Kind: captions
Language: en
evolutionarily we you know if we see a
lion running at us we didn't have time
to sort of calculate the lion's kinetic
energy and you know is it optimal to go
this way or that way you just reacted
and
physically our bodies are well attuned
to actually make right decisions but
when you're playing a game like poker
this is not something that you ever you
know evolved to do and yet you're in
that same flight or fight response um
and so that's a really important skill
to be able to develop to basically learn
how to like
meditate in the moment and calm yourself
so that you can think clearly
the following is a conversation with liv
marie
formerly one of the best poker players
in the world trained as an
astrophysicist and is now a
philanthropist and an educator on topics
of game theory physics complexity and
life
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's liv
bree
what role do you think luck plays in
poker and in life you can pick whichever
one you want poker or life and or life
the longer you play
the less influence luck has you know
like with all things the bigger your
sample size
um the more the quality of your
decisions or your strategies matter
um so
to answer that question yeah in poco it
really depends if you and i sat and
played
ten hands right now i might only win 52
of the time 53 maybe
um but if we played 10 000 hands then
i'll probably win like
over 98 99 of the time so
it's a question of sample sizes
and what are you figuring out over time
the betting strategy that this
individual does or literally doesn't
matter against any individual over time
against any individual over time the
better player because they're making
better decisions so what does that mean
to make a better decision well
ah to get into the real nitty-gritty
already um basically
poker is a game of math
um there are these strategies familiar
with like nash equilibria that's yes
right so there are these game theory
optimal strategies that you can adopt um
and the closer you play to them the less
exploitable you are
so
because i've studied the game a bunch um
although admittedly not for a few years
but back in you know when i was playing
all the time um i would study these game
theory optimal solutions
and try and then adopt those strategies
when i go and play so i'd play against
you and i would do that
and
because
the objective when you're playing game
theory optimal it's actually it's a loss
minimization thing that you're trying to
do um your best bet is to try and play
uh the sort of similar style you also
need to try and adopt this loss
minimization
um but because i've been playing much
longer than you i'll be better at that
so first of all you're not taking
advantage of my mistakes but then on top
of that
i'll be better at recognizing
when you are playing sub-optimally and
then deviating from this game theory
optimal strategy to exploit your bad
plays
can you define game theory and nash
equilibria
can we try to sneak up to it in a bunch
of ways like oh what's the game theory
framework of analyzing poker analyzing
any kind of situation so game theory is
just basically the
study of
decisions within a competitive situation
um i mean it's stately a branch of
economics um but it also applies to like
wider decision theory um and
you know usually when you see it it's
these like little payoff matrices and so
on that's how it's depicted but it's
essentially just like study of
strategies under different competitive
situations
um
and as it happens certain games in fact
many many games um have these things
called nash equilibria and what that
means is when you're in a nash
equilibrium basically uh it is not
there is no strategy
that you can take
that would be more beneficial than the
one you're currently taking assuming
your opponent is also doing the same
thing um so it'd be a bad idea you know
if we're both playing a in you know a
game three optimal strategy if either of
us deviate from that now
the other you know the we're putting
ourselves at a disadvantage um rock
paper scissors is actually a really
great example of this like if we
to were to start playing rock paper
scissors you know you know nothing about
me and we're going to play
for all our money let's play 10 rounds
of it what would your sort of optimal
strategy be do you think what would you
do
um
let's see
i
would
probably try to be as random as possible
exactly you want to because you don't
know anything about me
you don't want to give anything about a
way about yourself so ideally you'd have
like a little dice or somewhat you know
perfect randomizer that makes you
randomize 33 of the time each of the
three different things and in response
to that
um well actually i can kind of do
anything but i would probably just
randomize back too but actually it
wouldn't matter because you're i know
that you're playing randomly um so that
would be us in a nash equilibrium um
where we're both playing this like
unexploitable strategy
however if after a while you then notice
that i'm playing rock a little bit more
often than i should yeah you're the kind
of person that would do that wouldn't
you sure yes yes yes i'm more of a
scissors girl but anyway you are uh no
i'm a as i said randomizer uh
so you notice i'm throwing rock too much
or something like that right now you'd
be making a mistake by continuing
playing this game theory optimal
strategy because well the previous one
because
you are now
there's an i'm making a mistake and
you're not deviating and exploiting my
mistake um so you'd want to start
throwing paper a bit more often um in
whatever you figure is the right sort of
percentage of the time that i'm throwing
rock too often so that's basically an
example of where you know what what game
three optimal strategy is in terms of
loss minimization but it's not always uh
the maximally profitable thing if your
opponent is doing stupid stupid stuff
which you know in that example so that's
kind of then how it works in poker but
it's a lot more complex
um and the way poker players typically
you know nowadays they study the games
change so much and i think we should
talk about how it sort of evolved um but
nowadays like the top pros basically
spend all their time
in between sessions
running these simulators
uh using like software where they do
basically monte carlo simulations sort
of doing
billions of fictitious self-play
hands
you input a
fictitious hand scenario like oh what do
i do with jack nine suited on a
king ten four two two spade board um uh
and and you know against this bet size
so you'd input that press play it'll run
it's it's uh you know it's billions of
fake hands and then it'll converge upon
what the game theory optimal strategies
are um
and then you want to try and memorize
what these are basically they're like
ratios of how often you know what types
of hands uh you want to bluff and what
percentage of the time so then there's
this additional layer of inbuilt
randomization built in yeah those those
kind of simulations incorporate all the
betting strategies and everything else
like that so they
so as opposed to some kind of very crude
mathematical model of what's the
probability you went just based on the
quality of the card uh it's including
everything else too the the game theory
of it yes
yeah essentially and what's interesting
is that nowadays if you want to be a top
pro and you go and play in these really
like the super high stakes tournaments
or tough cash games if you don't know
this stuff you're going to get eaten
alive in the long run yeah but of course
you could get lucky over the short run
and that's where this like luck factor
comes in because
luck is both a blessing and a curse
if luck didn't you know if there wasn't
this random element and there wasn't the
ability for
worse players to win sometimes then
poker would fall apart
you know the same reason people don't
play chess
professionally for money against
you don't see people going and hustling
uh chess like not knowing
trying to make a living from it because
you know there's very little luck in
chess but there's quite a lot of luck in
poker have you seen a beautiful mind
that movie years ago well what do you
think about the game theoretic
formulation of
uh what is it the hot blonde at the bar
do you remember like oh yeah the way
they illustrated it is they're trying to
pick up a girl at a bar and there's
multiple girls they're like friend it's
like a friend group and you're trying to
approach i don't remember the details
but i remember don't you like then speak
to her friends yeah yeah like that fame
disinterest i mean it's classic pick-up
artist stuff right you you want to and
they were trying to uh correlate that
somehow that being an optimal strategy
a
game theoretically why
why what like i don't think i remember
don't imagine that there i mean there's
probably an optimal strategy is it
does that mean that there's an actual
nash equilibrium of like picking up
girls do you know the uh the marriage
problem it's optimal stopping yes so
where it's an optimal dating strategy
where you
uh do you remember yeah i think it's
like something like you you you know
you've got like a set of 100 people
you're going to look through and after
how many
do you
now after that after going on this many
dates out of a hundred at what point do
you then go okay the next best person i
see is that the right one and i think
it's like something like 37 percent
uh
it's one over e whatever that is right
which i think is
yeah
we're gonna fact-check that
um
yeah so but it's funny under those
strict constraints then yes after that
many people as long as you have a fixed
sized pool
then you just pick the the per the next
person that is better than anyone you've
seen before yeah
um
have you have you tried this have you
incorporated it i'm one of those people
i might we're and we're going to discuss
this i
and
what do you mean those people
i try not to optimize stuff i try to uh
listen to the heart
i don't
think
um i
like my mind immediately is attracted to
optimizing everything and i think that
if if you really give in to that kind of
addiction that you lose the
the joy of the small things the minutia
of life i think i don't know it says i'm
concerned about the addictive nature of
my personality in that regard in some
ways
while i think the on average people
under try and quantify things or try
under optimize um there are some people
who you know it's like with all these
things it's a you know it's a balancing
act i've been on dating apps but i've
never used them
i i'm sure they have data on this
because they probably have the optimal
stopping control problem because aren't
a lot of people that use social like
dating apps are on there for a long time
so the the the interesting
the interesting aspect is like all right
how long before you stop looking before
it actually starts affecting your mind
negatively such that you see
dating as a kind of
um
a game a kind of game versus an actual
uh
process of finding somebody that's going
to make you happy for the rest of your
life that's really interesting uh they
have the data i wish they would be able
to release that data and i do want to
it's okay cupid right i think they ran a
huge huge study on all of their yeah
they're more data-driven i think
what folks are yeah i think there's a
lot of opportunity for dating apps in
general you know even bigger than dating
apps people connecting on the internet i
just hope they're more data driven
and it doesn't seem that way
i think like uh i've always want i
always thought that um
good reads should be a dating app
like uh i've never used it the goodreads
is a good reason just list
like books that you've read okay and
allows you to comment on the books you
read and what books you're currently
reading it's a giant social networks of
people reading books and that seems to
be a much better database of like
interests of course to constrain you to
the books you're reading but like
that really reveals so much more about
the person allows you to discover shared
interests because books are kind of
window into the way you see the world
also like the kind of places
people you're curious about the kind of
ideas you're curious about are you a
romantic or are you called calculating
rationalists are you
are you into iron rand or are you into
bernie sanders are you into whatever
right and i feel like that reveals so
much more than like a a person
trying to look hot from a certain angle
and a tinder profile and it would also
be a really great filter
in the first place for people it selects
for people who read books and are
willing to go and
rate them and
give feedback on them and so on so
that's already a really strong filter
probably the type of people you'd be
looking for well at least be able to
fake reading books i mean the thing
about books you don't really need to
read it you can just game
yeah game the dating app by feigning
intellectualism can i admit something
very horrible about myself go on the
things that you know i don't have many
things in my closet but this is one of
them
i've never actually really read
shakespeare i've only read cliff notes
and i got a five in the ap english uh
exam
and i took
uh the which books have i read oh yeah
which was the the exam on which oh no
they they include a lot of them um
but hamlet
uh i don't even know if you read romeo
and juliet
uh macbeth i don't remember but i don't
understand it it's like really cryptic
it's hard it's really i don't and it's
not that pleasant to read it's like
ancient speak i don't understand it
anyway maybe i was too dumb i'm still
too dumb but uh
i did go to five which is yeah yeah i
don't know how the u.s grading system oh
no so ap english is a
there's kind of this advanced versions
of courses in high school and you take a
test that is like a broad test for that
subject and includes a lot it wasn't
obviously just shakespeare i think a lot
of it was also writing
uh written you have like ap physics ap
computer science ap biology ep chemistry
and then ap english or ap literature i
forget what it was
but i think shakespeare was a part of
that but i and you and your gamer the
point is you gamified it
well entirety i was into getting a's
i saw it as a game
i don't think any
i don't think all the learning i've done
has been outside of the outside of
school the deepest learning i've done
has been outside of school with a few
exceptions especially in grad school
like deep computer science courses but
that was still outside of school because
it was outside of getting site it was
outside of getting the a for the course
the best stuff i've ever done is
when you read the chapter and you do
many of the problems at the end of the
chapter which is usually not what's
required for the course like the hardest
stuff
in fact textbooks are freaking
incredible if you go back now and you
look at like biology textbook or
or
any of the computer science textbooks on
algorithms and data structures those
things are incredible they have the best
summary of a subject plus they have
practice problems of increasing
difficulty that allows you to truly
master the basic like the fundamental
ideas behind that that was i go through
my entire physics degree
with one textbook that was just really
comprehensive one that they told us at
the beginning of the first year buy this
but you're gonna have to buy
15 other books for all your
supplementary courses and i was like
every time i just checked to see whether
this book covered it and it did
and i think i only bought like two or
three extra and thank god because
they're so super expensive textbooks
it's a whole racket they've got going on
um
yeah they are they could just
you get the right one it's just like a
manual for
but what's interesting though
is
this is the tyranny of of having exams
and metrics it's the journey of exams
and metrics yes i loved them because i
loved i'm very competitive and i liked
yes i liked finding ways to gamify
things and then like sort of dust off my
shoulders afterwards when i get get a
good grade or be annoyed at myself when
i didn't um but yeah you're absolutely
right and that the actual
you know how much of that physics
knowledge i've retained like i've
i learned how to cram and study and
please an examiner but did that give me
the deep lasting knowledge that i needed
i mean yes yes and no
um but really like nothing makes you
learn
a topic better than when you actually
then have to teach it yourself
um you know like i'm trying to wrap my
teeth around this like game theory molok
stuff right now and
there's no exam at the end of it
uh that i can gamify there's no way to
gamify and sort of like shortcut my way
through it i have to understand it so
deeply from like deep foundational
levels to them to build upon it and then
try and explain it to other people and
like you know you're about to go and do
some lectures right you you
you can't you can't sort of just like
you probably presumably can't rely on
the knowledge that you got through when
you were studying for an exam
to reteach that yeah and especially high
level lectures especially the kind of
stuff you do on youtube
you're not just regurgitating material
you have to
think through
what is the core idea here and
when you do the lectures live especially
you have to
there's no
second takes
that is a luxury you get if you're
recording a video for youtube or
something like that
but
it definitely is a luxury you shouldn't
lean on
i've gotten to interact with a few
youtubers that lean on that too much
and you realize oh you're
you've gamified this system because
you're not really thinking deeply about
stuff you're through the edit both
written and uh
spoken
you're crafting an amazing video but you
yourself as a human being have not
really deeply understood it so live
teaching or at least on recording video
with very few takes is is uh is a
different beast and i think it's it's
the most honest way of doing it like as
few takes as possible that's why i'm
nervous about this
don't go back ah let's do that don't
this up liv
uh
the tyranny of exams i do think you know
people
talk about you know high school and
college
as a time to do drugs and drink and have
fun and all this kind of stuff but
you know looking back
of course i did a lot of those things
no uh yes but
it's also a time
when you get to
like read textbooks or read books or
learn
with all the time in the world
like you don't have these
responsibilities of like
uh
you know
laundry and uh
having to sort of uh pay for mortgage or
all that kind of stuff pay taxes all
this kind of stuff uh in most cases
there's just
so much time in the day for learning and
you don't realize it at the time because
at the time it seems like a chore like
why the hell does there's so much
homework but you never get a chance to
do this kind of learning this kind of
homework
ever again in life unless later in life
you really make a big effort out of it
you get so like you basically your
knowledge gets solidified you don't get
you don't get to have fun and learn
learning is really
is really fulfilling and really fun if
you're that kind of person like some
people
like to you know like knowledge is not
something that they think is fun but if
if that's a kind of thing that you think
is fun
that's the time to have fun and do the
drugs and drinking all that kind of
stuff but the learning
just going back to those textbooks
the hours spent with the textbooks is uh
is really really rewarding do people
even use textbooks anymore yeah do you
think because
there's days with their well
well not even that but just like
so much information really high quality
information you know is now in digital
format online
um yeah but they're not they are using
that but you know college is still very
there's a curriculum
i mean so much of school is about
rigorous study of a subject and still on
youtube
that's not there right youtube has um
uh grant sanderson talks about this he's
the this masterpiece
yeah three blue one brown
he says like i'm not a math teacher i
just take really cool concepts and i
inspire people but if you want to really
learn calculus if you want to really
learn linear algebra you just you should
do the textbook you should do that you
know and there's still
the uh the textbook industrial complex
that that like charges like two hundred
dollars for a textbook and somehow i
don't know this it's ridiculous
well they're like oh sorry new edition
edition 14.6 sorry you can't use 14.5
anymore it's like what's different we've
got one paragraph different
so we mentioned offline daniel negrano
um i'm going to get a chance to talk to
him on this podcast and he's somebody
that i was i found fascinating in terms
of the way he thinks about poker
verbalizes the way he thinks about poker
the way he plays poker
so
and he's still pretty damn good he's
been good for a long time so you
mentioned
that people are running these kind of
simulations and the game of poker has
changed
do you think he's adapting in this way
do you like the top pros do they have to
adopt this way or is there is there
still like
over years
you basically develop this gut feeling
about
like you you get to be like good the way
like alpha zero is good you look at the
board
and
somehow from the fog comes out the right
answer like this is likely what they
have this is likely the best way to move
and you don't really you can't really
put a finger on exactly why
but it just comes from your gut feeling
or no
yes and no
so gut feelings are definitely very
important um you know that we've got our
two mo
you can distill it down to two modes of
decision making right you've got your
sort of logical linear voice in your
head system two as it's often called and
your system on your
your gut intuition
um
and
historically in poker
the very best players were playing
almost entirely by their gut
um you know often they'd do some kind of
inspired play and you'd ask them why
they do it and they wouldn't really be
able to explain it um and that's
not so much because their process was
unintelligible but it was more just
because no one unders no one had the
language with which to describe what
optimal strategies were because no one
really understood how poker worked this
was before you know we had analysis
software you know no one was
writing you know if i guess some people
would write down their hands in a little
notebook but there was no way to
assimilate all this data and analyze it
but then you know with when computers
became cheaper and software started
emerging and then obviously online poker
where it would like automatically save
your hand histories um now all of a
sudden you kind of had this this body of
data that you could run analysis on
and so that's when people started to see
you know these mathematical solutions
and
um
and so what that meant
is the
the role of intuition essentially became
smaller
um
and it it meant more into as as we
talked before about you know this game
theory optimal style but as
also as i said like game theory optimal
is about um
loss minimization and being
unexploitable but if you're playing
against people who aren't because no one
person no human being can play perfectly
game through optimal in poker not even
the best ais they're still like they're
not you know they're 99.99 of the way
there or whatever but this it's kind of
like the speed of light you can't reach
it perfectly so there's still a role for
intuition yes so
when yeah when
you're playing this unexploitable style
but when your opponents start doing uh
something you know sub-optimal that you
want to exploit well now that's where
not only your like logical brain will
need to be thinking well okay i know i
have this my i'm in the sort of top end
of my range here with this with this
hand
so that means i need to be calling x
percent of the time um and i put them on
this range et cetera
but then
sometimes you'll have this gut feeling
that will tell you
you know
you know what this time i know i know
mathematically i'm meant to call now you
know i've got i'm in the sort of top end
of my range and
um these this is the odds i'm getting so
the math says i should call but there's
something in your gut saying they've got
it this time they've got it like uh
they're beating you maybe your hand is
worse um so then the the real art this
is where the last remaining art in poker
the fuzziness uh is like do you listen
to your gut how do you quantify the
strength of it or can you even quantify
the strength of it um and i think that's
what daniel
has i mean i i can't speak for how much
he's studying with with with the
simulators and that kind of thing i
think he has like he must be to still be
keeping up um but he has an incredible
intuition
for just he's seen so many hands of
poker in the flesh he's seen so many
people the way they behave when the
chips are you know when the money's on
the line and you've got him staring you
down in the eye you know he's
intimidating he's got this like kind of
x factor vibe that he you know
gives out and he talks a lot which is an
interactive element which is he's
getting stuff from other people yes
yeah just like the subtlety so he's like
he's probing constantly yeah he's
probing and he's getting this extra
layer of information that others can't
now that said though he's good online as
well you know i don't know how again
would he be beating the top
cash game players online probably not no
um
but when he's in in person and he's got
that additional layer of information he
he can not only extract it but he knows
what to do with it um still so well
there's one player who i would say is
the exception to all of this
um and he's one of my favorite people to
talk about in terms of
i think he might have cracked the
simulation uh is phil hellmuth
uh he
in more ways than one he's a practice
simulation i think yeah he
somehow to this day is still and i love
you phil don't i'm not in any way
knocking you um he's still winning
so much at the world series of poker
specifically um he's now on 16 bracelets
the next nearest person i think has won
ten um
and he is consistently year in year out
going deep or winning these huge field
tournaments you know with like 2 000
people
um which statistically he should not be
doing
and
and yet
you watch some of the plays he makes and
they make no sense like mathematically
they are so far from game theory optimal
yeah and the thing is if you went and
stuck him in one of these like high
stakes cash games with a bunch of like
gto people he's gonna get ripped apart
but there's something that he has that
when he's in the halls of the world
series of poker specifically um
amongst sort of amateurish players
he gets them to do crazy like that
and and
but my little pet theory is that also
he
just the car he he's he's like a wizard
and he gets the cards to do what he
needs them to do
because he
ex he just expects to win and he expects
to rece you know to get flopper set with
a frequency far beyond what this you
know the the the real percentages are
and i don't even know if he knows what
the real percentages are he doesn't need
to because he gets there i think he has
found the chico because when i've seen
him play he seems to be like annoyed
that the long shot thing didn't happen
yes
he's like annoyed and it's almost like
everybody else is stupid because he was
obviously going to win with us
if that silly thing hadn't happened and
it's like you understand the silly thing
happens 99 of the time and it's a one
percent not the other way around but
genuinely for his lived experience at
the well only at the monster as a poker
it is like that so i don't blame him for
feeling that way um but he does he has
this he has this x factor and
the poker community has tried for years
to rip him down saying like you know he
doesn't he's no good but he's clearly
good because he's still winning or
there's something going on whether
that's he's figured out how to
mess with the fabric of reality and how
cards
are you know a randomly shuffled deck of
cards come out i don't know what it is
but he's doing doing it right still who
do you think is the greatest of all time
would you put hellmuth
no no he's definitely he seems like the
kind of person would mention he would
actually watch this so you might want to
be careful as i said i love phil and i
and i'm i'm i have i would say this to
his face i'm not saying anything i don't
he's got he truly i mean he is one of
the greatest yeah i don't know if he's
the greatest he's certainly the greatest
at the world series of poker
and he is the greatest at
despite the game switching into a
pure game almost an entire game of math
he has managed to keep the magic alive
and this like just through sheer force
of will making the game work for him and
that is incredible and i think it's
something that should be studied because
it's an example
yeah there might be some actual game
theoretic wisdom there there might be
something to be said about optimality
from studying him
right what do you mean by optimality
meaning
uh or rather game design perhaps
meaning if what he's doing is working
maybe
poker is more complicated than we're
currently modeling it as so like or
there's an extra layer and i don't mean
to get too weird and wooy
but
or there's an extra layer of
ability to manipulate the things the way
you want them to go that we don't
understand yet
do you think phil hellmuth understands
them is he just generally hashtag
positivity
he wrote a book on positivity and he has
yes he did
positivity trolling books no a
wrote a book about positivity yes
okay
about i think and i think it's about
sort of manifesting what you want
and getting the outcomes that you want
by believing so much in yourself and in
your ability to win like eyes on the
prize
um
and i mean it's working the man's
delivered
where do you put like phil ivey and all
those kinds of people um i mean i'm too
i've been
to be honest too much out of the scene
for the last few years to really
i mean phil ivey's clearly got again
he's got that x factor um
he's so incredibly intimidating to play
against i've only played against him a
couple of times but when he like looks
you in the eye and you're trying to run
a bluff on him no one's made me sweat
harder than phil ivey just
um my my bluff got through actually
that was actually one of the most
thrilling moments i've ever had in poker
was it was in a monte carlo and a high
roller i can't remember exactly what the
hand was but um i i you know i three bit
and then like just barreled all the way
through
and he just like put his laser eyes into
me and i felt like he was just scouring
my soul
and i was just like hold it together
live hold
together weaker
you know your hand a it
yeah i mean i was bluffing i i presume
which you know there's a chance i was
bluffing with the best hand but i'm
pretty sure my hand was worse um and
uh and he folded
i was truly one of my one of the deep
highlights of my correct did you show
the cards are you useful
what would you you should never show in
game like because especially as i felt
like i was one of the worst players at
the table in that tournament so
giving that information unless i had a
really solid plan that i was now like
advertising oh look i'm capable of
bluffing phil ivey but like why
it's much more valuable
to take advantage of the impression that
they have of me which is like i'm a
scared girl playing a high roller for
the first time keep that going you know
interesting but isn't there layers to
this like psychological warfare that the
scared girl
might be way smart and then like to to
flip the tables do you think about that
kind of stuff or definitely i mean not
going to reveal information i mean
generally speaking you want to not
reveal information you know the goal of
poker is to be as
deceptive as possible about your own
strategies while
elucidating as much out of your opponent
about their own
so
giving them free information
particularly if they're people who you
consider very good players
any information i give them is going
into their little database and being i
assume it's going to be calculated and
used well
so i have to be really confident that my
like meta gaming that i'm going to then
do or they've seen this so therefore
that i'm going to be on the right level
um so it's better just to keep that
little secret to myself in a moment so
how much is bluffing part of the game
huge amount
so yeah i mean maybe actually let me ask
like what did it feel like with the ivy
or anyone else when it's a high stake
when it's a big
it's a big bluff
um so a lot of money on the table
and maybe
i mean what defines a big bluff maybe a
lot of money on the table but also some
uncertainty in your
mind and heart about
like self-doubt well maybe i
miscalculated what's going on here what
the bet said all that kind of stuff like
what does that feel like
i mean it's
i imagine comparable to
you know running a
i mean any kind of big bluff where you
have a lot of something that you care
about on the line
you know so if you're
bluffing in a courtroom not that anyone
should ever do that or you know
something equatable to that it's it's
incr
you know in that scenario you know i
think it was the first time i'd ever
played a 20 i'd won my way into this 25k
tournament
so that was the buy in 25 000 euros and
i had satellited my way in because it
was much bigger than i would never ever
normally play
and you know i hadn't i wasn't that
experienced at the time and now i was
sitting there against all the big boys
you know the negra news the fill ivs and
so on um
and then
uh to like
you know each time you put the bets out
you know you put another bet out
your car yeah i was on a what's called a
semi-bluff so there were some cards that
could come that would make my hand very
very strong and therefore win but most
of the time those cards don't come so
that it's the same above because you're
representing what are you representing
that you already have something
so i think in this scenario i had a
flush draw two two so i had two clubs
two two clubs came out on the flop and
then i'm hoping that on the turn in the
river one will come so i have some
future equity i could hit a club and
then i'll have the best hand in which
case great um and so i can keep betting
and i'll want them to call but i'm also
got the other way of winning the hand
where if my
card doesn't come i can keep betting and
get them to fold their hand
and i'm pretty sure that's what the
scenario was
um so i had some future equity but it's
still you know most of the time i don't
hit that club and so i would rather him
just fold because i'm you know the pot
is now getting bigger and bigger and in
the end like i jam all jam all in on the
river
that's my entire tournament on the line
as far as i'm aware this might be the
one time i ever get to play a big 25k
you know this is the first time i played
once so it was
it felt like the most momentous thing
and this is also when i was trying to
build myself up you know build my name a
name for myself in in poker i wanted to
get respect destroy everything for you
it felt like it in the moment like i
mean it literally does feel like a form
of life and death like your body
physiologically is having that flight or
fight response what are you doing with
your body what are you doing with your
face are you just like
what are you thinking about
a mixture of like okay what are the
cards so
in theory i'm thinking about like okay
what are cards that look make my hand
look stronger which you know which cards
hit my perceived range from his
perspective which cards don't um what's
the right amount of bet size to you know
maximize my fold equity in this
situation you know that's the logical
stuff that i should be thinking about
but i think in reality because i was so
scared because there's this at least for
me there's a certain threshold of like
nervousness or stress beyond which the
like logical brain shuts off
and now it just gets into this like
it's just like it feels like a game of
wits basically it's like of nerve can
you hold your hold your resolve
um and it certainly got by that like by
the river at this i think by that point
i was like i don't even know if this is
a good bluff anymore but it let's
do it your mind is almost numb from the
intensity of that feeling i call it the
white noise
and and that's this
and it happens in all kinds of decision
making i think anything that's really
really stressful like i can imagine
someone in like an important job
interview if it's like a job they've
always wanted and they're getting
grilled you know like bridgewater style
where they ask these very like really
hard like mathematical questions
you know that's it's a really learned
skill to be able to like
subdue
your flight or fight response you know
what i think get from the sympathetic
into the parasympathetic so you can
actually you know engage the that voice
in your head and do those slow logical
calculations because evolutionarily we
you know if we see a lion running at us
we didn't have time to sort of calculate
the line's kinetic energy and you know
is it optimal to go this way or that way
you just reacted and
physically our bodies are well attuned
to actually make right decisions but
when you're playing a game like poker
this is not something that you ever you
know evolved to do and yet you're in
that same flight or fight response
and so that's a really important skill
to be able to develop to basically learn
how to like
meditate in the moment and calm yourself
so that you can think clearly
but as you were searching for
a comparable thing it's interesting
because i you just made me realize that
bluffing is
like an incredibly high stakes form of
lying
you're you're you're lying
and i don't think you're telling a story
it's not it's straight up lying
in in the context of game
it's not a negative kind of lying
but it is yeah exactly you are you're
i'm you're representing something that
you don't have and i was thinking like
in how often in life
do we have such high stakes of lying
because i was thinking um
certainly in
high-level military strategy i was
thinking um
when hitler was lying to stalin
about his plans
to invade the soviet union
and so you're you're you're talking to a
person like your friends
and uh you're fighting against the enemy
whatever the the the formulation that
enemy is but
meanwhile whole time you're building up
troops on the border
um
that's extremely wait so hitler and
stalin were like pretending to be
friends yeah my history knowledge is
terrible that's crazy yeah that they
were
uh yeah
man
uh and it worked because stalin until
the troops crossed the border and
invaded
in operation barbarossa where they
this storm of nazi troops invaded large
parts of the soviet union and hence one
of the biggest wars in human history
uh began
stalin for sure was thought that this
was uh never going to be uh that hillary
is not crazy enough
to invade the soviet union that they it
makes geopolitically makes total sense
to be collaborators and ideologically
even though there's a tension between
communism and fascism or uh national
socialism however you formulated it
still feels like this is the right way
to battle the west right
they were more ideologically aligned you
know they in theory had a common enemy
which is the west so
made total sense and in terms of
negotiations and the way things were
communicated
it um it seemed to stalin that for sure
that
they would remain at least for a while
uh peaceful collaborators and uh that
uh and everybody everybody because of
that in the soviet union believed that
it was a huge shock when kiev was
invaded and you hear echoes of that when
i traveled to ukraine sort of the shock
of
the invasion
it's not just the invasion on one
particular border but the invasion of
the capital city and just like holy
especially at that time
when you thought world war one
you realized that that was the war that
to end all wars you would never have
this kind of war
and holy this this person is mad
enough to try to take on this monster in
the soviet union
uh so it's not no longer going to be a
war of hundreds of thousands dead it'll
be a war of tens of millions dead and um
yeah but that
like you know that's a very large scale
kind of lie but i'm sure there's in
politics and geopolitics that kind of
lying happening all the time
uh and a lot of people pay financially
and with their lives for that kind of
lying but in our personal lives i don't
know how often we
uh maybe we i think people do i mean
like think of spouses cheating on their
partners right and then like having to
lie like where were you last night stuff
that's tough yeah like that's
i think
you know i mean unfortunately that stuff
happens all the time right so or having
like multiple families that one is great
when when each family doesn't know the
other about the other one and like
maintaining that life
there's probably a sense of excitement
about that
too um
or it seems unnecessary yeah but why
well just lying like like you know
the truth finds a way of coming out you
know yes but hence that's the thrill
yeah perhaps yeah people i mean and
you know that's that's why i think
actually like poker what what's so
interesting about poker is
most of the best players i know they're
always exceptions you know they're
always bad eggs
but actually poker players are very
honest people i would say they are more
honest than the average you know if you
just took random
uh random population example um because
a you know i think you know humans like
to have that
most people like to have some kind of
you know mysterious you know an
opportunity to do something like a
little edgy
so we get to sort of scratch that itch
of being edgy at the poker table where
it's like it's part of the game everyone
knows everyone knows what they're in for
and that's allowed and you get to like
really get that out of your system
um
and then also like
poker players learned that you know i'll
you know i would play in a huge game
against some of my friends even my
partner igor where we will be you know
absolutely going at each other's throats
trying to draw blood in terms of winning
each money off each other and like
getting under each other's skin winding
each other up
um doing the craftiest moves we can
but then once the game's done
the you know the winners and the losers
will go off and get a drink together and
have a fun time and like talk about it
in this like weird academic way
afterwards because that and that's why
games are so great because you get to
like live out
our like this competitive urge that you
know most people have what's it feel
like to lose
like we talked about bluffing when it
worked out
what about when you
when you go broke
so like in a game i i'm you know
unfortunately i've never gone broke um
um i know plenty of people who have um
uh
and i don't think eagle would mind me
saying he went you know he went broke
once in pokeball you know early on when
we were together i feel like you haven't
lived unless you've gone broke oh yeah i
i in some sense right well i i i mean
i'm happy i i've sort of lived through
it vicariously through him when he did
it at the time
but yeah what is it like to lose well it
depends so it depends on the amount it
depends what percentage of your net
worth you've just lost
um
it depends on your brain chemistry it
really you know varies from person to
person you have a very cold calculating
way of thinking about this uh so it
depends what percentage
well it really does right yes
but that's i mean
that's another thing poker trains you to
do you see you you see everything in
percentages um or you see everything in
like roi or expected hourlies or cost
benefit etc you know so
um
that's
i i one of the things i've tried to do
is calibrate the strength of my
emotional response to the to the win or
loss that i've
received
because it's it's no good if you like
you know you have a huge emotional
dramatic response to a tiny loss um or
on the flip side you have a huge win and
you're so dead inside that you don't
even feel it well that's you know that's
a shame i want my emotions to calibrate
with reality as much as possible
um
so yeah what's it like to lose i mean
i've had times where i've
lost you know busted out of a tournament
i thought i was going to win in is you
know especially if i got really unlucky
or um or i make a dumb play uh where
i've gone away and like you know kicked
kicked the wall
punched a wall i like nearly broke my
hand one time like
um i'm a lot less competitive than i
used to be like i was like
pathologically competitive in my like
late teens early 20s i just had to win
everything um and i think that's sort of
slowly waned as i've gotten older
according to you yeah according to me i
i don't know if others would say the
same right um i feel like ultra
competitive people
like i've heard joe rogan say this to me
it's like i think he's a lot less
competitive than he used to be i don't
know about that
oh i believe it no i totally believe it
like
because as you get you can still be like
i care about winning like when you know
i play a game with my buddies online or
you know whatever it is polytopia is my
current obsession like why not thank you
for passing on your obsession to me are
you playing now yeah i'm playing now we
gotta have a game but i'm terrible and i
enjoy playing terribly i don't want to
have a game because that's gonna pull me
into your monster of of like uh
competitive play it's important
i'm enjoying playing on the
i can't
you just do that you just do the points
thing you know against the bots yeah
against the bots and i can't even do the
uh uh there's like a hard one and
there's a very crazy yeah that's crazy i
can't i don't even enjoy the hard one
the crazy i really don't enjoy because
it's intense you have to constantly try
to win as opposed to enjoy building a
little world and
yeah no no there's no time for
exploration in polytopia you gotta get
well when once you graduate from the
crazies then you can come play the
graduate from the crazy yeah so in order
to be able to play a decent game against
like
you know our group um you'll need to be
you'll need to be consistently winning
like 90 of games against 15 crazy bots
yeah and you'll be able to like there'll
be i could i could teach you it within a
day honestly um how how to be the
crazies how to be the crazies and then
and then you'll be ready for the big
leagues generalizes uh to more than just
polotopia but okay uh why were we
talking about polytopia losing hurts
losing hers oh yeah yes competitiveness
over time um oh yeah
i think it's more that at least for me
i still care about playing about winning
when i choose to play something it's
just that i don't see the world as
zero-sum as i used to be you know
um i think as you one gets older and
wiser
you start to see the world more as a
positive something or at least you're
more aware of externalities
of of scenarios of competitive
interactions
um and so
yeah i just like i'm more and i'm more
aware of my own you know like
if i have a really strong emotional
response to losing and that makes me
then feel shitty for the rest of the day
and then i beat myself up mentally for
it like i'm now more aware that that
that's unnecessary negative externality
so i'm like okay i need to find a way to
turn this down you know dial this down a
bit was poker the thing that has if you
think back at your life
and think about some of the lower points
of your life like the darker places
you've gone in your mind did it have to
do something with poker
like what did losing spark
the
um the descent into darkness or was it
something else um
i think my darkest points in poker were
when
i was wanting to quit and move on to
other things but i felt like i hadn't
ticked all the boxes i wanted to tick
yeah like i wanted to be the most
winningest
female player which is by itself a bad
goal um you know that was one of my
initial goals and i was like well i
haven't you know and i wanted to win a
wpt event i won one of these i won one
of these but i want one of those as well
and
that
sort of again like it's a drive of like
over optimization to random metrics that
i decided were important um without much
wisdom at the time but then like carried
on um
that made me continue chasing it longer
than i still actually had the passion to
chase it for
and i don't i don't have any regrets
that you know i played for as long as i
did because who knows you know i
wouldn't be sitting here i wouldn't be
living this incredible life that i'm
living now um this is this is the height
of your life right now this is it
experience
absolute pinnacle
here in your in your robot land yeah
yeah
with your creepy light
no it is i mean i i wouldn't change a
thing about my life right now and i feel
very blessed to say that um
so but
the dark times were in sort of like
2016 to 18 even sooner really where i
was like
i had stopped loving the game
and i was going through the motions
and
i would that and and then i was like you
know i would take the losses harder than
i needed to yeah because i'm like oh
it's another one and it was i was aware
that like i felt like my life was
ticking away and i was like is this
going to be what's on my tombstone oh
yeah she played the game of you know
this zero-sum game of poker
slightly more optimally than her next
opponent
like cool great legacy you know so
i just wanted you know there was
something in me that knew i needed to be
doing something
more
directly impactful um and just
meaningful it was like a search for
meaning and i think it's a thing a lot
of poker players even a lot of i imagine
any
games players who
sort of
love intellectual pursuits
um
you know i think you should ask magnus
carlsen this question yeah walking away
from chess right yeah like it must be so
hard for him you know he's been on the
top for so long
and it's like well now what he's got
this incredible brain like
what to put it to
um
and
yeah it's it's this weird uh moment
where i just spoken with people that won
multiple gold medals at the olympics
and the depression hits hard after you
win
doesn't mean crash
because it's a kind of a goodbye saying
goodbye to that person to all the dreams
you had the thought
you thought would give meaning to your
life but in fact
life is full of constant pursuits of
meaning it doesn't you don't like arrive
and figure it all out and there's
endless bliss now it continues going on
and on you constantly have to figure out
to rediscover yourself and so for you
like that struggle to say goodbye to
poker
you have to like find the next there's
always a bigger game that's the thing
that's my like motto is like what's the
next game and
more importantly
because obviously game usually implies
zero sum like what
what's the game which is like omni win
look what you win how many went when why
is so so important
because
if everyone plays zero sum games that's
a fast track to either completely
stagnate as a civilization but more
actually far more likely to extinct
ourselves
um you know like the playing field is
finite
yeah
you know nuclear powers are playing uh
you know a game of poker with uh with
you know but their chips are nuclear
weapons right
and
the stakes have gotten so large that if
anyone makes a single bet you know fires
some weapons the the playing field
breaks i made a video on this like
you know the the the fight the playing
field is finite and if we keep playing
these adversarial
zero-sum games
uh thinking that we you know
in order for us to win someone else has
to lose or if we lose that you know
someone else wins that that will extinct
us
it's just a matter of when what do you
think about that uh mutually sure
destruction
that very simple almost to the point of
caricaturing game theory idea that does
seem to be
at the core of why we haven't blown each
other up yet with nuclear weapons
do you think there's some truth to that
this kind of
stabilizing force of mutually sure
destruction and do you think that's
gonna
hold up
through the 21st century
i mean it's it has it has held yes
there's there's definitely truth to it
that it was a
you know it's a nash equilibrium yeah
are you surprised it held this long um
isn't crazy
it is crazy when you factor in all the
like
near-miss accidental firings
yes that's
makes me wonder like you know you know
they're familiar with the like quantum
suicide thought experiment where it's
basically like
uh you have a
you know like a russian roulette
type scenario uh
hooked up to some kind of quantum event
you know
particle splitting um or paraparticle
splitting and
if it you know if it goes a then the gun
doesn't go off and it goes b then it
does go off and it kills you
because you can only ever be in the
universe know assuming like the everett
branch you know multiverse theory you
will always only end up in the in the
branch where you continually make you
know option a comes in but you run that
experiment enough times it starts
getting pretty damn you know out of the
the tree gets huge there's a million
different scenarios in but you'll always
find yourself in this in the one where
it didn't go off
and
uh
and so from that perspective
you are essentially immortal
because someone and you will only find
yourself in the set of observers that
make it down that path yeah so it's it's
it's that doesn't mean
it doesn't
it just doesn't mean you're you're still
not going to be at some point in
your life
no i'm not i'm not advocating like that
we're all immortal because of this it's
just like a fun thought experiment and
the point is it like raises this thing
of like these things called uh observer
selection effects which bostrom nick
bostrom talks about a lot and i think
people should go read um it's really
powerful but i think it could be
overextended that logic i'm not sure
exactly how it can be i just feel like
you can get you can um overgeneralize
that logic somehow well no i mean it
leads you into like solipsism which is a
very dangerous mindset again if everyone
like falls into solipsism of like well
i'll be fine
that's a great way of creating a very
you know
self-terminating environment um but my
point is is that with the nuclear
weapons thing um there have been at
least i think it's 12 or 11 um
near-misses were of like just stupid
things like
uh there was moon rise over norway and
it made weird reflections off some
glaciers in the mountains which set off
i think the alarms of norad
norad radar and that put them on high
alert nearly ready to shoot and it was
only because um
the head of the russian military
happened to be at the u.n in new york at
the time that they go like well wait a
second why would
why would they fire now when their guy
is there it was only that lucky
happenstance which doesn't happen very
often where they didn't then escalate
into firing and there's a bunch of these
different ones stanislav petrov like
saved
the person who should be the most famous
person on earth because he's probably on
expectation saved the most human lives
of anyone like billions of people by
ignoring russian orders to fire because
he felt in his gut that actually this
was a false alarm and it turned out to
be you know very hard thing to do um and
there's so many of those scenarios that
i can't help but wonder at this point
that we aren't having this kind of like
selection effect thing going on because
you look back and you're like geez
that's a lot of near misses but of
course we don't know the actual
probabilities that they would have lent
each one would have ended up in nuclear
war maybe they were not that likely but
still the point is it's a very dark
stupid game that we're playing um and
it is
an absolute moral imperative if you ask
me to get as many people thinking about
ways to make this like very precarious
because we're in a nash equilibrium but
it's not like we're in the bottom of a
pit you know if you would like map it
topographically um it's not like a
stable ball at the bottom of a thing
we're not an equilibrium because that
we're on the top of a hill with a ball
balanced on top and just any little
nudge could send it flying down and you
know nuclear war pops off and hellfire
and bad times
on the positive side life on earth will
probably still continue and another
intelligent civilization might still pop
up maybe several yeah
depend pick your x-risk depends on the
x-risk nuclear war sure that's one of
the perhaps less bad ones uh
green goo through synthetic biology very
bad
will turn
you know destroy all
uh
organic matter
uh
through you know it's basically like a
biological uh paperclip maximizer also
bad or ai
type you know mass extinction thing as
well would also be shhh they're
listening
there's a robot right behind you okay
wait uh so well let me ask you about
this from a game theory perspective do
you think we're living in a simulation
do you think we're listening living
inside a video game created by somebody
else
well i think well so
what was the second part of the question
do i think we're living in a simulation
and
a simulation
that is observed by somebody for purpose
of entertainment so like a video game
are we listening how we be because
there's a cree it's like phil hellmuth
type of situation right like
um
there's a creepy level of like
this is kind of fun and interesting
like there's a lot of interesting stuff
going on i mean that could be somehow
integrated into the evolutionary process
where
in
the way we perceive and are you asking
me if i believe in god
um sounds like it
kind of but god seems to be
not optimizing
uh in the different formulations of god
that we conceivo he doesn't seem to be
or she optimizing for uh like personal
entertainment
or maybe the older gods did but the the
the
you know just like
basically like a teenager in in their
mom's basement
watching create a fun right universe to
observe
so what kind of crazy might happen
okay so to try and ask this um
do i think there is some kind of
ex
extraneous intelligence to like our
you know
classic measurable universe that we you
know can measure with convent you know
through our current physics and uh
uh
instruments
i think so yes
um
partly because i've had just small
little bits of
evidence in my own ex in my own life
which have made me question like so i
was a die-hard atheist
um even five years ago uh
you know i got into like the rationality
community big fan of les wrong uh
continued to be incredible uh resource
um but i've just started to have
too many little
[Applause]
snippets of experience which
don't make sense with the current sort
of purely materialistic
um
explanation
of how reality works
um
isn't that just like a humbling
practical realization that we don't know
how reality works
isn't that just a reminder to yourself
yeah no it's a reminder of epistemic
humility because i fell too hard you
know same same as people like i think
you know many people who are just like
my religion is the way this is the
correct way this is the work this is the
law um you are immoral if you don't
follow this blah blah i think they
are lacking epistemic humility they're a
little too too much hubris there but
similarly i think the sort of the
richard dawkins brand of atheism
is too
is too rigid as well and doesn't
you know there's a way to try and
navigate these questions which still
honors the scientific method which i
still think is our best sort of realm of
like reasonable inquiry you know a
method of inquiry um
so an example um
i've two kind of notable examples that
like really rattled my my uh my cage uh
the first one was actually in 2010 early
on in um
uh quite early on in my poker career and
i
the the the uh the remember the
icelandic volcano that erupted that like
shut down kind of all atlantic airspace
um and i meant i got stuck down in the
south of france i was there for
something else um
and
i i couldn't get home and someone said
well there's a big poke tournament
happening in italy maybe do you want to
go i was like oh right sure like let's
you know got a train across found a way
to get there um and the buy-in was 5 000
euros which was much bigger than my
bankroll would normally allow and so i
uh
played a feeder tournament won my way in
kind of like i did with the monte carlo
big one um
uh so then i won my you know from 500
euros into 5 000 euros to play this
thing
and
on day one of them the big tournament
which turned out to have it was the
biggest tournament ever held in europe
at the time it got over like 1 200
people absolutely huge and i remember
they dimmed the lights uh for
before you know the normal shuffle up
and deal uh to tell everyone to start
playing
and they played uh
chemical brothers hey boy hey girl um
which i don't know why it's notable but
it was just like a really it was a song
i always liked it was like one of these
like pump me up songs and i was sitting
there thinking oh yeah it's exciting i'm
playing this really big tournament
and out of nowhere just suddenly this
voice in my head
just it sounded like my own sort of
you know when you say you think in your
mind you hear a voice kind of right at
least i do um
and so it sounded like my own voice and
it said you were going to win this
tournament
and it was so powerful that i got this
like wave of like
you know
sort of goosebumps down my body and i
even i remember looking around being
like did anyone else hear that and
obviously people are in their phones
like no one else heard and i was like
okay
six days later
i win the tournament out of 1
200 people
and
i i
i don't know how to explain it
um okay yes
but maybe
i
have that feeling it before every time i
play and it's just that i happen to you
know because i won the tournament i
retroactively remembered it but or the
or the feeling
gave you a kind of now from the film
hellmuthian well exactly like it gave
you a confident a deep confidence and it
did it definitely did like i remember
then feeling this like sort of well
although i remember then on day one i
then went and lost half my stack quite
early on and i remember thinking like
well that was you know
what kind of premonition is this yes
thinking i'm out but you know i managed
to like keep it together and recover and
then and then just went like pretty
perfectly from then on
and
either way it definitely instilled me
with this confidence
and i don't want to put a i don't i
can't put an explanation like you know
was it some you know huge
extra extra you know supernatural thing
driving me
or was it just my own self-confidence in
someone that just made me make the right
decisions i don't know and i don't i'm
not going to put a frame on it and i i
think i know a good explanation so we're
a bunch of npcs living in this world
created by in the simulation and then
people uh uh not people creatures from
outside of the simulation
uh sort of can tune in and play your
character and that feeling you got is
somebody just like
they got to play a poker tournament
through you honestly it felt like that
it did actually feel a little bit like
that
but it's been 12 years now i've retold
the story many times like i don't even
know how much i can trust my memory
you're just an npc we're telling the
same story this because they just played
the tournament and left
yeah they're like oh that was fun cool
yeah cool next time um
and now you're for the rest of your life
left as a boring npc retelling this is
greatness but it was and what was
interesting was that after that then i
didn't obviously win a major tournament
for quite a long time and
it left that was that was actually
another sort of dark period because i
had this incredible like the highs of
winning that you know just on a like
material level were insane winning the
money i was on the front page of
newspapers because there was like this
girl that came out of nowhere and won
this big thing um
and so again like sort of chasing that
feeling
was was difficult um but then on top of
that there was this feeling of like
almost being touched by something
bigger that was like uh
uh so maybe did you have a sense
that i might be somebody special
like
the this kind of
i i think that's the confidence thing
that uh
maybe you could do something special in
this world after all kind of feeling i i
definitely i mean
this is a thing i think everybody
wrestles with to an extent right we all
we are truly the protagonists in our own
lives
and so it's a natural bias human bias to
feel
to feel special and i think and in some
ways we are special every single person
is special because that you are that
the universe does the world literally
does revolve around you that's the thing
in in some respect but
of course if you then zoom out and take
the amalgam of everyone's experiences
then no it doesn't so there is this
shared sort of objective reality but
sorry this objective reality that is
shared but then there's also this
subject of reality which is truly unique
to you and i think both of those things
coexist and it's not like one is correct
and one isn't and again anyone who's
like uh oh no your lived experience is
everything versus your lived experience
is nothing no it's it's a blend between
these two things they can exist
concurrently but there's a certain kind
of sense that at least i've had my whole
life and i think a lot of people have
this is like well i'm just like this
little person
surely i can't be one of those people
that
do the big thing right there's all these
big people doing big things there's
big actors and actresses big musicians
there's big uh business owners and all
that kind of stuff scientists and so on
i you know i have my own subject
experience that i enjoy and so on but
there's like a different layer
like um
surely i can't do those great things i
mean one of the things just having
interacted with a lot of great people i
realize no they're like
just the same the same the same humans
as me
and that realization i think is really
empowering and like for you to remind
yourself are they what what are they are
they
uh well depends on something yeah
they're like a bag of insecurities and
yes
um
peculiar sort of
like their own little weirdnesses and so
on um i i should say also not
um they have the capacity for brilliance
but they're not
generically brilliant like you know we
tend to say this person or that person
is brilliant
but really
no they're just like sitting there and
thinking through stuff just like the
rest of us right i think they're in the
habit of thinking through stuff
seriously and they've built up a habit
of
not allowing them their mind to get
trapped in a bunch of and
minutiae of day-to-day life they really
think big ideas but those big ideas
it's like allowing yourself the freedom
to think big
to realize that you you you can be one
that actually solved this particular big
problem first identify a big problem
that you care about then like i can
actually be the one that solves this
problem
and like allowing yourself to believe
that and i think sometimes you do need
to have like that shock go through your
body and a voice tells you you're going
to win this tournament well exactly and
whether it was
it's it's this idea of uh useful
fictions
so again like going through all like the
rat the classic rationalist training of
less wrong where it's like you want your
map you know the the image you have of
the world in your head to as
accurately match up with how the world
actually is yeah you want the map and
the territory to perfectly align as you
know you want it to be
as an accurate representation as
possible
i don't know if i fully subscribe to
that anymore having now had these
moments of like
feeling of something either bigger or
just actually just being overconfident
like there's there is value in
overconfidence sometimes i do if you
would you know take you know take
magnus carlsen right
if he i'm sure from a young age he knew
he was very talented but i wouldn't be
surprised if he was also
had something in him
to well actually maybe he's a bad
example because he truly is the world's
greatest um but someone who is unclear
whether they were going to be the
world's greatest but ended up doing
extremely well because they had this
innate deep self-confidence this like
even overblown uh idea of how good their
relative skill level is that gave them
the confidence to then pursue this thing
and they're like
with the kind of focus and dedication
that it requires to excel in whatever it
is you're trying to do you know and so
there are these useful fictions and
that's where
i think i diverge slightly with the
classic um
the classic sort of rationalist
community um
because
that's a field that is worth studying um
of like how the stories we tell what the
stories we tell to ourselves even if
they are actually false and even if we
suspect they might be false um
how it's better to sort of have that
like little bit of faith
um like value in faith i think actually
and that's partly another thing that's
like now led me to explore
um
you know the concept of god whether you
want to call it a simulator
the classic theological thing i think
we're all like elucidating to the same
thing now i don't know i'm not saying
you know because obviously the christian
god is like you know all benevolent
um endless love the simulation
one of at least one of the simulation
hypothesis is like as you said like a
teenager in his bedroom who doesn't
really care doesn't give a how
about the individuals within there it
just like
wants to see how the thing plays out
because it's curious and it can turn it
off like that you know
where on the you know where on the sort
of psychopathy to benevolent spectrum
god is i don't know
um but
having
having this having a little bit of faith
that there is something else out there
that might be interested in our outcome
is i think an essential thing actually
for people to to find a because it
creates commonality between it's
something we can all
share and like it like it is uniquely
humbling of all of us to an extent it's
like a like a common objective um but b
it gives people that little bit of like
reserve you know when things get really
dark and i do think things are going to
get pretty dark over the next few years
um
but it gives that like
to think that there's something out
there that actually wants our game to
keep going i keep calling it the game
you know uh it's a thing c and i like we
call it the game um
you and c is aka grimes
called what the game everything the
whole thing ever yeah we joke about like
everything is a game no well the
universe like what if
what if it's a game and the goal of the
game is to figure out like well either
how to beat it how to get out of it you
know maybe maybe that maybe this
universe is an escape room
like a giant escape room and the goal
is to figure out
all the pieces of the puzzle figure out
how it works
in order to like unlock this like
hyper-dimensional key and get out beyond
what it is that's no but but then so
you're saying it's like different levels
and it's like a cage within a cage
within a cage and never locate one cage
at a time you figure out how to describe
that
um again you level up you know like us
becoming multi-planetary would be a
level up or us you know figuring out how
to upload our consciousnesses to the
thing that would probably be a leveling
up or
spiritually you know humanity becoming
more combined and and less adversarial
and and
uh bloodthirsty and us becoming a little
bit more enlightened that would be a
leveling up you know there's many
different frames to it whether it's
physical
you know digital uh or like metaphysical
levels i think i think level one for
earth is probably
the biological evolutionary process
it's like going from single cell
organisms to to early humans and maybe
level two is
what whatever is happening inside our
minds and creating ideas and creating
technologies
that's like
evolutionary process of ideas
and then uh multiplanetary is
interesting
is that fundamentally different from
what we're doing here on earth
probably because it allows us to like
exponentially scale
it
it delays the malthusian trap right it
it's a way to
keep the playing field get
lot to make the playing field get larger
so that we can it can accommodate more
of our stuff more of us
um and that's a good thing but i don't
know if it like fully solves this issue
um of
uh
well this thing called molok which we
haven't talked about yet but um which is
basically
i call it the god of unhealthy
competition yeah let's go let's go to
mark what's malloc you you did uh a
great video on malik one aspect of it
the application of it to
instagram beauty filters
very niche uh i wanted to start off
small um
so uh
molok was originally
um
[Music]
coined
as well so apparently back in the like
uh
canaanite times it was to say ancient
carthaginian i can never say it carthage
in
somewhere around like 300 bc or 280 i
don't know um there was supposedly this
death cult
who
would sacrifice their children to this
awful demon god thing they called molok
um in order to get power to win wars so
really dark horrible things and it was
literally like about child sacrifice
whether they actually existed or not we
don't know but in mythology they they
did and this god that they worshipped
was this thing called molok
and then
i don't know it seemed like it was kind
of quiet throughout history um in terms
of mythology beyond that until um this
movie metropolis uh in 1927
talked about um
this is you you see that there was this
incredible futuristic city that everyone
was living great in um but then the
protagonist goes underground into the
sewers and sees that the city is run by
this machine
and this machine basically would just
like kill the workers all the time
because it was just so hard to keep it
running they were always dying so
there's all this suffering that was
required in order to keep the city going
and then the protagonist has this vision
that this machine is actually this demon
moloch so again it's like this sort of
like mechanistic consumption of of
humans in order to get more power um and
then alan ginsberg wrote a poem in the
60s um which incredible poem called howl
about this thing molok um
and a lot of people sort of quite
understandably take the the
interpretation of that he's that he's
talking about capitalism
um
but then the bet like the sort of piece
the resistance that's moved molok into
this idea of game theory uh was scott
alexander of slate starcodex
wrote this incredible one literally i
think it might be my favorite piece of
writing of all time it's called
meditations on molok
everyone must go read it uh
and i say codex is a blog it's a blog
yes we can link to it in the show notes
or something right um no don't
i
yes yes but i i like how you do how how
you assume um i have a professional
operation going on here i i i shall try
to remember
you're giving the impression of it yeah
yeah i'll like please if i if i don't
please somebody in the comments remind
me i'll also you know if you don't know
this blog it's one of the
best blogs ever probably you should
probably be following it yes
our blog's still a thing i think they
it's still a thing yeah he's migrated
onto sub stack but yeah it's still a
blog um anyway just like better enough
things up but i have not yeah i
hope they don't i hope they don't turn
moloky
which will mean something to people when
we continue
when they stop interrupting for once
that's good
uh so anyway so he writes he writes this
this piece meditations on molok and
basically
he analyzes the poem and he's like okay
so it seems to be something relating to
where competition goes wrong
and
you know moloch was historically this
thing of like where people would
sacrifice
a thing that they care about in this
case children their own children uh in
order to gain power a a competitive
advantage
and if you look at
almost everything that sort of goes
wrong in our society it's that same
process
um so with the instagram beauty filters
thing um
you know if you're trying to become a a
famous
instagram model
you are incentivized to post the hottest
pictures of yourself that you can you
know you're trying to play that game um
there's a lot of hot women on instagram
how do you compete against them you post
really hot pictures and that's how you
get more likes
as technology gets better um you know
more
makeup techniques come along um and then
more recently these beauty filters where
like at the touch of a button it makes
your face look absolutely incredible um
compared to your natural natural natural
face uh these these technologies come
along it's everyone is incentivized to
that short-term strategy um
but
over on on net it's bad for everyone
because now everyone is kind of like
feeling like they have to use these
things and these things like they make
you like the reason why i talked about
them in this video is because i noticed
it myself you know like
i i was trying to grow my instagram for
a while i've given up on it now but um
yeah and i noticed these filters how
good they made me look and i'm like well
i know that everyone else is kind of
doing this subscribe who lives instagram
please don't have to use the filters
uh post a bunch of yeah
make make it blow up uh so yeah it's you
felt the pressure actually exactly these
short-term incentives to do this like
this thing that like either sacrifices
your integrity
or something else um in order to like
stay competitive um which on aggregate
turns like creates this like sort of
race to the bottom spiral where everyone
else ends up in a situation which is
worse off than if they hadn't start you
know than it were before kind of like if
um like a
at a football stadium
uh like the system is so badly designed
a competitive system of like everyone's
sitting and having a view that if
someone at the very front stands up to
get an even better view it forces
everyone else behind to like adopt that
same strategy just to get to where they
were before but now everyone's stuck
standing up like so you need this like
top down god's eye coordination to make
it go back to the better state but from
within the system you can't actually do
that so that's kind of what this molec
thing is it's this thing that makes
people sacrifice uh
values in order to optimize for the
winning the game in question the short
term game but this this molec
do you can you attribute it to any one
centralized source or is it an emergent
phenomena from a large collection of
people
exactly that it's it's an emergent
phenomena it's it's a force of game
theory
um it's a force of bad incentives on a
multi-agent system where you've got more
you know prisoner's dilemma is
technically a kind of molecule
you know system as well but it's just a
two-player thing but um another word for
moloka's multi-polar trap
where basically you just got a lot of
different people all competing for some
kind of prize um and
it would be better if everyone didn't do
this one shitty strategy but because
that strategy gives you a short-term
advantage everyone's incentivized to do
it and so everyone ends up doing it so
the responsibility for
i mean social media is a really nice
place for a large number of people to
play game theory and so
they also have the ability to then
design the the rules of the game
and uh is it on them to try to
anticipate what kind of
like to do the thing that poker players
are doing to run simulation
ideally that would have been great if
you know mark zuckerberg
and jack and all that you know the
twitter founders and everyone if they
had at least just
run a few simulations of how
their algorithms would you know
different types of algorithms would turn
out for society that would have been
great that's really difficult to do that
kind of deep philosophical thinking
about thinking about humanity actually
so not
not kind of this level of how do we
optimize engagement
or what brings people joy in the short
term but how is this thing going to
change the way people see the world how
is it going to get morphed in iterative
games played
into something that
will change society forever that's that
requires some deep thinking that's
i hope there's meetings like that inside
companies but there aren't that's the
problem and and
it's difficult because like when you're
starting up a social media company you
know you're aware that you you've got
investors to please
there's
you bills to pay um you know there's
only so much r d you can afford to do
you've got all these like incredible
pressures it's bad you know bad
incentives to get on and just build your
thing as quickly as possible and start
making money
and you know i don't think anyone
intended when they built these social
social media platforms and just to like
preface it so the reason why you know
social media is relevant because it's a
very good example of like everyone these
days is optimizing for you know clicks
um whether it's the social media
platforms themselves because you know
every click gets more you know
impressions and impressions pay for you
know
they get advertising dollars or whether
it's
individual influencers or you know
whether it's the new york times or
whoever they're trying to get their
story to go viral so everyone's got this
bad incentive of using you know as you
call it the clickbait industrial complex
um that's a very molecule system because
everyone is now using worse and worse
tactics in order to like try and win
this attention game um
and
yeah so
ideally these companies would have had
enough slack in the beginning
in order to run these experiments to see
okay what are the ways this could
possibly go wrong for people what are
the ways that molok they should be aware
of this concept of molok and realize
that it's any whenever you have a highly
competitive multi-agent system which
social media is a classic example of
millions of agents all trying to compete
for likes and so on and you try and
bring all this complexity down into like
very small metrics such as number of
likes number of retweets whatever the
algorithm optimizes for that is a like
guaranteed recipe for this stuff to go
wrong and become a race to the bottom
yeah i think there should be an honesty
when founders i think there's a hunger
for that kind of transparency of like we
don't know what the we're doing
this is a fascinating experiment we're
all running
as a human civilization let's try this
out yes and like actually just be honest
about this that we're all like
these weird rats and a maze
not none of us are controlling it
there's this kind of sense like the
founders
the ceo of instagram or whatever mark
zuckerberg has a control and he's like
like with strings playing people no
they're he's at the mercy of this like
everyone else he's just like trying to
do his best
and like i think putting on a smile and
doing over uh polished videos about
how instagram and facebook are good for
you
i think is not the right way to uh to
actually ask some of the deepest
questions we get to ask as a society how
do we design the game
such that we build a better world i
think a big part of this as well is
people
there's this
there's this philosophy particularly in
silicon valley um
of well techno optimism technology will
solve all our issues
and there's a steel man argument to that
where yes technology has solved a lot of
problems and can potentially solve a lot
future ones
but it can also it's always a
double-edged sword and particularly as
you know technology gets more and more
powerful and we've now got like big data
and we're able to do all kinds of like
psychological manipulation with it and
so on um
it's
technology is not about values neutral
thing people think i used to always
think this myself it's like this naive
view that oh technology is completely
neutral it's just it's the humans that
either make it good or bad no
to the point we're at now the technology
that we are creating they are social
technologies they literally
dictate
how humans now form social groups and so
on beyond that and beyond that it also
then that gives rise to like the memes
that we then like coalesce around
and that you know if you have the stack
that way where it's technology driving
social interaction which then drives
like mimetic
uh mimetic culture and like
which ideas become popular that's molok
and the we need the other way around we
need it so we need to figure out what
are the good memes what are the good
um
values
that we think are we we need to optimize
for the like makes people happy and
healthy and like keeps society as robust
and safe as possible then figure out
what the social structure around those
should be and only then do we figure out
technology but if we're doing the other
way around and
you know like as much as i love
in many ways the culture of silicon
valley and like you know i do think that
technology has you know i don't want to
knock it it's done so many wonderful
things for us same with capitalism um
there are
we have to like be honest with ourselves
we're getting to a point where we are
losing control of this very powerful
machine that we have created can you
redesign the machine within the game can
can you just have
can you understand the game enough okay
this is the game and this is how we
start to re-emphasize the memes that
matter
the the memes that bring out the best in
us
uh you know like the way
i try to be in real life and the way i
try to be online is to be about kindness
and
love and i feel like i'm
sometimes
get like criticized for being naive and
all those kinds of things but i feel
like i'm just trying to live
within this game i'm trying to be
authentic
yeah but also like
hey it's kind of fun to do this like you
guys should try this too you know that
and that's like
trying to redesign
some aspects of the game within the game
um is that possible
i don't know
but i think we should try
uh i don't think we have an option but
to try well the other option is to
create new companies or to
pressure companies
uh that or anyone who has control of the
rules of the game i think we need to be
doing all of the above
i think we need to be thinking hard
about what are the kind of positive
healthy memes
um
uh
you know as elon said he who controls
the memes controls the universe um i
think he did yeah
um but there's truth to that
it's very there is wisdom in that
because
memes have driven history you know we
are we are a cultural species that's
what sets us apart from chimpanzees and
everything else we have the ability to
learn and evolve through culture
as opposed to biology or like you know
classic physical constraints
and that means culture is incredibly
powerful
and we can create and become victim to
very bad memes or very good ones um but
we do have some agency over which means
you know we we sub but not only put out
there but we also like subscribe to
um so i think we need to take that
approach
we also need to
you know because i don't want the the
the
i'm making this video right now are
called the attention wars which is about
like how molok like the media machine is
this moloch machine uh well is this is
this kind of like blind dumb thing that
where everyone is optimizing for
engagement in order to win their share
of the attention pie um and then if you
zoom out it's really like molok that's
pulling the strings because the only
thing that benefits from this in the end
you know like oh our information
ecosystem is breaking down like we have
you look at the state of the us it's in
we're we're in a civil war it's just not
a physical war it's it's it's a
it's an information war and people
people are becoming more fractured in
terms of what their actual shared
reality is like truly like an extreme
left person an extreme right person like
they
they literally live in different worlds
in their in their in their minds at this
point and it's getting more and more
amplified and this this force is like a
like razor blade pushing through
everything it doesn't matter how
innocuous the topic is it will find a
way to split into this you know
bifurcated culture war and it's
terrifying because that maximizes the
tension and that's like an emergent
moloch type force right that takes any
any topic
and
cuts through it so they it can split
nicely
into two groups one one that's well it's
whatever yeah
all everyone is trying to do within the
system is just maximize whatever gets
them the most attention because they're
just trying to make money so they can
keep their thing going right
and the way the
the best emotion for getting attention
in well because it's not just about
attention on the internet it's
engagement that's the key thing right in
order for something to go viral you need
people to actually engage with it they
need to like comment or retweet or
whatever
um
and of all the emotions the
uh you know there's like seven classic
shared emotions that studies have found
that all humans even from like un un
previously uncontacted tribes have um
some of those are negative you know like
sadness
uh disgust
anger etc summer positive happiness um
excitement and so on the one that
happens to be the most useful for the
internet is anger because anger is
it's
such an active emotion if you want
people to engage
if someone's scared and i'm not just
like talking about my essay there are
studies here that looked into this um
where it's like if someone's like
disgusted or fearful they actually tend
to then be like i don't want to deal
with this so they're less likely to
actually engage and share it and so on
they're just gonna be like whereas if
they're enraged by a thing well now that
like that triggers all the like the the
old tribalism emotions um and so that's
how then things get sort of spread you
know much more easily they out compete
all the other memes in the ecosystem um
and so this like
the attention economy the the wheels
that make it go around are is rage um i
did a you know tweet the the the the
problem with raising against the machine
is that the machine has learned to feed
off rage because it is feeding off our
age that's the thing that's now keeping
it going so the more we get angry the
worse it gets
um so the malloc and this attention
in in the war of attention is
constantly maximizing rage what it is
optimizing for is engagement and it
happens to be the engagement um
is
what propaganda you know is that i mean
it just sounds like everything is is
putting is more and more things being
put through this like propagandist lens
of winning whatever the war is in
question whether it's the culture war or
the ukraine war yeah well i think the
silver lining of this do you think it's
possible that in the long arc of this
process you actually do arrive
at greater wisdom and more progress it's
just in the moment it feels like people
are
tearing each other to shreds over ideas
but if you think about it one of the
magic things about democracy and so on
is you have the blue versus red
constantly fighting it's almost like
they're
in
discourse
creating devil's advocate making devils
out of each other and through that
process
discussing ideas like almost really
embodying different ideas just to yell
at each other and through the yelling
over the period of decades maybe
centuries figuring out a better system
like in the moment it feels up
right but in the long arc it actually is
pretty productive
i hope so
um
that said
we are now in the era of
just as we have weapons of mass
destruction with nuclear weapons
you know that can break the whole
playing field
we now are developing weapons of
informational mass destruction
information
you know wmds that
basically can be used for propaganda or
just
manipulating people however they you
know is needed whether that's through
dumb tick-tock videos or you know there
are significant
resources being put in um i don't mean
to sound like you know
to doom and gloom but there are
bad actors out there that's the thing
there are plenty of good actors within
the system who are just trying to stay
afloat in the game so we're effectively
doing monarchy things but then on top of
that we have actual bad actors who are
intentionally trying to like manipulate
the other side into doing things and
using uh so because of the digital space
they're able to use
uh
artificial actors meaning bots exactly
botnets you know and this is a whole new
situation that we've never had before
it's exciting you know you know what i
want to do you know what i want to do
that um because there is you know people
talking about boss manipulating and
uh like malicious bots that are
basically spreading propaganda i want to
create like a bot army for like that
like fights that yeah exactly for love
that fights though that i mean you know
there's there i mean there's truth to
fight fire with fire it's like but how
you always have to be careful whenever
you create again like molok is very
tricky yeah hitler was trying to spread
the love too well yeah so we thought but
you know i i i agree with you that like
that is a thing that should be
considered but there is
again everyone the road to hell is paved
good intentions
and
this is
there's there's always unforeseen
circums you know outcomes uh
externalities of you trying to adopt a
thing even if you do it in the very best
of faith but you can learn lessons if
you can run some sims on it first
absolutely but but also there's certain
aspects of a system as we've learned
through history that
do better than others like for example
don't have a dictator so
um like if i were to create this bot
army it's not good for me to have full
control over it because in the beginning
i might have a good understanding of
what's good and not but over time that
starts to get deviated because i'll get
annoyed at some and i'll think
okay wouldn't it be nice to get rid of
those but then that power
starts getting to your head you become
corrupted that's basic human nature so
distribute the powers we need we need a
a love
botnet
on a dao
a dow love botnet
yeah but and without a leader like
without exactly distributed right yeah
without any kind of centralized yeah
without even you know basically is the
more control the more you can
decentralize the control of a thing
uh to people
you know but the the they don't need the
ability to coordinate because that's the
issue when you if something is too you
know that's really to me like the
culture wars is
the bigger war we're dealing with is
actually between
the like the sort of i don't know what
even the term is for it but like
centralization versus decentralization
that's the tension we're seeing
power in control by a few versus
completely distributed and the trouble
is if you have a fully centralized thing
then you're at risk of tyranny you know
stalin type things can happen uh or
completely distributed uh now you're at
risk of complete anarchy and chaos where
you can't even coordinate to like on you
know when there's like a pandemic or
anything like that so it's like what is
the right balance to strike between
these two
well structures can't molec really take
hold in a fully decentralized system
that's the one of the dangers too yes
the the very vulnerable so the dictator
can commit huge atrocities but they can
also make sure the the infrastructure
works and
uh
they have that god's eye view at least
they have the ability to create like
laws and rules that like force
coordination which stops moloch but then
you're vulnerable to that dictator
getting infected with like this with
some kind of psychopathy type thing
what's uh what's your verse malloc
sorry great question so
that's where
i've been working on this series it's
been driving me insane for the last year
and a half uh i did the first one a year
ago i can't believe it's nearly been a
year uh the second one hopefully will be
coming out in like a month um
and my goal at the end of the series is
to like present because basically i'm
painting the picture of like what molok
is and how it's affecting almost all
these issues in our in our society and
how it's you know driving it's like kind
of the generator function as people
describe it of existential risk
and then at the end wait wait the
generator function of existential risk
so you're saying molok is sort of the
engine that creates
a bunch a bunch of x-risks yes not all
of them like like a uh you know a um
it's a cool phrase generator function
it's not my phrase it's daniel
schmacktenberger oh i got that from him
of course all things it's like all the
roads lead back to daniel
schmuckenberger the dude is the dude is
brilliant no he's not ready for that
it's mark twain
sorry
um totally rude interruptions from me no
it's fine uh so not all likes risks so
like an asteroid technically isn't
because it's um
you know it's just like this one big
external thing it's not like a
competition thing going on but you know
synthetic biola you know
bio weapons that's one because
everyone's incentivized to build
even for defense you know bad bad
viruses you know just threaten someone
else etc or ai technically the race to
adi is kind of potentially a monarchy
situation um
but
yeah so
if molok is this like generator function
that's driving all of these issues over
the coming century that might wipe us
out
what's the inverse and so far what i've
gotten to is
this character that i want to put out
there called win-win
because monica's the god of lose-lose
ultimately it masquerades as the god of
win-lose but in reality it's lose-lose
everyone ends up worse off
so i was like well what's the opposite
of that it's win-win and i was thinking
for ages like what's a good name for
this character
and then the more i was like okay well
don't try and you know think through it
logically what's the vibe of win-win and
to me like in my mind molok is like
and i dress as it in the video like it's
red and black it's kind of like very
you know hyper focused on it's one goal
you must win um
so win-win is kind of actually like
these colors it's like purple turquoise
um
it's
loves games too it loves a little bit of
healthy competition but constrained like
kind of like before like knows how to
ring fence zero sum competition into
like just the right amount
uh whereby its externalities can be
controlled and kept positive
and then beyond that it also loves
cooperation coordination love all these
other things um but it's also kind of
like mischievous
uh like you know it will have a good
time it's not like kind of like boring
you know like oh god it's it's it knows
how to have fun it can get like it can
get down um but ultimately it's like
unbelievably wise and it just wants the
game to keep going
um and i call it win-win um
that's a good like pet name yes
the i think the win
right and i think it's formal name when
it has to do like official functions is
uh omnia
omnia yeah from like um omniscience kind
of what's why omnia you just like omnia
omni win but i'm open to suggestions oh
like you know and this is like yeah yeah
like that but there's an angelic kind of
sense to omnia though so win-win is more
fun so it's more it's more like
uh it embraces the
the the fun aspect i mean there is
something about sort of um
there's some aspect to win-win
interactions that requires
embracing
[Music]
the chaos of the game and enjoying the
game itself
i don't know i don't know what that is
that's almost like a zen-like
appreciation of of the game itself not
optimizing for the consequences of the
game
right well it's recognizing
the value of competition in of itself
about it's not like about winning it's
about you enjoying the process of having
a competition and not knowing whether
you're going to win or lose this little
thing but then also being aware
that you know what's the boundary how
big do i want competition to be because
one of the reasons why molok is doing so
well
now in our society in our civilization
is because we haven't been able to ring
fence competition
uh you know and so it's just having all
these negative externalities and we've
completely lost control of it um you
know it's
i think
my guess is and now we're getting really
like
you know metaphysical technically but i
i think
we would be we'll be in a more
interesting universe if we have one that
has both
pure cooperation you know lots of
cooperation
and some pockets of competition then one
that's purely competition cooperation
entirely like it's good to have some
little zero sumness bits um but i don't
know that fully and i'm not qualified as
a philosopher to know that and that's
what reverse molex so this kind of
win-win creature is in
uh system is an antidote to the molex
system
yes
and
i don't know how it's going to do that
um but it's good to kind of try to
start to formulate different ideas
different frameworks of how we think
about that exactly at the small scale of
a collection of individuals a large
scale of a society exactly it's a meme i
think it's i think it's an example of a
good meme and i'm open i'd love to hear
feedback from people if they think it's
you know they have a better idea or it's
not you know but it's the direction of
meme that we need to spread this idea of
like look for the win-wins in life
well on the topic of beauty filters so
in that particular context where
uh malik creates
uh negative consequences what do you
know dostoevsky said beauty will save
the world
what is beauty anyway
it would be nice to just try to discuss
what kind of thing we would like to
converge towards
in our
understanding of what is beautiful
so to me i think something is beautiful
when
it can't be reduced down to
easy metrics like if you think of a tree
what is it about a tree like a big
ancient beautiful tree right what is it
about it that we find so beautiful it's
not you know the
the you know what the sweetness of its
fruit
or the value of its lumber
it's
it's this entirety of it
that is that there's these immeasurable
qualities it's like almost like a qualia
of it
um that's both like it walks this fine
line between pattern well it's got lots
of patronicity but it's not overly
predictable
um you know again it walks this fine
line between order and chaos it's a very
highly complex system
um
in the
you know you can't it's evolving over
time you know that the definition of a
complex versus and this is another
smackdom burger thing you know a complex
versus a complicated system a
complicated system can be sort of broken
down into bits understood and then put
back together a complex system it's kind
of like a black box it does all this
crazy stuff
but if you take it apart you can't put
it back together again because it's
there's there's all these intricacies
and also very importantly like there's
some of the parts sorry the sum of the
whole is much greater than the sum of
the parts
and that's where the beauty lies i think
and i think that extends to things like
art as well like
there's something there's something
immeasurable about it there's something
we can't break down to a narrow metric
does that extend to humans you think
yeah
absolutely
so how can instagram reveal that kind of
beauty the complexity of a human being
good question
um this takes us back to uh dating sites
and good reads i think
very good question i mean
well i know what it shouldn't do it
shouldn't try and like right now
you know one of the
i was talking to like a social media
expert recently because i was like oh i
hate things the social media expert oh
yeah there are like agencies out there
that you can like outsource because i'm
thinking about
working with one to like
i said i want to start a podcast
you should you should have done it a
long time ago checking on it gonna be
called win-win um and it's gonna be
about this like positive some stuff uh
and
the thing that you know they they all
come back and say it's like well you
need to like figure out what your thing
is you know you need to narrow down what
your thing is and then just follow that
have like a sort of a formula
because that's what people want they
want to know that they're coming back to
the same thing and that's the advice on
youtube twitter you name it and that's
why and and the trouble with that is
that it's it's a complexity reduction
and generally speaking complex you know
complexity reduction is bad it's making
things more it's an oversimplification
not that simplification is always a bad
thing um
but when you're trying to
take you know what is social media doing
is trying to like encapsulate the the
human experience and put it into digital
form and and commodify it to an extent
that you so you do that you compress
people down into these like narrow
things
and i that's why i think it's it's kind
of ultimately fundamentally incompatible
with at least my definition of beauty
it's interesting because
there is some sense in which
a simplification sort of in the in the
einstein kind of sense
of a really complex idea
a simplification in a way that still
captures some core
power of an idea of a person
is also
beautiful and so maybe it's possible for
social media to do that a presentation
a sort of a slither a sl a slice a look
into a person's life
that reveals something real about them
but in a simple way in a way that can be
displayed graphically or through words
some way i mean
in some way twitter can do that kind of
thing a very few set of words can reveal
the intricacies of a person
of course
the the viral machine that spreads those
words
uh often
results in people taking the thing out
of context not
people often don't read tweets in the
context of the human being that wrote
them the full the full history of the
tweets they've written the education
level the humor level the
the world view they're playing around
with
all that context is forgotten and people
just see the different words so that can
lead to trouble but in in a certain
sense if you do take it in context
it reveals some kind of quirky little
beautiful idea or a profound little idea
from that particular person that shows
something about that person so in that
sense twitter can be more successful if
we talk about molex is driving a better
kind of incentive
yeah i mean how they can
like if if we were to rewrite it is
there a way to rewrite the twitter
algorithm so that it stops being
the like
the fertile breeding ground of the
culture wars because that's really what
it is it's
um i mean
maybe i'm giving it you know twitter too
much power you know power but
just the more i looked into it and i had
conversations with uh
tristan harris uh from center of humane
technology and he explained it as like
twitter is where you have this amalgam
of human culture
and then this terribly designed
algorithm that amplifies the craziest
people um
and the the angriest the angriest most
divisive takes and amplifies them and
then the media the mainstream media
because all the journalists are also on
twitter they then
are informed by that and so they draw
out the stories they can from this
already like
very boiling lava of of of
rage and then spread that
you know to their millions and millions
of people who aren't even on twitter um
and so
i honestly i think if i could press a
button and turn them off i probably
would at this point because i just don't
see a way of being compatible with
healthiness but that's not gonna happen
um
and
so at least one way to like stem the
tide and make it less molecule would be
to
um
change
at least if like it was on a
subscription model then it's now not
optimizing for in you know
uh
impressions because basically what it
wants is for people to keep coming back
as often as possible that's how they get
paid right um every time an ad gets
shown to someone and the way is to get
people constantly refreshing their feed
so you're trying to encourage addictive
behaviors whereas if someone um
if they moved on to at least a
subscription model then
they're getting the money either way
whether someone comes back to the site
once a month or 500 times a month they
get the same amount of money so now that
takes away that incentive you know to
use technology you know
to build to design an algorithm that is
maximally addictive
um that would be one way for example
yeah but you still want people to
yeah i just feel like that just slows
down creates friction
in the virality of things but that's
good
we need to slow down
good it's one way
variety is monarch
to be clear
so molec
is always negative then yes
by definition yes
but then i disagree with you it's not
always negative competition is neutral i
disagree with you that all virality is
negative then uh as molok then
because
i i it's a good intuition because we
have a lot of data on virality being
negative
but i happen to believe that the core of
human beings so most human beings want
to be good
more than they want to be bad to each
other and so
i think it's possible it might be just
harder to engineer
systems that enable virality but it's
possible to engineer systems that are
viral
that enable virality and
the kind of stuff that rises to the top
is things that are positive and positive
not like
lala positive it's more like win-win
meaning a lot of people need to be
challenged wise things yeah you grow
from it it might challenge you you might
not like it but you ultimately grow from
it
and ultimately
bring people together as opposed to tear
them apart yeah i
deeply want that to be true and i very
much agree with you that people at their
core are on average good as opposed to
you know care for each other as opposed
to not like a you know i think it's
actually a very small percentage of
people are truly like wanting to do just
like destructive malicious things most
people are just trying to win their own
little game and they don't mean to be
you know they're just stuck in this
badly designed system
um
that said the current structure yes is
the current structure
means that virality is optimized towards
molok that doesn't mean there aren't
exceptions you know sometimes positive
stories do go viral and i think we
should study them i think there should
be a whole field of study into
understanding
you know
identifying memes that
you know
above a certain threshold of the
population agree is a positive happy
bringing people together meme the kind
of thing that you know brings families
together that would normally argue about
cultural stuff at the table
at the dinner table um identify those
memes and figure out what it was what
was the ingredient that made them spread
that day um
and also like uh not just like happiness
and connection between humans but
uh
connection between humans and other ways
that enables like productivity like
cooperation
solving difficult problems and all those
kinds of stuff um you know this so it's
not just about let's let's be happy and
have a fulfilling lives it's also like
let's build cool yeah
which is the spirit of collaboration
which is deeply anti-moloch right that's
that's uh it's not using competition
it's like
you know molech hates collaboration and
coordination and people working together
and that's you know again like the
internet started out as that and it and
um it could have been that but because
of the way it was sort of structured um
in terms of
uh you know
very lofty ideal they wanted everything
to be open source so open source and
also free
and but they needed to find a way to pay
the bills anyway because they were still
building this on top of our old economic
system um and so the way they did that
was through a third-party ad
advertisement but that meant that things
were very decoupled you know you've got
this third-party interest um which means
that you're then like people having to
optimize for that and that is the you
know the actual consumer is actually the
product
not the not the
the the person you're making the thing
for you're in in the end you start
making the thing for the advertiser and
so that's why it then like breaks down
um
yeah like it's
there's no clean solution to this um and
i
i it's a really good suggestion by you
actually to like
um
figure out how we can optimize virality
for
positive some
topics i shall be the general of the
love bot army
um
strip you did
distribute it distribute no okay yeah
the power just even insane that the palm
already went to my head no okay you've
talked about quantifying your thinking
we've been talking about this sort of
game theoretic view on life
and putting probabilities behind
estimates like if you think about
different trajectories you can take
through life just actually analyzing
life in a game theoretic way like your
own life like personal life you i think
you've given an example
that you had an honest conversation with
igor about like how long is this
relationship gonna last
so similar to our sort of marriage
problem kind of discussion
having an honest conversation about the
probability
of things that we sometimes are a little
bit too shy or scared to think of in
probabilistic terms
can you speak to that kind of way of
reasoning
uh the good and the bad of that
can you do this kind of thing with human
relations
yeah so the
the scenario you're talking about it was
like yeah tell me about that yeah uh
i think he was about a year into our
relationship
um and we were
having a fairly heavy conversation
because we were trying to figure out
whether or not i was going to sell my
apartment well you know
he had already moved in but i think we
were just figuring out what like our
long-term plans would be should we
should we buy a place together et cetera
well you guys are having that
conversation are you like drunk out of
your mind on wine or is he sober and
you're actually having a serious like
how do you get to that conversation
because most people are kind of afraid
to have that kind of serious
conversation
well
so you know our relationship was very
well first of all we were good friends
for a couple of years before we even you
know got you know romantic
um
and
when we did get romantic it was very
clear that this was a big deal it wasn't
just like another like you know it
wasn't a random thing
um and so the probability of it being a
big deal was high was already very high
and then we'd been together for a year
and it had been pretty golden and
wonderful so you know
there was a lot of foundation already
where we felt very comfortable having a
lot of frank conversations but igor's
mo has always been much more than mine
he was always from the outset like just
in a relationship
radical transparency and honesty is the
way because the truth is the truth
whether you want to hide it or not you
know but it will come out eventually
and
um
if you aren't able to accept difficult
things yourself then how could you
possibly expect to be like the most
integral version that you know you can't
the relationship needs this bedrock of
like honesty as a foundation more than
anything yeah that's really interesting
but i would like to push against some of
those ideas but okay all right but
that's the down the line just throw them
up uh i just rudely interrupt
um and so you know we we've been about
together for a year and things were good
and we were having this hard
conversation
and and then he was like well okay
what's the likelihood that we're going
to be together in three years then
because i think it was roughly a
three-year time horizon
and i was like oh interesting and
everybody actually wait don't before you
said out loud let's both write down our
predictions formally
um because we'd been like we were just
getting into like effective altruism and
rationality at the time which is all
about making you know formal predictions
as a means of uh
measuring your own um
well your your own foresight essentially
in a quantified way
so we like both wrote down our
percentages and we also did a one-year
prediction and a 10-year one as well so
we got percentages for all three
and then we showed each other um and i
remember like having this moment of like
oh because after the ten year and i was
like oh well i mean
i love them a lot but like a lot can
happen in ten years you know and
um we've only been together for you know
so i was like i think it's over 50 but
it's definitely not 90 percent and i
remember like wrestling i was like oh
but i don't want him to be hurt i don't
want him to you know i don't want to
give a number lower than his and i
remember thinking ah don't game it
this is a exercise in radical honesty
so just give you a real percentage and i
think mine was like 75
and then we showed each other and
luckily we were fairly well aligned um
and
but honestly even if we weren't 20
it definitely it definitely would have i
if his had been consistently lower than
mine that would have
rattled me for sure whereas if it had
been the other way around i think he
would he's just kind of like a water off
the duck's back type of guy he'd be like
okay well all right we'll figure this
out well did you guys provide error bars
on the estimate like the level one they
became built in we didn't give formal
plus or minus error bars i didn't draw
any or anything like that i guess that's
the question i have is did you feel
informed enough
to make such decisions because like i
feel like if you were if i were to do
this kind of thing rigorously
i would want some data
uh i would want to say one of the
assumptions you have is you're not that
different from other relationships right
and so
i want to i want to have some data about
the base rates
yeah and and also actual trajectories of
relationships i would love to have
um like time series data
about the ways that relationships fall
apart or prosper
how they collide with different life
events
losses job changes moving
both partners find jobs
only one has a job
i want that kind of data and how often
the different trajectories change in
life like
how
rep how informative is your past to your
future that's the whole thing like i can
you look at my
life and have a good prediction about in
terms of my characteristics of my
relationships what that's going to look
like in the future or not i don't even
know the answer that question i'll be
very ill informed in terms of making the
probability i would be far
yeah i i just would be under-informed i
would be under-informed i'll be
over-biasing to my prior experiences i
think
right but as long as you're aware of
that and you're honest with yourself i
still and you're honest with the other
person say look i have really wide error
bars on this for the following reasons
that's okay i still think it's better
than not trying to quantify it at all if
you're trying to make really major
irreversible life decisions and i feel
also the romantic nature of that
question for me personally i would
i try to live my life thinking it's very
close to 100 percent
like
allowing myself actually the this is
this is the difficulty of this is
allowing myself to think differently
i feel like has a psychological
consequence that's where that's what's
one of my pushbacks against radical
honesty
is uh this one one particular
perspective so you're saying you would
you would rather give a falsely high
percentage
to your partner going back to uh
in order to survive the traditional
optimism
yes of uh fake it till you make it about
the positive the power of the positive
well so that and this comes back to this
idea of useful fictions yeah right and i
i agree i don't think there's a clear
answer to this and i think it's actually
quite subjective some people this works
better for than others
um
you know to be clear igor and i weren't
doing this
formal prediction in it like we we did
it with very much tongue-in-cheek
it wasn't like we were going to make i
don't think it even would have me
drastically changed what we decided to
do even we kind of just did it more as a
fun exercise um but the consequence of
that fun exercise you really actually
kind of there was a deep honesty to it
too exactly it was a deep and it was it
was just like this moment of reflection
i'm like oh wow i actually have to think
like through this quite critically and
so on
and
and it's also what was interesting was
like you know i got to like check in
with what what my what my desires were
so there was one thing of like what my
actual prediction is but what are my
desires and could these desires be
affecting my predictions and so on and
you know that's a that's a method of
rationality and i personally don't think
it loses anything in terms of i didn't
take any of the magic away from our
relationship quite the opposite like it
brought us closer together because it
was like we did this weird fun thing um
that i appreciate a lot of people find
quite strange
um and i think it was somewhat you know
unique in our relationship that both of
us are very
you know we both love numbers we both
love statistics we're both poker players
um
so this this was kind of like our safe
space anyway
for others you know one part one partner
like really
might not like that kind of stuff at all
in which cases it's not a good exercise
to do you know i don't recommend it to
everybody um
but i do think there's
you know it's interesting sometimes to
poke holes in the or you know
probe at these
things that we consider so sacred that
we can't try to quantify them
but which is interesting because that's
intention with like the idea of what we
just talked about with beauty and like
what makes something beautiful the fact
that you can't measure everything about
it um and perhaps something shouldn't be
tried to make you know maybe it's wrong
to
completely try and value the utilitarian
you know put a utilitarian frame of
measuring the
the utility of a tree in in its entirety
i don't know maybe we should maybe we
shouldn't i'm ambivalent on that but
overall
people have too many biases
people are overly biased against
trying to
do like a quantified cost-benefit
analysis on really tough life decisions
um you know they're like oh just go with
your gut it's like well sure but guts
are our intuitions are best suited for
things that we've got tons of experience
in
then we can really you know trust on it
if it's a decision we've made many times
but if it's like should i marry this
person or should i buy this house over
that house you only make those decisions
a couple of times in your life maybe um
well i i would love to know
this there's a balance that probably is
a personal balance of strike
is the amount of rationality you you
apply
to a question versus
um
the useful fiction
the
fake it till you make it for example
just talking to soldiers in ukraine
you ask them
what's the probability of
you winning ukraine winning
um almost everybody i talk to is a
hundred percent
wow
and you listen to the experts right they
they say all kinds of stuff right they
are
they
first of all the morale there is higher
than probably and i've i've never been
to a war zone before this
but i've read about
many wars and i think the morale in
ukraine is higher than almost anywhere
i've read about it's every single person
in the country is proud to fight for
their country
everybody not just soldiers not
everybody why do you think that is
specifically more than you know in other
words
um i think because there's uh perhaps
a dormant desire
for the citizens of this country
to find the identity of this country
because it's been
going through this 30-year process of
different factions and political
bickering
and they haven't had as they talk about
they haven't had their independence war
they say all great nations have had an
independence war they had to fight
for their independence for the discovery
of the identity of the core of the
ideals that unify us and they haven't
had that there's constantly been
factions there's been divisions there's
been pressures from empires from the
united states and from russia from nato
and europe everybody telling them what
to do now they want to discover who they
are and there's that kind of sense that
we're going to fight for the safety of
our homeland but we're also going to
fight for our identity and that
on top of the fact that there's just
if you look at the history of ukraine
and there's certain other countries like
this
there are certain cultures are feisty
in their pride
of being part of being the citizens of
that nation ukraine is that
poland was that there's you just look at
history in certain countries you do not
want to occupy right
i mean both stalin and hitler talked
about poland in this way they're like
this is
this is a big problem if we occupy this
land for prolonged periods of time
they're going to be a pain in their ass
like they're not going to be want to be
occupied and certain other countries are
like pragmatic they're like well you
know leaders come and go i guess this is
good you know they're
ukraine just doesn't have ukrainians
those team throughout the 20th century
don't seem to be the kind of people that
just like sit calmly
and let the quote unquote occupiers
um in in uh impose their that that's
interesting though because you said it's
you know it's always been under conflict
and leaders have come and gone yeah so
you would expect them to actually be the
opposite under that yeah
because well because they're it's a very
fertile land
it's great for agriculture so a lot of
people want to i mean i think they've
developed this culture because they've
constantly been occupied by different
people for different peoples
and so
maybe there is something to that where
you've constantly had to
feel
like within the blood of the generations
there's the struggle for
um against the man
against the imposition of
rules against oppression and all that
kind of stuff and that stays with them
so there's a there's a will there um but
you know a lot of other aspects are also
part of that that has to do with the
reverse smaller kind of situation where
social media has definitely played a
part of it um also different charismatic
individuals have had to play a part the
fact that uh the president of the nation
zelonski
stayed in kiev during the
the invasion
uh was is a huge inspiration to them
because
most leaders as you could imagine
when the capital of the nation is under
attack
the wise thing the smart thing that the
united states advised zalensky to do is
to flee and to to be the leader of the
nation from a from a distant place right
he said that i'm staying put
you know everyone around him there was a
pressure to leave
and he didn't and that that
in you know those singular acts
um really can unify a nation there's a
lot of people that criticize the
landscape within ukraine uh before the
war is very unpopular even still
but they put that aside for the
for the especially that singular act of
staying in the capital
yeah
a lot of those kinds of things
come together to to to create something
within people
these things always
of course though like
the you know which
how zoomed out of a view do you want to
take
because yeah you describe it it's like
an antimonic thing happened within
ukraine because it brought the ukrainian
people together in order to fight a
common enemy
maybe that's a good thing maybe that's a
bad thing in the end we don't know how
this is all going to play out right um
but if you zoom it out from
the level you know on a global level
they're coming together to you know
fight
that
that could you know that could make a
conflict larger you know what i mean i
don't i don't know what the right answer
is here um yeah it seems like a good
thing that they came together i but i
like we don't know how this is all going
to play out if this all turns into
nuclear war we'll be like okay that was
the bad that was the oh yeah so i was
describing the the reverse molec for the
local level exactly now this is where
the experts come in
and they say well
if you uh
channel most of the resources the nation
and the nations supporting
ukraine into the war effort
are you not
beating the drums of war that is much
bigger than ukraine in fact
even the ukrainian leaders are speaking
of it this way this is not a war between
two nations
this is
this is the early days of a world war
if we don't play this correctly yes
uh and they
we need cool heads from our leaders
so you from ukraine's perspective we
need to win ukraine needs to win the war
because what is winning the war mean
is
coming up coming to
peace negotiations an agreement
that guarantees no more invasions and
then you make an agreement about
what land belongs to who right and that
that's you stop that and and
to sh basically
from their perspective is you want to
demonstrate to the rest of the world
who's watching carefully including
russia and china
and different players on the
geopolitical stage that this kind of
conflict is not going to be productive
right if you engage in it so you want to
teach everybody a lesson let's not do
world war three it's not it's gonna be
bad for everybody it's a it's a lose
lose
deep lose lose
doesn't matter
so but they you know uh but it and i
think that's actually
a correct
uh when i zoom out
i mean
99 of what i think about is just
individual human beings and human lives
and just that war is horrible
but when you zoom out and think from a
geopolitics perspective we should
realize that
it's entirely possible that we will see
a world war iii in the 21st century
and this is like a dress rehearsal for
that and so the way
we play this
as a as a human civilization will will
define whether we do or don't have a
world war three
um you know
um
how we discuss war
how we discuss nuclear war the kind of
leaders we
we elect and uh prop up the kind of
memes
we circulate because you have to be very
careful when you're being
pro-ukraine for example you have to
realize that you're being
you are also indirectly
feeding
the ever increasing military industrial
complex
so be extremely careful
that
when you say pro ukraine or pro
anybody
your
you're pro human beings
uh not pro the machine
exactly that uh
that uh creates narratives that says
it's pro-human beings but it's actually
if you look at the raw
use of
uh funds and resources it's actually
probe making weapons and shooting
bullets and dropping bombs right the
real we have to just
somehow get the meme into everyone's
heads that the real enemy is war itself
that's the enemy we need to defeat
and
that doesn't mean to say that you know
there isn't justification for
small local
scenarios you know adversarial
adversarial conflicts you know if you
have a a leader who is starting wars
you know they're on the side of team war
basically it's not that they're on the
side of team country whatever that
country is it's they're on the side of
team war so that needs to be stopped and
put down but you also have to find a
ways that your
corrective measure doesn't actually then
end up being co-opted by the war machine
and creating greater war again the
playing field is finite the scale of
in conflict is now getting so big that
you know the weapons that can be used
are so mass destructive
um
that we can't afford another giant
conflict we just we won't make it
what existential threat in terms of us
not making it are you most worried about
what existential threat to human
civilization we got like a dark path huh
this is good but no well no it's a dark
no it's like while we're in the summer
place we might as well
uh
some of my best friends are dark paths
um
uh what what worries you the most well
mentioned uh asteroids will mention agi
uh nuclear weapons
the one that's on
my mind the most
mostly because i think it's the one
where we have actually a real chance to
move the needle on in a positive
direction or more specifically stop some
really bad things from happening really
dumb avoidable things is uh
bio bio risks
um
so what in what what kind of violence
and so many fun options
so many so of course like we have
natural risks from natural pandemics you
know naturally occurring viruses or
pathogens
and then also as time and technology
goes on and technology becomes more and
more democratized and you know into the
hands of more people
the risk of synthetic pathogens um
you know and whether or not you fall
into the camp of covid was you know gain
a function accidental lab leak or
whether it was purely naturally
occurring
either way
we are facing a future where
synthetic pathogens or like art human
human meddled with pathogens um either
accidentally get out or
get into the hands of bad actors who you
know whether they're omnicidal maniacs
you know um either way
and so that means we need more
robustness for that and you would think
that us having this nice little dry run
which is what as awful as covid was
um you know and all those poor people
that died it was still like
like child's play compared to what a
future one could be in terms of fatality
rate
um
and so you'd think that we would then
becoming we'd be much more robust in our
pandemic preparedness
um
and
meanwhile the budget uh
in the last two years for the u.s
um sorry they just did this uh
i can't remember the name of what the
actual budget was but it was like a
multi-trillion dollar budget that the us
just set aside
and originally in that you know
considering that covert cost multiple
trillions to the economy right
the original allocation in this this new
budget for future pandemic preparedness
was 60 billion so tiny proportion of it
that proceeded to get whittled down to
like
30 billion
to 15 billion all the way down to 2
billion out of multiple trillions for a
thing that has just cost us multiple
trillions we've just finished we barely
even we're not even really out of it
it basically got whittled down to
nothing because for some reason people
think that
all right we've got the pandemic out the
way that was that one
and the reason for that is that people
are and and i say this with all due
respect to a lot of the science
community but they are there's an
immense amount of naivety about
they they they think that nature is the
main risk moving forward and it really
isn't
um and i think nothing demonstrates this
more than this uh this project that i
was just reading about that's sort of
being proposed right now called um
deep vision
and the idea is to go out into the wilds
and we're not talking about it's like
you know within cities like deep into
like caves that people don't go to deep
into the arctic wherever scour the earth
for whatever the most dangerous possible
pathogens could be that they can find
and then
not only do you know try and find these
bring samples of them back to
laboratories
and again whether you think covered with
a lab leak or not
i'm not going to get into that but we
have historically had so many as a
civilization we've had so many lab leaks
from even like the highest level
security things like it it just it
people should go and just read it it's
like it's like a comedy show of just how
many they are how leaky these these labs
are even when they do their best efforts
um so bring these things then back to
civilization
that's step one of the badness the the
next plan the next step would be to then
categorize them do experiments on them
and categorize them by their level of
potential pandemic lethality
and then the piece of resistance on this
plan is to then publish that information
freely on the internet about all these
pathogens including their genome which
is literally like the building
instructions of how to do them
on the internet and this is something
that genuinely
a pocket of the like bio
of the scientific community thinks is a
good idea
and i think on expectation like the and
their argument is is that oh this is
good because you know it might buy us
some time to buy
to development vaccines which okay sure
maybe would have made sense prior to
mrna technology but you know like they
mrna we can bank we can develop a
vaccine now when we find a new uh
pathogen within a couple of days now
then there's all the trials and so on
but those trials would have to happen
anyway in the case of a brand new thing
so you're saving maybe a couple of days
so that's the upside meanwhile the
downside is you're not only giving
you're bringing the risk of these
pathogens of like getting leaked but
you're literally handing it out
to
every bad actor on earth who would be
doing cartwheels and i'm talking about
like kim jong-un
isis people who like want they think the
rest of the world is their enemy um and
in some cases they think that killing it
themselves is is is like a noble cause
and you're literally giving them the
building blocks of how to do this it's
the most batshit i'd ever heard like on
expectation it's probably like minus ev
of like multiple billions of lives if
they actually succeeded in doing this
certainly certainly in the tens or
hundreds of millions so the cost benefit
is so unbelievably it makes no sense and
i was like trying to wrap my head around
like why why like
what's going wrong in people's minds to
think that this is a good idea
and it's not that it's malice or
anything like that it's i think it's
that
people don't
you know the proponents they don't
it they're actually overly naive about
the interactions of humanity and well
like that that there are bad actors who
will use this for bad things because not
only will it um
if you publish this information even if
a bad actor couldn't physically make it
themselves which given you know in 10
years time like
the technologies are getting cheaper and
easier uh to use but even if they
couldn't make it they could now bluff it
like what would you do if there's like
some deadly new virus that um
we were published on the internet in
terms of its building blocks kim jong-un
could be like hey if you don't you know
let me build my nuclear weapons i'm
going to release this i've managed to
build it well now he's actually got
incredible bluff we don't know you know
and so that's it's just like handing the
keys sending weapons of mass destruction
to people
though makes no sense the possible i
agree with you but the possible
world in which you might make sense
is if the um
the good guys which is a whole another
problem defining who the good guys are
but the good guys are like
an order of magnitude higher competence
and so they can stay
ahead
of the bad actors
by just being very good at the defense
by very good not meaning like a little
bit better but an order of magnitude
better
but of course the question is in each of
those individual disciplines
is that feasible can you can the bad
actors even if they don't have the
competence leap frog to the place where
uh the good guys are
yeah i mean i would agree in principle
um
with pertaining to this like particular
plan of like
that you know with the thing i described
this deep vision thing where at least
then that would maybe make sense for
steps one and step two of like getting
the information but then
why would you release it the information
to your literal enemies you know that's
that makes
that
that doesn't fit at all in that
perspective of like trying to be ahead
of them you're literally handing them
the weapon but there's different levels
of release right so
uh there's the kind of secrecy where you
don't give it to anybody but there's a
release where you incrementally give it
to
like major labs so it's not public
release but it's like you're giving it
to yeah there's different layers of
reasonability but but the problem there
is it's going to if if you go anywhere
beyond like complete secrecy it's going
to leak
that's the thing it's very hard to keep
secrets and so that's the information is
so you might as well release it to the
public it's that argument so you either
go complete secrecy
or you release it to the public
so which is essentially the same thing
it's going to leak anyway
if you don't do complete secrecy right
which is why you shouldn't get the
information in the first place yeah i
mean what in that
i think
well that's a solution yeah the solution
is either don't get the information in
the first place or be
keep keep it incredibly
incredibly contained see i think
i think it really matters which
discipline we're talking about so in the
case of biology i do think you're a very
right we shouldn't even be
it should be forbidden to even like
think about
that meaning don't coll don't just even
collect information but like don't do i
mean gain a functional research is a
really iffy area
like you start i mean it's all about
cost benefits right there are some
scenarios where i could imagine the cost
benefit of a gain of function research
is very very clear
where you've evaluated all the potential
risks factored in the probability that
things can go wrong and like you know
not only known unknowns but unknown
unknowns as well tried to quantify that
and then even then it's like orders of
magnitude better to do that i'm behind
that argument but the point is is that
there's this like naivety that's
preventing people from even doing the
cost benefit properly on a lot of the
things because
you know the site this i i get it the
science community there
again i don't want to bucket the science
community but like some people within
the science community just think that
everyone's everyone's good and everyone
just cares about getting knowledge and
doing the best for the world and
unfortunately that's not the case i wish
we lived in that world but we don't
yeah i mean there's a lie listen i've
been criticizing the science community
broadly quite a bit there's so many
brilliant people that brilliance is
somehow hindering sometimes because it
has a bunch of blind spots and then you
start to look at a history of science
how easily has been used by dictators to
any conclusion they want and it's
it's it's dark how you can use brilliant
people that like playing the little game
of science because it is a fun game
you know you're building you're going to
conferences you're building on top of
each other's ideas as breakthroughs hi i
think i've realized how this particular
molecule works and i could do this kind
of experiment and everyone else is
impressed ooh cool no i think you're
wrong let me show you why you're wrong
and that little game everyone gets
really excited and they get excited or i
came up with a pill that solves this
problem and it's going to help a bunch
of people and i came up with a giant
study that shows the exact probability
it's going to help or not and you get
lost in this game and you forget to
realize
this game just like malik
it can have like
unintended yeah
unintended consequences that might
destroy human civilization right uh or
or divide human civilization or have
a
geopolitical consequences i mean the the
effects of i mean it's just so
the most destructive effects of covid
have nothing to do with the with the
biology of the virus it seems like uh
it's i mean i could just list them
forever but like one of them is the
complete distrust of public institutions
uh the other one is because of that
public distrust i feel like if a much
worse pandemic came along
we as a world have not cried wolf
and when if an actual wolf now comes
people will be like masks
vaccines it yeah everything
and they they won't be
they'll distrust every single thing that
any major institution is going to tell
them and
because that's the thing like that
there were certain actions
made by
certain you know health public figures
where they told they very knowingly told
it was a white lie it was intended in
the best possible ways such as
you know
early on
when
there were there was clearly a shortage
of masks
and so they said to the public oh don't
get masks they don't there's no evidence
that they work there or the you know
don't get them they don't work in fact
it might even make it worse you might
even spread it more like that that was a
real like stinker uh yeah no no there's
a unless you know how to do it properly
you're gonna make that you're gonna get
sicker or you're more likely to get the
to catch the virus which is just
absolute crap
and
they put that out there and it's pretty
clear the reason why they did that was
because there was actually a shortage of
masks and they really needed it for
health workers which makes sense like i
agree like it you know but
the cost
of lying to the popul to the to the
public when that then comes out
people aren't as stupid as they think
they are as a you know and that's that's
i think where this distrust of ex
experts has largely come from a they've
lied to people
overtly but b
people have been treated like idiots
now that's not to say that there aren't
a lot of stupid people who have a lot of
wacky ideas around covid and all sorts
of things but if you treat the general
public like children
they're going to see that they're going
to notice that and that is going to just
dis like absolutely decimate the trust
in the public institutions that we
depend upon and honestly the best thing
that could happen
i wish like if like faulty or you know
and these other like leaders who i mean
god i would
i can't imagine how nightmare his job
has been over the last few years hell on
earth like so you know i i you know i
have i have a lot of sort of sympathy
for the position he's been in but like
if he could just come out and be like
okay look guys
hands up we didn't handle this as well
as we could have
these are all the things i would have
done differently in hindsight i
apologize for this and this and this and
this that would go so far
and maybe i'm being naive who knows
maybe this would backfire but i don't
think it would like to someone like me
even because i've like i've lost trust
in a lot of these things i'm unfortunate
that at least no people who i can go to
who i think are good like have good
epistemics on this stuff um but you know
if they if they could sort of put their
hands on my okay these are the spots
where we screwed up this this this um
this was our reasons yeah we actually
told a little white lie here we did it
for this reason we're really sorry but
they just did the radical honesty thing
the radical transparency thing
that would go so far
to build rebuilding public trust and i
think that's what needs to happen yeah i
know i totally agree with you
unfortunately
yeah his job was very tough and all
those kinds of things but
um
i see arrogance and arrogance prevented
him from being honest in that way
previously and i think arrogance will
prevent him from being honest in that
way now we need leaders and i think
young people are seeing that that kind
of
talking down to people from a position
of power
i'm i hope is is the way of the past
people really like authenticity and they
they like
leaders that are like a man and a woman
of the people
and i i think that just i mean he still
has a chance to do that i think i mean
yeah sure you know i i don't think you
know if i i doubt he's listening but if
he is like hey i i i think he you know i
don't think he's irredeemable by any
means i think there's you know
um i don't know i don't have an opinion
whether there was arrogance or there or
not um just know that i think
like coming clean on the you know it's
understandable to have up during
this pandemic like i won't expect any
government to handle it well because it
was so difficult like so many moving
pieces so much like lack of information
and so on um but
the step to rebuilding trust is to go
okay look we're doing a scrutiny of
where we went wrong and i and for my
part i did this wrong in this part and
that would be huge all of us can do that
i mean i was struggling for a while
whether i want to talk to
to him or not i talked to his boss
francis collins
um
another person that's screwed up in
terms of trust
um
lost a little bit of my respect to there
seems to have been
a kind of dishonesty in the
in the back rooms
in that p they didn't trust people to be
intelligent
like we need to tell them what's good
for them
we know what's good for them that kind
of idea
to be fair
the the thing that's
what's it called i heard the phrase
today uh nut picking
social media does that so you've got
like nitpicking nut picking is where
the the the craziest stupidest
you know if you have a group of people
let's call you know let's say people who
are vaccine i don't like the term
anti-vaccine people who are vaccine
hesitant vaccine speculative you know
what social media did or the media or
anyone you know
their opponents
would do is pick the craziest example so
the ones who are like you know i think i
need to inject myself with like
motor oil at my ass or something yeah
you know
select the craziest ones and then
have that beamed to you know so from
like someone like fauci or francis's
perspective
that's what they get because they're
getting the same social media stuff as
us they're getting the same media
reports i mean they might get some more
information but they're they too are
going to get these the nuts portrayed to
them so they probably have a
misrepresentation of what the actual
public's intelligence is well that's
that's just yes and that just means
they're not social media savvy so one of
the skills of being on social media is
to be able to filter that in your own
mind like to understand to put into
proper context realize that what you are
seeing social media is not anywhere near
an accurate representation
of humanity not picking a leather and
there's nothing uh wrong with putting uh
motor oil up your ass it's just one it's
one of them
i i do this every weekend okay
uh how did that analogy come from in my
mind like what i don't know i think we
need to there's some freudian thing you
would need to deeply investigate with a
therapist
okay what about ai are you worried about
agi superintelligence systems or
paperclip maximizer type of type of
situation
yes i'm definitely worried about it
but i feel kind of
bipolar in the some days i wake up and
i'm like you're excited about the future
well exactly i'm like wow we can unlock
the mysteries of the universe you know
escape the game um and
this this you know if because i spend
all my time thinking about these
molecule problems that you know what
what is the solution to them
well you know in some ways you need this
like
omni-benevolent omniscient omni-wise
coordination mechanism that can like
make us all not do the the molecule
thing uh or like provide the
infrastructure would redesign the system
so that it's not vulnerable to this
molecule process um and in some ways you
know that's that's the strongest
argument to me for like the race to
build agi is that maybe you know we
can't survive without it
but the flip side to that
is
the
the the the unfortunately now that
there's multiple actors trying to build
ai agi you know this is this was fine
ten years ago when it was just deep mind
but then other
companies started up and now it created
a race dynamic now it's like that's the
whole thing is it the same
it's got the same problem it's like
whichever company is the one that like
optimizes for speed at the cost of
safety will get the competitive
advantage and so it will be the more
likely the ones to build the adi you
know and and that's the same cycle that
you're in and there's no clear solution
to that because you can't just go like
um
slapping
you know
if you go and try and like
stop all the different companies
then
it will you know the good ones will stop
because they're the ones you know within
you know within the west's reach but
then that leaves all the other ones to
continue and then they're even more
likely so it's like it's a very
difficult problem with no clean solution
um
and
you know at the same time you know i i
know the
at least some of the folks at deepmind
and they're incredible and they're
thinking about this they're very aware
of this problem and they're like you
know
i think some of the smartest people on
earth yeah the the culture is important
there because they are thinking about
that and they're
some of the best machine learning
engineers
so it's possible to have a
a company or a community of people that
are both great engineers and are
thinking about the philosophical topics
exactly and importantly they're also
game theorists
you know and because this is ultimately
a game theory problem the thing this
this monologue mechanism and like you
know what this ra how do we voice
arms race scenarios um you need people
who aren't naive to be thinking about
this and again like luckily there's a
lot of smart non-naive game theorists
within within that group yes i'm
concerned about it and i i think it's
again a thing that we need
people to be thinking about um in terms
of like how do we create
how do we mitigate the arms race
dynamics and how do we
solve
the thing of it's got boston calls it
the orthogonality problem whereby
because obviously there's a chance you
know that the belief the hope is is that
you build something that's super
intelligent
and
by definition of being super intelligent
it will also become super wise and have
the wisdom to know what the right goals
are and hopefully those goals include
keeping humanity alive right um but
bostrom says that actually those two
things you know um super intelligence
and super wisdom
aren't necessarily correlated they're
actually kind of orthogonal things and
how do we make it so that they are
correlated how do we guarantee it
because we need it to be guaranteed
really to know that we're doing the
thing safely but i think that like
um merging of intelligence and wisdom
at least my hope is that this whole
process
happens sufficiently slowly that we're
constantly having these kinds of debates
that we have enough time to um
to figure out how to modify each version
of the system as it becomes more and
more intelligent yes buying time is is a
good thing definitely anything that
slows everything down we just everyone
needs to chill out we've got
millennia to figure this out yeah um
or at least
at least
um well it depends again it's some
people think that you know we can't even
make it through the next few decades
without having some kind of
omni-wise
coordination mechanism um and there's
also an argument to that yeah i don't
know
well there is uh i'm suspicious of that
kind of thinking because it seems like
the entirety of human history is
has people in it that are like
predicting doom
uh or just around the corner there's
something about us
that
is strangely attracted to that thought
it's almost like fun to think about the
destruction of everything
just objectively speaking
i've
talked and listened to a bunch of people
and they are
gravitating towards that it's almost
i think it's the same thing that people
love about conspiracy theories
is they love to be the person that kind
of figured out
some deep
fundamental thing about the that's going
to be it's going to mark something
extremely important about the history of
human civilization because then
i will be important right when in
reality most of us will be forgotten and
and and
life will will go on i mean one of the
sad things about
whenever anything traumatic happens to
you whenever you lose loved ones
or
just tragedy happens you realize life
goes on
even after a nuclear war that will wipe
out
some large percentage of the population
and will torture
people for
years to come because of the sort of i
mean the effects of a nuclear winter
people will still survive
life will still go on i mean it depends
on the kind of nuclear war but in in
case in yoko world it will still go on
that's one of the amazing things about
life it finds a way and so in that sense
i just i feel like the doom and gloom
thing
is um
well what we don't yeah we don't want a
self-fulfilling prophecy yes that's
exactly yes and i very much agree with
that and i you know even i have a slight
like feeling from the amount of time we
spent in this conversation talking about
this because it's like
you know
is this even a net positive if it's like
making everyone feel oh
in some ways like making people imagine
these bad scenarios can be a
self-fulfilling prophecy but at the same
time
that's how
that's weighed off with at least
making people aware of the problem
and gets them thinking and i think
particularly you know the reason why i
want to talk about this to your audience
is that
on average they're the type of people
who gravitate towards these kind of
topics because they they're
intellectually curious and
and they can sort of sense that there's
trouble brewing yeah they can smell that
there's you know i think there's a
reason people are thinking about this
stuff a lot is because
the probability
the probability you know it's increased
in probability over certainly over the
last few years
um trajectories have not gone favorably
let's put it in you know since 2010. so
um it's right i think for people to be
thinking about it but that's where
they're like i think whether it's a
useful fiction or whether it's actually
true or whatever you want to call it i
think having this faith this is where
faith is valuable
because it gives you at least this like
anchor of hope
and and i and i'm not just saying it to
like trick myself like i do truly i do
think there's something out there that
wants us to win yeah i think there's
something that really wants us to win
and it just you just have to be like
just like
okay now i sound really crazy but like
open your heart to it a little bit yeah
and
it will give you the like
the sort of breathing room with which to
marinate on the solutions we are the
ones who have to come up with solutions
but
we
can use that there's like this
hashtag positivity there's value in that
yeah you have to kind of imagine all the
destructive trajectories that lay in our
future and then believe
in the possibility of avoiding those
trajectories all while he's an
audience all while sitting back which is
majori the the two people that listen to
this are probably sitting in a beach
smoking some weed
um
that's a beautiful sunset or they're
looking at just the waves going in and
out
and ultimately there's a kind of deep
belief there and um
the the momentum of humanity to figure
it all out i think we'll make it
but we've got a lot of work to do which
is which what makes this whole
simulation this video game kind of fun
this battle of polytopia
i still man i love those games so much
so good
and that that one for people who don't
know but uh battle polytopia is a it's a
big it's like a
really radical sim simplification of a
civilization type of game it still has a
lot of the skill tree development a lot
of the strategy
um
but it's easy enough to play in a phone
yeah it's kind of interesting they've
really they've really figured it out
it's it's one of the most elegantly
designed games i've ever seen it's
incredibly complex
and yet being again it walks that line
between complexity and simplicity in
this really really great way um
and they use pretty colors that
hack the dopamine reward circuits in our
brains very well yeah it's fun
video games are so fun yeah
most of this life is just about fun
escaping all the suffering to find the
fun
uh what's energy healing i have in my
notes energy healing question mark
what's that about
uh oh man um god your audience are gonna
think i'm mad uh
so
the two crazy things that happened to me
the one was the voice in the head that
said you're gonna win this tournament
and then i won the tournament
the other craziest thing uh that's
happened to me was in
um
i started getting
uh this like weird
problem in my ear where
it was kind of like low frequency sound
distortion
uh where voices particularly men's
voices became incredibly unpleasant to
listen to
um it would it would like create this it
would be falsely amplified or something
and it was almost like a physical
sensation in my ear which was really
unpleasant
and i it would like last for a few hours
and then go away and then come back for
a few hours and go away and i went and
got hearing tests and they found that
like the bottom end i was losing the the
hearing in that ear
um and
i also in the end i got the doctor said
they think it was this thing called
meniere's disease um which is this very
unpleasant disease where people
basically end up losing their hearing
but they get this like
um it often comes with like dizzy spells
and other things because it's like the
inner ear gets all messed up um
now i don't know if that's actually what
i had um but that's what at least a
couple of one doctor said to me um but
anyway so i had three months of this
stuff this going on it was really
getting me down i was and i was at
burning man
um of all places
i don't mean to be that person talking
about burning man um but i was there
and again i'd had it and i was unable to
listen to music which is not what you
want because burning man is a very loud
intense place
and i was just having a really rough
time and on the final night
i get talking to this uh girl who's like
a friend of a friend
and i mentioned i was like oh i'm really
down in the dumps about this and she's
like oh well i've done a little bit of
energy healing would you like me to have
a look
sure now this is again
deep i was you know
no time in my life for this i didn't
believe in any of this stuff i was just
like it's all it's all woo
nonsense um
i was like sure have a go
and she starts like
with her hand and she says oh there's
something there and then she leans in
and she starts like sucking
over my ear not actually touching me but
like close to it like with her mouth
and it was really unpleasant i was like
bro can you stop she's like no no
there's something there i need to get it
i was like no no i really don't like it
please this is really loud she's like i
need to just bear with me and she does
it i don't know how long for a few
minutes
and then she eventually
collapses on the ground like freezing
cold crying
not you know and i'm just like i don't
know what the hell is going on like i'm
like thoroughly freaked out as there's
everyone else watching just like what
the hell me like warm her up and she was
like
she was really shaken up
and
she's like i don't know what that
she said it was something very
unpleasant and dark don't worry it's
gone i think you'll be fine in a couple
you'll have the physical symptoms for a
couple of weeks and you'll be fine
but you know she was like that
you know so i was i was so rattled a
because
the potential that actually i had
something bad in me that made someone
feel bad and and and that she was scared
that was what you know i was like wait i
thought you you do this this is the
thing
and now you're terrified like you pulled
like some kind of an exorcism or
something yeah what the is going on
yeah um so it
like just
the most insane experience um and
frankly it took me like a few months to
sort of
emotionally recover from it
um but my ear problem went away about a
couple of weeks later and touchwood i've
not had any issues since
so
that gives you uh
like hints that maybe there's something
out there
i mean
i i don't i i again i don't have an
explanation for this
the most probable explanation was uh you
know i was a burning man i was in a very
open state let's just leave it at that
um and
you know
placebo is an incredibly powerful thing
in a very not understood thing so almost
assigning the word placebo to it reduces
it down to a way that it doesn't deserve
to be reduced down maybe there's a whole
science of what we call placebo maybe
there's a
placebo is a door self-healing yeah you
know
and i mean i don't know what the problem
was like i was told it was many years i
don't want to say i definitely had that
because i don't want people to think
that oh that's how you know if they do
have that because it's terrible disease
and if they have that that this is going
to be a guaranteed way for it to fix it
for them i don't know
um
and i also don't i don't
you're absolutely right to say like
using even the word placebo is like it
comes with this like baggage of
of like frame
and i don't want to reduce it down all i
can do is describe the experience and
what happened i cannot put
an ontological framework around it i
can't say why it happened what the
mechanism was what the problem even was
in the first place
um i just know that something crazy
happened and it was while i was in an
open state and fortunately for me it
made the problem go away but what i took
away from it again it was part of this
you know this took me on this journey of
becoming more humble about what i think
i know because as i said before i was
like i was in the like richard dawkins
train of atheism in terms of there is no
god there's and everything like that is
we know everything we know you
know the only way we can get through
uh we know how medicine works and it's
molecules and and chemical interactions
and that kind of stuff
and now it's like
okay well there's there's clearly more
for us to understand um and that doesn't
mean that it's a scientific as well
because
you know
the beauty of the scientific method is
that it still it still can apply to this
situation like i don't see why you know
i would like to try and test this
experimentally um i haven't really you
know i don't know how we would go about
doing that we'd have to find other
people with the same condition i guess
and like
try and repeat repeat the experiment um
but it doesn't just because something
happens
that's sort of out of the realms of our
current understanding it doesn't mean
that it's
the scientific method can't be used for
it yeah i think the scientific method
sits on a foundation
of those kinds of experiences as a
scientific method is a process
to
um
carve away at the mystery
all around us
and experiences like this is just a
reminder that uh we're mostly shrouded
mysteries though that's it it's just
like a humility like we haven't really
figured this whole thing out
but at the same time we have
found ways to act you know we're clearly
doing something right because think of
the technological scientific
advancements the knowledge that we have
that was would blow people's minds even
from 100 years ago yeah and you know
we've even allegedly gone out to space
and landed on the moon although i still
haven't i have not seen evidence of of
the earth being round but i'm still i'm
keeping an open mind
uh speaking of which uh you studied
physics and astrophysics
uh would when just just to go to that
and we jump just to jump around
through the fascinating life you've had
when did you
how did that come to be like when did
you fall in love with astronomy and
space
and things like this as early as i can
remember um i was very lucky that my my
mum and my dad but particularly my mom
my mom is like the most
nature she is mother earth it's the only
way to describe her just she's like
doctor doolittle animals flock to her
and just like sit and look at her
adoringly as she sings
yeah she's just she just is mother earth
and she has always been fascinated by
you know she doesn't have any
you know she ever went to university or
anything like that she's actually phobic
of maths if i try and get her to like
you know i was trying to teach her poker
and she hated it um
but she's
so deeply curious
um and that just got instilled in me
when you know we would sleep out under
the stars whenever it was you know the
two nights a year when it was warm
enough in the uk to do that um and we'll
just lie out there until until we fell
asleep looking at
looking for satellites looking for
shooting stars and and i was just
always i don't know whether it was from
that but i've always naturally
gravitated to like
the biggest
the biggest questions and also the like
the most layers of abstraction
i love just like what's the meta
question what's the meta question and so
on um so i think it just came from that
really and it and and then on top of
that like physics
you know it also made logical sense and
that it was a
it was it was the degree it was a degree
that was a subject that ticked the box
of being you know answering these really
big picture questions but it's also
extremely useful it like has a very high
utility um in terms of i didn't know
necessarily i thought i was going to
become like a research scientist i my
original plan was i want to be a
professional astronomer so it's not just
like a philosophy degree that asks the
big questions and it's not uh
like
biology in the path to be going to
medical school or something like that
which is all overly pragmatic not overly
is um
this is very
pragmatic
yeah physics is a good combination of
the two yeah at least for me it made
sense and i was good at it i liked it um
yeah i mean i it wasn't like i did an
immense amount of soul-searching to
choose it or anything it just was like
this
it made the most sense i mean you have
to make this decision in the uk age 17
which is crazy um because you know in us
you go the first year you do a bunch of
stuff right and then you choose your
major
um yeah i think the first few years of
college you focus on the drugs and only
as you get closer to the end
do you start to think oh this
wasn't about that and i'm
uh i owe the government a lot of money
um
how many alien civilizations are out
there when you when you looked up at the
stars with your mom
[Music]
and you were counting them
what's your mom think about a number of
alien civilizations i actually don't
know
i would imagine she would take the
viewpoint of you know she's pretty
humble and she knows how many you know
there's a huge number of
potential spawn sites out there so she
would sponsor spawn sites yeah
you know this is our sport
we have spawn sites in polytopia we
spawned on earth you know it's
hmm yeah spawn sights
why does that feel weird to say
spawn because it makes me feel like it's
um
there's only one source of life and it's
spawning in different locations that's
why the word spawn
because like it feels like life that
originated on earth
really originated here right it is it is
a unique to this particular
yeah i mean but i don't in my mind it
doesn't exclude
you know the completely different forms
of life and different biochemical
soups
can't also spawn but
i guess it implies that there's some
spark that is yeah which i kind of like
the idea of it yeah and then i i get to
think about respawning
like after it dies like what happens if
life on earth ends is it
is it going to restart again probably
not
it depends maybe earth is depends on the
type of you know what what's the thing
that kills it kills it off right if it's
a paper clip maximizer not that you know
for the for the example but you know
some kind of very
self-replicating
you know high on the capabilities very
low on the wisdom type thing so whether
that's you know grey goo green goo
you know like nano bots or
just a shitty misaligned ai that thinks
it needs to turn everything into paper
clips um
you know if it's something like that
then it's going to be very hard for life
you know complex life because by
definition you know a paperclip
maximizer is the ultimate instantiation
of molecule deeply low complexity over
optimization on a single thing
sacrificing everything else turning the
whole world into i although something
tells me like if we actually take a
paper clip maximizer it destroys
everything it's a really dumb system
that just and envelops the whole of
earth
and that diverse beyond yeah
i didn't i didn't know that part but
okay great that's what it takes it
becomes a multi-planetary paperclip
maximizer well it just it just
propagates i mean it it depends whether
it figures out how to jump the vacuum
gap
um
but
again i mean this is all silly because
it's a hypothetical thought experiment
which i think doesn't actually have much
practical application to the ai safety
problem but it's just a fun thing to
play around with but yeah if by
definition it is maximally intelligent
which means it is maximally good at
navigating the environment around it in
order to achieve its goal
but
extremely bad at choosing goals in the
first place so again we're talking about
this orthogonality thing right it's very
low on wisdom but very high on
capability um then it will figure out
how to jump the vacuum gap between
planets and stars and so on and thus
just turn every atom it gets its hands
on into paper clips yeah uh by the way
for for people who which is maximum
virality by the way that's what virality
is
but does not mean that morality is
necessarily all about maximizing paper
clips in that case it is so for people
who don't know this is just a thought
experiment example of an ai system
that's very
that has a goal and is willing to do
anything to accomplish that goal
including destroying all life on earth
and all human life and all of
consciousness in the universe you know
for the goal of producing
a maximum number of paper clips
okay uh or whatever its optimization
function was that it was set up but
don't you think could be making
recreating lexus maybe it'll tile the
universe and lex uh go on i like this
idea now i'm scared that's better that's
that's more interesting than paperclip
that could be infinitely optimal if i
were to say
so it's still a bad thing because it's
permanently capping
what the universe could ever be it's
like that's that's its end or achieving
the optimal that the universe could ever
achieve but that's up to different
people have different perspectives uh
but don't you think within the paperclip
world
that would
emerge just like in the zeros and ones
that make up a computer that would
emerge beautiful complexities
like it it won't
suppress
you know as you scale to multiple
planets and throughout they'll emerge
these little worlds
that uh on top of the fabric of
maximizing paper clips there will be
that that would emerge like little
societies of
of a
paper clip well then we're not with them
we're not describing a paper clip
maximizer anymore because by the like if
you think of what a paper clip is it is
literally just a piece of bent iron yes
right
so if it's
maximizing that throughout the universe
it's taking every atom it gets its hand
on into somehow turning it into iron or
steel
and then bending it into that shape and
then done and on
by definition like paper clips there is
no there is no way for well okay so
you're saying that paper clips somehow
will just emerge and create
through gravity or something no no no no
because there's there's a dynamic
element to the whole system it's not
just
it's creating those paper clips and the
act of creating there's going to be a
process and that process will have a
dance to it because it's not like
sequential thing there's a whole complex
three-dimensional system of paper clips
uh you know like you know people like
string theory right it's supposed to be
strings that are interacting in
fascinating ways i'm sure paper clips
are very string like they can be
interacting very interesting ways as you
scale exponentially through
three-dimensional
i mean i'm sure
the paperclip maximizer has to come up
with the theory of everything it has to
create like wormholes right it has to
break uh like it has to understand
quantum mechanics i i love you i love
your optimism this is where i'd say this
we're going into the realm of
pathological optimism whereby it's um
i'm sure there will be a
i i think there's an intelligence that
emerges from that system so you're
saying that basically intelligence is
inherent in the fabric of reality and
will find a way kind of like goldblum
says life will find a way you think life
will find a way even out of this
perfectly homogeneous dead soup it's not
perfectly homogeneous it has to it's
perfectly maximal in the production i
don't know why people keep thinking it's
harmonic it's it maximizes the number of
paper clips that's the only thing it's
not trying to be homogeneous it's trying
true it's true maximize paper clips so
you're saying you're saying that because
it because you know kind of like in the
big bang or you know it seems like you
know things there were clusters there
was more stuff here than there that was
enough of the pathonicity that
kick-started the evolutionary process
the little weirdnesses that will make it
even out of yeah so yeah emerges
interesting okay well so how does that
line up then with the the whole heat
death of the universe right because
that's that's another sort of
instantiation of this it's like
everything becomes so far apart and so
cold and so
perfectly
mixed that it's like
homogenous grayness do you think that
even out of that homogeneous greatness
where there's no
you know negative
entropy that you know there's no uh free
energy
that we understand
even from that
new yeah the paperclip maximizer or any
other intelligent systems will figure
out ways to travel to other universes to
create big bangs within those universes
or through black holes to create whole
other worlds to break
the what we consider the limitations of
physics
the paperclip maximizer will find a way
if a way exists and we're we should be
humble to realize that we've been yet
but because it just wants to make more
paper clips yeah so it's going to go
into those universes and turn them into
paper clips yeah but we
humans not humans but complex systems
exist on top of that we're not
interfering with it
this complexity emerges
from this simple base state the simple
basis whether it's yeah whether it's
you know plank lengths or paper clips is
the base unit yeah
you can think of like the universe as a
paper clip maximizer because it's doing
some dumb stuff like physics seems to be
pretty dumb
it has
like i don't know if you can summarize
it yeah yeah the the laws are fairly
basic
and yet out of them amazing complexity
emerges and its goals seem to be pretty
basic and dumb
if you can summarize as goals i mean i
don't i don't know what's a nice way
maybe
um
maybe laws of thermodynamics could be i
don't know if you can assign goals to
physics but if you formulate in the
science in the sense of goals it's very
similar to
paper clip maximizing in in the dumbness
of the goals but the
the pockets of complexity has emerged is
where beauty emerges that's where life
emerges that's where intelligence that's
where humans emerge and i i think we're
being very down on this whole paperclip
maximizer thing now the reason we hate
it i think yeah because what you're
saying is that you
think that the force of emergence itself
is another like unwritten
unwritten but like another fake to in
law of the of of reality yeah and and
you you're trusting that emergence will
find a way to even out of seemingly the
most molechy awful out you know plain
outcome emergence will still find a way
i love that as a philosophy i think it's
very nice i would
wield it carefully because
there's
large error bars on on that and the
certainty of that yeah um and while we
build the paper clip maximizer and find
out classic yeah molok is doing
cartwheels man yeah but the thing is it
will destroy humans in the process which
is the thing which is the reason we
really don't like it we we seem to be
really holding on to this whole human
civilization thing
would you would that make you said if
ai systems that are beautiful that are
conscious that are interesting and
complex and intelligent
ultimately lead to the death of humans
that make you sad if humans led to the
death of humans sorry
like if they would supersede humans oh
if some ai yeah ai would uh
would end humans i mean that's that's
that's the reason why i'm like in some
ways in less emotionally concerned about
ai risk as then say bio you know bio
risk because at least with ai there's a
chance you know if if we're in this
hypothetical where it wipes out humans
but it does it for some like
higher purpose it needs our atoms to an
energy to do something at least now
there's the universe is going on to do
something interesting
um whereas if it wipes everything you
know bio like just kills everything on
earth and that's it and there's no more
you know earth cannot spawn anything
more meaningful in the in the few
hundred million years it has less left
because it doesn't have much time left
um
then
uh
yeah i i don't know
so one of my favorite books i've ever
read is uh nova scene
by james lovelock who sadly just died um
he wrote it when he was like 99.
he died aged 102 so it's a fairly new
book
um and he sort of talks about that that
he thinks it's you know
so building off this gaia theory where
like earth is like living
some form of intelligence itself and
that this is the next like step right is
this this whatever this new intelligence
that is maybe silicon based as opposed
to carbon-based goes on to do um and
it's really sort of in some ways an
optimistic but rudely fatalistic book um
and i don't know if i fully subscribe to
it but it's a beautiful piece to read
anyway
so am i sad by that idea i think so yes
and actually yeah this is the reason why
i'm sad by the idea because if something
is truly brilliant and wise and smart
and truly super intelligent
it should be able to figure out
abundance
so
if it figures out abundance it shouldn't
need to kill us off it should be able to
find a way for us it should be there's
plenty the universe is huge
there should be plenty of space for it
to go out
and do all the things it wants to do and
like give us a little pocket where we
can continue doing our things and we can
continue to do things and so on um and
again if it's so supremely wise it
shouldn't even be worried about the game
theoretic considerations that by leaving
us alive we'll then go and create
another like super intelligent agent
that it then has to compete against
because it should be omni-wise and smart
enough to not have to concern itself
with that
unless unless it deems humans to be kind
of
like uh like
the humans are a source of none of a
lose-lose kind of dynamics
well
yes and no
we're not molecules that's why i think
it's important to say well maybe humans
are the source of molecule
no i mean i think
game theory is the source of moloch and
you know because molecule exists in in
non-human systems as well it happens
within like agents within a game in
terms of like you know
uh it applies to agents but it like it
can apply to you know
uh a species that's on an island
of animals you know rats out competing
the ones that like massively consume all
the resources are the ones that are
going to win out over the more like
chill
socialized ones and so you know creates
this malthusian trap like moloch exists
in little pockets in nature as well well
so it's not a strictly human i wonder if
it's actually a result the consequences
of the invention of predator and prey
dynamics
maybe it needs to ai will have to kill
off
every organism
that you're talking about killing of
competition
not competition but just um
like the way
it's like uh
like the weeds or whatever in in a
beautiful flower garden
the parasites yeah
on on the whole system now of course it
will it will it won't do that completely
it'll put them in a zoo like we do with
parasites it'll ring fence yeah and
there'll be somebody doing a phd on like
they'll prod humans with a stick and see
what they do
[Laughter]
but uh i mean in terms of letting us run
wild
outside of the uh uh you know a
geographically constrained region that
might be
uh that you might have uh decided
against that no i think there's
obviously the capacity for beauty and
kindness and
non-uh
non-malic behavior amidst humans so i'm
pretty sure ai will preserve us
uh let me
you i don't know if you answered the the
aliens question you no i didn't you had
a good conversation with toby uh toby
yes about various sides of the universe
i think did did he say no i'm forgetting
but i think he said it's a good chance
we're alone
so the the the classic you know fermi
paradox question is
um
there are so many spawn points and
yet
you know it didn't take us that long to
go from harnessing fire to
sending out radio signals into space
so surely
given the vastness of space we should be
and you know even if only a tiny
fraction of those create
life and other civilizations too we
should be the universe should be very
noisy there should be evidence of
dyson spheres or whatever you know like
at least radio signals and so on but
seemingly things are very silent out
there um now of course it depends on who
you speak to some people say that
they're getting signals all the time and
so on and like i don't want to make an
epistemic statement on that but um
it seems like there's a lot of silence
and so that raises this paradox
and then
they
the the you know the drake equation
so the drake equation is like uh
basically
just a simple thing of like trying to
estimate the number of possible uh
civilizations within the galaxy by
multiplying the number of uh stars
created per year by the number of stars
that have planets planets that are
habitable blah blah blah so all these
like different factors um and then you
plug in numbers into that and you you
know depending on like the range of you
know your lower bound and your upper
bound
point point estimates that you put in
you get out a number at the end for the
number of civilizations
but what toby and his crew did um
differently was toby this is a
researcher at the future humanity
institute uh
they instead of
they realize that it's like basically a
statistical quirk that if you put in
point sources even if you think you're
putting in conservative point sources
because on some of these variables the
the uncertainty is so large it spans
like maybe even like a couple of hundred
orders of magnitude
um
by putting in point sources it's always
going to lead to um overestimates
um and so they
by putting stuff on a log scale
actually they did it on like a log log
scale on some of them um and then like
ran the simulation across the whole
um bucket of uncertainty across all
those orders of magnitude when you do
that
then actually the number comes out much
much smaller and that's the more
statistically rigorous you know
mathematically correct way of doing the
calculation it's still a lot of hand
waving as science goes it's it's like
definitely
you know just waving i don't know what
an analogy is but it's hand wavy um and
uh anyway when they did this and then
they did a bayesian update on it as well
to like factor in the fact that there is
no evidence that we're picking up
because you know no evidence is actually
a form of evidence right um and
the long and short of it comes out that
the
we're roughly around 70 to be the only
uh
intelligent civilization in our galaxy
thus far and around 50 50 in the entire
observable universe which sounds so
crazily counterintuitive but their math
is
legit
well yeah the math around this
particular equation which equation is
ridiculous on many levels but uh the
the the the powerful thing about the
equation is there's the different things
different components that can be
estimated
and the error bars on which can be
reduced with science
and enhanced throughout since the
equation came out the error box have
been coming out on different atoms yeah
that's right aspects and so that it
almost kind of says
uh what like this gives you a mission to
reduce the error bars on these estimates
now over a period of time and once you
do you can better and better understand
like in the process of redoing the error
bars you'll get to understand actually
what is the right way to
find out where the aliens are how many
of them there are and all those kinds of
things so i don't
think it's good to use that for an
estimation i think you do have to think
from like
more like from first principles just
looking at what life is on earth
like and trying to understand the very
physics-based biologic
chemistry biology-based question of what
is life
maybe computation based what the is
this thing right and that like how
difficult is it to create this thing
right it's one way to say like how many
plants like this are out there all that
kind of stuff but
it feels like from our very limited
knowledge perspective the right ways
to think
how how does what is this thing and how
does it originate from
from very simple non-life things
how does complex
life like things emerge
from from a rock
to a bacteria
protein
and these like weird systems that
encode information and pass information
from self-replicate and then also select
each other and mutate in interesting
ways such that they can adapt and evolve
and build increasingly more complex
systems right well it's a form of
information processing yeah right
right
whereas information transfer
but then also an energy processing which
then results in
if i guess information processing maybe
i'm getting buggered well
it's doing some modification and yeah
the input is some energy right it's able
to extract yeah
extract resources uh from its
environment in order to achieve a goal
but the goal doesn't seem to be clear
right the
goal is well the goal is to make more of
itself
yeah but in a way that uh
increases i mean i don't know if
evolution
is a fundamental
law of the universe but it seems to want
to
replicate itself in a way that maximizes
the chance of its survival
individual agents within yeah an
ecosystem do yes yes evolution itself
doesn't give a right it's a very it
don't care it's just like
oh you optimize it well at least it's
certainly um
yeah it doesn't care about the the
welfare of the individual agents within
it but it does seem to i don't know i i
think it's i think the mistake is that
we're anthropomorphizing and to even try
to you know give
evolution a mindset
um because it is there's a really great
post by eliezer uh yudkowski on um
uh less wrong which is um
an alien god
and he talks about like the mistake we
make when we try and like put our mind
think through things from an
evolutionary perspective as though like
giving evolution like some kind of
agency and what it wants
um yeah worth reading but
yeah i i would like to say
that having interacted with a lot of
really smart people that say that
anthropomorphization is a mistake i
would like to say that saying that
anthropomorphization is a mistake is a
mistake i think there's a lot of power
in anthropomorphization
if i can only say that word correctly
one time i i i think that's actually a
really powerful way to reason through
things and i think people especially
people on robotics seem to run away from
it as fast as possible
and uh i i just can you give an example
of like how it helps in robotics
oh in uh
that
our world is a world of humans
and to see robots as fundamentally just
tools
runs away from the fact that
we live in a world of a dynamic world of
humans that like these all these game
theory systems we've we've talked about
that a robot that ever has to interact
with humans and i don't mean like
intimate friendship interaction i mean
in a factory setting where it has to
deal with the uncertainty of humans all
that kind of stuff you have to
acknowledge that the robot's behavior
has an effect on the human
just as much as the human has an effect
on the robot and there's a dance there
and you have to realize that this entity
when a human sees a robot
this is obvious in a physical
manifestation of a robot they feel a
certain way they have a fear they have
uncertainty they um
they they have their own personal life
projections we have pets and dogs and
the thing looks like a dog they have
their own memories of what a dog is like
they have certain feelings and that's
going to be useful in a safety setting
safety critical setting which is one of
the most trivial settings for a robot
in terms of how to avoid
any kind of dangerous situations and a
robot should really con consider that in
navigating its environment and we humans
are right to reason about how a robot
should consider navigating its
environment through anthropomorphization
i i i also think our brains are designed
to think in in in
human
um
human terms like game theory
i think is um
is is best applied in the space of human
decisions
and so
uh right you're dealing i mean with
things like ai ais they are you know we
can somewhat
like i don't think it's
the reason i i say anthropomorphization
we need to be careful with is because
there is a danger of
overly applying overly wrongly assuming
that that this
artificial intelligence is going to
operate in any similar way to us because
it is
operating on a fundamentally different
substrate like even
dogs or even mice or whatever in some
ways like
anthromorphizing them is less of a
mistake i think than an ai even though
it's an ai we built and so on because at
least we know that they're running from
the same substrate and they've and
they've also evolved from the same out
of the same evolutionary process
you know they've followed this evolution
of like needing to compete for resources
and
needing to find a mate and that kind of
stuff whereas an ai that has just popped
into an existence somewhere on a like a
cloud server
let's say you know or whatever however
it runs and whatever whether i don't
know whether they have an internal
experience i don't think they
necessarily do in fact i don't think
they do but
the point is is that to try and
apply any kind of modeling of like see
thinking through problems and decisions
in the same way that we do
has to be done extremely carefully
because they are
like
they're so alien
their method of whatever their form of
thinking is it's just so different
because they've never had to evolve
you know in the same way
yeah i was beautifully put i was just
playing devil's advocate i do think in
certain contexts anthropomorphization is
not going to hurt you yes engineers run
away from it too fast
for the most point you're right uh do
you have advice for young people
today
like the the 17 year old that you were
of uh how to live life you can be
proud of how to have a career you can be
proud of in this world full of molex
think about the win-wins
look for win-win situations
and
be careful not to
you know overly use your smarts to
convince yourself that something is
win-win when it's not so that's
difficult and i don't know how to advise
you know people on that because it's
something i'm still figuring out myself
um
but have that as a sort of
default
mo
uh
don't see things everything as a
zero-sum game try to find the positive
sumness and like find waste if it if
there isn't seem to be one
consider playing a different game so
that i would suggest that
um do not become a professional poker
player
because people always ask they're like
oh she's a pro i want to do that too
fine you could have done it if you were
you know when i started out it was a
very different situation back then poker
is you know
uh
a great game to learn in order to
understand the way ways to think and
i recommend people learn it but don't
try to make a living from it these days
it's almost it's very very difficult to
the point of being impossible um
and then
really
really be aware of how much time you
spend on your phone and on social media
and really try and keep it to a minimum
be aware that basically every moment
that you spend on it is bad for you so
it doesn't mean to say you can never do
it but
just have that running in the background
this i'm doing a bad thing for myself
right now
um i think that's the general rule of
thumb
of course about becoming a professional
poker player if there is a thing in your
life
that uh
that's like that and nobody can convince
you otherwise just do it
um
don't listen to anyone's advice
find a thing that you can't be talked
out of too that's that's
i like that yeah
uh
you you were uh a lead guitarist in the
metal band oh did i write that down for
something uh
what that did you uh what would you do
it for the
the
the the performing was it the the pure
the the music of it
was it just being a rock star why'd you
do it um
so we only ever played
two gigs
we we didn't last you know it wasn't a
very we weren't famous or anything like
that um
but i
i was very into metal like it was my
entire identity
sort of from the age of 16 to 23. the
best metal band of all time ah don't ask
me that it's so hard to answer uh
ah
so i know i had a long argument with um
i'm a guitarist more like a classic rock
guitarist
so you know i've had friends who are
very big pantera fans and so there was
often arguments about
what's the better metal band metallica
versus pantera this is a more kind of
90s maybe discussion
but i was always on the side of
metallica
both musically and in terms of
performance and the the depth of war and
lyrics and and so on so um but they were
basically everybody was against me
because if you're a true metal fan
i guess the idea goes is you can't
possibly be a metallica fan i think
metallica's pop it's just like it's they
sold out
metallica are metal like they they
were the
i mean again you can't say who was the
godfather of metal blah blah but like
they
were so groundbreaking
and so brilliant um
i i you've named literally two of my
favorite bands like that's that when you
ask that question who are my favorites
like those were two that came up a third
one is children of bodom um who i just
think
they just take all the boxes for me um
yeah i don't know it's
nowadays like i kind of sort of feel
like a repulsion to the
i mean i was that myself like i'd be
like who do you prefer more come on
who's like no you have to rank them but
it's like this false zero sumness that's
like why they're so additive like
there's no conflict there
when people ask that kind of question
about anything movies
i feel like it's hard work
and it's unfair but it's it's you should
pick one yeah like and i that's actually
you know the same kind of it's like a
fear of a commitment people ask me
what's your favorite band it's like
but i you know it's good to pick exactly
and thank you for yeah thank you for the
tough question yeah uh well maybe not no
i don't know
when a lot of people are listening um
can i just like what what is it
uh no it does it it's are you still into
metal uh funny enough i was listening to
a bunch before i came over here oh like
you do you use it for
like motivation yeah or get you in a
certain way yeah i was weirdly listening
to 80s hair metal before i came does
that count as metal i think i think so
it's it's like proto-metal and it's
happy it's optimistic
happy proto-metal um
yeah i mean these things you know all
these genres bleed into each other um
but yeah sorry to answer your question
about
guitar playing
my relationship with it was kind of
weird and that i was
deeply uncreative
my objective would be to hear some
really hard technical solo and then
learn it memorize it and then play it
perfectly but i was
incapable of trying to write my own
music like the idea was just absolutely
terrifying um
uh but i was also just thinking i was
like it'd be kind of cool to actually
try
starting a band again and getting back
into it and right
but
it's scary
that's scary i mean i i put out some
guitar playing just other people's
covers like i play comfortably numb
on on the internet nice it's scary too
it's scary putting stuff out there
uh
and i had this similar kind of
fascination with technical playing both
on piano and guitar
you know uh one of the first
um
one of the reasons i started learning
guitar is the from ozzy osbourne mr
crowley solo
and one of the first solos i learned is
that
um
and it's there's a beauty to it there's
a lot of beauty right yeah
is there some tapping but it's it's just
really fast
it's beautiful like arpeggios yes
arpeggios yeah and but there's a melody
that you can hear through it but there's
also build up
it's a beautiful solo but it's also
technically just visually the way it
looks
when a person is watched you feel like a
rockstar player
but it ultimately has to do with
technical
you
you're not developing the part of your
brain that i think
requires you to generate beautiful music
it is ultimately technical in nature and
so that took me a long time to
let go of that and just be able to write
music myself and
and that's a different
that's a different journey i think
i think that journey is a little bit
more inspired in the blues world for
example or improvisation is more valued
obviously in jails and so on but
um i i think ultimately it's a more
rewarding
journey because you get to
your relationship with the guitar then
becomes
a kind of escape
from the world where you can create
create i mean creating stuff is
uh and it's something you work with
because my relationship with my guitar
was like it was something to tame and
defeat
yeah
which was kind of what my whole
personality was back then like i was
just very like you know as i said like
very competitive very just like must
bend this thing to my will
whereas
writing music is you were it's like a
dance you work with it
but i think because of the competitive
aspect for me at least that's still
there
which creates anxiety about uh playing
publicly or all that kind of stuff i
think there's just like a harsh
self-criticism within the whole thing
it's really really it's it's it's really
tough to hear some of your stuff
i mean that there is
there's certain things that feel really
personal and and on top of that as we
talked about poker offline
there are certain things that you get to
certain height in your life and that
doesn't have to be very high but you get
to a certain height and then you put it
aside for a bit
and it's hard to return to it because
you remember being good
and it's hard to um like you being at a
very high level in poker it might be
hard for you to return to poker every
once in a while and you enjoy it knowing
that you're just not as sharp as it used
to be because you're not doing it every
single day
uh that that's something i always wonder
with i mean even just like in chess with
kasparov some of these greats just
returning to it it's just it's almost
painful yes yeah and i feel that way
with guitar too you know because i used
to play like every day a lot
so returning to it is painful because
like
it's like accepting the fact that this
whole
ride is finite and
the you have you have a prime
there's a time when you're really good
and now it's over and now we're on a
different chapter of life i was like
but you can still you can still discover
joy within that process it's been tough
especially with some level of like
as people get to know you there's a and
people film stuff
you you don't have
the privacy of just
sharing something with a few people
around you yeah
that's a beautiful privacy that that's
the point well the internet is
disappearing yeah that's a really good
point yeah
but all those pressures aside if you
really you can step up and still enjoy
the out of uh
a good musical performance um
what what do you think is the meaning of
this whole thing
what's the meaning of life
wow
it's in your name as we talked about you
have to have to live up do you feel
the requirement to have to live up to
your name
because live yeah
no because i don't see it i mean my
well again it's kind of like
no i don't know
because my full name is olivia yeah so i
can retreat in that and be like oh
olivia what does that even mean um
live up to live uh
no i i can't say i i do because i've
never thought of it that way okay and
then your name backwards is evil that's
what i also talked about
um there's there's like layers i mean i
i feel the urge to to live up to that to
be to be the inverse of evil yeah um or
even better because i don't think you
know
is the inverse of evil good or is good
something completely
separate to that i think my intuition
says it's the latter but i don't know
anyway again getting in the weeds um
what is the meaning of all this uh of
life
um why are we here
i think to
explore have fun and understand
um and make more of here and to keep the
game going over here more more of more
of
this whatever this is more of experience
just to have more of experience and
ideally positive experience
um and
more
complex you know to i guess try and put
it into a sort of vaguely scientific
term um
make it so that the program required the
length of code required to describe the
universe is as long as possible
uh and you know highly complex and
therefore interesting
because again like
i know you know we bang the the
the metaphor to death but like
tiled with
x you know told with uh paper clips
doesn't require that much of a code to
describe
um obviously maybe something emerges
from it but at that steady state
assuming a steady state it's not very
interesting whereas
it seems like our universe is over time
becoming more and more complex and
interesting there's so much richness and
beauty and diversity on this earth and i
want that to continue and get more i
want more
more more diversity and i in the very
best sense of that word um
is i to me the
the the the goal of all this uh yeah
yeah and somehow
have fun in the process yes
because we do create a lot of fun things
along instead of in this
creative force
and all the beautiful things we create
somehow there's like a
funness to it and perhaps that has to do
with the finiteness of life the
finiteness of all these experiences
which is what makes them kind of unique
like the the fact that they end there's
this uh whatever it is
falling in love or um
creating a piece of art
or creating a bridge
or
creating a rocket or creating a
i don't know just the the businesses
that do that that that build something
or
solve something
the fact that it is born and it dies
um somehow
uh embeds it with
fun with joy
for the people involved i don't know
what that is
the finiteness of it it can do some
people struggle with the you know i mean
a big
thing i think
that one has to learn is is being okay
with things coming to an end
and
uh
in terms of like some projects and so on
right people cling on to things beyond
what they're meant to be doing you know
beyond what make is reasonable
and i'm gonna have to come to terms with
this podcast coming to an end i really
enjoy talking to you i i think it's
obvious as we've talked about many times
you should be doing a podcast you should
you're already doing
a lot a lot of stuff publicly to the
world which is awesome and you're a
great educator you're a great mind
you're a great intellect but it's also
this whole medium of just talking about
it it's good it's a fun one it's it
really is good and it's it's just
it's nothing but like oh it's just so
much fun
and you can just get into so many
yeah there's this space to just explore
and and see what comes and emerges and
yeah yeah to understand yourself better
and if you're talking to others to
understand them better yeah and together
with them i mean i you should do your
you should do your own podcast but you
should also do a podcast with c as you
talked about
the two of you have such
uh
different minds that like melt together
in just hilarious ways fascinating ways
just uh the tension of ideas there is
really powerful but in general i think
you you got a beautiful voice so thank
you thank you so much for talking today
thank you for being a friend thank you
for honoring me with this conversation
with your valuable time thanks liv thank
you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with little berry to
support this podcast please check out
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and now let me leave you with some words
from richard fineman
i think it's much more interesting to
live not knowing than to have answers
which might be wrong
i have approximate answers and possible
beliefs and different degrees of
uncertainty about different things
but
i'm not absolutely sure of anything and
there are many things i don't know
anything about such as whether it means
anything to ask why we're here
i don't have to know the answer
i don't feel frightened not knowing
things by being lost in a mysterious
universe without any purpose which is
the way it really is as far as i can
tell
thank you for listening and hope to see
you
next time
you