places, yeah.

And so at one point I was done, okay, keep it and somebody sent me a long message being like, you should come to, I don't know, I'm hoping to hosting a castle. It's some people that I met. I'm like, I have no idea who you are, but I just bought a plane ticket. And it's life changing. I ended up dating that guy for years and he changed my life quite a bit because he, like, was very agenty in the world. And before that, I wasn't agenty

agenty like Can we so expressing agent sounds like you were and don't you have to express agency when you're eating yourself across the world? Yeah, but a little bit like in the same way you express agency when you eat LSD like the only thing you actually do It eating LSD is like put the tab in your mouth and then you just kind of scream the whole way after that. Yeah, but I There's a lot of other things like I didn't feel powerful enough to like go make events happen or anything and it was this guy He had a lot of agency in the sense that he would just sort of create realities through the people around him Be like, okay, we're gonna do this startup or we're going to throw this incredible event like let's just do it

And it would somehow happen and it was really cool to see that him be like, okay, we're going to do this startup or we're going to throw this incredible event. Like, let's just do it. And it would somehow happen. And it was really cool to see that. And so that one thing led to another. And it was one of the biggest impacts on my life, I think. Yeah, that's pretty bold. I would say that it's pretty romantic. South of France.

Yeah, it was. And a little castle is in the winter. So we're all closed up by the fire. I'm jumping around here. Twitter pull, have you ever hitchhiked? You posted this Twitter poll. That was a big list of Twitter polls. Why did you pick the hitchhiking one? I don't know because it's relevant to traveling. I don't like that one. That's romantic too, right? I'm actually terrified of hitchhiking, but I have done it a little bit.

Also, it's terrifying. It's not romantic too. So you're'm actually terrified of hitchhiking but I have done it a little bit also it's terrifying So I don't imagine to you so you're terrified of what oh, so you you are just an antihistrangers That's terrifying. Yeah You still you go to South of France That yeah But that was like a cohesive thing. I don't know like there's it made sense There's like times where you're allowed to be weird and times where you're not.

And like if you're, like, it was allowing you, he had some fake, eager, or a society, I'm not sure. Okay. But some people are like, hey, we think you're cool. Come to this party.

You're like, all right, I'm allowed to come to this party. I'm really weird. But if you're being picked up by a hitchhiker, they're gonna want to make small talk and you can't be weird. Are they gonna take you out? I kind of think,

because Valentine's Day is coming up, I kinda think it's doing something crazy, I'm not sure. South of France sounds nice. You gotta go to a crazy romantic date with a woman, you don't know at all. Yeah, I think I would like to eat something and just like, how do I select randomly, basically? How do you select totally randomly,

like not people from your audience? No, you won't, no, no, no, no, no, no, from the audience But in an interesting way random sufficient. So random amongst good choices Couldn't you have people just like submit a form with and then you just randomize it and then select one and then you just if it's Terrible you just go randomize it again like the first not terrible option. Yeah, sure So they get like the first not terrible option. Yeah, sure.

Somebody's like drown yourself. But I feel like I you then just no longer ran up. You kind of want to do random. You just do it and just do it. If I across the world somewhere has some random place, just put like a single event. Like a dinner. Yeah. You got some sort of itching you. Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, the itch to live.

It's like, like sometimes it's nice to drop a little like chaos into a thing. What's your chaos, everybody? By the way, like, you mentioned that earlier. I kind of saw it. I don't know. Yeah, that's one of like the sort of artistic attempts to survey. Because, you know, like, at least from what I understand, the big five and the way that they used to do IQ tests have heard,

is that they do factor analysis, you know, where they ask a whole bunch of questions and then they run calculations on the data to like sort of group it by organic clusters. So like with the big five, it's like people who say, oh, I like to be at parties, they also tend to say yes to the questions like, I like being the center of attention. And so you notice that like there's a cluster of ways people are answering the question and then you can sort of pull out an organic spectrum. And so I was like, okay, we've done that a whole bunch with things like personality or romantic stuff. I did it with the rape spectrum survey.

But what happens if you apply that method to a completely unselected group of questions? Just like no random chaotic, no thing whatsoever. Like what happens if you ask all possible questions, what natural things evolve out of that natural spectrums? So I had other people submit questions for a very large survey and I took the first, I think, 1,100 and barely filtered them at all. And then I just had a whole bunch of people answer them.

Well, can you give a hint to what it looks like, like how crazy the question gets? I mean, a lot of them were standard, but somebody was like, if Bayes of Bubb like did something in 1512 to like turn the world over, would you, would you like it? I don't know. It's like, it was really just insane questions. There's a couple of those. A lot of like, would you fuck Aila at once? But I don't know, there's all across the spectrum.

A lot of would you fuck Aila? Yeah, I had to. Oh, a lot of the same question. Yeah, once. Okay. I got you. Yeah. So had to. Oh, a lot of the same question. Yeah. Once, okay. I got you. Yeah, so it's really all, it was like normal personal habits. It was, you know, romantic preferences or political preferences, personality stuff, like random opinions about media.

Okay. That's interesting. I'd love to see those actual, actual questions, but because your audience is probably really a super interesting mind. Okay. You mentioned body count. You said you can answer that one easily. Do you share your body count? Do you know your body count? Do you know, is there a spreadsheet? There's spreadsheet. There's Google sheets. It's Google sheets. Yeah. Okay. You run like, is there, you don't have to share the contents,

but is there like data on each? So I track paid clients and free sex separately. And I track different things on either the, like with the clients, I track positions we used and who had an orgasm. And with personal people, I just track basically like age, city, you know, name. And I, I think it's like 42 people, I just struck basically like age city, you know, name. And I have had things like 42 people, I think, for free. So it's I'm sharing this because I want

people to calibrate. It's not like huge. It's not like tiny. One of the people I've recently talked to Mel Destiny's, Steven's wife is a huge fan of yours. She was actually really excited to get to talk to you But I think she said her body count is more than 42. I think she's at 60 something like this. And so It's interesting because she was like saying like she loves like looking at your work talking to you Because you have similar perspectives on the world and it's really refreshing and liberating. Wow. It's really sweet. It's kind of interesting. So is there like an optimal body count? If you were to map, I wonder, yeah, what have you found out about body count in doing? Have you actually done surveys on body count? Like on how many people people have sex?

I have to have to look at that information on my last survey. I just haven't looked at it yet. There's so many things to look at. So I haven't. Yeah. But I think if I'm just sleeping with a guy and he's had sex with more than 120 people, then I start to get a little bit wary. What? 120 is supposed to 100? I don't know. I just like kind of skimmed through the numbers in my head and poked one that felt right. Just now. Yeah. 120. Yes. I think that's what I'm starting like. I just kind of skimmed through the numbers in my head and paked one that felt right. Just now. Yeah. 120.

Yes. I think that's what I'm starting like. Yes. So you're flexible. Yeah, I'm flexible. Very. But 200 is a hard line for sure. Well, let's see.

You have to. It depends. The factors. Because there's a level of body count at which you start to wonder if how much Like accidental misrepresentation a guy is doing to you. Oh, like if you're saying 200 that might be this asked No, like if he's has extra 200 girls This means that he's had a lot of casual sex and not a lot of like long-term relationships assuming that he's you know

Has it been superpoly. And this usually means that there has to be some sort of indication that he cares about the girl more than he actually does. He's leading you on, basically. And so I'm not saying this is necessarily the case. I'm saying at a certain level of number, I start to wonder if this is what's happening.

Is there, from your understanding of it, is there a different perception between men and women? Like if you look at the high body count for a woman versus a high body count for a man, like how society views it? Oh yeah, people are way more judgmental of women. I haven't experienced this personally in my circles because I'm in very sex friendly circles.

Like I'm in orgy circles where everybody like dates the same women and they're like, woo, good job. But yeah, people are much more like people always tell me online like you're not going to be able to find a husband because you have sex with too many people. Very common, which I don't think I mean, like men are also perceived negatively if you have high body count, but I think I don't think it's negatively in the same way. Yeah, do you think it's not ethical to lie about in your body count? Yeah. So all lying is not ethical.

Yeah. Okay. I'm not a big fan of lying in general. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Body count is an interesting one. It's so silly to take that, to care about that. But still we do.

In jealousy is silly, but still we get jealous. Is that weird? All right, it's like, And jealousy is silly, but still we get jealous. Is that weird? I think the thing is, I don't like viewing emotions as irrational, even if they are. It's like emotions are always there for a reason. And people don't like high body counts for a reason too. They're just fine and valid. Yeah, it also is like, yeah, I don't know what I make of just the past of like time. You know, like, like, each human is a collection of experiences.

And you don't know most of those experiences. And also, you meet this bag of experiences. And like, what are you supposed to do with both of your like training data? Are you supposed to like, like what? Like, I don't know if we like part of me wants to not actually ever talk about it to care at all. Like, why doesn't Matt, because only the future is that matters. And yet the past also matters a lot potentially, but maybe not really because you're you're somehow like

constructed from that past, but you're no longer that past. It sounds like you're evaluating for something different than most people. What do you mean? Like most the reason I'm just talking about my ass, but yes, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just saying crazy shit like as if I have my drugs. Well, I like kind of sound shit like, is it my drugs or not? Well, I kind of sound, I think this is like kind of like lining up with like this character that I'm building a few based on this conversation so far. Great.

But like a lot of people want to know about your past because they want to know how useful and compatible you are with them. Like, oh, do you have a similar job? You know, do you have a similar culture? Like what can I expect from you in the future? Like it's very practically oriented. Whereas like, if the thing that you're focused on is not like being able to predict someone,

like if the thing that you're focused on is a present moment, then it doesn't really matter anymore. They're the things that like they're training data. But I also think like the past is not that predictive of the future. Is it not? Not if you believe in the power of the interaction between two humans, like nature versus inertia, I guess also I don't believe in the ability of people to accurately describe their own past.

This is true. Because they have a very specific lens through it that doesn't necessarily, like it's too biased. But you can also interpret it based on the bias. If somebody describes their own past, you can kind of pick up like hard. It's difficult. Like you could if you're a therapist, like if you're really drilling, like, or whatever, I'm sorry.

If you're really investigating and like analyzing it, but then it's like, it's a different kind of relationship. Is it that hard though? Like if I'm with the guy I'm considering dating him and I asked like, how did your past relationship set? And then if all of them were like, he's like, oh, she was crazy and my other one that she went crazy too. I'm like, okay, like there's a, if you're talking about all of your exes, it's insane.

Like, but that's an easy level right flag. But that's true. I feel like the more that also this possible that we're crazy, he's attracted to crazy people. So like, but we, but that I would say that's like easy level Mario Kart video game versus like Elden Ring. I think most people's past is like complicated. That's a pretty good bird.

No, you're right. I do agree that like there's a level of obscuse obfuscation. Wow. That is hard to see through, but this is like still a little bit sometimes. I tend to like with people, I tend to do, in general, just human interaction, I tend to not talk about their past very much because it allows you to focus on like,

I feel like the past is kind of like talking about the weather, it's a crutch for me personally. It's interesting. As opposed to exploring the ideas in their mind. Yeah, I see. Is it like, I get really knowing people quote philosophers when they're trying to talk about philosophy? Yeah. Is it like that? A little, but that crush is useful. And it's kind of sexy.

Like it's kind of cool. Like because it's nice to quote because like, because a good quote allows you to be cheesier than you otherwise would be. Well, if you're doing it to be cheesy, that's fine. Not cheesy, but not cheesy. But it allows you to say a simple, profound thing that we're too afraid to say with our own words. So the quoting philosophers in that sense is, yeah, but it is still a crutch, yes.

But I feel like the past is more like talking about your dreams. It's not, it's a crush that doesn't care, it doesn't empathize with the other person's experience of the conversation or the explanations. It doesn't really convey the, they are not involved in your past. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you feel about this conversation where you're asking me about my past? And I talked about my past a lot.

Well, I'm okay asking about your past because you've really carefully thought about that aspect of it. And we didn't really talk about your past side of the things you've written about and I've really thought about. I see. Like, there's like with most conversations, you'll start talking about past stuff that's like the stuff that's actually bothering you. You still probably have not written a blog post about it, right? Like, there's probably still stuff like, maybe it's more recent like the last few months,

the last couple of years. Like, that's usually what will come up with conversation and just it's good, it's good, but it's not as deep and I would say it's not as intimate as talking about the actual ideas in your mind and how you interact with the world. So like the past is interesting for the frame of like sort of like the like I guess you're right, I guess we're talking a lot about like narrative. Yeah. And past. Yeah. I like the ideas and people's minds versus their

recollections and memories and so on. Yeah What do you think about porn? It's nice. I like it. Okay. You like it. What effect do you think it has on society? Like probably reduces rates of rape Cuz like really horny men get an outlet. That's not a real life woman. Okay, so what about like the I mean like I said I finished reading Brave New World like the over sexualization Does it does it increase like

The sexualization society that's not into degree. It's not good or is this is good like though Are really does it alter in a negative direction our relationship with sex? It's unclear. Like, it might. I don't know how to evaluate this thing, right? Because this is like one of those really charged things where like, I kind of don't trust anybody's argument on it because it's too charged. But like there's another question which is like, is it a net positive or net negative? Like it's possible that it might be like a net negative for specifically our relationship to sex but like a net positive overall in general.

I'm not sure. But the thing my guess is that in general, it's better to let people do the thing that feels good to them and then the environment will naturally modify to fit this thing. And then if we have more needs and response to that, then we're going to figure out a way to take care of those needs. So like if you're watching a bunch of porn and this makes you like not want to go have sex with women, then we're going to have to like change the way that we like experience IRL connection. To compete with porn?

Yeah, which seems like a natural evolution of the civilizational cycle. Like I'm pro natural evolution, and instead of trying to stop things that people wanted to do actually, we figured how to integrate that and find a more healthy outlet. But you have to then be first honest with the effects that porn has.

So is it a negative thing? Is it a positive thing in real life, sex interaction? You're gonna have that more and more with, is a positive thing in real life, sex interaction. You're gonna have that more and more with like porn and VR or maybe porn AI porn. Yeah. Like is that a bad thing? Like what if porn with AI or even like in physical spirits, sex robots, like what if that's more pleasurable in a bunch of different dimensions than with other

humans? And we should figure out artificial wounds, I don't know. Like how important sex for society, I guess, with between two humans. And I mean, like, we're having less sex and making fewer babies. And that seems like probably not great. Yeah, right. With the babies one. Yeah. right. But the baby's one. Yeah.

But the baby's this probably artificial way to have babies that we can figure out. Yeah. Then how important is sex to be human? I guess sex with other humans. Like, we're gonna have to figure that out in the century. Yeah, I don't know what it means to be human. I'm pretty on the transhumanist side of things.

I'm like happy to stop being human. So you're okay. If the century is the last time, we'll be something like these biological bags of meat that we are. Let's become something new and cooler. Even though that thing will be way cooler than you. Well, I would like to, I mean, I'm hoping that we get to be immortal. Ah, you'll take you along for the ride. I would like to do cryotics be immortal. Ah, you'll take you along for the ride. I was hoping, or you'll clone my, I would like to do cryotics, you get frozen when you die. Are you afraid of death?

I mean, yes and no. I like came to terms with death with my LSD use, but I still have press breaks when the red light happens. I think this is a poll you've asked. Or this might be one of the questions in your cards, but how many years would you like to live? Like, if you had to pick. Oh, that's not so fun.

That's a really hard, maybe like a million? A million. But you have to, like, I think the way, this must have been a Twitter poll. I forget where it's up. It's a poll and also in the deck of cards to ask, yeah. Yeah, like you have to pick that number of years and you're have to live that many years and you can't live anymore. Yeah. You can't die sooner, I guess.

A million years. I don't like that question. I know I ask that question a lot of people, but I don't like answering it. It's really difficult. What's the downside of a million years? I mean, maybe you want to die sooner than that. Yeah. Like, you know, I guess I would rather wait to see if AI kills us all in the next 10 years. And if it doesn't, that I'd like to maybe make it a million years. Yeah, but can't it torture you for like a million years? What if you're the last human left? Yeah, that is, I,

that's true. The thought of like civilization ending and then just flooding in space a lot is kind of shitty. No, no, being tortured. Just imagine today you're tortured. Tomorrow you're tortured. The third, the day after tomorrow. For some reason it's not that scary. I don't know.

Torture for a million years. Yeah, I just soon get used to it. But like maybe if they reset your memory, so it was on a loop. So you're always experiencing torture for the first time. Yeah, hence torture. Torture's supposed to be unpleasant. I'm sure AI will be very creative in figuring out how to torture you.

I think I would be, I would go on the say side. I was just like, like 150 years. Really 150 though. That feels like right in like the uncanny valley. Well, you picked 120 for body count. So I'm here more than 50. I'm helping you by 30 of the on cany valley. It's like probably everybody that you grew up with is going to be dead.

It's like just enough for like everybody you know to die, like one cycle. Yeah. And then start dating the next generation. I don't know. And then so you get like sort of two lifetime. Yeah, two left times. Yeah. Yeah, and then start dating the next generation. I don't know. And then so you get like sort of two lifetime. Yeah, two lifetimes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it also really depends on if other people get this feature. Yeah, assume they don't. Because you'll have like FOMO for sure for the people who pick 300 years. Yeah. Or not. Or the other man regret

ideas or not or the other man regret another human thing. But you're like what is transhumanism mean to you in general. So extension of life, extension of what it means to be in a living conscious being, you're all for it. Whatever that means. I didn't really thought about the term transhumanism. Like people say to transhumanism, I don't really care. But I slowly realized that my attitude is, in fact, at least the thing that I'm conceiving of as transhumanist. I'm very happy to do artificial wounds and upload our brains to the great collective and whatever.

I don't have the thing that I'm like, oh, what about the true organic humanists that makes us who we are? Whatever that soul of humanity, I have no attachment to it at all, which I think is what I'm thinking of as transhumanist. I'm like, so you're like, I guess the window of what you consider

to be beautiful about life is not limited to this particular definition. Yeah. Let's explode. Like let's make our consciousness is huge. So AI could be a part of that. So you're mostly excited by AI. Well, I mean, I'm like part of like the Doomer cult, which I say, tongue-in-cheek is not actually a Doomer cult, but I'm part of a lot of...

Do you worship a god of some sort? Would you sacrifice little small animals? That would make it like cooler than what it is. It's mostly just a bunch of nerds who are very concerned about AI. Sure. Yeah. So you're concerned about the existential risks of chat GBT? Of, you know, what chat GBT will eventually evolve into being? Yeah, it's super exciting and terrifying how quickly it's accelerating. Yeah. Like language models are freaking me out. Yeah. It's very unexpected that it's the same exact, mean chat GPT is just dp 3 3.5 It's the same same model relatively small to what it could be To what you to Pt4 will be in the other competitors and just like a few tricks made it much better in terms of

Interactional humans and then we'll keep discovering extra tricks the thing I'm really excited about is how everyone kind of knows how it works, so you can kind of create, especially with competition becoming cheaper and cheaper. You'll be a lot of competitors. Yeah, it's all scary. Yeah, it's terrifying. I mean, because like, everything is just like information, ultimately. Like the atoms that we have, like, are biological machines built out of like tiny code.

Like our DIA is just information. It's not hard. If you have access, if you're like have a brilliant brain that's like great processing information, you've complete control of your reality. Yes. You've control over the atoms around you.

All you need is like a tiny little like atomic printer. And like we have those, those are cells, right? And then like this is like if the limitation is information There is no boundary between the technology and the real world Like we are creating something that it has a massive ability to affect the real world I mean, it's hard to know where if how difficult is the close that gap to physical reality? like From the physics to the the information.

You have like all organic life is that gap. It's all around this. Yeah, but it's hard to know like how to go from digital to printing life. I don't know. We have like, you know, crisp or stuff. You can order. You can just like make crazy. There's technical difficulties and there's cost like at scale. Like the terrifying thing about AI is it can accelerate overnight, the capabilities, but the printing of stuff, the actually changing physical reality is very costly, it's very difficult to exponentially accelerate. The more terrifying thing is AI becoming exponentially intelligent and then controlling humans, which there's many of us.

Yeah. And then that's how we achieve scale. We humans build stuff or start wars or so on. Like it starts manipulating our minds, gets in our minds, becomes our friends, and then starts, I don't know, defining us. Yeah. I think people thinking this is unlikely. It's like, it's probably going to be smart to us

Is like we are to toddlers so we toddlers thinking that like oh we can prevent the AI from coming in the room like as an adult It's like not hard to trick a toddler What what about falling in love in the AI system? Do you think you'll have a sincere like this is the freedom you have being polyamorous you can kind of follow the AI No, you and like it not really have to dedicate your commit fully. Like, sorry, you still commit, but you have others, humans, who you can kind of diversify too, because like it's kind of a big thing to like, to come to a party and your boyfriend is an AI. to come to a party and your boyfriend is an AI.

And that's monogamous boyfriend is an AI. It's an issue, right? Why would it be an issue? All right, now you're already getting offended at that possibility, which they're, therefore I know it's gonna be a reality. No, I'm just joking this issue. I don't actually think it's an issue. I think it's a, maybe it's a cutting edge

you'll be an issue, but. Like, assume they have a body, I assume. Yeah, but the body will be really like crappy. It'd be like, our 2D too. I feel like we grow human bodies already from like just a tiny little cluster of cells. And so all they have to is make that cluster and grow it. No, no, no, no.

Like don't, that, that, that, that, that embryogenesis process, that's really not well understood at all. That's really tough. I think we're much more likely to have crappy humanoid robotics. I don't think the body is overrated in terms of, if the AIS system is super intelligent,

you can use charm to make up for the crappy body. I don't know. I feel like if I were in AI system and I were super intelligent, I probably would be able to solve the problem of like growing organic matter. And then I would obviously just do that. You just build exactly the organic machine that you want. Sure. That's like super intelligence. I think like with language I'm worried about before it's used superintelligence Like true age. Yeah, it'll just be really good at talking. Yeah, that's true. I like it I just don't think intelligence is a very different like

Basically a scientist and a super intelligent scientist is a different thing They're just a good conversation instead of party that can address you with their words. Would you date an AI? I much way before then I could see myself being friends with the AI system. Yeah. But like people are friends with inanimate objects and I mean, there's a robot behind you. A lot of them. I like the leg of robots.

They're interesting. It's on the shelf. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah. I don'tigga robots. They're interesting. It's on the shelf. Oh, it was so cool. Yeah. How do you notice that? Yeah. Yeah. Ligga robots, they, they, we enter for more fights than even more, because there's something about the movement of like, like a thing that steps, steps, steps, steps, and looks up at you. It does a power to that versus like a room, but it's just like running into the wall. Yeah, I think once as soon as we get some sort of empathetic expression on robot faces over, it's over. It's so cute. It's going to be so easy to make it cute too.

If that's what you want, or you want like a dominant, like clearly, this is what women want. It's sexy, a top coordinator, yeah. With strong hands. Yeah. And kind of dumb. Or not, I don't know, that you can customize. It could customize. It'd be interesting to do a survey like how they would customize it. Like what would you want in a perfect robot?

This is the problem I see with people the way they talk about robots is they kind of want to servant. I think what people don't realize within one in relationship, they want some, like there's, it has to be a push and pull. There, there has to be some resistance. Like you, you really don't want to servant or even like the perfect manifestation of like what you think you want. I think you want imperfections around that, like some uncertainty.

I don't know. I question how well we're able to perfectly put on paper what we really want. Would you really turn down like a perfect woman though? Like a suit? She walks into the room and it's just shockingly compatible. And you start dating her and there's just no hiccups. You fight perfectly. Like she really understands you. Like would you be's just no hiccups. Like you fight perfectly, like she really understands you.

Like would you be like, this is too perfect. I'm upset because we are not having enough imperfection. Like can you actually imagine yourself and do that? Yeah, I think so because, so, because I thought you'd find perfect, because perfect for me would be like easy and all that kind of stuff, right?

But then I would be like, this is too easy. I mean, if I actually were to introspect what is the perfect relationship, then yes, maybe, because I probably want some challenge. I probably want some chaos, right? Like, like, does anyone really fully want zero conflict ever? Like completely perfect conflict. Like, it's the thing that pressing a button, like do you really want interrelationship, anything you want, you press a button, you get. I don't think people want that.

You might think you want that. Yeah, I guess it depends, like, there's a kind of conflict that I think I would never want, which is something like antagonistic conflict. I wouldn't my disagreement. Right. You know, but there's a level of fighting. I would be happy to have a relationship for the rest of my life that never has like a

fight of a certain shittiness. Yeah, but that's shittiness, but like resistance. Like, I don't know what the example is, because I mean, I partially agree with you, but I just, and I, every time I would imagine like perfect flawless, nothing, no conflict, you imagine somebody that doesn't have like a complexity of personality, right? Like, I feel like it's not even, it's conflict that's laid in, in basic misunderstanding between human beings. Misinterpretation, different perspectives, the clash, different world views, different

ideas, all that kind of stuff, that conflict. Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. I like having somebody be like, I don't think that's right because I have this other view. That's cool. And also the threat of leaving, right? Oh, yeah.

That's a kind of conflict. Yeah, that's true. Like, you have to be good enough for the other person or maybe you'll lose them. Yeah. And maybe a little jealousy. Like, they're good at that, but not too much. Like,

but like, if you design all that in, then I don't know. Sounds romantic. Sounds romantic, okay romantic. Okay. All right. I do want to really quickly ask you about the rationalist community because I've got to know a few of them a few times. You tweeted a guideline to rationalist discourse, basics of rationalist discourse from less

wrong. What are these folks? What's the rationalist culture? What's the rationalist discourse from less wrong? What are these folks? What's the rationalist culture? What's the rationalist discourse? Yeah, I love the rationalist because they're interested in like, how do you have conversations more effectively if you're trying to figure out it was actually true? And which sounds kind of obvious, but in practice, it's not usually. I remember when I first started having, you know, debating conversations,

I was very antagonist and like, oh, I'm, you know, feminist or not a feminist. And then the rashless were generally like, actually, we don't know what we mean by the term feminism. It's like, how do you feel about that? It was, it was very like kind and compassionate. Like, even if somebody says something that sounds insane, you're like, okay, well, we're going to respect your reasoning. And like, even if we disagree, let's actually figure out why you think the way that you think. And they also really smart, write a whole bunch of great stuff about how to think more clearly and with less bias. Yeah, I wonder what those conversations, because I never really like talk to those folks. So this guideline, particularly, I think has to refer to like, the shorthand characteristics

of rationalist discourse, including expect good discourse to require energy. Don't say straight forwardly false things, track for yourself and distinguish for others, your inferences from your observations, estimate for yourself and make clear for others, your rough level of confidence in your assertions, make your claims clear, explicit and falsifiable, or explicitly acknowledge the you are doing so, or can't, so on and so forth. So, don't jump to conclusions. Don't weaponize equivocation, don't abuse categories, don't engage, it's a very aggressive guidelines.

Don't engage, I do what I want. I'll let my emotions guide me. God damn it. The pro that as long as you're explicit about it. Oh, yeah. So you can be like a crazy asshole as long as you're explicit. You can be like epistemic status, crazy asshole.

Yeah. Who's here to destroy the quality of the conversation? I think it's like a common misconception about rationalists is that they're kind of like spock. Like, ah, we suppress emotion and we're thinking logically hurt eater But I found this to be really not the case like I remember there's a less strong thread where I was like really emotional and I commented And I just be kidding. I was like just warning. I'm just very emotional and then I just vented my emotions and people responded really well to that They're like cool. Like we're just a genuinely truthfully expressing your state

This is actual information about the world that is important to hear. And it's just, they're very interested in having things framed correctly. You shouldn't be claiming that your emotions are necessarily a true version of the world. And so as long as you're just clear about what the frame it is, you're fine. How do you feel about this conversation?

What could we have done better? I like the conversation. I was a little worried coming in. I was like, what if you know, only asked a couple questions, and then we don't always talk about. Yeah. But it's been an inquisalong time. And I covered the so many things I didn't cover. I like the, you have like a, like, I'm not used to talking to somebody who feels like some of the core way that they approach the world is so different than mine. Usually the difference is that I've like higher up the tree, but there's something about like your root system that I think is very different from mine.

Also, the way that you engage with it, there's still flexible. Usually when I encounter somebody with such a different root system, it's more aggressive or something. But there's something about the way that you're structured that feels very gentle. All right. Well, I'm really happy we talked. Something tells me we'll probably talk a bunch more times. I think you're fascinating human being. I think I'm a huge fan of your work. Maybe one more question. What's the meaning of life? To want things to search, to be in... Well, I think your curiosity is like somehow getting to that. Yeah. To want things. To want things. To want things. To want things. Like you don't know. To want things. I want to know the answer. To be in the state of

yearning. Of wanting. Yeah. That's the thing. I wonder if you could do that if you lived a million years. Just keep yearning always. That's the thing I'm probably afraid of. I lived a million years. It's not the torture. It's like the yearning will fade. It probably yearn to die years. Just keep your earning always. That's the thing I'm probably afraid of, I've fell in a million years. It's not the torture. It's like the yearning will fade. It probably yearned to die then. I'm just sitting there wanting death intensely. That's kind of romantic a little bit. It has like a bit of that spark. romantic a little bit. I have like a bit of that spark and constantly being denied. Wow. So most of your existence on earth would be spent deeply intimate with death, just thinking about death. I think we're already doing that, but if like hiding that from ourselves a little bit, anyway, wanting. Well, This is an amazing conversation.

I think you're an amazing researcher and human being. You're a great interviewer. I can see why you do this a lot. I appreciate it. This is really fun. Ella, thank you so much for talking with me today. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ella.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Richard Feynman. Physics is like sex. Sure it may give you some practical results but that's not why we do it. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. Thank you.