TrueLife - Graham Reed - The Hallucinations of Artificial Intelligence

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.grahamxreed.com/Avid researcher in the neuropsychopharmacology sphere. Strong inSTEM with years of teaching students integrated perspectives. Certified in psychological first aid and in proper handling of hazardous materials. Did university research in the biophysics of membranes. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Heirous through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. It's live. It's live. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Live podcast. We got Graham Reed here today. Graham is an avid researcher.

in neuropsycho-farmacology, certified and psychological first aid, also has done some research in the biophysics of membranes. He's knee-deep in AI right now. He's part of this AI project team. He's worked with the effective index, psychoanaut wiki. Anybody that can teach O-Kim and Calculus three kind of makes me a little bit nervous to talk to, Graham. So first off, thank you very much for being here today. How are you? I'm very nervous because I've not. really done this before. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And it's just a couple guys having a conversation. And I think with the interesting life that you've lived, I just want to share that with people. I think you're an interesting person. And I really have gone through the bio and was

reading some of the things you're working on. And I think they're fascinating. But before we get into all this fascinating stuff, maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself. I have like a a document that describes myself so I can have this better. I like fitness and design and researching. That's my hobbies. Nice. Yeah, those are, you could call those like the trident of creativity, I guess.

So, you know what, Graham? I was reading through, I know you're doing a lot of AI stuff right now, but maybe I can ask you to go back in time a little bit, Because one of the things I was reading about that really kind of perked on my interest was this idea of hallucinations. And it seems that you, for at least a period in your life, were pretty fascinated by hallucination. How did that come about? Oh, ever since I was a kid, I was always in, like, the ESP section of, like, elementary school.

So, like, I love optical illusions because they're just brain failures. So, like, that all ties into, like, hallucinations. What does that mean, like, it's a brain failure? Is your brain just not processing that piece of work? Or like, what's going on when your brain fails when you're looking at an illusion? I think how everyone experiences normal everyday reality is an optimization for, like, just of the model of whatever you experience. That's what I've read. I do have to add the qualifier that nothing I say is medical advice and only a fool would believe me.

And this has been like a very, I haven't been around these things. for about a year now. So this is old topics for me. Policinations are, when you take a substance, like especially something like psychedelics, it messes with your ability to optimize your experiential reality and that allows you to both project and intake suggestions more. Yeah, it's what do you think about one one thing that I've been kind of tripping out on lately and I'll put that term in there because it kind of fits. is the idea of on a high dose to lysine trip, people often see like these three-dimensional,

abstract geometrical images. And I've begun thinking, and I think other people have too, is that is it possible gram that these could be like some sort of coding patterns? Like it's a hallucination, but maybe it's also a coding pattern. What do you think about that? In terms of coding patterns,

I think at best it's just like viewing something that's already in your brain that's been optimized away. Like, I'm a physicalist, so I don't, like, ascribe to any sort of mind-body difference. I think everything is kind of connected in that way. So I don't think you're seeing something new. I think you're seeing something that's already there. Hmm. Do you think it could be, like, you're seeing the way your brain works?

I guess, yeah. An unoptimized version of it. Yeah, sometimes I think that that's like, and I don't know, I'm not a doctor by any means. I'm just some guy that likes to think about all these things. But it seems to me that at least when I see those things, and this could just be my idea of my interpretation of those. And maybe they're all just interpretations. However, it does seem when you see those patterns, it does give you insight into relationships. Because a lot of the time in the world we live and we just see like these.

linear projections. We just see these right angles everywhere, these circles. But when you begin seeing these geometrical patterns, it makes me think like, wow, how is that connected over there? And how is this part connected to that part? And when I start doing that, then I start reflecting on my life and being like, wow, I wonder how my relationship with my wife is affecting my relationship with this guy at work that I don't like. You know, like, it just seems when you start thinking about those abstract images, it gives you the ability to think about your life in a similar abstract pattern. Is that too far out there? Well, there are different systems in your brain, but everything's like just a neural network interconnected with each other called the human

connectome. So there's giant major hubs for each part. So there's like highways that they are interconnected, but they also are different, just like everything. Yeah. It's interesting to about what what do you think is the most interesting part about the psychedelic experience if you were just to throw that out there and we're just a couple guys talking and i was like hey what do you think is the most interesting part about a psychedelic experience everyone experiences it different like uh and i think something that's been on my mind that just jumps to top of mind is a people experience time differently so like Like some people who have time accelerate, some people have time slow down.

And it's different for different people. And it's like, I have a big interest in natural science. So it's trying to tie the ideas of special and general relativity with neuroscience. Because this is dealing with hyperbolic geometry, which I have no idea how it works. Like that's even kind of how vision works. It's so complicated. It is complicated, but it takes people with the curiosity and the desire to dig into those difficult topics, to bring it into the world of interpretation. So we need guys so that I can understand it on some level or try to.

Well, I'm just saying we need people like you that have the ability to dig in there and check it all out, man. I often think that this concept of time, too, is pretty fascinating. I was talking to a guy yesterday. And on the idea of time, I think it's Marseilleade that talks about like sacred time versus profane time. And the reason that he gave or the example that he gave was if you go to a festival or if you go to a ceremony, be it like in a church or a wedding or maybe a funeral. But if you go to one of these ceremonies, the time there is. It's like a sacred time because you are, in a way, experiencing the same time that somebody before you went to. Does that kind of make sense?

Like if my dad got married and then I get married, we're both experiencing the ceremony, the ceremonial time. But if you get up and go to work or you just do your daily routines, it's kind of like a mundane time. Those are kind of different aspects of time. Is that something similar to your ideas of time? well i i was going to go in the sense that something that is novel is uh you i would guess that it is more important because that's how we humans learn in general is something that's novel so that time would slow down or at least have the perception of it slowing down because you're paying more attention to it yeah i'm not really a big fan of tradition i like like like processural stuff

like in the moment yeah do you think that like a of consciousness and being in the moment is a different kind of time than the time. Oh, yeah, of course. Everyone edits their own memories too. So your immediate perception of the past has already been edited. Yeah, so that brings about that. Like, ah. In some ways, though, it's kind of liberating, right?

Because you can realize that you can change the past if that's true. Yeah, I remember papers that have. where researchers, like, incepted memories of, like, kids being on hot air balloon rides, and they were never on hot air balloon rides. There's research out that says that. They believed it.

Like, it was genuine. Wow. Can you tell me about that? Like, tell me a little bit more about that. Oh, that was very old. It was before I was even in the Saigonau Wiki. That's when I learned about that. It's just, like, a psychology interest.

So I don't remember the people. specifically. I know there's a paper for it. And this kind of ties into anxiety is something that's pre-conscious and that's something that's hard to explain. Yeah, I often

hear that anxiety is being trapped in the future and depression is being trapped in the past. I think I've said something similar to that. I don't know. Depression is having two rigid internalized narratives, and that's what psychedelics do is they reset your internalized hierarchy of narratives. That's a quote from some paper somewhere. So that's kind of how it helps with it. Yeah.

I do find it fascinating. The whole concept of psychedelics in time, I can think of a time where for me, I had this experience of acceleration once where I was in a really high dose of psilocybin. And it was like, I started thinking about what my life would be like if I made a particular decision. And then shortly after that, it was like I could see myself in the third person. And then I could watch my life play out in all these decisions. But then it kind of branched out. So I like, I kind of got to live my life like, oh, well, if I had married this person, my life would have been like this. And then all of a sudden in like this weird sort of time dilation, like,

Like, I got to see all the different choices of my life play out had I made those decisions. I'm like, that's one of the most profound experiences I've had on with the relationship between time and psychedelics. Is there a particular type of relationship or interesting relationship you've had with time and psychedelics? I just want to say that's very interesting because I've never had an out-of-body experience and I've never had time accelerations. Wow, no way.

Yeah, really. I just don't have it I just don't have it. Yeah, it's true. Something with time. Well, usually mine slows down and like every duration I have is twice as long as everyone else's. I just

figured something with blood plasma in my brain makes that happen. So I don't have it like the objective measure of time is twice as long and like my internal experience of it, I never really have it accelerate. I like it You might have to come and do some mushrooms with me

And see if it accelerates Maybe it's something in Hawaii Maybe there's something over here in the air or something I've been there before When I was very young My grandpa lives there Oh nice Yeah

Did you live on Oahu or the big island Or do you remember which place? I've been to Waikiki Beach Wherever that is It's on that island Okay that's the same island I'm on And it's such a beautiful spot And one thing I really love about it here, Graham, is that there's no billboards or anything.

So like there's no there's no like just materialistic pornography that's just banging on your head all day long. Is it still rain every 15 minutes? Yeah, it rains here every day. Somewhere it's raining right now. Luckily not outside my house, but it probably will this afternoon. I live in the in like the center part. So it's I think it's like a thousand feet up and without any traffic I can get to any any size. within like 40 minutes.

So it's really beautiful. But I do think there's something to be said about the environment changing us that way. And maybe it just makes for a really beautiful psychedelic experience. What do you think about the environment you're in and the way that the psychedelics affect you? This has to do with your neural networks that are responsible for your sense of self

because they expand. Like normally whenever you're just a normal person being, your salience network, which is an attention network only incorporates things that are in your sense of self that are within your arms reach. What psychedelics does is that it expands that. So whatever environment you're in, you want it to be like beneficial. There's something that is a common thing that I've experienced is a, you always make a mess like you leave toys around. Like after you have a trip.

So you got to make sure you're just clean beforehand. It's a good point. It's a good point. Like, I always try to do it alone. And I know some people get a lot of, they get a lot of wellness where they get a lot of pleasure out of being in a group. And I'm sure that there are things that are very helpful to be in a group. But I'm always afraid for people to see what I look like when I'm in a high dose trip. You know, I'm usually rolling around and making a bunch of weird noises. I don't want people to see me like that. I've probably done it more times alone than with other people, but I haven't ever really been like self-conscious about it. Who are you trying to prove just what to? They're in the same state as you. That's a good point, man.

I don't know. Maybe it says maybe that speaks volumes of my relationship with myself and what I'm thinking, maybe my fears, right? Well, no judgment. Great point, man. That's a great point. How do you think that the relationship with psychedelic... What do you think is the relationship between psychedelics and artificial intelligence?

Or is there any relationship there? They're extremely different. Even like AI hallucinations is really just like, I think the best way to describe it. It's an autocomplete that BS is any sort of technical knowledge. And then people go like, oh, it's so it captures my attention. But really it's just good for creative story. telling more than anything else. So, but, so my main interest in that was more like, oh, it says hallucinations.

I might as well look into it and now I'm here. That is, I've never heard, I've never heard that term before. And that's, it made me, it brought a giant smile to my face when I read the idea of AI hallucinations. But maybe you can just unpack that again for people, for some people who may not thoroughly understand what's happening. There is an AI hallucinations. just a creative story that was scraped together,

like was it John Searle's Chinese room or whatever? Like they're just scraping stories and putting them together. Is that an AI hallucination? I think the best way I could describe it is like if you were to have a dictionary that was trained to output sentences that humans think are important. That's awesome, man. It's really well said. Because it was trained to capture our attention.

and that's why it's capturing our attention. That's to the extent of it currently is, as I understand it, there's a bunch of math involved like matrix dot product multiplications and algorithms, but I can't explain that well. Do you think that something that's trained to capture our attention is in a way, it seems strange to me that we have programmed this thing, this network or we've programmed AI to capture our attention. And in return, it seems like,

it's programming us. Well, it certainly seems useful. Yeah. It's a tool. So, like, I mean, that's the whole point of technology progressing is to make tools so that work is easier to do or just to get rid of work. Yeah. I'm especially excited for all the coding AIs that exist.

Let's make the singularity, guys. You know, I think it's awesome. I think there's been this explosion. And I don't know a whole lot about it, Graham. Like, I'm on the, I'm like a surface dweller over here. Like, I don't thoroughly, I can't write any code. But I do use chat GPT. I do use the text to AI to create images.

And I think it's fascinating that my daughter can you. She's like nine years old and she can begin to use these tools. And I think when we do begin to use these new set of tools that we have an opportunity to build a world that is a lot better. than the world we're living in. What do you think that these tools can help us build a better world? And do you think that's a direction of course? Of course. There's a BJ Hobbs habit design, behavior model where it's like trying to motivate yourself

to do something doesn't work. You have to make it simple for people to do it. And then you will do it. And I think the example that he uses is like, if you want to go on a jog, just start every morning by tying your shoes. And eventually you'll see that you'll put in the door your way into jogging. If you make it simple, then everyone will use it and do the action. And that's what kind of what AI is doing for art, coding, everything, like voice.

But mainly what I've been doing, I started around the middle of last summer with like labeling data on stuff was I've proliferated as much as I can, uncensored models of everything. because I don't think that one person should be in charge of this. Yes. Yeah. It seems that the consolidation is a problem or the centralization is a problem. Like a huge risk. With this type of tool, you don't want one person in charge. Do you think that there's a lot of people that are pushing for centralization

and one person to be in charge is the payoff so great that there's a large, a lot of money behind behind it trying to centralize it yes it's the same thing as psychilics emerging and like people patenting stuff yeah yeah like i think it was on a routine basis people rate psychedelics as one of the top five experiences in their lives so there's going to be people over here trying to make money off of that yeah i just didn't develop it i think it i'm more just didn't collaboration. Yeah. No, that's all right.

I was just going to say that, you know, I was talking to these guys in Oregon, really cool people. And they were telling me, we've begun our conversation talking about mushrooms, but we ended up talking a little bit about cannabis. We kind of backtracked. And he said, you know, George, it's really interesting to see what's happened with the legalization of cannabis. It's really dropped the price down to a level that is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is,

It's dirt cheap and it's good and it's bad. It's good because you can get it and it's really cheap, but it's bad because there's all these people that can't make money on it, you know, and there's all these. I saw, yeah. Sorry,

I saw a headline that said like a pound of cannabis was now like $100 in Oregon. Like that's crazy. Jeez, it's really that much. Yeah. But I kind of, I think it's representing like this new business model. Like maybe,

maybe that's how, how well, maybe that's how good life is right now. Maybe everything is cheap. And maybe if AI follows that same model and it'd be like then it becomes accessible to everybody. You know, cannabis is something that maybe shouldn't be sold for huge amounts of profits. Maybe it's something that helps people and maybe it's something that people should get for a lot cheaper.

Like maybe the things we have in life don't need to be so damn expensive. Maybe it should be accessible for everybody. And I think there's some similarities between the price of weed dropping. And we had legalized weed kind of move into the market. And now we have like AI kind of moving into the market. Do you think that I know it's kind of abstract, but do you think there's some similarities there? And do you think that maybe AI will help bring down all the cost of these services

and tools we need? Of course. I love it. I think I lost you there. AI is becoming mainstream. It's just been really lucky, I guess. yeah it does seem like that well the question was the lowering a value yeah like it's almost like deflationary in nature like the you know i don't know if it's deflationary in nature or we're just

changing our value system but yeah what do you think is that relationship there like how if a i can bring down the bring down the price of stuff like how does that process look I only think that it's a good thing because people are going to do what they want to do regardless so what we should be doing is making it so that it's easier for people to do what they want to do and then we'll just flourish everyone will flourish more. Yeah.

No gatekeeping. Yes, I love that. I agree 100%. I was talking to a guy yesterday and you know, it seems that if you read a lot of the propaganda that comes out of the news or the stuff that just kind of flooded out there. They talk about this world of, you know,

of, what is it? I want to say automation, but that's not right. When you allow the, I think it's, damn it, I can't think of the right word. Anyways, you know, I think that the ability for computers to take the positions of people is a positive thing. And I don't see why we can't tax the robots that are doing the work, right?

instead of taking that money and kicking it all upstairs, why don't we just tax the robots? And now those people, it's like we finally made it at this point where people have slaved and worked really hard for generations. And now we have the ability to have these machines do it for us. Like we all should be flourishing because we all played a part in that. What do you think about that, Graham?

What immediately comes to mind is like an analogy towards Tesla, like their cars killing people. people are a lot more comfortable when humans are killing humans rather than when robots are killing humans. So it's like, that's the existential threat of it. Only we can do it. But then like if it becomes too smart, like, ah! Do you think that's an issue? Do you think it will become smart?

Like a general AI or a... It depends on, like, there's so many different systems you could take this on, like, if you're a utilitarian versus the deontologist, which is just like on principle. or like do you want to maximize the most amounts of happiness? All this thing is like spirit of the law versus letter of the law. It's a very nuanced subject. I don't know if I support technocracy as like very much. Like I don't know. I'm looking into it now.

There's some good books by Patrick Wood who wrote Technocracy Rising and, you know, the Trojan horse of global transformation. And it's fascinating to think about. I talked to some systems people that really know systems. And sometimes I think that they're lacking in imagination a little bit. Why? Because it seems that it's when I talk to my friend who's the systems guy, he's like, okay, well, this part connects to this part.

And it doesn't seem like there's anything left for the unintended consequences of beautiful actions. You know, when you just have it just so A is B, B is C, it's very linear, it's very elegant in the way it's laid out. But I don't know that life is elegant like that. It doesn't seem to me that life goes in that way. And if we can agree that on psychedelics, we can see these different realms or we can see these different

novelties like you call them, like those are really beautiful to experience. And if you have a really strict technocratic system, Doesn't it not allow for the imagination? I mean, I guess you can make the case that it may enhance imagination, but I don't see it that way. This is part of the reason why I made a, like, a portmanteau combining the word,

the prefix meta with the suffix proxy, which is kind of like something that means beyond symbology. It's because computer neurons are never going to be like human neurons, because a computer is not a brain. It's not squishy. It's immediately obvious. I mean, you can model things, but models are always going to be, like, models are useful. Some models are useful, but all models are flawed.

I do agree. Like, I made metapraxia to confuse AI because it's based on code, which is language. And it has. It has confused it. It always gets in some sort of paradoxical recursion whenever I type it into it. So you can make words that confuse it. Like, yes, I fully support, like, you can make symbolological representations that computers can't understand because they're based off symbology. This is inherently going to be not fully captureable.

I think that's why I'm a soft determinist more than a hard determinist. And there's a recent Nobel Prize in Physics that says that I'm right. Uh-huh. Or at least that the very smallest level, uh, I think it's like, Bell's theorem, that's the word, like what it's called. That says the, when we try to measure something at a very small level, it turns, it looks like it's inherently paradoxical. So I just apply it to everything.

I know, like, you, you can't really bridge small to large well, but it's fun to think. Okay, so I got to take a moment to turn to wrap my brain around that. I don't know if I'll be able to, but so. how is that different from fractals? Because, like, if you see, like, a fractal image of something, like, isn't that, isn't, isn't, like, a fractal, a mirror, not a mirror, isn't a fractal a sort of image of the greater that's, God, just damn it, I should probably be better at trying to explain this. Well, a fractal is a type of math, so I mean.

Okay. And math is, like, the difference between deduction and induction. Okay. Computers are always going to be deductive because they're based off symbols. And induction is just gaining a bunch of experiences and being like, oh, the sun raised every other day of my life. So I think it's going to rise tomorrow. And I think I like quantum field theory as like a physics type thing, which basically

says everything is statistical representations. So anything can happen, just some things are more likely to happen than other things. and it kind of ties into like a gamma ray burst we cannot predict can destroy earth at any time as we all just go about our days like concerned with ourselves that's a great point yeah it's sometimes i think we're just we we just have this narrow bandwidth and we can only process so much so I don't know. I do feel fascinated by all the different ideas of symbolic representations and language. And if a computer just language is a symbol, right? Like if a computer, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Is that? Oh, I was just saying, yeah. Like, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. So if we're just processing symbols differently, right? If a computer is taking words in and regardless of how it puts stuff together, they're still interpreting symbols.

Isn't it similar to how we're, if you look at it from just that level, that's all we're doing is interpreting symbols? Well, the difference is that a computer is making everything in relation to how the computer sees it, and humans make everything in relation to how humans see it. I mean, it's the same for other species.

Like, I think dogs would only be able to think about, like, in dog terms. Yeah. And that's kind of part of my epistemology, which is like how we acquire knowledge, That's a problem I have with, like, defining sentience and stuff is that humans are only going to be able to put it in human terms. Because that's what we are. Yeah, it's true.

It's very true. And I think there's a big difference between the spoken word and the written word. And the computer seems to be just an interpretation of the written word. So so much gets lost in translation there, right? Well, I'm working on getting the voice AI is out. It's coming. Okay, how is that going to work? What is, how would the voice AI work?

Like, it's still just scraping together words. It's still the dictionary model that you've used, but now it's just vocalizing it, right? Oh, I don't understand it very well. I'm much more interested in like the text because I'm a much better writer than I am speaker. So it's like, it's coming after me. So I'm like, okay, I got to learn about this now. It's coming after me. I love it.

I love it. I can't wait to continue to use it to learn more. Like it does seem like this amazing tool to help us better understand ourselves. And I think that that's pretty much the main. Would you say that's one of the main goals of AI is to help us as humans understand ourselves? I think that unless it's like a small scale AI, trained on a specific thing, like the current large-scale ones

are going to be as smart as the general human is because that's what it's trained on. It's like trained on the entire internet. So it's only as smart as the entire internet is. Look around at the internet. I'm much more interested in small-scale AI because large-scale AIs are much more superstitious because, like, in general, humans are superstitious,

whereas smaller ones aren't so much. So they're more truthful. Is that a true statement though, Graham? It's more truthful just because it has less of other people's insecurities in it? Is that true? It has less wrong information in it. That sounds like a great point. I mean, like the larger the scale gets, the more it seems like it's a human talking to you,

that it's also has the intelligence of a human, like the general of whatever it's in it. That's my understanding of it. I'm not an AI expert. Yeah. Well, it's fascinating. I love the picture that you're painting because it helps me begin to understand it better. It helps me. I've been using it for like trying to find engaging titles for my videos

or trying to help me understand how to ask better questions. And so I think it's an interesting understanding. understanding of self in a way. And maybe that's just my interpretation of it. Like, what are some things that you use it for? I've mainly been trying to both find and, like, learn about, I'm much more abstract. Like, I haven't done very much practice in it.

I've made, like, AI videos, like, last summer, like, just through image image over and over and over again, like frames in the video. I was like, I was going to go somewhere with this. What was the question again? How are they used? it. I'm mainly interested in spreading the uncensored ones. Yeah. Just looking at for those. What are some of those? Can you point people to some of the uncensored

models that they could use? Oh, I helped list them at the Free Software Foundation. I just a collaborator on their AI project team. I think meta AI, which is Facebook's division, had their model weights leaked for Lama. So I like listed that immediately because it had a GPL license. So it was like, now it has this giant following behind it. And everyone's developing it.

Yes, this is going to help everyone. Yeah, I was listening to gosh, Martin Screlli, who was the guy, he had the pharmaceutical company on the East Coast and he sort of got labeled as this crazy villain for jacking up price. It's pretty crazy. But he was mentioning something similar

about taking that that Facebook model off of Reddit and then beginning to train it in a similar way to. And some of the ideas he was talking about was, you know, you could pretty much use it to drop down health care to almost nothing because you don't really need some of the doctors that are, in his idea, from what I remember, he was saying that there's only a certain amount of surgeons that are graduated each year. And they try to keep this at a certain level.

to keep prices at a certain way. But a lot of the work that's being done is through the nurses on a lower level. And, you know, if you're able to train this particular AI in a way, it would do so much good to drive down health care costs for drugs, for doctors. And that does seem to be like an area that AI could dramatically increase wellness in, right? Is the world of medicine? Do you? Mainly I've seen, like, for several years, even before.

generative models existed was that it was better at performing diagnostics for scans and stuff. But there's a kind of like an existential threat here is that like if we're looking at AI and then we give them like access to our microscopes, it could just change what we see on the microscope that does something like nefarious.

So like, uh, you definitely still want like a human to double check it. Yeah. That does kind of get into some murky waters there too. Like, you know, on some level is like, you know, is the China, is there a China AI versus the, the Russian AI versus the Ukrainian AI? Like, can you, can people set up these particular AI models to try to sabotage one another? I would expect that's happening already. Me too, man.

Like, government's using AI has been a very long time. Like, as far like, like my understanding of it is that it's already been influential. for a long time. Yeah. Just because there's so much data and like, I don't know how do we process all this data? Make it easier. Okay, so here's one for you.

Every now and then I'll go back and I'll try to reread like just a chapter or sometimes just a paragraph or sometimes if I have more time, I'll try to read longer. Like I'll go back and try to read like a little bit of like the like Plato or the, you know, these different types of old text because I think it's such a rich world of ideas. And my grandpa used to say, if you want a new idea, George, read a really old book. So I try to do that sometimes. But in this book, they talk about the invention of writing.

And I think it's, I can't, I don't remember, maybe it's Tameas or something like that. But they, and I'm just paraphrase here, it's something along the lines of Toth, this great inventor. He goes and he meets his wise master. And he says, oh, great master, I have invented a new technology. It's called writing. And the master says to him, oh, Toth, my paragon of inventors, which you have invented is a great technology. And Toth says, yes, it's going to help mankind become a far better version of themselves. They'll never need to have the experience.

Instead, they'll be able to pass down the wisdom and the human race will flourish. And then the master says to Toth, Toth, it is very unwise for the person that invents the technology to make predictions about what the technology is going to do. While you've created this great resource for people, in fact, what you've done is you've limited their experience. Now these people will have the understanding of the experience without ever going through it. And that will end up being part of their downfall. And it seems to me that sometimes not all technology, but it seems like technology kind of follows that path. Sometimes when we begin so reliant on these structures that we forget the how to do things moving forward. Do you think that that's something AIs may have in the future for us?

Might it weaken us to understand the how we got here? I would just make the analogy to as calculators, weakens mathematical ability. Like, I don't really think that happens. I think it's only made it better. It definitely made it easier. It easier. What about how? Yeah.

Oh, I'm sure that there's less like I've, I haven't read the invention of writing, but one of my favorite books is like how mathematics has progressed throughout the years. And like people used to do algebra at like over dinner because they were like, there's this new thing. Let's try it out. It might be a fascinating conversation.

Oh, I'm there. I was just trying to remember what I was going, I'm sure there's going to be less jobs for people acting as calculators, but we didn't need those jobs in the first place. Yeah. I guess the tool made it easier. Now everyone can do it. I think it's better.

I'm not a permissivist. The thing is better now and it's going to be better in the future. I love it. Yeah. I agree with that. And I think it already is getting better. And I think a lot of the fear we see is panic. I see a lot of people panicking that.

And why not? That's what we do best as humans is maybe not all of us, but it seems like we're really good at being scared. Yeah. Anxiety is like threat modeling, whereas fear is something like directly in front of you. That's at least the science papers that I've tried to describe it. So people are definitely more anxious because all their attention is being captured by,

like, it's kind of an attention economy on the internet now with YouTube views. headlines. So the things that capture people's brain attention are things that are negative. So it's making everyone scared of everything. It used to be like a threat. Like, like, oh, I'm going to die if I have this threat. That's what's ingrained in us somehow. It's not good. No, no, it's a sad state. More wholesome subredits. But I think that, and I'm living proof of this, I'm a truck driver turned

podcaster and I'm like I'm building my own website gram I granted it's wordpress and I'm using elementer but you know it's still something that a few years ago would have been out of reach for a guy like me a guy almost 50 being able to participate in this sort of world is it's to me that is the promise of AI that is the promise of the future the promise to reinvent yourself no matter what age you are and as a as some people that look back on their life That was a lot harder to do five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And now we're at this place. We're like, look, I can do it.

That means anybody can do it. Yes, it's very exciting. Always lower the barriers to entry. Let people be creative. Full support. Yeah, man, me too. I think it's a beautiful thing. And it's fun.

It's exciting. And it does change. Maybe that's the antidote. Maybe creativity is the antidote to being. What do you think about that? I don't think I've seen any science papers that say that. There is a lot of to write one. Methodology for, there is methodology for creative problem solving.

Like, I'm just, I'm much more visual than hearing. So, like, I'm picturing in my mind's eye, just different blurbs of papers I read, trying to search for it. I hear you there. I just go into the catalog. Yeah, I don't know. I think that there's a different, I think the creative state of mind

is very similar or is at least inspired by the psychedelic state of mind. And maybe the psychedelic state of mind is just a heightened awareness, a heightened state of consciousness. But I do think that these tools make it easier for us, and by us I mean just the general public, to be in that state.

And I think that that state, it's a positive state, it's a creative state. And I'm not sure that you can be creative and positive and anxious at the same time. So that's why I think I made that statement. I bet you, I'm going to look into that, man.

I think there's some truth there. I remember I've read papers that said the cultural icon of the depressed artist is kind of a misnomer because people don't create art when they're depressed. They create art and they kind of. I'm out of depression. Right.

And part of the reason I've worked on this so much is that people confuse anxiety with depression everywhere all the time. Because they're hard to distinguish. So that's what I'm trying to put boundaries here. Like, this is anxiety. This is depression. They are different. Do you think that we could use AI to see?

Well, I don't know if neural imaging is there yet. Maybe you do. But is there different parts of the brain that you can see on a map that are routinely affected in depression versus anxiety? They're like fMRIs brain scans are just hotspots that are arbitrary statistical thresholds. So it's just kind of like comparing everything to everything else. There's no, I don't think there's some sort of objective scale. It's just some become more and some become less.

like if there's no absolute scale would be a better way to put it. The brain works like there's no 10% brain. Everything in your brain is interconnected to each other. Right. Have you seen some of the work like one of my favorite books, and this might be a little bit off topic, but I think it's really fun to talk about it. And it's fascinating for me.

There is this alternative theory about language. And it was presented by Julian James. And he wrote a book called The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And in his theory, he says that the speech centers, like Broca's area and Vernica's area, used to have a court or they have a corresponding part on the opposite side of the brain. But he believed that those were the speech centers on the right hemisphere of the brain. And that when you read the old classics like, you know, the Illy or the Odyssey or any sort of, those classics where you hear people talk about the fates or Apollo came to me in a fit of anger

and I knew that I had to go and kill a magna, Agamemnon, or Aphrodite came to me and I knew that I was in love. Whenever they use these beautiful soliloquies in the stories, his idea is that this was actually the way speech took place. So when you would hear a voice in your head, that would be the speech centers on the right hemisphere of the brain. And so he makes the case that it wasn't until, you know, that time that the speech center began to migrate over to the left hemisphere of the brain. And that gave us a much more analytical view and it changed the way we use language. It changed our perspective.

And I don't know. I find it fascinating because I think that this idea of language, is how we see ourselves in the world. And I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I want to tell you that because I thought it was interesting. Yeah. My initial response is I think that a lot of like left, left versus right brain is like lesion studies.

So they like cut out a part of the brain and said, what happened? And the brain can always like correct itself to some extent. This is just the same problem with defining a boundary. So I'm not, I don't really think left brain, right brain exists because everything can correct itself mostly right okay i'm going to give you this one i'll try to change your mind again right here so there's another book called um there's two books

there's a really cool fascinating at least in my opinion gentleman named ian mcgillcrest and he wrote one book called the master in his emissary and then he wrote another book which is a two volume set called the matter with things and in his first book the master in the emissary and in his first book the master in the emissary He talks about the way in which the different hemispheres, while connected and part of the whole brain, they process information differently. And he says in the left hemisphere, it's good to use the model of a scalpel, like the analytical scalpel of the left hemisphere is like the emissary. The right hemisphere is like the master in that it sees the symbolic nature, it sees the metaphors, and it has the grand plan. And the evidence he uses to back this up is the studies they've done with people who have epilepsy. And if you take, there's been some studies done where people who had a certain type of severe epilepsy, they would cut the corpus callosum.

And then they would give that person a pen. And they would ask that person to put the pen in their left hand and write, and then they would ask that person, write down what you wanted to be as a kid. And that they would write something like fireman or some sort of, you know, socially acceptable type of answer. And then they would give the pen to the right hand and ask that. that same question and it would be like, I want to be a superhero, you know, and then they would take those two things

and they would show it to the person and be like, how come with your, with your left hand, or maybe they're right, I think the right hand is correspond to the left hemisphere and the left is it, whatever it is. Okay. And so whatever it is, like,

then they would ask the person like, hey, how come when you use your right hand, you wrote this and your left hand you wrote this? And the person would just go, oh, well, I was just playing around. I, you know, I didn't really want to be a superhero. But they did that type of question and answer session by changing that pendant hands and then getting the opposite hemisphere of the brain to answer the question. And they came up with some really interesting results.

Maybe that doesn't prove that the two hemispheres are opposite. But I think it may prove that they process information different. Is that something that you've thought about? Or do you think that the two hemispheres, while whole process it differently? I think, like, if you, like, I would compare this to there are different cortices of the brain. So, like, if you were to cut off, like, the executive part of your brain and then try to measure, like, how does the association differ from your executive? It's kind of the same thing. The corpus callosum, as far as my understanding of it is, is very interlinked in your, like, consolidation of your whole self.

So it's kind of like, if you cut out the part that makes you one person, why are you two people? I wonder why. Well, you put it like that, Graham. Makes a little more sense. It's part of like the whole ego death type stuff and like periphanpus epicampus stuff. It's the neural network goes like through your corpus callosum and connects to everything.

Maybe you could shine some light on that. I know going back further, you had written a little about ego death. Like what's happened in there? Let me think. I think I have it open. I'm always a better writer than I am speaker. We get a little summary.

Yeah. It's decreased connectivity between hemispheres of the brain to some 2015 paper. So I think it's just lowering your processing of yourself because it's, that's part of the resetting the internalized hierarchies of narratives or pathologizing you do about yourself is like involved here. because you want to like decouple what your memory is with what you're just like sitting and doing nothing and experiencing with that's what like losing your sense of self is it makes sense like that would be that would go a long way in explaining why it's so therapeutic if people can rewrite their narratives if they can and it makes sense with trauma like PTSD or you know other sorts of of problems

problems that come from a negative feedback loop. Like if you have the ability to rewrite that or take that scratch out of the record, it will stop playing that negative pattern. Yeah. And I want to make very clear that it does not get rid of your ability to use memory. It just changes your associations. Do you think that each time you use psychedelics, you can, you make that connection stronger? I mean, obviously, it would take intention because you have to, you know, I guess maybe you're rewriting your own code or you're reconnecting the pathways or something like that.

But do you think that repetitive use of psychedelics in the treatment of mental disorders is working really well because the person is actually reprogramming their brain? Yeah. I've seen some like analytical stuff, like trying to measure how it increases your analytical capability. and something that was like up all the things they measured was that it very significantly gets rid of your sense of existential self-worry in addition to like just making people more spiritual. So it like makes people less afraid of dying. So people will do what they want to do and not be so scared anymore. Yeah. Yeah, that's a huge part.

I have one of my friends Ranga is always telling me, George, it's everything is just fear of death. It's all just fear of death, George. You know, we get into some fun conversations about it. But sometimes I, it's on the topic of death and ego death, do you think that the world of trauma might be different if we stop using the word ego death or maybe not the world of trauma? I'm maybe saying it incorrectly. Forgive me if I am. Do you think that it may be beneficial to change the term ego death to alternate ego functioning?

Well, it's actually, I would prefer. to use ego dissolution. Ego death's more just kind of a sling. Because it's not like you're dead. It's just like you're less you. Yeah. I like that. You're like dissolving into everything else.

Yeah, it does have this incredible boundary dissolution, right? And so does the fear. Like if you're not fearful of what can happen in the future, instead you're willing to go out and become the best version of yourself. that that in itself is a form of dissolution it does seem that there's this boundary dissolution that it has yes i think oceanic boundlessness is like the science term that i never got around to putting in ocean can you say that again oceanic boundary list like how does it how do you soundlessness boundless like if you were to search into some uh science paper search engine that's what you would look for

Wow. Well, how would you define that? How would you define oceanic boundlessness? I'm becoming one with your environment because you're the things, these neural networks that are responsible for your sense of self, like all of this is interconnected. But those lessons, so you become more of everything surrounding you.

And this is kind of the reason why your environment setting is so important for the experience of it. I love that. You become it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I can see why psychedelics are so tied to, like, mysticism. Because it's, there's so much expression and so much beauty that comes out of, like, poetry or mysticism. It just begins to make sense when you embrace this oneness.

And it kind of seems like that's a big part of the psychedelic movement. Like, people that have pretty profound. experiences or even people that may not be profound but have enjoyable experiences, they seem to be participating in that in that boundlessness. Like it's a it's kind of a beautiful thing, right? Yeah. Like everybody's the same as you, but also different. Like I'm just a guy.

There's nothing special about me. I just read a lot. I am the guy in the chair talking, right? Like, you can just begin to explain. Yes. Explained in a way. Present moment. Like, it's right here.

One of my, one of the coolest, I want to shit is cool. Well, I think it's cool. I had a really cool experience a while back when I started taking psychedelics on the regular. And it was probably like six or seven years ago. And there was a guy at my work. And I was always mean to him, Graham. Like, I just didn't like him. And I'm like, this guy's a dummy.

And like, I remember one of my friends at work, pulled me aside and they're like, George, why are you so mean to that guy? I don't like them. And I remember, like, shortly after that, I had a really big experience with mushroom. And then I realized, like, you know what? I am a giant asshole to that guy. And the reason I am is because I think he's weak. But then I automatically, as soon as I said it, I realized that I'm weak. And I was just seeing my weak self and him. And I was like, man, I started crying a little bit and I had to go apologize to that guy. But hey, man, I'm sorry I'm being a dummy. It's a mean things to you.

We're all just humans here. Yeah, man. But it's such a cool experience. Like, even though it was tough to understand at first, like, it was a really cool experience to get to see. And then from that point forward, Graham, I realize that everything I see in somebody else is just me. Like, whether it's good or if it's bad, then I'm like, oh, man, that's me. Like, that's something I should work on. That guy's really selfish.

Oh, that means I'm selfish. I should probably, maybe that image. is trying to show me what I need to work on. And ever since I, like, that's one of the proudest moments I've had was how dumb I was. That kind of makes sense. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I think anger only comes out of being hurt. Mm. And like trying to process it somehow. Yeah. There's other ways to process it. But I don't get angry very often. Yeah.

Yeah. I've had a really big reduction in anger. And it does seem to me. There's a great quote that says, hurt people, hurt people. And if you look at the people in your life that are really angry or they're having a lot of problems, it's usually stems from a trauma they have

that they haven't figured out for themselves yet. That's what makes it so sad, I think, in a lot of ways. But that also opens the door for people to help them. You know, if people can begin understanding that. If they're willing to accept it. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Can't help people who don't want it.

Yeah. Wasting energy. It's a good point. I mean, that's kind of like how therapy works. Like, you don't go into therapy. You're like, I'm not going to do anything. The act of seeking it out first, right? It's like getting the leverage on yourself.

Yeah. Everyone's a rascal and you are too. It's true, man. Some of us more than others. Maybe we're all rascals, just at different parts of our life. You know, I, yeah. Do you think that like, as we spoke about AI earlier, do you think that AI will be able to take the place of like a really good therapist?

Like sometimes I sometimes I think that the chat bots or the ability for AI to talk to us is really amazing. And it is programmed to keep our attention. But what do you think about the felt presence of the other? Is there, is that there? Does that exist? It seems there's like a, the pheromones, the eye. contact, these small micro expressions, like, aren't those

something that help heal us in a traumatic situation too? So the felt presence of the other. Do you think I'm extremely concerned with people using AI for any sort of therapy because of the privacy implications of it and like selling of health data. I don't really feel comfortable

telling chat GPT all of my mental health woes and then Microsoft going and selling that data. It's like a huge, like, you don't need to know this about me. There's like HIPAA violations. That's part of the reason why I worked for towards local models is because if we're going to attack that angle, it should be something that it's private. Yeah.

Do you think in, how does that strategy work? Is it the more free the code is? then the more private like that kind of seems like a paradox to me yes no if everyone can see the code then like there's nothing that's being hidden

that's a big problem with AI right now is they're all kind of like black boxes so no one has any idea how they work but that's kind of like how a human body works too so uh anything that's interacting with AI like you need to know what's going on here I need support of that.

Yeah. It does seem like an incredible amount of power. And the, you know, the temptation that I can give somebody must be overwhelming at times. If you had access or, you know, you were, wasn't chat, wasn't chat GPT like called open AI? Like, they seem pretty far from open to me. Or are they? I've seen a lot of, like, unhappiness about that. they might have become more closed recently as like a profit incentive was introduced i know that they

have a good system set up where there's like a non-profit and intertwine with them so that they only do funding in a certain way but still the code isn't available so yeah what can people do graham if they if they want to kind of follow the footsteps of what you're doing like let's say there's some young George out there. There's a young Graham out there. And they believe that the way in which AI should be distributed should be a freer code. And they believe some of these ideas that they can really help humanity. Like, what, what can they do?

Get involved with the Free Software Foundation. Rep them. Nice. They have a very old philosophy for, and there's like open source versus free software foundation. There's like drama and stuff, which I have. and decide on the free software account. I should sign of it in terms of usage. Still, like, if you want to help out AI,

just get involved in a project. Like, essentially, what everything is surrounded to me is that I got involved in hobbies, and now they're, like, kind of changing everything. This is a hobby to me. This is, it is what? If you were to hold up your crystal ball and just make, you know, I think it was Yogi Berra who said, predictions are hard, especially predictions about the future.

But I'm just curious, if you were to look at your crystal ball five years from now and 10 years from now, what do you think will be some of the biggest changes we see in five years and then some of the biggest changes we see in 10 years? I read, I think it was an Elsevier paper that said, like, there's some percentage chance that 90% of all jobs will be automated away, like within 5 to 10 years. So there's my prediction, just something that a science paper said. It's not me. But that seems, it seems incomplete to me because by look at how many jobs that chat GPT or this technology has kind of already created,

if you just look at people that are content creators now. So is it saying that 97% of jobs that currently exist, Or is there like a qualifier on that? Like, because won't other jobs be... That makes sense. 30% are like, no, it's 30% currently can just be automated away. And then like up to 90% within five to 10 years. Mm.

Do you think that that opens the door for like a peer to peer sort of currency? Because what, like that would fundamentally change the economic system as well, right? Yeah. I haven't really been involved in crypto much. My older brother is a banker, so he's not allowed to do anything with it whatsoever. So I'm kind of just, okay, you're the money guy. I'm going to follow your money advice. He's pretty smart.

That's kind of interesting. Like someone who's involved with a bank is not allowed. Anytime you're not allowed to do something, it kind of makes me want to do it. You ever get that feeling? You have regulators everywhere surrounding you, and your job is depending on it. I think you're going to be pretty safe about it. Yes. Yeah.

But that sounds to me like they're very anxious. It sounds to me like they're scared. And I don't know, I don't know anything about crypto. I've bought some cryptocurrencies. I've made some money. I've lost some money. And from what I've read, there's some really fascinating ideas about how a world would look if you and I could exchange money together.

Just, hey, Graham, I want to buy your awesome book that you wrote. Here's a Bitcoin. Or, hey, George, I really like your podcast. Let me give you like a half of Bitcoin over here. You know, whatever we want to trade, it seems to me like it would be so much better if you and I could not have to have a percentage of that money taken away from us. Or if we do have a percentage taken away, shouldn't we be able to dictate where that percentage goes, at least on a broad

scope. Like, I would like, my percentage of the money that's taken from this transaction to go to schools. Like, it just seems like it would provide us with more of a voice in making a better world. Yeah, I fully agree with the ideals of it. There's some issues with, like,

whether it's a security or not, the SEC and Coinbase are going at it right now. Even like the US Chamber of Commerce got involved like on the Coinbase's side. So like it's a new thing and they're still figuring out what to do with it And there's crypto scams everywhere Like people just everywhere Yeah

Yeah I was talking to I was talking to this gentleman from Gemini Which is like a big crypto trading platform And we were just having a little chit chat And I had asked him something along the lines of wow It sure seems like there's a lot of crypto billionaires dying And he was like prove it And I was like whoa Oh, is he saying that they just didn't die?

Is he saying that they've got new identities? Is he saying that it's just a bigger rug pull on top of a rug pool? You know, but like it was very interesting the way the conversation led up to that point. And then just for him to walk, it's like a big mic drop. You just drop the mic and walked away. I was like, okay, maybe I don't know. But it's fascinating to think about. You know, there was a, there was.

a guy in his late 20s, I think. And I remember seeing, I forgot what platform he was the head of. And he was just very arrogant about a lot of things. And then he came to Hawaii and he was immediately, as soon as he stepped foot on American, so he was immediately picked up and arrested and taken away. Yeah, yeah, you know, I was like, whoa, this is a, you know. You can't get me and then immediately,

famous last words right if anything it's let me ask you this one Graham I'm a big fan of mythology and I like to read and I don't know if that makes me a primitivist I don't know but I think it's a lot of I don't think so yeah right

because I think that the ideas of like the hero's journey are still alive in us today this idea of getting the call to action and facing a threshold guardian And like, I admire that. Or, you know, if you look at the Nietzsche's, the camel to the child, like there's all these, you know, sort of symbolic pathways that are there for us to draw inspiration from. And so I'm wondering, I'm not really aware of any new mythologies that are being created. And I'm wondering, do you see any new myths emerging?

Maybe AI is part of a new mythology that's emerging. What do you think about that? I don't know if any new ones are emerging. Oh, because we're kind of living in the current mythology. Like we have mythologies, isn't that just history, but then like consolidated into a more simple form? Yeah. Everything is a story structure.

That's how like language works. We have mythologies of like, here's World War I. We're reaching the end of people who are like, if there even are any people left. who lived it. So now there's just the mythology surrounding the actors in it. Mm. Yeah, I guess you can't.

Sometimes it helps me to try to think that way. Because if we look at our language from a story model, then for me, that helps me think of myself as the main character in the story. And when you do that, I think it helps see yourself from a third person point of view. When you do that, at least for me, it helps me to live a better life because it's like, okay, I want to be,

I want to get the author's attention here. I want to be the hero in this story. I want to save the queen. I want to save the damsel in distress or help out the little kid over here. I've found that if you approach your life in that way, it helps. It really helps to sometimes give you the courage to do the thing, or sometimes it helps to maybe be a little delusional and believe in things that people wouldn't normally believe in. But yeah, I don't know.

I like to try and approach my life from a story, that kind of way of things. Is there a certain story you tell yourself? Is there a certain way you try to approach things that's maybe you think the crux of the matter. The crux of the matter is that everyone does that. So that's like how if you focus on yourself, you're also focusing. in other people. Everyone is mostly concerned with themselves, and that's like kind of how you relate to each other.

It's a great point. It's a paradox. I think everyone is inherently good because everyone thinks that they're the good guy because I think I'm the good guy, so I think everyone else does. Yeah. People just try to make it through.

They're just people, I think a good rule of thumb us to think that everyone's doing the best they can with what they have. They have a reason to do what they're doing. And sometimes that's enough to forgive. Sometimes that's enough to not judge, even though it's really hard. Like we always say we try not to be judgmental, but it's so ingrained in us.

It is way more difficult to love than it is to hate. It's way more difficult. But I think this kind of ties into AI because I think humans just act out of the goodness of their heart. So I think there's not. really an existential threat towards AI because it's trained on humans. So I think it will be good. Yeah.

Yeah. Ultimately, it's humans that are training it, right? So how can, in some ways, how can it not have our bias? I guess that's what you were saying with like the larger models that there's the, there's all that human emotion or this, that human understanding and lack thereof that go into training it. So how could it not have some of the same neurosis that we have? The problem is that

also has all the scams that we pull. It's good, but also, uh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's funny to think of it. There's always like the dark humor aspect of it too. I love dark humor. Yeah, man.

Yeah. And I think, you know what? I think that there's that that dark humor in the, in the boundary dissolution. the psychedelic experience, you know, like, and maybe that, I think dark humor is just a great therapeutic use because sometimes you find yourself in such a bad spot that all you can do is laugh. And when you, but when you do that, you're not crying, right?

It's crazy to think about it. I do hold the belief that comedians are kind of like cultural therapists because if you go back and watch any old comedians, then all of their memetic influence is already here. Like, it permeated into everything. Yeah. And then like comedy is a super difficult way to perform therapy. But I do think it's extremely useful when it's done right.

Yeah, that's really well said. I think so too. I, you know, especially, well, from my angle, like I used to listen to like a lot of George Carlin. And he would always talk about, you know, it's a big club. You know, there's three banking companies and two insurance companies and you're not in it and all this stuff. And like now you could just say it's the big. club and so many people know what that is but it's a great example of someone who's just yelling look the emperor has no clothes and it's such an important model media has only become more decentralized

like back in the old days i think you well had three channels yeah there's a lot more people centralized than that versus now and that's kind of old media versus new media i mean that's what we're doing now it's new media like yeah in favor of that yeah me too it's a big club Except it's getting bigger. That should be the new tagline. I'm going to make that the new tagline. That's really funny. What do you think about this, Graham?

Like, it seems that attention is kind of like the new currency. You know, we talk about views. We talk about likes. And the way in which some people are paid now is by the likes they generate, by the eye contact they generate, however they're measuring it. But it does seem that we're moving into this currency of likes or you can even say dopamine. And if we use that in conjunction with media, do you see the landscape of media beginning to pay the content creators? Like it seems like it's kind of been going that way.

If we went from three channels to 12 channels to HBO to cable and now you got TikTok, YouTube, Rumble and even smaller creators now they're getting a portion of it. Do you see that that pattern will continue to move in that way? It's a little, there's a whinge in here and that a good portion of the internet is currently just like bots. So that kind of fees into the cycle of promoting something. So like you only watch a video that has a million views already. And then you also have bots that do that. So that just projects it further.

So I don't really know how all this proliferation of AI is going to impact. to that because you could just have bots that are like you have AI and you have AI detectors but I don't think that detectors are going to be as far ahead as the AI just in general. There's always going to be a battle between them but bots are generally going to do forward specific things that I don't know who I guess people who control the bonds like you decederalize. Yeah, yeah. That's why I was talking to some other guys I did do podcasts.

And they were, one of my friends was like, oh, I like to tape everything and then I'll go back and edit it. And then we got into the idea of chat GPT and then the, you know, using AI to images. And then I'll, you know, I think the AI to video is probably not that far away. It seems to me like the next best thing. Like I think one of the only things we really have left is like live. And like I think that there's something to be said about the pauses. and the interactions you have with people, right? It's the same thing.

I want to go on earlier, but I forgot. Being in person is always going to trump, like, talking over any sort of video chat just because of those additional sensory modalities that are incorporated, like, sense of smell and, like, even like, I don't know, sense of time. Yeah. Now that you say that, I think it's going to make us appreciate it more. It may make us in some, now that I think about it, you know,

for a long time, especially when my kid was going to school for COVID, I was worried that not being in the presence of the other was going to make the ability to understand the micro-expressions, uh, um, aphetry. Oh, yeah. There's a, like a trillion bacteria on everyone. And when you're with someone else, your bacteria is interacting with that person. And like the gut microbiome is such a, it's another huge, complex topic. I got to write that down.

I think R-slash-human microbiome is like the main science area that I've looked at, because they have a wiki somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, man. I see, it's opening up so many avenues that I never would have thought of before. And on some levels, maybe being isolated from people on some levels, some level will help heighten our awareness when we're with them. You know, it would be an interesting to go and understand how those bacteria

on your skin interact with other people. I've never heard that before, man. Thank you. Oh, it's just a hypothesis. I have no science supporting this. I assume that if you have someone who's bacteria on you, then it's going to interact. Yeah, how can it not, right? And that's like super involved, even with a mental disorder.

stuff like your gut microbiome there's neurons in your intestines there's seroton receptors all of it's involved yeah you know i was i got to ask um i went to this online seminar one time and i got to talk to dr dennis mckenna and uh we were talking about neurotransmitters and and um you know how it obviously how it affects the brain and stuff like that and i had raised my hand and i was like oh i was super stoked to talk to them oh you know kind of nervous and i'm like how do you think that the psychedelic how do you think like psilocybin

interacts with like the neurotransmitters in your gut he's like I don't know we're not talking about to go we're talking about the brain I felt so dumb

I was like oh man but then he came back and he's like listen I'm not saying it's a dumb question I think maybe he thought about it

he's like yeah it's not a dumb question he's like maybe he just saw my face and saw me get all sad but he he's like it's not a dumb question

he's like you know there's probably a lot are really interesting things that happens. But yeah. People make better decisions when they trust their gut for like when they're picking out fruit than if they try to objectify it somehow. So it's definitely important even when it's how it's connected to your brain.

Yeah. Thank you, Graham. I needed to hear that. Yeah. You're valid. I did it. Yeah, it is a fascinating topic to think about. I am.

Graham, I'm coming up on about an hour and a half. here, I got to tell you, this was super awesome, man. I feel like I got to learn a lot. I feel like I had a, I got to get out some ideas that I'm thinking about. And I wasn't sure what to expect going into this conversation, but it exceeded all of my expectations, man. I hope that maybe in the future, if you're not busy, you can come back and talk to me again. Sure. Yeah, man. Yeah, I'll reach out to you. And maybe we can, maybe we can even get, I, what I want for my podcast is the next evolution to be me speaking to a few people at a same time. I want to try to experiment with making the tent a little bit bigger. And I'm hopeful that if I can get the right

people in at the same time, that it will be more of like a harmony that kind of comes to and just bouncing ideas off people, man. And I really enjoyed your perspective on a lot of things. I think you have a very unique perspective. And I love the fact that you're willing to share it. And I had a lot of fun today. But before I let you go, what do you want to shine a spotlight on anything? like the free software project or like what maybe if I gave you the platform to to shine a spotlight on a few things what would you say uh well for guests I had just the scientific authors that I've enjoyed the most my favorite is David Nichols and then I was talking about this earlier that I saw you interview Dr. Straussman he's also a name that stands out to me in science papers

like Folan Wider I hope I'm pronouncing that right he's a name that stands out and Griffiths So like those are the people of all the science papers I've consumed have been the most salient towards me. And in terms of the stuff that I'm doing, I'm kind of waiting on the open RPG creative license orc by Paiso before I. I've had this idea to make everything and like gamify it like a Dungeons and Dragons type thing. So that's called Metapraxy, but I've really done much work into it. It's just whenever that license is done, I'm going to use that. There's my spotlight. I love it, man.

Yeah. That would be fascinating to gamify everything in a dungeons and dragons toward a way. And for me, it's back to the mystical. You know, it's Alfred North Whitehead coming in there from mysticism. Wisdom. Clertification. Yeah, man. Yeah.

I love it. I love it. Well, Graham, I really enjoyed it. Hang on for one second. I'm going to hang on for one second. But I still want to talk to you for a quick second. And to everybody watching, I hope you enjoyed it. to everybody that made a comment.

Ben, Arwa, everybody, thank you so much for taking a moment to hang out with us. And I hope everybody has a beautiful day. That's all we got. Aloha. Thanks for having me. Of course.