Episode 413 Scott Adams: Talking to @Naval Ravikant About All the Important Stuff

Date: 2019-02-12 | Duration: 1:28:40

Topics

Trusting experts and science Fusion power’s future Crypto, here to stay? Turn-around specialists for countries (like Venezuela) A retirement plan for the entire U.S. legal population What will the future of news look like? Who currently holds the most power in the U.S.? Who’s thumb is on the scale? Twitter will become an unbiased protocol or… …democracy won’t stand for its control and power Is Universal Basic Income and Socialism the future? What form will future educational systems have? What are life’s biggest illusions? Thoughts on The Simulation Old problems were about scarcity, now they’re about abundance Author recommendations

I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a "boss" somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I'm trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.
See all of my Periscope videos here…
https://www.pscp.tv/ScottAdamsSays/1nAKERDOwylGL
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https://interface.whenhub.com

> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:08]

come on in here everybody it's going to be a fun time you'll be sorry if you missed it but if you're listening to me now you don't have to worry about that I apologize for the chainsaw that's happening right outside my window um I can't use the microphone on this because uh I'm using the guest feature and I'm going to be introducing Naval rabant in a moment I see you just joined and nval you just have to uh you have to submit yourself to be a guest and then I will select you uh and then we're going to find out the secrets to the universe but before we do that and as as nval is getting set up um we will uh enjoy the simultaneous setp and oops I see some people are joining Nal is here I'm going to get Nal

[1:08]

joining Nal is here I'm going to get Nal on
on oops we're going to add
Nal and as soon as that's alive Nal are you there right here can you hear me yes hello do you have a beverage with you I have some tea that will suffice because as far as far as anybody knows my cup is full of tea as well um so join me will you for the simultaneous sip whether it be your thermos your mug your chalice your Stein here it
comes now I think most of the people on here know who you are Nal but could you give those somebody who has never met you and has never heard heard of you if you were to give your own introduction because when other people introduce people they always botch it you know that they always get something wrong

[2:09]

that they always get something wrong yeah if if you were going to give your own quick introduction what would it be uh I'm a primate from a small planet that is circling a a star in the Milky Way galaxy uh born in the 20th century uh in India immigrated to the US first generation immigrant when I was 9 years old uh for the American dream uh was fortunate enough to realize it by becoming a technology entrepreneur and angel investor uh and like every person as they get older and hopefully a little wiser now turning into a pseudo philosopher uh well you you you left out a few things uh because your modesty uh your modesty uh may be preventing you from saying but angelist of course is is uh something yeah I I started a company called angelist list which uh connects startups and entrepreneurs startups and investors uh largest online investing platform for startups in the world uh largest recruiting platform for startups

[3:09]

largest recruiting platform for startups in the world largest launching products platform for startups in the world uh also made early investments in Uber and and uh wish and uh uh Postmates and a whole bunch of other companies that have done reasonably well in the tech industry um I write I tweet a lot you know I got kind of obsessed with Twitter it's sort of my art form um and I'm always cooking up a a bunch of other things uh on Twitter I'm probably uh most famous for a tweet storm on how to get rich without getting lucky uh and uh also tweet a lot about philosophy and happiness and things as I learn them Twitter is sort of my diary all right so I'll I'll add my filter on this um I've said this a number of times and I'll I'll say it again nval is actually the smartest person I know in person there may be smarter people in the world you know I'm I'm sure that you know out of seven billion people I would find somebody who's like oh that's the new smartest person but in terms of people I've ever met he's the smartest person I

[4:11]

I've ever met he's the smartest person I know across so many fields that uh you know that that's the unique part you're smart across a number of fields so I thought what would be most entertaining for the the people on here is for me to just ask you some questions on a number of interesting topics you gave yeah before before we get into that has anybody ever called you out on why you do the simultaneous sip have you ever gone to an explanation yeah many people have uh have understood why I do it I see um it of course is a a pacing and bonding right and U sort of a training wouldn't be the right word but it is kind of that um what I'm associating the delicious Taste of coffee that for most people is a pleasurable experience it activates different senses than just hearing or seeing now you've got the memory or the actual experience of The Taste the experience how it makes you feel Etc and so as that gets associated

[5:13]

feel Etc and so as that gets associated with my product which is the periscopes some of that goodness just um comes across but it's also causing some addiction I I understand from a lot of people who yeah it's extremely pavlovian how you're associating caffeine and that warm comforting feeling uh the anticipation buildup when the Periscope starts the physical motion the alliteration and simultaneous sip The Branding it's beautifully done right it's overly manipulative uh and yet it works well to me is a Hallmark of great persuation yeah I'm I'm not sure I would do it if my theme were not to how to persuade so you know you sort of have to model what you're doing so at least as long as I'm uh overtly you know OB obvious and how I'm doing it you can feel the you can feel the effects while watching while watching the technique which is very powerful you know that you can actually feel the the persuasion even if you're saying no don't don't persuade me with this damn it it's working so that's very powerful uh yes

[6:17]

working so that's very powerful uh yes did you have any other questions no no it's well it's very well done I was I was admiring it because when you first started it uh I thought it was so overly manipulative that uh you know it I I was like it wouldn't work on me and yet on the occasional times when I manag to watch your periscopes and it's usually later in the day I watch the reruns um uh I'm always a a little uh I'm a little annoyed at myself that I find myself reaching for a cup of something well you know the other thing that's interesting about Periscope is that it's it's the first personal broadcasting um experience I've had meaning that it's broadcasting but normally like I do interviews there's satellite interviews where you're just in front of a camera and you're talking to maybe a million people but you don't feel anything personal it's like you're talking to a camera you're listening to something and your ear but in Periscope I actually feel connected to the audience um in part because of the comments in real time I I agree I think Jack and team are really on to something

[7:17]

Jack and team are really on to something here uh I've wanted this feature for a long time and I've asked Twitter for it and I even had a friend working on the side building something in this space because it didn't exist and of course now he's sort of disapp because you spent a lot of time and and didn't and Twitter launched this uh but I think this is a in a sense it's a new medium in a sense it's a throwback if you look at podcast today the majority of podcasts are one-off interviews because any single speaker runs out of things to talk about and you're you're actually very rare in the Periscope world or in the podcast world because you continue talking to a camera uh with no one talking back now obviously the the feed from the audience is new it's replicated in twitch if you see that people watching video games the twitch streamer is talking at the same time uh to Their audience who's talking back but I think this brings back talk radio but modernized for the internet so I have a sense that especially with this ability to dial people in and they're going to need some moderation feature to figure out who you should connect in who has a good mic setting who's not going to make

[8:18]

good mic setting who's not going to make an idiot of themselves on the air so to speak uh but I think this could replace large chunks of podcasting I not only that I think it could replace the news because you know people are feeling pretty underserved because the you know the two sides and all they get is the two sides but one of the things that uh I like to do is talk to people that I don't necessarily agree with and I want to do a lot more of that so as soon as Twitter can do the video split screen and I'm sure that's you know somewhere on their product Road mapap pretty soon I would imagine that that's going to change everything because once I can get to to climate people who disagree on here then we're going to have some fun because I true yeah news is not really news anymore uh you know what it's really like I think both the internet commoditized distribution of facts so the news basically just became entertainment and then on top of it you also had CNN once you had 24-hour News Channel you had to fill it and there just wasn't enough news to go around um so now it's all opinions and entertainment and heck we can all offer

[9:19]

entertainment and heck we can all offer opinions we don't we don't need uh someone anointed to offer an opinion yeah you know I hadn't thought about information being commoditized you're right about that the way I've been looking at it is that everything went bad when we were able to measure the impact of the different content so as soon as we could find out that the news wasn't getting clicks and the and the gossip it was it was all over because you know we're a capitalist place we got to follow the money so let me let me uh let me ask you some big questions and if you want to pass on any of these questions or you just want to ask me a question sure I'm dealing with this question of how do know when to trust the experts and we see this across fields from climate change to border security to anything else and uh science especially uh because there's so many examples where science was unified but then wrong uh some examples I hear and I'm no science historian but for for

[10:20]

I'm no science historian but for for many years U doctors thought that ulcers were caused by stress and now we now we know that's not the case uh people thought that the food pyramid and and everything we knew about nutrition was sort of settled to only find out it was completely wrong it was about as wrong as anything could be yeah so not not to get into the politics of it but just in general to me science the foundation of science is doubt uh scientific things are things that are uh falsifiable uh verif independently verifiable and make very narrow and risky predictions um and uh scientific things it's not done by consensus that's politics uh the moment you got to get a whole bunch of people to agree on something that's Politics the Hallmark of science is you make a scientific claim I can replicate or verify that claim on my own that claim has to make a set of predictions that are novel and unlikely uh and narrow in in how they're defined they're hard to vary after the

[11:22]

defined they're hard to vary after the facts so if I come back and say well you didn't match up with your prediction you're not allowed to move the goal posts uh too much uh and then those predictions of course have to be falsifiable there have to be tests that could run in the real world uh that may prove those things to be false and this is not me this is Carl
poer without getting political and you can defer on this does climate science meet that test I don't one of the reasons I don't talk about climate science at all is because politics it has nothing to do with science people their politics all day long and they get angry if you pick the wrong ones um and I don't think I I don't know how you could make it scientific because there's only one data point called the Earth and we have to kind of watch it play out so the most compelling argument I find uh for climate change is Nasim taleb's precautionary principle which basically says we only have one planet we're playing with so if you get it wrong it's catastrophic don't screw this up and uh the best argument I find against it is

[12:22]

the best argument I find against it is that uh the moment something is so politicized and emotional and you have people with climate scientists in their title their hardly going to be objective anymore because their life depends on it and I just think incentives are superpowers so I just stay out of the fry um I would say in general like I'm a little disheartened uh as an environmentalist and as a father of a couple of children that uh everything is about sort of This Global environmentalism where we have to deal with invisible greenhouse gases and invisible long-term effects that that are not really here today um and we have to sort of risk the Earth's economy on it when I would much rather rather that we focus on local environmentalism um for example most of the carbon emissions are going to come from China and India and China and India are not going to sit back and not modernize or stay third world countries just because we are rich and now suddenly have found environmentalism uh I think the much more comp argument is to go to them and say hey let's clean up your Rivers because you don't have water to drink that's safe let's clean up your

[13:24]

to drink that's safe let's clean up your air because it's too polluted your children are coughing and and getting sick uh and if we turn them into environmentalists by cleaning up their local environment then I think they'll be much more inclined to clean up the global environment uh societies naturally become more environmentalist as they become richer North America is a n carbon sink because it is reforested so much because we value Gardens and forests and trees now that we're rich um and now that our population is going down actually the best thing you can look at for climate change is if you the single best thing you can do for climate change is what China did which is China had a one child policy and then China just got richer and now it's below the replacement rate so the latest estimates are that the Chinese population is dropping precipitously and they're actually worried about retirements and you know economic impact from that um but I think that's going to do a lot of good for climate change I also think people like Elon musker an inspiration in that they are using the private sector and Technology development to build better technologies that makes real change I've never seen government save the world you know at least in my

[14:25]

save the world you know at least in my lifetime or or if it does save the world it's against other government like World War II um so you know private problems private Solutions I I actually added on my list to ask you about the uh the Talib view that we only have one planet if there's even a small chance that this is sort of an Extinction uh situation that you have to act on it but here's the problem and why I disagree with that line of thinking that fits if you only have one Extinction problem uh or or if you have un limited money then you can do you know you can go that's right that's right yeah economics is a study of opportunity costs and uh in fact U uh who was it uh Nick Sabo uh brilliant brilliant cryptographer and technologist uh categorized this whole line of arguments into what he calls Pascal scam uh Pascal's wager of course being you should believe in God just in case because if if there is a God you show up in heaven you didn't believe you're going to hell but the problem is that

[15:25]

going to hell but the problem is that that when you when you're talking about uh
uh probabilities of a large number of events with sort of infinite outcomes the human brain can't do that math uh and so then it just basically Resorts back to emotion and Instinct um and here's a very simple way of seeing how politicized the whole climate change debate is um people literally decide on the so-called science based on which political party they belong to right that just right there tells you it's not a branch of science it's a branch of politics right yeah I've I've been doing a deep dive with you know with the public as as part of my co- conspirators to see if I can get to the bottom and I'm I'm genuinely undecided about how worried I should be because the deeper I go I keep finding that both sides are lying so grossly that uh there's got to be some truth that's more true on one side or the other but there's so much BS from both sides that uh I don't know how to penetrate that yet but I have some ideas I'm working on that yeah it's a tough

[16:27]

I'm working on that yeah it's a tough problem because you know at this point the you're not even allowed to have the conversation which is another another indicator that you're out of the realm of science because the Hallmark of science is doubt right you're allowed to doubt in science there would be no progress in science if there was no doubt um so you you know the moment you stop you stop being able to have a discussion uh now it's it's politics when you try and shut people up it turns into shouting which is kind of where it is I mean if climate change is happening let's let's say that it is happening and say it is being caused by humans I still don't see the solution I just simply don't see how you can stop the world from from doing what they're doing uh you can stop India and China and the third world from modernizing without some kind of a a war or an economic sanctions that are so ruined as that of just Destro the whole economy well let me let me be Devil's Advocate what you could do is develop Greener Technologies at a more agressive rate and then economics does the rest yeah that is the

[17:28]

economics does the rest yeah that is the way out but even to the extent that Greener Technologies are being developed uh you know the the history of the human race is the history of extracting more and more power from the natural environment and delivering it where we need to you know all the way from burning oil and coal to like creating the laser uh so in a sense we are headed towards a model in which we will mimic mother nature and mother nature generates most power through nuclear fusion uh and then it transmits it through solar energy and conduction and those kinds of things so I think we'll end up there just for just for efficiency reasons and just for power performance reasons so so you're the you're the perfect person to ask so when I bring up Fusion uh what I get is in it has never worked before it's the flying car of energy it's it's Pie in the Sky it will never happen at the same time there are no fewer than I believe 10 legitimate funded startups working on Fusion who all think they have a you know a line on

[18:28]

all think they have a you know a line on it to those unsolvable problems and and then the context is everything that that didn't work well everything that works started as something that didn't work you know the airplane wasn't the airplane until it was cell phones weren't Popular until they were good enough you know pretty much everything so is it nonsense to say Fusion won't work because it hasn't worked yet yeah Fusion will definitely work it works in nature it's just a question of when uh it's a question of uh does it happen in 10 years 100 years does it happen in orbital space does it happen on Earth uh it obviously already Works in nature it's how the stars are powered um the issue but just the engineering yeah the engineering can absolutely get there the issue is that we just haven't done enough iterations because we over regulate and shut down nuclear experimentation we don't have a model of experimenting and iterating with nuclear plants uh if you look at for example if the when the first airplane had crashed we'd shut down all new air airplane

[19:28]

we'd shut down all new air airplane development or when the first motorcycle had crashed we shut down all motorcycle development uh or even when the first steam engine blew up people forget steam engines used to blow up killing everybody around them um so you just need to be able to iterate a lot for technology technology development is done through iteration the problem is you get a few high-profile problems like Three Mile Island in Fukushima and then just the fear of invisible particles destroying us and giving us cancer uh you know something out of a horrible movie uh just sort of shuts everything down so we need to find a way to experiment and iterate a nuclear fusion at a fast rate if we're going to get there so I had a suggestion I'll run this by you that we pick some desert area uh where even if there's a meltdown it doesn't really much matter you put I think that's that's one way there's also passive fail reactors where like on their passive situation if you pull the plug on them like nothing goes wrong it's the other way around they can only fail actively um people are obviously talking about cleaner byproducts but I actually think the most inevitable Place

[20:30]

actually think the most inevitable Place World get developed if nowhere else is Mars exactly is one of your commentators is saying like if we go to Mars the last thing you want to do is living in a biosphere with like an artificial bubble uh trying struggling for oxygen you know life on Earth is hard enough like going to a place where oxygen is even harder but what Mars is really good for is for scientific experimentation and building um so iterating nuclear fusion plants and Mars I don't think anybody will care nobody saying well I care because I've watched those sci-fi where the Mars population becomes more technologically advanced on Earth and then they attack it's going to we we just we just prick their bubble all right um so you've you've probably met enough investors in that space that when you say Fusion will be solved in an engineering sense the stuff that is considered almost impossible um how confident are you that and and could you put a could you put a a window on that I can't put a window on it the the reason I'm not as confident as I like to

[21:30]

reason I'm not as confident as I like to be is that I I don't really see teams successfully raising lots of money and building it because I think there are still uh major environmental and Regulatory impediments uh if the environmental regulatory impediments weren't there and if there was a fast iteration cycle the way Tech development works it's not like you raise a hundred billion dollar and go into a corner and beaver away for 25 years the way it works is that you ship something two years from now and then something two years later something two years later and that op option cycle doesn't exist because you just the the regulatory red tape combined with the minimum uh threshold to get a working plant going or too high but why why does then why would a fusion startup be doing it in the United States why why don't they just take a base in some desert you know country some place where there's just no people I think at least right now Fusion startups can't raise the amount of money they need to raise to make meaningful progress uh I could be wrong I don't necessarily look at energy investment that much but just the sums of money

[22:32]

that much but just the sums of money required uh are too high and I haven't yet seen that kind of geographic Arbitrage that you talk about because this is not just about long-term development anything you build to kind of pay back investors and justify the risk uh would have to actually power something in the short to medium term and if you're sitting in the desert there may just be no one nearby for you to send the power to well suppose the US government said uh this looks like it's a $5 billion thing no matter what we do here's five billion could it get us there uh I don't know the number but I think that an an Manhattan Project like approach could get us there if we basically said hey this will not only provide Humanity with free abundance but also solve a lot of environmental issues in the long run uh we should just hunker down and put our best scientists and a lot of money behind it I think that would be smart you definitely have to get the private sector involved and with some kind of incentive scheme uh so that they iterate fast you'd have to have good testing you'd have to make sure you don't just end up with a generation of fusion scientists now who have to defend their

[23:33]

scientists now who have to defend their jobs and so they'll even cover up things that aren't working but I think it's definitely feasible all right um give me the I'm gonna ask you the question that I even hate to uh to ask because I I can imagine how many times people have asked you this the future of crypto now I'm sure blockchain will be around but are any of the cryptos going to make it okay the current batch of cryptocurrencies well you know a lot of them have been uh pretty unnecessary and sketchy um I think there's three or four uh groups of cryptocurrencies that are interesting in in their own right uh the first is called it Bitcoin because it's a store of value Swiss bank account in the cloud uh and it's a insurance against M by politicians uh I consider Bitcoin political insurance so for example if Alexandria kazia Cortez or you know Elizabeth Warren or ber Sanders uh impos socialist policies in the United States uh you could see Bitcoin Skyrocket uh similarly in other parts of

[24:35]

Skyrocket uh similarly in other parts of the world like if you're in Venezuela if you had the ability to get Bitcoin and use it you'd be much better off than you know trying to hide dollars in your mattress or gold bricks or certainly the Venezuelan Boulevard so I think that that is one category of crypto that I don't think will go away it's basically yeah I was sort of connected to that um I had an idea that I ran by my audence the other day I want to get your opinion on it which is if there were some country let's say Switzerland that could be a government in a box that could just come into a failed country and say look we're definitely not going to take over because we're not even bringing a military you're going to hire us for two years we're going to we're going to build a government that has some credibility and then then when you're up and running we're going to leave and as long as they didn't bring in their own Army probably pretty credible um and I can also imagine that that they bring in maybe a crypto solution to because currency is always a big problem in those situations uh would anything like that work do you think yeah there are multiple country

[25:36]

yeah there are multiple country scenarios that could work uh one scenario is some small country that's coming out of an economic crisis decides to adopt a cryptocoin as their native currency and if they just bought up a bunch of it first then by legitimizing it the value the remainder would go up and make that country extremely rich just for having been early adopted and having made the network effect happen now now let me let me just interject for the audience who doesn't know all of the ins and outs of this stuff one of the reasons that the US dollar has value and will continue to have value is that the US government accepts it in the payment of taxes so it'll always have a use so it as long as the US government says stff so in your example as long as there's a country that says yeah we'll take this in taxes boom it's got value exactly exactly right yeah so uh you know in terms of a country adopting it uh it legitimizes it it makes a sort of an economic uh fetac comp plea and the first adopter knows what's coming up so they either mint it themselves or they buy up a bunch of it and every citizen

[26:37]

buy up a bunch of it and every citizen that country can basically retire uh actually I have two retirement schemes for entire countries if you have a moment sure so so one of them is let's say that you're small let's say you're Venezuela and uh you recover from the brutal Chavez and Muro rule um and then you roll out infrastructure to adopt a cryptocurrency you pick a new one you know that's small smaller than Bitcoin called but still very good like Monero or zcash or one of the ones it's basically a Bitcoin Fork that brings in privacy and anonymity so it's even one level better or you just Fork Bitcoin you could just use Bitcoin too but you know you're going to adopt it so you buy up 20% of it then you declare that it's legal and you're going to use it and the remaining 80% you know people start seeing the what's called a shelling point it's a gathering point so people run and buy it knowing that the second country and the Third Country will adopt that and then it becomes really valuable now all your citizens have this cryptocurrency you pick and then you all retire because you've just got all this wealth um it's almost like you you're declaring the next US dollar as a reserve currency you just happen to hold

[27:39]

reserve currency you just happen to hold a bunch of it is there a version of that that pays off the US debt while not replacing the US
dollar yeah the no well the US debt is uh print it is denominated in the same currency the US print so the US will never have trouble paying off its debt it'll just end up in inflationary scenario but there's some evidence that a lot of hyperinflation tends to occur when you have external debts to repay not internal debts um so you just kind of like Germany Yar Republic for example I mean it can happen in both but that's where it's been more common um the other scenario I think is more interesting which has been less talked about the other way for a country to get rich so look at something like the United States right and now I'm going to wander into an area where I really shouldn't which is the immigration debate right which is the problem with immigration is that you have privatized gains and socialized losses right uh some people benefit from immigrants coming in across the border and other people lose so for example as a tech employer I benefit from skilled immigration because I get to hire people

[28:40]

immigration because I get to hire people at lower cost than I would hire native am you know local Americans um or if I'm some you know Farm owner in California I benefit from low cost migrant Labor uh if I'm a politician uh you know who's the leftwing side I may uh benefit from illegal immigrants who I know are going to be legalized and then vote my way so I'm importing voters right so there are these these privatized benefits but then the average American who's looking for a job gets outc competed or because we live in a welfare state where anyone can go to the emergency room and people talking about socialized medicine and we have welfare system uh you know the the burden falls on everybody so the average American loses out on something so how do we Rectify this how do we get everybody on the same page because it is a nation of immigrants it's a pot it's a lifeblood economy uh lifeblood econom or has been traditionally so I would say that a way to do that is to cut everybody in on the action so let's say we securitize citizenship we give every American citizen an extra passport so you Scott you get a blank passport I get

[29:41]

you Scott you get a blank passport I get a blank passport everybody on this Periscope gets a blank passport uh and then we can choose who kind of comes in within some vetting restrictions they can't be terrorist they can't have record Etc but I may choose to uh you know bring in a skilled computer science worker uh you may choose to bring in you know your your housekeeper who's been like really friendly and great and but doesn't have you know the right to come in as a citizen uh somebody else might say actually I just want to retire I want to find the hardest working immigrant who will come in and do you know twice as much work as I would have and I'm pretty lazy and cheap and then they can just me half and I retire somebody else could be fleeing a dictatorship and we'll give you a million bucks in savings very quickly what'll happen is a market will form around these passports and you'll be able to put a dollar value on it so you will know what the cost of letting an immigrant is and what the benefit is and you can collect it yourself only one only one passport per you can do as many as you want but you know I'm just making it simple so basically the the overall

[30:42]

it simple so basically the the overall effect would be that we could sell America and retire so for 300 million passports every American could retire so we double the nation's population over time but every American of the current generation would have a basic income would have all their needs met they just wouldn't to work we could be artists we could be poets singers musicians inventors whatever we want it to be but there's plenty of room and as long as you make it true Merit base and you create a market around it you can do this now the best side effect of this is that you also get good governance out of it so if a new president comes in and starts passing policies that Mak no longer want to come in then the value of the passports will immediately go down uh and so you will vote that person out of office because your most valuable asset which is now more valuable in your house and they're destroying the value of it now now now in this idea does it matter whether you have secure Borders or uh it's only a question of whether people coming in are are legal or or illegal well I mean you have to have a

[31:42]

illegal well I mean you have to have a secure border otherwise like what's the you can't you can't sell access when access is open um you know I look I I'm all for legal immigration I think we should have lots more of it I'm a legal immigrant uh and I think legal immigrants bring a lot to the country but you know most countries in the world world uh do uh sensible merit-based immigration it's not just who showed up first uh and I think most sensible people agree that you know America is a Melting Pot we do well because of our uh our Union not because of our divisions uh and we do want more legal immigration um but think yeah have you heard any any good Arguments for open borders because I've been claiming somewhat provocatively that uh there there isn't anybody who actually thinks that there are people who say it but if you talk to them in private they would say ah now it's more of a conceptual thing not not any yeah I've never met anyone with a good argument for a completely open border just because every try to define the word country without using the word border you can't right there's no

[32:45]

border you can't right there's no definition of a country or a state that doesn't somehow use the concept of a border there's no concept of an organism without a border if you didn't have a border like parasites from the environment would come in and literally Eat You Alive your house is actually just a border around the rest of the environment so you know words are just borders around Concepts like borders are intrinsic to things you can't have things Without Borders The the closest argument I've heard is it's funny and how bad it is because the closest argument goes like us all right assume all the countries in the world get rid of their borders and I go okay stop stop we're not talking about anything that can ever happen yeah right because it because even the open borders people would agree that if only one country opens their borders that's not really what they're talking about right and I don't think there's any chance China is going to open this border yeah I mean you can't you also can't have uh a modern welfare state you can't have services for people you can't take care of the homeless you can't take care of the sick or the poor or the

[33:45]

care of the sick or the poor or the elderly Without Borders I mean look I came from India I love India I love Indians but if you open the borders completely then why wouldn't the 7 or 800 million poorest Indians just move here tomorrow like if I were them would it's completely rational um just because they haven't come up to the border and walk through but hell you know we can organize a boating system like for example here's how I can solve the whole open borders debate tomorrow uh you know I can run a free shipping service from India to here and believe me everybody will want to close border pretty soon right all right um I love that passport idea of basically uh giving everybody a piece of the pie and selling selling the American Experience yeah I mean in an extreme case you could even build a full market around it so let's say that uh you know let's say that China is being governed poorly right or India is being governed poorly uh another country could come in uh buy up a whole bunch of passports vote the current people out of office uh put

[34:46]

current people out of office uh put better politicians in charge and the value of the passport would and they would basically have done lbo of a country a leverage buy out of a country where they would have bought a giant P become an activist investor raiseed the value for everybody and then sold everything off at a huge profit I I feel like there are some problems with this idea but that's that's a that's the science fiction version yeah um a question and stop me if I've asked you this in but by the way we've already said enough that I'm sure that some journalistic troll will take everything out of context and generate some hit and headlines out of this so if anybody you know wanders into this or if anybody sees that happening I hope you'll them out and encourage whoever's reading or listening to come and watch the whole episode um rather than resort to clickbait journalism I L I literally was just reading a buzzfeed article about myself I don't know if I saw it when it originally ran it's like a year old in which I said something somewhat tongue

[35:46]

which I said something somewhat tongue and cheek and there was a whole hitpiece on me for saying it you know as if I'd meant it completely seriously so yeah it's a problem yeah it actually it actually comes up in your search results because look looking for one of your books and it came up somewhere in the top 10 uh yeah I mean those kinds of clickbait farms I think will eventually go out of business I think eventually we're going to end up with uh one or two actual news delivery organizations like AP and Reuters uh and then we're going to have uh a long tale of independent journalists um mostly operating through Twitter and then we'll have a couple of large entertainment and opinion organizations you know uh which just sort of reinforce your biases maybe New York Times on the left and bright part or Wall Street Journal or someone else on you know on the right or center right um but basically where people go to get their ideas uh reinforced and validated with some data does it feel to you I've said this on Periscope before but our social media um platforms and other inventions it

[36:46]

um platforms and other inventions it seems like we're recreating uh a superum being with all the parts in other words Twitter is like the mind of the internet in other words that that's the idea dense you know argument uh politics kind of thing Facebook is sort of like the emotions and the family you know Instagram is more like your visual sense um it and it feels like we've just we're just recreating parts of a human almost to create some kind of a a Godlike entity that has all the parts of a human accidentally you yeah I think in in AGI and artificial general intelligence is much more likely to to be an emerging property of the internet rather than something we create in a lab um in that sense you can think of cryptocurrency as how it gathers resources for itself uh and things like Twitter and so on or how it communicates um you know here's an example of how an AI could emerge uh every time I send you a text message today uh if I mistype

[37:48]

a text message today uh if I mistype something it autocorrects right eventually it'll correct for sentiment we're like oh I know Scott and Nal are trying to get together but they need to coordinate a time let me suggest a time oh let even know that they want to get together before they do and suggest they get together right dot dot dot at some point the internet is completely running our lives if you're an Uber driver this is already true the internet orders you around what to do all day long for many people who are getting emails from their bosses a lot of these are driven by events on the internet how long before this becomes sophisticated enough that we just symbiotically all connect together and create the AI in a borg-like fashion yeah so we're we're just components of a larger mind at that point yeah um well my my head is spinning a little bit on on that thought um who who is running the country right now and I ask that here's the context you know we have a political system Etc but we we observe that our politicians pretty much have to do what the people ask them or else they get voted out uh used who is it who's

[38:52]

get voted out uh used who is it who's influencing decisions at this point who who is the biggest power source you see well you have to you have to follow it back up the chain right so uh first you think oh it's obviously the politicians but no the politicians are elected by voters okay well now who gets you voters and votes well it's been historically a combination of mass media and money buying votes uh not explicitly but through advertising but as we saw in the last election uh mass media sort of failed to make its case uh or traditional media failed to make its case and advertising didn't work you saw Jeb every time he spent money he went down in the polls uh so back just going further back up the chain it's all happening on social media and on social media you could say uh as Nim TB points out there intolerant minorities of activists who create memes and create control the discourse but even further back up if you have to look for the greatest concentration of power it's the people with their thumbs on the scale it's the people who are writing the algorithms to control the Distribution on social media and I think this is a

[39:53]

on social media and I think this is a very dangerous place for Facebook and Twitter to be in like I've been very explicit about this but I think Twitter could be a very powerful and permanent entity but only if it becomes a protocol and not an app see today Twitter is actually three different things Twitter is a protocol underneath for delivering messages Twitter is a software app that you run on your screen and then Twitter is a media company like the whole moments thing and all the uh people that they deplatform they promote and the verification and all of the badging stuff that they do and that should actually be three separate things uh because Twitter the protocol can survive forever but if you bundle it with Twitter the media company it's only a matter of time before the politicians say wait you choose the next president well then we got to control you if you have that level of control then we get to have that level of control on you so I think Twitter's got a short period of time to go to being an open uh unbiased protocol let people build their own apps and media companies on top that can filter or censor reject or promote uh because otherwise uh you cannot have a

[40:54]

because otherwise uh you cannot have a monopoly on the news uh especially if you're overly outwardly influencing it and you have an editorial team I just don't think a democracy will stand for that would uh would you think it would work if we just had government oversight of the algorithm even if perhaps it's not public but let's say there's a judge of technical judges who look at it and say okay that that at least intends to be fair no because any any process you create becomes a Honeypot to be captured any process so if you have a bunch of Judges then everybody wants to control those judges you have some voting system people want to hack that system I think the only way out is to just decentralize it so Twitter the protocol should accept a message from anyone deliver it to anyone who wants and then people can choose what app to run on top of it and what media Editor to have on top of it if any that's the only way out but how do you then how do you manage um to use Twitter's language the health of conversations because we we tend to you know the the more open and free things are the faster they head to the toilet

[41:57]

are the faster they head to the toilet there's no there's no objective definition of a healthy conversation what you consider a healthy conversation is not what somebody else does it's a objective let's just say let's just say in terms of fake news you know and you can you can have uh publish And subscribe mutant block lists so every time someone that you trust or some organization that you trust identifies something as fake news they add it to a block list which you subscribe to and it's automatically blocked out of your client and you encourage your friends and family to listen to your version of the truth and subscribe to that same block list it's how the world Works anyway you choose which newspapers to read and they're essentially white list and black lists on the news but wouldn't you imagine then that someone would become the the most uh let's say most influential blocker and you let's say it's me let's say I start blocking people and people say I don't want to figure it out myself I'll just block whoever Scott blocks then suddenly whoever is the big one becomes unusually powerful through who at least that way

[42:57]

powerful through who at least that way it's competitive if you're doing a bad job people can ignore you take you down they have choices it's like today who's The Blacklist New York Times New York Times would probably be running the most influential Blacklist or blocklist right so it wouldn't even be you the Wall Street Journal would be up there you could compete but the whole point is the reason capitalism works is because of competition so it would essentially be competitive market in uh editing in editorial whereas today you just have one small unaccountable team in a corporate office somewhere doing it and they're political biases are quite obvious you know open the moments Tab and see whatever the latest outrage is and you can just tell kind of what the people with their thumbs on the scale of thinking and by the way this is not to call out Twitter I actually think Twitter's heart is in the right place uh I've I believe Jack understands this and I think the Twitter team is interested in longevity of the platform I just think right now they're caught being a rock and a hard place because at each side wants them to take sides people scaming at them all day long and sort of human nature to try and make your friends happy and I think it's very hard

[43:58]

friends happy and I think it's very hard to walk back to a point where you're impartial and neutral uh that said if Twitter doesn't do it there'll be a blockchain blockchainbased protocol version of Twitter that will replace it you know 10 20 30 years from now there are at least a dozen good Twitter clones in development that use blockchain technology they're not all quite there yet but they will be good enough that you know three four 5 years from now if there is an opportunity or a reason for a large block of people to exit from Twitter there will be a new social media in the cloud happy to receive them uh is black is blockchain going to be efficient enough to hold a a major platform like that that's part of the reason why it hasn't happened yet but it absolutely will there's no fundamental technological reason why it can't scale especially with social media you need a much lower grade of censorship resistance than you do for example with a Swiss bank account Swiss bank account you know if I'm Bitcoin uh there's hundreds of billions of dollars worth of

[44:59]

hundreds of billions of dollars worth of value in there so it has to be locked super tight social media okay worst case you hack it you create some fake news you know it's you're going to have millions of dollars worth of security not hundreds of billions of dollars security much more tractable problem now if we get to a point where nobody has their thumb on the scale and the you know the regular news is sort of discounted um I've I've said that power will turn into the product of whoever whether it's a person or organization that has the best product of influence meaning skill to influence knows how to do it times reach meaning size of audience and I've uh I've speculated that if I if I reach a million users on Twitter that I'm running the country most credible man in the world uh yeah certainly if you if you reach the the right million well every day that passes it gets easier and faster to build your audience uh you know for example a great

[46:01]

audience uh you know for example a great tweet that I saw was that PewDiePie on his new news channel this is a YouTube blogger who I've actually never listened to so I'm talking secondhand now but he's a I think he's a kid out of Sweden or something like that and he runs a very influential uh kind of a YouTube entertainment Channel but just his news broadcast alone get three times of viewership of the number one and number two rated cable news shows so PewDiePie is the most most trusted name in news so distribution is free if you've got something interesting to say distribution happens instantly uh like you and I could say something uh very uh insightful or controversial here and if a billion people needed to hear it you can bet a billion people would hear it my how my how to get rich tweet storm on Twitter by the way across the whole set it has about 40 to 50 million impressions and that's just on Twitter I'm not even counting the blog Pages the PDFs I've not marketed one bit I've never spent a dime on it I haven't published a book right so when one random guy talking about how to make

[47:02]

random guy talking about how to make money can get 50 billion Impressions based just on the content distribution is irrelevant it's all about credibility it's all about judgment it's all about how much do people believe you and what you have to say the message will get out well and The credibility is related to how influential you are which is a set of tools so yeah credibility comes from uh your ability to predict the future correctly and your track record for doing so combined with your influence and your B to convince people that you predicted the future correctly or can um It's a combination It's a combination of influence and and actual predictive power uh you might be amused according to the uh the audience here who is making comments uh we started glitching like crazy on this last topic so that so I'm not sure if it'll work on on playback but a number of people lost some of that but okay well I I could hear it just I could just fine so if you hopefully it's stored somewhere let me ask you some other questions Universal

[48:05]

ask you some other questions Universal basic income is it inevitable because of the world of robots uh or is it the worst idea ever or something in between I think there's a form of universal basic income uh which works which is free services so uh you know do the thought experiment of if we if we all had degrees in hardware and software engineering okay and we were all perfectly knowledgeable Engineers what would the world look like five years from now we would all be retired and our robot servants would be doing everything even our thinking would be done by electronic brains uh we'd have unlimited entertainment from robot actors and and virtual actors we'd have unlimited food from robot farmers and so on so technology can create massive abundance and it's literally only just a lack of knowledge that holds us back it's a lack of education so I think we can get to a form of Ubi where your cell phone is free but it's not free because the government gives it to you it's free because Google gives it to you right because uh their robots want you to watch their virtual reality show uh that

[49:06]

watch their virtual reality show uh that is accessible through their phone but but wait only you're only going to get free stuff from a corporation if they think they can influence you to buy other stuff and yeah at some at some point I mean you have to do something with your life I don't think people just want free money because if you if you just get free money you have no meaning look at trust fund kids who never have to work a day in their life what are they doing right they basically fly off the rails um but wouldn't you say 10% of the population is going to be perfectly happy to stay on the couch they can and they already do I mean what what's the labor force participation rate right not everybody works uh and not everybody works full-time so that's fine so you know some percentage of the population will always subsidize some other percentage of the population the problem I have with Ubi as a Straight Cash transfer is that it's a straight slippery slide in Social ISM and slippery slide is not a fallacy that is actually just how humans work uh so the moment you basically say oh you can vote yourself all the money you want then

[50:06]

yourself all the money you want then first it starts with the 99% voting themselves all the money from the 1% then 98 from two 97 from three and it ends when 51 at the bottom vote themselves all the money from the top 49 at which point you have a complete economic meltdown so I just I I I I understand the technology-driven Leverage is exacerbating the uh gap between the Hales and the Have Nots you were actually the one who said what if it's not the rich are getting richer but the smart are getting richer this was something you said years ago that I thought was very intelligent uh the problem is that if you just reallocate through pure Force violence voting uh there's just no bottom to that you end up with Venezuela so I think it's much better and safer for everybody if we do a combination of Technology enabled abundance where for example education should be free at this point the idea that you need toay pay half a million dollars to go to an ivy league university and sacrifice four years of your life so a professor can lecture you in a lecture hall is absurd you can already get all the MIT courseware

[51:07]

already get all the MIT courseware online you have things like Lambda school where they'll like literally pay you to go to school or why combinator would they'll pay you to start a company and while they train you so it's it's just a matter of credentialing and and the current economic and and the current uh generation coming around to understand that so these things will be too cheap to meter and almost free and that will be the real Universal basic income by the way nobody nobody who has a degree in computer science even if it's from an online school is looking at Ubi as a potential outcome right knowing how to manipulate computers and robots is the modern equivalent of Reading Writing and arithmetic so what we're dealing with is we're dealing with the last generation that didn't know how to read at some point and they're like how are we going to make a living we don't know how to read and the economy is switching to a white our economy so that's really what's going on it's a one-time transition that needs to take place this is not something we should wreck our economy forever around let me challenge you on the

[52:08]

around let me challenge you on the slippery slope you knew this was coming sure uh so I I've called the slippery slope and illusion meaning meaning that everything will go forever until there's a reason for it to stop so therefore that that explains basically everything everything will go until there's a reason to stop but there's always a reason to stop intia yeah and yeah and I and I would point out that since we already have many democracies and in every democracy we the the poor do have the power to vote themselves all the money and it hasn't happened uh it hasn't happened because uh until now the US was a republic and so uh republics slows things down and for example money and uh the elites had a lot more power in that situation uh the US was designed as a republic not as a direct democracy the founding fathers feared mob rule just as much as they fear tyrants but what's changed is Now with uh the presidency having a lot more power uh you know as television and media came along the the presidency was the most visible office and so it just

[53:09]

the most visible office and so it just gained more and more power and every time a Democrat or Republican was in power they they Consolidated more power into executive actions and into the media uh bully pulpit of the president for example pres the presidency is not allowed to go to war we're not supposed to be able to bomb anybody without Congressional approval yet the president now can attack a country at any time there there used to be no such thing as an executive order now that's like a very commonplace thing uh I think 200 years ago if the president said I'm not going to enforce that law because I don't feel like it that would have caused a human and cry no longer the issue the president couldn't talk to 100 million people by going on TV now obviously that happens so we've become much more of a direct democracy because of those kinds of things because of the consolidation of power in the presidency and social media and crowdfunding and billionaires running for office have also turned it much more into a direct democracy so I do think the Republic aspect of the United States is breaking down to some extent uh and that is leading more to a direct democracy which will lead to I believe greater

[54:10]

will lead to I believe greater nationalism on the left and communism or socialism on the right I think we're degenerating into a direct democracy so but we're also completely changing who's in charge because it's who's influencing on social media Etc so wouldn't it depend on whether the the balance of influence on the Internet is pro-social ISM or antisocial yes so this goes back to the people with the the thumbs on the scale the people writing the algorithms have an inordinate amount of power as to where everything ends up yeah all right um so I I had I had thought that the future of education is going to turn into like a a a film model where like Hollywood forms a team that is together only for the purpose of making the movie and then they go onto other projects and it seems to me that that's the way online education will go so instead of the boring person standing in front of the classroom and you're just filming it as if you would never consider you know

[55:10]

as if you would never consider you know the differences in the online you know and the advantages you have versus creating a product that has maybe a great presenter a great writer a great graphics group a great editor and there it seems to me that if you were to compare online training to iners now uh in person is either better or at least sort of similar but long term would you agree that the online product especially once you get to VR and and everything else and ability to to uh customize for every for every student isn't it going to be 10x better than education is now yeah absolutely I think that the best teacher in the world for any given topic will teach everybody in the world about that topic like you should probably be teaching everybody in the world about persuasion influence there's nobody better so why would I go listen to number two when number one is available U my how to get rich tweet storm you know I'm actually turning that into a larger media that I'm going to give away for free um but once that's done you

[56:10]

for free um but once that's done you know you can learn from other people sure you can add to your knowledge but everyone should consume the best of any media you can already see this happening with kids in YouTube Right kids are learning so much from YouTube they're going on to YouTube uh my younger cousins even told me that they would go to their high school and college classes listen to the teacher and then they go home and watch KH KH Academy to actually learn the material like that's literally how they were absorbing it properly so we're still in the YouTube phase of this eventually get to the Netflix stage of this where you will have exactly you say big budgets uh to create it it's not going to be just video though you also need interactive elements you'll need uh you know peer uh help uh but you could imagine uh just here's something interesting about the internet when the internet touches a business it tends to go from a group of medium-sized competitors and producers who are separated by geography and regulation into being one or two or three gigantic aggregators and a huge long tail so journalism will end up

[57:11]

long tail so journalism will end up there there'll be Twitter Facebook maybe the New York Times maybe the Wall Street Journal and a long tale of small journalist all the ones in the middle will be gone um you see this in uh you see this across the board you you you'll even see this in like media and music you see YouTube and Netflix as the big AGG rators and you see a longtail so the same way in teaching you will see two three four gigantic schools where every which actually produce the content and produce the tests for the accreditation and then you'll have a long tale of millions of tutors um so someone like you for example could be on Lambda school or the their equivalent or YouTube and you could be the influence expert as voted by the audience you have the most vote most views you're making a living for everybody watching your videos you have a team that helps you produce it uh and then for actually on the street practice there's a whole bunch of Scott Adams trained or certified devotees who basically will sign up with you and Coach you one-on-one on Skype or whatever the equivalent is somebody uh is asking what a a long

[58:14]

is somebody uh is asking what a a long tail is the the best example of that is Amazon instead of selling just the bestsellers and the ones the books that everybody wants you know back when they were mostly books uh they could also cover a book that only you know only sells two copies a year so the long tail is all all the little stuff that you could never buy economically before yeah and even beyond that in the past you had to publish a book which was this giant chunky object and now you have a long taale of blog posts that explain the same concept from a thousand different facets and then for each blog post you have a long tail of tweets so it's fractal it just goes all the way down right all right um here here's here's my favorite question for you and uh I I love the fact that you you didn't tell me what not to ask about because what what is the biggest illusion of life for for average people what what

[59:15]

life for for average people what what Illusions are they suffering under the the that are the most let's say uh the biggest obstacles to them having a better life I think the largest illusion is the illusion of meaning that anything kind of matters uh because you're going to die and the moment you die like n this all goes away so I think that's a big one I think related to that is the illusion of free will because you're here from it you know an unbroken chain of particle collisions from The Big Bang till now so you're kind of just your it's your DNA reacting to your environment so thinking there's a separate you making decisions is is a hallucination and then I think there's also just the illusion of reality which is it's very high odds that we're statistically living in a Sim as you've talked about in the past a simulation and I think that one's even worse than people realize because uh you know when people think oh we might be living in simulation they think of the Matrix right they think oh it's like the Matrix and uh you know we're like I'm keano Reeves and I'm Neo and I'm trapped

[1:00:15]

keano Reeves and I'm Neo and I'm trapped and there's like a real world above well the thing is if you understand simulation Theory it's statistically likely that not only is there one level above there's zillions of levels above you so in The Matrix NE doesn't actually get out he just pops one level higher and now he's even more deeply trapped because he's trapped in a shittier environment and he's convinced it's real which is the ultimate trap so now he's not even looking for the next level up even one level beyond that it's worse than that because statistically likely if you're in a Sim you're not some real world character representing in a Sim you're actually an NPC there's you know Millions more NPCs in Call of Duty than there are real players so uh you're just you're you're probably just a Compu simulation you are and as the Buddhist would say you know you're kind of made of the stuff of the world right you're not separate from it so I think there's there there's a couple Illusions for you so uh I I had a thought about the likelihood that we'll find intelligent aliens elsewhere in other planets and I

[1:01:16]

aliens elsewhere in other planets and I I used to think the common the common scientific thinking which is that the universe is so big that surely there are not just others but probably lots of civiliz ations because the statistics of it is so overwhelming unless we're a simulation because if you're a simulation you don't really have to write the world that nobody's going to visit absolutely yeah this is the the rendering problem like if you look at a a 3D Graphics game they don't bother rendering or creating any part of the world you're not looking at and quantum mechanics hints at this which basically says the Observer affects the outcome without the Observer it's not clear anything is happening uh also are this is a lesser well-known uh aspect of physics but very important one which is the principle of least action the principle of least action basically says that some energy some unit is minimized in all of physics like basically particles follow the most efficient path uh the universe is maximally efficient if you look at light for example as it

[1:02:16]

if you look at light for example as it travels through water versus air light always takes the fastest most efficient most energy efficient path so our universe is designed or just happens to be maximally efficient um so in a maximally efficient Universe you wouldn't bother creating or rendering things that you don't need um so yeah I don't I don't I that's not to say that we may not have an Alien Encounter or two uh it's still possible and we may have already had who knows it's just unknowable but uh that said like the universe isn't going to bother creating and rendering lots of things when there's no Observer there to see it yeah so the the I've been collecting evidence that you would look for if you were a software product in other words a simulation like what would you look for and as you said you you conserve resources so you don't render things that nobody's going to look at but you would also you would also make sure that people can't see what they're made of and and sure enough in quantum physics when you you drill down to smaller and smaller and smaller it just becomes

[1:03:18]

smaller and smaller it just becomes something like probability and it's only there if you see it that's right it disappears yeah but I mean that that has to be the case so there's uh you know every formal System including science or math ultimately rests on belief so in that sense like you can chase religion and math all the way down and they have the same Roots there's only three ways there's only three ways to resolve the why question because you can always keep asking well why is it that way well why is that that way well why is that that way right and you keep drilling down there's literally only three ways way number one is you have circular reasoning chicken or egg well the egg came from first how did that come well the chicken came before that so that's obviously false logic but circular reasoning uh second is you can have it be uh axiomatic right which is well we just take this belief to be true and the third is infinite regression those are literally the only three ways that you can get to the bottom of anything all three of them are sofry all three are loopholes so at the end of the day even math has axioms that you just have to

[1:04:19]

math has axioms that you just have to take for granted a simple Axiom that we all take for granted is the world is going to be behave the same way tomorrow that it did yesterday the laws of physics going to be exactly the same way that's a belief that's an unfalsifiable belief so even science at the bottom at the bottom of it is a belief and nothing can be known for sure so I'm watching the comments go by and people are are just begging me to ask you if you're a Christian or you believe in God this is this is a question you can take a pass on no I I you know it's a it's a good question I think it's a very personal thing I don't think anybody should believe in anybody else's rendition of God uh to me uh God is just a fancy word for existence uh God is a fancy word for Universe you know if there was a God where would God stand right where would God sit where would God's home be to me it's obvious that God has to be the entire universe the universe is God it's just a definitional game uh so you know one set of people say God another say universe they're saying the same thing so to me existence itself is the thing and we're

[1:05:20]

existence itself is the thing and we're made of it we're sub routines in the greater reality does that suggest that God is uh more perfect in our future because we're evolving and creating you know ways to communicate and we'll we'll you know probably in in your lifetime we'll be able to terraform planets and create life and all that so would you say God is more in our future or more in our past under that that filter on reality well I know your God's debris hypothesis which is a remapping of the Buddhist hypothesis that it's like uh you know we got separated and we're under some kind of Illusion we're all trying to get back to one thing and I think that's a reasonable hypothesis uh I would just tweak it a little slightly and I think it's all fine the way it is I think existence just is that's literally the only answer you can give uh the definition of Truth is what exists uh the definition of perfection is what exists there is no other definition for example if you have some prediction about the future and the universe turns out a different way the way the universe turned out is true and your prediction was false so truth to me by definition

[1:06:21]

was false so truth to me by definition is what actually exists most of the stuff that's going on in our head that are judgments saying this is right this is wrong this is the way it's ought to be those are false and those are Illusions so I don't think the universe is heading from imperfection to Perfection uh I think it's just all perfect the way it is just it may not be perfect according to my limited illusory false self point of view uh but that doesn't change that the the thing is the way it is right uh who am I to second guess so in that sense you could say I am spiritual uh on the other hand it's it's hard to keep all of this day-to-day in your head because we're biological creatures that are separated ourselves from the environment we create a border around ourselves and we try to take care of everything within that border to the detriment of everything outside of that border and that's just how we got here so of course we're going to be always judging the external world is
imperfect I I have to rest every once in a while as my brain my brain is is processing um so so somebody said here

[1:07:21]

processing um so so somebody said here that God exists outside of outside of U our reality or something and I'm thinking that I don't know what that means yeah well that goes back to the trilemma that I talked about earlier well then okay then who made that God and where is that God standing and why is that God that way at some point you either go to infinite regression circular reasoning or axiomatic and the ultimate Axiom is God that's the Axiom which is well because God at the end of the day somebody got tired of answering the question why and just said because God that was the answer it's just an axiom so you can make that whatever you want to yourself but that doesn't an objective answer I I have a proposal for uh the meaning of life and you know I always look for things that are sort of actionable and and practical you know nothing that's just a philosophy and here's what I've noticed that when people act in accordance with their biological nature

[1:08:22]

accordance with their biological nature they feel satisfied and they they have an interior your sense of of meaning and when they're outside of their their biological evolutionary you know Channel that's when they get anxious that's when they think nothing matters Etc so for example you you've gone from not having children to having a child did that add meaning to your life or at least the the sensation of meaning yeah absolutely it did and and that's compatible with your evolutionary biological sense um it feels like you know I'm a believer that you can trace back most of our motivations to some evolutionary thing at least if you use that model of the world and that even things like being productive you know doing work learning that these things are so tied back to your basic biological and evolutionary impulses that you will have the sensation of meaning when you're

[1:09:23]

the sensation of meaning when you're acting in a in a way that's compatible with your biological and evolutionary self so I absolutely agree I mean evolution is how we got here and I don't see a lot of parent sitting around saying what's the meaning of life it's the kid that's running around right in front of them yeah if you can't explain something about human nature via Evolution you're probably doing it wrong um human nature is all about Evolution I think where we get trapped where we get screwed up is when we're trying to solve society's demand which is other monkeys with our own demands are biological programming and I think a lot of the thing that creates unhappiness in modern society is a struggle between what Society wants and what the individual wants uh and uh at least today I think most people have a have this guilty voice in their head telling them what they ought to be doing and that guilt is just society's voice talking in your head uh versus what you intrinsically want to be doing according to your biological programming now the problem is modern society and modern civilization can hack your biology in

[1:10:24]

civilization can hack your biology in many ways ways we're not meant to consume uh infinite news Infinite porn infinite food right we live in an era of too much abundance so the modern struggle is is is almost you have to be a modern aesthetic to survive in society you have to learn how to Shield yourself from the incredible violence you can see on TV you know and if you were involving in a tribe thousands of years ago if you saw one murder it would have been so horrified and traumatic the tribe may have talked about it for years and it would have taken you a long time to get over it now you can turn on the TV and flick through 50 murders no problem in a short period of time what is the psychological damage that's done to you the sugar that you're eating the crazy porn that you've been watching the uh you know the the drugs that you've been doing the alcohol you've been drinking all of that stuff it's just throws us so far off balance that I think we're lost from our biological underpinnings which is why when people need to recover they go to an asham they go out in the woods they go to Nature they go on a fast if I can just sorry to keep rambling there's one idea I can introduce that I that I saw recently YouTube there's a great

[1:11:25]

saw recently YouTube there's a great video about this this guy had this idea for a dopamine fast okay which is for uh one day every couple of months he goes on a complete dopamine fast which means that he just drink drinks water he doesn't really talk to other people he doesn't read books he doesn't watch TV he doesn't go to work you can meditate you can exercise you can Journal but that's it and you can drink water and so you reset your dopamine receptors back to where you can find meaning and happiness in the ordinary and everyday natural thing now uh is that what he told his wife he was
was doing right when he actually ran off to God knows what all right um so Define uh Freedom somebody said on internet recently that freedom was you you can measure your freedom by whether you have to get up on somebody else's schedule if you have to wake up when somebody else wants you to wake up you're you're not

[1:12:26]

you're you're not free and uh you know when we were negotiating to do this you you mentioned that you want to start at at 11 our local time because you don't need to get up before that and you're more of a night owl anyway right don't you you sh yeah I wait to bed at 3:30 in the morning last night 3:30 in the morning yeah so that that feels like the definition of freedom to me oh looks like we lost Naval and then he's back and of all when you uh you're going to have to uh there you go you're back and we will be able to hear you in a
moment and he's back you're there right okay um so do you like that definition that if you can wake up when you want to you're free yeah I think that's a really good practical day-to-day definition uh not having phone calls you have to take not having alarm clocks that you have to

[1:13:28]

not having alarm clocks that you have to get up to um you know not having to wear a tie if you have to wear a tie when you go to work you're not really free if you have to be at your desk at a certain time you're not really free I think that's like physical Freedom right then I think there's also the freedom to make your choices in life uh to kind of live the life that you want to self-actualize and then finally there's freedom from your own thoughts right there sort of that freedom from your own mind constantly telling you uh berating you how you feel so there's multiple layers to it but I think as a practical everyday definition I think not having to wake up to an alarm clock and not having to wear a uniform to work is a great one I wanted to add something to the the uh the point before this um I got in trouble on the internet was actually the thing I was talking about earlier that BuzzFeed took a little too seriously and I showed a graph of how the number of people living at home skyrocketed at about the same time as the first iPhone came out and said just a coincidence now I wasn't being too

[1:14:28]

a coincidence now I wasn't being too serious but there is a part of that and obviously it had more to do with uh home prices and and the economy so that was assuming that's the major driver but here's the thing if I had a smartphone I would have a lot of entertainment and a lot of access to things that give me dopamine without leaving home you know if I if I had a bedroom and mom's cooking um I I could could probably be okay with that for a long time whereas I remember my own motivations to get out of the house as soon as possible were because there was nothing in the house that I ever wanted to do like being in that house was just so unhappy you know just bored and you know Etc but if I had a smartphone I might not be s in such a hurry because it satisfies so many of my social and you know intellectual needs do you think there's anything to that oh yeah the the real Universal basic income is cannabis and video

[1:15:35]

games that is the best thing you've said in five minutes because you say the real Universal is is cannabis and video games I watch that get tweeted and quoted obviously it's tongue and cheek but yeah I mean I look this is this is the modern struggle there is so much of an abundance of sort of cheap fake instant dopamine and meaning like how do you how do you motivate yourself to do the real thing anymore uh this is the thing that every parent is currently struggling with this is the thing that every teenager is currently struggling with uh and I think the next generation is going to have to learn how to conquer a greater set of addictions like like you know all the problems of olden times were scarcity I don't have enough of of whatever now they're all abundance I have too much of this I have too much of that how do I stop doing this how do I stop eating how do I stop playing video games how do I stop drinking alcohol how do I stop smoking weed how do I stop going on social media well not not the not the bottom 20% they're yeah they

[1:16:36]

not the bottom 20% they're yeah they still have a shortage but I the point stands yes well I think I think the yeah that's right but I think the at least in a first world society success and failure in the future and even today is much more about how you control and manage and break addictions uh than it without even going out and doing something wow that now I completely agree with that and I've never heard anybody say it before and I wonder if we'll get to the point where your uh DNA will predict what kind of an addictive personality you have are we already there we're already there uh in fact if you look in human history generally pessimists survive because if you're walking through the woods with a friend you hear a tiger and the pessimist Runs The Optimist thinks it's not a tiger The Optimist gets eaten right so historically pessimists survive and optimists don't make it but I think in modern society because we have so many uh options available to us optimists do a lot better optimists you know break up and go find a new girlfriend or boyfriend because there's just many more people to select from uh optimists do well because there actually isn't a tiger in there it's an opportunity uh so

[1:17:39]

tiger in there it's an opportunity uh so uh optimists do better in modern society but I think the new transition that's happening is that people who have the DNA to resist addictions will do better that being said like I'll be honest I have an addictive personality which I have to be very careful about but it's the flip side of another coin the the flip side is I also have an obsessive personality so when I learn about something new I dive into it and I become an expert on it because I can't stop reading about it I can't stop thinking about it when I have a problem I get obsessed and I I just it so addiction may also be related to just this ability to focus on something and get lost in something it's not clear to me that you can have one without the other I I totally agree with that um now I heard an interesting idea I won't I won't say where because uh I don't want to I don't want to spoil it by saying where it came from um and the idea was that since you can check the DNA of somebody to find out that they have addiction I'm remembering how I heard this before um suppose you had a law that says if you give a drug let's say

[1:18:41]

that says if you give a drug let's say an illegal drug like fentanyl cocaine or something to somebody who you know has that DNA and let's say there's some way to know that you know it's published just imagine there's some way to know that that if you give somebody a drug to somebody who does not have an addictive personality well then you're just a drug dealer but if you give a drug to someone who does have an addictive personality and it can be knowable whether you look for it or not but let's just say it can be knowable that you get the death penalty because you basically killed somebody yeah I mean it does sound a little extreme but I think you're on to something there which is that like if I go to Vegas you know 90% of people don't have a gambling problem they're kind of just passing through using it for entertainment but there's a small percentage of people who are stuck to the slot machines and they should never have been allowed in in the first place it would be good to know who those people are in advance so we can educate them I'm not sure we need to give the death penalty to someone who screws it up because you know human nature Being Human Nature people will find their way to addictions but the better is just the

[1:19:42]

to addictions but the better is just the defense you being armed what if you knew what your addictions were so you need to watch out for them and your family need to watch out for them and you just kind of knew to stay out of those situations I've never had a drug addiction so it's hard for me to kind of empathize on or to fully understand that I understand you had a loss in the family which is very tragic around it uh but I'm not sure like throwing around the death penalty is the answer it makes me feel good though because for the re for the reasons you mentioned um but I agree that there there's absolutely something about Gene sequencing DNA origins of these things to just understand what you're vulnerable to right I've got a dangerous question and again you have the right to uh to pass on this yeah by the way this entire conversation is probably going to get me deplatformed out of my life just
so um that's my dog growling or something all right I'm seeing in a number of different contexts the conversation about uh who's responsible for for for what and so let me give you

[1:20:44]

for for for what and so let me give you some examples when Trayvon Martin uh I think that's the right name got shot he was wearing a hoodie and then people said well if he wasn't dressing like that you know there wouldn't have been any problem and of course there uh we saw today there was uh uh one of the judges who's being considered for one of the lower courts had said sometime in the past that women maybe should not drink so much because it contributes to maybe sexual assault and people people said no no that's you know the responsibility is the perpetrator not not the victim of course now every time I see people talking about stuff like this and and also the the Maga hat if you wear that that you're sort of asking for it no no it's really just the person who does the attacking but why can't people separate what is responsibility both socially and legally because that's pretty clear like the people whoever does the attacking is legally and socially responsible period but why

[1:21:44]

socially responsible period but why can't we talk about risk management certainly there are things that people do that put them in more more risk or lesser risk independent of whose respons responsibility is to avoid the trouble um why can't why can't we get that right you know do do you have any insight on that yeah I don't really so I honestly I haven't paid attention to most of the things that you just talked about um because to me these are just in the domain of politics and politics is just the excise of power without Merit so there's no you can't put reasons underneath anything political it's really people just make up their minds on who they hate and who they like and then they'll just justify by anything uh so there's contradictions all around you know one side will do something uh and then turn around and the other side will do it and they'll be ACC to hypocrisy but they never stick because as you said everyone's living in their own movie um this is not based on reason there's no reality underneath U yeah in real life you do risk management all day long

[1:22:46]

you do risk management all day long right like if I'm walking down the street uh I'm not you know and if it's in an urban neighborhood inner city I grew up in in Jamaica Queens which is a really neighborhood uh I would not walk around flashing a water of 20s and then when the guy attacks me I say it's my fa you know it's your fault of course it's his fault uh at the end of the day everyone's responsible for their actions uh but I definitely put myself in a difficult situation by flashing around a water of 20s it's just common sense but you're right we can't talk about common sense because we're now in the domain of politics where where sense making doesn't apply you you are correct um I I think we don't want to go too long because it'll make harder for people to to look at it so we should wrap up is there anything you either wanted to ask me or anything you wanted to to add yeah I I actually think that uh you know instead of um I'm waiting for you to write the book on
on hypnosis uh you know of all kinds and not just persuasion but just sort of Next Level

[1:23:47]

Next Level hypnosis um and that's what that's what win bigley was yeah but I'm talking about like getting very systematic especially at certain well let's just be clear I've seen your
girlfriend you've got a book to write just based on that so that that would be it could be my [Laughter] charm um all right well maybe it will now uh people have suggested and I always think of you when this topic comes up that uh people who have read a lot and have a good sense of what would be good to read should have their list I think you do have a list somewhere I don't I don't actually have an official list because I've just read so much it's hard for me to even pick top 20 books let alone you know top 10 even top 50 is hard for me uh but and I also my my interest wander I think one of the problems is that like the book that appeals to you at a certain point in time uh you know is not a book that appeals to you five years later or five

[1:24:48]

appeals to you five years later or five years earlier so a lot of it is about the reader to the author fit um but I think like there there are some time ones like in science fiction I don't know if you're like Jorge Lis bores Ted Chang snow crash Neil Stevenson uh on sort of science writing Matt Ridley has written some amazing books uh genome the Red Queen origins of virtue the rational Optimist the evolution of everything um I like you all know of Harari sapiens uh which I've recommended before was an amazing book uh will Durant's uh the lessons of History um I do read a lot of philosophy um you know it's and I've basically read everything but I like sidartha simple Herman Hesh kind of Novel which is uh partially or mostly fictional but still still really interesting um senica you know the stoics um like science Carlo relli is kind of a good modern physicist who who writes some good stuff um but you know I also recommend reading all the originals you know read The Eighth Day of Creation read the origin of the species read The

[1:25:48]

read the origin of the species read The Wealth of Nations uh there's no need to you know what people do today is someone writes a book on Evolution which is interpreting Darwin for you and then somebody else updates it slightly and writes the blog post and then there's the clickbait BuzzFeed version and then there's the hot take tweet on it and people are reading the hot take tweet on when they could just go read The Wealth of Nations right um You don't have to uh uh you don't have to read an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation uh and especially when you're building your foundational knowledge it's really important to read the basics and The Originals well although the cave out there is that Evolution as your example has changed quite a bit so the original theory has has been tweaked a number of times it's still basically correct and you know and Darwin didn't have the political agenda that a lot of people were tweaking it today do yeah that's that's so start with Darwin you can add the tweaks later but if you don't understand the basics uh and you're just memorizing advanced concepts

[1:26:49]

you're just memorizing advanced concepts you're completely lost it's far more important in life as you have pointed out to know the basic really well across a few domains and combine that than to try and be a deep expert in any one domain the simplest exam analogy I have to this is mathematics everybody at some point in their life sat down to the math class and there was a day when they no longer understood the basics of what the teacher was talking about at that point math turned to memorization whereas up until then it was logic so the moment math turned from logic to memorization you lost the ability to do and learn mathematics beyond that point um so I would argue that you know you should always build in a very solid Foundation of understanding and at any point you reduced to memorization or reading other people's opinions and taking those as your own that you need to stop and backtrack all right I like that I like that advice um let's uh let's wrap it up here and uh to the audience thank you for hanging in here thanks everyone and uh Nal uh feel free to have

[1:27:50]

everyone and uh Nal uh feel free to have me on your periscopes one of these days yeah I absolutely will I wanted to try out this calling feature this was great uh I I want to do more periscopes I'm actually on the hook for it because I I promised the Twitter team if they roll this feature out I would be using it so here I am uh and I'm going to be doing more regular periscopes with guests you know honestly the hard thing for me here is that uh you know we live in a very intolerant environment clickbait news where uh people want to take everything out of uh context and sort of attack people but I think I just have to get used to that it's it's hard to say anything interesting without annoying somebody out there and I guess people's feelings are their problem not my problem uh exactly all right so thank you very much and uh we'll wrap it up thanks for having me on Scott all right take care bye bye bye