SPEAKER_00
And look, almost everyone. Anyone who understands the scale of the universe and thinks about how probability works, almost all comes to the same conclusion. Of course we're not alone, right? It's like if you picked up one great, no, we have one example, which is what happened on Earth.

If you picked up one grain of sand from a beach and you looked in the microscope and you saw it was crawling with little critters, you wouldn't conclude, well, maybe this is the only one that has that. You'd say, of course, I'm sure they're on all kinds. I didn't just pick up the one that has it, right?

SPEAKER_02
Dude, great to meet you and thank you so much for taking the time.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I'm happy to meet one of my Twitter friends.

SPEAKER_02
I know, exactly. Well, it feels like everyone at this point is a Twitter friend that I'm now meeting in real life. Like over the last two, three years, some of my best friends in the world now are just like people that were anonymously you know, interacting with on Twitter.

SPEAKER_00
It's like a genuinely good way to meet people. Like Twitter sucks in 100 ways, but it's like really fantastically great for like three or four really important things.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I found that it like, to your point, it's both ends of the spectrum, right? I guess it's like anything else in life. There's like the 1%. You tweeted it actually just recently about like advice filters and trust filters, and I feel that same way.

It's like you need to know and figure out how to find the 1%. That is super interesting that you're really going to engage with and learn a lot from amidst all of the noise that is out there.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think like it, depending on who you follow, it can be a great way to learn a great way to like get a quick feel for, you know, to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on. It's a great way to do that in a way that like, if you were just checking random news sites versus, you know, because Twitter doesn't just teach, doesn't just show you what the news is. It shows you what the perception of the news is and it shows you what the arguments about the news is and the different, you know, viewpoints and the different you can, and if you follow the right, you know, array of people, it actually gives you a feel for what's going on in every bubble.

You know, you can, yeah.

SPEAKER_02
I had a really interesting conversation on this exact topic with a New York Times journalist who I won't name, but who's very famous, well known, literally earlier this week, and he was saying that they just had a memo go around internally at the New York Times that basically encouraged them to stop using Twitter so much and to stop reading so much because they have an internal perception that it is like 5% of what's actually happening, but commanding 95% of their mind share of what is happening. And so they're worried that it's like skewing their journalistic integrity or their, the journalism. So I'm curious just like generally how other people think about that.

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SPEAKER_00
It's hard because on one hand, what's going on on Twitter is part of what's going on in reality, and it has a big effect on things. You don't want to totally have your head in the sand and just pretend it doesn't exist, but I do think that we're really social beings. This is a random story here.

I always used to love traveling alone. It was one of my favorite things. The first time I went, I was kind of like, I'm going to a restaurant alone.

I'm in a foreign country. This is still embarrassing. I started to reframe it.

I was like, A, none of these people know who I am and they'll never see them again. B, it's like, why would I be embarrassed anyway? Who cares who anyone thinks? I got into this mode where I suddenly was just so comfortable being alone, traveling, whatever. But then I found myself on a little tour in the Amazon.

This is one of my solo trips. It was a little tour and I often made friends. I was very social when I went.

I often did meet people and I liked making friends from other countries. I went to this tour and there was six of us. I guess the four of them, two couples or whatever, had gotten to know each other.

The fifth one was another European and they kind of befriended that person. I was an American. I don't know why they didn't like Americans or they didn't just, they just didn't like me.

But I felt very out grouped in a way that it was like a two day thing. And I found myself caring so much about being out grouped by five RANDOS who I literally was never going to see again. And it was just a reminder that there's a mechanism in our brain that can be flipped on and make us insane.

For me to care about being out grouped by this group of complete strangers was like, because I appreciate it even at the time. I was like, this is super irrational, but it was really kind of upset about it. Three days after it was over, I was like, why did I care? But anyway, so back to Twitter.

I think that what Twitter does is it has a lot of dynamics on it. A lot of kind of in group out group bullying, like, you know, slandering and it has like, you know, people have their crew, they agree with them and people like me, we tweet, we retweet this stuff, whatever it is. And I think it like switches on kind of a kind of a crazy part of our brains.

And I can see journalists kind of getting wrapped up in it and suddenly kind of feeling that like middle school kind of social pressure. And I don't think that's probably, I don't think that's good for many people. And I think journalists especially.

So I was a roundabout way of kind of explaining why I think it might be bad.

SPEAKER_02
Well, I love that story because I've often talked about how I think a lot of society's problems or your individual problems would be solved if you went out on a date by yourself once a month and just like sat at a bar by yourself with your own thoughts. I think we've lost as a society our ability to be in solitude and experience solitude because we're constantly, you know, we're on our phones. I've got my phone, you know, you're getting pinged.

There's just stimuli all around you. And so we've lost the ability to just be alone. And I think that when you do that, when you reengage that sense, a lot of positives come from it to your point.

It's interesting some of the like biases and psychological impacts of it, like the spotlight effect, which you kind of referred to. We constantly think that other people are looking at us. The reality is everyone's just thinking about themselves.

Everyone's selfish and just thinking about themselves. No one cares how you look sitting alone at the bar. Nobody's thinking about you.

But it's such a funny reality.

SPEAKER_00
And even if someone is like, you have to, if you just like the thought that it matters is a very crazy part of your brain that cares. That is like, oh, you know, like, you know, when I'm in a good zone, like kind of comfortable and in a mature zone, I can, I can be pretty sure that other people I know, even like people I know well are talking shit about me. And I don't, and it rolls off my back and I say, you know, I talked shit about people like it happens.

It's okay. That's when I'm in a really good zone, you know, and when you're in a bad zone, like you just like you care so much about social things.

SPEAKER_02
It's a, it's such a fun like the ability to pull yourself away from your, your own internal feelings like that is very rare. I've been like, I personally, I won't comment on my own experience with this, but I've heard that when people are under the influence of psychedelic drugs or medicines, that you have some people have the ability to step away from what they're feeling. And so you're like, wow, there's all this crazy stuff going on, but then you can pull back from it and experience it as like, what is happening in my brain? This is an interesting experience and process, which is part of why scientists think there's a huge, you know, potential use of for treatments of depression and other psychological disorders as well.

You can like unpack and deconstruct your own, your own perspectives and emotions.

SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah, it's like, I feel like if usually you're kind of the way I kind of like it's if you're in a sphere of like, you know, experiences and feelings and thoughts. Yeah, it's like psychedelics allows you to kind of like step outside and look at the sphere and like maybe look at it from other angles and like walk around it and look under it and like, and that is incredible. Like it's an incredible tool.

SPEAKER_02
It relates to exactly how I wanted to. It's funny, we had a roundabout way of leading to the exact thing that I wanted to frame up this discussion with. And I always think about like, what is the right way to sort of frame up like as a framework or mental model, the kind of line of discussion and chat.

And, you know, I thought I would kind of go meta here in using one of your own pieces, one of my favorite pieces from weight, but why, which was your neural ink piece. And you had a line in there that I just thought was fantastic. And I think it's a great way of framing up the discussion.

And what you said was, I learned that you can only fully wrap your head around certain companies, abstract companies to really anything by zooming both way way in and way way out in on the technical challenges facing the engineers out on the existential challenges facing our species in on a snapshot of the world right now out on the big story of how we got to this moment and what our far future could look like. So maybe just to kick off, what did you mean by that when you when you wrote that. And I want to just kind of use that thread of zooming way in and zooming way out to examine a few different, a few different topics today.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think I just in general talking about zooming. To me, it's like a very it's an axis kind of, you know, that we can be on the spectrum of how kind of I think backed up or you know, sometimes I think about it as you're backing up but I think maybe sometimes even a better metaphor is like you're so when you're zoomed in, it's like you're on a beach and you can like look down, you know, you really know you're on a beach and you're looking around you see so like the coast goes around, you know wraps around over there and over there and you see some, you know, water goes out and you just don't see anything else. And so, first of all, you can zoom in, which is you can take a microscope and start examining the grains of sand and, you know, just really getting down there and and understanding how did this happen how did each grain of sand get you know get like this and you know how how is it how do these trees grow and you know one of these little tiny organisms doing.

But to me you know what's so that that's one that's one thing that I think can help you really understand a beach better, but often we were you know we're looking at something and we don't know is this are we on an island, is this part of a continent. Is this is this a little stretch stretch of a ton of beach or is this the only little area of beach. Is that am I looking at a lake, a big lake, or is this the ocean.

So what what what we can do is like, if you think about it like a news story if a news story that day is just like looking at a strip of beach. Sometimes you don't know like is that news is this new story actually important, like how like in 10 years will Russia Ukraine be like one of the biggest things of the decade or will it be like this kind of like we like oh yeah remember that Russia has been going on for like four months like it's hard to know right like there's all these you know stories that it's so I think of it as a helicopter you go up and now you can see more you can start to like so if you if you look back at the last month. And I know I'm like yeah bringing new stories and now it's a little bit convoluted but but basically if you look at the last month of news stories you can start to see like, oh okay this matter this that's like when you can like zoom up and you can see the whole kind of region here but you still can't see is this how big is this place is a content is a huge island I don't know you go farther and farther until you're actually now you can see actually okay now you can you can see the whole continent and the outline of it and where you were on it.

And you go up even further you can see the whole earth and you can kind of fully see to me it's like. If you know if you zoomed out. On a lot of things you can see the huge huge story and so often I think we're like caught in the middle.

We're caught in the middle like time wise, as I said with like news stories like it's hard to it's hard for us to see the big big picture here what's the real overarching story that's going on in 2022 right now and and you know, we time gives us that that helicopter hindsight. So it's not just time it's also just you know in an industry if there's a company well what's the big story of this company what's really going on in this industry what are the major forces and play. So I think we need to do a lot more zooming out the best we can obviously again hindsight helps and statistics can help to get a feel for.

And I think that whenever I want to understand something that's my instinct is like what's the big big story going on like what's all of this a part of again is this is this part of an island is this part of a giant continent is this is you know how relevant is each thing, but then also zooming in. I find that so often like we just, again we're caught in the middle where we like read the news story. Or we, we understand we try to study how a company works, or you know the basic deal with the company.

But it's when you, you know, if you go in and you actually talk to the engineers and start to understand the problems they're facing you watch what they're doing on a Wednesday at 2pm and you sit in on some of the meetings. It's amazing how much clearer everything gets suddenly you look back to what you thought like a week ago before all this and you're like wow I, I really had this like depiction that was just wrong. It was not accurate.

SPEAKER_02
It's so interesting because what my perception is that we often spend, I think most humans spend the vast majority of their time in the middle, not zoomed in not zoomed out and it's because it's most comfortable right that's like the, the point of peak abstraction where to use your thought experiment. The pencil just looks like a pencil and you don't worry about it and you're like yeah right with it. You know this is my thing it's my pencil and zooming in is really uncomfortable because you go in and you realize all of the different components and like your thought experiment of no one in the world knows how to build a pencil because it has lead and you know all of the different components of it not there's not a single human who can build that pencil and know how to put it the entire thing together.

But then when you zoom out it's also really uncomfortable you zoom out and you're like what is the meaning of all of this and what how does the pencil how has that changed society over the last thousand years you know and all of the writing and so most people because it's the most comfortable end up just sitting in the middle and you kind of play that like peak abstraction throughout your entire life.

SPEAKER_00
The middle is important too. It's just that it's only one of the areas and yeah.

SPEAKER_02
It's actually probably the best place to live but to understand you kind of need to go to both extremes. Yeah. And it's probably the point where it's like you go to both extremes and then you can coast in the middle and be happy and like feel fulfilled in there.

SPEAKER_00
And I do think the secret of some of the most you know people who seem super prescient like they can just you know read the future amazing and investing in stocks or they're incredible entrepreneurs they just can see opportunities or whatever it is. I think even you know stand up comedians you know which is a good stand up comedian is they really see the bigger social forces going on and they can point them out in a way that everyone says oh my God that's so true you know. I think that one of the things people have in common is that they often are really good at the zoom in and zoom out like Elon Musk classic example like no one's a better zoom out or I mean he he he just seems to like see the overarching far this back stories of like you know humanity is you know the like trying to keep the light of human consciousness and he sees you know the major existential threats.

He just thinks that's where his head is he's always thinking about that but then also you know he knows exactly the four elements that make up the paint on the rocket you know and and and you know and he can tell you how much the rocket weighs more if you use this paint versus that paint and you know. Every single component of the Tesla you know he can tell you about so. When you have that level of both out and in kind of clarity.

It just. You're just like seeing without any fog. You know we have so much.

So if you think about it is you know we see in the middle kind of even there you know the middle often we can get to see if you don't see the top and bottom. You know we can often be deceived by new stories you know by by you know headlines and you know you know kind of dogmatic story lines like you know political narratives can kind of fool us. But when you when you really see the big big picture and then you also kind of understand what's going on I feel like it's at the small level I think it's just you're much harder to trick and you can you can work magic.

In investing in entrepreneurship and the arts and other things like that.

SPEAKER_02
So I want to spend like a couple of minutes doing a zoom in zoom out on you. I feel like everybody knows you as you know the most popular blogger in the world whether or not that's like an official title you might not be in the Guinness Book of World Records for that I don't know if people still make those or if they're they commanded like a massive outside share of my childhood I kind of it was like one of the it was like the peak you know that was the pinnacle of human achievement was being in the Guinness Book of World Records in my mind it was one of the main.

SPEAKER_00
It was like one of the three or four main things.

SPEAKER_02
It was like right it was like it really I tweeted out something maybe like I don't know a few weeks ago like what was one thing that you thought was really important when you were a kid that actually turned out to be totally useless and like the most common responses were Guinness Book of World Records. And then the other ones which I thought which I find hilarious or like quicksand piranhas like the Bermuda Triangle I really wondered why no one was looking into the Bermuda Triangle I was like man planes are falling out of the sky and this thing and no one's looking into it.

SPEAKER_00
Nightmarish. Yeah, I mean quick quick sand is a very good one like I think part of it has to do with the princess bride. But I think it's just in general it was it was in cartoons and it was like, it was like very kind of a scary part of life was quick.

SPEAKER_02
I mean I thought I was like really going to encounter that stuff as an adult. I really thought that was going to be a part of my life so back to the broader point on you. Like, you know you were born now you're here.

You know kind of what happened in between how did you, you know, form your maps of reality like what were the what were the kind of key parts of your life that you feel like have impacted where you are today.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think I've always just kind of been an analytical person like I just it's just my instinct to when something is going on or I feel a certain way. Or something happens to just like try to categorize it, you know, and, and like make sense of it in a way and and and so I also then like people who do that I end up connecting well with them and when when I find someone who also happens to do that we become really good friends, because we just do a lot of that.

SPEAKER_02
And so I think downsides to that, were there ever downsides from a relationship standpoint or growing up where you kind of felt different as a result of that analytical nature.

SPEAKER_00
I mean, there's downsides and that it just can like, you're thinking you're just thinking all the time right it's hard you can take you out of being present. I think it can cause you anxiety, think you can overanalyze stuff. I think if something unfortunate happens like instead of just being like, yeah, that was a bummer you might like really, you might like internalize exactly how big a mistake it was in a way that like, you know, it would have been better to kind of just not be thinking so hard about it.

I always thought you were a picture right. Yeah, yeah, I would have the baseball fidget toy that I carry around. Yeah. Like, I would have been an awful match for that because I would have been like, you know, you know, I don't know, just say I'm like a relief picture and I come in and and I, you know, I have two outs and there's like a man on second and I just like, in my head I would start thinking, whether this third guy gets out or gets a hit is the difference between my entire like, like week being like a good having been like a good, you know, weekend like and like, you know, and then of course it's like the playoffs I would I would have a moment when I'm like, I would just not be able to get it out of my head that

SPEAKER_02
this what I do now will like affect the rest of my life and you can extrapolate by the way like I bet there is a very clear correlation if you look to pitchers the one common thread that I always found among great pitchers and I think it applies to all athletes I actually think it applies to entrepreneurs is this like almost irrational arrogance around your own abilities and like with pitchers you had to be so irrational that you could go out and give up a grants, you know, the worst outing of your life and come out of the game and be like those guys suck man that was lucky whatever like I'm way better than that's bullshit you had to have that like completely irrational made no sense if you actually evaluated every single outing you would have gone nuts and to your point you'd never be able to do it at scale.

SPEAKER_00
I had to have some kind of kind of like emotional shield that's just like when bad things happen just like bounces off so you stay strong you know, and, and so I think I think you know analytical people like analytical I'm not even sure is the word just I don't know whatever it is but like, it's kind of a zoom out thing like I guess if our pitching I'd be zooming out and being like I see the whole career and be like, Oh, shit like this might be my one time in the playoffs like, if or you know like if I like, you know, whatever it is like I would zoom out is not helpful in that moment,

SPEAKER_02
you know, it's like you want to be totally, it's kind of like a weird partially permeable shield to like to your point on the shield I think that's a great reference, but you sort of need something to break through so that you can actually adapt and get better to you and most of it to deflect off and shoot off back into space and the like little inkling of insight that might make you better the next time out to actually permeate and kind of hit you.

SPEAKER_00
I think that goes for a lot more than sports to like, I think if you think about your beliefs, your ideas and who you are as a person your personality like the way you are. I think it's good to be a little bit on the arrogant side, a little bit like enough where you're like proud of who you are, you're confident in what you know and, and your values and your beliefs and you go with them you're not always you know rethinking them or self doubt you know, you're maybe even have a little less than rational self doubt like you know you're, you're kind of just like this is why I'm proud of it and this is why I believe and I think that that's a good thing to a point. And I think that it's like that's a, it's like you said you have to you have to mix that with being able to sometimes say something's not working for me here, or maybe I can grow up a little bit in this way, or maybe I'm wrong about this like, and if you can't do that now it's like a rubber shield that's so thick because maybe you're so, maybe you're so scared of what it would feel like to not have that because usually once it gets when arrogance gets to a certain point I think it's not a result of confidence it's a result of some kind of fear when it gets to.

And now it's a rubber shield that all new information bounces off of all all negative feedback bounces off of and you know you know you can tell when someone's like this when they get negative feedback they get really angry, and they end up even more sure of themselves and they hate that person I mean that's someone who has a I think an arrogance problem with feedback. But I think that being totally rational about like maybe I well maybe I should question this question. That's I don't I think I think it's that's actually can can be a paralyzing place, and you can quickly drift.

When you think of this is like a spectrum of arrogance all the way down to like insecurity, you can drift below that totally rational line to a place where now you're, you're doubting yourself even when it doesn't make sense to right and so. But like for example like this is the kind of thing I've always done for having this conversation and now in my head I've formed an axis, a spectrum that goes from arrogant with a dotted line in the middle totally rational down to totally insecure and then I think the right thing is like a quarter of the or third of the way from the dotted line to that. But that's just like that's just how I think I've always done that right.

And like I remember in college I met these, a couple of my best friends, you know we really connected over our just like we were really really interested in the topic of like how to find love like how to find the right person to marry or whatever. What what makes a good relationship versus about what should deal breakers be. So so much so many of the things I write like I've written now a couple posts about that kind of thing and so many of those emerge from these conversations that I've had.

And like I remember we were like, you know I kind of come up with a theory. You know just talking I was like okay I think what matters is, you know, three, there's three things that you have to be good, and then everything else can be bad and it's fine like the three things have to be you have to have like a general attraction you can't just see them as like you have to have to have to have like a crush, or you know, physical attraction of some kind of physical traction is you know especially at the beginning but like, if it starts off with a lot of that I think that carries you it's always feels a little more special than just a friend. So there has to be something there.

There has to be like a best friendship type thing where like you don't want to feel like when you're out to dinner with your person, and then also your friends and you're having so much fun with your friends, and then you then they leave and you're heading home with your person you're like, just just us again like you don't want to feel that way you want to feel excited oh it's just us now we can like really get into it you know, like you don't want to feel like bummed out that like your friends aren't there all the time because you're just kind of bored with your person and I actually use something called the traffic test there which is if you know there's certain friends of mine, friends family members who when I'm I like talking to them so much I have so much fun just being with them and just talking to them that when we're like in a car somewhere and I'm driving them home, right or vice versa I'm actually like pumped up when we hit traffic Yes, we have more time as opposed to like you know, normally traffic sucks. I think that your person should pass the traffic test you know you should it should be one of those people where it's just super fun. Okay and then the third area.

So there's like attraction like best friendship. The third area is just that like a deep trust that you just like, you just know that they're, you feel a very good person you feel like they're just like, they're there, they're like, you know, deep down there, they're, you totally trust them they're not going to like hurt you badly you know like, kind of always like scared that you're like, you know, or you know you can just kind of be yourself and know that it's okay. So it sounds like that's a lot but actually there's a lot of other things you know there's stuff you like to do in common there's like mutual friends there's like same philosophies on values on these other things you know religion you know, there's a lot of other things that I think are there that I think you know, if the if those big three things are there.

Those friends so anyway that's the kind of thing that I've done a lot in my life.

SPEAKER_02
And so like John Nash, you know, hypothesizing around the Nash equilibrium and like game theory around the women at the bar. Yeah, it's in beautiful mind it's like that scene. I remember it's a very memorable scene.

It reminds me of that. You know, it's like breaking down this situation in a mathematical way and in such an analytical way it's very, it's very interesting. How did, how did wait but why actually come about, were you writing before it like I don't know the origin story of how it actually came to be and like the stick figures and all of your amazing drawings and like how did you actually launch into that endeavor.

Yeah, I was writing. I basically I always wanted to do something creative professionally.

SPEAKER_00
And the thing I was trying to do is music, but it's like the worst master of procrastinator because, you know, you can't just you know you know you know and perfectionist you know you always I would be paralyzed by wanting to write like the best movie score for this thing possible and then you just like, and I had to buy a deadline and like, or I just don't go out in the first place and do the networking and it was a lot of like things where I was not. I did not have the work habits to like that I needed to be like really getting that career rolling and so I was procrastinating on that by doing a couple other things and then I started a test prep company which was just like my side job and then I ended up hiring friends who are out there and they also needed to job and tutoring. And then I started blogging just for fun, which I didn't take seriously it was like just a fun procrastination on I made like a blogger, and, you know, just super simple and.

And I found it was as part of it was this it was this, I didn't know I tricked myself where I was doing a creative pursuit that I wasn't being perfectionist about because I didn't pride myself on being good at it and wasn't trying to do anything big with it. And so that's often how you end up in a really kind of loose, carefree creative zone, having fun. And so I ended up writing what I think was a pretty good blog it was it was, it was not I didn't put anywhere in the near the time that I put in now.

It was just kind of stuff about my day or my theories on this or a bunch of 20 things that don't understand, you know, and I would just, you know, I just had fun with it right and. And then so meanwhile, on the test prep side of things I my best friend since we were five moved to LA which is where I was and we partnered up and we were doing that together and have, you know, now now I'm like 30 and I'm basically telling him I'm going crazy doing these like creative pursuits on the side I was doing blogging on the side, while doing this test for company I didn't feel like I was giving my all to the business and I wasn't giving my all to anything and it was this kind of classic me situation to end up in like super miserable. Not really, you know, and I was like I need to go full time with one of these creative pursuits and we decided to do something that you know, could be also maybe like something that could be a business venture possibly.

You know, it was like, because it was a way to like, keep working together, because I liked working with him, but he would manage the, the kind of the business we were doing and I would go and start a new thing. That was the kind of idea it was like a way to have my cake and eat it to not having like fully quit everything and but also get to do something I really wanted but something that maybe was a fun thing for him to be part of, if it grew as opposed to like a musical which is just like, it's such a long time process it's like so hard to get that to actually make money and so anyway, that was because it was just sat in between those I was like I do a lot of blogging and I do this, this musical so decided to go with blogging that's kind of this long story. But the bigger picture was like, I finally, at 31 did what I should have done a long time ago which is just go full in with one of my creative pursuits.

SPEAKER_02
It's so interesting, because there's a generalized version of this story, which I've experienced as well which is just this idea that you almost like most people that go and build something really unique or something impressive successful etc. And I had the like janky version of it that happened before. And then that led to and sort of allowed and enabled the really beautiful polished version of it and like I used to write this, like once a month newsletter that I would send out to probably at like a max distribution of like 500 people.

And it was like what I read that month basis and it was sort of just me like reviewing a few books and it was pretty crappy like the writing probably wasn't good but it was loose to your point and it was kind of, again, like a janky version of the building and the thing that I ended up doing at scale was the seed had been planted and I was working on it and I think about that when I hear you tell the story of way but why, like you'd been working writing, you know you kind of opened yourself up creatively put yourself in the arena of it, and you had to do that small thing in order for the big thing to actually happen.

SPEAKER_00
There's actually even another level which is when I started this first blog, I realized that when I was actually doing is I was doing something I had done forever which has come back from a trip or a crazy weird day. And I would just type an email to like 12 friends. And I would do it you know I'd be like okay you know like you know throughout the day like the following things happen like tick this tick this right I just do that where these long kind of, you know, emails to friends.

And I started blogging is like I'm just actually doing the thing that I used to just do one as an email I'm doing this now as a blog. And then then I took it and did it as a full time job, you know so it was even like more layers like and I think that is a lot of times something you're doing very casually, actually, you know is you actually sometimes find something that man I'm good at this and I really like it, and it doesn't feel like it. It could go anywhere because it seems like it's such a casual thing but sometimes you can make that connection say, I think this like thing that I do with my friends actually is pretty special maybe I can do something with that like sometimes that's what you know that sometimes it's there.

SPEAKER_02
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com slash room. Again, that's f u n d r i s e dot com slash room to get started today. Today I am so excited to talk about Riverside.

Riverside is the leading platform for studio quality remote podcasts and video recordings from anywhere. We absolutely love it at where it happens and you're going to love it too. Greg, what have you enjoyed most about Riverside?

SPEAKER_01
What's amazing about Riverside is that when you're recording a remote video podcast or remote interview, the recording quality is independent of Wi-Fi stability. It basically records locally, which is a huge advantage in order to ensure a reliable and uncompressed content outcome. The way I think about it, it's basically like a studio inside your browser, and it's not just us who uses it.

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SPEAKER_02
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Again, that's riverside.fm and use code happens for 15% off at checkout. So it's led you to some amazing things.

You've built relationships, built a reputation around your writing and your creative work that is astounding and far-reaching. Your posts, which you're a bit of a unicorn within the blogging and newsletter writing sphere because you don't really have a set cadence for these posts. You're not like, one of these, hey, I'm going to write one a week or one a month.

Your posts are sort of few and far between, but when you release them, they go completely nuts. People dive in, they're these longer posts, really exploring a topic from what I love about them is it feels like you come at a topic from basically any and every angle that might exist at it and really envelop the topic. One of the things that sort of kind of vaulted you to another level of prominence along the way was your relationship with Elon Musk.

And you mentioned him earlier and some of your insights on him. And so I feel like a need to unpack that a little bit. Can you just tell the quick story of how you originally got connected with him in the first place to write the pieces you did on SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, etc.

?

SPEAKER_00
Yeah. It really started when, so as I said, this was a partnership with my friend Andrew Finn. And so every week I was coming up with what's the next topic, what's the next, because at the beginning it was more regular.

And it was like, you know, I was able to kind of go longer and less regular once there was already an audience and you'd be there. And it was always like, you know, what's what's like, you know, so many topics, potential topics, what's the choice and he said to me one day, Andrew, he was like, he's like, you might want to write about AI. There's, you know, the Nick, I think he's like, you know, there's the budget people are reading this book by Nick Bostrom.

Super intelligent. So I was like, All right, so I picked it up, read it was like, had, you know, jaw on the floor. And then I read, you know, another book.

And then I read, I forget what the second book was called, it's in the post at the bottom. I read a third book I read Ray Kurzweil's singularity is near. I read, you know, a bunch of long articles I read a handful of papers I watched a bunch of people on YouTube and I just started to like absorb this crazy topic and wrote a big long post about.

Sometimes you happen to, you know, sometimes you write something at the right time and sometimes you don't write it's part of the skill is trying to like, figure out when it's a good time for a topic, you know, a good time is when it's it's it's fuzzy, but people don't quite understand it yet is a good time for a topic like that. You don't want to do it when everyone's like read a bunch of stuff and they already have a sense of it and it's become like now there's camps, political camps about it is controversial. You want it at the beginning when everyone's like, What is this new thing, you know, everyone's wide eyed still about it and try to understand.

But if you do it too early, then also it doesn't hit either you know it's it's it's. There's a Goldilocks. There's a Goldilocks moment for things to hit.

Yes, so I feel like I got lucky here with, you know, I was it was the right time and the post, you know, really went pretty viral. And then one day, you know, we use chart beat to see how many people are on the site. And one day, you know, there's a you know, get the notification from chart beat like, you know, high activity or something and going there was like a trillion people on this on the site and it was like, it was like, you know, it was like a few days or a week after this thing was published.

And see on the side like tweets, they don't do that anymore, unfortunately, but I showed you like tweets that are sending people to your site, Elon Musk, to, whoa, went to the see what the tweet was and he was like, you know, funny, you know, interesting post, you know, good primer on on AI. And I was like, damn, it was like super exciting, obviously. Yeah. You know, I was I was a fan. I already thought he was like a super awesome dude.

And so I had part two coming out in a couple weeks. And now I'm writing part two thinking, you know, Elon Musk might read this. Right. And so, you know, it was kind of stressful and also in my head I was like, he's not going to like he already dedicated, you know, 15 minutes of his like ridiculously precious time to my blog. I'm not don't don't expect more, you know, my hopes are now but I published it turns out I don't know how he got back to it but he ended up reading that and he ended up tweeting about it again.

And I was like, wow. So I was like, okay, this dude like likes this blog. That's pretty awesome.

So then, then I got an email from his, you know, like a staff member of his who basically was like, you know, do you want to, you know, Elon likes your stuff would like to talk to you about like maybe doing some writing about, his stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I expect that to be him on the phone for a second or maybe not even at all like it's he but it's actually someone else. And he's on the phone for a second then he gets off and I talked to like, you know, a person who's working for him about what it turns out he calls me one on one.

And it's just just us on the phone for like an hour. Talking about SpaceX and Solar City Tesla and like AI and other things and like super interesting conversation. And did you feel over your depth in that conversation? You know, I think the way this started was very helpful.

If this has been something where it's like a I had a good friend that knew him and like asked if he would talk to me for a minute. I would have been like, you know, so but he this he came to me after like clearly liking my stuff. So I think that gave me some like confidence like, and I'm very much myself on the blog.

I'm like, I don't have to pretend to be someone else. You're clearly like, he's coming. He specifically like is interested in me writing because he likes like the way I am thinking about this stuff.

So you ticked up north on your own spectrum that we talked about. Yeah, yeah, I think I mean, look, I'm saying this now. I think probably if you asked me at the time I would have been like, Yeah, this is horrifying.

I probably was like, you know, just a mess like, you know, rambling. But he also like, you know, his credit is pretty easy to talk to like, you know, he like, you just ask him a question and he kind of just goes on like he wouldn't in an interview or anywhere else. He just kind of starts talking about it and very, very upfront, you know, you know, there's, there's just really he's really interested in the things he's working on.

So if you ask him about it, he'll just go and it becomes very easy. So we had a great combo and and the idea was like, we were trying to figure out he had no specific idea was like, should should you write some stuff on the Tesla website because there was a blog there, written by actually Hamish McKenzie who now is the one of the founders of the WebStack. And it was like, oh, should you do some stuff on that blog and and I was like, I didn't want to do that because I was trying to build my own site.

And I don't want to spend a lot of time writing something that was going to bring traffic to the Tesla website. And so I, you know, I wasn't sure if you know he was going to be like, well that's the only way I'm going to do it. He again, very laid back.

I was like, I was like, I think it should be on wait but why. And then I can really like I can have all the features I want I can put footnotes I can make it long I can have images and and he was like, Okay. And I was like, cool.

And so then we were like, what's and then so I kind of came up with the plan that he didn't really have like any like instructions for me it was like, I like you did on AI I like that he felt it was like entertaining and accurate. Those are the two things you know, and he that's what he cares about accurate and he also like prefers something to be, you know, a tone that people you know that might wrote people in so he basically was like, well why don't I do a post on Tesla and on SpaceX and you know, whatever else. And so they turned into a four part series first one was just a big picture about him the second one was long post about Tesla and third one was even longer post about SpaceX and the whole story there.

And the fourth one was about like, why is this guy so successful like what's going on and to me it was like the way he reasons and that was the answer there. And I've since written about other companies of his like narrowing but but but what was really interesting is because he just doesn't do things in normal way you know he doesn't know you think someone like him would have this PR team that's doing his tweets. There's no PR team.

Right this is him, you know, he's a guy he's acting like a guy he hasn't opens up his Twitter and he tweets something funny. He just doesn't do things in normal way for someone like that right in so many ways.

SPEAKER_02
What does he think I mean you spent time with him. He's obviously in the news and you know his prominence since you first interacted with him is probably 100 x because he was already yeah I think you get a million Twitter followers when we. Yeah, so if you just take Twitter it's 100 x that if you look at any other metric, you know his influence in the world is completely astounding, you know with all the different companies with Starlink now with everything that he's doing.

How do you think he, what is your perception of how he thinks about new opportunities and like I'm asking this question in the context of all this stuff that he's talking about with Twitter now and with all the different stuff that he's doing in the world of Adams, you know that's out there like, how do you think, like what is his mental model or his framework for evaluating what to take on and new opportunities. What's your perception of that.

SPEAKER_00
Um, I think he always starts from the big goal and works backwards from there. So the big goal for him. He's very clearheaded about it and he's been saying in the same wording, the same goal since if you look back to interviews from his you know, or, you know things he said in 2001 2002, which is to increase the probability of a good future for humanity.

And even bigger picture maybe to he wants the light of human consciousness to go on for a long time and he wants it to be a good future you want to. So increase the probability of a good and long future for humanity, not not for each individual person, you know, he's not working on life extension for people as much, you know, he's concerned about the species. And again, I think if you really zoom out and you take a big step back and you picture the whole Milky Way galaxy in front of you.

And you know that there's this little like dot of, of higher consciousness there maybe it is a lot of places where that exists but maybe not we don't know what we know is that it's one place. And it and and you know he thinks about the Fermi paradox a lot why don't we see other aliens he's worried that maybe we're very rare, and maybe you know it's very precarious to keep a civilization like ours going. So he wants to keep that dot that little flame alive, really badly.

And so at that point. Now you start thinking okay so you work backwards from there so if that's what you want to raise the probability of a good future. What are the threats to a good future.

What are the threats to a long future right so what are the major biggest, you know, existential things going on. And then from there, what are. Okay, so now you've identified some threats like he thinks you know advanced AI is a threat.

He thinks that, you know, not moving to a sustainable energy world is a threat to a good future. He thinks being stuck on one planet alone you know all our eggs in one basket is a threat to a good future. He's you know so there's some major things like this.

SPEAKER_02
And it's almost like inverting, like he kind of inverts like if the goal is the big future he's inverted that and said like what would lead to a bad future. Yeah, and now go solve those problems that could potentially lead to that bad future.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no which which of these has potential solutions like where can human effort have an effect a positive effect on some of these things and raise the probability of a good future. And the erosion of free speech is a threat to a good future. He, you know, I see Twitter very much as he Twitter very much as part of the same story here.

He sees. And this is you know this he sees what's just in general the polarization of society and the threats of authoritarianism from many angles, and he says it's a threat to a good future. And, and, and again it's not just that it's a threat, but he thinks he sees ways that human effort can make it better.

He sees ways that if we change things in this way, it could be better with, you know, sustainable energy and future. He, you know, if if everyone went electric for vehicles like that would have be big help, and it seems doable like electric vehicles are good enough where people will want to switch over if they could, you know, so it has to be practical has to make sense but he'll talk about even if

SPEAKER_02
he thinks something has a 10% chance of succeeding but it's really important it's worth trying. This is like his Charlie Munger lunch right like Charlie Munger spent the whole lunch I don't know if this is actually a true story but it's definitely been told several times of like Charlie Munger at a lunch with with Elon Musk tells the entire table all the reasons why Tesla will fail. And Elon responded by basically agreeing with all of the reasons and saying I agree all of those are real reasons why it is likely to fail, but it is still worth trying.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like you miss 100% of the shots you don't take kind of thing like if this really matters. Well the one way to guarantee the failure is to not try it at all. But you know he's not crazy if you thought if you think it's a point one percent chance of succeeding is not going to put his time into that.

SPEAKER_02
It's also, it's an EV right like it's an expected value bet and he's a highly analytical person as as you are as well right and so you're calculating even if it's a 10% chance but if the outcome in that scenario is astronomically better than in the event of not trying it or in the event of failure, you should probably take that bet and you would do it over and over again and the overall EV of society will be hugely positive from doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly like whatever he could be working on that's more of a 90% chance of succeeding.

SPEAKER_00
He does he doesn't see that EV is as as matching up.

SPEAKER_02
So I have to route back to something that you mentioned in passing there on the Fermi paradox, because I absolutely love this one. You've written a long post on it which I thought was which I thought was fantastic. For anyone that doesn't know this is like the where is everybody question of you know like if life in the universe exists as we you know as people surmise shouldn't we've encountered it by now.

You know if there's like millions of stars and there's likely to be planets that look like Earth. Where is the life that would have progressed to the point of interstellar travel why haven't we met them yet. So I'm curious just for your perspective on this like what is your current thinking on this paradox is their life in the universe why haven't we encountered it yet.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean it's like it's the world's most interesting question right. I think there's nothing if you take it again zoom out like there's nothing more interesting than than this and the reason it's so tantalizing. I mean first of all it seems like it's something I suspect that we're going to get an answer to in the next like 50 years like I think we're at the end of art I think this is the this one in the last, not last it's one of like the it's it's the it's one of the big questions is probably going to be

SPEAKER_02
solved in our lifetimes in my opinion, I just think that it can only be solved in one direction because the absence of evidence is not evidence correct correct.

SPEAKER_00
I think, yes, although although the better your tools get the more that the argument that maybe we're alone starts to go up if you don't find anything so but yes that's not a clear answer obviously. And, and our tools is just like you know if you think about it's not like oh well it's been millennia we haven't answered it so well we've only been actually searching for like a few decades in a real way, and our tools are getting exponentially better so it's just, you know, there's unbelievable what they can do now like just by looking at the wavelengths of light emerging from a star system they can actually understand what gases are on a planet, like they can understand the atmospheric makeup it's like insane to me totally just like imagine how I'm knowing how to do that and so they can be like yeah there's you know and they and there's a certain kind of fingerprint that we know maybe life exists in lots of different kind of atmosphere print fingerprints, but we know one we know one where it really worked here. And so we if we see another fingerprint that looks a lot like this with a certain amount of oxygen carbon dioxide and nitrogen or whatever.

And so we know that you know that's a, that can be a signal so. So anyway, and obviously the big things you're looking for is it some weird, you know, thing where a star is one of my favorite. I'll get to the answer in a second but just I just just a lot to think about here one of my favorite scary theories is like.

It's void, it's called, which is like this insanely large space out in the universe with no galaxies are like very few, like a much smaller it's almost entirely blank it's just like a sphere of black. When when that's not normal like in any other sphere that size there's like, you know, thousands of galaxies. It's like a big black hole, like, you know, like, or there's a group of black holes that like merge a lot of different ways of things it could be referred to as the great nothing.

Yes, I'm kind of a scary it's it's it's upsetting it's an upsetting concept like I'm just like I don't want to be in the middle of that where like what's crazy is that light that go that leaves one side of the boots for it doesn't hit the other side for like a billion years. So it's like, so you can be you can be so so so and the thing is there are planets. There are some stars and planets like scattered in there.

What's crazy is that if there are, you know, planets around there and there's life on there they'll look out and they will be sure that there's no such thing as like a galaxy or there's no such thing as like other galaxies and they're just going to see, you know, they're only going to see. Anyway, so one of the ten or one of the potential theories is that actually what you're seeing here, because you know one of the one of the. One of the ideas about what advanced life more advanced than us might do is you know we think about it in terms of energy.

So there's this thing called the Kardashev scale. Level ones, a level one species can now harness all the energy of their home planet. So we're not there.

It's logarithmic we're like a point seven out of one but that's not 70% we're like 2% but logarithmically it's like seven point seven. So we're a little below that like you know it was obviously all kinds of energy from the inside of the earth and from you know rivers and from wind that we're not harnessing right now. Then level two is you can harness the energy of your whole star.

So that can be a Dyson sphere around the star you know this idea of like a sphere that captures because you think oh you can't sometimes I think intuitively you can't put a sphere on a star it'll go out. And I'm like no no no it's not fire that needs oxygen it's fusion it's not going to do because I'm like you can't like but say no you can cover up the sun and it would be burning just as bright and just as as you know doesn't there's nothing it needs from the outside of it so you can put a sphere around it. And all the thing goes into the service of the sphere and it gets channeled into different you know tubes that go out to the you know whatever it's like that that would be so vastly more energy than we have right now that we could ever need but but a super advanced civilization they might have thousands of space habitats and they might be on hundreds of planets and they might be doing way higher level kind of stuff that you know energy requirements.

Anyway level three is when you harness the whole energy of your whole galaxy which again sounds insane when there's a hundred you know over 100 billion, maybe, maybe you know, half a billion half a trillion stars. But if someone mastered the Dyson sphere thing, you know once you get it you get like it's like it's like building a building was really impossible for like early humans like a big tall building but once we did it we just replicate it in other buildings or everywhere right so you can see once they get it now so they just start to go out and they start to even if it takes them a few million years because you know and you know to go build these Dyson spheres and anyway, the one of the theories about the boots void is that there's an extraordinarily advanced civilization that has been you don't see the light because it's all been covered up by their things and they're living this vast thing that we just can't see it and that's that's the evidence of their expansion. Anyway, long answer to get back to you asked is just a big picture for the Fermi paradox.

And look every almost everyone. Anyone who understands the scale of the universe and thinks about how probability works almost all comes to the same conclusion of course we're not alone. It's like if you picked up one great know we have one example which is what happened on earth if you picked up one grain of sand from a beach and you looked in the microscope and you saw it was crawling with little critters.

You wouldn't conclude well maybe this is the only one that has that you say of course I'm sure they're on all kinds of you know I didn't just pick up the one that has it right so we see we have one example here, or one solar system and we see that civilization to think that well maybe this is the only place it happened makes no sense right of course with the scale of course this must be coming that said there are some very compelling papers and arguments out there that that say we don't have any good reason to be confident that what happened here wasn't outrageously rare like that's on a scale so it could be so rare that it pops up in a galaxy once every couple million years so we're here now and then maybe there's another one over there and then maybe you know these two die out and million years passes and another one pops up so it could be like that and again if you do if you picture those as like little lights flashing on if you zoomed out you still see if you see all the galaxies you still see all these lights everywhere and all the galaxy you know so that but but that that would be rare enough that there would be nothing else in our whole galaxy right now right that would be mean we are unbelievable freak incident if it happens like once in a galaxy every once in a while, you can go further and say that you know maybe this is the only time this has ever happened in the Milky Way but it's happened in other galaxies here and there, you can go even further and say actually this is the only time it's happened in the observable universe. Again, it goes counterintuitive but we have no sense of how rare it was how how freak of an incident and was obviously it's some kind of freak incident that life began because it took so long before it happened right so a lot of collisions of molecule before it happened clearly it's a hard thing to have

SPEAKER_02
happen. We also know I want to propose. Yeah, I want to propose something that I don't know whether anyone has ever thought of this kind of angle to it so have you ever heard of copes rule.

No. So copes rule is this idea that like organisms basically scale in size linearly over time, kind of up to a point right like then basically like becoming too big, you know, if you followed that humans would be you know the size of the sky would be giants etc and so like there's this idea that as you get too big, you know, it's bad right like there's like an actual you kind of asymptote from a size standpoint you can't actually get much bigger it's bad for you for various reasons, and you see it play out like, you know, companies get too big and then struggle or like investors like once you get big law of large numbers it would be difficult to perform etc. So I wonder whether there is an intelligence asymptote of societies where at scale, you actually will not see interstellar travel ever become a thing, because societies find a way to die off from an intelligence standpoint when they basically like get too smart for their own good so like in the same way that size becomes a disadvantage when it gets like too too big does intelligence actually become a disadvantage and are we seeing the beginning of that with the fracturing of society and the way that we're seeing today.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, so you're talking about is is is human level intelligence of possible great filter candidate, great filters are Robin Hansen term that is you know is there some point along the evolutionary path that that that that that almost every single attempt hits a wall there. And, and, and there's a few options here it's not just what you said it's like the great filter might be behind us, it may be, maybe going from simple cell to complex cell with a nucleus because that took a billion years it took a huge amount of time I think it took a billion years of simple cells mean that's, but maybe actually the averages it would have taken 1000, you know, a trillion years and it happened really really early here is a freak incident. So maybe it's behind us and all the other attempts, they don't get past that we happen to that would be great news.

It also could be ahead of us. Meaning, you know, we look, this is, you know, Nick Bostrom talks about how. What if you could make a nuclear weapon by microwaving sand, right, set up a nuclear bomb by putting sand in the microwave just something that anyone could do.

You have to imagine we would be set back to the Stone Age at this point, right, because one out of every 100,000 people is a maniac who would love to extinct humans and love to go down and them, you know, look at school shooters I mean I don't think that they're choosing to only kill 15 people I think that they could kill 1000 they a lot of them would write and they're obviously trying to go down with the biggest bang possible. So, doesn't matter if 99.999% of people are good and reasonable.

If it becomes easy to blow up the planet the planet's going to be blown up right so this the scary thing is to think about well as our technology gets better and better and better. And you look at stuff like social media maybe this happens on a lot of planet and be every planet that you know all these civilizations they end up with their social media phase. And when they get there, very quickly, you know, madness starts to prevail over reason which is what's happening on social media this most people are reasonable but the forces of madness are on the rise and squashing the forces of reason right now.

And maybe this is an, you know, maybe this is just very predictable and happens all the time and some point you get too interconnected and the weapons get too easy to make. And all the reason in the world doesn't matter because suddenly everyone's back in the state of nature just trying to protect themselves and, and maybe doesn't extinct that maybe it sets them back, you know to the stone age or whatever and then they can, you know, so you know, doesn't have to So yeah, I mean, that's a very possible thing but here's here. Okay, here's an argument against it.

If life, you know, because there's also lots of theories that say even if even if this is pretty rare, there's so many stars out there. So many sun like stars with earth like planets around habitable planets. That a lot of other people say well, what we would expect is that there's not just other civilizations like ours there's millie tens of millions of them in the Milky Way alone.

Milky is just one of 100, you know, a two trillion galaxies. And so, even if this were the case what you're saying there'd be a freak incident to be outliers. There'd be some species that developed this all encompassing religion that was so, you know, that did such a good job of policing people's behavior that they that they made it past they got to the point where they can now all upload their consciousness and you couldn't kill off people anymore easily and they were on many many planets and they had developed, you know, intelligence that they allowed them to snuff out any threats I don't know.

So, or maybe not, but it seems like, you know, man, it really it's a great filter that filters everyone if it's working.

SPEAKER_02
Right. It's a pretty amazing I mean it's just amazing to go to the like reaches of thinking on this the boots, the boots boy, the boots boy is going to be like in my nightmares.

SPEAKER_00
It's a bad time. Yeah, I don't want to go. Because there's so much space in between stars, but all of the stars around us we're all in like a tiny like a super like urban neighborhood.

You know, a galaxy is like super condensed but yet when you actually get in here you're like oh my God there's so much space between galaxies is even more space and the boots void is like it's next level. It's like it's upset.

SPEAKER_02
It is amazing to just think about like humans do have a fascination with the very very big. And like the zooming out, you know, cosmos like Neil deGrasse Tyson and cosmos and and how he kind of brought a, you know, an abstraction of the complexity of the very big to the masses. You know, and before him obviously the original cosmos with Carl Sagan and that there's always been this amazing fascination with the unknown of space and the scale of it and it like, you know, you watch the first episode of cosmos, and I defy you to not like get pushed back into your pillow or wherever you're watching it and feel like holy shit what is the meaning of all this why am I here.

But the big has this allure that I find personally the like very small doesn't necessarily have in zooming in.

SPEAKER_00
It's just the bigness is just so because like the smallness we know it's there right we know at some point you can just get it's like, you know, it's like yes, if you zoom in enough on anything you're going to see really small particles right. But the bigness like we didn't I don't think you know humans knew about how big things were for a long time, which which of course is another way of saying they didn't know how small they were right makes us really small, like tiny.

SPEAKER_02
Not to mention that there are things about the bigness one of the things I find fascinating historically is like Galileo was ostracized cast off, you know, complete pariah for, you know, theories that he had about the universe and about the bigness. A few hundred years later he was obviously proven completely correct and was no longer, you know, considered a pariah historically, but there are going to be things that today. We are hilariously wrong about that we are like ostracizing people saying you're an idiot, you know, pushing them off like they're on the fringes of science that 100 years from now that person will be like the genius that you know predicted x y or z whatever it was.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's there. I mean, there's I forget who said it but you know, if you go back to any point in history. To any society there's going to be a bunch of things that you will that you should not say out loud, a bunch of truths that you better not say out loud.

Right. And it's easy to look back at the people in the past and the societies in the past and see what they were and say oh my god, you know, if you said this very obvious normal thing today out loud back in 1620 England or in you know the Roman Empire. You're done, you know, you're your best ostracized, you know.

And yeah, and it's hard to under it's hard to see you know again we have that we have the helicopter view of those those societies now so we can see. But we are ridiculous like you said we are for sure without question I mean, I think 20 years ago it would have been like wow we're probably ridiculous in some ways today it's almost like it's it's painfully clear to see. Like just looking at social media, looking at like, like the way like we're being manipulated by information warfare and you know the fact that there's like still like lots and lots of like brutal dictatorships.

And like our livestock farming there's so many areas where I'm like, you can see like it's annoying to know the things that we're going to be laughed at in the future. But like I'm sure people in the 1700s. And you know if you look at like Abigail Adams letters to john Adams, people were aware how bad slavery was, you know, there are a lot of Abigail Adams is writing these letters basically being like, this is like the worst thing ever they knew right so I think a lot of the time like there are people who know how bad things are but there's there's some forces that are keeping it up upheld.

So yeah I think about this kind of thing all the time it's like, yeah, the ridiculousness of the human state, the one thing I will leave you with and I know we're running up against the end of

SPEAKER_02
this time is one of your one of your tweets I think it was last year which is sort of to this day one of my favorite tweets and general thoughts which is this idea that like if you went back in time to a few days before you were conceived or born. You would be very careful about the actions you took, because you would know that there was the potential that any action you took back then might lead to you not being born back to the feedback to the future.

SPEAKER_00
To before your parents met you'll be like don't touch anything hide in the closet don't say anything right because you know yeah.

SPEAKER_02
And so it's a good reminder if that's the case that in the present to think just as carefully about the things you're doing because your actions have very real impacts on the future and where everything goes from here.

SPEAKER_00
You don't have to like worry about like oh no, like I just interrupted that conversation now those two people might not like have gotten married you don't worry because it doesn't matter because any of the future paths might be equally as bad or good when you're in the present. But it's a reminder that you know any I do think that like we take any person who lives from like a baby to like old age and then they die whether they're totally you know ordinary person living an ordinary life. And so it's a real effects that person causes and the secondary kind of consequences.

I think you have a totally different world. If they lived or if they did, most cases, you know, and yeah, and certainly today, you know, so yeah, I think it's, it's empowering to be like, is what we do matters. Yeah, yeah, it's empowering.

SPEAKER_02
The last one is on the Fermi paradox. You said it has two possibilities both of them make me want to hug you either the universe is teaming with aliens which means we're a single family in a cosmic society. Great. Or there's no one else in which case we're stranded together on a tiny tiny island in the vast darkness, but gladly not the boots void.

SPEAKER_00
And that's true. That's part of why the fairy part paradox is so cool because like either way it's mind blowing, right? There's no not there's no non mind blowing outcome here. And either way, it is a reminder that like fighting with each other aboard dumb shit and like human tribalism is so stupid.

It's only when you're like head is so like zoomed in that you can't like just remind yourself what the hell is really going on here.

SPEAKER_02
A good a good reason to not fight on Twitter with strangers. Oh, man. Well, thank you so much.

By the way, I love your I love your Twitter. No, I appreciate it. It was, you know, it's been an absolute blast talking to you.

I feel like I owe you money for how much I learned from this conversation. And I also feel like I'm going to be kind of mad at you when I think about the boots void later tonight. So I appreciate it so much.

Look forward to getting together when you're out in New York. And thanks so much for joining me. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at high at trwh.com. Leave us a review at Apple or Spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast. Until next time, we will see you soon.