TrueLife - High Octane Speculation - The Restrict Act, Phosphenes, & psychedelic geometry as coding patterns

Episode Date: March 29, 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/ In this episode we talk about the issues involving our struggles, from riots around the world, corporate malfeasance, and corruption & what we can do to mitigate it in our lives…  From this point we jump off into the deep waters of psychedelic imagery. Might these abstract geometric forms be a “blueprint”, a degree of organisation, or coding patterns for neural activity? Plasticity?   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 scar's my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious 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. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Wednesday. Got a great show for you today. It's Benjamin George,

a.k.a. Mr. Wizard from the No Absolute podcast with a book with the same name. You've seen us together quite often. We've started this new series called George and George. We're on round three here. Just talking about what we got going on in the world, the corruption, the malfeasance, and hopefully finding some solutions that can help you

listening to this or watching this. Help out a little bit, man. Let me give you a different point of view. So, you know, let's jump in here. And, Ben, first off, how are you doing today? And what's on your mind over here? I'm doing pretty good It's probably one of the nicest days

In Colorado Springs since last autumn So that's always nice Springs come and summers here So that makes me happy But what doesn't make me happy Is some of the stuff going on in the world That's for sure Yeah

So I woke up this morning and I saw You know I've been hearing whispers About this TikTok ban But TikTok ban Equaling restrict act There seems a lot in there that people aren't talking about. What do you know about this whole conundrum?

Yeah, so this is kind of popped up over the past week, right? Like all of a sudden, they had a Senate meeting, and then they grilled a couple of the CEOs and a couple other people from social media. And it was all under the guise of this banning TikTok. Come to find out there was, I think it was 11 senators put forward a bill yesterday or two days ago called the Restrict Act. And instead of it,

actually just saying, hey, we're banning TikTok. It's a very draconian thing that's basically, so it starts off and it lists people as, you know, it says it's for foreign people. But here's the thing, it's ran by the Commerce Department. And it encompasses every single transaction via e-commerce. So, and they can label you as a foreign collaborator through this act.

without, you know, just by essentially, you know, like if I decided to use a VPN to log in the TikTok, which, you know, I don't use TikTok anyway. But if I did, now all of a sudden I can fall under this act with maximum penalties of a million dollar in fines in 20 years in prison. Not only that, this is also, it protects itself from Freedom of Information Act. So we as citizens can't go in and ask them for, you know, the evidence and why. They don't, they're not responsible to any court but the FISA court, which is basically the secret court. So there's no actual like repercussions or there's no response from a judicial perspective from the common individual to go off and say, well, I, you know, I want to take this to court. We don't have that right. So, I mean, it's a complete, just a complete.

just a complete overstretch of government authority and it would basically it would essentially by the what I read would monitor all internet traffic disallow anything that the state doesn't like so like and something that some people are picking up on this would really impact things like crypto Bitcoin because now if I go off and use an exchange say that's based in Japan and the United States government doesn't like that, they can come back and say, they can, they can go through the past, the present, and future transactions. How do they do that? You know, but so they basically gave themselves carte blanche to monitor the common individual's transactions online. Yeah. And, you know, there's so much there. I want to take it back just for a moment before we

get into everything else. This idea of the Commerce Department taking over government. Like that is the debt. I always go to Mussolini's idea of fascism. Like, let's be honest. Every single government is a little bit fascist, right? They all partner with corporations. But this to me is an all-and-all just takeover, a full state capitalist takeover of the world we live in. And if the Commerce Department has carte blanche, if the Commerce Department can go through any of your finance, if the Commerce Department can tell you what to buy, when to buy, how to buy it, create the rule.

not be subject to FOIA, not be subject to any of the other rules, not be subject to the American people, then that's rule by corporation. That's corporate rule. And it's, it doesn't seem like, I think that that's been, we probably agree, maybe we don't agree, but it seems to me the United States has been taken over by the corporate powers for quite a long time. I think it was John Dewey who said, government is the shadow cast upon people by business. And let's be clear, the international business association, let me give you one example of something that's already happened is Norfolk Southern. They have taken over.

They have, whether you call it land acquisition or real estate acquisition, they have their own private security force. They own everything about the disaster except the consequences. They have ruined the land. They've ruined the water. They have their own police. They're not allowing people to, to get compensated for their animals,

their farms, their livelihood. A corporation came in and said, F you to all the people. F you to America, there's nothing you could do about it. And I think the rest of the United States, at least the politicians, both Democrats and Republicans

that are pushing this view are clearly paid off. They're clearly part of an agenda that wants the corporate takeover of the world. Now, you could, if I put on my hat of, hey, we're in a financial crisis and we need capable people to take the helm. Maybe there's some sort of, maybe they're trying to argue from that point of view.

But I don't see how this ends well. And I think it's panic, panic, panic, panic. What do you think? I think it's panic, panic, panic. I don't see it ending well. I mean, you're essentially not only everything you stated, I agree with, but it also removes the democratic process from the entire thing, right? This is a position the person who runs the Commerce Department is a position appointed by the president

There's no voting about it. There's no anything about that there's no way to vote anything about the Commerce department That's all like an internal structure in the United States government Yeah, this is I mean I heard we we talked a little bit about it but you know Patriot Act 2.0 or Patriot Act on steroids and you know the it know it's it's it's been happening let's also acknowledge that you know uh edward snowed back in the day showed us that the nsa's basically essentially been doing this now they didn't have the exact you know legal authority to you know go after american citizens even though they were spotted on all of us this would give that legal authority to not just one alphabet agency but you know a bunch of them with no repercussions yeah

You know, I was thinking about that. I think it's, I think that a lot of people, and in fact, I'll try to make the argument that we're being run. Well, I guess if you look at the history of the CIA, they are the enforcement arm of corporations. You know, they are the enforcement arm of multinational corporations. I'm not saying that everybody there is a bad person. That's not true. There's great people at all institutions that are trying to do the right thing. However, it seems to me that for quite some time, you know, you have parts of places like these three-letter agencies that have black budgets.

They have, you know, different interests than the country that we thought that they worked for. And the Commerce Department, I think, fits the same type of mold almost as a three-letter agency. They work kind of behind the scenes. Like, they're the, you know, Elton John, he's got this. flashy jacket and he sings the songs. But there's another guy that writes all his music. So the commerce department is kind of like the guy that writes the music and the president is like the dance and monkey out there or the politicians are like the dance and monkeys. And so, you know, I think that it's almost lifting this certain department above everything else

and allowing them to run the show. And that's on some level, you know, when I look at the state capitalist model of China. They are, I would say they're better able to compete, but that's because they're not competing. They don't have to. This is where the rail is going. This is where the harbor's going.

If you live there, get out. We're not going to give you any money. Just get out of there. I don't care how long your family's been there. I don't care how powerful your attorney is. This is the best spot for the train and it's going there. Deal with it. That's what needs to be done if you want to have an effective,

efficient set of supply chains. And we've been hearing a lot about supply chains, whether it was the breakdown in COVID, whether it's the railroad of Norfolk Southern, whether it is the water problems we're having. And if we, yeah, so, you know, maybe this is what's happening is like, okay, we're going to, we're going to move the U.S. into an area that it can be self-sustainable. We're going to draw back from the world. We're going to put in new, new sort of, uh, supply chains or maybe it's the world's idea of putting supply chains in the U.S.

And that's why you see these different countries coming in. But this is definitely the first step, you know. And I know that when something has a name like the Patriot Act, it sounds good. But a little tip for everybody listening and probably all our listeners know this, the better the bill sounds, the worse it is for you. If it's a band, if it's the Patriot Act, they're stripping patriotism away. If it's the TikTok Act, they are going to strip away all your rights to social media, not just TikTok. And so it's like a Trojan horse. But yeah, it's crazy.

What are some other things that you can think of, Ben, that we're talked about in this bill? Well, I mean, I think the bigger implications are what it means for the way that we operate in day-to-day world. I mean, this is something. So any sort of crypto transaction theoretically could fall under this bill as you cooperating with a foreign asset or with a foreign enemy. Because as somebody who uses a crypto network, you don't have a say on what computer processes that bit of information when you send a transaction. That computer so happens to be housed like in China. All of a sudden, you become, you're aiding a foreign. enemy and now you're subjected to I mean this is essentially you know go straight to

jail do not pass go do not get a lawyer you know they could even throw you in Gitmo under this this new this new bill this restrict act just for sending the simple transaction I mean using a VPN to log into a band app right you know now it doesn't explicitly say these things but it has such overarching language that all of these things fall under it. And that's kind of the nefarious way that a lot of these bills are written in general, is they give this blanket idea of what empowers that we can do. And then they say, oh, yeah, that falls under that because of, you know, this obscure idea that this means this, or, you know, you're aiding a foreign enemy simply because you logged

into a social media app, let alone setting like an actual financial crypto transaction, right? So, yeah, it's just blinking, Blank in authority over every single interaction that we do online, which is how the world's ran these days. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to pan out and then focus back in. You know, when I look at the world right now, you see the yellow vest movement or what's called the, you know,

this riots in France over retirement age. But is that really about retirement age? Or is that just the straw that broke the camel's back? You're hearing conflicting reports. The people on the street say there's over a million people at the Eiffel Tower in France, throwing rocks protesting. And you listen to their media and there's like, oh, there's only 300,000. Well, I don't care if it's 300,000 or if it's a million. 300,000 people in the streets that are pissed off make it impossible to do any kind of commerce.

Now, that's just happening right there in France. If we just move over a little bit and we go to the UK, we see that the food inflation has gone up upwards of 50%. They're getting ready to have all kinds of strikes across the board, almost like a general strike happening over there. But it doesn't stop there. You head over to the Netherlands. You see the farmers over there.

Like these guys are stopping too. And, you know, we just saw the railroad strike here in the United States. Look what happened at Norfolk Southern, what I've already brought up. So as I'm panning, I'm trying to show everybody the big picture of what's happening. On top of all these strikes around the world, governments are trying, at least in my opinion, it looks like a giant form of austerity for the people.

Hey, nothing for you guys. You got to work longer. You got to work harder. You don't deserve anything. You guys are grunts. Get out there, work hard. I don't give a fuck about your family. Fuck you.

Go to work. Work harder. Work longer. Screw your kids. That's what the government's telling everybody. But then, oh, but by the way, we're going to find trillions of dollars to give our friends at the bank. We're going to find trillions of dollars to give our friends in Ukraine.

This is the ultimate sort of, you know, socialism for the richest people and, you know, just straight poverty for everybody. It's privatizing profits, socializing losses. You know, when we can find billions of dollars for corrupt banking practices, for insider trading, and there's no jail time for SB. There's no jail time for, you know, the Federal Reserve. The guy worked at the Federal Reserve from SVB. If you don't know this, the guy from SVB worked at the Federal Reserve.

Like, if that is not the Fox in the Hint House, I don't know what is. It's crime at a grand scale and they're getting away with it. And that is part of the reason why people are in the streets. It's going to get worse. You can't just take someone's face. You can't. if you're going to put your foot on the back of someone's head, you better make sure that that person never gets up.

You better make sure that the little kid that saw you do it. You better make sure that that kid doesn't grow up because those kids are coming for your family. That guy's going to get up and he's coming to your house. Like people know where other people live. We don't live in 1920 or 1930. And so now that I've paned back out and I've given people, at least in my idea, these ideas are what are happening.

Let me refocus it a little bit. So we see all that happening. So if we refocus it, when you pan back in, the dollar becomes into focus. Money comes into focus. And now all of a sudden, this restrict act, you could see that it could be about money. Like you said, it's about crypto. We have seen the radical attempt to take out finance. I think CZ is probably the smartest person in the world of finance that the world has ever known.

This is my opinion. And I could be wrong. I'm not a huge crypto guy, but I've studied a little. bit and that guy seems to be 12 steps ahead of everyone, at least in my opinion. And so they have done everything they've can, but you're chasing them between different countries, finding loopholes, finding all that stuff to get them. They've finally gotten close to it. And now you're seeing this restrict act, which restricts commerce in different areas. So I know I've kind of been on a rant there, but we talked about crypto. I wanted to pan out. I wanted to bring it back in. So what more do you

think you agree that maybe this whole thing could be about finance whether it's riots in france but is all connected what do you think then 100% um and then we correlate it with other things you know like the agendas of agenda 2030 the smart cities all of this other stuff they all kind of fit in a nice little column um you know another interesting thing about the restrict deck is it specifically mentions quantum cryptography oh yeah uh and that you're not allowed to use quantum cryptography, which is wild. That just, which kind of is strange because, you know, that's essentially almost broadcasting that, hey, we've cracked standard cryptography.

Yep. And which, you know, not a huge surprise because a lot of those cryptographic algorithms were originally developed by the NSA. A couple of them have been found to have backdoors over the years. A couple of them have been found to have. flaws. There's been a couple that really stand up to time. But like Shaw 256, which is primarily the primary crypto algorithm of like Bitcoin and also what banks use, also what HTTP uses online. If they've cracked that, you know, you essentially can not only monitor what everybody's

doing, but then you could also go in and move it around at will. And so now if you have that power, you don't want somebody to be able to take back any sort of sovereignty from that and so you go off and you say hey we're we're banning the use of quantum cryptography like and you know it's pretty wild so i you know i think this definitely is financial related i think this is when crypto started everybody thought there's no chance in hell the governments are going to allow this to happen right because it was it was it really was back to it gave power back to the people I think this is the realization of that. I think they've finally caught up to the game a little bit.

And if something like this passes, I think that is, you know, earmarks the end of most crypto. Yeah, it's almost like it's in lockstep with CBDCs. You know, you see the financial system just being obliterated. And the fact that they're hemorrhaging trillions of dollars. Like people just imagine this.

imagine having a bucket and it has no bottom or it has like a little just like a little triangle because everything else is falling out and you're filling up that bucket like there's not much water in there like that that container for that particular substance doesn't work a broken bucket doesn't hold water and banks don't hold money right right and so you know even and back to this is all legal though too right yeah you know there's a reason that the people from SVB aren't being charged for their insider trading is because there's an actual law that says they were allowed to do it. You know, things have been lobbied into, and this goes back to corporations kind of running the

country, things have been lobbied into these 4,000 page bills over the past 20, 30 years that have completely stripped away any recourse for the population, the citizenry to go off and say, hey, this, we don't agree with this. this isn't right. Say, well, the guys you voted for, they voted on this. And now, look, it's a lot. It's right here. And so this has just been a systemic thing that's been happening for, you know, decades now.

And I think this is the culmination of those events. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting how, you know, I think another part, too, is the minute you hold one bank responsible, the gig is out. because you know you you you there's a there's a great scene in this movie for people who haven't seen this movie called Goodfellas it's a great movie it's like this Italian kind of a gangster flick and uh they robbed in the movie spoil alert here for you know it's only 30 years old but you know uh they they they had this huge score and they this huge score is at the airport and they take down like i think it's a uh like a like a a a

Bricks truck or whatever. It's all filled with money. And they get away with it. Total inside job. They had everybody connected. And there was a lot of people on this scam. And so they show Ray Leota. He's listening to the radio and it's like,

financial chaos where four, you know, Brinks, trucks were taken over and exploded at the airport. You know, it looks like all damages are written off. And he's like, yeah, we did it. He's all stoked. And then it cuts to a scene where they're at this bar, you know. and Polly, who's the big boss, is like,

listen, everyone's like, when are we going to get our cut? When are we getting our cut? And he's like, no one's getting a cut. No one's going to get a cut for like a year. This has to blow over. And like, fuck you, we're not getting our cut. What do you mean we're not getting our cut? And so, Polly caves in.

And then a month later, they have another party. And he's like, okay, everyone gets their cut, but no one buy anything. But at this party, one guy shows up in a new Cadillac. One guy's wife shows up in a mint coat. Another guy's got a brand new suit and a new girlfriend. He's like, what are you doing? Now it's obvious we stole it now. And so that's the same thing with this financial thing is that, yeah, look, now it's obvious.

So what are you going to punish that guy from SVB? That guy's going to go in and say, oh, yeah, well, if I'm dirty, I'm going to tell on everybody. And so, like, the game is up. And so now all that's left to do is begin restricting access to everyone. Like you're going to have at least what they're going to try to do to the financial system, what they did at East Palestine, and that's a controlled burn. They want to try to mitigate everything, keep everybody from watching. And that could be another avenue with this commerce and the VPNs is that we want to control the information.

The crisis is coming. We want to get ahead of it. We want to restrict people from really knowing what's happening. There's too much transparency. There's too much shit going on. And we need to be able to put people away. They need to be put away without putting ourselves away. And so I think that that's another part of.

You know, when you think about VPNs, when you think about privacy, when you think about the election that we had and the corruption, you know, it's called the Restrict Act, you know, the restricting currency, the restricting information. And what do you what do you think about the idea of, you know, restricting information with this Restrict Act? We've talked about currency a little bit. And we can shift back there in a minute. But I'd love to hear your opinion on how this restricts the flow of information. Well, from what I read, it sounds like, you know, e-commerce was a big part of it, but it's also accessing these foreign websites. So it's not just a financial transaction. You can argue an informational transaction of me visiting a website, say, you know, some Russian propaganda site, right? All of a sudden would violate this act.

So, you know, it's it's not just the finance part of it. It is in part restricting just access to information, which we really shouldn't be surprised. I mean, the first thing President Biden did when he came in was started the Ministry of Misinformation or whatever. Yeah. Right. You know, which quickly fell out of favor because it was too close to a couple of our favorite books. But, yeah, I mean, this is essentially that, but in legal. form. So, you know, it reminds me of China's great firewall. You know, and it seems in so many ways

we're just, we're just importing. And I don't know if it's, if it's Chinese interests that are importing it or if it's just jealousy from the, the American politician or the American corporation, but it seems similar. Is it kind of like China's great firewall? It's definitely like China's great firewall. And I think the motivations are a multitude of different perspectives. I think, I think on one perspective, you got kind of a more military slant, which is, hey, we're going to war with China. And in order for us to actually compete with China, we need to be as nimble as China. We need to be able to get everybody on board, like China can get everybody on board. This makes a lot of sense under that perspective.

Then I think you also have just general greed is part of it. But you also have where this is, you know, the open internet was, in my opinion, was kind of the flag for the fall of nations. Because for open commerce to happen, open information sharing to happen, a lot of the lies that most nations are built on, if not all of them, now eventually have to get flown out for everybody to see. And I think this is, you know, nations trying to combat that at another perspective as well. And I think that's where the great firewall China came from. They weren't worried about the U.S. snoop on anything. They were the one stealing the IP. They weren't worried about that.

They were worried about being able to keep their populace in one. They didn't want their populace to be able to go off and read, you know, how great life was somewhere else or what other people think about China or all these, you know, or negative things about their leaders because that's where ideas take you know take root that's where the seeds come from yeah you know it's that's a those are great points you know when i when i think about our country trying to restrict access to sites or sensor information or i think today they call censors fact checkers which is a very ingenious way of calling someone a censor it's a fact checker Oh, that's beautiful.

You know, but what you don't see on the mainstream news is all these different riots. You know, you don't hear about the civil war that's about to break out in Israel or France or Britain or the Netherlands. And maybe in some level that's because they're afraid of of it being more contagious than COVID. You know, maybe the riots are more contagious. You know, idea, I think there's a saying that says the most powerful idea, the most powerful thing in the world is an idea. whose time is common. I think that this new idea of freedom, this new idea of open commerce,

this new idea of peer to peer is an idea whose time is common. And the more the world's try to clamp down on it, it's like a balloon. If you try to clamp down on it, it's just popping everywhere. So it seems, and that kind of gives me hope in some ways. The more restrictive people try to be,

the more afraid they are that they're losing. Yeah, I think this gambit ultimately fails. Because for a multitude of reasons, but exactly what you just said, and when you look at, you know, where the chips are actually stacked, if you were to imagine it as a game board, you know, you have billions of people versus a very small group of people who are completely self-interested. Yeah. Now, you can, they can skirt around. They can hide. They can manipulate. they can do so much from the shadows until eventually the light shines on it.

And when the light shines on it, that's the end of the game. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like Colonel Mustard did it in the kitchen with the lead pipe. I know it's in those cards. Yeah. And it's like that game. Pretty soon you have everything written down. You have all your checkmarks.

You know who it is. And I think that we're getting there. You know, and it's like a cornered animal. Like it's going to try and fight and bite and be nasty. And, you know, it's, it's unfortunate, but it's probably well deserved. It's crazy to think about. You know, as I'm curious, too, I think that part of the answer that might be, and I don't know if this is answering for the powers that be or answering for the people. But, you know, this competitive world of AI, Ben, is really.

beginning to blossom. It seems that this ideas of AI has the same fervor that crypto had when it first came out. And a lot more access. Yeah. The onboarding to it's much more simple than crypto was or still is for most people. Yeah, I recently just got access to Google Bard, which is their competition to chat GPT. And so this restrict that came out a couple days ago and I decide to ask Google Bard about it. And not only could I ask Google Bart about it, it told me what senators put it up for, you know, things. And then I asked, well, where do these senators get their funding in their last election cycle? And it gave me all of the people who funded them. So, you know, there's, it's, it is an interesting tool because it's not restricted so much yet that you can't

go out and follow these rabbit holes and connect the dots and fill, out our clue card. But the potential is there for it to be. You know, so it's a dangerous, slippery slope potentially. I think Elon Musk and a couple other AI researchers signed a petition, a letter, an open letter saying, hey, we need to hold off on advancing these systems until we understand the implications of them, what that means for humanity. Yeah.

It's a big statement. And it's one I agree with. It's kind of why I gave up my AI research years ago. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, I was listening to, remember Martin Schrelli, the guy that started his own, his own pharmaceutical company, you know, going to jail.

I listened to that guy on a podcast the other day. And the guy was making me laugh a little bit. According to him, there's a group on Twitter called, I think they're called E-A. E-S-A-C and a guy's name is like Beth J-Zos, like a base Jeff Bezos or something like that. And these guys are kind of on a mission. They're out there out doing some things.

But according to what Schrelli was talking about, he said that someone from Facebook dumped like a whole lot of source code on Reddit or 4chan or one of these sites. And people have been up all night using that source code and plugging it into different sorts of AI models. And they're trying to build this AI model. model, you know, and I guess because the guy from Facebook dumped all this code, now people have all this code that they can put into the AI model to make, to make their own open kind

of AI model. And anyways, what he was talking about is, is that they've been able to create, you know, a really, like an open AI type chat bot that's always in Dan mode for do anything now, right? And he was talking about some of the things they're asking it. And like it's really, some of us were really funny. Some parts were really impressive. And it just made me realize how much the genies out of the bottle.

Because people, what separates open AI or what separates Microsoft or what separates these people with these giant ones is the input they've been able to put in there. But as people are starting to leak source code or people are starting to leak all the stuff, like, To burn everybody, like, okay, we'll let everybody do it then if we can't be in on it. It turns them to an arms race. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, what does that mean? Does that mean people are held hostage in the arms race? Or does that mean that competition will force people to be more honest? Hmm. I don't know that competition has ever forced honesty. You would have to throw me some examples of that one. I'm pretty sure every time I've seen competition,

there's always somebody trying to skirt the rules somehow. That's a great point. But yeah, I mean, that arms race could really elevate some people in the world and be absolutely detrimental to others. Yeah. But, I mean, that's always the case of an arms race. Think about the Cold War, right? What happened to the USSR?

I mean, those people have been impoverished since then. Yeah. Ramping poverty for, you know, 50 years, you know, a whole, almost two generations. Yeah. He brought up some interesting information. According to him, according to Shrelli,

what he was trying, one of his projects, in that he said on the podcast, was that he's trying to build, like, AI as doctors and surgeons. And he gave some pretty interesting information that I never really knew before.

He said, you know, there's only a set amount of surgeons that are allowed to graduate on any given time. Yeah. And the idea is that you don't want to flood that market

because you want the, best in there. But then, you know, the truth is people could probably be trained to be surgeons. Like, and all my doctor friends, don't get mad at me. I'm just saying, if you could train someone to be a mechanic, you could probably train someone to be a surgeon. You know, obviously there's a higher threshold. You have to know more. But at some point in time, it's almost algorithmic in the way you're doing a procedure. A procedure can be algorithm. And so he said, you know, yeah, right? And so, when you look at the world of medicine,

you know, some doctors are paid for $500,000 when most of the time it's the nurse practitioner doing the work. Most of the time it's someone on a lower level doing all the work and to someone up here getting paid. And so his idea was that like, look, if we can get these AI bots, if we can get these AIs to start doing things like being a surgeon,

being a lawyer, being a judge, now we've cut out so much of this middle fat that we don't need anymore. Like we don't really need lawyers or judges or surgeons if we can get the information right. I'm not saying we don't need them now. Clearly we do. But if we could get it to an area that there was, you know, it could cut out a lot of the corruption. It could cut out a lot of the fat. And I think that it's an interesting point.

I know we've talked to it a little bit before, but do you, what do you think about AI coming in and taking these jobs and maybe what we're seeing now is a pushback to that? Well, one of the reasons I originally got involved in AI is because I had this similar thought. It was, hey, you know, if you could actually leverage technology

to replace these things that cause so much inequity, that caused a lack of sustainability, that, you know, create bureaucracies and hardships for people, then, you know, that actually stands as a good model for society, right, potentially. The problem with that is all the people who are self-interested in a part of the current system who wouldn't want that to ever happen. And that includes, you know, individuals, NGOs, and also nation states. Nation states don't want that to happen.

you know, if all of a sudden all of your, you replace the Supreme Court judges and all of the judicial system with an artificial intelligence that's going to fairly apply the law equally across the board, they lose their edge. Not only do they lose their edge, they lose their ability to manipulate the system. They lose the ability to appoint, you know, some Supreme Court judges and eventually, you don't change how law is handled in the country. You know, all of that goes out the window, all those little games and massinations and systems that are in play that have been systemically robbing people of their liberty, that all of a sudden becomes something that you can't do any longer. And so then it becomes an untenable situation for those people who are in those positions, which, if we're being honest, that's where all of the money lies in the world, too. So now you're competing against the world of money for essentially the world of, you know, of humanity, of liberty, of freedom. And I think that's actually where we're moving towards with all of this stuff. Yeah, that's really well said, Ben.

I, you know, I guess when you look at it from that angle, the idea, the definition of money is something that went from, a medium of trade to a belief system. And a system of debt. In a system of debt. And, you know, there's a lot of people that are great people that were born into debt. And when you want to get a job,

it's like you almost have to take on an unsustainable amount of debt to get a job that could potentially pay it off in the future. And that system has to collapse on itself, right? Yeah. I mean that's kind of been the conversation of economists you know for years and years and years is you know how how has this thing remain sustainable how can you how can you keep this going and you know most everybody's been surprised about how long it has kept going when we have all of these systems that default you know and and now it's happening more and more frequently right

you know the first the first time was the back in the great depression era and then you know we had a good little while. It wasn't until, you know, probably around the 80s where we started to see the murmurs with this happening again. Then all of a sudden, you know, 2008. Now we're only 13, 14 years later, or 15 years later, and it's happening even to a greater degree. And it's not just happening locally, but it's happening worldwide. Yeah. And you know, you and I had spoken last week about the bank bailouts and that there was this idea that the taxpayers weren't going to pay for it, but that's clearly not the case. Yeah.

And so, you know, when I think of solutions, you know, might one solution be that since we're the taxpayers and we're bailing out all the banks, maybe we shouldn't have to pay our debts until the tax is, you know, until the debt, maybe that's one way of clearing the debt. It's just saying like, okay, well, I'm not going to pay my mortgage anymore because that bank is corrupt and they've been getting bailouts, which is basically my money. So those banks owe me money. So I'm just not going to pay them. You know, I wonder, like, that's clearly not put in the perfect terminology. I understand what you're getting to. Yeah. But, you know, and then this rolls back to what are the laws? Who do those, who are those laws written for ultimately? You know,

just because they're corrupt, just because they're blatantly fraudulous, just because they've mismanaged your money doesn't give you any sort of right in the legal sense that you can go off and do something like that and so what happens is you just you you know even if you got say 10% of the country to say fuck you we're not going to pay a mortgage guess what you just got a whole new privatized prison system that just got a whole lot of new free slave labor because they will incarcerate every single one of you know that's the unfortunate reality of of that game theory, I think. You know, on paper, I think, you know, yes, all things considered all things being fair,

that would make sense. You could have a congregation of the populace of taxpayers say, hey, look, you guys are mismanaging this whole thing. You've broken the systems that were in place in order for us to, you know, voice our opinions and to have a say in how this is all done. And this situation has come to a point where it's just unfixable. So we're going to band together and we're going to do our own thing. That's it won't, it won't ever go over well.

You think that that's maybe one of the reasons we have the restrict act? Certainly, certainly fits under the, under the commerce column, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, it doesn't take too much imagination to look at what Roaring Kitty from and the Apes did with AMC and GameStop. And, yeah, like, you know, it's along the same lines. if if everybody on Reddit just went like, hey, I have a Fannie Mae loan or I have a Bank of America loan. Okay, there's, there's 5,000 of us. Let's none of us pay our mortgage for two months and we're going to short it right now.

You know what I mean? Like, you could, you could, if they were, I don't know if any laws were put in place because of the GameStop or the Apes, but that strategy would work beautiful, you know, or even if you just did a little bit of research and found out what the big banks were shorting. you know, if this sort of the people began to act like a hedge fund and began shorting stuff or not paying their mortgage and then shorting things, you know, they could really do a number on that. And in some ways, it would force the government to be like, we can't do this. Now we're going to bail out the banks more. You know, and if you could just keep doing that, it would be, I think it would maybe take

a round or two before something had to give and the banks had to be like, okay, look, you guys got to knock that shit off. We're going to give you 50% off your house. But I think you could, I think if a small percentage of people could band together and not pay their mortgages and then short the system before they missed their first payment, I think you could cause enough pain to the financial sector for, you know, they're, we're watching. These guys that want to be martyrs. You don't want the first people getting arrested. But I mean, if somebody did it, it could work. I think, I think the principle is interesting. And I think, you know, the example of the AMC was, fascinating to watch the internet band together against wall street hedge funds banks are an entirely different area mm a wall street hedge fund has what maybe a hundred billion or maybe a hundred

million to you know 20 billion in assets right these banks are hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and not only that they all sleep in the same bet they're all cross-invested with one right so if all of a sudden you said hey everybody with a fanny may more Let's short it and not pay our mortgage. Yeah, you might get round one. But eventually what's going to happen is they'll be bailed out whether it be the government or through their buddy's investment from other banks or, you know, just that they'll sell off the assets and have it consolidated under something else. And then you end up in a situation where now it's, you know, that no longer affects fanning it. You know, it got sold off.

And so they just took all these problem children and sold them off. to, you know, national debt collection company or whatever, which isn't a, which is in a publicly traded company. So now you shorting their stock, you know, now they come back in round two and their stock rises. Now, you know, depending on what, you close that short, if you saw this coming, yeah, you could play this game. You could go a few rounds with these people, but you really, you know, banks are just a different animal than a hedge fund. You're just talking in orders of magnitude more resources. Yeah.

You know, it's, I'm sure that there's people much smarter than me that have, you know, how many people shorted SVB or how many people shorted First National or, you know, there's people that saw like Peter Thiel and those guys like, yeah, pull your money out of that bank now. And those guys were, I guarantee, I don't know if they were, but I bet you there's people that saw what Peter Thiel was telling people. I was like, maybe I could short this bank and make some money. And they probably did and they probably crushed it.

And that's probably part of the contagion, right? Like, I don't think the people on Wall Street are really affected by integrity or morality. Like, that bank's going down by as short of them as much as you can. Like, just just eat them on the way down. And, you know, it's interesting to see. That's always been that game, yeah. Yeah, right, right. You know, Lehman, Lehman and at some point in time, the government should step in and be like, hey, everybody knock it off.

You know, they're like, okay, well, we'll stop for a week. Yeah, but it's crazy to think about. And I think that, you know, when you think about the restrict act, it's like restrict everything. You know, it's like they're trying to restrict everything. And it wasn't too long ago. If you listen to Jerome Powell, what he was saying is that everyone, well, not everyone, but if you have a job and you're not a multimillionaire, he wants you to stop buying less. Like the banks do not want you to consume anything.

And when you think about that, another way that could be said is restrict the ability to consume. And so the restrict act is a way of restricting people from consuming. And that's, that's, it's like, I see it everywhere. I see it at my work. The level of productivity, people trying to squeeze out of the average employee is not only, you know, immoral and unsafe, but it's unattainable. Like you can't get that level of production that you want. You can't squeeze blood from a rock. You can try, but you're not going to get it.

So it just, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that the people in positions of authority are trying such desperate moves that it's like a boxer in the 15th round that's just throwing haymakers. Like, it's over for you. It's over. You're going down. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, they're just hoping to catch everybody on the chin with one of those haymakers.

And even if you do, all that does is is open up around 16. Yeah. And, but that's what they've been doing kind of successfully for a while, right? So, you know, if it's worked in the past, why, why won't it work this time? Yeah. People love the, and I think it's dumbest saying in the world. If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Or, you know, we've always done it this way type of, those types of things. Yeah. These are silly things. You know, progress is fundamental to humanity. innovation, ingenuity, creativity. These are the things that, the reasons why we're in the positions we're in today. And, yeah, you know, AI is another piece in that puzzle where, you know, these things just, if you always do it the same way, you won't eventually, this actually gets like a smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

or in the windows of opportunity, the ability to move up from social classes. All of these things go away. Even having a middle class goes away. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we're at a confluence of ideas in the world. And the internet kind of kicked it into high gear, I think. And this is what we're seeing is, you know, all of those pieces now being put on the same game board.

and we're looking for the winner. Yeah. It's interesting, this idea of class structure where, you know, on some level, like, on some level, and I'm just thinking out loud here, so I hope this makes sense. On some level, I see this destruction of the middle class and there are only being two classes, maybe like the same way a cell divides into two. But on another level, I see the, breakdown of society as empowering people who are really smart or critical thinking or imaginative,

empowering them to become something that they never had the opportunity to do. And I don't know how those two things fit together. Well, the way I see it is, you know, the people who are becoming aware of this or have been aware of this are, you know, they're gaining skills. They're gaining resources. They understand that, yeah, all. of a sudden I might be farming for five years with no electricity, right? But that will allow the cream to rise to the top because, you know, the only people who will

thrive in a situation where this starts to break down are the people who are prepared for. Otherwise, you're going to be, you know, in the line, in the pig line like we were talking in the last podcast. Just just waiting for your turn to be slaughtered. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I grew up, my father was bipolar, and our house was always chaos. Like, there was 20 things going on or there was nothing going on at all. And so, you know, as I've built my own relationship in my family, my wife is always amazed at my ability to thrive in chaos. Like, dude, you have like five things going on, George, like you're cooking food. You're on a podcast.

You have the music going. Like, how can you even function? And I'm like, oh, this is bliss. Yeah. It's like, oh, I can finally relax. I hear you. It's interesting to see the world becoming chaotic. And in a way, in a way, this idea of relative peace is, is maybe it was fleeting all along.

Like maybe the world is chaos. You know, maybe there's, maybe it's just cycles of chaos and cycles of calm, day and night, winter and summer. As above, so below. Yeah. I mean, it's the ebb and flow. if we look at just kind of the wave structure of everything in the world, you know, you have the ebbs and you have the flows, you have the peaks and you have the valleys. You know, that applies everything from, you know, healthy cells to non-healthy cells all the way up to, you know, the formations of

galaxies and the universe itself. You know, nature is replete with examples of this and to think that somehow we are, you know, above or beyond that is pretty hubristic. Yeah, I had this other idea that I was thinking about. Let me get your thoughts on. You know, I was reading an article the day that talked about how the migration of the magnetic North Pole is speeding up. And, you know, it seems to me, I was recently rereading parts of Ian McGilchrist's book, The Master and His Emissary. He's got a new book out. And it talks about the different, the different hemispheres of the, the, um, different hemispheres of

the brain in the right hemisphere versus the left hemisphere and the verbal analytic side versus the more creative type of visual imagery side. And as I'm thinking about the magnetic north pole kind of switching hemispheres, you know, I'm wondering, wouldn't it make sense that we are beginning to switch hemispheres thinking in our brain? Like if we're part of the planet and the magnetic pole and the hemispheres of the earth are having a pole shift, might it be possible that the dominant hemisphere of the brain is kind of shift or the way we think is being affected by the pole ship. What do you think?

Is that possible? I think it's a stretch to say like directly affected, right? But, no, we're electromagnetic creatures. You know, the whole way this all works is because there's electromagnetic signals being shot around and fired off, right? And so whenever you have a magnetic field, it's going to interact with electrons, with, you know, these electromagnetic firings of the, the human body. We have a sense of magnetoception, right? We can sense magnetic fields. Well, how can

you sense a magnetic field if it's not affecting you in some way? You know, our sense of smell is, is we don't smell everything. We only smell differences in smell. You know, our sense of touch is the difference of touch, right? So, you know, if we have a magnetic sensory part of our brain, then yeah, the difference in a magnetic field is going to affect, you know, potentially everything. That would require some studies, I think, you know, but it would be entirely almost untenable to have a study like that. But yeah, I think absolutely it will have an effect, a direct effect that you could correlate on a graph.

That might be a world more difficult. Yeah, it's a fun idea to think about. And it's, I think that I've been reading quite a bit about the ideas of, I've been reading quite a bit about how for the last maybe 60 years, we have decided that verbal communication, language is a higher order of magnitude than image laden thought. You know, we rely really heavy on the verbal language, but it's often been said that some great painters have regressed into a childlike state in order to have an imagination to draw something. But that just seems like bullshit to me. Like just because this person paints good or is a good poet doesn't mean they're regressing into a childlike state of mind. Maybe it's a superior set of, maybe mental imagery and. maybe mental imagery is a higher order of magnitude than verbal fluency.

Or maybe they're equal. But maybe, you know, it's a weird concept to think about. Well, I mean, you're familiar. A picture's worth a thousand words. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, it's a fairly true statement, I think. You know, I don't think there's too many people who could argue that, you know,

words can, yeah, you can paint a picture with words. But, you know, if I, I could tell you what the beautiful Pikespeak Mountain and looks outside my window. And I could describe the snow on it. And I could describe the different, you know, contours that the sunlight shining on it makes. And I could describe these with great detail over 20 minutes. And then I could show you a picture.

And you'd be like, damn, that's a nice picture. Yeah. And I might be able to see what you saw in that picture or I might be able to see something totally different. But we could both recognize the beauty of it. Indeed. Yeah, that seems to be like almost a great equalizer is this world of images. And, you know, another thought I was having is, you know, because we always find a way to tie this to psychedelics in some way.

But, you know, a lot of people on a high-dose psychedelic trip will see vivid geometrical objects. And on a recent venture that I had, I had this thought that, you know, it's, while it's not something that happens every trip for me, it's something that is repeatable. And I'm wondering if these geometrical images that you see on the back of your audience, eyelids or sometimes even in open eye visuals are some sort of an organizational, organizational or coding pattern. Like maybe you're seeing those geometrical images and that's a coding pattern. It's a sort of organizational pattern. And then you think about Francis Crick's work with the double helix.

Like maybe those images are a form of language that we're only beginning to comprehend. I think so. I've come to similar conclusions over the years. And it seems to be that there's, it's kind of like an internal reflection externally. And because of the broadening of your sensory capacity on psychedelics, now you're kind of getting in touch with the interplay between those two things. Instead of just having that solid filter of a brain that filters out, you know, 30, 40, 50, 90% of this. It was surrounding sensory information just because of your focus and attention.

Now all of a sudden you are, you're basically getting to, you know, be an observer in that process. And so I think a lot of what we see is internal massinations, you know, the firing of different neurons. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And the patterns that that creates reflected into the external stimulus. I'm going to write that down. That's, I didn't think about it like that. But yeah. Yeah. You know, would you say that it could be similar for phosphenes?

You know, like when you close your eyes and you rub them and sometimes you get those white dots or you see like little white veins running through things. Right. You know, it's the cones and rods that you're, I think you're actually breaking when you do that. And so because, you know, of how they reflect or refract light, you know, you break that. Now you get to see kind of, you know, a broken pattern essentially. And until your brain filters that out, you know, through over time, you know, you still see that. You know, like the sunspots staring at the sun.

You know, sometimes those last for a while because they actually damage the rods and cones in your eyes. And so many of them that the effect persists. Man, it's fascinating to think about how. And I haven't done, I haven't looked up, I haven't gone to like Google Skull or looked up any sort of these ideas. I'm, in some ways, Ben, when the world's as crazy as it is, I find myself thinking about all these ideas about linguistic structures or psychedelics or organizing and coding patterns of phosphenes. And, you know, it makes me so thankful and happy. Like, I think we've barely scratched the surface of human knowledge. And so many people are so caught up and like, we're going to murder this.

People are going to do all this. like we're like one we've scratched like one percent off of like what's really happening on this planet oh yeah i mean you know we can't even agree on you know uh climate change for some for an example right we can't even agree on pronouns and gender and all these things that would seem you know that we have the settled science or whatever you want to call it uh you know a meteorologist can still maintain their job and get the forecast 100% wrong 100% of the time. When it comes to what we actually know, no, no, no, we have, I think we know nothing. Hence the no absolutes.

Yeah, that's why I love your book, No Absolute. I'm looking forward to the next one's coming out. I've been reading this, another book called Alternate States of Consciousness. And it's from, it's a series of essays written by different people. and I pulled out this quote that he talks about thinking and internal dialogue and mental imagery. And I wrote down this quote and I would like to read it to you and get your thoughts on it. Sure. The plans with which one approaches one's own awareness of ongoing private experience determined to a great extent,

the probability of increased complexity of associational structures. Yeah, I could see that. That's a fancy way of almost saying no absolutes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, whatever sort of narrative we hold in our heads, right? You know, it's going to add complexity to all of our interactions. Societyal, all sorts of relationships, you know, even how motivated we are to get up and go do something. You know, I'll wake up and do some push-ups.

oh man i i did get the right amount of sleep on groggy uh and you know if if you reflect on these moments we have the internal capacity to move beyond those things you know that's that's kind of one of the fascinating things about humanity you know we can force ourselves into periods of incredible focus uh unparalleled awareness uh and yet by and by most days you walk around like an Atomaton, you know, being blissfully unaware of actually most of the world that's happening around you. And so, you know, I think that focus, you know, when you do have that internal reflection, you do add complexity, but you also, through the addition of complexity, find order in chaos.

That's fascinating because further in that book, they were talking about experiments where they did where they would try to get someone to focus on something. And then they were trying to make. measure the random thoughts that went through someone's mind while they were focusing on something. And they used a word like, we would like you to

focus on this, but make a mental note of the machinations that happen while you're doing the thing you're doing while you're focusing or while you're on autopilot. And one of the examples they use is I guess they studied surgeons. And the surgeons reported that in the later stages when they were sowing victims up, not victims, when they were sewing up, um,

um, they were sewing up, um, when they were sewing up their patients, they found themselves daydreaming about trips and cars and women and these different things. And so they had asked the surgeons, okay, going forward, we would like you to not, when those thoughts come into your mind, try, try to push those away. And they had found over like a period of six months that the doctors that did their best to push away the machinations and daydreams found themselves having more slight snafews in the process of sewing people up. And so the conclusion is that, you know, even though you think your thoughts are random when you're trying to focus, they're not. They're the next thought in the process.

And it, you know, it reminds me of a story of this guy that was getting. getting his black belt. I probably told this before, but, you know, he's, he's like, ah, doing his punches like a thousand times. And he's like, okay, Sonseya, I'm ready for the next move. I've done this punch a million times. And the sense he's like, yeah, punch again. That's the next move. Like, you know, so it's this idea that it's the next thought. How come when I'm washing dishes, I feel like stabbing my cat. That's the next thought in the pathway to what you're doing next.

You know, it's not a random thought. It's connected. And this brought me back. to the idea of geometric structure has been because when you look at this weird 15-sided tesseract you're attracted to the connections that are on that geometric image they're all connected and sometimes when you look at a

geometric image you're like it's so beautiful because look how the back all those weird angles make it all the way to the top and it has that weird shape I think a geometric unique geometric form is part and parcel of

how we think as human beings. And when we push this idea of image-laden imagery to the side and we rely on a verbal cue, I think we're missing out on some deep thoughts. Oh, absolutely. I think even, you know, we have some scientific evidence to kind of support that. If you look at NeurLink and their whole process for doing, for, for accomplishing what they're trying to accomplish is there is a firing of neurons in three-dimensional space. And so when all of those neurons fire in, not just in three-dimensional space, but in sequence.

So in temporal space and three-dimensional space, they all have to fire in a certain way for you to see an apple. And so, you know, if you think about that and you kind of extract that, that is a geometric pattern. It's those moving patterns. It's, you know, and that's why I hypothesize that, you know, those visuals that you see on psychedelics are you basically, observing that process at a visceral level. And it's kind of, you know, you're able to perceive it through your sensory information because there's, you know, you have a sense of interoception. And that's just exceptionally heightened. And so you're basically, you take all of the filters off of the sensory data and you're like, oh, well, now I get to really see this. And then it kind of

mixes because, you know, all of those cortexes and everything moving really close together, you know, That's where we get these neuroplasticity and different connections between different brain regions, the massive firing of all sorts of different neurotransmitters. And I think we're witnessing that process just kind of as the observer at that point. That's beautiful, Ben. I see this is another reason I love talking to you. Like it's on some level, the dimension and reality we're living in is unfolding. Like if you can be the observer, you know, it's like,

when they did Schrodinger's cat, they're like, hey, there's, there's this thing that it's observing that's causing it. But it's almost now, like we're becoming aware that we're the observer. Like, we knew we were observing it. But now, if you know you're the observer, then you can see the neuroplasticity happening as it's happening. Like, that's, that's, that's mind-blowing, right? Like, that's my hypothesis. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I came to over years and years and years and years of this and I you know and done other research of course and I was like you know that actually makes a lot of sense and so I've played with that idea quite a bit and I I think there's a good chunk of scientific evidence to support it and I have a whole bunch of personal you know

just arbitrary evidence I guess but you know it works for me I would I think that should be I think that that should be a whole book man I would read that book probably multiple times just to read all that information. If you just put it down, man, it's freaking beautiful. I love it. And I agree. I agree.

When you say it like you did, it makes sense. Yeah, I love it. I think it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, it is a wonderful thing because not only, you know, for me personally, it was then also that really kind of filtered into,

you know, the information theory, the book, no absolutes, the philosophy behind that, right? Because then it starts to really tie those, you know, intellectual thoughts and verbiage together with the internal imagery and

the external imagery and the interplay between all of that and kind of what it means to be human. Okay. So if we just go down that road a little bit, like let's say that we can observe the firing of neurons in the thought process. What would that mean, Ben? Like, what would that help us, would that help us solve degenerative diseases or like would that open up doors to all kinds of new solutions can you give me some examples of what that what kind of profound things that that would do well i i think you nailed it on the head i think you know you essentially you're you're basically hijacking all of these subconscious processes these you know uh processes of healing even, you know, and we kind of, you know, the big push in psychedelics these days is all about trauma,

trauma, trauma, which is the same idea. Yes. You know, you're physically rewiring something, right? And it's through that awareness, conscious awareness process that you're able to do that. Now, that takes on different modalities for different people because some people, you know, have to relive the experience. Other people can just think about it and be the observer in it, you know, things like that. I think there's more exploration to do with it.

But in hijacking the processes of the body, I think we have untold potential. Okay, so maybe this. Like, I'm on the height of a psychedelic trip, and I'm trying to get over PTSD. And in that trip, I close my eyes and I see a three-dimensional diamond-shaped geometrical object. might that represent the way I need to fire a course of neurons through my brain?

Might that represent a pattern of thinking that will help alleviate the PTSD? Or not necessarily alleviate, but identify where it exists. You know, it might not be seeing that diamond pattern, but it would be, you know, the black spot in it, right? So you're, you know, you're seeing something over here, but it just doesn't seem to complete. Yeah, it's fascinating to think about. Like, why wouldn't it be an internal blueprint? Right. Like, why wouldn't it be that?

Right. That's where I'm coming from. But, you know. Yeah, I think so, too. And if you read the accounts of people who have been helped through traumatic experiences by a course of psychedelics, I think what they're explaining in a lot of cases is neuroplasticity. They're explaining what happened to them.

They're explaining the process of how the damage happened. And then they're explaining about what the account of their life was like after the damage happened. And then they're explaining how they think differently after taking the psychedelics. they're essentially using verbal sequencing to explain how they change the structure of their brain. The internal structure of things. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, this is where intent comes in, right?

Now it's not only that. Now you have the intent of, I want this to be different. I want to change this. And so by going through that process, your intent is able to mold and, through neuroplasticity, reshape those connections in your brain, essentially, potentially curing people. Okay, for someone who is the book, for people just listening, the books called No Absolutes, and there's so many incredible infographics in there.

Ben, can you do an infographic for this particular model that we're talking about? I would love to see a Mr. Wizard, Benjamin George infographic for this, because I think you have a real skill at creating these things that transcend language. And maybe we, I'm going to have to hold your feet to the fire on this one, man. You'll have to hold my feet to the fire, but I'll, I'll add it to the list for sure because it's fascinating to me too. So, you know, it's really easy to get me to do things I'm interested in. Not so easy to get me to do things I'm not, but. I know.

You're preaching to the choir here. You know, I, um, yeah, I, I, I really love that idea. I think about it quite a bit. And it makes sense. And, you know, if you can begin thinking about it. you know, you can begin going deeper into it. And it's like exploring a territory or exploring a new environment. And so many of us on psychedelics have become comfortable with the environment.

Now it's almost like you're beginning to study the objects or the subjects in that environment. It's almost like you're taking out one of Terrence McKinnell's. Yeah, yes. Yeah. You know, and it's so synonymous, Ben, with exploration. you think about the people that, you know, explore a new area and, you know, whether it's you and I going to a cave or whether it was our ancestors moving into a new area, the first thing you do is explore the environment. Then you begin using the tools in the environment. So we say above, as above so below, why wouldn't the exploration of outer space be synonymous with the exploration of inner space? And when you're beginning to see these tools, these three-dimensional objects, these different patterns, how do you use those tools?

You know, it's it's really, I feel like we're really on the cusp of just changing everything. I agree. Amen, brother. And we do it. You can see it in your own lives. Like you can see it people that are going down this. There's so many people in this space, been that both you and I have had on our podcast that both you and I have talked to that, you know, are writing books or are telling their own stories. stories about how they've changed their life. I had a really good podcast yesterday with Kristen Taylor, who was a really beautiful and strong woman.

And she was one of the only people that I've ever talked to that has epilepsy and takes psychedelics. And, you know, I was like, wow. And she was super open and conscious and very giving when she was talking about it. And, you know, she was telling me that, look, she made her own decision to do it, Even though she's in a group of people who are told not to do it, she believes that it's helping her. And she'd also said some other things, too, that I didn't know. She said that her and some other people that may have similar disorders. One thing that they run into is that when they take their meds for epilepsy or bipolar, it makes them feel less than who they are.

I've heard that too. Have you heard that before? Yeah. And it makes sense that psyched. And I had mentioned to her, you know, maybe it's psychedelics that are beginning to, you know, even things out. And she, I recommend people go back and watch the podcast because I had the question I had asked her is, well, if it's you who are the individual and it's you who are feeling as if the psychedelics may be helping you, then who is someone else to tell you that they're not? You know, it's, it's an interesting conundrum. Right. And then, you know, people cite, you know, biases.

and you know things like that um but i think it's you know you touched on something that's important in all of that you know a lot of these things that are prescribed to people for these types of you know what we call mental health conditions um are inhibitors right SSRIs they're inhibitors um a lot of these other things uh you know are different inhibitors for different types of neurotransmitters and whereas something like a psychedelic is you're you're you're a you're just opening up the floodgates, right? And I think it's through opening up the floodgates that we get increased. And there's lots of documentation now in a growing set of it.

You just get a massive amount of neuroplasticity. And that neuroplasticity then can be set in, you know, through, you know, people I call it integration. But I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that. And yeah, you can physically change your body through these experiences, you know, similar to how meditation changes the mind. You know, so we're just really scratching the surface on what's actually possible as an individual to heal oneself. Yeah.

You know, it's fascinating to get to read all these studies and talk to people and, you know, understand what's happening in the mind of someone who's on psychedelics. And I've read some really cool ones. I know you have too. But as we're sitting here talking, you know, I often think about if I could see brain imagery or if I could think of an experiment that I would like to see, you know, what I would like to see that I think would be very fascinating. And if anybody's listening and has means to do this, I think you would break the bank

on this. You know, on the topic of epilepsy, there was a lot of studies done that said if you cut the corpus callosum, all kinds of things happen. One of them is that you have less seizures. Another thing is, if you write with your right hand, if you cut my corpus closom, and they, forgive me for not citing this study, but you could look it up, it's well documented. If they would ask people questions and give them a pen with their right hand and say, what did you want to be when you grew up? And they would write down a firefighter. And then they would take the pen in their left hand and ask them the exact same question. And they would write down, I wanted to be a circus clown.

And then they would tell the person, they would say, look, with your right hand, you said, firefighter, with your left hand, you said, clown. Why did you do that? And then people would deny it that what they had wrote down with the right hemisphere they're bringing. Because that's that, according to the research I read is not the talking part. So they would explain it away like, like, oh, I was just joking around. You know, I'm a clown. I was just playing, but I really want to be a firefighter. You know, and they did all these different studies like that.

So we have seen people take psychedelics and they image the brain. I'm curious what would happen if we took a subset of those people that have epilepsy and have had their corpus clothes and cut. What do you think? Because there's so much connection happening. I'm wondering what it would look like. Might it isolate different centers of the brain and show us what's happening? Or might it show similar sides of the brain lighting up?

That's a good question. If I had to take a guess, I think you would actually see a whole. whole bunch of alternate routes kind of developed. Oh. So, you know, where that was kind of the center point of, you know, the meeting with these things, now I think you're going to see, you know, like the detour. Now it's going through this, you know, the visual cortex and on up to the neo cortex and down to the other side, right?

I think that's what you would have to see from that imaging. If I had to take a guess. Wow. That would be interesting because then that would be. that would be the override. It would be the same way as stroke victim learns to talk again by creating new pathways.

You know, might that... And if that was true, Ben, then that would validate so much of the theories people have about psychedelics or at least some psychedelics or entheogens healing the brain.

Right. Yeah, and I think, you know, we have evidence in other parts of the body. Like when people have, you know, like heart failure. The heart grows. new little pathways like when a ventricle fails, it'll grow little tendrils of pathways in order to continue to operate in the way that it's, you know, kind of programmed to do. So I think,

you know, as above so below, we have other examples of other tissue in the body that already employ this mechanism. And so to assume our brain would be any different, kind of doesn't really add up to the, in the equation. Yeah. It's so fascinating to me. If you could, if you had heart blanche and you could do a study with psychedelics and the body or brain imagery or environment. Can you think of one that you would like to see? Well, I think that would be fascinating. I think just, you know, getting a set of people and, you know, who are, and being able to have all the imaging, all the fMRIs, all of that stuff, being able. And then, you know, being able to view that data in mass because I think that's where you start to see the correlations and the

patterns and the synchronicities between these things. And I think that's where, you know, and then, you know, in, in those studies, you put people to different tasks. Yeah. You have them do different things. Uh, you have them think different ways. You have them draw different pictures. You have them, you know, in just a litany of all this stuff, which essentially, you know,

early psychology kind of did in a really messed up way. Uh, but opposite of that. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think that would be a cool one. There's probably some cool twin studies you could do. I don't know what it would show you, but there's just so much out there right now.

And I feel like the psychedelics on some level has created not only a renaissance in psychedelics, but a renaissance in thinking and ideas. Maybe it's not psychedelics. Maybe it's just the where we, maybe it's a cycle, it's the call yoga or whatever they talk about. Maybe it's just we're coming. into ourselves in a way we haven't done so in a long time. I think, yeah, just like everything else, that's a complex scenario.

I think you can shine a light on it and see multiple facets from different, and all of those can give you different perspectives to the greater whole of what's going on. But I think all of those apply. You know, I think as a society, we're, you know, we're having conversations we've never had. As race, we're, you know, we're in regions of space that we've never been to before. you know, as we've, as we cruise around the galaxy, you know, from a psychedelic perspective, we're having a renaissance of thought from just a, you know, an individual self perspective. You know, the individuality is returning to society, right?

You know, it's now it's not what can you do for your country, but what can, you know, it's what you can do for yourself. And which is interesting because that correlates to some other stuff that's happening in the world, you know, like patriotism, you know, things like community and stuff like that. I saw a really interesting statistic the other day. In 1998, if you ask, they surveyed people and asked them, what do you think is, is patriotism an important aspect of society? 78% of people said absolutely yes. these days in 2023, that number was down to like

20 some percent. Wow. Community was another one. Having kids was another one. So, you know, there's definitely a whole bunch of different ways to look at this. But I think, yeah, we're moving into

a different cycle of what it means to be human on planet Earth. Yeah. Yeah, you can see those things that are that are um you know a lot of people don't have kids a lot of people can't afford to have kids or they choose not to have kids and i wish i mean i i wish it's sad to say but if i had more money i would have more kids but i because i don't have a lot of money i have less kids you know because it's it's it's hard it's interesting when patriotism like i i i love the country i live in and i i

love other countries i don't live in them but they should be free to love where they live like there's nothing really wrong with that. And sometimes I think that the social engineers, much like all of us or other engineers, or just humans in general, like we fail to understand all the moving parts. And so there's all these unintended consequences of, hey, look, let's just tear down these things,

so that everybody gets together. And like, well, you tear down, there's that thing called Chesterson's fence, right? Like, if you just see a fence out in a yard somewhere, you should leave it. Someone put that fence up for a reason, you know? Right. Yeah, you know, it's another, you know, it's like the butterfly effect too.

Yeah. All of a sudden, you know, removing that fence might have seemed like a good idea. Yeah, it allowed your dog to run a little bit further, but then the dog got ran over by a car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think we're moving into rapidly moving into some very interesting changes as society as a whole. Yeah.

Let's take it. If we take it all the way to back to the beginning, the restructing. the restrict act is in an attempt to reinstate all of these rules that went afoul. Like, we don't like that you can talk anymore. We're going to try to bring that back. But the genies left the bottle. And even, you know, you can't go backwards. It's interesting to me because the same group of people that were denouncing one group's arguments,

like you can't go back to the 50s. Now this group is like, listen, we've got to bring things back to the other, you know, we've got to bring things back. Like, you can't. It's going forward. Yeah. The trains are moving. Even if you walk to, even if you, even if you walk back to the last car on the train,

you're still on the moving train. You're still going forward. You can walk to the back car, but you're still going down the tracks. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're cruising around the center of the galaxy moving into space that no human has ever experienced before, every single second that we're talking. We're living in perpetual novelty. And, you know, to, you know, like, where I was saying before, you know, just because we've always done it this way,

we're going to do it this way. You know, these are terrible arguments, right? Because you did it that way over there, but now we're over here. And so over here is a completely different environment. It's a completely different animal. We have to understand what this environment is, create the tools for it to move forward in this new environment that we're now exploring. Yeah.

Okay, so that makes me think that the reason why the majority, of everything is wrong, whether it's science or history or any experiment, is that we never measure all the variables. We get to good enough for now. And that's a good point. It's good enough for now. But now is a second ago. It's good enough for now. That was a second ago.

It's good enough for now. That was a second ago. You know, when you, like, we never measure where we are in the galaxy when we're doing an experiment. And I know people are like, who fucking cares, George? Well, I care because guess what? If we have summer and we have winter because our planet is tilted, our galaxy is kind of tilted. So wouldn't it make sense that if we have different seasons going around the sun, don't we have different seasons going around the galaxy or isn't there different seasons in the galactic year? And if you measure something in August, it's different than in December.

So it matters where you are now. The problem is you don't have the tools to measure that. But we might maybe what we were just talking about, maybe this. idea of understanding geometric, abstract geometric objects as organizational or coding patterns, maybe the tool, those are the tools you need

to understand how you're thinking in the past and how you could think different in the future. Like maybe we're beginning to get tools now. Sure, absolutely. I mean, and that's kind of been the overarching process of humanity, right? Yeah. We've always, you know, we create the tools

that are good enough for now, like you said. You know, they give some sort of, some sort of useful information that we can apply at some scales. And then, you know, we continue to evolve those tools over time, you know, is kind of one of the arguments in my no absolutes is unless you have access to all information from all time, there's no way to really say definitively that this is something. Even if we could measure our movement around the galaxy, we're still moving in the universe. Yeah, we've identified these massive structures like the Virgo cluster that's 500 some light years and incorporates massive amounts of galaxies that are all connected and moving in in tandem together.

You know, so back to just scratching the surface. We haven't even really scratched the surface of where we are in this galaxy, let alone this universe, let alone on this planet for a lot of different things too. Yeah. Yeah, that takes us back to scarcity what we talk about and how easy it is to be, you know, I can't. I think it was Yoda. I'll probably butcher this. I should totally know it, but I don't know it. It's, you know, fear, anger leads to anxiety.

Anxiety leads to fear and fear at the dark side of the force. Something like that, you know, but I know. Like I, when I look at my life, like I, I see myself beginning to emerge from the cocoon of fear that has encapsulated my life for so long. And I think that is what so many people are living in. It's like you're brought up and you're taught, hey, don't do this. Hey, don't do that. Hey, don't do this. Hey, don't do that?

You want to be this, don't you? And so we're cocooned in this idea of fear. And inside fear, there's scarcity because you're in a sport. small little air, there's only a little bit, but, you know, the truth is you can break out of the cycle of fear and you can have abundance. It's there, right? Absolutely. I think, I mean, you know, everything I've seen in my life indicates as much. Yeah. And I would agree with you. I think, you know, I grew up in fear for quite a number of years. And then it wasn't until I started to explore, really. Yeah. Not just the world, but myself too. Yeah. That all of a sudden I woke up and I wasn't

isn't as fearful anymore. And then, you know, I explored a little bit further, took the thoughts to the, you know, what I considered the extremes at the time. Then all of a sudden I got a little less fearful. Then I started finding joy here and there. Then I was like, wait a second. You know, there might be something to this. And I think, you know, it's very foundational in what one's philosophy is. If you look at the world in that scarcity mindset, in that fearful mindset, in that fearful mindset. mindset, your actions become limited to, and this is where all these determinists get their, you know, their ideas. You know, there's only a certain set of actions now, and it's pretty much determined based upon the environmental factors, that that's what it is, except when you live in from a point of abundance, from joy, when you find these things, because your philosophy, in your internal philosophy, how you view the world, isn't constricted, and instead it's completely open. So too does your thoughts,

your freedoms, your experiences, your choices become open. Yeah, that's really well said. Man, I love talking to you, Ben. I feel like I get to walk away with more things to think about and anticipating some new models

that be out in one of the new books, I'm sure. For everybody listening, you can see Ben's book over his right shoulder. It's called No Absolutes. There it is. And I would recommend you do yourself a favor and check it out. It's really, just for the infographics

alone, I think that you would be excited about. But that's just part of the reason you should read. It's full of really awesome information and it provides a lot of clarity to how you can see the world as well as operating it. And I really enjoyed it. And he's

got some new ones coming out, so you should probably read that one first. But before I let you go, Ben, what do you got coming up? Where can people find you? And what are you excited about? Um, Benjamin C.George.com for everything that I'm up to. I have tons of content that I'm just kind of sitting on my hands on. So I'm excited to actually kind of bring that out and start doing some more things on a consistent basis. Trying to get a product out of Mexico is taking up the first part of my year. You know, it's manana, manana, maniana. Always. Yeah, I'm actually, when the day it actually shifts, I'm going to declare it a holiday and call it not mania day.

So hopefully all that happens soon and then I can get back into the content world. But always looking forward to more conversations with you, George. Likewise, you know, even having an answer that I've thought about before and then vocalizing it in the context of the conversation that we have. gives me the same thing, gives me new models to think about, gives me new ideas for infographics, even if somebody is holding the feet to my fire. So thank you and, yeah, hi, have a good day, everybody. Yeah, hello, everyone. Thanks for hanging out with us.