Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is an ama episode where i
answer
a few questions that folks asked on
patreon youtube
and other social networks i'll try to do
these episodes on occasion
if it's of interest to anyone at all
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this podcast and now on to the questions
and the answers the question is
lex i'm a young man that has battled
with depression
do you think when trying to develop a
human-like ai we will reach
a stumbling point where the ai
themselves suffer from depression and
other complex mental issues
do you think it will be a simple fix
like rewriting a piece of code or a new
patch or update
or maybe when trying to create something
human-like
with high fidelity you need to leave in
the possibility of the ai
suffering from such complex mental
issues
that a human can what are your thoughts
generally and philosophically
about ai suffering from depression
i think that suffering
is a deep fundamental property of
consciousness
i would like to probably say quite a bit
about depression
i have friends who suffer from
depression but
that's for another time that's for when
we talk about depression in humans
i think depression is just one flavor of
suffering
that is part of the human condition
i see it as a kind of dark
side street on the path
to intelligence so in terms of robot
suffering
if we are to create systems that are
truly intelligent
in the way that they're able to interact
in intelligent and deeply meaningful
ways with other humans
is going to have many of the properties
many of the characteristics of the human
condition
of the full human experience and i think
depression is part of that
there's of course a part in us humans
that longs to remove
all that is cruel in this world you know
that's why
people that believe in god often the
biggest question is
of why does god allow there to be
suffering in the world
there's this longing to understand why
is there so much unfairness in this
world
and so building on that there's an
inclination to then in our systems
engineers something
that is void of those things
that we cannot understand why that's
part of the human condition but i think
it is
intricately part of the experience that
is to be human and i think
if we were to build intelligence systems
that are interacting with humans
there has to be in some ways
properties of consciousness baked in and
if we were to have properties of
consciousness baked in
we have to have the full mystery and
uncertainty of the human experience
which yes
includes all the different flavors of
suffering of which
uh depression is part i think the yin
and the yang
in all of its versions the ups and downs
of moods
but also the more sort of rational
intellectual
interpretations of different concepts
that are less sort of dramatic
all have to oscillate back and forth i
think that's where the interesting
aspect of interactions happens just like
when i have conversations in the podcast
the interesting stuff happens
when there's disagreements when there's
a bit of turmoil
when there's a push and pull when
there's a changing of minds
or even just a morphing of your own
opinions about something your own
thoughts
i think that's part of it so i really do
think all of that mess
of humanity has to be engineered in
into ai systems that are interacting
with humans and are trying to create
meaningful interactions with those
humans there's of course
a huge amount of ai systems that are
going to be uh
more intelligent than humans at
particular tasks those do not need to
have those
properties of the human experience like
suffering and all those kinds of things
but for the ones that move among us
i think unfortunately depression has to
be part
of the experience or the possibility of
depression has to be part of the
experience
of course i tend to focus on the
positive aspects of the human experience
like like love beauty
joy all all those kinds of things but
uh it's the ying and the yang they they
go together
they're a lifelong partners
unfortunately
i think now of course all this is just
hypothesis and most my answers to all
these questions are going to be just
my own thoughts but i am thinking about
all this from an engineering perspective
and maybe i'll have more to say in the
future about how we actually build these
kinds of things
into our ai systems that interact with
humans
thanks for the great question it's a
tough one question is
lex i was wondering if you would be
willing to talk about your immigrant
experience i myself started off as an
international student
studying working in america not from
russia
i'm from india but there was a constant
push and pull
that i experienced given my life
circumstance i would be curious to hear
how you assimilated do you feel like you
belong etc
thank you for the ama okay your
statements about do you feel like you
belong hit hard
for some reason maybe it's because late
at night maybe
because i'm a bit over caffeinated
maybe what pops to mind to focus on is
the aspect of loneliness the aspect of
belonging
i think a lot of us in the early teenage
years go
through that process of feeling like an
outsider
an outcast of different kinds i think it
hit me the hardest
personally because i was a popular kid
in russia
and when we moved here i went to the
opposite of being popular
or feeling like that i felt like an
outcast the the place i moved to in
america
had more of an emphasis maybe it's a
cultural thing
of uh emphasizing material possessions
over two things that
were deeply meaningful to me which is
human connection like friendship
and also knowledge like
uh mathematics and scientific discovery
all those kinds of things
it's just the emphasis of what was
valued was different
and that for me was a catalyst to feel
like a total outcast
as opposed to being this person who
looks out into the world and enjoys
the beauty of the world i kind of went
to this brooding
phase of first of all learning the
english language
but starting to read books more
philosophical books
the first one i remember reading in
english was the giver
that sort of helped me start thinking
about this world
i was so fortunate to be so in love with
people
for so long and have close friends in in
russia that i didn't notice
in my childhood how deeply
alone we all are
so for me the immigrant experience
involved in a small way at least the
first
realizing that hard human truth that
we all are born alone
live alone die alone even when we're in
the arms of somebody we love
we're still somehow fundamentally alone
with our thoughts with their hopes with
our
fears trapped in this uh
conscious meat vessel between our ears
i think the immigrant experience for me
was the catalyst to
realizing uh and being
terrified and also liberated by the idea
that
i'm alone in this world and
at the same time was the realization
that this beautiful feeling i felt
from the connection to other
humans was this gift
that uh took me away from this dark
realization
so it's almost that love is kind of
escape from the reality
of life from the muck of life
and so the journey began in that way to
think about this world in this way
both the burden of being alone coupled
with the frequent
escape from that feeling by being
lost in the company of friends loved
ones so
early on coupled with this love of the
human mind and curiosity about the human
mind
was the love of programming and actually
building little programs
and engineering systems of course
building robots in college and so on
i think the gift of the immigrant
experience of feeling like the outcast
was the love of
experiencing the deep connection with
others
like a deep appreciation of it when it's
there i guess
because it was taken away because i was
ripped out of it
through moving here i got to really
appreciate it
and start becoming cognizant of it to
where i can start looking for it
and being more grateful when i do have
it and at the same time a kind of
curiosity started boiling up
of the perspective on artificial
intelligence systems
from that kind of longing for a
connection so as opposed to
looking at robots or ai systems or even
just
programs that accomplish a particular
task
can these programs accomplish the same
richness
of task and richness of experience that
i came to appreciate as a human being
you know so when i talk about kind of
love
it's there's echoes of that in my
longing of the kind of experiences i
would like to create
in artificial intelligence systems that
was born
out of the immigrant experience
of the loss of
child-like innocence experience of all
of it combined
of starting to read books and thinking
deeply about this world experience all
that coupled in
i really think sometimes unfortunately
the first step of deep gratitude
is loss so for me i lost quite a bit
during that time
and through that loss i was able to
discover the things
that i truly appreciate about life so
let me leave it at that question is
if you were able to ask an alien some
questions
what would they be this is a really good
question and uh
i find it to be actually a really good
thought experiment let me put out some
candidate questions out there and see
what sticks
so first i'll probably ask for advice
for the human species as a whole for our
civilization
of what we might do
to survive and prosper
for a long time to come assuming the
alien is
uh from a civilization that's far older
than ours
or far wiser i think there could be some
really interesting
clear statements about the things we're
doing here on earth
that are getting us into trouble from an
alien perspective so
i think that's the number one thing and
maybe i'll bring up like
along those lines bring up questions of
great filters like
you know if you look at the history of
your civilization
when did you almost destroy the entirety
of your species
uh it would be like informative from a
historical perspective to see
like you know for us it's currently what
the nuclear age
and the few moments in the history that
could have resulted in
an all-out nuclear war it'd be
interesting to see if they mentioned
something about agi
something about uh viruses
or wars or just things that don't we
don't even think about
so i guess question number one would be
like some basic life advice
hoping that this alien is like a naval
type character
who can like in a crisp short way give
some profound advice
second i would probably ask this is a
very selfish conversation because it's
just
following along the things on top of my
head that follow my curiosity
i would ask about the difference between
their civilization and ours i would ask
whether they have some of these things
that make us human
like love like do you guys have love
where you come from do you have death
mortality
you know i suspect it's possible to have
mortality not
even be a concept that makes any sense
to an alien species
that of course everybody's immortal and
there might be some kind of
enforced selection mechanism like
evolution in general
i would ask about consciousness try to
like
tease apart the question of like this
thing
of subjective experience is
is this some kind of uh self-centered
weird over-dramatized quirk of evolution
that we have
that's not actually special at all and
then we make a kind of big deal
about it that's some kind of useful
feature of our brain to think of
ourselves as individuals that's
completely silly
it'd be interesting to try to tease
apart whether they have
consciousness and what form their
intelligence takes that is
distinct from consciousness in the way
that we think of humans as
being conscious entities that are also
able to do intelligent things
are those intricately connected they're
those separate
it'd be interesting to sort of tease
that apart of how their alien minds work
so that includes intelligence
consciousness love and death
all the greatest hits okay then i will
probably go to physics
of course you got to ask about physics i
would look
into the aliens eyes if they have eyes
and try to determine if if we can
actually even find the same
language of mathematics and physics or
sciences in general
probably ask about the big mysteries of
physics and science
of what's outside our universe
why is there something rather than
nothing why is there stuff
and what's outside the stuff we think of
as stuff
so like what's outside the universe i'd
be hesitant to ask the why questions but
you know i'll try a few out to see maybe
there is a good answer to the why
questions of like
why did it start like why
is there something rather than nothing
then i would probably ask
slightly more detailed about what's the
universe made of like
what's up with this dark matter and dark
energy stuff
like what are the basic building blocks
of reality
and what are the laws of physics that
govern that reality
so i would of course ask kind of sneak
in there just like casually
can you maybe give a few hints of how to
unify
first of all we're on the right track in
terms of
quantum mechanics and general relativity
and then
how do you unify all the laws of physics
maybe sneak in there in a different
angle
trying to ask about the singularity in
the black hole
or maybe what happens at the very
beginning of the big bang
like where those laws are all unified
maybe trying to get a sense of what are
the kind of
physics required to fully describe
these events i think the physics
discussion would be a good time to ask
is there a god maybe not use the g
word but instead say is there a kind of
a centralized designer
or team of designers that have like
launched the universe and are actively
managing the universe
and of course another version of asking
that i would uh probably talk about the
simulation
of looking at the universe as we see it
as a computation
as a computer that's doing information
processing
see if that rings a bell to the alien if
there's a connection to that in general
would ask about what kind of computers
you have
and also kind of computer games that'd
be really useful like what do you do for
fun
you come here often but that's like
usual ice breakers of course i'm not
mentioning those that's just like
chatter at the bar so i guess outside
the big physics questions i would ask
the more
engineering-centric questions first my
interest ai
about super intelligence how do we build
super intelligent systems ones that are
far more intelligent than humans
how do we travel close to the speed of
light
or faster than the speed of light
like how did the aliens get to where
we're at that we're meeting and talking
related to that would be a question of
energy how do we harness the energy of a
sun
or multiple suns or all of the suns in
our galaxy
and then also kind of an engineering
question
can we travel through time and if we can
how do we build a
time traveling machine and is it a good
idea
i think a lot of these questions will be
appended with a sort of caveat of like
if you know the answer to this question
will i be better off if you told me this
answer
sometimes knowledge is not power
sometimes uh
knowledge is a burden that leads to
self-destruction
so we want to be careful about that of
course as the alien gets
tired of talking to me at this
intergalactic bar
probably gets up sort of politely starts
walking away i'll
um i would definitely ask some questions
you know
for my own personal knowledge bank
is p equals np good question
theoretical computer science one of the
big questions all mathematics
would be i just need to know the answer
just give me the answer i'll work from
there
okay we'll figure out the rest just the
answer so yes or no
i probably won't ask him for investment
advice
he probably thinks that the whole
concept of money is silly but i might
ask about
uh bitcoin
good long-term investment or bad what do
you think
the digital currency in general and of
course would probably ask
is elon musk one of you guys or a
different species do you know
which uh galaxy which group of planets
they came from
it'd be nice to sort of localize things
is there others like it that visit
and build companies just get some of the
details
the cma has suddenly become ridiculous
but
i think this is a really nice thought
experiment and i'll
think about this a little bit more i'm
sure there is a list
of really precise questions that could
most efficiently unlock the mysteries
before the human race
that are both useful for our progress
and useful for our survival
question is what advice would you give
an intermediate life stage
36 year old who wants to career
pivot from medical technology and
research to computer science
so first by computer science i think you
mean
the broad field that includes software
engineering machine learning
robotics just computing in general maybe
with less emphasis on the mathematical
side like theoretical computer science
i think the best advice on this that i
could give is
find a simple project to get excited
about
and allow yourself to get really excited
by it
have fun fall in love with it
be proud of the thing you create and i
should say there's a big emphasis on the
simple
don't go super ambitious i believe that
most people if they allow themselves can
derive a huge amount of joy for creating
some simple little things
even if it's following a tutorial if you
just allow yourself to experience the
joy of creation
it's there for you that's that's one of
the magical things about computer
science
is it allows you to create things
that are almost like entities on their
own that's what programs are
so i i think a career in computer
science starts first
with allowing yourself to be passionate
and getting that stoking that flame
and allowing it to build so it's not
about any other practical like which job
do i get what thing i work on is just
really
giving yourself over to the simple
passion
of creating stuff i think there's just a
quick set of steps
that i think i followed early on
that i would also recommend you at least
consider following is
first is basic software engineering so
finding maybe python or javascript like
super popular
accessible programming language and
build just like a hello world program
or something just a little bit more
complicated but not much more
beyond that is using that newly acquired
set of tools of programming build
something that automates something you
do on the computer
maybe another way to phrase that is just
like scripts that are
helping you in your interaction with the
computer so maybe
finding different files in your computer
that you try to look for
often or reorganizing things
in an automated way like folder
structures or maybe renaming files
like i have a script that finds all the
files that have
spaces in the file name and it renames
them
after confirmation to underscores all
those kinds of things
there's a bunch of little helpless
scripts i have all over the place and
those are just really joyful because you
get to use them every day
and it's something that you've created
that made your life a little bit easier
i
for me at least that's a source of joy
that helps feed that like
love of programming of
just being a part of the computing of
the computer science world
and i've been doing that really my whole
life it started with
c and c plus but now it's a lot of other
languages
primarily python and yes javascript
next is a branching into two separate
little worlds in computer science of
algorithms and then like data
science i think both are full of
beautiful things to fall in love with
the thing you can really enjoy with
algorithms is learning how to build
more and more efficient algorithms on
the data side
is learning how to process different
data sets how to
clean them up how to reorganize them and
do different kind of
statistics on them processing on them so
we're not even talking about machine
learning yet it's just
being able to visualize those datasets
all those kinds of stuff just working
with data
and now we're starting to talk about
career
because there's a lot of jobs that have
to do with
the use of computing techniques to
process
visualize and interpret aggregate
analyze data
so that's i guess you would call that
field
data science so that's a really cool
career trajectory and there's so many
cool things to get into
with i think a very reasonable small
learning curve that you can
really if you push yourself do within
weeks
maybe months not years and once you
become comfortable with the data science
world
you can start building on on top of that
quite naturally
doing some boilerplate machine learning
supervised learning projects and then
building out
into more specific more useful more
novel cutting edge applications of
machine learning
reinforcement learning that whole world
maybe even taking that into physical
systems of actually building robots
as you backtrack it it sounds like i'm
building towards something super
complicated but it's not all these can
be really small projects
even robotics projects you can build a
little robot
that does some basic tasks maybe does
some basic computer vision
and it's a nice way to learn on the
robotic side and better systems
programming
so it's just getting more comfortable
with hardware and seeing like if that's
something you're interested in
or on the data science side where you're
sticking much more to the software
both of those you now start to figure
out what is the
exciting career possibility i think two
things even i would even see them as
skills are important here
passion and google i see passion as a
skill
because it's allowing yourself to be
excited it's finding things you could be
excited about and allowing yourself to
be excited
and seeing that as an actually essential
part of progress
is along yourself to be excited and the
reason i mentioned google is because
i find that in a lot of fields but
especially in computer science so
software engineering or machine learning
there's so many amazing resources out
there that the key
skill actually ends up being is how good
are you at discovering the exact
page and resources that is
allowing you to take the next step in
your journey of exploration of learning
and that's fundamentally a skill of how
do i google the right thing
what pages do i click on and all those
kinds of things
i think it sounds almost kind of
ridiculous to say that that's a skill
but that is one of the most essential
skills
of the modern day student
lifelong student is how to google
so yeah passion and google
allow yourself to fall in love with the
project and
keep taking the next step the next step
next up with the help
of a good search engine and a bit of
curiosity
question is what form factor of robots
are you most excited about for the
future
bipeds quads arms humanoids
maybe something else more obscure
this is a really tough question because
i really like robots
i think that love is born in
software and uh
the hardware stuff just makes it a
little more fun so i think the things
i'm really excited about even in terms
of form factors is in the software
i think much of the exciting
developments in robotics is actually in
simulated worlds
currently and i think that will be true
for quite a while to come
and so i think in terms of human robot
interaction
the robots that will be really exciting
are the ones that live in virtual worlds
like
in virtual reality or even just on a
screen
so i think what we would see more and
more
is entities human-like entities
or entities that allow us to
anthropomorphize
a consciousness a spirit
onto them living in the digital world
i think that's what i'm really excited
about
and of course slowly those entities
taking a form in the physical space
in terms of uh i think probably the
humanoid form
unfortunately though very difficult to
engineer and create
a uh realistic and natural
fulfilling experience with i think it's
still probably the most
to me exciting form although i do really
like
uh boston dynamic spot the robot dog
from uh kind of having a pet perspective
is a really exciting form
again very difficult to do stuff in the
physical space
it's uh it's a huge engineering
challenge
that as far as i can tell is several
orders of magnitude
more difficult than the same challenge
in the digital space
so i just see the digital simulated
robotics advancing much quicker and
having a much
larger scale impact on the world
especially if we start seeing more and
more
virtual worlds being created and that
that doesn't necessarily mean virtual
reality or like augmented reality
it just means ability and mediums within
which you can interact with artificial
intelligence systems
in the digital space and i do see that
as a
form factor which is entities in digital
space
having a humanoid or a semi-humanoid
form
something that we can anthropomorphize
something we can connect with on a human
level
question is on the topic of suffering
and growth is happiness a healthy
pursuit
or do you agree with einstein's view on
happiness
as the aspiration of a pig okay let me
quickly
look up the einstein quote here that you
reference about a pig
and happiness okay einstein writes
i have never looked upon ease and
happiness
as ends in themselves this critical
basis i call the ideal
of a pigsty the ideals that have lighted
my way
and time after time have given me new
courage to face life cheerfully
have been kindness beauty and truth
without the sense of kinship with men of
like mind
without the occupation with the
objective world the eternally
unattainable
in the field of art and scientific
endeavors life would have
seemed empty to me the trite objects of
human efforts
possessions outward success luxury
have always seemed to me contemptible
okay where do i start with this i think
i usually agree with einstein
especially when he talks philosophy on
most things and i do hear as well
in terms of material possessions and all
those kinds of things
but i think he unfairly attacks the word
happiness
and also pigs so let me uh
disagree with einstein and try to defend
the word happiness and also maybe defend
pigs
if i can somehow figure that out so
the word happiness
i think is one of those words that could
mean a lot of things to a lot of people
and i think in this case einstein is
using it as almost uh
or the pursuit of happiness as a kind of
synonym for
hedonism so kind of very narrow
definition of what happiness is
i think i see happiness as a
indicator that is much bigger than
than direct pleasures but as a word that
includes those pleasures but also
includes
more meaningful deep fulfillment in life
and so i'd like to reclaim the word
happiness as a good thing
which is slightly applied in this
discussion that
happiness is a kind of uh distraction
that shouldn't be thought about
i do think that happiness is a side
effect
of a life well lived not
a goal i think the moment it becomes a
goal in itself
i think it's easy to lose your way and
perhaps that's what impart einstein
means
but i do think it's a really good signal
of progress
happiness so in
losing yourself in the focus of battle
of just focusing on
excellence and progress and improving
and
challenging yourself and growing all the
time
i think a kind of a running average
measure of your happiness
day-to-day happiness you like average
that over a period of weeks and months
is a good measure of how you're doing
and i think a more like actionable
process
of collecting that signal is the process
of just gratitude of sitting back and
thinking
how grateful i am how grateful you are
for
uh for how it started how it's going
for the progress uh that you've made so
i do think it's a good signal
not momentary happiness but over a
period of time several weeks several
months
if there's not happiness that you've
probably lost your way as well
so it's a useful signal not a goal in
itself but a useful signal
and you know kindness beauty and truth
as einstein puts it are good ideals
but they're a bit ambiguous in a
practical day-to-day sense i i share
them of course
but i think practically if i were to put
it into words at least for myself
struggle is the process
and happiness is
the measure so day-to-day
life actually looks like a constant
struggle to improve yourself
and then the flip side of that
is the gratitude of how amazing
life is the progress you've made but
also just the opportunity
to struggle as uh you know
you have to imagine this was happy and
uh
ultimately when i look back at my life
most days i spent
truly happy to be alive
so in that sense the pursuit of
happiness is a good one
so not hedonistic in the moment
local optima of kind of pleasure
but more like stepping back looking at
the running average
over the past few weeks and months and
making sure you're at a good level
so that's a bit of a disagreement with
einstein
and i also have to say that i think
pigs are one of the most intelligent
animals
so i'm still holding out for the
possibility that pigs
or maybe dolphins have life figured out
quite a bit better than
us humans so on those two things the
pursuit of happiness
and on the brilliance of pigs me and
einstein part ways
for a brief moment
question is hey lex i was curious how
you
pick people to come on to the podcast
i think this process is actually quite
difficult and it evolved
over time so let me mention a few
factors
i think first and foremost
it's important that a a person is
really passionate about what they do and
that passion can take all kinds of
different forms
i know i sometimes or all the time
completely lack emotion
in my face but i truly am passionate
about the things i do
and so that passion can express itself
in different ways
and so coupled with that passion i look
for people who are
sort of not only passionate but they
appreciate enjoy
are drawn to the long-form conversation
format as a way to express that passion
which is not everybody
some people love to express their
passion their interests
their expertise their ideas in written
form
maybe that's more kind of edited over
several passes of editing versus a
conversation format especially long-form
conversation where there's very little
editing
in addition to that i'm also try
to make sure the person actually wants
to come on to this particular podcast
you know there's so many amazing
podcasts out there and
it's also just surprising to see how
much better they are
than me at talking conversations
explaining stuff
it's uh humbling it's also inspiring
because it pushes me to kind of
improve seeing what's possible so
i don't know if people don't actually
listen to this particular podcast or at
least have listened a little bit
and are not drawn to the particular
flavor of weirdness that is me like some
kid who wears a suit all the time and
like
mumbles speaks slowly asks these weird
questions i mean
if if they're not drawn to whatever the
hell that weird mystery is
of this particular human then there's no
reason
to to talk if they're drawn i think
there's a possibility of something
magical happening
me with my weirdness and them with their
weirdness kind of colliding in
interesting ways that
create something new that both of us are
surprised by
and on that topic more and more i'm
looking for people that are
different than me and that means the
full spectrum
of diversity so it could be different
backgrounds different world views
different personalities like you can
tell there'll be a clash of flavors
it's like chocolate and salt
but it can also turn out to be uh like a
pineapple pizza
that actually some people love but i
don't understand
it it doesn't even it doesn't make any
sense why
it doesn't make any sense so it could be
you know taking that risk of embracing
that
clash and the chemistry can sometimes
result in a pineapple pizza so
uh there's a cost to that risk but i i
seek it out more because i think that's
the possibility of some
magical experience of a magical
conversation
and on that topic i should mention
there's this kind of idea of platforming
which is
um i've been fortunate enough to have
sort of enough listeners
and viewers that the question of
platforming even comes up
meaning if you have this kind of uh
guest with these kind of controversial
viewpoints
why give them a platform that's
further spreads their viewpoints and
i understand i empathize with this kind
of
uh view but i don't like it
because to me if i'm successful now
that's the problem
i'm not very good at this thing
especially in challenging conversations
so
but if i'm successful that the
tension and world views the tension and
personalities
the clash will create
wisdom so i really want to talk to
very challenging people i want to have
really difficult conversations
and that means talking to people that
are at the outskirts of society i think
it's something that
i'm thinking about a lot
it's important to say that i'm not
afraid of being canceled
i do think i'm afraid
or perhaps the better word is concerned
about doing a terrible job on a
important difficult conversation
where as a result of me doing a terrible
job
i don't add love or knowledge or
inspiration to the world but fuel
further division
not because of the guest i have on
but because of my failure to
[Music]
catalyze and like steer
an inspiring conversation i see my skill
in conversations not
i mean i don't know how to put it nicely
but not very good
i'm striving to improve constantly so
some of the guest selection has to do
with
the difficulty of the conversation
and how prepared i am for that level of
difficulty
i think the way i think about difficult
conversations
is some of them might take years to
prepare for
just intellectually there's there's
certain people and certain spaces of
ideas
that takes a lot of time you have to
remember that
i'm just uh an engineer
i have a set of things that preoccupied
my mind for years
and there's a lot of difficult topics
that
i just won't do a good job of so part of
it is i have to work hard to learn
more to kind of constantly
look outside the overton window to try
to explore
difficult ideas and at the same time
build enough sort of
reputation driven freedom to take risks
and make mistakes
or try to inspire people in the
community to allow me
to allow each other all of us to make
mistakes
in conversation so it's the coupling of
extreme
thorough preparation and allowing
yourself to make mistakes
it's like excellence and not giving a
damn
combined but overall the thing i'm
concerned about
and i take back the fear i'm not afraid
of it i'm just concerned of doing a bad
job of conversation
i'm not concerned of being cancelled or
derided
or criticized after having done
a reasonably good job i'm concerned
i'm on myself it doesn't matter if i'm
cancer or not just when i look in the
mirror
when i look at the results of the
conversation being
a failure something that doesn't add
love to the world but something that has
derision and also this is the problem
with words i don't even like how i'm
expressing myself currently
i really try not to have some kind of
agenda
or strategy going into a conversation i
really want to be
fragile open-minded almost boring and
naive
and just giving my trust to a person
even when i challenge or play devil's
advocate all those kinds of things
i really want to place trust
in the mutual respect and the love
that the other person gives and
i trust that they won't take advantage
of that
and so some of the guest selection
has to do with do i have enough trust
yet
that this person won't take advantage of
my open-mindedness
of my childlike curiosity all those
kinds of things
so but all of this is just a giant
learning experience
i do want to be careful not to let my
curiosity run
what should i say too far ahead of me
where my preparation
doesn't meet the level of curiosity i
exhibit
so again like i said i'm willing
and i'm trying to be more and more
willing to take risks
and make mistakes in conversations but
i'm also
not letting myself off the hook in terms
of the level of preparation
i put and i really hope that we give
each other
the freedom and are patient with each
other
in nuanced conversation that's what
seems to be really missing
in public discourse is this kind of
patience and allowing each other to make
statements that we
later change our mind on and not
putting that statement on us as a kind
of scarlet letter
that forever puts us in a bin
of red or blue or some other bin
so i'm trying to navigate all of this
while still being naive and
open-minded as best i can question is
hey lex i was wondering how you managed
to remain optimistic in the face of
adversity
when you encounter hostile people that
don't want to even consider offering
constructive criticism
and would rather try to tear you down
and force their ideology
i find pieces of hope for short periods
of time
and then they fade after i see the
arguments surrounding whatever brought
about hope to begin with i guess to put
it simply
how do you hold on to hope and optimism
thank you for the question there's
probably a lot to be said about this but
i'll try to keep it brief
and simple
try to ignore the noise of the world
the the bickering of the moment
i find that if you give yourself a
chance to see how amazing people
are that those people will reveal
themselves to be amazing
that uh you will see it
that if you give yourself a chance to
see it you will see it
i see it and i see
gratitude for how amazing things are and
optimism for how much even better
things could be as a kind of superpower
it makes life exciting in a way that
first is just fun to live
and two from just a productivity
perspective as an engineer or anybody
who creates anything
it's fuel to create
i believe that to create new things
and especially for things that others
will say is not possible to create i
find that
optimism is a necessary precondition
to give you the energy the fuel the
drive the inspiration to go for
months for years to carry the fire of
belief
that uh that's where that optimism truly
is
a superpower that enables that kind of
perseverance
so i think the most important thing is
it makes life
more exciting and fun and uh
it's a good productivity hack it's the
second thing
you also asked how so i tried to my
personal life
and the influences i take in the books i
read and
and the people i talk to i try to
surround myself with people that are
also
full of optimism in general i'm uh
unapologetically a fan of a lot of
people
especially sort of big thinkers wild
engineers and scientists and creators of
all walks of life
people that shine in ways that
surprise me or excite me there's really
thousands to be honest just off the top
of my head
even people i talked on this podcast
chris lattner
always brings a smile to my face one of
the greatest engineers of the world
jim kellers from that ilk as well though
slightly different personalities but
also
inspires me makes me smile such a deep
and kind
and brilliant human being along that
line of engineers
elon musk of course also
the embodiment of optimism about this
world
uh is an inspiration and then
uh maybe down the dimension of more wild
even george hotz
with a chaotic style of thinking
that's very different than my own but
one that i find just
inspiring of course joe rogan
for me has been for many years a kind of
example of somebody who doesn't take
themselves too seriously
like he's been for a lot of people he
has been for me
a uh role model for
a successful life that's not full of
jealousy and kind of derision
but it's more being supportive of others
being a fan of all this all those kinds
of things
i mean on the darker side dan carlin of
course
you know often think of him as
optimistic but i truly think he's
optimistic
he's just been so deeply
soaking in the muck the darkness
of human history that i think sometimes
the thing he
talks about come off as um
as deeply cynical about the future of
human civilization but they're not
there's a shining optimism to him and um
i wasn't in my conversation with him
even though his words were saying that
he's not always optimistic
i think his heart his spirit was clearly
optimistic
there's a hope for us in him
and uh at least to me and that's that's
what i see and i
to me that hope glows pretty bright in
in the stuff that he creates and the
passion that he has for human history
of course the scientist stephen will
from uh
on the computer science side i can't
tell you how much i love cellular
automata sean carroll
the way he loves everything about
physics is incredible communicator eric
weinstein the way he
loves everything geometrical shapes of
all things whether they're mathematical
or
whether they're connected to physics
just his loves for symmetry
asymmetry for topology for the weird
curvature of
things in the visible dimensions of
space-time or the invisible ones
and that's just sticking to people i've
talked to on this uh podcast of course
joshua bach
whose flow of consciousness is full of
so much brilliance it breaks my brain
anytime i try to process it
my commodore 64 brain takes in his uh
pentium i don't know what the analogy is
but it always breaks my brain
i'm especially inspired by the creations
of software engineers for example
because there's an
inherent optimism to the creative
process
a lot of people in the cryptocurrency
space like vitalik buterin
is a constant inspiration he just goes
on and on
and of course the hundreds probably
thousands of dead folks
from nietzsche dostoevsky freud young
kamu hasse kerouac
everybody i mean i just kind of feel
like i exist in this world
of people that
are excited about the future and then
of course the noise of the world
that is lost in the bickering of the
moment can seep in
and that's where a kind of meditation
comes in i don't fully ignore it
i think that's kind of
running away from the world in a way
that i don't find constructive at least
at this time in my life
i i just take it in but i don't let it
linger
if there is any kind of harshness or
trolling or just maybe destructive
criticism
i try to pick from it pieces
that i can use to grow to inspire me and
let the rest go
and that's the kind of muscle you have
to build
and every once in a while just
disconnect from it all and
and recharge the mind in a way from
just simple silence of
nature the question is what is something
you changed your opinion about
in the past few years thank you for
everything you're doing
love from brussels i love belgium thank
you
for that question and the kind words i
changed my mind on a lot of things and i
changed my mind all the time
i'm in a constant flux i'm constantly
learning
i guess my mind is the quantum
mechanical system but i can mention a
few things that have been
um stable big shifts in my
thinking at least over the past year or
two
especially related to the podcast so on
the topic of uh
psychedelics i've always found those
fascinating
what i've changed my mind over the past
couple years is a
hopeful message i think that uh
psychedelics can actually
enter the realm of science and that
there's a bunch of places that are
starting to conduct large-scale
research studies on psychedelics and
that's really exciting to me
because i have a sense that that's just
another perspective
into the world of neuroscience that will
help us understand the way the mind
works
and potentially how to engineer
different
aspects of what makes the human mind so
special in our artificial intelligence
systems
on the topic of social media i've
changed my mind over the past two years
i always felt that it had a bunch of
complicated bad influences on society
but they were balanced with a lot of
positive effects that
build community they give people a voice
all those kinds of things
more and more i'm starting to think that
the the
possible set of destructive trajectories
that
social media can take human civilization
is uh much wider much more destructive
than i accounted for
so it's something that i worry about you
know in the space of
existential risk of artificial
intelligence that people talk about
i think my mind more and more over the
past two years has been focused on
social media
as the greatest threat of artificial
intelligence
i also think it's the greatest set of
possibilities so
what i want to say is it's the set of
trajectories is wider than i expected
the set of possible trajectories then
society might go
as driven by managed by
directed by our platforms
hence it's been something that i've been
working on
to see if i can the biggest thing i
probably changed my mind on
is that extraterrestrial life
intelligence consciousness is
worthy of serious scientific
investigation
it's similar how i felt before about
consciousness human consciousness
is that we lack the tools and we're very
early in our ability to explore to
understand to engineer
consciousness and the same with
extraterrestrial life
the tools are very crude in terms of the
study efforts of trying to communicate
with far away
civilizations also the the listening
then there's the detection and faraway
exoplanets and
whether they're habitable in life forms
on those planets
also the hundreds of thousands of
reports of ufo sightings
actually getting some high resolution
sensory data around that so
we're in the very early days of any of
that kind of understanding
but what i've changed my mind on or
rather what i've come to understand
is closing my mind
closing the mind of other scientists
to these fields of consciousness and
extraterrestrial life
prevents us from actually discovering
new things
basically what happens when you close
your mind to these fascinating inspiring
mysterious
spaces of exploration
you leave the exploration of these
topics the people that are not
well equipped to explore them they're
just curious minds
and by the way those curious minds are
magical
and they're inspiring and i'm one such
curious mind
but the rigors of science the tools of
science the funding of science can uh
can crack these wide open and give us
better data
better understanding inspire totally
new ways of thinking about consciousness
about extraterrestrial life
have entire paradigm shifts of the way
we approach our understanding of
intelligence of life forms in general
and there's a lot of things that kind of
opened my eyes
to this fascinating world the david
favor conversation of
the pilot that uh saw the
tic tac ufo the it was just recent
a more more conversation but that was in
i remember seeing avi loeb's thoughts
about
moa when it first came out and even just
thinking about the drake equation
more seriously and thinking about the
different possibilities built into the
uncertainty of the parameters just
open my eyes to the mystery and the
wander
of the amazing universe we're in
and how little we know about it and so
i've definitely kind of become much more
intellectually open to the exploration
of what extraterrestrial life might look
like
what are the ways we might be able to
communicate with it
how we might be able to understand it
what does it teach us about ourselves
and also importantly this very
fascinating psychological effect
of being open to these
mysteries that we know very little about
what does that do to the
actual productivity the
the creative output of an engineering
mind
that opening your mind in this way to
think outside
of the little box of things we
understand well
what does that do in terms of the things
you might be able to build
the ideas that might visit you
and result in you being able to build
something totally new
i think all of that changed my mind
about aliens that's why i've been having
conversations about
extraterrestrial life i'm of course very
careful walking down this line
because i am first and foremost a
scientist an engineer and i want to stay
in that world
but i really do want to cultivate an
open mind
and a childlike curiosity and i
generally hope to see that in
other scientists as well that's what
science is all about
i think incremental progress is
essential
for science but it has to be coupled
to that childlike wonder about the world
and an open-minded out-of-the-box
thinking the results and major paradigm
shift
that throw all those silly citations out
the window
and build totally new sciences totally
new approaches
that uh make everything we did in the
decades
past meaningless or actually
counterproductive
so they have to be coupled together
incremental progress
and first principles
deep thinking that results in paradigm
shifts
question is what was your decision
behind going on the keto diet
mainly meat based and how has it helped
you
so the decision or rather process of
discovering the diets that work for me
has to do with the fact that i wrestled
the combat sports my whole life
that has weight classes so you're
constantly
figuring out how to perform optimally
physically and mentally while you know
going to school and so on
while also cutting weight so grounded in
that i've developed
a fascination with different diets i've
never thought
about diet as a prescriptive thing for
others
i've always thought of myself as a kind
of a nutritional scientist
running a study of n of one
so just studying myself and not trying
to extrapolate to others just
understanding what makes me happy what
makes me perform the best and that's
where that journey took i've tried
everything
i think about 15 or more years ago i
discovered the power of intermittent
fasting or fasting in general
and i can talk about that forever i used
to do a lot of weight lifting sort of
power lifting all that kind of stuff
in in the world of like men's health or
rather
uh men's muscle and fitness kind of
where you eat six seven times a day
small meals chicken and broccoli all
that kind of stuff
in that kind of world to realize you can
eat once a day
and still train two three times that day
and actually have more energy
more focus and perform better than you
ever have
was mind-blowing so i think
fasting was the biggest like
paradigm shift for me because it made me
realize
that i really need to study myself
better
try new things all the time to allow
myself the opportunity to discover
something that's totally transformative
on my life makes my life easier
makes my body my mind work better all
that kind of stuff
i discovered intermittent fasting and
fasting in general from the
ultra endurance athletes world
and that's where also i came across the
ideas of fat adapted
athlete which is this kind of idea that
you can use fat as an energy source
and then quickly you discover that there
is diets similar to like a keto diet
that are extremely low carb
that could allow you to perform well
physically and mentally
all those kinds of things i think it all
sounded a little bit crazy to me
i grew up thinking low fat is good high
fat is bad
so it's always weird to eat something
with fat in it
and for it not to be like a cheat meal
or something
but to be something that's part of the
diet so
it was strange but once i gave it a
chance and did it properly with all the
electrolytes and
water and all those kinds of things you
can look it up when you do it properly
it just felt great and there was just a
huge number of benefits i felt
immediately and i've been doing it ever
since so
let me maybe quickly comment on some
pros and cons of the keto diet
and again this is all personal
experience i don't want to extrapolate
this to others
but i do encourage people to try to
explore
to be their own scientists of their own
body
so for me prose is the
physical energy first of all the energy
levels are more stable
but also i just feel more energized for
exercise
this is both for like explosive
movements
you know heavy lifts or
jiu jitsu grappling judo wrestling all
those kinds of things
and also for prolonged endurance
exercise
i find both a really benefit for me i
think for explosive exercise the biggest
benefit for me is the mental focus
at least the way i approach like the
grappling sports but even lifting
it's certainly very important how my
body feels but
it's also important that the mind is
really focused on the technique
and i find that the biggest benefit of
keto
combined with the fasting is that my
mind can achieve
a greater level of stable
prolonged focus which is useful for
exercise funny enough for me obviously
it's really useful for work
for deep work sessions for thinking
deeply for prolonged periods of times
whether that's programming whether
that's writing
or whether that's sitting behind a sheet
of paper and designing new systems
it's both the energy of mental focus and
the kind of
clarity i don't know how else to put it
but there's just a cleanness to the
focus that i really enjoy
also when you acclimate to it i find
that the sort of
number of hours in the day that i have a
positive mood is just
larger i can be cranky sometimes
especially when i'm sleep deprived or
especially when stuff is just not
working
now so there will always be parts of the
day when i'm cranky
but it just feels i haven't quantify it
but i'm pretty sure sort of anecdotally
speaking
that the number of hours i feel just
good about the day just grateful to be
alive
is higher with um with keto
other benefits are better sleep i fall
asleep easier
that might have to do with just a lower
volume of food i don't know
but i enjoy naps and sleep
better there's also just in general like
small
aches and pains from joints when you're
exercising all that kinds of stuff
seems to be less on keto so
that's just my own personal experience
also when you're doing fasting and keto
because of the stable energy you find
that you can actually skip meals
quite easily and so that gives you a
nice gateway into fasting for longer
periods of times if you like
there's a lot of benefits to fasting
they could talk about that's fine
another time
but in general it gives you this freedom
to live life to enjoy life
and not be so obsessed about food i
think that's the biggest liberating
thing
about keto is that if you do the keto
diet
while that food ceases to be a kind of
um habitual obsession
that drives the progress of the day you
more of the day is spent kind of
lost in the passions and the things you
love doing
i just found that when i was doing the
kind of
many meals a day i i would find myself
thinking about food a lot
like it it drove the structure of the
day
it uh influenced a lot of the things i
would talk about and think about
you don't really think of it that way
until it's gone and you notice
like with uh keto and fasting that
you can spend really long hours
of the day just doing some cool stuff
that you love
and food doesn't come into play in your
in your mind and your actual activity so
my personal sort of cons of the keto
diet is uh
i enjoy eating like higher volume
it gives you a feeling of fullness and i
think with the keto diet
is a lower volume of food in general
you're still full in terms of
your body not saying you're hungry but
there's not a feeling of real fullness
now that's also
a benefit because you just feel better
you feel
lighter less bloated and so on i find
this is actually changing a lot
but keto used to be a little bit less
socially friendly
most of the fun foods fuji associated
with kind of just like
going crazy at parties or restaurants
and so on
have a ton of carbs and so in social
settings
it's it often feel like you're being
restrictive and not partaking in the fun
if you're doing a keto diet i think
that's changing a lot people are
becoming much
more accepting of it for example
mcdonald's
you can uh order just the beef patties
for a dollar fifty as i've talked about
and people don't look at you weird at
least in my experience
if you just get the burger without a bun
another con is
keto and carnivore just doesn't sound
healthy so
i usually try not to talk about it too
much because it just makes me
feel really good my mind focused
my body performs well but i don't know
if i want to sort of prescribe it to
others
it's definitely something i recommend
you try but i just don't feel like
conclusively saying this diet is great
for everybody i really don't
i certainly don't know enough to be able
to say that and also it just doesn't
sound right to say that
and while i've loved meat my whole life
i feel the best when i eat a lot of meat
i do think about the ethical side of
veganism it's something
i'm reading about now i'm thinking a lot
about
it's an ongoing journey perhaps i'll
have
more to say more of my mind to be
changed
in the future we'll see but for now
for many years now i've been uh really
enjoying the
keto diet a mix of keto and carnivore
diets
we'll see what the future holds what was
the darkest time in your life
and what did your road to recovery look
like
in general i love life so it's difficult
for me to talk about these kinds of
things
but let me briefly say that i think
the darkest times have been when i've
put my faith
in people when i opened my heart to them
and they turned out not to be
the best versions of themselves or maybe
the kind of amazing
people that i'd hope i thought they
might be
so my heart has been broken in
small ways in my life as i'm sure it has
been for many people
but the fire of hope
still burns bright perhaps even brighter
you mentioned road to recovery i think
with the people i mentioned i focus on
the positive moments and there always
are
and uh just have gratitude for those
and just don't linger on the negative i
just remember the good times
that's how i recover that's how i keep
my optimism and that's how i
keep my heart open for future amazing
people to take
the risk and i'm sure my heart will be
broken again
perhaps many times in the future but um
i think it's always worth the risk
uh i like the i wrote this down uh
the marcus aurelius quote love the
people with whom fate brings you
together
and do so with all of your heart i think
that's all we can do
i hope some of these answers were at
least somewhat interesting or
useful if so i'll
try to do it again in the future it is
currently
4 2 oh it's 4 21. when i started saying
that sentence it was 4
20 am a good time to end
as any perhaps the best good night
i love you all thanks for listening to
this ama episode
and thank you to our sponsors brooklyn
and sheetz
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friends
and if you wish click the sponsor links
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and to support this podcast and now
since we talked about einstein's
thoughts about happiness
and pigs let me leave you with some
words from winston churchill
i'm fond of pigs dogs look up to us
cats look down on us pigs treat us as
equals
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time