 Eduardo test test is there anyone is there anyone here who can validate that I am actually doing Hello, I am live, bro. Okay, cool Hello It's always a it's always a gamble with this stuff like Thank you. I do feel validated. Hey guys, how's how's everyone doing? I think that I've shared this everywhere Oh, no got to share to the discord is everyone here in the discord Discord channel is actually quite excellent If you're not there yet, but Damn it. I I have I have the laptop set up like around my work computer So I keep on like gesturing at control implements that aren't actually the what's on the laptop having multiple Multiple control stuff like, you know, you've got two mice or two keyboards. You're gonna be consistently reaching for the wrong one It's really annoying This is this lighting is bad. This is real bad. Oh man, I should have I should have tested this some more Turn let's turn this down go mood lighting. Come on. Oh No, that's still awful. All right. Well It's just gonna be this For the foreseeable future. Sorry guys Yeah, the links for the curious. So I was planning to fill in Like inevitably over the course of like over the course of the life the last live stream Everybody kept on saying like have you read this? Have you read this? And I was like, I I haven't read any of these things And so rather than just what I did last time, which was assemble a list like on the side I was going to like I was going to do that as well but also like put the list of stuff that Josh has to read in the description so that everything's kind of, you know, and Enjoyed the Tsundoku that I am amassing just by having one of these You say you save more of Josh's house. Yeah, I mean, it's not much Like this is this is actually my wife's this is a platter that she got in in Tuscany So it is proudly displayed along with some other things up here. Hey, you know, I guess sufficiently recuperated from the From the D&D session It looked like you guys had a lot of fun after I left a history reading list Of course, I would like a link to a history reading list sleeping until 10 a.m. Yeah, same here. I had to drive I drove four hours out to Fresno and Had dinner and then drove four hours back and crashed so Reminds me I've got coffee around here somewhere. I should consume that Ion officially became a lady. Yeah, uh-huh officially too bad the the badge of office is in the possession of a Notable rogue Who has a hatred for for governance? Thanks, John The the Diego, what's up? I I promise that I'm not trying to like do the Parasocial relationship thing. I am merely calling you by the name that your Thing shows up in the chat It's like if you want to if you want to cultivate a friendship with me out Exterior to the whole YouTube apparatus that I'm game But the whole parasocial thing kind of like squicks me out a little bit S-Risks is s s risk a like a a I Might have I might have encountered it before but like the the only thing that the only thing that I am immediately aware of is like x-risk so it's s risk like Like a primary like you Brian Thomas Thomas six essays on reducing suffering. I haven't I haven't risked I haven't there's the first one Let's let's see if I can't edit this live. Okay, so Brian Thomas's Brian Thomas six essays on reducing suffering Edit links for the curious. I am I am literally typing on the wrong keyboard right now Remember what I said at the beginning? This is this is going to be a consistent problem Brian well instead of links for the curious. We'll call this reading list. How about that? s save okay risks of Astronomical suffering is astronomical a literal term or just like it's think lots of things are suffering and it's bad I might interested in geopolitics. I mean, how could you not be? It it's kind of like running running stuff right now Thank you for the 25k Congratulations, what? Newton's over there whining at me Prisoners prisoners of geography. All right. Let's put that on the list as well Reading lists prisoners of geography Sounds like an argument that would resonate with me ripple doesn't have a YouTube account What is he even doing age of Malthusian industrialism? Wow. All right we've been lying for like I Don't know like a couple of minutes or eight minutes now and I've already got a reading list that is That's probably exceeded what I have read in the past like three months Mathematical intuition is a mathematical intuition ism mathematical Platonism. Yeah, so There've been a couple there been a few a few things that have like kind of cropped up on my philosophical radar recently and one of them is Pragmatism, I've been I've been very slowly like making my way through a series of books on philosophical pragmatism, which is essentially a like an De-emphasis on Oh, hello Hello Hold on it is. Oh, it is a crime if there's a cute animal asking to sit in your lap But you don't let him sit in your lap say hello Oh Yeah, so So pragmatism pragmatism is this like philosophy that de-emphasizes the role of like Pure theory and is more about like what you do with it. Like there isn't it is there isn't like a capital T truth about Say mathematics, there is only like what What success you get from utilizing it and in that sense Mathematics is just as true as any other like Epistemic category that you want to talk about That is if if if you use it and it works for you Then it is as true as anything else that you might claim to have a model of so How am I I'm I'm surviving man like this is It's been rough like my my wife is actually away for a month. She is doing er services in In a different part of the state That's this I was talking about driving for for four for eight hours last night. I was pretty wild but Yeah ecology against capitalism Ecology against capitalism all right Let's get that Favorite musical artists well recently I was listening to I'm uh I am still mourning the loss of uh of daft punk So I've been trying to branch out and listen to some other daft punk adjacent like edm kind of just fun uh fun music like that and so I was listening to some justice And the justice spotify playlist um it is Like I'm fond of saying that I only enjoy the like cotton candy versions of any musical genre like I can't I there are people who can listen to um jazz Audices and uh and they're just like yeah, it's about the notes that they don't play or how do you do they even know they're together and stuff like that And it's like I I am not that sophisticated like I I have some musical theory background, but I'm not on that level primary job um My primary job is as a design engineer um Which is for and I work for a product consulting firm. So uh Big companies or just companies in general come to us and say hey you guys have expertise with um like plastic part design and um Recently like my my most my my current job. I'm using a cat package It's called crio that has a lot of like Niggling details and like it's very unintuitive to use and I have been Like trying to cram it into my head. Uh, I'm from soloworksland so, um, anyway The the thing that I do is essentially I'm I sit in CAD and solve mechanical design problems For eight hours a day and document them in a way that is hopefully helpful to the client What's your take on virtue ethics? I uh, I Have been more and more convinced of a sort of uh moral pluralist account Where there are lots of different things that are um That are like pulling us in different directions like different moral intuitions about what sorts of things are good and that the like ethical accounts of This is this is the rule um Point they highlight like an important part of the landscape like yes suffering is bad and like breaking, uh, like violating your duties is bad and uh cultivating virtue is good and that sort of stuff But they pull they pull it the all of these intuitions are pulling us in different directions. And so if you don't uh If you don't like want to bite a bullet and say no all of these other ones are irrelevant then Or bite a different bullet and say no moralities kind of just a social construct or doesn't really exist or things like that um I think that a pluralist account like that. We have different we have different moral obligations And they pull us in different directions With different intensities and they can defeat each other if they are sufficiently strong. Uh, that's that's very compelling to me Oh rip ripple Correct theory of personal identity. I I wring my hands about it a lot like I said before I've been on a pragmatist kick recently so um closed individualism Empty individualism. I I don't I don't know those things by name. I might I might know the concepts if you impact them a little bit, but um the the pragmatists A more pragmatist account of personal identity would be something like personal identity is whatever That like trying to identify the capital t truth about it or create the perfect model is Kind of a fool's errand. It's just like what model works best and um How did the trip go? It's it's sort of a cop-out answer to be to be honest like pragmatism is attractive to me because it dissolves a lot of Like big philosophical problems that are otherwise intractable. I think um How did the trip go? It was fine. We had dinner. It was lovely happy pi day happy, uh tau over two day if you're one of those um Four to three aspect ratio. This is a very is a very old webcam. It's very old. I I apologize if you are missing the like the parts of the shot of this corner of my one bedroom apartment that are like here and here If you really want to see those i'll take a picture afterward and uh and post it to something It's not that exciting Marshall Marshall McLuhan Harry Innis Nope. Nope. I haven't read those. Don't know who they are going on the list Marshall McLuhan But I think that might sound familiar Let me let me look that up Marshall McLuhan Canadian philosopher Media theory interesting understanding media hot and cool media Extension ourselves huh sort of like a commentary on the interaction the interactivity of media and what is Ripple is Ripple is whining on the discord Sign up with a bs email address get on get on a youtube account get in here Oh medium is the message I I thought that that was um I thought that that was earlier I mean I I know that I have heard I have heard people Like make arguments on on that account before but um Or about that before Do you think we have an obligation to hold true beliefs? Idea channel has made a video that I must have I must have seen I must have been exposed to McLuhan's ideas on multiple occasions. I just don't I I don't think that I've read the the source material yet Um, definitely need to get that Uh get that on the reading list Do we have an obligation to hold true beliefs? Um an obligation talks is like a sort of a morality kind of an argument or a normative uh a normative statement about an ought um I think that I think that necessarily if you buy some sort of moral realist account then you are uh Then you if you buy moral realism at all then you're immediately invested in an idea of like some sort of um epistemic commitment as well because if you don't if you can't if you Don't know what the hell is going on if you don't know um If you have false beliefs and you act on those false beliefs and you end up committing like moral Violations then you you have committed moral violations and that's bad So if you have any obligations at all then you must have obligations to have True beliefs of some sort What important truth do very few people agree with you on? Oh, um I guess it depends what you mean by very few like i'm sort of um I don't know I have I I can't I can't imagine um thinking enough of like my my particular like philosophies and whatnot Like just little pet theories that I come up with and thinking that there's somehow Like important truths and I just need to get the word out or something like that. I think that a lot of Like I I I I've had I've had some ideas that I've kind of laid out there um About like um Like hiring practices and and stuff like that. I've I have I have invented what I think are novel Like syntheses of ideas, but I don't I I can't See elevating them and saying these are important truths Um, that's not really that's not really my gig Uh, I'm just I'm just some asshole who does cat, you know Um High goes over my head. Yeah saying here Uh Aren't beliefs something you hold because you hold them it's hard to claim an obligation when the beliefs you hold are just stated being not a choice I I I've heard this account before and I do disagree that belief is just something that happens to you I think that you like the whole basis of things like cognitive behavioral therapy and um, and you know mantras and stuff like that is that Like by act by acts that you perform you can cultivate um belief of some stripe you can cultivate like some sort of investment or make some ideas more or less automatic um habits and uh, I think that Like There you can chase the like free will rabbit hole in either direction You could say like while you're just predisposed to do the thing or whatever like Whatever it is that you want, but I think that for human scale Conceptions of these things like there you might have a responsibility like an epistemic responsibility to believe true things might Uh translate to a responsibility to like read diverse news sources or to um To think critically about your existing beliefs or something like that um So I I think I think that there is I think that there is some meat to that Uh, magnus vending believes in moral realism Lots of people lots of very smart people do this is this is an important point like if you ever Get somebody who's like oh x philosophy or y philosophy is garbage Like you go to the fill paper survey and you just you just search for it And you'll find out that like 25 of professional academic philosophers think that it is true in some Fashion that they're willing to back um What do you think of cryonics? Okay So the cryonics thing I actually had sort of a A Long like rant about this on um on a on a particular discord server and the I sort of I sort of buy that it's like it's a game. It's a gamble of some sort It's very Pascal's wagery um In it's framing like if people who defend it as the objectively right way to spend a bunch of money um You know they tend to uh, they tend to elevate it as like this it is How how much would you gamble on a chance at immortality which is a very Pascal's wagery argument um, and I think that for for me there are obvious Problems with that sort of framing right? There's there's reasons that Pascal's wager is not a popular argument and you know That a lot of people have problems with that why it sounds wrong and I think that If you're I I you know, I I don't think I don't begrudge anybody who thinks that it's it might be a good idea um I do think that the It's sort of like at this perfect intersection. Oh, hello. Hello. I'll I'll Well, we're doing this now Okay Yes, I love you too Okay, okay. I'm doing a live stream right now one time Anyway, um So I think I think that there are like There's a reasonable case to be made there But I don't think that it is I I think that it lies at a perfect intersection where it is Like just tempting enough like it It's like a tech bro fantasy um You know people who are raised on a bunch of science fiction Love to think of humanity's future as having godlike technology and all this other stuff um, but I think that the actual best investment of Like a bunch of money might be to um Like stave off some of the some of the things that might cause civilization will collapse or um, or otherwise like Like dominating risks like the the things that are actually going to happen Like the global warming like just wipes wipes out substantial amounts of infrastructure such that cryogenics fails then What what the hell are you even doing? Oh, yeah, I froze myself and then the world boiled itself Um, who is the best dog? Um, this is the best dog This is this is newton. He is the best um Any good criticisms to rolls veil of ignorance. Yeah, uh the Uh the podcast very bad wizards actually did a great, um They covered rolls veil of ignorance and covered some of the great some of the good rebuttals to it um sort of like it assumes a set of liberal values um And that you can't derive a liberal society from assuming liberal values and then claim that you've planted the flag somewhere Uh, yud thinks the concept of free will is meaningless. Okay, yud thinks lots of things um frozen water grows in volume. We need to develop antifreeze proteins from critters that live under the ice. Yeah, so they the um Generally for like cryogenics they purge the water from your body with some sort of uh preserve of writing video on places other than youtube um I have toyed around with like Uh writing He's snootin the microphone here. Um I have toyed around with like, uh with doing like Blogging or long form content. Maybe like a book or something like that. Um, I Think that a lot of people misinterpret me in text and Uh, I feel like I get less Uh less communication errors in like sort of a video format where people can see where I kind of like roll my eyes or take an or sigh in an exasperated fashion. Um, at least it seems like more people It's weird to say that like youtube comments seem to get me, but youtube comments Very rarely like occasionally they'll okay Okay, there you go um You know youtube comments will occasionally just like miss the entire thrust of the message, but often they make very Point the youtube comments under thunk videos tend to make very like poignant and relevant um points about whatever it is that i'm saying And I feel like I get into nitpicky like weird phrasing arguments in text. So I I kind of like the video medium. I don't know Uh, true responsibility to pet all the dogs. Correct Be careful about youtube terms of service Who has ever read terms of service like I think the youtube the entirety of the youtube terms of service are Probably pretty constraining And it's all it's all legal boilerplate It's also they they have a they have something to fall back on if they want to do something You know, it's all about like what the lawyers can swing for you Uh people who try to bring rather futuristic ideas into the modern political discourse Like the united states transhumanist party. I backed zoltan east von and his campaign against um against more human mortality and I am I'm Kind of embarrassed about that. It was kind of a It was in a more tech bro phase of my life um I think that there are real political issues real political problems that Deserve attention and that were focused on many of them Like the political discourse tends to be a particular way not because of um What not because People are stupid or people who do politics are stupid But because they are actually important things that people care about um And so like if you zag instead instead of zinging with these sort of like transhumanist ideas or Far future like what we really need to be focused on is like mars colonies um I think that you I think that you might lose scope of things like people are working Very hard and starving to death um people are Very concerned about the like the decay of culture or civilization Like these are these are things that people are worried about and The fact that some some nerd Really liked reading sci-fi when he was growing up And thinks that that's very important like okay, that's that's cool Uh, you know everybody gets to value different things, but Sad how much futurism is used to manipulate people to benefit Some shady individuals. Yes. Yeah That is a thing that happens Cryogenics company goes out of business this like a bunch of a bunch of corpses can remain corpses and Don't uh, don't get resurrected. You know or don't get anything done to them um Take on evolutionary psychology uh Evo psych so they're on the thunk discord channel. There is a An emoji that is from sort of like an Evo psyche paper um and Good Evo psych is good and bad Evo psych is bad and armchair Evo psych is universally bad like people who are not You know anthropologists or uh or psychologists or evolutionary researchers of any stripe who develop pet theories about the ancestral environment or What why humans are a particular way or like build models Out of this stuff if it works for them Great cool, but I feel like there is Usually a normative bent to these sorts of arguments just like and that's why Women don't belong in tech or that's why this that or the other and you know when you're using evolutionary psychology to me as like a sort of just so story to um exonerate like Modern aspects of culture which are not necessarily like arbitrary It's entirely possible that there's some biological basis or uh or substrate for it, but um I think that there's a lot of bad Evo psych Hi anakim luke. Oh anakim I have seen you in the comments before People in charge of real cryogenics facilities are sketchy as a rule. Yeah, I I I kind of buy that I think that some of them are true believers, but they are still sketchy I'd rather pet you than the dog goodness Should I should I undo another button? Is that is that where this is going? Uh, what does how many buttons does youtube terms of service? For bed, you know um Evolutionary psychology is a way to excuse bad arguments Yep Yep, absolutely Extremist anti natalists all life should go extinct. No life equals no suffering I think that anti natalism is um It's an interesting Like you're you're you're combining two sort of like different trains of thought and They it leads somewhere um I think that if you It requires a sort of moral normativity that supersedes um people's uh desires, which is not necessarily um a A I I think that it doesn't like you have to you have to make a series of very very um Not necessarily unintuitive, but like very firm commitments in order to get to anti natalism and Saying that all life should go extinct. Uh It is pi day or as I was saying before tau over two day um Yes, that that that is the um The long and short of my position on that's a much better and more succinct way of phrasing my position on uh on cryogenics is that uh, we've got more problems in 40 years than in the next 40 years than um That we should probably be paying for instead Terms of service aren't hurtful and kind of I I have a a friend. Um Who is uh like real big shot lawyer whenever I get to pick his brain about law He's always very it always feels very like Slippery and he's always like well you could tell a story like this And that's how a lot of lawyers think and I think that that's kind of how law is in practice um So like terms of service you uh You get you get into terms of service and like it it is not a It's not like a legally binding contract in the sense that there are no unambiguous interpretations of the text uh you it the the terms of service exist as A thing that a lawyer could hold up in court and say look like they agreed to this and they didn't do this So they are in violation of this contract and therefore we're not liable for the damages or something like that And that kind of story can get you somewhere, but it's not like a Like a binary thing. It's not software All evils arise from the denial of death Hmm The uh, uh Terror mitigation theory or something like that would argue that all good things arise from the denial of death like all of culture um Even if there is a biological basis for something fuck biology. Yeah biological basis does not imply like good or Or should be maintained. Am I a hug person? I'm absolutely a hug person um Became a hug person and then the pandemic hit. Yeah, that's rough Uh, it's been rough for all of us man Infantipulse hypothesis That's that that is an excellent word and uh, it sounds I imagine that it involves uh a Siege engine of some some sort and uh and babies sufficiently advanced technology could solve all social problems um Maybe like holodeck like vr tech if every human being could be embedded in a Like their own their own reality of their of their own creation um It would do a lot I think that there are still people who would feel that there is a moral obligation That lies outside of their own personal experience, you know so Uh, if hi IQ people stop reproducing you might create an idiocracy in the future I I have my doubts. I have my doubts the um One of the one of the upshots of the the cultural evolution theory Which has been like really just kind of grinding away in the background for me recently Is that IQ is like you've got you've got this towering graph this towering bar chart that is cultural knowledge that is the accumulated cultural know-how of like our Cultural evolutionary history and then at the top there's like a little there's a little stripe There's a tiny little stripe that is uh an individual's IQ and the like the variance The the variance in outcomes from like an individual's IQ. I can't see meaning anything substantial beyond uh idiocracy and if a society like stops flourishing If a culture stops flourishing then uh, it has a tendency to self correct or go extinct. So If life doesn't go extinct the heat death of the universe will get depressing. It's already depressing, man job Oh job so many good comments any strong opinions on strong long termism People in the future matter much more than the people looking today because they outnumber us by a huge margin Oh, there's like the whole discounting thing. There's the um I honestly I haven't invested a lot of thought and it it seems like a It seems like a difficult argument to um To sustain in the face of just like our standard intuitions about morality um And also the unpredictability of of the future like uh, if you If you get into You know, I'm sure that the people who are invested in it have have Put more thought into it than I have but just from a um Just from the basic things that I know about it, uh, assuming that the human population of the future is going to be Like exponentially Larger than the current population. I think is It's defensible. It's a thing that could happen. I don't know that it will happen um So from from that uncertainty you kind of have to hedge your um, your assertions accordingly Bad evo psych oversimplifies context and explains a lot of non genetic inheritance as genetics Intends to think that some everybody. This is camilla camilla is the uh, the real um cult of personality of thunk we're all uh, we're all thankful for her shepherding the volcano and uh and arranging the lust Uh tend to think of Western values as universal needs weird people is a great counter argument. Yep A lot of science done on um on college students The needs of people that don't exist yet seems like a very good way to waste brainpower and yet We would probably critique somebody who had a child And without any means or plans to support them, you know genetic pacification and european outbreeding don't Thought criminal don't get into uh anthropology off with camilla. She she is like Seriously educated on this and we'll clean your clock on this Uh, all right. See you zike. See you later How do you approach study of a new unfamiliar concept? Do you jump into it or do you have some structured way journal steps you find yourself taking to approach the subject? um my constant bugaboo is like keyword um Keyword bingo something like that keyword yatsi maybe where I go to google scholar and I type in every combination of words that I can think of that might lead to a vain an existing vain of research or thought And then I look for stuff that has the most citations and I assume that those are the ones that are the most influential or the most right sometimes um for things that have uh, like an obvious like ha Anti-natalism that is a thing that I could just look up on the stanford and psychopedia philosophy If there's some existing resource that has like a very neat summary of it. That's always great um I don't have as much time as I would like to to dive into primary sources um like sitting down and reading a uh a 300 500 700 page book about pragmatism Is in the cards for me, but uh, I have here. Let me show you the the book that I've got around here It was it was actually in this bowl Or uh under this bowl, which has my lunch in it I have been um Sneaking snacks every now and again I've been making my way through this book for like months now It's really embarrassing like I'm I'm like about here ish I mean my reading speed is atrocious when it comes to like primary source material um Interventionism is it avoidable. It's obviously avoidable. You can Wait for things to happen to you and then say that You know at least we didn't metal I I do think that it is um It's difficult in an increasingly like global environment where the things that um The things that I put up on youtube are visible and can affect things in um in other places very easily um And you know people will say well, it's been like that for years I don't I I think that especially with the advent of the internet that you get um more community building across like geopolitical borders traditional geopolitical borders and that's um different So I think that in some sense interventionism is um like I I am not smart enough to have an informed opinion about like What sort of wars we should be fighting or um Or what political things require um Require intervention intervention like I couldn't come up with a rule for it. I couldn't tell you what Current like wars were fighting or places that we have troops stationed that we should or shouldn't have troops stationed um That's this a way above my pay grade but I do I do tend toward a Sort of a leftist non-colonialist Sort of view where if people are Uh if people report being happy they don't need you to like come in and make things right then um Then you're and and you like assert yourself anyway uh Yeah, that that seems that seems obviously bad, right? Like I said, it's it's it's way too. It's way too, uh level for me to have an informed opinion about Six nines work Nice No, I'm not familiar. I will add that To the list Bumped the uh the microphone there Well, first I'm going to check to make sure that this isn't just like some porn site. Who's six nine? guba gumo American rapper Awesome Oh, he's got he's got like a sort of like a hand hand sign. I dig it. I'm into it. I'm adding it to the list Uh the agi thing. Yeah Um human should just choose to go extinct because agi is superior to me. That was unfathomable superior. What? There are people who are so invested in the idea of meritocracy that they would be willing to jump into the jaws of a utility monster of some sort and if there is a and also so invested in the idea of intelligence as the primary indicator of uh of moral value uh So like a paperclip optimizer could be superior at any sort of strategy revolving around optimizing paperclips And uh a lot of people are just like well, it's better than us Um, so we should just like roll over and let it turn us into paperclips No acetal paradox No acetal. I don't know this one This is that doing a live stream exposes my ignorance What is the no acid? I got some weird results for milfs. Uh, if you could if you could describe what the paradox is I would be happy to Tell you what I think about it. Um Mitchell heisman's argument Any tv show that you enjoyed and would recommend? um It's all it's like the tv that I watch is like home renovation shows and stuff like that um I guys it would be it would be really nice to have a house and to be able to like Knock down walls and do like I can do all that stuff. I'm pretty handy um, and so it's sort of uh a uh catharsis kind of a thing it's just like oh thank god they Put in new shutters or something um tv show that I would recommend I always recommend connections Like that's how that is how my brain works is uh, james berks connections seasons one two and three. They are all fantastic um Camilla unpacking the the breadth her knowledge about anthropology And epigenetics and all of this other stuff Why should we care that it's superior at some goal? It's not like there's specific goal intrinsic to the universe that we should achieve Yeah, like a main quest. Yeah, it you know People have value for reasons that are not them being smart Or making good paper clips or being very good at whatever it is that they choose to do uh Why are so many philosophers left-wing? uh there's um I think that there's a correlation between If if I were to kind of paint a picture here, so leftism Left-wing ism for me is sort of like a focus on social responsibility um Whereas right wing ism is a focus well at least in at least in the us that it kind of breaks down this way You've got left wing social responsibility. You have you are your brother's keeper sort of a thing And then right wing is sort of individual responsibility like you should um pull your weight uh sort of a thing and I think that academia tends to like academia in general is very much the Model of especially science like science is a collaborative process and anybody who is a big shot Like scientists will tell you that they are standing on the shoulders of giants that there is this like um It's a social it's a social process by which we all move forward together um and I think that that I think that those kind of go together, you know like you don't go into academia and uh develop this sort of community of Where like you would have absolute like a lot of right wing is kind of like independent and um and there is no such thing as uh Like maybe in mathematics where you have like some weirdo who goes off into a shed in the woods and um And like toodles around for a while and then comes out with some revolutionary theorem about I don't know format or something like that. Um For my if you will but You know, there is a a social element and a social responsibility Uh that comes with being a scientist or being involved in academia where you're connected to this body of knowledge um that is I don't know that that's that's sort of my Like off the dome like why that might be the case um And philosophers obviously have to be in academia. You can't make it as a as a philosopher on your own um Unless you appeal to like some political movement or something like that political freedom is possible without economic freedom. I don't um Like politic it depends on what you mean by political freedom, but for me politics is the um the Like allocation and utilization of power Uh over other people and so if you are subject to somebody else's like economic Designs then you are not Politically free. There is power that is being exercised over you. Why should we care about continuing to exist? Because we do There's no should um Don't have to be handy to knock down what walls I've done it on accident. Well, uh, if I Honestly if the person who owned the apartment that I live in right now just let me like go to town I could probably increase the value of this by like one and a half times, but she's not going to do that Left-wingers are more likely to challenge their fundamental beliefs. Yeah Yeah, I mean right right wing is tradition and um Um Things are the way they are for a good reason sort of a thing philosophers are very invested in um In like picking stuff apart that makes sense Also come up with mail bombs. Yep Oh ted the industrial revolution and so on and so forth Uh knowledge is shared Free is there Pinker the stinker. Oh sounds like you have an opinion already um He's a smart guy. He's like he's he's real He's real quick on his feet, which is um, very impressive And he's got a lot of ideas Uh retributive justice do evil people deserve to suffer? I uh Uh Beatrice here is setting me up uh because uh, I have been Known to uh beat this particular horse in the thunk discord for a while. I think that the that we emphasize Uh ethical systems that are very easy to justify um To a point So if you say well, this is wrong because that person is suffering it's very easy to understand It's very like one-to-one relationship. You're good um the thoughts on Yeah, so retributive justice the idea that justice is a mistake is um Or that I that notion is driven by an observation that frequently it goes awry that you or someone um Like punish it like acts out in vengeance and in so doing Uh commits like goes over the top or does so for bad reasons or something like that and um And it's difficult to it's difficult to justify like there's uh, you say well, you've increased the amount of suffering in the world and we have all sort of collectively Accepted that suffering is like the primary measure of what makes the thing moral or immoral but at some point you have to ask well, why is What justifies suffering is the basis for that and the answer to that is not quite straightforward, but we we don't ask that question um, I think that retributive justice that people get what they deserve is a um Another thing another moral intuition that we all share on some level Um, you know if somebody tortures a cat, I don't want them to have a slice of cake I don't Like despite the fact that them having a slice of cake would make them happier would increase the total amount of happiness in the world I don't want them to have a slice of cake and there isn't a Uh rigorous philosophical underpinning for that desire. That's just my moral intuition. It's just how it works Uh, the same as I don't like the cat suffering. Um so I I like I said before I'm sort of of a pluralist mentality where we have these different moral intuitions and Um, so I I do think that it's in there. It's part of the palette if you will Ever question their fundamental beliefs or philosophers. That's what philosophy is, right? Like Terminal goals are arbitrary Yeah, yeah, yeah The Nordic model The homogeneity yeah, so the u.s. Has a cultural touchstone of being a melting pot that is part of our Cultural heritage a lot of people have sort of rejected it recently Oh Six nine guy was jailed for sexual misconduct. Ah man Okay, now now we have to get into this, right Can't sued for alleged copyright infringement His obscene chain collection How the takashi six nine documentary made an action figure into an artful monster post homophobic joke Yeah, I mean all I will sample his music um this is like uncomfortably adjacent to the cancel culture debate or discussion or whatever um I think that his music You know, I think that it can be enjoyed independent of who he is as a person Maybe if you know enough about him, then you can't disentangle those or you shouldn't um Nordic model Yeah Homogeneity, um, yeah, so like the u.s. Being a melting pot is uh It's a good I I like I like that. I like that as a model for uh Our culture or for a country um Where a lot of things can be can coexist side by side uh, I don't It's it's outside of my pay grade to say whether Any particular system instantiated in the united states would Would work or would not work. There are people who are way smarter than me about economics and um And like uh, social social welfare and the relationship between those things um You know, I I tend to lean more towards like there's Like this is take some take some taxes like we we have traditionally had high tax rates and it was fine Maybe we could try that again um Goodness and badness of plain pleasure are directly observable Uh, right wingers are conservative and want to maintain the status quo. Oh goodness I'm way behind now. Okay Please keep asking questions. I will get to them. I promise I am just uh Just trying to catch up here push on the boundaries of knowledge. Yeah, that's also a good way of of framing it is that um The left were about figuring out what the like What a more ideal society would look like and kind of pushing in that direction And figuring out what a more society more ideal society looks like is kind of a a philosophical endeavor If I could just up and leave which country would I migrate to? Everything's taking care of her. I would have to move around man like um I am of the opinion like trouble was not on my radar for a very long time and then I kind of started doing it and the thing that I love The best parts of travel are the weird Things that happen somewhere that couldn't happen anywhere else. So here I'm in like Silicon Valley Bay Area Things that happen here that could not happen anywhere else as you see someone walking their robot Robot wheelchair And trying to teach it like navigation around stop signs and stuff like that Like that's that's a weird thing that you would like order some street food and then just like watch this happen and be like this This is not like this is a weird thing that you could only get here And uh, I would want to collect as many of those as possible Pinker has cute hair. Yes, he does great hair Friendly numbers or landmark numbers? um I've heard I've heard from numbers before friendly numbers the one that that people just um numbers Oh dear I do not know these math categories. I am very sorry for that Uh, okay. I'm going to add these to the list under six nine Friendly numbers and landmark numbers. See this is this is where we're at right now Where we're at is that I've got somebody uh an american rapper who might well be um Like a sex offender or something like that. It might be a terrible person. I don't know. Um Right next to friendly numbers and landmark numbers This is the problem with making an eclectic show where I cover a bunch of different subjects So that now I have to know things about everything Favorite or interesting? Friendly numbers or landmark numbers. I'm I'm very sorry that I'm I am but a a mathlet. I am not uh I'm not well versed in like real pure mathematics I can I just know enough that I can do engineering Pain is pleasure. Pleasure is pain um Have I read any of tecandesis books? No, I've read snippets um Interesting anti-transhumanism arguments. Yeah Yeah, like the the kiz Kizinski stuff. He was obviously unhinged, but he he does have a way of Framing things that is at the very least Uh An interesting meme to consider while you're an interesting point of view saying Devil's advocate um I So playing devil's advocate just on its own is annoying and stupid um but There are frequently people who have Stronger piss that I think that they ought to be more reserved about um Comes with the territory and philosophy, you know, you you've learned that all that your whole Frickin structure of thought is built on a pile or on a mound of sand And you And so your uncertainty about all of these things goes up And you start to become incredulous that anybody could have a strong opinion about uh, what Like how you is this is this right or wrong? Oh, well, it's right How can you possibly be so absolutely sure of that when there's all this uncertainty? as an example, um So I often find myself This is a thing that philosophers do a lot and I I appreciate it for what it is um This the straight-up socratic method is kind of annoying but at the very least I like to say look You've got this position. That's great. I'm glad that you Have an opinion about this Um, but there are but have you considered Like this aspect of it. Have you considered this aspect of it and I try to like Give Give people something to chew on if maybe they haven't chewed on it before if they've already heard it before and they're like no I dismiss it. I I like my knowledge on this subject totally encompasses yours um And I still have a firm opinion. I'm like fair enough. Maybe I should read more Thunk episode on the just world fallacy. I did do a thunk episode on the just world fallacy Um, it's an earlier one. I think that's in like the 70s or 80s or something um It was in a period where I was flirting with being a little more political with thunk and it did it did not It's not great Oh my god, so behind. Okay Favorite youtuber to make a crossover episode with. Oh, I don't know that my ego could break that. Um I I would love to chat with Contra points or philosophy tube Um, any of the bread tubers would be I think would be a laugh, right? I think that me and h bomber guy could do a lot um Let's see Well, uh, I would love to do a crossover episode with this old tony Oh god, that's that's the dream this old tony is my man that guy has it's uh it's like a he's an uh amateur machinist and his I say he's an amateur machinist and he does all of these videos about like lathes and welding and all of this other crap but his like cinematic just vision Just like what he puts together Like the visual gags that he does and the timing and the editing and like how everything is framed in the shot And all of this other stuff. It's masterful He's got he is a cinematographer trapped in a machinist body And it's just it I would love to like Learn some stuff from him like have him teach me how to I don't know have him teach me how to how to stick weld. I don't know how to stick well TIG weld. I mean um His blicky does contain the stiffy I guess John Rawls veil of ignorance Yes somebody asked about John Rawls earlier. Yeah, so there was a Essentially the idea is that he is assuming a liberal Uh standpoint to begin with and deriving liberal society from it. And that's kind of Catechum hypothesis Fermi paradox universe of simulation Use too much computational power might be removed from the simulation If the universe is a simulation, then you've got you've um You've solved the Fermi paradox already, right? There isn't anybody There isn't anybody out there because We're the subject of the simulation or something like that. I think that that's probably unnecessary too much computational power like if uh I mean all things are possible, right, but Who is your favorite philosopher? Oh god Oh Favorite philosopher I'm I am a basic bitch. I've got to say I've got to say Hume Like he was you know a racist and a misogynist and all of these other things It was maybe not the best person but his writing is tongue-in-cheek and uh and cheerful In many cases or at the very least like authentic to the human condition and um I just remembered I forgot to shave before this. I'm not at my best right now um And he's just got like a sense of humor about the whole thing the and it's uh It's good stuff and he's very insightful Like the stuff that he puts together like bundle theory and all these other things. It's just like it's very masterful um Hold on I'm checking checking checking checking People are people are in voice chat on the thunk discord channel right now. I feel uh I don't know I'm missing out. I've got some FOMO What degree do you hold I hold a Uh a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from university of california san diego revel college go revel Okay, just fun fun story time so I applied to a bunch of Colleges and got into like a couple and ucsd was one of them And it was close to home. And so obviously I went there and when I went there for orientation um This like a auditorium full of probably 300 Set 300 people of like parents and their kids on the first day of college and all this other stuff And they had a student speaker get up there At the end of the this like orientation where they're talking about like ucsd and how it's broken into the colleges all this other stuff And the student speaker says okay guys so um It's spirit week and so you'll see a bunch of people out there like With face paint on all this other stuff. Also if you see people throwing this around this is the trident symbol This is like go tridents because the ucsd mascot is is uh king triton um so like If you see people throwing this around then uh, it's just a school spirit thing and I bust out laughing because If you're unaware this Is known is known as the shocker it is a sexual um Is it like a uh a thing that people do to uh to people who have vaginas um and the uh and so I bust out laughing because I thought he was Real ballsy to get up in front of the kids and and parents and all this other stuff and like throw up the shocker like it was a thing and I came to understand that no Actually, that's just that's just their thing that's just like They will at at ucsd basketball games the cheerleaders When somebody is making a free throw will just like unironically like throw throw up the the tridents and It's wild and I was the only one in the whole room who left I was the only one who got it and I felt really self-conscious about it. So Oh, micro igneta, of course, of course micro igneta He's not really on youtube anymore like he uh, he's got his own thing plug, uh, if you're into role playing podcasts um Fun city micro igneta is doing a podcast that's called fun city Where they did shadow run and currently they're doing something called still fleet And he is the dm and of course because it's mike Rugnata, he's just incredible he's just It's a masterful sort of role playing a podcast Hi psychos welcome back proliferation I I've recently gotten some like tmj type stuff. So I'm having a little bit of trouble talking here proliferation of wacky ideologies among the teens of the internet by way of memes pole calm ball um I think the teens have always had wacky ideologies. I certainly thought some weird shit when I was a teenager um They certainly have more exposure to richer veins of memes. I think So there might be something to that Yeah, I don't know The the world continues to coalesce around certain Sinks ideological sinks And I think that that will probably continue How bad is our level of inequality in your opinion? second gilded age um Amount of inequality like the inequality between the northern and southern hemisphere of the earth is pretty striking Like I am I am worried about stuff like Like I I want to get a new pair of jeans Because these ones are like old and stretched out and stuff And I have to and that is the like one of the most pressing things on my agenda And there are a lot of people who Are struggling to keep their kids fed um Like obviously that is not an equal An equal world And I I think that everybody sort of um I think that everybody sort of acknowledges that this is the like everybody who's watching this right now has access to technology that that a lot of a lot of the earth does not have access to And I think that we all sort of dwell on this constant like uh uncomfortable acceptance that That what we are that you know we we purchase things and uh improve the quality of our life Uh in ways that are incongruent with the amount of inequality that exists And we all just sort of acknowledge that and keep on doing it because we're You know we're humans we That is that is a thing like I want people to be equal to have um, you know equal opportunity and to kind of I don't want anybody to be suffering because just because they don't have access to the resources that I do But also I want a new pair of jeans and this is the human condition and we all kind of struggle through it um Some of us are more pained by the moral quandaries of that than others That is also like an important thing um I've recently been I have been enchanted with the idea. I've had a bunch of people tell me that it's an awful idea, but I have been uh enchanted with the idea that humans have like The hedonic treadmill, right? So we reach a certain state status and um regardless of how like objectively good or bad that That way of being is we adjust to it our psychology Expands to fill the space that is available to it And if every day is just torment of every day is torture if you live in a like nasi kow camp um Then your psychology expands to fill that space and a day where the guard forgot to beat you is like it's a great day you feel good and um I've been enchanted with the idea of harnessing that of yoking that to um And focusing instead of on the metric the metrics that we have access to like uh income inequality uh countries gdp or um infant mortality rate or um You know even uh access to health care and things like that Uh, we the things that we can measure are not the things that we are interested in the things that we can measure are correlates with mental well-being or emotional well-being or flourishing human flourishing and they correlate okay like Certainly a person whose kid has just died would feel awful. Um But the thing that we're actually interested in is subjective It is something that is inaccessible to us and I wonder how much work has been done um to improve subjective well-being Just totally divorced from those other things like you Like the way that you think about the world changes how you experience it and if we could um If we invested more like there was a class at Yale. There was a university course that was about um happiness was about how to lead a happy or satisfying life And it was unique. It was new and the person who was teaching it was like nobody's doing this But this is like the this is the whole point. This is the thing that we're actually interested in um And yeah, I I think that I think that there's a lot of room there I think that there's a lot of untapped potential in that area Or at least from what I've read maybe a lot of people have gotten into it and I'm just ignorant of that um Sorry long long window response Uh, this will Tony has the editing skills of all the other youtubers I'm subscribed to combine and then some absolutely. He's just masterful um being human in cities and flentes um Human fans represent everybody's a hume fan I I can't think of anybody who is into philosophy who would read hum and be like this is garbage um I haven't read straw dogs yet. Let me put that on the list I have heard I think that uh very bad wizards did an episode on straw dogs the film uh something about like a being being a manly man and And something and cuckoldry or something like that um Causality doesn't exist I don't think that you could safely assert that hume thought that causality doesn't exist I think that he The furthest he would go would be to say that Causality might exist, but all we see all we see is correlation all we have access to is correlation Josh is going osha now um Judea pearl found a way to mathematically formalize causality dude, okay, so general General proviso about less wrong. There are a lot of very smart people there They think they figure a lot of things out, but I think that in general they have a tendency to What like they they lean towards the idea that philosophy is garbage the the like a lot of yadkowskis original texts are kind of like philosophers like debate about this and how stupid is that? um, you know, somebody mentioned earlier that he was talking about uh, how free will doesn't exist And anybody who thinks it does is stupid um And the thing is is that like philosophy is about It's not it's not about like find the answer and then just freaking move in that direction. It's about like feeling out the nuances of the idea and looking for cracks and looking for problems that we have and I sincerely doubt that mathematically formalizing causality Debunks any of Hume's arguments. I don't think that that has I don't think that anybody in the know would say that Oh, yeah, causality is totally solved. We figured it out um And I think that in general if somebody claims to have solved a philosophical have solved the philosophical problems um they are misguided or Overstate overstating the case. I think I think is the most charitable way of saying it. They they overstate what they have discovered um, and how How rigorous and uh irrefutable it is And I don't I don't think that mathematics is like you see a thing and then another thing happens and like There you can't you don't physically see causality causality doesn't emit photons um So, I think I think that it's still I think that it still stacks up a bit Someone from uci. I used to play in the uci pet band. I'll you recommend it. Sot. Sot. Sot um You be fan of the lobster king I am not a fan of Jordan Peterson if that is who you're referring to reset the counter Um, I think that his ideas are useful for a certain kind of person. Um, I think that uh, a lot of people have found Value in those ideas Um, which is good We split it separates the two gestures. I don't I don't think so man Whoever came up with that knew exactly what they were doing If you could bootstrap paradox something I've never heard bootstrap paradox as a verb Hold on. Let me let me refresh Ah, yeah, so like, uh, I've also heard this described as a gin um This is a a closed Time like time like curve. It's a thing that goes back in time and becomes itself um so generally bootstrap paradox is like, uh, a bit of technology or something comes into existence and and the Reason for its existence it just it just appears because it was sent back from the future And the reason that they were able to send it back from the future is because it was sent back already um and so like like Sky's the limit, right? I could say uh bootstrap paradox and entropy reverser um Or bootstrap paradox, you know, it's it's basically like what would you wish for sort of a thing, right? um Yeah So, you know use your use your imagination a ring of a ring of three wishes or a ring of wishes or something um Do you have any UX expectations about AR VR? uh Yeah, so, um The the AR VR thing. Uh, I don't know if you saw my episode on um the Oh god, I just forgot the term for it um It's not virtual reality. It's not augmented reality It's not reality. Oh god. Oh god. This is very embarrassing. I made a whole episode about it. I can't remember um funk Uh augmented reality No, no, no, no I did do one on google glass on augmented reality, but there is The idea is that there's a that it's just a spectrum I don't I don't have to remember the name for it. I can just tell you what the how it was The idea is that there's just a spectrum of digital digital overlay of your experience or digital um contribution to your Your subjective experience um so The idea that like augmented reality and virtual reality kind of exist on the same spectrum of which like just having You know having a phone um And having the phone be part of your consciousness like you're kind of listening for a notification sound or something like that That's kind of just All part of the same thing um But the lack of access to the metaphor meta metaverse like if you accept that theory um then Yes, anybody who doesn't have a phone now is already excluded from The metaverse or who doesn't have internet access now is sort of uh Excluded from excluded from that um UX expectations uh Uh, there there are some things that i'm working on at work right now that i'm not allowed to talk about. Um There are people who are making headway in that nobody has really cracked it yet. I think david purse Wireheading genetic engineering. Yeah, super happy. Yeah, the the wireheading argument is um I think it's defeated by nosix experience machine Like I think that is self-evident for most people that if you could have the experience of something But not actually do it then that's worse um That there is that there is virtue or value to be had in uh actively pursuing Or or actually doing things um And overcoming the hedonic treadmill is not necessarily a goal like the hedonic treadmill is a fact it is part of Is part of how we are And it's not good or bad. I think that we can use it uh, for example, um If you could readjust someone's hedonic set point somewhere else Regardless of their situation um Such that they could do they could still do things but enjoy it more Uh, I think that that might be a nice like middle ground donald hoffman I've heard of I've heard of hoffman which one I might be thinking of hoffstatter One sec one sec one sec UCI yeah cog psych okay Oh, um I might have yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this stuff um One sec. Let me get a book and see if it's by him because I've read this Oh, sorry. It must be in a it must be in another bookcase but it's called the visual brain in action and No, it's by millner. It's by millner by mistake. Anyway um Yeah, I mean the like all of the uh the stuff about the you know Uh attention and how Perception is constructed and all that other stuff. I'm super into that Do you think consciousness is possible without sensory perception? Oh, oh Scrolled off the screen there Do you think consciousness is possible without sensory perception? Uh I don't see why not You know, you could just be Uh, I uh, it depends on what you mean by sensory perception. Uh, it is I think that it's probably a semantic argument Do you think consciousness can exist without emotion? I don't see why not Again, it sort of depends on how you how you define emotion, but I think I don't see any intrinsic reason that you can have those be separable How evolution hid the truth from our eyes? Uh, it sounds very, um Kantian, you know numinal, uh That that sort of stuff numinal phenomenal, uh, and I'm I'm super into it like all of these ideas that Uh, you know perception is Uh, largely a cognitive Uh process Is uh, is fascinating And it informs a lot of like my personal philosophy and why I'm so skeptical about a lot of claims of objective reality and stuff Uh, how much of your life do you prefer to automate? I automate myself as much as uh Like I I get things into my muscle memory like making coffee is not a conscious act anymore. Like I I have no idea like I I I go into a fugue state and wake up and I have coffee, you know um I could do I could do a better job at just at being very uh deliberate about what things I choose to invest Like energy in versus, uh putting them on autopilot Like I think that I could reduce a lot of my cognitive load by Like turning off notifications for certain things on my phone or being very granular with what notifications I allow It's it's a work in progress Why do you think technology is accelerating? Well because Technology is you take two things and you combine them and you have a new thing And the more things there are the more that process works, you know, there's more combinations. It's it's common combinatorial, I would say Um Bronze swords to iron swords and get from iron swords to fighter jets. Yep. Yeah, absolutely and I I do think I buy this stochastic theory of of scientific discovery I buy that the primary process by which we make forward progress or develop new ideas is by combining things that already exist. So the more things that exist the the More ideas you can get the reality bubble is a pop sigh book. I recently read the reality bubble uh, is this a um Uh like fragmentation of the internet into um Or like You you have a news bubble that sort of a thing Stop experiencing fear and anxiety if you have your amygdala removed and you will stop being able to make decisions important important feature of the amygdala is that it is intrinsic to resolve the paradox of choice or burns ass type situations people who have Who only who don't have any amygdalae cannot make any decisions They just kind of sit there and be like well, I could do this or I could do this And there isn't anything that recommends one course of action to the other. So I What should I do? And they just do that forever uh Love locks gaia theory. I have heard the gaia theory recently. Were you the one that brought it up in the uh thunk comments? Oh, yeah, so this has nothing to do with the fictional work Of the same name Components in a social ecosystem Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, um Somebody somebody brought this somebody brought this up recently and was like uh, it might have been an aon article But it was about the gaia theory and how the person who Uh thought that it was bonk to begin with and then they started thinking about it And then they found some way to liberate a theory that makes sense from it and I am very I lean very like social or communitarian or Whatever you want to phrase it like I tend to think of humans not as Not I tend to analyze things without um individuals being the basis of the framework of thought But the gaia theory is still pretty wild for me I think I think it would be for anyone uh Choose to keep feeling sadness fear and anxiety. Yeah, like we don't just watch uh Like art that makes us happy. We watch We we don't consume art or media that makes us happy. We consume art and media that makes us feel things Uh painless society would really be bad um a painless painless society like Pain serves a a useful purpose like people who can't feel pain, uh, often Um suffer greater greater consequences, you know, it depends on what you mean by painless Like alleviating suffering alleviating non desired suffering would probably be a good idea cognitive apprenticeship mental steps to deal with foreign concepts and conversation reading philosophy Is cognitive apprenticeship an established term? I've never heard that before cognitive apprenticeship, let's Do it live as they say cognitive apprenticeship is a theory that emphasizes the importance of the process in which a master of a skill teaches that skill to an apprentice okay, so like uh sort of um Mentorship um mental steps to deal with foreign concepts and conversation and reading philosophy I think that if you um One of the things that I really prioritize when I was doing thunk Is to not take two steps or to to not jump two steps to like kind of explain every step in the chain of reasoning from the beginning to the end to not Assume that my audience was going to follow if I just like jumped off into Somewhere else. I think that that is I find that to be very important for pedagogy. Um, I Uh, I've had a lot of college professors who were very brilliant in their field who for whom um, like tensor arrays and Um, you know signals and systems and why you need to care about signals and systems and all these other things are Like trivial because they work with them their entire life And they would be like they write a thing on the top left corner of the board and write another thing beneath it That board no relationship as far as I could say All right, just be like Okay, well, uh, I'll catch up with you at the end I guess um and I think that an important part and Like part of maybe one of the reasons that thunk works is because I am experiencing these concepts for the first time In many cases along with you guys So I to just jump to the end like I have to I am showing you how I'm processing it. So maybe the the um Best route to cognitive apprenticeship is to learn it with someone um Maybe maybe with having more context you have like more things that you can draw on and and just like point out like interesting connections to the ideas that you're exploring Playing doom on a pregnancy test anything that you can install linux on you can play doom on so that's most computational platforms that are turning complete What about using doom as a pregnancy test? If somebody stops play if somebody stops playing at the middle starts crying and it's just like it's just I just can't handle it It's so emotional The emotional resonance of the story of doom is just too much for me right right now and then maybe maybe pregnant maybe Um, why don't the elderly are generally more wise more time to learn stuff? uh The like again calling on the cultural evolution theory if the only thing that we have going for us if the if the primary the if the primary um component of our knowledge Is learn stuff that we assimilate from culture then the longer you can Like have that diffusion gradient the longer you have that stuff diffuse into you then the longer Uh, the more of it you can absorb And the only old people who are insufferable are the ones who have stopped learning stuff, you know um Do you think society would be significantly better off if everyone lived to age 300 or so? I mean, I would certainly like that um again Like there's the problem of people who just stop who have You know, I know everything that I need to know and I know what I like and that's the end of it There's an explorer exploits uh relationship that is described in um Algorithms to live by which is interesting in that regard Um Wireheading is evolutionarily maladaptive. Yeah, if everything if everything has the same emotional valence Then there's no reason to do anything over anything else Gradience of bliss could replace the functionality of physical pain. Yeah Hello, love your vids. Thank you Joaquin. Uh, thank you for watching. I appreciate it Curse of knowledge is real Yeah, yeah My only curse is you Tony to Thanos. Yeah Uh, I am burdened with uh I'm burdened with glorious purpose. Is that the line? Got it. I can't even remember it right now. I am burdened Glorious purpose. Yes Um, well right now I am burdened with uh a full bladder So I'm gonna take care of that and I've reached the end of the channel If you guys want to submit some more questions, I promise I will get to them when I get back We're sitting at about an hour 50. I didn't put an ending on this. So, um I think that I'll I'll take a bathroom make and eat some brussel sprouts and then come back And if there are any more questions, then I'll answer them and if not, then we can just call it and I could get started Um, editing the script for the next episode. So new string I'll be right back How many episodes do you have on the pipeline? I have like I have a constant stream of um of Like ideas that I have for scripts and they're all they all exist in sort of a state of like proto script they're all like I don't know at the very least I have an outline or like a set of points that I want to talk about And so like I I've got a large number of those um I'm sorry if anybody has misophonia. I hope that you can't hear the chewing It says that the gain is turned way down. So Hopefully it's hopefully it's not gross, but I I Pull I pulled these out right at noon. So I kind of have to like get into them at some point My frail human body requires sustenance Raz I didn't see you come in How's the live stream going? Any new ideas come out of it like discord from the last one I misophonia misophonia is being More grossed out by mouth noises than most people It's a thing that I actually suffer from like if somebody's chewing on a Into a microphone or something like that and I've got headphones on I I lose my goddamn mind like it's it's almost a like grab them and throw them across the room sort of thing for me So I'm hoping I'm hoping that it's not it's not too gross for you guys, but I Planned poorly I guess and so here we are Let's let's Let's hopefully what I'm here for man um Have I done an episode about moo? um Okay Thanks string. I I appreciate it. I I do do not want to inflict this on anyone, you know I Can't gun gin. Uh, good luck on your history finals Uh, I hope that uh, I hope that you remember all of the things and that you have interesting things to say about all of them Any new ideas come out of it. Well, I've got a I've got a reading list going so that's something I've been doing I've been doing okay at like incorporating stuff into the list people ask me Have you read the this that the other and I've been accumulating those Nothing that says good of an idea is discord was though discord was the best idea out of that last live stream for sure Remove the world's value system without replacing it with another you end up in the nihilism we live in today I mean everybody has a value system, right? Like it there isn't such a thing as just existing without a value system Even if that value system is um Is egoism, you know, I don't know about uh I don't know about nihilism like nihilism would Would claim that like Nothing nothing matters by by some measure and I think that it's probably not Viable for um Like a long term I think that you might be able to be nihilist in like very small moments when you're deep in uh Philosophical reflection, but I don't think that it works as a long term thing Eventually you you you have to decide that you are going to do something, right? Oh, uh speaking of Nietzsche um There's a uh Fun thing that I heard on the very bad wizards podcast, which is that all undergrad or um all philosophy students When they read Nietzsche they decide that they want to write like Nietzsche But nobody can write like Nietzsche except Nietzsche And so you end up with a bunch of people who just like do these um pollonic rants that don't actually say anything sensical very uh, I think that uh iron rand if she had actually read any Nietzsche would have Been inspired to be how she was but that's not how That's not how it panned out. I don't think that she read any of it But writing like Nietzsche is actually he's He's got he's got a way about him. He's got a style about him And the thing is is that it's backed up by very clearly a uh a razor sharp insight And you can be you can be polemic if you're if you're right, you know, you can get away with it sometimes but Um, would you consider an episode talking about how technology augments are grasps of the numina? Huh um the Yeah, I've I've definitely toyed around with doing an episode on um scientific instrumentalism which is sort of um It's in that domain um The question being is Like the the the numina phenomena distinction is insurmountable as far as anybody Uh anybody who talks about numina like it's it's just a categorical Um split and there there isn't any surmounting it really um I think that I think that it would be interesting to get into Like I did the episode on science Which was motivated by a discussion I was having with someone who was like um Sort of a pragmatist who uh Who is like asserting that like it's all it's all heuristics. There isn't any uh realism to be had And I was like well, what what do you say to someone? What do you say to someone who has a clearly absurd belief? um That you know is not going to work out for them, but you have not yet seen How it's going to work Right sort of a thing It's like pragmatism is very based in this evolutionary mindset where things either Work or don't work But the whole idea of being able to like predict what is going to work Uh ahead of ahead of time that sort of invest itself in a in some form of realism So that was that was sort of where that episode came from It's just like you have to be able to say that some things are real and some things aren't Or else you lose the ability to make normative uh normative statements or Or predictions and things like that um And so for for the the numeral phenomenal distinction And in scientific apparatus like the the oscilloscope says this or the meter or whatever it is might say a thing But that it doesn't that doesn't mean that you have Bridged the gap to the numeral by looking at it like all all you can see The only phenomena that you have access to or so that the meter says this that with the other you have to add Something else have access to or so that the meter says this that with the other you have to add something else in order to make that work Fiddling while rome burns has experienced the phenomenon that uh that i was referring to Stop trying to write like micha is good advice for most people For most people. Oh, i'm sorry. I missed some stuff um oof chocolate cake in one sitting If nothing truly matters in the long run You can you you can eat a chocolate cake in one sitting, but you have to care about it um More episodes of morality ethics i'm totally into it Morality and ethics are very easy to talk about because i can just describe like what the theories are without necessarily having to Come down on one side or another of these things and that's that's Just because that's that's my attitude towards a lot of it um It's just like this is a this is an interesting way of analyzing this landscape A good idea to have some sort of eugenic program to raise the average IQ Like i was saying before i think that like cultural knowledge is here iq is like this little stripe on the top I don't think that like increasing iq is going to like, um the like iq for disability like people who are uh incapable of uh of reading because of uh like learning deficits or things like that um, I think is a worthy a worthy cause to try and and fix um or combat um Just because those people suffer negative life outcomes uh You know you could also And that is not to not also render society such that those people can have satisfactory life outcomes Without needing to be able to read or whatever um I think that the There's a a whole uh, there's a mentality that if individual intelligence got better if the average individuals intelligence got better then Uh, that would cascade into these massive like utopian effects um For society and I think that that's fundamentally misguided. I think that like individual intelligence is what gets you know explorers dead in in The wilderness in like some territory that they have never Uh, they they that they are exploring for the first time while the natives looking are looking at them like they're idiots uh, you know individual intelligence is uh is largely Just the tiniest variance on top of this massive body of practical know-how that is cultural knowledge so You know we can talk about iq. We can talk about like raising it or whatever, but I think that the more important endeavor is to um pursue systems that allow us to increase cultural knowledge like science and education and um Uh, you know increasing the landscape of available ideas Like those are the things to focus on if you want to improve society quickly. I think Uh, I only read thus spoke zarathustra uh It uh reading young nicha is a trip young nicha is bright and bushy tailed in a way the old nicha is not Um beyond good and evil is interesting. It makes oblique references back to previous works I'm pretty sure he did a video about the trouble with eugenics. I don't know that I have explicitly talked about eugenics I should have at some point uh The problem with eugenics is that you have to In order to move Society or people in a direction you have to decide what direction you're going to move them and that in that value judgment is not necessarily It's never objective. It's always just a thing that somebody wants um You go camilla get that cake. Have I dabbled in machine learning? Um I've gone on like I I've I have done all of the like cutesy web apps that google has thrown At the public where you can do like the deep mind dreaming thing and stuff like that I don't know anything about machine learning. Um, I certainly don't um Like I I have not I can barely program like a calculator. I am I am not Uh very skilled at programming. I think that my peak was a sudoku over that worked like That worked 95 percent of the time and then there was like a five percent of puzzles that it just couldn't solve I never figured it out And I read I redo it Uh occasionally when I when I'm learning a new programming language and I really want to like get into it I sort of uh build a sudoku solver but man It's a it's a neat exercise but it is uh, but I am not good at it I think if I could do things over I might have taken a programming major in college Maybe done that instead Eugenics also don't work frequently It's just an excuse to discriminate against um against people who are not, uh you know Good at IQ tests um Old biased worldviews cognitive performances aren't directly linked to a handful of genes and again can be heavily influenced by environment. Of course um I do think that I do think that cognitive deficit is uh Like it's a real phenomenon like there there are people who who who uh do not do not have the um The same like substrate that the rest of us have to assimilate culture And that that's very important Do you plan on diving into the philosophy of mind? I I think that i'm kind of In there already like i'm constantly learning new philosophy of mind stuff Um, it's definitely an area of interest You didn't do one talking about all the issues and troubles that we've had trying to raise cows to give more milk No, I think that that might have been rebecca watson I think that might have been her my uh my videos that are explicitly refuting like um kind of like, uh fascist or alt-right or other Or racism or things like that or all cartoonish. They're not good Um YouTube is not your main job. Absolutely not. I do not make enough money doing this to live where I live um, I'm in silicon valley where rent uh the rent on this a one bedroom apartment that has uh old wiring and uh not enough light The rent here is three thousand dollars a month three thousand u.s. Dollars every month um for The and the like the cost of real estate around here is such that the cost of this one bedroom apartment I could get a um A seven bedroom mansion in ohio with a swimming pool and like a gravel driveway and the whole nine yards Like it is just absurd What sort of algorithm do I use to make a sudoku solver? um It's uh, it's an elimination algorithm with uh So, you know, it's this it's the way that it's a way that a human would do sudoku where you look at the thing And there's an eight in this column. So that means that there can't be an eight in this row or the or any of those other ones You strike those numbers out and as you strike them out there will be Cells that have no other possibilities in which case you can fill those in and then like do that recursively um coupled with a guess and check algorithm where um Which is where uh, which is where I think that the five percent that it can't solve kind of it falls down on Uh, where it just like plugs in a thing sees if a solution is viable And if it's not then it like terminates that and strikes it from the cell and then tries to do another elimination round That's that is the algorithm that I developed. It is the most obvious and dumbest thing that I thought of that could work I went with Uh biggest things that you have learned while researching stuff for thunk Have you changed your mind view perspective and live your day-to-day life? So the things The things that I have discovered while doing thunk That like I carry around in my head and just like rub up against whatever I'm encountering the cultural evolution theory thing stochastic theory of um scientific discovery um, you know, there's a lot of philosophical like recently like I've been saying philosophical pragmatism Sort of if it works then it's true for some value of true um It's it's difficult because these are all things that I Like from where I am right now. It feels like well. Yeah, I've always carried these around with me, but um The engineer syndrome thing like that's a thing that I ring my hands about a lot um yeah Just I think stuff like that um Any thoughts about starting a youtube channel but thinking about making videos about philosophical perspective on performance performative aesthetics, especially musical practices But I am quite unsure if my skill set will suffice will suffice My marvelous person My first video was not marvelous and it kind of decayed from there. I think um, but um Starting a youtube channel is much harder now than it was just because it is much more saturated and the algorithm is Uh much harsher than it used to be um So Don't do it because you want an audience do it because you enjoy making videos um and Make videos about things that you enjoy Uh, hopefully as with thunk um You develop an audience of people who like the things like listening to the things that you like to talk about um The valley the valley absolutely don't fuck around. Yeah Uh It is I've heard recently that it is because of um very low Um very low standards for who qualifies for um credit So any uh any yahoo can get any size uh A loan for purchasing property that they want and then rent that property out for some absurd value And use that to pay off the the loan um, and that everybody's just doing that and um I don't I I am not like a real estate or economic expert So I don't know the the truth of that but uh, it sure sucks to hand $3,000 to a stranger every month You know And for the for the honor of living in a box with not enough light that I can't knock out the walls for you know Um Any commentary on our climate crisis? It's bad. We should stop it. We should do we should do something else build nukes More nukes nukes everywhere pebble bed reactors do some do some stuff Oh Raz you're you're gonna you're gonna build a sudoku solver in like 30 minutes that is far and above anything that I ever achieved People who know actual coding Have you joined a union already and if not why? Because I am not protected like Uh, if I were to join if I were to join a union I would be the only union member in my in my 20 person company and um And like there are no protections, especially especially in Palo Alto, especially in silicon valley um for like I'm not going to get any collective bargaining Or anything like that if if I was to join a union I would just get fired and Then and then like stuff really goes bad because my wife who is studying to be a doctor, but does not get paid doctor money um see the uh The thunk episode on residency for more about that um, you know our life If I get fired our life our life plans all Kind of come unraveled and we've got it like scramble and figure something else out. So um Welcome to the united states. This is what employment is like here Uh, would you join the borg? I would be interested um It is Like there there is a question about what the specific like with all questions like this the specifics really matter a lot So do I cease to be? um Because even when Picard was assimilated he still had an identity afterward so would I Does You know, can I switch it on and off if I want to? Uh, is it a one-way thing? Do I still have a body? Having a body is very important to me. That's why I keep on eating on my live stream like a jackass Uh thoughts on nuclear power. It is much safer than people give it credit for and Like I I get it. I get it. It's because it's scary like nuclear nuclear power unlike burning stuff, which we can I which we can like process on a very like Basic levels just like I understand burning stuff to a greater or lesser extent It heats up. It's fine nuclear power is unlike anything that we experience in our everyday life Like you burn something on the stove. You get it nuclear power will um, you know Ion eyes the particles in your dna and just give you cancer because you're looking at a pretty blue light And that's scary. It's like magic. So people are scared of it and that's understandable by uh, yeah climate change climate change is coming and uh Like the economy trusting trusting in markets or the economy to fix it for us is not going to work Um, it is going to happen to us before is going We're going to pass the threshold where we are doomed Before we can be before we see the immediate effects of being doomed and that is not a thing that humans are good at figuring out like real time We can plan for it Which is what we kind of have to do but um Yeah, like massive massive, uh, regulation government intervention um, like social campaigns um And building lots of nukes You know, it's kind of the only the only answers that I have right now How much time do you put into your research and shaping your message? um I put a lot of time into research Uh, especially for this most recent episode like I have been toodling on the same script for like thunk has taken a little hiatus And uh, it's been great. It's been uh, it's been very rejuvenating. I feel better than I did when uh, when I left off um the But I've been researching this topic and I can't find I just like I might I might have just Struck a keyword that I can kind of get access to some academic literature but it is um Unfortunately, I I have stumbled into into the uh The the problem of having had a novel idea maybe so So I'm struggling with that Um, and I've been trying I've been working a long time to try and frame it in some way that is uh That is not overstating the case, you know, um You work on engineering. How do you balance the philosophy with the stem work? the stem work is very uh It's very kind of like A reflex at this point like I look at stuff and I just see like Well, that's a one-way snap and that's the wall thickness is too big and there's sink there and and other stuff um So in that sense the stem is something that I do and uh, it is great for It's a different it's a different kind of it's a different kind of thing. It's a more um A closed a closed ended problem where there is like an answer or set of answers that are kind of more or less optimal for the initial conditions that you're given and then you can just roll with it um whereas philosophy is always much more open-ended and um You kind of you can like grind on a question Over and over and over again and come up with new things every time you grind on it So it's like it's different different kinds of thinking about stuff If you don't any functional When you say functional Do you mean? Programs that are based on functions or do you mean programming that works because the answer is no to both of those? No, I've done uh, like I do see like c is my is how I think about programming. It was the first language that I learned um So that's a lot of like function calls and stuff like that Yeah, sorry string. It's it's just rough. It's rough Some residencies aren't that draining. Have you thought about psych a lot of abstract thinking? Some residencies aren't that draining is true, but they are also um like um You could be hyper competitive in For like dermatology is a pretty cushy gig because it's like eight to five and you get paid a lot and um if you go into and you but you have to be a gunner to go into derm like uh, it is you dermatology is are people who go into dermatology are some of the most competitive um medical residents and my wife just did not want to do didn't want to do that And um, I don't blame her because she was already like She's she's got she has a phd in neuroscience she's got like so many qualifications for Like so many different positions and they're paying her like uh The salary that I was making as an engineer when I first got out of undergrad like it's it's absurd Have you thought about psych a lot of abstract thinking? Uh, she's uh, she's actually she's doing uh, Pete's Pete's neuro pediatric neuro neurology um Which are your obligatory sci-fi books or franchises? obligatory, um culture series um Foundation series dune Just you you don't have to read the other dune books. You can just read the you can just read dune dune is fine Hitchhiker's guide um Silver ships was pretty good silver ships was was fun Uh, most recently Oh god, I'm I'm gonna I'm blanking on the name right now, but it's uh, it's the one with the octopuses Children of ruin By adrian chikovsky Children of ruin by adrian chikovsky is I I would say that that is mandatory reading Uh, he's also written some other books. I haven't read yet, but um, that's very good So razz is making a joke about uh, few less nukes in the warhead sense. There was actually a proposal um at the beginning of like fusion Like fusion weapons like h bombs Uh, where you put a giant goddamn fusion bomb under a column of stone And you set it off and it just blows up and raises the column And then you harness the potential energy To as it like drops back down And that's how you that's how you get a fusion power um Uh nuclear reactor without all of that garbage with like confining plasma and stuff So I don't know maybe more of those nukes too Are experienced in systems engineering. I am not experienced in systems engineering. Um Except in the like broad you know I forget what the actual definition of systems engineering is I mean, it it sounds it sounds like um It's just a buzzword for engineering That's how I read it. Anyway, uh Systems thinking principles as an organizing body of knowledge Yeah, I mean, this is this is kind of just engineering, you know, like, um When I say engineer Yeah, so it it You know, I I am I am thinking about the life cycle of the product and all this other stuff. I'm a consultant So I I have to kind of frame always frame the engineering that I'm doing in the in a larger context of making the client happy so um See you walking David burns. Oh, uh, what did the burn do? Sorry guys. I I am Blanking on what what did David burn? David brinn There we go. Sorry. I know that this is the most thrilling live stream that you have ever seen David brinn there we go Hero award winner What did he do? What was the book? uplift stories Is this is is he the one who literally wrote? Oh, yeah, yeah Yeah the uplift series a curse of thinking at the object model anyway sorry just just had to speaking of uplift series there's a series of videos Isaac arthur who has a series of videos about um like kind of future tech and what what it might be to um to He has he has a series of videos that are about like getting humans off of earth and into space um Are invertebrates moral patients um Do insects suffer in a way that obligates us to care about their well-being? I think I think probably to some extent um Like any of that subjective experience of suffering of creatures that are not uh, not human uh Who or who can't communicate with us in meaningful ways? um It's always suspect. Uh, I think that probably like if you had an option to Uh to torture a bunch of mosquitoes to death you probably shouldn't do that Despite the fact that I hate mosquitoes um killing them killing them without uh Without suffering would be preferable. So that implies some sort of like moral obligation to them I think um Have you read the entire silver silver ship series? No not yet. Just the first just the first one so far I love what you do. Do you know less wrong forum or george hot? I don't know george hot, but I do know less wrong all too well um When does the striptease portion start did I miss it? It started earlier Now that now that you say that I I did I did undo a button here. I'll do it again for you Welcome gem's buck Uh, do you have any ideas how to solve the societal problem? Oh god I undo a shirt button and then I have to answer a problem. I have to answer How to solve a societal problem great um value versus price Neuroside phd is working as a postdoc on increasing human lifespan. Good for you Salary is around 50k. Yep That sounds about right Yeah, um value and price the primary like the primary argument for capitalism and like markets Is that they are very good at distributing resources where they are needed um But I think that that argument I think that that falls apart in the face of exactly what you mentioned there like crypto and bitcoin Because these are things that have zero. They have no intrinsic value. There is no intrinsic value to a bitcoin and you can't and it's not like a fiat currency thing where There's no intrinsic value to any money, of course and yet people are um People are like I I still can't get a video card, you know, like I I was very excited about the gtx 3000 series video cards from nvidia and I haven't been able to get one for a year because whenever they come into stock anywhere people buy them and use them to make crypto to mine crypto and it is not um It's not a valuable resource to have mined crypto mining crypto does not add anything to the world yet the people who do the who do that have uh increased power to um obtain things of value and that is That it falls apart like there there isn't any defense for it anymore um And I think that you know, uh that that worries me a lot uh, I think that the whole Like as as things as things drift towards crypto um That that discrepancy is going to become more and more apparent You know, we've got and we've also got the like the game stop squeeze and all of this other stuff um And it you know, I I wonder at what the future where people stop believing in the market as As a valid measure of value um Like where that goes. I don't know where that goes. Uh I Happen to be you know, I was saying earlier that I'm I'm in Silicon Valley and I can't exist here without pulling in a substantial income I give most of it to my landlord, but um, it is still like a large transfer of these of of currency and um And that what does this process that what does this whole thing look like when Like it's all just imaginary numbers and everybody knows it like we don't even pretend anymore. I don't know I do think that you deserve more than uh 50k a year for trying to extend people's lives I'll say it Yeah, coding with pure functions only. Yeah. Yeah. I mean see see can be a functional programming language um The exams don't solve themselves. Oh if you were watching this instead of doing your exam, uh, you should probably do that Built an anti-mining thing and I still can't buy it Yeah, you know like It is um They are like Nvidia is deliberately crippling their cards And what they can do just so that they can get them into the hands of people who are not bit bitcoin miners But it's not enough because The demand for bitcoin is infinite Right like so long as bitcoin continues to have like some value to people um, there's no reason to not if the value that you can get from a video card exceeds the um the value of Like um us dollars that it takes to get one. There is no reason. There's never a reason not to buy one Thank you, sir. Okay. Um, maybe another economical system would be more beneficial Just wanted to hear your opinion. I don't like you know I um, I like the uh There are all sorts of there are all sorts of like hobby horse economic theories that purport to um To like solve the problems with capitalism and markets and um, like natural monopolies and things like that um But yeah, I I have not heard anything yet where I'm just like, oh, yeah, I want in on that I want the us to transition to that system um I certainly like there are certainly modifications to it that I'm in favor of, you know, like I think that raising the taxes on the top 1% is not You don't you don't need more than like a million dollars. You don't you don't need it. You can get You you the lifestyle that you can get for having a million dollars is sufficient and There's no reason to continue piling money on top of it. Maybe like have a 100 100 tax rate once you reach 5 million dollars or 10 million dollars or something like that There's no reason to be there's no reason for there to be billionaires I think I I'm not an economist. I'm sure that there are people who are gnashing their teeth at that, but um favorite medieval philosopher Uh Aquinas is pre medieval I guess, um, or or does he count does he count? Thomas Aquinas was like what 300? Oh, no, no, no, no. I was totally wrong That's close enough 12 1200 st. Thomas Aquinas there. That's the thing I don't I don't know very many philosophers. You called me out on, um Gemsbach the last time I did a live stream asked me if I had read much theory Which is a total which is a thing that anybody who actually knew anything about philosophy Like anybody would have gotten that that meme Uh, and I did not And it was really embarrassing Uh, yeah the the amount of the amount of philosophy that I know and especially being able to tie like Names to ideas is embarrassing my small so Um, I'm going to go with Thomas Aquinas and hope that 1200 1200 ad qualifies as being a medieval philosopher Yes, Camilla, this is this is another one of those things that I think should not be heritable 70 k then individuals happiness derived from money plateaus. Um, I recently saw another study that refute to that idea Um, apparently they they did another they pulled from another cohort or something like that and um, and did some Uh, some additional analysis and found that there were actually increases after 70 000 a year Uh For for what that's worth. I haven't looked into it deeply yet, but I was I was sort of like I I was similarly on the um on the train that Having more than 70 000 a year does not substantially increase your life your uh, your outcomes, but You know or life satisfaction rather Yeah, who decides Chat disconnected that's new Um, who decides where the excess profit goes. Yeah, absolutely. I think that I think that in a democratic republic Then we can fucking hash that out. Um The the question of whether we actually live in a democratic republic is up for grabs Uh, certainly in form of some electoral reform in favor of some electoral reform um Putting a cap on on uh on how much money you can accumulate Maybe that disincentivizes some people to hoard a bunch of money as politicians and not be quite so transparently corrupt. I don't know Um thoughts on the reformation Uh, god um Luther was a bit of a prick um He had a uh a famous argument with erasmus uh about About gods about free will and gods Like omniscience And I came down on Erasmus's side. So I think that should have ended there the the reformation should have been led by Erasmus I'm just doing with the top six. Like I said anything substantive there um The book outliers Is it is great about this idea non-money ways you can walk into being rich. Yeah, totally I I think that being rich is primarily a luck-based thing um I just found your channel welcome Uh rational circles. Oh, so you're you're in with the rats as well politics is a mind killer We'd like to know your view on this. I have a view on this that is most recently um That I have I have been developing um, so I think that the the way that I forget who it was, but there there's a social psychologist who says that um Cognitive psychology that is psychology where you're looking into like an individual's brain and how it works and the um Like cognitive biases and things like that cognitive psychology is psychology with all the interesting variables set to zero That is to say the interesting parts of psychology are social psychology There are interactions between people. They're how communities come to consensus and uh, what What things they tend to believe and how they interact with each other I think that the the rationalist Enterprise like the whole idea that they were dedicated to is to perfidivigual Cognition to make the individual the The most accurate predictor of whatever and The and because of that or related to that is this concept of um politics being the mind killer because as soon as you get involved in politics your individual processing power your individual ability to um To like evaluate things objectively or whatever goes out the window And so if you're if the goal of your enterprise is to perfect the individual and make a a single person A perfect predictor of the future then politics would be to be avoided but That is not how that is not how humans are that is not how we uh, we are embedded in We are embedded in a society and the idea that an individual in a vacuum could ever like figure out the The perfect prediction for the future is laughable like an individual in a vacuum dies before they get to five years of age, right? um So I think that the politics is the mind killer thing and I think that I think that the This lends itself to the rationalist um like political stance as well, which is usually very liberal or neoliberal um It's that like people people thinking on their own if you're if your goal is to be a perfect Individual who can see the future Then you you don't want to get involved in politics But as soon as you get two people together trying to figure stuff out then politics becomes inevitable It's just a fact of the world and there's probably a healthier way of going about it. So um That's what I've been thinking about recently a fair amount Uh, I'm trying to ask things I can be reasonably confident weren't asked before I joined these streams There there isn't a lot so far. It's like um favorite philosopher and What do you think of x? Not trying to needle you I appreciate it with the pointy horns is probably very easy to needle people Uh, can you say some on how you understand ideas? In is it is essence you see in your mind or rather word chains or something different? uh There's a great pbs idea channel episode on what our ideas and who gets to have them um for how they exist and um Like What they how they're embodied and stuff like that. I highly recommend um the most recent thunk thunk episode Which is about uh deluz and quittari and the rhizome favorite voting system, um Recently I have been made aware that I did some shelling for fair vote org early on in thunk as a There's a ranked choice voting system ranked choice voting is great if you live In a society with a bunch of nerds in a normal functioning society I think that uh, there's there's research that has been shown that approval voting is probably the most effective So approval voting is like all these candidates. Who would you be okay with running things? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and then they tally those up and it gets it gets closer to a fair representation of stuff It's still vulnerable to gaming because everything is but um, it's better uh formal methods verification type systems Pros and cons of programming. I am not a programmer. So my opinion is that of an amateur looking in from the outside but uh I know that there are some people in this chat right now who are highly critical of things like, um um Or pattern languages. I think that there's uh, there are some advantages to being able to reference a uh A codified set of things and see it well like this like this prototype but different in some way and having a starting point is always useful but um Type systems provers and pros and cons. So I don't know if that actually answers your question because like I said, I'm not I'm not a coder. I I just do cad but um Luther was a bit of a prick is certainly no hot take The yeah, I mean if you came here for hot takes about the reformation I will I was raised jewish man like the reformation is just like, oh, there's the new kids. They're arguing um An individual in a vacuum dies a bit faster than five years. Yes, but I mean saying it is technically correct, right? um Sounds like it's an excuse to not do anything about the status quo and chat themselves about any ongoing ongoing systemic issues. Yes That is also certainly part of it When you're when you're trying to feel smarter to every to everyone else um it is uh is very convenient to be able to point to uh political gamesmanship and say while those people Like playing political games leaves you uh leaves you biased and so I refuse to partake in it and I happen to be of uh a class of people who benefits from that situation Curious curious correlation there Luther was obsessed with sketch. Ooh Apparently luther was obsessed with the scatology. That is study of poop Used to take detailed notes on his daily duties and would literally not stop talking about his crap to his friends I did not know that uh If I was to Find some sort of parallel like God has a plan for everything and my body and its processes are like made in god's image So maybe that's maybe there's something there All right I made it to the bottom. I think that i'm going to call this at three hours this time. I'm not going to go for the full six um My my jaw is actually starting to hurt a little bit um But I am so I I promise I will finish up any questions that are asked before three hours I I might be able to turn off chat at some point. So I might do that and then just like wrap it up So if there's anything else that you want to ask don't like Don't like slam me with like 150 questions or something like that But if you have like a few a few closing things that you'd like me to talk about I would be happy to hear them uh food turkey I The first the first thing that I think of when I see the letters futa Uh are from my days on 4chan back when I was young Oh, it's by robin hanson. Yeah Elected officials to find measures of national well-being and prediction markets. Yeah. Yeah. So Uh, I think that prediction markets are uh a useful policy Uh Yeah fair hold on let me get this bonk. Um the Uh Robin hanson has a lot of opinions about things uh, I think that using prediction markets to uh to get to something like a reasonable like a reasonable policy um recommendation Is vulnerable to a lot of the thing a lot of the problems that you have with direct democracy um And also like Markets can be manipulated. This is and markets can be manipulated and the heart the hardest part about any prediction market as anybody who's been on mataculist can tell you is figuring out how a thing actually resolves like Have been technically right about about like where where the stock market will close on such a such in such a day is useful for accumulating like Money is useful for that But it doesn't tell you anything about the health of the system It doesn't tell you anything about the quality of life of people or any of these other things Defining defining the victory conditions defining the metrics is is the The beginning and end of the game right if we could all agree like this is like use use elected officials to um to just declare what metrics they're going to Focus on it's like that that's the beginning and end of it if we could do that then we could And like they were enacting policies that were in line with that Then we would have like figured out how to overcome Political gamesmanship and all that other stuff. We're not that's that's it's solving the wrong problem, right? The problem is not that people Don't can't figure this stuff out. The problem is that we disagree about what it is that we need to do um Is there a question you want to answer that you haven't been asked yet? Ha That is a fantastic question Um, I wanted to be asked that one and I didn't even know it. Um See I'm I'm gonna need to take a beat on that one. Uh, give me a sec Ask me ask me about playing hitman ask me about hitman And also while while while you're providing me a question about hitman Um, I would like to ask you guys a question anybody who's happens to be on right now. It looks like there's 26 of you. Jesus um What what do you think like it is a pretty youtubey thing to? A live stream playing video games. Uh, I've played video games with some of you before Uh, would you be interested in watching me play hitman and fail miserably at it repeatedly? Uh, it would not be it would be uh, a lot of it would not be safe for work because uh, I think that there's like Adult themes and that like murder and stuff, but uh shoes boots or sneakers right now. I'm wearing slippers So that's the annoying answer I Have been I've been trying to get into more men's fashion stuff recently trying to like make an effort in a way that I haven't before Um, so like I've been getting into the watch game and all that other stuff um And as soon as every as soon as I get vaccinated and it is responsible to do so I would like to go try out some red wing boots. I've heard many good things about them Sort of like the last pair of boots that you ever need to buy thing They're like absurdly expensive, but um, I'd like to I'd like to try some out and see If I can make them work and if they really are the last pair of boots or shoes that I'll ever need to buy um What do you think about indian gurus? uh the The guru the guru thing is for me. It's difficult for me to bias from growing up around a lot of new agey stuff where guru ship was a marker of Like this person has everything figured out. This is this is a A person who who knows the ways of the universe and knows what you need to succeed in your life Uh, which is which was garbage. It was garbage and there are a lot of people who claim to be gurus and all this other stuff Um, I don't know. I don't know the primary source material for all of that stuff My gut reaction of when I hear the word guru is to dismiss it as like nonsense um, but I I need to I need to get into like the actual source material because I because usually when you get to the The stage where it's like grossly over commercialized and people everybody's selling you a new age book about guru ship Uh, it's gone way past Like like it's it's taken like two things from a rich body of philosophy and thought and then just like gone off on some tangent that they can Mark it to people and I would like to I would like to read some of the source material Uh, what are your plans for channel's future any plans to grow the channel? Uh crossovers with other philosophy uh, so I have been on the record before and I maintain this position that um I am not interested in like subscriber numbers beyond comprehension like 25 000 is already way more than I can hold in my head and I am very lucky that the people who have uh Who have gotten into the show thus far are all um, very they're very kind. They're very thoughtful and they um They they make me They they don't they don't critique me for the sake of just like picking apart my ideas Or uh, or making me feel bad Um, I am a delicate flower I I don't respond very well to negative criticism in many cases and it is and being exposed to the mainstream just opens the floodgates because it becomes uh, it invites Being famous makes you somebody to poke fun at or uh to To mock for uh for social prestige and I I don't think that I could handle that so No plans to grow the channel um crossovers might be fun, but it would invite that sort of audience. So I don't know Uh, is a moneyless society possible? Absolutely. We've had societies before we had money um Whether it's possible with the precedent of a world where money has been brought into existence. I don't know it would be nice It would be nice if uh, no human had wants that uh, they could not afford Thanks for all the great content. Truly one of youtube's best hidden gems. Thank you. I appreciate that a lot Don't ask him about hitman. We'll be here all day. Hi Rob Uh I I have I have been playing way more hitman than I should and I've been insufferable about it I have talked everybody everybody who will listen to I've tacked their ears off about it and it's pretty embarrassing Uh, what do you think of the government banning sugar in many foods heavily taxing it? um uh I am I mean it depends if it works right like, uh I think that generally regulations That limit stuff like people just find ways around it to get it something Especially something that their body tells them is good for them or uh, their body tells them is good Uh, they just find ways of getting to it. Um the uh, you know ban banning sugars or putting taxes on sugars or things like that um It I think that a lot of people have a uh An unknown preference for eating healthy things I think that there are a lot of people who uh, who don't Uh, who don't know what it feels like to not Just consume gallons gallons and gallons of sugar water every day um And not gallons, you know what I mean? And I I think that Giving giving them the opportunity to uh to eat healthily And to know what that is they might discover that they like it But that gets into a very sort of Orwellian like oh, I know what you really need sort of a thing I think that interfering with what what people state that they want is generally a dodgy proposition Finally my internet is stable enough yet now. Well, here we are Hitman math, but could you show us how you surf the web hearts? Uh I surf the web I don't know. Do you want to see the do you want to see my setup? I'm not going to turn this around because my apartment. It's a mess right now. Uh, I have a thinkpad laptop a t5 10 And I usually use firefox on there With stupid plugins Uh Don't count on a screamer career a streamer career to pay your rent. Absolutely not I am not an idiot. Uh, what watches do you have post pictures in the discord? Uh, this is actually Rob was making fun of me earlier for uh for my hitman obsession But this is actually a watch that rob got for me. This was uh, this was a gift for for being a Being there on an important day for him And it is uh, it's a lovely watch. It's a kenneth coal It's got a weird it's like weird and not round and stuff and I dig it It's the only white-faced watch that I have. I also have a scoggin that's got a black face And uh like a timex expedition that I wore on my wedding day Um If you make a gaming channel, I'll watch it. Good to know. Thank you Try the red wing Pekos model. I will do that Do you wear any fragrances? No, they really bothered me a lot I think uh the uh There's something about smelling like if I'm wearing something and I I keep on smelling it myself and I'm just like, oh, what is that? And I look around for the source of it. And if it's if it's me, I can't get away from it um anyway And on that note I'm not fragrance The end of the list and it's three hours Thank you. Thank you, Zahm Favorite game of all time. I will end on that one because listening to me rant about um about smelling myself Okay Favorite game of all time. I am going to say it is uh Two rooms and a boom which is right here This is This is a a party game that I don't that you haven't been able to play this way. That's why I'm mentioning it right now but um Two rooms and a boom is a party game where you've got two teams a red team and a blue team And you're it's like a social deduction game and there's Like all sorts of weird silly roles in it and it is very very hard to get enough people together to make it fun But if you can it's fantastic um Everyone should smell nice. I I try to smell like nothing which allows other smell sense to pervade the stuff um anyway Thank you all for uh for coming to the live stream. Thank you all for for being subscribers. Uh, it is pretty wild 25 000 people subscribed uh I uh, I hope that uh, I hope that you're having a decent weekend and it continues to be good And I hope that the pandemic is not getting too bad. It's been nice to hang out for a little while and uh, yeah Talk to you guys later Join the discord. I'll I'll put a link. I'll put a link for the discord come come to the discord and hang out and say hi