The Joe Rogan Experience - #584 - Zoltan Istvan

Episode Date: December 8, 2014

Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, philosopher, journalist, author of #1 best-selling novel "The Transhumanist Wager" & 2016 US Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party.

Hey everybody Zoltan is that the correct way to say it perfect Istvan did I do it right perfect oh I nailed it now when you're a guy who's a transhumanism expert and you sound like a robot your name's i mean zoltan you sound like like an evil robot from another planet i mean the name sounds like no no insult meant no no of course of course you've heard you know it's it's a pretty bizarre name esoteric in america uh strangely enough it's the most common Hungarian name. Is it really? Yeah.

So like you say in a movie theater in Hungary, you get five people to turn around. But in America, yeah, it sounds a bit spacey. So Zoltan is like the equivalent of Joe. Exactly. Because when someone says Joe, if I'm out a mountain a crowd i assume it's someone else always there's just so many damn joes so zoltan is the hungarian joe yeah and it's it's it's yeah it's amazing you say it on the street and you'll get people turning around for sure now um that's a it's it's a it's very funny though that your name is zoltan and you are a transhumanism expert i

mean it's the irony cannot be lost on you in that. No, and a lot of the media points that out too because I'm pushing ideas that are pretty bizarre. They're certainly far out there, and the name sort of just emphasizes that aspect of it. What do you think when it comes to this? This is a very controversial subject because I think there's a lot of people that are resisting the inevitability of this relationship that we have to technology, the continuation of this inevitable relationship.

There's a lot of people that, for whatever reason, don't like it. They want to go back to chopping wood. It seems like there's some people that are digging in their heels when it comes to technological progress. What do you think is like one of the big reasons for that? Well, I think anything that's foreign to people sort of scares them. And as human beings, we have a kind of a biological propensity to just take our time in adapting. And unless it's like a snake in the grass, people don't react really quickly.

People tend to like want to take it all in, discuss it with their family, their friends, government, whatnot. And so we have this huge, almost I would say a paradigm shift about to occur where, you know, we're doing things like already starting to put microchips in people's heads. We're, you know, we can, uh, take

photos from the atmosphere and look at ourselves. It's like surveillance issues. I mean, this is all drone use. I mean, there's a million different things going on with technology and science and it's coming so fast, so quickly, it's scaring a lot of people. Um, people that would not normally be so frightened if it was like individually had come at some separate time, but it's just coming all at once. And, you know, just even looking at the equipment in this room, you know, even 10 years ago, a lot of this wasn't like it was. And so, you know, if you're not accustomed to it, or if you're a little bit afraid of some of that change, you might back off from it and say, well, what is this? This is too weird. But, you know, for those of us who love it, and who see it as very useful

and functional and improving well being and health, this type of technology, this type of change is, is, is really great. Do you have any apprehensions at all about the sort of exponential growth of technology? Well, I certainly have lots of apprehension. I think the biggest thing I'm worried about, and you've been hearing about this in the news recently, is artificial intelligence. This idea that there will be another entity on the planet that is smarter than us, equal to us, this kind of thing, and could potentially become so much smarter than us in such a short time that it could literally change the way, you know, our Earth actually is. And if all of a sudden it controls all the machines in this room and all the airplanes and stuff like that, for whatever reason, it could certainly stop the Earth, I'd say, or at least progress as we know it. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? These are very, you know, touchy and difficult questions,

but the thing about it is certainly scary. And that's the one thing that I've kind of agreed with a lot of the experts lately saying that, yeah, we probably need to have some type of oversight. I was recently speaking at an artificial intelligence and singularity conference, and we were on a panel, there were five experts talking about AI, and someone asked, well, who is regulating artificial intelligence development? And all the experts had, no one said anything because no one said there really is anything regulating this idea that maybe in potentially eight to 12, probably 20 years, there will be this entity that's smarter than us on planet earth. That seems a little bit of a disconnect.

I don't really like regulatory things, but maybe for this one is something we'd have to. So I have a lot of apprehension when it comes to that single concept. But most of the other technologies, I think as long as historically they are increasing lifespans, they are making people live better. Poverty is going down across the world because of technology. So from a statistical point of view, technology has helped. And I'm pretty sure it's going to continue to do that, especially if it's made kind of freely available to everyone. It seems like there's two schools of thought when it comes to artificial intelligence.

There's the Elon Musk school where he's like, you know, hey, we might be summoning the demon. I mean, that was his exact quote, which is terrifying. And then there's the other school of thought where people are saying, like, you know, hey, we might be summoning the demon. I mean, that was his exact quote, which is terrifying. And then there's the other school of thought where people are saying, like, you don't need to worry about it because they will only react in the way that we program them to react. That when we create some sort of an artificial life form that will have very strict parameters of what it can and can't do. You know, we've seen that in science fiction movies before, like they have a protocol that they can't harm human beings.

You know, they have these things that are programmed into their behavior patterns that cannot be overridden. But I think the real concern, at least my real concern, is that we are giving birth to this new superior form of life. And then the way I've described it is that we're essentially a caterpillar that doesn't recognize that it's going to become a butterfly, that we are toiling away creating this anthill or whatever we're doing. You know, we're just involved in this constant growth, constant technological innovation process, and we don't even realize that our whole purpose here was to create this new thing, was to create this new life form.

No, and I'm a big proponent of that entire idea because, as I point out in my book, The Transhumanist Wager, a lot of what evolution is going towards is not what we think it's going, or what we want it to go towards, which is, you know, human beings, family, all the institutions of marriage and stuff like that continuing. I actually think what evolution has really been leading to is the creation of a really incredible superpower. I don't want to say God, but something that has omnipotence, something that is omniscient, something that is perfect in its form. The universe is becoming alive through us. And, you know, we're very early in the process of that. I would say we're, you know, I don't know, 5%, 10% along the way.

We're just kind of kids in the universe. But the idea is eventually artificial intelligence and, you know, the key, the way I work through my apprehension of artificial intelligence is that I would like to merge with it. I would like to have it so that we could connect, you know, through a neural implants or whatever it's going to be into the machines. So it's not like the machines leave us. It's like we leave with the machines and that's the natural state of evolution. Therefore we actually become that. And it's like you said, you know, the caterpillar idea where the butterfly actually then becomes something else. And that's where I see not only humanity going, but also the kind of evolutionary course of the universe, which is sort of moving towards this much more incredible of an intelligence,

incredible energy forms, whatever it is that's going to end up, I think we're going to end up being then the most important things that humans don't miss the train. I wonder if one of the things that people are concerned with is that we enjoy a lot of our flaws. And if the if we keep improving, if technology comes along and gets to the point where a human being becomes free of any irrational thoughts, free of irrational emotions, or maybe even any emotions. We're missing out on rock and roll. We're missing out on Charles Bukowski. We're missing out on muscle cars, all the stupid shit that makes life fun.

It's going to be completely irrelevant. No one's going to be getting drunk. No one's going to be getting drunk. No one's going to be making dirty jokes. We're going to miss out on fast food, like ridiculous ice cream sundaes. You know what I mean? It's like there's a lot that we enjoy about life that is ultimately ridiculous. And as we continue to get smarter and as technology takes us to this point where we can kind of eliminate a lot of the biological protocols that are in place that cause these flaws, what will we be left with?

We'll be these weird robot creatures. No, and this is one of the most, I think, important philosophical dilemmas of the kind of thing I just spoke about where we're evolving into some type of incredible intelligence is what if it's super boring, you know, and what if it's just not much fun and, you know, so I think what's going to happen is along the way, we're going to find out how much we miss, you know, some, as you said, the ridiculousness of life, you know, I also don't know if life can actually evolve and progress just through pure logic or pure rationality. I think chance is very important in life. And I also think being creative and creative must to some extent involve that ridiculousness, at least must involve the question of asking why.

Now it might get more logical and rational as we go forward, but I'm not sure we're ever going to completely be the perfect mathematical model that we would want to be. I'm not even sure that if we had perfect intelligence, if let's just say hypothetically, we became that perfect intelligence, we might purposely sabotage ourselves just so that we always have that element of irrationality in our lives to keep us on the go, to keep us moving forward, to keep us evolving. So that's the first part of that. I think the second part of what you're speaking about, the interesting thing that I always tell people, because I get asked this question a lot, is that right now our current perception of the universe is pretty

limited. For example, our eyesight can only see about 1% of the light spectrum. Our ears can hear far less than 1% of the sound waves and what's possible in the universe. So our actual ability to determine what is in the universe is completely limited. And in fact, so limited that we're just basically getting tiny bits of it. As we progress forward, I think we're going to have more applications towards getting a better perception in our senses of what the universe really entails. We'll all have night vision. We'll all be able to see different types of gases in the air. We'll have different types of feelings that are based in with these kind of hypersenses.

And that in itself will give us so many new experiences. And I try to tell this to people a lot that we're actually going to become much more complex. We think this is our world around us, but actually if you and I had bionic eyes, we'd see that there are maybe a billion different organisms in this room that are also interacting with us. And that's something that I'm not saying it's going to maybe take us down either a smart or a bad path, but it's something that could be different that could take us to other ideas and other ways of experiencing the world that makes it so it's not either boring or makes it so it's not so, you know, so kind of crazy. Though, you know, I don't think that humans are ever going to, and transhumans at least

to start with, are going to give up some of the ridiculous aspects of their life because one of the things that motivates us is fun and one of the things in in human experience that is fun is being ridiculous so i think you need that creativity you need that creative element in the species yeah i agree i worry about the there's just a sheer amount of data you would have to process if you could see all the gases in the air, all the organisms that are in the air. I was camping recently in Alaska. We're in Prince of Wales, which is essentially a rainforest.

It rains all day, every day. And we were in the, like, this area was just constant downpour, 100% humidity. And I was in my tent, and I turned and i turned i had like a little headlamp on i turned the lamp on and looked in the tent and the tent was filled with moisture like little tiny droplets of dew were floating in the air in the entire tent and it made me think like if you could see all the microscopic particles that are in the air constantly i mean you're you're breathing in particulates you're breathing in all sorts of pollutants you're breathing in farts and gases and things from cars and and there's actually organisms in the air i mean there's there's colds that are

spread by people coughing they cough it gets in the air and those organisms float into your body and infect you. And that's why we tell people, cover your mouth when you cough. You're literally spitting out life forms, and then those life forms contaminate other people. I worry that that would be like almost too much data to process. No, I mean, imagine if you walk on an airplane and you could see everything, and you see people coughing. There's like, here's a virus. Oh, there's a virus.

You know, you're right. It would be a pretty freaky experience. But I think the thing is we're probably at that point, you're going to have so many connection either through neural implants or just some type of connection to machines that were our data processing is, you know, in our brain and however, whatever kind of servers we're attached to will allow us to, you know, make sense of it all. Cause right now I know what you're saying. It's like, wow, there's no way I could process it. Life is already pretty complicated to process when you're going through a red light or someone's running a red light or something like that. But, um, hopefully in the future, we'll have all these

neural enhancements that will allow us to take that kind of stuff on and take more of it on. And there's just so much that's going to happen when we start increasing our own brain power. For example, when they talk about artificial intelligence, we're talking about something that could be 10,000 times smarter than the smartest human being within a year or two of it actually existing just through its upgrading of it. 10,000 times smarter. And that's just the first year. Maybe the second or third year, it's hard to know, could become, you know, then the

J curve takes off and that's where the singularity idea comes from. But if we're attached to that and we're able to keep up with that, we're able to kind of process it, then, you know, all these things we start seeing are going to make more sense and we'll have so much more capacity to understand. I think right now when we try to imagine it, it's like, wow, way too much. But in the future, I'm hoping that our brains are going to be like a thousand iPhones just connected and then our ability to make sense of it all. I look forward to the day when I can see everything.

We'll be able to see your heartbeat. I'll be able to see right through the walls, whatever people are doing in the, in the building. We'll hear the planes. We'll know it, you know, everything we'll, we'll see the airwaves. Have you seen the movie Lucy? Yes. So, you know, she starts getting to that point when she, she understands everything, everything is totally interconnected to her. And she has that processing ability. It doesn't overwhelm her. In fact, it kind of becomes magical to her, sort of like some kind of saint or some kind of guru. It just feels the entire universe. And I'm hopeful that that's what it's going to be like, though I'm not really sure. That may be too optimistic, but hopefully we'll be so interconnected

that we'll actually be able to be much more part of the universe in terms of sensing it and feeling and understanding it than we are right now. That's the big concern that people have is when folks like you say, I'm hopeful. Because you take the Elon Musk possibility, the way he's describing it, and you take what you're saying. You're like, I'm hopeful. And Elon Musk's saying, the demons are coming. It's like, well, hopefully's that that concerns people right no of course and um unfortunately you know i always try to back away from any kind of totally qualitative you know totally firm statements because if i say anything other than it's going to happen then all of a sudden you're this guy who's pegged a definite thing.

And the problem is anything we're talking about in futurist issues is always speculation to some extent. And no one's ever really got it right. No, no. And most people are wrong. The question is how close are you to getting it right? If you're 20% wrong, that's pretty good. If you're 70%, 80% wrong. So futurists try to attempt to speculate based on statistical

analysis, historical patterns, what things are going to happen. And then, you know, philosophers just throw out their ideas and hope that some of them stick. And occasionally one becomes totally accurate. And, you know, that's the way the species moves. But when I say hope, I'm certainly not trying to pretend that the universe is going to be the way I'm saying it could go very wrong. And it could turn out even better to be the way I'm saying it could go very wrong. And it could turn out even better than I'm hopeful of. And it could just be a lot less magical than I'm hoping, you know, I've seen some critics, some really well educated critics, I was reading this piece written by this biologist, who was criticizing the whole idea

of transhumanism and Kurzweil in particular. And what he was saying is that essentially we know so little about the human mind already, and we're still just trying to wrap our heads around the processes that are going on that we're just beginning to understand as far as synapses, neurons, where memories are stored, how to manipulate them, and just the various processes of the mind. And his take on it was that it's so incredibly unrealistic that we'll be able to duplicate this by 2045. That's the idea behind it, right?

To 2045 an issue. But my take on that, when I was reading his piece, I was saying, I think he's being particularly critical of it because he's saying that what these guys don't understand about the human mind is that there's all these processes that go on behind the scenes that we still don't have a handle on. But my take on it was we don't really have to have a handle on it if we can replicate them. Like if they can replicate it with technology, we don't have to know how proteins are processed and all these different various things that create a biological computer, which is essentially what a human mind is. It's not necessary if we can create something far superior and something that's based entirely on artificial intelligence and artificial technology yeah no and i i'm you know first off there's a lot of critics out there that are coming uh at transhumanist ideas futurist ideas and you just have to remember you know that we as especially in america 85% of the people are religious Christians.

Is it really that much? An ABC poll told me 83% was out, I think, in early 2014. Do you know what the problem with that is? I have a whole bit about this in my act. It's that only idiots answer polls. So you're getting 83% of idiots. I mean, have you ever answered a poll? No.

I have never answered a poll. Jamie, have you ever answered a poll? No. There you never answered a poll. Jamie, have you ever answered a poll? No. There you go. I don't think most people answer polls. No, you're right. And I think 83% seems totally high to me. But I think even if it's a lot lower, let's just say it's 50%, 60%.

And let's just say there's another 10% that are various other religious ideas. The problem is we've been kind of brought up in a Judeo-Christian or an Abrahamic culture where we celebrate Christmas, Easter. There's so much religiosity and basically set into place. And a lot of these ideas, transhumanists, one of their most important goals is that they want to live indefinitely. That's really the center of a lot of the most important goals of the next 10, 20, 30 years is they don't want to die. We want to use technology and science to live, at least have the choice when we're going to die.

And if that sort of flies in the face of so much of the major, the world's major religions, because a lot of it is kind of based on you want to, you know, be a good person so you can get to that afterlife and have, you know, your either, you know, seven wives or whatever it is that they do. 72 virgins. Yeah. Whatever it is that they promise you. But, um, transhumance are like, no, actually this is perfect. What we're here right now, this, this earth. And what we'd like to do is just make it so we don't have to leave it.

And we could stay with our families and we could stay with our loved ones and we could continue in our jobs or professions and stuff like that. And that really conflicts with a lot of the American point of view of, you know, how is it that what's going to happen in the future? I mean, as you probably know, I think it's still 100% of people in Congress at least are claiming they're religious. Now, I don't know if it's truly 100% and how many are pretending, but either way, you still have a president that swears on the Bible to get his job. These are things that fly in the face of transhumanism. And I think until that changes, there's going to be a huge amount of critics out there that are saying, this is a dangerous idea. And you can paint it a different direction and say, well, transhumanism is just a

label. It's just science and technology. All religious people want that anyways, or at least want some of the benefits. But I think at some point there will be a clash because when you take death out of the picture, a lot of the main philosophies, a lot of the main ideologies of the religious texts fall away and they're not necessary anymore. And I think that's going to create a pretty big conflict here in the next five, 10, 15 years, as we kind of crawl to that spot where a lot of people start realizing, wow, we may not die. We may live indefinitely. What does that mean for the environment? What does that mean for politics? What does that mean for countries, globalization and stuff like that? you know, population as well?

So I think there's going to be a lot of issues with that in the future. And I think that's where you get a lot of your critics from. That's fascinating because this guy that I was talking about is not religious at all, the biologist. He's an atheist. I think there's a lot of atheists that have issues with the possibility of transhumanism just as much as people who are religious. But I think there's definitely something to this idea that, you know, no one knows what happens when we die. And that's confusing. It causes a lot of conflict. And we've sort of created placeholders for that.

We've created with religion. We've created these. Whether you believe in religion or not, the reality is no one truly knows what happens when we die. If you have faith that the religious texts of your choosing are correct, that's all well and good. But the reality of scientific data is that there's none when it comes to what happens when you die. There's none as far as like where did your soul, where did your personality come from? There's none. There's no data we have no idea is it nature is it nurture is it dna is it epigenetics what creates a person's

personality who are you what's inside of you is there a soul all of it's just pure speculation is it consciousness trying to form some rational reason for your existence all of its speculation so i i think when we start talking about circumventing the whole reality of biological death, going around it and coming up with something that allows you to live forever, there's some people that think, well, we might be missing the whole point. Like this might be a gigantic cycle of life and death and life and death and continual improvement. And just like everything else that we see around us, just like our technological improvement is constant and death, and life and death, and continual improvement, and just like everything else that we see around us, just like our technological improvement is constant and consistent, that might be the same thing with life itself.

Like, with us stepping in and stopping this process with technology in some sort of way, we might be fucking up the whole process of the universe. The other hand, it might be, that's the whole reason why we have be fucking up the whole process of the universe the other hand it might be that's the whole reason why we have these thoughts in the first place my thought of us being this caterpillar that becomes this butterfly our whole reason for existential angst our whole reason for this fear of death these i remember when i was six, I was seven, seven years old, and I was talking to my parents, and I was asking them,

what happens when you die? And my stepfather said, it's probably nothing. It's probably, you probably just die, and that's it. And I was crying. I couldn't wrap my head around it,

but for a seven-year-old, it's terrifying. And I've said this this before but i'll say it again everybody likes to go to sleep but nobody wants to die and they're probably incredibly similar but this idea of having this impending end to this experience it might be one of the motivating factors for us to create this artificial life, to create this artificial intelligence. This thing that we have that freaks us out, worrying about death, might be part of the motivation for us to transition into something new. No, in fact, I totally agree with you. In fact, my entire book is really based on a very singular moment when the main character basically almost dies. And he realizes from that point forward, and that's what the transhumanist wage.

So your book is a novel. Yeah, it's a novel, but that's exactly what you've said is the transhumanist wagers. Once you realize that you could die and that's potentially as a seven-year-old child, that's it. And there's something you can do about it, especially in the 21st century where we have so much science and so much technology at our disposal. Then you make this kind of wager where you're saying, you know, I'm actually going to dedicate my life to trying to accomplish that because I don't like it that I have to die. And that's essentially what the transhumanist wager really is. But I think the interesting thing is that philosophical conundrum of,

well, if we take death out of the equation is life as valuable as it is, or are we messing with the mechanism of evolution? And are we messing with the mechanism of growth of, of whatever the universe is going into? And I intend to, I'm not, you know,

as I've said before, I want to live forever. I want to live indefinitely, but I'm not necessarily wanting to have it so that that's kind of permanent. I just want the choice. And that's what I think is most important. And when people in the transhumanist community, we've actually been shying away from the use of the word immortality anymore because we've realized that a lot. It just kind of scares people.

They really think we mean immortality. And we don't necessarily, what we mean is we just want a choice on when and how we're going to live. And if we're ever going to die, it's under our circumstances. Um, it's on our terms. And, um, so I use indefinite lifespans, uh, a lot more because that at least lets me say when I might want to, um, end my life if ever. And I actually wondered too, I thought, you know, if you're going to live indefinitely, uh, you know, would God potentially, if someone was God, would God maybe commit suicide some point? Because it's this idea.

No, you know, if you were, if you were God, um, and you had all power, is that something that would, you know, be the thing you wanted? And, uh, I'm revealing like plots in my sequel, but anyways, the, the idea is maybe an omnipotent entity would say to re to create a cycle of renewal. I will end my existence. I will commit suicide. And, uh, and then the whole system perhaps restarts itself as we had talked about earlier, you know, maybe you create parameters in your existence so that all of a sudden you, there is renewal, there is creativity, and it's out of your control. Sometimes you have to, you know, I know that, for example, day traders, when they're

playing stocks, they, some of them have such problems that they'll purposely set their code so they can't get into their account, but they won't remember it. They'll just like type it in, type it in short term memory, and then stop it. And the way they do this is so they can't get into their account, but they won't remember it. They'll just like type it in, type it in short-term memory and then stop it. And the way they do this is so they can't trade anymore if they've been losing money and they having a bad day or something like that. Friends of mine were doing it in college. And I sometimes wonder if maybe a grand spiritual entity would do the same thing. He would program into his own existence problems, issues, as we talked about, ridiculousness of life, because that's something that keeps us moving forward. And maybe God would even program in

killing himself or herself, itself, whatever. Whoa. That's a heady concept. And I have always wondered why it is that it seems like we need conflict in order to find resolution. It's like, I think if everybody lived in this perfect state of bliss and this utopian existence, we'd probably never get anything done. And one of the reasons why we get things done is because we're constantly worried about overcoming struggle. We're constantly worried about overcoming potential aggressors or things that could go wrong and overcoming environmental issues that we've created. And so we're coming up with technological solutions for those things. For every new power source we come up with, whether it's nuclear or

whatever, there's always some sort of a byproduct of that that we have to deal with and some sort of an effect that it's having on the environment that we have to mitigate. And it seems that this constant yin and yang is sort of built into the universe. I was telling you about my trip that I had in Alaska where I was camping in the rain. It was awful. It was wet and cold. It was miserable. But when I came back to LA, I was so happy. And I called my friend Steve, who took me on the trip. And I was like, dude, I have never felt better. I feel fucking great. It's like the sun feels good. It just feels good to be driving. It feels good to be able to go to a store. There's so many things about life that are so amazing that I don't necessarily completely

appreciate until I go like into the wilderness. When you go into the wilderness and then you come back, you can really appreciate the city. And I feel like that these built-in struggles, this yin and this yang of life is why we appreciate things. Like you don't appreciate really cool people unless you're around a bunch of assholes. You know, you don't appreciate funny people people unless you're around a bunch of assholes. You know, you don't appreciate funny people unless you're around people that have zero sense of humor. And then you're around funny people and they just feel so good. They warm you up.

It just feels fun. And I really wonder if that is, I mean, we think of it as just life. These are just the realities of life, the unfortunate realities of life. And one day we're going to get our shit together and we won't have all those bad aspects. But is that real? I mean, or is this like, is it all just data? Is it all just a part of the code? Is it all just a part of the algorithm that moves whatever we're doing forward? And that in that sense, you need conflict. It's built into the system in order to create entropy, in order to create movement, in order to keep everything going so that we eventually make that fucking cocoon and become that butterfly. Yeah, no, I mean, the conflict question is such an age-old philosophical question because it's like you're always striving for perfection. But when you actually think about perfection in itself, it doesn't sound like the

thing you actually might want, what you really wanted was the journey. And, uh, you know, and that's why I think they say, well, journey is, you know, most of the fun or half the fun at least. And, um, but I tend to think, you know, as far as we, like from a transhumanist perspective, since we're so, we're so, I think, minuscule in terms of what we are as entities right now. Our brain power is whatever a billion neurons or however many billion there are. But the idea is we could create an earth that's full of servers. Or as I like to say in some of some of my writings you know the empire state building could be filled with servers and that you don't mean like waiters no no no but you know basically

computer chips servers that kind of thing and the thing is we could create something far more complex than the human brain and if we're tapped into that and now we get into something more like the death start even that's just filled with computer chips and servers. You know, if we get to something that huge, our intelligence could be millions, millions of times more what it is now. And if that happens, we have no idea the types of conflicts that would come from that. We have no idea. Maybe the conflicts are also a million times greater. Maybe conflict is something that you always go through, and maybe you even get to the end of some perfect entity, and you actually can't get in. Or you get stopped by some kind of physical thing that could happen. It's awesome to think about it because the bottom line is, from a philosophical perspective, currently I can't see a world without conflict.

It would almost be like the world didn't exist. What makes it exist to us is that we have all these trials. We have all these tribulations and these things happen to us and we're happy and sad because of it and we feel it because of it and we grow from it. So it's hard for me to even understand the world. But I think as we get more complex, I think as we're able to tap our brains into mega giant machines and increase our intelligence, it will probably become that much more complex. And I think the conflicts will also become much more complex. And so I'm not really worried about a universe, at least in the near term, at least in the next 100 years,

two, 300 years, without any conflict, because the universe is still so big. There's all these types of exploration in it. We have to figure out exactly what pure energy is. Will transhuman entities eventually transition into something like that, into subatomic things and whatnot? And there's so much to explore. I think we'll probably find that there's more to explore than we ever thought, and we'll probably be just as lost in the universe and stuck in conflict as we are now, perhaps even more so as we grow more intelligent. And even if we do create this unbelievably, incredibly complex system of computers that run everything, we've eliminated emotions, we've carved out this utopian existence, there's still asteroids. There's still super volcanoes. There's still hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes and all sorts of things that we,

it's not even on the remote horizon, us controlling natural disasters. Not even for a fraction of the natural disasters that potentially can come our way. I mean, we're not even considering how to control super volcanoes. There's no technology so far. There's nothing they can do. And I was reading about,

I got on this trip one night, I'll do this and this really fucks my head up and I hate doing it right before I go to bed, but I got on this trip one night about super volcanoes and I started reading all the super volcanoes that exist currently and the The reality of what has happened when those have gone off and there's one in Indonesia that they believe there's a lot of people that have pointed to as the Possibility of why all humans can be traced back to original ancestors

that they think that this one that blew somewhere i believe it was like 75 000 plus years ago that they think that when this fucker went off it killed most of the people on the planet it's in indonesia it's an enormous it's bigger than Yellowstone. And they think that the remaining few people repopulated the earth and that the seven plus billion people are directly related to 70,000 years ago, the survivors of this super volcano. That's crazy. And that's terrifying. And if that happens again, there's not a damn thing we could do about it right now. We're constantly worrying about getting faster Wi-Fi and making an electric car that can go more than 300 miles without a recharge but the reality of natural disasters is there's always that nature reset button and that nature reset button could come in the form of a five mile wide rock that slammed into the yucatan

and killed all the dinosaurs, or that gigantic super volcano in Indonesia that killed off, you know, who knows what percentage of the population, but they think it could be as much as like killed off everybody, but for a thousand people that that's a real possibility that's being bandied about. And that's something that we're not going to be able to stop. No, no, no, definitely. You know, I, about two months ago, created the Transhumanist Party, which is the kind of first political organization about it.

And the third, we had three main goals. And the first is try to make it so that everyone can live indefinitely. The second one is just to spread a kind of a general, like we want people to think positively when they think of technology and science instead of being so critical. But the third one deals with existential risks. And it amazes me that we spend so much money at a Walmart or at a McDonald's or going to Disneyland when we have problems like a super volcano that exists. Things that if you think about at late at night, it keeps you up because it's so horrific. And what's amazing about it is that it's not just super volcanoes. We've had existential risks facing the planet for, you know, they've happened. We know

they've happened. We can see that they've happened. And still we send such a small amount of government budgets towards protecting the species as a whole, when, you know, you would think from an existential risk point of view, it would be the first thing you would probably tackle. I actually thought this sort of with Ebola. I thought, you know, I can't believe that we don't spend $100 million and wipe it out. Why don't we just, as a world, get together and do it? It's not like we're, you know, we're worth $200 to $400 trillion, they say, the world, and it would probably take $50 or $100 million to wipe out the disease. Why don't we do it?

Why don't we wipe out malaria? Why don't we wipe out the things? Is it really that simple, though? It's probably not that simple, but no one's tackled it with more than a fraction of that amount. And I think if you actually put the world's best scientists together and really said, you know what, some things really are scary for the human race. This is something that we need to go out there and attack first before it gets out of control. And I just, I find it always so strange that governments don't treat this seriously. And I think it's because as a politician, you can't because it sounds so far fetched to talk about a five milemile-wide asteroid hitting the Earth.

It sounds like, yeah, yeah, I'll worry about that tomorrow. But the reality is as soon as something like that happens or a tidal wave happens, for example, and kills so many people a few years back, then you start thinking about that. I think it always takes like some kind of giant cataclysmic disaster to actually get people to say, today I'm putting my money where my mouth is, and we're going to actually go out and try to stop some of these things. And like you said, with super volcanoes, there's nothing we can do. But certainly with asteroids and stuff like that, there are some things that we can do. And certainly with diseases, there are things that we can do. And I'm kind of, you know, I'm always bummed out because I feel like our governments

don't treat the risk to the species seriously enough. They treat Social Security tax issues and this kind of stuff. It covers the headlines. But what's really important for the species, for all seven, almost eight billion of us soon, is making sure that we don't all go the way of the dinosaurs. And that just takes a matter of money and putting some of the best minds to it and saying, let's just, whatever it is that you guys and girls need to do, just please do it. The malaria one is terrifying.

I was listening to Radiolab. You ever listen to that podcast? I haven't, but I've heard the name. It's a brilliant, brilliant podcast that I think it's put out by NPR. I think those are the folks who do it. But they had an episode where they were talking about mosquitoes and they were talking about malaria.

And they said that half of the people that have died ever since people have been around were killed by malaria. I've had malaria. You've had malaria? Yeah, I've had a whole bunch. Oh, my God. When I was 20, I did this long sail trip. And as a result, I got a whole bunch of stuff like hepatitis A, dengue fever, malaria.

Whoa. You got dengue fever and malaria? I had it all at various places. So I spent about four months in the Solomon Islands. But I also kind of went through the North Pacific Ocean after the South Pacific. And basically on a sailboat, you're going to get it unless you're taking it. And I was even taking prophyl, malaria pills when I got malaria, but, um,

it doesn't always work. There's more than chloroquine that you needed. You needed methiquine and whatnot. And the problem is it gave me crazy nightmares. So I didn't take the, the proper, uh, prophylactics, but I eventually got it, went and tested there and then just sat on my boat for three, four days. And then I did a methlaquine treatment for malaria, which is essentially you take four tablets times three days. So you take 12 altogether. And I don't know if you know anything about larium or methlaquine, but it gives you an, it makes you hypersensitive. So when you look at a sunset, you get incredibly emotional and it's like a great thing to write poetry on, but it totally messes with you, which is why a lot of people, at least when I was sailing 10 years ago, tried not to take it as a prophylactic.

But so it worked. I got rid of it. I was, I was an able-bodied 22 year old, you know, person. So you're pretty much able to go through a lot of things. But I have been around a number of villages in that trip where people have died. Children die all the time. And I still, I'm not sure what the numbers are, but I think it's 750 million people maybe are still dying from malaria a year or have died in the last, I don't know, something, something crazy. When you

think about it, you, you, you think, wow, why don't we just go out there? I mean, this is why Bill Gates has targeted this as one of his main initiatives with his, his incredible wealth is to say, God, this, this is one thing we could literally just take out 627,000 malaria deaths this year. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a huge amount when you think about in terms of it's far more than war. It's insane. It's far more than anything else. And think of like, so we spent all this money on war we could you know take a little bit of that budget and you know unicef has a different uh number they say over a million unicef says over a million people die of malaria every year wow so many it causes 300 to 500 million infections and over a million deaths this is john hopkins also says that so i'm assuming it's probably somewhere around a million i i think when you're

dealing with impoverished countries right it's very difficult to keep track isn't it of uh how many people yeah no and i think a lot of the people like where i got it was there was no telephone in this village there was no anything i was just anchored off there at a surf spot. And I must have gotten it through the time that I was sailing through some of these outer islands. And maybe once a week there's a boat that comes through with supplies. But that's why people die from it because there's really nothing there except the basic drugs to take care of it. And it doesn't always work and stuff like that. And there's variations of it as well.

So some people try to just ride it out and not take the drugs because they make you so wacky? Well, some people actually, once they get it, are too weak to walk into the clinic. So like in the Solomon Islands, for example, it's just filled with these giant, well, not giant mountains, but there's a lot of hills. And so you have to kind of cross ravines.

And I was so out, I mean, I could barely even get up. I didn't really eat. I just could drink water. And I kind of laid in my, in my bed all day. And, um, so if you have it and you're an adult, you either have to send one of your kids to get it, but you weren't, you're not gonna be able to climb a couple of miles to go get the medication. And so if you live in some outer tribe away from a clinic and most of salt, there's, I don't know, a couple hundred islands in the Solomon Islands, no one has access to. And the same thing with Papua New Guinea, there's not a huge amount of tribes, but if you actually try to get anywhere, it's all highlands full of snakes and whatnot. So even across a mile and that kind of territory is pretty tough stuff. So if you have to go 20 miles to get pills, it might just be

safer to take your bet, not use all your energy and, uh, and try to ride it out. So your immune system is capable of your healthy young 22 year old of surviving. And sometimes I think it's just luck. So for example, I was already on a chloroquine at the time. So I already had some resistance to a certain type of, uh, uh, malaria. Oh, I see. But once I had tested for it, cause I got, basically I got feverish and all this and I went and tested before I was got really bad. And they said, yeah, it looks like you have it at this little clinic. And, uh, so, and I, I was too far away to sail to anywhere. And, um, at the time I didn't have any real services to be air evacuated out.

And also, you know, I had been sailing three, four years already. You can't leave your trip. I had a whole bunch of incidences. You can't leave your boat every time something goes wrong. You just got to deal with it. And so I just went back and took this larium treatment. And so I had the cure for it. And the cure is, at least in the Solomon Islands at the time, was you take this regimen of larium, 12 tablets over three days and that should that should take care of it what a crazy trip you went on man you you you

sail for three or four years so no I sailed for actually around seven yeah and it was uh left from uh from Los Angeles Santa Barbara Los Angeles and went through the South Pacific spent four years there and continued uh and across the Indian Ocean and, uh, uh, Mediterranean. So I, I'd done some crazy stuff. A lot of that stuff was when I was working, um, for the national geographic channel. So, uh, I had was kind of set up where I would go and do short, uh, three to five minute, um, kind of filler documentaries in between the longer segments of a new show that they had. And, uh, so I'd stop places and film and film and um and i'd create these three to five minute news pieces so it's really fun stuff did some crazy crazy uh fun stories but you know

uh weird stuff yeah i would imagine that would be an insane life of adventure all those years on a sailboat just sailing around and and and in the in the South Pacific as well. You know, the South Pacific was the best part because I, uh, I wasn't working at the time. It was later that I started actually working and doing the National Geographic stuff. And, um, that was great too, but the South Pacific, I was just there with about 500 books. I spent literally four years in the South Pacific, including the time I was at the Solomons. The Solomons is, starts getting into the North Pacific. And, uh, yeah, what a wonderful time. I was 21, just finished school and, uh, was sailing around and, uh.

Just reading books on the ocean. Yeah. A couple of times I had girlfriends come with me and, you know, for a month or two. And so it was really like, uh, I was a surfer and, uh, I was a paraglider. And, uh, so I would do just all sorts of activities all the time and spearfishing.

It was hard to talk about because it's like I have kids now, and I'm married and a house and all this. So I probably could never go back. Oh, that boring shit. God damn it. Go back to the days of youth, wandering around, no shirt on in the Pacific, fucking sailing, going by the wind. Oh. Oh. Glorious.

Yeah. So those were the days. That's kind of the opposite of transhumanism though, isn't it? It is, and I was very low tech at the time. You know, when I first started sailing, they didn't even have GPS. I used a sextant for the first few years of the trip. Whoa, you used one of those crazy fucking Christopher Columbus things? That's all they had.

Only the military had access to the GPS system then didn't private people weren't allowed to have it yet i had a gps system on my phone or my car that was cd-rom driven and it was in i want to say the early 2000s or maybe even the late 90s it was somewhere around 2000 ish and i i got one of the first ones and it was such an inaccurate piece of shit and it was really slow and it was only good for california like i had to stick the cd in like there was a slot that it would go into it's it's so hard to imagine a world where GPS didn't exist. I know. Let alone be on a boat, traveling around the world on this boat with no GPS.

That to me is just incredible. Oh, it was really, it was fun. You know, the sex and thing is so awesome because you actually use the stars to navigate. Same stars we teach kids, you know, like to my daughters, I'll point out and be like, you know, and the whole life was so magical. I mean, it's still cool.

I loved what I'm doing now. But there was something much more human and just youthful about that entire period of my life. Human. Isn't that a strange word that you just used? Yeah, I'm not sure. What is human? Your whole thing is transhumanism. And you're talking about this incredibly low-tech adventure as being one of the highlights of your life.

So I'll tell you exactly how that switched. After most of the sail trip, I was actually covering a story in Vietnam for the National Geographic Channel. We were covering a story on bomb diggers. for the National Geographic channel, we were covering a story on bomb diggers. And what they do is, and there's about, I think, 5% to 15%, 10%. It's hard to know exactly, but at least 5% of the American bombs dropped by America in Vietnam never exploded. So what you have is you have millions of tons of metal lying around the jungles just sitting there. Overgrowth is all around them. And most of the

rice farmers market make a dollar a day. So ultimately what's happened is a huge community of farmers have said, well, why don't we salvage the metal, sell the metal, and we'll make 10 times what we would make in a season in farming. The problem is that the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, and quite a bit of parts of Vietnam are filled with landmines. And dealing with these unexploded bombs, some of them that are as long as this table or about pretty close to it, are incredibly dangerous because you have to dismantle it and take the metal to a dealer in the city and whatnot. So a lot of these bomb hunters, what they call themselves, and there might be 10,000 of them in Vietnam, end up losing their lives or losing their legs on landmines. And, uh, so I went to cover the story cause there's an awesome story, totally fascinating. But, um, I had a very close incident on one of my final days when I was, um, covering

the story. Cameron Hand is my guide came from behind me. We're walking on a trail. A guide came from behind me. I had stepped off the trail to look at an impression because the way you can tell where these unexploded bombs came is that a part of the jungle, there's an impression in the, uh, in the earth. And, uh, he came and tackled me. And I said, dude, I'm holding my camera. You know? And so we all went down and then he pointed out, he said, look right here. And in the ground, there was this like little silver thing and a little

black thing actually. And, uh, he said he said, it's probably a landmine. And you almost stepped on it. And I just kind of sat there and I thought, wow, that's a little too freaky for me. I'd after, I'd already like in the years preceding this, I'd had all my diseases on the sailboat. I had been to a number of war zones.

I just about a year earlier had a huge kind of bunch of incidents in the Kashmir, uh, Indian Pakistan conflict, which I covered. I did a humanitarian kind of war piece there. And I was the, the, the, the landmine incident was the one that sort of in my brain said human to transhuman. And I thought I'm not doing dangerous things anymore. I actually went home after the incident. It just, there was a, there was a shook you up that much. It was like a philosophical bomb went off my head. I said, you know what? I'm, I'm 28 years old. I actually went home after the incident. It just, there was a, there was a, it was like a philosophical bomb went off my head. I said, you know what? I'm, I'm 28 years old. I've been doing crazy things for huge amounts of time and getting very lucky. Um, I was, uh, working at this, uh,

nonprofit organization, Cambodia called wild aid. And we were doing undercover work to busting poachers. You know, we were literally, um, I'd go with a team of militia. Uh, we were doing undercover work to busting poachers. You know, we were literally, I'd go with a team of militia. We were a nonprofit and we'd go into places and free live animals that had been confiscated for food. And we'd, you know, literally arrest poachers because they have, you know, China and Cambodia have this illegal poaching system. But it was like, I had just come from about a month of doing that

and it was like a little bit too much for me all. You know, it was just too much like, I had just come from about a month of doing that. And it was like a little bit too much for me, you know, it was just too much danger, too much hecticness. So the landmine incident was the one in my mind that changed it. And I said, I went home. That's when I essentially began working on the book, and the transhumanist wager, which has sort of launched me into this, this public career of promoting transhumanism. I'd always been a transhumanist. I know someone who, you know, wants to use technology and science to upgrade myself, but this was the time that I made it personal. This is the time that I said, you know, I'm, I'm done having fun and just writing journalistic stories. I'm now going to actually dedicate my life to something that means

a lot to me because I don't want to ever have to be facing death. Uh, you know, the landmine certainly would have killed me, I think, or at least maimed me to such a, you almost always lose legs. And it was just a little too much for me. So I came back, and that's sort of how my career, the trajectory of transhumanism for me, took on this quite public role. Wow. Wow. role wow wow um that that is first of all it's incredibly terrifying to think that there's that many landmines still in vietnam i've read that before and i kind of put it aside i guess in the back of my mind but those poor people that live there i mean the vietnam war is just such an

unbelievably fucked up time in history but it's so incredible how peaceful the Vietnamese are and how forgiving and accepting the Vietnamese people are about us invading. I shouldn't say us. The troops of the 1960s and 70s invading Vietnam and all the horrific things that happened there. But the fact that no one's freaking out that there's that many bombs that just occasionally go off and kill some poor farmer. I know. I think America should go in there and clean it up. Fuck yeah.

You know, cause it's ridiculous. The amount of bombs that are there are such a staggering number. You could never clear it up with 10,000 Vietnamese farmers who have given up their fields. And again, it's, it's happening all over the country now in Cambodia and Laos, bomb diggers are, it's an entire culture,

mostly young kids. And a lot of my documentary was on actually filming the amputees that lost their legs or arms when something went wrong. And your viewers can watch this. Um, I, the National Geographic video is still up on this one. What's it called? Um, I think it's just, you would Google Zoltan Isvan slash Vietnam and go to YouTube and it'll, it'll called um i think it's just you would google zoltan ishvan slash vietnam and go to youtube and it'll it'll appear um it's it's called bomb diggers i think but or just vietnam bomb diggers just a it's a four minute clip but it shows like you know what what these people go through on a daily basis they just go out with a shovel they go out with metal detectors and they're like and every step they take is

freaky for a whole week i was freaked out it was like because the dmz is just filled with no one's been there there's no villages in that immediate area because it's just too dangerous to live some people you know so there's thousands of those thousands and thousands and what's worse is that bomb digging uh is attracting a younger generation and they make so much more money than rice farming. Like literally a hundred times. If you find one six foot bomb, you can feed your family for a year.

Wow. And you could find in one day. So in one day's worth of work, you can make more than you could in an entire season. So the bomb is just the metal of the bomb or the bomb itself unexploded. It's no, it's just the metal. They dismantle it and they just the metal of the bomb or the bomb itself unexploded it's no it's just the metal they dismantle it and they sell the metal that because they're only making one dollar a day and they're farming so it's so they're so poor you know and they're very like you're right you nailed

it they're totally nice people they were happy to help me with my story um but uh they're uh the whole thing is so bizarre that's's incredible. And what do they do? How do they dismantle these things? So they have experts. If they find a big one, they carry it into their village. And this is another problem. Oh, they fucking pick it up?

Yes, yes. That's the whole problem. And then they hammer it apart. Oh my God. It's just, yeah, it's crazy. And sometimes like half villages go up when they make a mistake. This has been a problem that's happened in Laos.

So yeah, a couple of documentaries have now been made since I did this. And I think in 2002, 2003, but a couple of real documentaries, because now there are nonprofits dedicated to saying, Hey, don't go bomb digging that you might make a fortune in a day. You might change your, you know, your, your family, your wealth of your family, but it's not worth it because look, every, for every 10 people that go out two or three end up with amputees or some end up completely dead and stuff like that. And so much more dangerous than just farming. And has there been any effort whatsoever by the United States government to go in there and clean it up? You know, so I did the story a long time ago. At that point, there wasn't much.

They just gave a lot of, I think, money to make up for it. But I actually don't know what's going on now. I know that the nonprofits have been working on trying to get them money. God, just it's so hard to think about. It's so hard to think that you're not responsible for all the bombs you left behind. That wouldn't be one of the first things the United States deals with. And how difficult would it be to do a sweep of the entire country and find all the bombs? Well, the problem is like in the area, the DMZ is all pretty big hills.

So it's almost impossible. You couldn't be able to get tractors up there. It's just there's too much vegetation and everything's overgrown. So nobody knows what to do it would be much easier just to throw a lot of money at it and uh and try to you know get the un or somebody to go in there and sweep through it with metal detectors yeah but what the fuck man i mean how is it possible that they have just left all that shit there that's just that's so dark they bomb so much of the country it's really like it's such a, it's just when you actually study the numbers of how much they dropped, I think they dropped more. I'm not a hundred percent on this fact, but I believe they dropped more bombs in Vietnam than all other wars or something like that combined of the amount of like bombs.

And because at the time that's all they did. And, uh, because at the time that's all they did. And, um, you know, and when you think about it, it's just literally millions and millions and millions of bombs and tons of bombs. And of course, a huge percentage of that just never explodes. So. Wow. That's terrifying to think that that could be there a hundred years from now. Yeah. That there still potentially could be deaths.

And your kid could step on one or it could just, you know, it might be just ready to, there's probably doesn't, you know, I don't know, thousands of them that are just ready to be ticked off for one reason, one missed wire or something like that. I don't know. But it's a, it's a serious problem. And every, if you look in the news every now and then you'll say, oh, another explosion happened here.

And again, it's also not, it's, it's also quite substantial in Cambodia, parts that were bombed there and, and whatnot. And then they have all the internal wars. Some of the countries, it's not just us that bombed it. Some of the other countries, North Vietnam bombed it, these kind of things. So there's a lot of unexploded stuff all over. So you see this bomb, you almost step on it, and then a switch goes off and you decide to to change your focus yeah so i uh i had been interested in transhumanism from the time i was in college we were given an essay on cryonics

um you know this the the field where you actually put dead people into some type of freezing compound and then in hopes in 20 30 years you you'll be able to have the science regenerate them and reanimate them. And our English class was asked to write an essay on it and then debate it. And so it was the very first time I was introduced to it at about age 20. And I started reading about transhumanism and sort of fell in love with this concept of using science and technology to become superhumans. You know, just, we don't need to worry about death just we don't need to worry about death. We don't need to worry about disease. We don't need to worry about, you know, the kind of things that plague our biological beings. We can use science and technology to overcome it all.

So I spent, you know, a lot of the next 10 years as I was sailing just kind of reading about it, being into it without doing anything about it. But then after this incident, I came back and began working on The Transhumanist Wager, which is a novel about transhumanism. It's kind of an epic. And it took me many years to write the book because it's a pretty long, complex, philosophical novel. At least 30% of the book is pure philosophy. So while it's a novel, it's not a novel in the sense of you just read it in storyline.

It's actually huge amounts of just pure academic philosophy going through it. And the book did really well. And I've been talking ever since about it. And it's gotten me in a lot of trouble because it's pretty controversial. In what way? controversial in what way well essentially the main character Jethro Nights uh he says he will do anything to live indefinitely and so naturally the book goes out of its way to create an environment where he can't do what he wants it's he's fighting a religious he's fighting against religious um entities in America that are saying we don't like transhumanism.

We don't want it as part of anywhere in America. So they sort of outlawed. And so he kind of becomes a sort of a terrorist for his own ideas. But the problem is he'll take it to all these extremes. And in the end, he forms his own nation called Transhumania, a floating seasteading platform. And I'm a volunteer ambassador at the seasteading institute i know you've uh you've done something about we had joe cork yeah yeah and uh and i uh and so i kind of did a a big about a third of the book discuss the seasteading where a 10 000 of some of the smartest scientists in the world work on creating uh the ability to live indefinitely but then the world says no no, no, no, this is not right.

And they say, we're going to take over your country. And Jethro says, no, we're going to start a world war. And we have the technology to do that. And he ends up defeating the planet and making it into a transhumanist-minded planet. What kind of crazy fucking thoughts are going on in your head, sir? So he uses authoritarian ideas. And this has been the controversy of the book, is that a lot of the transhumanists, especially the older ones, said, hey, we like it that you're writing about transhumanism, but we don't like that you're taking to such extremes. But Jethro is a militant leader.

He wants his ideas to spread, and they want to keep taking away from him. They also, in the book, kill his wife and do all sorts of other things. So it's a novel where it's an epic from kind of his early childhood to the end or near the end of his life, where he transforms the world against everyone's will. And what makes the book controversial is that nobody likes Jethro. He's sort of this incredibly arrogant, um, machine-like human being, yet he's the good guy of the book. And yet you sort of cheer for him because, you know, he, even though he's sort of, uh,

authoritarian, he's sort of, you would like him because he's driven. He's like the greatest fighter you've ever met. Who just, he's not, don't tell me about rules this. I'm just the best fighter, you know? And on one hand, that's very admirable. On the other hand, we have rules for a reason, but Jethro breaks them to get what he wants. And he made the transhumance wager where he really like, he says, I'll, I'll put anything, I'll do anything to achieve it. And that's where the controversy comes in because clearly if we all did anything we

wanted, we'd be, uh, in a, in a pretty hectic place, both politically government, you know, with society, all these different things. And so I, uh, the book has won a lot of praise and just as much criticism. And there, if you look at the, the Amazon reviews, it's like an E there's like a huge amount of one stars and a huge amount of five stars, but not much in the middle. And nobody said, you know, everyone hates the book because they call it, you know, they say, well, this is an evil character. And, and, you know, the people that like it say, no, this is a character who actually wants to fight for what he believes in. And, uh, you know, revolutionary leaders are sort of like that. They, they just, they take us to different places and they use different methods that, um, you know,

certainly are questionable, but again, it's a fictional novel, and you can take it for what the art is worth. Well, this is where it gets complicated, because you are planning on actually running for president on a transhumanism platform. Now, when you've written a book about a world war that gets started by a good guy with a transhumanism agenda and now you're wanting to run for president people go this zoltan guy this motherfucker think about his name his name is zoltan and he wants to run the planet and he wants to be a transhumanism he wants to be a robot you're turning into a robot that's going to start a world war to run the planet yes Yeah. So that's obviously not true, but no, no. And of course that is the most difficult question I'm going to be asked probably a lot as I

move forward with the whole, you're really going to do this. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's already said, I've sort of staked my entire reputation on at this point. We have some big, big publicity events. But do you think that you could possibly win? So I don't think I could win this time around. I think there's virtually no chance.

I think if you look at how far the transhumanist party might do by 2020, 2024, where I would potentially do it again, I think we might have a much better chance of making a dent. Now, I don't want to be unrealistic and say that we could actually win or that I could win the presidency or anything like that. But I am definitely advocating for a run that's taking all my time. I'm literally dedicating now all my waking hours towards this party. Really? All the infrastructure it takes, it's really complicated. I mean, I basically am working with advisors. I'm working on the different, there's so many logistical things that one has to do, including just dealing with taxes for an entity like this and registration process, a manifesto.

But in the next week or two, most of the infrastructure will be in place. We already have a lot of it in. We have a number of officers now. And we're going for it. I mean, I'm going to stake everything I have on it. My wife has given the approval, which is important because I got two kids and, you know, in her and we're going to do a lot of campaigning. We're going to, uh, we have some great events. In fact, I'll probably hopefully be down in a few weeks to LA to start a documentary on it. Um, which has, which has a great budget by the way. And so I think, uh, there'll be a lot of things coming out about the transhumanist party that are going to work really in the favor of getting people to think about what would it mean to have a political, you know, person running who actually wants to use technology and science to change politics, not just, you know, oh, politics, let's dab a little bit in

science policy, but I actually want to use technology and science to dominate politics. I think we can solve most of humanity's problems and run a much better country if we put politics, medicine, and technology sort of at the forefront of the government. Currently, where at the forefront is a lot of other issues that defense and, you know, I don't know, taxes and all that stuff is very important, of course. you know, I don't know, taxes and all that stuff is very important, of course. But I'm an idealist and I would like to make it so that we can, everyone can live longer. Everyone has the choice to potentially not die.

I'm pretty convinced that if we put a trillion dollars towards conquering death, we would probably achieve it. Most experts actually feel that way too, that the amount of money that's actually going into life extension science right now is so small, literally hundreds of millions. But if we actually could quadruple it or maybe make it 20 times that, we could take the 20, 30 our wars, our far-off wars, and put it directly towards important things, education, science and technology, and also life extension science. But to answer your somewhat dangerous question for me publicly, I am distancing myself from the book because it was a moment of writing something very artistic and trying to write something very philosophical. But the philosophy of Jethro Nights does not work in a political campaign. And I'm doing my best to disassociate myself from his ways, even though I'm the creator of the philosophy. And I'm the one who sort of spent all these years developing it.

But it would never work. It would never work in America as we are today. We live in a country that's very free. There aren't a bunch of religious people trying to stamp out transhumanism. In the book, he lives in a war environment. That's part of why he fights back with war. So luckily, we live in a pretty awesome country. You can mostly do what you want. And I'd like to convince people to do a lot more than just building bombs and, and some of the crazy things that they do and spend it towards science and technology, and hoping that everyone will eventually like it. Everyone will eventually live better, everyone will eventually kind of be taken to a new era where, you know, their families and their loved ones don't have to die. We have

all the benefits of technology, like we don't have traffic in L.A., like I told you. I mean, these are kind of things, you know, driverless cars that are going to improve everything. And I think if more people embrace technology, we might go a lot further as a species and also as a country. The obvious question when you say if people live forever or people could get to a point where they don't die, we can conquer death. We have too many people. There's 7 billion people on the planet, right? Is that what the number is now? Yeah, I think it's going up fast.

Yeah, it's going up fast. Los Angeles, as you said, we were talking on the way about you traveling on the way over here how difficult it was to get here because the traffic is so bad. You know, there's 20 plus million people in Los Angeles. What happens if they keep having babies and no one dies? Yeah. So, you know, this is one of the most challenging questions and most challenging ideas about the problem with transhumanism right now is when we advocate for technology and science to change people's lives and make them live longer and better, the first question everyone says, well, hey, man, we got environmental problems in the world. And I agree, we do. I'm a believer in some of the climate change problems. I'm a believer in overpopulation. I'm not going to in any way try to deny some of these things.

I actually think the science stands pretty strongly for it. The question though, is whether tackling that broadly, tackling environmental problems with the kind of ideas that we're trying to do right now, less population, recycling and, you know, and, and stuff like, you know, just the basic things we're trying to empower ourselves to be a more green world. I'm not a hundred percent sure that that is the accurate, um, or that is the very best path we can take. Uh, now this gets kind of spec speculative and I don't actually endorse this necessarily as, as a kind of a political platform, but I'm pretty quite pretty convinced that within

25 to 50 years, people will start downloading their consciousness into machines and stuff like that. So there's this idea that maybe we'll start using a lot less resources 100 years from now because people will live in digital lives and virtual lives. Maybe we'll all live, maybe the entire population will fit

into that Empire State Building that is full of servers, as we had discussed. And maybe the Earth will have a chance to grow back or come back to what its former. But that's just one of the kind of speculative ideas that transhumanists might use to counter some of the criticism that we get about environmental problems. I'm personally, what I'm for is for a lot of the green technology. That's the stuff I want to see. I want to see solar power increase. I want to see money going towards that. I want to see money going towards the windmills. I want to see money going towards the green types of technologies that not only can make a whole new generation of wealthy people

and give millions of jobs to people, but it can also at the same time help the planet. So, you know, I take this twofold approach. One is very speculative. In the future, there'll be space exploration and all these other things. We might figure out ways that don't make us so dependent on the planet. But the more important way is that we're going to spend money on the type of technologies that really make the planet better. You know, get people to move into cities, make them greener, leave open spaces alone. And I'm a big animal advocate as well. I've worked with wildlife. A lot of my national geographic work was with wildlife. So I'm, I'm,

I'd love to see the species replenished. I'd love to see it so that we can actually go to national parks and have the kinds of things that we all hope for where you see deer and you you could take your children out there and uh and especially in africa with so much poaching and stuff like that of course um you know in america we do a pretty good job with protecting our wildlife but um i'd like to see us be more of a leader on the international front saying we actually need to say stop it uh it's crazy that the tiger population is literally on the edge of extinction, literally gone. There are more tigers in Texas than there are in the wild.

Isn't that incredible? It's sad. It's terrible because they're an important part of the ecosystem in all the places they're at. And one of the stories we covered was the Siamese crocodile when I was in Cambodia. And there's a couple in captivity, but basically the last time someone saw one was like 13 years ago in the wild. And so it's gone, you know, it's, it's essentially gone. And when you think about it, you're like, well, that's a certain species just basically gone. And why is it gone? Well, people were making boots and stuff

out of its tails and whatnot. So I would like to advocate for policies that kind of make that happen less and generally increase our environmental consciousness with money. Instead of building bombs, hey, let's spend it on building electric cars. Let's spend it on other ideas, even more unique ideas than that. Well, there's a lot of things to discuss there. First of all, the beginning of this, you were talking about downloading consciousness into computers. So you're kind of advocating a non-biological life. You're kind of advocating life inside of a server, a virtual life, and that that would be the future of life.

That is really hard for people to conceptualize. That is really hard for people to conceptualize. It's really hard for the average person who just likes to go on Facebook every now and then and post pictures of their dog with a fucking bow on her head. You know what I mean? Like one day you're going to live in a computer. It won't be just your photos in a computer. Your mind, your consciousness will live in a computer. Your body will die and you will exist in ones and zeros in some sort of a program like that to a

lot of people that doesn't seem like life um it could get to a point in our lifetimes where it is indistinguishable from life and that is in fact one of the freakiest ideas that's bandied about today by people far more intelligent than me, this is not my own philosophical stoner ramblings, but the concept of living right now in some sort of a computer simulation. And this has been discussed ad nauseum amongst physicists and scientists that we're going to come, there's going to come a point in time where we will be able to create

some sort of a virtual life that is absolutely indistinguishable from the life that you and I are experiencing right now. If that's the case, how do we know we're not already in it? You know, that's the big mind fuck, right? That's the big mind fuck when it comes to quantum theory. And when people start talking about virtual realities is that we may already be in one i did my senior thesis at university on brains in a vat exact same concept so i'm it was i spent like a whole month writing a 24 page paper it's crazy in fact after writing the paper i was like it took me like a week to even become normal again because you can't you can't choose right and that scares me you know you can't choose. Right. And that scares me.

You can't say I'm not in one or I am in one. Right. And yeah, it's a totally freaky concept. Not only that, you can't say it and it's going to happen. If that super volcano doesn't blow, if we don't get hit by the meteor, there's going to come a point in time if technology continues to increase, whether it's 50 years from now or 100 years from now or 1,000 years from now, our ability to control reality itself will reach some sort of an epic point where we can create a virtual reality.

I'm sure you've messed around with Oculus Rift. I have. I haven't tried the new one. I tried, my friend Duncan, he's got the old model and now he has a new model. He has the developer's kit. And the old one I put on, it was all pixelated and weird, but it gave you the sense like, wow, this is kind of freaky. He called me up. He went to some sort of a virtual conference that they had in Los Angeles.

And he called me up just ranting and screaming, it's over, man. This is bigger than the printing press. This is bigger than the internet. Like this is, it's fucking over. We're gonna, this is gonna be reality. And he was just freaking out so much so that I'm scared to go and try this, this headset on. But he was talking about going into some virtual room where there's a person playing the piano

and you, you interact with them and you feel like you're in the room with them. And he said it was the freakiest thing he's ever experienced in his life because it's all in like 4K, HD, super, like really, really clear video. And apparently the way they do it, they put cameras all over the person's body when they film this, cameras on your hands, cameras on your legs. So everywhere you look, they have it covered. over the person's body when they film this cameras on your hands cameras on your legs so everywhere you look they have it covered and it's just a matter of the processing power of being able to keep up with all the different potential views that you have same as when you're going into a

computer 3g generated world like a video game like quake or something like that where you're going down corridors and you can look up and look down they have it like that but they have it in complete three-dimensional hd video to the point where it it's indistinguishable from actually looking at these things in real life and that's just now i mean what is that going to be like 50 years from now there when they figure out how to do something on your head where they put, you know, electrodes or something where they can stimulate parts of your mind that can give you the sensations of the feel of the wooden floor giving slightly under your feet, the texture of a wall as you run your fingers by it. You'll be able to feel that on your fingertips.

And then a thousand years from that, what happens then? I mean, what happens then? What happens then? What happens then? It keeps going and going and going and going. And if you extrapolate, if you look at where we are now and you look at the future, it's almost impossible for us to not reach a point where we're indistinguishable, where reality and virtual reality are indistinguishable from each other. No, I couldn't agree more. And if you try that stuff on, that's really the, it's sort of like the landmine thing. Once you've tried that on, it really is such a freaky thing that you realize,

oh, this is here today. Okay, it's not perfect, but in 10, 15 years. It's coming. It's coming. And I think a lot of younger people get that because they either have tried it or they're cool with it. They grew up like my 11-month-old or 10-month-old daughter is already quite – she's already pretty quite good at using the iPad and skipping through things. She doesn't know what the apps mean yet. But she's only 11 months.

And she's just growing up with this technology. And so for her, I think to put on whatever virtual reality setup it's going to be in 10 years or 15 years is not going to even dent her. She's not going to be scared of it. She's going to be have heard the word. She's going to be have heard transhumanism for the last 10 years. It'll be like stepping in. You know, I think when people first talked about cars, they must've thought, well, how weird, what do you mean we're going to get rid of the horse? And then the next generation thought, well, I can't believe you guys were in a horse. And sort of like the way we talk about either fax machines now, or, you know, the new generation is going to take it and run with it. And they're not going to be afraid of it at all.

I think it's people our age that are already still, we're like a little skeptical. And then it's people above us that are really still out there and they have to actually test it to see it. But in 15 years, no matter who tests it, it's going to be so real. I think the philosophical dilemma there is that people are going to say, well, it's not real life. And people like myself are going to say, well, why not? You know, what makes that real knife just because it's created, you know, through a machine? What's to say this isn't created through a machine?

You know, what's to say this is so different? I can touch something in there and it feels maybe even more real than it does now. You know, maybe the touching of wood there, as we had talked about, if you have sensors on your fingers, it's not just touching wood. We'll be able to determine the strength of that wood. I can't, you know, you know, we can do all these things right now, but for example, I'm writing an article right now on, um, blind people using, uh, artificial robotic eyes, bionic eyes to see. And they're now basically kind of doing a surgery where they put something into your eye

and then they can program it through these goggles that you wear, and blind people can now effectively see. Sounds like the character on Star Trek. Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it looks like, too. It's called, I think, the Argus 2 is one of the latest ones. The point, though, is that part of my article is what are they doing now? Because last year they went from black and white to upgrading the eyes to color. They can program in the certain types of lights that hit color into your nerve cells, but soon they're

going to start programming things like we talked about gases or, you know, eventually it's just a matter of the machinery will be able to have whatever capabilities you can give it. It's not a, you know, we're not limited anymore. Our eyeballs are limited to its biology, but if we have something robotic that ties into the nervous system, our nervous system can understand anything. The reason we don't see much more than we see is because our eyeballs are, frankly, they're quite poor. When you give, uh, when you think about what kind of mechanisms are out there that can really be attached inside there. And, uh, so the, the articles about what is the future of the 10 year future of of bionic eyes and i'm a pretty

big believer that within 10 years we'll have bionic eyes that are almost equivalent of the human eye and probably within 15 or 20 years people will start replacing one of their eyes for the bionic one and the reason they'll do so is because like i said you're gonna it's not just seeing one percent of the universe anymore. The, the computers and the programs and the devices will be able to see far more. You're going to be able to see through walls. You're going to be able to see, and this is, this is stuff companies are like literally working on right now. I mean, it's, this is blind people have already seen this happen in 2012 and 2013. Now they're starting to upgrade the software and you know what happens

when they start upgrading things. It's then it's like, okay, we got the apparatus in place. Now let's see what kind of magic this can do. And this is just the eyeball. The same thing's happening with the human heart. The same thing's going to be happening with the ear. Very soon we're going to be replacing parts in ourselves and going for upgrades. And our lives are going to become much more complex, better, live longer. But also experience will be different.

Experience will be sort of like virtual reality. It's such a different experience that once you've gone through it, you realize it's kind of, you know, I've heard you talk a little bit about drugs in the show, and I'm a big proponent of experimental drugs myself. I think it's quite great for kids to do all sorts of stuff, including adults. Well, you just fucked up your presidential chances right there, pal. No, no way. I think it's great for kids to do drugs. Well, no, I don't mean kids. I mean, you know.

20-somethings. 21-year-olds and above. Those youngins. Yeah. I'm 40. I guess kids are anything in their 20s these days. Kids are in their 30s, right? Yeah.

Those fucking kids, those wacky kids. I'm 40. I guess kids are anything in their 20s these days. Kids are in their 30s, right? Yeah. Those fucking kids, those wacky kids. But ultimately, whether we like it or not, and whether, again, I'm not running on some presidential campaign to try to be the guy who pretends these things. I'm luckily not at that point yet. Maybe in eight years I'll have to watch a lot more of what I say. But right now, I'm a big believer. I don't think you will. I think eight years from now, we're going to be able to know exactly what you mean without you even having to say it. I think eight years

from now, we're going to have such amazing access to each other's minds that the walls are getting closer and closer. Possibly. Yeah. I don't think you're going to have to worry about people lying anymore. Well, that would be great because then we can know when they're pretending stuff. Yeah. And the truth is, I think all of us, many of your listeners, we all realize that there are lots of things out there that the government considers illegal, considers terrible, that have been very useful for artists, creative types, and basically people in general to expand their consciousness. And I think the technology will be also some new form of enabling us to expand our consciousness. the technology will be also some new form of enabling us to expand our consciousness. Like I said, if we have a bionic eye and it allows us to see different things, that's got to mess with our consciousness in some way.

And you can combine that with all sorts of things. And I'm a big advocate in doing anything, as long as it doesn't harm someone else, I think it's open game. I agree. And I think that when you think about the possibility of improving our organs, I think we could also look at the natural world and what we know about, for instance, what dogs can smell, the incredible ability that some animals have to see things. My friend Matt, he lives in Alaska, and we were talking this weekend about fishing, and he was saying that sometimes when they fish,

they'll catch sharks. And when they pull them out of the ocean, like they'll catch them accidentally when they're fishing for halibut. And when they release them, they're on the surface of the water and eagles can see them from a mile away. They can see a fish just swimming on the surface of the water from a mile away and they'll just show up they show up and they grab it it's like their eyes like our vision of what that could be it's so but think about like you can see a fire in the distance an ant has no fucking idea that fire's out there you know jamie was showing me this photo of uh there was a a huge fire last night in los angeles and from a distance it looked like like like a bomb had gone off it looked like a missile it hit some apartment building it was a huge huge fire melted signs that we're saying on the 110 now we can see that but to a worm they

have no fucking idea that's going on so we already know that biologically there are animals that have organs that work far better than the ones that we have. So we're completely aware that their ability to smell things, their ability to hear things. I mean, you can just like ruffle your fingers together slightly across the room and my cat's ear will like turn like that. Like she can hear shit that I couldn't even hope to hear in a million years. We know those organs exist. We know that their capacities are far beyond anything that we have. And if we start giving people cat eyes and cat ears and dog noses and the ability to do that, I mean, we will radically transform human existence just based on not even fantastical, like science fiction versions of these organs,

but organs that we know exist in the biological world. No, a hundred, a hundred percent, you know, so my articles, one of the funniest things about the article is that it's quite possible within 10 years, a blind person will see better than a normal biological person where they'll have the ability to see, you know, 150 miles and they'll have ability to see various tiny things that are the human eye could never see. That's how far technology has come where a blind person has better sight than a real person. Now it's not here, but it's definitely probably going to happen within the next decade. Well, I have reading glasses, these little, little glasses as I'm 47. And as

I've gotten older, one of the things that's happened is most likely from fucking staring at screens all the time, my close-up vision is starting to suck. Like, I can read, like, my iPhone. I can read it fine, no issues at all. But when I start reading small print, like a small website or something like that like i need to put on the reading glasses that in their one and a half what regular vision is like so it's one plus 50 um that's that's like robotics i mean this is like this is technology i'm putting something over my eyes it changes my eyes right now it just goes over and some people they get lasik they change their their actual lens

they cut it they do it with technology they change the form of it and then some people they get lasik they change their their actual lens they cut it they do it with technology they change the form of it and then some people get artificial lenses put in when they have issues or or you know they get injuries and i i know fighters who've forgotten artificial lenses put into their eyes it's gonna it's gonna creep up on us i think it's like people with hearing aids and you know some folks have artificial hips. I have a friend who has an artificial hip. I have another friend who has an artificial knee. And these are becoming more and more commonplace where they are taking parts that are not working well anymore and replacing them with robotics. Yeah. I was just doing an article. Apparently,

I think around 300,000 people in the world have this cochlear implant yeah which is actually inside and um that's 300 000 is not like 300 i mean that's a huge number around the world that are having hearing problems that have this that decided to go undergo a surgery that involves their skull and head essentially and have this implanted. That's great. And those people apparently hear far better now. Society is changing. It's just going to take interviews like this where people hear about it. And if you hear about enough times, all of a sudden you're like, oh, well, I know someone else did that or this, that. And eventually everyone will sort of hopefully start to say, well, this is great. And I think the big thing is really getting a lot more

government funding for kind of these kinds of things, because, you know, sometimes it seems so speculative, but if we improve the world and improve people's, you know, biological beings and their livelihoods, it's hard to argue with that kind of logic. It's just, it's getting better. It is getting better. And as we said, when it comes to technology, if we don't blow ourselves up or the universe doesn't set a rock our way, it seems inevitable that we'll continue this progress. It just seems inevitable. And I think there's a certain duty that we have, especially folks like you have, that have the scientific know-how or knowledge and the information to inform people that this process is underway.

And better prepare yourself because there's no getting away from it. As long as we are human beings, we are never satisfied. There's a horsepower revolution right now with cars. It's gotten completely out of hand and totally ridiculous. I don't know if you're aware, if you're a car person, but in performance cars, they've reached this staggering level of performance at the highest end. They have an American car now called the Challenger Hellcat. I drove one when I was in Denver. It has 707 horsepower.

It's fucking insane. It has 707 horsepower. It's fucking insane. And it is a run-of-the-mill, not run-of-the-mill, but it's a standard production car. You get it from a Chrysler dealership or you go to a Dodge dealership. You pick up an SRT Challenger. You drive it off the lot. You don't need to go to some flight school. You don't need to show any incredible proficiency with high-performance engines.

show any incredible proficiency with high performance engines and they have cars now that regularly hit zero to 60 in less than three seconds less than three seconds and they're going 60 miles an hour that's insane i mean this is far faster than race cars of a couple of decades ago and it's going to get faster and faster and faster and if eventually we're all going to be driving like formula one race cars around i mean it's going to be that bizarre and it it's it exists in everything we're seeing it now in internet speeds we're seeing it in processor speeds when computers when they when they eventually do go public with quantum computing it's going to reach an entirely new level i don't even understand quantum computing. I've read several articles on it, tried to wrap my head around what the fuck it means. I don't get it. But apparently, in my crude understanding of it is they're going to be able to create computers that aren't just 10 times stronger than the, you know, this MacBook I'm using, but a million times

or 10 million times or 100 million times where they have processing power that is literally unimaginable. We will get to a point, again, whether it's 100 years or 500 years from now, we're going to get to a point where we are masters of the universe, or we literally become gods. We become an entity that has the ability to manipulate all matter all the time. And my issue with that is when this gets into the hands of everyday folks, we have a problem already in this country with guns. And the problem is mostly people with mental health. The gun problem in this country is not nearly as bad

as people think it is. This is what I mean by that. There are 350 million people in this country. The amount of actual mass shootings we have is very rare when you consider how many people have guns. It's a mental health issue. But the issue is you're giving one individual who is mentally ill, they have the ability to get in control of this device, a gun, which can cause all sorts of incredible damage. What happens when it's not, you're not talking about a gun, you're talking about something that manipulates matter. You're talking about something that has the ability to radically transform the environment in some sort of a way that this responsibility can't be overemphasized.

We could get to a point where an average human being has the ability to create worlds. The average human being has the ability to completely alter life as we know it for everyone else who exists on this planet whether that's a thousand years from now whether that's 500 years from now if we keep going we're these technologies will eventually get into the hands of of regular people how do we stop that i mean how do we stop i mean do we is the is the real question, do we concentrate on mental health? Do we concentrate on getting people to live in harmony and in peace before we create all these technologies? Or do we sort of figure it out as we go along and have it catch up? Well, you know.

That's a lot of questions. No, no. that's a lot of questions. No, no. But again, this is, you know, back to why I had was trying to do the transhumanist party is that I'm trying to introduce these concepts into politics because for example, I just was reading an article and they said, you know, the average kid can go spend a thousand dollars on eBay and create this kind of very professional microbiology lab in his bedroom where he could then launch potentially very dangerous diseases if he knows what he's doing. And I thought that thousand dollars, you know, 20 years ago, that would have been a hundred thousand dollars. So no one would have had access to it except, you know, and these are the kind of

things where I don't think a lot of governmental agencies, politicians are actually thinking about. They're just saying, oh, we'll push that off to some other day because it's so crazy, but it's really not that crazy anymore. What's happening is more and more people are getting more and more access to power. And that's why hackers, for example, might be able to, at some point in the future, bring down entire systems if they're able to do that. So, you know, your questions on how do we stop that? Do we try to make everyone, you know, live in harmony? I'm not a big believer of to make everyone you know live in harmony i'm not a big believer of that because to make them live in harmony is probably to we we've tried that for

for ages you know programs that make everyone live better we're too competitive as as a species i think you need to use technology to not only advance the species but sort of to protect the species and this kind of this is difficult because I try to hold some libertarian values. And those values include not impeding technology or not impeding the right to use the things you want. But I think that technology can really help guide us if we use it. Like everyone talks about surveillance, for example, and how, you know, all of a sudden we live in this great surveillance world where everything we're doing is tracked and watched and there's all these cameras. But the reality is actually, if you look at it, a lot of the surveillance has made the world safer and better for our children,

for ourselves. And yet we still, a lot of us have the freedoms that I think we all wanted. I mean, I still feel like a very free person almost all the time, not happy paying taxes, whatever, everyone else the same way. But the bottom line is we live in a pretty free world and that's technology has made it safer at the same time without really compromising our freedoms. I think we can continue going down that path where we can use technology to continue to monitor people, monitor the kinds of things that make it very dangerous for an individual to get, you know, some type of power in his hands that we can remake universes or whatever, or just the microbiology lab where he creates a virus and then releases it into the water supply.

I think we can use technology to stop that. But at the same time, I think we can use technology to grow the species as a whole. That's a very fine balance because we're probably going to have to give up some freedoms. We're probably going to have to accept that this idea of absolutely no government or this idea of too much government, you know, governments are going to have to change as technology grows. Technology is going to be leading governments from here on out. Governments are going to have to look to technology to find their solutions, not, oh, well, let's use technology on occasion to solve this. Technology is in the driver's seat,

and I don't think a lot of people realize that anymore. They think they're in the driver's seat, or they think we can still control that all, that anymore. They think they're in the driver's seat or they think we can still control that all. But the reality is our life is so determined by the amount of structure that progress and technology has put in our lives. It's no escaping it anymore. And yet it's done very good things. So I think we need to continue with it and put more of our faith into it. And that might mean, you know, more regulation, more observance, more tracking. Eventually we're all going to be interconnected with chips. So this idea of you had mentioned early, you know, maybe in 10 years, you'll all be able to read my thoughts. I have recently put on

some of the, uh, the head reading equipment and done a few articles on it. The brainwave reading stuff is fascinating. Um, a singularity university professor, uh, Jose Cordevo, we were at the World Future Society in Florida a few months ago speaking together. And he said, Zolt, spoken language won't be here in 20 years. What? He said, spoken language won't be here. So I did an article on that. And he said, look, Brainwave, he works at Singularity University. He's a professor there.

And Brainwave technology is increasing so quickly. In the last two years, it's jumped. jumped in another two years it's going to jump in 10 years we're going to have the ability and you know just last year or i guess it's about eight months ago a man in a person in india and a person in france had the telepathy thoughts they were without saying a word to each other he said hello and the other one said ciao and that's just the start in five years everything is going to can you explain that technology to folks sure so basically it uses this egg technology which is a very complicated word to say but i'll just say it's that technology and essentially the brain creates certain types of waves when you have certain types of thoughts in various places

of the body and very various places of the brain and the headgear you have can types of thoughts in various places of the body and various places of the brain and the headgear you have can read it. And it knows based on algorithms, based on a lot of repetitious practices. If you're thinking like fly a helicopter, for example, the army is working on flying helicopters with using these brainwave headsets. It knows lift, it knows turn left, it knows turn right based on the soldiers, you know, repeated, like saying, okay, experimenting and saying, okay, this always means the same thing. Right. And they've put it so good together that they know when you say hello and they know when you say goodbye now. And if you just can send that to another person and then it can stimulate that person the same way, it's able to, on a very basic level right now, tell that person that what you feel or what

you, what you actually said, except it comes through in that feeling and your thoughts. And, uh, I'm not, I'm not a scientist. I'm not doing it very eloquently, but that's the basic structure of it. And the idea is eventually we'll have signals going in and signals coming out that ultimately can make us hear these things in our head. You know, I mean, we're hearing stuff in our head right now, but we're doing through our senses. But if we bypass the senses and just go right to the neurons and stimulate them, it'd be the same thing.

And that's essentially what they're trying to do with that type of technology. It's very primitive right now, but it's growing so fast. And there's a huge amount of people that think the brainwave reading headsets will become the next iPhone technology, which is, you know, why do we need an iPhone when you can just wear this little device in your head and you're like, tell your, you know, tell your wife this or tell you, you know, I want to take out pizza here or I want to reserve a flight. You know, we're going to have Siri that's going to be much more improved in a few years. And all these things will be digitally just done through your thoughts. So, you know, this Singularity professor, who I totally believe, said, we probably won't be speaking to each other.

We'll be at a conference and everyone will be plugged in and you'll be thinking these things because it's a lot easier just to think it. And, you know, and is it that different than what we're doing right now with our headsets? Like I said, the ear is the interface, but if you just go right to brainwaves and stimulate those places in the brain that know how to recognize it, we'll learn this new form of communication. My article is based on whether we'll need second languages because Google Translate already translates things instantaneously. So, and I suffered through six years of Spanish and I've been working on trying to teach my daughter Chinese and Spanish right now. And I, my wife and her are like, yes, we must go through it. But I said, well, do we really need to? What

if we all have headsets that do instant translations with anyone on the planet through our thoughts? You know, and this is the kind of thinking where it's like, wow, that's real transhuman thinking, because maybe all second languages will die out. We will just go to one language. In my book, I talk about Lojban, which is this, there's various types of languages out there that are better for communicating scientific ideas or logical ideas. And they don't consider, you know, English has all sorts of imperfections in it. And that's why it's sometimes

difficult to learn. And most languages have imperfections. But a couple of scientists have worked on other forms of languages that are much more easier, for example, to program into a computer. There's types of languages that a computer can process a lot more simply than, for example, English, if you're trying to teach a computer a language. And because there's feminist and masculine types of endings and things like that, that can trick things if they're irregular, but certain languages don't have any irregular things. And so scientists have worked on these languages. But the idea is that eventually we might arrive in 20 years at a perfect language that we'll all use.'ll be our communication will be a lot quicker more expedient simpler and it'll all be done through brainwaves and you know the world will be a very different place i mean think of it without just one single language just

thinking about things so it'll be some sort of tower of babel type shit we're going to have that inside of our head with some technologically created translation device that allows us to utilize this universal language that computers create i feel so dumb just listening to this my my mouth is starting to unconsciously go slack well i'm glazing over and i talk about it but i don't know any of the ins and outs of it because the kind of you know the question of like how technically do they do this? The scientists that are working on this have spent their entire lives on this. And the other scientists that are trying to look into it don't even know what they're doing.

And they're experts on it. And then you have people like myself discussing it. It's amazing. But, you know, it's true that it happened. And that's, I think, the more important thing is that they're developing these things. And especially these brainwave reading technologies, there's now a number of companies that are selling it, I'm sure, at the local target.

And it's already here. Wow. God. That is so crazy. It's just so hard to wrap the mind around the potential of something like that. I mean, if you think about originally what Morse code was, The mind around the potential of something like that. Some sort of an ability. I mean, if you think about, like, what originally what Morse code was.

Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee. And now, you know, you send a text message. And now you can talk into your phone and send a text message. I have, you know, they have that Google Voice thing that you can, or not Google Voice, but you could use, Google Voice does work, where you could ask Google questions. But I have this application on my phone with the iPhone. It's a notepad. And when I have ideas, when I'm in my car, I just talk to the phone, and it transcribes it. And it's almost perfect, except for weird words that it doesn't understand. Generally speaking, like if you said to it,

concentrate on new technology that makes sure that people can see like eagles. It'll do that and make it perfect. Have you ever messed with it? No, I haven't, but I've seen it. Watch this. We'll do it right now because it's just so crazy how good it's gotten. You just press this little button right here. Concentrate on new technology that allows people to see as well as eagles do.

Bam. Awesome. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Absolutely perfect, and I just talked like a normal person. I talked like I would normally if I was trying to, you know, send a message to someone or I was trying to communicate to someone and it takes it and it's doing it right now while I'm doing that. Wow. That's incredible.

You should type in the Google, the Mindwave reading post photos to Twitter. You know, they now have devices where you can actually post directly to Twitter and Facebook by thinking it based on those devices I was just telling you about. That's incredible. My thought was the difference between Morse code, which they created a language. They had to create a certain amount of sounds that mean an S, a certain amount of sounds that mean a zero. create a certain amount of sounds that mean an S, a certain amount of sounds that mean a zero. You know, there's all these different, or an O rather, there's all these different sounds that correspond with letters and then you had to piece that together and create a language out of it, or create a word out of it.

Now you're able to just say the word and it transcribes it. But eventually, if this technology comes to fruition and you'll have a thought, and that thought will be transcribed to a universal language of someone in India, someone in Zaire, someone in South America, anyone, anywhere, no matter what they speak, will use this language. And it's possible that there won't be any other languages

other than this. You know, like we used to cursive used to be standard i mean i had alerted growing up um my kids don't know it they don't know what it is my daughter's six and they don't teach cursive anymore it's gone yeah and they're gonna typing will be gone too typing probably by the time my 11-month-old gets to six, I'm wondering if they're going to even do typing because a lot of it will eventually just be what you said, verbally speaking or thinking.

And it's amazing. All these technologies that we thought were so breakthrough eventually get to a point when they're so obsolete. And then you try to tell a younger person what it was like, and they just look at you like, I don't get it. Why did you do that? Do you have a voice navigation system on your car? No, I just use everything on my iPhone.

For a transhumanist, I'm not very high-tech with any of that stuff. I just like talking about it. No, but I don't actually have that much technology in my house. In fact, we don't even have a television. You don't have a television? No. How do you watch TV then? We don't have a TV.

We watch DVDs and stuff like that. On what? On a computer? No, we have a big giant screen. We have no TV whatsoever, not even local access. Oh, I see. So you have a big TV. You just don't have cable or satellite yeah

yeah so we the internet we just use the internet for everything and it's just kind of like it's funny because i think tv is one of those things where for 30 40 50 years it was such a mainstay and then all of a sudden you're trying to teach your kids and say well they hear it at school and they're like well we don't have it. It's not nearly necessary anymore. You know? And eventually I'm not even sure a big giant screen TV will be necessary. It might just be, well, I guess one thing that you carry around or an iPad or something like that. I mean, it's constantly in flux and that's the great thing about it. It's just constantly i mean um yeah i wonder if we'll you know if in five years you'll be using a laptop for what you're doing now it might just be using

probably be something more projected from a hologram or something like that from the ceiling yeah i've seen those and i've seen that you know the the new uh watches that exist like on like a little bit of a fitbit thing right and it projects an image on your wrist, and you could touch it and play with it the same way that you would like a touchscreen on an actual phone. I mean, this phone that I have now, I got this big iPhone. I have an iPhone,

and I also have this big Samsung Galaxy S5. And with both of them, they're so big and so good that oftentimes when I go on the road, I don't use a laptop anymore. I answer all my emails on this, on the Samsung, and it's plenty big for images. It's plenty big for web surfing. The only reason I even use a laptop is because the companies make it so none of their programs actually work with each other.

And sometimes the laptop is the only way to make it with the software. Like Flash and stuff like that. Yeah, and they do that purposely because they want you to buy as many gadgets as possible. But, you know, eventually they'll, you know, I heard something like 30 years worth of technology now fits into an iPhone. You know, 30 years because you can watch movies on it. You can watch music on it. You can do all your, if you're in math class, you can do your calculators and stuff like that. And television is now on an iPhone. that that's how small it's gotten but i bet in another

30 years it's going to get to something your size your thumbnail and inside your head and uh you know we'll have all this recording will be done with no equipment just probably big giant tables yeah i remember my first computer i had some crappy Mac that I bought that I don't even think it had a one gigabyte hard drive. I mean, I don't think they existed back then. I got a computer in 1994 from CompUSA, which doesn't even exist anymore. And I think, I'm pretty sure it was less than one gigabyte. And then I remember in the future, I ordered a computer that had a four gigabyte hard drive and i'm like this is fucking crazy four gigabytes now my phone is 128 gigabytes and it's

this little tiny narrow thing this has a case on it and it's narrow and it just slides right into your pocket it's got 128 gigs you know and this one, the Samsung has cards. You slide in new ones. You can stick in 64 gigs, 128 gigs. You can just keep sticking in little tiny SD cards. They're so small, and they're 128 gigs. I mean, it doesn't even make sense anymore. And with the cloud, the cloud is definitely where the future is.

There's going to be no more gigabytes on our phones. Everything will just be interconnected. We'll all have these floating big giant databases above us. And I already use the cloud for a lot of my stuff because I do a lot of videos and photos of the kids, and it just adds up too much space on the actual phone. And I realized that you could run programs. You can just run entire computers in the cloud now.

It's just all about the new programs coming out. And the, the, eventually everything will just be probably a hologram screen connected to somewhere way up there. What, I mean, it's obviously metaphorical, but, um, we'll be interconnected that way without actually even having much of a device. So, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, and that's probably five years away that what I'm speaking about. I mean, I think the, the cloud is probably one of the most heavily invested things of gadget technology that they're trying to do right now. And eventually we'll all be interconnected. Uh, the story I just did on artificial hearts, um, you know,

it's such an interesting story because they just did the second completely robotic artificial heart surgery on a patient in France. And robotic hearts have been around for 10 or 15 years or maybe even 20. But they were always a way to keep someone alive until they found a transplant heart. But they're now starting to do robotic hearts that replace the real heart. And that's it. That's the only heart that person's going to have for the rest of his life or her life. It's so far been two guys. And so we've, just in the last 12 months, we've crossed that with now robotic hearts are no longer just a temporary replacement.

They are the final replacement. And they're all Wi-Fi, and they all have Wi-Fi things about it. they're all Wi-Fi, they all have Wi-Fi things about it. And my article is like, if you want to be in a fight, you could pump up your heart with your cell phone, for example, if you're in the ring, and then you could fight that much better if I'm a surfer in big waves. Or if you want to meditate or sleep, you could put it at the sleep boat so your heart goes slower.

These are the ways you're going to be able to control the technology in your life. And the interesting thing I found about the story I did was Dick Cheney, the former vice president, had this kind of little device that was attached to one of his, the valves in his heart. And I don't know if you'd read, but he was actually afraid of terrorist attacks because that was Wi-Fi controlled as well. That was an episode of Homeland. Yeah, yeah. You know, they used that kind of technology to hack into someone's heart so the technology's coming it's crazy but they're going to start doing that and people are actually really worrying about that kind of stuff too it's actually here today

and um so you know it's just a totally brave new world but it's also pretty awesome because when you think of the possibilities of having a robotic heart, and now you want to go, for example, you want to be a, go free diving. I like free diving. And you want to go down as far as you can, maybe a couple hundred feet. This is the kind of time you could program your heart to actually work with you. Like I said, do you want to sleep or do yoga or even have sex? You know, I mean, all of a sudden you could program your heart to be a different person than you might've been normally. Well, that was one of the things in or even have sex. You know, I mean, all of a sudden, you could program your heart to be a different person than you might have been normally. Well, that was one of the things in Transcendental Man

where they were talking about the potential using nanobots or artificial blood cells that you'd be able to hold your breath underwater for an hour. Just, you know, just using these artificial blood cells that get created. They, they just, yeah, this last year was one of the big things for that, where they now have some kind of injection when, for example, someone has, uh, been, uh, drowned for 30 minutes and they can inject it into your blood supply. It's one of the first things they're trying to put forth that they can now do in an accident like that. But it works in the same way where it allows you to hold oxygen in your body a lot longer

than you normally would have. And so of course, yeah, you know, one of my very first opening articles after the book was on the transhumanist Olympics. And this is this idea that instead of having so many strict regulations regarding drug control and what technology you can use during real competition why not make a competition where you anything goes where weightlifters can use any types of enhancers and uh you know and athletes can use any type of technology and they get their hands on and you know it's crazy because for example if you did this thing with um you know the oxygen cells

maybe all swim races will be underwater. It's, it's considered that, you know, all of a sudden you can, but you, no one can go underwater long enough. That's why sometimes when you see backstrokers, I used to be a swimmer, they kick as far as they can underwater because they can go faster. There's less resistance. Problem is no one can hold their breath long enough. And so all of a sudden, if you could do that, it could change the face of swimming. Um, and the same thing can happen with almost any sport that you, you think of, especially powerlifting, when you actually need just a burst of energy instead of lifting what they're lifting. Now they might be able to lift three or four times that with steroids that are just designed for, to give you 10 seconds of just pure rage. The problem with that is what we look for in competition, what we look for in sports, is someone transcending the ability of the average person with discipline and focus and drive and will. That they work really hard and concentrate really hard on their technique,

and then they get to some point where they're a Michael Jordan or some Olympic power lifter. If you could just program it in, what would be the point of watching it, we would like eliminate a lot of the really magical moments in sport, because we're going to create a bunch of super athletes. But on the other hand, if you don't do it, you know, my take on is going to be that we're going to be able to manipulate biological bodies in a way where you're going to be able to literally create an incredible hulk like someone is going to be that and if we're watching athletes that are totally natural and have all these limitations but your mailman can jump over your fucking house like we're going to

be bored with regular sports they're not going to have the ability. But who is going to watch football if everybody's the Hulk? I mean, if you have a team of 16 Hulks on one side and 16 Hulks on the other, and it's all about moving a ball across a line, I mean, what kind of a fucking world are we going to be living in? And I think that's, you know, from just even a commercial perspective, that's why I like the idea of having two separate types of sporting endeavors. For example, you have the stuff we have now, because I totally agree with you. I've been an athlete my whole life, did water polo through college and stuff like that. The idea is, you're right, the whole point of it

is that I work my butt off and I got, I was good at it, you know, and, but it's kind of cheating if someone gets to take a drug just because a scientist developed it and he had more money in that, you know, to do it and then they're're better and that's why i think maybe two fields could be created like one transhumanist olympics one olympics uh whatever it is sporting would cheat the the regular people would pretend yeah not transhumanists and they would cheat i mean that's what you have and i mean that was the big argument about lance armstrong lance arm Armstrong got busted cheating and then they, they, you know, took away his tour de France wins.

But if you want to go back to the person that hasn't tested positive for drugs on the tour de France, you got to go back to like 17th place because everybody was cheating. So it gets to this point where like, is it cheating? Is it cheating? Everybody's cheating. Or is it just some unfortunate aspect of this competition that people don't admit what they need to do in order to be able to race like this? You have a really good driver, but then you have engineers behind him that make the vehicle so that he can get that far.

And, and that's part of the cool thing is like, you're like, well, he has this engineer from Porsche or whatever. And they become sort of celebrities or, you know, in the transhumanist Olympics world, I think scientists would maybe become celebrities as much as, or, you know, becomes popular figures because you would really say, well, ah, he's the one who made this athlete and this athlete and this athlete do all those records. So it would be kind of different. I, you know, I think maybe even a different word should be used. It wouldn't be sports anymore. It might be something new because it would be something so different. You would be taking the coaches and the engineers and scientists behind that athlete to a whole nother level. Yeah, man. i don't know what would that be i mean i think part of what we love about sports is the fact that we know it's so difficult to become a great athlete it involves like like the dedication of like go back to the

movie rocky like one of the things that people loved about it was that he got up when he was tired he hit that alarm clock he drank the raw eggs he went jogging you know he was doing all these things that he didn't want to do to push his body to reach this level of fitness that allowed him to go and fight apollo creed you know a guy who really you know was out of his league he rose the occasion with hard will and heart and will and determination and hard work that that's's what excites us about sports, is that we know it's hard to do. If it becomes easy to do, I mean, if the average person can go to some transhumanism clinic

and get a shot of nanobots and become some Ultraman, some person that has capabilities far beyond the normal biological body, we might lose interest. We might lose interest. No, you're right. But the problem is what you said, and you nailed it right on the head, when you said, well, what are you going to do? And the mailman is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan

just because he's taking these things. Or a 10-year-old who puts on a certain exoskeleton suit just runs as faster than a horse. And then, you know, it doesn't matter what, if you're an Olympia, Olympia, a sprinter. I'm sorry, but aren't sports kind of silly in that sense? I mean, we're concentrating on this, this thing that we talk about this, this competition aspect of our lives. But if we reach some incredible transcendent point in the physical abilities of people because of technology, does the sport really matter anymore? I mean, it's kind of a silly thing to concentrate on about this being the one thing that we're

going to lose. Like, who gives a shit if that ball goes in that net? You know, like, he made a basket. Woo-woo. Does it really change the world no or is it far more impressive that the average person no longer has the limitations that the biological body yeah no i mean i i think to some extent probably well you know i guess one has to be careful i don't think sports will fade away because sports has become one of the greatest methods that people use to become great.

You know, that it's one of the inspiring events that we have as a species that brings us together. And so it's hard to see that going away, but I guess if everyone has access to this incredible technology, they may not be necessarily like so involved, you know, right now,

for example, the Superbowl is one of America's big giant events. I never, I don't really understand why it's that way, but it's hard to see that changing anytime soon. Even if we get really crazy access to technology, somehow that's become kind of part of our culture. This type of competitive, friendly, competitive, you know, endeavors that we do.

The World Cup just came, and I remember that was like, when do you actually have so many people all thinking of the same thing? Well, isn't like steroids and even supplements to that to a certain extent, aren't they essentially like low-level engineering of the human body? I mean, it's like a low-level genetic engineering i mean that's that's what you're doing when you're adding steroids you're adding a chemical to a system that forces that system perform in an exemplary matter that's really not possible without the steroids no it's totally i think it's technology yeah it's it's and it's they may say it's unnatural, but what is unnatural? I mean, in today's day and age, I mean-

Toothpaste is unnatural. Shit. Everything's unnatural. Well, I mean, everything- You're creating it. It's true. Soap. Where the fuck did that come from?

Well, from a certain perspective, everything is kind of like, you know, if it comes from certain elements, it's there. It's natural. Use it if it's useful and functional. Well, isn't everything that human beings create, fact natural because we are natural and we have we have a built-in curiosity and a built-in thirst and hunger for innovation that is i mean how much different is that than a natural animal that forages for food i mean that is what they do i mean it is natural that they dig a hole in the ground and find the roots that they're looking for, the animals they want to eat.

All these things are natural. And that's why I've been – everyone says, Zoltan, the transhumanism stuff you're doing is so unnatural. And I say, actually, it's potentially the most natural thing that we have done. Becoming robots might actually be an incredibly natural process for human beings one day. And, you know, that's just, it's evolution, so how can it not be a natural thing? But, you know, it's all perception. And if people want to twist it and say, oh, it's just too weird for me, it's not in any way that it's just too weird for them.

It's not in any, like, big statement saying that it's unnatural for us to transform ourselves, whether we're creating steroids, whether we're putting microchips inside our head, or whether we're just putting on an exoskeleton suit and climbing Mount Everest. I mean, these are, they're always going to be natural things. I wish people would see that technology more as a natural phenomenon rather than some type of like outside thing that comes in as an alien and that we're slowly started using.

You know, I think if you had told someone a century ago, Hey, we're all going to be interconnected on this cell phone and this, on this internet, we're going to be doing video conferencing across the oceans. People would have looked at you and said, he's not mental problems. You know, it's crazy. And now everyone does it. I mean, I know they have cell phones in some of the poorest villages in Africa. It's incredible how far it's come. And there's nothing unnatural about it. In fact, it's just amazing stuff that's going to keep getting more amazing. That's the one thing that gives me the most hope about technology is that somehow or another it will raise up the level of the quality of life for people that live in poor

areas and your the the cell phone is a perfect example of that it used to be gordon gecko on the beach with that big ass brick phone in you know in wall street and that was like wow this guy's got access to a phone and he's walking on the beach this is super high tech and now you know i've been to Brazil and seen people in the favelas in these poor neighborhoods that have cell phones and have smartphones, they have iPhones or Android phones. And this is becoming more and more prevalent all throughout the world in Africa and all these different places. I think the quality of life and as far as the access to health care, as far as the ability to communicate

with each other, as far as the access to modern comforts, that's the one thing that gives me the most hope about the exponential growth of technology is that I hope it elevates the quality of life for the people that are stuck in the lowest 1%, 5%, 10%, whatever it is in the world, that slowly that life will be a far better, far less suffering, far easier existence. And that they, in fact, with this technology can concentrate on other things because the technology frees up a lot of resources and it'll allow them to raise up their quality of life, raise up their education, raise up their health care, raise up their government.

Like all of these things will in fact raise the – we look at Africa as a perfect example. We look at the Congo, which is this incredibly rich area in terms of resources but incredibly poor in terms of the quality of life for the people that live there. And if we could somehow or another raise that up where the people that live in the Congo have the same quality of life as the people that live in the average American city, you'd have a radically different world, a radically different world. I mean, it would change everything. That could be one of the biggest changes that technology brings in the world,

the elevation of the quality of life of the average person on the planet. No, and I totally agree. In fact, that's one of the big reasons I'm such a big promoter of the internet, because the one thing the internet has done, I did a huge amount of reporting, I think 13 or 14 Muslim or Middle Eastern countries for National Geographic. I went to various places. And the great thing about the internet is it's offered a sense of democracy. And even though a lot of those places still don't really have it, this is why we had some of the uprisings I think recently, is that you get enough people on the internet and they find out things.

They're like, wow, this is what some person is doing in Los Angeles. Why don't we do that here? And that's happened because there's computers or cell phones that are slowly appearing in these places that never had access to that. It's inevitable to stay in your culture, especially if it's kind of some type of authoritarian culture, if you have access to that kind of information, because it makes you upset and you're going to revolt. And that's brilliant. That's why cell phones are so important. And just even regarding the malaria thing we talked about earlier in the Solomon Islands, one of the reasons so many people die from malaria is they can't get access to the drugs.

But if you can call someone and have them, a healthy person, make the walk over the mountain, they can bring you the drugs. But the problem is in the past, there's been no way to call. There's no telephone lines, but cell phones have enabled that to happen. Cell phones is one of the main reasons that a lot of villages in Africa, I'm sorry, a lot of villages in Africa have cell phones for this reason, for literally medical reasons, so that people can come in and take out sick people when otherwise they have to walk days just to get into, you know, to get them to help. And so, I mean, this kind of technology is literally changing the face of how especially poor people live and making them live better, longer, and so that mortality rates

are just, everything's getting better. And I'm totally hopeful that tech, everyone says, oh, you know, big brother for technology or, you know, it's a new world order. I have a lot of conspiracy theorists that always leave me threats, but I keep saying that, you know, They leave you threats? Oh, they leave me threats because I'm, you know, now saying a lot of stuff. Like I advocate for using microchips in people's heads and, and, and using technology as means

to improve life, but they think it's all part of the elite trying to control us. And I always say them, but the fact is that all people around the world are getting more and more access to this technology. That's improving their lives. If that's what the elite do, I'm not saying there's elite behind anything, but if that's what they do, then that's a good thing because it's happened that way. It's not an elite thing. It just happens to be that it costs a lot of money to

develop technology at first. And it takes a few years to trickle down, maybe takes a few decades. But history has shown that most technology has trickled down from wherever it came from. And that some of the poorest people in the world have access to a lot of the development that has come through the pipeline. A few weeks ago, I debated John Zerzan. He's the leading philosopher of the anarcho, kind of capitalistic. Well, he's basically an anti-civilization philosopher. He really advocates for going back to an entirely primitive lifestyle. And we had a debate at Stanford University and it went well. He's a nice guy, but he represents kind of the anarchists. And my book has some anarchist themes, so I can't completely disassociate myself from some of the radical and revolutionary ideas that are there. But at the

same time, he advocates for things that would absolutely harm some of the poorest people in the world, harm basically everyone by giving up the things that have made us live longer and better. When you actually, my wife is a doctor, so she's done a lot of work in Africa. When you take away technology and medicine and, you know, uh, modern, uh, science from the people, especially the poorest people, they have a very hard time surviving. They go right back to the way a lot of, uh, tribal people had lived for long times where people die from a cavity. People die from a cavity. People die from the simplest of infections.

We now have ways to deal with all of that. So lifespans are growing, growing. And not just growing in America. They're growing all around the world. They're growing in Africa. And they're getting better. So what does this guy want? What does he want to happen? So.

Like a primitive way of life? Yeah. What does he want to happen? So, um. Like a primitive way of life? Yeah, so he advocates, he says that all harm came from basically the development of technology and kind of, um. Basically, when we lived in tribes and we were in very communal tribes, we were much happier as human beings. I've heard this shit so many times before it drives me bananas what's this dude's name john zerzan spell his last name um z-e-r-z-a-n and we literally just had a big kind of public debate at stanford university um recently and it went well but it was a little bit crazy the the anarchists outnumbered the transhumanists in the auditorium like four to one it was was a little bit sketchy, actually.

They're the black block guys. What's that mean? You know the guys that go through the Oakland riots or when you have riots and they put on the black stuff, the black masks and whatnot? No. Oh, you know whenever you see like the World Trade Organization, the people that kind of go, they're called black block people. They usually try to make themselves completely anonymous. And anyways, there were some of those guys there and it was a little bit sketchy because it was it was a pretty heated these guys think that all transhumanists are aiming to turn the world into robots so they actually feel quite angry they they really they're like you want to

kill us by making us become different types of entities. And transhumans say, well, you guys want to kill us by taking us back to a domestic, you know, into this kind of very primitive lifestyle where most of us couldn't survive because we'd all starve. There's not enough hunter and gathering. So they want to hunt? Yes. They want to take us back essentially to a

hunter and gatherer lifestyle. And that's, that's, that's their platform? Yes. That's a hundred percent of their platform. The whole world? Hunter and gatherer? A hundred, a's that's their platform yes that's 100 their platform the whole world hunter and gatherer 100 100 in the whole world well that doesn't work with seven billion people no no i know that and they they know that too yet they they advocate in the same way that like um some people advocate things that they they're trying to make a point that technology has made human beings unhappy and our point is that technology has made human beings unhappy. And our point is that technology has made human beings live better and longer and happier. And so they advocate for that.

And it's a pretty big movement. I mean, they're certainly a lot bigger than transhumanists. So all these guys, they hunt for their own food, they grow their own vegetables. No, they're all hypocrites in that sense. And this is not criticism of their end. Because even, and this is not criticism of their end. There's really no way for, for example, for to even get Mr. Zerzan to a debate. He had to fly in from Oregon. He had to, you know. That's hilarious.

We use speakers, you know, I mean, stuff like that. He wears clothes. He has a watch. So anyways, John Zerzan is the, he's the, he was the confidant of the Unabomber. And that's why he, he's kind of taken over the Unabomber's position. He of the Unabomber. And that's why he's kind of taken over the Unabomber's position. He knew the Unabomber? He knew Kaczynski? He was a good friend of his who was there during the entire court proceedings. Oh, fucking Christ.

So this is why I had a lot of threats. Because when you're debating him, you're sort of debating some of the ideas of the Unabomber, who still has a large following. Well, you know the Unabomber, they screwed his mind up in the Harvard LSD studies. I actually don't know that much about him. Oh, my God. He was a part of those original LSD studies, and I believe it was the 60s before they made LSD illegal, and they fucking torched that guy's brain.

I mean, Harvard did a series of experiments on people with LSD. And the results of those experiments are all classified. But there's a documentary called The Net that went into great detail. I believe it was a German documentary that talked about it. But it's public knowledge that he was involved in the Harvard LSD studies. And it's very likely that they cooked his fucking brain with extraordinarily large doses of LSD in these clinical settings. And who knows what kind of fucking test they ran on these guys. But he came out of that, went to Berkeley, and made enough money essentially teaching just to be able to build this house, this little small cabin up in the woods, and start his plan to murder people

who were involved in the creation of technology. I mean, the fact that anybody could leave out that, just look only purely at his philosophy and leave out the fact that they cooked this guy's brain on acid, and who knows what kind of dosages. I mean, if you go back to some of the studies they did in the 1950s with soldiers, and they did studies with housewives, there was varying doses. Like, you know, they would give people a couple, you know, like what would be, you know, the average hit, what you would call a couple hits of acid. I don't know what the actual dosage would be, but they would give them 100 hits. Oh, wow. That's totally different.

You're right. They would cook their fucking brain with this stuff. And this guy came out of those studies, and there's a direct link. There has to be. I mean, there's a direct link to several people that have undergone large doses of LSD and severely diminished mental capacities afterwards, severely diminished abilities to rationalize reality to to view the world through the same the same uh lens that they had before they took it it really can fuck people's head up and this

guy was one of them so the fact that this zirzan guy is uh you know a proponent of kaczynski's ideas yeah i mean if you look at the worst case scenario, you know, the iRobot scenario, the, you know, summoning the demon scenario, there is some potential that we could be doing something horribly bad by creating accelerating technology. But if we don't, what are we doing? We're limiting ourselves to being animals? Well, let's throw away fucking weapons. Let's kill things with our face, like jaguars do.ars do. You want to go super low tech? Because everything is technology. A fucking stone axe is technology.

Of course. So he doesn't, it's funny enough, he doesn't even advocate for a lot of, he says domestic, John Zerzan. And he doesn't, so he was really good friends with Kaczynski for a while. And then they had a falling out. And in the process, Zerzan has become kind of the leader of that movement since Kaczynski for a while and then they had a falling out and in the process uh Zerzan has become kind of the leader of that movement since Kaczynski has been in prison we're probably not representing his ideas accurately but but so Zerzan essentially you know he he I think he knows what he's advocating would kill billions of people however I, I think, you know, his main message is that

technology, because, for example, he blames, he says school shootings are a result, the increase of school shootings in America are a result of our discontent with technology. And these are some of the things we debated about at Stanford. And I disagree. I think there are anomalies in the system. There are mental health issues. Yeah are, exactly. And mental health issues happen for a number of reasons. And, you know, perhaps the most, you know, if everyone has, if people with mental health have access to guns, it just goes wrong sometimes. And then the media explodes it. I think, you know, and a lot of people feel the same way that Zerzan's ideas are way out there, and he's not taking in the whole picture, which is what I feel. But at the same time, you know, he can, he's in charge now, or at least he's written a number of books where a lot of people

follow for potentially millions of anarchists around the world that are taking very serious issue with. And so they have kind of, they are some of those same people that are now, I think they attacked recently a Google bus and there's been some other attacks, including physical attacks. I'm not exactly sure what happened with the Google bus. I think there was some physical attacks with it, but they're basically, you know, it's combined with the Occupy movements. It's all those sort of fringe groups are starting to say, well, there's too much surveillance.

There's too much government. There's too much of this. There's too much technology involved. And, of course, transhumanists are pitted sort of against it all, saying, actually, technology is improving the lives of everyone. And you guys couldn't even send your texts or do arrange any of your movements without all this happening, without all this technology. So what's happened is ever since that moment, I have been sort of under attack as the guy who went against Sarzan.

And we're probably going to actually have another public debate because him and I liked each other. We were fine talking to each other, yet we represent totally extremes. talking to each other. Yet we represent totally extremes. And he really does advocate going back to a truly hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But he doesn't do that himself. No.

He doesn't hunt. Well, I grow my own food. I grow vegetables. I have chickens that I get eggs from. I hunt. But I just don't think you can have, it's not for everybody. People don't want to.

My friend Steve Rinella, who's the host of the show Meat Eater, it's a hunting show, he has a really great point. He's like, society has come up with all sorts of methods where we don't have to do everything. We don't have to be responsible for eliminating our own waste, for getting rid of our own garbage. We don't have to be responsible for digging a hole and burying it. We don't have to be responsible for our own sewage system. We don't have to do that anymore. Society's figured out a way.

There's nothing wrong with a supermarket. His idea is that, yeah, there is a disconnect when you just pick up a piece of meat that's neatly wrapped in saran wrap and a little foam tray, but that's a part of progress. It's a part of civilization. You can go back to hunting if you want. It is an option, but it's very difficult to do. And most people are not going to do it. And that's the reality.

I like it. I like doing it. It makes me feel connected to what I'm eating, but you don't have to do it. There's nothing wrong with going to the supermarket. And this idea that we need to go back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, this is a short-sighted idea because that life fucking sucked. People died. They broke their legs and they were dead. They got a cavity and they die from cavities. I mean, it's just – Infections, skin infections, dead.

You had an open wound, dead, septic, dead. No antibiotics. all that's technology it's i i find that incredibly short-sighted no and i am i have had the luck um one of the uh ways i actually even got involved in that geographic was i had visited a tribe in vanuatu on my sail trip um and i was the very first, uh, uh, foreigner in this tribe in 1995. And they had never, I think only two or three people had actually been off the hill or off the mountain. There are a couple of mountains, uh, mountains to get through in this mountain range and been to the ocean and seen, uh, even a town. So most of the people had never seen anyone outside of people

in their village. And so I was the very first one to actually get access into this. And I went back later for National Geographic and filmed them. But I have actually seen firsthand a truly indigenous and authentic tribe. And almost about 40% of the kids do not live until their like 12th or 13th year because they die from various things. That's no way to run a society when you're losing almost half of your population, people you love, because of stupid things, snake bites, malaria, disease,

stuff that we can deal with. Well, that's why primitive societies are so into fertility rituals. They had an incredible infant mortality rate. It was just ridiculous. Yeah, no. I mean, so much death. And it's not a place to be happy.

It's not a place. I remember I've never been in that village. I've been there a couple times. Never been in that village when it wasn't in a state of mourning. It's always in a state of mourning. Their rites lay out last month. They're never going to be in a not a state of mourning because someone is always dying. And when you have a society like that, it's incredibly difficult to come up with technological

innovation because you're constantly worried about staying alive, feeding your family, fighting off the enemy, whether it's an animal, nature, whatever it is. Yeah, no, totally. And this is, it's like, you know, in our debate, I talked about this, but this is what is so great about, you great about our society is that we have time, leisure time, to dedicate to the things that matter to us. For example, you get a cavity. You can replace it with a fake tooth. And look, now you can eat steak again. As opposed to, well, you've lost all your teeth.

Now you're stuck eating shrubs or whatever it is. You know what I mean? You can't really eat shrubs. That's the worst thing you can eat. Or whatever. You're chewing a shrubs or whatever it is. You know what I mean? You can't really eat shrubs. I don't think that's the worst thing you can eat. Or whatever. Chewing a shrub with your gum. Yeah, I know what you're saying, though. I know exactly what you're saying.

I think people, they fuck up with this either-or thing. They fuck up this black and white. They go way too far. It's not a black and white issue. It's like it is complex, and we all have a limited amount of technology that we must use to exist in this world today. Whether it's clothes, if you live in a cold environment, that is technology. Whether it's a vehicle, a house, all these things, these are human creations and human innovation. A fucking house itself is a human creation.

And if you want to live in a house, then you want technology. I mean, that is reality. Do you not like insulation? Well, guess what? Insulation was created by humans. What, are you going to live in a house, then you want technology. I mean, that's reality. Do you not like insulation? Well, guess what? Insulation was created by humans. What, are you going to use a lighter? Guess what that is, fuckface. That's technology.

Right. Are you going to start all your fire with flint? Of course. Because if you're not, you're a hypocrite. Yeah. No, of course. And that's the problem with those perspectives. And they are taking the either or instead of saying, well, what is the middle ground? And I think, you know, I guess it's important also that transhumanists

take a step back and try to work with other groups and, uh, and say, well, there are times, and I agreed with a few of his points. There are times that technology does alienate us or make us forget some of the better parts that we've just talked about. Like, well, what do we really want to live in a universe? That's totally robotic. Maybe it's boring. So there are, we need, we do need to keep some of the ridiculousness as we discussed in our lives or some of the, uh, the chaos, but, um, uh, an advocation for going or just to advocate going backwards, uh, to such an extreme, it was such a far-fetched idea. But, um, like I said, it's a big movement and there's a lot of people that have gone down that path.

Well, there's nothing wrong with it for the individual that's involved in that movement. If you want, look, there's plenty of area in Alaska. If you so choose to go and get some land and build a house and live off the land and live a subsistence living, if that's for you, you can do that, man. You can do that. You can live like that. And there's a bunch of shows dedicated to the people that do it.

Life Below Zero, one of my favorite ones. It's fine. You can do that. There's nothing wrong with that. But to think that society has to do that too. Man, you're digging your heels in on a process that is impossible to slow down. Yeah.

The train left a long time. There's no changing this. I mean, this is what we're about now. It's what we've been about since they invented metal. It's been a slow process. The combustion engine, tires, roads, all of it is almost an unstoppable process. 3D printing is fascinating to me,

and that was one of the things I wanted to bring up when it came to Africa when you were talking about the ability to use cell phones to get medicine. I'm fascinated by the ability to actually produce things, to produce things in – like things that are necessary for survival in these villages. The ability to instead of have goods shipped in to produce them and ultimately maybe even possibly produce medicine if technology continues to improve to produce whatever nanobots that we're going to be able to inject into our bodies to have that a machine that makes those things so that you can literally fix people on the spot in any remote location with these these types of technologies i mean i think that's something

that we have to look forward to too. If eventually you can have something that fits in a backpack that you can take anywhere in the world that's controlled by some type of wireless, you know, signals, and you could probe, you're like, you know what, I need something for this person because they broke their leg and make it right there in the spot. I mean, imagine what it would do for huge, you know, swaths of the population that are actually don't have access to that type. And I mean, you could create the malaria

medicine right on there. So, I mean, it, it absolutely stands to change the world. And I think, um, 3d printing is probably one of the most exciting things that have happened in this decade so far, you know, as far as things in the press and things that we're looking forward to.

And I think, um, it has the possibility of, of totally transforming manufacturing itself. There might come a time when everyone in their house has one and anything that you need, whether it's a lava lamp or, uh, you know, uh, a table, or, uh, I mean, you'll be able to create parts of it or create it and put it together and everything will come with plans, you'll be able to create parts of it or create it and put it together. And everything will come with plans, you know. Well, look at what we can do now with printers, with photograph printers. They can print these beautiful high-resolution photographs from a cell phone. You take your cell phone. I don't know how many fucking megapixels these things have now.

But this new iPhone, the lens and the camera on them, it's beautiful. So you take these incredibly rich pictures and then you print them in this large – and put it on a frame. And you would never know if you looked at that framed photo that that came off of a regular computer printer from a cell phone. I mean it's amazing. And this is something that just didn't exist 10, 15, 20 years ago. It's just the technology wasn't available 20 years ago. Ten years ago, they looked like shit. Today, they look 20 years ago. It's just the technology wasn't available 20 years ago. 10 years ago, they looked like shit. Today, they look amazing.

Totally. And in the future, you're going to probably print them in your frame and put them right there on your desk, and you're done. Yeah. Well, it's going to be a hologram. Yeah, you're right. In the future. It's going to already be that, which is crazy.

Have you seen this new technology that they're using? What was that shit called with the little elephant in the guy's hand oh yeah that was with um uh the the one we did with lewis from unbox therapy i'll find it yeah find it i don't know if you even know about this but there's some incredible is that google that's working on that yeah some insane new technology that allows them to project 3D images that are moving with shadows on your hand, like what we had in Star Wars. You haven't seen this? No, I don't think so.

How dare you? Magic Leap is what it's called. Magic Leap. Put this up. Put this up so he can get a look at this. But there's a website that shows some of the demos of what's going to be capable what's going to be possible with this technology but it's unbelievable there's a there's one that really gets me because i have daughters and there's a tiny ballerina dancing on this girl's bed i mean look at this oh wow that's brilliant yeah there's this guy has this for folks

listening to this magic leap l-e-a-p is the name of this technology you can google it this guy has this for folks listening to this magic leap leap is the name of this technology you can google it this guy has his hands open and there's a small elephant floating and dancing in his hands and they're going to be able to project things that aren't really there out in the world and have floating dragons. I mean, they're going to be like, there's a picture here we're looking at of these kids looking at these beautiful seahorses that are floating above their desk in their classroom. This one gets me.

This little girl watching a ballerina dance on her bed. I don't know what the projection mechanism is, what the technology is involved in. Where does it come from? I'm not sure. But, God, it looks insane. It looks incredible. I mean, imagine all the billboards.

They're all going to be taken down. You're just going to project stuff. Yeah. But that's going to just cause car crashes everywhere. Exactly. Is that a real elephant? No, it's not an elephant. It's that magic leap shit.

I mean, there's a whole host of problems. No, I mean, it will change the entire world of advertising. It's just like the whole thing because you'll just be like, and then it will change the entire thing. I haven't seen that yet. I'm surprised. When did that come out? It's pretty recent.

Yeah, this month. Okay. How dare you not be on the cutting edge? You're the transhumanism guy. Working too hard, I think. I think so. You've got to get on the Twitter with the young kids today. Well, we didn't find out until Lewis came on and explained it to us.

But it's mind-blowing. And this is obviously, look, you're pretty in tune with this stuff, and you weren't aware of this. And, I mean, how many other technologies are on the verge of announcing that these guys have been working on for years, and these folks are about to on for years and you know these folks are about to put out and just we're not we're not aware yet when that came out i was like oh this is one of those leaps that i never saw coming you know you're looking at that guy's hands if that's real if that's a working model that's not a cgi representation of what they're actually going to be able to do that's mind-blowing stuff totally totally i i hope it's not like the

hoverboard thing where you know they were that did you see the hoverboard commercial that came out? Yes. And it was like, it was like, oh, you know, but then it ended up not being real. But then I think in the last few months they actually did do one that was sort of real. Sort of. Yeah. But it's, I'm a surfer and a skateboarder, so I look forward to that kind of thing. It just sounds like it's something I dreamt of, you know, when I was a young kid.

I think it's going to be like a combination of like that hoverboard technology along with those scooters what are those things called those gyroscope scooters you know i'm talking about what are those goddamn thing segways yeah those segways have you ever ridden a segway no amazing they're amazing yeah kevin james a good buddy of mine and he was doing that that movie uh paul blart mall cop and you know in that movie he's riding around in this silly segue and uh he got one because of he's like dude they are amazing and i'm like yeah you're riding a scooter is that really fun but i i rode one i'm like this is incredible you lean forward to make it go and you lean back to make it stop you turn like you shift your weight to turn with it. They're amazing. I mean, they're really amazing.

I know they have them like you can just rent them for a vacation. They're really fun, man. The problem is when they run out of batteries, you're fucked. Because George Bush was on one. It went out of batteries. You went flying over the top of it. Because it just stops and it just falls down. So when the battery's out, you fucking tilt forward and fall flat on your face

because the gyroscope is somehow or another balancing your weight out. As you're moving with this thing, it's sort of correcting, like going back and forth with you. And when it runs out of batteries, it just stops. How long do they go?

Just a good question. I don't know. How long can those Teslas go? Even those things, those are amazing, but they're only good for like 300 miles on the highway, right? Right, right, yeah. The electric car thing is going to be, I mean, they're going to, don't they accelerate far quicker than like a horsepower engine? Not quicker, but comparable.

Like we were talking about horsepower wars, like these new Teslas, the Tesla Model D, I believe is comparable to like a really high-end like a sports car right now. Like I think they're doing 0 to 60 in under four seconds. That ability with an electric car, and especially because I think they have four-wheel drives, there's not as much traction issues as they have with uh with some two-wheel drive cars it's they're getting there you know and it's also they don't have gears

the way like you have to go first gear second gear they just go you know because it doesn't have a combustion engine doesn't have to sort of regulate the power through a transmission the same way this is a completely different kind of transmission. So it's all pretty amazing stuff. I used to race motorcycles growing up, and I've been following a little bit of the electric motorcycle market too, which is slowly developing as well. I didn't even know about that. But it's not nearly as complex,

and I don't know if anyone's making any money yet. But they're, of course, trying to do the same types of things. And they're trying to do the same types of things with all sorts of vehicles now including watercraft vehicles and boats and stuff like that and um so the entire market it could literally change and you know one of the technologies i love most is the exoskeleton technology yeah because i have a feeling that within five years now i think panasonic is releasing its first exoskeleton commercially in the next few months, at least according to some articles I did. And it's supposed to cost around $5,000. I don't know how many are going to be available. I'm not sure if it's even on

schedule right now, but it was a few months ago. And apparently you're going to be able to walk a little bit on and lift some very heavy stuff. But I'm assuming within five years, you'll be able to run and play sports and think of some of the activity. First off, it's going to change the way a lot of old, unfit, obese people handle their existence because either I'm, you know, a lot of them can't go outside right now, or a lot of them can't get to the, uh, go from the bathroom to the refrigerator comfortably. If you're wearing one of these things, it's going to be a lot easier for a lot of unfit people to move. So that could revolutionize America, especially since we have so much obesity and diabetes and stuff like that.

But I'm pretty sure in five years, you're going to see a lot more sporting events, uh, like things like people running with it. And that'll be, you know, you just look outside and people will be jogging in their exoskeleton suits and they're probably going to be very soon able to jog as quickly as maybe horses or even as one day they'll probably be able to outrun cheetahs. It's really just a matter of, of technology, you know, fuck 10, 15, 55, 60 miles an hour, something crazy, something crazy. And that might be 20 years out. But the thing is, the great thing about the exoskeleton technology is that it offers the ability for a lot of people to use it.

So some technologies, like only 10% of the population would actually use it. But exoskeleton technology will become probably a multi-billion dollar industry very quickly. It already is. I think I wore one of the cruder ones, not, I shouldn't say cruder, but it's a fairly prototypical model. And,

uh, there was, um, a show that I did for sci-fi called Joe Rogan questions, everything. And one of them, we, we went to this place and I put this suit on and it kind of walks with you.

It like, it kind of like makes your legs walk and for people we had a guy who was paralyzed from the waist down and he used this and you could walk around with it but it's attached by a tether to this power pack and it's very large and bulky right no they're totally bulky still yeah but it's they're gonna be smaller and smaller and the power supply is gonna be smaller and smaller and as the power supply is going to be smaller and smaller. And as battery technology continues to evolve, that's when things are going to get stranger and stranger. And Harvard right now is working on a soft one, like a soft exoskeleton suit. And one of the reasons they're working on it is for military people that are carrying these really heavy backpacks.

And it's not supposed to be something sort of like the steel one where it helps you to walk. I mean, it helps you to walk, but it's not supposed to be like you can lift stuff with it. It's just supposed to help you go much further distances without getting tired. So it's like adding 20, 30% of your walking capacity to you. And I've seen already the test on them in Harvard, and it's pretty brilliant. Brilliant brilliant have you heard about this armor that harvard that that hardens on impact it's the harvard exoskeleton oh wow what are we seeing here uh i'm walking in it yeah this is the soft one that's incredible and this is the one i think that will really catch on because people are going to be a little bit afraid of the metal thing to get into but this is one that i think you know a lot of people say hey it's just

like a dress. It's an outfit. It's a jogging outfit. Yeah. Wow. And some of the tests that they're doing with this stuff is super cute. It makes you stronger and it can make you faster. And you got a little fanny pack back there with some batteries on it.

And that, the battery packs are going to get smaller and smaller. And that's so interesting as these people are working on this technology, the people that are working on battery technology will develop smaller and smaller batteries and it'll get to a point where they all work together and just create these things that we just can't even wrap our hands around right now. Yeah, well, I mean, I look for it.

Because I've been a motorcycle rider most of my life, I think the exoskeleton business is very similar to kind of like, you know, what motorcycle riding is to me, it's recreational. So if you could put on an exoskeleton suit and go play different types of sports or go climbing, you know, or, and stuff like that, you might find yourself able to do things that you never would have done before. Um, and, uh, and have, you know you know, more strength and more endurance and stuff like that.

So I think an entire recreational, like, you know, um, enterprise is going to occur because of it, where people start using exoskeleton technology in the same way that they would use recreational motorcycles or recreational boats, where we now go do exoskeleton things together. Right. You know, we climb mountains, we climb cliffs. We never would have been able to climb just because we can lift ourselves and we have grip that we never would have had. Let's play catch with a boulder.

Yeah, exactly. You know, that's crazy stuff like that. No, but I mean, it's pretty, it could change, I think, a lot of recreational things. things and i'm uh you know i i think it it's also like i said it's going to be so much money to be made in it that the technology is going to grow a lot quicker than perhaps other fields so i'm totally excited about because uh as i told my wife i wrote one of my articles i want one for christmas i want the first one coming out they're pretty expensive so i'm not have you heard of this artificial skin that they've developed that's bulletproof, that's made out of spider silk, it's an artificial skin that they believe they're going to be able to put on human beings. It's going to make people bulletproof.

You know, I've heard of the artificial skin. I haven't heard of the bulletproof part of it. There's an article on discovery.com, if you want to Google it for the folks who are listening to here, bulletproof skin made from spider silk. This is so crazy. Spiders are coming to here. Bulletproof skin made from spider silk. This is so crazy. Spiders are coming to the aid of burn victims. This is one of the things that they've figured out a way to use spider silk and combine it in some sort of a way to create artificial skin. And so this Dutch artist, along with forensic genomics,

genomics, genomics consortium in the Netherlands created a swatch, a swatch, right? That's how you say it of nearly bulletproof skin made from spider silk and human skin cells. The project takes its name from the maximum weight and velocity a type one bulletproof vest can withstand from a 22 caliber long rifle bullet

so this is uh the the image that you're looking at that that's a bullet that's headed towards this piece of artificial skin that they've created and the idea is as this technology grows you're you're eventually going to be able to replace human skin with artificial skin that's bulletproof. What? Oh, that's awesome. That's another, like, wow, look, now nothing happened to me. Yeah. Oh, car accident?

I didn't even get scratched. Yeah, you'll be fine. I mean, and it's going to come a point in time where we're going to see people removing their parts and changing, exchanging them them you can see the impact of this watch show this again jamie you can see the impact of this it's so crazy this is on new scientist of this bullet hitting this spider silk skin and look it just bounces it out i mean you see the impact of the bullet but it it doesn't break the skin, which is just fucking insane. I mean, it's an artificial skin that you're going to be able to replace your skin with someday.

I can't imagine. I mean, I literally can't imagine. I mean, it's hitting it. You're still going to have to deal with the impact of the bullet. You're still going to have to deal with the impact of the bullet. But there was that other stuff that I was talking about, this armor that they've created for motorcycle riders that hardens on impact. You can mush it in your hand.

It's pliable until it receives an impact. And they do a demo with it where they have a hammer, and they're playing with it and toying it and mushing it, and then he hits it with a hammer, and it's hard as a rock. So you could have this armor on fall off your motorcycle and it protects you like as if you're covered in an incredibly hard like polymer shell or something like that sounds similar they you know they now have the bicycle helmets that inflate when you fall it knows it through a balance and that you can like if you're gonna fall and there's gonna be an impact um it inflates like very instantaneous sort of like an airbag

so you can you wear it around your collar and it's just like be an impact, it inflates like very instantaneous, sort of like an airbag so that you can wear it around your collar. And it's just like something right here and it's going to go whoosh. Oh, so it protects your neck. Yeah, and I felt like in one of my articles I mentioned it because I thought with aerial skiing where they're doing like four or five jumps, if you know you're going to blow it, it could just, you know, right at the last moment, a full body thing. It's, you know, this kind of moment a full body thing it's you know this kind of

technology that kind of like blow up stuff could protect us from a lot of things you know in the future i suppose we could wear suits that protect us from our own idiocy yeah well i mean what if the entire you know i don't know if it would work for something like airplanes or something but eventually we want to get to that point when we are invincible really nothing we can do can harm us and uh that that's going to be great i'm that's why i said that's the stuff jamie you're showing on the screen this is this uh this is this impact stuff so see you see this guy's moving it around but now watch when he hits it with this hammer

nothing wow just stop it's just showing how pliable it is. Yeah. I don't think that's the same stuff. I don't know if it's the same one. The one that I saw, when he hits it, it's hard as a rock. Okay. But, I mean, it might be just a different kind of impact-resistant stuff. Because that, like, it gave in a little bit. The stuff that I saw, he hit it with a hammer and it just, like, dunk. Like, he was playing with it.

It was pliable. And then when you hit it with a hammer, it's just hard. Bang. You know, there's a million things coming yeah a million totally it and it's great because it's just going to make us all safer without and make us you know we're going to be able to do crazier things i think that's one of the things i've loved seeing about for you've seen this in sports in the last 10 20 years they're doing stuff when we were kids like bicycle riding flip you know i can't believe

they're doing double triple stuff flips and stuff and crazy you know i even in surfing the stuff they're doing the waves they're riding now you would have thought would have just killed everyone but they do it and you know that's one of the great things about a lot of the technologies just allows us to do new things we would never thought possible and push ourselves to new limits and i think the future is probably a lot bigger than the past has been. So there's going to be a lot more craziness that we all see in full. I think every day there's so many companies working on the weirdest stuff. Yeah, I agree. I think we could probably do another podcast in six months and everything we're talking about today will be obsolete. There'll probably

be some new stuff six months down the line. And that's a big part of what exponential growth is about, right? It's like the growth happens so quickly that as time goes on, it happens quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker. Yeah, until it's just, you know, and then you say six months. It could be three months the time after and then one and a half. Of course, that's pretty quick, but eventually it will be like that. Eventually it'll just be the spike is straight up. And, you know, I'm not, it's hard, it seems almost impossible to think like that eventually it'll just be the the spike is straight up and uh you know i'm not it's hard it seems almost impossible to think like that but when you actually look at the modeling

it actually is like that there are huge amounts of new companies working on stuff every day they get an idea they think something else they get funding and they just you know it's crazy world we live in man yeah it's it is crazy and getting crazier totally and changing rapidly and and uh becoming more brilliant i think as as the as the days go by i agree listen this has been a fascinating conversation i really appreciate you coming on the podcast um uh if people want to reach you on twitter it's zoltan underscore Istvan, I-S-T-V-A-N, Z-O-L-T-A-N underscore I-S-T-V-A-N website? Well, there's two of them. There's transhumanistparty.org, and then you can either go to zoltanistvan.com.

And your book, the novel? My novel is The Transhumanist Wager, and you can get it on Amazon. The Kindle is only 99 cents right now. There's a special, and then there's also a paperback copy if your readers want to get it. Beautiful. Listen, thank you very much. I really appreciate you coming on. It was really fascinating conversation. Absolutely. Let's do it again. Absolutely. Thanks so much. It was fascinating. Let's do it again in six months when the world's going to become even crazier. Totally. Thank you. Appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. All right, folks. We'll see you soon. Bye. Thank you. Appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. All right, folks. We'll see you soon. Bye. Big kiss.