Kind: captions
Language: en
we are becoming cyborgs like
our brains are fundamentally changed
everyone who grew up with electronics we
are fundamentally different from
previous from homo sapiens i call us
homo techno i i think we have evolved
into homo techno which is like
essentially a new species previous
technologies i mean may have even been
more profound and moved us to a certain
degree but i think the computers are
what make us homotech know i think this
is what it's a brain augmentation so it
like allows for actual evolution like
the computers accelerate the degree to
which all the other technologies can
also be accelerated would you classify
yourself as a homo sapien or a homo tech
no definitely home attack no so i think
we're all you're you're one of the
earliest of the species i think most of
us are
the following is a conversation with
grimes an artist musician songwriter
producer director and a fascinating
human being who thinks a lot about both
the history and the future of human
civilization studying the dark periods
of our past to help form an optimistic
vision of our future
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's grimes
oh yeah the cloud lifter there you go
there you go you know your stuff
have you ever used the cloud lifter yeah
i actually this microphone cloud lifter
is what michael jackson used so no
really yeah this is like thriller and
stuff this mic this mic
and that yeah it's it's a incredible
microphone yes it's very flattering on
vocals i've used this a lot it it's
great for demo vocals it's great in a
room like sometimes it's easier to
record vocals if you're just in a room
and like the music's playing and you
just want to like feel it and it's not
so it's not in the headphones and this
mic is pretty directional so i think
it's like a good mic for like
just vibing out and just getting a real
good vocal take just vibing just in a
room anyway this is the
system this is the michael jackson
quincy jones
microphone
i feel way more badass now all right
let's get it you want to just get into
it i guess so
all right one of your names at least in
the space and time is c like the letter
c and and you told me that
c means a lot of things it's the speed
of light it's the render rate of the
universe it's yes in spanish it's the
crescent moon
and it happens to be my favorite
programming language because it's uh it
basically runs the world but it's also
powerful fast
and it's dangerous because you can mess
things up really bad with it because of
all the pointers but anyway which of
these associations uh with the name c is
the coolest to you
i mean to me the coolest is the speed of
light obviously or the speed of light
when i say render rate of the universe i
think i mean the speed of light
because essentially that's
what we're rendering it see i think
we'll know
if we're in a simulation if the speed of
light changes because if they can
improve their render speed then
it's already pretty good it's already
pretty good but if it improves
then
we'll know you know we can probably be
like okay they've updated or upgraded
it's fast enough for us humans because
it seems
like um it seems immediate there's no
delay there's no latency in terms of
like us humans on earth interacting with
things but if you're like uh like
intergalactic species operating on a
much larger scale then you're gonna
start noticing some weird stuff or if
you can operate
in like around a black hole then you're
gonna start to see some render issues
you can't go faster than the speed of
light correct
so it really limits our ability or and
it's one's ability to travel space
theoretically you can you have wormholes
so i there's nothing in general
relativity
that uh precludes faster than
um
speed of light travel but it just seems
you're gonna have to do some really
funky stuff with uh
very heavy things that have like
weirdnesses that have basically tears in
space-time we don't know how to do that
dune navigators know how to do it
dude navigators yeah yeah folding space
basically making wormholes
so
the name c
yes
who are you are you do you think of
yourself as multiple people are you one
person do you know
like in this morning were you different
person than you are tonight we are i
should say recording this
basically at midnight which is awesome
yes thank you so much i think i'm about
eight hours late no you're right on time
good morning this is the beginning of a
new day soon anyway uh are you the same
person you were in the morning in the
evening
do you you're you're is there multiple
people in there do you think of yourself
as one person or maybe you have no clue
are you just a giant mystery to yourself
okay these are really intense questions
but uh
that's cool because i asked this myself
like look in the mirror who are you
people tell you to just be yourself but
what does that even mean uh i mean i
think my personality changes with
everyone i talk to
so i have a very inconsistent
personality
yeah person to person so the interaction
your personality
materializes
like i'll go from being like a
megalomaniac to being like
you know just like a total
hermit who is very shy so some
combinatorial com combination of your
mood and the person you're interacting
with yeah moon people are interacting
with but i think everyone's like that
maybe not
well not everybody acknowledges it and
able to introspect it who brings up what
kind of person what kind of mood brings
out the best in you as an artist and as
a human
can you introspect this like my best
friends
like people i can
when i'm like
super confident and i know that they're
gonna understand
understand everything i'm saying so like
my best friends then
when i can start being really funny
that's always my like peak mode but it's
like yeah takes a lot to get there let's
talk about constraints
you've talked about constraints and
limits
uh do those help you out as an artist or
as a human being or do they get in the
way do you like the constraints so in
creating music and creating art and
living life
do you like the constraints that this
world puts on you
or
do you hate them
if constraints are
moving
then you're good
right like it's like it's like as we are
progressing with technology we're
changing the constraints of like
artistic creation you know um making
video and music and stuff is getting a
lot cheaper there's constantly new
technology and new software that's
making it faster and easier we have so
much more freedom than we had in the 70s
like when michael jackson you know when
they recorded thriller with this
microphone
like they had to use a mixing desk and
all this stuff and like probably even
get in the studio it's probably really
expensive and you have to be a really
good singer and you have to know how to
use like the mixing desk and everything
and now i can just you know
make i've made a whole album on this
computer
i have a lot more freedom but then i'm
also constrained in different ways
because there's like
literally millions more artists it's
like a much bigger playing field it's
just like
i also i didn't learn music i'm not a
natural musician so i i don't know
anything about actual music i just know
about like the computer so
i'm really kind of just like
messing around
and like
trying things out well yes i mean but
the nature of music is changing so
you're saying you don't know actual
music well music is changing
music is becoming you've talked about
this is becoming
it's like merging with technology
yes
it's becoming something
more than just like the notes on a piano
it's becoming some weird composition
that requires engineering skills
programming skills
some kind of human robot interaction
skills and still some of the same things
that michael jackson had which is like a
good ear for a good sense of taste of
what's good and not the final thing what
is put together like you're allowed
you're
enabled empowered with a laptop to layer
stuff
to start like layering insane amounts of
stuff and it's super easy to do that
i do think music production is a really
underrated art form i feel like people
really don't appreciate it when i look
at publishing splits the way that people
um like pay producers and stuff
uh it's it's
super like producers are just deeply
underrated like so many of the songs
that are popular
right now or for the last 20 years like
part of the reason they're popular is
because the production is really
interesting or really sick or really
cool and it's like i don't think
listeners
um
like people just don't really understand
what music production is
it's not it's sort of like this weird
discombobulated art form it's not like a
formal because it's so new there isn't
like a formal training
path for it it's
um mostly driven by like autodidacs like
it's like almost everyone i know who's
good at production like they didn't go
to musical school or anything they just
taught themselves they're mostly
different like the music producers you
know
is there some commonalities the time
together or are they all just different
kinds of weirdos because i just i just
hung out with rick rubin i don't know if
you've yeah la la i mean rick rubin is
like literally
one of the gods of music production like
he's one of the people who
first
you know who like made music production
you know
made the production as important as the
actual lyrics or the notes but the thing
he does which is interesting i don't
know if you can speak to that but just
hanging out with him he seems to just
sit there in silence close his eyes and
listen it's like he almost does nothing
and that nothing somehow gives you
freedom to be the best version of
yourself so that's music production
somehow too which is like encouraging
you to do less to simplify to like
push towards minimalism
i mean i guess i mean
i
work differently from recruitment
because rick rubin produces for other
artists whereas like i mostly produce
for myself
so it's a very different situation um i
also think rick rubin he's he's in that
i would say advanced category of
producer where like you've like
earned your you you can have an engineer
and stuff and people like do the stuff
for you yeah but um i usually just like
do stuff myself you're the engineer
the producer
and the
the artist
yeah i guess i would say i i'm in the
era like the post rick rubin era like i
come from the kind of like um
skrillex school of thought which is like
uh where you're you are yeah the
engineer producer artist like right um
i mean lately
sometimes i'll work with a producer now
i'm
gently sort of
delicately starting to collaborate a bit
more but like uh
i think i'm kind of from the like the
whatever 2010s
explosion of things where um
you know everything became available on
the computer and you kind of got this
like lone wizard energy thing going so
the you embrace being the loneliness
is the loneliness somehow an engine of
creativity like uh see most of your
stuff most of your creative
quote-unquote genius in in quotes is
in the privacy of your mind
yes
well it was
um
but
here's the thing
i was talking to daniel eck and he said
he's like most artists they have about
10 years
like 10 10 good years um and then they
usually stop making their like vital
shit
um and i feel like
i'm sort of like nearing the end of my
10 years on my own
and um so you have to become somebody
else now i'm like i'm in the process of
becoming somebody else and reinventing
when i work with other people because
i've never worked with other people i
find that i make
like that i'm like exceptionally
rejuvenated and making like some of the
most vital work i've ever made
so
because i think another human brain is
like one of the best um tools you can
possibly find
um like
it's a funny way to put it i love it
it's like if a tool is like you know
whatever hp plus one or like adds some
like
stats to your
character like another human brain will
like square it instead of just like
adding something
double up the experience points i love
this we should also mention we're
playing tavr music before this and which
i love which i first i think you have to
stop the tavern music yeah because it
doesn't the the audio okay okay but it
makes yeah it'll make the podcast
edit and post no one will want to listen
to the podcast they probably would but
it makes me it reminds me like a video
game like a role playing video game
where you have experience points there's
something really
joyful
about wandering places like elder
scrolls
like skyrim
just exploring
uh these landscapes in another world and
then you get experience points and you
can work on different skills and somehow
you progress in life
and i don't know it's simple it doesn't
have some of the messy complexities of
life and there's usually a bad guy you
can fight in in um in skyrim it's
dragons and so on i'm sure in elder ring
there's a bunch of monsters you can
fight i love that i feel like elden ring
i i feel like this is a good analogy to
music protection though because it's
like i feel like the engineers and the
people creating these open worlds are
it's sort of like similar to people to
music producers whereas it's like this
this hidden archetype that like no one
really understands what they do and no
one really knows who they are but
they're like
it's like the artist engineer because
it's like
it it's both art and uh fairly complex
engineering well you're saying they
don't get enough credit aren't you kind
of changing that by becoming the person
doing everything
isn't the engineer
well i mean others have gone before me
i'm not you know there's like timbaland
and skrillex and there's all these
people people that are like you know
very famous for this but but i just
think the general i think people get
confused about what it is and just don't
really know what
what it is per se and it's just when i
see a song like when there's like a hit
song like um
like
i'm just trying to think of like just
going for like even just a basic pop hit
like um
like was it like rules by dua lipa or
something the production on that is
actually like really crazy
i mean the song is also great but it's
like the production is exceptionally
memorable like
you know
and it's just like no one i ca i don't
even know who produced that song it just
like isn't part of like the rhetoric of
how we just discuss the creation of art
we just sort of like
don't consider the music producer
because i think the music producer used
to be more
just simply recording things
um yeah that's interesting because when
you think about movies we talk about the
actor and the actresses but we also talk
about the director directors yeah we
don't talk about like that with the
music as often
um the beatles music producer was one of
the first kind of
guy one of the first people sort of
introducing crazy sound design into pop
music i forget his name
he has the same i forget his name but um
you know
like that he was doing all the weird
stuff like dropping pianos and like yeah
oh to get the aaa to get to get the
sound to get the authentic sound what
about lyrics
you think those
where did they fit into how important
they are i was heartbroken to to learn
that elvis didn't write his songs i was
very mad a lot of people don't write
their songs i understand this but but
here's here's the thing i feel like that
there's this desire for authenticity i
used to be like really mad when like
people wouldn't write or produce their
music and i'd be like that's fake and
then i realized
um
there's all this like weird bitterness
and like aggro-ness and art about
authenticity yeah but i had this kind of
like weird realization recently uh
where i started thinking that like
art is
sort of a decentralized collective
thing
like
um
like art is kind of a conversation
with all the artists that have ever
lived before you you know like it's like
you're really just sort of it's not like
anyone's reinventing the wheel here like
you're kind of just taking
you know
thousands of years of art and um like
running it through your own little
algorithm and then like
making you're like your interpretation
of it you're just joining the
conversation with all the other artists
that came before it's such a beautiful
way to look at it like and it's like
it's like i feel like everyone's always
like there's all this copyright and ip
and this and that and or authenticity
and it's just like
like
i think we need to stop seeing this as
this like egotistical thing of like oh
the creative genius the lone creative
genius or this or that because it's like
i think art isn't
shouldn't be about that i think art is
something that sort of
brings humanity together and it's also
art it's also kind of the collective
memory of humans it's like
we don't
like we don't give a fuck about
whatever ancient egypt like how much
grain got sent that day and sending the
records and like you know like
who went where and you know how many
shields needed to be produced for this
like the we just remember their their
art and it's like you know it's like in
our day-to-day life there's all this
stuff that seems more important than art
um because it helps us function and
survive but when all this is gone
like the only thing that's really gonna
be left
is the art the technology will be
obsolete that's so fascinating like the
humans will be dead that is true a good
compression of human history is the art
we've generated across the different
uh centuries of diff different millennia
so with the aliens come
when the aliens come they're going to
find the hieroglyphics on the pyramids i
mean art could be broadly defined they
might find like the engineering marvels
the bridges
uh the rockets the i guess i sort of
classify though architecture is art too
yes
i consider engineering um
in those formats to be art for sure it
sucks that like digital art is easier to
delete
so if there's an apocalypse a nuclear
war
that can disappear yes and the physical
there's something still valuable about
the physical manifestation of art
that's that sucks that
like music for example has to be played
by somebody
yeah i mean
i do think we should do have a
foundation type situation where we like
you know how we have like seed banks up
in the north and stuff yeah like we
should probably have like like a like a
solar powered or geothermal little
bunker that like has all the all human
knowledge uh you mentioned danielle egg
in spotify um
what do you think about that as an
artist what's spotify is that empowering
i get to me spotify sort of as a
consumer is super exciting it makes it
easy for me to access music from all
kinds of artists
get to explore all kinds of music make
it
super easy to sort of uh curate my own
playlist and
have fun with all that it was so
liberating to let go you know i used to
collect you know albums and cds and so
on like like like horde albums yeah like
they matter but the reality you could
you know that was really liberating i
could let go of that and
letting go of the albums you're kind of
collecting allows you to find new music
exploring new artists and all that kind
of stuff but i know from a perspective
of an artist that could be like you
mentioned competition could be a kind of
constraint
because there's more and more and more
artists
on the platform i think it's better that
there's more artists i mean again this
might be propaganda because this is all
for conversation with daniel x so this
could easily be propaganda dude like
we're all a victim of somebody's
propaganda so let's just accept this
but daniel eck was telling me that uh
you know at the because i you know when
when i met him i like i was i came in
all furious about spotify and like i
grilled him super hard so i've got his
his um answers here
but um
uh he was saying like at the sort of
peak of the cd industry
there was like 20 000 artists making
millions and millions of dollars like
there was just like a very tiny kind of
one percent um and spotify has kind of
democratized uh the industry um because
now i think he said there's about a
million artists making a good living
from spotify and when i heard that i was
like honestly
i would rather make less money and have
just like a decent living
um
then
and have more
artists be able to have that
even though i like i wish it could
include everyone but yeah that's really
hard to argue with youtube is the same
is
youtube's mission they want to
basically
have as many creators as possible make a
living some kind of living yeah and that
that's so hard to argue with
but i think there's better ways to do it
my manager i actually wish he was here i
like i would have brought him up my
manager is um building an app that um
can manage
you
so it'll like help you organize your
percentages and um get your publishing
and da da da da so you can take out all
the middlemen so you can have a much
bigger it'll just like automate it um so
you can get automate the manager
automate automate managing management
publishing um
like and and lee and and legal it can
read the app he's building can read your
contract and like tell you about it
because one of the issues with music
right now
it's not that we're not getting paid
enough but it's it's that
the art art industry is filled with
middlemen because
artists are not good at business and
you know from the beginning like frank
sinatra it's all mob stuff like it's the
music industry um you know is run by
business people not the artists and the
artists really get very small cuts of
like what they make and so
um i think
part of the reason i'm a technocrat
which i mean your fans are gonna be
technocrats so no one's they're not
gonna be mad at me about this but like
my fans hate it when i say this kind of
thing or the general public they don't
like technocrats they don't like
technocrats
like when i mean when i watched um
battle angel elita and they were like
the martian technocracy and i was like
yeah martian technocracy and then they
were like and they're evil and i was
like oh okay yeah i was like is martian
technocracy sounds sick to me
yeah so your intuition
as technocrats would create a some kind
of beautiful world for example what my
manager's working on if you can create
an app that um
removes the need for a lawyer and then
you could you could have a smart
contract on the blockchain um removes
the need uh
for like management and organizing all
the stuff like can um read your stuff
and explain it to you can collect your
royalties
you know like then
the small amounts the amount of money
that you're getting from spotify
actually means a lot more
um and goes a lot farther it can remove
some of the bureaucracy some of the
inefficiencies that
uh make life not as great as it could be
yeah i think the issue isn't that
there's not enough
like the issue is that there's
inefficiency and i'm really into this um
positive some
mindset
um you know the win-win mindset of like
instead of you know fighting over the
scraps how do we make the
or worrying about scarcity like instead
of a scarcity mindset why don't we just
increase the efficiency
um and you know in that way expand the
size of the pie
let me ask about experimentation
so you said which is beautiful
uh
being a musician is like having a
conversation with all those that came
before you
um how much of uh creating music is like
kind of having that conversation trying
to fit into the cultural
uh trends and how much of it is like
trying to as much as possible being
outside and come up with something
totally new it's like when you're
thinking when you're experimenting are
you trying to be totally different
totally weird are you trying to
um fit in
man this is so hard because i feel like
i'm
kind of in the process of semi retiring
from music so i'm this is like my old
brain yeah bring it back
bring it from like the shelf put it on
the table for for a couple minutes we'll
just we'll just poke it i think it's a
bit of both because i think uh
forcing yourself to engage with new
music um it's really great for neural
plasticity like i think uh
you know as people
part of the reason music is marketed at
young people is because young people are
very neuroplastic so um like if you're
16 to like 23 or whatever you're it's
gonna be really easy for you to love new
music and if you're older than that it
gets harder and harder and harder and i
think one of the beautiful things about
being a musician is i just constantly
force myself to listen to new music and
i think it keeps my brain really plastic
and i think this is a really good
exercise i just think everyone should do
this you listen to new music and you
hate it i think you should just keep
force yourself to like okay well why do
people like it and like
you know make your brain form new neural
pathways and
uh be more open to change that's really
brilliant actually sorry to interrupt
but like get that exercise
is is really
amazing
to sort of
embrace change embrace sort of practice
on your plasticity because like that's
one of the things you you fall in love
with a certain band you just kind of
stay with that for the rest of your life
and you never understand the modern
music that's a really good experience
most of the streaming on spotify is like
classic rock and stuff like new music
makes up a very small chunk of what is
played on spotify and i think this is
like
not a good sign for us as a species i i
think uh
yeah so it's a it's a good measure of
the the species open-mindedness to
change is how often you listen to new
music yeah the brain the brain let's put
the the the music brain on the back on
the shelf i gotta pull out the
futurist brain for a second
uh
in what wild ways do you think the
future saying like 30 years
maybe 50 years maybe 100 years will be
different
from like from our current way of life
on earth we can talk about augmented
reality virtual reality
maybe robots
maybe space travel maybe video games
maybe genetic engineering i can keep
going cyborgs aliens
world wars maybe destructive nuclear
wars good and bad
when you think about the future what are
you imagining
what's the weirdest and the wildest it
could be
have you read surface detail by ian
banks
uh surface detail is my favorite
depiction of a su oh wow you have to
read this book it's literally the
greatest science fiction book possibly
everything
is the man yeah for sure
what have you read
uh just the player of games i i read
that um titles can't be copyrighted so
you can just steal them and i was like
player of games sick nice yeah so you
could name your album like i always
romeo and juliet
i always wanted to name an album war and
peace nice like that would be like that
is a good that's a good uh what have i
heard that before you can do that like
you could do that
um also things that are in the public
domain for people who have no clue you
do have a song called player games yes
oh yeah so ian banks surface detail is
in my opinion the best future that i've
ever read about or heard about in
science fiction um
basically there's uh
the relationship with super intelligence
um like artificial super intelligence is
just it's like great
um
i want to credit the person who coined
this term because i love this term
and i feel like young women don't get
enough credit in
um
yeah so if you go to protopia futures on
instagram what is her name personalized
donor experience at scale already power
don't experience monica
bielskite i'm saying that wrong
um and i'm probably gonna i'm probably
butchering this a bit but protopia is
sort of
if utopia is unattainable protopia is
sort of like
um you know it's an awesome instagram
features
a a great a future that is
you know as good as we can get the
future positive future ai is this a
centralized ai in the surface in surface
detail or is it distributed what kind of
ai is it um they mostly exist as giant
super ships like sort of like the um
guild ships and dune like they're these
giant ships that kind of kind of move
people around and the ships are sentient
and um they can talk to all the
passengers and uh i mean there's a lot
of different types of
ai in the banksian future but um in the
opening scene of surface detail there's
this place called the culture and the
culture is basically a protopian future
and a proto a protopian future i think
is like a future that is like
obviously it's not it's not utopia it's
not perfect and like because like
striving for utopia i think feels
hopeless and and it's sort of like
maybe not the best terminology to be
using um
so
it's like it's a pretty good place like
mostly
like
you know
super intelligence and biological beings
exist fairly in harmony there's not too
much war there's like as as close to
equality as you can get you know it's
like it's like approximately a good
future like there's really awesome stuff
it's
um
and uh the
uh
in the opening scene um this girl she's
born as a sex slave outside of the
culture so she's in a society that
doesn't adhere to the cultural values
she tries to kill the guy who is her
like master um but he kills her but
unbeknownst to her when she was um
traveling on a ship through the culture
with him one day um
a ship put a neural lace in her head and
um
neural lace is sort of like it's
basically a neural link uh
because life imitates art it does indeed
it doesn't need so she wakes up and the
opening scene is her memory has been
uploaded by this nero lace when she's
been killed and now she gets to choose a
new body and this ai um is interfacing
with her recorded memory in her neural
lace um and helping her and being like
hello you're dead but because you had a
neurologist your memory is uploaded do
you want to choose a new body and you're
going to be born here in the culture and
like start a new life
which is just that's like the opening
it's like so sick
and the ship is the super intelligence
all the ships are kind of super
intelligence but they still want to
preserve a kind of rich fulfilling
experience for the humans yeah like
they're like friends with the humans and
then there's a bunch of ships that
don't want to exist biological beings
but they just have their own place like
way over there but they don't they just
do their own thing they're not
necessarily so it's a pretty
this portopian existence is pretty
peaceful yeah i mean and then and then
for example one of the main fights in
the book is um
uh they're fighting there's these
artificial hells
um
that uh and people
are don't think it's ethical to have
artificial hell like basically when
people do crime they get sent like when
they die their memory gets sent to an
artificial hell and they're eternally
tortured and so um
though and then the way that society is
deciding whether or not to have the
artificial hell is that they're having
these simulated they're having like a
simulated war so instead of
actual blood you know people are
basically essentially fighting in a
video game to choose the outcome of this
but they're still experiencing the
suffering
or wait in this artificial hell or no
can you experience stuff or so the
artificial health sucks and a lot of
people in the culture want to get rid of
the artificial hell there's a simulated
wars are they happening in the
artificial light so no the simulated
wars are happening outside of the
artificial health between the political
factions who are the so this political
faction says we should have simulated
hell to um deter crime and and this
political faction is saying no
stimulated hell is unethical and so
instead of like having
you know blowing each other up with
nukes they're having like a giant
fortnight battle yes uh to just to
decide this which
you know to me that's protopia that's
like okay we can have war without death
um you know i don't think there should
be simulated hells i think that is
definitely one of the ways in which
technology could go very very very very
wrong so almost punishing people in a
digital space or something yeah like
torturing
people's memories
either as a deterrent like if you
committed a crime but also just for
personal pleasure if there's some
demented humans in this world um
dan carlin actually has this um
um episode
of hardcore history uh on
painfultainment oh that episode is
fucked it's dark because it he kind of
goes through human history and says like
we as humans seem to enjoy
secretly enjoy or used to be openly
enjoyed sort of the torture
and the death watching the death and
torture of other humans
i do think
if people were consenting we should be
allowed to have
gladiatorial
matches
but consent is hard to achieve in those
situations it always starts getting
slippery like it could be also forced
cons like it starts getting weird yeah
yeah there's way too much excitement
that this is what he highlights there's
something about human nature that wants
to see that violence and it's really
dark
and you hope that we can sort of
overcome that aspect of human nature but
that's still one
within us somewhere well i think that's
what we're doing right now i have this
theory that um what is very important
about the current moment is that um
all of evolution has been survival of
the fittest up until now and um at some
point you know it's kind of the lines
are kind of fuzzy but
in the recent
past or maybe even just right now we're
getting to this
point
where
we
can choose intelligent design
like we
probably since like the integration of
the iphone like we are becoming cyborgs
like
our brains are fundamentally changed
everyone who grew up with electronics we
are fundamentally different from
previous from homo sapiens i call us
homo techno i i think we have evolved
into homo techno which is like
essentially a new species like um if you
if you look at the way if you mr if you
took an mri of my brain and you took an
mri of like a
medieval brain i think it would be very
different the way the way that it has
evolved do you think when historians
look back at this time they'll see like
this was a fundamental shift to what a
human being is i think i i i do not
think we're we are still homo sapiens i
believe we are homo techno and i i think
we have evolved
um and
uh
and i think right now the way we are
evolving um we can we can choose how we
do that and i think we are being very
reckless about how we're doing that like
we're just having social media but i
think this idea that like this is a time
to choose intelligent design should be
taken very seriously it like now is the
moment to reprogram the human computer
um you know it's like if you go blind um
your uh visual cortex will get taken
over with um other functions we can
choose our own evolution we can change
the way our brains work and so we
actually have a huge responsibility to
do that and i think
i'm not sure who should be responsible
for that but there's definitely not
adequate education we're being inundated
with all this technology that is
fundamentally changing um the physical
structure of our brains and we are not
um adequately responding to to that
to choose how we want to evolve and we
could evolve
we could be really whatever we want and
i think this is a really important time
and i think if we choose correctly and
we choose wisely
um consciousness could exist for
a very long time and integration with ai
could be extremely positive
and i don't think enough people are
focusing on this specific situation do
you think we might irreversibly screw
things up if we get things wrong now
because like the flip side of that it
seems humans are pretty adaptive so
maybe the way we figure things out is by
screwing it up like social media over a
generation we'll see the negative
effects of social media and then we
build new social medias and we just keep
improving stuff and then we learn the
failure from the failures of the past
because humans seem to be really
adaptive on the flip side
you we can get it wrong in a way where
like literally we create weapons of war
or increase hate
past a certain threshold we really do a
lot of damage i mean i think we're
optimized to notice the negative things
but i would actually say
um
you know one of the things that i think
people aren't noticing is like if you
look at silicon valley and you look at
like whatever the tech technocracy like
what's been happening there like it's
like when silicon valley started it was
all just like facebook and
all this like for-profit crap that like
really
wasn't particular i guess it was useful
but it was it's sort of
just like whatever
um but like now you see like lab-grown
meat like compostable
um or like biodegradable
like single-use cutlery or like um you
know like meditation apps you know i i
think uh we are actually evolving and
changing and technology is changing i i
think there's just
maybe
there isn't
quite enough education
about this and also i don't know if
there's like quite enough incentive for
it because i i think the way capitalism
works um
what we define as profit
we're we're also working on an old model
of what we define as profit i i really
think
if we changed
um
the idea of profit to include social
good you can have like economic profit
social good also counting as profit
would incentivize things that are more
useful and more whatever spiritual
technology or like positive technology
or um you know
things that help reprogram the human
computer in a good way or things that um
help us
intelligently design
our new brains yeah there's no reason
why within the framework of capitalism
the word profit or the idea of profit
can't also incorporate you know the
well-being of a human being so like
long-term well-being long-term happiness
um or even for example you know we were
talking about motherhood like part of
the reason i'm so late because i had to
get the baby to bed um and it's like i
keep thinking about motherhood how um
under capitalism
it's like this extremely essential job
that is very difficult that is not
compensated and we sort of like value
things by by how much we
compensate them and so we really devalue
motherhood in our society and pretty
much all societies like capitalism does
not recognize motherhood it's just a job
that you're supposed to do for free
um and it's like but i feel like
producing great humans should be seen as
a great as as profit under capitalism
like that should be that's like a huge
social good like every
awesome human that gets made adds so
much to the world so like if that was
integrated into the profit structure
then
um
you know and if we potentially found a
way to compensate motherhood so
come up with a compensation that's much
broader than just money
or or it could just be money like what
if you just made
i don't know but i but i don't know how
you'd pay for that like i mean
that's where you start getting into
reallocation resources that people get
uh upset over like what if we made like
a motherhood dao
yeah yeah
you know and and and um
you know used it to fund
like single mothers like
you know
pay for
making
babies
so i mean if you create and put
beautiful things onto the world that
could be
companies that can be bridges they could
be
art they could be a lot of things and
that could be children
uh which are
or education or anything that could
should be valued by society and that
should be somehow incorporated into the
framework of what
as a market
of what like if you contribute children
to this world that should be valued and
respected and uh sort of celebrated
like proportional to what it is which is
it's the thing that fuels human
civilization yeah like kind of important
i feel like everyone's always saying i
mean i think we're in very different
social spheres but everyone's always
saying like dismantle capitalism and i'm
like well okay well i don't think the
government should own everything like i
don't think we should not have private
ownership like that's scary you know
like that starts getting into weird
stuff and just sort of like i feel
there's almost no way to do that without
a police state you know yeah um
but obviously capitalism has some major
flaws um and i think actually mac uh
showed me this idea called social
capitalism which is a form of capitalism
that just like
considers social good to be uh also
profit like you know it's like right now
companies need to like you're supposed
to grow every quarter or whatever
to like show that you're
functioning well but it's like okay well
what if you kept the same
amount of profit you're still in the
green but then you have also all the
social good like do you really need all
this extra economic growth or could you
add this social good and that counts and
you know
i i don't know if i i am not an
economist i have no idea how this could
be achieved but i don't think economists
know how anything can be achieved either
but they pretend it's the thing they
construct a model and they they go on tv
shows and sound like an expert
that's the definition of economist
um how did
being a mother becoming a mother
change you as a human being
would you say man i i think it kind of
changed
everything and it's still changing me a
lot it's actually changing me more right
now in this moment than it was before
like today like this just like they
getting in the
most recent months and stuff
can you elucidate that
child
chain like when you wake up in the
morning and you look at yourself it's
again which who are you
um how have you become different would
you say
i think it's just really reorienting my
priorities
and at first i was really fighting
against that because i somehow felt it
was like a failure of feminism or
something like i felt like it was like
bad if like my kids
started mattering more than my work
um
and then like more recently i started
sort of analyzing that
uh thought in myself and being like
that's also kind of a construct it's
like we've just devalued motherhood so
much in our culture that like i feel
guilty for
caring
about my kids more than i care about my
work so feminism includes breaking out
of whatever the construct is
so yeah continually breaking it's like
freedom
empower you to be free and that means
uh
but but it also but like being a mother
like i'm so much more creative like i
cannot believe
the massive amount of great brain growth
that i what do you think that is just
cause like the stakes are higher somehow
i think it's like
it's just so trippy watching
consciousness emerge it's just like
it's like going on
a crazy
journey or something it's like the
craziest science fiction
novel you could ever read it's just so
crazy watching consciousness
come into being and then at the same
time
like you're forced to
value your time
so much like when i have creative time
now it's so sacred i need to like
be really freaking
on it
um but the other thing is that uh
um
i used to just be like a cynic and i
used to just wanna like my last album
was called misanthropicine and it was
like this like
it was like a study in villainy like or
or like it was like well what if you
know we have instead of the old gods we
have like new gods and it's like
misenthropicity is like misanthrope like
and anthropocene which is like the you
know
like and she's the goddess of climate
change or whatever and it's like
destroying the world and it was just
like
it was like dark and it was like a study
in villainy and it was sort of just like
like i used to like have no problem just
making cynical
angry scary art
um and now that there's anything wrong
with that but i think having kids just
makes you such an optimist it just
inherently makes you want to be an
optimist so bad that like um like i feel
like a more responsibility to
make more optimistic
things and
i get a lot of shit for it because
everyone's like
oh you're so privileged stop talking
about like pie in the sky stupid
concepts and focus on like the now but
it's like
um
i think if we don't ideate about um
futures that could be good we won't be
able to get them if everything is blade
runner then we're gonna end up with
blade runner it's like as
we said earlier life imitates art like
life really does imitate art and so
we really need more protopian or utopian
art um i think this is incredibly
essential for uh the future of humanity
and i think the uh the current discourse
where
um that's seen as a
thinking about
protopia or utopia is seen as a
dismissal of the problems that we
currently have i think that is a an
incorrect mindset
um
and
like having kids just makes me want to
imagine amazing futures that like
maybe
i won't be able to build but they will
be able to build if they want to yeah it
does seem like ideation is a precursor
to creation you have to imagine it in
order to be able to build it and there
is a
sad thing about human nature that they
somehow a cynical view of the world is
seen as a
insightful view you know cynicism is
often confused for insight which is sad
to see
and optimism is confused for
naivete yes yes like you don't yes
you're blinded
by your maybe your privilege or whatever
you're blinded by something but you're
certainly blind and that's a
that's sad that's sad to see because it
seems like the optimists are the ones
that create the
the
our future they're the ones that build
in order to build the crazy thing you
have to be optimistic you have to be
either stupid or
uh excited or passionate or mad enough
to actually believe that it can be built
and those are the people that built it
my favorite
quote of all time is from star wars
episode 8 uh which i know everyone hates
hates do you like star wars episode 8 uh
no i yeah yeah probably i would say
would probably hate it yeah
i don't i don't have a strong feelings
about it let me backtrack i don't want
strong feelings about star wars i just
want to i'm a tolkien person i'm not i'm
not i'm more i'm more into dragons and
orcs okay
yeah i mean tolkien forever
i really want to have one more son and
call him i thought tau techno tolkien
would be cool
it's a lot of teas i like it yeah and
well and tau is six two eight two pie
yeah
yeah um yeah and then techno is
obviously the best genre of music but
also like technocracy it sounds really
good yeah that's right and techno
tolkien
um
but uh uh star wars episode eight um
i know a lot of people have issues with
it personally for on the record i think
it's the best uh star wars film um
uh
starting trouble today yeah so what uh
and uh but uh don't kill what you hate
save what you love don't kill what you
hate don't kill what you hate save what
you love and i think we're in in a
society right now we're in a diagnosis
mode we're just diagnosing and
diagnosing and diagnosing and we're
we're trying to kill what we hate
and we're not trying to save what we
love enough and it's um there's this
buck mr fuller quote which i'm gonna
butcher because i don't remember it
correctly but it's it go it's something
along the lines of um
uh
don't
like
try to destroy the old
bad models render them obsolete
with better models
you know
maybe we don't need to destroy the oil
industry maybe we just create a new
great new battery technology and
sustainable transport and just make it
economically unreasonable to still
continue to rely on fossil fuels you
know
um it's like it's like don't don't kill
you hate say what you love like make new
things and just render the old things
unusable you know it's like if the
college debt is so bad like and and
universities are so expensive like in
this like i feel like education is
becoming obsolete you know i i feel like
we could completely revolutionize
education and we could make it free and
it's like you look at jstor and like you
have to pay to get all the studies and
everything like what if we created a dao
that like bought jstor or we created a
dao that was funding studies and all and
those studies were open so like or free
for everyone and like like what if we
just open source to educate education
and decentralized education and made it
free and like um all research
was on the internet and like all the
um outcomes of studies are on the
internet and
uh you know
like
and no one has student debt and um you
just take tests
when you apply for a job and if you're
qualified then you can work there
i'm just just like no this is i don't
know how anything works i'm just
randomly ranting but
um i like the humility um
you got to think from just basic first
principles like what what is the problem
what's broken what are some ideas that's
it and get excited about those ideas and
share your excitement and uh don't tear
each other down like
it's just when you kill things you often
end up killing yourself like war
war is not a one-sided like you're not
going to go in and just kill them like
you're going to get stabbed it's like
and and i think that when i talk about
this nexus point of um
that we're in this point in society
where we're switching to intelligent
design i think part of our switch to
intelligent design is that we need to
choose non-violence and we need to like
i think we can choose to
start i don't think we can eradicate
violence from our species um because i
think
we we need it a little bit but i think
we can choose to really reorient our
primitive
brains that are fighting over scarcity
and fight and and um
that are so attack oriented and and move
into it we can optimize for creativity
and building
yeah it's interesting to think how that
happens so some of it is just education
some of it is
living life and introspecting your own
mind and trying to
live up to the better angels of your
nature for each one of us
all those kinds of things at scale
that's how we can sort of um start to
minimize the amount of destructive uh
war
in our world and that that's to me i
probably you're the same technology's
it's a really promising way to do that
like social media should be a really
promising way to do that it's a way to
reconnect i you know for the most part i
really enjoy social media i just ignore
all the negative stuff i don't engage
with any of the negative stuff
just not even like
by blocking or any of that kind of stuff
but just not letting it enter my mind
like just like uh when somebody says
something negative
i see it
i immediately think positive thoughts
about them and i just forget they exist
after that just move on because like
that negative energy if i return the
negative energy they're going to get
they're going to get excited in a
negative way right back and it's just
this kind of vicious cycle
um but you would think technology would
assist us in this process of letting go
of not taking things personally of not
engaging the negativity but
unfortunately social media
profits from the negativity so the
current models i mean social media is
like a gun like you should take
a course before you you use it like it's
like it's true this is what i mean like
when i say reprogram the human computer
like in school you should learn about
how social media optimizes to you know
raise your cortisol levels and and make
you angry and crazy and stressed and
like you should learn how to have
hygiene about how you use social media
um
but
so you can yeah choose not to focus on
the negative stuff but um
i don't know i'm not sure social media
should
i guess it should exist i'm not sure
i mean we're in the messy it's it's the
experimental phase like we're going to
the early days i don't even know when
you say social media i don't know what
that even means we're in the very early
days i think social media is just basic
human connection in the digital realm
and that
i think it should exist but there's so
many ways to do it in a bad way there's
so many ways to do it in a good way
there's all discussions of all the same
human rights we talk about freedom of
speech we talk about sort of
violence in the space of digital media
we we talk about hate speech we talk
about all these things that we had to
figure out back in the day with in the
physical space we're not figuring out in
the digital space and it's like baby
baby stages when the printing press came
out it was like pure chaos for a minute
you know it's like it's like when you
inject when there's a massive
information injection into the into the
general population um
there's just gonna be
i like i feel like the printing press i
i don't have the years but it was like
printing press came out shit got really
fucking bad for a minute but then we got
the enlightenment
and so it's like i think we're in this
is like a
the second coming of the printing press
we're probably gonna have some shitty
times for a minute um and then we're
going to have recalibrate to have a
better understanding of how we consume
media and how we
deliver media speaking of programming
the human computer you mentioned baby x
uh so there's this young consciousness
coming to be
came from a cell it like
like that whole thing doesn't even makes
it came from dna yeah and then there's
this baby computer it just like grows
and grows and grows and grows and now
there's a conscious being with extremely
impressive cognitive capabilities
with uh have you met him yes yeah yeah
he's actually really smart he's really
smart yeah he's weird
yeah baby he doesn't i don't i i haven't
i don't know a lot of other babies but
he's actually i don't know with babies
often but this baby was very impressive
he does a lot of pranks and stuff
oh so he's like he'll like like give you
a treat and then take it away and laugh
and like stuff like that so he's like a
chess player uh
so
here's a
cognitive sort of there's a computer
being programmed he's taken in the
environment interacting with a specific
set of humans
uh how would you first of all what what
is it what let me ask
i want to ask how do you program this
computer
and also how do you make sense of that
there's a conscious being right there um
that wasn't there before it's giving me
a lot of crisis thoughts i'm thinking
really i think that's part of the reason
it's like i'm struggling to focus on
art and stuff right now because baby x
is becoming
conscious and like my
it's just reorienting my brain like my
brain is suddenly totally shifting of
like oh shit like the way we
raise children like
like i hate
all the baby books and everything i hate
them like they're all the art is so bad
and like
like all the stuff
everything about all the aesthetics and
like i'm just like ah like this is so
the programming languages we're using to
program these baby computers isn't good
yeah like i i'm thinking and i i not
that i have like good answers or know
what to know what to do but um i'm just
thinking really
really hard about it i
uh we we recently watched uh totoro with
him studio ghibli yeah um and
it's just like a fantastic film and he
like responded to i know you're not
supposed to show baby screens too much
but like
i think it's the
most sort of like
i feel like it's the highest art baby
content like it's it's it it it really
speaks there's almost no
talking in it it's really simple
although all the dialogue is super super
super simple
you know and it's it's like an a one to
three year old can like really connect
with it like it feels like it's almost
aimed at like a one to three year old um
but it's like great art and it's so
imaginative and it's so beautiful and um
like the first time i showed it to him
he was just like so invested in it
unlike i've ever unlike anything else
i'd ever shown him like he was just like
crying when they cry and laughing when
they laughed like just like having this
roller coaster of like emotions like and
he learned a bunch of words like he was
and he started saying totoro and started
just saying all this stuff after
watching totoro and
he wants to watch it all the time and i
was like man
why isn't there an industry of this like
why aren't our best artists
focusing on making art
like for
the birth of consciousness like and and
i that's one of the things i've been
thinking i really want to start doing
you know i don't want to speak before i
do things too much but like like i
i'm just like
ages one to three like
we should be putting so much effort into
that and the other thing about totoro is
it's like um it's like better for the
environment because adults love totoro
it's such good art that everyone loves
it like i still have all my old totoro
merch from when i was a kid like i
literally have the most ragged old
totoro merch
um
like everybody loves it everybody keeps
it it's like
why does
the art we have for babies
need to
suck and then and be
not accessible to adults and then just
be thrown out when
um
you know they age out of it like it's
like i i i i don't know i i'm i don't
have like a fully formed thought here
but this is just something i've been
thinking about a lot is like how do we
like
how do we have more totoro esque content
like how do we have more content like
this that like is universal and
everybody loves but is like
really geared to an emerging
consciousness emerging consciousness in
the first like three years of life that
so much turmoil so much evolution of
mind is happening it seems like a
crucial time would you say
to make it not suck
do you think of
basically treating a child
like they have the capacity to have the
brilliance of an adult or even beyond
that is that how you think of that mind
or no because they still
they like it when you talk
weird and stuff like they respond better
to
because even they can imitate better
when your voice is higher like people
say like to oh don't do baby talk but
it's like when your voice is higher it's
closer to something they can imitate so
they like
like the baby talk actually kind of
works like it helps them learn to
communicate i've found it to be more
effective with learning words and stuff
but like
you're not speaking
i'm not like you're speaking down to
them like yeah do you do do they have
the capacity to understand really
difficult concepts you know just in a
very difficult different way like an
emotional intelligence about something
deep within
oh yeah no like if x hurts like if x
bites me really hard and i'm like ow
he like he gets he's sad
he's he's like sad if he hurts me by
accident yeah which he's huge so he
hurts me a lot
uh yeah that's so interesting that that
that that mind emerges and and he and
children don't really have memory of
that time so we can't even have a
conversation with them about yeah so
they don't have a memory of this time
because like think about like
i mean with our
youngest baby like it's like i'm like
have you read the sci-fi
short story i have no mouth but i'm a
scream
good title no
oh man i mean you should read that
um
that it's
i i hate getting into this roko's
basilisk shit it's kind of a story about
the um about like um
uh
an ai that's like torturing someone in
eternity and they have like no body the
way they describe it it sort of sounds
like what it feels like like being a
baby like you're conscious and you're
just getting inputs from everywhere and
you're you have no muscles and you're
like jelly and you like can't move and
you try to like communicate but you
can't communicate and we're and like
you're just like
in this like hell state i think it's
good we can't remember that
like
my little baby is just exiting that like
she's starting to like get muscles and
have more like autonomy but like
watching her go through the opening
phase i was like
i was like this does not seem good
oh you think it's kind of like i think
it sucks i think it might be really
violent like violent mentally violent
psychologically violent consciousness
emerging i think is is a very violent
thought about that i think it's possible
that we all carry quite a bit of trauma
from it that we don't i i think that
would be a good thing to study because i
think if
i think addressing that trauma
like i think that might be oh you mean
like echoes of it are still there in the
shadows i think it's gotta be i i feel
this this helped the helplessness
the like existential and that like
fear of being in like an unknown place
bombarded with inputs and being
completely helpless like that's got to
be somewhere deep in your brain and that
can't be good for you
what do you think consciousness is
this this whole conversation has
impossibly difficult questions what what
what are you doing
this is so hard
uh yeah we talked about music for like
two minutes all right no i'm just no i'm
just over music i'm over music yeah i
i still like it it has its purpose no i
love music i mean music's the greatest
thing ever it's my favorite thing but i
i just like
every interview is like
what is your process like i don't know
i'm just done i can't do it i do want to
ask you about ableton
live i'll tell you about ableton because
ableton is sick
no one asks no one ever asks about
ableton though yeah well because i just
need tech support mainly i can i can
help you i can help you with your
ableton
anyway uh but from ableton back to
consciousness what do you do you think
this is a thing that only humans are
capable of
can can robots be conscious can
like when you think about entities you
think there's aliens out there that are
conscious like it's conscious what is
consciousness there's this terence
mechanic quote that i've found that i
fucking love
am i allowed to swear on here uh yes
nature loves courage
uh you make the commitment and nature
will respond to that commitment by
removing impossible obstacles dream the
impossible dream and the world will not
grind you under it will lift you up this
is the trick this is what all these
teachers and philosophers who really
counted who really touched the
alchemical gold this is what they
understood
this is the shamanic dance in the
waterfall this is how magic is done by
hurling yourself into the abyss and
discovering it's a feather bed
yeah
and for this reason i
i do think there are no technological
limits i i think like what what is
already happening here this is like
impossible this is insane and we've done
this in a very limited amount of time
and we're accelerating the rate at which
we're doing this so i i think digital
consciousness
uh it's inevitable and we we may not be
able to even understand what that means
but i like curling yourself into the
abyss so we're surrounded by all this
mystery and we just keep hurling
ourselves into it
like fearlessly and keep discovering
cool shit
yeah
like
i just i just think it's like
the
like who even knows if the laws are
physical the laws of physics are
probably just the current like as i'm
saying speed of light is the current
render rate it's like
if we're in a simulation they'll be able
to upgrade that like i sort of suspect
when uh
we made the james webb telescope like
part of the reason we made that is
because we had an upgrade
uh you know and so now more more of
space has been rendered so we can see
more of it now
yeah but i think humans are super super
super limited cognitively so i wonder
uh i wonder if we'll be allowed to
create more intelligent beings that can
see more of the universe as the as their
render rate is upgraded maybe we're
cognitively limited everyone keeps
talking about how we're cognitive
cognitively limited and ai is going to
render us obsolete but it's like
you know
like this is not the same thing as like
an amoeba becoming an alligator like
it's like if we create ai again that's
intelligent design that's literally all
religions are based on
gods that create consciousness like we
are god making like what we are doing is
incredibly profound and like even if we
uh can't compute even
even if we're so much worse than them
like just like unbelie like like
unfathomably worse than like you know an
omnipotent kind of ai it's like we
i do not think that they would just
think that we are stupid i think that
they would recognize the profundity of
what we have accomplished are we the
gods or are they the gods in our
perspective i mean i mean we're kind of
like
it's complicated it's complicated
like they would acknowledge the the
value
well i hope they acknowledge the value
of paying respect to the creative
ancestors i think they would think it's
cool i i i think um
i i think if curiosity is is a trait
that we
uh
can quantify and put into ai then i i
think if ai are curious then they will
be curious about us and they will not be
hateful or dismissive of us they might
you know see us as
i don't know it's like
i'm not like oh fuck these dogs let's
kill all the dogs i love dogs dogs have
great utility dogs like provide a lot we
make friends with them yeah we have a
deep connection with them
uh we anthropomorphize them like we have
a real love for dogs for cats and so on
for some reason even though they're
intellectually much less than us and i
think i think there's some there is
something sacred about us because it's
like if you look at the universe like
the whole universe is like
cold and dead and sort of robotic and
it's like
um
you know
ai intelligence
you know it's it's
kind of more like the universe it's like
it's like cold and
and
you know
logical and
you know abiding by the laws of physics
and whatever but like we like we're this
like loosey-goosey weird art thing that
happened and i think it's beautiful and
um like i think even if we want i think
one of the values
if uh
consciousness is the thing
that is most worth preserving
um which i think is the case i think
consciousness i think if there's any
kind of like religious or spiritual
thing um
it should be that consciousness is
sacred uh
like
then you know
i still think even if ai renders
obsolete and we climate change
it's too bad and we get hit by a comet
and we don't become a multi-planetary
species fast enough but like ai is able
to populate the universe like i imagine
like if i was an ai i would uh find more
planets that are capable of hosting
biological life forms and like recreate
because we're fun to watch yeah we're
fun to watch
yeah but i i do believe that ai can have
some of the same magic
of consciousness within it
because consciousness we don't know what
it is so you know there's some kind of
it might be a different magic it might
be like a strange
a strange different
right because they're not gonna have
hormones like i feel like a lot of our
magic is a hormonal uh kind of i i don't
know i think some of our magic is the
limitations the constraints and within
that the hormones and all that kind of
stuff the finiteness of life and then we
get given our limitations
we get to some come up with creative
solutions of how to dance around those
limitations we partner up like penguins
against the cold we
we fall in love and uh and then love is
ultimately some kind of
allows us to delude ourselves that we're
not
mortal and finite and that life is not
ultimately you live alone
you're born alone you die alone and then
love is like a for a moment or for a
long time forgetting that and so like we
come up with all these creative hacks
that make life
like fascinatingly
fun
yeah yeah yeah fun yeah and then ai
might have different kinds of fun yes
and hopefully our funds intersect
intersect i think once in a while i
think there would be there there'd be a
little intersection there'd be a little
intersection of the fun yeah yeah what
do you think is the role of love
in the human condition
why is it useful is it useful like uh
hack or is this like fundamental to what
it means to be human the capacity to
love
i mean i think love is the evolutionary
mechanism that is like beginning the
intelligent design like i was just
reading about uh
do you know about crop pot kropotkin
he's like an anarchist like old russian
anarchist i live next door to uh michael
malus i don't know if you know that is
he's an anarchist he's a modern-day
anarchist okay anarchists are fun i'm
kind of getting into anarchism a little
bit this is probably
yeah not a good route to be taking but
oh no i i think if you're listen you
should expose yourself to ideas there's
no harm to thinking about ideas i think
anarchists
challenge systems in interesting ways
and they think in interesting ways it's
just it's good for the soul it's like
refreshes your mental palate i don't
think we should actually
i i wouldn't actually ascribe to it but
i i've never actually gone deep on on
anarchy as a philosophy so i'm you still
think about it like when you when you
listen because i'm like reading about
the russian revolution a lot and it was
like
there was like the soviets and lenin all
that but then there was like krapotkin
and his like anarchist sect and they
were sort of interesting because he was
kind of a technocrat actually like he
was like you know like women can be more
equal if we have appliances like he was
like really into like um you know
using technology to like reduce the
amount of work people had to do
but so kropochen was a
like a biologist or something like he
studied animals um and he was re really
at the time
like uh i think it's nature
magazine
i think it might have even started like
a russian magazine but he was like
publishing studies like everyone was
really into like darwinism at the time
and like survival of the fittest and
like war is like the mechanism by which
we become better and it was like this
real
kind of like
like like
cementing this idea in society that like
violence uh you know kill the weak and
like that's how we become better and
then kropotkin was kind of interesting
because he was looking at um instances
he was finding all these instances in
nature where animals were like helping
each other and stuff um and he was like
you know actually love is a survival
mechanism
like there's
so many uh
instances in the animal kingdom where
like cooperation
and you know like helping weaker
creatures and all this stuff is actually
um an evolutionary mechanism i mean you
even look at child rearing like child
rearing is
like
immense amounts of just love and good
will and just like there's no immediate
um
you're there you know you're not getting
any immediate feedback of like
winning it's not competitive it's
literally it's you know it's like we
actually use love as an evolutionary
mechanism just as much as we use war and
i think we've like missing the other
part and we've reoriented we've
culturally reoriented like science and
philosophy has re has
oriented itself around darwinism a
little bit too much and the krapotkin
model
um i think is equally valid like it's
like cooperation and um
uh
and love and stuff is just as essential
for
uh sp species survival and evolution to
be a more powerful survival mechanism
in the context of evolution and it comes
back to like you know we think
engineering is so much more important
than motherhood but it's like
if you lose the motherhood the
engineering means nothing we have no
more humans like it's like uh
you know it's like we
i i think our society should
the survival of the the way we see we
conceptualize evolution should really
change to also include this idea i guess
yeah there's some weird thing that seems
irrational
that it
is also core to what it means to be
human so
love is one such thing they could make
you do a lot of irrational things but
that depth of connection and that
loyalty is a powerful thing are they
irrational or are they rational like
it's like it's like is uh
you know
maybe
losing out on some things in order to
like keep your family together or in
order like it's like
what are our actual values like well
right i mean the rational thing is
if you have a cold economist perspective
you know motherhood or sacrificing your
career for love
you know if you turn in terms of salary
in terms of economic well-being in terms
of flourishing of you as a human being
that could be seen
on some kind of metrics as a irrational
decision or suboptimal decision but
there is the
manifestation of love
could could be the optimal thing to do
there's a kind of saying
save one life save the world
this is the thing that doctors often
face which is like well it's considered
irrational because the profit model
doesn't include social good yes yeah so
food is social good then suddenly these
would be rational decisions this might
be difficult to
you know it requires a shift in our
thinking about profit
and might be difficult to measure
social good yes
but we're learning to measure a lot of
things like we're digitizing we're
actually you know quantifying
vision and stuff like where like we're
like
you know like you you go on facebook and
they can like facebook can pretty much
predict our behaviors like we we're
a surprising amount of things that seem
like
uh mysterious consciousness
soul things have been quantified at this
point so surely we can quantify these
other things yeah
um but as more and more of us are moving
the digital space i wanted to ask you
about something from a fan perspective i
kind of
you know you as a musician use an online
personality
it seems like you have all these
identities and you play with them
um
one of the cool things about the
internet it seems like you can play with
identities so as we move into the
digital world more and more maybe even
in the in the so-called metabours i mean
i love the metaverse and i love the idea
but like
the way this has all played out
didn't
didn't go well and people are mad about
it and i think i i think we need to like
i think that's temporary i think it's
temporary just like you know how all the
celebrities got together and sang the
song imagine by jeff
and everyone started hating the song
imagine i'm hoping that's temporary
because it's a damn good song
yeah so i think it's just temporary like
when you act once you actually have
virtual worlds whatever they're called
metaverse or otherwise it becomes
i don't know we do have virtual worlds
like video games elden ring have you
played all right you haven't been really
afraid of playing that game literally it
looks way too fun it would look it looks
i would want to go there and stay there
forever it's
yeah so fun it's so good it's so nice
um
oh man yeah so that that's the yeah
that's the metaverse that's the
metaverse but you're not really
it's how immersive is it
in the sense
that um does the three dimension like
virtual reality integration necessary
can we really just take our close our
eyes and kind of plug in
in the 2d screen
and become that other being for time and
really enjoy that journey that we take
and we almost become that you're no
longer see i'm no longer lex you're that
creature whatever whatever the hell it
is in that game yeah that is that i mean
that's why i love those video games it's
i really do become those people
for a time but like it seems like with
the idea of the metaverse the idea of
the digital space but even on twitter
you get a chance to be somebody for
prolonged periods of time like across a
lifespan you know you have a twitter
account for
years for decades and you're that person
i don't know if that's a good thing i
feel very
tormented by it by twitter specifically
by social media representation of you
the i feel like the public perception of
me has gotten so distorted
uh that
i find it kind of disturbing it's one of
the things that's disincentivizing me
from like wanting to keep making art
because i'm just like
i've completely lost control of the
narrative and the narrative is
some of it is my own stupidity but a lot
like some of it has just been like
hijacked by
forces far beyond my control yeah you
know i kind of got in over my head in
things like i i'm just a random indian
musician but i just got like dragged
into like
geopolitical matters and like like
financial like the stock market and shit
and so it's just like it's just there
are very powerful people who have who
have at various points in time had very
vested interest in
making me seem insane and i can't
fucking fight that and i i just like
you know
people really want their celebrity
figures to like
be consistent and stay the same and like
people have a lot of like emotional
investment in certain things and like
first of all i like i
i'm like artificially more famous than i
should be
isn't everybody who's famous
artificially famous
no but like like i should be like like a
weird niche indie thing and i'm i make
pretty challenging i do i do challenging
weird fucking shit a lot yeah and i
accidentally by proxy got
like
voiced it into sort of like weird
celebrity culture but like
i cannot be media trained they have put
me through so many hours of media
training i would love to like i'd love
to see bf fly in that wall i can't do i
like when i do i try so hard and i like
learn this thing oh and i like got it
and i'm like i got it i got it i got it
but i just can't stop saying
like my mouth just says things i i like
and and it's just like and i just do i
just do things i just do crazy things
like
i'm i just i need to do crazy things and
it's just i should not be
it's too
jarring
for people and
uh and the contradictory stuff and and
then all the
by association
like
you know it's like
i'm in a very weird position and my
public image
the the avatar of me
is now this totally crazy thing that is
so lost from my control so you feel the
burden of the avatar having to be static
so the the the avatar on twitter the
avatar on instagram on these social
platforms
uh
is there's a burden it becomes like
because it like people don't
want to accept a changing avatar a
chaotic avatar avatar it's a stupid
choice or they think the avatar is
morally wrong or they think the avatar
and maybe maybe it has been and like i
like i question it all the time like i'm
like
hey like i
i don't know if everyone's right and i'm
wrong i i i don't know like but you know
a lot of times people ascribe intentions
to things the worst possible intentions
at this point people think i'm you know
but which is kind of words yes and it's
fine i'm not complaining about it but
i'm just
it's a curiosity
it's a curiosity to me that
we live these double triple quadruple
lives and i have this other life that is
like
more people know my other life than my
real life right which is interesting
probably i mean you too i guess probably
yeah but i i have i have the luxury so
we have all different
we don't like i don't know what i'm
doing
there is an avatar and you're mediating
who you are through that avatar i have
the nice luxury
um not the luxury maybe by intention of
not trying really hard to make sure
there's no difference
between the avatar and the private
person
um do you wear a suit all the time
yeah but you do wear a suit i mean not
all the time like recently because i get
recognized a lot yeah i have to not wear
the suit to hide i'm such an introvert
um social anxiety and all that kind of
stuff to hide away i loved wearing a
suit because it
makes me feel like i'm taking the moment
seriously like i'm
i don't know it makes me feel like a
weirdo in the best possible way your
suits feel great every time i wear a
suit i'm like i don't know why i'm not
doing this more
in fashion in general you if you
if you're doing it for yourself
i don't know that it's a
it's a really awesome thing but yeah i
think there is definitely a uh painful
way to use social media in an uh
empowering way and i don't know if
anyone has no any of us know which is
which
so we're trying to figure that out some
people i think doja cat is incredible at
it
incredible like just masterful yeah i
don't know if you like
yeah yeah yeah so the so so okay so not
taking anything seriously joking absurd
humor that kind of i think dojo cat
might be like the greatest
living comedian right now like i'm more
entertained by doja cat than
actual comedians
like she's really fucking funny on the
internet she's just great at social
media it's just
you know
yeah the nature of humor like
humor on social media is also
a beautiful thing the absurdity the
absurdity and memes like i i just want
to like take a moment
i love like when we're talking about art
and credit and how and authenticity i
love that there's this i mean now memes
are like they're no longer
like it memes aren't like new but it's
still this emergent art form that is
completely egoless and anonymous and we
just don't know who made any of it and
it's like
the forefront of comedy and it's just
totally anonymous and it just feels
really beautiful it just feels like this
beautiful
collect like
collective
human art project that's like this like
decentralized comedy thing that just
makes it memes add so much to my day and
many people's days and it's just like
i don't know i don't think people
ever
i don't think we stop enough and just
appreciate how sick it is that memes
exist yeah and he's also making a whole
brand new art form
in like the modern era that's like
didn't exist before
like i mean they sort of existed but the
way that they exist now as like this
like
you know like me and my friends like we
joke that we go like mining for mean
memes or farming farming for memes like
a video game and like like meme dealers
and like whatever like it's you know
it's it's this whole memes are this
whole
like
new comedic language well it's this art
form the interesting thing about is that
lame people seem to not be good at memes
like
corporate can't infiltrate memes yeah
they really can't they tr they could try
but it's like it's weird because like
they try so hard
every once in a while i'm like fine like
uh you got a good one i think i've seen
like one or two
good ones but like yeah they really
can't because they're even corporate is
infiltrating web three it's making me
really sad
but they they can't infiltrate the memes
and i think there's something really
beautiful about that that gives power
that's uh that's why deutsche coin is
powerful it's like all right i'm gonna
fu just sort of anybody trying to
centralize is trying to control the rich
people that are trying to roll in and
control this control the narrative
wow i haven't thought about that but
uh how would you fix twitter how did you
fix social media for your own
like
you're an optimist you're a positive
person there's a bit of a cynicism that
you have currently about this particular
little slice of humanity i tend to think
i'm not that cynical about it i'm not
that cynical about it i actually refuse
to be a cynic on principle yes uh i was
just
briefly expressing some personal passion
personal stuff
it was just some personal pathos but
like
just to vent a little bit just to i
don't have i don't have cancer i've
i love my family i have a good life i'm
that
that is if that is my biggest
one of my biggest problems it's a good
life yeah i i you know that was a brief
although i do think there are a lot of
issues with twitter just in terms of
like the public mental health but
due to my proximity to the current
dramas
i honestly feel that i should not have
opinions about this because
i think
if elon
ends up
getting twitter
that is a being the arbiter of
truth or public discussion that is a
responsibility
i do not i i
am not qualified to be responsible for
that and i do not want to
say something that might like dismantle
democracy
and so i just like actually i actually
think i should not have opinions about
this because i truly
am not
i don't want to have the wrong opinion
about this and i think i'm too close to
the actual situation yeah uh wherein i i
should
not have i i have my thoughts in my
brain but i think
um
i am scared by my proximity to this
situation is this isn't that crazy that
a few words
that you could say
could
change world affairs and hurt people i
mean that's the nature of celebrity at a
certain point
um that
you have to be you have to a little bit
a little bit not so much that it
destroys you or puts too much
constraints but you have to a little bit
think about
the impact of your words i mean we as
humans you talk to somebody at a bar you
have to think about the impact of your
words
like you can say positive things you can
think of negative things you can affect
the direction of one life but on social
media your words can affect the
direction of
many lives that's crazy it's a crazy
world to live in it's uh worthwhile to
consider that responsibility take it
seriously sometimes just like you did
uh choose kind of
silence
choose sort of respectful
like i do have a lot of thoughts on the
matter i'm just um
yeah i just i don't if my thoughts are
wrong this is this is one one situation
where the stakes are high you mentioned
a while back that you were in a cult
that centered around bureaucracy so you
can't really do anything because it
involves a lot of paperwork and i really
love a cult
that's just like kafka-esque you know
just like i mean it was like a joke but
i know but i love this idea the holy
rain empire yeah it was just like a
kafka-esque um
pro bureaucracy but i feel like that's
what human civilization is is that
because when you said that i was like oh
that is kind of what humanity is is this
bureaucracy i do yeah i have this
theory
i really think that um
we really
bureaucracy is is starting to kill us
and i
think like
we need to reorient laws and stuff like
i think we just need sunset classes on
everything like i think the rate of
change in culture is happening so fast
and the rate of changing technology and
everything is happening so fast it's
like you know when you see these
hearings
about like
like
social media and cambridge analytica and
everyone talking it's like even from
that point
so much technological change has
happened from like those hearings and
it's just like we're trying to make all
these laws now about ai and stuff i feel
like we should be updating things like
every five years and like one of the big
issues in our society right now is we're
just getting bogged down by laws and
it's um making it very hard to
change things and develop things like in
austin like i don't want to speak on
this um
too much but like one of my friends is
working on a housing bill in austin to
try to like prevent like a san francisco
situation from happening here because
obviously
we're getting a little mini san
francisco here like housing prices are
skyrocketing it's causing massive
gentrification um
this is gonna be this is really bad for
um
anyone who's not super rich like like
there's so much bureaucracy part of the
reason this is happening is because you
need all these permits to build it takes
like years to get permits to like build
anything it's so hard to build and so
there's very limited housing and there's
a massive influx of people and it's just
like you know this is a microcosm of
like problems that are happening all
over the world where it's just like
we're
dealing with laws that are like 10 20 30
40 100 200 years old and they are no
longer relevant and it's just slowing
everything down and
causing massive social pain
yeah and but it's like it's also
makes me sad when i see politicians talk
about technology and when they don't
really get it and but most importantly
they lack curiosity and like that like
inspired excitement yeah about like how
stuff works and all that stuff they just
like they see they have the very cynical
view of technology it's like tech
companies are just trying to do evil in
the world from their perspective and
they have no curiosity about like how
recommender systems work or how
how ai systems work natural language
processing how robotics works how
computer vision works you know
they always take the the most cynical
possible interpretation of what
technology will be used and we should
definitely be concerned about that but
if you're constantly worried about that
and you're regulating based on that
you're just going to slow down all the
innovation i i do think a huge priority
right now is undoing um the
bad
energy
um surrounding the emergence of silicon
valley like i think that like a lot of
things were very irresponsible during
that time and um
you know
like even just this current whole thing
with twitter and everything it's like
like there's been a lot of negative
outcomes from
uh the sort of technocracy boom but uh
one of the things that's happening is
that like
it's
alienating people from
wanting to care about technology and i
actually think technology is
probably some of the better probably the
best
i think we can fix a lot of our problems
more easily with technology than with
um
you know fighting the powers that be as
i you know not to go back to the star
wars quote or the buckminster quote
let's go to some dark questions
if we may for time what is the darkest
place you ever gone in your mind
is there a time a period of time a
moment
that you remember
that was difficult for you
i mean when i was 18 my best friend died
of a heroin overdose
and
it was like my
it was it and then shortly after that
one of my other best friends committed
suicide
um
and that
sort of like coming into adulthood
dealing with two of the most important
people in my life dying in extremely
disturbing violent ways was
a lot that was a lot do you miss them
yeah definitely miss them did that make
you think about your own life
about the finiteness of your own life
the the the the places your mind can go
did you ever
in the distance far away contemplate
um
just your own death
or maybe even taking your own life no
never oh no
i'm so i love my life
i cannot fathom suicide i'm so scared of
death i haven't i'm too scared of death
my manager my manager's like the most
zen guy my manager's always like you
need to accept death you need to accept
death and i'm like look i can do your
meditation i can do the meditation
but i cannot accept death i like that i
was terrified of death i'm terrified of
death i will like fight
although i actually think death is
import important i recently went to this
um
uh meeting about immortality um and in
the process of that's the actual topic
of the meeting all right it was it was
this girl it was a bunch of people
working on like anti-aging like um
stuff it was like some like seminary
thing about about it and i went in
really excited i was like yeah like okay
like what do you got like how can i live
for 500 years or a thousand years and
then like over the course of the meeting
like it was sort of like right it was
like two or three days after the russian
invasion started and i was like man like
what if putin was immortal
like what if i i'm like man maybe
immortality
is not good i mean like if you get into
the later dunes stuff the immortals
caused a lot of problem because as we
were talking about earlier with the
music and like brains calcified like
good people could become immortal but
bad people could become immortal but i
also think
even the best people
power corrupts and power alienates you
from like the common human experience
and right so the people that get more
and more powerful even the best even the
best people who like whose brains are
amazing like i i think death might be
important i think death is part of
yeah you know like i i think with ai one
thing we might want to consider
i don't know i want to talk about ai i'm
such not an expert and probably everyone
has all these ideas and they're already
figured out but whenever he is an expert
in anything see okay go ahead but when
i'm talking about yeah but i like it's
just like
i think some kind of pro pruning
but it's a tricky thing because because
if there's too much of a of a focus on
youth culture
then you don't have the wisdom
so i feel like we're in a tricky
we're in a tricky moment right now in
society where it's like we've really
perfected living for a long time so
there's always all these really like old
people who are like
really voting against
the well-being of the young people
you know and like like
it's like there shouldn't be all this
student debt and we need like health
care like universal health care and like
like just voting against like
best interests but then you have all
these young people that don't have the
wisdom that are like like yeah we need
communism and stuff and it's just like
like literally i got canceled at one
point for um
i ironically used a stalin quote in my
high school yearbook but it was actually
like
a diss against my high school i saw that
yeah and and people were like you used
to be a stalinist and now you're a class
trader and it's like
it's like oh man just like please google
stalin yeah please google stalin like
he's ignoring his the lessons of history
yes it's it and it's like we're in this
really weird middle ground where it's
like
we are not finding the happy medium
between miz wisdom
and fresh ideas and they're fighting
each other and it's like
like really
like what we need is like like the fresh
ideas and the wisdom to be like
collaborating and it's like
well the fighting in in a way is the
searching for the happy medium and in a
way maybe we are finding the happy
medium that maybe that's what the happy
medium looks like and for ai systems
there has to be it's you know you have
reinforcement learning you have the uh
dance between exploration exploitation
sort of doing crazy stuff to see if
there's something better than what you
think is the optimal and then doing the
optimal thing and dancing back and forth
from that you would um stewart russell i
know if you know that is um
ai guy with um thinks about sort of
how to control super intelligent ai
systems and his ideas that we should
inject uncertainty and sort of humility
into ai systems that they never as they
get wiser wiser wiser more intelligent
they're never really sure
they always doubt themselves and
in some sense when you think of young
people that's a mechanism for doubt
it's like it's it's how society doubts
whether the thing it has converged
towards is the right answer so the the
voices of the young people
is a society asking itself a question
the way i've been doing stuff for the
past 50 years maybe it's the wrong way
and so you can have all of that within
one ai system i also think though that
we need to i mean actually that's
actually really interesting and really
cool um
but i also think there's a fine balance
of
i think we maybe also overvalue
the idea that the old systems are always
bad and i think there are things that we
are perfecting and we might be
accidentally overthrowing things that we
actually have gotten to a good point
yeah just because we are valuing we
value disruption so much and we value
fighting against the generations before
us so much
that like
there's also an aspect of like sometimes
we're taking two steps forward one step
back because
okay
we maybe we kind of did solve this thing
and now we're like fucking it up you
know and and and so i think there's like
a middle ground there too yeah we're in
search of that happy medium let me ask
you a bunch of uh crazy questions okay
okay
uh you can answer in a short way or in a
long way what's the scariest thing
you've ever done
these questions are to be ridiculous
something uh something tiny or something
big
skydiving or um
touring
your first record
going on this
podcast i've had two crazy brushes like
really scary brushes with death where i
randomly got away on skates i don't know
if i should talk about those on here
but like i don't know i think i think i
might be the luckiest person alive
though like
this might be too dark for a podcast
though i feel like i don't know if this
is like good content for a podcast i
don't know what it is content it might
hijack here's a safer one i mean having
a baby
really scared me
before
the birth process surgery surgery like
like just having just having a baby is
really scary so just like the medical
aspect of it not the responsibility were
you ready for the responsibility of did
you were you ready to be a mother all
the all the beautiful things that comes
with motherhood that you were talking
about all the changes and all that were
you ready for that
were you did you feel ready for that no
i think it took about nine months to
start getting ready for it and i'm still
getting more ready for it because now
you keep you keep realizing more things
as they start getting as the
consciousness grows and stuff you didn't
notice with the first one now that
you've seen the first one older you're
noticing it more
like that the sort of like existential
horror of coming into consciousness with
uh
um baby y or baby sailor mars or or
whatever she has like so many names at
this point that it's um
we really need to probably settle on one
uh if you can be someone else for a day
someone alive today but somebody you
haven't met yet who would you be would i
be modeling their brain state or would i
just be in their body
you can choose the degree to which
you're modeling their brain state
because so you can still
take a third person perspective
and realize you have to realize that
you're can they be alive or can it be
dead
no oh uh could it be anyone they would
be brought back to life right if they're
dead yeah you can bring people back
definitely hitler stalin
huh i want to understand evil
who would you you would need to oh to
experience feels like i want to be in
their brain feeling what they feel
that might change you forever returning
from that yes but i think it would also
help me understand how to prevent it and
fix it that might be one of those things
once you experience it'll be a burden
to know it because you won't be able to
yeah but a lot of things are burdens
like but it's useful burden but it's a
useful burden yeah that for sure i i
want to understand evil and like
psychopathy and and and that i have all
these fake twitter accounts where i like
go into different algorithmic bubbles to
try to like understand
i'll keep getting in fights with people
and realize we're not actually fighting
i think we're we used to exist in a mono
culture like before social media and
stuff like we kind of all got fed the
same thing so we were all speaking the
same cultural language but i think
recently one of the things that like we
aren't diagnosing properly enough with
social media is that um
there's different dialects there's so
many different dialects of chinese there
are now becoming different dialects of
english like i am realizing like
there are people who are saying the
exact same things but they're using
completely different verbiage and we're
like punishing each other for not using
the correct verbiage and we're
completely misunderstanding like people
are just like misunderstanding what the
other people are saying and like like i
just got in a fight with a friend um
about like anarchism and and and
communism and shit for like
two hours and then by the end of the
conversation like i think she'd say
something and i'm like but that's
literally what i'm saying and she was
like what what and then and then i was
like fuck we've different i'm like we're
our english like the way we are
understanding terminology
is like
drastically
like our algorithm bubbles are are
creating many dialects and and of how
language is interpreted how language is
used that's so fascinating and so we're
like having these arguments that we do
not need to be having and there's
polarization that's happening that
doesn't need to be happening because
we've got these like algorithmically
created um
uh
dialects occurring plus on top of that
there's also different parts of the
world that speak different languages so
there's
literally lost in translation kind of
communication i happen to know the
russian language and just know how
different it is yeah um then the english
language and i just wonder how much is
lost in a little bit of man i actually
cause i have a question for you i have a
song coming out tomorrow with ice peak
who are russian band and i speak i speak
a little bit of russian and i was
looking at the title and the title in
english doesn't match the title in
russian i'm curious about this because
look it says
the title in english is last day and
then the title in russian is
my production pronunciation sucks
like a new day a new day yeah new day
new day
yeah a new day yeah
yeah yeah a new day yeah new day but
last day uh and
novi jane so last day would be pasadena
yeah maybe they yeah or maybe the title
includes both the russian and the and
and it's for maybe it's for maybe four
by language to be honest nova jane
sounds better than uh
just
um musically like uh
nova james new day yeah that's the
current one and pastel
is the last day
uh i think nobody did
i don't like nobody but this meeting is
so different
yeah yeah that's kind of awesome
actually though there's a there's an
explicit sort of contrast like that um
if everyone on earth disappeared and it
was just you left
um
what would your day look like like what
would you do everybody's dead
as far as
it's a big difference if there's just
like birds singing versus if there's
like corpses littering the street yeah
there's corpses everywhere i'm sorry
it's
and you don't actually know what
happened and i you don't know why you
survived and you don't even know if
there's others out there
but it seems clear that it's all gone
what would you do
what would i do
listen i'm somebody who really enjoys
the moment enjoys life i would just go
on
like enjoying
the inanimate objects i would just uh
look for food basic survival
but most of it is just
listen when i
just i take walks and i look outside and
i'm just happy that we get to exist on
this planet
to be able to breathe air
it's just all beautiful it's full of
colors all of this kind of stuff just
there's so many things about life
your own life conscious life that's
fucking awesome so i would just enjoy
that
but also
maybe after a few weeks the engineer
would start coming out like
want to build some things
maybe there's always hope searching for
another human
maybe
probably searching for another human
probably trying to get to a tv or radio
station and broadcast
something
i
that's interesting i didn't think about
that so like really yeah
maximize your ability to connect with
others yeah
i like probably try to find
another person
would you be excited to see to meet
another person or terrified because you
know excited i'd be excited even if they
yeah yeah
being alone for for for the last however
long of my life would be really bad
that's the one instance i might i don't
think i'd kill myself but i might kill
myself if i had to understand do you
love people
you love connection to other humans yeah
i kind of hate people too but i like
yeah that's a love-hate relationship
yeah i feel like this is i feel quite a
bunch of like weird nature questions and
stuff
though oh yeah like i wonder because i'm
like when podcast like i'm like is this
interesting for people to just have like
or or i don't know maybe people do like
this i'm when i listen to podcasts i'm
into like the lore like the hard lore
like i just love like dan carlin i'm
like give me the facts just like get
yeah like
like the facts into my bloodstream but
you also don't know
like you're a fascinating mind to
explore so you don't realize as you're
talking about stuff the stuff you've
taken for granted
is actually unique and fascinating the
way you think
not always what like the way you reason
through things is the fascinating thing
okay to listen to listen to because
people kind of see oh there's other
humans that think differently that
explore thoughts differently that's the
cool that's that's so cool so yeah dan
carlin retelling of history by the way
his retelling of history
is very
i think what's exciting is not the
history is
his way of thinking about history no i
think dan carlin is one of the people
like when dan carlin is one of the
people that really started getting me
excited about like revolutionizing
education because like dan carlin
instills instilled
i already like really like liked history
but he instilled like an obsessive love
of history in me to the point where like
now i'm fucking reading like
like going to bed
reading like part four of the rise and
fall of the third reich or whatever like
i got like dense ass history but like
like he like opened that door that like
made me want to be a scholar of that
topic like it's like i feel like he's
such a good
teacher he just like
you know and and it sort of made me feel
like
one of the things we could do with
education is like
find like the world's great the teachers
that like
create passion for the topic because
it
auto didacticism i don't know how to say
that properly but like self teaching is
like much faster than being lectured to
like it's much more efficient to sort of
like be able to teach yourself and then
ask a teacher questions when you don't
know what's up but like you know
that's why it's like in university and
stuff like you can learn so much more
material so much faster because you're
doing a lot of the learning on your own
and you're going to the teachers for
when you get stuck but um like these
teachers that can inspire passion for a
topic i think that is one of the most
invaluable skills in our whole species
like because if you can do that then you
it's like ai like ai
is gonna
teach itself so much more efficiently
than we can teach it we just need to get
it to the point where it can teach
itself
and then it finds the motivation to do
so right yeah like you inspire it to do
so yeah and it could it could teach
itself
what do you make of the fact you
mentioned rise and fall the third reich
i just have you read that you've read it
twice and you read it twice yes okay so
no one even knows what it what it is
yeah and i'm like i'm like wait i
thought this was like a super popping
book
super puff i i'm
i'm not like that i'm not that far in it
but it is it's so interesting yeah uh
it's written by a person that was there
which is uh very important to kind of
you know you start being like how could
this possibly happen and then when you
read rise and fall of the third reich
it's like
people tried really hard for this to not
happen
people tried they almost reinstated a
monarchy at one point to try to stop
this from happening like they almost
like
like abandoned democracy to try to get
this to not happen at least the way it
makes me feel is that there's a bunch of
small
moments
on which history can turn yes it's like
small meetings
yes human interactions and it that's
both terrifying and inspiring because
it's like um
even just attempts at assassinating
hitler
like time and time again failed
and they were so close valkyrie mm-hmm
such a good
and and then there is also also the role
of
that's a really heavy burden which is
the from a geopolitical perspective the
role of leaders to see evil before it
truly becomes evil to anticipate it and
to stand up to evil
because evil was actually pretty rare in
this world at a skill that hitler was we
tend to you know in the modern discourse
kind of call people evil too quickly if
you
look at ancient history
like there was a ton of hitler's i i
actually think it's more the norm
than
like again going back to like my sort of
intelligent design theory i think one of
the things we've been successfully doing
in our slow move from survival of the
finished to intelligent design is we've
kind of been eradicating
like if you look like ancient assyria
and stuff like
that shit was like brutal and just like
the heads on the like like brutal like
like genghis khan just like genocide
after genocide after genocide was like
throwing plague bodies over the walls
and decimating whole cities or like like
the muslim conquests of like damascus
and shit just like people cities used to
get leveled
all the fucking time okay get into the
bronze age collapse it's basically there
was like almost like roman level like
society like there was like all over the
world like global trade like everything
was awesome through a mix of i think a
bit of climate change and then the
development of iron because basically
bronze could only come from this uh the
way to make bronze like everything had
to be funneled through this one iranian
um mine and so it's like there was just
this one supply chain and this is one of
the things that makes me worried about
supply chains and why i think we need to
be so thoughtful about
i think our biggest issue with society
right now
like the thing that is most likely to go
wrong is probably supply chain collapse
you know because war climate change
whatever like anything that causes
supply chain collapse our population is
too big to handle that and like the
thing that seems to cause dark ages is
mass supply chain collapse but
the bronze age collapse happened um
like
uh it was sort of like this
ancient collapse that happened where
like literally like um
ancient egypt all these cities
everything just got like decimated
destroyed abandoned cities like hundreds
of them there was like a flourishing
society like we were almost coming to
modernity and everything got leveled and
they had this many dark ages but it was
just like there's so little writing or
recording from that time that like there
isn't a lot of information about the
bronze age collapse but it was basically
equivalent to like medieval the medieval
dark ages but it just happened
i don't know the years but like
thousands of years
earlier and then
um we sort of like recovered from the
bronze age collapse
empire re-emerged writing and trade and
everything re-emerged
um
you know and then we of course had the
more contemporary dark ages
um and then over time we've designed
mechanism to lessen and lessen the
capability for the destructive
uh there's more centers to emerge
there's more recording about the the
more contemporary dark ages so i think
we have like a better understanding of
how to avoid it but i still think we're
at high high risk for it i think that's
one of the big the big risks right so
the natural state of being for humans is
for there to be a lot of hitler's we
just gotten really good
at making it hard for them to emerge
we've gotten better at collaboration yes
and resisting the power
like authoritarians to come to power
we're trying to go country by country
like we're moving past this we're kind
of like slowly incrementally like moving
like moving towards like
not
scary old-school
war
stuff and i think seeing it happen in
some of the countries that at least
nominally are like
supposed to have moved past that that's
scary because it reminds us that it can
happen
like in in in the places that have made
like move pa supposedly as hopefully
moved past that and possibly at a
civilization level like you said supply
chain collapse
might make people resource constrained
might
make people desperate
angry hateful violent
and drag us right back in i mean supply
chain collapse is how like the ultimate
thing that caused the middle ages was
supply chain collapse it's like people
because people were reliant on a certain
level of technology like people like you
look at like britain like they had glass
like people had um aqueducts people had
like
indoor heating and cooling and like
running water and like
buy food
from all over the world and trade in
markets like people didn't know how to
hunt and forage and gather and so we're
in a similar situation we are not
educated enough
to survive without technology so if we
have a supply chain collapse that like
limits our
access to technology there will be like
massive starvation and violence and and
displacement and war like
you know
it's also it like yeah in my opinion
it's like the primary marker of of
dark
like what a dark ages well technology is
kind of enabling us to be more resilient
uh in terms of supply chain in terms of
to all the different catastrophic
events that happened to us although the
pandemic has kind of challenged our
preparedness for um the catastrophic
what do you think is the coolest
invention humans come up with
the wheel
fire
cooking meat
computer computers computers freaking
computers internet or computers which
one what do you think the previous
technologies i mean may have even been
more profound and moved us to a certain
degree but i think the computers are
what make us homotech no i think this is
what it's a brain augmentation
and and so it like allows for actual
evolution like the computers accelerate
the degree to which all the other
technologies can also be accelerated
would you classify yourself as a homo
sapien or a homo tech definitely homotec
now
so i think we're all
you're you're one of the earliest of the
species i think most of us are like i i
like as i said like i think if you
um
like
looked at brain scans of us versus um
humans a hundred years ago it would look
very different i think we are
physiologically
different just even the interaction with
the devices has changed our brain well
and if you look at um a lot of studies
are coming out to show that like
there's a degree of inherited memory so
some of these physiological changes in
theory should be we should be passing
them on
so like
that's you know that's not like a
an instance of physiological change
that's going to fizzle out in theory
that should progress
like to our offspring
speaking of offspring what advice would
you give to a young person like in high
school
um whether there be
an artist a creative an engineer
a uh
any kind of career path or maybe just
life in general how they can live a life
they can be proud of
i think one of my big thoughts and like
especially now having kids is that um i
i don't think we spend enough time
teaching creativity and i think
creativity is a muscle like other things
and there's a lot of emphasis on
you know learn how to play the piano and
then you can write a song or like learn
the technical stuff and then you can do
a thing but i i think it's um
like i have a friend who's like world's
greatest guitar player um
like you know amazing sort of like
producer works with other people but
he's really sort of like
you know he like engineers and records
things and like does solos but he
doesn't really like make his own music
and i was talking to him and i was like
dude you're so talented at music like
why don't you make music or whatever and
he was like because i got i'm too old i
never learned the creative muscle and
it's like you know it's embarrassing
it's like learning the creative muscle
uh takes a lot of failure and
it also sort of
your if when you're being creative
you know you're throwing paint at a wall
and a lot of stuff will fail so like
part of it is like a tolerance for
failure and humiliation and that's um
somehow that's easier to develop when
you're young yeah or be persist through
it when you're younger everything is
easier to develop yes when you're young
yes and the younger the better it could
destroy you i mean that's the shitty
thing about creativity if you know
failure could destroy you if you're not
careful but that's the risk worth taking
but also but at a young age developing a
tolerance to failure is
is good i fail all of the time
like i do stupid shit all the time
like
in public i get canceled for i i've
make all kind of mistakes but i just
like
am very resilient about making mistakes
and so then like i do a lot of things
that like other people wouldn't do and
like i think my greatest asset is my
creativity and i like i think pain like
tolerance to failure is
just a super essential thing that should
be taught before other things brilliant
advice yeah yeah uh i wish everybody
encouraged sort of failure more
uh as opposed to kind of because we like
punish failure we're like no no like
when we were teaching kids we're like no
that's wrong like that's you know uh
like
x keeps like will be like wrong like
he'll say like crazy things like x keeps
being like like bubble car bubble car
and i'm like
and you know
i'm like what's a bubble car like but
like it doesn't like but i don't want to
be like no you're wrong i'm like
you're thinking of weird crazy shit like
i don't know what a bubble car is but
like he's creating worlds and they might
be internally consistent and through
that he might discover something
fundamental about this yeah or he'll
like rewrite songs like with words that
he prefers so like instead of baby shark
he says baby car
it's like
uh maybe he's on to something let me ask
the big ridiculous question we were kind
of dancing around it but
uh
what do you think is the meaning of this
whole thing we have here
uh
of human civilization of life on earth
but in general just life
what's the meaning of life
c
have you
did you read uh nova scene yet
by james lovelock you're doing a lot of
really good book recommendations here i
haven't even finished this so i'm a huge
fraud yet again um but like really early
in the book um
he says this amazing thing like i feel
like everyone's so sad and cynical like
everyone's like the fermi paradox and
everyone i just keep hearing people
being like fuck what if we're alone like
oh no ah like uh uh and i'm like okay
but like wait what if this is the
beginning
like in nova scene he says um
i'm this is not gonna be a correct i
can't like memorize quotes but uh he
says says something like um
uh what if our consciousness
like right now like
this
is the universe waking up like what if
instead of discovering the universe this
is the universe
like this is the evolution
of the little literal universe herself
like we are not separate from the
universe like this is the universe
waking up this is the universe seeing
herself for the first time like this is
um the universe becoming conscious yeah
first time and we're part of that yeah
because it's like we aren't separate
from the universe like like this could
be of like an incredibly sacred moment
and maybe like social media and all
these things the the stuff where we're
all getting connected together like
maybe this these are the neurons
connecting of the like collective super
intelligence
that is
you know waking up the the yeah like
like you know it's like maybe instead of
something cynical or maybe if there's
something to discover like maybe this is
just
you know we're a blastocyst of of like
some incredible
kind of consciousness
or being and just like in the first
three years of life or for human
children we'll forget about all the
suffering that we're going through now i
think we'll probably forget about this i
mean probably
you know artificial intelligence
will eventually render us obsolete i
don't think they'll do it in a
malicious way but i think probably we
are very weak the sun is expanding like
i don't know like hopefully we can get
to mars but like we're pretty vulnerable
and i i you know like
i think we can coexist for a long time
with ai and we can also probably make
ourselves less vulnerable but
you know i just think um
consciousness sentence self-awareness
like
i think this might be the single
greatest
like moment in
evolution ever and like maybe this is
you know
the big like the
true beginning of of life and we're just
we're we're the blue green algae or
we're like we're like the single-celled
organisms of something amazing the
universe awakens and this is this is it
yeah
well uh see you're an incredible person
you're a fascinating mind um you should
definitely do your friend liv
mentioned that you guys were thinking of
maybe talking i would love it if you
explored your mind in this kind of
medium more and more by doing a podcast
with her or just in any kind of way so
you're you're an awesome person it's an
honor to know you it's an honor to get
to sit down with you late at night which
is like
surreal um and i really enjoyed it thank
you for talking today yeah no i mean
huge honor i feel very unqualified to be
here but i'm a big fan i've been
listening to the podcast a lot and yeah
me and liv would appreciate any advice
and help and we're definitely going to
do that so
uh
yeah anytime thank you cool thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with grimes to support this
podcast please check out our sponsors in
the description
and now let me leave you with some words
from oscar wilde
yes i'm a dreamer
for dreamers one who can only find her
way by moonlight
and her punishment is that she sees the
dawn before the rest of the world
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you