Daniel Schmachtenberger: Steering Civilization Away from Self-Destruction

Lex Fridman (02:00.920)

My first thoughts take more than a page.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:04.520)

They'd probably distill it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:06.840)

Because if they watched, well, I mean, first, I have no idea if their senses are even attuned

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:12.420)

to similar stuff to what our senses are attuned to, or what the nature of their consciousness

Lex Fridman (02:16.960)

is like relative to ours.

Lex Fridman (02:19.000)

So let's assume that they're kind of like us, just technologically more advanced to

Lex Fridman (02:22.480)

get here from wherever they are.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:24.040)

That's the first kind of constraint on the thought experiment.

Lex Fridman (02:27.400)

And then if they've watched throughout all of history, they saw the burning of Alexandria.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:32.760)

They saw that 2,000 years ago in Greece, we were producing things like clocks, the antikytheria

Lex Fridman (02:38.960)

mechanism, and then that technology got lost.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:40.880)

They saw that there wasn't just a steady dialectic of progress.

Lex Fridman (02:45.000)

So every once in a while, there's a giant fire that destroys a lot of things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:49.280)

There's a giant commotion that destroys a lot of things.

Lex Fridman (02:54.280)

Yeah, and it's usually self induced.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (02:58.520)

They would have seen that.

Lex Fridman (03:00.840)

And so as they're looking at us now, as we move past the nuclear weapons age into the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:07.400)

full globalization, anthropocene, exponential tech age, still making our decisions relatively

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:15.100)

similarly to how we did in the stone age as far as rivalry game theory type stuff, I think

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:21.200)

they would think that this is probably most likely one of the planets that is not going

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:24.840)

to make it to being intergalactic because we blow ourselves up in the technological

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:28.040)

adolescence.

Lex Fridman (03:29.600)

And if we are going to, we're going to need some major progress rapidly in the social

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:37.220)

technologies that can guide and bind and direct the physical technologies so that we are safe

Lex Fridman (03:43.660)

vessels for the amount of power we're getting.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (03:46.200)

Actually, Hitchhiker's Guide has an estimation about how much of a risk this particular thing

Lex Fridman (03:55.920)

poses to the rest of the galaxy.

Lex Fridman (03:57.640)

And I think, I forget what it was, I think it was medium or low.

Lex Fridman (04:03.560)

So their estimation was, would be that this species of ant like creatures is not going

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:08.940)

to survive long.

Lex Fridman (04:10.400)

There's ups and downs in terms of technological innovation.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:13.960)

The fundamental nature of their behavior from a game theory perspective hasn't really changed.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:18.520)

They have not learned in any fundamental way how to control and properly incentivize or

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:26.660)

properly do the mechanism design of games to ensure long term survival.

Lex Fridman (04:32.760)

And then they move on to another planet.

Lex Fridman (04:35.720)

Do you think there is, in a slightly more serious question, do you think there's some

Lex Fridman (04:43.440)

number or perhaps a very, very large number of intelligent alien civilizations out there?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:50.560)

Yes, would be hard to think otherwise.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:54.000)

I know, I think Bostrom had a new article not that long ago on why that might not be

Daniel Schmachtenberger (04:58.920)

the case, that the Drake equation might not be the kind of end story on it.

Lex Fridman (05:04.020)

But when I look at the total number of Kepler planets just that we're aware of just galactically

Lex Fridman (05:09.640)

and also like when those life forms were discovered in Mono Lake that didn't have the same six

Daniel Schmachtenberger (05:16.460)

primary atoms, I think it had arsenic replacing phosphorus as one of the primary aspects of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (05:21.360)

its energy metabolism, we get to think about that the building blocks might be more different.

Lex Fridman (05:26.400)

So the physical constraints even that the planets have to have might be more different.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (05:30.760)

It seems really unlikely not to mention interesting things that we've observed that are still

Lex Fridman (05:37.400)

unexplained.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (05:38.400)

As you had guests on your show discussing Tic Tac and all the ones that have visited.

Lex Fridman (05:44.320)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (05:45.320)

Well, let's dive right into that.

Lex Fridman (05:46.560)

What do you make sense of the rich human psychology of there being hundreds of thousands, probably

Daniel Schmachtenberger (05:56.480)

millions of witnesses of UFOs of different kinds on Earth, most of which I presume are

Lex Fridman (06:02.880)

conjured up by the human mind through the perception system.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (06:07.520)

Some number might be true, some number might be reflective of actual physical objects,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (06:12.760)

whether it's you know, drones or testing military technology that secret or otherworldly technology.

Lex Fridman (06:21.080)

What do you make sense of all of that, because it's gained quite a bit of popularity recently.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (06:26.760)

There's some sense in which that's us humans being hopeful and dreaming of otherworldly

Daniel Schmachtenberger (06:37.040)

creatures as a way to escape the dreariness of our of the human condition.

Lex Fridman (06:44.480)

But in another sense, it could be it really could be something truly exciting that science

Daniel Schmachtenberger (06:49.480)

should turn its eye towards.

Lex Fridman (06:53.640)

So what do you where do you place it?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (06:56.320)

Speaking of turning eye towards this is one of those super fascinating, actually super

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:00.960)

consequential possibly topics that I wish I had more time to study and just haven't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:05.720)

allocated so I don't have firm beliefs on this because I haven't got to study it as

Lex Fridman (07:09.000)

much as I want.

Lex Fridman (07:10.000)

So what I'm going to say comes from a superficial assessment.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:15.480)

While we know there are plenty of things that people thought of as UFO sightings that we

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:20.280)

can fully write off, we have other better explanations for them.

Lex Fridman (07:24.400)

What we're interested in is the ones that we don't have better explanations for and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:27.200)

then not just immediately jumping to a theory of what it is, but holding it as unidentified

Lex Fridman (07:33.080)

and being being curious and earnest.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:36.560)

I think the the tic tac one is quite interesting and made it in major media recently.

Lex Fridman (07:42.360)

But I don't know if you ever saw the Disclosure Project, a guy named Steven Greer organized

Daniel Schmachtenberger (07:49.120)

a bunch of mostly US military and some commercial flight people who had direct observation and

Lex Fridman (07:57.520)

classified information disclosing it at a CNN briefing.

Lex Fridman (08:02.100)

And so you saw high ranking generals, admirals, fighter pilots all describing things that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (08:07.480)

they saw on radar with their own eyes or cameras, and also describing some phenomena that had

Daniel Schmachtenberger (08:17.600)

some consistency across different people.

Lex Fridman (08:20.560)

And I find this interesting enough that I think it would be silly to just dismiss it.

Lex Fridman (08:27.320)

And specifically, we can ask the question, how much of it is natural phenomena, ball

Lex Fridman (08:32.000)

lightning or something like that?

Lex Fridman (08:34.440)

And this is why I'm more interested in what fighter pilots and astronauts and people who

Daniel Schmachtenberger (08:39.360)

are trained in being able to identify flying objects and atmospheric phenomena have to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (08:48.960)

say about it.

Lex Fridman (08:51.560)

I think the thing then you could say, well, are they more advanced military craft?

Lex Fridman (08:57.240)

Is it some kind of, you know, human craft?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:00.120)

The interesting thing that a number of them describe is something that's kind of like

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:03.920)

right angles at speed, or not right angles, acute angles at speed, but something that

Lex Fridman (09:09.260)

looks like a different relationship to inertia than physics makes sense for us.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:14.600)

I don't think that there are any human technologies that are doing that even in really deep underground

Lex Fridman (09:20.880)

black projects.

Lex Fridman (09:22.360)

Now one could say, okay, well, could it be a hologram?

Lex Fridman (09:25.760)

Or would it show up on radar if radar is also seeing it?

Lex Fridman (09:28.240)

And so I don't know.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:30.760)

I think there's enough, I mean, and for that to be a massive coordinated psyop, is it as

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:37.440)

interesting and ridiculous in a way as the idea that it's UFOs from some extra planetary

Lex Fridman (09:45.200)

source?

Lex Fridman (09:46.200)

So it's up there on the interesting topics.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:49.340)

To me there's, if it is at all alien technology, it is the dumbest version of alien technology.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (09:57.540)

It's so far away, it's like the old, old crappy VHS tapes of alien technology.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:03.040)

These are like crappy drones that just floated or even like space to the level of like space

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:08.240)

junk because it is so close to our human technology.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:14.280)

We talk about it moves in ways that's unlike what we understand about physics, but it still

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:19.400)

has very similar kind of geometric notions and something that we humans can perceive

Lex Fridman (10:26.960)

with our eyes, all those kinds of things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:28.480)

I feel like alien technology most likely would be something that we would not be able to

Lex Fridman (10:34.800)

perceive.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:35.800)

Not because they're hiding, but because it's so far advanced that it would be beyond the

Lex Fridman (10:43.200)

cognitive capabilities of us humans.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:45.280)

Just as you were saying, as per your answer for alien summarizing Earth, the starting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (10:53.440)

assumption is they have similar perception systems, they have similar cognitive capabilities,

Lex Fridman (10:59.200)

and that very well may not be the case.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (11:01.400)

Let me ask you about staying in aliens for just a little longer because I think it's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (11:08.320)

a good transition in talking about governments and human societies.

Lex Fridman (11:14.440)

Do you think if a US government or any government was in possession of an alien spacecraft or

Daniel Schmachtenberger (11:24.600)

of information related to alien spacecraft, they would have the capacity, structurally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (11:34.220)

would they have the processes, would they be able to communicate that to the public

Daniel Schmachtenberger (11:45.040)

effectively or would they keep it secret in a room and do nothing with it, both to try

Daniel Schmachtenberger (11:50.840)

to preserve military secrets, but also because of the incompetence that's inherent to bureaucracies

Lex Fridman (11:58.400)

or either?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:00.240)

Well, we can certainly see when certain things become declassified 25 or 50 years later that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:08.400)

there were things that the public might have wanted to know that were kept secret for a

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:13.000)

very long time for reasons of at least supposedly national security, which is also a nice source

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:20.600)

of plausible deniability for people covering their ass for doing things that would be problematic

Lex Fridman (12:27.940)

and other purposes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:34.260)

There are, there's a scientist at Stanford who supposedly got some material that was

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:42.600)

recovered from Area 51 type area, did analysis on it using, I believe, electron microscopy

Lex Fridman (12:48.640)

and a couple other methods and came to the idea that it was a nanotech alloy that was

Daniel Schmachtenberger (12:56.520)

something we didn't currently have the ability to do, was not naturally occurring.

Lex Fridman (13:00.320)

So there, I've heard some things and again, like I said, I'm not going to stand behind

Lex Fridman (13:05.040)

any of these because I haven't done the level of study to have high confidence.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (13:13.140)

I think what you said also about would it be super low tech alien craft, like would

Daniel Schmachtenberger (13:19.480)

they necessarily move their atoms around in space or might they do something more interesting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (13:24.240)

than that, might they be able to have a different relationship to the concept of space or information

Daniel Schmachtenberger (13:30.160)

or consciousness or one of the things that the craft supposedly do is not only accelerate

Lex Fridman (13:36.880)

and turn in a way that looks non inertial, but also disappear.

Lex Fridman (13:40.580)

So there's a question as to like the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive and it

Daniel Schmachtenberger (13:45.240)

could be possible to, some people run a hypothesis that they create intentional amounts of exposure

Lex Fridman (13:51.400)

as an invitation of a particular kind, who knows, interesting field.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (13:58.800)

We tend to assume like SETI that's listening out for aliens out there, I've just been

Daniel Schmachtenberger (14:05.400)

recently reading more and more about gravitational waves and you have orbiting black holes that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (14:13.360)

orbit each other, they generate ripples in space time on my, for fun at night when I

Daniel Schmachtenberger (14:20.880)

lay in bed, I think about what it would be like to ride those waves when they, not the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (14:25.960)

low magnitude they are when they reach earth, but get closer to the black holes because

Daniel Schmachtenberger (14:30.600)

it will basically be shrinking and expanding us in all dimensions, including time.

Lex Fridman (14:38.000)

So it's actually ripples through space time that they generate.

Lex Fridman (14:43.040)

Why is it that you couldn't use that, it travels the speed of light, travels at a speed which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (14:51.960)

is a very weird thing to say when you're morphing space time, you could argue it's faster than

Lex Fridman (15:00.200)

the speed of light.

Lex Fridman (15:02.200)

So if you're able to communicate by, to summon enough energy to generate black holes and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:08.720)

to orbit them, to force them to orbit each other, why not travel as the ripples in space

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:16.960)

time, whatever the hell that means, somehow combined with wormholes.

Lex Fridman (15:21.040)

So if you're able to communicate through, like we don't think of gravitational waves

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:26.840)

as something you can communicate with because the radio will have to be a very large size

Lex Fridman (15:33.420)

and very dense, but perhaps that's it, perhaps that's one way to communicate, it's a very

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:39.360)

effective way.

Lex Fridman (15:41.040)

And that would explain, like we wouldn't even be able to make sense of that, of the physics

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:47.640)

that results in an alien species that's able to control gravity at that scale.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:53.320)

I think you just jumped up the Kardashev scale so far that you're not just harnessing the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (15:57.880)

power of a star, but harnessing the power of mutually rotating black holes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:05.840)

That's way above my physics pay grade to think about including even non rotating black hole

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:13.600)

versions of transwarp travel.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:17.040)

I think, you know, you can talk with Eric more about that, I think he has better ideas

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:22.600)

on it than I do.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:23.920)

My hope for the future of humanity mostly does not rest in the near term on our ability

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:30.000)

to get to other habitable planets in time.

Lex Fridman (16:33.140)

And even more than that, in the list of possible solutions of how to improve human civilization,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:39.400)

orbiting black holes is not on the first page for you.

Lex Fridman (16:43.080)

Not on the first page.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:44.080)

Okay.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:45.080)

I bet you did not expect us to start this conversation here, but I'm glad the places

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:49.840)

it went.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (16:52.640)

I am excited on a much smaller scale of Mars, Europa, Titan, Venus, potentially having very

Daniel Schmachtenberger (17:02.600)

like bacteria like life forms, just on a small human level, it's a little bit scary, but

Daniel Schmachtenberger (17:11.560)

mostly really exciting that there might be life elsewhere in the volcanoes and the oceans

Daniel Schmachtenberger (17:19.120)

all around us, teaming, having little societies and whether there's properties about that

Lex Fridman (17:25.240)

kind of life that's somehow different than ours.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (17:28.320)

I don't know what would be more exciting if those colonies of single cell type organisms,

Lex Fridman (17:35.320)

what would be more exciting if they're different or they're the same?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (17:39.360)

If they're the same, that means through the rest of the universe, there's life forms like

Lex Fridman (17:47.080)

us, something like us everywhere.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (17:51.320)

If they're different, that's also really exciting because there's life forms everywhere that

Lex Fridman (17:57.160)

are not like us.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:00.440)

That's a little bit scary.

Lex Fridman (18:01.440)

I don't know what's scarier actually.

Lex Fridman (18:04.640)

I think both scary and exciting no matter what, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:08.600)

The idea that they could be very different is philosophically very interesting for us

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:11.560)

to open our aperture on what life and consciousness and self replicating possibilities could look

Lex Fridman (18:17.640)

like.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:19.760)

The question on are they different or the same, obviously there's lots of life here

Lex Fridman (18:22.560)

that is the same in some ways and different in other ways.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:26.840)

When you take the thing that we call an invasive species is something that's still pretty the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:30.520)

same hydrocarbon based thing, but co evolved with co selective pressures in a certain environment,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:36.360)

we move it to another environment, it might be devastating to that whole ecosystem because

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:39.720)

it's just different enough that it messes up the self stabilizing dynamics of that ecosystem.

Lex Fridman (18:44.960)

So the question of are they, would they be different in ways where we could still figure

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:52.600)

out a way to inhabit a biosphere together or fundamentally not fundamentally the nature

Daniel Schmachtenberger (18:59.280)

of how they operate and the nature of how we operate would be incommensurable is a deep

Lex Fridman (19:04.240)

question.

Lex Fridman (19:05.240)

Well, we offline talked about mimetic theory, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:10.000)

It seems like if there were sufficiently different where we would not even, we can coexist on

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:15.600)

different planes, it seems like a good thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:19.620)

If we're close enough together to where we'd be competing, then it's, you're getting into

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:24.400)

the world of viruses and pathogens and all those kinds of things to where we would, one

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:30.040)

of us would die off quickly through basically mass murder without even accidentally.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:40.160)

If we just had a self replicating single celled kind of creature that happened to not work

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:48.560)

well for the hydrocarbon life that was here that got introduced because he either output

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:53.720)

something that was toxic or utilized up the same resource too quickly and it just replicated

Daniel Schmachtenberger (19:57.520)

faster and mutated faster, that it wouldn't be a mimetic theory, conflict theory kind

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:01.480)

through mimesis.

Lex Fridman (1:00:02.560)

One of the things that Gerard says is they're also learning what to want.

Lex Fridman (1:00:06.760)

And they learn what to want.

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.880)

They learn desire by watching what other people want.

Lex Fridman (1:00:10.580)

And so, intrinsic to this, people end up wanting what other people want and if we can't have

Lex Fridman (1:00:16.440)

what other people have without taking it away from them, then that becomes a source of conflict.

Lex Fridman (1:00:21.760)

So the mimesis of desire is the fundamental generator of conflict and that then the conflict

Lex Fridman (1:00:29.420)

energy within a group of people will build over time.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:32.920)

This is a very, very crude interpretation of the theory.

Lex Fridman (1:00:35.560)

Can we just pause on that?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:37.800)

For people who are not familiar and for me who hasn't, I'm loosely familiar but haven't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:42.920)

internalized it, but every time I think about it, it's a very compelling view of the world.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:46.600)

Whether it's true or not, it's quite, it's like when you take everything Freud says as

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:53.400)

truth, it's a very interesting way to think about the world and in the same way, thinking

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:00:59.520)

about the mimetic theory of desire that everything we want is imitation of other people's wants.

Lex Fridman (1:01:11.320)

We don't have any original wants.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:01:13.360)

We're constantly imitating others.

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.840)

And so, and not just others, but others we're exposed to.

Lex Fridman (1:01:21.400)

So there's these little local pockets, however defined local, of people imitating each other.

Lex Fridman (1:01:27.600)

And one that's super empowering because then you can pick which group you can join.

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.880)

What do you want to imitate?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:01:37.000)

It's the old like, whoever your friends are, that's what your life is going to be like.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:01:42.640)

That's really powerful.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:01:43.640)

I mean, it's depressing that we're so unoriginal, but it's also liberating in that if this holds

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:01:50.400)

true, that we can choose our life by choosing the people we hang out with.

Lex Fridman (1:01:55.680)

So okay.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:01:57.120)

Thoughts that are very compelling that seem like they're more absolute than they actually

Lex Fridman (1:02:01.020)

are end up also being dangerous.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:02.840)

We want to, I'm going to discuss here where I think we need to amend this particular theory.

Lex Fridman (1:02:10.380)

But specifically, you just said something that everyone who's paid attention knows is

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:14.460)

true experientially, which is who you're around affects who you become.

Lex Fridman (1:02:19.080)

And as libertarian and self determining and sovereign as we'd like to be, everybody I

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:26.520)

think knows that if you got put in the maximum security prison, aspects of your personality

Lex Fridman (1:02:31.640)

would have to adapt or you wouldn't survive there, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:34.560)

You would become different.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:37.020)

If you grew up in Darfur versus Finland, you would be different with your same genetics,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:40.720)

like just there's no real question about that.

Lex Fridman (1:02:44.440)

And that even today, if you hang out in a place with ultra marathoners as your roommates

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:50.320)

or all people who are obese as your roommates, the statistical likelihood of what happens

Lex Fridman (1:02:55.360)

to your fitness is pretty clear, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:02:57.040)

Like the behavioral science of this is pretty clear.

Lex Fridman (1:02:59.440)

So the whole saying we are the average of the five people we spend the most time around.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:04.280)

I think the more self reflective someone is and the more time they spend by themselves

Lex Fridman (1:03:07.800)

in self reflection, the less this is true, but it's still true.

Lex Fridman (1:03:10.800)

So one of the best things someone can do to become more self determined is be self determined

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:16.680)

about the environments they want to put themselves in, because to the degree that there is some

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:20.320)

self determination and some determination by the environment, don't be fighting an environment

Lex Fridman (1:03:24.800)

that is predisposing you in bad directions.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:27.140)

Try to put yourself in an environment that is predisposing the things that you want.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:30.960)

In turn, try to affect the environment in ways that predispose positive things for those

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:34.200)

around you.

Lex Fridman (1:03:36.240)

Or perhaps also there's probably interesting ways to play with this.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:39.440)

You could probably put yourself like form connections that have this perfect tension

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:45.840)

in all directions to where you're actually free to decide whatever the heck you want,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:50.040)

because the set of wants within your circle of interactions is so conflicting that you're

Lex Fridman (1:03:56.820)

free to choose whichever one.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:03:59.240)

If there's enough tension, as opposed to everybody aligned like a flock of birds.

Lex Fridman (1:04:03.360)

Yeah, I mean, you definitely want that all of the dialectics would be balanced.

Lex Fridman (1:04:09.920)

So if you have someone who is extremely oriented to self empowerment and someone who's extremely

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:17.240)

oriented to kind of empathy and compassion, both the dialectic of those is better than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:21.320)

either of them on their own.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:24.000)

If you have both of them inhabiting, being inhabited better than you by the same person

Lex Fridman (1:04:28.480)

and spending time around that person will probably do well for you.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:32.640)

I think the thing you just mentioned is super important when it comes to cognitive schools,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:36.920)

which is I think one of the fastest things people can do to improve their learning and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:43.880)

their not just cognitive learning, but their meaningful problem solving communication and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:04:50.880)

civic capacity, capacity to participate as a citizen with other people and making the

Lex Fridman (1:04:54.860)

world better is to be seeking dialectical synthesis all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:05:01.080)

And so in the Hegelian sense, if you have a thesis, you have an antithesis.

Lex Fridman (1:05:06.280)

So maybe we have libertarianism on one side and Marxist kind of communism on the other

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:05:10.240)

side.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.240)

And one is arguing that the individual is the unit of choice.

Lex Fridman (1:05:16.760)

And so we want to increase the freedom and support of individual choice because as they

Lex Fridman (1:05:21.920)

make more agentic choices, it'll produce a better whole for everybody.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:05:25.280)

The other side saying, well, the individuals are conditioned by their environment who would

Lex Fridman (1:05:28.080)

choose to be born into Darfur rather than Finland.

Lex Fridman (1:05:31.880)

So we actually need to collectively make environments that are good because the environment conditions

Lex Fridman (1:05:39.000)

the individuals.

Lex Fridman (1:05:40.000)

So you have a thesis and an antithesis.

Lex Fridman (1:05:42.400)

And then Hegel's ideas, you have a synthesis, which is a kind of higher order truth that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:05:46.040)

understands how those relate in a way that neither of them do.

Lex Fridman (1:05:50.200)

And so it is actually at a higher order of complexity.

Lex Fridman (1:05:52.760)

So the first part would be, can I steel man each of these?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:05:55.540)

Can I argue each one well enough that the proponents of it are like, totally, you got

Lex Fridman (1:05:58.860)

that?

Lex Fridman (1:06:00.040)

And not just argue it rhetorically, but can I inhabit it where I can try to see and feel

Lex Fridman (1:06:04.680)

the world the way someone seeing and feeling the world that way would?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:06:08.540)

Because once I do, then I don't want to screw those people because there's truth in it,

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.520)

right?

Lex Fridman (1:06:13.520)

And I'm not going to go back to war with them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:06:14.520)

I'm going to go to finding solutions that could actually work at a higher order.

Lex Fridman (1:06:18.400)

If I don't go to a higher order, then there's war.

Lex Fridman (1:06:21.760)

And but then the higher order thing would be, well, it seems like the individual does

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.680)

affect the commons and the collective and other people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:06:28.800)

It also seems like the collective conditions individuals at least statistically.

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.120)

And I can cherry pick out the one guy who got out of the ghetto and pulled himself up

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:06:37.480)

by his bootstraps.

Lex Fridman (1:06:38.480)

But I can also say statistically that most people born into the ghetto show up differently

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:06:42.120)

than most people born into the Hamptons.

Lex Fridman (1:06:44.520)

And so unless you want to argue that and have you take your child from the Hamptons and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:06:49.480)

put them in the ghetto, then like, come on, be realistic about this thing.

Lex Fridman (1:06:52.980)

So how do we make, we don't want social systems that make weak dependent individuals, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:07:00.240)

The welfare argument.

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.240)

But we also don't want no social system that supports individuals to do better.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:07:08.080)

We don't want individuals where their self expression and agency fucks the environment

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.300)

and everybody else and employs slave labor and whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:07:15.680)

So can we make it to where individuals are creating holes that are better for conditioning

Lex Fridman (1:07:21.560)

other individuals?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:07:22.560)

Can we make it to where we have holes that are conditioning increased agency and sovereignty,

Lex Fridman (1:07:26.560)

right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:07:27.560)

That would be the synthesis.

Lex Fridman (1:07:28.560)

So the thing that I'm coming to here is if people have that as a frame, and sometimes

Lex Fridman (1:07:33.280)

it's not just thesis and antithesis, it's like eight different views, right?

Lex Fridman (1:07:37.600)

Can I steel man each view?

Lex Fridman (1:07:39.520)

This is not just, can I take the perspective, but am I seeking them?

Lex Fridman (1:07:42.240)

Am I actively trying to inhabit other people's perspective?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:07:46.600)

Then can I really try to essentialize it and argue the best points of it, both the sense

Lex Fridman (1:07:52.060)

making about reality and the values, why these values actually matter?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:07:57.280)

Then just like I want to seek those perspectives, then I want to seek, is there a higher order

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:04.020)

set of understandings that could fulfill the values of and synthesize the sense making

Lex Fridman (1:08:08.560)

of all of them simultaneously?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:10.360)

Maybe I won't get it, but I want to be seeking it and I want to be seeking progressively

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:13.140)

better ones.

Lex Fridman (1:08:14.540)

So this is perspective seeking, driving perspective taking, and then seeking synthesis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:21.960)

I think that that one cognitive disposition might be the most helpful thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:31.680)

Would you put a title of dialectic synthesis on that process because that seems to be such

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:36.040)

a part, so like this rigorous empathy, like it's not just empathy.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:42.680)

It's empathy with rigor, like you really want to understand and embody different worldviews

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.240)

and then try to find a higher order synthesis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:50.840)

Okay, so I remember last night you told me when we first met, you said that you looked

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:08:58.080)

in somebody's eyes and you felt that you had suffered in some ways that they had suffered

Lex Fridman (1:09:01.800)

and so you could trust them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:03.880)

Empathy pathos, right, creates a certain sense of kind of shared bonding and shared intimacy.

Lex Fridman (1:09:08.000)

So empathy is actually feeling the suffering of somebody else and feeling the depth of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:14.000)

their sentience.

Lex Fridman (1:09:15.000)

I don't want to fuck them anymore.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:16.000)

I don't want to hurt them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:17.000)

I don't want to behave, I don't want my proposition to go through when I go and inhabit the perspective

Lex Fridman (1:09:22.480)

of the other people if they feel that's really going to mess them up, right?

Lex Fridman (1:09:25.980)

And so the rigorous empathy, it's different than just compassion, which is I generally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:30.320)

care.

Lex Fridman (1:09:31.320)

I have a generalized care, but I don't know what it's like to be them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:34.280)

I can never know what it's like to be them perfectly and that there's a humility you

Lex Fridman (1:09:37.500)

have to have, which is my most rigorous attempt is still not it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:42.480)

My most rigorous attempt, mine, to know what it's like to be a woman is still not it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:46.720)

I have no question that if I was actually a woman, it would be different than my best

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:49.520)

guesses.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:09:50.520)

I have no question if I was actually black, it would be different than my best guesses.

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.560)

So there's a humility in that which keeps me listening because I don't think that I

Lex Fridman (1:09:57.880)

know fully, but I want to, and I'm going to keep trying better to.

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.440)

And then I want to accross them, and then I want to say, is there a way we can forward

Lex Fridman (1:10:05.560)

together and not have to be in war?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:07.920)

It has to be something that could meet the values that everyone holds, that could reconcile

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:12.400)

the partial sensemaking that everyone holds, and that could offer a way forward that is

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:17.000)

more agreeable than the partial perspectives at war with each other.

Lex Fridman (1:10:21.280)

But so the more you succeed at this empathy with humility, the more you're carrying the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:26.600)

burden of other people's pain, essentially.

Lex Fridman (1:10:30.000)

Now, this goes back to the question of do I see us as one being or 7.8 billion.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:38.720)

I think if I'm overwhelmed with my own pain, I can't empathize that much because I don't

Lex Fridman (1:10:47.120)

have the bandwidth.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:48.120)

I don't have the capacity.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:49.680)

If I don't feel like I can do something about a particular problem in the world, it's hard

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:10:53.080)

to feel it because it's just too devastating.

Lex Fridman (1:10:56.040)

And so a lot of people go numb and even go nihilistic because they just don't feel the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:00.280)

agency.

Lex Fridman (1:11:01.280)

So as I actually become more empowered as an individual and have more sense of agency,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:05.680)

I also become more empowered to be more empathetic for others and be more connected to that shared

Lex Fridman (1:11:10.560)

burden and want to be able to make choices on behalf of and in benefit of.

Lex Fridman (1:11:15.720)

So this way of living seems like a way of living that would solve a lot of problems

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.620)

in society from a cellular automata perspective.

Lex Fridman (1:11:28.540)

So if you have a bunch of little agents behaving in this way, my intuition, there'll be interesting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:34.380)

complexities that emerge, but my intuition is it will create a society that's very different

Lex Fridman (1:11:39.740)

and recognizably better than the one we have today.

Lex Fridman (1:11:44.760)

How much like...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:45.760)

Oh, wait, hold that question because I want to come back to it, but this brings us back

Lex Fridman (1:11:49.960)

to Gerard, which we didn't answer.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:51.620)

The conflict theory.

Lex Fridman (1:11:52.620)

Yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:53.620)

Because about how to get past the conflict theory.

Lex Fridman (1:11:54.840)

Yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:11:55.840)

You know the Robert Frost poem about the two paths and you never have enough time to return

Lex Fridman (1:11:59.040)

back to the other?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:12:00.040)

We're going to have to do that quite a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:12:01.400)

We're going to be living that poem over and over again, but yes, how to...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:12:08.320)

Let's return back.

Lex Fridman (1:12:09.320)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:12:10.320)

So the rest of the argument goes, you learn to want what other people want, therefore

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:12:14.500)

fundamental conflict based in our desire because we want the thing that somebody else has.

Lex Fridman (1:12:19.200)

And then people are in conflict over trying to get the same stuff, power, status, attention,

Lex Fridman (1:12:24.960)

physical stuff, a mate, whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (1:12:27.780)

And then we learn the conflict by watching.

Lex Fridman (1:12:30.680)

And so then the conflict becomes metic.

Lex Fridman (1:12:33.280)

And we become on the Palestinian side or the Israeli side or the communist or capitalist

Lex Fridman (1:12:37.840)

side or the left or right politically or whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (1:12:41.460)

And until eventually the conflict energy in the system builds up so much that some type

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:12:46.720)

of violence is needed to get the bad guy, whoever it is that we're going to blame.

Lex Fridman (1:12:50.920)

And you know, Gerard talks about why scapegoating was kind of a mechanism to minimize the amount

Lex Fridman (1:12:55.180)

of violence.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:12:56.180)

Let's blame a scapegoat as being more relevant than they really were.

Lex Fridman (1:13:00.460)

But if we all believe it, then we can all kind of calm down with the conflict energy.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:03.600)

It's a really interesting concept, by the way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:06.240)

I mean, you beautifully summarized it, but the idea that there's a scapegoat, that there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:11.200)

this kind of thing naturally leads to a conflict and then they find the other, some group that's

Lex Fridman (1:13:15.900)

the other that's either real or artificial as the cause of the conflict.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:20.360)

Well, it's always artificial because the cause of the conflict in Gerard is the mimesis of

Lex Fridman (1:13:25.040)

desire itself.

Lex Fridman (1:13:26.040)

And how do we attack that?

Lex Fridman (1:13:27.640)

How do we attack that it's our own desire?

Lex Fridman (1:13:30.240)

So this now gets to something more like Buddha said, right, which was desire is the cause

Lex Fridman (1:13:33.880)

of suffering.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:34.880)

Gerard and Buddha would kind of agree in this way.

Lex Fridman (1:13:40.160)

So but that's that explains I mean, again, it's a compelling description of human history

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:46.720)

that we do tend to come up with the other.

Lex Fridman (1:13:50.040)

And

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:51.040)

okay, kind of I just I just had such a funny experience with someone critiquing Gerard

Lex Fridman (1:13:55.440)

the other day in such an elegant and beautiful and simple way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:13:59.760)

It's a friend who's grew up Aboriginal Australian, is a scholar of Aboriginal social technologies.

Lex Fridman (1:14:12.760)

He's like, nah man, Gerard just made shit up about how tribes work.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:16.960)

Like we come from a tribe, we've got tens of thousands of years, and we didn't have

Lex Fridman (1:14:21.080)

increasing conflict and then scapegoat and kill someone.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:23.880)

We'd have a little bit of conflict and then we would dance and then everybody'd be fine.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:28.040)

We'd dance around the campfire, everyone would like kind of physically get the energy out,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:31.120)

we'd look in each other's eyes, we'd have positive bonding, and then we're fine.

Lex Fridman (1:14:34.800)

And nobody, no scapegoats.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:36.540)

And

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:37.540)

I think that's called the Joe Rogan theory of desire, which is, he's like, all all of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:42.680)

human problems have to do with the fact that you don't do enough hard shit in your day.

Lex Fridman (1:14:47.000)

So maybe, maybe just dance it because he says like doing exercise and running on the treadmill

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:14:51.720)

gets gets all the demons out and maybe just dancing gets all the demons out.

Lex Fridman (1:14:55.320)

So this is why I say we have to be careful with taking an idea that seems too explanatory

Lex Fridman (1:15:00.440)

and then taking it as a given and then saying, well, now that we're stuck with the fact that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:06.080)

conflict is inexorable because human, because mimetic desire and therefore, how do we deal

Lex Fridman (1:15:09.900)

with the inexorability of the conflict and how to sublimate violence?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:12.920)

Well, no, the whole thing might be actually gibberish, meaning it's only true in certain

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:17.080)

conditions and other conditions it's not true.

Lex Fridman (1:15:19.200)

So the deeper question is under which conditions is that true?

Lex Fridman (1:15:22.340)

Under which conditions is it not true?

Lex Fridman (1:15:23.960)

What do those other conditions make possible and look like?

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.000)

And in general, we should stay away from really compelling models of reality because there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:31.360)

something about, about our brains that these models become sticky and we can't even think

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:36.040)

outside of them.

Lex Fridman (1:15:37.040)

So.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:38.040)

It's not that we stay away from them.

Lex Fridman (1:15:39.040)

It's that we know that the model of reality is never reality.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:42.540)

That's the key thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:43.540)

Humility again, it goes back to just having the humility that you don't have a perfect

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:47.280)

model of reality.

Lex Fridman (1:15:48.480)

There's an ep, the, the model of reality could never be reality.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:15:52.060)

The process of modeling is inherently information reduction and I can never show that the unknown

Lex Fridman (1:16:00.000)

unknown set has been factored.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:02.480)

It's back to the cellular automata.

Lex Fridman (1:16:05.720)

You can't, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:10.240)

Like when you realize it's unfortunately, sadly impossible to, to create a model of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:19.300)

cellular automata, even if you know the basic rules that predict to even any degree of accuracy,

Lex Fridman (1:16:26.440)

what how that system will evolve, which is fascinating mathematically.

Lex Fridman (1:16:32.200)

Sorry.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:33.200)

I think about it quite a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:16:34.400)

It's very annoying.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:36.400)

Wolfram has this rule 30, like you should be able to predict it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:41.980)

It's so simple, but you can't predict what's going to be like, there's a, there's a problem

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:48.040)

he defines, like try to predict some aspect of the middle, middle column of the system,

Lex Fridman (1:16:53.240)

just anything about it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:16:54.760)

What's going to happen in the future.

Lex Fridman (1:16:55.760)

And you can't, you can't, it sucks because then we can't make sense of this world in

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:03.960)

a real, in a reality, in a definitive way.

Lex Fridman (1:17:07.680)

It's always like in the striving, like it, we're always striving.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:11.920)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:17:12.920)

I don't think this sucks.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:15.480)

That so that's a feature, not a bug.

Lex Fridman (1:17:17.880)

Well, that's assuming a designer.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:21.520)

I would say I don't think it sucks.

Lex Fridman (1:17:23.240)

I think it's not only beautiful, but maybe necessary for beauty.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:27.800)

The mess.

Lex Fridman (1:17:30.000)

So you're a, so you're, you're disagree Jordan Pearson should clean up your room.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:35.360)

You like the rooms messy.

Lex Fridman (1:17:36.720)

It's a, it's essential for the, for beauty.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:39.560)

It's not, it's not that it's okay.

Lex Fridman (1:17:42.640)

I take, I have no idea if it was intended this way.

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.080)

And so I'm just interpreting it a way I like the commandment about having no false idols

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:52.560)

to me, the way I interpret that that is meaningful is that re reality is sacred to me.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:17:58.600)

I have a reverence for reality, but I know my best understanding of it is never complete.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:04.920)

I know my best model of it is a model where I tried to make some kind of predictive capacity

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:11.900)

by reducing the complexity of it to a set of stuff that I could observe and then a subset

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:16.600)

of that stuff that I thought was the causal dynamics and then some set of, you know, mechanisms

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:20.680)

that are involved.

Lex Fridman (1:18:22.100)

And what we find is that it can be super useful, like Newtonian gravity can help us do ballistic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:27.960)

curves and all kinds of super useful stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:18:30.080)

And then we get to the place where it doesn't explain what's happening at the cosmological

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:34.520)

scale or at a quantum scale.

Lex Fridman (1:18:36.920)

And at each time, what we're finding is we excluded stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:18:42.120)

And it also doesn't explain the reconciliation of gravity with quantum mechanics and the

Lex Fridman (1:18:46.120)

other kind of fundamental laws.

Lex Fridman (1:18:48.400)

So models can be useful, but they're never true with a capital T, meaning they're never

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:53.000)

an actual real full, they're never a complete description of what's happening in real systems.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:18:59.640)

They can be a complete description of what's happening in an artificial system that was

Lex Fridman (1:19:02.800)

the result of applying a model.

Lex Fridman (1:19:04.700)

So the model of a circuit board and the circuit board are the same thing, but I would argue

Lex Fridman (1:19:07.960)

that the model of a cell and the cell are not the same thing.

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.760)

And I would say this is key to what we call complexity versus the complicated, which is

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:16.640)

a distinction Dave Snowden made well in defining the difference between simple, complicated,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:24.040)

complex and chaotic systems.

Lex Fridman (1:19:26.060)

But one of the definers in complex systems is that no matter how you model the complex

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:30.160)

system, it will still have some emergent behavior not predicted by the model.

Lex Fridman (1:19:34.360)

Can you elaborate on the complex versus the complicated?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:37.740)

Complicated means we can fully explicate the phase space of all the things that it can

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.600)

do.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:42.600)

We can program it.

Lex Fridman (1:19:44.200)

All human, not all, for the most part, human built things are complicated.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:49.000)

They don't self organize.

Lex Fridman (1:19:51.180)

They don't self repair.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:52.240)

They're not self evolving and we can make a blueprint for them where, sorry, for human

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:19:57.640)

systems, for human technologies, human technologies, that are basically the application of models

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:20:04.200)

right.

Lex Fridman (1:20:06.800)

And engineering is kind of applied science, science as the modeling process.

Lex Fridman (1:20:12.240)

And but with humans are complex, complex stuff with biological type stuff and sociological

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:20:19.920)

type stuff, it more has generator functions and even those can't be fully explicated than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:20:25.480)

it has or our explanation can't prove that it has closure of what would be in the unknown

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.840)

unknown set where we keep finding like, oh, it's just the genome.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:20:33.520)

Oh, well now it's the genome and the epigenome and then a recursive change on the epigenome

Lex Fridman (1:20:37.100)

because of the proteome.

Lex Fridman (1:20:38.100)

And then there's mitochondrial DNA and then viruses affected and fuck, right?

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.780)

So it's like we get overexcited when we think we found the thing.

Lex Fridman (1:20:46.820)

So on Facebook, you know how you can list your relationship as complicated?

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.760)

It should actually say it's, it's complex.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:20:52.160)

That's the more accurate description.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:20:54.980)

You self terminating is a really interesting idea that you talk about quite a bit.

Lex Fridman (1:21:01.480)

First of all, what is a self terminating system?

Lex Fridman (1:21:04.080)

And I think you have a sense, correct me if I'm wrong, that human civilization is a currently

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:21:11.080)

is, is a self terminating system.

Lex Fridman (1:21:16.180)

Why do you have that intuition combined with the definition of what soft self terminating

Lex Fridman (1:21:20.240)

means?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:21:21.240)

Okay, so if we look at human societies historically, human civilizations, it's not that hard to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:21:33.400)

realize that most of the major civilizations and empires of the past don't exist anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:21:37.920)

So they had a life cycle, they died for some reason.

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.640)

So we don't still have the early Egyptian empire or Inca or Maya or Aztec or any of

Lex Fridman (1:21:46.320)

those, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:47.320)

So they, they terminated, sometimes it seems like they were terminated from the outside

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.560)

in war.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:21:53.560)

Sometimes it seems like they self terminated.

Lex Fridman (1:21:54.560)

When we look at Easter Island, it was a self termination.

Lex Fridman (1:21:57.720)

So let's go ahead and take an island situation.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:00.680)

If I have an island and we are consuming the resources on that island faster than the resources

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:05.180)

can replicate themselves and there's a finite space there, that system is going to self

Lex Fridman (1:22:09.760)

terminate.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:10.760)

It's not going to be able to keep doing that thing because you'll get to a place of there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:13.520)

no resources left and then you get a, so now if I'm utilizing the resources faster than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:20.080)

they can replicate or faster than they can replenish and I'm actually growing our population

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:25.320)

in the process, I'm even increasing the rate of the utilization of resources, I might get

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:22:30.400)

an exponential curve and then hit a wall and then just collapse the exponential curve rather

Lex Fridman (1:22:35.000)

than do an S curve or some other kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:22:39.980)

So self terminating system is any system that depends upon a substrate system that is debasing

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.060)

its own substrate, that is debasing what it depends upon.

Lex Fridman (1:22:50.480)

So you're right that if you look at empires, they rise and fall throughout human history,

Lex Fridman (1:22:58.320)

but not this time, bro.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:23:02.080)

This one's going to last forever.

Lex Fridman (1:23:04.680)

I like that idea.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:23:06.520)

I think that if we don't understand why all the previous ones failed, we can't ensure

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.760)

that.

Lex Fridman (1:23:11.760)

And so I think it's very important to understand it well so that we can have that be a designed

Lex Fridman (1:23:15.240)

outcome with somewhat decent probability.

Lex Fridman (1:23:18.760)

So we're, it's sort of in terms of consuming the resources on the island, we're a clever

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:23:24.100)

bunch and we keep coming up, especially when on the horizon there is a termination point,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:23:33.800)

we keep coming up with clever ways of avoiding disaster, of avoiding collapse, of constructing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:23:40.680)

This is where technological innovation, this is where growth comes in, coming up with different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:23:44.760)

ways to improve productivity and the way society functions such that we consume less resources

Lex Fridman (1:23:50.060)

or get a lot more from the resources we have.

Lex Fridman (1:23:53.880)

So there's some sense in which there's a human ingenuity is a source for optimism about the

Lex Fridman (1:24:02.080)

future of this particular system that may not be self terminating.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:07.720)

If there's more innovation than there is consumption.

Lex Fridman (1:24:13.080)

So overconsumption of resources is just one way I think can self terminate.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:17.400)

We're just kind of starting here.

Lex Fridman (1:24:18.920)

But there are reasons for optimism and pessimism then they're both worth understanding and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:27.480)

there's failure modes on understanding either without the other.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:31.960)

As we mentioned previously, there's what I would call naive techno optimism, naive techno

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:38.320)

capital optimism that says stuff just has been getting better and better and we wouldn't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:43.520)

want to live in the dark ages and tech has done all this awesome stuff and we know the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:48.160)

proponents of those models and this stuff is going to kind of keep getting better.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:52.240)

Of course there are problems, but human ingenuity rises to its supply and demand will solve

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:55.720)

the problems, whatever.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:24:56.720)

Would you put Rick or as well in that, or in that bucket, is there some specific people

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:03.600)

you have in mind or naive optimism is truly naive to where you're essentially just have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:08.600)

an optimism that's blind to any kind of realities of the way technology progresses.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:13.400)

I don't think that anyone who thinks about it and writes about it is perfectly naive.

Lex Fridman (1:25:22.080)

Gotcha.

Lex Fridman (1:25:23.080)

But there might be.

Lex Fridman (1:25:24.080)

It's a platonic ideal.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:25.720)

There might be a bias in the nature of the assessment.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:29.640)

I would also say there's kind of naive techno pessimism and there are critics of technology.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:40.320)

I mean, you read the Unabomber's Manifesto on why technology can't not result in our

Lex Fridman (1:25:46.200)

self termination, so we have to take it out before it gets any further.

Lex Fridman (1:25:51.280)

But also if you read a lot of the X risk community, you know, Bostrom and friends, it's like our

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:25:58.080)

total number of existential risks and the total probability of them is going up.

Lex Fridman (1:26:04.160)

And so I think that there are, we have to hold together where our positive possibilities

Lex Fridman (1:26:11.780)

and our risk possibilities are both increasing and then say for the positive possibilities

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:16.920)

to be realized long term, all of the catastrophic risks have to not happen.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:22.640)

Any of the catastrophic risks happening is enough to keep that positive outcome from

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:26.640)

occurring.

Lex Fridman (1:26:27.640)

So how do we ensure that none of them happen?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:30.020)

If we want to say, let's have a civilization that doesn't collapse.

Lex Fridman (1:26:33.100)

So again, Collapse Theory, it's worth looking at books like The Collapse of Complex Societies

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:38.960)

by Joseph Tainter.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:39.960)

It does an analysis of that many of the societies fell for internal institutional decay, civilizational

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:49.640)

decay reasons.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:51.440)

Baudrillard in Simulation and Simulacra looks at a very different way of looking at how

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:26:55.720)

institutional decay and the collective intelligence of a system happens and it becomes kind of

Lex Fridman (1:26:59.720)

more internally parasitic on itself.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:27:02.800)

Obviously Jared Diamond made a more popular book called Collapse.

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.640)

And as we were mentioning, the anticatheria mechanism has been getting attention in the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:27:10.600)

news lately.

Lex Fridman (1:27:11.600)

It was like a 2000 year old clock, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:27:14.240)

Like metal gears.

Lex Fridman (1:27:15.960)

And does that mean we lost like 1500 years of technological progress?

Lex Fridman (1:27:23.800)

And from a society that was relatively technologically advanced.

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.440)

So what I'm interested in here is being able to say, okay, well, why did previous societies

Lex Fridman (1:27:35.720)

fail?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:27:38.080)

Can we understand that abstractly enough that we can make a civilizational model that isn't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:27:44.960)

just trying to solve one type of failure, but solve the underlying things that generate

Lex Fridman (1:27:49.480)

the failures as a whole?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:27:51.560)

Are there some underlying generator functions or patterns that would make a system self

Lex Fridman (1:27:56.160)

terminating?

Lex Fridman (1:27:57.240)

And can we solve those and have that be the kernel of a new civilizational model that

Lex Fridman (1:28:00.600)

is not self terminating?

Lex Fridman (1:28:02.960)

And can we then be able to actually look at the categories of extras we're aware of and

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.920)

see that we actually have resilience in the presence of those?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:28:10.440)

Not just resilience, but antifragility.

Lex Fridman (1:28:13.160)

And I would say for the optimism to be grounded, it has to actually be able to understand the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:28:18.920)

risk space well and have adequate solutions for it.

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.540)

So can we try to dig into some basic intuitions about the underlying sources of catastrophic

Lex Fridman (1:28:31.860)

failures of the system and overconsumption that's built in into self terminating systems?

Lex Fridman (1:28:37.480)

So both the overconsumption, which is like the slow death, and then there's the fast

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:28:42.400)

death of nuclear war and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:28:45.720)

AGI, biotech, bioengineering, nanotechnology, nano, my favorite nanobots.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:28:53.760)

Nanobots are my favorite because it sounds so cool to me that I could just know that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:28:59.960)

I would be one of the scientists that would be full steam ahead in building them without

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:06.160)

sufficiently thinking about the negative consequences.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:08.680)

I would definitely be, I would be podcasting all about the negative consequences, but when

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:14.080)

I go back home, I'd be, I'd just in my heart know the amount of excitement is a dumb descendant

Lex Fridman (1:29:20.800)

of ape, no offense to apes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:24.600)

I want to backtrack on my previous comments about, negative comments about apes.

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.360)

That I have that sense of excitement that would result in problems.

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.020)

So sorry, a lot of things said, but what's, can we start to pull it a thread because you've

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:43.800)

also provided a kind of a beautiful general approach to this, which is this dialectic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:50.200)

synthesis or just rigorous empathy, whatever, whatever word we want to put to it, that seems

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:29:57.440)

to be from the individual perspective as one way to sort of live in the world as we tried

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:01.960)

to figure out how to construct non self terminating systems.

Lex Fridman (1:30:06.180)

So what, what are some underlying sources?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:08.200)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:09.200)

First I have to say, I actually really respect Drexler for emphasizing Grey Goo and engines

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:17.120)

of creation back in the day to make sure the world was paying adequate attention to the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:23.880)

risks of the nanotech as someone who was right at the cutting edge of what could be.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:32.600)

There's definitely game theoretic advantage to those who focus on the opportunities and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:37.360)

don't focus on the risks or pretend there aren't risks because they get to market first.

Lex Fridman (1:30:46.800)

And then they externalize all of the costs through limited liability or whatever it is

Lex Fridman (1:30:51.360)

to the commons or wherever happen to have it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:53.320)

Other people are going to have to solve those, but now they have the power and capital associated.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:30:56.640)

The person who looked at the risks and tried to do better design and go slower is probably

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:31:01.600)

not going to move into positions of as much power influences quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:31:04.520)

So this is one of the issues we have to deal with is some of the bad game theoretic dispositions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:31:08.720)

in the system relative to its own stability.

Lex Fridman (1:31:12.820)

And the key aspect to that, sorry to interrupt, is the externalities generated.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:31:17.320)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:31:18.680)

What flavors of catastrophic risk are we talking about here?

Lex Fridman (1:31:21.840)

What's your favorite flavor in terms of ice cream?

Lex Fridman (1:31:24.280)

So mine is coconut.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:31:25.920)

Nobody seems to like coconut ice cream.

Lex Fridman (1:31:28.000)

So ice cream aside, what are you most worried about in terms of catastrophic risk that will

Lex Fridman (1:31:36.000)

help us kind of make concrete the discussion we're having about how to fix this whole thing?

Lex Fridman (1:31:44.720)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:31:45.720)

I think it's worth taking a historical perspective briefly to just kind of orient everyone to

Lex Fridman (1:31:49.880)

it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:31:50.880)

We don't have to go all the way back to the aliens who've seen all of civilization.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.000)

But to just recognize that for all of human history, as far as we're aware, there were

Lex Fridman (1:32:03.040)

existential risks to civilizations and they happened, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:07.400)

Like there were civilizations that were killed in war, tribes that were killed in tribal

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:12.940)

warfare or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:32:13.940)

So people faced existential risk to the group that they identified with.

Lex Fridman (1:32:18.220)

It's just those were local phenomena, right?

Lex Fridman (1:32:20.500)

It wasn't a fully global phenomena.

Lex Fridman (1:32:22.040)

So an empire could fall and surrounding empires didn't fall.

Lex Fridman (1:32:25.440)

Maybe they came in and filled the space.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:30.020)

The first time that we were able to think about catastrophic risk, not from like a solar

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:35.720)

flare or something that we couldn't control, but from something that humans would actually

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:39.000)

create at a global level was World War II and the bomb.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:43.100)

Because it was the first time that we had tech big enough that could actually mess up

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:47.480)

everything at a global level that could mess up habitability.

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.140)

We just weren't powerful enough to do that before.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:32:53.120)

It's not that we didn't behave in ways that would have done it.

Lex Fridman (1:32:55.160)

We just only behaved in those ways at the scale we could affect.

Lex Fridman (1:32:59.520)

And so it's important to get that there's the entire world before World War II where

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:33:04.680)

we don't have the ability to make a nonhabitable biosphere, nonhabitable for us.

Lex Fridman (1:33:09.340)

And then there's World War II and the beginning of a completely new phase where global human

Lex Fridman (1:33:14.600)

induced catastrophic risk is now a real thing.

Lex Fridman (1:33:18.640)

And that was such a big deal that it changed the entire world in a really fundamental way,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:33:23.360)

which is, you know, when you study history, it's amazing how big a percentage of history

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:33:28.280)

is studying war, right, and the history of war, as you said, European history and whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:33:32.840)

It's generals and wars and empire expansions.

Lex Fridman (1:33:35.840)

And so the major empires near each other never had really long periods of time where they

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:33:40.720)

weren't engaged in war or preparation for war or something like that was – humans

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:33:45.480)

don't have a good precedent in the post tribal phase, the civilization phase of being able

Lex Fridman (1:33:51.060)

to solve conflicts without war for very long.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:33:54.720)

World War II was the first time where we could have a war that no one could win.

Lex Fridman (1:34:00.920)

And so the superpowers couldn't fight again.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:02.880)

They couldn't do a real kinetic war.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:04.320)

They could do diplomatic wars and Cold War type stuff and they could fight proxy wars

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:08.600)

through other countries that didn't have the big weapons.

Lex Fridman (1:34:11.400)

And so mutually assured destruction and like coming out of World War II, we actually realized

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:15.920)

that nation states couldn't prevent world war.

Lex Fridman (1:34:19.680)

And so we needed a new type of supervening government in addition to nation states, which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:23.920)

was the whole Bretton Woods world, the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, the globalization

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:31.120)

trade type agreements, mutually assured destruction that was how do we have some coordination

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:36.240)

beyond just nation states between them since we have to stop war between at least the superpowers.

Lex Fridman (1:34:42.280)

And it was pretty successful given that we've had like 75 years of no superpower on superpower

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:48.040)

war.

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.920)

We've had lots of proxy wars during that time.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:34:53.040)

We've had Cold War.

Lex Fridman (1:34:56.000)

And I would say we're in a new phase now where the Bretton Woods solution is basically over

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:01.840)

or almost over.

Lex Fridman (1:35:02.840)

Can you describe the Bretton Woods solution?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:05.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:35:06.160)

So the Bretton Woods, the series of agreements for how the nations would be able to engage

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:15.320)

with each other in a solution other than war was these IGOs, these intergovernmental organizations

Lex Fridman (1:35:21.960)

and was the idea of globalization.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:24.960)

Since we could have global effects, we needed to be able to think about things globally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:28.160)

where we had trade relationships with each other where it would not be profitable to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:32.480)

war with each other.

Lex Fridman (1:35:33.480)

It'd be more profitable to actually be able to trade with each other.

Lex Fridman (1:35:35.880)

So our own self interest was gonna drive our non war interest.

Lex Fridman (1:35:42.480)

And so this started to look like, and obviously this couldn't have happened that much earlier

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:35:47.200)

either because industrialization hadn't gotten far enough to be able to do massive global

Lex Fridman (1:35:51.200)

industrial supply chains and ship stuff around quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.800)

But like we were mentioning earlier, almost all the electronics that we use today, just

Lex Fridman (1:35:59.040)

basic cheap stuff for us is made on six continents, made in many countries.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:02.920)

There's no single country in the world that could actually make many of the things that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:06.080)

we have and from the raw material extraction to the plastics and polymers and the et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:36:12.760)

And so the idea that we made a world that could do that kind of trade and create massive

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:18.240)

GDP growth, we could all work together to be able to mine natural resources and grow

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:22.360)

stuff.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:23.920)

With the rapid GDP growth, there was the idea that everybody could keep having more without

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:28.320)

having to take each other's stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:36:30.980)

And so that was part of kind of the Bretton Woods post World War II model.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:35.520)

The other was that we'd be so economically interdependent that blowing each other up

Lex Fridman (1:36:38.920)

would never make sense.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:41.100)

That worked for a while.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:43.600)

Now it also brought us up into planetary boundaries faster, the unrenewable use of resource and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:36:51.560)

turning those resources into pollution on the other side of the supply chain.

Lex Fridman (1:36:56.680)

So obviously that faster GDP growth meant the overfishing of the oceans and the cutting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:02.840)

down of the trees and the climate change and the mining, toxic mining tailings going into

Lex Fridman (1:37:08.400)

the water and the mountaintop removal mining and all those types of things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:11.880)

That's the overconsumption side of the risk that we're talking about.

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.600)

And so the answer of let's do positive GDP is the answer rapidly and exponentially obviously

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:23.700)

accelerated the planetary boundary side.

Lex Fridman (1:37:27.280)

And that started to be, that was thought about for a long time, but it started to be modeled

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:31.480)

with the Club of Rome and limits of growth.

Lex Fridman (1:37:38.080)

But it's just very obvious to say if you have a linear materials economy where you take

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:41.240)

stuff out of the earth faster, whether it's fish or trees or oil, you take it out of the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:47.280)

earth faster than it can replenish itself and you turn it into trash after using it

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:52.360)

for a short period of time, you put the trash in the environment faster than it can process

Lex Fridman (1:37:56.120)

itself and there's toxicity associated with both sides of this.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:37:59.960)

You can't run an exponentially growing linear materials economy on a finite planet forever.

Lex Fridman (1:38:05.160)

That's not a hard thing to figure out.

Lex Fridman (1:38:07.020)

And it has to be exponential if there's an exponentiation in the monetary supply because

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:38:11.900)

of interest and then fractional reserve banking and to then be able to keep up with the growing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:38:16.500)

monetary supply, you have to have growth of goods and services.

Lex Fridman (1:38:19.380)

So that's that kind of thing that has happened.

Lex Fridman (1:38:24.740)

But you also see that when you get these supply chains that are so interconnected across the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:38:28.400)

world, you get increased fragility because a collapse or a problem in one area then affects

Lex Fridman (1:38:33.220)

the whole world in a much bigger area as opposed to the issues being local, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:37.560)

So we got to see with COVID and an issue that started in one part of China affecting the

Lex Fridman (1:38:43.200)

whole world so much more rapidly than would have happened before Bretton Woods, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:38:48.920)

Before international travel, supply chains, you know, that whole kind of thing and with

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:38:52.760)

a bunch of second and third order effects that people wouldn't have predicted, okay,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:38:55.520)

we have to stop certain kinds of travel because of viral contaminants, but the countries doing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:39:01.940)

agriculture depend upon fertilizer they don't produce that is shipped into them and depend

Lex Fridman (1:39:06.000)

upon pesticides they don't produce.

Lex Fridman (1:39:07.440)

So we got both crop failures and crops being eaten by locusts in scale in Northern Africa

Lex Fridman (1:39:12.640)

and Iran and things like that because they couldn't get the supplies of stuff in.

Lex Fridman (1:39:15.400)

So then you get massive starvation or future kind of hunger issues because of supply chain

Lex Fridman (1:39:21.020)

shutdowns.

Lex Fridman (1:39:22.060)

So you get this increased fragility and cascade dynamics where a small problem can end up

Lex Fridman (1:39:26.440)

leading to cascade effects.

Lex Fridman (1:39:29.420)

And also we went from two superpowers with one catastrophe weapon to now that same catastrophe

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:39:40.360)

weapon is there's more countries that have it, eight or nine countries that have it,

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.980)

and there's a lot more types of catastrophe weapons.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:39:50.320)

We now have catastrophe weapons with weaponized drones that can hit infrastructure targets

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:39:54.980)

with bio, with in fact every new type of tech has created an arms race.

Lex Fridman (1:39:59.800)

So we have not with the UN or the other kind of intergovernmental organizations, we haven't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:04.500)

been able to really do nuclear de proliferation.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:07.680)

We've actually had more countries get nukes and keep getting faster nukes, the race to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:12.140)

hypersonics and things like that.

Lex Fridman (1:40:15.260)

And every new type of technology that has emerged has created an arms race.

Lex Fridman (1:40:20.020)

And so you can't do mutually assured destruction with multiple agents the way you can with

Lex Fridman (1:40:25.580)

two agents.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:26.840)

Two agents, it's much easier to create a stable Nash equilibrium that's forced.

Lex Fridman (1:40:31.700)

But the ability to monitor and say if these guys shoot, who do I shoot?

Lex Fridman (1:40:33.980)

Do I shoot them?

Lex Fridman (1:40:34.980)

Do I shoot everybody?

Lex Fridman (1:40:35.980)

Do I?

Lex Fridman (1:40:36.980)

And so you get a three body problem.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:37.980)

You get a very complex type of thing when you have multiple agents and multiple different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:41.500)

types of catastrophe weapons, including ones that can be much more easily produced than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:45.620)

nukes.

Lex Fridman (1:40:46.620)

Nukes are really hard to produce.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:47.620)

There's only uranium in a few areas.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:48.620)

uranium enrichment is hard, ICBMs are hard, but weaponized drones hitting smart targets

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:54.580)

is not so hard.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:55.580)

There's a lot of other things where basically the scale at being able to manufacture them

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:40:58.880)

is going way, way down to where even non state actors can have them.

Lex Fridman (1:41:02.860)

And so when we talk about exponential tech and the decentralization of exponential tech,

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.600)

what that means is decentralized catastrophe weapon capacity.

Lex Fridman (1:41:14.400)

And especially in a world of increasing numbers of people feeling disenfranchised, frantic,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:41:19.400)

whatever for different reasons.

Lex Fridman (1:41:21.460)

So I would say where the Bretton Woods world doesn't prepare us to be able to deal with

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:41:27.540)

lots of different agents, having lots of different types of catastrophe weapons you can't put

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:41:31.900)

mutually assured destruction on, where you can't keep doing growth of materials economy

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:41:37.860)

in the same way because of hitting planetary boundaries and where the fragility dynamics

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.220)

are actually now their own source of catastrophic risk.

Lex Fridman (1:41:46.180)

So now we're, so like there was all the world until world war II and world war II is just

Lex Fridman (1:41:50.220)

from a civilization timescale point of view is just a second ago.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:41:54.020)

It seems like a long time, but it is really not.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:41:56.720)

We get a short period of relative peace at the level of superpowers while building up

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:42:00.280)

the military capacity for much, much, much worse war the entire time.

Lex Fridman (1:42:04.540)

And then now we're at this new phase where the things that allowed us to make it through

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:42:09.420)

the nuclear power are not the same systems that will let us make it through the next

Lex Fridman (1:42:13.620)

stage.

Lex Fridman (1:42:14.740)

So what is this next post Bretton Woods?

Lex Fridman (1:42:18.220)

How do we become safe vessels, safe stewards of many different types of exponential technology

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:42:26.140)

is a key question when we're thinking about X risk.

Lex Fridman (1:42:30.140)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:42:31.140)

And I'd like to try to answer the how a few ways, but first on the mutually assured destruction.

Lex Fridman (1:42:41.660)

Do you give credit to the idea of two superpowers now blowing each other up with nuclear weapons

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:42:49.700)

to the simple game theoretic model of mutually assured destruction or something you've said

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:42:54.900)

previously this idea of inverse correlation, which I tend to believe between the, now you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:43:04.780)

were talking about tech, but I think it's maybe broadly true.

Lex Fridman (1:43:09.660)

The inverse correlation between competence and propensity for destruction.

Lex Fridman (1:43:14.020)

So the better, the, the, the bigger your weapons, not because you're afraid of a mutually assured

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:43:22.140)

self destruction, but because we're human beings and there's a deep moral fortitude

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:43:27.980)

there that somehow aligned with competence and being good at your job that like, it's

Lex Fridman (1:43:32.820)

very hard to be a psychopath and be good at killing at scale.

Lex Fridman (1:43:42.340)

Do you share any of that intuition?

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.740)

Kind of.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:43:48.700)

I think most people would say that Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan and Napoleon were

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:43:53.380)

effective people that were good at their job that were actually maybe asymmetrically good

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:01.580)

at being able to organize people and do certain kinds of things that were pretty oriented

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:08.400)

towards certain types of destruction or pretty willing to, maybe they would say they were

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:13.860)

oriented towards empire expansion, but pretty willing to commit certain acts of destruction

Lex Fridman (1:44:18.240)

in the name of it.

Lex Fridman (1:44:19.780)

What are you worried about?

Lex Fridman (1:44:20.780)

The Genghis Khan, or you could argue he's not a psychopath.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:27.860)

That are you worried about Genghis Khan, are you worried about Hitler or are you worried

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:31.820)

about a terrorist who is, has a very different ethic, which is not even for, it's not trying

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:42.240)

to preserve and build and expand my community.

Lex Fridman (1:44:46.740)

It's more about just the destruction in itself is the goal.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:50.460)

I think the thing that you're looking at that I do agree with is that there's a psychological

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:44:56.780)

disposition towards construction and a psychological disposition more towards destruction.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:03.020)

Obviously everybody has both and can toggle between both and oftentimes one is willing

Lex Fridman (1:45:07.740)

to destroy certain things.

Lex Fridman (1:45:09.100)

We have this idea of creative destruction, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:11.020)

Willing to destroy certain things to create other things and utilitarianism and trolley

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:15.860)

problems are all about exploring that space and the idea of war is all about that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:20.660)

I am trying to create something for our people and it requires destroying some other people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:29.260)

Sociopathy is a funny topic because it's possible to have very high fealty to your in group

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.880)

and work on perfecting the methods of torture to the out group at the same time because

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:38.380)

you can dehumanize and then remove empathy.

Lex Fridman (1:45:43.420)

And I would also say that there are types.

Lex Fridman (1:45:48.340)

So the reason, the thing that gives hope about the orientation towards construction and destruction

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:45:55.160)

being a little different in psychology is what it takes to build really catastrophic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:00.300)

tech, even today where it doesn't take what it took to make a nuke, a small group of people

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:04.760)

could do it, takes still some real technical knowledge that required having studied for

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:10.660)

a while and some then building capacity and there's a question of is that psychologically

Lex Fridman (1:46:16.940)

inversely correlated with the desire to damage civilization meaningfully?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:24.340)

A little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:46:25.340)

A little bit, I think.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:27.980)

I think a lot.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:29.100)

I think it's actually, I mean, this is the conversation I had like with, I think offline

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:34.100)

with Dan Carlin, which is like, it's pretty easy to come up with ways that any competent,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:41.460)

I can come up with a lot of ways to hurt a lot of people and it's pretty easy, like I

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:46:46.460)

alone could do it and there's a lot of people as smart or smarter than me, at least in their

Lex Fridman (1:46:55.740)

creation of explosives.

Lex Fridman (1:46:58.120)

Why are we not seeing more insane mass murder?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:03.420)

I think there's something fascinating and beautiful about this and it does have to do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:10.500)

with some deeply pro social types of characteristics in humans but when you're dealing with very

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:19.500)

large numbers, you don't need a whole lot of a phenomena and so then you start to say,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:24.260)

well, what's the probability that X won't happen this year, then won't happen in the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:27.700)

next two years, three years, four years and then how many people are doing destructive

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:32.480)

things with lower tech and then how many of them can get access to higher tech that they

Lex Fridman (1:47:36.340)

didn't have to figure out how to build.

Lex Fridman (1:47:39.100)

So when I can get commercial tech and maybe I don't understand tech very well but I understand

Lex Fridman (1:47:47.180)

it well enough to utilize it, not to create it and I can repurpose it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:51.460)

When we saw that commercial drone with a homemade thermite bomb hit the Ukrainian munitions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:47:57.780)

factory and do the equivalent of an incendiary bomb level of damage, that was just home tech,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:48:03.860)

that's just simple kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:48:06.560)

And so the question is not does it stay being a small percentage of the population?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:48:14.020)

The question is can you bind that phenomena nearly completely and especially now as you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:48:24.140)

start to get into bigger things, CRISPR gene drive technologies and various things like

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.140)

that, can you bind it completely long term over what period of time?

Lex Fridman (1:48:36.020)

Not perfectly though, that's the thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:48:38.100)

I'm trying to say that there is some, let's call it, that's a random word, love, that's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:48:46.100)

inherent and that's core to human nature that's preventing destruction at scale.

Lex Fridman (1:48:54.220)

And you're saying yeah but there's a lot of humans, there's going to be eight plus billion

Lex Fridman (1:48:59.740)

and then there's a lot of seconds in the day to come up with stuff, there's a lot of pain

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:49:03.620)

in the world that can lead to a distorted view of the world such that you want to channel

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:49:08.580)

that pain into the destruction, all those kinds of things and it's only a matter of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:49:12.780)

time that any one individual can do large damage, especially as we create more and more

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:49:19.020)

democratized decentralized ways to deliver that damage even if you don't know how to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:49:23.420)

build the initial weapon.

Lex Fridman (1:49:25.860)

But the thing is it seems like it's a race between the cheapening of destructive weapons

Lex Fridman (1:49:37.180)

and the capacity of humans to express their love towards each other and it's a race that

Lex Fridman (1:49:44.740)

so far, I know on Twitter it's not popular to say but love is winning, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:49:52.020)

So what is the argument that love is going to lose here against nuclear weapons and biotech

Lex Fridman (1:49:58.060)

and AI and drones?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:02.380)

Okay I'm going to comment the end of this to a how love wins so I just want you to know

Lex Fridman (1:50:07.940)

that that's where I'm oriented.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:09.660)

That's the end, okay.

Lex Fridman (1:50:10.660)

But I'm going to argue against why that is a given because it's not a given, I don't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:19.300)

believe and I think that it's…

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:20.860)

This is like a good romantic comedy so you're going to create drama right now but it will

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:25.420)

end in a happy ending.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:27.060)

Well it's because it's only a happy ending if we actually understand the issues well

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:30.420)

enough and take responsibility to shift it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:32.580)

Do I believe like there's a reason why there's so much more dystopic sci fi than protopic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:37.500)

sci fi and the some protopic sci fi usually requires magic is because – or at least

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:45.960)

magical tech, right, dilithium crystals and warp drives and stuff because it's very hard

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:51.900)

to imagine people like the people we have been in the history books with exponential

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:50:59.420)

type technology and power that don't eventually blow themselves up, that make good enough

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:04.940)

choices as stewards of their environment and their commons and each other and etc.

Lex Fridman (1:51:09.820)

So like it's easier to think of scenarios where we blow ourselves up than it is to think

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:13.500)

of scenarios where we avoid every single scenario where we blow ourselves up.

Lex Fridman (1:51:16.460)

And when I say blow ourselves up I mean the environmental versions, the terrorist versions,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:21.800)

the war versions, the cumulative externalities versions.

Lex Fridman (1:51:25.260)

And I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your flow of thought but why is it easier?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:33.740)

Could it be a weird psychological thing where we either are just more capable to visualize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:39.060)

explosions and destruction and then the sicker thought which is like we kind of enjoy for

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:44.580)

some weird reason thinking about that kind of stuff even though we wouldn't actually

Lex Fridman (1:51:48.900)

act on it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:51:49.900)

It's almost like some weird, like I love playing shooter games, you know, first person shooters

Lex Fridman (1:51:56.300)

and like especially if it's like murdering zombies and doom, you're shooting demons.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:01.420)

I play one of my favorite games Diablo is like slashing through different monsters and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:05.980)

the screaming and pain and the hellfire and then I go out into the real world to eat my

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:11.320)

coconut ice cream and I'm all about love.

Lex Fridman (1:52:13.480)

So like can we trust our ability to visualize how it all goes to shit as an actual rational

Lex Fridman (1:52:20.940)

way of thinking?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:22.620)

I think it's a fair question to say to what degree is there just kind of perverse fantasy

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.740)

and morbid exploration and whatever else that happens in our imagination but I don't think

Lex Fridman (1:52:37.060)

that's the whole of it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:38.060)

I think there is also a reality to the combinatorial possibility space and the difference in the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:44.500)

probabilities that there's a lot of ways I could try to put the 70 trillion cells of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:50.060)

your body together that don't make you.

Lex Fridman (1:52:53.180)

There's not that many ways I can put them together that make you.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:55.260)

There's a lot of ways I could try to connect the organs together that make some weird kind

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:52:58.740)

of group of organs on a desk but that doesn't actually make a functioning human and you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:06.860)

can kill an adult human in a second but you can't get one in a second.

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.900)

It takes 20 years to grow one and a lot of things happen right.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:12.700)

I could destroy this building in a couple of minutes with demolition but it took a year

Lex Fridman (1:53:18.660)

or a couple of years to build it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:20.500)

There is –

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.500)

Calm down, Cole.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:23.900)

This is just an example.

Lex Fridman (1:53:25.220)

He doesn't mean it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:27.900)

There's a gradient where entropy is easier and there's a lot more ways to put a set

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:35.340)

of things together that don't work than the few that really do produce higher order

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:38.940)

synergies.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:45.140)

When we look at a history of war and then we look at exponentially more powerful warfare,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:51.300)

an arms race that drives that in all these directions, and when we look at a history

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:54.540)

of environmental destruction and exponentially more powerful tech that makes exponential

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:53:58.340)

externalities multiplied by the total number of agents that are doing it and the cumulative

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:54:02.260)

effects, there's a lot of ways the whole thing can break, like a lot of different ways.

Lex Fridman (1:54:07.580)

And for it to get ahead, it has to have none of those happen.

Lex Fridman (1:54:12.020)

And so there's just a probability space where it's easier to imagine that thing.

Lex Fridman (1:54:18.060)

So to say how do we have a protopic future, we have to say, well, one criteria must be

Lex Fridman (1:54:23.100)

that it avoids all of the catastrophic risks.

Lex Fridman (1:54:25.800)

So can we understand – can we inventory all the catastrophic risks?

Lex Fridman (1:54:28.680)

Can we inventory the patterns of human behavior that give rise to them?

Lex Fridman (1:54:32.260)

And could we try to solve for that?

Lex Fridman (1:54:35.100)

And could we have that be the essence of the social technology that we're thinking about

Lex Fridman (1:54:39.800)

to be able to guide, bind, and direct a new physical technology?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:54:42.900)

Because so far, our physical technology – like we were talking about the Genghis Khan's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:54:47.860)

like that, that obviously use certain kinds of physical technology and armaments and also

Lex Fridman (1:54:52.820)

social technology and unconventional warfare for a particular set of purposes.

Lex Fridman (1:54:57.960)

But we have things that don't look like warfare, like Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

Lex Fridman (1:55:04.300)

And it looked like a constructive mindset to be able to bring this new energy resource

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:55:11.100)

to the world, and it did.

Lex Fridman (1:55:14.060)

And the second order effects of that are climate change and all of the oil spills that have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:55:21.360)

happened and will happen and all of the wars in the Middle East over the oil that have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:55:26.820)

been there and the massive political clusterfuck and human life issues that are associated

Lex Fridman (1:55:32.540)

with it and on and on, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:36.540)

And so it's also not just the orientation to construct a thing can have a narrow focus

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:55:44.180)

on what I'm trying to construct but be affecting a lot of other things through second and third

Lex Fridman (1:55:47.900)

order effects I'm not taking responsibility for.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:55:51.140)

You often on another tangent mentioned second, third, and fourth order effects.

Lex Fridman (1:55:57.300)

And order.

Lex Fridman (1:55:58.300)

And order.

Lex Fridman (1:55:59.300)

Cascading.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:00.300)

Which is really fascinating.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:02.020)

Like starting with the third order plus it gets really interesting because we don't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:09.460)

even acknowledge like the second order effects.

Lex Fridman (1:56:11.940)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:56:12.940)

But like thinking because those it could get bigger and bigger and bigger in ways we were

Lex Fridman (1:56:17.540)

not anticipating.

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.540)

So how do we make those?

Lex Fridman (1:56:20.200)

So it sounds like part of the thing that you are thinking through in terms of a solution

Lex Fridman (1:56:27.460)

how to create an anti fragile, a resilient society is to make explicit acknowledge, understand

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:38.540)

the externalities, the second order, third order, fourth order, and the order effects.

Lex Fridman (1:56:44.840)

How do we start to think about those effects?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:47.020)

Yeah, the war application is harm we're trying to cause or that we're aware we're causing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:52.300)

Right.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:53.300)

The externality is harm that at least supposedly we're not aware we're causing or at minimum

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:56:58.060)

it's not our intention.

Lex Fridman (1:56:59.060)

Right.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:57:00.060)

Maybe we're either totally unaware of it or we're aware of it but it is a side effect

Lex Fridman (1:57:03.340)

of what our intention is.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:57:04.580)

It's not the intention itself.

Lex Fridman (1:57:06.620)

There are catastrophic risks from both types.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:57:09.020)

The direct application of increased technological power to a rivalrous intent which is going

Lex Fridman (1:57:16.460)

to cause harm for some out group, for some in group to win.

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.740)

But the out group is also working on growing the tech and if they don't lose completely

Lex Fridman (1:57:23.500)

they reverse engineer the tech, up regulate it, come back with more capacity.

Lex Fridman (1:57:27.820)

So there's the exponential tech arms race side of in group, out group rivalry using

Lex Fridman (1:57:33.680)

exponential tech that is one set of risks.

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.380)

And the other set of risks is the application of exponentially more powerful tech not intentionally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:57:44.480)

to try and beat an out group but to try to achieve some goal that we have but to produce

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:57:49.060)

a second and third order effects that do have harm to the commons, to other people, to environment,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:57:56.220)

to other groups that might actually be bigger problems than the problem we were originally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:02.660)

trying to solve with the thing we were building.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:05.400)

When Facebook was building a dating app and then building a social app where people could

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:10.800)

tag pictures, they weren't trying to build a democracy destroying app that would maximize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:20.460)

time on site as part of its ad model through AI optimization of a newsfeed to the thing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:27.800)

that made people spend most time on site which is usually them being limbically hijacked

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:31.780)

more than something else which ends up appealing to people's cognitive biases and group identities

Lex Fridman (1:58:37.380)

and creates no sense of shared reality.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:39.920)

They weren't trying to do that but it was a second order effect and it's a pretty fucking

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:45.220)

powerful second order effect and a pretty fast one because the rate of tech is obviously

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:51.580)

able to get distributed to much larger scale much faster and with a bigger jump in terms

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:58:56.900)

of total vertical capacity than that's what it means to get to the verticalizing part

Lex Fridman (1:59:00.600)

of an exponential curve.

Lex Fridman (1:59:02.960)

So just like we can see that oil had the second order environmental effects and also social

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.800)

and political effects.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:59:11.560)

War and so much of the whole like the total amount of oil used has a proportionality to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:59:19.100)

total global GDP and this is why we have this the petrodollar and so the oil thing also

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:59:27.960)

had the externalities of a major aspect of what happened with military industrial complex

Lex Fridman (1:59:32.240)

and things like that.

Lex Fridman (1:59:34.740)

But we can see the same thing with more current technologies with Facebook and Google and

Lex Fridman (1:59:40.020)

other things.

Lex Fridman (1:59:41.140)

So I don't think we can run and the more powerful the tech is, we build it for reason X, whatever

Lex Fridman (1:59:49.460)

reason X is.

Lex Fridman (1:59:51.260)

Maybe X is three things, maybe it's one thing, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:59:55.180)

We're doing the oil thing because we wanna make cars because it's a better method of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (1:59:58.860)

individual transportation, we're building the Facebook thing because we're gonna connect

Lex Fridman (20:04.440)

of harm.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (20:05.440)

It would just be a Von Neumann machine, a self replicating machine that was fundamentally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (20:11.200)

incompatible with these kinds of self replicating systems with faster OODA loops.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (20:16.280)

For one final time, putting your alien God hat on and you look at human civilization,

Lex Fridman (20:24.280)

do you think about the 7.8 billion people on earth as individual little creatures, individual

Lex Fridman (20:30.840)

little organisms, or do you think of us as one organism with a collective intelligence?

Lex Fridman (20:41.760)

What's the proper framework through which to analyze it again as an alien?

Lex Fridman (20:46.600)

So that I know where you're coming from, would you have asked the question the same way before

Daniel Schmachtenberger (20:50.640)

the industrial revolution, before the agricultural revolution when there were half a billion

Lex Fridman (20:54.080)

people and no telecommunications connecting them?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (20:59.220)

I would indeed ask the question the same way, but I would be less confident about your conclusions.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:09.000)

It would be an actually more interesting way to ask the question at that time, but I was

Lex Fridman (21:12.840)

nevertheless asked it the same way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:14.520)

Yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:15.520)

Well, let's go back further and smaller than rather than just a single human or the entire

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:20.480)

human species, let's look at a relatively isolated tribe.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:27.480)

In the relatively isolated, probably sub Dunbar number, sub 150 people tribe, do I look at

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:34.600)

that as one entity where evolution is selecting for based on group selection or do I think

Lex Fridman (21:40.400)

of it as 150 individuals that are interacting in some way?

Lex Fridman (21:45.800)

Well, could those individuals exist without the group?

Lex Fridman (21:49.840)

No.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (21:52.480)

The evolutionary adaptiveness of humans was involved critically group selection and individual

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:00.920)

humans alone trying to figure out stone tools and protection and whatever aren't what was

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:06.760)

selected for.

Lex Fridman (22:09.040)

And so I think the or is the wrong frame.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:13.560)

I think it's individuals are affecting the group that they're a part of.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:20.280)

They're also dependent upon and being affected by the group that they're part of.

Lex Fridman (22:25.280)

And so this now starts to get deep into political theories also, which is theories that orient

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:31.080)

towards the collective at different scales, whether a tribal scale or an empire or a nation

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:35.280)

state or something, and ones that orient towards the individual liberalism and stuff like that.

Lex Fridman (22:40.100)

And I think there's very obvious failure modes on both sides.

Lex Fridman (22:43.420)

And so the relationship between them is more interesting to me than either of them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:47.040)

The relationship between the individual and the collective and the question around how

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:49.840)

to have a virtuous process between those.

Lex Fridman (22:52.080)

So a good social system would be one where the organism of the individual and the organism

Daniel Schmachtenberger (22:57.480)

of the group of individuals is they're both synergistic to each other.

Lex Fridman (23:02.000)

So what is best for the individuals and what's best for the whole is aligned.

Lex Fridman (23:05.760)

But there is nevertheless an individual.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:08.960)

They're not, it's a matter of degrees, I suppose, but what defines a human more, the social

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:21.240)

network within which they've been brought up, through which they've developed their

Lex Fridman (23:26.480)

intelligence or is it their own sovereign individual self?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:33.040)

What's your intuition of how much, not just for evolutionary survival, but as intellectual

Lex Fridman (23:40.040)

beings, how much do we need others for our development?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:44.040)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:45.040)

I think we have a weird sense of this today relative to most previous periods of sapient

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:51.800)

history.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:53.280)

I think the vast majority of sapient history is tribal, like depending upon your early

Daniel Schmachtenberger (23:59.880)

human model, 200,000 or 300,000 years of homo sapiens and little tribes, where they depended

Lex Fridman (24:06.760)

upon that tribe for survival and excommunication from the tribe was fatal.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:12.760)

I think they, and our whole evolutionary genetic history is in that environment and the amount

Lex Fridman (24:17.320)

of time we've been out of it is relatively so tiny.

Lex Fridman (24:20.880)

And then we still depended upon extended families and local communities more and the big kind

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:27.040)

of giant market complex where I can provide something to the market to get money, to be

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:33.200)

able to get other things from the market where it seems like I don't need anyone.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:35.960)

It's almost like disintermediating our sense of need, even though you're in my ability

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:42.200)

to talk to each other using these mics and the phones that we coordinated on took millions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:46.500)

of people over six continents to be able to run the supply chains that made all the stuff

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:50.080)

that we depend on, but we don't notice that we depend upon them.

Lex Fridman (24:52.360)

They all seem fungible.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (24:56.080)

If you take a baby, obviously that you didn't even get to a baby without a mom.

Lex Fridman (25:00.320)

Was it dependent?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:01.320)

Are we dependent upon each other, right, without two parents at minimum and they depended upon

Lex Fridman (25:05.440)

other people.

Lex Fridman (25:06.440)

But if we take that baby and we put it out in the wild, it obviously dies.

Lex Fridman (25:11.400)

So if we let it grow up for a little while, the minimum amount of time where it starts

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:14.700)

to have some autonomy and then we put it out in the wild, and this has happened a few times,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:19.260)

it doesn't learn language and it doesn't learn the small motor articulation that we learn.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:27.760)

It doesn't learn the type of consciousness that we end up having that is socialized.

Lex Fridman (25:34.420)

So I think we take for granted how much conditioning affects us.

Lex Fridman (25:41.260)

Is it possible that it affects basically 99.9 or maybe the whole thing?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:49.960)

The whole thing is the connection between us humans and that we're no better than apes

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:56.280)

without our human connections.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (25:59.080)

Because thinking of it that way forces us to think very differently about human society

Lex Fridman (26:05.400)

and how to progress forward if the connections are fundamental.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:09.800)

I just have to object to the no better than apes, because better here I think you mean

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:14.060)

a specific thing, which means have capacities that are fundamentally different than.

Lex Fridman (26:17.480)

I think apes also depend upon troops.

Lex Fridman (26:21.920)

And I think the idea of humans as better than nature in some kind of ethical sense ends

Lex Fridman (26:29.200)

up having heaps of problems.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:30.360)

We'll table that.

Lex Fridman (26:31.360)

We can come back to it.

Lex Fridman (26:32.600)

But when we say what is unique about Homo sapien capacity relative to the other animals

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:36.500)

we currently inhabit the biosphere with, and I'm saying it that way because there were

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:41.460)

other early hominids that had some of these capacities, we believe.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:47.820)

Our tool creation and our language creation and our coordination are all kind of the results

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:52.020)

of a certain type of capacity for abstraction.

Lex Fridman (26:56.320)

And other animals will use tools, but they don't evolve the tools they use.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (26:59.760)

They keep using the same types of tools that they basically can find.

Lex Fridman (27:03.380)

So a chimp will notice that a rock can cut a vine that it wants to, and it'll even notice

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:08.200)

that a sharper rock will cut it better.

Lex Fridman (27:10.160)

And experientially it'll use the sharper rock.

Lex Fridman (27:12.480)

And if you even give it a knife, it'll probably use the knife because it's experiencing the

Lex Fridman (27:15.640)

effectiveness.

Lex Fridman (27:16.640)

But it doesn't make stone tools because that requires understanding why one is sharper

Lex Fridman (27:22.240)

than the other.

Lex Fridman (27:23.240)

What is the abstract principle called sharpness to then be able to invent a sharper thing?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:28.280)

That same abstraction makes language and the ability for abstract representation, which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:34.060)

makes the ability to coordinate in a more advanced set of ways.

Lex Fridman (27:38.960)

So I do think our ability to coordinate with each other is pretty fundamental to the selection

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:43.360)

of what we are as a species.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:46.520)

I wonder if that coordination, that connection is actually the thing that gives birth to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:51.120)

consciousness, that gives birth to, well, let's start with self awareness.

Lex Fridman (27:56.080)

More like theory of mind.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:57.080)

Theory of mind.

Lex Fridman (27:58.080)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (27:59.080)

You know, I suppose there's experiments that show that there's other mammals that have

Lex Fridman (28:03.640)

a very crude theory of mind.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (28:05.640)

Not sure.

Lex Fridman (28:06.640)

Maybe dogs, something like that.

Lex Fridman (28:08.360)

But actually dogs probably has to do with that they co evolved with humans.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (28:12.520)

See it'd be interesting if that theory of mind is what leads to consciousness in the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (28:18.920)

way we think about it.

Lex Fridman (28:21.040)

Is the richness of the subjective experience that is consciousness.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (28:24.880)

I have an inkling sense that that only exists because we're social creatures.

Lex Fridman (28:31.440)

That doesn't come with the hardware and the software in the beginning.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (28:36.600)

That's learned as an effective tool for communication almost.

Lex Fridman (28:45.120)

I think we think that consciousness is fundamental.

Lex Fridman (28:49.200)

And maybe it's not, there's a bunch of folks kind of criticize the idea that the illusion

Lex Fridman (28:58.520)

of consciousness is consciousness.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:00.720)

That it is just a facade we use to help us construct theories of mind.

Lex Fridman (29:08.440)

You almost put yourself in the world as a subjective being.

Lex Fridman (29:12.120)

And that experience, you want to richly experience it as an individual person so that I could

Lex Fridman (29:18.000)

empathize with your experience.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:20.800)

I find that notion compelling.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:22.760)

Mostly because it allows you to then create robots that become conscious not by being

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:29.000)

quote unquote conscious but by just learning to fake it till they make it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:37.840)

Present a facade of consciousness with the task of making that facade very convincing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:44.400)

to us humans and thereby it will become conscious.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:48.240)

Have a sense that in some way that will make them conscious if they're sufficiently convincing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (29:55.440)

to humans.

Lex Fridman (29:58.880)

Is there some element of that that you find convincing?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:01.980)

people socially in a personal sphere.

Lex Fridman (2:00:04.680)

But it interacts with complex systems, with ecologies, economies, psychologies, cultures,

Lex Fridman (2:00:13.060)

and so it has effects on other than the thing we're intending.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:16.620)

Some of those effects can end up being negative effects, but because this technology, if we

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:22.260)

make it to solve a problem, it has to overcome the problem.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:25.900)

The problem has been around for a while, it's gonna overcome in a short period of time.

Lex Fridman (2:00:28.380)

So it usually has greater scale, greater rate of magnitude in some way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:32.660)

That also means that the externalities that it creates might be bigger problems.

Lex Fridman (2:00:37.960)

And you can say, well, but then that's the new problem and humanity will innovate its

Lex Fridman (2:00:40.780)

way out of that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:41.780)

Well, I don't think that's paying attention to the fact that we can't keep up with exponential

Lex Fridman (2:00:45.700)

curves like that, nor do finite spaces allow exponential externalities forever.

Lex Fridman (2:00:52.640)

And this is why a lot of the smartest people thinking about this are thinking, well, no,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:00:57.900)

I think we're totally screwed unless we can make a benevolent AI singleton that rules all

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:02.580)

of us.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:03.580)

Guys like Ostrom and others thinking in those directions, because they're like, how do humans

Lex Fridman (2:01:10.280)

try to do multipolarity and make it work?

Lex Fridman (2:01:14.500)

And I have a different answer of what I think it looks like that does have more to do with

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:19.100)

love, but some applied social tech aligned with love.

Lex Fridman (2:01:22.940)

That's good, because I have a bunch of really dumb ideas I'd prefer to hear.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:28.260)

I'd like to hear some of them first.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:30.020)

I think the idea I would have is to be a bit more rigorous in trying to measure the amount

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:37.860)

of love you add or subtract from the world in second, third, fourth, fifth order effects.

Lex Fridman (2:01:46.580)

It's actually, I think, especially in the world of tech, quite doable.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:01:52.500)

You just might not like, the shareholders may not like that kind of metric, but it's

Lex Fridman (2:01:58.540)

pretty easy to measure.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:01.340)

That's not even, I'm perhaps half joking about love, but we could talk about just happiness

Lex Fridman (2:02:07.940)

and well being, long term well being.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:11.140)

That's pretty easy for Facebook, for YouTube, for all these companies to measure that.

Lex Fridman (2:02:16.780)

They do a lot of kinds of surveys.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:19.220)

There's very simple solutions here that you could just survey how, I mean, servers are

Lex Fridman (2:02:25.060)

in some sense useless because they're a subset of the population.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:31.340)

You're just trying to get a sense, it's very loose kind of understanding, but integrated

Lex Fridman (2:02:35.100)

deeply as part of the technology.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:37.320)

Most of our tech is recommender systems.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:39.500)

Most of the, sorry, not tech, online interactions driven by recommender systems that learn very

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:46.980)

little data about you and use that data based on, mostly based on traces of your previous

Lex Fridman (2:02:52.380)

behavior to suggest future things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:54.660)

This is how Twitter, this is how Facebook works.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:02:56.860)

This is how AdSense or Google AdSense works, this is how Netflix, YouTube work and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:03:02.980)

And for them to just track as opposed to engagement, how much you spend in a particular video,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:08.300)

a particular site, is also track, give you the technology to do self report of what makes

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:16.060)

you feel good, what makes you grow as a person, of what makes you, you know, the best version

Lex Fridman (2:03:23.940)

of yourself, the Rogan idea of the hero of your movie.

Lex Fridman (2:03:31.100)

And just add that little bit of information.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:34.220)

If you have people, you have this like happiness surveys of how you feel about the last five

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:39.580)

days, how would you report your experience.

Lex Fridman (2:03:42.940)

You can lay out the set of videos.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:45.020)

It's kind of fascinating, I don't know if you ever look at YouTube, the history of videos

Lex Fridman (2:03:48.460)

you've looked at.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:49.460)

It's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:03:50.460)

It's very embarrassing for me.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:52.340)

Like it'll be like a lecture and then like a set of videos that I don't want anyone to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:03:57.740)

know about, which is, which is, which will be like, I don't know, maybe like five videos

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:04:03.580)

in a row where it looks like I watched the whole thing, which I probably did about like

Lex Fridman (2:04:07.220)

how to cook a steak, even though, or just like with the best chefs in the world cooking

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:04:11.540)

steaks and I'm just like sitting there watching it for no purpose whatsoever, wasting away

Lex Fridman (2:04:17.020)

my life or like funny cat videos or like legit, that's always a good one.

Lex Fridman (2:04:23.540)

And I could look back and rate which videos made me a better person and not.

Lex Fridman (2:04:29.460)

And I mean, on a more serious note, there's a bunch of conversations, podcasts or lectures

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:04:34.700)

I've watched, which made me a better person and some of them made me a worse person.

Lex Fridman (2:04:40.340)

And honestly, not for stupid reasons, like I feel dumber, but because I do have a sense

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:04:45.820)

that that started me on a path of, of not being kind to other people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:04:54.400)

For example, I'll give you a, for my own, and I'm sorry for ranting, but maybe there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:04:58.740)

some usefulness to this kind of exploration of self.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:02.580)

When I focus on creating, on programming, on science, I become a much deeper thinker

Lex Fridman (2:05:11.640)

and a kinder person to others.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:14.600)

When I listen to too many, a little bit is good, but too many podcasts or videos about

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:20.540)

how, how our world is melting down or criticizing ridiculous people, the worst of the quote

Lex Fridman (2:05:28.340)

unquote woke, for example.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:30.060)

All there's all these groups that are misbehaving in fascinating ways because they've been corrupted

Lex Fridman (2:05:35.820)

by power.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:37.100)

The more I watch, the more I watch criticism of them, the worse I become.

Lex Fridman (2:05:44.260)

And I'm aware of this, but I'm also aware that for some reason it's pleasant to watch

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:49.240)

those sometimes.

Lex Fridman (2:05:51.020)

And so for, for me to be able to self report that to the YouTube algorithm, to the systems

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:05:56.440)

around me, and they ultimately try to optimize to make me the best person, the best version

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:06:02.220)

of myself, which I personally believe would make YouTube a lot more money because I'd

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:06:06.460)

be much more willing to spend time on YouTube and give YouTube a lot more, a lot more of

Lex Fridman (2:06:11.380)

my money.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:06:12.380)

That's a, that's great for business and great for humanity because it'll make me a kinder

Lex Fridman (2:06:17.700)

person.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:06:18.700)

It'll increase the love quotient, the love metric, and it'll make them a lot of money.

Lex Fridman (2:06:25.420)

I feel like everything's aligned.

Lex Fridman (2:06:27.100)

And so you, you should do that not just for YouTube algorithm, but also for military strategy

Lex Fridman (2:06:31.980)

and whether you go to war or not, because one externality you can think of about going

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:06:36.620)

to war, which I think we talked about offline is we often go to war with kind of governments

Lex Fridman (2:06:42.660)

with a, with, not with the people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:06:46.100)

You have to think about the kids of countries that see a soldier and because of what they

Lex Fridman (2:06:57.280)

experienced the interaction with the soldier, hate is born.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:01.780)

When you're like eight years old, six years old, you lose your dad, you lose your mom,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:07.140)

you lose a friend, somebody close to you that want a really powerful externality that could

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:12.180)

be reduced to love, positive and negative is the hate that's born when you make decisions.

Lex Fridman (2:07:19.500)

And that's going to take fruition that that little seed is going to become a tree that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:25.300)

then leads to the kind of destruction that we talk about.

Lex Fridman (2:07:30.860)

So but in my sense, it's possible to reduce everything to a measure of how much love does

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:35.340)

this add to the world.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:38.700)

All that to say, do you have ideas of how we practically build systems that create a

Lex Fridman (2:07:48.060)

resilient society?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:49.060)

There were a lot of good things that you shared where there's like 15 different ways that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:07:55.100)

we could enter this that are all interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:07:57.180)

So I'm trying to see which one will probably be most useful.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:00.020)

Pick the one or two things that are least ridiculous.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:03.180)

When you were mentioning if we could see some of the second order effects or externalities

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:11.340)

that we aren't used to seeing, specifically the one of a kid being radicalized somewhere

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:15.420)

else, which engenders enmity in them towards us, which decreases our own future security.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:20.400)

Even if you don't care about the kid, if you care about the kid, it's a whole other thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:24.100)

Yeah, I mean, I think when we saw this, when Jane Fonda and others went to Vietnam and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:30.180)

took photos and videos of what was happening, and you got to see the pictures of the kids

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:34.700)

with napalm on them, that like the antiwar effort was bolstered by that in a way it couldn't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:42.260)

have been without that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:45.780)

Until we can see the images, you can't have a mere neuron effect in the same way.

Lex Fridman (2:08:50.220)

And when you can, that starts to have a powerful effect.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:08:53.260)

I think there's a deep principle that you're sharing there, which is that if we can have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:09:01.980)

a rivalrous intent where our in group, whatever it is, maybe it's our political party wanting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:09:07.660)

to win within the US, maybe it's our nation state wanting to win in a war or an economic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:09:13.860)

war over resource or whatever it is, that if we don't obliterate the other people completely,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:09:19.860)

they don't go away, they're not engendered to like us more, they didn't become less smart.

Lex Fridman (2:09:27.260)

So they have more enmity towards us and whatever technologies we employed to be successful,

Lex Fridman (2:09:31.300)

they will now reverse engineer, make iterations on and come back.

Lex Fridman (2:09:35.500)

And so you drive an arms race, which is why you can see that the wars were over history

Lex Fridman (2:09:42.140)

employing more lethal weaponry.

Lex Fridman (2:09:46.020)

And not just the kinetic war, the information war and the narrative war and the economic

Lex Fridman (2:09:53.300)

war, like it just increased capacity in all of those fronts.

Lex Fridman (2:09:58.420)

And so what seems like a win to us on the short term might actually really produce losses

Lex Fridman (2:10:04.300)

in the long term.

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.460)

And what's even in our own best interest in the long term is probably more aligned with

Lex Fridman (2:10:08.760)

everyone else because we inter affect each other.

Lex Fridman (2:10:11.020)

And I think the thing about globalism, globalization and exponential tech and the rate at which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:16.860)

we affect each other and the rate at which we affect the biosphere that we're all affected

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:19.780)

by is that this kind of proverbial spiritual idea that we're all interconnected and need

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:28.240)

to think about that in some way, that was easy for tribes to get because everyone in

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:33.420)

the tribes so clearly saw their interconnection and dependence on each other.

Lex Fridman (2:10:37.900)

But in terms of a global level, the speed at which we are actually interconnected, the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:43.820)

speed at which the harm happening to something in Wuhan affects the rest of the world or

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:48.020)

a new technology developed somewhere affects the entire world or an environmental issue

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:52.320)

or whatever is making it to where we either actually all get, not as a spiritual idea,

Lex Fridman (2:10:58.220)

just even as physics, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:10:59.580)

We all get the interconnectedness of everything and that we either all consider that and see

Lex Fridman (2:11:04.340)

how to make it through more effectively together or failures anywhere end up becoming decreased

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:11:10.580)

quality of life and failures and increased risk everywhere.

Lex Fridman (2:11:12.820)

Don't you think people are beginning to experience that at the individual level?

Lex Fridman (2:11:16.540)

So governments are resisting it.

Lex Fridman (2:11:18.700)

They're trying to make us not empathize with each other, feel connected.

Lex Fridman (2:11:21.780)

But don't you think people are beginning to feel more and more connected?

Lex Fridman (2:11:25.060)

Like isn't that exactly what the technology is enabling?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:11:27.940)

Like social networks, we tend to criticize them, but isn't there a sense which we're

Lex Fridman (2:11:34.740)

experiencing, you know?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:11:37.180)

When you watch those videos that are criticizing, whether it's the woke Antifa side or the QAnon

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:11:43.900)

Trump supporter side, does it seem like they have increased empathy for people that are

Lex Fridman (2:11:50.100)

outside of their ideologic camp?

Lex Fridman (2:11:51.700)

Not at all.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:11:52.700)

I may be conflating my own experience of the world and that of the populace.

Lex Fridman (2:12:04.620)

I tend to see those videos as feeding something that's a relic of the past.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:12:12.140)

They figured out that drama fuels clicks, but whether I'm right or wrong, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:12:19.540)

But I tend to sense that that is not, that hunger for drama is not fundamental to human

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:12:26.300)

beings that we want to actually, that we want to understand Antifa and we want to empathize.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:12:34.860)

We want to take radical ideas and be able to empathize with them and synthesize it all.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:12:41.820)

Okay, let's look at cultural outliers in terms of violence versus compassion.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:12:51.980)

We can see that a lot of cultures have relatively lower in group violence, bigger out group

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:12:58.020)

violence, and there's some variance in them and variance at different times based on the

Lex Fridman (2:13:01.500)

scarcity or abundance of resource and other things.

Lex Fridman (2:13:04.660)

But you can look at say, Janes, whose whole religion is around nonviolence so much so

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:12.180)

that they don't even hurt plants, they only take fruits that fall off them and stuff.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:16.860)

Or to go to a larger population, you could take Buddhists, where for the most part, with

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:21.340)

a few exceptions, for the most part across three millennia and across lots of different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:25.780)

countries and geographies and whatever, you have 10 million people plus or minus who don't

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.620)

hurt bugs.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:33.100)

The whole spectrum of genetic variance that is happening within a culture of that many

Lex Fridman (2:13:36.420)

people and head traumas and whatever, and nobody hurts bugs.

Lex Fridman (2:13:41.980)

And then you look at a group where the kids grew up as child soldiers in Liberia or Darfur

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:47.580)

were to make it to adulthood, pretty much everybody's killed people hand to hand and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:13:51.700)

killed people who were civilian or innocent type of people.

Lex Fridman (2:13:54.860)

And you say, okay, so we were very neotenous, we can be conditioned by our environment and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:00.260)

humans can be conditioned where almost all the humans show up in these two different

Lex Fridman (2:14:05.660)

bell curves.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:06.660)

It doesn't mean that the Buddhists had no violence, it doesn't mean that these people

Lex Fridman (2:14:08.980)

had no compassion, but they're very different Gaussian distributions.

Lex Fridman (2:14:14.460)

And so I think one of the important things that I like to do is look at the examples

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:20.460)

of the populations, what Buddhism shows regarding compassion or what Judaism shows around education,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:28.860)

the average level of education that everybody gets because of a culture that is really working

Lex Fridman (2:14:32.460)

on conditioning it or various cultures.

Lex Fridman (2:14:35.500)

What are the positive deviance outside of the statistical deviance to see what is actually

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:41.680)

possible and then say, what are the conditioning factors and can we condition those across

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:47.060)

a few of them simultaneously and could we build a civilization like that becomes a very

Lex Fridman (2:14:52.020)

interesting question.

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.500)

So there's this kind of real politic idea that humans are violent, large groups of humans

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:14:59.340)

become violent, they become irrational, specifically those two things, rivalrous and violent and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:03.900)

irrational.

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.180)

And so in order to minimize the total amount of violence and have some good decisions,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:08.980)

they need ruled somehow.

Lex Fridman (2:15:10.780)

And that not getting that is some kind of naive utopianism that doesn't understand human

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:15.400)

nature yet.

Lex Fridman (2:15:16.400)

This gets back to like mimesis of desire as an inexorable thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:20.140)

I think the idea of the masses is actually a kind of propaganda that is useful for the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:26.560)

classes that control to popularize the idea that most people are too violent, lazy, undisciplined

Lex Fridman (2:15:37.380)

and irrational to make good choices and therefore their choices should be sublimated in some

Lex Fridman (2:15:42.300)

kind of way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:43.300)

I think that if we look back at these conditioning environments, we can say, okay, so the kids

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:50.060)

that go to a really fancy school and have a good developmental environment like Exeter

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:15:58.260)

Academy, there's still a Gaussian distribution of how well they do on any particular metric,

Lex Fridman (2:16:03.540)

but on average, they become senators and the worst ones become high end lawyers or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:16:09.300)

And then I look at the inner city school with a totally different set of things and I see

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:16:12.340)

a very, very differently displaced Gaussian distribution, but a very different set of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:16:15.500)

conditioning factors.

Lex Fridman (2:16:16.500)

And then I say the masses, well, if all those kids who were one of the parts of the masses

Lex Fridman (2:16:20.380)

got to go to Exeter and have that family and whatever, would they still be the masses?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:16:25.140)

Could we actually condition more social virtue, more civic virtue, more orientation towards

Lex Fridman (2:16:32.140)

dialectical synthesis, more empathy, more rationality widely?

Lex Fridman (2:16:37.580)

Yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:16:39.940)

Would that lead to better capacity for something like participatory governance, democracy or

Lex Fridman (2:16:45.180)

republic or some kind of participatory governance?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:16:47.940)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:16:48.940)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:16:49.940)

Is it necessary for it actually?

Lex Fridman (2:16:52.500)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:16:54.060)

And is it good for class interests?

Lex Fridman (2:16:57.580)

Not really.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:16:58.580)

By the way, when you say class interests, this is the powerful leading over the less

Lex Fridman (2:17:03.540)

powerful, that kind of idea.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:17:06.800)

Anyone that benefits from asymmetries of power doesn't necessarily benefit from decreasing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:17:12.780)

those asymmetries of power and kind of increasing the capacity of people more widely.

Lex Fridman (2:17:20.340)

And so, when we talk about power, we're talking about asymmetries in agency, influence and

Lex Fridman (2:17:28.100)

control.

Lex Fridman (2:17:29.100)

Do you think that hunger for power is fundamental to human nature?

Lex Fridman (2:17:33.180)

I think we should get that straight before we talk about other stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:17:36.020)

So like this pick up line that I use at a bar often, which is power corrupts and absolute

Lex Fridman (2:17:43.440)

power corrupts, absolutely.

Lex Fridman (2:17:45.560)

Is that true or is that just a fancy thing to say?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:17:48.760)

In modern society, there's something to be said, have we changed as societies over time

Lex Fridman (2:17:55.080)

in terms of how much we crave power?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:17:58.100)

That there is an impulse towards power that is innate in people and can be conditioned

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:03.260)

one way or the other, yes, but you can see that Buddhist society does a very different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:06.840)

thing with it at scale, that you don't end up seeing the emergence of the same types

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:13.100)

of sociopathic behavior and particularly then creating sociopathic institutions.

Lex Fridman (2:18:21.460)

And so, it's like, is eating the foods that were rare in our evolutionary environment

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:28.220)

that give us more dopamine hit because they were rare and they're not anymore, salt,

Lex Fridman (2:18:31.820)

sugar?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:33.220)

Is there something pleasurable about those where humans have an orientation to overeat

Lex Fridman (2:18:37.560)

if they can?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:38.560)

Well, the fact that there is that possibility doesn't mean everyone will obligately be obese

Lex Fridman (2:18:42.740)

and die of obesity, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:18:44.020)

Like it's possible to have a particular impulse and to be able to understand it, have other

Lex Fridman (2:18:49.900)

ones and be able to balance them.

Lex Fridman (2:18:52.780)

And so, to say that power dynamics are obligate in humans and we can't do anything about it

Lex Fridman (2:19:00.460)

is very similar to me to saying like everyone is going to be obligately obese.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:05.460)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:06.460)

So, there's some degree to which the control of those impulses has to do with the conditioning

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:10.640)

early in life.

Lex Fridman (2:19:11.640)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:19:12.640)

And the culture that creates the environment to be able to do that and then the recursion

Lex Fridman (2:19:16.940)

on that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:17.940)

Okay.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:18.940)

So, if we were to, bear with me, just asking for a friend, if we're to kill all humans

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:24.060)

on Earth and then start over, is there ideas about how to build up, okay, we don't have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:32.740)

to kill, let's leave the humans on Earth, they're fine and go to Mars and start a new

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:38.220)

society.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:39.220)

Is there ways to construct systems of conditioning, education of how we live with each other that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:47.340)

would incentivize us properly to not seek power, to not construct systems that are of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:19:57.980)

asymmetry of power and to create systems that are resilient to all kinds of terrorist attacks,

Lex Fridman (2:20:03.460)

to all kinds of destructions?

Lex Fridman (2:20:06.540)

I believe so.

Lex Fridman (2:20:08.460)

Is there some inclination?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:10.300)

Of course, you probably don't have all the answers, but you have insights about what

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:14.620)

that looks like.

Lex Fridman (2:20:15.620)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:16.620)

It's just rigorous practice of dialectic synthesis as essentially conversations with assholes

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:23.380)

of various flavors until they're not assholes anymore because you become deeply empathetic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:28.420)

with their experience.

Lex Fridman (2:20:29.420)

Okay.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:30.420)

So, there's a lot of things that we would need to construct to come back to this, like

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.620)

what is the basis of rivalry?

Lex Fridman (2:20:39.700)

How do you bind it?

Lex Fridman (2:20:41.020)

How does it relate to tech?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:20:43.460)

If you have a culture that is doing less rivalry, does it always lose in war to those who do

Lex Fridman (2:20:48.180)

war better?

Lex Fridman (2:20:49.180)

And how do you make something on the enactment of how to get there from here?

Lex Fridman (2:20:52.460)

Great, great.

Lex Fridman (2:20:53.700)

So what's rivalry?

Lex Fridman (2:20:54.700)

Well, is rivalry bad or good?

Lex Fridman (2:20:58.980)

So is another word for rivalry competition?

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.980)

Yes, I think roughly, yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:05.380)

I think bad and good are kind of silly concepts here.

Lex Fridman (2:21:10.640)

Good for some things, bad for other things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:12.700)

Bad for some contexts and others.

Lex Fridman (2:21:15.820)

Even that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:16.820)

Okay.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:17.820)

Let me give you an example that relates back to the Facebook measuring thing you were mentioning

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:21.700)

a moment ago.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:23.300)

First, I think what you're saying is actually aligned with the right direction and what

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:21:27.580)

I want to get to in a moment, but it's not, the devil is in the details here.

Lex Fridman (2:21:32.300)

So I enjoy praise, it feeds my ego, I grow stronger.

Lex Fridman (2:21:36.720)

So I appreciate that.

Lex Fridman (2:21:37.720)

I will make sure to include one piece every 15 minutes as we go.

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.420)

So it's easier to measure, there are problems with this argument, but there's also utility

Lex Fridman (2:21:53.860)

to it.

Lex Fridman (2:21:54.860)

So let's take it for the utility it has first.

Lex Fridman (2:21:59.340)

It's harder to measure happiness than it is to measure comfort.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:22:04.960)

We can measure with technology that the shocks in a car are making the car bounce less, that

Lex Fridman (2:22:10.780)

the bed is softer and, you know, material science and those types of things.

Lex Fridman (2:22:16.340)

And happiness is actually hard for philosophers to define because some people find that there's

Lex Fridman (2:22:23.180)

certain kinds of overcoming suffering that are necessary for happiness.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:22:26.220)

There's happiness that feels more like contentment and happiness that feels more like passion.

Lex Fridman (2:22:30.180)

Is passion the source of all suffering or the source of all creativity?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:22:32.780)

Like there's deep stuff and it's mostly first person, not measurable third person stuff,

Lex Fridman (2:22:37.380)

even if maybe it corresponds to third person stuff to some degree.

Lex Fridman (2:22:40.860)

But we also see examples of some of our favorite examples as people who are in the worst environments

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:22:45.260)

who end up finding happiness, right, where the third person stuff looks to be less conducive

Lex Fridman (2:22:49.100)

and there's some Victor Frankl, Nelson Mandela, whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:22:54.420)

But it's pretty easy to measure comfort and it's pretty universal.

Lex Fridman (2:22:57.540)

And I think we can see that the Industrial Revolution started to replace happiness with

Lex Fridman (2:23:01.760)

comfort quite heavily as the thing it was optimizing for.

Lex Fridman (2:23:05.260)

And we can see that when increased comfort is given, maybe because of the evolutionary

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:23:09.020)

disposition that expending extra calories when for the majority of our history we didn't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:23:14.400)

have extra calories was not a safe thing to do.

Lex Fridman (2:23:17.420)

Who knows why?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:23:19.660)

When extra comfort is given, it's very easy to take that path, even if it's not the path

Lex Fridman (2:23:25.820)

that supports overall well being long term.

Lex Fridman (2:23:29.220)

And so, we can see that, you know, when you look at the techno optimist idea that we have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:23:37.500)

better lives than Egyptian pharaohs and kings and whatever, what they're largely looking

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:23:41.780)

at is how comfortable our beds are and how comfortable the transportation systems are

Lex Fridman (2:23:47.980)

and things like that, in which case there's massive improvement.

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.340)

But we also see that in some of the nations where people have access to the most comfort,

Lex Fridman (2:23:54.700)

suicide and mental illness are the highest.

Lex Fridman (2:23:57.500)

And we also see that some of the happiest cultures are actually some of the ones that

Lex Fridman (2:24:01.420)

are in materially lame environments.

Lex Fridman (2:24:04.220)

And so, there's a very interesting question here, and if I understand correctly, you do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:08.260)

cold showers, and Joe Rogan was talking about how he needs to do some fairly intensive kind

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:13.900)

of struggle that is a non comfort to actually induce being better as a person, this concept

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:21.040)

of hormesis, that it's actually stressing an adaptive system that increases its adaptive

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:27.560)

capacity, and that there's something that the happiness of a system has something to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:33.020)

do with its adaptive capacity, its overall resilience, health, well being, which requires

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:37.000)

a decent bit of discomfort.

Lex Fridman (2:24:40.020)

And yet, in the presence of the comfort solution, it's very hard to not choose it, and then

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:24:46.220)

as you're choosing it regularly, to actually down regulate your overall adaptive capacity.

Lex Fridman (2:24:51.800)

And so, when we start saying, can we make tech where we're measuring for the things

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:00.460)

that it produces beyond just the measure of GDP or whatever particular measures look like

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:06.580)

the revenue generation or profit generation of my business, are all the meaningful things

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:13.660)

measurable, and what are the right measures, and what are the externalities of optimizing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:20.020)

for that measurement set, what meaningful things aren't included in that measurement

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:23.660)

set, that might have their own externalities, these are some of the questions we actually

Lex Fridman (2:25:27.100)

have to take seriously.

Lex Fridman (2:25:28.100)

Yeah, and I think they're answerable questions, right?

Lex Fridman (2:25:31.140)

Progressively better, not perfect.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:33.020)

Right, so first of all, let me throw out happiness and comfort out of the discussion, those seem

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:37.740)

like useless, the distinction, because I said they're useful, well being is useful, but

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:43.500)

I think I take it back.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:47.940)

I propose new metrics in this brainstorm session, which is, so one is like personal growth,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:25:59.180)

which is intellectual growth, I think we're able to make that concrete for ourselves,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:05.700)

like you're a better person than you were a week ago, or a worse person than you were

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:11.540)

a week ago.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:12.540)

I think we can ourselves report that, and understand what that means, it's this grey

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:18.380)

area, and we try to define it, but I think we humans are pretty good at that, because

Lex Fridman (2:26:22.940)

we have a sense, an idealistic sense of the person we might be able to become.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:27.220)

We all dream of becoming a certain kind of person, and I think we have a sense of getting

Lex Fridman (2:26:31.420)

closer and not towards that person.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:34.280)

Maybe this is not a great metric, fine.

Lex Fridman (2:26:36.400)

The other one is love, actually.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:39.680)

Like if you're happy or not, or you're comfortable or not, how much love do you have towards

Lex Fridman (2:26:45.620)

your fellow human beings?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:26:47.100)

I feel like if you try to optimize that, and increasing that, that's going to have, that's

Lex Fridman (2:26:51.540)

a good metric.

Lex Fridman (2:26:55.720)

How many times a day, sorry, if I can quantify, how many times a day have you thought positively

Lex Fridman (2:27:00.860)

of another human being?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:02.860)

Put that down as a number, and increase that number.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:06.380)

I think the process of saying, okay, so let's not take GDP or GDP per capita as the metric

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:13.660)

we want to optimize for, because GDP goes up during war, and it goes up with more healthcare

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:18.020)

spending from sicker people, and various things that we wouldn't say correlate to quality

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:21.620)

of life.

Lex Fridman (2:27:23.260)

Addiction drives GDP awesomely.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:24.260)

By the way, when I said growth, I wasn't referring to GDP.

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.260)

I know.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:29.260)

I'm giving an example now of the primary metric we use, and why it's not an adequate metric,

Lex Fridman (2:27:33.980)

because we're exploring other ones.

Lex Fridman (2:27:35.380)

So the idea of saying, what would the metrics for a good civilization be?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:41.700)

If I had to pick a set of metrics, what would the best ones be if I was going to optimize

Lex Fridman (2:27:44.880)

for those?

Lex Fridman (2:27:46.440)

And then really try to run the thought experiment more deeply, and say, okay, so what happens

Lex Fridman (2:27:51.980)

if we optimize for that?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:27:54.440)

Try to think through the first, and second, and third order effects of what happens that's

Lex Fridman (2:27:58.820)

positive, and then also say, what negative things can happen from optimizing that?

Lex Fridman (2:28:03.000)

What actually matters that is not included in that or in that way of defining it?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:07.040)

Because love versus number of positive thoughts per day, I could just make a long list of

Lex Fridman (2:28:11.320)

names and just say positive thing about each one.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:13.860)

It's all very superficial.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:15.780)

Not include animals or the rest of life, have a very shallow total amount of it, but I'm

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:20.900)

optimizing the number, and if I get some credit for the number.

Lex Fridman (2:28:24.920)

And this is when I said the model of reality isn't reality.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:29.220)

When you make a set of metrics that we're going to optimize for this, whatever reality

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:33.300)

is that is not included in those metrics can be the areas where harm occurs, which is why

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:38.000)

I would say that wisdom is something like the discernment that leads to right choices

Lex Fridman (2:28:48.880)

beyond what metrics based optimization would offer.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:28:53.660)

Yeah, but another way to say that is wisdom is a constantly expanding and evolving set

Lex Fridman (2:29:03.940)

of metrics.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:06.260)

Which means that there is something in you that is recognizing a new metric that's important

Lex Fridman (2:29:10.060)

that isn't part of that metric set.

Lex Fridman (2:29:11.520)

So there's a certain kind of connection, discernment, awareness, and this is an iterative game theory.

Lex Fridman (2:29:19.100)

There's a girdles and completeness theorem, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:20.820)

Which is if the system, if the set of things is consistent, it won't be complete.

Lex Fridman (2:29:24.260)

So we're going to keep adding to it, which is why we were saying earlier, I don't think

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:27.980)

it's not beautiful.

Lex Fridman (2:29:30.300)

And especially if you were just saying one of the metrics you want to optimize for at

Lex Fridman (2:29:32.740)

the individual level is becoming, right?

Lex Fridman (2:29:34.580)

That we're becoming more.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:35.580)

Well, that then becomes true for the civilization and our metric sets as well.

Lex Fridman (2:29:39.720)

And our definition of how to think about a meaningful life and a meaningful civilization.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:44.300)

I can tell you what some of my favorite metrics are.

Lex Fridman (2:29:46.700)

What's that?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:50.980)

Well love is obviously not a metric.

Lex Fridman (2:29:52.500)

It's like you can bench.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:53.500)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:29:54.500)

It's a good metric.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:29:55.500)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:29:56.500)

I want to optimize that across the entire population, starting with infants.

Lex Fridman (2:30:01.400)

So in the same way that love isn't a metric, but you could make metrics that look at certain

Lex Fridman (2:30:06.860)

parts of it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:07.860)

The thing I'm about to say isn't a metric, but it's a, it's a consideration because I

Lex Fridman (2:30:11.500)

thought about this a lot.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:12.500)

I don't think there is a metric, a right one.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:16.260)

I think that every metric by itself without this thing we talked about of the continuous

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:20.220)

improvement becomes a paperclip maximizer.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:22.660)

I think that's why what the idea of false idol means in terms of the model of reality

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:28.700)

not being reality.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:29.860)

Then my sacred relationship is to reality itself, which also binds me to the unknown

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:34.100)

forever.

Lex Fridman (2:30:35.100)

To the known, but also to the unknown.

Lex Fridman (2:30:36.500)

And there's a sense of sacredness connected to the unknown that creates an epistemic humility

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:41.220)

that is always seeking not just to optimize the thing I know, but to learn new stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:30:45.900)

And to be open to perceive reality directly.

Lex Fridman (2:30:47.620)

So my model never becomes sacred.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:49.020)

My model is useful.

Lex Fridman (2:30:50.020)

My

Lex Fridman (2:30:51.020)

So the model can't be the false idol.

Lex Fridman (2:30:53.380)

Correct.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:54.380)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:30:55.380)

And this is why the first verse of the Tao Te Ching is the Tao that is nameable is not

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:30:59.060)

the eternal Tao.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:00.660)

The naming then can become the source of the 10,000 things that if you get too carried

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:04.140)

away with it can actually obscure you from paying attention to reality beyond in the

Lex Fridman (2:31:08.540)

models.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:09.540)

It sounds a lot, a lot like Stephen Wolfram, but in a different language, much more poetic.

Lex Fridman (2:31:14.020)

I can imagine that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:15.460)

No, I'm referring, I'm joking, but there's a echoes of cellular automata, which you can't

Lex Fridman (2:31:20.700)

name.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:21.700)

You can't construct a good model cellular automata.

Lex Fridman (2:31:24.380)

You can only watch in awe.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:26.380)

I apologize.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:27.780)

I'm distracting your train of thought horribly and miserably making it different.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:32.000)

By the way, something robots aren't good at and dealing with the uncertainty of uneven

Lex Fridman (2:31:36.900)

ground.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:37.900)

You've been okay so far.

Lex Fridman (2:31:38.900)

You've been doing wonderfully.

Lex Fridman (2:31:40.380)

So what's your favorite metrics?

Lex Fridman (2:31:41.380)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:31:42.380)

So I know you're not a robot.

Lex Fridman (2:31:43.380)

So I have a

Lex Fridman (2:31:44.380)

So one metric, and there are problems with this, but one metric that I like to just as

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:50.380)

a thought experiment to consider is because you're actually asking, I mean, I know you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:31:56.980)

ask your guests about the meaning of life because ultimately when you're saying what

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:01.340)

is a desirable civilization, you can't answer that without answering what is a meaningful

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:06.560)

human life and to say what is a good civilization because it's going to be in relationship to

Lex Fridman (2:32:11.700)

that, right?

Lex Fridman (2:32:17.260)

And then you have whatever your answer is, how do you know what is the epistemic basis

Lex Fridman (2:32:22.260)

for postulating that?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:25.140)

There's also a whole nother reason for asking that question.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:27.540)

I don't, I mean, that doesn't even apply to you whatsoever, which is, it's interesting

Lex Fridman (2:32:34.140)

how few people have been asked questions like it.

Lex Fridman (2:32:41.100)

The joke about these questions is silly, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:45.460)

It's funny to watch a person and if I was more of an asshole, I would really stick on

Lex Fridman (2:32:50.740)

that question.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:51.740)

Right.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:32:52.740)

It's a silly question in some sense, but like we haven't really considered what it means.

Lex Fridman (2:32:58.420)

Just a more concrete version of that question is what is a better world?

Lex Fridman (2:33:03.020)

What is the kind of world we're trying to create really?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:06.340)

Have you really thought,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:07.340)

I'll give you some kind of simple answers to that that are meaningful to me, but let

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:13.140)

me do the societal indices first because they're fun.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:17.340)

We should take a note of this meaningful thing because it's important to come back to.

Lex Fridman (2:33:20.700)

Are you reminding me to ask you about the meaning of life?

Lex Fridman (2:33:23.740)

Noted.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:24.740)

Let me jot that down.

Lex Fridman (2:33:28.540)

So because I think I stopped tracking it like 25 open threads.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:33.220)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:33:34.220)

Let it all burn.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:36.340)

One index that I find very interesting is the inverse correlation of addiction within

Lex Fridman (2:33:42.100)

the society.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:33:45.260)

The more a society produces addiction within the people in it, the less healthy I think

Lex Fridman (2:33:50.540)

the society is as a pretty fundamental metric.

Lex Fridman (2:33:54.900)

And so the more the individuals feel that there are less compulsive things in compelling

Lex Fridman (2:34:01.940)

them to behave in ways that are destructive to their own values.

Lex Fridman (2:34:06.940)

And insofar as a civilization is conditioning and influencing the individuals within it,

Lex Fridman (2:34:12.220)

the inverse of addiction.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:14.860)

Lovely defined.

Lex Fridman (2:34:15.860)

Correct.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:16.860)

Addiction.

Lex Fridman (2:34:17.860)

What's it?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:18.860)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:34:19.860)

Compulsive behavior that is destructive towards things that we value.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:25.020)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:34:28.180)

I think that's a very interesting one to think about.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:29.980)

That's a really interesting one.

Lex Fridman (2:34:30.980)

And this is then also where comfort and addiction start to get very close.

Lex Fridman (2:34:35.740)

And the ability to go in the other direction from addiction is the ability to be exposed

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:40.420)

to hypernormal stimuli and not go down the path of desensitizing to other stimuli and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:34:46.540)

needing that hypernormal stimuli, which does involve a kind of hormesis.

Lex Fridman (2:34:51.140)

So I do think the civilization of the future has to create something like ritualized discomfort.

Lex Fridman (2:35:00.900)

And I think that's what the sweat lodge and the vision quest and the solo journey and

Lex Fridman (2:35:11.060)

the ayahuasca journey and the Sundance were.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:35:13.420)

I think it's even a big part of what yoga asana was, is to make beings that are resilient

Lex Fridman (2:35:20.400)

and strong, they have to overcome some things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:35:23.140)

To make beings that can control their own mind and fear, they have to face some fears.

Lex Fridman (2:35:27.620)

But we don't want to put everybody in war or real trauma.

Lex Fridman (2:35:31.200)

And yet we can see that the most fucked up people we know had childhoods of a lot of

Lex Fridman (2:35:35.700)

trauma.

Lex Fridman (2:35:36.700)

But some of the most incredible people we know had childhoods of a lot of trauma, whether

Lex Fridman (2:35:40.220)

or not they happened to make it through and overcome that or not.

Lex Fridman (2:35:43.300)

So how do we get the benefits of the stealing of character and the resilience and the whatever

Lex Fridman (2:35:49.620)

that happened from the difficulty without traumatizing people?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:35:52.900)

A certain kind of ritualized discomfort that not only has us overcome something by ourselves,

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.680)

but overcome it together with each other where nobody bails when it gets hard because the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:05.020)

other people are there.

Lex Fridman (2:36:06.020)

So it's both a resilience of the individuals and a resilience of the bonding.

Lex Fridman (2:36:11.340)

So I think we'll keep getting more and more comfortable stuff, but we have to also develop

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:15.700)

resilience in the presence of that for the anti addiction direction and the fullness

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:21.740)

of character and the trustworthiness to others.

Lex Fridman (2:36:24.820)

So you have to be consistently injecting discomfort into the system, ritualize.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:30.660)

I mean, this sounds like you have to imagine Sisyphus happy.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:34.740)

You have to imagine Sisyphus with his rock, optimally resilient from a metrics perspective

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:45.060)

in society.

Lex Fridman (2:36:47.140)

So we want to constantly be throwing rocks at ourselves.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:52.580)

Not constantly.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:36:54.420)

You didn't have to frequently, periodically, and there's different levels of intensity,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:00.980)

different periodicities.

Lex Fridman (2:37:01.980)

Now, I do not think this should be imposed by states.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:05.380)

I think it should emerge from cultures.

Lex Fridman (2:37:09.040)

And I think the cultures are developing people that understand the value of it.

Lex Fridman (2:37:12.540)

So there is both a cultural cohesion to it, but there's also a voluntaryism because the

Lex Fridman (2:37:19.220)

people value the thing that is being developed and understand it.

Lex Fridman (2:37:22.420)

And that's what conditioning, it's conditioning some of these values.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:28.480)

Conditioning is a bad word because we like our idea of sovereignty, but when we recognize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:32.440)

the language that we speak and the words that we think in and the patterns of thought built

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:38.180)

into that language and the aesthetics that we like and so much is conditioned in us just

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:42.440)

based on where we're born, you can't not condition people.

Lex Fridman (2:37:45.420)

So all you can do is take more responsibility for what the conditioning factors are.

Lex Fridman (2:37:48.900)

And then you have to think about this question of what is a meaningful human life?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:51.860)

Because we're, unlike the other animals born into environment that they're genetically

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:37:55.940)

adapted for, we're building new environments that we were not adapted for, and then we're

Lex Fridman (2:37:59.980)

becoming affected by those.

Lex Fridman (2:38:02.140)

So then we have to say, well, what kinds of environments, digital environments, physical

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:38:06.340)

environments, social environments would we want to create that would develop the healthiest,

Lex Fridman (2:38:13.100)

happiest, most moral, noble, meaningful people?

Lex Fridman (2:38:16.640)

What are even those sets of things that matter?

Lex Fridman (2:38:18.280)

So you end up getting deep existential consideration at the heart of civilization design when you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:38:23.460)

start to realize how powerful we're becoming and how much what we're building it in service

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:38:27.420)

towards matters.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:38:28.420)

Before I pull it, I think three threads you just laid down, is there another metric index

Lex Fridman (2:38:34.960)

that you're interested in?

Lex Fridman (2:38:35.960)

There's one more that I really like.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:38:39.780)

There's a number, but the next one that comes to mind is I have to make a very quick model.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:38:51.720)

Healthy human bonding, say we were in a tribal type setting, my positive emotional states

Lex Fridman (2:38:58.280)

and your positive emotional states would most of the time be correlated, your negative emotional

Lex Fridman (2:39:03.460)

states and mine.

Lex Fridman (2:39:04.860)

And so you start laughing, I start laughing, you start crying, my eyes might tear up.

Lex Fridman (2:39:10.200)

And we would call that the compassion compersion axis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:15.080)

I would, this is a model I find useful.

Lex Fridman (2:39:18.860)

So compassion is when you're feeling something negative, I feel some pain, I feel some empathy,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:23.000)

something in relationship.

Lex Fridman (2:39:24.880)

Compersion is when you do well, I'm stoked for you, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:27.600)

Like I actually feel happiness at your happiness.

Lex Fridman (2:39:29.640)

I like compersion.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:30.640)

Yeah, the fact that it's such an uncommon word in English is actually a problem culturally.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:35.800)

Because I feel that often, and I think that's a really good feeling to feel and maximize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:40.320)

for actually.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:41.320)

That's actually the metric I'm going to say is the compassion compersion axis is the thing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:46.280)

I would optimize for.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:47.640)

Now, there is a state where my emotional states and your emotional states are just totally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:53.080)

decoupled.

Lex Fridman (2:39:55.080)

And that is like sociopathy.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:39:57.200)

I don't want to hurt you, but I don't care if I do or for you to do well or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:40:01.520)

But there's a worse state and it's extremely common, which is where they're inversely coupled.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:40:06.240)

Where my positive emotions correspond to your negative ones and vice versa.

Lex Fridman (2:40:11.280)

And that is the, I would call it the jealousy sadism axis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:40:17.200)

The jealousy axis is when you're doing really well, I feel something bad.

Lex Fridman (2:40:20.640)

I feel taken away from, less than, upset, envious, whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:40:26.320)

And that's so common, but I think of it as kind of a low grade psychopathology that we've

Lex Fridman (2:40:34.560)

just normalized.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:40:36.740)

The idea that I'm actually upset at the happiness or fulfillment or success of another is like

Lex Fridman (2:40:41.080)

a profoundly fucked up thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:40:42.920)

No, we shouldn't shame it and repress it so it gets worse.

Lex Fridman (2:40:45.480)

We should study it.

Lex Fridman (2:40:46.560)

Where does it come from?

Lex Fridman (2:40:47.560)

And it comes from our own insecurities and stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:40:50.760)

But then the next part that everybody knows is really fucked up is just on the same axis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:40:55.160)

It's the same inverted, which is to the jealousy or the envy is the, I feel badly when you're

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:01.120)

doing well.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:02.160)

The sadism side is I actually feel good when you lose or when you're in pain, I feel some

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:06.880)

happiness that's associated.

Lex Fridman (2:41:07.880)

And you can see when someone feels jealous, sometimes they feel jealous with a partner

Lex Fridman (2:41:12.280)

and then they feel they want that partner to get it, revenge comes up or something.

Lex Fridman (2:41:17.540)

So sadism is really like jealousy is one step on the path to sadism from the healthy compassion

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:23.160)

conversion axis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:24.160)

So, I would like to see a society that is inversely, that is conditioning sadism and

Lex Fridman (2:41:30.280)

jealousy inversely, right?

Lex Fridman (2:41:32.840)

The lower that amount and the more the compassion conversion.

Lex Fridman (2:41:36.040)

And if I had to summarize that very simply, I'd say it would optimize for conversion.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:42.240)

Which is because notice that's not just saying love for you where I might be self sacrificing

Lex Fridman (2:41:47.840)

and miserable and I love people, but I kill myself, which I don't think anybody thinks

Lex Fridman (2:41:52.200)

a great idea.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:41:53.200)

Happiness where I might be sociopathically happy where I'm causing problems all over

Lex Fridman (2:41:56.400)

the place or even sadistically happy, but it's a coupling, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:42:00.680)

That I'm actually feeling happiness in relationship to yours and even in causal relationship where

Lex Fridman (2:42:04.840)

I, my own agentic desire to get happier wants to support you too.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:42:09.820)

That's actually speaking of another pickup line.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:42:13.920)

That's quite honestly what I, as a guy who is single, this is going to come out very

Lex Fridman (2:42:19.120)

ridiculous because it's like, oh yeah, where's your girlfriend, bro?

Lex Fridman (2:42:22.840)

But that's what I look for in a relationship because it's like, it's so much, it's so,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:42:32.040)

it's such an amazing life where you actually get joy from another person's success and

Lex Fridman (2:42:38.000)

they get joy from your success.

Lex Fridman (2:42:40.120)

And then it becomes like you don't actually need to succeed much for that to have a, like

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:42:45.160)

a loop, like a cycle of just like happiness that just increases like exponentially.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:42:52.380)

It's weird.

Lex Fridman (2:42:53.380)

So like just be, just enjoying the happiness of others, the success of others.

Lex Fridman (2:42:58.160)

So this, this is like the, let's call this, cause the first person that drilled this into

Lex Fridman (2:43:02.600)

my head is Rogan, Joe Rogan.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:05.000)

He was the embodiment of that cause I saw somebody who is a successful, rich and nonstop

Lex Fridman (2:43:12.880)

true.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:13.880)

I mean, you could tell when somebody is full of shit and somebody is not really genuinely

Lex Fridman (2:43:19.400)

enjoying the success of his friends.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:22.320)

That was weird to me.

Lex Fridman (2:43:23.320)

That was interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:43:24.320)

And I mean, the way you're kind of speaking to it, the reason Joe stood out to me is I

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:30.240)

guess I haven't witnessed genuine expression of that often in this culture of just real

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:36.840)

joy for others.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:38.000)

I mean, part of that has to do, there hasn't been many channels where you can watch or

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:43.680)

listen to people being their authentic selves.

Lex Fridman (2:43:46.040)

So I'm sure there's a bunch of people who live life with compersion.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:49.600)

They probably don't seek public attention also, but that was, yeah, if there was any

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:43:56.360)

word that could express what I've learned from Joe, why he's been a really inspiring

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:00.720)

figure is that compersion.

Lex Fridman (2:44:03.000)

And I wish our world was, had a lot more of that cause then it may, I mean, my own, sorry

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:12.840)

to go in a small tangent, but like you're speaking how society should function.

Lex Fridman (2:44:19.360)

But I feel like if you optimize for that metric in your own personal life, you're going to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:25.780)

live a truly fulfilling life.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:27.840)

I don't know what the right word to use, but that's a really good way to live life.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:32.260)

You will also learn what gets in the way of it and how to work with it that if you wanted

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:37.880)

to help try to build systems at scale or apply Facebook or exponential technologies to do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:42.600)

that, you would have more actual depth of real knowledge of what that takes.

Lex Fridman (2:44:48.800)

And this is, you know, as you mentioned that there's this virtuous cycle between when you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:44:52.360)

get stoked on other people doing well and then they have a similar relationship to you

Lex Fridman (2:44:55.640)

and everyone is in the process of building each other up.

Lex Fridman (2:44:59.920)

And this is what I would say the healthy version of competition is versus the unhealthy version.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:05.800)

The healthy version, right, the root, I believe it's a Latin word that means to strive together.

Lex Fridman (2:45:12.280)

And it's that impulse of becoming where I want to become more, but I recognize that

Lex Fridman (2:45:16.360)

there's actually a hormesis.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:17.820)

There's a challenge that is needed for me to be able to do that.

Lex Fridman (2:45:21.320)

But that means that, yes, there's an impulse where I'm trying to get ahead.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:24.760)

Maybe I'm even trying to win, but I actually want a good opponent and I want them to get

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:28.760)

ahead too because that is where my ongoing becoming happens and the win itself will get

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:32.700)

boring very quickly.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:34.520)

The ongoing becoming is where there's aliveness and for the ongoing becoming, they need to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:39.040)

have it too.

Lex Fridman (2:45:40.040)

And that's the strive together.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:41.040)

So, in the healthy competition, I'm stoked when they're doing really well because my

Lex Fridman (2:45:44.560)

becoming is supported by it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:45:47.200)

Now this is actually a very nice segue into a model I like about what a meaningful human

Lex Fridman (2:45:55.600)

life is, if you want to go there.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:00.120)

Let's go there.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:01.120)

I have three things I'm going elsewhere with, but if we were first, let us take this short

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:08.920)

stroll through the park of the meaning of life.

Lex Fridman (2:46:12.120)

Daniel, what is a meaningful life?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:16.280)

I think the semantics end up mattering because a lot of people will take the word meaning

Lex Fridman (2:46:24.160)

and the word purpose almost interchangeably and they'll think kind of, what is the meaning

Lex Fridman (2:46:30.240)

of my life?

Lex Fridman (2:46:31.240)

What is the meaning of human life?

Lex Fridman (2:46:32.240)

What is the meaning of life?

Lex Fridman (2:46:33.240)

What's the meaning of the universe?

Lex Fridman (2:46:35.440)

And what is the meaning of existence rather than nonexistence?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:38.600)

So, there's a lot of kind of existential considerations there and I think there's some

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:43.160)

cognitive mistakes that are very easy, like taking the idea of purpose.

Lex Fridman (2:46:48.960)

Which is like a goal?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:49.960)

Which is a utilitarian concept.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:46:51.980)

The purpose of one thing is defined in relationship to other things that have assumed value.

Lex Fridman (2:46:59.020)

And to say, what is the purpose of everything?

Lex Fridman (2:47:00.920)

Well, purpose is too small of a question.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:03.480)

It's fundamentally a relative question within everything.

Lex Fridman (2:47:05.840)

What is the purpose of one thing relative to another?

Lex Fridman (2:47:07.760)

What is the purpose of everything?

Lex Fridman (2:47:08.940)

And there's nothing outside of it with which to say it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:11.160)

We actually just got to the limits of the utility of the concept of purpose.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:16.160)

It doesn't mean it's purposeless in the sense of something inside of it being purposeless.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:19.440)

It means the concept is too small.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:21.500)

Which is why you end up getting to, you know, like in Taoism, talking about the nature of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:27.240)

it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:47:28.240)

Rather, there's a fundamental what where the why can't go deeper is the nature of it.

Lex Fridman (2:47:35.320)

But I'm going to try to speak to a much simpler part, which is when people think about what

Lex Fridman (2:47:40.600)

is a meaningful human life.

Lex Fridman (2:47:42.740)

And kind of if we were to optimize for something at the level of individual life, but also,

Lex Fridman (2:47:48.160)

how does optimizing for this at the level of the individual life lead to the best society

Lex Fridman (2:47:54.360)

for insofar as people living that way affects others and long term, the world as a whole?

Lex Fridman (2:47:59.880)

And how would we then make a civilization that was trying to think about these things?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:48:05.840)

Because you can see that there are a lot of dialectics where there's value on two sides,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:48:13.520)

individualism and collectivism or the ability to accept things and the ability to push harder

Lex Fridman (2:48:20.520)

and whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:48:22.200)

And there's failure modes on both sides.

Lex Fridman (2:48:25.820)

And so, when you were starting to say, okay, individual happiness, you're like, wait, fuck,

Lex Fridman (2:48:29.800)

sadists can be happy while hurting people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:48:31.000)

It's not individual happiness, it's love.

Lex Fridman (2:48:32.680)

But wait, some people can self sacrifice out of love in a way that actually ends up just

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:48:36.600)

creating codependency for everybody.

Lex Fridman (2:48:39.200)

Or okay, so how do we think about all those things together?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:48:48.160)

This kind of came to me as a simple way that I kind of relate to it is that a meaningful

Lex Fridman (2:48:54.480)

life involves the mode of being, the mode of doing and the mode of becoming.

Lex Fridman (2:49:00.160)

And it involves a virtuous relationship between those three and that any of those modes on

Lex Fridman (2:49:07.720)

their own also have failure modes that are not a meaningful life.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:12.480)

The mode of being, the way I would describe it, if we're talking about the essence of

Lex Fridman (2:49:20.280)

it is about taking in and appreciating the beauty of life that is now.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:25.440)

It's a mode that is in the moment and that is largely about being with what is.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:33.040)

It's fundamentally grounded in the nature of experience and the meaningfulness of experience.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:37.360)

The prima facie meaningfulness of when I'm having this experience, I'm not actually asking

Lex Fridman (2:49:42.800)

what the meaning of life is, I'm actually full of it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:45.400)

I'm full of experiencing it.

Lex Fridman (2:49:46.880)

The momentary experience, the moment.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:49.800)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:49:50.820)

So taking in the beauty of life.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:54.360)

Being is adding to the beauty of life.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:56.040)

I'm going to produce some art, I'm going to produce some technology that will make life

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:49:59.480)

easier and more beautiful for somebody else.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:01.200)

I'm going to do some science that will end up leading to better insights or other people's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:08.300)

ability to appreciate the beauty of life more because they understand more about it or whatever

Lex Fridman (2:50:11.680)

it is or protect it, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:13.240)

I'm going to protect it in some way.

Lex Fridman (2:50:14.680)

But that's adding to or being in service of the beauty of life through our doing.

Lex Fridman (2:50:19.780)

And becoming is getting better at both of those.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:23.000)

Being able to deepen our being, which is to be able to take in the beauty of life more

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:26.880)

profoundly, be more moved by it, touched by it, and increasing our capacity with doing

Lex Fridman (2:50:32.680)

to add to the beauty of life more.

Lex Fridman (2:50:37.720)

So I hold that a meaningful life has to be all three of those.

Lex Fridman (2:50:42.560)

And where they're not in conflict with each other, ultimately it grounds in being, it

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:48.640)

grounds in the intrinsic meaningfulness of experience.

Lex Fridman (2:50:52.120)

And then my doing is ultimately something that will be able to increase the possibility

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:50:57.440)

of the quality of experience for others.

Lex Fridman (2:51:00.360)

And my becoming is a deepening on those.

Lex Fridman (2:51:03.200)

So it grounds an experience and also the evolutionary possibility of experience.

Lex Fridman (2:51:09.000)

And the point is to oscillate between these, never getting stuck on any one or I suppose

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:51:18.080)

in parallel, well you can't really, attention is a thing, you can only allocate attention.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:51:26.840)

I want moments where I am absorbed in the sunset and I'm not thinking about what to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:51:31.880)

do next.

Lex Fridman (2:51:32.880)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:51:33.880)

And then the fullness of that can make it to where my doing doesn't come from what's

Lex Fridman (2:51:39.400)

in it for me because I actually feel overwhelmingly full already.

Lex Fridman (2:51:45.400)

And then it's like how can I make life better for other people that don't have as much opportunities

Lex Fridman (2:51:51.120)

I had?

Lex Fridman (2:51:52.120)

How can I add something wonderful?

Lex Fridman (2:51:53.560)

How can I just be in the creative process?

Lex Fridman (2:51:56.960)

And so I think where the doing comes from matters and if the doing comes from a fullness

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:01.920)

of being, it's inherently going to be paying attention to externalities or it's more oriented

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:08.360)

to do that than if it comes from some emptiness that is trying to get full in some way that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:12.200)

is willing to cause sacrifices other places and where a chunk of its attention is internally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:15.960)

focused.

Lex Fridman (2:52:18.620)

And so when Buddha said desire is the cause of all suffering, then later the vow of the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:23.720)

Bodhisattva which was to show up for all sentient beings in universe forever is a pretty intense

Lex Fridman (2:52:29.340)

thing like desire.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:32.920)

I would say there is a kind of desire, if we think of desire as a basis for movement

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:36.160)

like a flow or a gradient, there's a kind of desire that comes from something missing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:39.800)

inside seeking fulfillment of that in the world.

Lex Fridman (2:52:43.160)

That ends up being the cause of actions that perpetuate suffering.

Lex Fridman (2:52:46.880)

But there's also not just non desire, there's a kind of desire that comes from feeling full

Lex Fridman (2:52:51.960)

at the beauty of life and wanting to add to it that is a flow this direction.

Lex Fridman (2:52:57.920)

And I don't think that is the cause of suffering.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:52:59.840)

I think that is, you know, and the Western traditions, right, the Eastern traditions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:04.080)

focused on that and kind of unconditional happiness outside of them, in the moment outside

Lex Fridman (2:53:08.680)

of time.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:09.680)

The Western tradition said, no, actually, desire is the source of creativity and we're

Lex Fridman (2:53:12.600)

here to be made in the image and likeness of the creator.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:15.660)

We're here to be fundamentally creative.

Lex Fridman (2:53:17.760)

But creating from where and in service of what?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:21.440)

Creating from a sense of connection to everything and wholeness in service of the well being

Lex Fridman (2:53:24.620)

of all of it is very different.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:28.940)

Which is back to that compassion, compersion axis.

Lex Fridman (2:53:31.440)

Being, doing, becoming.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:34.560)

It's pretty powerful.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:38.000)

You could potentially be algorithmatized into a robot just saying, where does death come

Lex Fridman (2:53:50.960)

into that?

Lex Fridman (2:53:54.680)

Being is forgetting, I mean, the concept of time completely.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:53:59.400)

There's a sense to doing and becoming that has a deadline built in, the urgency built

Lex Fridman (2:54:07.120)

in.

Lex Fridman (2:54:08.120)

Do you think death is fundamental to this, to a meaningful life?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:54:16.560)

Acknowledging or feeling the terror of death, like Ernest Becker, or just acknowledging

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:54:25.360)

the uncertainty, the mystery, the melancholy nature of the fact that the ride ends.

Lex Fridman (2:54:31.000)

Is that part of this equation or it's not necessary?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:54:34.560)

Okay, look at how it could be related.

Lex Fridman (2:54:37.480)

I've experienced fear of death.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:54:40.400)

I've also experienced times where I thought I was going to die that felt extremely peaceful

Lex Fridman (2:54:47.960)

and beautiful.

Lex Fridman (2:54:50.040)

And it's funny because we can be afraid of death because we're afraid of hell or bad

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:54:59.800)

reincarnation or the bardo or some kind of idea of the afterlife we have or we're projecting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:55:03.600)

some kind of sentient suffering.

Lex Fridman (2:55:05.040)

But if we're afraid of just non experience, I noticed that every time I stay up late enough

Lex Fridman (2:55:12.720)

that I'm really tired, I'm longing for deep sleep and non experience, right?

Lex Fridman (2:55:18.120)

Like I'm actually longing for experience to stop.

Lex Fridman (2:55:21.640)

And it's not morbid, it's not a bummer.

Lex Fridman (2:55:26.120)

And I don't mind falling asleep and sometimes when I wake up, I want to go back into it

Lex Fridman (2:55:30.820)

and then when it's done, I'm happy to come out of it.

Lex Fridman (2:55:34.080)

So when we think about death and having finite time here, and we could talk about if we live

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:55:44.840)

for a thousand years instead of a hundred or something like that, it would still be

Lex Fridman (2:55:47.680)

finite time.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:55:49.800)

The one bummer with the age we die is that I generally find that people mostly start

Lex Fridman (2:55:53.520)

to emotionally mature just shortly before they die.

Lex Fridman (2:55:58.480)

But if I get to live forever, I can just stay focused on what's in it for me forever.

Lex Fridman (2:56:15.360)

And if life continues and consciousness and sentience and people appreciating beauty and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:56:20.440)

adding to it and becoming continues, my life doesn't, but my life can have effects that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:56:25.640)

continue well beyond it, then life with a capital L starts mattering more to me than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:56:31.300)

my life.

Lex Fridman (2:56:32.300)

My life gets to be a part of and in service to.

Lex Fridman (2:56:35.800)

And the whole thing about when old men plant trees, the shade of which they'll never get

Lex Fridman (2:56:40.540)

to be in.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:56:41.540)

I remember the first time I read this poem by Hafez, the Sufi poet, written in like 13th

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:56:49.640)

century or something like that, and he talked about that if you're lonely, to think about

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:56:56.000)

him and he was kind of leaning his spirit into yours across the distance of a millennium

Lex Fridman (2:57:01.780)

and would comfort you with these poems and just thinking about people a millennium from

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:57:06.800)

now and caring about their experience and what they'd be suffering if they'd be lonely

Lex Fridman (2:57:10.360)

and could he offer something that could touch them.

Lex Fridman (2:57:13.120)

And it's just fucking beautiful.

Lex Fridman (2:57:15.340)

And so like the most beautiful parts of humans have to do with something that transcends

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:57:20.460)

what's in it for me.

Lex Fridman (2:57:23.060)

And death forces you to that.

Lex Fridman (2:57:25.360)

So not only does death create the urgency of doing, you're very right, it does have

Lex Fridman (2:57:34.040)

a sense in which it incentivizes the compersion and the compassion.

Lex Fridman (2:57:42.380)

And the widening, you remember Einstein had that quote, something to the effect of it's

Lex Fridman (2:57:46.200)

an optical delusion of consciousness to believe there are separate things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:57:50.280)

There's this one thing we call universe and something about us being inside of a prison

Lex Fridman (2:57:56.520)

of perception that can only see a very narrow little bit of it.

Lex Fridman (2:58:02.520)

But this might be just some weird disposition of mine, but when I think about the future

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:58:10.580)

after I'm dead and I think about consciousness, I think about young people falling in love

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:58:18.920)

for the first time and their experience, and I think about people being awed by sunsets

Lex Fridman (2:58:22.720)

and I think about all of it, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:58:27.520)

I can't not feel connected to that.

Lex Fridman (2:58:30.240)

Do you feel some sadness to the very high likelihood that you will be forgotten completely

Lex Fridman (2:58:37.500)

by all of human history, you, Daniel, the name, that which cannot be named?

Lex Fridman (2:58:46.640)

Systems like to self perpetuate, egos do that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:58:52.520)

The idea that I might do something meaningful that future people will appreciate, of course

Lex Fridman (2:58:56.800)

there's like a certain sweetness to that idea.

Lex Fridman (2:59:00.640)

But I know how many people did something, did things that I wouldn't be here without

Lex Fridman (2:59:05.480)

and that my life would be less without, whose names I will never know.

Lex Fridman (2:59:09.640)

And I feel a gratitude to them, I feel a closeness, I feel touched by that, and I think to the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:59:15.460)

degree that the future people are conscious enough, there is a, you know, a lot of traditions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:59:22.100)

have this kind of are we being good ancestors and respect for the ancestors beyond the names.

Lex Fridman (2:59:26.720)

I think that's a very healthy idea.

Lex Fridman (2:59:30.160)

But let me return to a much less beautiful and a much less pleasant conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:59:36.520)

You mentioned prison.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:59:37.600)

Back to X risk, okay.

Lex Fridman (2:59:41.040)

And conditioning.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:59:43.440)

You mentioned something about the state.

Lex Fridman (2:59:48.200)

So what role, let's talk about companies, governments, parents, all the mechanisms that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (2:59:56.440)

can be a source of conditioning.

Lex Fridman (2:59:58.840)

Which flavor of ice cream do you like?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:05.260)

This is a much harder set of questions and deep end of the pool than starting with the

Lex Fridman (30:11.960)

aliens was.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:15.040)

We went from aliens to consciousness.

Lex Fridman (30:18.060)

This is not the trajectory I was expecting nor you, but let us walk a while.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:24.140)

We can walk a while and I don't think we will do it justice.

Lex Fridman (30:27.100)

So what do we mean by consciousness versus conscious self reflective awareness?

Lex Fridman (30:34.320)

What do we mean by awareness, qualia, theory of mind?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:38.200)

There's a lot of terms that we think of as slightly different things and subjectivity,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:45.040)

first person.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:46.040)

I don't remember exactly the quote, but I remember when reading when Sam Harris wrote

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:53.200)

the book Free Will and then Dennett critiqued it and then there was some writing back and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (30:57.780)

forth between the two because normally they're on the same side of kind of arguing for critical

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:05.380)

thinking and logical fallacies and philosophy of science against supernatural ideas.

Lex Fridman (31:11.240)

And here Dennett believed there is something like free will.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:15.680)

He is a determinist compatibilist, but no consciousness and a radical element of this.

Lex Fridman (31:21.600)

And Sam was saying, no, there is consciousness, but there's no free will.

Lex Fridman (31:24.340)

And that's like the most fundamental kinds of axiomatic senses they disagreed on, but

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:29.040)

neither of them could say it was because the other one didn't understand the philosophy

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:31.240)

of science or logical fallacies.

Lex Fridman (31:34.220)

And they kind of spoke past each other and at the end, if I remember correctly, Sam said

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:37.160)

something that I thought was quite insightful, which was to the effect of it seems, because

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:42.360)

they weren't making any progress in shared understanding, it seems that we simply have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:46.120)

different intuitions about this.

Lex Fridman (31:49.100)

And what you could see was that what the words meant, right at the level of symbol grounding,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:56.240)

might be quite different.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (31:59.360)

One of them might have had deeply different enough life experiences that what is being

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:03.480)

referenced and then also different associations of what the words mean.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:06.700)

This is why when trying to address these things, Charles Sanders Peirce said the first philosophy

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:11.760)

has to be semiotics, because if you don't get semiotics right, we end up importing different

Lex Fridman (32:16.600)

ideas and bad ideas right into the nature of the language that we're using.

Lex Fridman (32:20.320)

And then it's very hard to do epistemology or ontology together.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:22.920)

So, I'm saying this to say why I don't think we're going to get very far is I think we

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:28.280)

would have to go very slowly in terms of defining what we mean by words and fundamental concepts.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:33.960)

Well, and also allowing our minds to drift together for a time so that our definitions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:40.960)

of these terms align.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:42.800)

I think there's some, there's a beauty that some people enjoy with Sam that he is quite

Daniel Schmachtenberger (32:51.360)

stubborn on his definitions of terms without often clearly revealing that definition.

Lex Fridman (32:59.600)

So in his mind, he can sense that he can deeply understand what he means exactly by a term

Daniel Schmachtenberger (33:06.440)

like free will and consciousness.

Lex Fridman (33:08.200)

And you're right, he's very specific in fascinating ways that not only does he think that free

Daniel Schmachtenberger (33:15.860)

will is an illusion, he thinks he's able, not thinks, he says he's able to just remove

Daniel Schmachtenberger (33:23.360)

himself from the experience of free will and just be like for minutes at a time, hours

Daniel Schmachtenberger (33:30.000)

at a time, like really experience as if he has no free will, like he's a leaf flowing

Lex Fridman (33:38.480)

down the river.

Lex Fridman (33:41.320)

And given that, he's very sure that consciousness is fundamental.

Lex Fridman (33:45.880)

So here's this conscious leaf that's subjectively experiencing the floating and yet has no ability

Daniel Schmachtenberger (33:53.280)

to control and make any decisions for itself.

Lex Fridman (33:56.760)

It's only a, the decisions have all been made.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:02.440)

There's some aspect to which the terminology there perhaps is the problem.

Lex Fridman (34:06.560)

So that's a particular kind of meditative experience and the people in the Vedantic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:11.320)

tradition and some of the Buddhist traditions thousands of years ago described similar experiences

Lex Fridman (34:15.680)

and somewhat similar conclusions, some slightly different.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:19.480)

There are other types of phenomenal experience that are the phenomenal experience of pure

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:27.240)

agency and, you know, like the Catholic theologian but evolutionary theorist Teilhard de Chardin

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:33.720)

describes this and that rather than a creator agent God in the beginning, there's a creative

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:39.640)

impulse or a creative process and he would go into a type of meditation that identified

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:44.280)

as the pure essence of that kind of creative process.

Lex Fridman (34:49.360)

And I think the types of experience we've had and then one, the types of experience

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:55.560)

we've had make a big deal to the nature of how we do symbol grounding.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (34:58.640)

The other thing is the types of experiences we have can't not be interpreted through

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:03.040)

our existing interpretive frames and most of the time our interpretive frames are unknown

Lex Fridman (35:07.240)

even to us, some of them.

Lex Fridman (35:09.720)

And so this is a tricky, this is a tricky topic.

Lex Fridman (35:15.480)

So I guess there's a bunch of directions we could go with it but I want to come back to

Lex Fridman (35:19.520)

what the impulse was that was interesting around what is consciousness and how does

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:24.440)

it relate to us as social beings and how does it relate to the possibility of consciousness

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:29.960)

with AIs.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:30.960)

Right, you're keeping us on track which is, which is wonderful, you're a wonderful hiking

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:35.880)

partner.

Lex Fridman (35:36.880)

Okay, yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:37.880)

Let's go back to the initial impulse of what is consciousness and how does the social impulse

Lex Fridman (35:43.180)

connect to consciousness?

Lex Fridman (35:45.940)

Is consciousness a consequence of that social connection?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:50.640)

I'm going to state a position and not argue it because it's honestly like it's a long

Daniel Schmachtenberger (35:55.160)

hard thing to argue and we can totally do it another time if you want.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (36:00.980)

I don't subscribe to consciousness as an emergent property of biology or neural networks.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (36:11.080)

Obviously a lot of people do, obviously the philosophy of science orients towards that

Lex Fridman (36:17.880)

in not absolutely but largely.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (36:24.600)

I think of the nature of first person, the universe of first person, of qualia as experience,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (36:33.920)

sensation, desire, emotion, phenomenology, but the felt sense, not the we say emotion

Lex Fridman (36:41.160)

and we think of a neurochemical pattern or an endocrine pattern.

Lex Fridman (36:45.320)

But all of the physical stuff, the third person stuff has position and momentum and charge

Lex Fridman (36:50.560)

and stuff like that that is measurable, repeatable.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (36:55.200)

I think of the nature of first person and third person as ontologically orthogonal to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:00.880)

each other, not reducible to each other.

Lex Fridman (37:03.620)

They're different kinds of stuff.

Lex Fridman (37:06.840)

So I think about the evolution of third person that we're quite used to thinking about from

Lex Fridman (37:11.160)

subatomic particles to atoms to molecules to on and on.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:14.400)

I think about a similar kind of and corresponding evolution in the domain of first person from

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:19.440)

the way Whitehead talked about kind of prehension or proto qualia in earlier phases of self

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:24.720)

organization into higher orders of it and that there's correspondence, but that neither

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:29.240)

like the idealists do we reduce third person to first person, which is what idealists do,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:35.960)

or neither like the physicalists do we reduce first person to third person.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:40.840)

Obviously Bohm talked about an implicate order that was deeper than and gave rise to the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:46.440)

explicate order of both.

Lex Fridman (37:48.480)

Nagel talks about something like that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:49.920)

I have a slightly different sense of that, but again, I'll just kind of not argue how

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:54.080)

that occurs for a moment and say, so rather than say, does consciousness emerge from,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (37:59.240)

I'll talk about do higher capacities of consciousness emerge in relationship with.

Lex Fridman (38:07.340)

So it's not first person as a category emerging from third person, but increased complexity

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:12.320)

within the nature of first person and third person co evolving.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:17.160)

Do I think that it seems relatively likely that more advanced neural networks have deeper

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:22.080)

phenomenology, more complex, where it goes just from basic sensation to emotion to social

Lex Fridman (38:29.920)

awareness to abstract cognition to self reflexive abstract cognition?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:35.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (38:36.160)

But I wouldn't say that's the emergence of consciousness.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:37.880)

I would say it's increased complexity within the domain of first person corresponding to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:41.800)

increased complexity and the correspondence should not automatically be seen as causal.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:46.640)

We can get into the arguments for why that often is the case.

Lex Fridman (38:50.000)

So would I say that obviously the sapient brain is pretty unique and a single sapient

Lex Fridman (38:57.080)

now has that, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (38:58.280)

Even if it took sapiens evolving in tribes based on group selection to make that brain.

Lex Fridman (39:03.760)

So the group made it now that brain is there.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:06.100)

Now if I take that single person with that brain out of the group and try to raise them

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:09.800)

in a box, they'll still not be very interesting even with the brain.

Lex Fridman (39:14.920)

But the brain does give hardware capacities that if conditioned in relationship can have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:20.880)

interesting things emerge.

Lex Fridman (39:21.880)

So do I think that the human biology, types of human consciousness and types of social

Lex Fridman (39:29.520)

interaction all co emerged and co evolved?

Lex Fridman (39:32.760)

Yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:33.760)

As a small aside, as you're talking about the biology, let me comment that I spent,

Lex Fridman (39:38.580)

this is what I do, this is what I do with my life.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:41.520)

This is why I will never accomplish anything is I spent much of the morning trying to do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:47.400)

research on how many computations the brain performs and how much energy it uses versus

Daniel Schmachtenberger (39:53.120)

the state of the art CPUs and GPUs arriving at about 20 quadrillion.

Lex Fridman (3:00:01.840)

Do you think the state is the right thing for the future?

Lex Fridman (3:00:05.680)

So governments that are elected democratic systems that are representing representative

Lex Fridman (3:00:10.200)

democracy.

Lex Fridman (3:00:11.660)

Is there some kind of political system of governance that you find appealing?

Lex Fridman (3:00:17.920)

Is it parents, meaning a very close knit tribes of conditioning that's the most essential?

Lex Fridman (3:00:26.000)

And then you and Michael Malice would happily agree that it's anarchy, or the state should

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:00:34.000)

be dissolved or destroyed or burned to the ground if you're Michael Malice, giggling,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:00:42.680)

holding the torch as the fire burns.

Lex Fridman (3:00:46.200)

So which which is it is the state can state be good?

Lex Fridman (3:00:50.960)

Or is the state bad for the conditioning of a beautiful world, A or B?

Lex Fridman (3:00:57.480)

This is like an SPT test.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:00:58.920)

You like to give these simplified good or bad things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:03.400)

Would I like the state that we live in currently, the United States federal government to stop

Lex Fridman (3:01:08.520)

existing today?

Lex Fridman (3:01:09.520)

No, I would really not like that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:11.560)

I think that would be not quite bad for the world in a lot of ways.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:16.960)

Do I think that it's a optimal social system and maximally just and humane and all those

Lex Fridman (3:01:23.520)

things?

Lex Fridman (3:01:24.520)

And I wanted to continue as is.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:25.520)

No, also not that.

Lex Fridman (3:01:26.520)

But I am much more interested in it being able to evolve to a better thing without going

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:32.080)

through the catastrophe phase that I think it's just non existence would give.

Lex Fridman (3:01:38.360)

So what size of state is good in a sense like do we should we as a human society as this

Lex Fridman (3:01:45.720)

world becomes more globalized?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:47.160)

Should we be constantly striving to reduce the we can we can put on a map like right

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:01:53.680)

now, literally, like the the centers of power in the world, some of them are tech companies,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:02.000)

some of them are governments, should we be trying to as much as possible to decentralize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:06.840)

the power to where it's very difficult to point on the map, the centers of power.

Lex Fridman (3:02:12.640)

And that means making the state however, there's a bunch of different ways to make the government

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:18.400)

much smaller, that could be reducing in the United States, reducing the funding for the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:28.280)

government, all those kinds of things, their set of responsibilities, the set of powers,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:33.540)

it could be, I mean, this is far out, but making more nations, or maybe nations not

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:40.720)

in the space that are defined by geographic location, but rather in the space of ideas,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:45.800)

which is what anarchy is about.

Lex Fridman (3:02:47.200)

So anarchy is about forming collectives based on their set of ideas, and doing so dynamically

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:52.760)

not based on where you were born, and so on.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:02:56.080)

I think we can say that the natural state of humans, if we want to describe such a thing,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:03:03.200)

is to live in tribes that were below the Dunbar number, meaning that for a few hundred thousand

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:03:11.240)

years of human history, all of the groups of humans mostly stayed under that size.

Lex Fridman (3:03:16.960)

And whenever it would get up to that size, it would end up cleaving.

Lex Fridman (3:03:19.720)

And so it seems like there's a pretty strong, but there weren't individual humans out in

Lex Fridman (3:03:23.880)

the wild doing really well, right?

Lex Fridman (3:03:25.240)

So we were a group animal, but with groups that had a specific size.

Lex Fridman (3:03:28.720)

So we could say, in a way, humans were being domesticated by those groups.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:03:32.600)

They were learning how to have certain rules to participate with the group, without which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:03:36.000)

you'd get kicked out.

Lex Fridman (3:03:37.000)

But that's still the wild state of people.

Lex Fridman (3:03:40.600)

And maybe it's useful to do as a side statement, which I've recently looked at a bunch of

Lex Fridman (3:03:45.240)

papers around Dunbar's number, where the mean is actually 150.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:03:49.080)

If you actually look at the original papers, it's a range.

Lex Fridman (3:03:51.640)

It's really a range.

Lex Fridman (3:03:53.240)

So it's actually somewhere under a thousand.

Lex Fridman (3:03:56.120)

So it's a range of like two to 500 or whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (3:03:59.120)

But like you could argue that the, I think it actually is exactly two, the range is two

Lex Fridman (3:04:05.280)

to 520, something like that.

Lex Fridman (3:04:08.440)

And this is the mean that's taken crudely.

Lex Fridman (3:04:12.080)

It's not a very good paper in terms of the actual numerically speaking.

Lex Fridman (3:04:18.840)

But it'd be interesting if there's a bunch of Dunbar numbers that could be computed for

Lex Fridman (3:04:24.680)

particular environments, particular conditions, so on.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:04:26.880)

It is very true that they're likely to be something small, you know, under a million.

Lex Fridman (3:04:32.320)

But it'd be interesting if we can expand that number in interesting ways that will change

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:04:36.760)

the fabric of this conversation.

Lex Fridman (3:04:37.760)

I just want to kind of throw that in there.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:04:39.640)

I don't know if the 150 is baked in somehow into the hardware.

Lex Fridman (3:04:43.880)

We can talk about some of the things that it probably has to do with.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:04:47.120)

Up to a certain number of people.

Lex Fridman (3:04:50.240)

And this is going to be variable based on the social technologies that mediate it to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:04:53.960)

some degree.

Lex Fridman (3:04:54.960)

We'll talk about that in a minute.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:04:59.680)

Up to a certain number of people, everybody can know everybody else pretty intimately.

Lex Fridman (3:05:04.360)

So let's go ahead and just take 150 as an average number.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:05:12.320)

Everybody can know everyone intimately enough that if your actions made anyone else do poorly,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:05:18.860)

it's your extended family and you're stuck living with them and you know who they are

Lex Fridman (3:05:22.640)

and there's no anonymous people.

Lex Fridman (3:05:24.360)

There's no just them and over there.

Lex Fridman (3:05:27.200)

And that's one part of what leads to a kind of tribal process where it's good for the

Lex Fridman (3:05:32.400)

individual and good for the whole has a coupling.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:05:35.300)

Also below that scale, everyone is somewhat aware of what everybody else is doing.

Lex Fridman (3:05:41.040)

There's not groups that are very siloed.

Lex Fridman (3:05:44.560)

And as a result, it's actually very hard to get away with bad behavior.

Lex Fridman (3:05:47.960)

There's a force kind of transparency.

Lex Fridman (3:05:50.840)

And so you don't need kind of like the state in that way.

Lex Fridman (3:05:55.720)

But lying to people doesn't actually get you ahead.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:05:58.600)

Sociopathic behavior doesn't get you ahead because it gets seen.

Lex Fridman (3:06:01.600)

And so there's a conditioning environment where the individual is behaving in a way

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:06:06.760)

that is aligned with the interest of the tribe is what gets conditioned.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:06:11.440)

When it gets to be a much larger system, it becomes easier to hide certain things from

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:06:16.920)

the group as a whole as well as to be less emotionally bound to a bunch of anonymous people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:06:22.800)

I would say there's also a communication protocol where up to about that number of people, we

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:06:29.440)

could all sit around a tribal council and be part of a conversation around a really

Lex Fridman (3:06:33.320)

big decision.

Lex Fridman (3:06:34.320)

Do we migrate?

Lex Fridman (3:06:35.320)

Do we not migrate?

Lex Fridman (3:06:36.320)

Do we, you know, something like that?

Lex Fridman (3:06:37.320)

Do we get rid of this person?

Lex Fridman (3:06:39.080)

And why would I want to agree to be a part of a larger group where everyone can't be

Lex Fridman (3:06:47.160)

part of that council?

Lex Fridman (3:06:49.160)

And so I am going to now be subject to law that I have no say in if I could be part of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:06:54.520)

a smaller group that could still survive and I get a say in the law that I'm subject to.

Lex Fridman (3:06:58.120)

So I think the cleaving and a way we can look at it beyond the Dunbar number two is we can

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:03.040)

look at that a civilization has binding energy that is holding them together and has cleaving

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:08.140)

energy.

Lex Fridman (3:07:09.140)

And if the binding energy exceeds the cleaving energy, that civilization will last.

Lex Fridman (3:07:12.960)

And so there are things that we can do to decrease the cleaving energy within the society,

Lex Fridman (3:07:16.560)

things we can do to increase the binding energy.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:18.200)

I think naturally we saw that had certain characteristics up to a certain size kind

Lex Fridman (3:07:22.060)

of tribalism.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:24.440)

That ended with a few things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:25.800)

It ended with people having migrated enough that when you started to get resource wars,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:31.460)

you couldn't just migrate away easily.

Lex Fridman (3:07:33.360)

And so tribal warfare became more obligated.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:35.120)

It involved the plow and the beginning of real economic surplus.

Lex Fridman (3:07:39.600)

So there were a few different kind of forcing functions.

Lex Fridman (3:07:45.640)

But we're talking about what size should it be, right?

Lex Fridman (3:07:48.440)

What size should a society be?

Lex Fridman (3:07:50.000)

And I think the idea, like if we think about your body for a moment as a self organizing

Lex Fridman (3:07:55.720)

complex system that is multi scaled, we think about...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:07:58.800)

Our body is a wonderland.

Lex Fridman (3:08:00.400)

Our body is a wonderland, yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:04.720)

That's a John Mayer song.

Lex Fridman (3:08:06.560)

I apologize.

Lex Fridman (3:08:07.560)

But yes, so if we think about our body and the billions of cells that are in it.

Lex Fridman (3:08:12.040)

Well, you don't have...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:14.040)

Think about how ridiculous it would be to try to have all the tens of trillions of cells

Lex Fridman (3:08:18.320)

in it with no internal organization structure, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:21.880)

Just like a sea of protoplasm.

Lex Fridman (3:08:24.200)

It wouldn't work.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:25.200)

Pure democracy.

Lex Fridman (3:08:26.200)

And so you have cells and tissues, and then you have tissues and organs and organs and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:31.800)

organ systems, and so you have these layers of organization, and then obviously the individual

Lex Fridman (3:08:36.280)

in a tribe in a ecosystem.

Lex Fridman (3:08:39.720)

And each of the higher layers are both based on the lower layers, but also influencing

Lex Fridman (3:08:44.400)

them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:45.400)

I think the future of civilization will be similar, which is there's a level of governance

Lex Fridman (3:08:49.800)

that happens at the level of the individual.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:51.480)

My own governance of my own choice.

Lex Fridman (3:08:54.600)

I think there's a level that happens at the level of a family.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:08:57.800)

We're making decisions together, we're inter influencing each other and affecting each

Lex Fridman (3:09:01.000)

other, taking responsibility for the idea of an extended family.

Lex Fridman (3:09:05.120)

And you can see that like for a lot of human history, we had an extended family, we had

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:08.160)

a local community, a local church or whatever it was, we had these intermediate structures.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:13.520)

Whereas right now, there's kind of like the individual producer, consumer, taxpayer, voter,

Lex Fridman (3:09:20.000)

and the massive nation state global complex, and not that much in the way of intermediate

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:24.280)

structures that we relate with, and not that much in the way of real personal dynamics,

Lex Fridman (3:09:28.040)

all impersonalized, made fungible.

Lex Fridman (3:09:31.520)

And so, I think that we have to have global governance, meaning I think we have to have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:39.040)

governance at the scale we affect stuff, and if anybody is messing up the oceans, that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:43.280)

matters for everybody.

Lex Fridman (3:09:44.280)

So, that can't only be national or only local.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:48.240)

Everyone is scared of the idea of global governance because we think about some top down system

Lex Fridman (3:09:51.820)

of imposition that now has no checks and balances on power.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:09:54.960)

I'm scared of that same version, so I'm not talking about that kind of global governance.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:00.080)

It's why I'm even using the word governance as a process rather than government as an

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:03.680)

imposed phenomena.

Lex Fridman (3:10:07.600)

And so, I think we have to have global governance, but I think we also have to have local governance,

Lex Fridman (3:10:11.560)

and there has to be relationships between them that each, where there are both checks

Lex Fridman (3:10:16.280)

and balances and power flows of information.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:18.760)

So, I think governance at the level of cities will be a bigger deal in the future than governance

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:24.840)

at the level of nation states because I think nation states are largely fictitious things

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:30.320)

that are defined by wars and agreements to stop wars and like that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:34.280)

I think cities are based on real things that will keep being real where the proximity of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:38.400)

certain things together, the physical proximity of things together gives increased value of

Lex Fridman (3:10:43.280)

those things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:44.280)

So, you look at like Jeffrey West's work on scale and finding that companies and nation

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:50.360)

states and things that have a kind of complicated agreement structure get diminishing return

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:10:54.440)

of, of production per capita as the total number of people increases beyond about the

Lex Fridman (3:10:58.920)

tribal scale.

Lex Fridman (3:10:59.920)

But the city actually gets increasing productivity per capita, but it's not designed, it's kind

Lex Fridman (3:11:04.280)

of this organic thing, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:06.160)

So, there should be governance at the level of cities because people can sense and actually

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:10.320)

have some agency there, probably neighborhoods and smaller scales within it and also verticals

Lex Fridman (3:11:15.040)

and some of it won't be geographic, it'll be network based, right?

Lex Fridman (3:11:17.840)

Networks of affinities.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:18.840)

So, I don't think the future is one type of governance.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:21.760)

Now, what we can say more broadly is say, when we're talking about groups of people

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:26.520)

that inner affect each other, the idea of a civilization is that we can figure out how

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:30.380)

to coordinate our choice making to not be at war with each other and hopefully increase

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:35.520)

total productive capacity in a way that's good for everybody, division of labor and

Lex Fridman (3:11:40.440)

specialty so we all get more better stuff and whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:11:44.880)

But it's a, it's a coordination of our choice making.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:49.800)

I think we can look at civilizations failing on the side of not having enough coordination

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:55.240)

of choice making, so they fail on the side of chaos and then they cleave and an internal

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:11:58.720)

war comes about or whatever, or they can't make smart decisions and they overuse their

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:04.720)

resources or whatever.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:07.060)

Or it can fail on the side of trying to get order via imposition, via force, and so it

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:14.400)

fails on the side of oppression, which ends up being for a while functionalish for the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:20.480)

thing as a whole, but miserable for most people in it until it fails either because of revolt

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:25.140)

or because it can't innovate enough or something like that.

Lex Fridman (3:12:28.260)

And so, there's this like toggling between order via oppression and chaos.

Lex Fridman (3:12:34.340)

And I think the idea of democracy, not the way we've implemented it, but the idea of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:39.560)

it, whether we're talking about a representative democracy or a direct digital democracy, liquid

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:43.840)

democracy, a republic or whatever, the idea of an open society, participatory governance

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:12:50.280)

is can we have order that is emergent rather than imposed so that we aren't stuck with

Lex Fridman (3:12:56.380)

chaos and infighting and inability to coordinate, and we're also not stuck with oppression?

Lex Fridman (3:13:04.040)

And what would it take to have emergent order?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:08.620)

This is the most kind of central question for me these days because if we look at what

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:16.520)

different nation states are doing around the world and we see nation states that are more

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:20.660)

authoritarian that in some ways are actually coordinating much more effectively.

Lex Fridman (3:13:26.500)

So for instance, we can see that China has built high speed rail not just through its

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:32.700)

country but around the world and the US hasn't built any high speed rail yet.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:36.820)

You can see that it brought 300 million people out of poverty in a time where we've had increasing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:41.400)

economic inequality happening.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:43.920)

You can see like that if there was a single country that could make all of its own stuff

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:49.260)

if the global supply chains failed, China would be the closest one to being able to

Lex Fridman (3:13:53.420)

start to go closed loop on fundamental things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:13:57.700)

Belt and Road Initiative, supply chain on rare earth metals, transistor manufacturing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:03.840)

that is like, oh, they're actually coordinating more effectively in some important ways.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:08.840)

In the last call it 30 years.

Lex Fridman (3:14:12.020)

And that's imposed order.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:14.680)

Imposed order.

Lex Fridman (3:14:16.160)

And we can see that if in the US, let's look at why real quick.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:24.680)

We know why we created term limits so that we wouldn't have forever monarchs.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:29.040)

That's the thing we were trying to get away from and that there would be checks and balances

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:32.320)

on power and that kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (3:14:34.480)

But that also has created a negative second order effect, which is nobody does long term

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:38.560)

planning because somebody comes in who's got four years, they want reelected.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:43.200)

They don't do anything that doesn't create a return within four years that will end up

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:46.440)

getting them elected, reelected.

Lex Fridman (3:14:48.880)

And so the 30 year industrial development to build high speed trains or the new kind

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:14:53.780)

of fusion energy or whatever it is just doesn't get invested in.

Lex Fridman (3:14:57.040)

And then if you have left versus right, where whatever someone does for four years, then

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:15:02.840)

the other guy gets in and undoes it for four years.

Lex Fridman (3:15:05.880)

And most of the energy goes into campaigning against each other.

Lex Fridman (3:15:08.520)

This system is just dissipating as heat, right?

Lex Fridman (3:15:11.220)

Like it's just burning up as heat.

Lex Fridman (3:15:12.800)

And the system that has no term limits and no internal friction in fighting because they

Lex Fridman (3:15:16.540)

got rid of those people can actually coordinate better.

Lex Fridman (3:15:20.040)

But I would argue it has its own fail states eventually and dystopic properties that are

Lex Fridman (3:15:27.400)

not the thing we want.

Lex Fridman (3:15:28.400)

So the goal is to accomplish, to create a system that does long term planning without

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:15:34.080)

the negative effects of a monarch or dictator that stays there for the long term and accomplish

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:15:45.360)

that through not doing the imposition of a single leader, but through emergence.

Lex Fridman (3:15:54.200)

So that perhaps, first of all, the technology in itself seems to maybe disagree a lot for

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:16:03.040)

different possibilities here, which is make primary the system, not the humans.

Lex Fridman (3:16:08.420)

So the basic, the medium on which the democracy happens, like a platform where people can

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:16:21.760)

make decisions, do the choice making, the coordination of the choice making, where emerges

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:16:29.800)

some kind of order to where like something that applies at the scale of the family, the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:16:34.080)

family, the city, the country, the continent, the whole world, and then does that so dynamically,

Lex Fridman (3:16:43.400)

constantly changing based on the needs of the people, sort of always evolving.

Lex Fridman (3:16:48.440)

And it would all be owned by Google.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:16:54.960)

Is there a way to, so first of all, you're optimistic that you could basically create

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:00.720)

the technology can save us technology at creating platforms by technology, I mean, like software

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:06.560)

network platforms that allows humans to deliberate, like make government together dynamically

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:14.680)

without the need for a leader that's on a podium screaming stuff.

Lex Fridman (3:17:19.440)

That's one and two.

Lex Fridman (3:17:21.240)

If you're optimistic about that, are you also optimistic about the CEOs of such platforms?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:27.680)

The idea that technology is values neutral, values agnostic, and people can use it for

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:36.080)

constructive or destructive purposes, but it doesn't predispose anything.

Lex Fridman (3:17:40.240)

It's just silly and naive.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:44.080)

Technology elicits patterns of human behavior because those who utilize it and get ahead

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:49.260)

end up behaving differently because of their utilization of it, and then other people,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:17:53.680)

then they end up shaping the world or other people race to also get the power of the technology

Lex Fridman (3:17:57.620)

and so there's whole schools of anthropology that look at the effect on social systems

Lex Fridman (3:18:02.720)

and the minds of people of the change in our tooling.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:06.040)

Marvin Harris's work called cultural materialism looked at this deeply, obviously Marshall

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:09.920)

McLuhan looked specifically at the way that information technologies change the nature

Lex Fridman (3:18:13.400)

of our beliefs, minds, values, social systems.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:19.120)

I will not try to do this rigorously because there are academics will disagree on the subtle

Lex Fridman (3:18:23.800)

details but I'll do it kind of like illustratively.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:27.840)

You think about the emergence of the plow, the ox drawn plow in the beginning of agriculture

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:31.560)

that came with it where before that you had hunter gatherer and then you had horticulture

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:36.160)

kind of a digging stick but not the plow.

Lex Fridman (3:18:40.320)

Well the world changed a lot with that, right?

Lex Fridman (3:18:43.720)

And a few of the changes that at least some theorists believe in is when the ox drawn

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:54.200)

plow started to proliferate, any culture that utilized it was able to start to actually

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:18:57.840)

cultivate grain because just with a digging stick you couldn't get enough grain for it

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:01.080)

to matter, grain was a storable caloric surplus, they could make it through the famines, they

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:04.520)

could grow their population, so the ones that used it got so much ahead that it became obligate

Lex Fridman (3:19:08.400)

and everybody used it, that corresponding with the use of a plow, animism went away

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:14.440)

everywhere that it existed because you can't talk about the spirit of the buffalo while

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:18.720)

beating the cow all day long to pull the plow, so the moment that we do animal husbandry

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:23.840)

of that kind where you have to beat the cow all day, you have to say it's just a dumb

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:27.440)

animal, man has dominion over earth and the nature of even our religious and spiritual

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:30.640)

ideas change.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:31.880)

You went from women primarily using the digging stick to do the horticulture or gathering

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:37.080)

before that, men doing the hunting stuff to now men had to use the plow because the upper

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:40.920)

body strength actually really mattered, women would have miscarriages when they would do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:44.000)

it when they were pregnant, so all the caloric supply started to come from men where it had

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:48.160)

been from both before and the ratio of male female gods changed to being mostly male gods

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:52.880)

following that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:19:54.920)

Obviously we went from very, that particular line of thought then also says that feminism

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:01.800)

followed the tractor and that the rise of feminism in the West started to follow women

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:09.880)

being able to say we can do what men can because the male upper body strength wasn't differential

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:15.440)

once the internal combustion engine was much stronger and we can drive a tractor.

Lex Fridman (3:20:20.760)

So I don't think to try to trace complex things to one cause is a good idea, so I think this

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:26.160)

is a reductionist view but it has truth in it and so the idea that technology is values

Lex Fridman (3:20:33.080)

agnostic is silly.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:35.040)

Technology codes patterns of behavior that code rationalizing those patterns of behavior

Lex Fridman (3:20:39.160)

and believing in them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:40.560)

The plow also is the beginning of the Anthropocene, right, it was the beginning of us changing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:44.640)

the environment radically to clear cut areas to just make them useful for people which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:49.340)

also meant the change of the view of where the web of life were just a part of it, etc.

Lex Fridman (3:20:54.180)

So all those types of things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:20:57.360)

That's brilliantly put, by the way, that was just brilliant.

Lex Fridman (3:21:02.480)

But the question is, so it's not agnostic, but...

Lex Fridman (3:21:05.960)

So we have to look at what the psychological effects of specific tech applied certain ways

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:10.480)

are and be able to say it's not just doing the first order thing you intended, it's doing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:17.280)

like the effect on patriarchy and animism and the end of tribal culture in the beginning

Lex Fridman (3:21:23.200)

of empire and the class systems that came with that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:26.000)

We can go on and on about what the plow did.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:28.720)

The beginning of surplus was inheritance, which then became the capital model and like

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:32.320)

lots of things.

Lex Fridman (3:21:34.580)

So we have to say when we're looking at the tech, what are the values built into the way

Lex Fridman (3:21:39.820)

the tech is being built that are not obvious?

Lex Fridman (3:21:42.200)

Right, so you always have to consider externalities.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:44.480)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (3:21:45.480)

And the externalities are not just physical to the environment, they're also to how the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:21:48.560)

people are being conditioned and how the relationality between them is being conditioned.

Lex Fridman (3:21:51.880)

So the question I'm asking you, so I personally would rather be led by a plow and a tractor

Lex Fridman (3:21:56.740)

than Stalin, okay?

Lex Fridman (3:21:58.880)

That's the question I'm asking you.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:22:02.640)

In creating an emergent government where people, where there's a democracy that's dynamic,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:22:09.400)

that makes choices, that does governance at like a very kind of liquid, there's a bunch

Lex Fridman (3:22:19.520)

of fine resolution layers of abstraction of governance happening at all scales, right?

Lex Fridman (3:22:26.540)

And doing so dynamically where no one person has power at any one time that can dominate

Lex Fridman (3:22:32.080)

and impose rule, okay?

Lex Fridman (3:22:34.320)

That's the Stalin version.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:22:35.480)

I'm saying isn't the alternative that's emergent empowered or made possible by the plow and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:22:48.040)

the tractor, which is the modern version of that, is like the internet, the digital space

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:22:54.100)

where we can, the monetary system where you have the currency and so on, but you have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:23:00.040)

much more importantly, to me at least, is just basic social interaction, the mechanisms

Lex Fridman (3:23:03.840)

of human transacting with each other in the space of ideas, isn't?

Lex Fridman (3:23:08.240)

So yes, it's not agnostic, definitely not agnostic.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:23:12.240)

You've had a brilliant rant there.

Lex Fridman (3:23:14.320)

The tractor has effects, but isn't that the way we achieve an emergent system of governance?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:23:20.280)

Yes, but I wouldn't say we're on track.

Lex Fridman (3:23:26.720)

You haven't seen anything promising.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:23:28.160)

It's not that I haven't seen anything promising, it's that to be on track requires understanding

Lex Fridman (3:23:32.720)

and guiding some of the things differently than is currently happening and it's possible.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:23:36.720)

That's actually what I really care about.

Lex Fridman (3:23:38.800)

So you couldn't have had a Stalin without having certain technologies emerge.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:23:46.520)

He couldn't have ruled such a big area without transportation technologies, without the train,

Lex Fridman (3:23:51.040)

without the communication tech that made it possible.

Lex Fridman (3:23:55.200)

So when you say you'd rather have a tractor or a plow than a Stalin, there's a relationship

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:00.280)

between them that is more recursive, which is new physical technologies allow rulers

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:08.640)

to rule with more power over larger distances historically.

Lex Fridman (3:24:14.120)

And some things are more responsible for that than others.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:19.520)

Like Stalin also ate stuff for breakfast, but the thing he ate for breakfast is less

Lex Fridman (3:24:23.860)

responsible for the starvation of millions than the train.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:28.220)

The train is more responsible for that and then the weapons of war are more responsible.

Lex Fridman (3:24:32.480)

So some technology, let's not throw it all in the, you're saying like technology has

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:38.120)

a responsibility here, but some is better than others.

Lex Fridman (3:24:42.040)

I'm saying that people's use of technology will change their behavior.

Lex Fridman (3:24:46.280)

So it has behavioral dispositions built in.

Lex Fridman (3:24:48.880)

The change of the behavior will also change the values in the society.

Lex Fridman (3:24:52.160)

It's very complicated, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:53.480)

It will also, as a result, both make people who have different kinds of predispositions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:24:58.580)

with regard to rulership and different kinds of new capacities.

Lex Fridman (3:25:03.420)

And so we have to think about these things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:06.440)

It's kind of well understood that the printing press and then in early industrialism ended

Lex Fridman (3:25:12.080)

feudalism and created kind of nation states.

Lex Fridman (3:25:15.800)

So one thing I would say as a long trend that we can look at is that whenever there is a

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:22.240)

step function, a major leap in technology, physical technology, the underlying techno

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:27.560)

industrial base with which we do stuff, it ends up coding for, it ends up predisposing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:33.080)

a whole bunch of human behavioral patterns that the previous social system had not emerged

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:38.640)

to try to solve.

Lex Fridman (3:25:40.560)

And so it usually ends up breaking the previous social systems, the way the plow broke the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:44.400)

tribal system, the way that the industrial revolution broke the feudal system, and then

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:48.360)

new social systems have to emerge so they can deal with the new powers, the new dispositions,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:54.200)

whatever with that tech.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:25:55.200)

Obviously, the nuke broke nation state governance being adequate and said, we can't ever have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:00.360)

that again.

Lex Fridman (3:26:01.360)

So then it created this international governance apparatus world.

Lex Fridman (3:26:06.800)

So I guess what I'm saying is that the solution is not exponential tech following the current

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:21.600)

path of what the market incentivizes exponential tech to do, market being a previous social

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:26.400)

tech.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:28.160)

I would say that exponential tech, if we look at different types of social tech, so let's

Lex Fridman (3:26:38.760)

just briefly look at that democracy tried to do the emergent order thing, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:46.680)

At least that's the story, and which is, and this is why if you look, this important part

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:56.360)

to build first.

Lex Fridman (3:26:57.360)

It's kind of doing it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:26:58.360)

It's just doing it poorly.

Lex Fridman (3:26:59.360)

You're saying, I mean, that's, it is emergent order in some sense.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:03.120)

I mean, that's the hope of democracy versus other forms of government.

Lex Fridman (3:27:06.200)

Correct.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:07.200)

I mean, I said at least the story because obviously it didn't do it for women and slaves

Lex Fridman (3:27:11.260)

early on.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:12.260)

It doesn't do it for all classes equally, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (3:27:14.560)

But the idea of democracy is that, is participatory governance.

Lex Fridman (3:27:20.720)

And so you notice that the modern democracies emerged out of the European enlightenment

Lex Fridman (3:27:26.160)

and specifically because the idea that a lot of people, some huge number, not a tribal

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:31.240)

number, a huge number of anonymous people who don't know each other, are not bonded

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:34.560)

to each other, who believe different things, who grew up in different ways, can all work

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:38.680)

together to make collective decisions, well, that affect everybody, and where some of them

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:42.560)

will make compromises and the thing that matters to them for what matters to other strangers.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:27:46.560)

That's actually wild.

Lex Fridman (3:27:47.560)

Like it's a wild idea that that would even be possible.

Lex Fridman (3:27:50.820)

And it was kind of the result of this high enlightenment idea that we could all do the

Lex Fridman (3:27:57.400)

philosophy of science and we could all do the Hegelian dialectic.

Lex Fridman (3:28:03.000)

Those ideas had emerged, right?

Lex Fridman (3:28:04.400)

And it was that we could all, so our choice making, because we said a society is trying

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:11.400)

to coordinate choice making, the emergent order is the order of the choices that we're

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:15.520)

making, not just at the level of the individuals, but what groups of individuals, corporations,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:18.960)

nations, states, whatever do.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:21.560)

Our choices are based on, our choice making is based on our sense making and our meaning

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:25.440)

making.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:26.440)

Our sense making is what do we believe is happening in the world, and what do we believe

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:30.040)

the effects of a particular thing would be.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:31.620)

Our meaning making is what do we care about, right, our values generation, what do we care

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:34.620)

about that we're trying to move the world in the direction of.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:37.280)

If you ultimately are trying to move the world in a direction that is really, really different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:41.560)

than the direction I'm trying to, we have very different values, we're gonna have a

Lex Fridman (3:28:44.920)

hard time.

Lex Fridman (3:28:46.140)

And if you think the world is a very different world, right, if you think that systemic racism

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:51.160)

is rampant everywhere and one of the worst problems, and I think it's not even a thing,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:28:56.040)

if you think climate change is almost existential, and I think it's not even a thing, we're gonna

Lex Fridman (3:29:00.440)

have a really hard time coordinating.

Lex Fridman (3:29:02.800)

And so, we have to be able to have shared sense making of can we come to understand

Lex Fridman (3:29:07.220)

just what is happening together, and then can we do shared values generation, okay?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:12.920)

Maybe I'm emphasizing a particular value more than you, but I can take your perspective

Lex Fridman (3:29:17.360)

and I can see how the thing that you value is worth valuing, and I can see how it's affected

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:21.520)

by this thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:22.520)

So, can we take all the values and try to come up with a proposition that benefits all

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:25.980)

of them better than the proposition I created just to benefit these ones that harms the

Lex Fridman (3:29:30.020)

ones that you care about, which is why you're opposing my proposition?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:34.380)

We don't even try in the process of crafting a proposition currently to see, and this is

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:39.400)

the reason that the proposition we vote on, it gets half the votes almost all the time.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:43.480)

It almost never gets 90% of the votes, is because it benefits some things and harms

Lex Fridman (3:29:47.580)

other things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:48.580)

We can say all theory of trade offs, but we didn't even try to say, could we see what

Lex Fridman (3:29:52.640)

everybody cares about and see if there is a better solution?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:29:55.840)

So...

Lex Fridman (3:29:56.840)

How do we fix that try?

Lex Fridman (3:29:57.840)

I wonder, is it as simple as the social technology of education?

Lex Fridman (3:30:01.960)

Yes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:02.960)

Well, no.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:03.960)

I mean, the proposition crafting and refinement process has to be key to a democracy or participatory

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:10.320)

governance, and it's not currently.

Lex Fridman (3:30:11.960)

But isn't that the humans creating that situation?

Lex Fridman (3:30:16.920)

So one way, there's two ways to fix that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:20.120)

One is to fix the individual humans, which is the education early in life, and the second

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:24.200)

is to create somehow systems that...

Lex Fridman (3:30:26.240)

Yeah, it's both.

Lex Fridman (3:30:28.120)

So I understand the education part, but creating systems, that's why I mentioned the technologies

Lex Fridman (3:30:33.820)

is creating social networks, essentially.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:36.240)

Yes, that's actually necessary.

Lex Fridman (3:30:37.560)

Okay, so let's go to the first part and then we'll come to the second part.

Lex Fridman (3:30:42.000)

So democracy emerged as an enlightenment era idea that we could all do a dialectic and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:30:49.120)

come to understand what other people valued, and so that we could actually come up with

Lex Fridman (3:30:55.160)

a cooperative solution rather than just, fuck you, we're gonna get our thing in war, right?

Lex Fridman (3:31:00.520)

And that we could sense make together.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:01.520)

We could all apply the philosophy of science and you weren't gonna stick to your guns on

Lex Fridman (3:31:05.160)

what the speed of sound is if we measured it and we found out what it was, and there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:08.360)

a unifying element to the objectivity in that way.

Lex Fridman (3:31:12.040)

And so this is why I believe Jefferson said, if you could give me a perfect newspaper and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:17.240)

a broken government, or in paraphrasing, a broken government and perfect newspaper, I

Lex Fridman (3:31:21.000)

wouldn't hesitate to take the perfect newspaper.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:22.640)

Because if the people understand what's going on, they can build a new government.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:26.000)

If they don't understand what's going on, they can't possibly make good choices.

Lex Fridman (3:31:30.080)

And Washington, I'm paraphrasing again, first president said the number one aim of the federal

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:36.200)

government should be the comprehensive education of every citizen and the science of government.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:41.400)

Science of government was the term of art.

Lex Fridman (3:31:42.820)

Think about what that means, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:44.020)

Science of government would be game theory, coordination theory, history, wouldn't call

Lex Fridman (3:31:49.640)

game theory yet, history, sociology, economics, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:53.660)

All the things that lead to how we understand human coordination.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:31:57.320)

I think it's so profound that he didn't say the number one aim of the federal government

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:02.040)

is rule of law.

Lex Fridman (3:32:04.360)

And he didn't say it's protecting the border from enemies.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:07.400)

Because if the number one aim was to protect the border from enemies, it could do that

Lex Fridman (3:32:11.560)

as a military dictatorship quite effectively.

Lex Fridman (3:32:14.560)

And if the goal was rule of law, it could do it as a dictatorship, as a police state.

Lex Fridman (3:32:21.000)

And so if the number one goal is anything other than the comprehensive education of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:24.840)

all the citizens and the science of government, it won't stay democracy long.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:28.300)

You can see, so both education and the fourth estate, the fourth estate being the...

Lex Fridman (3:32:33.080)

So education, can I make sense of the world?

Lex Fridman (3:32:34.760)

Am I trained to make sense of the world?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:36.080)

The fourth estate is what's actually going on currently, the news.

Lex Fridman (3:32:38.700)

Do I have good, unbiased information about it?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:41.440)

Those are both considered prerequisite institutions for democracy to even be a possibility.

Lex Fridman (3:32:46.620)

And then at the scale it was initially suggested here, the town hall was the key phenomena

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:51.760)

where there wasn't a special interest group crafted a proposition, and the first thing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:55.920)

I ever saw was the proposition, didn't know anything about it, and I got to vote yes or

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:32:59.640)

no.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:00.640)

It was in the town hall, we all got to talk about it, and the proposition could get crafted

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:03.600)

in real time through the conversation, which is why there was that founding fathers statement

Lex Fridman (3:33:08.340)

that voting is the death of democracy.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:11.100)

Voting fundamentally is polarizing the population in some kind of sublimated war.

Lex Fridman (3:33:16.180)

And we'll do that as the last step, but what we wanna do first is to say, how does the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:19.480)

thing that you care about that seems damaged by this proposition, how could that turn into

Lex Fridman (3:33:23.920)

a solution to make this proposition better?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:26.080)

Where this proposition still tends to the thing it's trying to tend to and tends to

Lex Fridman (3:33:29.120)

that better.

Lex Fridman (3:33:30.120)

Can we work on this together?

Lex Fridman (3:33:31.120)

And in a town hall, we could have that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:33.000)

As the scale increased, we lost the ability to do that.

Lex Fridman (3:33:35.720)

Now, as you mentioned, the internet could change that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:38.000)

The fact that we had representatives that had to ride a horse from one town hall to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:41.800)

the other one to see what the colony would do, that we stopped having this kind of developmental

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:47.800)

propositional development process when the town hall ended.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:33:52.000)

The fact that we have not used the internet to recreate this is somewhere between insane

Lex Fridman (3:33:58.480)

and aligned with class interests.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:03.920)

I would push back to say that the internet has those things, it just has a lot of other

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:08.920)

things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:09.920)

I feel like the internet has places where that encourage synthesis of competing ideas

Lex Fridman (3:34:16.040)

and sense making, which is what we're talking about.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:19.960)

It's just that it's also flooded with a bunch of other systems that perhaps are out competing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:24.840)

it under current incentives, perhaps has to do with capitalism in the market.

Lex Fridman (3:34:29.040)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (3:34:30.040)

Linux is awesome, right?

Lex Fridman (3:34:32.040)

And Wikipedia and places where you have, and they have problems, but places where you have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:36.320)

open source sharing of information, vetting of information towards collective building.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:41.760)

Is that building something like, how much has that affected our court systems or our

Lex Fridman (3:34:48.040)

policing systems or our military systems or our?

Lex Fridman (3:34:50.600)

First of all, I think a lot, but not enough.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:53.640)

I think this is something I told you offline yesterday as a, perhaps as a whole nother

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:34:59.360)

discussion, but I don't think we're quite quantifying the impact on the world, the positive

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:05.360)

impact of Wikipedia.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:08.000)

You said the policing, I mean, I just, I just think the amount of empathy that like knowledge

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:16.880)

I think can't help, but lead to empathy, just knowing, okay.

Lex Fridman (3:35:25.480)

Just knowing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:26.480)

Okay.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:27.480)

I'll give you some pieces of information, knowing how many people died in various wars

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:30.900)

that already that Delta, when you have millions of people have that knowledge, it's like,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:35.940)

it's a little like slap in the face, like, Oh, like my boyfriend or girlfriend breaking

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:41.680)

up with me is not such a big deal when millions of people were tortured, you know, like just

Lex Fridman (3:35:47.480)

a little bit.

Lex Fridman (3:35:48.480)

And when a lot of people know that because of Wikipedia, uh, or the effect, their second

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:54.160)

order effects of Wikipedia, which is it's not that necessarily people read Wikipedia.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:35:58.880)

It's like YouTubers who don't really know stuff that well will thoroughly read a Wikipedia

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:07.040)

article and create a compelling video describing that Wikipedia article that then millions

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:11.740)

of people watch and they understand that.

Lex Fridman (3:36:14.640)

Holy shit.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:15.640)

A lot of, there was such, first of all, there was such a thing as world war II and world

Lex Fridman (3:36:18.560)

war I.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:19.560)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (3:36:20.560)

Like they can at least like learn about it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:22.720)

They can learn about this was like recent.

Lex Fridman (3:36:25.520)

They can learn about slavery.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:26.560)

They can learn about all kinds of injustices in the world.

Lex Fridman (3:36:30.220)

And that I think has a lot of effects to our, to the way, whether you're a police officer,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:36.880)

a lawyer, a judge in the jury, or just the regular civilian citizen, the way you approach

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:46.320)

the every other communication you engage in, even if the system of that communication is

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:52.040)

very much flawed.

Lex Fridman (3:36:53.040)

So I think there's a huge positive effect on Wikipedia.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:56.000)

That's my case for Wikipedia.

Lex Fridman (3:36:57.000)

So you should donate to Wikipedia.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:36:58.800)

I mean, I'm a huge fan, but there's very few systems like it, which is sad to me.

Lex Fridman (3:37:04.840)

So I think it's, it would be a useful exercise for any, uh, listener of the show to really

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:37:14.040)

try to run the dialectical synthesis process with regard to a topic like this and take

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:37:21.640)

the, um, techno concerned perspective with regard to, uh, information tech that folks

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:37:29.840)

like Tristan Harris take and say, what are all of the things that are getting worse and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:37:35.960)

what, and are any of them following an exponential curve and how much worse, how quickly could

Lex Fridman (3:37:39.920)

that be?

Lex Fridman (3:37:42.680)

And then, and do that fully without mitigating it, then take the techno optimist perspective

Lex Fridman (3:37:48.600)

and see what things are getting better in a way that Kurzweil or Diamandis or someone

Lex Fridman (3:37:53.660)

might do and try to take that perspective fully and say, are some of those things exponential?

Lex Fridman (3:37:59.460)

What could that portend?

Lex Fridman (3:38:00.460)

And then try to hold all that at the same time.

Lex Fridman (3:38:03.700)

And I think there are ways in which, depending upon the metrics we're looking at, things

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:38:10.780)

are getting worse on exponential curves and better on exponential curves for different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:38:15.120)

metrics at the same time, which I hold as the destabilization of previous system and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:38:20.920)

either an emergence to a better system or collapse to a lower order are both possible.

Lex Fridman (3:38:27.380)

And so I want my optimism not to be about my assessment.

Lex Fridman (3:38:32.100)

I want my assessment to be just as fucking clear as it can be.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:38:35.360)

I want my optimism to be what inspires the solution process on that clear assessment.

Lex Fridman (3:38:41.240)

So I never want to apply optimism in the sense making.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:38:45.680)

I want to just try to be clear.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:38:47.600)

If anything, I want to make sure that the challenges are really well understood.

Lex Fridman (3:38:52.640)

But that's in service of an optimism that there are good potentials, even if I don't

Lex Fridman (3:38:57.880)

know what they are, that are worth seeking.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:02.240)

There is some sense of optimism that's required to even try to innovate really hard problems.

Lex Fridman (3:39:07.580)

But then I want to take my pessimism and red team my own optimism to see, is that solution

Lex Fridman (3:39:12.400)

not going to work?

Lex Fridman (3:39:13.400)

Does it have second order effects?

Lex Fridman (3:39:14.680)

And then not get upset by that because I then come back to how to make it better.

Lex Fridman (3:39:19.660)

So just a relationship between optimism and pessimism and the dialectic of how they can

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:24.320)

work.

Lex Fridman (3:39:25.320)

So when I, of course, we can say that Wikipedia is a pretty awesome example of a thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:32.600)

We can look at the places where it has limits or has failed, where on a celebrity topic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:40.080)

or corporate interest topic, you can pay Wikipedia editors to edit more frequently and various

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:45.760)

things like that.

Lex Fridman (3:39:46.760)

But you can also see where there's a lot of information that was kind of decentrally created

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:51.320)

that is good information that is more easily accessible to people than everybody buying

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:54.760)

their own encyclopedia Britannica or walking down to the library and that can be updated

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:39:58.700)

in real time faster.

Lex Fridman (3:40:01.560)

And I think you're very right that the business model is a big difference because Wikipedia

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:09.480)

is not a for profit corporation.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:11.520)

It is a – it's tending to the information commons and it doesn't have an agenda other

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:17.100)

than tending to the information commons.

Lex Fridman (3:40:19.960)

And I think the two masters issue is a tricky one when I'm trying to optimize for very different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:25.760)

kinds of things where I have to sacrifice one for the other and I can't find synergistic

Lex Fridman (3:40:32.560)

satisfiers.

Lex Fridman (3:40:33.560)

Which one?

Lex Fridman (3:40:34.560)

And if I have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholder profit maximization and, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:40:40.440)

what does that end up creating?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:43.400)

I think the ad model that Silicon Valley took, I think Jaron Laney or I don't know if you've

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:50.320)

had him on the show, but he has an interesting assessment of the nature of the ad model.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:40:56.400)

Silicon Valley wanting to support capitalism and entrepreneurs to make things but also

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:03.120)

the belief that information should be free and also the network dynamics where the more

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:07.700)

people you got on, you got increased value per user, per capita as more people got on

Lex Fridman (3:41:12.320)

so you didn't want to do anything to slow the rate of adoption.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:15.480)

Some places actually, you know, PayPal paying people money to join the network because the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:20.520)

value of the network would be, there'd be a Metcalf like dynamic proportional to the

Lex Fridman (3:41:24.360)

square of the total number of users.

Lex Fridman (3:41:26.720)

So the ad model made sense of how do we make it free but also be a business, get everybody

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:33.080)

on but not really thinking about what it would mean to – and this is now the whole idea

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:38.720)

that if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:44.200)

If they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholder to maximize profit, their

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:47.760)

customer is the advertiser, the user who it's being built for is to do behavioral mod for

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:41:54.440)

them for advertisers, that's a whole different thing than that same type of tech could have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:00.280)

been if applied with a different business model or different purpose.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:05.760)

I think because Facebook and Google and other information and communication platforms end

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:14.640)

up harvesting data about user behavior that allows them to model who the people are in

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:19.600)

a way that gives them more sometimes specific information and behavioral information than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:27.680)

even a therapist or a doctor or a lawyer or a priest might have in a different setting,

Lex Fridman (3:42:31.840)

they basically are accessing privileged information.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:35.160)

There should be a fiduciary responsibility.

Lex Fridman (3:42:38.280)

And in normal fiduciary law, if there's this principal agent thing, if you are a principal

Lex Fridman (3:42:45.720)

and I'm an agent on your behalf, I don't have a game theoretic relationship with you.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:49.600)

If you're sharing something with me and I'm the priest or I'm the therapist, I'm never

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:42:53.040)

going to use that information to try to sell you a used car or whatever the thing is.

Lex Fridman (3:42:58.400)

But Facebook is gathering massive amounts of privileged information and using it to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:43:03.040)

modify people's behavior for a behavior that they didn't sign up for wanting the behavior

Lex Fridman (3:43:07.000)

but what the corporation did.

Lex Fridman (3:43:08.720)

So I think this is an example of the physical tech evolving in the context of the previous

Lex Fridman (3:43:14.720)

social tech where it's being shaped in particular ways.

Lex Fridman (3:43:18.520)

And here, unlike Wikipedia that evolved for the information commons, this evolved for

Lex Fridman (3:43:25.040)

fulfilling particular agentic purpose.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:43:26.880)

Most people when they're on Facebook think it's just a tool that they're using.

Lex Fridman (3:43:29.600)

They don't realize it's an agent, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:43:31.160)

It is a corporation with a profit motive and as I'm interacting with it, it has a goal

Lex Fridman (3:43:37.160)

for me different than my goal for myself.

Lex Fridman (3:43:40.080)

And I might want to be on for a short period of time.

Lex Fridman (3:43:41.760)

Its goal is maximize time on site.

Lex Fridman (3:43:43.760)

And so there is a rivalry where there should be a fiduciary contract.

Lex Fridman (3:43:49.920)

I think that's actually a huge deal.

Lex Fridman (3:43:52.680)

And I think if we said, could we apply Facebook like technology to develop people's citizenry

Lex Fridman (3:44:05.520)

capacity, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:44:06.520)

To develop their personal health and wellbeing and habits as well as their cognitive understanding,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:44:13.320)

the complexity with which they can process the health of their relationships, that would

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:44:20.240)

be amazing to start to explore.

Lex Fridman (3:44:22.320)

And this is now the thesis that we started to discuss before is every time there is a

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:44:28.480)

major step function in the physical tech, it obsoletes the previous social tech and

Lex Fridman (3:44:33.920)

the new social tech has to emerge.

Lex Fridman (3:44:36.880)

What I would say is that when we look at the nation state level of the world today, the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:44:41.600)

more top down authoritarian nation states are as the exponential tech started to emerge,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:44:47.160)

the digital technology started to emerge, they were in a position for better long term

Lex Fridman (3:44:52.480)

planning and better coordination.

Lex Fridman (3:44:55.480)

And so the authoritarian states started applying the exponential tech intentionally to make

Lex Fridman (3:44:59.480)

more effective authoritarian states.

Lex Fridman (3:45:01.940)

And that's everything from like an internet of things surveillance system going into machine

Lex Fridman (3:45:07.320)

learning systems to the Sesame credit system to all those types of things.

Lex Fridman (3:45:11.760)

And so they're upgrading their social tech using the exponential tech.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:16.360)

Otherwise within a nation state like the US, but democratic open societies, the countries,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:23.760)

the states are not directing the technology in a way that makes a better open society,

Lex Fridman (3:45:28.240)

meaning better emergent order.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:30.160)

They're saying, well, the corporations are doing that and the state is doing the relatively

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:34.320)

little thing it would do aligned with the previous corporate law that no longer is relevant

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:37.960)

because there wasn't fiduciary responsibility for things like that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:40.560)

There wasn't antitrust because this creates functional monopolies because of network dynamics,

Lex Fridman (3:45:45.640)

right?

Lex Fridman (3:45:46.640)

Where YouTube has more users than Vimeo and every other video player together.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:50.640)

Amazon has a bigger percentage of market share than all of the other markets together.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:45:54.640)

You get one big dog per vertical because of network effect, which is a kind of organic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:00.120)

monopoly that the previous antitrust law didn't even have a place, that wasn't a thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:05.120)

Antimonopoly was only something that emerged in the space of government contracts.

Lex Fridman (3:46:11.600)

So what we see is that the new exponential technology is being directed by authoritarian

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:15.920)

nation states to make better authoritarian nation states and by corporations to make

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:19.280)

more powerful corporations.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:21.720)

Powerful corporations, when we think about the Scottish enlightenment, when the idea

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:25.440)

of markets was being advanced, the modern kind of ideas of markets, the biggest corporation

Lex Fridman (3:46:31.520)

was tiny compared to what the biggest corporation today is.

Lex Fridman (3:46:35.040)

So the asymmetry of it relative to people was tiny.

Lex Fridman (3:46:39.080)

And the asymmetry now in terms of the total technology it employs, total amount of money,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:43.640)

total amount of information processing is so many orders of magnitude.

Lex Fridman (3:46:48.920)

And rather than there be demand for an authentic thing that creates a basis for supply, as

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:55.800)

supply started to get way more coordinated and powerful and the demand wasn't coordinated

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:46:59.760)

because you don't have a labor union of all the customers working together, but you do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:03.120)

have a coordination on the supply side.

Lex Fridman (3:47:05.160)

Supply started to recognize that it could manufacture demand.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:08.040)

It could make people want shit that they didn't want before that maybe wouldn't increase their

Lex Fridman (3:47:10.880)

happiness in a meaningful way, might increase addiction.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:14.400)

Addiction is a very good way to manufacture demand.

Lex Fridman (3:47:17.600)

And so as soon as manufactured demand started through this is the cool thing and you have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:23.640)

to have it for status or whatever it is, the intelligence of the market was breaking.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:28.860)

Now it's no longer a collective intelligence system that is up regulating real desire for

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:32.960)

things that are really meaningful.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:34.280)

We were able to hijack the lower angels of our nature rather than the higher ones.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:38.160)

The addictive patterns drive those and have people want shit that doesn't actually make

Lex Fridman (3:47:42.040)

them happy or make the world better.

Lex Fridman (3:47:44.340)

And so we really also have to update our theory of markets because behavioral econ showed

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:51.100)

that homo economicus, the rational actor is not really a thing, but particularly at greater

Lex Fridman (3:47:55.960)

and greater scale can't really be a thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:47:58.560)

Voluntaryism isn't a thing where if my company doesn't want to advertise on Facebook, I just

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:48:02.840)

will lose to the companies that do because that's where all the fucking attention is.

Lex Fridman (3:48:06.600)

And so then I can say it's voluntary, but it's not really if there's a functional monopoly.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:48:12.040)

Same if I'm going to sell on Amazon or things like that.

Lex Fridman (3:48:14.760)

So what I would say is these corporations are becoming more powerful than nation states

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:48:21.760)

in some ways.

Lex Fridman (3:48:24.080)

And they are also debasing the integrity of the nation states, the open societies.

Lex Fridman (3:48:34.000)

So the democracies are getting weaker as a result of exponential tech and the kind of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:48:38.840)

new tech companies that are kind of a new feudalism, tech feudalism, because it's not

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:48:43.640)

a democracy inside of a tech company or the supply and demand relationship when you have

Lex Fridman (3:48:48.400)

manufactured demand and kind of monopoly type functions.

Lex Fridman (3:48:53.200)

And so we have basically a new feudalism controlling exponential tech and authoritarian nation

Lex Fridman (3:48:57.280)

states controlling it.

Lex Fridman (3:48:58.280)

And those attractors are both shitty.

Lex Fridman (3:49:01.120)

And so I'm interested in the application of exponential tech to making better social tech

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:07.200)

that makes emergent order possible and where then that emergent order can bind and direct

Lex Fridman (3:49:13.280)

the exponential tech in fundamentally healthy, not X risk oriented directions.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:19.080)

I think the relationship of social tech and physical tech can make it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:22.680)

I think we can actually use the physical tech to make better social tech, but it's not given

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:26.600)

that we do.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:27.940)

If we don't make better social tech, then I think the physical tech empowers really

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:32.020)

shitty social tech that is not a world that we want.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:35.040)

I don't know if it's a road we want to go down, but I tend to believe that the market

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:39.520)

will create exactly the thing you're talking about, which I feel like there's a lot of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:43.600)

money to be made in creating a social tech that creates a better citizen, that creates

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:49:55.160)

a better human being.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:00.640)

Your description of Facebook and so on, which is a system that creates addiction, which

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:05.740)

manufactures demand, is not obviously inherently the consequence of the markets.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:14.600)

I feel like that's the first stage of us, like baby deer trying to figure out how to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:19.200)

use the internet.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:20.560)

I feel like there's much more money to be made with something that creates compersion

Lex Fridman (3:50:28.360)

and love.

Lex Fridman (3:50:29.360)

Honestly.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:30.360)

I mean, I really, we can have this, I can make the business case for it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:35.360)

I don't know if, I don't think we want to really have that discussion, but do you have

Lex Fridman (3:50:39.840)

some hope that that's the case?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:41.920)

I guess if not, then how do we fix the system of markets that worked so well for the United

Lex Fridman (3:50:47.160)

States for so long?

Lex Fridman (3:50:49.120)

Like I said, every social tech worked for a while.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:51.520)

Like tribalism worked well for two or 300,000 years.

Lex Fridman (3:50:55.440)

I think social tech has to keep evolving.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:50:58.000)

The social technologies with which we organize and coordinate our behavior have to keep evolving

Lex Fridman (3:51:03.360)

as our physical tech does.

Lex Fridman (3:51:05.860)

So I think the thing that we call markets, of course we can try to say, oh, even biology

Lex Fridman (3:51:12.960)

runs on markets.

Lex Fridman (3:51:15.000)

But the thing that we call markets, the underlying theory, homo economicus, demand, driving supply,

Lex Fridman (3:51:22.160)

that thing broke.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:51:23.700)

It broke with scale in particular and a few other things.

Lex Fridman (3:51:28.320)

So it needs updated in a really fundamental way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:51:32.640)

I think there's something even deeper than making money happening that in some ways will

Lex Fridman (3:51:37.840)

obsolete money making.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:51:41.680)

I think capitalism is not about business.

Lex Fridman (3:51:46.560)

So if you think about business, I'm going to produce a good or a service that people

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:51:50.520)

want and bring it to the market so that people get access to that good or service.

Lex Fridman (3:51:55.420)

That's the world of business, but that's not capitalism.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:51:58.840)

Capitalism is the management and allocation of capital, which financial services was a

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:05.680)

tiny percentage of the total market has become a huge percentage of the total market.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:09.080)

It's a different creature.

Lex Fridman (3:52:10.440)

So if I was in business and I was producing a good or service and I was saving up enough

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:14.760)

money that I started to be able to invest that money and gain interest or do things

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:19.340)

like that, I start realizing I'm making more money on my money than I'm making on producing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:24.620)

the goods and services.

Lex Fridman (3:52:26.160)

So I stop even paying attention to goods and services and start paying attention to making

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:29.960)

money on money and how do I utilize capital to create more capital.

Lex Fridman (3:52:34.380)

And capital gives me more optionality because I can buy anything with it than a particular

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:37.880)

good or service that only some people want.

Lex Fridman (3:52:42.880)

Capitalism – more capital ended up meaning more control.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:49.540)

I could put more people under my employment.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:51.640)

I could buy larger pieces of land, novel access to resource, mines, and put more technology

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:52:57.400)

under my employment.

Lex Fridman (3:52:58.400)

So it meant increased agency and also increased control.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:53:02.360)

I think attentionalism is even more powerful.

Lex Fridman (3:53:07.740)

So rather than enslave people where the people kind of always want to get away and put in

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:53:14.680)

the least work they can, there's a way in which economic servitude was just more profitable

Lex Fridman (3:53:19.120)

than slavery, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:53:21.800)

Have the people work even harder voluntarily because they want to get ahead and nobody

Lex Fridman (3:53:26.100)

has to be there to whip them or control them or whatever.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:53:30.740)

This is a cynical take but a meaningful take.

Lex Fridman (3:53:35.680)

So people – so capital ends up being a way to influence human behavior, right?

Lex Fridman (3:53:43.320)

And yet where people still feel free in some meaningful way.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:53:48.680)

They're not feeling like they're going to be punished by the state if they don't do

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:53:53.200)

something.

Lex Fridman (3:53:54.200)

It's like punished by the market via homelessness or something.

Lex Fridman (3:53:56.680)

But the market is this invisible thing I can't put an agent on so it feels like free.

Lex Fridman (3:54:01.420)

And so if you want to affect people's behavior and still have them feel free, capital ends

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:54:10.800)

up being a way to do that.

Lex Fridman (3:54:12.560)

But I think affecting their attention is even deeper because if I can affect their attention,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:54:18.480)

I can both affect what they want and what they believe and what they feel.

Lex Fridman (3:54:22.960)

And we statistically know this very clearly.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:54:24.680)

Facebook has done studies that based on changing the feed, it can change beliefs, emotional

Lex Fridman (3:54:29.360)

dispositions, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (3:54:31.640)

And so I think there's a way that the harvest and directing of attention is even a more

Lex Fridman (3:54:38.000)

powerful system than capitalism.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:54:39.840)

It is effective in capitalism to generate capital, but I think it also generates influence

Lex Fridman (3:54:44.660)

beyond what capital can do.

Lex Fridman (3:54:46.760)

And so do we want to have some groups utilizing that type of tech to direct other people's

Lex Fridman (3:54:56.840)

attention?

Lex Fridman (3:54:57.840)

If so, towards what?

Lex Fridman (3:55:03.280)

Towards what metrics of what a good civilization and good human life would be?

Lex Fridman (3:55:07.320)

What's the oversight process?

Lex Fridman (3:55:08.920)

What is the...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:09.920)

Transparency.

Lex Fridman (3:55:10.920)

I can answer all the things you're mentioning.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:14.920)

I can build, I guarantee you if I'm not such a lazy ass, I'll be part of the many people

Lex Fridman (3:55:20.720)

doing this as transparency and control, giving control to individual people.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:26.360)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (3:55:27.360)

So maybe the corporation has coordination on its goals that all of its customers or

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:36.120)

users together don't have.

Lex Fridman (3:55:37.660)

So there's some asymmetry of its goals, but maybe I could actually help all of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:44.880)

the customers to coordinate almost like a labor union or whatever by informing and educating

Lex Fridman (3:55:50.160)

them adequately about the effects, the externalities on them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:54.940)

This is not toxic waste going into the ocean of the atmosphere.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:55:58.080)

It's their minds, their beings, their families, their relationships, such that they will in

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:03.520)

group change their behavior.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:10.920)

One way of saying what you're saying, I think, is that you think that you can rescue homo

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:16.000)

economicus from the rational actor that will pursue all the goods and services and choose

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:23.180)

the best one at the best price, the kind of Rand von Mises Hayek, that you can rescue

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:27.160)

that from Dan Ariely and behavioral econ that says that's actually not how people make choices.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:31.400)

They make it based on status hacking, largely whether it's good for them or not in the long

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:35.200)

term.

Lex Fridman (3:56:36.360)

And the large asymmetric corporation can run propaganda and narrative warfare that hits

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:41.400)

people's status buttons and their limbic hijacks and their lots of other things in ways that

Lex Fridman (3:56:46.760)

they can't even perceive that are happening.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:56:50.000)

They're not paying attention to that.

Lex Fridman (3:56:51.480)

The site is employing psychologists and split testing and whatever else.

Lex Fridman (3:56:55.120)

So you're saying, I think we can recover homo economicus.

Lex Fridman (3:57:00.040)

And not just through a single mechanism of technology.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:03.000)

There's the, not to keep mentioning the guy, but platforms like Joe Rogan and so on, that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:09.880)

make help make viral the ways that the education of negative externalities can become viral

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:20.160)

in this world.

Lex Fridman (3:57:21.160)

So interestingly, I actually agree with you that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:26.560)

I got them that we four and a half hours in that we can take can do some good.

Lex Fridman (3:57:33.360)

All right.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:34.360)

Well, see, what you're talking about is the application of tech here, broadcast tech where

Lex Fridman (3:57:38.760)

you can speak to a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (3:57:40.500)

And that's not going to be strong enough because the different people need spoken to differently,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:44.160)

which means it has to be different voices that get amplified to those audiences more

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:47.120)

like Facebook's tech.

Lex Fridman (3:57:48.260)

But nonetheless, we'll start with broadcast tech plants the first seed and then the word

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:52.040)

of mouth is a powerful thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:53.920)

You need to do the first broadcast shotgun and then it like lands a catapult or whatever.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:57:59.440)

I don't know what the right weapon is, but then it just spreads the word of mouth through

Lex Fridman (3:58:03.720)

all kinds of tech, including Facebook.

Lex Fridman (3:58:06.280)

So let's come back to the fundamental thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:58:08.160)

The fundamental thing is we want to kind of order at various scales from the conflicting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:58:14.660)

parts of ourself, actually having more harmony than they might have to a family, extended

Lex Fridman (3:58:22.360)

family, local, all the way up to global.

Lex Fridman (3:58:25.640)

We want emergent order where our choices have more alignment, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:58:33.640)

We want that to be emergent rather than imposed or rather than we want fundamentally different

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:58:38.360)

things or make totally different sense of the world where warfare of some kind becomes

Lex Fridman (3:58:42.680)

the only solution.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:58:45.040)

Emergent order requires us in our choice making, requires us being able to have related sense

Lex Fridman (3:58:50.680)

making and related meaning making processes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:58:55.160)

Can we apply digital technologies and exponential tech in general to try to increase the capacity

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:02.560)

to do that where the technology called a town hall, the social tech that we'd all get together

Lex Fridman (3:59:06.200)

and talk obviously is very scale limited and it's also oriented to geography rather than

Lex Fridman (3:59:11.200)

networks of aligned interest.

Lex Fridman (3:59:13.200)

Can we build new better versions of those types of things?

Lex Fridman (3:59:16.200)

And going back to the idea that a democracy or participatory governance depends upon comprehensive

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:23.280)

education and the science of government, which include being able to understand things like

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:27.080)

asymmetric information warfare on the side of governments and how the people can organize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:31.520)

adequately.

Lex Fridman (3:59:33.360)

Can you utilize some of the technologies now to be able to support increased comprehensive

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:38.920)

education of the people and maybe comprehensive informativeness, so both fixing the decay

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:44.700)

in both education and the fourth estate that have happened so that people can start self

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:48.480)

organizing to then influence the corporations, the nation states to do different things and

Lex Fridman (3:59:55.440)

or build new ones themselves?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (3:59:57.080)

Yeah, fundamentally that's the thing that has to happen.

Lex Fridman (40:00.080)

So that's two to the 10 to the 16 computations.

Lex Fridman (40:03.560)

So synaptic firings per second that the brain does.

Lex Fridman (40:08.080)

And that's about a million times faster than the let's say the 20 thread state of the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (40:15.840)

arts Intel CPU, the 10th generation.

Lex Fridman (40:21.360)

And then there's similar calculation for the GPU and all ended up also trying to compute

Daniel Schmachtenberger (40:28.640)

that it takes 10 watts to run the brain about.

Lex Fridman (40:32.600)

And then what does that mean in terms of calories per day, kilocalories?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (40:36.020)

That's about for an average human brain, that's 250 to 300 calories a day.

Lex Fridman (40:44.780)

And so it ended up being a calculation where you're doing about 20 quadrillion calculations

Daniel Schmachtenberger (40:54.800)

that are fueled by something like depending on your diet, three bananas.

Lex Fridman (40:59.280)

So three bananas results in a computation that's about a million times more powerful

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:05.760)

than the current state of the art computers.

Lex Fridman (41:08.320)

Now, let's take that one step further.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:10.720)

There's some assumptions built in there.

Lex Fridman (41:12.480)

The assumption is that one, what the brain is doing is just computation.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:17.240)

Two, the relevant computations are synaptic firings and that there's nothing other than

Lex Fridman (41:21.760)

synaptic firings that we have to factor.

Lex Fridman (41:25.120)

So I'm forgetting his name right now.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:28.040)

There's a very famous neuroscientist at Stanford just passed away recently who did a lot of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:35.240)

the pioneering work on glial cells and showed that his assessment glial cells did a huge

Lex Fridman (41:40.320)

amount of the thinking, not just neurons.

Lex Fridman (41:42.280)

And it opened up this entirely different field of like what the brain is and what consciousness

Lex Fridman (41:46.440)

is.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:47.440)

You look at Damasio's work on embodied cognition and how much of what we would consider consciousness

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:51.960)

or feeling is happening outside of the nervous system completely, happening in endocrine

Daniel Schmachtenberger (41:56.120)

process involving lots of other cells and signal communication.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:00.560)

You talk to somebody like Penrose who you've had on the show and even though the Penrose

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:04.540)

Hammerhoff conjecture is probably not right, is there something like that that might be

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:08.720)

the case where we're actually having to look at stuff happening at the level of quantum

Lex Fridman (42:11.920)

computation of microtubules?

Lex Fridman (42:14.820)

I'm not arguing for any of those.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:16.800)

I'm arguing that we don't know how big the unknown unknown set is.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:20.800)

Well, at the very least, this has become like an infomercial for the human brain.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:26.440)

At the very, but wait, there's more.

Lex Fridman (42:29.820)

At the very least, the three bananas buys you a million times.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:33.400)

At the very least.

Lex Fridman (42:34.400)

At the very least.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:35.400)

That's impressive.

Lex Fridman (42:36.400)

And then you could have, and then the synaptic firings we're referring to is strictly the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:41.280)

electrical signals.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:42.280)

That could be the mechanical transmission of information, there's chemical transmission

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:45.880)

of information, there's all kinds of other stuff going on.

Lex Fridman (42:49.520)

And then there's memory that's built in, that's also all tied in.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (42:52.600)

Not to mention, which I'm learning more and more about, it's not just about the neurons.

Lex Fridman (42:58.760)

It's also about the immune system that's somehow helping with the computation.

Lex Fridman (43:02.320)

So the entirety and the entire body is helping with the computation.

Lex Fridman (43:06.960)

So the three bananas.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (43:07.960)

It could buy you a lot.

Lex Fridman (43:10.080)

It could buy you a lot.

Lex Fridman (43:12.320)

But on the topic of sort of the greater degrees of complexity emerging in consciousness, I

Daniel Schmachtenberger (43:22.360)

think few things are as beautiful and inspiring as taking a step outside of the human brain,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (43:29.120)

just looking at systems where simple rules create incredible complexity.

Lex Fridman (43:36.460)

Not create.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (43:38.300)

Incredible complexity emerges.

Lex Fridman (43:40.180)

So one of the simplest things to do that with is cellular automata.

Lex Fridman (43:46.540)

And there's, I don't know what it is, and maybe you can speak to it, we will certainly

Daniel Schmachtenberger (43:53.960)

talk about the implications of this, but there's so few things that are as awe inspiring to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:02.360)

me as knowing the rules of a system and not being able to predict what the heck it looks

Lex Fridman (44:07.960)

like.

Lex Fridman (44:08.960)

And it creates incredibly beautiful complexity that when zoomed out on, looks like there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:15.280)

actual organisms doing things that operate on a scale much higher than the underlying

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:26.000)

mechanism.

Lex Fridman (44:27.920)

So with cellular automata, that's cells that are born and die.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:31.440)

Born and die and they only know about each other's neighbors.

Lex Fridman (44:34.560)

And there's simple rules that govern that interaction of birth and death.

Lex Fridman (44:38.120)

And then they create, at scale, organisms that look like they take up hundreds or thousands

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:44.760)

of cells and they're moving, they're moving around, they're communicating, they're sending

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:49.160)

signals to each other.

Lex Fridman (44:51.000)

And you forget at moments at a time before you remember that the simple rules on cells

Daniel Schmachtenberger (44:59.040)

is all that it took to create that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:04.120)

It's sad in that we can't come up with a simple description of that system that generalizes

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:15.480)

the behavior of the large organisms.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:19.040)

We can only come up, we can only hope to come up with the thing, the fundamental physics

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:23.320)

or the fundamental rules of that system, I suppose.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:25.600)

It's sad that we can't predict everything we know about the mathematics of those systems.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:29.880)

It seems like we can't really in a nice way, like economics tries to do, to predict how

Lex Fridman (45:34.760)

this whole thing will unroll.

Lex Fridman (45:37.160)

But it's beautiful because of how simple it is underneath it all.

Lex Fridman (45:42.600)

So what do you make of the emergence of complexity from simple rules?

Lex Fridman (45:49.040)

What the hell is that about?

Lex Fridman (45:50.360)

Yeah.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:51.360)

Well, we can see that something like flocking behavior, the murmuration, can be computer

Lex Fridman (45:56.800)

coded.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (45:57.800)

It's a very hard set of rules to be able to see some of those really amazing types of

Lex Fridman (46:01.680)

complexity.

Lex Fridman (46:03.600)

And the whole field of complexity science and some of the subdisciplines like Stigma

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:08.320)

G are studying how following fairly simple responses to a pheromone signal do ant colonies

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:14.980)

do this amazing thing where what you might describe as the organizational or computational

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:19.240)

capacity of the colony is so profound relative to what each individual ant is doing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:26.040)

I am not anywhere near as well versed in the cutting edge of cellular automata as I would

Lex Fridman (46:31.320)

like.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:32.320)

Unfortunately, in terms of topics that I would like to get to and haven't, like ET's more

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:36.800)

Wolfram's A New Kind of Science, I have only skimmed and read reviews of and not read the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:43.340)

whole thing or his newer work since.

Lex Fridman (46:47.020)

But his idea of the four basic kind of categories of emergent phenomena that can come from cellular

Daniel Schmachtenberger (46:53.280)

automata and that one of them is kind of interesting and looks a lot like complexity rather than

Lex Fridman (46:59.300)

just chaos or homogeneity or self termination or whatever.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (47:08.520)

I think this is very interesting.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (47:11.900)

It does not instantly make me think that biology is operating on a similarly small set of rules

Lex Fridman (47:17.760)

and or that human consciousness is.

Lex Fridman (47:19.800)

I'm not that reductionist oriented.

Lex Fridman (47:26.400)

So if you look at, say, Santa Fe Institute, one of the cofounders, Stuart Kaufman, his

Lex Fridman (47:31.200)

work, you should really get him on your show.

Lex Fridman (47:33.220)

So a lot of the questions that you like, one of Kaufman's more recent books after investigations

Lex Fridman (47:39.060)

and some of the real fundamental stuff was called Reinventing the Sacred and it had to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (47:42.180)

do with some of these exact questions in kind of non reductionist approach, but that is

Lex Fridman (47:47.080)

not just silly hippie ism.

Lex Fridman (47:50.520)

And he was very interested in highly non ergodic systems where you couldn't take a lot of behavior

Daniel Schmachtenberger (47:55.680)

over a small period of time and predict what the behavior of subsets over a longer period

Daniel Schmachtenberger (47:59.200)

of time would do.

Lex Fridman (48:01.960)

And then going further, someone who spent some time at Santa Fe Institute and then kind

Daniel Schmachtenberger (48:05.460)

of made a whole new field that you should have on, Dave Snowden, who some people call

Lex Fridman (48:10.840)

the father of anthro complexity or what is the complexity unique to humans.

Lex Fridman (48:16.300)

And he says something to the effect of that modeling humans as termites really doesn't

Lex Fridman (48:19.960)

cut it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (48:20.960)

Like we don't respond exactly identically to the same pheromone stimulus using Stigma

Daniel Schmachtenberger (48:26.740)

G like it works for flows of traffic and some very simple human behaviors, but it really

Daniel Schmachtenberger (48:30.840)

doesn't work for trying to make sense of the Sistine Chapel and Picasso and general relativity

Lex Fridman (48:35.440)

creation and stuff like that.

Lex Fridman (48:37.880)

And it's because the termites are not doing abstraction, forecasting deep into the future

Lex Fridman (48:43.280)

and making choices now based on forecasts of the future, not just adaptive signals in

Daniel Schmachtenberger (48:47.240)

the moment and evolutionary code from history.

Lex Fridman (48:49.780)

That's really different, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (48:51.120)

Like making choices now that can factor deep modeling of the future.

Lex Fridman (48:56.260)

And with humans, our uniqueness one to the next in terms of response to similar stimuli

Daniel Schmachtenberger (49:02.160)

is much higher than it is with a termite.

Lex Fridman (49:06.100)

One of the interesting things there is that their uniqueness is extremely low.

Lex Fridman (49:08.960)

They're basically fungible within a class, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (49:11.040)

There's different classes, but within a class they're basically fungible and their system

Lex Fridman (49:14.400)

uses that very high numbers and lots of loss, right?

Lex Fridman (49:19.680)

Lots of death and loss.

Lex Fridman (49:20.680)

But do you think the termite feels that way?

Lex Fridman (49:21.680)

Don't, don't you think we humans are deceiving ourselves about our uniqueness?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (49:25.320)

Perhaps it doesn't, it just, isn't there some sense in which this emergence just creates

Daniel Schmachtenberger (49:29.440)

different higher and higher levels of abstraction where every, at every layer, each organism

Lex Fridman (49:34.360)

feels unique?

Lex Fridman (49:35.880)

Is that possible?

Lex Fridman (49:36.880)

That we're all equally dumb but at different scales?

Lex Fridman (49:40.240)

No, I think uniqueness is evolving.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (49:44.280)

I think that hydrogen atoms are more similar to each other than cells of the same type

Lex Fridman (49:51.160)

are.

Lex Fridman (49:52.160)

And I think that cells are more similar to each other than humans are.

Lex Fridman (49:54.240)

And I think that highly K selected species are more unique than R selected species.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:00.800)

The exponential tech gives us a novel problem landscape that the world never had.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:05.060)

The nuke gave us a novel problem landscape and so that required this whole Bretton Woods

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:09.480)

world.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:10.580)

The exponential tech gives us a novel problem landscape, our existing problem solving processes

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:15.320)

aren't doing a good job.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:16.620)

We have had more countries get nukes, we have a nuclear de proliferation, we haven't achieved

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:21.360)

any of the UN sustainable development goals, we haven't kept any of the new categories

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:26.200)

of tech from making arms races, so our global coordination is not adequate to the problem

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:30.640)

landscape.

Lex Fridman (4:00:32.280)

So we need fundamentally better problem solving processes, a market or a state is a problem

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:36.540)

solving process.

Lex Fridman (4:00:37.540)

We need better ones that can do the speed and scale of the current issues.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:41.560)

Right now speed is one of the other big things is that by the time we regulated DDT out of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:46.240)

existence or cigarettes not for people under 18, they had already killed so many people

Lex Fridman (4:00:50.720)

and we let the market do the thing.

Lex Fridman (4:00:52.980)

But as Elon has made the point that won't work for AI, by the time we recognize afterwards

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:00:59.400)

that we have an auto poetic AI that's a problem, you won't be able to reverse it, that there's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:02.840)

a number of things that when you're dealing with tech that is either self replicating

Lex Fridman (4:01:07.760)

and disintermediate humans to keep going, doesn't need humans to keep going, or you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:11.800)

have tech that just has exponentially fast effects, your regulation has to come early.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:17.720)

It can't come after the effects have happened, the negative effects have happened because

Lex Fridman (4:01:23.240)

the negative effects could be too big too quickly.

Lex Fridman (4:01:25.480)

So we basically need new problem solving processes that do better at being able to internalize

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:31.840)

this externality, solve the problems on the right time scale and the right geographic

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:36.160)

scale.

Lex Fridman (4:01:37.900)

And those new processes to not be imposed have to emerge from people wanting them and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:44.480)

being able to participate in their development, which is what I would call kind of a new cultural

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:48.400)

enlightenment or renaissance that has to happen, where people start understanding the new power

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:01:54.360)

that exponential tech offers, the way that it is actually damaging current governance

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:02:00.480)

structures that we care about, and creating an extra landscape, but could also be redirected

Lex Fridman (4:02:07.200)

towards more protopic purposes, and then saying, how do we rebuild new social institutions?

Lex Fridman (4:02:13.140)

What are adequate social institutions where we can do participatory governance at scale

Lex Fridman (4:02:17.200)

and time?

Lex Fridman (4:02:19.160)

And how can the people actually participate to build those things?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:02:24.100)

The solution that I see working requires a process like that.

Lex Fridman (4:02:29.600)

And the result maximizes love.

Lex Fridman (4:02:32.360)

So again, Elon would be right that love is the answer.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:02:36.200)

Let me take you back from the scale of societies to the scale that's far, far more important,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:02:42.680)

which is the scale of family.

Lex Fridman (4:02:47.480)

You've written a blog post about your dad.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:02:50.120)

We have various flavors of relationships with our fathers.

Lex Fridman (4:02:56.920)

What have you learned about life from your dad?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:03:01.160)

Well, people can read the blog post and see a lot of individual things that I learned

Lex Fridman (4:03:06.600)

that I really appreciated.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:03:07.600)

If I was to kind of summarize at a high level, I had a really incredible dad, very, very

Lex Fridman (4:03:18.520)

unusually positive set of experiences.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:03:23.240)

We were homeschooled, and he was committed to work from home to be available and prioritize

Lex Fridman (4:03:28.880)

fathering in a really deep way.

Lex Fridman (4:03:35.680)

And as a super gifted, super loving, very unique man, he also had his unique issues

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:03:41.680)

that were part of what crafted the unique brilliance, and those things often go together.

Lex Fridman (4:03:46.040)

And I say that because I think I had some unusual gifts and also some unusual difficulties.

Lex Fridman (4:03:52.360)

And I think it's useful for everybody to know their path probably has both of those.

Lex Fridman (4:03:59.280)

But if I was to say kind of the essence of one of the things my dad taught me across

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:05.880)

a lot of lessons was like the intersection of self empowerment, ideas and practices that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:13.320)

self empower, towards collective good, towards some virtuous purpose beyond the self.

Lex Fridman (4:04:21.160)

And he both said that a million different ways, taught it in a million different ways.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:25.600)

When we were doing construction and he was teaching me how to build a house, we were

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:31.720)

putting the wires to the walls before the drywall went on, he made sure that the way

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:35.380)

that we put the wires through was beautiful.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:37.720)

Like that the height of the holes was similar, that we twisted the wires in a particular

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:44.200)

way.

Lex Fridman (4:04:45.200)

And it's like no one's ever going to see it.

Lex Fridman (4:04:47.400)

And he's like, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and excellence is its own

Lex Fridman (4:04:50.760)

reward.

Lex Fridman (4:04:51.760)

And those types of ideas.

Lex Fridman (4:04:52.760)

And if there was a really shitty job to do, he'd say, see the job, do the job, stay out

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:04:55.120)

of the misery.

Lex Fridman (4:04:56.120)

Just don't indulge any negativity, do the things that need done.

Lex Fridman (4:04:59.400)

And so there's like, there's an empowerment and a nobility together.

Lex Fridman (4:05:06.440)

And yeah, extraordinarily fortunate.

Lex Fridman (4:05:10.600)

Is there ways you think you could have been a better son?

Lex Fridman (4:05:13.960)

Is there things you regret?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:05:16.640)

Interesting question.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:05:18.440)

Let me first say, just as a bit of a criticism, that what kind of man do you think you are

Lex Fridman (4:05:28.480)

not wearing a suit and tie, if a real man should?

Lex Fridman (4:05:34.360)

Exactly I agree with your dad on that point.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:05:36.680)

You mentioned offline that he suggested a real man should wear a suit and tie.

Lex Fridman (4:05:44.360)

But outside of that, is there ways you could have been a better son?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:05:48.600)

Maybe next time on your show, I'll wear a suit and tie.

Lex Fridman (4:05:52.600)

My dad would be happy about that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:06:12.560)

I can answer the question later in life, not early.

Lex Fridman (4:06:17.400)

I had just a huge amount of respect and reverence for my dad when I was young.

Lex Fridman (4:06:20.680)

So I was asking myself that question a lot.

Lex Fridman (4:06:23.920)

So there weren't a lot of things I knew that I wasn't seeking to apply.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:06:32.320)

There was a phase when I went through my kind of individuation, differentiation, where I

Lex Fridman (4:06:39.160)

had to make him excessively wrong about too many things.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:06:43.280)

I don't think I had to, but I did.

Lex Fridman (4:06:46.200)

And he had a lot of kind of nonstandard model beliefs about things, whether early kind of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:06:55.600)

ancient civilizations or ideas on evolutionary theory or alternate models of physics.

Lex Fridman (4:07:03.480)

And they weren't irrational, but they didn't all have the standard of epistemic proof that

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:07:10.520)

I would need.

Lex Fridman (4:07:12.560)

And I went through, and some of them were kind of spiritual ideas as well, I went through

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:07:19.920)

a phase in my early 20s where I kind of had the attitude that Dawkins or a Christopher

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:07:31.440)

Hitchens has that can kind of be like excessively certain and sanctimonious, applying their

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:07:41.720)

reductionist philosophy of science to everything and kind of brutally dismissive.

Lex Fridman (4:07:47.960)

I'm embarrassed by that phase.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:07:52.960)

Not to say anything about those men and their path, but for myself.

Lex Fridman (4:07:57.040)

And so during that time, I was more dismissive of my dad's epistemology than I would have

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:05.080)

liked to have been.

Lex Fridman (4:08:06.080)

I got to correct that later and apologize for it.

Lex Fridman (4:08:09.000)

But that's the first thought that came to mind.

Lex Fridman (4:08:12.120)

You've written the following.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:14.240)

I've had the experience countless times, making love, watching a sunset, listening to music,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:22.440)

feeling the breeze, that I would sign up for this whole life and all of its pains just

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:29.840)

to experience this exact moment.

Lex Fridman (4:08:33.480)

This is a kind of wordless knowing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:37.360)

It's the most important and real truth I know, that experience itself is infinitely

Lex Fridman (4:08:42.400)

meaningful and pain is temporary.

Lex Fridman (4:08:46.640)

And seen clearly, even the suffering is filled with beauty.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:50.200)

I've experienced countless lives worth of moments worthy of life, such an unreasonable

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:08:57.920)

fortune.

Lex Fridman (4:08:58.920)

A few words of gratitude from you, beautifully written.

Lex Fridman (4:09:03.720)

Is there some beautiful moments?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:05.360)

Now you have experienced countless lives worth of those moments, but is there some things

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:11.280)

that if you could, in your darker moments, you can go to to relive, to remind yourself

Lex Fridman (4:09:20.360)

that the whole ride is worthwhile?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:22.840)

Maybe skip the making love part.

Lex Fridman (4:09:24.400)

We don't want to know about that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:27.880)

I mean, I feel unreasonably fortunate that it is such a humongous list because, I mean,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:42.800)

I feel fortunate to have like had exposure to practices and philosophies in a way of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:48.000)

seeing things that makes me see things that way.

Lex Fridman (4:09:50.080)

So I can take responsibility for seeing things in that way and not taking for granted really

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:09:55.200)

wonderful things, but I can't take credit for being exposed to the philosophies that

Lex Fridman (4:09:58.560)

even gave me that possibility.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:10:03.760)

You know, it's not just with my wife, it's with every person who I really love when we're

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:10:10.400)

talking and I look at their face, I, in the context of a conversation, feel overwhelmed

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:10:14.920)

by how lucky I am to get to know them.

Lex Fridman (4:10:17.960)

And like there's never been someone like them in all of history and there never will be

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:10:21.680)

again and they might be gone tomorrow, I might be gone tomorrow and like I get this moment

Lex Fridman (4:10:24.820)

with them.

Lex Fridman (4:10:25.820)

And when you take in the uniqueness of that fully and the beauty of it, it's overwhelmingly

Lex Fridman (4:10:30.320)

beautiful.

Lex Fridman (4:10:33.720)

And I remember the first time I did a big dose of mushrooms and I was looking at a tree

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:10:42.240)

for a long time and I was just crying with overwhelming how beautiful the tree was.

Lex Fridman (4:10:47.080)

And it was a tree outside the front of my house that I'd walked by a million times and

Lex Fridman (4:10:50.000)

never looked at like this.

Lex Fridman (4:10:52.280)

And it wasn't the dose of mushrooms where I was hallucinating like where the tree was

Lex Fridman (4:10:58.000)

purple.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:10:59.000)

Like the tree still looked like, if I had to describe it, it's green and it has leaves,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:02.320)

looks like this, but it was way fucking more beautiful, like capturing than it normally

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:08.480)

was.

Lex Fridman (4:11:09.480)

And I'm like, why is it so beautiful if I would describe it the same way?

Lex Fridman (4:11:12.100)

And I realized I had no thoughts taking me anywhere else.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:15.760)

Like what it seemed like the mushrooms were doing was just actually shutting the narrative

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:19.320)

off that would have me be distracted so I could really see the tree.

Lex Fridman (4:11:22.960)

And then I'm like, fuck, when I get off these mushrooms, I'm going to practice seeing the

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:25.240)

tree because it's always that beautiful and I just miss it.

Lex Fridman (4:11:29.320)

And so I practice being with it and quieting the rest of the mind and then being like,

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:33.360)

wow.

Lex Fridman (4:11:34.360)

And if it's not mushrooms, like people have peak experiences where they'll see life and

Lex Fridman (4:11:39.120)

how incredible it is.

Lex Fridman (4:11:40.120)

It's always there.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:41.120)

It's funny that I had this exact same experience on quite a lot of mushrooms just sitting alone

Lex Fridman (4:11:49.160)

and looking at a tree and exactly as you described it, appreciating the undistorted beauty of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:11:55.280)

it.

Lex Fridman (4:11:56.280)

And it's funny to me that here's two humans, very different with very different journeys

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:02.520)

or at some moment in time, both looking at a tree like idiots for hours and just in awe

Lex Fridman (4:12:09.400)

and happy to be alive.

Lex Fridman (4:12:10.400)

And yeah, even just that moment alone is worth living for, but you did say humans and we

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:17.800)

have a moment together as two humans and you mentioned shots that I have to ask, what are

Lex Fridman (4:12:25.760)

we looking at?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:27.080)

When I went to go get a smoothie before coming here, I got you a keto smoothie that you didn't

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:32.120)

want because you're not just keto, but fasting.

Lex Fridman (4:12:35.080)

But I saw the thing with you and your dad where you did shots together and this place

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:39.940)

happened to have shots of ginger, turmeric, cayenne juice of some kind.

Lex Fridman (4:12:45.960)

So I didn't necessarily plan it for being on the show, I just brought it, but we can

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:52.360)

do it that way.

Lex Fridman (4:12:53.360)

I think we shall toast like heroes, Daniel.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:12:59.160)

It's a huge honor.

Lex Fridman (4:13:00.160)

What do we toast to?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:01.760)

We toast to this moment, this unique moment that we get to share together.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:06.960)

I'm very grateful to be here in this moment with you and yeah, I'm grateful that you invited

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:11.480)

me here.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:12.480)

We met for the first time and I will never be the same for the good and the bad, I am.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:23.000)

That is really interesting.

Lex Fridman (4:13:24.360)

That feels way healthier than the vodka my dad and I were drinking.

Lex Fridman (4:13:29.400)

So I feel like a better man already, Daniel, this is one of the best conversations I've

Lex Fridman (4:13:33.280)

ever had.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:34.280)

I can't wait to have many more.

Lex Fridman (4:13:36.240)

Likewise.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:37.240)

This has been an amazing experience.

Lex Fridman (4:13:39.200)

Thank you for wasting all your time today.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:40.800)

I want to say in terms of what you're mentioning about like the, that you work in machine learning

Lex Fridman (4:13:48.720)

and the optimism that wants to look at the issues, but wants to look at how this increased

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:13:55.160)

technological power could be applied to solving them and that even thinking about the broadcast

Lex Fridman (4:14:00.600)

of like, can I help people understand the issues better and help organize them?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:05.640)

Like fundamentally you're oriented like Wikipedia, what I see, to really try to tend to the information

Lex Fridman (4:14:13.120)

commons without another agentic interest distorting it.

Lex Fridman (4:14:18.040)

And for you to be able to get guys like Lee Smolin and Roger Penrose and like the greatest

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:24.520)

thinkers of, that are alive and have them on the show and most people would never be

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:29.880)

exposed to them and talk about it in a way that people can understand, I think it's an

Lex Fridman (4:14:34.520)

incredible service.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:35.680)

I think you're doing great work.

Lex Fridman (4:14:37.000)

So I was really happy to hear from you.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:39.480)

Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:41.400)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Daniel Schmachtenberger and thank you

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:44.520)

to Ground News, NetSuite, Four Sigmatic, Magic Spoon, and BetterHelp.

Lex Fridman (4:14:51.760)

Check them out in the description to support this podcast.

Lex Fridman (4:14:55.640)

And now let me leave you with some words from Albert Einstein.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:14:59.640)

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Daniel Schmachtenberger (4:15:05.600)

with sticks and stones.

Lex Fridman (4:15:08.200)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (50:00.800)

So they're different evolutionary processes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (50:03.080)

The R selected species where you have a whole, a lot of death and very high birth rates,

Lex Fridman (50:09.600)

and not looking for as much individuality within or individual possible expression to

Lex Fridman (50:16.080)

cover the evolutionary search space within an individual.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (50:18.760)

You're looking at it more in terms of a numbers game.

Lex Fridman (50:22.840)

So yeah, I would say there's probably more difference between one orca and the next than

Daniel Schmachtenberger (50:26.960)

there is between one Cape buffalo and the next.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (50:29.880)

Given that, it would be interesting to get your thoughts about memetic theory where we're

Daniel Schmachtenberger (50:35.400)

imitating each other in the context of this idea of uniqueness.

Lex Fridman (50:43.360)

How much truth is there to that?

Lex Fridman (50:46.180)

How compelling is this worldview to you of Girardian memetic theory of desire where maybe

Daniel Schmachtenberger (50:56.000)

you can explain it from your perspective, but it seems like imitating each other is

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:00.040)

the fundamental property of the behavior of human civilization.

Lex Fridman (51:05.920)

Well, imitation is not unique to humans, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:09.400)

Monkeys imitate.

Lex Fridman (51:11.800)

So a certain amount of learning through observing is not unique to humans.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:18.000)

Humans do more of it.

Lex Fridman (51:19.640)

It's actually kind of worth speaking to this for a moment.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:24.360)

Monkeys can learn new behaviors, new...

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:27.020)

We've even seen teaching an ape sign language and then the ape teaching other apes sign

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:31.620)

language.

Lex Fridman (51:33.180)

So that's a kind of mimesis, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:34.840)

Kind of learning through imitation.

Lex Fridman (51:38.200)

And that needs to happen if they need to learn or develop capacities that are not just coded

Lex Fridman (51:42.880)

by their genetics, right?

Lex Fridman (51:44.420)

So within the same genome, they're learning new things based on the environment.

Lex Fridman (51:49.120)

And so based on someone else learn something first and so let's pick it up.

Lex Fridman (51:54.640)

How much a creature is the result of just its genetic programming and how much it's

Daniel Schmachtenberger (51:59.140)

learning is a very interesting question.

Lex Fridman (52:02.300)

And I think this is a place where humans really show up radically different than everything

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:06.080)

else.

Lex Fridman (52:07.360)

And you can see it in the neoteny, how long we're basically fetal.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:13.760)

That the closest ancestors to us, if we look at a chimp, a chimp can hold on to its mother's

Lex Fridman (52:19.920)

fur while she moves around day one.

Lex Fridman (52:22.820)

And obviously we see horses up and walking within 20 minutes.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:26.640)

The fact that it takes a human a year to be walking and it takes a horse 20 minutes and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:30.560)

you say how many multiples of 20 minutes go into a year, like that's a long period of

Lex Fridman (52:34.320)

helplessness that wouldn't work for a horse, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:37.360)

Like they or anything else.

Lex Fridman (52:40.320)

And not only could we not hold on to mom in the first day, it's three months before we

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:46.000)

can move our head volitionally.

Lex Fridman (52:48.600)

So it's like why are we embryonic for so long?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:52.440)

Obviously it's like it's still fetal on the outside, had to be because couldn't keep growing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (52:58.880)

inside and actually ever get out with big heads and narrower hips from going upright.

Lex Fridman (53:05.600)

So here's a place where there's a coevolution of the pattern of humans, specifically here

Daniel Schmachtenberger (53:11.360)

our neoteny and what that portends to learning with our being tool making and environment

Daniel Schmachtenberger (53:18.080)

modifying creatures, which is because we have the abstraction to make tools, we change our

Lex Fridman (53:24.160)

environments more than other creatures change their environments.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (53:26.760)

The next most environment modifying creature to us is like a beaver.

Lex Fridman (53:31.760)

And then we're in LA, you fly into LAX and you look at the just orthogonal grid going

Daniel Schmachtenberger (53:36.780)

on forever in all directions.

Lex Fridman (53:39.320)

And we've recently come into the Anthropocene where the surface of the earth is changing

Daniel Schmachtenberger (53:43.320)

more from human activity than geological activity and then beavers and you're like, okay, wow,

Lex Fridman (53:47.880)

we're really in a class of our own in terms of environment modifying.

Lex Fridman (53:53.800)

So as soon as we started tool making, we were able to change our environments much more

Lex Fridman (54:01.680)

radically.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:02.680)

We could put on clothes and go to a cold place.

Lex Fridman (54:05.360)

And this is really important because we actually went and became apex predators in every environment.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:10.480)

We functioned like apex predators, polar bear can't leave the Arctic and the lion can't

Lex Fridman (54:15.920)

leave the Savannah and an orca can't leave the ocean.

Lex Fridman (54:18.160)

And we went and became apex predators in all those environments because of our tool creation

Lex Fridman (54:21.360)

capacity.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:22.360)

We could become better predators than them adapted to the environment or at least with

Lex Fridman (54:25.240)

our tools adapted to the environment.

Lex Fridman (54:27.320)

So in every aspect towards any organism in any environment, we're incredibly good at

Lex Fridman (54:34.360)

becoming apex predators.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:36.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (54:37.120)

And nothing else can do that kind of thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:40.080)

There is no other apex predator that, you see the other apex predator is only getting

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:44.880)

better at being a predator through evolutionary process that's super slow and that super slow

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:48.840)

process creates co selective process with their environment.

Lex Fridman (54:52.180)

So as the predator becomes a tiny bit faster, it eats more of the slow prey, the genes of

Daniel Schmachtenberger (54:56.480)

the fast prey and breed and the prey becomes faster.

Lex Fridman (54:58.960)

And so there's this kind of balancing and we in because of our tool making, we increased

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:03.800)

our predatory capacity faster than anything else could increase its resilience to it.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:08.580)

As a result, we start outstripping the environment and extincting species following stone tools

Lex Fridman (55:13.920)

and going and becoming apex predator everywhere.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:15.640)

This is why we can't keep applying apex predator theories because we're not an apex predator.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:18.800)

We're an apex predator, but we're something much more than that.

Lex Fridman (55:22.540)

Like just for an example, the top apex predator in the world, an orca.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:27.240)

An orca can eat one big fish at a time, like one tuna, and it'll miss most of the time

Lex Fridman (55:31.680)

or one seal.

Lex Fridman (55:33.760)

And we can put a mile long drift net out on a single boat and pull up an entire school

Lex Fridman (55:39.040)

of them.

Lex Fridman (55:40.040)

Right?

Lex Fridman (55:41.040)

We can deplete the entire oceans of them.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:42.040)

That's not an orca.

Lex Fridman (55:43.040)

That's not an apex predator.

Lex Fridman (55:45.760)

And that's not even including that we can then genetically engineer different creatures.

Lex Fridman (55:49.640)

We can extinct species.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:50.760)

We can devastate whole ecosystems.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:52.840)

We can make built worlds that have no natural things that are just human built worlds.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (55:56.260)

We can build new types of natural creatures, synthetic life.

Lex Fridman (55:59.240)

So we are much more like little gods than we are like apex predators now, but we're

Daniel Schmachtenberger (56:02.800)

still behaving as apex predators and little gods that behave as apex predators causes

Lex Fridman (56:06.320)

a problem kind of core to my assessment of the world.

Lex Fridman (56:10.780)

So what does it mean to be a predator?

Lex Fridman (56:13.080)

So a predator is somebody that effectively can mine the resources from a place.

Lex Fridman (56:19.680)

So for their survival, or is it also just purely like higher level objectives of violence

Lex Fridman (56:28.440)

and what is, can predators be predators towards the same, each other towards the same species?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (56:34.840)

Like are we using the word predator sort of generally, which then connects to conflict

Lex Fridman (56:39.960)

and military conflict, violent conflict in this base of human species.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (56:46.080)

Obviously we can say that plants are mining the resources of their environment in a particular

Daniel Schmachtenberger (56:50.000)

way, using photosynthesis to be able to pull minerals out of the soil and nitrogen and

Daniel Schmachtenberger (56:54.680)

carbon out of the air and like that.

Lex Fridman (56:57.600)

And we can say herbivores are being able to mine and concentrate that.

Lex Fridman (57:01.400)

So I wouldn't say mining the environment is unique to predator.

Lex Fridman (57:04.600)

Predator is generally being defined as mining other animals, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (57:16.760)

We don't consider herbivores predators, but animal, which requires some type of violence

Lex Fridman (57:23.600)

capacity because animals move, plants don't move.

Lex Fridman (57:27.040)

So it requires some capacity to overtake something that can move and try to get away.

Lex Fridman (57:34.200)

We'll go back to the Gerard thing and then we'll come back here.

Lex Fridman (57:37.640)

Why are we neotenous?

Lex Fridman (57:38.640)

Why are we embryonic for so long?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (57:42.040)

Because are we, did we just move from the Savannah to the Arctic and we need to learn

Lex Fridman (57:47.020)

new stuff?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (57:48.200)

If we came genetically programmed, we would not be able to do that.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (57:51.640)

Are we throwing spears or are we fishing or are we running an industrial supply chain

Lex Fridman (57:56.380)

or are we texting?

Lex Fridman (57:57.380)

What is the adaptive behavior?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (57:59.780)

Horses today in the wild and horses 10,000 years ago are doing pretty much the same stuff.

Lex Fridman (58:03.880)

And so since we make tools and we evolve our tools and then change our environment so quickly

Lex Fridman (58:10.280)

and other animals are largely the result of their environment, but we're environment modifying

Lex Fridman (58:14.520)

so rapidly, we need to come without too much programming so we can learn the environment

Lex Fridman (58:19.240)

we're in, learn the language, right?

Lex Fridman (58:21.700)

Which is going to be very important to learn the tool making.

Lex Fridman (58:27.360)

And so we have a very long period of relative helplessness because we aren't coded how to

Daniel Schmachtenberger (58:32.600)

behave yet because we're imprinting a lot of software on how to behave that is useful

Daniel Schmachtenberger (58:36.680)

to that particular time.

Lex Fridman (58:38.740)

So our mimesis is not unique to humans, but the total amount of it is really unique.

Lex Fridman (58:44.680)

And this is also where the uniqueness can go up, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (58:46.960)

Is because we are less just the result of the genetics and that means the kind of learning

Daniel Schmachtenberger (58:51.760)

through history that they got coded in genetics and more the result of, it's almost like our

Lex Fridman (58:56.680)

hardware selected for software, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:00.120)

Like if evolution is kind of doing these, think of as a hardware selection, I have problems

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:04.520)

with computer metaphors for biology, but I'll use this one here, that we have not had hardware

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:12.540)

changes since the beginning of sapiens, but our world is really, really different.

Lex Fridman (59:18.340)

And that's all changes in software, right?

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:20.800)

Changes on the same fundamental genetic substrate, what we're doing with these brains and minds

Lex Fridman (59:27.280)

and bodies and social groups and like that.

Lex Fridman (59:30.740)

And so, now, Gerard specifically was looking at when we watch other people talking, so

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:40.680)

we learn language, you and I would have a hard time learning Mandarin today or it would

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:44.000)

take a lot of work, we'd be learning how to conjugate verbs and stuff, but a baby learns

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:47.220)

it instantly without anyone even really trying to teach it just through mimesis.

Lex Fridman (59:50.320)

So it's a powerful thing.

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:52.520)

They're obviously more neuroplastic than we are when they're doing that and all their

Daniel Schmachtenberger (59:55.400)

attention is allocated to that.

Lex Fridman (59:57.200)

But they're also learning how to move their bodies and they're learning all kinds of stuff