The School of Greatness - 741 How to Be a True Billionaire with Jason Silva

Episode Date: January 4, 2019

POSITIVELY IMPACT THE WORLD AROUND YOU. If you were to ask my grandfather what a billionaire is, he would tell you it’s someone with a billion dollars. Today, that definition has changed - even by Forbes standard. Now a true billionaire is someone who impacts a billion lives. The value of money is declining, and in order to have true value in this world you need to add positivity to the world. It’s so much easier today than ever, especially in the digital age. To dive into this more, I revisited a conversation I had with Jason Silva for this Five Minute Friday. Jason Silva is a media artist, futurist, philosopher, keynote speaker, and tv personality. He is the creator of Shots of All, a short film series of trailers for the mind that serve as philosophical espresso shots exploring innovation, technology, creativity, futurism, and metaphysics of the imagination. He is also the Emmy nominated host of National Geographic’s channel, hit TV series, Brain Games, which airs in over 100 countries. Learn what it means to be human today on Episode 741. In This Episode You Will Learn: What it means to be human today (1:02) The Extended Mind Thesis (2:13) What three questions everyone should ask themselves (4:19)

This is 5-Minute Friday! Welcome everyone to this very special interview and episode with the one and only Jason Silva. We cover a lot today, but for those that don't know who Jason is, this is a guy you want to make sure you follow online and on TV. Jason is a media artist, futurist, philosopher, keynote speaker, and TV personality. He is the creator of Shots of Awe, a short film series of trailers for the mind that serve as philosophical espresso shots exploring innovation, technology, creativity, futurism, and metaphysics of the imagination. He is also the Emmy-nominated host of National Geographic's channel hit TV series Brain Games, which airs in over 100 countries. What do you think it means to be human today?

Well, I did a video recently called Redefine Billionaire, which is inspired by some of the ideas put out there by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis from the XPRIZE Foundation, which is that the new definition of billionaire today on the back of these exponentially emerging technologies is not somebody who has a billion dollars, but somebody who positively affects a billion people. That's the new definition of billionaire. Empowered by smartphones, empowered by the fact that a young kid in Africa with a smartphone has better communications technology than the U.S. president had 25 years ago. How does that allow us to change the world? When the supercomputers of yesterday now fit in your pocket, how does that allow us to impact the world in a positive way? A kid in a garage, a kid with passion has the communication, has the power, has the technology that only governments and corporations used to have a few decades ago. So to be human today is

to crisscross the skies. To be human today is to communicate instantaneously across the world, to turn our ideas, electrify them at the speed of thought, get them out there, reach other people. I mean, we are miraculous beings. You know, there's these cognitive philosophers that I love called David Chalmers and Andy Clark, who wrote a thesis called the extended mind thesis, where they basically put on the notion that, you know, I phone, therefore I am, that are tools, that these technologies are actually cognitive appendages. Like, that these technologies are actually cognitive appendages. Like if you drew the Vitruvian man today, you know, and you're pointing to all of his physiological features of the ideal human form,

that he'd have an iPhone in his hand, and you'd point to it and identify it the same way you point to the neocortex or you point to his limbs. Even though it's outside of our skin tissue, it's very much part of the mental apparatus of the human being. So we are extended minds. Our intellect, our cognition is distributed between biological and non-biological props and scaffolding. So it's like, that's I think what to be human today is that we are extended. And it almost never leaves our body. Except when we sleep.

And it's maybe an arm's length away. A thousand percent. Yeah. And some people like get freaked out. They're like, oh, we're so dependent leaves our body. Except when we sleep. Yeah. And it's maybe an arm's length away. A thousand percent. Yeah. And some people get freaked out. They're like, oh, we're so dependent on our phones. But look, dude, we've always been symbiotically codependent on our tools. Like when we started, we discovered fire and started cooking food and using stone tools, our jaws shrank over a couple generations.

Like our physiology has always been transformed and affected by the tools we create. Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist in the 70s, the visionary, used to say, we build the tools and the tools build us. Feedback loops. Remember we were talking before about the feedback loops? Everything we design designs us in return. And Stephen Johnson, our thoughts shape our spaces. Our spaces return the favor.

You know, like that's us. And so that's what it means to be human today. These cameras are extensions of our mindedness and our agency and our will. Like our thoughts, you know, electrochemical activity within our brain goes way beyond the brain. You know, it's going into other brains. It's changing other people's neurochemistry today. So we're becoming a super organism. Well, we've always have been.

But it's like now it's sort of blooming. I'm just in the jazz pocket. Awesome! We are in the pocket. I love this. What would you say if you could come up with three questions that everyone should ask themselves to have a richer, fuller, more expressive,

healthy life? What would those three questions, or maybe a couple, fuller, more expressive, healthy life? What were those three questions? Or maybe a couple questions, Peter. Yeah. You know that great line that says, ask not what the world needs, ask instead what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive. So the question, of course, is what makes you come alive? I like that.

What do I mean by that? Well, what gives you the goosebumps? What gives you the chills? What makes you come alive? What do I mean by that? Well, what gives you the goosebumps? What gives you the chills? What makes you well up? There's a great line by Alan de Botton, the UK philosopher, where he says, we don't cry because something is sad. We cry because something is more beautiful than we expected it to be. So those moments, make note of those moments.

When do you find yourself witnessing something that's more beautiful than you expected it to be? What induces that? What are the precursors to be? What induces that? What are the precursors to that? Because I'm all about control. How can we pre-configure more of those experiences, pre-configure more of those moments of grace, reverse engineer, author more of those moments for ourselves?

Instead of allowing those moments to be haphazard, coincidental moments that just happen, oh, it just happens. No, we can make more of that. We can make more inspiration that we can make more inspiration we can make more flow more grace more transformation and that's what i want man i want to just constantly epiphanize myself and i think people should ask themselves how can i epiphanize myself more yeah i like that okay