 everybody welcome to your own book show on this what is it Tuesday 1 p.m. I don't know what's going on my last night last night video kept kept coming on and off and it wasn't the internet I think it might have been Chrome or my software use which is restream which just failed me and then today today I the sound is not working so volume is very low I mean this is the best I can do because I'm using a crappy mic yes I'm using a crappy mic because my my mic setup my UBS board with my preamp and my super duper microphone all of those all of those are not are not working so somehow the board is not being picked up by the computer I tried a number of different UBS inputs but so far it just isn't it just isn't picking up so anyway sorry about all of this it's good I guess I'm leaving town I left to figure out let's see volume is too low I can increase the volume wait wait wait wait how about that is that better volume I assume that that'll be better volume alright I don't I doubt it's a computer update my computer's updated for some reason the computer just this morning stopped hearing the stop I think so but I will reboot today I'll try to fix it I'll try to get it going anyway let's let's get on with the show because the reality is I don't have a lot of time I've got a play to catch and I do want to cover today I do want to do a show today given that I again apologize for yesterday but I couldn't figure out what was going on I decided instead of rebooting everything and restarting and starting the show half an hour late and everything if it worked at all I just canceled yesterday show so sound is tinny at nothing I can do about that it's a shitty mic but we will not we will fix the system we will fix the system I promise we just you gonna have to give me a little bit of time to do that oh yeah let's jump in I the big story I think constantly you know big story evolving story is story that is is being in the headlines now for for couple of months and that is artificial intelligence AI and put aside where they should be called artificial intelligence or not that's what it's called AI and as there really seems to be two schools in terms of their approach to AI you know the one school is that AI is gonna bring an end to the world and we're all gonna die this is the catastrophizing that happens all the time and I'm sure it's you can see it happening now AI is going to destroy all the jobs AI is going to become conscious AI is gonna is going to focus all our knowledge on a few experts and it's inherently authoritarian you know the number of horror stories it's gonna come alive and destroy the human race that's a Jim Cameron Terminator movie scenario it's AI become is now a focal point for Armageddon stories right so so we already have the Armageddon of climate change we have the Armageddon of I don't know nuclear war around the corner we have the Armageddon of population bomb we'll get to that in a minute we have we have Armageddon's off the Armageddon's off the Armageddon's AI is the latest version of that the I don't need money for a new mic the new mic the mic is here it's the old mic I just need to figure out why my computer is not picking up my my old mic anymore what the hell is going on so as I'm using a little you know phone mic for this which which should never be used for podcasts so but it is what so AI is as I said AI is perceived to be Armageddon destructive horrific and yet there is an alternative story to tell and I think an alternative story that's much closer to the truth although this alternative story might be a little bit too optimistic right optimistic and here I'm referring to a story coming out of Goldman Sachs that have done a kind of economic analysis of the potential for AI as as we move here into the future and I think this is exciting and I think super positive and I thought I would show you so I'm just going to read a paragraph from the report that was issued by Goldman Sachs the report is titled quote the potential large effects of artificial intelligence and economic growth and this is a one paragraph so long paragraph one paragraph from the report which I think is super encouraging uplifting it's good that some people are still doing positive stuff and so the quote the recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence AI raises whether we are on the brink of a rapid acceleration and task automation that would drive labor cost saving and raise productivity despite significant uncertainty around the potential of generative AI its ability to generate content that is indistinguishable from human created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advancements with potentially large macro economic effects the combination of significant labor cost saving new job creation and a productivity boost for non-displaced workers raises the possibility of a labor productivity boom like those that followed the emergence of earlier general purpose technologies like electric motor and personal computer so I agree completely with Goldman Sachs I mean this is a massive massive opportunity the the new technology that okay so everybody focuses on the fact that AI is has a potential of taking jobs from people right reducing reducing jobs and replacing human beings but the reality is that the first level of fact that AI has is by dramatically increasing productivity dramatically increasing the productivity of labor so whatever labor there is its productivity increases and and that can have profound impact on GDP on wealth you know and of course that's just taking into account existing jobs that we can imagine and we can figure out at least in theory how to replace with AI but if we replace them with AI we immediately get a booster productivity boost the productivity means a booster wealth boost the wealth means a boost the quality and standard delivery now people would jump up and say but wait what about all the jobs that are lost but that is the fallacy that that always comes around when new technology is is adopted but not only jobs in total not lost jobs almost always more jobs are actually created I mean I find it fascinating that today in the world if you look globally they are more jobs than ever before they are more jobs in America today than ever before in spite of all the automation all the computerization all the all the panic and hysteria about jobs being lost by Luddites every decade or two and yet we have more and more and more jobs they are different jobs many many jobs were destroyed and are being destroyed every single day I mean you know the easiest graspable statistic here is that we produce in the United States a lot more food than we ever have and yet the number of people working in farming is about one percent versus a hundred years ago when the number of people working in farming was close to a hundred percent ninety percent eighty percent seventy percent right two hundred years ago was close to a hundred maybe a hundred years ago was close to eighty but significant number of Americans were working in farming the same as true in in in people say oh they're no manufacturing jobs yeah they're no manufacturing jobs you know why because people are not working in manufacturing anymore manufacturing now is done by robots it's done by computerized fewer people produce more cars more finished goods so AI is going to do the same thing and of course a lot of the lower-end jobs that the unskilled labor the labor that you can't imagine programming or adopting some of these new jobs that would be created by AI in terms of tech although more and more people can program with AI why because AI can fix your mistakes you know things like that happen but what happens to very low-end jobs you can't do any of that well they they now service us provide services to people who are a lot richer who can afford to pay for I don't know manicures and pedicures massages and who knows what will you know what will need demand in in the future in terms of personal services so AI is going to be a massive job creator now we've got a demographic issue we'll get to that in a second where the population is going to start to decline but AI is going to be a massive job creator AI is going to make the jobs far more efficient productive it is going to take a lot of jobs from people so you know everybody every one of you should think about is my job susceptible to be taken over by AI and if it is if it is then you need to think about how to specialize in a way where you can work with AI to make it better or you can switch jobs to something that is not is not going to replace a little by AI it's going to take longer than one expects but it will happen a lot of jobs will go away our jobs as entrepreneurs of our own lives is to figure out what jobs we can do that AI won't be able to and to start shifting and to start moving into those kind of jobs alright so we'll keep returning to the AI story because it's it's everywhere and people are going to be panicking and talking about it non-stop you know people like Elon Musk are telling us that AI is going to destroy the world so there's constant this is a constant kind of thing so talking about destroying the world I came across an article in the Guardian a very left-wing newspaper in England and but it's got good news it's it actually says the long-fared population bomb may not go off oh my god it turns out that the club of Rome the club of Rome that started the panic over environmental issues and over population and they were all going to die very very soon the club of Rome was just commissioned a report a study and that study finds that they what population will probably reach a high of 8.8 billion before the middle of the century and then decline rapidly it seems like the real problem that we are going to face in the future is too few people not too many people and that the peak is going to come much earlier than people expected they still warn against you know pollution and climate change and all the other stuff but I think now we can say with assuredness when the club of the population explosion the fear population bomb is gone even the club of Rome the originators of all of this panic in the 1970s have now come to the conclusion it ain't happening now we've been saying it's not a problem forever a lot of people have been saying it's not a problem forever it's nice to see that the originators of the of the of the actual problem are finally recognizing that reality alright and I'm going fast here so I because I see there are a lot of questions and our time got compressed by the fact that I didn't get started on time let's see China we're gonna keep track of of China on the show on the Chinese economy on the show I think again there are a lot of doomsday is a lot of fear mongering a lot of fear generally the China's an authoritarian state is gonna grow it's gonna have this massive economy it's gonna be richer than America it's gonna have a better military because they're gonna have those money because they're so rich and they get invested in the military and they're gonna grow so fast and I want to document coming in kind of the the fact that authoritarian regimes don't ultimately do it's certainly not totalitarian regimes don't ultimately do well economically and to the extent that China does economically it'll be because they free up the economy which will mean they're less totalitarian than we expect so the latest number of stories that have come out one is everybody remember the belt and road initiative that again everybody was panicked at you was the Chinese were building these roads and train lines through Central Asia and also shipping routes along the Pacific and Indian Ocean and Africa, Sri Lanka and ultimately the idea was that China would dominate trade into Europe by land through through these rails and these highways and in doing that they were building ports and building highways and investing the local economies but by by providing debts and by helping governments facilitate all this and everybody's afraid oh China's gonna take over the world by getting everybody indebted to it well it's turned out that the belt and road initiative is kind of floundering it's in deep deep trouble the Chinese have funded a lot of projects all over the world that are not particularly economically viable then are viable for the for the host countries that are viable for the Chinese and indeed it appears that China has now has poured into these different projects over the last 20 or so year over the last I'd say 10 years they poured into it you know 128 bailouts where they had a bailout companies bailout governments to the tuna 250 billion dollars not 250 billion dollars in the United States into the bailing out countries doesn't seem like that big of an amount because we do when we do bailouts we do trillion dollar bailouts we do it right we do it big but the Chinese economy is not as big as ours Chinese Chinese people are really poor as compared to us and yet the Chinese are having to bail out all of these projects all over these places now some people say that allows them to take ownership it doesn't work exactly like that there's a huge backlash they're not taking ownership of a lot of it it's just more debt for the Chinese and the Chinese are you know wallowing in debt over the belt and road initiatives things are not going as well as everybody else thought they would they would go in addition if you look at Chinese cities Chinese cities are buried in debt during particularly during COVID but really leading up to COVID Chinese cities were funding real estate they were doing all kinds of stimulus projects to show the GDP was high and because government spending is counted in GDP and and to meet their quotas vis a vis the central government well during COVID they started spending even more in order to keep the economy's afloat and of course for them COVID is an economic phenomena because of zero COVID policies that lasted from 2020 until this until last year until 2022 right so it lasted almost three years they've been pouring gazillions of dollars into all kinds of projects stimulus keeping the economy afloat somehow by taking on debt and by funding unproductive projects it's gonna take years maybe decades for this debt to be paid off this debt is is in the trillions trillions of dollars or at least significantly over over a trillion I mean just Guangdong China's biggest province you know is spending you know 1.2 trillion dollars on 1500 different projects in 2023 that is the the province spending so we're talking about massive amounts of money being spent on infrastructure and other things that at the end of the day I'm not going to pay them back but this is what central governments do this is what bureaucracies do they're very good at spending as long as they can borrow money they will they'll spend but you have to pay the pipe up the real estate market and real estate companies in China already feeling that and I suspect we will see a general slowdown in Chinese economy over time all right I see a ton of super chat questions so I'm going to do these I also have two from yesterday that I have to cover quickly so let me cover those and also catch up to all these other super chat questions thank you everybody you guys have been very generous today okay clocks this is from yesterday I suspect you're right that people are always thinking binaries the way to this is binaries to the republican democrat the way to win is by getting objectivism to become one of those binaries most likely through taking over the republican party over the next hundred years no no no no no you see this is the problem the republican democrat binary is the least important of all the binaries that is the only way for us to take over the republican party is to get people to stop thinking in binaries because as long as they think in binaries they won't accept reason as we understand it they won't expect egoism as we understand it and they won't accept capitalism as we understand so maybe they'll accept so they won't accept us taking over the republican party that reject the republican party and choose a different binary a different alternative to democrats if we want to change the world we have to get people thinking rationally thinking rationally is not thinking in binaries all right um michael asked yesterday do you see a dramatic increase in wages over the next few decades well i mean i there's real potential for that i see a real potential for dramatic increases in wages generated by things like ai generated by big advancement in technology and i think ai might be that big advancement the problem is that you've got to drag on wages from government spending government regulations government controls government limitations on entrepreneurs so what is the net effect of those two forces hard to tell but i fear that it is negative that is is not beneficial to wages all right west for fifty bucks says obviously you on was replaced by an ai but doesn't have his voice down right that's only that's the only rational explanation i think that's right and it's why i'm pro ai because i am ai so actually i think i'm an i i'm natural intelligence not artificial intelligence you could argue yeah anyway but yep thanks west really appreciated adam says catching up on my live shows but what wanted to contribute to sunday's show a living a moral life in an irrational world well you kind of contributed you got me thinking about that adam so i thank you for forgetting me thinking in that direction in our one-on-one and that got me at least to do that show and there's a lot more that can be said about that topic and we will in the future all right kfax says did you see alexa science creature gunning gpt for gpt three quadrails suppressed pro fossil fuel responses for example asking for pro ff arguments which got attention in december now gpt four is no such bias yes i i i noticed that so gpt four is better writing about biases on ai actually helps reduce the bias because the ai in a sense notices it and can learn from it and if you link to the alternative explanations that is always helpful and beneficial for the so the more good stuff we write the more good stuff we produce the more good stuff we reference the more good stuff we share the more good stuff ai picks up the better ai will be presenting our ideas another reason to share share share alexa stuff share my stuff share aroa stuff share i meant video shake learn to pick up video share share get it out there into the public space so the gpt can pick it up and include it include it right in the uh in the answers that it gives all right andrew asks an abyssal view of man is required to respond to ai with fear that what men will do um with it is commit mass murder but many would claim that it is historically accurate using new technology for war what do you say yeah i mean people will use new technology for war um but look we haven't used nuclear weapons against since you were shiman agasaki we saw the devastating power we know uh what can actually happen and and how bad it can get so we stopped using them we will use ai i believe that in the future robots will fight wars but let's also hope that as this kind of technology advances uh you know it helps actually and i think gpt has the potential to do this it helps actually liberate people all over the world thus reducing the prevalence of war so i i think technology actually reduces war uh you know we haven't had many wars in the last 80 years you know look at what's happening in russia now that's a warning sign we didn't have wars during the capitalist period relative capitalist period of the 19th century so what we need is to brace more freedom that is i'm guarantee not to use devastating technologies in war but that a part of this is hopefully the good guys will have better technology and thus be able to use it to win wars faster and with your casualties west says ai will increase productivity which should which should make things cheaper for everyone yes also by allowing us to be more productive we can probably work less hours give us more time to be productive in other areas of our life yes and that will create jobs for people to satisfy those needs i i like to use the pedicure manicure example i mean 30 years ago it was very rare to see a shop doing pedicures and manicures um it was something that some people did you know relatively wealthy not that often today pedicure and manicure is at every strip mall at least in california every strip mall has one the the thousands of them they're everywhere and it's not a big deal to get a pedicure manicure it's something everybody does a lot of people do so um that is the kind of jobs that are you know created if you will um by the fact that we are we become wealthy um all right mike says my daughter-in-law is going to portuiko in april to help evacuate all the animals and close the zoo because the animals are suffering poor condition you want to give us a pr status in a future sure i mean generally pr nothing much is changing it's very inefficient very unproductive and and uh it's not going anywhere near it's it's it's real potential so i'm not surprised that jizu is run down a lot of portuiko is still run down there's a lot of work to do in portuiko but the work to be done is to liberate it and to free it up like most other places not your average algorithm um power is not controlling other people power is controlling yourself trying to control other people in the first sign that you are entirely out of control controlling others is what weak people think power looks like yeah but that's what you know a lot of successful power lusters look at our politicians look at look at putin look at look at qixi in china that's the conception of power they have and that's the conception of power they implement remember there are two forms of power there's power over in a sense reality which is what a scientist and engineer a productive businessman has and and there is power there's economic power that comes from accumulating wealth through trade and then there is political power and political power is power over other people political power is power of a gun of a fist of physical force and that's the power we should reject the clock that says is it immoral to own section eight housing apartments and if he's society obviously they wouldn't exist but at the moment the government pays me every month guaranteed and i don't have to pay for maintenance on the building um yeah i mean i i don't see it as immoral uh is immoral to do it a lot of things wouldn't exist in a in a in a free market in a capitalist market so no i mean you're not you know this is money that would be paid out anyway uh you're not increasing i don't think by using this section eight you're not increasing it beyond what it would be used otherwise so no i i would not consider it as immoral all right whoops i didn't mean to do that collin asks um the how to live up all life in an irrational world episode from the weekend was excellent amazing life advice with the value of membership alone thank you uh thanks collin i mean i mean you really all these compliments about that show really suggest that you guys miss the uh you're on rules for life shows uh which i used to do um you miss that kind of positive application to your own life advice for living your own life so i don't know maybe i should just have one of those um even if it's repetitive to what i did last year just to keep the top of mind uh in your own mind and of course if anybody wants to sponsor one of those shows feel free to uh sponsor a show like that but yes i i i i i do it does seem to me that there is a real eagerness and desire for um for shows like the rules for life so i'll try to do more of those you want did you hear about the restrict act it is intensely authoritarian to outlaw vpns think it will pass oh they can outlaw vpns god then they become like uh they become like china they become like china that would be horrible i hope it doesn't pass i hope it doesn't pass but no i had not heard of that i heard of the executive order that biden just signed that restricts the ability to use certain types of uh listening devices a commercial i guess uh listening devices but i think that's something different robert says from grace under pressure i appreciate that thank you uh equal to reality new mic money as i said i just need to figure out why this computer will not connect to the mic i already have which worked fine uh roland old mic money thank you roland jake up with this with coven against australian tga doc released submitted january 2021 up fiza data released by foia no info spiked degrade circulation potential autoimmune disease noted no no study lipid nano well i i'll have to i i don't know what you expect of me i'd have to look and and find what it is and then comment on it all right submitted january 2021 come on guys um michael i had a professor challenge me that's saying fee will is self-evident because we see it like saying the earth is flat is self-evident because we see it what is wrong with this analogy well first of all you don't see those as flat um if you if you uh it doesn't take much uh even through vision this is how the greeks understood the world was not flat you know you can see the horizon you can see the ship going over horizon and you can tell that the earth is not flat just by pretty pretty simply um there are illusions but your senses give you what exists out there indeed for all intents and purposes your little piece of the earth is flat um it's it's you know what you suspect in what you see is true now as as um as you gain knowledge about the world you expand the context of what you're seeing you expand the the understanding but this is the this is the difference free will stands at the base of all knowledge that is there is no thinking without free will there is no reason without free will there is no the professor challenging free will without free will in order to refute the idea free will one has to refute free will what one has to use free will so uh it's it's it's very existence a is observable and b once it once it isn't there there's just um if there's no free will then then there's no knowledge and there's no reason and there's no thinking and and there's no correcting because it just is what it is um it's probably a better way to phrase my answer for that um i mean i i highly recommend asking you that question michael for when we have greek salamiri on the show on call one of the one of the philosophers um and i money thanks for making sense thanks for appreciate it uh doc fox says do you know of the academic agent neema pavini he's an intellectual lynchpin for the right making a video countering his arguments which sway his less extreme let me uh let me let me copy paste this his book is popular's delusion um yeah that could be interesting i'm looking for videos stuff like that to do so thank you uh for you for for sending that i'll look i'll look him up i do not know him right now palo says tips to people on how to keep up with modern tech well depends what you mean um by how to keep up with modern tech i mean first the first thing is to be curious uh get be engaged or in chat gpt comes out or you can download or you can play around with it play around with it but look there the point of and it depends on how old you are and and if you're doing this in order to figure out uh career wise if you're doing it for fun um but just be engaged just read up about it test it try it download it uh think about it think about its implication for your own career and your own job uh but read read read read read read there's no you know if you're if you're 25 then read and and experiment and try right don't let technology pass you over i mean i i'm i'm uh almost 62 and i can't afford to let technology pass me over though there's some technologies i obviously uh don't go near but uh but don't let it go over you uh read about it and then and then the main thing is test it try it explore experiment engage in it right uh the future is yours you're 25 the future is technology you better be whatever your profession is whatever you're going to do in the future the future for you is technology so invest some time in understanding it in embracing it in making it a part of you so uh and the best way to do that is to use it is to use it and see how it applies um all right thank you everybody again i apologize for the tech problems um by the time that well the next show is while i'm on the road so that's a whole different set of equipment whole different set of problems um but um uh i will i will probably do a show tomorrow from medellin in columbia uh and i'll let you know how that goes uh let's see what else do i need to update you yes and by the time i get back home i will have fixed this i might be able to fix this somebody said reboot the system and that's exactly what i'm going to do i'm going to be able to fix this in the next few minutes uh by by doing that all right thanks everybody i will see you all in uh tomorrow from from columbia uh thanks for being patient with me i with me i really