The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future–and Shape It by Byron Reese

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future--and Shape It by Byron Reese ". . . Byron Reese gets to the heart of what makes humans different from all others." —Midwest Book Review What makes the human mind so unique? And how did we get this way? This fascinating tale explores the three leaps in our history that made us what we are—and will change how you think about our future. Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas? In Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think, Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in. Envisioning human history as the development of a societal superorganism he names Agora, Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, and predict—and eventually master—the future. Thoughtful, witty, and compulsively readable, Reese unravels our history as an intelligent species in three acts: Act I: Ancient humans undergo “the awakening,” developing the cognitive ability to mentally time-travel using language Act II: In 17th century France, the mathematical framework known as 'probability theory' is born—a science for seeing into the future that we used to build the modern world Act III: Beginning with the invention of the computer chip, humanity creates machines to gaze into the future with even more precision, overcoming the limits of our brains A fresh new look at the history and destiny of humanity, readers will come away from Stories, Dice, and Rocks that Think with a new understanding of what they are—not just another animal, but a creature with a mastery of time itself.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks who's boss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com and i hope you're ready for some serious plain brain bleed i'm already bleeding from the brain clearly this Monday morning. Thanks for tuning in the show, folks. We certainly appreciate you coming by. We have

an amazing multi-book author on the show. He's written a bunch of brilliant books, and we're going to be talking today about some of his books. Byron Reese, who has written the newest book coming out on August 23rd, 2022, Stories, Dice, and Rocks that Think How Humans Learn to See the Future and Shape shape it he's written a number of amazing books and we'll be talking to him about it in the meantime remember the chris mosh show is the family that loves you it doesn't judge you it just turns 13 years old this month the chris mosh show is 13 years old in fact our youtube channel is i think 19 years old although we didn't really use it much for the first a years. But we just got a notification of it for YouTube the other day.

It's like, you're 19 years old. And so fun is fun, man. Go check out all the videos over there at YouTube.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, everything at the Chris Voss Show.com, Chris Voss Leadership Institute.com, all of our big groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places the kids are playing. Check out and follow those places. Refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go get a five-star review on iTunes. He is an amazing multi-book author, as I mentioned. The new book, of course, you can pre-order.

Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think, How Humans Learn to See the Future and Shape It, August 23rd, 2022. You can pre-order that baby up and see it coming out here soon. Byron Reese is an Austin-based entrepreneur with a quarter century experience building and running technology companies. He is a recognized authority on AI and holds a number of technology patents. In addition, he is a futurist with a strong conviction that technology will help bring about a new golden age of humanity. He gives talks around the world about how technology is changing work. Education and Culture. He's the author of four books on technology.

His most recent was described by the New York Times as entertaining and engaging. Welcome to the show, Byron. How are you? I am good. Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to have you as well. Give us your.com so people can find you on the internet, please. I'm the easiest person in the world to find.

I'm Byron Reese everywhere. I'm ByronReese.com, ByronReese on Twitter. My email address, ByronReese at Gmail. There you go. That's easy to do. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Well, I was getting an eye exam and my eye doctor asked me a question. And it's a very

straightforward question. He said, if we're all that, we're all smart, why aren't the other animals that are coming up and that are going to catch up with us? Why is there us and

everything else? So i got really interested in that question about how are people different than animals and that's that was what i started writing you on wait people are different than animals have you seen us lately no well you know there are i mean we obviously have animal but if you think about some animal that's supposed to be all smart, like a dolphin or something, and then you say, well, they're really dying. They don't have the internet.

They don't even have telegraphs. They don't have a still system. They're writing. What have they been doing all this time? And the short answer is humans are different because humans are different because we believe in these two things that don't really exist, the future and the past. We know. So we accumulate knowledge, and it piles up over time.

Whereas you think about a beaver or something, it makes the same damn that it was making 5,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago. It's just very different than how we do things. Maybe animals are just freaking lazy. I'm just kidding. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with Little Station Break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second.

I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to

for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out ChrisVossLeadershipInstitute.com. Now back to the show. So, you know, is it because we have some sort of consciousness that those animals don't, or is that not true? Oh, I think that could very easily be part of it. I mean, of course, we assume they're not conscious. For all I know, they're sitting around thinking about shit all day long. Yeah.

But, I mean, let me back it up and start two million years ago, you know, where all stories begin. There was this creature known as Homo erectus, which is supposed to be some ancestor of ours. And erectus lived for like a million and a half years. And erectus

just had one tool called an Acheulean hand axe. It looks like a big arrowhead. It's kind of a curved bottom. And the thing about it is those are found all over Asia, Africa, and Europe. Because Erectus lived for 80,000 generations, there are so many of these things, you could buy one on eBay for like $100. It's cool. It's used a million years ago.

Now, the punchline of the story is is that over the million and a half years they did never change i showed you two a million years but said which one's older you know a hard time i mean even experts date them plus or minus 500,000 years and so you think well wait a minute it took us three generations to get from kitty hawk to the moon how did they go 80,000 generations and not improve it any? And even more to the point, even if they hadn't intended to improve it,

if they were just like copying their parents' paradoxes, they would have drifted. And the ones in Asia would have looked different eventually than the ones in Africa. We didn't see that. But the big punchline of the story is, it's likely that was not a cultural object or a piece of technology.

That's just something Erectus was hard-coded to know how to build. The way a bird would build the same nest. The only nest it knows how to build. So Erectus is sitting there chipping away at this thing making it, but doesn't even really know what it's doing, any more than the beaver knows why it's building a dam.

And the beavers don't know why they're building dams because if you put a recording of running water in the middle of a field and the beaver just walked by, that beaver's going to build a dam over it. That's all it's doing. And that's all Rectus did. And then I'm getting to the punchline here. And then somehow,

60,000, 70,000 years ago, something very strange happened to us. Like we got bitten by a radioactive spider or something, because like overnight, you get beautiful cave art where you had none before, you get musical instruments where we have no evidence of them,

you get representative art, like carved figures where there are none, just like that. And something happened, and it could very easily be. So probably gave us language. And language is, the main purpose of language is not to communicate, but to think. But to think.

You think in language. And there's a beautiful quote in the book from Helen Keller who talks about what her life was like before her teacher came. She said she didn't even realize she was a thing that was different than the universe oh okay was not conscious she didn't understand that there was time passing she just didn't it's like steak um and that's what erectus i think was and then all of a sudden wow we get we get all these powers and one of them could very well be that we experience the universe that we have that we are conscious and and it could be that consciousness that that was a i mean i wrote a whole book on whether computers could be conscious or not i you know been down

that path and it could be but as you point out it's kind of the unknowable thing so i have to i can't let this joke slide i here i thought homo erectus was a only fan's channel i just can't waste that joke it's too good so so were we dumb like most animals are you saying for a long time where we kept doing the same thing over and over again and then sometimes somewhere in there i think this i think the story goes aliens stepped in and wake on our brains or something it's funny you say that because when i was writing the book people would always jokingly make that remark. It's a great joke. It's a fair one to make because what happened

is so dramatic, it invites speculation that crazy. And something happened to us. And then all of a sudden, it's the reason there are no Bronze Age beavers or Iron Age iguanas or pre-industrial prairie dogs or any of that

is because the spider didn't bite them they're just erectus they're just building their dam or doing whatever they want and that's their story so does it become like Moore's Law where basically once we awaken we just you know you

mentioned the thing with Kitty Hawk and flying. And yeah, it's amazing how quickly we, you know, now we're in space and we're on Mars. Does it become Moore's law where we just slowly over time start, you know, doubling, tripling and, you know. Yeah. I mean, I think so. You know, the thing about Moore's law that we discovered was that all technology seems to behave that same way. It doubles on a periodic basis. It may not be every two life doubles every 127 million years, which means if you graph it backwards from us,

life formed 6, 7 billion years ago, which is pretty cool since the Earth is only about 4.5 billion years ago. There you go. Almost certainly, if it wasn't aliens, we could very easily have had it. Could have come here on a... We know that microbes can survive in the vacuum of space. You know, there was a... We left a camera on the moon for two years,

and when they took the lens cap off, it stuck under the light. So it could be that that came down and was, you know, the seed that launched all of this. Yeah, the spider that bit us's kind of interesting sort of analogy is it possible that our brain just i don't know somehow evolved to a point of consciousness i mean i i sometimes you know i you hear the theory that people say well you know snakes don't sit around and contemplate the universe and their existence and you know if there's a snake god they imagine that there's a god of their own image which is the most narcissistic sort of concept anyway when i think

about it you know i think about i think about if you look at the universe and you go whoever built this thing and then the math and everything else he really wasn't a petty person who was sitting around as a narcissist you know concerned about his navel if there was a creator i should say i'm an atheist so whoever built this had to be you know pretty darn smart intelligence because we have no concept of building a universe or what how to do it we kind of i think we have the we're starting at the blueprint of the math but we all can't float in space or whatever he floats in or she floats in or it floats in. Let's put it that way. Again, it's narcissistic to think that he or she, for all we know,

it's, you know, whatever. I think I'm off on the wrong tangent. I'm just going to keep running with it. But no, I mean, how do we, do you think animals are conscious? I think that's the question I'm trying to set up in a joke. So the thing about, I'll answer that very directly, but the thing about consciousness that's so vexing to people is not that we don't understand it, because there's a lot of things in science we don't understand, and that doesn't, there's no surprise. The thing about consciousness is we don't actually have an understanding

of reality where matter can have an experience. You know, a thermometer can measure temperature, but you can feel warm. And you and that thermometer are made of the same elements. And so that's the difference. It's the experience of that feeling of warmth. So we don't know why matter can even do that. So, okay. We don't know why the thermometer

can sense temperature? Is that what you see when you're a person or me? We don't know why we can experience one. And the thermometer can only measure temperature. People say we don't know what consciousness is, but we actually know

exactly what it is. It is your experience of the universe. And, you know, you can, you're built in such a way that you have all of these senses that you experience. And you have a self and experience decisions. And we just don't know how a matter can do that. Like you're made out of 30 different elements. A smart girl is made out of 60. So, you know, so the question is,

but why are you able to feel warmth and happiness and joy and all that? So we have minds. And I think if we have minds, then that might be the source. So to answer your question about if the animals are conscious, I mean, again, everybody guesses. I would assume so, because

I do believe they can feel pain. And if they can feel pain, they're experiencing something. Ah, that makes sense. Then they're coaching. That makes sense. Or, I mean, could it just be a reaction? I mean, the body is like... It could be. You know, until the

1990s. Until the 1990s, Until the 1990s, it was standard procedure for veterinarians in the United States was to operate on dogs and cats without anesthesia because they can't feel it. They may be screaming and agonizing, but it's just some kind of reaction. Similarly, by the way, we did open up surgery on babies with no anesthesia until the late 90s. And I'm not saying the 1890s, the 1990s. We were still operating on babies without anesthesia. So we didn't feel like they had a neural development that would allow them to feel pain.

So even if they're screaming, that don't really hurt. It's an easy thing to say, but if you've got an error on one side or the other, you always want to err on not torturing things. Yeah. If it comes down to, hmm, I don't know, okay, I'll go with that don't torture option. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, wow, that gave me the creepy jeebies. You say that animals are immortal.

What's that about? Well, you know, I mentioned that we learned about the future and the past. Mm-hmm. And they're not real things and the only thing that exists in the universe is this moment and in the future in the past don't and yet we live in them right we're always thinking a minute ahead oh i'll do that i'll get over in traffic i'll pick that exit then i'll swing by here and i'll pick that up like we make plans and uh and because but the double the double side of that sword is that we also know there'll be a future where we are not in it that we will die there's no evidence that animals have an understanding of the future in fact i shouldn't even say it that way this is a well-studied thing and you may get a couple of animals that may have a very limited few hour future view

maybe but they're not going to like invest in a 401k or anything we don't think your time it's not if you don't know that there's a future then you don't know there's a future without you you don't know you're going to die so i don't think animals know they're going to die why why would they why would? It's not even a... I've had a few Nigerian snakes send me Google invites for calendar. That's a joke. So you talk about how our lives are so full of technology compared to, say, dolphins. You know, I guess dolphins don't have as deep jobs.

Is that what separates us from them? Is our ability to, I don't know, develop and scale technology. Sort of, I think, sort of. I mean, if you were to drop you on a desert island, you would probably do okay. Like, I assume you watched a few episodes of Mythbusters and maybe some Gilligan's Island. I'd be screwed unless there was coffee. And you would be actually okay. You could build a lean

but if you could imagine like a real Tarzan, like a real baby that was born in the woods and didn't have our culture and dropped into the desert island, well they wouldn't. They'd be starting over. And so what I think makes

it special is we're born into a long sequence of both we have a lot of history behind us we're born into that and so i was born into more culture than leonardo da vinci was because i had everything up to leonardo and everything after it i was born into more culture than mar Aurelius. I have all of that. And so our stuff accumulates and the dolphins don't. That's the setup of the book was that we learned

how to see the future and then we learned to tell ourselves these stories and the stories are not what's been time. The stories are how we plan and navigate life. And only much later did we start articulating them. But once we could see the future and know there was a future, then the question was how can we predict it?

And that's the second part of the book, which is nice. That's when we learned about probability. There you go. You know, you mentioned earlier that we're made up of, I think, what was it, 30 elements, I think it was? I'm actually 31 elements. Okay. And I know where we're conscious. The 31th element is coffee, and coffee is the reason we're conscious, because without it, I'm not conscious.

Well, you know, everybody, I'm sure, has heard the old song that says the Enlightenment happened because we went from drinking beer all day and Bob's to drinking coffee and that that was the enlightenment yeah there is a flip side to that though which are counties in the United States that had been wet counties where you could buy alcohol before prohibition then when prohibition hit the number of new patents coming out of those counties was 14 percent less than it had been wow wow it sounds like you need a boat you gotta have to pick me up and then you gotta have to you know just be just lit enough to invent something like i know i'll make a whatever yeah there you go so you say we're at the dawn of Act 3. I missed the first two acts then.

Act 1 is stories. You're late for the show. Act 1 is stories. That's where we learn to imagine a visualized future until that story. Act 2 is about a probability. If it means something, can I show a visual aid? Please. Please do.

So the question for predicting the future is what determines what's going to happen in the future? And there were all these different theories. It's fate. It's will. It was on my vision board, right? I'm like, what's this? What you didn't know is that it's this that determines the future. So you may have seen these before.

I'm about to flip it. And all these BBs are going to start falling. And when they fall, they get a piece of plastic and they're going to go to one side or the other. So let's describe this for, because the podcast is largely audio and YouTube can see this. This will be lost

on people. Basically, every time you flip that golden board down, all these BBs fall and they bounce randomly. But there's a normal curve at the bottom, a bell curve. Okay, so there's a bell curve at the bottom. What's that device called again? It's called a

golden box after a golden box. G-A-L-P-O-N, yeah. Every time you flip it, you get that bell curve over and over. I mean, if you ever flip that thing and you get a big U, it's like world's going to end tomorrow or go buy a lottery ticket. The universe does not

behave like that. And what we learned is that there's predictability and randomness and you would never have assumed that. Why is it that I mentioned in the book, year before last,

there were 166 workplace debts from electrocution. And the next year there were 161. Why would it be that it's the same every year? Why would it be that? And the reason is, is because in order to electrocute yourself, you have to do like 10 things wrong. You have to, it has to be hot. And then you have to not check it, and then you have to touch it.

And that's that bead bouncing to the right every step of the way. And then you flip it, you're going to get 150, 100, 75, 100, and you have them over there. And that's it. That's what determines our reality is largely that falling of those bowls. But luckily, there's predictability in it. So that's Act 2. We were like, hey, it's cool to be able to imagine the future. Can we predict it?

And that's when we invented probability. It was done. It's two guys writing letters trying to solve a math problem that you'd give a sixth grader today. In any case, that brings us to Act III, which has started in 1952, 1953, when we booted up the first transistor computer. Because what happened is we developed a science for seeing the future called probability. But we had to do it with paper and pencil. Like, that's all we had. And we built the modern world on being able to make predictions with those tools. But it didn't scale well.

So we built machines to do our thinking for us. And those are the rocks to think. world on being able to make predictions with those tools, but it didn't scale well. So we bought machines to do our thinking for us, and those are the rocks to think. Silicon chips, of course, being rocks and the kind of thing, and that's what Act 3 is. That's what we're using technology for. And the reason

it's more than it sounds like, yeah, let me, the reason that is such a big deal is because for billions of years, the only place we knew how to write information was in our DNA. The wee creature in the world,

all they could do is write information in their DNA. And it took a long time to write something new. Then all of a sudden we got language 70, 80,000 years ago, and our DNA expanded to be what was in our head. And then I could say, hey, Chris, don't eat those purple berries. And that doesn't take 10,000 years to learn. You're like, okay, I won't eat them.

And then you can pass that mutation to everybody instantly. Now, what's important, what's cool is that we now have writing, and now we have everything that's ever been written is now the DNA of our planet. A man named Leonard Reed wrote an essay a while back called Eye Pencil. I don't know if you've heard of this. He points out nobody knows how to make a pencil. There's not a person in the world that knows every step of making a pencil. Nobody who can bind the ore and make the steel and bend it in the ferrule and

get the yellow paint. Nobody. And yet pencils get made. And so the question is, who makes the pencils? Who knows how to make the pencils? I'd say it's a superorganism called Agora. A superorganism of humans called Agora. And Agora knows how to make pencils. And more importantly,

Agora knows how to make smartphones. So Agora is the thing. Our DNA now is distributed around the planet. It's in written form. Like the DNA in your body, most of it's junk DNA, but there's a lot of good stuff in it too. And that's what runs our world is this new DNA we have.

And that is computers, which not only can process data quickly, but they can collect information as well. And that's it. You see, this is short, don't worry. But for the longest time, you know, humanity has been hindered by the fact we don't have a collective memory. So you can learn something your whole life and know it, and then you die and it's gone. And maybe you taught one person and they died it's gone and so we never could accumulate our knowledge

we're you know like the dolphin we couldn't accumulate it and then all of a sudden we we we could and that made i think all all the difference in the world yeah what did it be was it was it because we started storing information? I mean, for a long time, we had historians that were griots that would keep a verbal mental history, and then we started writing it down. What our ultimate goal is now, the ultimate direction, this may not be anybody's goal, I don't know,

but imagine if you could record every single thing that happened every i mean everything every word you say everywhere you go every breath you take everything your eye tracks to what happens to your pupils when you see it we're building that world because we all want all these little pieces of it like if they made a skillet that could detect botulism or e-pool i'd buy this skillet i don't want to get e-pool but the skillet that could detect botulism or eat co-op, I'd buy that skillet. I don't want to get any co-op. But the skillet is therefore recording everything that was ever made in it. And then my silverware could keep track of what I eat and the vitamins in it so it can tell me what I need to take or whatever.

I'm going to take that. So slowly we're building all the data. We're getting all the data of eight billion lives and then we're going to mine that data and then that is our collective memory as a planet that is our collective wisdom and now every mistake you make will be the data that helps somebody else down the road and every person in the future will be smarter will be wiser than the wisest person who ever lived. Because they're going to have billions of pieces of life experience to draw on.

So now you've made me realize that all this tracking of data that we do through technology is really based upon a song about stalking by the police and Sting. Every movie we make. Basically, that's right. Record it all. Thanks, Sting. Way to fucking go. Let's touch more on this Agora, because I want to flush this out a little bit. Agora

is, or Agora, I didn't mean to put an N in there. Agora is, is it a collaboration? Is it a concept or idea or a real creature? It's one of three things. Is it a concept or idea or a real creature? It's one of three things. Is it a metaphor?

Is it all three things or three things? Well, I don't think so. It's either a metaphor, a useful way to understand the division of labor, or it's a system, like it are, a system that can break. Or it's an actual bona fide living creature. It's alive. They can break. Or it's an actual bonafide living creature. It's alive. The notion of a superorganism is this, is that, you know, you have something like bees.

And your average bee isn't very smart, but bees live in these colonies, and the colonies are smart. Smarter than any bee. And the colony takes on different attributes than any of the bees. For instance, bees are cold blooded they don't regulate their body temperature beehives are warm-blooded they're held at 97 degrees by the bees so they're warm-blooded likewise you're an emerging entity right because none of your cells knows about you if i take you apart a cell at a time and put every one of those cells in a petri dish they could live on but you would vanish like you ever even there like what are you what is it that you are that is different

than the sum of all of your cells and that you are a super organism super organism and and so the all humans who are connected in any way with common culture or common in any way are part of this big super organism of people. It's nothing mystical or anything like that. It is how a beehive is smarter than any being. It's humans. Okay. It has this emergent property that it makes smartphones, and they're cheap, right? Like a Goron.

The Goron, by the way, was in ancient Greece. It was like the part of the town where everything happened. It was the market. It was the big society. It was the, you know, they used to, like in Assyria, they used to bring all the sick people and just set them down near the entrance and when you're walking in, everybody's supposed to yell out their symptoms.

And then you're like, oh, I had that once. And then you go over and talk to that person. I mean, it's basically like posting your symptoms on a forum and hoping somebody says, oh, I did that. So everything's happening in the avary. Energy of humans. And that, by the way, is what the next book is about.

It's just awesome. This book leads into agora, but, ah, it was just, that's what I do. I post my monkey pox pictures and that's how I found out monkey pox on social media. The, you know, I'm gonna put sup, what was the term super organism? Mm-hmm yeah. I'm, I'm putting on my Tinder profile on LinkedIn. That's my new title on LinkedIn and Tinder. Let's probably get more dates.

Especially when I put super in organism, the chicks dig that, I hear. Really? I like it. The chicks dig that. So we'll do that. What is your thoughts on, you know, because you've written books about AI, you talk about AI. What's your thought on that whole Google thing? The kerfuffle?

What age do I live in? I've been listening to Biden too much. I love Biden. The kerfuffle from Google where that one engineer dude who wears a top hat, actually, if you see his photos, good for him. He looks like, if he had one of those long cigars that women used to use in the 60s, he'd look like the guy from Batman. What was his name? The Penguin, yeah. He's a fine fellow.

I don't mean to be that way, but he does have... Penguin ears? I don't know much about the Penguin's past. Well, yeah, I don't, clearly. I was getting laid instead of reading comic books. That's a joke, folks. So what's your take on him declaring that Google Systems, their AI that they're building has become conscious and is cooking up Skynet

and will deliver Terminators next year or something? I don't know. I used to run this podcast called Voices in AI, and we had 120 guests on it. And I'm fortunate that we live in a time when you still get access to a lot of people who were in early. You know, the big brain. It's just wonderful.

And what I like to do is ask all the same set of questions. And one of them I would ask, well, do you believe we can make general intelligence? Do you think we can make general intelligence? Do you think we can make general intelligence? And 96% said yes.

And then I said, but you agree we don't know how to, right? What's general intelligence? What is that? It's an unfortunate word because it means two unrelated things. It's like the word pool. Does that mean like a game pool or a swimming pool? They're different things. It's like the word pool. Does that mean like a game pool or a swimming

pool? It's like they're different things. So we use AI for these two different things. And one of them is narrow AI. It's what we know how to do now. It's a real simple technology where you take a bunch of data and you look for patterns in it and you make projections in the future about those from those patterns. That's your spam filter and that's how you get routed through traffic and that's great that works but then there's this hypothesized form of ai called general intelligence and that's an ai like you and i that is c3po that is commander data that is ex machina that is her from the joaquin phoenix movie that is general intelligence and so when you hear people say oh you know AI is going to kill us all or whatever, they're not talking about the Stanfield returning the engine.

They're talking about this hypothesized other kind of intelligence. Now, we don't know how to make it. And that's what was claimed, that we were almost there. Now, what's important, though, is to understand that 96% of people believed, of any of the experts believed we can make it, but they would all agree we don't know how. And so you say, well, why are you so sure we can make it? And their answer is because we are machines with J intelligence. And so their belief is based on a core belief that people are

machines. If, in belief that people are machines. If in fact we are machines, if that is true, then someday we'll build a mechanical human and then two years later, it'll be twice as good and two years later, it'll be twice as good. I don't believe people are machines. I, and I don't even think you have to go to the soul or anything like that to make the argument that there's something about people that cannot be reproduced in a fab if there is then general intelligence is possible so impossible

and i'm in that camp it's impossible you cannot make general intelligence it will never happen it will never happen yeah i've seen humans there's no general intelligence. What is that line from George Carlin? 50% of people are dumber than average. So there's that. And, you know, it's kind of interesting. You know, you mentioned earlier the thing where people are getting shocked by electricity. I always just thought that was Darwinism. You know, there's that bell curve of enough people are dumb enough amongst us to get themselves electro electrocuted and killed i imagine i'd be interested i'd be interested to know how many of those people said hold my beer watch this before that electricity killed them there should do is there should be a survey someone should conduct to some sort of university grant for that.

The shocking thing about that curve is how many things in life follow it. If I were to grant, oh, I don't know, I mean, oh, suicide methods or something, it would

follow that from year to year. It would follow that. It would. I from year to year. It would follow that. I have a dumb question. Shouldn't the amount of people go up based upon the fact that we have more people on the planet? Like we're, evidently we're hitting 8 billion people right now because people won't stop having kids in Utah or something in Florida. I don't know. I mean, shouldn't the number go up because we're increasing, you know, the George Carlin 50% access of more stupid people? How come it stays the same if we have more population? Well, if I have automotive accidents by day, you know, there are,

in the United States, 36,500 people die of automobile accidents every year. And if I looked at last year versus the year before last, it's going to be very close like that. Because, again, it's that bell curve. It's something that had to bounce that many times to the right for somebody to die. But you're right. If you compare it to 20 years ago or 20 years in the future, it's different because the populations are different. So I would always pick adjacent years because that's apples to apples. And then you have to say, well, why would it stay the same?

That's really strange. Yeah. Because, I mean, I can accept there's a certain amount of, you know, Darwinistic as a comedy bit. But, you know, there's a certain amount of people that experience enough stuff that they're going to happen. Just odds of, you know, I mean, even police will tell you an accident isn't truly an accident. It's a series of bad decisions people make. And fortunately, it ends up involving other people. It's kind of like when most people, when two parents get together on New Year's Eve and they've been drinking too much or two singles, and then there's an accident that happens.

It's not really an accident, which might make half my audience feel better. That's a joke, folks. Your parents did plan you. Don't worry. It's okay. You'll be fine. See a psychiatrist. Anything more you want to touch on or tease out, Reese, on your new book?

I didn't hear that. I'm sorry? Anything you want to touch on or tease out more on your book as we go out? No. No. We've covered it all. There you guys. So give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs.

Your.com so we can find you on the interweb? Byron? Our audio is garbled. Okay. If you could give me your.com so we can find you on the interweb? Byron? My radio is garbled. Ah, okay. If you could give me your.com so we can find you on the interweb, please. Yeah. I'm the world's easiest guy to find. I'm Byron Reese everywhere.

ByronReese.com, ByronReese.gmail, ByronReese on Twitter. There you go. Order up the book, folks. You'll find it wherever fine books are sold, but stay out of those alleyway bookstores because you'll need a tetanus shot stories dice and rocks that think how humans learn to see the future and shape it august 23rd 2022 also check out his other books how many other books do you have byron that are published four four and another one in the works so you're prolific and they'll just keep coming. Thank you very much, Byron, for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it. I had a great time. I look forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to youtube.com. Forge has Chris Foss.

See everywhere we are on the interwebs. The big LinkedIn newsletter, the big LinkedIn group, and everything we do over there. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.