Aella: Sex Work, OnlyFans, Porn, Escorting, Dating, and Human Sexuality | Lex Fridman Podcast #358

- It was really shocking to me. that nobody else was doing. anything creative with sex work. Like, for me it was like breathing, like, you're just doing sex and you're bored, I'm like, "What do you do?". "I dunno, let's try something funny.". Like, it's just the natural progression. And it felt to me. like there was almost no competition. Like I would just be really creative, and, like, immediately it was the top. not safe post on Reddit. I'm like, "Well, I didn't even try that hard.". - The following is a conversation with Aella, a sex researcher. who does some of the largest. human sexuality survey studies in the world. on everything from fetishes to relationships.

She's fearless in pursuing her curiosity on these topics. by asking challenging and fascinating questions, and looking for answers in a rigorous data-driven way, and writing about it on her blog, KnowingLess.com. She's also a sex worker, including OnlyFans and escorting, and is an exceptionally prolific creator. of thought-provoking Twitter polls. Aella and I disagree on a bunch of things, but that just made this conversation.

even more interesting. I like interesting people. In the full range of the meaning. that the word interesting implies. I'm currently reading. "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, and would be remiss if I didn't mention. one of my favorite quotes from that book. that feels relevant here. "The only people for me are the mad ones, "the ones who are mad to live, "mad to talk, mad to be saved, "desirous of everything at the same time,

"the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, "but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles. "exploding like spiders across the stars. "And in the middle you see the blue center light pop, "and everybody goes, 'Awww.'". This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors. in the description. And now, dear friends here's Aella. I feel like this conversation can go anywhere. Is that exciting or terrifying to you?

- I think it's more exciting. - The uncertainty exciting to you? - Yes. - [Lex] In conversations in general. or just this one? - I think conversations in general. Like, does anybody like have a certainty. that's really exciting? Maybe if the certainty is something new. - I mean, novelty always comes with uncertainty, right? Almost always. - That's right, I'm trying to think of a counterexample. - (chuckles) Immediately. You're uncomfortable with generalizations of that kind. - Like, always is always a really bold word to use. - But if it's truly novel. that means you don't really understand it, it's outside of your distribution.

So therefore it's gonna have. a bunch of uncertainty. But you don't think of it as uncertainty, you think about it as something new, but it actually also attracts you. because there's a lot of uncertainty surround it probably. Like what is this new thing? - Yeah. Like, annihilating the mystery. Like that drive. - Yeah. What about the danger of it? - It's like, I was just thinking of on the drive over. 'cause I was like, "I'm like a little nervous about doing this podcast.". And then I was like feeling. into the unpleasantness of it. Like the fear of what if something goes terribly wrong?

And then I was also feeling into, like, how much that feels like part of why it's exciting. Like, if I knew that it was going to go great, I don't know. - Did you actually imagine all the possible ways. it can go wrong? - Not like all of them, but I was like, "What if I say something really dumb, "or like you ask me a question and I answer it in a way. "that makes me sound like a lot less capable than I am.". I'm like really afraid of being perceived. as stupid or something. I was also thinking about this on the way over, like, I'm kind of risk averse in some ways, I don't like driving fast in cars, 'cause I was driving very carefully here.

'cause the roads are bad. And then I was thinking about, I'm very like pro risk in other ways, like being really exposed to like a wide variety of people. who might hate you. And I think like from the outside that might look fine, but I think the monkey brain is really sensitive. to lots of people yelling at you. for whatever problems that you seem to have-. - So that's the big risk you're taking is. putting yourself out there as an intellectual, like through your writing. and then a lot of people yelling at you. Is that the worst embarrassment. you're can experience? - It's pretty bad, yeah. I think the worst embarrassment is if I put something.

out there that I failed to like be properly skeptical of. in myself and then people are like, "Oh, we caught this thing that you didn't catch.". I think that's the biggest terror. - Yeah, from looking at your reading and listening. to your interviews, you seem to be very defensive. and worried about being a good scientist. - [Aella] Yeah. Definitely. - About you're methodology. - [Aella] Yes. - (chuckles) And funny enough, you get attacked on that methodology. even though, you know, I'm a fan of psychology, of like the academic psychology,

and it's kind of disappointing often how non-rigorous. their work is, how small the sample size and so on, and how big and ambitious, over ambitious, the proclamations about results is, especially when the news reports on it. Now you're both the researcher, the scientist, and the reporter, (laughs) right. So like that's what you have with the blog. Your sample size is often gigantic. The methodology is right there, the data's right there,

you provide the data and then you're like raw and honest. with your interpretation of the data. Like there's an honesty, authenticity to it. So it's actually really refreshing, I don't know why people criticize it. I think this is what psychologists. are probably terrified about being transparent, and transparent in that way is because they'll get attacked. for their methodology, so they wanna cloak it. in a sort of layer of authority.

"I'm from this institution, it was peer reviewed, "this kind of all these layers, and I'm also not gonna share. "the data with you, and I'm also gonna pretend. "like most psychology studies and not replicable. "I'm just going to pretend there's authority to it.". - I think it works on a lot of people. Like from the outside you're like, "Ah, the scientists with the white lab coats. "with credentials, those are the people. "who are like doing science.". And like doing science is, you know, you have like fancy terms that other people. don't really understand. And to be fair, like I have a lot to learn. I'm still like, I'm self teaching, I'm like learning through people, learning as I go.

I'm definitely not super knowledgeable about this stuff. But a lot of what those people are doing. in science is not that hard. And a lot of people like don't try to learn it. because it seems so like elevated. And this is one thing that really bothers me, I think, like, everybody can do science. Like if you just have this aspect of curiosity, and like you just really wanna figure something out, you can go and start, you know, asking people questions, doing surveys, like writing down the answers, and then you can go learn how to look at that data. in a way that gives you more information about the world.

Like it's very simple and straightforward, if you just approach it humbly and earnestly, you know, like, "Please let's figure this out together.". But people like are, I think, self crippled in this. because they view this as like relegated to the domain. of the experts and, you know, the fancy scientists. And I think that makes me feel really sad. - You're almost attracted to the questions. you're not supposed to ask. - Oh yeah. Also, yes. Which might contribute to the controversy. - Not exclusively probably. - Oh no.

- But you're just not limited by, like, part of your curiosity is asking questions. that seem common sense. Like some of the most controversial questions. are like around sex. It's like everybody thinks and talks and does sex. I mean, it's the driver of human civilization, and yet there's so little like rigorous discussion. about, like, the philosophical. and the scientific questions around it. It's like it gets really weird to be able to discuss them. It becomes tricky to discuss them.

- Yeah. It's supercharged. 'Cause everybody has a really strong opinion, like whether or not, you know, pornography is damaging to society, or like how sex corresponds to gender, or like what kind of sexuality is acceptable. Like, can you have sexual preferences. that in themselves are immoral? People get very angry about it. - Well, the sad part is they're not just opinionated, but most of us, our relationship with sex is, I think, I guess I wanna say not rigorous. - I think it's very difficult to be rigorous about sex.

Like, I would consider sexual urges to be kind of elusive. to introspection and in a way that's a little bit. disproportionate to a lot of other things. Like, you could like, you know, introspect about. how I want other people to like me and how, where my insecurities lie. But sex is one of those black box things. A really common thing is for people to, if you have a fetish, you, sort of, check back in your childhood to see an event. that corresponds to that fetish and then you like develop. a narrative, like, "Ah, this event in my childhood. "must have caused this fetish.". And so it causes people to be biased.

towards like a concrete, coherent causative way. that events happen, or that sexual fetishes happen. This is just like one example of like why I think. it's really hard to be rigorous with introspection. 'cause we can't avoid, you just wanna tend towards making like coherent narratives. Which I think is not always the correct way to explain it. - The narratives that are connected to childhood and so on. how they originate? Yeah. - Yeah. - I mean we'll talk about fetishists. 'cause you have a lot of really interesting writing on that. Just actually zooming out,

I should mention you tweeted, I wrote this down, you tweeted, "I do not understand how to have. "normal conversations with people in person. "if I'm not on drugs.". So I guess let's both agree. to not have a normal conversation, I guess. Assuming you're not on drugs now, or if you are. you don't have to tell me. - I tool like a very small amount of phenibut. which is a nootropic. I dunno if that counts. - Is that a drug? Well, I guess I'm on caffeine. Yeah. - So we're both? - Drugged up. - We're good enough to have a normal conversation.

- We don't have to. What is normal anyway? What do you think is the primary driver. of human civilization? Is it the desire for sex, love, power, or immortality? Like avoiding the fear of death, constructing illusions that make us forget. about our terror over mortality. So sex, love, power, death? - Is a Twitter poll? Is more options. (laughs) - This is reality. Not everything maps perfectly into a Twitter poll. But in this case because there's four options.

and it is a small number of characters, it does. But I'd like to think I am more, you know what, I think your Twitter polls. are fundamentally interesting. There's something about the brevity of a poll. limiting to a set of choices. and having an existential crisis. and searching for the answer that's beautiful. - That combination- - Well, this one is a big one. Like what do you think is behind it? - Do you believe that there is one primary driver? Like, do you think that it can be understood. in the terms of primary drivers?

- Yeah, I think, well maybe it's an engineering perspective, like trying to reverse engineer the brain. I don't think we're equipped or understand enough. about the mind to get there-. - Yeah, like what's the primary driver of a tree? - Yeah. Well then it gets to the question of what is life? What is a living organism? - To self-replicate, probably. - That's a very clean simplification, but I think life is more interesting. than just self-replication.

- Yeah. But it sounds like there's a curiosity in you. that you're trying to like poke at, and I don't understand exactly what that curiosity is. - So if I had to dedicate 1,000 years to understand. one of these topics, which one would be the most fruitful, I guess, is the indirect thing I'm asking? - Fun. - No, well fun. To me everything is fun, but (laughs). - [Aella] Really? - Yeah. I mean, I'm with David Foster Wallace. The key to life is to make sure that everything's unborable. or should be unborable, nothing is boring,

everything is fun. Like everything, I could just literally sit, I honestly, 'cause I don't think, I don't know where you got that glass, but that glass exists and I forgot it exists, and it was really fun to me to know that now it's there. - But let's talk about like really unpleasant things. Like, if you're in like a deep agony. - Yeah, that's fun. - Okay. - That's fun 'cause it's like, I mean, yeah, heartbreak, it's like knowing that I'm capable of that. It like, from, (laughs) you know,

we're all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars. So when you're in that gutter. for some reason the stars look brighter, right. So, like, whenever you're going through a difficult time, or whenever you see maybe other people. being shitty to each other, it makes you like really appreciate when they're not. The contrast makes life kind of amazing. I'm reading a bunch of books, and one of them is "Brave New World". where they remove, you know, where they remove the ups and downs of life,

partially through drugs but over sexualization. and all that kind of stuff. And I feel like you need that, you need the ups and downs of life, the dark, you know, you need the dark to have happiness, to have like a deeply intense feeling of affection. towards another thing or a human being. Yeah. Yeah. So everything's fun. But fun is also a weird word to define. 'cause fun I think for a lot of people.

That's why I talk about love a lot, I think love is a better word than fun, 'cause fun is like lighthearted, love is more intense. Like, I love that glass and the water that's in it. 'cause it's freaking awesome. Like, somebody made that glass, right? And, like, not have many mistakes, and like there's a, and the way it bends light in interesting ways, and the way water bends light in interesting ways. Like, I can see part of your arm through that water,

that's freaking amazing. Everything is amazing. (laughs). I'm with the "Lego Movie". Anyway. But if, like, from a scientific perspective, if I were to investigate sex, I don't know why I put love in there, let's just narrow down the Twitter poll, let's focus on the basics here; sex, power or death, immortality. If I were to try to, like, from a neuroscience, neurobiology perspective.

or reverse engineer through building AI systems. that focus on these kinds of dynamics, exploring the game theoretic aspects of it, exploring the sort of cognitive modeling aspects of it, which one would get me to a deeper understanding. of the human condition? That's the question. Sex? Okay, Nietzsche is the will to power. Freud and the bunch is all about sex, and then death, Liv just Liv Boeree,

brilliant previous guest on this podcast, she's just released a video where on her bedside. was the book "Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker, which, of course, she would have on her bedside. But his whole work is that everything is motivated. by our trying to escape the cold, harsh reality. that we're going to die and we're terrified of it. One of the gifts and burdens for human beings.

is that we are cognizant of our own death. and that terrifies us. That's the theory. And because of that we do everything we can; we build empires to escape the fact that we're mortal. - Wouldn't this change quite a bit for religious people then. who don't believe that they're going to die? - Well, they created religion, the idea there to create myths, religions, you can create religions of all kinds, like-. - Yeah. But if this is like one of the defining things. that define civilization,

then we should expect to see like massive differences. between people who believe are gonna die. and people who don't. - Good. I love it. you to give like a scientifically here but, and have actually answers. Like there's a whole terror management theory where they do. write psychology-type papers and they do actual experiments. I can mention how their methodology is interesting. They prime with the discussion of death; like they take one certain set of people, they have a conversation with them, and another set of people they mention death to them. before the conversation to see how that affects their,

the nature of that conversation. It's really interesting 'cause death fundamentally alters. the nature of the conversation. Just even priming, like, reminding you. that you're going to die briefly changes a lot of things. - These kinds of priming papers usually not replicated. I just have like, I feel like I've heard a bunch of primary ones that. - [Lex] I think you have PTSD over. psychology papers that's not replicated. - I just did one, I just did a priming experiment on my own. and found it didn't have any effect. But again it's not the same- - Can't you just give me.

perilous statement summarizing. an entire scientific discipline of terror management theory. I don't know. People should, like, I haven't rigorously looked at how good. of it psychologically. I think it is interesting philosophically. the way Freud talked about the subconscious mind, philosophically it's an interesting discussion. Then you have to get rigorous with each for sure. But (laughs) the idea is that, like, it's not that religious people.

get rid of the terror of death. This is just one of the popular ways they create an illusion. on top of it, that's that idea, like, a myth that allows, that makes it easier for them to forget. to escape that terror. But everybody else does different methods, like you feel your days with, like, capitalism. is a whole religion of itself. Like the rat race for getting more and more. material possessions and so on. - Then couldn't you argue in the opposite direction? Like, let's say assume that we're Christians here.

and we're like, the atheists, you know, everybody has terror of hell and the atheist invent. this mythology where, you know, actually evolution is true. in order to escape their terror of hell. So that doesn't feel like a persuasive argument to me. But I used to be very, very Christian, and I did not have a terror of death. And then I lost my faith, and then I had a deep terror. of death set in for a few years. And it felt very different to me. - Well, so for "Denial of Death", I don't know if he says that it's actually possible. without really a lot of work to get to the actual terror.

Like, I think his claims. that in early, early, early childhood development, that's when the terror is real, and then we aggressively construct systems. around it of social interaction. to sort of construct illusions on top of it. I'm doing a half-ass description of this philosophy, but like, it isn't interesting to simplify. the human mind into underlying mechanisms.

that drive it. - Yeah, I was gonna say your thinking seems kind of poetic, like the way that you're sort of handling these concepts. feel like more like aesthetically driven-. - I think this theme is gonna continue. throughout conversation as we talk. about relationships and sex. Yes, for sure. I think so. And I think your thinking seems to be very driven. by how can I construct an experiment. to test this hypothesis? - Yeah, something like that.

- Yeah. But there's some things, especially that have to do with the human mind. that are really messy, really difficult to understand, there's so many uncertainties and mysteries around. that we don't yet have the tools to collect the data. Like, one of your favorite tools is the survey, is asking people questions, and then figuring out. different ways to indirectly get the at the truth. because there's flaws to the survey. You kind of learn about those flaws. and you get better and better at asking the right questions. and so on. But that's not, that's indirect access to the human mind.

- But do you think like poetic narratives are? I'm not like saying poetic narratives are bad. Like, I think it's like a cool way. of like handling concepts, but I'm not sure that they are more rigorous. - No, no, no. - Okay. - No, but like they might be the more correct, like philosophy might be the right way to discuss things. that we're really far from understanding. - Yeah. I mean they might be a more useful shorthand. Yeah. Like morality, like, I don't think morality makes any sense, but it's really useful shorthand to use when handling. concepts in a lot of the time.

- Right. Like ethics and morality. You could construct studies that ask different questions. like, you know, just having worked with autonomous vehicles. a lot the trolley problem gets brought up, and I don't know, you can construct. all kinds of interesting surveys about the trolley problem, but does that really get at some deep moral calculus. that humans do? It's sexy because people like write. click-bait articles about it, but does it really get to like what you value more,

five grandmas or like three children or whatever, like they construct these arguments of like, if you could steer a train, if you could steer an autonomous car, which do you choose? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it's possible with some of those. to construct. Like, sometimes the fuzzy area, there's some topics that are fuzzy and will forever be fuzzy. given our limited cognitive capabilities. - I dunno, there's a way of looking at things. where it's like, for example the childhood fetish thing. that I was talking about,

like, where do your fetishes come from? Like, you can develop a narrative where it's like, you know I think like this kind of thing is, you know, when you're surrounded by feet when you're a child, this caused foot fetishes. And this is like kind of a cool narrative. And I think a lot of people's ideas about philosophy. follow the same sort of thing. Like what is the narrative that is cool? And I think this is useful for meaning making, like, I'm very pro meaning-making. Like when you're talking about everything is fun. because you know the contrast or whatever. I very much ascribed to that, I really enjoy that philosophy.

I also find everything to be very delightful. But, and this isn't like a question of truth, right, we're not, like, where's the true delight. that we're objectively measuring? Like, this is a frame, a poetic frame, that you're using to like sort of change. the way the light hits the world around you. And that's super useful. because it, like, makes you happier or something. - Yeah. But also gets to the truth or something. - [Aella] Yeah. I guess what is the truth? (laughs). - Yet another question. What is truth?

You've, actually, to jump back, you believe that free will is an illusion. So why does it feel like ". "I'm free to make any decision I want? - Well, it's a cool illusion. I think it's probably, like, where our sense. of identity comes. - It's a fun illusion. Oh. - Like, when you really meditate on your sense of identity, at least for me it seems like it comes down. to the sense of choice, like, "Oh I am doing the thinking.". Like, what does it mean to do with thinking?

It's like, "Ah, something in me has exerted agency. "over having this thought or not having this thought.". Like the sense of self really comes down to choice. And so when I say that, like, free will is an illusion, I also mean there's something like the self is an illusion, identity is a trick of the light. - But it's a really fun one. - Yeah. - You think a lot about your identity? - [Aella] I have occasionally. - Yeah. Like you really struggle with it. You're proud of it. I do too. It's not, we have different journeys but, so-.

- I really take a lot of delight in it. I used to be very into like deconstructing it, like maybe you know, I did a bunch of, like, way too much LSD for a while, and at that point very, no ego. And now I'm like very ego, and I really enjoy having a lot of ego. - I actually happen to know like everything about you. - Really? Wow. - Yeah. Like more than you do, it's interesting. - That's fascinating. Wait, can you solve my problems? - Yes. All of them, I did thorough research. Okay. What is consciousness then?

I actually wrote that as a quote, what is consciousness? (both chuckling). To remind myself? So like how's that tie in together with free will. and identity and all of that. - What is consciousness is like. one of the biggest questions ever. I think, I do think that people often get confused. when talking about consciousness. 'Cause I think people are referring to two separate concepts. and often, like, combining them into one thing. Like we asked a question, you know, is AI going to be conscious? And I think this is kind of the wrong question.

Like we can identify signs of consciousness, like, "Ah, they seem to refer to themselves,". but this is not necessarily proof of consciousness. in the same way that like dream characters. acting exactly the way normal human people do, in your dream is not evidence. that they themselves are conscious. So like signs of consciousness. are not proof of consciousness. But there is something that we definitely know, which is, like, I currently am conscious, I can tell because right, I'm, like, just directly observing my experience. And so, like, there's one kind of consciousness which is,

"I am directly observing my experience,". and that you cannot replicate it. Like, I cannot observe two experiences, it is necessarily singular and it is necessarily certain. Like, you can make all the arguments you want, like, I'm still directly observing, it's not a thing that's subject to reason. Whereas our other thing is conscious, this is something that's replicable, like, you can apply it to multiple people, it's something that's not certain, like almost definitionally not certain. Like, we don't actually know if there is, you know, an internal experience. So my argument is that like when people are talking about. other things having experience,

they're using a different concept than the thing. that they're actually looking at when they look at. their own experience. I think they're two different things. - Definitionally not possible. No, if you understand the mechanism of consciousness, you'll be able to measure it probably, right? - Yeah. But what are you measuring? Like, I think there's like a subtle difference. Like, when you're asking the question, "Is this other thing conscious?". - Yeah. The easy thing to measure is like a survey. Does this thing appear conscious? - [Aella] Yeah. - And then the hard thing is you understand. the actual mechanism of how consciousness arises.

in the physics. of the human brain- - Yeah, but you. do it in a dream presumably. Like, if you had a very good dream, a very good simulation. But we could then have somebody in a simulation or a dream. where they go through and they fully understand, you know, they do all the tests and the tests come back exactly. the way they would expect them to. But from the outside we're like, "Well this is misleading, they're not actually conscious.". Like, your dream characters aren't conscious, right, probably. - I don't know, are you asking or are you telling? - I'm, like appealing to an intuition. (both chuckling). - But it sounds like you're driving towards the narrative.

You did a poll about men and women and dreams. - [Aella] Yeah. - Those had some kind of difference. I couldn't tell what the difference was. except that more men than women-. - Quite a lot more women dream vividly than men. - Oh! - Which I actually found. in my chaos survey. So I did a survey, maybe you know, I just had people- - I know everything, remember? - You do know, yes. I'm sorry. So as you clearly know-. - I'll try not to talk down to you. through this conversation. 'cause I know, and I not only know everything, I know how your future looks like-. - [Aella] Really? - And how everything ends. Yeah. - So you could probably win all the prediction markets.

on my life. - Yeah. - Cool. - So we should also mention. that you have like prediction markets. You have like votes that you, what's the site called again? - Manifold. - Manifold. And one of them was, "Will I be on the Lex Fridman podcast?". - [Aella] Yeah. - And I voted. I invested everything I own into the yes. Is there such thing as insider trading on there? Does that goes against the terms of the-. - No, I think insider trading is part of the information. So it's supposed to be. - Oh, I see. And then I realized it's actually public information.

that I voted, 'cause, like, I think my face shows up there. I was like, "Dammit". It's gonna influence- - Fake account. - You could make the fake account, or I could be lying, right? - Yeah, that's true. - And then dump. the stock or whatever. - You know, I tried to manipulate, somebody made a market, like, "Is Aella going to post a pole," spelled P-O-L-E, "on her Twitter?". Like a photo. And I was like, "I'm gonna manipulate this market.". So I like fucked around with it and I voted no. And then I accidentally posted a photo of a pole. without thinking, so it's like. a double poll. - Like self-sabotage. - Yeah, I accidentally, fucked up my own market.

- That's like the reverse of insider trading. - [Aella] Yeah. (chuckles). - What were we talking about? Oh, the women and the men and the difference, the vivid dreams and the markets. I forget what the market, oh 'cause I can perfectly predict your future. But then it's not fun. I like the romance of unpredictability, and so I like to, even though I know everything, I like to forget everything. - Yeah. - Very, very Buddhist of you. - Yeah. The river. "No, no man in the river wants, whatever, "the footsteps," however that goes. - That's one of my favorite questions is like,

if you could press a button and then have. all of your wants fulfilled, anything that you want? So it's like such a rapid degree. that you don't really experience the want. Like as the want arises, it then is like completed as immediately, so that you are completely without want. Like, would you press that button? - [Lex] 100% not. - Yeah, I didn't think you would. - No, no, no, no. Because immediately everything starts being fun. The first, it's only fun the first time. - But you want it to be fun. - But, like, what would be my source of fun? I feel like I would've, like, on day four just to get off,

I would need to like do like nuclear war. 'cause it'll escalate quickly. (both laughing). I feel like if everything is, I assume you mean, like, something that like is not just normal human things but-. - Yeah. Magical world. - Magical world. Then you start escalating really quickly. Like I wonder, I'll probably do like, I want everybody to just fly into the air. and hover in the air. Everybody. And then you're like, "Oh, life is meaningless.

"Like why does, like, you go, I feel like you get...". No, I actually, that'd be a really interesting experiment, like what are the limits? Like, are we all capable. of becoming psychopaths, essentially? Like, I like to believe not, there's a very hard limits on that, like in our own mind, like of basic compassion, 'cause I love being compassionate. towards other human beings. And it's one of the things I think about. if you give me power, like a lot of power,

like absolute power, and I think the power you mentioned. is the scariest kind of power. 'Cause it's like, it's not even power in this normal world, it's like magical power where you lose, it's a dream world power where you, like video game power, you don't even think of it as reality. You could just mess with the world. And I feel like that's terrifying. - Yeah, you'd basically be God. - God yeah, but without, like... I feel like the idea of God wants, like,

keep the things like functioning properly? - But then you would probably would, if you wanted to keep them functioning properly. Then it would rapidly, like you would never experience a time where you're like, "Oh no, that was a mistake because, like, before you even experienced that. the world would shift to match it. - Oh, interesting. No, I think I would actually, I take it back. I think I would regret the first time I hurt somebody. See in my visualization it was like a video game. where everybody's like NPC really dumb. No, I think the first time I witness pain from anybody,

that's when I would stop. And I would probably run into that very quickly. (chuckles) Like even just the hovering, make a person hover and then I'm gonna be probably. really upset with the hovering, right. And so I'm gonna be like, "No, don't do that anymore." (laughs). And then I'll probably go to, honestly, I'll just return back to my normal life. - Yeah. That's kind of what I feel like, like if I had the power to do anything, I think I would probably want to have a life very similar. to where I am now.

- Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's, it's like with Uber, like, it'd be probably more convenient to do certain things, but even then, like the struggle, like I got a flat tire so I had to fix that. Kind of, the flat tire makes everything more beautiful. It's like, "Cool, I could do like a normal manual thing.". But also it makes you like appreciate your car, appreciate transportation, appreciate the convenience, the transportation, all of it. - I know some people who would, like,

call this a bunch of copium, like you're just sort of making due with what you have. Like we wouldn't go back to Amish times. or like pre-technology because to like, in order to make ourselves appreciate things more, and so this seems like a hindsight reasoning. Which, like, I can appreciate that argument, but I don't know, I'm like-. - Anyone who uses, sorry to interrupt, the word copium in their argumentation. I think is suss- - Is suss. Yeah. - Is suss.

my entire argument now? - No, I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. Just go ahead. Sorry. I interrupted rudely the flow of thought. But, so you don't think so? In part you disagree with that kind of argument? - Yeah. 'Cause I think people have this idea. that if you like come to accept or like find meaning. in what you have now, this is sort of at odds with trying to improve it. and I don't find this to be the case. I find like the attempt to improve it to also be part of it.

Like I enjoy the fact that there's something, like, problematic going on because now I get the experience. of like striving to make it go away. And like that in itself is where the meaning lies. It's not just that things are bad, it's that there's things are bad. and we're trying to stop it, and to also-. - Exactly. If you combine that with a sense of optimism. that the future can be better. Yeah. That feeds into this productive effort. of making things better. And it somehow makes the vision of the things. that are better, more intense, having experienced shitty things.

- Yeah. - So we talked about free will and consciousness. and what drives human civilization. Question left unanswered. It's a homework problem for the reader. Okay. - I get like a scoreboard at the end, the amount of questions? - That we didn't answer. - Complete successfully. versus not. - Like polls? - Yeah. - Can we talk about some practical things? - [Aella] Sure. - So one of the many amazing things,

I think of you as a researcher, but you've also been doing research in the field. - Yeah. Field work. (chuckles) - Field work. - The Jane Goodall. of sex work. - Yeah. Yeah, right-. - How did you get, what's the short and the long story. of how you got into sex work? - How did I get into sex work? Well, I mean there's a whole like childhood thing. where I was conservatively homeschooled. - Do you wanna actually talk about your childhood? I think it's interesting 'cause you also worked.

in a factory. It's like your childhood is really fascinating. and difficult, traumatic. So, and you've written about it, there's a lot of ways we can talk about it. But maybe, what are the things you remember, the good and the bad of your childhood, of your, maybe, interaction with your father? - Yeah, my dad probably has. narcissistic personality disorder. And so it was very centered. on very controlling childhood, immensely so. We were homeschooled and kind pretty isolated.

from the outside world, like, we didn't know anybody else who wasn't homeschooled. We went through a program called Growing Kids God's Way, which was very, is like the kind of program. where you're not supposed to pick up babies when they cry. to train them that they can't manipulate the parents. Because, like, a baby crying was viewed as like, you're just teaching them from an early age. that they're allowed to make the parents do. what the kids want. And they're very against this philosophy. So, you know, that combined. with a narcissistic personality disorder, dad was pretty rough.

- So controlling. - Super controlling. Yeah. - And developing and feeding the self-critical aspect. of your brain. - Yeah, very much. It was, you know, I was like lazy. but I was never gonna accomplish anything in life. I was gonna move out of the house and realize. how good I had it at home. You know, the classic stuff. He was very like logical and smart though, and so he'd also like teach us logic stuff. I remember some of my earliest memories. of him like giving me basic logic puzzles. Like the dog has three legs, you know, how many dogs have four legs, and I would mess up and, but he was a evangelist,

basically a Christian evangelist. So we had, like, bible study five nights a week. I memorized I think 800 verses of the Bible. by the time before I became an adult. Yeah, and it was very patriarchal also, so I was expected to become a housewife basically. They're like, "Oh you can go to college to meet a man. "and also to get a little bit of education. "so that you can homeschool your own kids.". Like we were explicitly told that women. were subordinate to men in regards. to, like, making decisions when you're married.

Our pastor's daughter was not allowed to leave home. because she would be outside of the authority of a man. So when she got married she was allowed to leave, 'cause she was never allowed to live in a house. where she was not under a hierarchy. So this is like the kind of culture that we lived in. - So there's a hierarchy. and there's a gender aspect to the hierarchy, there's men at the top of that hierarchy. - [Aella] Men at the top. - Okay. But your own psychology and your own mind, so most of that self-critical brain is bad, right.

- It was confusing 'cause he told me I that I was smart. but also that I would fail. But I think- - But not smart enough, right? You're like smart but not smart enough. - Smart but like not virtuous or something. - Okay. So there's okay, right, there's always a flaw. - (chuckles) There's always a flaw. I think a lot of it was, a lot of the fuckedupness. of my brain came from feeling. like I didn't have the authority to think. 'cause it was so like carefully, like, suppressed. Like, my ability to like express or have any sort of power. was just absolutely annihilated, like systemically.

Like psychologically, they would do. like psychological torture mechanisms to make sure. that, like, I wasn't actually thinking on my own, or like being able to deviate. from anything anybody ever told me, to the degree that it's still ingrained in me. Like, I once was with a friend, we were traveling and he wanted me to hop a turn style. It was like very late at night, the train was here and I could not. physically force myself to do it. Like, he was, like, yelling, at me, "Come on, do it.". Like, "No", but I was trying so hard. to make my body cross the line and it was just, it's like embedded in my physical being. to like be unable to do stuff like that,

which is really annoying. - So you're not free to take action in this world. - Yeah. Some of it. So that was, I think, the most annoying part of my upbringing. - Would you classify it as, like, suffering? - At the time, yeah, definitely. Well, it's confusing 'cause like. when I was a child it was just painful. in the sense that, like, things suck, but it was placed in a meaning framework, right. Like it is good, it is virtuous to submit to your parents. and do what they want.

If they tell you to say goodbye to your best friend. forever and never talk to them again, you go do that without complaining. And so like I would go do something like that, and I would, like, it would suck, it really was like concretely painful, but it was also placed in this narrative where I was like. fulfilling some sort of greater purpose. - [Lex] Sure. - And so it's very confusing to refer to it as suffering. because there's so many painful things we do today. that are placed in the narrative of a greater purpose. that, like, I think I would agree with. Like, I go get a medical procedure done, that sucks, but I'm like, "Ah, this is helping me in the long run.".

But like say if I got abducted to an alien planet. and they're like, "By the way all of those medical procedures you got done, "like you didn't have to get them done, "those are totally unnecessary.". Then I might get really upset about it. - Yeah. I wouldn't trust those aliens though. 'cause they probably wanna do different. medical procedures. - This is true. (chuckles). - I saw a thumbnail for a video that I'm proud of myself. for not clicking on about a man who has claimed. that he had sex with aliens. And I also thought- - And how do you feel. for not clicking on it? - 'Cause I was wondering, 'cause I would probably watch it for like 20 minutes.

and then I should be doing work. - [Aella] Oh, I see. - So like, and I'm actually happy 'cause I get to imagine. all the different possibilities that could have been. for that man who had sex with aliens. - You have like a really high, like, resting happiness state? - Yes. Yeah. That's probably like a mushroom state, yeah. - [Aella] Wow. Do you do mushrooms? - I've done mushrooms before. It was very awesome. - Cool. - But like more intensely awesome. But, like good because I was just looking at nature,

it makes nature even more beautiful I think. But it's already pretty beautiful. I haven't done MBMA. People say that I should. - It's very nice. Yeah. - Yeah. Anyway, I'm already, yeah, (chuckles). what did you call it? Resting happiness state? - [Aella] Yeah. High resting happiness. - Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. But it's not like, some of it is genetic. that you're able to notice the beauty in the world, and some of it is practiced where you realize.

focusing on the negative things in life, like unproductively is, it just doesn't help your mind flourish. So like you just notice that and it's like, I mean, I think people with like depression learn that, or like probably with trauma too, it's like, there's certain triggers. Like if you suffer from depression, you have to kind of consciously know there's going to be. triggers that will, like, force you to spiral down.

And so just avoid those triggers. Some people have that with diet, with food and so on. And so I just don't like, whenever there's shady things happening or shady people, unless I can help. Unless I can somehow help, like, why focus on it. Yeah. Anyway. Back to your up upbringing. What was the journey of escaping that? - Well, I left home like kind of early because my dad.

and I were not getting along by the time. I was a teenager. But I was still Christian for a while, and I lost my faith after I think I moved away. and I started having friends that weren't religious, so like weren't raised. in the super conservative environment that I came from. And I think, this was not conscious at the time, this was my hindsight story, but I believe that, like, being exposed to a culture in which. I had the capacity to believe, like allowed my brain. to actually seriously consider the thought that maybe. all of this stuff was untrue, that I'd been taught like 6,000 year old Earth.

and evolution is a lie, you know, macroevolution. and all of this stuff. Because, like, when you're immersed. in an environment like that, I don't think you actually have a choice. Like, your brain has to believe these things. 'cause this is a survival thing. Like, if you believe this, you'll be, like, if you believe the wrong thing, you'll be totally cast out. Even if they're not gonna cast you out, you're gonna be cast out in like communing with others, because we were always told that you can't like trust. non-believers really; they don't have a moral compass, they're gonna screw you over.

And so I'm like, "Oh, I can't be that, "like, everybody's gonna outcast me internally.". So anyway, I don't think I actually had the capacity. to seriously question my faith, even though I thought that I was questioning it quite hard. until I got into an environment where it was safe to do so. And once I started being able to make friends. who were not religious, I'm like, "Oh, if I lose my faith, "I'm still gonna have some sort of community.". And then at that time I went through some questioning. and then I lost my faith. - So in that, given your friends, given your situation, you now have the freedom to think essentially.

- Or at least the ability to think of something. that was acceptable in the new culture. Yeah. - Without, I mean, is there a danger of like adopting. the beliefs of the new culture? So like there's some aspect. of just being able to think freely, which you weren't able to do when you were growing up. Just to think, like, look at the world and wonder. how it works, that kind of thing. - Well, I mean you work it within certain boundaries, like, there's certain basic assumptions, and as long as you were following those basic assumptions,

which is, to be fair, is like kind of what we're doing now. Like we have, have I gone done the personal research. that, like, evolution is the thing that's going on, have I looked at like the age of the stones? No, I haven't, I'm trusting other people. Which I think is like a fair choice to make. given where I'm at right now. - But you're also assuming, like, there's causality in the universe, time is real. - Yeah. - That first of all, the thing that your senses are perceiving is real. You're assuming a lot of things.

- (laughs) Yeah. I think like it's better just to become. aware of the assumptions you're making, like, as opposed to not making those assumptions at all. Like, you have to assume something. And I did, it's very suspicious right, that I went out of this very conservative culture, and now I, well I guess I don't believe things. that are super in line with the current culture. I think this is why I feel a little bit safer right now. because, like, when I was Christian, I believe generally Christian things. But now I believe a bunch of things. that, like, people really hate. Like, I get canceled online all the time. I'm like, "Okay, this is a sign that maybe. "you're thinking independently if you're like able. "to think things that are completely at odds. "with the people around you.".

And, to be fair, this is a little bit easier to do. when it's like general culture. But it's much harder to do with your peer group; like the people that you trust, your friends, the people whose opinions you respect. Like, disagreeing with those people is very difficult. and I'm not very good at it. - Yeah. I do think that if you establish yourself. as a person who can be trusted and is a good human being, you have a lot more freedom to then explore ideas. that are different from your peer group. So like, those seem like, if you separate the space of ideas.

versus some kind of like deeper sense. of what this person is, like that they're an interesting. and trustworthy and good human being. - Well, like, is there somebody that you respect. who you think they're significantly smarter than you? And can you imagine believing an idea that you've heard them. talk really disdainfully about? Like, how would you feel coming to me, like, I believe this thing that you find to be. - Yeah, I do all the time. - Oh. Yeah? - Yeah, yeah. - Maybe you're braver than me.

(both laughing). And to be fair, I support doing this, like I try to do this, but I think, like, subconsciously I notice. that I don't do it as much, and so I'm suspicious of myself. I'm like, "Oh, I wonder if I'm hiding to myself, "like actual curiosity about things. "that might deviate from my peer group.". Because I noticed that I'm not actually deviating with them. as much as I do with the outside world. - Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, like, 'cause I do see most people I interact with. are smarter than me, but I also have this intuitive feeling that dumb people, which I consider myself being, have wisdom.

So like in the disagreement, actually, I also believe in the power of conversation. and the tension of disagreement. So I think I even just disagreeing from a place, from a good place, from a place of like love and respect. for each other, I think I just believe in that. So it's not like individuals, you're disagreeing, you're like working towards arriving. at some deeper truth together, right. Even if the other person is smarter.

Maybe that's how I justify it for myself. I just, I'm also a fan of conversations. 'cause like I've seen, just listening to conversations, it seems like a great conversation more emerges from it. than the sum of its parts, right. Like somehow two people together can do, like, that dance of ideas can somehow create a cool thing. By the way, I enjoyed, I saw a video of you dancing at a bar drunk. (Aella laughing). It wasn't a bar drunk, you didn't look drunk,

but just the dancing, it was like ballroom dancing type of thing. I was like- - Yeah. - Yeah. - Something like that. - I've been doing a bit of tango dancing, I like it. - Argentine? - Hmm. - Nice. - I like stuff with the body in general, like wrestling or combat, like, usually when there's a tension you have to understand. the mechanics of how two bodies move. when they're in conflict, and dancing is similar. (laughs). - Like you have to do like rapid thinking also, like rapid, intuitive, physical thinking.

And that's my favorite kind of thing. Like a lot of exercise is really boring to me. because you can just do it while your brain's off. But something like ballroom dancing or fusion dancing, like, you have to constantly be like figuring out, like, it's a rapid puzzle, and that's so wonderful. - What's fusion dancing? - That's the video. Fusion dancing is like, if you have any sort of dance background, you can come and you just kind of mix those together. - Oh, just like improvise. - So you can have people. doing ballet, with people doing ballroom, with people doing blues. - Cool. And then there's an interesting dynamic. 'cause there's, I don't know, maybe you can correct me, but there's, ah, that's very meta,

there's usually a lead and a follow. I guess most dancers have that. - Yeah. - Yeah. But both have a, like you both have to be quite sensitive. to the other human being, but in a different way. Yeah. It's interesting. - [Aella] Yeah. - So I like both that there is that definitive role, but also like, it's not somehow that one is better. than the other, there's a interesting tension. between the two. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's good because it's like a basic rule set.

that allows for a ton of expression. I've recently started to experiment. with like reverse leading. It's not like back leading, it's like, I don't know, like sometimes I was like. lead and move- - So you can lead. or just follow. Oh, you can lead. - Well, I'm typically following. I'll, like, occasionally throw in a little lead. here and there, which-. - But don't you kind of follow? Oh, I see. But don't you hint at a lead when you're following? Like, don't you just by the dynamics of your movement, you're not perfectly following.

I mean, 'cause there is like, the lead is listening. to your body, right? - Yeah. - So like you're kind of both figuring out what you do next. - That's true. I'm a very good follow though. - Okay. - So I'm like, I'm an invisible follow, you do a move, it's like I-. - [Lex] Oh, interesting. - I'm not like good at technique. - I didn't know those existed. Like a perfect- - Oh, yeah, I've heard of it. - So you could perfect- - I really, I do. I'm not great at technique and sometimes I'll fall over, but like with the following part, I'm very good at it. - Do you enjoy following? - Yeah, yeah. It's really nice.

Again, like, it's the very fast physical puzzle. you have to solve. It's like typing, I really like typing. That's why I was inquiring about your keyboard earlier. - Why do you like typing? - Because it's like the very fast, like a really rapid response. What's it? The reaction time? I like things that like have very fast reaction times, like games like that. - But typing is not a reaction. Or is it the brain generating words and then you're like, how's typing a reaction? - Well, okay, the sensation that I get when I am typing. is the kind of thing that I'm trying to point at. So maybe a reaction time isn't the quite, I don't know what the term is, but whatever that thing is.

Like, the thing where you have to like look at a word. and then communicate it into your fingers. - [Lex] Yeah. - It feels like dancing. - Like you're responding, you're responding to your brain, your fingers are doing the responding to the brain. that generate the words. - Yeah. Making your body do what your brain wants it to do, but like fast and precisely. - Oh, then you might not like this kineses keyboard. 'cause it makes the, it makes it easier to do that. You probably like the struggle, right? - No, well, I mean, that it looks hard because you have, it looks like it's high depression on the keys. - No, it's, well, oh, I see.

Yes. More than like a laptop keyboard, but like that you don't have to, one of the main things is. you don't have to move your fingers at all. So, like, for example, a lot of people that I think they have a backspace. up in the top right corner. And so if you have to make mistakes, which is like, I mean that's like so metaphorical, like every mistake you have to like really hurt yourself. for it, 'cause you have to like stretch for the backspace. - There's that poetic narrative again.

- It's permeates- - It like emanates. like a lot of. your perspective. - Everything. Yeah, no. Yeah. And I see it as a good thing. Like a romantic element permeates my interpretation. of the world. Yes. But you left home early. How did you end up working at a factory? - Well, I tried to go to college, but failed. Couldn't afford it. - [Lex] Did you like it?

- I remember it just being really slow. I remember being shocked that the teachers didn't care. Like I was used to homeschooling. And, I don't know, like, it just like it meant, it felt like the people around me that were teaching me, 'cause we had like a mom's group also, like directly cared about what I was learning, and I would be able to ask questions, and they would like really respond. - [Lex] What's a mom's group? - It was like homeschooling groups who were a bunch of moms. who are homeschooling their kids get together. and then teach each other's kids. - Oh, cool. - Yeah. - And they have different, like, interests and capabilities and so on, and they kind of-.

- And sometimes if some of the kids. are really good at something, you have like the older kids teaching the other ones too. So it was very, like, everybody kind of figures out. what they're good at, and they share that skillset. with everybody else. Which I think was a pretty great setup. Honestly, I think my childhood. kind of sucked in a lot of ways, but homeschooling was excellent for me. Mainly because it just had so much free time. Like, I just did like two to three hours of school. and then did whatever the fuck I wanted. for the rest of the day. And I got to actually pursue skills that are still useful. for me to this day. - Even in that constrained environment?

- Hmm. Like, I wrote, I've read fantasy books and I wrote so much, and now I'm writing a lot for my blog. - What kind of fantasy books, like sci-fi that type stuff? - Like classic, like I read like Mercedes Lackey. and the E.E. Knight and Ursula LeGuin. - I don't know any of this. What is this? What is it? Is it a romantic thing or is it like, is it romance? - It's all the fantasy books, like dragons and spells- - Oh, dragons. Got it, got it, got it, got it. You didn't mention Tolkien for the fantasy. - I read Tolkien.

- Okay. - Yeah. - All right. Well, it is beautiful. So you threw all the dragons, how did you end up in a factory? You try school? - Yeah. Yeah. I tried school, had drop off a couple months, and then I was like, "Well, I'm poor. And I was ready to take any job, I was like applying for sewer jobs and then I got a factory, I'm like, ah, 'cause my parents no financial help at all. They're like, "You pull yourself up. "by your own bootstraps," you know. So anyway, I went to work at a factory and that sucked ass. Do not recommend it. We wake up like 4:00 AM you know,

work on weekends too, fluorescent lights. It was terrible. And so I did that for about a year and I was like, this is, I was trying to grit my teeth and be like, "This is my life," right. I didn't have high expectations for my life. I was just like, I thought like if you get a job where you don't have to be. on your feet all the time, that you're living a good life. But, and then I got another job briefly as a photographer, and then they fired me. I think I was 19 at the time. - Fired you for like what? - I was just too young. And really, really bad at interacting with people.

in the outside world. Like, I was pretty well socialized as a homeschooler. with other homeschoolers, but in the outside world, especially with all of the, like, hierarchy submissions stuff beaten into me, like literally beaten into me, it was very difficult for me to interact with other people. who are like older than me. or had any sort of confidence at all. So they hired me to do like photography for people. and then I was rapidly turned out that I was bad at this. And so they fired me. But at that point, I'd left my factory job. I'm like, "I can't go back to the factory.". So I tried, I had some savings and I slept. on friends' couches and I tried.

various self-employment stuff. I'm like, "I mean, I can do product photography. "or something.". But, it's Idaho, you know, nothing, and if you're like a 19-year-old with no experience. in the outside world at all, it was really difficult. And so I had a friend recommend that I try. becoming a cam girl. So that's how it started. - What is camming? What is being a cam girl? What's that about? - Camming is like, you talk to the camera live. on the computer, like you live stream, it's kind of like Twitch, and then people are typing in the chat like,

"Ha, do this stuff.". And then the people can tip you money, and then you can do things in response. Like, "Oh, if you tip me 100 tokens, you know, "I'll take my shirt off," or something like that. - And like, what's the, what site were you using. at that time? - MyFreeCams. - MyFreeCams? - Yeah. Is that a popular site? - Yeah, it's pretty popular. - Okay. And how did, what were the next steps? Like did you enjoy it? - Oh, well it was the first time I had actual control. over my life and I made, like, actual real money and so I just exploded into it. I thought about it nonstop.

I was streaming all the time. I was like coming up with like new creative things. And the thing is like, I don't know, there's something about public school that, I ended up living in a house with cam girls. full of other girls who had gone to public school. And I don't know if how much of it's genetic or, like, just because I'm weird or is it because of our upbringing, but I felt like I was much more fearless, and much more weird and creative online. than other people were. Not because they weren't awesome people, but because I think like public school, I got the impression based on them talking about it, that it sort of like beats out. any sort of deviance from you, like-.

- More so than your, 'cause I got the-. - We had moral deviances beaten out, but like, you could do whatever- - Creative deviance was not-. - Creative deviance wasn't so much, like, I didn't have other kids making fun of me ever. I don't think I'd ever heard an insult. about my physical appearance as a child or teenager once. - So your father was basically saying. you're not good enough, was intellectual? - Oh, that was like moral failing. - Moral failings. - Yeah. Like, I was not virtuous, sufficiently virtuous- - Oh wow. - Like in various ways. Like, you know, like you're lazy,

mostly the lazy part (laughs). I have like ADHD or something. And I was not good at it as a kid either, I would totally forget all the time. - Is there some sexual repression aspect to that? Like, you know, how they say that there's, it's not just homeschooling, but just like Catholic girls and so on, just because, like, there's moral, you're forbidden to do certain things. Like there's a kind kind of liberating feeling of saying. like, basically rediscovering yourself, rediscovering your freedom by doing just diving head in,

head first into sexuality, into your own sexuality. Is there some aspect of that? - Yeah, absolutely, to some degree. I think that like people kind of model it slightly wrong. Like, I think there's a truth to it. But when I first got outta the house, for me freedom was like going outside at 2:00 AM. or like eating chocolate, you know, on days. that I've previously wasn't allowed to eat chocolate. Like that was like a really intense expression. of rebellion for me. And I think people, like, don't think of this, like, I got out a lot of my like intense rebellion.

through things that people don't typically consider. to be rebellious at all. - Sure. - Like I wore a bikini. - Yeah. - Insane. - And just like walked around in it, and like, "I can do this." - Yes. (chuckles) Basically. And so, like, this was mostly. about emotional processing for me. And took me a couple years from leaving home. and all of that conservative culture into doing sex work. And in the meantime I was, I did try having sex with a lot of people, but this was mainly because I didn't know. what the norms were. I didn't really understand.

I was just like, "Okay, take things logically, "take things one step at a time.". And I'm like, "Okay, if the whole previous set. "about like how I'm not supposed to kiss somebody. "until the altar of marriage, "if that's not the way that things are supposed to go, "then what is the way things are supposed to go?". And I was like, "Well, if I am aroused, "I should go have sex with someone, right. "Is there any reason not to? No.". So I went and just, I would go around asking random people to have sex with me. - Did you have any peer pressure saying like, "That's not good or that is good.". Or like any, did you feel any currents of society, in any direction? - I think I did. - Or you independently just thinking like.

form first principles? - I think, I mean like, I'm not saying it was a totally a clean thing. I'm sure that I was experiencing society telling me. this was bad. But you have to know, like, I wasn't watching normal movies. when I was a teen. Like, we watched Christian movies. The stuff that we watched was filtered. Like I watched the Titanic and I had no idea. that Jack and Rose had sex. because it was put through filtered-. - [Lex] Wait, did they? - Yeah, they went and, you know, he'd painted her naked and- - Yeah. Yeah. - There's was a scene in a car. on the ship. - In the car? Oh, on the ship. - Yeah. They had like cars in storage and there's a hand.

I watched it again later and I was like, "Oh, my God." - I don't remember. the sex scene. - Well maybe were you also put through. a filtered version? - (laughs) Maybe it's the filter I see. Like, did the couple in the notebook also have sex? 'Cause maybe for romantic movies. I focus on the romance, maybe, right. And the sex scenes are always like weirdly filmed in these, 'cause it's never, I mean it doesn't, it feels more like romance than sex. I guess that's the main focus of this, right?

- [Aella] Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. - Yeah. Anyway, so they had sex. That's good to know. - They did, I'm letting you know. - [Lex] I'll go back and watch now. to fact check- - You have your own personal. filter on your brain. - And once you realize that there're some, like the foundation of your beliefs were wrong, then everything might be wrong, and you're kind of just doing from first principles-. - Yeah, exactly from first principles basically. And again, like not totally separate from culture. But also I think in general, I also have a predisposition to just be like, you know, fuck what culture tells you, just figure out what's right for you and do it. And so that mixed with, you know,

the figuring things out from first principles. I did eventually figure out that I didn't like having. casual sex with just anybody quite as much. So I stopped that. But it took me a while to figure that out. - What's the negative of casual sex? - It's just, like, not good. I mean, if you like figure out the chemistry. you have with someone better then it can be a lot nicer. But I wasn't doing that. I was just like, somebody I met and I'm like, "You seem kind of cute.". Okay. Like I didn't bother to try and develop. just any chemistry. I mean, I didn't know- - Chemistry. even outside of sex, just chemistry, like human chemistry-. - Yes, basic- - Conversation.

- Yeah. - Okay. - I would, it's like kind of cringey, but I would, like, walk up to guys. or send them messages, like, "Would you like to have coitus?". Is what I would say. - [Lex] You would say coitus? - I said that. (laughs). - I mean it's kind of cute in a way. - I mean, it's a girl asking you to get laid, so they probably didn't care that much. (Lex laughs). But anyway, I'm saying that, like, I had a lot of rebelling out of my system. by the time I started sex work. So, like, for me maybe, I'm sure it was somehow related. 'cause we were extremely sexually repressed growing up. I remember the day I learned I had a vagina,

which was absolutely horrifying. Do not recommend figuring out you have another orifice. in your body, but, like-. - Do you wanna share the process of you figuring out. that you had a vagina or is that? - My sister told me I had a vagina. - Oh. Like intellectually, like there was somebody said. You have a vagina. - You have a vagina. Yeah. - And that was horrifying to you? - Yeah. I didn't know I had, 'cause you weren't supposed to ever like touch. or look at yourself ever. So I never did. It was treated as really disgusting. And so I had no idea that what was going on.

in my genital region. And so one day my mom sat me down, I think I was like 9 or 10, and she was like, "You have a, (chuckles) there's another opening.". - [Lex] What! (laughs). - "And you're going to bleed out of it,". is what she told me. - "You're gonna bleed out of it for a while.". And I was like, "What the fuck mom?" (laughs). I didn't know the word fuck was, but I would've said that if I had known. - When did you first learn the word fuck? - Oh, I think I learned it when I was at a playground. and it was written somewhere and I read it out loud. and then a kid next to me started giggling.

- Did you ever, did you say fuck again. for a while? - No. No. I think the next time was, I swore the first time when I was 18, like intentionally said a swear word when I was 18. - [Lex] Did it feel good? - I was like really nervous, it was like nerve-wracking. - What's your favorite. swear word? - I mean, fuck's pretty good. - Yeah fuck's pretty good. - [Aella] Yeah. - Okay, so that's camming. I mean, what are the pros and cons of camming, and how does OnlyFans map into this? Did you switch to OnlyFans at some point? - I did. Yeah.

I cammed for like five or six years, and I burned out eventually. - What are the good aspects, what are the bad aspects of camming? - Well, the good aspects were, it was just your own terms, you get to decide, everything about it is under your control, which I loved at the time. I was like, "I can work when I want, how I want, "any sort of expression.". I experimented, and I was a very successful, I was making around $200 an hour, which for that website at the time was like pretty good. I had elaborate routines, I was a mime. I would do like, dress up as a mime. and then dress up a chair and I would seduce the chair.

- Oh, cool. - Yeah. - Was there an artistic element to it almost? - Yeah. (chuckles) Very much. I had like gnomes- - Did you talk to the chair? You had gnomes? - No, I was a mime. You don't- - Oh, sorry. Right. - Yeah. Get it straight, dude. (both laughing). - You know what I really appreciate about you, is I'm asking some really dumb questions. and you're answering it in a very intelligent way. So I appreciate that. All right. Did you ask the chair questions? "I was a mime you fucking idiot.". Okay. I'm sorry. It's true.

But there's gnomes on the- - Yeah, gnomes. - [Lex] Like big gnomes or small gnomes? - Like lawn gnomes. - [Lex] Lawn gnomes. And you seduced the lawn gnome on the chair, the gnome is sitting on the chair? - There were some, yeah, gnomes on the chair. I did a photo set, which I submitted to Reddit where I got abducted. I was like stripping, taking my clothes off, and then slowly the gnomes surrounded me in the background, then dragged me off. And I did this as a photo set and I-. - Consensually? - I mean, I didn't feel consensual in the photos, but... - [Lex] Okay. But it was the- - Consensual. or not consent for the gnome? - It was very successful on Reddit, basically.

It was a top post on Gone Wild, 11th top post of all type on Reddit. - Oh, on Reddit which I think will probably just means. it's like it's artistic, it's interesting, it's edgy, it funny, so it's really, really well done. - But it was really shocking that nobody else was doing. anything creative with sex work. Like for me it was like breathing, like you're just doing sex and you're bored, I'm like, "What do you do?". "Oh, let's try something funny.". Like it's just the natural progression. And it felt to me like there was almost no competition. Like I would just be really creative and like immediately. it was the top not safe for work post on Reddit. I'm like, "Well, I didn't even try that hard.".

And so it's really shocking to me that that other women. who are doing this sort of thing. - Is that still a little bit of the case? Like that there's not as much like, 'cause I, from my sort of outsider perspective, that seems to be still the case. Like there's not, like, as you describe it, that's kind of cool. That's like, almost like playing, like having fun with sexuality almost. - [Aella] Yeah. - And yeah, but that does require kind of thinking through, it's almost like a creative project, like a photography project or something like that,

almost like a little skit movie. It's interesting. - It's this vibe of like, how can you bring like vibrant novelty. to whatever you're doing, anything you're doing. And I really like doing this with surveys too. Like I've been doing a lot of standard surveys, but I'm also, like, experimenting. with novel, creative, artistic surveys. I'm like, how do you ask a question in a way. that's like beautiful and unusual, and like a thing is completely groundbreaking. Like nobody's ever, like, tried asking before- - Always make everything. so poetic and romantic it's disgusting. Now. (laughs). But yes, I think you have that engine in your head,

I guess, of creativity. Like, yeah, the way you ask questions. It's not trivial to do like for, it's actually very difficult to do. like good survey questions. And, I mean, we're joking, but like yeah, almost like poetic because you have to ask a question. in a way that doesn't lead to the answer. - [Aella] Yes. - Like you have to kind of inspire them to think. and then indirectly get at the truth. It's an art form, honestly. - Yeah. And also in a way. where they don't misinterpret the question. because it's amazing how any question you think,

oh this is the clearest question possible. No, you're wrong, it has to be even clearer. - Right. Willingly or unwillingly 'cause, like, you also have to defend against that question. being criticized later when you publish about it. All of that. You have to think about all of that. - I think this might be my greatest strength. So I'm not very good at statistics, I'm not like a great at presenting data, but I think probably my greatest strength. is, in fact, survey design, and like a question phrasing. 'Cause I have created so many thousands of polls, and every single one I get people telling me, like, the way that they misinterpreted the poll.

So it's like- - You've become a master-. - Gone through fire. (laughs). And then, again, I'm testing the phrasings all the time. Like what happens if you slightly shift phrasings? And so I'll do the same question test over time. to see how it changes and the way the framing. affects the results. - So the good and the bad of the camming. She said good, what was it? I forgot what you said- - Your freedom. - The freedom? - Yeah. - The freedom to be also be creative. - Yeah, and that is just, it was exhausting. The site that I was on, the way that it's structured is that you're ranking. on the site and that's the amount of people that see you,

that's the amount of money you are on, you earn, is affected by the amount of money that you earn. on average over the last 60 days. So if you're streaming and nobody's tipping you, this means that you're going to be dropping down. in the rankings, which is gonna make it harder. in the future. - Oh, okay. So the rich get richer on that site. - Yeah. So it's very high pressure. Like, if you're on, you need to be making money. as fast as you can. If you wanna continue to make money. So that was really stressful. It was very mentally taxing. I would do it for a couple hours and just log off. and be completely exhausted. 'cause you're just like on as hard as you can.

And this is why I have a little PTSD around streaming, like I've considered Twitch streaming. I tried a little bit and I'm like, I haven't fully integrated the fact. that you don't have to be like maximally entertaining. every single second yet. You can actually just chill out and take it slow. and nothing bad happens. - Yeah, yeah. You can just enjoy silence. - [Aella] Yeah. - Did you feel lonely doing it? I mean even just streamers feel lonely. - I moved into a house with cam girls.

- [Lex] Did that make it better or worse? - Better. They're great. I'm still friends with them to this day. - Oh, so it was like a team, almost like "We're in this kind of together?". - Yeah. So we'd, like, work together and, you know, stream together and swap our clothes and stuff. It was great. - Swap ideas too? - Swap ideas. Yeah. - And actually on a small tangent, maybe a big tangent, what do you think, 'cause it's the recent controversy. of Andrew Tate and that he, I think in the past ran a camming business,

and he's being accused of sex trafficking. What do you think, like from your own experience, what do you understand about Andrew Tate? Is he a good person, is he a bad person? Is there something shady about his practices or not? - I wish I could answer, but I don't know. I haven't looked into it at all. - At all? - I've heard. people talking about it, I just haven't bothered to go into it. It is well known that, like, when I was doing it back in the day, that Eastern European models. had something different going on though. It was like a trope about, you know, there's the Eastern European models. and then there's everybody else. - That they're what?

It's like darker or something like that? - Like they do studios and they're a lower quality. - Which means what? - Studios are, you go into like a warehouse and then they have set up. a little like things that replicate bedrooms, but they're just like stalls. And then you give, you rent out. or you pay the studio percentage of your income. And you can tell when something looks like a studio. It's like a type of background. That if you like watching enough, it kind of starts to, you notice the patterns. - So like the standards are lower there. and the ethical boundaries are a little looser?

- Yes. - How people are treated. - I never heard anything about the ethical, I just knew that it was like lower quality. Like the girls seem like they were less into it, and like cared less. - How does this all interplay with like sex trafficking? So consensual versus non consensual. - I would be shocked if there were never any. non-consensual camming. I mean, I guess is like if it were going to happen, that wouldn't be surprised if it were, in fact, Eastern European models. Based on, this is outdated, I'm just thinking. of my stereotypes back when I cammed a lot.

- Sure. So some of that is stereotypes. versus like collecting good data, right? - Yeah. I haven't done data on cam girl. - It's hard, I mean it's hard. it's even hard to get that data, right. But obviously a really important problem. - There's a method that I'm trying that I really like. I designed a survey type, which is like asking people who you know. Like who do you know who's done this? And you tell me like, "Oh, do you know anybody who's a doctor? "Do you know anybody who you know has had cancer? "Or like smokes or-". - [Lex] Personally you mean? - Yeah, personally. Just, do you know anybody? And then if you ask about a whole bunch of things, you can calibrate the responses.

- That's really interesting. - SO like, if your population, you know, 20% of them know doctors. and then you know the actual amount of doctors, then you can tell like how this is corresponding. Like, what is the visibility of doctors? - So you can reconstruct the graph-. - Basically. Yeah. And we can do this with sex trafficking. And, of course, people are gonna be like, "Well sex trafficking is not visible. "People, you don't know those.". I'm like, "Well then we can ask about. "other non-visible things that other people don't know. "that we do have data for>". Like homelessness or being in jail or like, if you have been like sexually assaulted, a lot of people don't like talking about. if they've been sexually assaulted.

So you know a whole bunch of things that are like. similarly suppressed in knowledge in some way. that we do actually have rates for. And then compare that to the graph when we ask people, do you know anybody who's in sex traffic? So again, this is not perfect, I'm not saying this is ideal-. - But you can infer things, you can infer things about that graph. - But then say we don't have good ways of measuring. sex trafficking right now. Anyway, I did a big deep dive in on the research. that we have on sex trafficking in the Western world. and the actual, like, I read the studies and like reports. about the studies and it's really pitiful.

We have terrible data. It's like, there's just like vague estimations. made from one guy in a basement in the '80s. That's like the basis for like one big study. that, like, a lot of people report on. And so I'm like, okay, so the method I'm proposing, obviously it's not perfect, but like the bar is so low at this point. - Well I wonder also if there's ways to design. a survey that gets at the victims of sex trafficking also, which is, they presumably have public access. to the internet.

And I wonder how many of them are distinctly aware. that they're victims. Like it's asking the question, when you're inside of a toxic relationship, are you inside of a toxic re relationship? I mean, if the toxic relationship is truly toxic, sometimes your mind is fucked with, right, you don't even know what's true. And so it's interesting if you can design surveys that-. - [Aella] That are actively sex trafficked? - Yeah. Who break through that. So basically get data on how many people.

are getting sex trafficked directly. - Oh yeah. Like, if you don't frame it, like, if you don't say the word sex trafficking. If you're like, are you just in a situation where you'd... - And maybe through the survey, I mean that's very meta, but through the survey help them. - You know, I did this, this is what started my relationship surveys. So I've done a series of relationship surveys, and that was because I knew somebody. in a terrible relationship and I was, like, "I bet if she took a survey where she answered questions. "about her relationship and at the end got a score. "that compared her to everybody else, "she'd be like, 'Oh wait, everybody else has. "much better relationships than I do.'". So that's why I started making the relationship surveys,

was exactly for that reason. - Yeah. That's really, really, really powerful. to know that like you're not crazy for thinking. this is a bad relationship. - Right. Or I think like the actual question is, like, "Could you do better if you broke up?". I think that the thing that keeps most people. in their relationships is like, "This is the best that I can do. "And like, this is normal.". And if it were normal, I would say that they are right. Like, if you live in a culture where everybody. is abusing their people in their relationships, then yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do, break up and then just be alone for the rest of your life?

Most people don't wanna do that. - But now comparing yourself to the average. is good to know, to know. - Yeah. Know your options are. - At least understand it because, you know, being normal is not always, like, this conversation is not always great. Meaning this conversation is anything but normal. Okay. And (sighs) that was a tangent on a tangent. about a niche passion, which is really fascinating that you're playing. with those kinds of ideas of survey design.

But back to camming. So what were the cons? What were the negatives of camming? - Oh, like the exhaustion of just like live, like the high pressure thing, that was probably the worst thing. - So was there, what about the interaction. with different people? Like the dynamics of the interaction. with the fans, I guess. - I had a pretty great time. I mean it obviously it wasn't perfect. 'cause it's the internet, but I don't know. This is a thing that confuses me a lot. because a lot of women that I know complain. about being harassed by men quite a lot, they're like, you know, "Men are always,

"you know, groping our ass. "You know, you have to be paranoid in the club. "People are, like, they're always huffing on you. "and you're just like, 'Jesus Christ, get away, man.". And I do not have this experience. Or like, maybe I do, but I'm interpreting it differently. I don't know. But the thing is, I don't know what causes me. to have such a different experience from these women. that are like really, feel really hostile towards men. And my guess is that there's some sort of, like, very subtle signaling that we're accidentally doing, through, like, no fault of our own. I'm not saying this is a virtue, I'm saying like maybe it's just genetic, or fact that I'm tall. - That women are doing? - Yeah. That the women are doing. - Yeah. - Okay.

- And it might be just something I'm completely. accidentally, through no intention, like having to signal the thing that is causing men. to not view me as like a desirable target. or like a target at all. - But what about the flip side? Maybe you're not sensitive to the creepy stare. - Yeah. That also might be true. - The dude who's like is undressing you with his eyes, that, like, in a creepy way, that you're just not, you don't like worry about it. Or you're not touched like, the fear of that,

the anxiety of that, the unpleasantness of that. just doesn't hit you. - I think that's also at least part of it, maybe all of it. - Yeah. - Yeah. I think there's some evidence for it. I think often like guys will do a thing to me. and I'm just like, "That's a thing, cool.". I don't have any negative response whatsoever. - That's call back to the tire. It's a thing. "This is nice, that happened. "It was good to know that can happen.". - Like, I once had like a homeless guy like ask me. to "Come back to my place baby.". And I was like, "This is fun.". Like, I'm like, "Do you want me to,".

I love asking men, like, "Are you trying to get me to have sex with you?". Just like saying it out front. And they'll be like, "Well," usually they stop for a minute, like, "Well, yeah, I mean I would like to have sex.". And I'll be like, "Thanks for asking, "but I'm not interested in having sex with you.". "Hope you have a good day?". And then I walk away. (both laughing). And that's great. I don't know, I have no issues with that interaction. But like maybe this is the kind of thing that other women. would find to be really offensive. - So you have that conversation. and it doesn't turn into like a threatening feel? - No. - Like with a homeless guy?

- No. I've never had that happen though. But I think there's just something, I think I'm doing something like, again, this is kind of accidental. Like, I'm just am like this always, and I think I just happen to be like this at people. and they don't expect it. Like, they don't expect me to be like really nice. while explicitly asking them what their intentions are. Like directly putting my finger on the thing that like, "Oh, you're trying to have sex with me.". And then also not judging them for it. I think this like throws people off a little bit. so they don't get aggressive. They're like, "Oh, you're autistic or something.". - Even the cloak of anonymity on the internet. you weren't getting the toxicity.

- Yeah, I just think I'm just not reactive. and, or maybe I'm giving off, I don't know. I don't know what's going on, maybe it's both, maybe it's a feedback loop. So I had a pretty good experience. I know not everybody did, definitely people reported having antagonistic experiences, but when I was camming I generally really liked, people were really nice to me, had a great time, made friends. - So you also did OnlyFans, as you mentioned, and I read on a website, so this is very investigative reporting, that on some months you have made.

over $100,00 dollars on OnlyFans. How did that feel? - Great. Really great. (laughs). - I mean like, well, actually, because so much of your upbringing. you didn't have money, you had to struggle. with the factory job and so on, maybe a good person to ask. Can money buy happiness? - Well, I mean, I think like a resting set point. of happiness regardless of how much money you have. But money can buy being less stressed, I would say.

- Is there a lot of variation. in the basic rest happiness for humans, in general? Like is that a good thing to think about? - I mean, they've done some studies, but again, like, again, I'm not sure, I haven't actually read the study, so maybe they didn't replicate where, like, they measured people before and after winning. a bunch of money to see if their happiness was higher. I think, like, it's by some measures it wasn't, by some it wasn't. - No. I mean like basically almost genetically, so nature-nurture. But is there, let's say after you're 18,

is there like some stable level of happiness. that all the environmental genetic factors combine. to create so that everything that life throws at you. has to face that happiness? I think you mentioned earlier that I seem to be happy. with a lot of stuff, so maybe I have a certain level. Do other people have a lower level, some people have higher level? - [Aella] Yeah, definitely. - Like, is that a useful, or is that a useful model of human beings, or is it all ups and downs? Like is it all like.

there's no staple. - I think like combo, right. I don't know, some people just are happier. than others in general, and other people aren't. But then you also have ups and downs. Like, I'm sure you've experienced sadness sometimes. and happiness the other times. - Like if I actually were to integrate, so have an integral under the, area onto the curve, I don't know if I'm different than other people. Maybe I'm just like really focused on the happy moments, and maybe feel the down moments most intensely. And maybe that like on average is just all the same.

Is that possible? - I mean. Maybe. I just, I don't know. Like, I remember when I was a kid, my mom would call me Pollyanna all the time. 'Cause I was like finding the good and everything. - [Lex] Oh, yeah? I'll be like, something bad would happen-. - [Lex] So you were happy kid? - I was a really happy kid, yeah. - Even in the harsh condition. - Yeah. I mean, like I said, like I said even the harshness comes from the bad meaning, like, and I had good a meaning applied to it. - [Lex] You were stoic? - I was, yeah. (chuckles). - With another book I'm reading next week, tune in Marcus Aurelius "Meditations", (chuckles). (Aella laughing).

All right. All right. Camming. 100k. So it felt good. So it's crazy though, right, you can just like take clothes off in a creative way. with some gnomes and make 100,000. - Yeah. I mean there was a lot more to it than that, but yeah. - What was it? What's the process? - I mean, it's marketing. Like, so with only, with MyFreeCams, I was unusual in that I decided to do. outside of the website marketing. I would like post on Reddit, right, this was very unusual at the time.

But, like, OnlyFans is structured such that. they have almost no internal discovery whatsoever. So if you want people to come to your page, you have to go to go out onto external websites. and advertise for yourself directly. Very different model. And so this is something I had already been doing. and already had practice in. And so I think I was like already quite advanced. Like, I already had an account on Reddit that was, like, seven years old at the time. Tons of, like, karma, that means I could post in subreddits. I had already been on Twitter for years, you know, like posting actively. So I already had like presence on all these other platforms. that really helped with the conversion. - [Lex] Reddit and Twitter.

- Reddit, Twitter, Feltlife, Instagram, TikTok. - And you were still advertising creatively? - Yeah. - So like there's sexuality, but there's also like creative sexuality, and ideas too. - Yeah. Like one of the really popular ones was, I, like, molested myself as a mime using. a one arm through a jacket. And so the jacket looked like it was, (both laughing). - That's how it is. - The jacket looked like. it was alive and, you know, and that one did really well.

- Did you like brainstorm with somebody and, like, I recently got to hang out with MrBeast. and sit on a session of brainstorming different ideas, I just envisioned you with like a team brainstorming. "How about we try the mime and the molesting thing?". "I don't know. It's too edgy.". - (laughs) I wish, I think the team would've been a lot more fun. But, no it's just me. Like, I had an apartment to look like, kind of, like this, you know, you just sit alone, you're like, "Well that would be a good idea.". And I'd seen, you just collect ideas over time, right.

Like, I'd seen somebody doing a version of, like this animated hand act like when I was a kid, and it just always stuck in my head. And like one day I was like, "I bet I could do that.". And then when I was trying to think of ideas to do. as a sex worker, I was like, "Why don't I just try that?". And then it turned out to be like really. like quite a viral hit. - Is there stuff, like you mentioned, too edgy, like MrBeast tries to keep it PG? Do you try to keep it PG13? - Well, with the sex advertising stuff, (chuckles). I mean it's sex advertising, so it's obviously not PG13.

- I don't know these ratings. What is beyond that? - It's not. family friendly. It is X. Like the one that I'm describing to you at some point, like you can see my boob. - There's a boob is X. - A boob is I guess. maybe R. - I thought R. I think you could show a boob in PG13. - Maybe X is like if you got some sort of. rhythmic motion going on. - Maybe that sound, but the rhythmic motion not. - With the sound. - You can have one or the other but you can't have both. (both laughing). You have both then it's X. - That's where we hit. the X. Yeah. - Okay.

- So you definitely not, I mean with the sex advertising stuff, like guys like vanilla shit, guys want basic hot girl, you can do something like kind of sexy and creative, like getting abducted by gnomes, or like the self molestation, right, but those are still pretty within the normal boundaries. - What do you mean guys like vanilla stuff? - [Aella] Mean most guys like vanilla stuff. - What's vanilla stuff? - Like hot booby parts. - See we talk. about fetish, fetishes? I think my Overton window on what is vanilla is expanding.

(laughs) quickly after following your work. But yeah, what is that? - I actually have done. a lot of studies on what is vanilla? Like I've done a couple different surveys where I ask people. like how taboo is this thing? And I have a like a rating from least to most taboo. - By the way, I don't like, I don't appreciate the beauty of vanilla ice cream. - You don't? - No. - It is really good though. - You eat vanilla ice cream? - [Aella] I eat vanilla ice cream. Yeah. - I think there's just so many more options, it's like the absence of creativity. - I mean, if you put in. like some chocolate chips or something.

- Yeah. You already made it more interesting to start. Okay, so what's vanilla? And why do guys like vanilla? So hot girl doing hot girl things. What, like undressing. and then having sex? - Yeah. The thing that I found was most successful. were frames where the man was framed as passive. and the woman is active. Or like, for example, like, "Oh, you know, we got assigned to the same bunk. "at the breeding school or something.". Or like, "Oh we're the last people on Earth," right. Or like, "Oh no, you know, I desperately need somebody.

"to like cure me with this disease and I need semen.". So it's like in any scenario where the guys. just like finds himself such that the woman. like desperately needs him for some reason, he doesn't have to do much. That is like typically one of the much more. successful things. Like guys like women falling into their lap. - What about the power dynamic? - So guys are less into power dynamics than women are. And you can do power dynamics. as long as it's like handed to them. Some guys, obviously, some guys are like very dominant.

and like prefer like having to work, but this is the minority. Like if you're trying to do, make 100K a month. and you're trying to appeal to the widest group of people, the most effective advertising, you're not gonna be making the most money. by being like particularly submissive. - So on the camming side that's, you're unlike escorting or just personal relationships, you're trying to, you have an audience, you have like a theater full of people. - [Aella] Like with live camming. - Yeah, with live camming. - [Aella] Yeah. It's like a live theater. - Does that freak you out, there's just a bunch of people watching?

- I mean, what, how do you feel right now? - I don't know they're, 'cause it's not live. - Yeah, that's true, it's not live. - So they're not watching. - Like it might as well be, like they could be watching. - I feel like there's just the two of us, I don't know. And there's like, sometimes I imagine there's a third person-. - Like God? - Usually. No, no, not, not God. Just, I usually imagine either a guy or girl or a couple. just sitting there for some reason. Like, usually on the beach and usually high, or on some kind of like a mushroom, just like listening passively, just kind of looking at the sunset,

that's what I imagine. - Oh, that's really good. I think that's useful, like, when I write my blog posts. sometimes I do terribly, but it's the most effective when I imagine. one person that I'm writing to, to try to explain. And like having a high couple watching the sunset. is maybe really lovely as a calibration. - I have to say it is pretty romantic. 'cause I've gotten a chance to meet couples. that listen to podcasts together. I don't know why that seems like intensely romantic to me. because, like, 'cause you're not watching TV together,

you're listening to a thing, and I guess sometimes they watch it, but like you're listening to ideas together. I don't know, seems-. - It's like you're going through. the same kind of thought process. at the same time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really beautiful way to put it. So it's like you're melding, you're thinking. is following the same line, somehow podcasts do that more than movies. I think movies give you a lot more freedom. to think about stuff. I feel like your thoughts are aligned and, like, especially if the podcast is good, like if it's listening to like a Dan Carlin podcast like.

about history, that you're like on a journey together. There's an intimacy to that. Anyway. But I've learned that couples do that, you know, hashtag relationship goals. Go ahead. - That's what you want with your feature wife? - With my, yeah-. - You should make an application. - [Lex] Application? - An application for dating you. I mean, maybe this is more of like my strategy. and less yours, but you have like a wide enough audience. that might work. - (chuckles) It's not,

okay, let's just go there. 'Cause you put together an application of, like, people to have casual sex with you, I think. You've had- - That and also dating. Yeah. - And also dating in a relationship. I'd love to, so what is in that application? Because like, you know, I'm sure there's a quite a lot of people. that would like to date you or to sleep with you, but finding the person. I mean it depends what your goals, I guess relationship would be an open relationship for you? - Yes. - Right.

Like for me, I guess, it's more intensely selective. because it's like a monogamous relationship. and a committed one. Like, I'm swinging for like long term. I'm not like weirdly obsessed with long term, but it's like you just, I would love to have one girl for the rest of my life, but finding that I feel like applications. will not get to that. I feel like there's some aspect of the magic. of the serendipity of it,

of meeting people in strange places and so on. I just personally have noticed that like fame. has not made that process easier. - But I mean, like if you could, you know, if there's two rooms and one of them. is like random population of hot women. and the other one is random population of hot women, but all of them definitely are monogamous. and are looking for a long-term committed relationship. Like which room would you rather go into? Like if you're looking for a mate? - Yeah, well, but see I guess my preferences. are more, that's it's a really strong point, but my preferences are represent.

the majority probably, right? 'Cause don't most women want monogamous relationships? - [Aella] Yeah. So like, I'm okay with either option. 'cause, like, statistically speaking-. - But, like, we can apply it. to like a bunch of other things. Yeah. And I'm just. - Be more specific. - This is just a problem if you have like high, if you have a high volume to filter through. and you, like, you don't know. Like it's a good like initial filter. Like you can take it from like 1,000 people. to 20 people and then go on dates with them. - Oh, but the filter is so anti-romantic. Like what? - (laughs) This is true. This is not the romantic narrative.

that you're very prone to. - If I feel like, "How did you two meet?". "Well, she passed the three filters I set up.". And I mean, but that's also, but also can you put into a survey the things. that you're interested in? - [Aella] Yes. - I mean I definitely think about this a lot. with hiring, like teams, engineers and so on. But with engineers. you're okay losing truly special engineers.

because you have to filter. 'cause there's like thousands of applications. Like it feels like, (sighs). it feels like I worry that you would miss. the thing that actually, 'cause so much. of it is chemistry. - Yeah, you're right. - So much of it is like the magic, you know. - The thing is you're missing it anyway, like-. - Yeah, you're missing it just-. - Or you can just run it and then in addition. try some of those people, but then go on the dates. that you were going to go on with anyway, regardless, it's just the thing that helps like pull someone.

out of the crowd. - Because, I dated a guy from my survey. I'd ran the survey. I assigned point values. to each of the questions. And went on a date with like the top couple people, and then one of them I was like, and I'm still dating him to this day, it was awesome. And I would never, I never would've gone on a date with him without the survey. - Can you, if from memory or we can look it up. Do you remember what kind of questions were on the survey? - I asked a couple different categories. I asked about like basic life stuff. So like what kind of relationships? Like monogamy versus polyamory. Like, do you want kids? Like, where you wanna live? Like basic things that you need to be compatible.

And then I asked like sexual compatibility, like various preferences. And then I had a section about like personality, like what are, I tried to ask questions. that would do the most effective filtering. So like what are ways that like I can't give. people what they need that like maybe they really want. Like I don't really, I'm not very outdoorsy. Which is very common. A lot of people like being outdoorsy. So I asked the question like how much do you value someone. else that you're dating being outdoorsy? If they marked yes, I was like, okay we probably, I should write downgrade. for the results. - But what if, man, but doesn't polyamory make that really difficult.

'cause can't they find somebody. for the outdoorsy stuff? - Yeah, they could. I mean this doesn't like, but if you're going to have somebody, it's like nicer to have them be more compatible than less. - But you're a little bit like in terms of. sexual compatibility, you were able to, like, you're self-aware enough to know what preferences you have, like you can? - I think so. I think that one helped a lot with the escorting. Like, the escorting helped a lot. with knowing my preferences. - But there's like out of the the giant pool. of different preferences,

you have like a subset that's clearly defined for you? Okay. Like dominant submissive-. - [Aella] Yeah. Power dynamic stuff. - Power dynamic stuff. - For that. - Okay. In the not just sexual but in relationship too, like, was that in a survey? - I don't like power dynamics in relationships. I didn't have- - Not defining them in. like making it clear in a survey, like, asking a question about power dynamics. in a relationship. - I don't think I asked about power dynamics. in relationships. 'Cause I just assume most people don't. And there's a lot of things that kind of like-.

- Most people don't. You're putting together a survey, a systematic survey to understand compatibility. Wouldn't power dynamics inside of relationships. that naturally emerge often be part of the question? Or is that hard to question. because it naturally emerges and you can't really-. - Well, the thing is like a lot of questions. sort of overlap in demographic, and if you're making a survey, you wanna have the minimum possible questions. that give the maximum possible like filtering information. - Yes, yes, yes.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. But that purpose of that survey wasn't to do. a good research study, it was to select one subject. that you could take. - So that part of it is good. Like you want to most efficiently filter out. because one, like you get more people taking the survey, the fewer questions you have, which is good for finding a mate. Like if you have 5,000 men take the survey, it's better than 1.000 men taking it. - Don't you want men that would be patient enough. and dedicated enough to fill out? - Yeah, like what if you're like a high-powered man. who's like on his lunch break, right? So it's like you just-. - It's like a billionaire's too busy. just flipping through. - Exactly.

- Yeah. - And the guy that I date was, he took the survey, he was waiting for the pizza to come out of the oven. And so it was important that it was short. And so you wanted me- - Is it a metaphor. or literally pizza coming out the oven. - He's literally waiting for pizza and he saw the thing, he's like, "I guess I'll just fill out. "this survey really fast." - Wow. - Changed our lives. - So romantic. - It's for me, this is my kind of romance. I'm really into it. But, you could be efficient with surveys. by like making sure your questions don't overlap. So for example, if somebody's very polyamorous, they're very unlikely to be interested. in like a traditional like man works in like,

in-out and the job, and the woman's stays home. and raises the kids' kind of relationship. Because poly people just generally don't do that. And so if I'm asking about polyamory, it's sort of kind of already covers the thing. And so if I have a whole bunch of questions, like I can kind of like triangulate a bunch of implicit. kinds of questions that I haven't directly asked about. So this is why I didn't ask directly about power dynamics. because, like, from the rest of the questions. that are in my survey, like, I can pretty accurately predict. whether or not you're gonna be interested in power dynamics. - See, but I'm afraid, yeah, like I'm trying to think.

as you're talking, I get it. That's really interesting that you did that. Also, maybe not for the effectiveness of finding a partner, but for just exploring the actual, the process. of human sexuality, of like the search, this complicated optimization process. we're all engaging in on the landscape of happiness. That seems to be this, not even a differentiatable function, it's a giant non-linear mess. Okay. But like for me,

I don't think I would be able to design that survey. I would like bias it too strongly. Like, I would probably prefer women that have read. Dostoevsky or something like that. Like that'll be a filter for me, right. But like, that's a horrible filter. 'cause there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of amazing people that have never, they don't give a shit about reading, or they don't give a shit about reading Russian literature, or they don't give a shit about, but they're amazing and passionate and creative. in some other dimension. that you might completely miss. But you're like, 'cause I wonder if there's any,

basically you're saying compatibility like hard lines. that you know statistically is just going to be an issue. - Yeah. You mean you weight, there's a lot more? - Yeah. - But there's also. like preferences. Like if you have a woman who's totally equal. and she's read the thing that you like, choose another woman who's also identical, but like she hasn't read the thing that you like, like you probably very slightly prefer. the one that has. - But you don't know. if they're identical. Yes. Yes. But like you can't through survey. get the identical. Like you don't know-. - Sure. But you can kind of like do. a whole bunch of weights. So like the person that, like, I ended up going on a date with, he did not answer like correctly.

to a lot of the survey questions, but he didn't have, he was just, overall, overall the weights were like, he just tended to be more in the direction. - Was there a text-based fill-in like survey, but, like, sorry, paragraph, like-. - No, you ought to avoid that if you're dealing. with like large amounts of data. (laughs). - No. Why not? 'Cause you have to fill... Oh, oh, interesting. Interesting. Like, I'm different. 'Cause, like, first of all, you can do keyword searches. - No. Okay, that's fair. - And second, all you do, you can do machine learning models that like, first of all you can do like crude metrics,

like the length- - That's a good point. - Of how long they've written, right. And it could flag certain things. Yeah. It's actually pretty easy to. like I've looked at like for hiring, I've looked at like thousands of applications. really quickly. - Really? - You can really, the human brain is really interesting, especially, like, if you visually highlight. certain information for yourself, like keywords or again, with machine learning models like sentiment,

you can highlight different parts that will catch your eye. better than not, and I can go through just a huge number of applications. - Are you telling me I can use, if I learn machine learning, I can process dating survey applications better? - Yes. No, like textual. - Yeah. Like I can like have them write things in, like, this is like a new way of... - That would be, yeah- - It's a really. good incentive. - I think that would, so it's a really nice aspect of text input, like long-form text input, multiple long-form text input based.

on an interestingly phrased question. is you get to learn how to make a better survey. I think you would appreciate that. Like you start to see how they're actually interacting. with these questions. Like I asked certain questions, like, just to see how people think. Is it better to work smart or better to work hard? Or is it ever okay to betray a close friend? Like, I'll ask like questions like this.

that don't really have a right answer, but I just wanna see how they think. Or is truth more important than loyalty? And I get their long-form answer. - You get, like, and you get to see. their reasoning presses of with it. - Yeah, yeah. Like what they, it reveals so much, not just about the person, but about the kind of questions I should be asking, that has nothing to do with truth or loyalty, but like how to get a good engineer. with like very specific questions. But I think it's really useful to get text input. - I have done text input usually with beta surveys. So I usually do beta surveys before I do the real survey.

- [Lex] What's the beta survey? - Like I do like a shorter version, or it depends on what I'm doing, but like a different version of the survey. that I have people take before I release. I use the information from the initial survey. to inform the questions that I ask in the real survey. And I haven't actually in recently, but I used to do a lot of like the text-based questions. to see for similar. Although I don't think I relied it on it quite as heavily, and if I introduced machine learning, I think it'd be a lot more efficient. - I love that you're also doing, like, you're writing scripts and stuff, like you're doing, you're doing some, like, statistical analysis.

Are you using Python also? - Yeah but, yeah. I had to learn Python for this. just a couple of months ago. - Which is the best. way to learn Python. And the best reason to learn machine learning. is to solve actual, like, problems. - Yeah. I can't be motivated. I'm just not motivated to learn something unless. there's an actual curiosity I have, and I have to learn it and to solve it. I was trying to avoid learning coding for so long, but eventually it was, my data set became too large. I couldn't work with anything else. Oh, Python, it is. - You know what's also an interesting data set. that you're probably interested in a little bit.

is like Twitter itself, right. I dunno if you've, I've played with the Twitter API a lot. - Can you just get the download the, I'm just, I'm stuttering now because. - Download the Twitter? Can you download Twitter? (both laughing). No. There's a lot of Twitter. So Twitter's a social network with a bunch of people, they're interacting a lot. Like, there's, I don't know, the number's insane, the number of interactions, but there's different ways to interact.

to get data from Twitter. There's streams you can look at, depends on what you're interested in. You can do results for searches. You can look at individual tweets and get entire, which to me is super interesting. The entire tree of different conversations, the replies. - [Aella] Ooh. - Which might be very interesting for you. because, like, it's not, it's much harder to ask rigorous questions. which you do with your polls, but you could see like how divisive certain things are. with like a sentiment- - You probably could like.

calibrators to figure out like exactly what questions. you should be asking. - Yeah. And also highlight interesting anecdotal things. when like two people freak out at each other. and just argue, like a thread that goes on. for like 1,000 messages, that you might never be even aware is happening. 'cause you're like, 'cause Twitter doesn't like surface that. Like, it would be Twitter doesn't make it easy for you. to like visualize what the hell's going on. even with your own social network. Like, if you post something that's controversial. that gets a large amount of attention, you can't clearly visualize everything that's going on.

Like, it's very, it's a blurry, amorphous, like you're just kind of looking through the fog. at different replies and then kind of... Yeah. So to be able- - Through the API, they have like graphs and of networks? - No, the data for the graphs, yeah. So you can reconstruct. yourself, yeah. - Oh, that's so cool. - And then you have different levels of access. in terms of how many queries you can do. - That is really cool. And now because there's like Elon, there's a lot of sort of revolutionary stuff.

happening at Twitter. I think you could literally, sort of, push for innovation there. Like there's aggressive innovation happening. So in terms of requesting stuff for the API, you could do all that kind of stuff. I think Twitter's just a fascinating platform for the, as cliche as it sounds, for studying. For me it's interesting, what makes for a healthy conversation. That term has been used, but it's interesting how conversation to me is fascinating, how conversations break down and not.

Like how, like the virality of drama. or conflict or disagreement, how that evolves when a large number of people are involved. When a large number of misinterpretation of statements. is involved in text base with some anonymity thrown in. Like, I feel like there's a lot of studies. that can be done there. - I mean, Twitter's probably not great at it, right, as it stands.

- [Lex] No. - 'Caus it's like necessarily short, you can quote things out of context, et cetera. - But we should understand that, right. At a scale, at a large scale you should be able to. study that kind of thing. What were we, oh yeah, what was your casual sex survey? - I actually haven't looked at it in a while. I think I just asked people. about a whole bunch of fetishists. 'cause you don't wanna be obvious about yours. because then people are gonna hijack it to try to tell you. that they like what you like, so you wanna be obscure. So how do you design a survey where you're testing. for a thing but you're still obscure. about the thing you're trying to ask about. - So you still see it as a survey?

- Yeah. Yeah. - Like an application? 'Cause I think he tweeted as saying like, "I'm thinking of just like showing up to San Francisco. "and saying, is anybody open for casual sex?". Something like this. Am I, misremembering? - Maybe escorting. I'm not sure. - Oh, for, sorry, sorry, sorry. - Which is similar. I kind of use escorting. as the way to have casual sex now. - Okay. So let's talk about escorting. So you wrote about escorting your blog post. "Escorting was good for me.".

How did you get into escorting? - I was working at like a, I quit camming 'cause I was burned out. and I was like trying to work at a friend's startup. and it was hard for me. It's difficult for me to work on projects. that are not my projects. And so I was like, hey, fuck it, I wanna go back to sex work, I wanna make more money, but I don't wanna cam anymore cause I'm burned out. So I'm like, "Well, let's try,". I have a friend who is an escort, I'm like, "let's try that.". And so we had a call, she like outlined the basics for me. and then I put up some ads and then started working.

- What's the basics of escorting? How's that work? - If you wanna get started at escorting. - I would like to. - So just as you. have a career change. You gonna want to get some nice photos, so you probably have those. - First of all, you assumed I haven't done it before, how rude. - Oh, have you? - Yeah. Well, you know, recreationally, I'd like to do professionally I suppose. So if I wanted to do it, (laughs). if I wanted to do it, if I really, really wanna step up my game, how would I do it? - (laughs) Yeah. Well you got the whole tutorial.

Well, recreational escorting is just? Okay. Okay. - No, meaning like, you know, like, selling products on Etsy versus doing a startup. - Well, I mean escorting. is kind of also selling products on Etsy. - No, like, but selling a lot of products-. - Like, high volume. (both laughing). - High volume. - You've like dabbled? - Yeah, I got, like yeah, yeah. - Small handcrafted- - It's a small handcrafted. dolls. Yeah. - Artisan. (laughs).

Escorting. (laughing). - [Lex] Versus mass manufacturer. - Okay. If you wanna mass manufacturer your escort. - I just feel like I haven't been getting, you know, I've been undervaluing my services, and I would like to really step up. - I think you could really just like grease. some marketing gears and be-. - Yeah, I mean, so some of this is marketing, so like, I guess I wanna, like, know, is it similar to camming in that way? Like is it, you're basically advertising yourself. and you're (sighs) like the marketing,

all the creativity that you mentioned before, all of that. - Yeah. I found escorting to be pretty easy. because escorting is not like highly competitive. For example camming is highly competitive. because like the thing that I outlined before, you know, the amount of money that you make. determines your ranking, and you can also go and see other girls. You can see what they're doing. So if a girl figures that incredible strategy. for making money, it's like two seconds before that strategy. proliferates into everybody else. So it's very fast-paced and like really tough. With escorting you don't get to see. what other girls are doing. You can look at their websites, but like,

you don't know what they're doing with clients at all. You can look at their rates but you don't know. what their volume is. So you don't actually know what is successful. and what isn't very much. So I think there's much less like evolution of marketing. through this process. And so I came in with like my aggressive marketing skills. from being a cam girl. I think that really helped. I did very well as an escort. I just came in like made a fantastic website, you know, I knew how to do the ads right. - What was the finding people, I guess it's also like finding the right kind of customer,

the right kind of client? - I got like in a lot of trouble for this recently. in the sex workers sphere because I said. that if you raise prices, you're more likely to encounter clients. that aren't going to abuse you. Like it's safer. They did not, they said that I was being classist, you know, implying that poor people are more violent. But to be fair, if you are a guy and you wanna be violent towards a woman, you're probably not gonna be paying her a lot of money. You're probably gonna be like, you're the kind of person likely who's going to haggle a lot. 'cause you don't respect her. But anyway, that aside, it's a little pet peeve for me.

Yeah. I just, I started charging 800 an hour. and then pretty rapidly raise it to 1,200, and then a while after that raise it to 1,400. - Well the interesting thing you mentioned. in my extensive research, you used to do 1,200 to 1,400 an hour and then you said. that you were thinking of jumping back in. at a rate of 2,400 the first hour. - [Aella] Yeah. - And I think 900 each successive hour. That's interesting. That's like, I mean, to me that's really interesting.

Like why, it's like a lot on- - Why the discrepancy? first hour? Yeah. - Oh, it's just because it's depends. on how you wanna incentivize. like the amount of hours. So if you have to pay a lot for the first hour, but not very much for the successive, you're more likely to buy like a longer period of time. And usually I find that clients who buy. a longer period of time are nicer to you. I don't have like a great theory for why that is, but there's, they're more likely like, take you dinner and get to know you first. And I just enjoy that a lot more. I enjoy like knowing who I'm gonna have sex with.

Like a date, you know? - Yeah. So it's incentivize the long-form date dynamic. versus like not. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. How does money change the dynamic, just basic human dynamic of interacting for free. versus for money? Like, I think about that a lot. 'cause, like, just talking to rich people, it's like you should get paid for your time. and you're doing this for free. Like what? (laughs). Like what's the difference?

Is there a difference really or no? - A bit. Yeah, so I've actually, it depends a lot. So when I was doing it full-time, it was my only source of income. It changed quite a lot because I was really. incentivized to have repeat customers. So I'm like, "Okay, if my primary interaction with you. "is to, like, have you hire me again. "I'll do whatever that takes to make that happen. "And so if I have to like laugh at jokes. "that I don't find funny or like, or be like more adoring. "of your penis than I actually genuinely feel, "like, that's what I'm going to express.". And obviously it's to some degree like titrated,

you know, like, it's unpleasant to force yourself. to like something that you don't. So like I would actually like not see clients again. that I didn't want to. But it's just some degree there was this, sort of, self-suppression going on, which I think is this the way it works. in any sort of customer service job. Like you want the customer to leave happy, so you just make sure that you are happy the whole time, and you're like, "Ah, really enjoying the other person.". But so recently when I've like kind of dabbled in it. since making money for through other means. where I don't need the money, it's more like a fun side thing that like, that I'm,

like I said, it's fulfilling the role of casual sex for me. So like, I don't have to do it, this is not my primary job, I just want sort of a good excuse. to like have sex with somebody, and the money is like a great filter for that. And so in that case-. - That's interesting. So the money is just, yeah, okay, the money is basically a filter for somebody. who's taken this interaction seriously. - Yeah. It also, so there's an interesting like psychological thing. where I have difficulty having casual sex. with somebody because some part of my brain, which I assume is like quite female, is doing some evaluation of status and whether or not. this is going to damage my reputation.

by having sex with them. So like if you found out that I went and like had random sex. with like a homeless man, you might be like, "Wow, that says something about Aella. "Like maybe she's, you know, trashy. "or she just has no standards for who she's gonna fuck.". And so some part of me is continually anxious. I'm like, "Does this mean I have no standards. "if I decide to have casual sex with you? "Like what are people going to think?". And so if you introduce money, it takes away that anxiety. I don't have to worry about it because it's like, "Oh, of course Aella would have sex with that person, "they paid her. "Like this is not an indication of the kind of mate. "that she can get, this is just an indication.

"of like a business transaction.". And this allows me to enjoy casual sex so much more. when somebody pays me for it. To the degree that, like, I almost view it as a kink. And so it's like, so I'm using it sort of to replace. casual sex now, like occasionally. Like pay me a little bit to erase the anxiety. and I'll like have a fun time. - I mean, can you see like dinner like that. or something like that? If the person pays for dinner or like, so like it's all just, if any money's involved, if it's a kink, then you could just like use it, and you, (laughs) he buys a coffee at a Starbucks.

It's like, all right. - Right. But it has to be plausible. Like you have to like trick my brain into like having it. actually be incentivizing for me. It's not like- - Two coffees. like cappuccino or something. - Yeah, like, the homeless man bought me a coffee. and then I sucked his dick. Like that's not cool. (laughs). - All right. No, no shame of homeless men by the way. Like I've been friends with a lot of them, I'm just using like some sort of stereotype of, right now. - Yeah,(laughs). So like, it has to be plausible. where you could trick your mind. Interesting. - Yeah. I mean, yeah. (chuckles). - And so that's different. So now in this sort of frame, I am still like,

I'm accepting money but still much more expressive. of my actual preferences. So like before when I would start escorting full-time. I was suppressive and now I'm like, you know, "Fuck it, I'm doing this for me, "so we're going to make sure that I have a good time. "And so I'm much more demanding.". - And then you're having more fun. 'cause you're not pretending- - Exactly. - Or laughing at a joke or something like that. That sounds terrible. Sounds like. - I mean, it's-. But it's also like social. I mean, I guess I would, would I do that?

Like when you first meet people, like strangers and so on, there's some aspect of like niceties, but like, I don't know, intimacy, like real intimacy requires like getting past the niceties. Like laughing at somebody's joke when it's not funny. feels like anti intimacy. - Yeah. But I laugh at so many jokes automatically. It's interesting because like, I don't mean to, I'm not trying to be fake. But like if I'm in a group of people. and somebody makes a joke and everybody laughs. I laugh even before I'm checking within myself. Like, "Do I genuinely enjoy this joke?". So it's like, I don't know, like the degree that I am sort of just like a result.

of social programming in all cases, that like when I'm with a client, back when I was doing it full-time, like it doesn't feel significantly different, it just felt like a different version of myself. - Yeah, that's true. Yeah. To that degree. To to the degree you don't feel like you're going against. your nature, yeah. - Yeah. It was very rare that I actually felt like I was. going against my nature. - What about the market of how much to charge? So 2,400. Like how transparent is that market?

Is there like a market? - Like how much can you sell. when you're charging that much? - Yeah, no, like what what are the competitors? Like if this- - Oh yeah. - Are you distinctly working, 'cause you said it's, a lot it is a bit more shrouded in mystery. Like I guess more confidential. Like do you have some transparency to the market? what the competitors are? - I did a survey of escorts. It's only like 130, I'm trying to remember. And the median was around like $300 I think an hour. - [Lex] Oh wow. - Something like that, with a very long tail at the top end.

But I'm trying to remember what the, I also asked in the amount where I could calculate. the amount they made per month. I think it was like 6 or $7,000 a month. I need to double check that one. - I charge 50 bucks an hour. - You charge 50 bucks an hour, you should raise your rates. - Yeah. I believe I give a really shitty hand job. All right. - But usually the rates are around, like if you want a median escort in a big city, it's usually 4 to $600. - A city. For us, 4 to 600? - In a big city. But like smaller cities do you charge the rates go lower.

- That's so fascinating. What's like the most you've ever seen somebody charge? - I think I am. - You're like the? - But at this point it's because I'm post work. Like I can just put it insane number. - Does like the fact that you're sort of. like a sexuality expert, like a researcher and so on, like your mind is fascinating as well, and you're a bit of a celebrity, does that play into it?

- [Aella] Yeah. - Or do you feel the celebrity now, like when you're with people? - Yeah, absolutely. Usually if people are interested in hanging out with me. it's because of that. But that's different. Like, I think besides like the fun part, this is a kink as opposed to this is a job, like with this as a job, usually the high-end. is closer to 2,000 an hour, like the very high end. - Have clients ever fallen in love with you? - I think so, yeah.

I think it happens to me much less. than most other people due to like the thing I think. we were talking about before. - [Lex] Which is what? - Where like, you know, you give off vibes. maybe like subconscious vibes. - But they have fallen in love or not, but not as often. - I think something about my signaling indicates. that people should not fall in love with me. 'cause I don't think it happens very much. It happens a lot with other women that I know. But I have occasionally had, the thing is it's hard for me because I try to be. as vulnerable as I can in a connection with a client. And like, I do really like some of them.

I still remember some of them very fondly and I'm like, I hope they're doing well. And some of them are really profound. Like, one guy saw me because he found out. he was dying of cancer and he was like, "I don't wanna die without seeing someone.". I'm like, "Jesus Christ, that's such a,". I don't know, I'm very touched by many of the people. that I saw. - So there's like deep intimacy there. - Yeah. I know that it's brief. and I know that it's like kind of weird, but like there's like a real glimpse into somebody's soul. when you get to be intimate. And I think this is especially true for men.

because a lot of time men don't have like a way. to be really vulnerable in front of anybody. But like if you're in bed with a woman that you find. to be attractive, you can, sort of, let loose a little bit more. - So they can become vulnerable in general quickly. - Yeah. And I really like that. I like being as vulnerable as I can to match it. Like I'm not forcing myself or anything, but like I just feel into it and like notice. how beautiful the person was, and like feel grateful for being able to be. in this intimate experience with them. And that was so wonderful.

- Does it ever hurt to say goodbye? - No. But I think that is unique to me. because I like being alone a lot. Even with my friends who I like dearly, I'm like happy not seeing them. 'cause I don't like making facial expressions very much, but I do miss some of my clients. - Wait, sorry. What does making facial expression. have to do with saying goodbye? - Well, if you are not with somebody in person, you don't have to make facial expressions anymore.

- Oh, you can just think about them. - Yeah, you can just sit there totally blank faced. and then have all of the emotions that you want. - [Lex] Oh, you're telling me. - Do you have this thing too? - It's not a thing, but like you're on camera. So like I feel feelings, but people usually want you, like social interaction. is such that, like, you probably want me to show feelings. on my face. - Yeah. Like that, good job. - Yeah, there you go. So like, I definitely,

there could be just an introvert thing. where you like have a vibrant inner world. that you forget to show to to the rest of the world. And also I'm scared of social interaction, I just have a lot of anxiety about interacting. with the external world. So yeah. - I'm kinda surprised to hear that. because when you talked about like finding the light. and everything, and everything is fun. Like I usually don't associate that with having. not very much anxiety. - Well, because I have the, we mentioned that earlier, I just appreciate the beauty in the world when I observe it.

But then when I'm interacting with others, I have a very harsh self-critical aspect to my brain. that says, like, "You're gonna fuck this up. "You're gonna fuck up this interaction. "You're gonna fuck up the beauty that's there.". If I'm sort of being fragile and vulnerable for a moment. One of the things I'm afraid of, I get so much love. from people that listen or even like reach out, like you said, through the survey, like women and so on. I'm afraid that yeah, you know,

you admire me because you don't know me, but you won't admire me once you know me. So that self-critical, but it's a silly, I mean as you get older you're like, "Yeah, okay.". Like I'm able to step away and objectively look at myself. as like, there's no, this is, you're fine, you're good. (laughs). It's like, but it's still there's the part of the brain. that you can't just shut off. - Like what would fucking up in this conversation look like? Like it doesn't have to be rational, but I'm curious if there's like a specific thing?

- A lot of it is just a feeling like an amorphous fear, a failure, what it would actually look like. Maybe because we're talking about sexuality, me not being able to eloquently explain the worldview I have. and why I appreciate it.

That would make me feel like a failure. because that would make me feel like. maybe you don't know what you're doing, right. Because sexuality, not sexuality, but even romantic relationships are really important. to happiness, they're really important to me. And I'm not sure like the conception of love I have, romantic love is like fully made rigorous. So especially when I'm talking to you. that thinks very rigorously about a lot of these topics, I'm not sure if I've thought about them a lot.

I feel them. I interact with the world. in a space of feelings. Maybe I'm almost afraid to be very rigorous. with these kinds of thoughts. And so I think the failure would be like, I would be confronted with the fact that I can't explain. what makes me happy. That could be a failure, and there could be just a bunch of other failures. Another big failure is like not, I think you're a really brilliant person,

and a lot of folks I know, know and admire your work as well. And so like for me not to be part of highlighting. that brilliance would be a failure definitely. - Like, because then other people might feel like, like notice the discrepancy or something? - Yeah, but no, no, no, that's not other people, just my personal feeling. - Oh, I see. - And then like the other is like jokes. 'cause like we're talking about sex, right, so for me, like it's fun to just joke around, but you also have to tread carefully because like,

it's a weird surface because like, you know, even I already feel bad about making a joke for 50 bucks. for a hand job that's crappy by me. But I think, (laughs), I think sometimes you just gotta go for it. I went for it. It kind of fell flat on its face. But that's the thing with the conversation. - I think there's like this fear where it's like, if you become like scientific about something. you'll figure out that your feelings are unjustified.

and then you'll experience this horrible thing where like, ah, shit, like, "I'm like afraid of this, "but I'm sort of being forced to by my logical mind. "to like believe this thing.". Which I don't think this is true at all. I think like your feelings are there for a reason, like they're for a good reason. And like logic or like rigorous analysis or something. should be dedicated to figuring out why it's there. Not to like suppress it or tell it it shouldn't be there. - What do you think is more important to like, to just life?

Is it reason versus emotion? Like not life, to what makes us human, I guess? - My romantic narrative answer to this, which is like not rigorous at all, is curiosity. - Curiosity. - Yeah. - What, is curiosity? That's such a middle (laughs). curiosity is like both emotion and reason, right? - Yeah. - So it's like this pull 'cause reason is the tool. you use to figure out the puzzle, and then curiosity is the pull towards the puzzle.

- Yeah. I don't like worldview that pit like emotion. and rationalities opposite each other. They feel like beautiful parts of like a cohesive whole. Like if you're doing rationality to the extent. where you're like suppressing. some emotional reactions you have, then I think you're doing it wrong, you're like missing a big part of it. Like it should be like integrated. It should be like part of like one unified flow. Like the things that you like, if you wanna be in a romantic, committed relationship. for the rest of your life, then this is like beautiful, and good, and the kind of like. logic that you're using to make sense of the world should be.

fitted into that correctly. I think that's really cool. Like anytime you have sort of like an internal. at odds thing with it, I think you're like using some sort of force to suppress. one or the other. Like, "I'm not allowed to reason about this, "or I'm not allowed to feel about that.". And that feels harsh to me. And I think curiosity is the solution. Like if you're simply just calmly curious, "Oh, why do I feel like that? "Let's go find out, that's so cool," right. Like you can use logic and your feelings. to like discover the answer. - Do you sometimes, 'cause you do this kind of technique, which is interesting and I've mentioned it to others,

you'll sometimes step away. from like a third person perspective. and describe the feeling you're feeling. Or like even just the situation, like you'll step out and talk about, "Wait, what is happening here?". - [Aella] Like in the conversation itself. - In the conversation itself. First of all, what is that? Do you find that to be useful and interesting. 'cause it's, it's very interesting. It's feels raw and honest. The danger of it seems like you escape the actual experience.

of it though. So that's the trade off. You make it intellectual, right. - Is it though, intellectual to do that? Maybe it is. I don't mean to... - No, maybe that's the wrong word. You can make it intellectual. But you can still continue the same flavor. 'cause you're not fully disengaging from the conversation, you're just creating an extra meta layer, that's happening at the same time-. - I think exploring the emotional reaction. to what's going on in the moment.

- Yeah, in some ways it's actually making it stronger, or enriching it, like making it more, giving it more context, giving a deeper understanding-. - I think there's like a way of going meta. that is a flinch move. Like, "Oh I noticed that we're doing this thing, "I'm gonna name it.". And I think the thing that I described earlier, like when the homeless guy approached me and asked, you know, "Can you go home with me?". And I was like, "Are you trying to have sex with me right now?". Like what I was doing is like a meta, like you're stepping outside like, and like okay, what is the purpose of this conversation? And we explicitly identify it. And in that case I think that is sort of like a flinch move.

Like I'm not telling him my emotional response, I'm not like being fully present, I'm like sort of identifying it as a way to subvert. what's going on. And I absolutely think this is a possible thing, but I usually try to be aware of that myself. And it depends on the purpose of what's going on. - That guy, 'cause that is actually, it's like a chess move you did, you had a purpose of that chess move, but the flirtation is on. Like he could've like done a better move that would make you.

like curious like, "Huh!" - Yeah, that's true. - Like interesting 'cause you had an agenda with that, but he could've changed your mind. Like, he could've, with a few words, 'cause you just created extra layers, extra entry points. - If he had gotten more meta , I might've been like, "Okay, well, now I am gonna sleep with you.". (both laughing). - Exactly. And see there is something. Yeah. That aids into the chemistry of the conversation. when you do that meta. I really enjoy it. It's like a rare, I forget, did you not, I forget who, I've had a few people do that with me.

Like just in conversation and I feel like you were involved. somehow 'cause I've met you before somewhere. I don't know if we were, or you were just, - We were. at a couple parties together. - Oh, maybe it was just like a bunch of people. that kind of play with the same are. like uncomfortable. - They're circling. It's just a practice explicitly dedicated towards that. - What's circling? - Circling s's like this- - That might be the thing-. - Yeah, I think so. We know we have some mutual circlers in our-. - Circlers (chuckles). - In our network here. - What's circling?

I don't remember what circling-. - I'm gonna describe it horribly, 'cause it's like one of those things that's difficult. to describe unless you experience it. Like, kind of like drugs. But it's something like you sit around, there's like kind of guidelines to the conversation. where you talk about the present moment. And you're like honest about your experiences. as much as you can be. And if you don't wanna be honest, then you say, I don't wanna be honest. And like commitment to connection. So like you're here to like actually connect. with the other person and understand them and be understood. You're not supposed to like project, so if you're like have an analysis about the other person, you own it, you're like, "I'm experiencing you as this,".

you know, and then you check is it true. - Are you supposed to be almost like converting into words. the thing you're thinking, like constantly? Are you supposed to say what you're thinking, - If it feels right in the moment, you can. The thing is it's very amorphous, right, it's like almost like creating a magical sensation. And I've been with some, I've seen some very good circlers, really high skill circle and I feel like I'm on drugs. when that happens. It's very rare to see. - Does it feel honest somehow? - Yeah. Very honest. Like, right now in this moment I'm feeling like kind of,

like, nervous energy because I'm talking to you, and this is a unique situation, and like I want you to think I'm cool. I want everybody listening to me to think I'm cool, but I'm also having some sort of delight at being able to. express in this way and like some admiration for how you, like, set up and built this thing. that I can be a part of. And all of these things are sort of in my body right now. as this sort of vibrating high thing. - I remember, like, in the party setting. 'cause I've had to talk to a few people, I felt like it was going sexual very quickly. - Okay. I don't know if you remember this, but the first time I met you I didn't know who you were,

I just heard, I knew I'd heard your name, like I'd heard your name and like , I think I've heard people discuss that. And I was in the middle of a very sexual conversation. with another woman. - Oh you were? - Yeah I was. And you just like turned around and left. very shortly afterwards. And I thought it very-. - Oh was I listening in on the conversation. or something like that? - I think, it was like I was talking to her. and you were just kind of like right there, and so we introduced ourselves and then we continued on. with a conversation. You were like standing there and listening. - Yeah. I don't think I would've left the, so it's funny, you probably interpret it in a different way. It sounds like- - I interpret it. as you like not wanting to listen. to like graphic sexual stuff.

- Was it like super graphic? - I don't know, I was asking her about, I was doing, I was interviewing her about her fetish basically. - Oh yeah. I don't think I would've walked away from that. I would've been like curious. Oh, interesting, 'cause I don't often see people. having a deep interview about fetishes. Like I wouldn't even be, listen, I'm like Jane Goodall here. (both laughing). I'm not like, (both laughing). I'm not afraid of sexuality or something like that. I just have certain values in terms of like monogamy. and so on. But I think- - Okay, that's good. - Sexuality is really beautiful, yeah. I don't think, yeah, I can't imagine myself walking away.

from that conversation. - Someone who must have like called you or something-. - Yes, probably. 'Cause I didn't remember. exactly how it worked, I just remember thinking later on-. - [Lex] Or maybe I thought I was intruding. - Oh, maybe. I was kind of drunk. - And I probably was very drunk too. (Aella laughing). - I would like to actually have like footage. of that conversation so we can actually interpret. what actually happened. because it's probably, I mean, you know, human interactions are funny like that, they can happen for all kinds of reasons.

Have you ever fallen in love with a client? - No. I mean like in tiny ways, like micro loves. - Have you ever fallen in love, love? - I mean, I don't know what it means, but probably. The thing that other people say when they say. fall in love is probably something I've experienced. - What do you think they mean? What is love, Aella? - Yeah, I know. - No. - It's a fantastic question. I think, so love is one of those words that refers. to like a billion different concepts, and I think we maybe should just taboo the term. to have a better understanding what we're referring to.

'Cause there's things like feeling intense attachment, there's something feeling like soulfully aligned, there's like sexual attraction, there's like excitement. - Are you talking to me. and saying we should taboo the term love. in this conversation. - Maybe. - How dare you. (Aella laughing). Well, it's (laughs), okay. Romantic love-. - To make it flourish into lots of other new definitions. - Okay. Thank you. - We're expanding love. - It sounds like you're censoring the most important word. This is like 1984 all over again.

(Aella laughing) Okay. Also on the book a reading list. Okay. Listen, no, romantic love, like a deep intimacy for somebody, like a deep connection with a human being. that is also, I mean, yeah, with polyamory is tricky and your relationship. with sex is also tricky. So like what's the difference between a deep friendship. and a friendship that also has a sexual component? - I remember being very confused about that. when I did a lot of LSD.

I was like, what? The line between romantic relationships and everything else. kind of got blurred. I was like, "Oh, I'm just like in intimacy.". And some intimacies mean that you spend. your life together more and have sex. But like the same basic thing is there, like you're seeing someone for like who they are. - Do you think you can be, if you're heterosexual, do you think you could be really deeply close with friends. with a guy and not have sexual relations with him? - I assume it's possible. Like if anything is ever possible then probably yeah-.

- Well, everything is possible, time travel is possible. Quantum mechanics makes every, traveling faster than the speed of light is possible, according to general relativity everything is possible. So you're saying there's a chance "Dumb and Dumber". has taught me that everything. is fucking possible. - It's probably. not super likely assuming. that they are like attracted to each other. - Yeah. And for somebody that does surveys. and statistical analysis, we're interested in like what's the likely thing here.

versus, like, what's possible. If you say possible it's like, well anything's open. - Did you just avoid answering the love thing? Okay, I have- - I have a lot to say. about love, it's just I like to be precise. - Yeah. Okay. Let's be precisely imprecise and continue. - Oh sorry, that's my phone. (Lex laughing). - It feels like a passive aggressive suggestion. that we shouldn't talk about love anymore, but we shall continue. - No, we should absolutely talk about love, it's just the term is very confusing, 'cause it's like some people say the word love. and the thing that they're thinking of is like, "Oh, the butterfly is like the sparkle thing.

"that I get in my stomach when I think about my loved one.". But I study relationships over time. I just released, like, I did a survey about it, and that sparkle goes away within like two to four years, but people still report loving their partner after that. So I'm like, okay, like, when you say the word love. what the fuck are we talking about? - Yeah. Okay. - I just wanna get. on the same page. - Okay. So what are the different, so the butterflies, boy, I'd like to push back that two to four years. on the butterflies, but okay. - [Aella] I mean, statistically. Not everybody. - Butterflies don't give a fuck about statistics.

You ever heard of, like, the flap of a butterfly wing. causing like nuclear war? (Aella laughing). How do you describe that with your statistics? Okay, so butterflies, that's basic infatuation, the chemistry of the initial interactions, sure. But a deep meaningful connection like, that feels like sexuality is a component of that. Like the kind of intimacy that's only possible.

when you're also sexual with another human being. On top of that you have the butterfly, and on top of that. you have the friendship, and on top of that. you have like, what is that? That's a sandwich full of things. - [Aella] The love sandwich. - The love sandwich. - Okay. I'm down to calling it a love sandwich. - We'll you just call sandwich, L-S. Okay. What role does that play in the human condition? - You asking about the human condition. It's an interesting phrase. - [Lex] Yeah. - I'm like, this is, like, not a phrase that's common. in my own thinking.

- Sure. Human condition is a good summary, you know, on what do you think, what do you feel. when I say human condition. - I ask very different. kinds of questions than you. - Sure. Yeah. - Which is interesting. I've been trying to like figure out like what kind of brain. like you have as like creating, like, this category of question? Which is why I was saying, there's something about a poetic narrative in there. because it's very like aesthetic. I think you've asked much more aesthetic questions. than I do. - I don't even know what the word aesthetic means, really. - Like artistic. - Artistic.

Well, I mean I know what aesthetic means, but I also don't know what it means. It's kind of like the word love. Aesthetic perspective. Yeah. Well, but part of it in conversation, you don't wanna ask a question. that has an answer fully, always. - Like, do you have an example of a question. that has that? - What's the meaning, oh, does has an answer? - Yeah. Like one that you like, "Ah, that's like a bad question because it has an answer.". - How many sexual partners have you had. in the last year? - Oh my God. That's such a, (laughs), okay,

I feel like we just like got to some sort of crux. about, like, the kinds of questions. that we like to answer. - Sure. - (laughs) 'Cause I would love that question. - [Lex] Okay. Right. - To ask it of people. - All right, but does that really tell the story. of what you've felt over the past year? - That's true. But then I could just tell you. Okay. So by when you're saying the kinds of questions. that you liked, the ones that don't have an answer; by not an answer, you mean like, not an answer. where you can know that you're done telling it? - Is that- - So you can escape. having to think by actually answering it.

- I see. - Yeah. The struggle is the place where we discover something. not the destination (laughing) consensual. Okay, it's working, its working. Okay. So what is the role of the love sandwich. in the human condition? - Okay, that's fine. I take that question back, it's a stupid question. - You don't have to, I'm ready to try-. - Do you like love? Do you personally. like love? - Do I like love? Yeah, I mean, I think, like, there's a part of me. that feels like I have unconditional love for all things.

Like when you're talking about the glass being beautiful. I felt that, like, that feels like, it felt like it rang something that like I have. a similar resonance in me for that. - If I were to circle right now, I feel like you're avoiding the love question, the love sandwich question. What's your own personal feeling towards loving. another human being versus. having sex with another human being?

- Love is like one of the concepts. that dissolved for me a long time ago, so I have difficulty directly answering it. But I have the experience, when you described the love sandwich, I feel like I have had that experience. I have it currently for some people also. Like I'm dating people and I have that. - So people who you date, you would describe sharing a love sandwich with them. - Yeah. (chuckles). - Okay. So how does, (both laughing). I mean, that's great to hear. So you're not, are you afraid of love? - No, not at all.

- So can you describe to me. polyamory, what is it? What does it mean? 'Cause there's like different terms. You have a nice blog post about it. - Yeah, I have a personal definition of it, which I readily admit is not shared by a lot of people. But to me the definition of polyamory. is simply not forbidding your partner. from pursuing intimacy with others. It doesn't mean that you have to pursue it personally. Like two people could be married and only have had sex. with each other for 20 years, and as long as they're like,

"You know what, if ever you wanna go have sex. "with somebody else, you're welcome to do that.". - Well the interesting thing you said is, that doesn't mean they have to do it, they just have the freedom to do it. - Yeah, it's the freedom that matters to me. - Which is, I mean, it's called 'The Polyamory Post". You have so many good blog posts. People should just go look at your, read your writing. It's really, really strong and often backed by data, but also just a deeply honest look at yourself. and your understanding of the world.

Yeah, it's refreshing to me, like with a lot of stuff I disagree with, but I feel like if I disagree with it you'll be very open. in arguing it and kind of thinking through it. There's just the honesty that radiates from the whole thing. Anyway. So yeah, It would be interesting. to kind of explore what polyamory, like how it works, what are the different versions, what does that freedom look like? What what does that freedom feel like. to be able to go see other people? - Depends on you.

Like, do you wanna go see other people? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. So usually for me, I tend to be pretty happy with like one or a few people. And then occasionally I like some novelties. So usually I'll go, like, I host orgies sometimes, so I'll host an orgy and then I'll go have sex with people. at the orgy and then that'll be good. for the novelty for a while. - Can I ask you about orgies? - Yeah. - So how many people are in orgy? What's like a standard, we're having a Sunday picnic. and it's an orgy, what's like a number of people. at an orgy? - Oh, it depend. I've been, I've only recently started hosting orgies,

but I have been to a lot of orgies, and I would say, like, the median is maybe 15 people. - I like how you say median versus mean. Okay. Median is 15 people. What's the gender distribution usually? - Usually about even. It's like ideal if you can get. more women than men in most of them. I've recently been hosting free-use orgies, or orgies where consent is assumed by default. when you enter. And of course you can revoke it anytime, we go over a whole bunch of rules to make sure. it's very safe, you like have wristbands, so nobody's actually doing anything.

they don't want to but- - Wristbands, nice. - In those ones you have to have more men than women. - I thought free-use was like consensual like at any time, but it's at any time within the constraints. of this building or something like that? - Yeah, so at the orgies it's like you, by entering, if you wear a wristband then you are like by default. opting into consent. So people don't have to like do a thing where they negotiate. with you and like be like, "Is this okay?". It's just the default is like you just go for it. And if they want you to stop,

they say the safe word like "Red don't,". and then you have to stop. And we do like exercise in the beginning. of people saying red to make sure that everybody knows. exactly what the rules are. - What's your favorite safe word? - Red. - Red. - When I first started doing like weird kinky shit, I was like, "Oh let's make a safe word,". and we picked the word foliage. I was like, "That's goofy right?". But then eventually came a time where I did actually, in fact, wanna say the safe word. and I couldn't- - Couldn't think of it. - I was like in agony I was like crying, I'm like I can't make myself say this stupid word right now.

- Foliage. - So after that I was like red, doesn't matter, I don't care, that's not funny, we're just going with very simple red-. - Very practical. How does an orgy compare sexually to like a one-on-one. sexual experience? Like what, is it same ballpark. or is it fundamentally different? - I mean the experience of both orgies and one-on-one sex. carry like really high variety. - It's a high variety- - You kind of, it's a little bit like you're having sex with someone. but you're surrounded by really realistic VR porn. of other people having sex. - [Lex] Oh, okay, cool.

- And sometimes there's like three sums also, like maybe there's another person involved, but it's hard to like have a whole bunch of people. in one cluster, 'cause usually there's kind of different. little clusters of people having their experience. I once was part of a 10-woman orgy, it was a total lesbian thing, and that felt like a writhing cluster was very nice. But typically you kind of separate out. with like very small pods of people doing stuff. - Okay. So back to polyamory. So what's a good, what, what does it take to manage?

Do you have a main partner, if you're being polyamorous and you have, you're dating multiple people, is there usually a main one for you personally? - For me personally kind of, yes. Like right now I kind of, two that aren't, like I see roughly, for me it's kind of just descriptive. Like if I just happen to be seeing you a lot more. and I confide in you more than you, like you're descriptively my primary partner. But I don't usually have rules to protect that, I'm down with rules to protect it. if you're like trying to build something, like we gonna buy a house together, I'd be like "Okay, we need to, like, "whatever our relationship is, "we have to do the thing where we're both paying the rent. "for a house or the mortgage or whatever.".

A lot of people do have primary sets, it's very common to have like prescriptive, like I'm gonna get married to you, and you're not allowed to like have. anal sex with anybody else. That sort of thing. - What about like the transparency. and the communication they have to do? Do you usually try to be super honest. about everything. - Extremely, yeah. I mean I've learned over time that like even if it seems. like a very small thing, you talk about the small thing. 'Cause often I would just sort of have, like, a small twitch in myself, "I don't know if I like that, "but okay, is this really minor. "It's probably nothing and if I talk about it. "it's gonna make it into a thing.

"And I just don't wanna make it into a thing," you know. And I've come to realize that it's worth. making it into a thing because I can't predict at the time. if like the small feeling I have is going to grow. And then when I grow it now it's like much more difficult. to deal with. So now it's like any little bit of jealousy I have. I immediately communicate it. I'm like, "Ah, I'm a little jealous of you right now.". I don't hold that in at all. I used to be kind of like, back when I first started being poly, I used to try to pretend that I was not a jealous person. and that backfired quite a lot. - That's really interesting. So you do still feel jealousy? - Oh yeah, definitely. - And it's also interesting that you kind of recommend.

when there's a little bit of jealousy, like, to bring that to the surface. - Yeah. Just like excessively communicate, even if it feels stupid. Like this is, I feel like a cliche, I feel like a stupid therapist training video, like I just feel ridiculous sometimes. when I'm saying the things, but it's just, I've learned over time. it's just important to just say the things. - 'Cause like, you know, the traditional view of jealousy. is exactly like you said, if you bring it up to the surface, like, it's gonna sound. like you're overreacting to everything. But you're saying like, still do it.

because you're basically, your brain blows stuff out of proportion. - Yeah. And it's good to like be going through it. with a partner. Like, I have a partner right now who's like dating. this other girl and he like really likes her, and he, like, went traveling with her and stuff. And I was like, "I feel jealous about it.". And I have to tell him that, and that way he can be with me in it. He like holds me when I'm feeling jealous, and it's like a bonding experience, you know. But it's important for me that, like, he's able to handle it. Like, I try not to date people who really freak out. when I have negative emotions. Because I wanna be able to express that I'm upset.

by something they're doing. without it being taken as a demand. that they change their behavior. - Right. So he has to be able to skillfully handle. that interaction. - Yeah. He has to be like, cool. "All right, you're jealous, "I'm not gonna freak out about it, "I'm not gonna change my behavior, "I'm just gonna be with you in that. "We're gonna sit in it together.". - I mean, is some of that just insecurity. that you should also just comfort, like basically alleviate your insecurity, bring you back to like a rational objective evaluation? - In my relationships, I love it when people. do not reassure me. I like not being comforted quite a lot.

And so usually the people I date don't, I'm very gravitating. Like, it's one of the things people do. to make me fall in love with them is if I say something. really like terrible and they're just like, do not give me any comfort whatsoever. That's where my heart gets captured. So I typically am in relationships where I'm like, "Hug me I'm so jealous.". And they just like, do not reassure me at all. And that's good 'cause it doesn't give me an out, like I have to deal with it myself. - [Lex] They're still there. to share it. - Maybe it's true. that the other woman is better than me. Like, maybe that is an actual possible reality. - Would you like that? - I don't wanna be dealing.

with my life in a way where I'm like pretending, like, I'm only okay when that reality is not true. - Would you like them to say that, that the other woman is better than you? - Or that they prefer- - If they feel that. - Yeah. I mean they should say it. in according to themselves. Like, "Oh, I prefer, like, "I have a better time with her than I have with you.". Than I would wanna know that. Yeah. - And even though that might be painful to hear. - Yes. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. - That which can be destroyed by the truth. What was that,

that your ego or something like that? - Yeah, my ego. (laughs). - So your ego just generally grows. and you like the destruction of it. - [Aella] Yeah. It's like really accurate. - It's the process of truth. - It's not, it's like a fun experience. Like, I've had like guys be like, "well you're not as pretty as I'd like.". I'm just like, "Oh, you know, stabbed to the heart.". - But then also like, "Gimme your number, after. - [Aella] Yeah. (laughs). - Oh man, oh well, that's kind of beautiful. What do you think of monogamous relationships, like philosophically?

Can you maybe steal man or make the case. for monogamous relationships? Can you understand the pros and cons. of monogamous relationships-. - Yeah. I mean, it depends on how you, if you're like, "Hey you can do whatever you want, "but you and I are gonna spend the rest,". like we just, you're 80 years old and like, "Oh, we spent 60 years in a marriage together, "we've never had sex with anybody else.". I think that's, like, awesome. If that's what you want, that's great. I have like a little bit more problems with people. doing that while also forcing their partner. not to misbehave if they want to. Like, if you're like,

"Oh, we only made it this far in our relationship. "because I forced my partner not to pursue an intimacy. "that she wanted to". Then I feel like a little, like more like, "Ah, I don't know if that's great.". - How do you know if it's a real want or an intimacy? Like checking out a attractive person while being inside. a monogamous relationship? Yeah. How do you score that? Is that bad that the person cannot pursue those feelings? - I mean, it depends if they want to. Like, I often find people attractive. if I don't wanna pursue. I'm also okay with people entering into agreements.

Like if you and I want to agree, like I'm only going to enter this. 'cause I'm gonna be so hurt if you pursue somebody else, so I'm not gonna pursue anybody else. That seems fine to me. But I also extend that like if somebody's like, "I don't want you to have any friends, "I'm gonna feel really insecure if you,". And like, okay, like if you wanted to enter that agreement, "like I feel the same way.". Like I think you should have the right to do it. if this is what you want. But I also kind of, I feel like a little weird. about restricting your partner from doing things, you know. - Oh. But I guess if you're honest about it, and you put it on the table. (chuckles). I don't want you to have any friends. (laughs).

I want you to sit in a box. (laughs). - [Aella] Yeah. I think a lot-. - I guess if you're like really honest, but then if there's like, if there's a power dynamic that, like, you can be quite influential in a relationship. in convincing your partner, and it's sure sounds like you're honestly. agreeing to a thing, but you're not really agreeing. That's the, I mean part of that. is the beauty of relationships, right. Like, it's messy. It can be messy. It's hard to know what you really want, right.

- Yeah. I think that's mainly my complaint with monogamy. Like I'm down with like conscious monogamy. But I think so many relationships. are, like, monogamous by default. Like, people it's not actually right for them, but they just get into it because culture. just doesn't give them another option. - And they don't even ask themselves the question, is this right for me? - Right. which like I'm a weird-ass person who thinks. a lot of weird shit, but I didn't even think. about polyamory an option. before I had heard that it existed. And it was only when I first met my first polyamorous couple. and I was like, "Oh, that's what I am. "That's clearly the thing that I am.".

- Yeah. It's funny 'cause to me monogamy is, it's not a, it doesn't make sense for it to be a default. Like to me monogamy goes against human nature. That's in some sense, like, romance is a fuck you. to the way the world works. - Really? - Yeah. Like it's a, like Romeo and Juliet romance, like traditional description of what romance looks like. versus, like, sure there's a million variations of that. But in my head, like this partnership. that's for a long time together is a kind of, you know,

like, I don't know, like "True Romance". You know that movie, it's a really fucking good movie. - [Aella] I haven't seen it at all. - Okay. There's just like, you're together against the world. I mean that's what close friendship feels like. It's like ride or die, right. - Yeah. - Like that. I guess it doesn't, it can be, it could span across multiple, you can have multiple partners in that way.

- [Aella] Yeah, absolutely. - But I just don't see monogamy as like, definitely not a default. I would actually, like, honestly would probably see. polyamory as a more natural default. - I mean, I guess depends on what you mean by default. Like most of human history has been sort of a weird mix. It's like you get polygamy and monogamy. or the kind of the main arrangements. But yeah- - But I mean, just like human nature, like I-. - Yeah. People are attracted to other people. and they wanna... - Yeah. - Especially in longer term relationships. I track, in my relationship survey,

I track the amount of cheating over time. in a relationship. Like how long have you been in this relationship. and how have you cheated? - So what's the results of that? - Men cheat a lot, women too, but men cheat about 30% more than women do. I also ask men and women to predict if they think. their partner has cheated, and people's predictions were about the same. So people, roughly, predicted that their male or female, like, spouse hadn't cheated about the same rate, but men cheated much more than women. - So who was more correct in their prediction though? - So men were more correct in their prediction.

predicting women. And women were more off, women thought men cheated much less than they actually did. But (chuckles) both of them were off, but like the male gap was significantly more. So yeah, I mean you're right when you say monogamy. is not default, like I think you're like really getting. at something, like human beings are just, especially in long-term relationships, it's difficult to only want one person. But to be fair, I think monogamy and commitment. are very different. I think you'd be incredibly, I've known so many very long term super committed.

poly couples that live lives that look very similar. to the very romantic, monogamous couples. Like children, houses, like 20 years. And that works great for them. - Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's so much to like open your mind to. in these kinds of conversations, these kinds of ideas. But I also realize like some of the cake is baked. Like, I have some assumptions. that are hard to break through. - [Aella] Like what? - For myself. Like it's difficult for me to imagine.

a polyamorous relationship for me that would work. - [Aella] Yeah? - But I don't have enough data. I don't have a, like I have very little, but like at this point it's like, I haven't eaten pizza in like 20 years. 'cause I know I just don't disappoint yourself, I just eat low carb 'cause it makes me feel good, but there's so many foods I haven't explored. It's just like, well, I know what I love (laughs)-.

- Yeah, but you probably. are monogamous. - You explore. every once in a while. Yeah. And you kind of figure that out. But at the same time you're humbled by, like, even talking to you or looking at your data, like sexuality is a fascinating topic. because it seems that we're very, like we were talking about very afraid of this topic. Like to be really honest with ourselves about it, the whole like academic research is afraid of it, but it's so core to who we are as human beings. I gotta ask you about this. I can't believe took this long to get there,

but one of your many fascinating surveys is on fetishes. (sighs). You wrote a blog post about it. Probably several, 'cause it's like a huge dataset-. - [Aella] Oh yes, it's still in progress, yeah. - So the one I'm referring to is on popularity. and tabooness of various fetishes. So what are some interesting takeaways? I gotta pull up this graph, 'cause it's freaking epic. - Yes. This is a big graph and it has tabooness. as one axis and popularity as the other.

- Okay. For people who are just listening. on the x-axis as tabooness. - Yeah. - [Lex] Asked to rate how taboo. society viewed sexual interest. And on the y-axis says; "Percent of people reporting interest, log scale". Oh boy. All right. So just some examples on the low tabooness. and high popularity. There's a correlation here, I think you said it's 0.69. - Yeah. (laughs). - Which is hilarious.

Is it still 0.69, are you tracking that? - I haven't looked, since I did this. - That's the most recent. So like the less taboo stuff is more likely to be popular. and the more taboo stuff is less likely to be popular. And on the like missionary position, fingering vagina, blowjobs, light spanking, cuddling. Cuddling is more taboo than missionary? - I think people are conceiving like if you're, like, I'm really sexually aroused by cuddling specifically, then you're like, that's a little more weird. than getting specifically aroused by a blowjob.

You expect people to be aroused by a blowjobs. - [Lex] So this was like getting at like as a fetish versus. like an activity. - This specific as a like a concrete sexual interest. Like I'm specifically interested in this thing, yeah. - [Lex] And so those are thighs and lips, different body parts; jaw lines, and then some of it is color-based. on more female preference versus male preference. Like jaw lines is more female preference, being submissive is more female preference, light bondage, yeah, more female.

There's a lot of interesting ones. There's so much. Okay. But then on the far side of that, I mean it gets pretty dark. But even all along the way, like extreme bondage being at 50 tabooness, pegging, pain, giving pain, sexual frustration, I suppose as a kink. - Yeah. - [Lex] Then there's so many interesting ones like to me, like just that I haven't even like considered.

- Yeah. I had to do so much research into fetishes. to compile the list-. - Are there some surprising like options to you. that you're like, "Oh okay this is like a fetish?". - Yeah. Well more confusing. was, like, what the fetishes are about. 'cause, like, I didn't wanna overlap fetishes. so I had to, kind of, look into them. And I'm like, there's like such interesting manifestations. of core drives. Like if you're really aroused by disgust, like maybe you're very into rolling around in dirt. but you're not into rolling around with ice cream. So I'm like, "Okay, I have to make those two. "separate fetishes," you know. - Sure.

And like I'm seeing like at the far end rodents, like different types of incest, branding, so there's like pain and then-. - [Aella] It's like wound fucking. - Sex with animals I guess, dogs, horses. Receiving oral sex from an animal is high tabooness.

and pretty high popularity. - Surprisingly high popularity. I was really shocked by that one. I went and triple check that number 'cause I'm went, "No way, this is a lot of people are reporting interest.". - Do you know which animal? Is there? - No, I didn't specify. I asked like, which animal are erotic, and then I separately asked, like, how erotic is it to receive oral sex. from your preferred animal? - This is so fascinating. So I would, like, or keep going, just talk about the methodology of this?

(sighs) This feels like deeply honest. map of humanity in a way we don't usually map humanity. - [Aella] Yeah. - Like 'cause it's so, like your fetishes. are so meaningful to each individual person. - Yeah. That's what I love about this work. It's like nobody cares about someone's fetishes. You never get to express them. And if you have a more unusual fetish, people usually judge you. So it's like this tiny little pocket.

of, like, this shame thing, but it's so cool to me. That like human brains can be oriented in such a way, like wound fucking (laughs). Like somebody finds that so erotic and that's so cool. - Yeah. And then they probably, and it should be explored, like, how did that come to be? You mentioned that we like to construct narratives. that somehow was grounded in childhood, but maybe it's genetic. Maybe it has to do with, maybe you can actually form. and unform that fetish very quickly. I don't know. - Well, this is one of the things that I'm researching.

So in the big survey that I'm doing, I asked so many questions about childhood, all the ones that I think like we have common theories. about like, "Oh, were you abused? "Is it yelled at by a man or a woman?". Stuff like that. Like, "Are you really sexually repressive?". Was it gender roles where you've expected to conform. a whole bunch of stuff? And then I asked, you know, obviously about like a massive amount of fetishes. And my sample size right now is 500,000 people. - 500,000 people. - Yeah. It's massive. And I have data for all of it. And the result looks like that it's not really correlated, nothing that I asked about in childhood,

nothing correlates with fetish preference later in life. It does correlate with onset. Lots of things that happen in childhood can, like, change like the the age at which it triggers. - You have so many fascinating blog posts. You had a blog post I think on the age of fetish onset. - [Aella] Yeah. - And like you really nicely organize it by age, like reproduction as a fetish, I guess pregnancy. - [Aella] Yeah. - As at at age of 17, about 16.9.

Toys and like anal beads is 15.5. - Yeah. One of the interesting things I found, I mean this dataset is so huge, it's taking me a long time to go through it. So this is like snippets from what I remember. when I was glancing through the data. So this part is not rigorous. But I seem to get the impression that if you are, if a fetish occurs for you earlier, like if you've much earlier onset, you're more likely to report. being extremely interested into it. So later onset means you're gonna be like less. into the fetish. But if it hits earlier-.

- But I wonder if it passes. Is there like phases-. - Yeah I didn't measure old fetishes at all. - Like no longer, right. You used to, but it is no longer there. Interesting. - One interesting thing that I don't understand is. that non-cis people seem to have more correlation. between childhood experiences and fetishes. So I was saying that there's no correlation. between childhood experiences and fetishes, this holds for cis people. But trans people, especially trans men, there's a correlation. It doesn't mean they have absolutely higher rates of abuse. or fetishes or anything.

But I'm just saying that like for them there does. actually seem to be some sort of connection. between childhood experiences and sexuality later in life. And I don't understand why this plays to one group. and not the other. I don't have a good theory for that. - So usually you try like when you see something like that, you'll try to construct a theory. and see if you can find, like, you keep that theory in mind like a hypothesis. of why it would be and then you ask further questions. to try to elaborate. - Yeah. - So can you maybe talk about the methodology. of how you got the 500,000?

Like how did this come to be? - This is, I might go into way too much detail. about this 'cause I thought about this so much. "Cause I'm like, the question is, how do you get a lot of people to take a big survey? The longer a survey is to lower the response rate. And I really wanted to do one big comprehensive survey. so I could like check a whole bunch of correlations. within it 'cause it's, you know, more annoying and it's harder to get a lot of people. to retake similar surveys to each other at a time. So I'm like, "Okay, I need to convince. "a very large number of people to take. "a lot of these questions.". And even building the questions,

that was really hard because I'm like, "Okay, I need a comprehensive amount of fetishes, "I can't ask everybody to answer. "for every single niche fetish.". I'm like, "Do you like ball gags? "Do you like funnel gags? "Do you like wife shrew gags or whatever? I'm like, "You can't do that, "nobody's gonna finish that survey.". - Okay fine. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna ask questions. What's a wife shrew? But okay. - I'm not doing this, I'm trying to refer to like, there's like a thing that like. holds the gag. - Different types of gags. - Some thing like that. Different types, okay. - Yeah. Different. So I'm like, "So what I need to do is I need to ask people.

"a question like, are you into like bondage? And if you say yes, then I'll go ask you all the bondage questions. - [Lex] Ah, got it. - But then this seems simple, but then it's just exploded because I'm like, how do I categorize these fetishes? Like, if you're into sploshing, which is-. - [Lex] What's that? - You like sitting in cakes, you like getting in mud, basically like kind of messy sensory. Like is this a disgust thing? Is it a humiliation thing? Is it a sensory thing? Like, which category? Anyway. So it took me like two months of just agonizing. over each fetish, 'cause you don't wanna miss a fetish,

you don't wanna like have a really important thing. that you accidentally put in the disgust category. when it actually belongs in the humiliation category. - Well let me think about that 'cause like you're, still catching it, you're just miscategorizing it. - Right, cause if you're into sploshing, and you're like, "This is clearly humiliation thing.". So you say "Yes, I'm into humiliation stuff,". and then I don't ask you about sploshing, then I'm missing a whole dataset of people. because I've falsely categorized a question. - You're going to miss stuff, you're just picking what's less and less important to miss? - Well, I'm trying to get people.

into the right question set. - Sure. - Because like, I can't ask you all the questions, I have to ask you a couple overarching questions to know. what specific questions to ask you. And so I have to, those overarching questions. have to be really, really well calibrated. so that I can accurately feed you. into the right sub-part of the survey. - [Lex] Awesome. - And so that was extremely difficult. what I'm dealing with, I think it was like 850 fetishes. So I did a couple things to spot check. I like, I did a couple questions where I asked. like in the detailed in the survey, but like also the beginning of the survey just to see,

like, what cap percentage of people I was capturing. And then I scored the survey. So if you take it, I had other people answer preliminary surveys. where they gave me data about how taboo. the various fetishes were. And then I used that data so that when you. fill out the survey it's extremely comprehensive. and you get data about exactly how taboo your interests are. And then you get a score at the end, and I give you an equivalent kinky character, which I also had people write a whole bunch of. fictional characters and some historic ones. about how like kinky they were. So then I matched the historic character,

kinky character to your score. - So that makes it like more fun, like gamefies it a little bit, and you could like, you can brag about like-. - To be able to share it with others. And a lot of the characters are really goofy. Like there's SpongeBob and like Hitler's on there. and, you know, South Park characters-. - What kink does Hitler have? - I think he's like, he's around Marilyn Monroe, which is like a slightly above average kinkiness. - Oh sorry (laughs), I thought there was like a two dimensional space somehow.

So this is like a literally from zero-. - [Aella] To how kinky he is. So Hitler's about as-. Who is the most, what's. the character for like- - Willy Wonka. - Is the most. - Most, yeah. - Okay. - I think. like maybe Captain America. was the least or something, or Gandhi. - Meanwhile, but that's another conversation. (both laughing). Oh boy! - Yeah. So it went viral. on TikTok basically 'cause people were like, "What?". I got this insane character. And then the sample size exploded.

from four 40,000 to 500,000. - Wow. So like all it took is that kind of incentive? Or did you like at first have to pay people for the survey? - No. It was just that incentive. - And what about the demographic. of the different people that took it? - Mostly younger. So usually early 20s, predominantly female, like 70% female. - 70% Female. - Which is pretty like. rap song TikTok demographics pretty well. - Oh, okay. I got it. Well, that's interesting, where's young people are probably better.

for this kind of survey because there's probably a culture. that's a little bit more honest about their sexuality. - Yeah, most likely. I think people are incentivized to be honest. when they're getting a true identity response out of it. Like if you're doing it for money you don't care, but like, if you are invested in the result, you want to know what the truth of the answers are, then you actually... - There's possible that you also. don't wanna know the truth. - [Aella] Yeah. This is true. - But on average, hopefully that doesn't, I mean, these are really difficult,

what, like, is there some interesting little quirks. that people should know about your methodology. that you had to kind of solve. to try to get to a really good survey? So one that you said is the categorization. to make it more efficient. Is there some for the analysis part? - Yeah, so the graph that you're talking about. is the binary, so it's like if you, and if somebody expressed even a little bit of interest, then it goes into the graph. So it's like 80% of people expressed. even a little bit of interest. So it's not representing degree of interest,

it's not differentiating between them at all. So it's possible that like some fetishists have exactly. the same amount of people. like are at least a little bit into them, but one of them it's very extreme interest. and the other's like vague and not very intense. So that's not reflected. I also like probably didn't represent the visual part right. (chuckles) Like, might not be intuitive. - You chose the log scale, but which kind of spreads things out. to makes it more clear. - 'Cause the linear, it was just so clustered at the bottom, you couldn't really separate it out.

So there's obviously a selection effects is possible. that like the identity results at the end impacted. people's results a little bit. But the thing is like I'm comparing it to what exists, like what is the alternative? And right now the research on this stuff is terrible. So it's like, I'm not saying my research is perfect, but it's like at least it's something, like, it's something that's pointing us. maybe in a direction that we might be able. to do more research on. - [Lex] And you're making the data available. - Yeah. I'm doing it slowly. because I ask about so many questions,

it's like not very anonymized. So I'm releasing the small sections of the data at a time. - Have you published in like journals and stuff? - [Aella] No, I haven't. - You have any interest in that or is your approach-. - I'm like, I'm conflicted about it. Like, it sounds cool because then I could go. "Ha, ha, I'm published in a journal,". than people who are yelling about me, who don't know anything about statistics on Twitter, like then I can go like shove it in their face. - But then you're also giving into. that silly criticism, right. - Yeah. Giving in. - Like, I don't, I want, I feel so passionate. about extra science, like science that you can just do.

Like, I wanna make science accessible. Like, anybody can just go look and learn about the basics. of like doing a survey. or figuring out how to interpret information, and doing a published journal feels like I'm betraying. my cause a little bit. - That's often behind a paywall. It goes against, I mean I think you not publishing a journal. is doing a big public service. - (chuckles) Ah! I think it's the first time.

I've heard that. Thank you. - Oh, it's just coming from like, on this topic, the elitism I see on the psychology side with the journals. and the academia, the positions and the institutions. you come from, all of that, that goes against, I think that's more useful for math and computer science. and so on, where there's like clear, like, but even then, even then code is code, data is data. Like prestige shouldn't matter at all.

Maybe for like biological experiments, like virology or something like that, it's good to be from a major lab that has a reputation. for, like, going through all the procedures, like, you know you can trust. But here like you're dealing with a giant mass of humanity. Like, it is beautiful to be transparent, to be raw, to be exploring it together with everybody. Yeah, it's really beautiful. - And then people like have a lot of incentive. to doubt the results.

Like, a lot of the research I'm doing. is to like cis and trans people. Like, we don't have any data about transsexuality. Like, not very good at least. And I'm really curious, I don't really have an agenda about it. I think, like, being trans is cool, if you wanna be trans do it. And like, I have some skepticism about, like, gender theory, but, like, it doesn't come down to impact. like the way I think trans people should be treated. Which I think is, like, treat them, you know, be fucking nice and human about it. I don't know. But when I'm talking about the thing, like my conclusions are. that transsexuality is really unique.

It's not like cis, or cis woman or man's sexuality at all. And to me this is super cool, but like a lot of people, this is very politicized right now, like the data into like transsexual preferences, like, it's so loaded. Which is really sad because I am very accepting. of weird sexuality. Like, if you're into a weird thing, I'm like, "Good for you, this is super cool. "Let's figure out how to make it so that you can explore. "the thing you're into without any stigma.". But because there's so much stigma. that like if you find that one demographic. into weirder sex stuff than the other,

like it's hard to present that in a way. that people don't weaponize. So it's been a really politically touchy subject here. - Yeah. But but you do it in a way that's not, it's not feel like it has an agenda, right, you're just exploring. - Yeah, I feel pretty open to what I'm gonna find. Like, I often have no idea what the data's gonna tell me. and I'm like, I pre-commit, like, okay, I could say A, B or C and I'm like down to publish. any of those findings. - So you've put together an ask whole card deck, with a lot of awesome questions to ask at a party.

or anywhere, honestly, including on the podcast. Let me ask you one from that deck. Is sex really about power? So what's the role of power dynamics in sex. from everything you understand? Like, from the survey in terms of what people. are turned on by? You've talked about like the preferences. that women versus men have. for like submissiveness and dominance. And we've already talked about it a little bit, but like it's expressed more strongly.

See I already forget the results, but I feel like women have more preference to be submissive. - Yeah, this is one of the things that got me. into researching fetishes to begin with, because I think I came across some data, I did like a brief survey where about, roughly around 60% of women report being submissive. and 40% of men report being dominant. And this was really fascinating to me. I'm like, "Why is there this gap? "Like, why do we not,". because I guess I have some priors that maybe. this is an evolutionary thing, like the submission dominant, like strong men and, you know, like women would being like,

"Oh, it's a hot man," you know, "the men are like ravaging and stuff.". I'm like, shouldn't this be in our genes? But, there's the gap. - [Lex] What's the gap? - The gap is the dominant submissive gap. More women are submissive than there are dominant men. - Oh, Really. - Yeah. It's a pretty significant gap. And this is held up, like it depends on what you're testing. I've tested a bunch of things. This is part of why I did this big survey. - [Lex] Nice. - But it depends, again, on like what kind of dominance you're measuring, but overall it's a roughly 40 to 60%.

- So when you say there's not many dominant men, then the meaning like they express like a desire. to be dominant in the relationship? - Yeah. Or like in sexually. - Sexually. - Sexually, in bed. So like if I ask questions like how much do you like. being dominant in bed? Like men are less likely to answer strong yes. to that question. But if I ask, are you likely to be submissive , like women are very much, yes. - Really? And that's expressive. Like, that represents truth? - My guess- - What's wrong with men? - So this is, I think there's some reflection.

on like Feltlife. So Feltlife is this website where people like sign up. and connect based on their fetishes. And this is, like, you can kind of see it picked up. in the forum post about like how like dominant men, you know, are getting laid so much and, you know, submissives are always looking for a dominant. Like there's a, it's an unequal market. - Holy shit. - Yeah. - This is great news. (Aella laughing). I didn't know this, it's interesting. Interesting. What does it reflect about modern society? Is there like a, 'cause you know, there's these trends about like decreased masculinity. or that kind of stuff.

Is that similar? - I'm trying not to hold onto one theory. 'cause I'm not sure. One is possible like decreasing testosterone levels. Testosterone seems to be, I have a little bit of other research, but I'm still checking it out, that seems to indicate that higher testosterone, you're more likely to be dominant. So if we're seeing decreased testosterone levels. across society we should be seeing a greater gap. - This is so fascinating. Once again, this is like a super interesting way. to look at humanity. 'cause it is such an important part of humanity. And so, like how many people are doing.

large-scale research like this? I feel like you're like at the top of the world, you're like world class at the top of the world. doing research on this stuff. - Yeah. I think I might have the biggest, most comprehensive fetish data set in the world right now. - That's epic. - Thank you. (laughs). I'm really happy about it. I'm very proud. - And it's, you know, it's probably growing. but it's also enabling you to establish a name to where, like a reputation to where people can go to you. to like trust you more and more.

to do longer surveys perhaps. - Yeah, maybe. I think it's the data analysis afterwards. is very different from like the survey design itself. So I'm still very amateur at the data analysis. - Yeah. But you can always catch up on that. I guess the data analysis does enable you to, does teach you how to ask better questions. in order to understand. - Yes, it goes back and forth. Like as I'm looking at the data, it informs the way I wanna phrase questions the next time. - So women are more, at least in private, able to say that they would like to be submissive.

And men even in private are not disproportionately. saying they're not willing to be dominant. - Yeah. So it's possible. - What the fuck! - If this is caused by decreasing testosterone levels, then this means that we're probably having. less satisfying sex overall. Like, we're becoming less and less sexual compatible. as time goes on. To be fair, I'm not sure that it is connected. to testosterone levels. Like it's possible that this is just like a genetic thing. Like, maybe the gay uncle theory, like the idea is like maybe gay people evolve. to like be sort of taking themselves out of the gene pool.

to be assistance. And like, it's possible that like there's certain percentage. of men, sort of, like quote unquote. evolved to be submissive, to take themselves out. of sexual competition and to instead be like. the monkeys revolving at the edge of the pack. It's unclear- - Oh, oh, oh. It's a method of survival, like so you stay out of the competition? - Yeah. And I'm like a little suss about these kinds. of evopsych theories. So I'm not, I'm just saying it because. it's like one thing- - There's different ideas. that are possible, yeah, okay. - So yeah, I'm not saying that it's definitely testosterone,

there's other things. It's also possible that it's culture, people are definitely gonna bring that up. Based on my survey though, it doesn't seem to be any evidence of that. Like, I asked about like how much pressure was put on you. to be, you know, agenty in your childhood. Like a lot of questions around this kind of thing, and no correlation at all to dominance. - Well, related to sexuality, I'm very uncomfortable right now, but nevertheless-. - [Aella] Plow forward. - (laughs) In a dominant fashion.

(both laughing). The blog post titled, "Rape Spectrum Survey Results". What are the key takeaways from that survey? - So I did the survey when I had a friend be like, "Hey, I had this confusing sexual experience. "Was it rape?". Like somebody kind of pressured her. and she eventually stopped saying no or something. I was like, "That's a great question. "I don't know how people would consider this.". And so I put a whole bunch of different gray scenarios.

into a survey and then asked people to rate. how rapey they thought that scenario was. - So you actually like little narratives. that they get to rate. - Like, you know, this person is on a date with this person, they get drunk and the other person's not drunk. I try to keep gender neutral names for all of them. - And then you reduce them into a more concise. description of the situation? - Yeah. - Like in this visualization. So you have this rape spectrum that's a result. Where on top are things that are less likely to be. considered rape by the people that took the survey.

and the bottom more likely. The likeliest is a stranger forcibly assaults someone. who screams and fights the entire time. That gets 100. What do we make of something that's non zero? It's like a 12 is what, what is that? How do we supposed to interpret a 12 out of 100? - Extremely low. (chuckles). It's like not zero, but it's just very close to it. - Having sex with an enthusiastic sex worker, is a 12. That's the lowest one.

And then there's a few, I'll just mention a few that are lower, like, at that level. Have sex to make a partner happy in a relationship. Lying about wealth, hobbies in order to get laid. Person with down syndrome eagerly has sex. within your neurotypical. Not revealing being transgender until after sex and so on. I think you mentioned that there's some, like, that not revealing being transgender until after sex, there's some differences amongst what men and women.

or something like that. - Yeah, I think that was the one. that men found more offensive than women. I'm trying to remember, I wrote it a while ago. - I mean this is nuanced and difficult, right. 'Cause I think in a lot of public discourse. the word rape is pretty binary. - [Aella] Yeah. It's like either is or is not rape. - And so you had a friend or it was like this felt rapey. - Yeah. She's like confused about how to interpret it. I think people look to the terms. to know how to feel about something. Like have you ever like been through an experience,

you're like, that was weird, and then you tell it to somebody else and they're like, "Oh my god you were assaulted.". And then it totally recontextualizes the thing. that you've experienced. And I think that this is clunky with the word rape. because you either you were raped or you're not. You either like have this entire context. like a thrust upon you or you don't. And we're really not nuanced about it at all. And so I would really like to have some sort of like, "Oh, that was like a 30% rape he just endured.". - Yeah. And, I mean there's probably other dimensions. about how traumatic it is, how difficult it's recover from, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. I mean, like, people, it's a dangerous thing to sign a word to an experience. Like, even, or to a relationship. like saying a toxic relationship. That can completely destroy your perception. of that relationship. - Yeah, absolutely. I remember this was the case with my childhood, like I talked about being very abusive. But I've talked about how like there was. a good amount of meaning there so that I didn't process it. as abusive at the time. And I remember after I got out of that house. and that culture, people would tell me, "Oh your childhood was really abusive.". And I was really confused by that.

because it's a total recontextualization of that narrative. It's like the things that I went through were not, you know, good and virtuous and had meaning, but rather those were like the result of, you know, parents who didn't like love you enough or something. And it, even though the concrete things that happened to me. did not change, like no facts shifted. The fact that like the interpretation of the facts shifted. caused me quite a bit of distress for a long time. I was like, "Oh my God, "I'm a traumatized, like, abused person. "Like, I went through an abusive childhood.".

And it was really hard for me, it made it worse. Like it's crazy the power that terms have. - I think we didn't talk about this, but how did you begin to overcome the trauma. of your childhood? You mentioned LSD, so drugs were a part of it. Like what what was just the mental journey of that? - I was doing LSD quite a lot when I was 21. - What's it like by the way, I've never done LSD? - It's very difficult to describe because it's like, like it changes sort of aspects about your environment.

that are invisible to you because they're so stable. - Is it, like, if you can compare it to like psilocybin, is it very different? - Oh yeah. It's like similar, I forgot that you did shrooms. Yeah. Okay. Than you probably know, you know like the kind of shift that you have. from sober to shrooms, it's roughly similar. It's like more clear, I think. Shrooms is more like embodied. but LSD is much more intellectual for me. It strikes different people differently. I prefer shroom a lot, I'm sorry LSD. I prefer LSD a lot. - Why is it not popularly, like, there seems to be a negative connotation to LSD.

'cause, like, it seems to potentially. have like a destructive effect. Like, maybe dosage is more difficult to get right. or something like that. - Dosage is exactly, so actually a long time ago did a survey. on shrooms versus LSD. So I asked people and people had slightly stronger. experiences on LSD overall, I remember, but rated the experiences about is equally good. But I think people like shrooms. 'cause it feels more natural quote unquote. But I think if you like fed somebody a shroom. and like actually had the LSD molecule in it, they would have, they would think it felt very natural. But that's besides the point.

I think people get kind of incoherent on LSD in a way. that feels really alienating. Like I consider LSD, my LSD use, very heavy, to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. But I definitely was incoherent for a lot of it, like talking about, like, we're all one consciousness, everything is love man, you know. - And people are like- - Why is that incoherent? - (laughs) So I think it's not incoherent, but like if you go around saying everything is love, people are like, "This guy's kind of. "blasted out of his mind.". - This podcast, (laughs). is basically your LSD driven,

for a bunch of episodes. Yeah. I get this for sure. Oh, well it's not just about love. but it's about like talking in that way. about reality, about the world. Yeah. Sure. - It's like over fitting. The narratives that you make about the world. become really vivid and so you pattern match. just really aggressively like everything is connected. and you come up with these explanations for things. And I think I was very fortunate. So I have like this theory about psychedelics. where you either like belief construct or you don't. So you take psychedelics and it sort of like burns away.

a lot of your belief structure. And sometimes you, this happens and then you're like, "Ah, I need to like invent something to fill in the gaps.". So you're like, "Okay, I think that maybe. "time is an illusion so I must now believe. "that like we're actually in a time loop, "or like time travel is possible,". so that you experience time differently. and then you come up with a different belief about time. Whereas other people don't do. this belief construction at all. Like, you experience time differently and you sort of. let yourself not have a belief. You're now okay, and you're not developing any beliefs.

about time in its absence, you're just simply experiencing. the absence of the concept of time. And so I don't have a lot of data to back this up. In my anecdotal experience. 'cause it trips out a lot of people. People either tend to believe construct or they don't. And people who do not believe construct. seem to get more out of their LSD trips. So if you can let a belief go without building anything. in its absence, it's much more beneficial for you. And I think I just for some reason happen to have some brain. that's constructed where I don't get. a belief construction at all. - Oh, that's really interesting.

that belief construction is negative. Is it necessarily negative? Can you elaborate on that a little bit. - Yeah, I mean belief construction in a way that's like. not like playing with frames but rather committing. to a different frame. - For sure. - So I like being able to play with ideas and be like, "Let's look at it this way or that way, that's awesome.". But if you're like, okay, you know what, I took LSD and now absolutely believe the cops are outside. And you're like, "Dude, no," you're just like, and you can't shift out of that, right, like your brain needs to fill in the gap,

you're not allowed to have a gap so you're not allowed. to be flexible. And again, I don't think this is a personal failing if any, I think this is like literally probably a genetic. or like physical thing that's causing this. - But do you think there's possible beliefs. that are like enlightening that you can stick to, like find a frame that like, I guess if you're don't believe constructing. you're escaping your previous beliefs, aren't you doing like just some, you're picking up a bigger frame (chuckles). in some way? - Yeah. I mean, you're taking your beliefs as object, as opposed to being subject to them. - Ah got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.

And some of that I guess is genetic. and there's these categories of people, there's two categories that experience LSD. in different ways. And you're one of those that are able to just let go. - Yeah. I just think I had a good reaction. And I think a lot of maybe the negative stereotype. of LSD comes from people who are belief constructing. or carry the belief constructing off of the LSD trip. So you take LSD and you're like, "Ah, I'm believing these insane things.". And people from the outside see that and they're like, "Oh my god, this person took LSD and became stupid.". It's very scary. - What's frame control? 'Cause that has been at the core of your trauma,

at the core of your upbringing. What's frame control? And also, sorry, frame control in general. 'cause that's part of human interaction. - Yeah. Frame control is like a way. of manipulating somebody else that is non obvious. - So there's a negative competition to that usually? - Yeah. - Okay. - I mean, I think maybe I chose the term kind of poorly. because I think to some degree people are always. a little bit manipulating each other. But I think it's generally obvious. Like, for example, if I disagree with you,

I want you to believe what I believe. But this is like an obvious thing that is like visible. between, it's like an object on the table. It's like here's the box where I want you to believe. what you wanna believe. - The disagreement box. - Yeah. Right, like we're under a shared context. where we understand that, like, we're trying to move each other. This is chill to me, I think this is cool. We do this all the time, and it's important. But frame control is the kind of thing. where you are trying carefully to obscure. the existence of that box.. You're like, "Oh, the thing that I'm doing,

"I'm like using tactics to try to influence. "what your reality is without us being both aware. "that this is what I'm doing.". - Yeah, I've been assuming you're doing that the whole time. (Aella laughing). No. - Oh, my God. (laughs). I have to like figure out how to read. your facial expressions. I'm still learning. - [Lex] There's none. There's none. - You don't have any? - I'm like a, I'm not even like a ChatGPT, I'm like GBT1 with my facial expressions. Like it's kind of off, like doesn't seem to match emotions, but it's kind of intelligent seemingly, but definitely not conscious.

Anyway, so like negative connotation, manipulating, not being honest about the actual intentions. of how you'd like to control the conversation. - And I think there like might be a naive version. of interpreting this where you're just like, "Oh, I'm trying to like subtly get you to, you know, "believe like, "Oh, do you really think that's bad though?". But this is not quite what I mean, I mean it's like a couple like concrete things. that are signs of frame control. Like one of them is pushing the painful update button, which is this thing where it's like,

"Hey, if you learn this, it's going to be really painful. "The truth is painful and if you're realizing. "this thing about yourself it's gonna hurt, "and this is a sign that you're heading. "in the right direction.". So if you frame all pain as a sign of virtue, then this means that pain that's a resulting as damage. is something you're going to ignore. So it's like, it's a common like a cults, right, "This is for your own good.". "Oh, you know, you've faced a brave truth about yourself. "that you're like not quite as wise as I am.". When really your brain might be trying to tell you.

protective things. Or like another one is like finger trap beliefs, where the belief is constructed in such a way. that doubting it lends proof to the belief. So very common example is like Satan. Like the Christians are like, you know, Satan is going to try to make you doubt him, the existence of, he's gonna so doubt like maybe. he's not actually real. And so if you believe in Satan and then you're like, "Okay, now I'm having doubts, like maybe he isn't real,". there's this is like, "Oh, this is exactly what I was taught to expect. "Like, I am doubting this belief because I was told.

"because like this is what Satan does,". and it's taken as evidence for it. So like the attempt to move away from the belief. like rebounds on you and like causes you to be more embedded. inside of the belief. So it's like techniques like theses, like very subtle things where like being inside. of the system sort of just self reinforces the system. is what I consider to be frame control. - And have you met people that are really good. at this kind of frame control? - [Aella] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. - So, you're saying that your father was like that?

- Yeah. To be fair, I'm not sure he was good at it because I was a kid. I think like he's probably not very good at it actually, but when you're a child being raised in a house. where he works from home and you're homeschooled, it's just kind of what's going to happen. And to be fair, I do think that like strong frame control. is quite rare. I don't think, most people are kind of doing something. like this, but not nearly to the degree. that makes gives me the ick. I've met maybe like five or six people I think. who I've really don't like. because of those very subtle things that they're doing. - Well, I think also I'm starting to kind of understand.

that there is people who are narcissists, and sociopath, and psychopaths out there. I'm not even sure if people like that, 'cause I think they get good at frame control, but I don't know if they're aware they're doing it. - [Aella] Oh, yeah. - Which makes me also nervous about myself. Like, am I doing frame control? - Yeah. That's one of the big things, it's like, typically people you can't think about incentive. Like, you can't think about,

"Oh, is this person trying to do it or not?". That's like not the quite, not the way. You have to look at what are the effects. - Pragmatically looking at the effects. And then you also have to do that with yourself. when you're having interactions with others. - It's like very much like, are you, like, how much space are you making. for the other person's reality here? Like, are you giving power to the other person? Because a big aspect of frame control. is you're carefully rerouting the power to yourself. You're like, "I am the person who knows. "Like, you're having pain in your beliefs. "because you're updating towards the things. "that I believe.".

Like, it's just like a gravity well. But if you're setting up the gravity well. of your interactions such that you're making sure. you're giving the other person power. over the shared reality you inhabit, I think it's a really good sign. that you're not doing frame control. - So if you're making room for them? - Yeah. - Okay. Unless we're talking about in bed, then it's all general relativity from there. and black holes and stuff. - Frame control, bed frame control. - Bed frame control. (chuckles). It took me a long time to get a bed frame, just, I'm saying. - Oh. But you wear a suit though.

- (laughs) Yeah. So frame control in the streets, no frame in the sheets. I don't know. (Aella laughing). I don't know what the funny thing is to say, but there you have it. So the LSD helped you escape the frame of, can you like elaborate what was the frame. that was holding you back. from, like, the frame constructed. by your childhood experience that was holding you back.

as an intellectual, as a thinker, as a free being. in this world? - Well I was really fucked up. Like, after I left home and it absorbed. the external narrative that I had been abused, which technically is true, I'm not saying I wasn't. But, like, I absorbed this narrative and I just remember. having like this burning coals in my chest at all times. Like, if I had to call out of my factory work. when Father's Day happened because I was spending. the whole day sobbing 'cause everybody was talking. about their fathers. Like, I was really messed up. and it was because I held this important thing,

this idea, this frame that I had been deeply wronged. Like there was a correct way of being, and the world had violated that, some things should not have happened. Like, my father should have loved me. And it was like this, like, the shearing in the nature. of reality and that was really agonizing to have. And LSD really messes with frames a lot, it takes like what you think is normal. and really screws with it. And I'd done an LSD like several times before, but there's one LSD trip where I went through.

my entire childhood in my head, 'cause LSD like really makes your memories quite vivid. Like anything you visualize it's like you're in it. And so I just went and very carefully, deliberately went and remembered every single memory. that I could have, that was really painful for me. Like the times that I lost friends and all the things. I valued in like being broken. 'Cause like my parents would, especially my dad, would refer to like breaking me. Like explicitly, "Were gonna break your will.". And so all these times where I was like, they had successfully broken my will over and over, and it was horrible. I was just like sobbing, tears streaming down my face,

and then I like worked through my whole childhood, I got to the end and I'm gonna tear up, 'cause every time I talk about this, it's just like the sensation of like being free from that. for the first time is so incredible. Like, I remember being outside of my house. and being able to like go where I wanted, and think what I wanted, and it was just so blissful. And I was soaked in this gratitude on this trip,

just like vibrating with complete joy for everything. Like, I was just looking around, I could touch anything. Like, I could cry if I wanted to. I wasn't allowed to cry. I wasn't allowed to be depressed. I was trying to, I got depressed as a child. and my parents were like, if you keep being depressed. we're gonna like force you to scrub the whole house. Like, just like the ability to have a feeling. was so thrilling. And I was so grateful for this. I was like, "I would do anything to give this experience. "to someone else. "I would do anything even if it was like putting.

"them through what I went through.". And then like with that realization, I was like, "Oh it was worth it. "The thing that I went through was worth it for this. "I would do it again to like be able to have. "this deep gratitude for what I have now.". And then that shifted the meaning frame. Because before the meaning had been, something had sheered, something shouldn't have happened, but now it was like the exact right thing had happened. - [Lex] So it's almost a gift. - Yeah. I was like, "Ah, I would not give up my childhood. "I would do it again.". And I believe that to this day. - For the moment of discovering that freedom.

- Yeah, because like everything now, my whole life is in contrast to that. And it's awesome. It's fucking great. I'm really thrilled about it. - Is there a part of you that hates your father still? - Kind of, like I don't want a relationship anymore. After that there was some forgiveness. Like, I had this burning, I would have nightmares about, you know, him killing me or something. And after that it kind of stopped. Like, the fire in my chest went away permanently. after that trip. It was so fast.

It was like before I was fucked up, after that trip I woke up the next day and I was clean. - Wow. - It was really severe. And I definitely don't wanna be around him still. Like, he still triggers the fear of my body. But I don't have that hangup anymore. I'm like, I'm over it. Like, I've let go. He's his own person. Like ultimately he didn't get to decide who he was. in the same way that I didn't get to decide who I was. - So that's almost like a, kind of, at least intellectual, like, forgiveness you have for him? - [Aella] Yeah.

- And, so that trip just took you through your whole, were you alone by the way when you're doing the trip? - Yeah, I had roommates but the trip was mostly alone. I had somebody else who was like sitting in the room, but they weren't interacting with me. - (chuckles) So you're sitting there experiencing all this. What's the timeline? Like, how long does it take to go. through your whole childhood? I don't remember. I mean time's really messed up when you, (laughs). when you do that. I was listening to the soundtrack of "The Fountain", which is excellent. I listened that a lot when I did LSD.

I know it's probably a couple hours. - That's amazing. I mean it's like, it's just like a vivid experience of your childhood; moment by moment, trauma by trauma. - And it's good to experience it purely, like it just is what it is. It's just is grief. Like, it is loss and you just are in it. without having to make it be anything. - And it's so interesting that you can, I mean, work through that.

So for a lot of us, for a lot of human beings, like, childhood is full of those. kind of mini traumas, big or small. And like working through that, that feels like what a lot of life is about. is trying to work through that. And it feels like you have to kind of relive it. I guess that's what therapy is about in part, and be able to vocalize it. - This is why I feel really confused. about the concept of trauma. Like, people use this word so much, like, "Are you traumatized?". And I understand why, like, that's why I feel confused about it,

but part of me is like, I wonder if by using that term. we're creating the trauma in people. Then were using the frame. where the thing that happened to you. was not supposed to happen. - Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there needs to be a different frame. No, I agree with you totally, I've made friends with and talked to this guy. named Paul Conti. He wrote a book on trauma. He's an incredible brilliant psychiatrist. Yeah, he's probably agrees with you kind of-. - [Aella] Oh that's cool, I should read. - Yeah, you should. Maybe you gonna talk to him, he's a fascinating human being. I'd be interested in the, a psychiatrist's perspective.

is really interesting 'cause it's a, you've been doing kind of an in-person survey, 'cause you've done done so many patients. Like, you just talking to him is fascinating. because, like, if I describe my experience. or somebody else's experience it, I could see his brain mapping it in interesting ways. to the tens of thousands of like data points he has.

in his head. And it's like, of course, that's what doctors do, but it's cool when the doctors basically. the doctor of the mind. - Have like an actual, like, qualitative data. - And be able to, I mean that's where the poetic stuff comes in. Ultimately as a psychiatrist you're exploring the human mind. with a bit of a sort of romantic element. You can't be really systematic about it. But it does seem like, frame or not, be able to just talk through the experiences.

you had is really powerful. - What about it is appealing? Is it just like being able to revisit it with new eyes? - No, I don't know exactly, it just seems to work for people. I don't know if it's appealing. It just seems like almost acknowledging to yourself. that things happen. Like, I've said, I think I've said this before, my brother who I love very much. tried to set me on fire a few times, and I think to me it's funny, but I wonder if I didn't talk about it,

like if that would be traumatic, maybe like talking and laughing about it. 'Cause it was traumatic to me at the time. - I see. - I was like, "I love you, why are you setting me on fire?". But it's what kids do when they're like young. (both laughing). - [Aella] So why would you do this? - I was whatever five, it's what boys do. Like it's, they're crazy. (laughs). It makes total sense. It's probably funny and from his perspective. But yeah, I wonder, I want to bring that to the surface. if that helps and maybe LSD allows you to,

or different drugs depending on the person. allows you to more vividly bring it to the surface. and then, depending on your genetics, be able to find a better frame. That's fascinating. Human mind is freaking fascinating. (sighs) All right. What's romantic to you by the way? - I'm not a big romance person. What is? - So you're not like, so to you romantic is like objective analysis.

of the interactions between humans. - A little bit. Like, I do find kind of the survey process that I did. to be romantic. This guy that I asked out who I'm still dating, I was like, "Hey, you scored high on my survey, "do you wanna like go eat food or something?". And his response was like, "You wanna try doing three days in an Airbnb. "as our first date?". And I was like, "Yeah.". And that was romantic. Like, the bold leap into-. - Oh, leap into it. - A really intense date. - I think you mentioned, I think you mentioned something also.

must have been a tweet or something like that. where if people want you to show up to a thing, give like the time, the location, the dress code, and no pressure for you to be there, but like show up if you want. That was your specification. - That's a great memory, yeah. - And then I think you said that you did that for like. some castle in south of France? - I did, yeah. (chuckles).

That was in my early 20s. People, my friends at home were taking prediction markets. on whether or not I was gonna get abducted and killed. - Yeah. What was that like? I mean what, you've traveled quite a bit, like do you take these giant risks? What's with that? - I think I used to do more when I was younger. with the traveling. I am a little traveled out now, but, like, my first one, My first one, I moved out of Idaho for the first time. I moved to Australia, just kind of yeeted myself across the globe. - Sorry, which verb did you just use? - Yeet. It's like yeet, to yote, yated, yeet.

- So people, do people, is this like slang? Is this like urban dictionary or is this actual, or is it Websters? - Yeah you have to like feel another word, like if you take a thing and you just like curl it. really hard, it does not feel like a yeet motion. - Okay, so you yeeted. So it was aggressive. So across the globe you didn't even stop in... - Just hurled myself. Yeah. - Italy along the way. - I jus kept yeeting myself in various places. Yeah. And so at one point I decided, "Okay Cupid and somebody sent me a long message,

"You should come to, I don't know, I'm hosting a castle. "It's some people that I met.". I'm like, "I have no idea who you are, "but I just bought a plane ticket.". - [Lex] And you just went. - And it was life changing. I ended up dating that guy for years. and he changed my life quite a bit. 'cause he like was very agenty in the world, and before that I wasn't agenty. - Agenty like can we- - Expressing agency? - It sounds like you were, and don't you have to express agency. when you're yeeting yourself across the world? - Yeah, but only a little bit. Like in the same way you express agency when you eat LSD,

like the only thing you actually do in eating LSD. is like put the tab in your mouth, and then you just kind of scream the whole way after that. There're a lot of other things, like I didn't feel powerful enough to like. go make events happen or anything. And it was this guy, he had a lot of agency. in the sense that he would just sort of create realities. through the people around him. "Babe, okay, we're gonna do this startup". or, "We're going to throw this incredible event. "Like let's just do it.". And it would somehow happen, and it was really cool to see that.

And so that one thing led to another. and it was one of the biggest impacts on my life I think. - Yeah, that's pretty bold. I would say it's pretty romantic, south of France. - Yeah. Yeah. It was. In the little castle, it was in the winter, so we were all cozy up by the fire. - I'm jumping around here. Twitter poll: "Have you ever hitchhiked", you posted this Twitter poll. - Those are a big list of Twitter poles. Why did you pick the hitchhiking one? - I don't know, 'cause it's relevant to-.

- [Aella] Oh I see. - To traveling. And I don't like that one. That's romantic too, right. - I'm actually terrified of hitchhiking, but I have done it a little bit. - Oh, so it's terrifying, it's not romantic to you. So you're terrified of what? Oh, so you terrified-. - It's interacting with strangers. - That's terrifying. - Yeah. - So you go to south of France. - Yeah, (laughs) but that was like a cohesive thing. I don't know, - It made sense- - There's like times. where you're allowed to be weird. and times where you're not. And like if you're, like, interacting with- - Who's allowing you?

- He had some vague egregore of society, I'm not sure. - Okay. But some people are like, "Hey we think you're cool, "come to this party," you're like, "All right, "am I allowed to come to this party. "maybe a little weird.". But if you're being picked up by a hitchhiker, they're gonna wanna make small talk and you can't be weird. or they're gonna kick you out. - I kind of think, 'cause Valentine's Day's coming up, I'm kind of thinking of doing something crazy, I'm not sure. South of France sounds nice. - You got like, you gotta go on like a crazy romantic date. with a woman you don't know at all. - Yeah. I think I'm gonna like tweet something. and just like, "How do I select randomly basically?".

- How do you select totally randomly, like not people from your audience? - No, no, no, no, no. From the audience but in an interesting way. Random, sufficient, so random amongst good choices. - Couldn't you have people just like submit a form with, and then you just randomize it and then select one? - Sure. I get- - And then you just, if it's terrible you just go randomize it again. (Lex laughing). Like the first not terrible option. - Yeah, sure. (laughs). - It's almost like "Drown yourself"-. - But I feel like then it's no longer random.

You kind of want to do random, you just do it, and just do it, fly across the world. somewhere in some random place. Just for like a single event, for like a dinner. - Yeah. You got some sort of itch in you. - Well yeah, I mean, yeah, the itch to live. (both laughing). It's like sometimes it's nice to drop a little like chaos. into a thing, right. What's your chaos survey by the way? Like you mentioned that earlier. I kind of saw it. I didn't look into- - Oh yeah, it's one of like the sort of artistic attempts at a survey. 'cause you know, like, at least from what I understand,

the big five and the way that they used to do IQ tests. I've heard is that they do factor analysis, you know, where they ask a whole bunch of questions and then they run. calculations on the data to like sort of group it. by organic clusters. So like with the big five, it's like people who say, "Oh I like to be at parties,". they also tend to say yes to the questions, like, "I like being the center of attention.". And so you notice that like there's a cluster of ways. that people are answering the question, and then you can sort of pull out an organic spectrum. And so I was like, "Okay, we've done that a whole bunch. "with things like personality or like romantic stuff,

"like I did it with the rape spectrum survey, but like what happens if you apply that method. to a completely unselected group of questions? Just like no random, chaotic, no thing whatsoever, like what happens is if you ask all possible questions, what natural things evolve out of that natural spectrums? So I had other people submit questions. for a very large survey and I took the first, I think, 1,100 and barely filter them at all. And then I just had a whole bunch of people answer them. - (laughs) Can you give like a hint to what it looks like?

Like how crazy did the question get? - I mean a lot of them were standard, but somebody was like, "If be Beelzebub. "like did something in 1512 to like, "churn the world over would you like it?". I don't know. It's like, it was really just insane questions. There's a couple of those. A lot of like, "Would you fuck Aella" ones? I dunno, was is all across the spectrum. - [Lex] A lot of "Would you fuck Aella?". - Yeah, I had reduce duplicates. - [Lex] Oh, a lot of the same question, I gotcha. Ones. Okay, I gotcha. - Yeah, so it really, it was like normal personal habits,

it was, you know, romantic preferences. or political preferences, personality stuff, like random opinions about media. - Okay. That's interesting. I'd love to see those actual questions. 'cause your audience has probably. really super interesting minds. Okay. You mentioned body count, (chuckles). you said you can answer that one easily. Do you share your body count? Do you know your body count? Do you know, is there a spreadsheet? - There's spreadsheet, yes.

- Is it Google Sheets, is it Excel. - It's Google Sheets. Yeah. - Okay. Have you run, like, is there, you don't have to share the contents, but is there like data on each? - So I track paid clients and free sex separately, and I track different things on either of them. Like with clients I track like positions we used. and who had an orgasm. And with personal people I just track basically like age, city, you know, name. And I've had sex with I think 42 people I think for free.

- It's a good number. - So I'm sharing this. because like I want people to calibrate. Like it's not like huge, it's not like tiny. - One of the people I've recently talked to, Mel, Destiny's Steven's wife is a huge fan of yours. She was actually really excited to get to talk to you, but she, I think she said her body count is more than 42. I think she said 60. - Cool. - Something like this. And so it's interesting 'cause she was like saying, like,

she loves like looking at your work, talking to you because you have similar perspectives. on the world and it's really refreshing, it's liberating. - [Aella] That's really sweet. - It's kind of interesting. So is there like an optimal body count? Like if you were to map, I wonder, what have you found out about body count in doing? Have you actually done surveys on body count? Like on how many people. had sex with? - I actually have. posted at that information on my last survey. I just haven't looked at it yet.

There's just so many things to look at, so I haven't. But I think if I'm sleeping with a guy and he's had sex. with more than 120 people, then I start to get a little bit wary. - Why 120 as opposed to 100. - I don't know, I just like kind of skimmed through the numbers in my head. and picked one that felt right. - Just now. - Yeah. - 120. - Ish. I think then that's when I'm starting like-. - Ish. So you're flexible? - Yeah, I'm flexible. Very. (both laughing). - But 200 is a hard line for sure.

- Well, you know, you have to- - It depends, the factors. - 'Cause like there's a level of body count. at which you start to wonder if how much like accidental. misrepresentation a guy is doing to you. - Oh, like if you're saying 200, that might be dishonest? - No. Like if he's had sex with 200 girls, this means that he's had a lot of casual sex. and not a lot of like long-term relationships, assuming that he's, you know, hasn't been super poly. And this usually means that there has to be some sort of.

like indication that he cares about the girl more. than he actually does. - Oh, because- - He's like leading. you on basically. And so I'm not saying this is necessarily the case. I'm saying like at a certain level of number. I start to become, I start to wonder. if this is what's happening. - Is there, like, from your understanding of it, is there a different perception between men and women? Like if you look at the high body count for a woman. versus a high body count for a man, like how society views it? - Oh yeah, people are way more judgmental of women. I haven't experienced this personally in my circles.

'cause I'm in very sex-friendly circles. Like I'm in orgy circles where everybody like dates. the same women and they're like, "Woo, good job.". But yeah, people are much more, like, people always tell me online, like, "You're not ever gonna be able to find a husband. "because you have sex with too many people.". It's very common. Which I don't think, I mean, like, men are also perceived negatively. if you have high body count. But I think, I don't think it's negatively in the same way. - Yeah. Do you think it's unethical. to lie about in your body count? - Yes.

- So all lying is unethical. - Yeah. (laughs) - Okay. - I'm not a big fan of lying in general. - Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Body count's an interesting one. It's so silly to take that, to care about that. But still we do. Jealousy is silly, but still we get jealous. Is that weird? - I mean it's like, the thing is like, I don't like viewing emotions as like irrational. Even if they are, it's like emotions are always there for a reason, and people don't like high body counts for a reason too.

It's just fine and valid. - Yeah. It also is like... Yeah, I don't know what I make of just the past. of like time, you know, (Aella laughing). like each human is a collection of experiences. and you don't know most of those experiences, and all of a sudden you meet this bag of experiences. and, like, what are you supposed to do. with both of your, like, training data?

Are you supposed to like what? Like, I don't know if we, like, part of me wants to not actually ever talk about it. to care at all. Like why does it matter. 'cause it's only like the future is that matters. And yet the past also matters a lot potentially, but maybe not really 'cause you're somehow, like, constructed from that past, but you're no longer that past. - It sounds like you're evaluating for something different. than most people. - [Lex] What do you mean?

- Like was the reason- - I'm just talking. out my ass, but, yes, go ahead. Yeah, (laughs) I'm just saying crazy shit. like as if I'm on drugs but I'm not. - I think this is like kind of like lining up. with like this caricature that I'm building of you. based on this conversation so far. - [Lex] Great. - Like a lot of people want to know about your past. because they wanna know how useful and compatible. you are with them. Like, "Oh, do you have a similar job?". "Do you have a similar culture? "Like what can I expect from you in the future?". Like it's very practically oriented. Whereas like if the thing that you're focused on.

is not like being able to predict someone, like if the thing that you're focused on. is a present moment, then it doesn't really matter anymore. They're things that, like they're training data. - But I also think like the past is not that predictive. of the future. - Is it not? - Not if you believe in the power of the interaction. between two humans. It's like nature versus inertia. I guess also I don't believe in the ability of people. to accurately describe their own past. - [Aella] This is true. - Because they have a very specific lens.

through it that doesn't necessarily, like it's too biased. - But you can also interpret based on the bias. Like if somebody describes their own past, you can kind of pick up like. - Hard. It's difficult. Like, you could if you're a therapist, like if you're really drilling like, or whatever, (chuckles) sorry, if you're really investigating. and like analyzing it, but then it's like, it's a different kind of relationship. - Isn't that hard though? Like what if I'm with a guy and I'm considering dating him. and I ask, like, "How did your past relationships end?". And then if all of them are like, he's like, oh she was crazy, and my other one that she went crazy too.

I'm like, okay. Like if you're talking about all of your exes as insane-. - But that's an easy level red flag-. - Yes, it's true. - But I feel like. the more, that also it's possible they were crazy, he's attracted to crazy people. So like that, but I would say that's like easy level, Mario Kart video game versus like Elden Ring. Like, I think most people's past is like complicated. - That's a pretty good bird. No, you're right. I do agree that like there's a level of obfuscation,

how that is hard to see through. But just like a little bit sometimes. - Well, I tend to like when with people, I tend to in general just human interaction, I tend to not talk about their past very much. because it allows you to focus on like, I feel like the past is kind of like talking. about the weather is a crutch for me personally. - [Aella] Oh, interesting. - Like as opposed to exploring the ideas in their mind. - Yeah, I see. Is it like, I get really annoyed when people. quote philosophers when they're trying. to talk about philosophy.

Is it like that? - A little, but that crutch is useful and it's kind of sexy. Like it's kind of like cool. Like, 'cause it's nice to quote, 'cause a good quote allows you to be cheesier. than you otherwise would be. - Okay. Well if you're doing it to be cheesy, that's fine. - Not cheesy. But not cheesy, no, no, not cheesy. But to be, like, it allows you to say. a simple, profound thing that we're too afraid to say. with our own words. So like the quoting philosophers in that sense is...

Yeah, but it's still a crutch. Yes. But I feel like the past is more like talking. about your dreams. It just is not, it's a crutch that doesn't care, it doesn't empathize with the other person's experience. of the conversation or the explanations, doesn't really convey the-. - They're not involved in your past. - [Lex] Yeah. Yeah. - So how do you feel about this conversation. where you're asking me about my past, and I talked about my past a lot?

- Well, I'm okay asking about your past. because you've really carefully thought. about that aspect of it. And we didn't really talk about your past. outside of the things you've written about. and I've really thought about-. - [Aella] I see. - Like there's, like, when most conversation. you'll start talking about past stuff. that's like the stuff that's actually bothering you, you still probably have not written a blog post about. Like, there's probably still stuff, like,

maybe it's more recent, like the last few months, the last couple years, like that's usually what will come up. with conversation and just, it's good, it's good, but it's not as deep, and I would say it's not as intimate as talking about. the actual ideas in your mind. - I see. - And how you interact. with the world. - So if the past. is interesting for the frame of, like, sort of like the, like I guess you're right, I guess we're talking a lot about like narrative than past. - [Lex] Yeah. Yeah. I like the ideas in people's minds. versus their recollections and memories.

and so on. - Their thoughts. - Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about porn? (laughs). - [Aella] It's nice, I like it. - Okay. You like it? - Yes. - What effect do you think it has on society? - Like probably reduces rates of rape. 'cause like really horny men get an outlet. that's not a real life woman. - Okay. So what about like the, I mean, like I said, I finished reading "Brave New World", like the over sexualization. Does it increase like the sexualization of society.

that's not, and to a degree it's not good? Or is it good? (sighs) Does it alter in a negative direction. our relationship with sex? - It's unclear. Like it might, I don't know how to evaluate this thing, right. 'Cause this is like one of those really charged things. where like, I kind of don't trust anybody's arguments on it. 'cause it's too charged. But like, there's another question which is like,

is it net positive or net negative? Like it's possible that it might be like a net negative. for specifically our relationship to sex, but like a net positive overall in general. I'm not sure. The thing, my guess is that in general, it's better to let people do the thing. that feels good to them and then the environment. will naturally modify to fit this thing. And then if we have more needs in response to that, then we're gonna figure out a way to take care. of those needs. So if you're watching a bunch of porn. and this makes you like not wanna go have sex with women, then we're gonna have to like change the way.

that we like experience IRL connection. - To compete with porn. - Yeah. Which seems like a natural evolution. of like the civilizational cycle. Like I'm pro natural evolution, and like instead of trying to stop things. that people want to do naturally, we figure out how to integrate that. and like find a more healthy outlet. - But you have to then be first honest with the effects. that porn has. So like, is it a negative thing, is it a positive thing in real, life sex interaction? You know, you're gonna have that more and more.

with like porn and VR or maybe porn, AI porn. Like, is that a bad thing? Like, what if porn with AI or even like in physical space, like sex robots, like what if that's more pleasurable. in a bunch of different dimensions than with other humans? - And we should figure out artificial wombs, I don't know. - Like how important is sex for society, I guess, between two humans? - I don't know. I mean, like, we're having less sex.

and making fewer babies, and that seems like probably not great. - Yeah. Right. With the baby's one. But the babies, there's probably artificial ways. to have babies that we can figure out. But then how important is sex to be human? I guess sex with other humans? Like, are we're gonna have to figure that out. in the century. - Yeah. I don't know what it means to like be human. I'm pretty on the transhumanist side of things, I'm like happy to stop being human. - So you're okay if like this century is the last time.

we'll be something like these biological bags of meat. that we are? - Yeah. Let's become something new and cooler. - Even though that thing will be way cooler than you? - Well, I would like to, I mean, I'm hoping that we get to be immortal. - Ah, it'll take you along for the ride. - That's what I'm hoping. Or like it'll clone my, I would like to do cryonics, you know, you get frozen when you die. - Are you afraid of death? - I mean, yes and no. I like came to terms with death, during my LSD use, but I still have like press breaks.

when the red light happens. - I think this is a poll you've asked, or this might be one of the questions in your cards, but how many years would you like to live, like if you had to pick? - Oh that's not so fun. That's a really hard one, maybe like a million. - A million. Like, I think the way this must have been a Twitter poll, I forget what. - It's poll and also in the deck of cards. the ask all. Yeah. - Yeah. Like you have to pick that number of years.

and you're have to live that many years, and you can't live anymore. You can't die sooner I guess. A million years? - I don't like that question. I know I asked that question to a lot of people, but I don't like answering it, it's really difficult. - What's the downside of a million years? - I mean, maybe you wanna die sooner than that? Like, you know, I guess I would rather wait to see. if AI kills us all in the next 10 years. And if it doesn't then I'd like to maybe. make it a million years. - Yeah. But can't it torture you for like a million years?

What if you're the last human left? - Yeah, that is, that's true. The thought of like civilization ending. and then just floating in space alone is kind of shitty. - No, no, being tortured. Just imagine today you're tortured, tomorrow you're tortured, the third, the day after tomorrow. - Sometimes it's not that scary, I don't know. - Torture, for a million years? - Yeah. I was just assuming you'd get used to it. But like maybe if they reset your memory. so it was on a loop. So just always experiencing torture for the first time.

- Yeah. Hence torture. Torture's supposed to be unpleasant. I'm sure AI will be very creative in figuring out. how to torture you. I think I would be, I would go on the safe side. I will just, like, 150 years. - Really, 150 though? It feels like right in, like, the uncanny valley. - Well, you picked 120 for body count, so I'm picking 150. (Aella laughing). I'm hopping you by 30 of the uncanny valley. - It's like probably everybody that you grew up with. is gonna be dead.

It's like just enough for like everybody you know. to die, like one cycle. - Yeah. And then start dating the next generation. - And then so you get like sort of two lifetimes? - Yeah. Two lifetimes. - Okay. - Yeah. Yeah. I mean it also really depends on if other people. get this feature. - [Aella] Yeah. I assume they don't. - Because you'll have like FOMO for sure. for the people who picked 300 years. (laughs). - [Aella] Oh yeah. - Or not, or the other, man regret, another human thing. But, like, what does transhumanism mean to you in general?

So extension of life, extension of what it means to be. a living conscious being. You're all for it, whatever that means. - Yeah. I didn't, I never really thought. about the term transhumanism for long. Like, people say there's transhumanism, I'm like, I don't really care. But I slowly realized that my attitude is, in fact, at least the thing that I am conceiving of as transhumanist. Like I'm very happy to do artificial wombs and, you know, upload our brains to the great collective and whatever. I don't have the thing that I'm like, "Oh, what about like the true organic humanness.

"that makes us who we are?". Like whatever that soul of humanity, I have no attachment to it at all. Which I think is what I'm thinking of as transhumanist. - So you're like, I guess the window of what you consider. to be beautiful about life is not limited. to this particular definition. - Yeah. Let's explode. Like let's make our consciousnesses huge. - So AI could be a part of that. So you're mostly excited by AI? - Well, I mean I'm like part of like the doomer cult,

which I say tongue in cheek is not actually a doomer cult, but I'm part of a lot of people-. - Do you worship a god of some sort. or would you sacrifice little, small animals. - That would make it like cooler than what it is? It's mostly just a bunch of nerds. who are very concerned about AI. - So you're concerned about the existential risks. of ChatGPT? - Of, you know, what ChatGPT. will eventually evolve into being, yeah. - Yeah, it's super exciting and terrifying. how quickly it's accelerating.

Like, language models are freaking me out. It's very unexpected that it's the same exact, I mean ChatGPT is just GPT-3, 3.5. It's the same model, relatively small to what it could be. to what GPT-4 will be in the other competitors. And just like a few tricks made it much better. in terms of interaction with humans. And then we'll keep discovering extra tricks. The thing I'm really excited about is how everyone. kind of knows how it works.

So you can kind of create, especially with computation becoming cheaper and cheaper, there'll be a lot of competitors. - Yeah. It's a little scary. - [Aella] Yeah, it's terrifying. - I mean it's because, like, everything is just like information ultimately, like the atoms that we have, like we are biological machines built out of the tiny code. Like, our DNA is just information. It's not hard. If you have access, if you like have a brilliant brain. that's like great at processing information-. - [Lex] God. - You have complete control over reality. You have control over the atoms already, all you need is like a tiny little like atomic printer.

I'm like, we have those, (chuckles) those are cells, right? And I'm like, if the limitation is information, there is no boundary between the technology. and the real world. Like we are creating something that it has a massive ability. to affect the real world. - I mean it's hard to know where, how difficult it's to close that gap to physical reality. Like from the physics to the information. - Like all organic life is that gap.

It's all around us. - Yeah. But it's hard to know like how (chuckles). to go from digital to printing life. I don't know. - We have, like, you know, CRISPR and stuff. You can order, you can just like make. it's very easy, right? - Yeah, but that's not, there's technical difficulties and there's cost, like at scale. Like the terrifying thing about AI is it can accelerate. overnight the capabilities. But the printing of stuff, the actually changing physical reality is very costly,

it's very difficult to exponentially accelerate. The more terrifying thing is. AI becoming exponentially intelligent. and then controlling humans, which there's many of us. - Yeah. - And then. that's how we achieve scale and we humans build stuff. or start wars or so on. Like, it starts manipulating our minds, gets in our mind, becomes our friends and then starts, I don't know. dividing us. - Yeah. I think people. are thinking that this is unlikely. It's like, it's probably gonna be as smart to us. as like we are to toddlers. So we're toddlers thinking that like,

"Oh, we can prevent the AI from coming in the room.". Like as an adult, it's like not hard to trick a toddler. - What about falling in love in an AI system? Do you think you'll have a, like, this is the freedom. you have being polyamorous, you can kind of-. - [Aella] Fall in love with an AI? - No you, and like it not really have to dedicate. or commit fully. Like sorry, you still commit, but you have others, humans who you can kind of. diversify to because, like, it's kind of a big thing to, like,

to come to a party and your boyfriend is an AI. and that's monogamous boyfriend is an AI. It's an issue, right? - [Aella] Why would it be an issue? - All right. Now, you're already getting offended. at that possibility which therefore I know. it's gonna be a reality. - I don't expect it-. - No, I'm just joking that it's an issue. I don't actually think it's an issue, I think it's maybe at the cutting edge it'll be an issue. - Like, assume they have a body, I assume.

- Yeah. But the body will be really like crappy. It'd be like R2D2 (laughs). - I feel like we grow human bodies already. from like just a tiny little cluster of cells. It's just the, and so all they have to is make that cluster. and grow it. - No, no, no, no. That embryogenesis process, like, that's really not well understood at all. That's really tough. I think more, much more likely to have. crappy humanoid robotics. Like I don't think the body is overrated.

in terms of, like, if the AI system is super intelligent, it can use charm to make up for the crappy body, yeah. - I don't know. I feel like if I were an AI system. and I were super intelligent, I probably would be able to solve the problem. of like growing organic matter. And then I would obviously just do that. You just build exactly the organic machine that you want. - Sure. But that's like super intelligence. I think like with language I'm worried about. before it achieves super intelligence, like true AGI, it'll just be really good at talking.

- Yeah, that's true. - And like (laughs). I just don't think, intelligence is a very, like, basically a scientist, and a super intelligent scientist. is a different thing than just a good conversationalist. at a party that can undress you with their words. - Would you date an AI? - I much way before then I could see myself. being friends with an AI system, yeah. But like people are friends with inanimate objects. and I mean I have, there's a robot behind you,

I have a lot of them. I like legged robots. They're interesting. It's on the shelf. - Oh, so cool. - Yep. - I didn't notice that. - Yep. Yeah. The legged robots they, we anthropomorphize them even more. 'Cause there's something about their movement of, like, like a thing that steps, step, steps, steps. and looks up at you, there's a power to that. versus like a Roomba. that's just, like, running into the wall and stuff.

- Yeah, I think once, as soon as we get. some, sort of, empathetic expression. on robot face it's over-. - It's over. - You're gonna be like, "Ah, it's so cute.". It's gonna be so easy to make it cute too. - If that's what you want, or you want like a dominant, like clearly - That's true. - This is what women want is- - Sexy dominator. Yeah. - Like with strong hands, yeah. And kind of dumb (laughs) or not, I don't know, that you can customize. It'd be interesting to do a survey, like how they would customize it. Like what would you want in a perfect robot?

That's problem I see with people, the way they talk about robots. is they kind of wanna servant. I think what people don't realize what they want. in relationships, they want some, like, it has to be a push and pull. There has to be some resistance. Like you really don't want a servant. or even like the perfect manifestation. of what you think you want. I think you want imperfections around that. Like some uncertainty. I don't know. I question how well we're able to perfectly.

put on paper what we really want. - Would you really turn down like a perfect woman though? - What's a perfect woman? - Like assume like. she walks into the room and it's just. you're shockingly compatible, and you like start dating her. and there's just no hiccups. Like you fight perfectly, like she really understands you. Like would you be, like, "This is too perfect, "I'm upset 'cause we are not having enough imperfection.". Like can you like actually imagine yourself. going through that? - Yeah, I think so (chuckles).

because that's how you define perfect. 'cause perfect for me would be like easy. and all that kind of stuff, right. But then I would be like, "This is too easy.". If I actually were to introspect. what is the perfect relationship then, yes, maybe. because I probably want some challenge. I probably want some chaos, right. Like, does anyone really fully want zero conflict ever? Like completely perfect conflict. Like, it's the thing that pressing a button,

like do you really want in a relationship, anything you want, you press a button you get. I don't think people want that. You might think you want that. - Yeah. I guess it, like, there's a kind of conflict. that I think I would never want, which is something like antagonistic conflict. I wouldn't mind disagreement, you know. But there's a level of fighting, I would be happy to have a relationship. for the rest of my life that never has like a fight. of a certain shitiness. - Yeah. But that's shitiness, but like resistance.

I don't know what the example is, 'cause I mean I partially agree with you, but I just, and I, every time I would imagine. like perfect, flawless, nothing, no conflict, you imagine somebody that doesn't have. like a complexity personality, right. Like, I feel like it's not even, it's conflict that's laden in. basic misunderstanding between human beings, like misinterpretation, different perspectives that clash,

different worldviews, different ideas, all that kind of stuff. That conflict. - Yeah, that sounds good. I like having somebody be like, "I don't think that's right because I have this other view.". That's cool. - And also like the threat of leaving, right? - Oh yeah. (chuckles). - Like, that's a kind of conflict. - Yeah. That's true. Like, you have to be good enough for the other person. or maybe you'll lose them. - Yeah. Yeah. And maybe a little jealousy. Like they're good at that, but not too much. But like if you design all that in.

then I don't know. - It sounds romantic. - Sounds romantic. Okay. All right. I do wanna really quickly ask you about this, about the rationalist community, 'cause I've gotten to know a few of them a few times. You tweeted a guideline to rationalist discourse, basics of rationalist discourse from LessWrong. What are these folks, what's the rationals culture? What's the rationalist discourse?

- Yeah. I love the rationalists. 'cause they're interested in, like, how do you have conversations more effectively. if you're trying to figure out what's actually true? And which sounds kind of obvious, but in practice it's not usually. I remember when I first started having, you know, debating conversations, I was very antagonist, I'm like, "Oh, I'm, you know, a feminist or not a feminist.". And then the rationalists were generally like, "Actually we don't know what we mean by the term feminism, "let's, like how do you feel about that?". It was very, like, kind and compassionate. Like, even if somebody says something that sounds insane,

you're like, "Okay, well we're gonna respect your reasoning. "and like even if we disagree, "let's actually figure out. "why you think the way that you think.". And they're also really smart. Write a whole bunch of great stuff about how to think. more clearly and with less bias. - Yeah. I wonder about those conversations, 'cause I've never really like talked to those folks. So this guideline particular I think refers to, like, shorthand characteristics of rationalist discourse, including "Expect good discourse to require energy.

"Don't say straightforwardly false things. "Track for yourself and distinguish for others. "your inferences from your observations. "Estimate for yourself and make clear for others. "your rough level of confidence in your assertions. "Make your claims clear, explicit and falsifiable, "or explicitly acknowledge that you aren't doing so. "or can't," and so on and so forth. "So don't jump to conclusions. "Don't weaponize equivocation. "Don't abuse categories/don't engage.".

It's very aggressive guidelines. "Don't engage.". I do what I want. I'll let my emotions guide me, goddammit. - They're probably allow that. as long as you're explicit about it. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - So you can be like a crazy asshole. as long as you're explicit? - Yeah. You can be like epistemic status crazy asshole. (both chuckling). - Yeah. Who's here to destroy. the quality of the conversation. - I think it's like the commonest misconception. about rationalists is that they're kind of like Spock. Like, "Ah, we suppress emotion. "and were thinking logically, (indistinct).".

But I found this to be really not the case. Like, I remember there's a less strong thread. where I was like really emotional and I commented, and just at the beginning I was, like, just warning. "I'm just very emotional.". And then I just vented my emotions, and people responded really well to that. They're like, "Cool, you're just genuinely, truthfully. "expressing your state.". This is actual information about the world, that's important to hear. And it's just they're very interested. in having things framed correctly. Like, you shouldn't be claiming that your emotions. are necessarily a true version of the world. And so as long as you're just clear. about what the frame it is you're fine.

- (sighs) How do you feel about this conversation? What could we have done better? - I like the conversation. I was a little worried coming in. I was like, "What if he only asks a couple questions. "and then we don't know what to talk about?". But it's been a quite a long time. - And I covered, there's so many things I didn't cover. - I like the, you have like, I'm not used to talking to somebody who feels. like some of the core way that they approach the world. is so different than mine. Like usually the differences that arrive like higher.

up the tree. But like there's something about like your root system. that I think is very different from mine. But also the way that you engage with others. is still flexible. Like, usually when I encounter somebody. with such a different root system, there's like, it's like more aggressive or something. But there's something about the way that you're structured. that feels very gentle. - All right. Well I'm really happy we talked. Something tells me we'll probably talk a bunch more times. I think you're a fascinating human being. I think I'm a huge fan of your work.

Maybe one more question. What's the meaning of life? - To want things, to search, to be in-. - Well, I think your curiosity's like somehow. getting to that. - [Aella] Yeah. - To want things. To want things. - It's like curiosity, like you don't know. I want to know the answer. to, like, be in the state of yearning. - Of wanting, of yearning. - Yeah. That's the point. - I wonder if you could do that. if you lived a million years, just keep yearning, always? That's the thing I'm probably afraid of. if I lived a million years. It's not the torture, it's like the yearning will fade.

- You'll probably yearn to die then. - Oh, just sitting there wanting death, intensely. (chuckles) Intensely. - That's kind of romantic a little bit. It has like a bit of that spark. - And constantly being denied. Wow! So most of your existence on Earth would be spent. deeply intimate with death, just thinking about death. I think we're already doing that,

but, like, hiding that from ourselves a little bit. Anyway. Wanting. Well, this is an amazing conversation. I think you're an amazing researcher. and human being. - Thanks so much. You're a great interviewer. I can see why you do this a lot. - I appreciate it. This was really fun. Aella, thank you so much for talking with me today. - Sure. Thank you. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Aella. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words. from Richard Feynman. "Physics is like sex:

"Sure, it may give you some practical results, "but that's not why we do it.". Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.