A Quantum Leap into AI and Consciousness | Brian Roemmele - Part 1

[00:00:08] I don't even know what to say. This is just like the smartest podcast episode I've ever

[00:00:16] listened to and I was doing it. But all credit goes to my guest, Brian Roemmele, expert on

[00:00:23] ... He's an expert on everything, but we talk consciousness, intelligence, quantum mechanics,

[00:00:30] AI, outraged, the fact that everyone is outraged and what the cure for that might be.

[00:00:41] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James

[00:00:46] Altucher Show. Brian, I've been following you for years, of course, on Twitter. I started

[00:01:01] following you because you would tweet this incredibly crazy stuff. All these things

[00:01:07] from around the world that were just fascinating. I was trying to find ... Some of them were

[00:01:12] years old because I've been following you for years. What were some of the things

[00:01:15] you tweeted that were just ... It was like you searched the world for incredibly interesting

[00:01:20] things that I'd never seen before. They were interesting intellectually and visually and

[00:01:26] then you would tweet them. What's an example? Do you remember?

[00:01:28] Oh my gosh. I would go into a coronary fit right now trying to remember some of them.

[00:01:35] I got to say, first off James, thank you. Such an honor to be here. Deep fan of your

[00:01:42] work. My pleasure. Basically all your books. Big subscriber on

[00:01:46] Paradigm so thank you for that and you've made me some money in stocks so I appreciate

[00:01:52] that. Excellent.

[00:01:54] So there's a method to my madness. I saw Twitter because I had come off of Quora.

[00:02:01] I'd been one of Quora's top writers for a couple of years and I was a bit of a

[00:02:06] Twitter snob. I thought that it was hot takes, it was drive by commenting and it was very

[00:02:12] little commitment intellectually to what people were saying. That's fine. I'm not

[00:02:17] judging that. I just didn't want to participate. So I started creating what I

[00:02:22] feel ultimately now is a human Rorschach test across social media. I just

[00:02:29] throw out ideas and concepts that are intriguing and they're designed to make

[00:02:36] you think. I think what I really try to do most of the time is I'm trying to

[00:02:41] elicit thought. What do you see here? And what's your first reaction and was

[00:02:47] your first reaction right? What's your second reaction? And I just kind of went

[00:02:53] with it. So yeah, there would be all sorts of things. I really like showing

[00:02:58] animal intelligence because I've always been involved in machine

[00:03:02] intelligence. And I think if we don't understand animal intelligence to some

[00:03:06] degree, even primates, right? How are we going to really understand machine

[00:03:11] intelligence and what is intelligence and things of that nature? So Twitter

[00:03:16] kind of became an open market of my ideas. And yeah, I get very eclectic

[00:03:21] at times. Yeah, like what were some of the... I remember some of the animal

[00:03:26] ones. Like what were some things that intrigued you on animal intelligence?

[00:03:29] Yeah. Intrigued you so much that you tweeted about it.

[00:03:31] Oh, okay. So one of the ones that I thought was really quite profound, it's

[00:03:36] sort of my concept of what I call the Kim Peek proof. Kim Peek was Rain Man

[00:03:41] in the Dustin Hoffman movie.

[00:03:44] Oh, that was based on our real person?

[00:03:45] Absolutely. Kim Peek. I actually got to meet him briefly. Incredibly

[00:03:50] beautiful individual. And what we learned about Kim Peek is the limits

[00:03:54] of human capability mentally. He actually was able to recite to you exactly

[00:04:01] what the weather was like the day you were born, what day of the week it

[00:04:05] was, all sorts of trivial things about who was the best baseball player at

[00:04:10] that particular moment in time. What game was being played that day?

[00:04:15] I mean just incredible things. So my concept about any scientific theory

[00:04:22] is that if you cannot account for the outlier in the theory, you really

[00:04:26] don't have a theory. You have sort of a postulation.

[00:04:30] What do you mean? Like I don't understand. So let's say what's an

[00:04:35] example of scientific theory where there's an outlier, like the theory

[00:04:39] of relativity?

[00:04:41] All right. Well, let's keep it with Kim for a second. So how do you explain...

[00:04:45] So Kim had encephalitis, the swelling of the brain, which essentially

[00:04:50] broke down his corpus callosum, that sort of piece that connects your

[00:04:55] right and left hemisphere. It's not widely known exactly why he

[00:05:00] developed what is savantism, right? A sort of a savantic syndrome. Kim

[00:05:06] in one of the clips that I put up there, and it was really about Kim.

[00:05:10] It was about primates. It was about this particular primate

[00:05:14] research center in Japan that was showing that a chimpanzee can be

[00:05:18] trained to remember a flash of 45 numbers on a grid of about 100

[00:05:26] grid, and remember the sequence after it flashes on. Now humans

[00:05:31] can't do that. It's like how did that primate know how to do that?

[00:05:35] Why?

[00:05:35] How fast was the flash? How many seconds were you allowed to look at?

[00:05:38] Like half a second, maybe a second at maximum. And some of these guys

[00:05:43] and gals were trained, and some did better than others. But the

[00:05:47] fact that one was able to do it, 100 out of 100 monkeys, the fact

[00:05:52] that one was able to do it fascinated the heck out of me. So I

[00:05:56] started studying the brain more and I said, okay, what did humans

[00:05:59] give up that chimpanzees had that we don't have? Well, it turns

[00:06:04] out it's Broca and Warnicke or the phonological loop. So we

[00:06:09] gave up short-term memory to be able to do what we're doing

[00:06:12] right now is having a conversation. So I started really diving

[00:06:17] into and again, this is all based on computer science, ultimately.

[00:06:22] But I started diving in what is human creativity and human

[00:06:25] memory? Well, you have the right hemisphere technically. And

[00:06:28] again, some of this is symbolic talk, I'm not trying to

[00:06:31] talk in, you know, the sense of where neurobiology and

[00:06:35] neuropsychology is at this moment. But you have the right

[00:06:39] hemisphere, which is your creative thought process. And

[00:06:42] let's call that a bunch of nebulous clouds that you have to

[00:06:45] assemble to the left hemisphere, which is a serial chain of

[00:06:50] thought that is only so long. Once you lose that chain of

[00:06:54] thought, the idea sort of dissipates and you get

[00:06:57] frustrated. And I see this with creative people, song

[00:07:01] writers, writer, you know, book writers, you know, people

[00:07:05] like yourself that are just trying to come up with that

[00:07:07] idea, and it just dissipates. Where did it come from? Where

[00:07:10] did it go? So it came from potentially the right

[00:07:13] hemisphere. And then the process of mechanicalizing it. Now

[00:07:18] mechanicalizing it to speech is easier because it flows out

[00:07:21] of us, we're not we're not translating the inner monologue

[00:07:25] that voice we hear when we read, or when we type sometimes.

[00:07:30] But when we have to mechanicalize it to a keyboard

[00:07:33] or writing it on a piece of paper, there's a mechanical

[00:07:37] slowdown in that process. So the flow is broken. And

[00:07:41] sometimes ideas and thoughts dissipate. So we went from

[00:07:46] 10 fingers to thumb clawing on a glass screen. And so what

[00:07:51] happens when you do that? Well, the flow of ideas slows

[00:07:55] down significantly. So much so that I believe that it is

[00:08:00] one of the underlying premises for hostility that

[00:08:03] you see in social media. I think the inability to emote

[00:08:07] correctly by using all of your functionality, your

[00:08:11] micro movements and your face, my hand movements, all of

[00:08:15] this frustrates people they can't communicate correctly

[00:08:18] because we're communicating through an archival system.

[00:08:21] Right? So think about this James typing was designed for

[00:08:25] archival purposes more than it was for communication

[00:08:28] purposes.

[00:08:29] Right. And by archival, you mean I would type

[00:08:32] something so I could store it so other people could later

[00:08:34] exactly. And right now we're kind of we're kind of archiving

[00:08:38] in real time to each other. We're like archiving directly

[00:08:41] to each other.

[00:08:42] And and the problem is about 80% of what humans use to

[00:08:49] communicate being in a physical presence or doing what

[00:08:52] we're doing with the video here video definitely helps.

[00:08:56] But it doesn't complete everything because there's

[00:08:58] nuances you pick up when you're physically present

[00:09:00] with somebody that you don't get otherwise. And I think

[00:09:03] those nuances are totally gone when we're throwing

[00:09:07] emojis at each other because emojis are completely

[00:09:10] open to interpretation. There is there's at least two

[00:09:13] interpretations to them. One is the direct and one is

[00:09:15] the ironic funny version of that emoji. And none

[00:09:20] of it is really useful. So we've kind of

[00:09:23] de-evolved in our communication. So that

[00:09:26] gets back to the monkey scenario right? Okay.

[00:09:29] And we'll kind of go back to Kim Peek now. So if the

[00:09:32] brain in fact can store as much information that if

[00:09:36] our listeners remember Rain Man, Kim Peek was

[00:09:39] better than Dustin Hoffman's presentation of Rain

[00:09:43] Man. He was absolutely phenomenal. And his social

[00:09:46] skills was actually quite a few degrees higher.

[00:09:50] He did have some of the situations of communication

[00:09:53] that Savants had. So what we have now is we

[00:09:57] have an outlier. We have somebody that can hold

[00:10:00] almost everything they've ever seen and heard. So

[00:10:03] it's in the brain. And that was a question I've

[00:10:06] had ever since I was a child is how much of the

[00:10:09] brain is really stored? And how does it stay

[00:10:14] there? And where is the brain? Because we know

[00:10:16] holographically, we can't pull out a single

[00:10:19] memory out of somebody's brain. We wish we could

[00:10:22] right? You can't laser cut. Let's take that

[00:10:25] little unpleasant memory out of your brain. It's

[00:10:27] holographically stored. In fact, I later found out

[00:10:29] through Candice Perth's work, molecules of emotion

[00:10:33] is that your memories are stored throughout your

[00:10:36] body through a neuropeptide memory system, a

[00:10:39] chemical memory system. And that's why when we

[00:10:42] get heartbroken, right? Think about that hurt

[00:10:45] that love that this tore you apart. Do you

[00:10:49] feel it here? You probably feel it here or

[00:10:52] your gut. Right? So your heart, yeah, right?

[00:10:56] There's and there's a more neurochemicals or more

[00:10:59] serotonin in the gut than in the brain.

[00:11:01] And that's evolutionarily wise. That was for us

[00:11:03] to remember this food good, this food bad,

[00:11:07] right? Because we had to have a way humans are

[00:11:11] born naked, right? We don't we have to be

[00:11:13] taught for the first eight years how to get

[00:11:16] through this world or we're going to die.

[00:11:18] Right? That's just the realities of it. And

[00:11:20] our brain was is as big as it's going to get,

[00:11:23] you know, beyond killing moms to a high

[00:11:27] degree. Right? Essentially, the containment

[00:11:30] of the human skull is based upon how wide

[00:11:34] the hips can be displaced on a female before

[00:11:38] it's impossible for them to walk. I mean,

[00:11:40] that's really the bottom line. And yet there's

[00:11:42] trillions of possible bites that could be

[00:11:44] stored in the brain, right? Because every

[00:11:46] possible ways to connect the neurons in

[00:11:48] your brain and in your body is could be

[00:11:51] another memory, another thought, another

[00:11:53] another way of awakening a memory.

[00:11:55] Exactly. So if you're dealing with somebody

[00:11:57] like for a stroke patient or somebody with

[00:11:59] dementia Alzheimer's, you can usually

[00:12:01] bring something more of a higher response

[00:12:05] if you put something that they smell

[00:12:07] that brings back a memory. I like to use

[00:12:10] the apple pie concept. Go back and think

[00:12:13] about the first time you've ever smelled

[00:12:15] apple pie. Hopefully your mom baked or

[00:12:17] your caregiver baked and the first time it

[00:12:19] was in front of you hot apple pie baked.

[00:12:22] What does that sound like? And already a

[00:12:24] lot of things start happening. Most of us

[00:12:26] the like upper pie starts elevating.

[00:12:29] All right. So what's going on there?

[00:12:30] It's setting off a whole series of memory.

[00:12:34] Now, if you've never tasted apple pie or

[00:12:36] anything that might feel like that,

[00:12:39] you're not going to have that response.

[00:12:41] So the memory is encoded all over the

[00:12:44] place. And to me, that's fascinating

[00:12:48] because we're trying to create artificial

[00:12:50] intelligence, but we're not fully

[00:12:52] understanding human intelligence.

[00:12:54] We're not understanding human consciousness

[00:12:57] because really it's not intelligence as

[00:12:58] much as consciousness that we really

[00:13:01] need to kind of get to the bottom of

[00:13:03] what is consciousness? Where is it?

[00:13:06] Where does it come from? Where does it go?

[00:13:08] Tell me more about like how is Ken

[00:13:10] Peak the outlier of a theory?

[00:13:12] So it's a great question, James.

[00:13:14] So basically if you essentially

[00:13:16] say that the human brain can only

[00:13:19] hold so much memory and then

[00:13:22] it stops or you don't remember

[00:13:26] everything that has ever been done to

[00:13:28] you because you can't recall it.

[00:13:31] I call bunk on that.

[00:13:33] I believe that the human sense organs

[00:13:37] record basically everything.

[00:13:39] Now, I'm a really big fan of

[00:13:42] Tor Norstander's The User Illusion.

[00:13:45] And a lot of my work is based upon

[00:13:47] not just his body of work.

[00:13:49] I tell everybody to read this book.

[00:13:52] It will absolutely profoundly change

[00:13:54] you on everything you think it.

[00:13:56] So say the book again.

[00:13:57] Tor Norstander's The User Illusion.

[00:14:00] So James, I was such a nerd.

[00:14:02] I followed this guy during his book

[00:14:04] tour. I went to a couple of his

[00:14:05] signings because I knew some of the

[00:14:07] work by Lashley and others that

[00:14:10] were trying to understand where

[00:14:12] consciousness was in the brain.

[00:14:14] And that came from a whole

[00:14:17] series of weird

[00:14:19] coincidences in my life growing up

[00:14:21] near Princeton and spending a lot of

[00:14:23] time at Princeton University as a

[00:14:25] child. Where did you go up near

[00:14:27] Princeton? Well, I was born in

[00:14:29] Nork. I had my young

[00:14:33] life in Carterette, the armpit of

[00:14:34] New Jersey. And then I wound up

[00:14:37] in Flemington. And then from

[00:14:39] Flemington, I spent a lot of time

[00:14:40] in Princeton. I had friends whose

[00:14:42] parents worked at the university,

[00:14:44] the Institute of Advanced Study,

[00:14:46] David Sarnoff Research Center and

[00:14:48] Bell Laboratories. So, you know,

[00:14:51] I'm talking about 60s and 70s

[00:14:54] because I'm an old man. And that

[00:14:55] was the prime time of Bell

[00:14:58] Laboratories. Bell Laboratories

[00:15:00] had so many incredible thinkers who

[00:15:03] were paid just to think.

[00:15:05] Walk around barefoot,

[00:15:07] in their pajamas way before it was

[00:15:09] cool. No shaving for two or three

[00:15:11] weeks. You would essentially think

[00:15:13] they're homeless and nobody knew

[00:15:15] what they were thinking about, but

[00:15:16] they were paid to be there. Same

[00:15:17] thing with the ins...

[00:15:18] People think I'm homeless even

[00:15:20] though I try not to be.

[00:15:22] Don't change, man. Yeah, this is

[00:15:25] not my normal look either. But so

[00:15:27] anyway, in that environment, I

[00:15:30] started to really feel that we

[00:15:32] need to understand consciousness

[00:15:35] at a very young age. And I was a

[00:15:36] rationalist. I thought it was going

[00:15:37] to be a physicist growing up.

[00:15:39] That's why I love Princeton so much

[00:15:41] and mostly quantum physics is

[00:15:44] where I wanted to be. But also

[00:15:46] planetary science had a lot of

[00:15:48] influence by Carl Sagan, obviously

[00:15:50] and people of that epoch.

[00:15:54] But I started realizing that

[00:15:56] quantum physics didn't give us

[00:15:58] answers. It gave us actually a lot

[00:15:59] more questions. And the thing

[00:16:02] that really made me very angry

[00:16:04] about quantum physics is the

[00:16:06] observer aspect of it. I thought

[00:16:09] that that had to be the most

[00:16:11] astrological explanation of

[00:16:14] reality that could ever happen.

[00:16:15] So I rejected it. So I got

[00:16:17] involved in business and

[00:16:20] in computers and stuff like that

[00:16:22] because I can control the

[00:16:23] rationality within computer

[00:16:26] language. That was way

[00:16:27] irrational, but it did not

[00:16:29] stop me from continuing my

[00:16:32] curiosity. So quantum physics

[00:16:35] led me into trying to understand

[00:16:36] the brain and to understand the

[00:16:38] observer. Why the heck does an

[00:16:41] observation change a scientific

[00:16:44] test? Now, some people say, well,

[00:16:46] it's not really like that, Brian,

[00:16:47] you don't know it is. Ultimately,

[00:16:49] it is whether it's photons or

[00:16:51] something. The test is changing

[00:16:54] via the observation. And then

[00:16:57] entanglement was the next

[00:16:58] thing that completely freaked me

[00:17:00] out. How could how could matter

[00:17:02] be entangled? And how could that

[00:17:04] matter communicate across

[00:17:06] apparently, especially in the

[00:17:08] 70s, apparently across

[00:17:11] light years of distance

[00:17:13] instantly? How is that possible?

[00:17:15] Do we have a correct theory to

[00:17:16] explain that? No, we don't. We

[00:17:18] didn't then and we don't now.

[00:17:20] So that puts you to the edge.

[00:17:23] If you are an empirical

[00:17:24] scientist, you got to go to

[00:17:26] the edge and look over and say,

[00:17:28] you guys, gals, we don't really

[00:17:30] have a theory really. We have

[00:17:32] the best possible prediction.

[00:17:34] And that's kind of the thing.

[00:17:52] If you think about it, we don't

[00:17:53] really have a theory about

[00:17:54] anything. Exactly.

[00:17:55] So, you know, and you know, you

[00:17:56] think of like Stephen Hawking's

[00:17:58] the theory of everything, you

[00:17:59] know, a brief history of

[00:18:00] everything. We don't really know

[00:18:02] anything because so quantum

[00:18:04] mechanics are the basic building

[00:18:06] blocks of all physics, all

[00:18:07] reality. And we just don't

[00:18:09] understand how it works.

[00:18:10] There's I mean, there are

[00:18:12] particles even called strange

[00:18:13] quarks because it's just so

[00:18:14] strange. We just don't even know

[00:18:16] how a clue of how it works.

[00:18:17] And then the other big important

[00:18:18] thing consciousness, which you

[00:18:20] brought up, we don't have a real

[00:18:21] theory of that. We have we have

[00:18:23] no better understanding of that

[00:18:24] than we had 5000 years ago.

[00:18:26] For all we know what they had

[00:18:27] a better understanding 5000

[00:18:28] years ago than we have now.

[00:18:30] And so now we're trying to

[00:18:31] break it down using science

[00:18:33] that I'm sure is primitive

[00:18:35] compared to what's actually

[00:18:36] needed to understand these

[00:18:37] things. And we're trying to

[00:18:38] make some sense of it. You

[00:18:40] know, theoreticians have their

[00:18:41] ideas and experimentalists have

[00:18:42] their ideas. But none of it

[00:18:44] really works. We haven't

[00:18:46] concluded anything. You know,

[00:18:48] yes, we could make as you

[00:18:51] know, the movie this weekend

[00:18:52] was Oppenheimer, we can make a

[00:18:54] nuclear bomb. We can make a

[00:18:55] rocket ship. We can make a

[00:18:56] computer. But these are all

[00:18:58] are all mechanical things like

[00:19:01] you put these tools together

[00:19:02] and it works according to

[00:19:05] Newton's laws of physics. But

[00:19:07] you know, like like we

[00:19:09] decades away, probably from real

[00:19:10] quantum computing. And again,

[00:19:11] we're probably I'd like your

[00:19:13] opinion on this, we're probably

[00:19:14] decades away from any real

[00:19:16] intelligence and artificial

[00:19:18] intelligence. Right now it's

[00:19:19] like these massive statistical

[00:19:20] models. But we don't have

[00:19:23] like you're beginning to

[00:19:24] allude to with the brain

[00:19:26] being different from from

[00:19:27] exactly James brilliant. You

[00:19:29] know, so let's look at it

[00:19:31] from a perspective of, you

[00:19:34] know, scientific explanation

[00:19:36] from a chemical and

[00:19:37] electronic and electrical

[00:19:39] standpoint, standpoint within

[00:19:40] the brain. We are not even

[00:19:42] sure what particular chemicals

[00:19:45] and again, we can go to the

[00:19:46] very basics. You know, we a lot

[00:19:48] of people believe that the

[00:19:51] science of chemistry is fully

[00:19:52] understood. And certainly it

[00:19:55] must be fully understood

[00:19:56] within a human body. But you

[00:19:58] change just a couple of

[00:19:59] different chemicals in

[00:20:00] somebody, they're going to

[00:20:02] think dramatically different.

[00:20:04] And we're seeing it play

[00:20:05] out as a real time

[00:20:06] experiment in our

[00:20:08] environment. We're throwing

[00:20:10] chemicals out there. We don't

[00:20:12] know what the neurotropic

[00:20:13] effects are on people. We do

[00:20:15] know that there are

[00:20:17] neurotropic effects, but we

[00:20:18] don't know what the

[00:20:19] grand neurotropic effects

[00:20:20] are until we come back two or

[00:20:22] 300 years and say those

[00:20:23] crazy people I can't believe

[00:20:25] they did that. And that's

[00:20:26] got that's coming. We live

[00:20:28] long enough in the UNI be

[00:20:29] like four or 500 years, I

[00:20:30] don't know. We're going to

[00:20:31] look back and say, Oh, yeah,

[00:20:33] that was a big debate, but

[00:20:34] it was a debate about

[00:20:35] politics and philosophy had

[00:20:37] nothing to do with

[00:20:38] chemicals. You know, and

[00:20:40] that's kind of the problem is

[00:20:42] chemicals divide, divine

[00:20:45] your feeling and your

[00:20:47] construct of the world. Right?

[00:20:50] So if you're chemically off

[00:20:51] just a little bit, your view

[00:20:54] of the world is

[00:20:55] dramatically changed. It's

[00:20:56] a very, very fine tuning.

[00:20:58] And, you know, ancients

[00:21:00] understood the pineal gland

[00:21:01] as being vitally important,

[00:21:04] so important that the

[00:21:05] pinecone became such a big

[00:21:08] thing all the way to Sumerian

[00:21:10] times, all the way to the

[00:21:11] Pope's staff as a pinecone

[00:21:14] under Jesus' feet, all the

[00:21:17] way down to Sumerians, you

[00:21:19] know, they're holding

[00:21:19] pine cones. The pine cone

[00:21:21] represents the pineal gland

[00:21:23] that symbolism. Why does it

[00:21:25] represent? How do they even

[00:21:26] know about that gland in

[00:21:28] Sumerian? Unfortunately, when

[00:21:30] you brutally break somebody's

[00:21:32] brain open, the pineal gland

[00:21:34] looks like a pinecone

[00:21:36] almost precisely. Really? Yeah.

[00:21:38] Yeah. And and it's not

[00:21:40] a guess. This is not us

[00:21:42] philosophizing. They actually

[00:21:44] pointed out they the

[00:21:45] Egyptians actually talked

[00:21:47] about, you know, the seat

[00:21:49] of consciousness,

[00:21:50] essentially, was within

[00:21:52] the pine cone or the

[00:21:54] pineal gland.

[00:21:55] And why did they think

[00:21:57] that? Like, why did they

[00:21:58] have a sense that that was

[00:21:59] the seat of consciousness?

[00:22:00] Well, they they poked

[00:22:03] they poked things into it

[00:22:04] through the eye sockets

[00:22:06] while people were alive.

[00:22:07] They cut open skulls.

[00:22:09] South America, we can see

[00:22:10] a lot of people that had

[00:22:12] their skulls cut open and

[00:22:13] lived, you know, in

[00:22:15] ancient times. And they

[00:22:18] believe that.

[00:22:21] We don't know why.

[00:22:22] We know that maybe

[00:22:24] from the very basic

[00:22:26] we can speculate that

[00:22:28] proto doctors were

[00:22:30] experimenting with people's

[00:22:31] brains. I don't know how

[00:22:32] they got people to agree with

[00:22:33] it. Hey, buddy, let me cut

[00:22:35] open, you know, well, they

[00:22:36] could have been torched or

[00:22:37] slaved or whatever.

[00:22:38] It could have been but why

[00:22:39] they why they fixated on

[00:22:41] that gland is always

[00:22:44] interesting. We can go to

[00:22:46] certainly Indus Valley,

[00:22:48] what you know, India and

[00:22:50] things of that, you know,

[00:22:51] the Bende is a

[00:22:52] representation of the third

[00:22:54] eye. We can go to, you

[00:22:56] know, parts of Asia.

[00:22:58] Certainly the Greeks talked

[00:23:00] about it.

[00:23:01] All of this stuff plays out

[00:23:03] to the pineal gland.

[00:23:05] We don't fully understand it.

[00:23:07] Why? Well, all right, we

[00:23:08] call it a third eye.

[00:23:09] Here's what's interesting.

[00:23:11] There's retina tissue within

[00:23:12] the pineal gland.

[00:23:14] Now we only found that out

[00:23:16] about 100 years ago

[00:23:18] that there's full on retinal

[00:23:20] tissue in the pineal gland.

[00:23:21] So.

[00:23:23] Hold it, what's going on?

[00:23:24] Thousands of years ago,

[00:23:26] they called it a third eye,

[00:23:27] but it is in fact an eye

[00:23:29] embedded essentially

[00:23:30] within the center of your brain.

[00:23:31] And it's not even a part of your

[00:23:32] brain, it's more of a part of

[00:23:34] your organ.

[00:23:35] What does that mean, though,

[00:23:36] that there's retinal tissue?

[00:23:37] Like does it transmit

[00:23:40] information to the eyes?

[00:23:41] No, we see things with it.

[00:23:43] It is an eye in and of itself.

[00:23:47] It what's it looking at?

[00:23:49] Photochromatic

[00:23:51] discharges of light within

[00:23:53] the fluid of the pineal gland

[00:23:55] is a best guess.

[00:23:55] I can give you

[00:23:57] a photochromatic and pressure

[00:24:00] chromatic type of crystalline

[00:24:02] structures that are in the fluid

[00:24:05] within. But what does that mean?

[00:24:06] I don't know.

[00:24:07] For an evolutionary reason,

[00:24:08] like why do we need to look at

[00:24:10] that? No idea other than to

[00:24:11] look at ancient history.

[00:24:13] This is what fascinates me

[00:24:15] about the frontier of science.

[00:24:17] James is like,

[00:24:19] why are we looking into that

[00:24:20] more, more, you know,

[00:24:22] ironically here?

[00:24:23] Why are we looking into that

[00:24:24] more? What does it represent?

[00:24:26] So if you were to go to most

[00:24:29] brain researchers to say that

[00:24:31] the pineal gland is sort of a

[00:24:32] vestigial organ

[00:24:35] when we were low and reptiles,

[00:24:37] it may have served some function

[00:24:39] about mediating your day

[00:24:41] night cycle.

[00:24:42] We do know melatonin is released

[00:24:44] when the pineal gland

[00:24:46] is entering into a sort

[00:24:48] of darker maybe twilight

[00:24:51] type of stage and that people

[00:24:53] with certain melatonin

[00:24:55] imbalances tend to have a problem

[00:24:57] with the pineal gland calcification,

[00:25:00] things of that level.

[00:25:01] I don't really talk about this much

[00:25:03] because it can really go down

[00:25:04] a deep rabbit hole because we're

[00:25:06] looking at ancient

[00:25:09] ancient principles

[00:25:10] and they're using the crude

[00:25:12] language of their epoch

[00:25:14] and we're trying to compare it

[00:25:15] to our scientific language

[00:25:17] of this epoch.

[00:25:18] So whenever we're looking at

[00:25:20] explanations in antiquity,

[00:25:23] they can only explain through

[00:25:24] relativity of what they knew

[00:25:26] at that period in that epoch.

[00:25:28] Right.

[00:25:28] And so to us, it looks crude.

[00:25:30] It looks childlike.

[00:25:31] It looks uninformed,

[00:25:33] but it may be very well

[00:25:35] informed and it may be not very crude.

[00:25:38] It's just the wording

[00:25:39] to us seems to be very

[00:25:42] non scientific.

[00:25:43] They certainly knew that the pineal

[00:25:45] gland meant something

[00:25:47] going like winding it back

[00:25:49] to to Kim Peak.

[00:25:50] Are you suggesting that

[00:25:52] as humans evolved to have things

[00:25:55] like speech and longer term memory,

[00:25:57] we gave up short term memory.

[00:26:00] So when Kim Peak suffered from

[00:26:02] encephalitis, for instance,

[00:26:04] he lost some abilities to socialize

[00:26:07] and communicate and perhaps

[00:26:08] have long term memory.

[00:26:10] But in return, the savantism aspect,

[00:26:12] he gained this enormous,

[00:26:14] enormous short term.

[00:26:15] Exactly. Or long term or

[00:26:17] or tribute or he got

[00:26:20] he got long term memory

[00:26:20] because he could remember facts from, like,

[00:26:22] one hundred years ago.

[00:26:23] Facts that we would never even digest.

[00:26:25] We would not remember the weather

[00:26:28] on the day that somebody was born.

[00:26:31] I mean, and we're talking anybody,

[00:26:32] you just tell them,

[00:26:33] tell him what, you know,

[00:26:35] what your year and day

[00:26:37] he'll tell you the day of the week

[00:26:39] and what the weather was like

[00:26:40] in your part of the country.

[00:26:41] That's how finite it was,

[00:26:42] how he knew that.

[00:26:44] He read a lot.

[00:26:45] He certainly read some books more

[00:26:47] than others trivia books about sports.

[00:26:49] He was incredible about biblical things.

[00:26:52] He made some insights that are absolutely,

[00:26:55] I think, prophetic in my view.

[00:26:57] You know, he well, he was born

[00:26:59] a Mormon in Utah and

[00:27:02] he saw the Bible and

[00:27:04] other Mormon scriptures

[00:27:06] as being very profound.

[00:27:08] He saw that he saw the

[00:27:10] the holy books

[00:27:12] very much as a method

[00:27:15] for aligning your life

[00:27:17] with the tragedies of life

[00:27:19] is I'm subtexting a lot of this here.

[00:27:23] He said that there were much more

[00:27:25] than about God and religion.

[00:27:27] And he said that they certainly were.

[00:27:29] He absolutely believed that there was a God.

[00:27:32] There was no question.

[00:27:33] He thought it was ridiculous

[00:27:34] that that we were even questioning it.

[00:27:37] You know, he said, how could you?

[00:27:40] He wouldn't even have a talk about

[00:27:41] and wasn't programming.

[00:27:42] It was just it was his insight

[00:27:44] from, you know, enveloping so much knowledge.

[00:27:47] And I find the same is true with AI.

[00:27:50] It's it's very interesting.

[00:27:52] And AI is living on our language,

[00:27:54] a human construct, right?

[00:27:55] And we can jump into that

[00:27:57] getting out of this rabbit hole.

[00:27:58] I took you into them. So sorry.

[00:28:00] But no, so Kim

[00:28:03] Kim had some insights about that.

[00:28:04] And he said these books were guides

[00:28:08] so that you could live a better life.

[00:28:10] And he said the life

[00:28:11] that's going to take place

[00:28:13] after I leave.

[00:28:14] And he knew he was not going to be around long.

[00:28:16] And this was, you know,

[00:28:19] 15 years before he passed away.

[00:28:22] He just knew and he knew

[00:28:24] his unborrowed time.

[00:28:25] The doctor wanted to put him away

[00:28:27] in an institution and lobotomize him

[00:28:30] for his own safety.

[00:28:32] And his parents said no.

[00:28:34] And, you know, you can look up Kim Peek

[00:28:37] making a comment about the doctor

[00:28:39] wanted to go out and play golf.

[00:28:41] So he gave the parent three minutes,

[00:28:43] lobotomize them and institutionalize them.

[00:28:45] I got a game to go play.

[00:28:47] And Kim just jokes.

[00:28:48] This is how funny it is.

[00:28:50] He he had enough knowledge

[00:28:53] and humanity connection

[00:28:55] that he could make a joke out of it.

[00:28:57] Ah, go play golf, doc, you know.

[00:28:59] And and he laughs, you know.

[00:29:01] So he had an incredible sense of humor,

[00:29:03] much more than the

[00:29:04] than the the humor that Dustin Hoffman had.

[00:29:07] And Dustin played an interesting character,

[00:29:10] but it wasn't really Kim,

[00:29:12] but it was based on him.

[00:29:13] So what what what he basically said

[00:29:15] is that humanity is going to

[00:29:19] regress into sort of a cesspool.

[00:29:22] He used the word cesspool

[00:29:24] because there were no guides to keep you

[00:29:27] doing the right things, you know.

[00:29:30] If you're only answering to yourself,

[00:29:32] then essentially you're going to keep

[00:29:34] compromising yourself until you pull yourself

[00:29:37] down to the lowest possible element.

[00:29:39] And that was his insight.

[00:29:57] This is interesting because you look at it

[00:29:58] from what's going on in society

[00:30:00] and it is almost like a contradiction

[00:30:02] because right now our innovations

[00:30:06] per decade are amazing.

[00:30:08] Like in just in the past decade,

[00:30:10] we have so much innovation

[00:30:12] in genomics, which is actually editing DNA

[00:30:15] in innovation and AI, innovation in

[00:30:20] 3D printing, automation, space travel, computers.

[00:30:24] It's amazing. And yet at the same time,

[00:30:27] I'm willing to bet that the actual

[00:30:29] IQs of people five thousand years ago

[00:30:32] were higher than they are now,

[00:30:34] just because we get to just sit in front

[00:30:36] of a TV and zone out for,

[00:30:39] you know, on average six hours a day,

[00:30:41] you know, at least in the U.S.

[00:30:43] And they didn't do that.

[00:30:44] They had to be aware of every single

[00:30:47] plant, animal, tribe, worm, mosquito,

[00:30:53] hut, whatever, in a five mile radius

[00:30:55] of wherever they were.

[00:30:56] And they were constantly moving around.

[00:30:58] They had to constantly think

[00:30:59] because their lives depended on it

[00:31:02] and our lives just don't.

[00:31:03] And James, incredible insight

[00:31:05] because basically by reducing us

[00:31:08] to essentially being at the ultimate machine,

[00:31:12] right? Because let's look at humanity.

[00:31:15] Humanity is basically tool builder

[00:31:17] and storyteller.

[00:31:18] That's our existence.

[00:31:19] We're two tool builders and storytellers.

[00:31:22] If we took that away,

[00:31:22] we basically wouldn't exist.

[00:31:25] And everybody has to become a storyteller.

[00:31:28] That is the reality of life.

[00:31:30] We have to we have to become a salesperson, right?

[00:31:33] We have to convince people.

[00:31:34] And this is what's really funny

[00:31:36] is that we diluted ourselves

[00:31:37] into this sort of STEM thing

[00:31:39] that we can kind of go off and be so abstract

[00:31:42] that we don't need to be a storyteller

[00:31:44] or even tool builder.

[00:31:45] We can just sort of intellectualize it

[00:31:47] and the Greeks failed them that.

[00:31:49] And by the way, I just want I

[00:31:51] and I'm sorry to interrupt

[00:31:52] and probably listeners will criticize me,

[00:31:54] but I just want to explain like we had to evolve

[00:31:57] extreme storytelling ability

[00:31:58] because we're relatively weak animals

[00:32:01] compared to even chimpanzees.

[00:32:03] And so in order,

[00:32:04] we had to communicate to our kids,

[00:32:06] hey, don't go over the mountain

[00:32:09] because we knew that's where the lions were.

[00:32:10] We had to tell them that's where the

[00:32:12] that's where Satan is.

[00:32:14] And we have to tell a whole story

[00:32:15] about Satan and monsters

[00:32:17] and we had to develop storytelling

[00:32:18] ability to basically help the next generation live longer.

[00:32:21] Absolutely.

[00:32:22] Because they wouldn't live a lot without stories.

[00:32:24] We didn't have and then, of course,

[00:32:26] we could build tools to help us eat

[00:32:28] because again, we're relatively weak.

[00:32:30] We can't just like kill something and eat it.

[00:32:33] We have to it's hard for us to kill.

[00:32:35] It's hard for us to cook.

[00:32:36] Like we had we had a developability

[00:32:38] to build tools so we could plant things

[00:32:41] and do other things. Absolutely, James.

[00:32:43] So so the storytelling is usually

[00:32:45] through allegorical stories, right?

[00:32:48] The only let's imagine we didn't have a writing system.

[00:32:51] We only had a communication system,

[00:32:53] which is like 99% of human existence.

[00:32:56] We had no writing system.

[00:32:57] We had a communication system.

[00:32:59] And so the way you communicate

[00:33:01] is through bold allegorical stories,

[00:33:03] but we needed to record it.

[00:33:05] So how do we first record our allegorical stories?

[00:33:08] We looked up.

[00:33:09] We looked up at the unchanging sky

[00:33:12] and these constellations became allegorical stories

[00:33:17] to our to our youth

[00:33:18] and our younger folks that would pass it on.

[00:33:21] So our first books were the stars.

[00:33:26] So when we looked up, we would say,

[00:33:27] oh, that's the lion and the story of the great lion

[00:33:30] that overcame, you know, and these stories.

[00:33:33] Joseph Campbell, a hero with a thousand faces

[00:33:36] and the hero's journey and all of that.

[00:33:39] Joseph Campbell cataloged all of these allegorical stories

[00:33:44] and he came to the same conclusion

[00:33:46] and I am certainly I'm sure you do,

[00:33:48] is that all of these allegorical stories

[00:33:50] are almost precisely the same.

[00:33:52] There's about 20 of them

[00:33:54] and they're all about the hero's journey,

[00:33:56] monometh of what we're all going through.

[00:33:59] And we go through many of them.

[00:34:00] We go through the macrohero's journey

[00:34:02] from life to death.

[00:34:05] And then we go to these sort of micro cycles

[00:34:09] within a day or a week, you know,

[00:34:12] that we're going on the, you know,

[00:34:14] the abyss and coming back from the abyss

[00:34:17] and things of that nature.

[00:34:18] But all of these stories had that pattern to them

[00:34:21] and they're Jungian patterns, right?

[00:34:23] From Carl Jung, essentially.

[00:34:25] Jung took the inner space of the brain

[00:34:29] and the mind, which is what AI does, right?

[00:34:33] Does the same thing.

[00:34:34] So AI is going to see the same Jungian patterned

[00:34:37] and it says, wow, every single movie,

[00:34:40] every single song, every single book,

[00:34:43] ultimately everything that we're attracted to

[00:34:46] is on a monometh, is on a hero's journey.

[00:34:49] There is a bold allegorical story that's a part of it.

[00:34:52] And we know that all movies are formulas.

[00:34:55] If we break that formula big enough,

[00:34:57] it won't get funded because producers

[00:34:59] won't even put it out there.

[00:35:00] And this is why some really esoteric movies

[00:35:03] just don't resonate because we're looking for the pattern

[00:35:07] because part of human intelligence

[00:35:10] is pattern recognition and pattern matching.

[00:35:13] Did I see that before?

[00:35:15] Has anybody seen that before?

[00:35:17] Can somebody see that before?

[00:35:19] Please help us because we're looking for that pattern.

[00:35:22] We're desperate for it because our very

[00:35:25] existence depends on trying to grok and decode

[00:35:29] the unknown that's in front of us.

[00:35:31] We're the only animals that we know of on this planet,

[00:35:34] maybe off-world after yesterday,

[00:35:38] that is in constant search of decoding the pattern.

[00:35:42] And a lot of times if you're fast at decoding pattern,

[00:35:46] you're considered intelligent.

[00:35:48] So if I'm fast at adding numbers together,

[00:35:51] is that intelligence?

[00:35:53] Well, computers can do numbers added together

[00:35:56] even better than Kim Peek.

[00:35:57] Kim was great at adding numbers together.

[00:35:59] 15 digit numbers.

[00:36:01] I think the largest one I heard him do is 45 digits.

[00:36:04] Added together, multiplied, boom, done.

[00:36:07] But a computer can do it better.

[00:36:09] Does that make us inept?

[00:36:11] Does that make us cower?

[00:36:13] No, the computer is better at adding those numbers together.

[00:36:16] Now, can computers do other things faster

[00:36:19] and we can dive into that what AI is doing?

[00:36:21] But essentially, yes, fastness to me

[00:36:26] doesn't equate with intelligence.

[00:36:28] It's just fastness.

[00:36:30] But we have deluded ourselves.

[00:36:32] That person is fast.

[00:36:34] They're smarter than I am.

[00:36:36] That equated very well when we were out on the savannah.

[00:36:40] The person who could think fast

[00:36:42] under a pressure situation tended to live.

[00:36:46] So we are the generations of the fast thinkers.

[00:36:50] There's no doubt about it.

[00:36:52] Every single one of us are from those

[00:36:54] because the ones that didn't think fast, they didn't make it.

[00:36:58] So we are the sum total of that.

[00:37:00] So it's built into our DNA.

[00:37:03] Fast thinking means better survival ability.

[00:37:07] But you know, and you've written about this,

[00:37:08] you've talked about it, fast thinking isn't necessarily

[00:37:12] always the best result.

[00:37:14] It's a best result under the time compression

[00:37:16] of that circumstance.

[00:37:18] But retrospect allows a much more nuance

[00:37:22] of that scenario.

[00:37:23] Social media makes fast response down into microseconds.

[00:37:28] The hot take.

[00:37:29] Something happens politically.

[00:37:31] You've already aligned to a specific team.

[00:37:34] This is my team.

[00:37:36] I don't care if the entire team changes.

[00:37:38] I like their flags, I like their uniforms.

[00:37:42] I'm sticking with my team.

[00:37:44] When I was a kid, I grew up back east, Metz Yankees, right?

[00:37:48] And I was getting old enough

[00:37:49] where the entire team, plus the coach was gone,

[00:37:52] was replaced.

[00:37:54] But I had friends who were Yankees fans or Metz fans.

[00:37:56] I'm like, dude, everybody in that team is gone.

[00:38:00] The coach is gone.

[00:38:01] There's nothing other than the uniform and the name.

[00:38:05] I'm a Yankees fan.

[00:38:07] We have tribalized ourselves into these categories.

[00:38:10] And it's not a modern phenomenon.

[00:38:13] It's an ancient phenomenon.

[00:38:14] And it all wraps up into this fast thinking

[00:38:18] who is a winner?

[00:38:21] Winning in a ancestral sense is literally living.

[00:38:26] All right, you survived being attacked

[00:38:29] by a very unlikely another clan

[00:38:32] because we really didn't battle as much

[00:38:34] as the movies would have us believe.

[00:38:36] That was very unlikely.

[00:38:38] And the other thing is how do we survive food-wise?

[00:38:43] Who was able to ascertain the right food to eat?

[00:38:47] Turns out the wise old men and the wise old women

[00:38:52] of that tribe were the most valuable aspects of any tribe.

[00:38:57] They were also the first thing that was taken out

[00:39:00] when you conquered another tribe

[00:39:02] is you would take out the wise people.

[00:39:03] Well, it's interesting because as you age cognitively,

[00:39:09] the brain gets weaker at fastness.

[00:39:13] Like I can no longer add numbers as fast

[00:39:17] as when I was in my 20s.

[00:39:18] I can no longer remember things as quickly

[00:39:20] as when I was in my 20s.

[00:39:22] But pattern recognition increases

[00:39:25] and which is why like the peak age

[00:39:28] or the peak age of a mathematician might be 25 years old

[00:39:32] but the peak age of a historian,

[00:39:34] it turns out is in their 60s.

[00:39:36] So because they can pattern recognize from,

[00:39:38] oh, this is like when we invented air conditioning

[00:39:42] in 1900 invention of AI is like that

[00:39:46] in some weird way that they think of

[00:39:48] and they write a book about it.

[00:39:50] So the elders kind of have that wisdom.

[00:39:52] And I think James, we're lacking,

[00:39:54] we are floating and drowning in a pool

[00:39:57] of information and data,

[00:40:00] but we're starving of wisdom in this epoch.

[00:40:03] More so than I think anytime historically

[00:40:05] that I can account for wisdom is turned upside down

[00:40:09] because we've given the highest attribute

[00:40:12] to the latest tech.

[00:40:14] You know, I'm from the tech world

[00:40:15] and we're riding this wave of AI.

[00:40:17] I mean, literally just this morning,

[00:40:20] 27 new models were invented in AI

[00:40:24] in the open source community.

[00:40:25] And I'm trying to grok what the power of every model is

[00:40:29] and trying to help clients

[00:40:31] and the world that follows me,

[00:40:35] which model is better to use

[00:40:36] under any particular circumstance?

[00:40:38] But on the aspect of wisdom,

[00:40:42] we just totally discount it.

[00:40:43] In fact, we're the only epoch that I'm aware of

[00:40:48] that have reduced the elderly

[00:40:50] to an almost useless functionality.

[00:40:54] So much so that I worry for the people

[00:40:57] that are gonna enter their 60s in 20 years.

[00:41:01] Because as they enter their 60s, 20 years from now,

[00:41:05] society is gonna organize if it continues on

[00:41:08] in the same mental gymnastics,

[00:41:11] they're gonna see somebody in the 60s

[00:41:13] as being almost useless.

[00:41:16] Okay, they can still do a job,

[00:41:18] but there is not up to the changes.

[00:41:22] There's not up to the rate of change.

[00:41:24] And of course, rate of change

[00:41:26] has been increasing multifold.

[00:41:28] I think we can really say the start date

[00:41:31] was probably the invention of the vacuum tube

[00:41:34] was where the acceleration of rate of change.

[00:41:38] And throughout the 70s and 80s,

[00:41:40] personal computers and things of that.

[00:41:42] And now AI, the rate of change is quite dramatic.

[00:41:46] I don't think very many experts in the field

[00:41:49] understand what this really means

[00:41:51] as far as the acceleration

[00:41:53] and the ability to understand it.

[00:41:55] So as you get older,

[00:41:57] the wisdom is a grounding effect.

[00:42:00] It lets you understand where you need

[00:42:03] to roll with punches, right?

[00:42:05] Hyper reactivity is probably one of the biggest problems

[00:42:09] that we have in society today.

[00:42:10] People are over reactive to something that they see.

[00:42:14] An older person might look at it and say,

[00:42:16] you know what, let's see what happens in a couple of days.

[00:42:21] Yeah, keep your mouth shut

[00:42:23] and let's just see what happens.

[00:42:24] You're totally right.

[00:42:26] Like when I was in my 20s,

[00:42:27] if I got a letter from the IRS,

[00:42:29] I would consider jumping off the roof right then.

[00:42:31] Now it usually takes me about a month

[00:42:33] before I consider it.

[00:42:34] Yeah, we're still considering it, right?

[00:42:36] Yeah, so that heightened sensitivity

[00:42:40] is being fed by certain AI algorithms within social media.

[00:42:46] We can say that there's one particular algorithm

[00:42:49] that's designed to pull you into hyper reactivity

[00:42:54] much more than people realize.

[00:42:56] And that's TikTok and that's done through video,

[00:43:00] almost again a Rorschach type of conditioning.

[00:43:05] If you know certain biological responses to imagery,

[00:43:11] sounds, even flash, even subliminal things

[00:43:16] that are implanted in some of this media,

[00:43:20] you know that you can start building a certain level

[00:43:23] of disposition within a person.

[00:43:26] And about 80% of the world is hypersensitive

[00:43:31] to being hypnotized and they may not understand that.

[00:43:35] And I think the other 20% are not hypersensitive

[00:43:39] but still capable of it.

[00:43:40] And hypnotized not necessarily in the kind of classic,

[00:43:44] like look at this watch and fall asleep.

[00:43:45] Exactly.

[00:43:46] But just like the words we hear, the words we see,

[00:43:50] what you're saying basically is both TikTok

[00:43:52] and AI to an extent, they learn us,

[00:43:56] they learn from us by our responses.

[00:43:57] So like TikTok learns how many seconds

[00:43:59] you stayed on a video, exactly what categories,

[00:44:02] what thousand categories overlapping is this video about?

[00:44:07] And then it's, and because it's able to fine tune

[00:44:09] those categories so much just the way AI does

[00:44:11] with a piece of text.

[00:44:13] And then, oh, James likes these thousand different contexts

[00:44:18] that overlap, we're gonna just keep feeding him

[00:44:20] more and more videos like this

[00:44:22] and maybe even guide him towards-

[00:44:24] With some novelty.

[00:44:25] Yeah.

[00:44:26] The idea is over a cross section of people

[00:44:30] that have the same predispositions that you might have,

[00:44:33] there's a model built.

[00:44:34] Not like there is a James model,

[00:44:37] but in a sense there is within the grand AI

[00:44:40] that say TikTok is using.

[00:44:42] And so getting outside the nefarious aspect

[00:44:46] of a state actor and all that, we can leave that aside,

[00:44:50] just looking at time consumption.

[00:44:52] Everybody is battling for your attention and your time.

[00:44:55] And the longer you spend in a TikTok

[00:44:59] where you don't feel time is moving, right?

[00:45:02] If you're engaged and there's just enough novelty

[00:45:05] to tip you over the edge to say, hold it, what was that?

[00:45:09] So it's novelty and familiarity mixed together

[00:45:14] in this very seductive dance with your brain.

[00:45:17] And then along the way you can implant

[00:45:20] particular directionals philosophically and emotionally.

[00:45:24] It's not very hard.

[00:45:26] We've been doing it with movies and TV.

[00:45:29] Anybody battling me?

[00:45:31] Have you ever seen a commercial that was a tear jerker?

[00:45:33] Have you ever cried at the end of the movie?

[00:45:35] Have you ever gotten the, let's go after that person?

[00:45:37] You've been programmed.

[00:45:38] That's part of an emotional programming.

[00:45:42] Well think about like you grew up in the 60s and 70s.

[00:45:44] Think about the television shows that you watched.

[00:45:48] Like everything was to sort of make,

[00:45:52] take things that were considered harsh in society.

[00:45:54] Like the powers that be for instance,

[00:45:57] considered hippies and drugs harsh.

[00:46:01] Vietnam War was harsh.

[00:46:02] Civil rights was a harsh topic.

[00:46:05] And so then think of the shows you watched.

[00:46:07] The Partridge family sort of normalized the hippie.

[00:46:11] The monkeys?

[00:46:12] I mean it was all psychedelic imagery.

[00:46:14] Yeah, it's all psychedelic imagery

[00:46:16] but without mentioning drugs.

[00:46:18] And then there was like the Mod Squad.

[00:46:20] So there's like, it's an FBI team that had appros

[00:46:24] and dressed like hippies.

[00:46:26] And then you had the Brady Bunch.

[00:46:28] This somehow were they divorced?

[00:46:30] Were they widowed?

[00:46:31] But it just sort of normalized the idea

[00:46:32] that families might be,

[00:46:35] it's not like the normal family unit anymore.

[00:46:37] Things are a little different and it's okay.

[00:46:39] It's like everything we watched,

[00:46:42] think of all the war shows.

[00:46:44] I Dream of Jeannie was a war show.

[00:46:45] Major Nelson was going to outer space to shoot people.

[00:46:49] F-Troop.

[00:46:51] Hogan's Heroes.

[00:46:52] Hogan's Heroes.

[00:46:53] Hogan's Heroes, Baba Black Sheep, Star Trek.

[00:46:57] These are all like war shows basically.

[00:46:59] Yeah, so basically that's why when some people

[00:47:03] are very, very smart, they intellectualize this,

[00:47:06] saying I'm invulnerable to hypnotism.

[00:47:09] It's like no, except that fact of your humanity.

[00:47:12] We are emotional creatures.

[00:47:15] We are driven.

[00:47:15] Every single decision we make is ultimately

[00:47:18] a neuropeptide release of chemicals,

[00:47:20] which are by definition emotions.

[00:47:23] So once we understand that we're emotional creatures,

[00:47:26] we accept that reality and then we build from there.

[00:47:29] The problem in society right now

[00:47:30] is that we think we're making rational decisions.

[00:47:34] We think that there's a logical decision that took place

[00:47:37] and the user illusion will prove to you scientifically

[00:47:41] because tour nor standards

[00:47:43] is not a scientist per se, he's a science writer.

[00:47:46] In the late 90s, if you were to write the book today,

[00:47:49] there's much more data and information

[00:47:52] getting back to what reality is.

[00:47:57] There's a half second delay that takes place

[00:48:00] from you doing something and you realizing that you did it.

[00:48:03] Your brain is making you think you did it

[00:48:07] but the super person inside of you

[00:48:10] that we can call it subconscious

[00:48:13] or you can call it the editor of reality for you

[00:48:16] because reality is being edited to you.

[00:48:18] We don't have real time screens on our eyeballs.

[00:48:21] Reality is being represented in the brain

[00:48:25] at a very low bit rate.

[00:48:26] It's 31 bits per second is consciousness.

[00:48:30] That's it and anything beyond 31 bits per second,

[00:48:34] we are just getting background noise and information.

[00:48:37] We're not really dealing with what's going on.

[00:48:41] So we have a throughput bandwidth issue.

[00:48:44] I call it the, well called the bandwidth issue.

[00:48:49] And then we have the half second delay problem.

[00:48:52] Those are the two fundamental things that user illusion

[00:48:55] the tour nor standards wrote presents

[00:48:57] but it presents it in very dense material.

[00:48:59] I read it once a year.

[00:49:00] What's the half second delay?

[00:49:01] The half second delay is what a lot of people like to say

[00:49:04] in a street nomenclature as muscle memory.

[00:49:09] It's like, oh, I hit that ball because of muscle memory.

[00:49:11] Well, there is no muscle memory.

[00:49:13] It's not it is your, in a sense, your subconscious

[00:49:17] is doing it and you're letting it do it rather

[00:49:21] you're giving up the control

[00:49:25] that you're in control of your reality

[00:49:28] and you're just letting it happen.

[00:49:30] And I'm sure you know this being very creative

[00:49:33] is that when you get into the flow of things

[00:49:34] you're kind of taking a step back.

[00:49:37] You're just letting things happen.

[00:49:39] And I see this, I've studied creative people

[00:49:41] my entire life find it fascinating.

[00:49:44] And the hardest thing is, is most people have

[00:49:47] imposter syndrome that are highly creative.

[00:49:50] See don't know where it came from

[00:49:51] and they don't know where it went when it's not there.

[00:49:54] Great songwriters, great novelists

[00:49:56] they are literally in fear

[00:49:59] that it may not come back one day.

[00:50:01] Now you can intellectualize it ex post facto.

[00:50:04] After the fact, you can say, oh yes, of course

[00:50:06] I studied this, I studied that

[00:50:08] and that's how I came up with that.

[00:50:10] But the spark of insight, that creative spark

[00:50:13] that comes into you, nobody's been able

[00:50:16] to fully define it.

[00:50:17] It's a collection of all of these different pieces

[00:50:21] that if you take a step back

[00:50:23] combined in a way that's magic

[00:50:26] but if you try to force it

[00:50:27] if you try to overthink it

[00:50:29] and you try to capture a cloud in your hand

[00:50:32] or get a cup of water by grabbing it as much as you can

[00:50:36] it dissipates.

[00:50:48] Great episode, great conversation.

[00:50:50] We're gonna have part two all about consciousness

[00:50:55] and then part three, the most intense conversation

[00:50:58] I've ever had about AI in my life

[00:51:02] with Brian Romel, such a smart guy

[00:51:06] such a great conversation

[00:51:07] I really love talking to Brian.

[00:51:09] Stay tuned for not only discussions

[00:51:13] about consciousness, AI, quantum mechanics

[00:51:15] but how knowing all this stuff can help your life.