Bryan Johnson: Kernel Brain-Computer Interfaces | Lex Fridman Podcast #186

the following is a conversation with. brian johnson founder of kernel. a company that has developed devices. that can monitor. and record brain activity and previously. he was the founder of braintree. a mobile payment company that acquired. venmo and then was acquired by paypal. and ebay. quick mention of our sponsors for. sigmatic. netsuite grammarly and expressvpn. check them out in the description to. support this podcast. as a side note let me say that this was. a fun and memorable experience.

wearing the kernel flow brain interface. in the beginning of this conversation. as you can see if you watch the video. version of this episode. and there's a ubuntu linux machine. sitting next to me collecting the data. from my brain. the whole thing gave me hope that the. mystery of the human mind. will be unlocked in the coming decades. as we begin to measure signals from the. brain. in a high bandwidth way to understand. the mind we either have to. build it or to measure it both.

are worth a try thanks to brian and the. rest of the colonel team for making this. little demo happen. this is the lex friedman podcast and. here. is my conversation with brian johnson. you ready lex yes i'm ready do you guys. want to come in. and put the interfaces on our heads and. then i will proceed to tell you a few. jokes. so we uh we have two incredible pieces. of technology and. a machine running ubuntu 2004 in front. of us.

what are we doing all right are these. going on our heads they're going on our. heads yeah. and they will place it on our heads for. proper alignment. does this support giant heads because i. kind of have a giant head. is this is just as like an ego or are. you saying. physically both. it's a nice massage yes. okay how does it feel it moves around.

it's okay to move around yeah it feels. oh yeah. [Music]. this feels awesome thank you that feels. good. so this is big head friendly it suits. you well lex. thank you i. feel like i need to uh i feel like when. i wear this i need to sound like sam. harris calm. collected eloquent.

i feel smarter actually i don't think. i've ever felt. quite as much like i'm part of the. future as now have you ever. worn a brain interface or had your brain. imaged. oh uh never had my brain imaged. the only way i've analyzed my brain is. by uh. talking to myself and thinking no direct. data. yeah yeah that is it that is definitely. an interface. that has a lot of blind spots it has. some blind spots.

yeah psychotherapy that's right. all right are we recording. all right so lex the objective. of this i'm going to. tell you some jokes and your objective. is to not smile. which as a russian you should have an. edge. make the motherland proud i gotcha okay. let's hear the jokes lex and this is.

from the kernel crew. we've been working on a device that can. read your mind. and we would love to see your thoughts. is that the joke that's the opening okay. if if i'm if i'm seeing the muscle. activation correctly on your. on your lips you're not gonna do well on. this let's see all right here here comes. the first unscrewed here comes the first. one. is this gonna break the device is it.

resilient. to uh to laughter. lex what goes through a potato's brain. i got already failed that's the. hilarious opener okay. what tater thoughts. what kind of fish performs brain surgery. i don't know a neural surgeon.

and so we're getting data of everything. that's happening in my brain right now. lifetime yeah we're getting. activation patterns of your entire. cortex. i'm gonna try to do better i'll edit out. all the parts where i left. photoshop you serious face over me you. can recover. all right lex what do scholars eat. when they're hungry i don't know what. academia. nuts.

that's a pretty one so what we'll do. is so you're wearing. kernel flow which is. an interface built uh using technology. called spectroscopy so it's similar to. what we wear. wearables on the wrist using light so. using lidar as you know. and we're using that to image. it's a functional imaging of brain. activity and so as your neurons fire.

electrically and and chemically it. creates. uh blood oxygenation levels we're. measuring that and so in you'll see in. the reconstructions we do for you. you'll see your activation patterns in. your brain as throughout this entire. time we are wearing it. so in the reaction to the jokes and as. we were sitting here talking. so it's a we're moving towards a. real-time. feed of your cortical brain activity so. there's a bunch of. things that are in contact with my skull.

right now how many of them are there and. so how many of them are. what are they what are the actual. sensors there's 52. modules and each module has one laser. and six. sensors and they're the sensors fire. uh in about 100 picoseconds and then the. photons scatter and absorb in your brain. and then a few go in if you come back. out they a bunch go in that a fuel come. back out and we. sense those photons and then we do the. reconstruction for the activity.

overall there's about a thousand plus. channels. that are sampling your activity how. difficult is it to make it as. comfortable as it is. because it's surprisingly comfortable i. would not think it would be comfortable. something that's measuring brain. activity. i would not think it would be. comfortable but it is i agree in fact i. want to take this home. yeah yeah that's right so people are. accustomed. to being in big systems like fmri where.

there's 120 decibel sounds and you're in. a claustrophobic. encasement or eeg which is just painful. or surgery and so yes i agree that this. is a. convenient option to be able to just put. on your head it measures your brain. activity in the contextual environment. you choose so if we. want to have it during the podcast if we. want to be at home in a business setting. so we it's freedom to be where to record. your brain activity in the setting that. you choose. yeah but sort of from an engineering.

perspective are these uh. what is it there's a bunch of different. modular parts and they're kind of. there's like a rubber band thing where. they they mold to the shape of your head. that's right so we we built this this. version of the mechanical design. to accommodate most adult heads. but i have a giant head and if it's fine. it feels fits well actually. so i don't think i have an average head. okay maybe i feel i feel much better.

about my head now maybe i'm. uh i'm more average than i thought. okay so what else is there interesting. you could say what's up. while it's on our heads i can keep this. on the whole time this is kind of. awesome. and it's amazing for me as a fan of. ubuntu i use a bunch of mate you guys. should use. that too but it's amazing to have code. running. to the side measuring stuff and. collecting data. i mean that i just i feel like much more. important now.

that my data is being recorded like. somebody care. like you know when you you have a good. friend that listens to you. that actually like listens like actually. is listening to you this is what i feel. like. i'm like a much better friend because. it's like accurately listening to me. upon two what a cool perspective i. hadn't thought about that. of feeling understood yeah heard. yeah heard deeply by the mechanical. system. that is recording your brain activity.

versus the human. that you're engaging with that your mind. immediately goes to. that there's this dimensionality and. depth of understanding. yeah of this software system which. you're intimately familiar with. and now you're able to communicate with. this system in ways that you couldn't. before. yeah i feel heard. yeah i mean i guess what's interesting. about this is your intuitions are. spot on most people have intuitions. about brain interfaces that.

they've grown up with this idea of. people moving cursors on the screen or. typing or changing the channel or. skipping a song it's. primarily been anchored on control and. i think the more relevant understanding. of brain. interfaces or neural imaging is that. it's a measurement system. and once you have numbers for a given. thing. a seemingly endless number of. possibilities emerge around that of what. to do with those numbers. so before you tell me about the. possibilities this was an incredible.

experience. i can keep this on for another two hours. but i'm being. told that uh for a bunch of reasons. just because we probably want to keep. the data small and visualize it nicely. for the final product we want to cut. this off and take this. to take this amazing helmet away from me. so. brian thank you so much for this. experience and let's uh. let's continue without helmetless all. right. so that was an incredible experience uh. can you maybe speak to. what kind of opportunities that opens up.

that stream of data that rich stream of. data from the brain. first i'm curious what is your reaction. what. what comes to mind when you put that on. your head what does it mean to you. and what possibilities emerge and what. significance might it have i mean i'm. curious where. your orientation is at well. for me i'm really excited by the. possibility of. various information about my body about. my mind.

being converted into data such that data. can be used to create. products that make my life better so. that that means really exciting. possibility. even just like a fitbit that measures i. don't know. some very basic measurements about your. body is really cool. but it's the the bandwidth of. information. the resolution of that information is. very crude so it's not very interesting. the possibility of recording of just. building a data set. coming in a clean way in a high.

bandwidth way from. my brain opens up uh. all kinds of you know at the very i was. kind of joking when we're talking but. it's not really it's like i feel heard. in the sense that it feels like. the full richness of the information. coming from my mind. is actually being recorded by the. machine i mean there's a i can't. i can't quite put it into words but.

there is a genuinely for me. this is not some kind of joke about me. being a robot is this genuinely feels. like i'm being. heard uh in a way that uh. that's going to improve my life as long. as the thing that's on the other end. can do something useful with that data. but even the the recording itself. is like once you record it's like taking. a picture. that moment is forever saved in time. now a picture cannot allow you to step.

back. into that world but perhaps. recording your brain is a much higher. resolution thing. much more personal recording of that. information than a picture. that would allow you to step back into. that. where you were in that particular moment. in history. and then map out a certain trajectory to. tell you certain things about. uh about yourself that could open up all. kinds of applications.

of course there's health that i consider. but honestly. to me the exciting thing is just being. heard my state of mind. the level of focus all those kinds of. things being heard. what i heard you say is you have an. entirety of. lived experience some of which you can. communicate in words. and in body language some of which you. feel internally. which cannot be captured in those. communication modalities and that this. measurement system. captures both the things you can try to. articulate in words maybe in a lower.

dimensional. space using one word for example to. communicate focus. yeah when it really may be represented. in a 20 dimensional space of. this particular kind of focus and that. this information is being captured so. it's a closer representation to the. entirety. of your experience captured in a dynamic. fashion that is not just. a static image of your conscious. experience. yeah yeah that that's that's that's the. promise that's the hope that was the. feeling. and it felt like the future so it's a. pretty cool experience and from the sort.

of. mechanical perspective it was cool to. have an actual device that. feels pretty good that doesn't uh. doesn't require me to go into the lab. and also the other thing i was i was. feeling there's a guy named andrew. huberman. he's a friend of mine amazing podcast. people should uh uh should listen to a. humor in the lab podcast. we're working on a paper together about. eye movement and so on. and we're kind of he's a neuroscientist. and i'm a data person a machine learning. person and.

we're we're both excited by. how much the that. how much the data measurements of the. human mind. the brain and all the different metrics. that come from that. can be used to understand human beings. and. in a rigorous scientific way so the. other thing i was thinking about is how. this could be turned into. a tool for science sort of not just. personal science not just like. fitbit style like uh how am i doing.

my personal metrics of health but doing. larger scale studies of human behavior. and so on. so like data not at the scale of an. individual but data at a scale of many. individuals or a large number of. individuals so. science so it's personal being heard was. exciting and also just. for science is exciting it's very easy. like there's a very powerful thing to it. being so easy to just put on. that you can scale much easier if you. think about the second thing you said.

about. the science of. the brain most. we've done a pretty good job like we the. human race has done a pretty good job. figuring out how to quantify the things. around us from distance. stars to calories and steps. and our genome so we can measure and. quantify. pretty much everything in the known. universe. except for our minds and we can do these.

one-offs if we're going to get an fmri. scan or. do something with the low-res eeg system. but we haven't done this at. population scale and so if you think. about. human thought or human cognition is. probably. the single law largest raw input. material into society at any given. moment. it's our conversations with our with. ourselves and with other people. and we have this this raw input that we.

can't haven't been able to measure yet. yeah. and if you when i think about it through. that frame. it's remarkable it's almost like we live. in this. wild wild west of unquantified. communications within ourselves. and between each other when everything. else has been grounded me for example i. know if i buy an appliance at this. at the store or on a website i don't. need to. look at the measurements on the.

appliance make sure it can fit through. my door. that's an engineered system of appliance. manufacturing and construction. everyone's agreed upon. engineering standards and we don't. have engineering standards around. cognition it's not a for it has not. entered as a formal engineering. discipline. that enables us to scaffold in society. with everything else we're doing. including consuming news our. relationships. politics economics education all the. above. and so to me that the most significant.

contribution that kernel technology has. to offer. would be the formal sca the. introduction of the formal engineering. of cognition as it relates to everything. else in society. i love that i idea that you kind of. think. that there is just this ocean of data. that's coming from people's brains as. being in a crude way reduced down to. like. tweets and texts and so on just a very.

hardcore mini scale compression of. actual the raw data but maybe you can. comment. because you use the word cognition. i think the first step is to get the. brain data. but um is there a leap. to be taking to sort of interpreting. that data in terms of cognition. so is your is your ideas basically you. need to start collecting data at scale. from the brain and then we start to. really be able to.

take little steps along the path to. actually. measuring some deep sense of cognition. because it's. you know as i'm sure you know we don't. we understand. a few things but we don't understand. most of what makes up cognition. this has been one of the most. significant challenges of building. kernel. and colonel wouldn't exist if i wasn't. able to fund it initially by myself. because when i engage in conversations. with investors. the immediate thought is what is the.

killer app. and of course i understand that. heuristic that's what they're looking at. is they're looking to de-risk. is the product solved is there a. customer base are people willing to pay. for it how does it compare to competing. options. and in the case with brain interfaces. when i started the company. there was no known path to even build a. technology that could potentially. become mainstream yes and then once we. figured out the technology. we could even we could commence having. conversations with investors and it. became.

what is a killer app and so what has. been. so i've funded the first 53 million. dollars of the company. and to raise the round of funding the. first one we did i spoke to 228. investors. one said yes it was remarkable and it. was. mostly around this concept around what. is a killer app and. so internally the way we think about it. is we think of the. the go-to-market strategy much more like. the drake equation. where if we can build technology that.

has. the characteristics of it has the data. quality is high enough it meets some. certain threshold. cost accessibility comfort. it can be worn in contextual. environments if it meets the criteria. of being a mass-market device then. the responsibility that we have is to. figure out how to. create the algorithm that enables. the human to enable. uh humans to then find value with it.

okay so it so the analogy is like. brain interfaces are like early 90s of. the internet is you. you want to populate an ecosystem with a. certain number of devices you want a. certain number of people. who play around with them who do. experiments of certain data collection. parameters you want to encourage certain. mistakes from experts to non-experts. these are all. critical elements that ignite discovery. and so. we believe we've accomplished the first. objective building technology. that reaches those thresholds and now.

it's the drake equation component of. how do we try to. generate 20 years of value discovery in. a two or three year time period how do. we compress that. so just to clarify so when you mean the. drake equation. uh which for people who don't know i. don't know why you if you listen to this. i bring up aliens every single. conversation so. it's i don't know how you would know. what the drake equation is but you mean. like the killer app it would be one. alien civilization in that equation.

so meaning like this is in search of an. application that's. impactful transformative by the way it. should be a we need to come up with a. better term. than killer app as a it's also violent. right. very violent you can go like viral app. that's horrible too. right it's some very uh inspiringly. impactful application how about that no. yeah okay so let's stick with killer app. that's fine. nobody's but i concur with you i dislike. the chosen words in in capturing the.

concept. you know it's one of those sticky things. that uh is as. effective to use in the tech world but. when you. now become a communicator outside of the. tech world especially when you're. talking about software and hardware and. artificial intelligence applications it. sounds horrible you know it's. interesting i. i actually regret now having called. attention because i regret having used. that word in this conversation. because it's something i would not. normally do i i used it. in order to create a bridge of shared. understanding of how others would what.

terminology others would use. yeah but yeah i concur let's go with the. impactful application value creation. value creation something people love. using. there we go that's it love app. okay so what uh do you have any ideas so. you're basically creating a framework. where there's. the possibility of a discovery of uh. an application that people love using. is do you have ideas we've began to play.

a fun game internally where when we have. these discussions and we. begin circling around this concept of. does anybody have an idea does anyone. have intuitions and. if we see the conversation starting to. to veer in that direction. we flag it and say human intuition alert. stop it and so we really want to focus. on the algorithm. of there's a natural process of human. discovery. that that when you populate a system. with devices and you give people the.

opportunity to play around with it in. expected and unexpected ways. we are thinking that is a much better. system of discovery. than us exercising tuitions and it's. interesting we're also seeing a few. neural scientists who have been. have been talking to us where i was. speaking just one young. associate professor and i approached a. conversation and said hey. we have these five data streams that. we're pulling off. when you hear that what weighted value. do you add to each data source like. which one do you think is going to be.

valuable for your objectives. and which one's not and he said i don't. care just give me the data. all i care about is my machine learning. model but importantly he did not have a. theory of mind he did not come to the. table and say i think. the brain operates you know in this way. and these regions that have these these. functions. he didn't care he just wanted the data. and we're seeing that more and more. that certain people. are devaluing human intuitions for good. reasons as we've seen in machine. learning over. over the past couple years and we're.

doing the same in our value creation. uh market strategy. so more collect more data clean data. make uh the products such that the. collection of data is uh. easy and and and fun and then the the. rest will just. spring to life that's right through. humans. playing around with them our objective. is to create the most valuable. data collection system of the brain ever.

and with that then applying all the. best tools of machine learning and other. techniques to extract out you know. to try to find insight but yes our. objective is really to systematize the. discovery process because we. we can't put definite time frames on. discovery. the brain is complicated and and science. is not a business strategy.

and so we really need to figure out how. to. this is the difficulty of bringing. bringing you know technology like this. to market it's why. most of the time it just ling it. languishes. in academia academia for quite some time. but we hope that. we will over you know cross over and. make this mainstream in the coming years. the thing was cool to wear but what's uh. are you chasing a good reason for. millions of people to put it. this on their head and keep on their. head regularly.

is there um like who's going to discover. that reason. is it going to be people just kind of. organically. or is there going to be a angry bird. style application. that's just uh too exciting to. to not use if i think through the things. that. have changed my life most significantly. over the past few years. when i started wearing a wearable in my. wrist. that would give me data about my heart. rate heart rate variability respiration.

rate. metabolic approximations etc. for the first time in my life i had. access to information. uh sleep patterns that were highly. impactful. they they told me for example if i eat. close to bedtime i'm not going to get. deep sleep. and not getting deep sleep means you. have all these follow-on consequences in. life and so. it opened up this window of. understanding of myself. that i cannot self-introspect and deduce.

these things this is information that. was. available to be acquired but it just. wasn't i would have to. get an expensive sleep study then it's. an end like one night and that's not. good enough to look. to run all my trials and so if you look. just at the information. that one can acquire on their wrist and. now you're applying planted to the. entire cortex on the brain. and you say what kind of information. could we acquire. it opens up a whole new universe of. possibilities. for example we did this internal study. at kernel where i wore a prototype.

device. and we were measuring the cognitive. effects of sleep. so i had a device measuring my sleep i. performed with 13 of my. my co-workers we performed four. cognitive tasks over. 13 sessions and we focused on reaction. time. impulse control short-term memory. and then a resting state task and we. with mine we found for example that. my impulse control was independently. correlated with my sleep.

outside of behavioral measures of my. ability to play the game the point. of the study was i had the brain study i. did at colonel. confirmed my life experience that if i. my deep sleep determined whether or not. i would be able to resist. temptation the following day and my. brain didn't show that. as one example and so if you start. thinking if you actually have. uh data on yourself on your on your. entire cortex you can control the.

settings i think there's probably an. uh a large number of things that we. could discover about ourselves. very very small and very very big i just. for example like when you read. news what's going on like when you use. social media when you use news what. like uh all the ways we allocate. attention. that's right with the computer i mean. that seems like a compelling place to. where you would. want to put on uh kernel by the way what. is it called kernel flux kernel like.

what flow. fluid yeah two technologies uh flow flow. okay so when you when you put on the the. kernel flow. it it is seems like to be um. a compelling time and place to do it is. when you're behind a desk behind a. computer. because you could probably wear it for. prolonged periods of time. as you're as you're taking in content. and there could a lot of. because some of our so much of our lives. happens in the digital world now. that kind of coupling the information.

about the human mind. with the consumption and the behaviors. in the digital world might give us a lot. of information about the effects. of the way we behave and navigate the. digital world. to the actual physical meat space. uh effects on our body it's interesting. to think so in terms of both like. for work i i'm a big fan of uh. cal newport his ideas of deep work. that uh i spend uh.

with few exceptions i try to spend the. first two hours of every day. usually if i'm like at home and have. nothing on my schedule. is going to be up to eight hours of deep. work or focus zero distraction. and for me to analyze the i mean i'm. very aware of the. uh the waning of that the ups and downs. of that. and it's almost like you you're surfing. the ups and downs of that as you're. doing programming as you're doing.

thinking about particular problems. you're trying to visualize things in. your mind you. start trying to stitch them together. you're trying to uh. when there's a dead end about an idea. you have to kind of. calmly like walk back and start again. all those kinds of processes it'd be. interesting to get data on what my mind. is actually doing. and also recently started doing uh i. just talked to. sam harris a few days ago and been uh. building up to that i started using. started meditating using his app waking.

up but. very much uh recommend it it'd be. interesting to get data on that. because it's you're very it's like. you're removing all the noise. from your head and you're very much it's. an active process of. active noise removal active noise. cancelling. like the headphones and it'd be. interesting to see what is going on in. the mind. uh before the meditation during it and. after all those kinds of things. and in all of your examples it's.

interesting that. everyone who's designed an experience. for you so whether it be the meditation. app. or the deep work or with all the things. you mentioned. they constructed this product with a. certain. number of knowns yeah now what if. we expanded the number of knowns by 10x. or 20x or 30x. they would reconstruct their product. cool incorporate those known so it'd be. yeah and so this is the dimensionality. that i think is. the promising aspect is that people will.

be able to. use this quantification use this. information. to build more effective products and. this is i'm not talking about. better products to advertise to you or. manipulate you i'm talking about uh. our focus is helping people individuals. have this contextual awareness and. quantification and then to engage with. others who are. seeking to improve people's lives that. the objective is. is betterment across ourselves.

individually and also. uh with each other yeah so it's a nice. data stream to have if you're building. an app. like if you're building a podcast. listening app it would be nice to know. data about the listener. so that like if you're bored or you fell. asleep maybe pause the podcast. it's like really dumb just very simple. applications. that could just improve the quality of. the experience of the using the app. and imagining if you have you have your. neuron this is lex. and you there's a statistical. representation of you. and you engage with the app and it says.

lex. your best to engage with this meditation. exercise in the following settings at. this time of day. after eating this kind of food or not. eaten fasting. with this level of blood glucose and. this kind of night's sleep. but all these data combined. to give you this contextually relevant. experience just like we do with our. sleep we you've optimized your entire. life. based upon what information you can.

acquire and know about yourself. and so the question is how much do we. really know. of the things going around us and i. would venture to guess in my own my life. life experience. i capture my self-awareness captures an. extremely small. percent of the things that actually. influence my conscious. and unconscious experience well in some. sense the data would. help encourage you to be more self-aware. not just because you. trust everything the data is saying but.

is it'll give you a prod to start. investigating. like i would love to get like a a rating. like a ranking of all the things i do. and what are the things this is probably. important to do without the data but the. data will certainly help it's like. rank all the things you do in life and. which ones make you feel shitty which. must make you feel good. like uh you're talking about evening. brian like uh. this is a good example somebody like.

i do pig out at night as well. and uh and it never makes like you're in. a safe space. this is just a safe space let's hear it. no i i definitely have much less. self-control at night and it's. interesting. and the same you know um people might. criticize this but. i i know my own body i know when i eat. carnivore just eat meat. i feel much better uh. than uh if i eat more. more carbs the more cups i eat the worse.

i feel i don't know why that is. i don't i there is science supporting. but i'm not leading on science i'm. leaning on personal experience and. that's really important. i don't need to read i'm not going to go. in a whole rant about nutrition science. but. many of those studies are very flawed. they're doing their best but nutrition. science is a very difficult. uh field of study because humans are so. different. and the mind has so much impact on the. way your body. behaves and it's so difficult from a. scientific perspective to conduct really.

strong studies. that you have to be almost like a. scientist of an. of one you have to do these studies on. yourself that's the best way to. understand what works for you or not. and i don't understand why because it. sounds unhealthy but eating only meat. always makes me feel good just eat eat. meat that's it. and i don't have any allergies and you. know that kind of stuff. i'm not full like jordan peterson where. like if he like deviates a little bit. that he goes off like deviates a little.

bit from the carnivore diet he goes off. like the cliff no i can i can have like. chalk i can i can go off the diet i feel. fine it's not it's a it's a gradual. uh it's a gradual worsening. of how i feel but what i eat only meat i. feel great. and it'd be nice to be reminded of that. like there's a very simple fact. that i feel good when i eat carnivore. and i think that repeats itself in. all kinds of experiences like i feel. really good.

uh when i exercise. not i hate exercise okay but. in the rest of the day the the uh the. impact it has. on my mind and the clarity of mind and. the experiences and the happiness and. all those kinds of things i feel really. good and to be able to. concretely express that through data. would be would be nice it would be a. nice reminder almost like a statement. like. remember what feels good and what not. and there could be things like.

uh that i'm not many things like just. you're suggesting that i could. not be aware of they might be sitting. right in front of me. that uh make me feel really good and. make me feel not good. and the data would show that i agree. with you i've actually. employed the same strategy i i fired my. mind entirely. from being responsible for constructing. my diet. so i started doing a program where i now. track over 200 biomarkers. every 90 days and it captures.

of course the things you would expect. like cholesterol but also dna. methylation. and all kinds of things that about my. body all the processes that make up. me and then i let that data generate the. shopping list. and so i never actually ask my mind what. it wants it's entirely what my body. is reporting that it wants and so i call. this goal alignment. within brian and there's 200 plus actors. that i'm currently asking their opinion. of. and so i'm asking my liver how are you. doing and it's expressing. via the biomarkers and so then i.

construct that diet. and i only eat those foods until my next. testing round. and that has changed my life more than i. think anything else. because in the emotion of my conscious. mind that i gave primacy to my entire. life it led me astray because like you. were saying. the mind then goes out into the world. and it navigates. the dozens of different dietary regimens. people put together in books and it all. has.

al their their supporting science in. certain contextual settings but it's not. n of one. and like you're saying this dietary. really is an end of one. these what people have published. scientifically of course can be used. for nice groundings but it changes when. you get to the end of one level. and so that's what gets me excited about. brainerd faces is if you. if i could do the same thing for my. brain where i can stop asking my. conscious mind. for its advice or for its decision. making which is.

flawed and i'd rather just look at this. data that and i've i've never had better. health markers in my life than when i. stopped. actually asking myself to be in charge. of it and. the idea of uh the motion of the. conscious mind. is uh is such a sort of engineering way. of phrasing like meditation with. what they mean that's what we're doing. right yeah that's beautiful that means. really beautifully put. by the way testing around what does that. look like what's that. well you mentioned uh yeah the very the.

test i do. yes so includes a complete. blood panel i do a microbiome test i do. a food inflammation of diet. induced inflammation so i look for. excited kind expressions so foods that. produce inflammatory reactions. i look at my neural endocrine systems i. look at all my neural transmitters. i do yeah there's several micronutrient. tests to see how i'm looking at the very. various nutrients. what about like self report of.

like how you feel you know almost like. um. you can't demote your con you still. exist within your conscious mind. right so that lived experience of is of. a lot of value so how do you measure. that i do a temporal sampling. over some duration of time so i'll think. through how i feel. over a week over a month over three. months i don't do a temporal sampling of. if i'm at the grocery store in front of. a cereal box and be like.

you know what captain crunch is probably. the right thing for me today because i'm. feeling like. i need a little fun in my life yeah and. so it's a temporal sampling if the data. set's large enough then i i smooth out. the function of my natural oscillations. of how i feel about life where some days. i may. feel upset or depressed or down or. whatever and i don't want those moments. to then rule my decision making that's. why. the demotion happens and it says really. if you're looking at health over 90 day. period of time. all my 200 voices speak up on that. interval.

and they're all given voice to say this. is how i'm doing and this is what i want. and so it really is an accounting system. for everybody so that's why. i think that if you think about the. future of being human. there's two things i think that are. really going on. one is the design manufacturing and. distribution of intelligence. is heading towards zero con a cost curve. over over a certain design over a. certain time frame.

but our ability to you know evolution. produced us. an intelligent form of intelligence we. are now designing our own intelligence. systems. and the design manufacturing. distribution of that intelligence over a. certain. uh time frame is going to go to a cost. of zero. design manufacture distribution of. intelligent. cost is going to zero again. just give me a second okay that's. brilliant okay. and evolution is doing the design. manufacturing distribution of. intelligence and now we are doing.

the design manufacturing distribution of. intelligence. and the cost of that is going to zero. that's a very. uh nice way of looking at life on earth. so if that that's going on and then now. in parallel. to that then you say okay what. what then happens if when that cost. curve is heading. to zero our existence becomes. a goal alignment problem a goal. alignment function.

and so the same thing i'm doing where. i'm doing goal alignment within myself. of these 200 biomarkers where i'm saying. when when brian exists on a daily basis. and this entity is deciding what to eat. what to do and et cetera. it's not just my conscious mind which is. opining it's. 200 biological processes and there's a. whole bunch more voices involved. so in that equation. we're going to increasingly automate.

the things that we spend high energy on. today because it's easier. and now we're going to then negotiate. the terms and conditions of intelligent. life now we say conscious existence. because we're biased because that's what. we have. but it will be the largest computational. exercise in history because you're now. doing go alignment. with planet earth within yourself with. each other. within all the intelligent agents we're. building bots and other you know voice. assistants. you basically i don't have a trillions.

and trillions of agents working on. the negotiation of goal alignment yeah. this this is in fact true uh and what. was the second thing. that was it so the cost the design. manufacturing distribution of. intelligence going to zero. which then means what's really going on. what are we really doing. we're negotiating the terms and. conditions. of existence do you worry about. the survival of this process.

that uh life as we know it on earth. comes to an end. or at least intelligent life that as the. cost goes to zero. all something happens where uh. all of that intelligence is thrown in. the trash by. something like nuclear war or. development of agi systems that are very. dumb. not agi i guess but ai is just that it's. the paper clip thing. what on mass is dumb but has unintended. consequences to where it destroys human. civilization.

do you worry about those kinds of things. i mean it's it's unsurprising. that a new thing comes into. the sphere of human consciousness humans. identify the foreign object in this case. artificial intelligence our amygdala. fires up and says. scary foreign. we should be apprehensive about this and. so it. makes sense from a biological. perspective that humans. for the the knee-jerk reaction is fear.

what i don't think has been properly. weighted with that is that. we are the first generation of. intelligent beings on this earth. that has been able to look out over. their expected lifetime. and see there is a real possibility of. evolving. into entirely novel forms of. consciousness. yeah so different that it would be.

totally. unrecognizable to us today we don't have. words for it we can't hint at it we. can't point at it we can't. you can't look in the sky and see that. thing that is shining we're going to go. up there. you you cannot even create an. aspirational. statement about it and. instead we've had this knee-jerk. reaction of fear. about everything that could go wrong but. in my estimation. this should be the defining aspiration.

of all intelligent life on earth that. that we would aspire. that basically every generation surveys. the landscape of possibilities they're. afforded. given the technological cultural and. other contextual situation that they're. in. we're in this context we haven't yet. identified this and said. this is unbelievable we should carefully. think this thing through. not just of mitigating the things that. wipe us out like we have. this potential and so we just haven't.

given voice to it. even though it's within this realm of. possibilities so you're excited about. the possibility of. super intelligence systems and what the. opportunities that bring i mean. there's parallels to this you think. about people before the internet. as the internet was coming to life. i mean there's kind of a fog through. which you can't see. what does the future look like. like predicting collective intelligence. which i don't think we're understanding. that we're. living through that now is that there's. now we've.

we've in some sense stopped being. individual intelligences. and become much more like collective. intelligences. because ideas travel much much. faster now and they can in a viral way. like sweep across the populations and so. it's almost. i mean it almost feels like a thought. is had by many people now thousands or. millions of people as opposed to an. individual person. and that's changed everything but to to.

me i don't think we're realizing how. much that actually changed in people. or societies but like to predict that. before the internet. would have been very difficult and in. that same way we're sitting here. with the fog before us thinking what is. uh super intelligent systems how is that. going to change. the world what is uh increasing the. bandwidth like. uh plugging our brains into this whole. thing how is that going to change the.

world. and it seems like it's a fog you don't. know. and it could be it could uh. whatever comes to be could destroy the. world that this we could be the last. generation. but it also could uh transform in in. ways that creates a an incredibly. fulfilling life experience that's. unlike anything we've ever experienced. it might involve dissolution of ego and. consciousness and so on you're no longer.

one individual. it might be more you know. that might be a certain kind of death. and ego death but the experience might. be really exciting and enriching. maybe we'll live in a virtual like it's. like it's it's. it's funny to think about a bunch of. sort of hypothetical questions of. would it be more. fulfilling to live in a virtual world. like if you were able to plug your brain. in. in a very dense way into a video game.

like which world would you want to live. in in the video game. or in the physical world for most of us. we're kind of. touring it with the idea of the video. again but we still want to live in the. physical world have friendships and. relationships. in the physical world but we don't know. that. again it's a fog and maybe maybe in a. hundred years we're all living inside a. video game. hopefully not call of duty hopefully. more like.

like sims 5 which version is it on. for you individually though does it make. you. sad that your brain ends. that you die one day very soon. that the whole thing that that uh that. data source. just goes offline sooner than you would. like. that's a complicated question i would. have answered it. differently in different times in my.

life i. you know had chronic depression for 10. years and so in that 10-year time period. i desperately wanted lights to be off. and the thing that made it even worse is. i was in a religious. i was born into a religion it was the. only reality i ever understood and it's. difficult to articulate to people. when you're born into that kind of. reality and it's the only reality you're. exposed to. you're literally blinded to the. existence of other realities. because it's so much the in-group out.

group thing. and so in that situation it was not only. that i desperately wanted lights out. forever. it was that i couldn't have lights out. forever it was there was an afterlife. and this afterlife had this. system that would either penalize or or. reward you for your behaviors and so. it's almost like this. is indescribable hopelessness. of not only being in hopeless despair.

of not wanting to exist but then also. being forced to be to exist. and so there was a duration of my time. of the observation of life where i'd say. yes i have no remorse. for lights being out and actually want. it more than anything in the entire. world. there are other times where i'm looking. out at the future and i say. this is an opportunity for future. evolving human conscious experience that. is beyond.

my ability to understand and and i jump. out of bed and i race to work and i. i can't think about anything else but i. i think the the reality for me. is i don't know what it's like to be in. your head but in my head. when i wake up in the morning i don't. say. good morning brian i'm so happy to see. you like i'm sure. you're just going to be beautiful to me. today you're not going to make a huge. long list of everything you should be. anxious about. you're not going to repeat that list to.

me 400 times you're not going to have me. relive all the regrets i've made in life. i'm sure you're not doing any of that. you're just going to. just help me along all day long i mean. it's a. brutal environment in my brain and we've. just become. normalized to this environment that we. just accept that this is what it means. to be human. but if we look at it if we try to muster. as much soberness as we can. about the realities of being human it's. brutal. if it is for me and so.

am i sad that the brain may be off one. day. yeah it depends on the contextual. setting like how am i feeling what. moment are you asking me that and that's. it's my mind is so fickle. and this is why again i don't trust my. conscious mind i have been. given realities i was given a religious. reality. that was a video game and then i figured. out it was not. a real reality and then i lived in a. depressive reality which delivered. this terrible hopelessness that wasn't a.

real reality then i discovered. uh behavioral psychology and i figured. out how biased 188 chronicle biases and. how my brain is distorting reality all. the time. i have gone from one reality to another. i don't. trust reality i don't trust realities. are given to me. and so to make try to make a decision on. what i value or not value that future. state. i don't trust my response so not. fully not fully listening to. the conscious mind at any one moment as. the ultimate truth.

but allowing it to go up and down as it. does and just kind of being observing it. yes i assume that whatever my conscious. mind delivers up. to my awareness is wrong. on pawn landing and i just need to. figure out where it's wrong how it's. wrong how wrong it is. and then try to correct for it as best i. can but i i assume. that on impact it's mistaken in some. critical ways. is there something you can say by way of. advice. when the mind is depressive when the.

conscious mind serves up. something that uh you know. the dark thoughts how you deal with that. how in your own life you've overcome. that and others who are experiencing. that. can overcome it two things one. that those depressive. states are biochemical states. it's not you. and the suggestions that these things.

that this state delivers to you about. suggestion of the hopelessness of lice. or. or the meaninglessness of it or. that you should hit the eject button. that's a false reality. yeah and that it's when. i i completely understand their rational. decision to commit suicide there's it is. not lost to me at all that that is a and. that is an irrational. situation but the key is when you're in. that situation those thoughts are.

landing. to be able to say thank you you're not. real. i know you're not real yeah and so i'm. in a situation where for whatever reason. i'm having this. this uh neurochemical state but. that state can be altered and so it. again it goes back to the realities of. the difficulties of of being human and. like when i was trying to solve my. depression i. tried literally ev you name it i tried. it. systematically and nothing would fix it. and so.

this is what gives me hope with brain. interfaces for example like could i have. numbers on my brain. can i see what's going on because i go. to the doctor and it's like how do you. feel i don't know. terrible like on a scale of 10 how bad. you want to commit suicide. 10. okay at this moment here's. here's his bottle how much i take well i. don't know like just. yeah it's very very crude and this data. opens up the. the yeah it opens up the possibility of. really helping.

in those dark moments to first. understand. the the waves the ups and downs of those. dark moments on the complete flip side. of that i. i am uh very conscious in my own brain. and deeply deeply grateful that. what they're it's it's almost like a. chemistry thing a biochemistry thing. that i go many times throughout the day. i'll i'll look at like this cup. and i'll be overcome with joy how.

amazing it is to be alive. like i actually think i'm my. biochemistry is such that it's not. as common like i've talked to people. and i don't think that's that common. like it's a. and it's not a rational thing at all. it's like. i feel like i'm on drugs and i'll just. be like. whoa a lot of people talk about like the. meditative experience. will allow you to sort of you know look.

at some basic things like the movement. of your hand. as uh deeply joyful because it's like. that's life. but i get that from just looking at a. cup like i'm waiting for the coffee to. brew. and i'll just be like fuck. life is awesome and i'll sometimes tweet. that but then i'll like regret it later. like god damn it you're so. uh ridiculous but yeah so but that. is purely chemistry like. there's no rational it doesn't fit with. the rest of my life i have all this shit. i'm always late to stuff i'm always like.

there's all stuff. you know i'm super self-critical like. really self-critical about everything i. do. i'm to the point i almost hate. everything i do but. there's this engine of joy for life. outside of all that. and that has to be chemistry and the. flip side of that is what depression. probably is. is the opposite of that feeling of. like because i i bet you that feeling of. the cup being amazing is would save. anybody in a state of depression like.

that that would be like fresh. you're in a desert and it's a drink of. water. shit man the brain is uh it would be. nice to understand where that's coming. from. to to be able to um to understand the. how you hit those lows and those highs. that have nothing to do with the actual. reality it has to do with some very. specific aspects. of how you maybe see the world maybe it. could be just like basic habits that you.

engage in and then how to. walk along the line to to find those. experiences of joy and this goes back to. the discussion we're having of. human cognition is in volume. the largest input of raw material into. society. yeah and it's not quantified we have no. bearings on it. and so we just you wonder. we both articulated some of the. challenges we have in our own mind. and it's likely that others would say.

i have something similar yeah and you. wonder when you look at society. what how does that contribute to all the. other. compounded problems that we're. experiencing how does that. blind us to the the opportunities we. could be looking at. and so it really it has this potential. distortion effect on reality that just. makes. everything worse and i hope. if we can put some if we can.

assign some numbers to these things just. to get our bearings. so we're aware of what's going on if we. could find greater stabilization. in how we conduct our lives and how we. build society. it it might be the thing that enables us. to scaffold. uh because we've really again we've done. a humans have done a fantastic job. systematically scaffolding. technology and science institutions.

it's humans it's our own selves which we. have not been able to scaffold it's it's. we are the. we are the one part of this intelligence. infrastructure. that remains unchanged. is there something you could say about. coupling. this brain data with uh not just the. basic human experience but say. an experience you mentioned sleep but. the wildest experience which is. psychedelics. is there and there's been quite a few. studies. now that are being um approved and run.

which is exciting from a scientific. perspective. on psychedelics uh do you think. uh what do you think happens to the. brain on psychedelics. and how can data about this help us. understand it. and uh when you're on dmt do you see. else and can we guess. can we convert into data um can you add. aliens in there. yeah aliens definitely do you actually. meet aliens and elves are. elves the aliens i'm asking for uh for a.

few austin friends yet. that that are convinced that they've. actually met the elves. what are elves like are they friendly. are they healthy i haven't met them. the smurfs of like they're like they're. industrious and they have different. skill sets and. yeah i think they're very uh they're. very. critical as friends that's what they're. trolls the elder. trolls no but they care about you so.

there's a bunch of different version of. trolls there's there's a loving trolls. that. are harsh on you but they want you to be. better and there's trolls that just. enjoy. the your destruction and i think they're. the ones that care for you. like i i think they're criticism for my. see i'm i'm talking i haven't met him. directly so i'm i'm. it's like a friend of a friend yeah i'm. getting a telephone. yeah a bit of a and and the whole point. is that in psychedelics. and certainly at dmt where this is where.

the. the the brain data versus war data. fails which is you know words can't. convey the experience. most people that you can be poetic and. so on but it really does not convey the. experience of what. what it actually means to meet the uh to. meet the elves i mean to me what. baselines this conversation is imagine. if you. if we were interested in the health of. your heart. and we started and said okay lex. self-introspect tell me how's the health. of your heart you sit there and you.

close your eyes and you think. it feels all right like things seem. things feel okay. and then you went to the cardiologist. and the cardiologist like hey lex. you know tell me how you feel actually. what i'd really like. you to do is do an ekg and a blood panel. and look at arterial plaques. and let's look at my cholesterol and. there's like. five to ten studies you would do they. then give you this report and say here's. the quantified health of your heart now. with this data. i'm going to prescribe the following.

regime of exercise and maybe i'll put. you on a statin. like et cetera but the protocol is based. upon this data you would. think the cardiologist is out of their. mind if they just gave you a bottle of. statins. based upon you're like well i think. something's kind of wrong and they're. just just kind of. experiment and see what happens that's. what we do with our mental health today. so you're it's it's kind of absurd and. so if you look at psychedelics. to have again to be able to measure the. brain and get a baseline state.

and then to measure during a psychedelic. experience and post a psychedelic. experience then do it longitudinally. you now have a quantification of what's. going on and so. you could then pose questions what. molecule is appropriate. at what dosages at what frequency in. what contextual environment. what happens when i have this diet with. this molecule with this experience. all the experimentation you do when you. have good sleep data or. hrv and so that's what i think happens. what we could potentially do with. psychedelics is we could add this level.

of sophistication. that is not in the industry currently. and it may. improve the outcomes people experience. it may improve the safety and efficacy. and so that's what i hope we are able to. achieve and. it would transform mental health. because we would finally have numbers to. work with to baseline ourselves and then. if you think about it we when we talk. about things related to the mind we talk. about the modality we use words like. meditation or psychedelics or.

or something else because we can't talk. about a marker in the brain we can't use. a word to say. we can't talk about cholesterol we don't. talk about plaque in the arteries we. don't talk about. hrv and so if we have numbers then. the solutions get mapped to numbers. instead of the modalities being the. thing we talk about meditation just does. good things in a crude fashion. so in your blog post zeroth principle. thinking good title you ponder how do. people come up with uh truly original. ideas. uh what what's your thoughts on this as.

a human. and as a person who's measuring brain. data zeroth. principles are building blocks. first principles are understanding of. system laws. so if you take for example like in. sherlock holmes he's a first principle. thinker. so he says once you've eliminated. the impossible anything that remains. however improbable. is true whereas dirk gently the holistic.

detective by douglas adams. says i don't like eliminating the. impossible. so when someone says from a first. principal's perspective. and they they're trying to assume the. fewest number of things. within a given time frame and so when i. after braintree venmo. i set my mind to the question of.

what single thing can i do that would. maximally increase the probability that. the human. race thrives beyond what we can even. imagine. and i found that in my conversations. with others in the books i read. in my own deliberations i had a missing. piece of the puzzle. because i didn't feel like uh over if. yeah i didn't feel like the future. could be deduced from first principle. thinking. and that's when i i read the book zero a.

biography of a dangerous idea. and i i have a really good book by the. way it's. i think it's my favorite book i've ever. read it's also a really interesting. number. zero and i i wasn't aware that the. number zero had to be discovered i. didn't realize that it caused a. revolution in philosophy and. it just tore up math and it tore up i. mean it builds modern society but it. it wrecked everything in its way it was. an unbelievable disrupter and it. was so difficult for society to get. their heads around it.

yeah and so zero is of course the. representation of zeroth principle. thinking which is it's. the caliber and consequential nature of. an idea. and so when you talk about what kind of. ideas. have civilization transforming. properties. oftentimes they fall in the zeroth. category and so. in thinking this through i i was wanting. to find a.

quantitative structure on how to think. about. these zeroth principles and that's so i. came up with that. to be a coupler with first principle. thinking and so now it's a staple as. part of how i think about. the world in the future so it emphasizes. trying to identify. the lands on that word impossible like. what is impossible. essentially trying to identify what is. impossible and what is possible and. being. as how do you i mean. this this is the thing is most of.

society tells you. the range of things they say is. impossible is very wide so you need to. be shrinking that. i mean that's the whole process of of. this kind of thinking is you need to. be very rigorous in in. trying to be trying to draw the lines of. what is actually impossible. because uh very few things are actually. impossible. i don't know what is actually impossible. like uh it's the joe rogan is entirely.

possible. i like that approach to uh to science. to engineering to entrepreneurship it's. entirely possible. basically shrink the impossible to zero. to very small set. yeah life constraints favor. first principle thinking because it. it enables faster action with higher. probability of success. pursuing zero with principal optionality.

is expensive. and uncertain and so in a society. constrained by resources. time and money and a desire for social. status accomplishment etc. it minimizes zero principle thinking but. but the reason why i think. zeroth principle thinking should be a. staple of our shared. cognitive infrastructure is if you look. through the history of the past couple. thousand years and. let's just say we arbitrarily. we subjectively try to assess what is a.

zero level zero level idea. and we say how many have occurred on. what time scales. and what were the contextual settings. for it i would argue. that if you look at alphago. when it played go from another dimension. with the the human go players when it. saw alphago's moves. it attributed it to like playing with an. alien playing. go with uh with alcohol being from. another dimension.

and so if you say computational. intelligence. has an attribute of introducing. zero-like. insights then if you say. what is going to be the occurrence of. zeros in society. going forward and you could reasonably. say. probably a lot more than have occurred. and probably more at a faster pace. so then if you say what happens if you. have this computational intelligence. throughout society the manufacturing.

design and distribution of intelligence. is now going to heading towards zero. you have an increased number of zeros. being produced. with a tight connection between humans. computers. that's when i got to a point and said we. cannot predict the future. with first principles thinking we can't. that cannot be our imagination set it. can't be. uh our sole anchor in this situation. that basically the future of our. conscious existence 20 30 40 50 years. is probably a zero.

so just to clarify when you say. zero you're referring to basically. a truly revolutionary idea yeah. something that is currently not a. building block. of our. shared conscious existence either in the. form of knowledge. uh yeah it's currently not manifest yeah. in what we. acknowledge so zeroth principle thinking.

is. playing with ideas that are so. revolutionary that we can't even. clearly reason about the consequences. once those ideas come to be. yeah or for example like einstein. that was a zeroth i would categorize it. as a zeroth principle. insight you mean generality space time. yeah. basically building upon what newton had. done and said.

yes also and it just changed the. fabric of our understanding of reality. and so that was unexpected. it existed we just uh it became. it came part of our awareness and the. moves alpha go made. existed it just came into our awareness. and so it to your point. there's this question of. what do we know and what don't we know. do we think we know 99. of all things or do we think we know.

0.001. of all things and that goes back to no. no no knowns and unknown unknowns. and first principles and zero principle. thinking gives us a quantitative. framework to say. there's no way for us to mathematically. try to create probabilities for these. things. therefore it would be helpful if they. were just part of our standard thought. processes. because it may encourage different. behaviors in what we do individually.

collectively as a society what we aspire. to what we talk about. the possibility sets we imagine yeah. i've been. engaged in that kind of thinking uh. quite a bit. and thinking about engineering of. consciousness. i think it's feasible i think it's. possible in the language that we're. using here. it's very difficult to reason about a. world. when inklings of consciousness can be. engineered. into uh artificial systems.

not from a philosophical perspective but. from an engineering perspective. i believe a good step towards. engineering consciousness. is is creating engineering the. illusion of consciousness i'm. captivated by our natural predisposition. to anthropomorphize things. and i think that's what we. i don't want to hear from the. philosophers but.

i think that's what we kind of do to. each other okay. that consciousness is. created socially. that like much of the power of. consciousness. is in the social interaction i create. your consciousness no i create my. consciousness by having interaction with. you. and that that's the display of. consciousness it's the same as like the. display of emotion. emotion is created through communication.

language is created through its use. and then we somehow humans kind of. especially philosophers you know the. heart problem of consciousness. really want to believe that we possess. this thing. that's like there's a there's a bot. there's a there's an. elf sitting there with the with the hat. that's or like. name tag says consciousness and they're. like feeding. this subjective experience to us as. opposed to. like it actually being an illusion that.

would construct to make social. communication more effective. and so i think if you focus on. creating the illusion of consciousness. you can create some very fulfilling. experiences. in in software and so that to me is the. compelling. space of ideas to explore i agree with. you and i think. going back to our experience together. with brain interfaces on you could. imagine. if we get to a certain level of maturity. so first let's take. the the inverse of this so you and i. text back and forth and we're sending.

each other emojis. that has a certain amount of information. transfer rate as we're communicating. with each other. and so in our communication with people. via email and text and whatnot we've. taken the bandwidth of human interaction. the information transfer rate and we've. reduced it. we have less social cues we have less. information to work with there's a lot. more opportunity for misunderstanding. so that is altering the conscious. experience between two individuals. and if we add brain interfaces to the.

equation let's imagine now we amplify. the dimensionality of our communications. that to me is what you're talking about. which is consciousness engineering. perhaps i understand you with dimensions. so maybe i understand your hap when you. look at the cup. and you experience that happiness you. can tell me you're happy and i then do. theory of mine and say. i can imagine what it might be like to. be lex and feel happy about seeing this. cup. but if the interface could then quantify. and give me a 50 vector space model and. say.

this is the version of happiness that. lex is experiencing as he looks at this. cup. then it would allow me potentially to. have much greater empathy for you and. understand you as a human of this is how. you experience. joy yes which is entirely unique from. how i experience joy even though we. assumed ahead of time. that we were having some kind of similar. experience but i agree with you that. the we do consciousness engineering. today in everything we do when we talk. to each other when we're building. products. and that we're entering into it in. a stage where it will be much more.

methodical. and quantitative based and computational. in how we go about doing it which to me. i find encouraging because. i think it creates better guardrails for. to create uh ethical systems. on versus right now i feel like it's. really wild wild west. on how these interactions are happening. yeah and it's funny you focus on human. to human but that. this kind of data enables human to. machine yes. interaction which is what we're.

kind of talking about when we say. engineering consciousness. and that will happen of course let's. flip that on its head let's. right now we're putting humans as the. central. node what if we gave gpt3. a bunch of human brains and said hey. gpt3. learn some manners when you speak yeah. and run your algorithms on humans brains. and see how they respond. so you can be polite and so that you can.

be friendly. and so that you can be conversationally. appropriate but to inverse it to give. our machines. a training set in real time with closed. loop feedback. so that our machines were better. equipped to. find their way through our society in. polite and kind and appropriate ways. i love the idea or better yet teach it. some uh. uh have it uh read the founding. documents and.

have a visit austin in texas and so that. when you ask when you tell it. why don't you learn some manners it gpt3. learns to say. no it learns what it means to be free. and a sovereign individual so that. it depends so it depends what kind of. version of gpg3 you want. one that's free one that behaves well. with the social revolution. you want you want to like you want a. socialist gpt3 you want an anarchist. gpc3.

you want to polite like you take it home. to visit mom and dad gpt-3 and you want. like party and like vegas. to a strip club gpt3 you want all. flavors and then you've got to have. goal alignment between all those yeah. you know they don't want to. manipulate each other for sure. so that that's i mean you kind of spoke. to ethics. the one of the concerns that people have. in this modern world the digital data is. that of privacy and security.

but privacy you know they're concerned. that when they share. data it's the same thing we feel when we. are. trust other human beings uh in being. fragile and revealing something that. we're vulnerable. vulnerable about there's a there's a. leap of faith there's a leap of trust. that that's going to be just between us. as a privacy to it and then. the challenge is when you're in the. digital space then sharing your data.

with companies that use that data for. advertisement all those kinds of things. there's a hesitancy to share that much. data. to share a lot of deep personal data and. if you look at brain data. that feels a whole lot like it's richly. deeply personal data so how do you think. about privacy. with this kind of ocean of data i think. we got off. to a wrong start with the internet where. the basic rules of play. for the for the company that be was.

if you're a company you can go out and. get as much information on a person. as you can find without their. approval and you can also do things to. induce them. to give you as much information and you. don't need to tell them what you're. doing with it. you can do anything on the back side you. can make money on it but. the game is who can acquire the most. information and devise the most clever. schemes. to do it that was a bad starting place.

and so we are in this period where we. need to wreck we need to correct for. that. and we need to say first of all the. individual. always has control over their data. it's not a free-for-all it's not like a. game of hungry hippo but. they can just go out and grab as much as. they want so for example when your brain. data was recorded today the first thing. we did in the kernel app was. you have control over your data and so. it's individual. consent it's individual control and then.

you can build up on top of that. but it has to be based upon some clear. rules of play if. everyone knows what's being collected. they know what's being done with it. and the person has control over it so. transparency and control so. everybody knows what does control look. like me my ability to delete the data if. i want yeah delete it and to know. who is being shared with under what you. know what under what terms and. conditions we haven't reached that level. of sophistication with our products of. if if you say for example hey spotify.

please give me a customized playlist. according to. my neurom you know you could say you can. have access to this vector space model. but only for this duration of time and. uh and then you've got to. delete it we haven't gotten there to. that level of physician but these are. ideas we need to start talking about of. how do you how would you actually. structure permissions. yeah and i think it creates a much more. stable set. for society to build where we understand. the rules of play.

and people aren't vulnerable to being. taken event. it's not fair for an individual. to be taken advantage of without their. awareness with some other practice that. some companies doing for their sole. benefit. and so hopefully we are going through a. process now where we're correcting for. these things and that. it can be an economy-wide shift that. because really these are. these are fundamentals we need to have. in place it's kind of fun to think about.

like uh. in chrome when you install an extension. or like install an app it's. asking you like what permissions you're. willing to give and be cool if in the. future it says like. uh you can have access to my brain data. i mean and if it's it's not unimaginable. in the future. the big technology companies have built. a business based upon acquiring data. about you that they can then create you. a model of you and sell that. predictability. and so it's not unimaginable that you.

will create with like kernel device for. example a. more reliable predictor of you than they. could and that they're asking you for. permission. to complete their objectives and you're. the one that gets to negotiate that with. them. and say sure but it's not un. unimaginable that might. be the case so there's a guy named elon. musk. and he has a company in one of the many. companies called neuralink. that has uh that's also excited about. the brain. so be interesting to hear your kind of.

opinions about a very different approach. that's invasive. that requires surgery that implants. a data collection device in the brain. how do you think about the difference. between kernel and neurolink. in the approaches of. getting that stream of brain data yeah. elon and i. spoke about this a lot early on we we. met up i had started colonel. and he had an interest in printer faces. as well and we explored. doing something together him joining. kernel and ultimately it wasn't the.

right. move and so he started neural link and i. continued building colonel. but it was interesting because we were. both. at this very early time where it wasn't. certain what if there was a path to. pursue. if now was the right time to do. something and then the technological. choice of doing that and so. we were both our starting point was. looking at invasive technologies. and i was building invasive technology.

at the time. that's ultimately where he's gone a. little less than a year after. elon and i were engaged i shifted kernel. to do non-invasive. and we had this neuroscientist come to. colonel we were talking about he had. been doing neurosurgery for 30 years one. of the most respected neuroscientists in. the us. and we brought him to colonel to figure. out the ins and outs of his profession. and at the very end of our three hour. conversation he said. you know every 15 or so years.

a new technology comes along that. changes everything. he said it's probably already here you. just can't see it yet. and my jaw dropped i thought because i i. had spoken to bob greenberg. who had built a second site first on the. optical nerve and then he did court. up an array on the optical. cortex and then i also became friendly. with um. neural pace who did who does the. implants for seizure detection. and remediation and.

i saw in our in their eyes what it was. like to take something through an. implantable device through. for for a 15-year run they initially. thought of seven years. and ended up being 15 years and they. thought it'd be 100 million is you know. 300. 400 million and i really didn't want to. build invasive technology. it was the only thing that appeared to. be possible but then once. i spun up an internal effort to start. looking at non-invasive options we said.

is there something here is there. anything here that again has the. characteristics of. it has the high quality data it could be. low-cost it could be accessible could it. make brain interfaces mainstream. and so i did a bet the company move we. shifted from non-invasive to. invasive to non-invasive so the answer. is yes to that there's something there. it's possible uh the answer is we'll see. we've now built both technologies. and they're now you experience one of. them today. we were applying.

we're now deploying it so we're trying. to figure out what value is really there. but i'd say it's really too early to. express confidence. whether it's to i think it's too early. to. assess which technological choice. is the right one on what time skills. yeah time skills are really important. here very important because if you look. at the like on the invasive side. there's so much activity going on right. now of. less invasive techniques to get at.

the neuron firings which would what. neural link is building. it's possible that in 10 15 years when. they're scaling that technology other. things have come along. and you'd much rather do that that thing. starts to clock again. it may not be the case it may be the. case that neural link has properly. chosen the right technology. and that that's exactly what they want. to be totally possible and it's also. possible that the paths we've chosen are. non-invasive. fall short for a variety of reasons it's. just it's unknown.

and so right now the two technologies we. chose the analogy i'd give to. give you to create a baseline of. understanding is. if you think of it like the internet in. the 90s. the internet became useful when people. could do a dial-up connection. and then the page and then as as. bandwidth increased. so did the utility of that connection. and so the ecosystem improve. and so if you say what kernel flow uh. is going to give you a full screen on. the picture. of information but as you're going to be.

watching a movie but the image is going. to be blurred. and the audio is going to be muffled so. it has a lower resolution of coverage. kernel flux our amyg technology is going. to give you the full movie. in 1080p okay and. neuralink is going to give you a circle. on the screen of 4k okay. and so each one has their pros and cons. and. uh it's give and take and so the.

decision i made. like kernel was that these two. technologies flux and flow. were basically the answer for the next. seven years. yeah and they would give rise to the. ecosystem which would become much more. valuable than the hardware itself. and that we would just continue to. improve on the hardware over time. and you know it's early days so it's. kind of fascinating to think about that. you don't it's very true that you don't. know. uh both paths are very prom. are promising.

and it's like 50 years from now. we will look back and maybe not even. remember one of them. and the other one might change the world. it's so cool how technology is i mean. that's. that's what entrepreneurship is is like. mark it's the. the zeroth principle is like you're. marching ahead into the darkness into. the fog. not knowing it's wonderful to have. someone else out there with us. doing this because if you if you look at. brainerd faces.

anything that's off the shelf right now. is inadequate it's had its run for. a couple decades it's still in hacker. communities it hasn't gone to the. mainstream. the room size machines are on their own. path. but there is no answer right now of. bringing brain interfaces. mainstream and so it both. you know both they and us we've both. spent over 100 million dollars. and that's kind of what it takes to have.

a go at this. because you need to build full stack i. mean that kernel. we are from the photon and the atom. through the machine learning. we have just under 100 people i think. it's something like 36 37 phds. in these specialties these areas that. there's only a few people in the world. who have these abilities. and that's what it takes to build next. generation have to. make an attempt at breaking into brain. interfaces and so we'll see over the. couple years whether it's the right time. or whether we're both too early.

or whether something else comes along in. seven to ten years which is the right. thing that brings it mainstream so you. see elon is the kind of competitor. or a fellow traveler. along the path of uncertainty or both. it's a fellow traveler. it's like at the beginning of the. internet is. how many companies are going to be. invited to. this new ecosystem. like an endless number because if you.

think that the hardware. just starts the process and so if you. okay back to your initial example if you. take the fitbit for example you say okay. now i can get. measurements on the body and what do we. think the ultimate value of this device. is going to be what is the information. transfer rate. and they were in the market for a. certain duration of time and google. bought them for. two and a half billion dollars they. didn't have ancillary value add there. weren't people building on top of. the fitbit device they also didn't have. increased.

insight with additional data streams so. it's really just the device. if you look for example at apple and the. device they sell you have value in the. device that someone buys but also. you have everyone who's building on top. of it you have this additional ecosystem. value and then you have. additional data streams that come in. which increase the value of the product. and so if you say if you look at the the. hardware. as the instigator of value creation. you know over time it what we've built. may constitute five or ten percent of. the value of the overall ecosystem and. that's what we.

really care about what we're trying to. do is kick-start the mainstream adoption. of quantifying the brain and the. hardware. just opens the door to say what kind of. ecosystem could exist. and that's why we the examples are so. relevant of the things you've outlined. in your life. we hope i hope those things the books. people write. the experiences people build the. conversations you have your relationship. with your ai. systems i hope those all are feeding on.

the insights. built upon this ecosystem we've created. to better your life. and so that's the thinking behind it. again with the drake equation being the. underlying. driver of value and you know the people. at colonel have joined. not because we have certainty of. success but because we find it to be the. most exhilarating opportunity we could. ever pursue. in this time uh to be alive. you founded the payment system braintree.

in 2007. that acquired venmo in 2012 and then. in that same year was acquired by paypal. which is now ebay. can you tell me the story of the vision. and the challenge of building an online. payment system and just building a large. successful business. in general i discovered payments by. accident. as i was when i was 21. i i just returned from ecuador.

living the money extreme poverty for two. years and i came back to the u.s and i. was. shocked by the opulence and. [Music]. yeah of the united states and i just. thought this is i couldn't believe it. and i decided i wanted to try to spend. my life. helping others that was the that was a. life objective that i thought was. worthwhile to pursue versus making money. and. whatever the case may be for its own. right and so i decided in that moment. that i was going to. try to make enough money by the age of. 30. to never have to work again and then.

with some abundance of money. i could then choose to do things that. might. be beneficial to others but may not meet. the criteria of being. you know a standalone business and so in. that process i started. a few companies had some small successes. had some. failures in one of the endeavors i was. up to my eyeballs in debt. things were not going well and i needed. a part-time job to. pay my bills and so i.

one day i saw in the paper in utah where. i was living. the 50 richest people in utah and i. emailed each one of their assistants and. said you know i. i'm young i'm resourceful i'll do. anything i just wanna. i'm entrepreneurial i tried to get a job. that would be flexible and. no one responded and then i interviewed. at a few dozen places nobody would even. give me the time of day. like it wouldn't want to take me. seriously and so finally i. it was on monster.com that i saw this. job posting for.

credit card sales door-to-door. commission i did not know the story this. is great. i love the head drop that's exactly. right so it was. the low points to which we go in life so. i. i responded and you know the person made. an attempt at. suggesting that they had some kind of. standards that they would. consider in hiring but it's kind of like. if you could fog a mirror. like you come and do this because it's. 100 commission and so i started walking. up and down the street in my community.

selling credit card processing and so. what you learn immediately in doing that. is if you you walk into a business first. of all. the business owner is typically there. it's. and you walk in the door and they can. tell by how you're addressed or how you. walk whatever their pattern recognition. is. and they just hate you immediately it's. like stop wasting my time i really am. trying to get stuff done i don't want to. do a sales pitch. and so you have to overcome the initial. get out. and then once you engage when you say. the word credit card processing. the person's like i already hate you.

because i have been taken advantage of. dozens of times because you all are. yeah weasels and so i had to figure out. an algorithm to get past all those. different conditions because i was still. working on my other startup uh for. the majority of my times i was doing. this part time and so i figured out that. the industry really was built on. people on deceit. basically people promising things that. that were not reality and so i'd walk. into a business and say look.

i would give you 100 i'd pull out a. hundred dollar bill and say i'll give. you a hundred dollars for three minutes. of your time. if you don't say yes to what i'm saying. i'll give you a hundred dollars and then. you usually crack a smile and say okay. what do you got for me son and so i'd. sit down i just open my book and i'd say. here's the credit card industry here's. how it works here are the players here's. what they do here's how they deceive you. here's what i am i'm no different than. anyone else it's like you're gonna. process your credit card you're gonna. get the money in the account you're just. gonna get a clean statement you're gonna. have someone who. answers the call when someone asks and. you know just like the basic like you're.

okay. and people started saying yes and then. of course i went to the next business. and be like you know. joe and susie and whoever said yes too. and so i built a social proof structure. and i became the number one salesperson. out of. 400 people nationwide doing this and i. worked you know half time still doing. another startup and. that's a brilliant strategy by the way. it's very well. very well strategized and executed. i did it for nine months and at the time. my. customer base was making was generating.

around. i think a sick if i remember correctly. sixty two thousand five hundred four. dollars a month. were the overall revenues i thought wow. that's amazing if i. built that as my own company i would. just make sixty two thousand dollars a. month of income passively. with these merchants processing credit. cards so i thought hmm. and so uh that's when i thought i'm. going to create a company and so then. i started braintree and the idea was the. online world was broken because.

paypal had a uh had been acquired by. ebay. around i think 2000 1999 or 2000 and. ebay had not innovated much with paypal. so. it basically sat still for seven years. as. the software world moved along and then. authorized.net was also a company that. was relatively stagnant so you basically. had. software engineers who wanted modern. payment tools but there were none. available for them and so they just. dealt with software they didn't like and. so with braintree. i thought the entry point is to build. software that engineers will love.

and if we can find the entry point via. software make it easy and beautiful and. just a magical experience and then. provide customer service on top of that. it was easy that would be great. what i was really going after for though. was it was paypal they were the only. company in payments making money. because they because they had the. relationship with ebay early on. people created a paypal account they'd. fund their account with their checking. account versus their credit cards. and then when they'd use paypal to pay a. merchant paypal had a cost of payment of. zero.

versus if you have coming from a credit. card you have to pay the bank the fees. so paypal's margins were. three percent on a transaction. versus a typical payments company which. may be a nickel or a penny or a dime or. something like that. and so i knew a new paypal really was. the model to replicate but. a bunch of companies had tried to do. that they tried to come in and build a. two-sided marketplace. so get consumers to fund the checking. account and merchants to accept it. but they'd all failed because building a. two-sided marketplace is very hard.

at the same time so my plan was i'm. going to build a company. and get the best merchants in the whole. world to use our service. then in year five i'm going to have i'm. going to acquire a consumer payments. company and i'm going to bring the two. together. wow and so focus on the merchant side. exactly and then get the payments. company does the the customer the. whatever the the other side yeah this is. the planet presented. uh when i was at the university of. chicago and.

weirdly it happened exactly like that so. for four years in. our customer base included uber airbnb. github. 37 signals now base camp we had a. fantastic collection of. companies that represented the fastest. growing. some of the fastest growing tech. companies in the world and then. we met up with venmo and they had done a. remarkable job. in building products then something very. counterintuitive which is make public. your private financial transactions. which people previously thought were.

something that should be hidden from. others and we acquired venmo. and at that point we now had we. replicated the model because now people. could fund their venmo account with. their checking account keep money in the. account. and then you could just plug them one as. a form of payment and so. i think paypal saw that that we were. getting the best merchants in the world. we had people using venmo they were both. the up and coming millennials at the. time who had so much influence online.

and so they came in and offered us uh an. attractive number. and my my goal was not to. build the biggest payments company in. the world it wasn't. to try to climb the forbes billionaire. list it was. the objective was i want to earn enough. money. so that i can basically dedicate my. attention to doing something that could. potentially be useful. on a society-wide skill and. uh more importantly that could be.

considered to be valuable. from the vantage point of 2050. 2100 and 2500 so. thinking about it on a a few hundred. year time scale. and there was a certain amount of money. i needed to do that so i didn't. require the permission of anybody to do. that and so that. what paypal offered was sufficient for. me to get that amount of money to. basically have a go. and that's when i set off to. survey everything i could identify in.

existence to say. of anything in the entire world i could. do what one thing could i do. that would actually have the highest. value. potential for the species and so it took. me a little while to arrive at brain. interfaces but. you know payments in themselves. are revolutionary technologies that can. change. the world like let's not. let's not uh sort of um let's not forget.

that too easily i mean obviously. you know this but there's uh. quite a few lovely folks who are now. fascinated with the space of. cryptocurrency. and uh where payments are very much. connected to this but in general just. money. and many of the folks i've spoken with. they also kind of connect that to. not just purely financial discussions. but philosophical and political. discussions. and they see bitcoin as a way.

almost as activism almost as a way to. resist. the the corruption of centralized the. centers of power. and sort of basically in the 21st. century decentralizing control. whether that's bitcoin or other. cryptocurrencies they see. that's one possible way to give power to. those that live in uh regimes that are. corrupt. or are not respectful of human rights. and all those kinds of things. what's your sense just all your.

expertise with. with payments and seeing how that. changed the world what's your sense. about. the lay of the land for the future of. bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. in the positive impact it may have in. the world. and to be clear my communication wasn't. suggest. wasn't meant to minimize payments or to. denigrate it in any way. it was a an attempted communication that. when i was surveying the world it was an.

algorithm of. what could i individually yes do. so there's there are things that exist. that have a lot of potential that can be. done. and then there's a filtering of how many. people are qualified to do this given. thing. and then there's a further. characterization that can be done of. okay given the number of qualified. people. will somebody be uh a unique out. performer of that group to make. something truly impossible to be. something done that otherwise couldn't. get done so there's.

there's a process of assessing where can. you add unique value in the world. and some of that has to do with you're. being very uh. very formal and calculative here but. some of that is just like. what do you sense like part of that. equation. is how much passion you sense within. yourself to be able to drive that. through. to discover the impossibilities and make. them possible that's right and so we. we were a braintree i think we were the. first company to integrate coinbase. into our i think we were the first. payments company.

to formally incorporate. uh crypto if i'm not mistaken for people. who are not familiar coinbase. is a place where you can trade. cryptocurrencies yeah which was one of. the only. places you could so we were early uh in. in doing that. and of course this was in the year 2013. so an attorney to go in in. cryptocurrency land. i concur with the the statement you made. of the potential of.

the principles underlying. cryptocurrencies. and that many of the things that they're. building. in the name of money and of. of moving value is equally applicable to. the brain. and equally applicable to how the brain. interacts with the rest of the world. and how we would imagine doing goal. alignment. with people so it's to me it's a. continuous spectrum. of possibility and we're talk your.

question is isolated on the money. and i think it just is basically a. scaffolding layer for all of society so. you don't see the. this money is particularly distinct from. i don't it's i think we. we at colonel we will benefit greatly. from the progress being made in. cryptocurrency because it will be a. similar technology stack we will want to. use. for many things we want to accomplish. and so i'm. bullish on what's going on and i. think it could greatly enhance uh brain. interfaces and the value of. the brain face ecosystem i mean is there.

something you could say about. first of all bullish on cryptocurrency. versus fiat money. so do you have a sense that in 21st. century cryptocurrency will. be embraced by governments and changed. of. the the face of governments the. structure of government it's the. it's the same way i think about. my diet where previously it was. conscious brian looking at foods.

in certain biochemical states am i. hungry am i irritated am i depressed and. that i choose. based upon those momentary windows do i. eat at night when i'm. fatigued and i have low willpower am i. going to pig out on something. and the current monetary system is based. upon. human conscious decision making and. politics and power and. this whole mess of things and what i. like about. the building blocks of cryptocurrency is. it's methodical it's structured. it is uh accountable it's transparent.

and so it introduces this scaffolding. which i think again is the right. starting point. for how we think about building next. generation. institutions for society and that's why. i think it's much broader much broader. than money. so i guess what you're saying is bitcoin. is the demotion of the conscious mind as. well. in the same way you were talking about. diet it's like giving less priority to. the. the ups and downs of any one particular.

human mind in this case. your own and uh giving more power to the. sort of data driven. yes yeah i i think that is. accurate that cryptocurrency. is a version of. what i would call my autonomous self. that i'm trying to build yeah. it is an introduction of an autonomous. system. of value exchange and value. and the process yeah of value creation.

in society yes. that's their similarities so i guess. what you're saying is bitcoin will. somehow help me not pig out at night. or the equivalent of speaking of diet. if we could just linger on that uh that. topic a little bit. we already talked about your your blog. post of i. i fired myself i fired brian the the. evening. brian who was uh too willing to. uh not not making good decisions for the. long-term well-being and happiness.

of the entirety of the organism uh. basically you were like pigging out at. night and but it's. interesting because i do this i do the. same. in fact i often eat one meal a day. and uh like i have been this this week. actually especially when i travel. and it's it's funny that uh. it never occurred to me to just. basically look at the fact that i'm able.

to be much smarter about my eating. decisions in the morning in the. afternoon than i am at night. so if i eat one meal a day why not eat. that one meal a day. in the morning like i'm not. it never occurred to me this. revolutionary yeah. until until you've uh you've outlined. that so maybe. can you give some details and what this. is just you this is one person brian. arrives at a particular thing that they. do but it's fascinating.

uh to kind of look at this one. particular case study so. what works for you diet-wise what's your. actual diet what do you eat. how often do you eat my current protocol. is. basically the the result of thousands of. experiments. and decision making so i've i do this. every 90 days i do the tests. i do the cycle throughs then i measure. again and then. i'm measuring all the time and so what i. i of course i'm. optimizing for my biomarkers i want.

perfect cholesterol and i brought. perfect. blood glucose levels and perfect dna. methylation. you know processes. i also want perfect sleep and so for. example. recently the past two weeks my resting. heart rate. has been a 42 when i sleep and when my. resting heart rate's at 42. my hrv is at its highest and i wake up. in the morning. feeling more energized than any other. configuration.

and so i know from all these processes. that eating at roughly 8 30 in the. morning. right after i work out on an empty. stomach creates enough. distance between that completed eating. and bedtime where. i have no almost no digestion processes. going on. in my body therefore my resting heart. rate goes very low. and when my heart rate is very low i. sleep with high quality and so basically. i've been trying to optimize. the entirety of what i eat to my sleep. quality. and my sleep quality then of course. feeds into my willpower so it creates.

this. virtuous cycle and so what i at 830 what. i do is i eat. what i call super veggie which is it's a. pudding. of 250 grams of broccoli 150 grams of. cauliflower and a whole bunch of other. vegetables. that i eat what i call nutty pudding. which is make the pudding yourself like. red like veg like. the um what do you call it like a veggie. mix whatever. thing is that like a blender yeah the. pasta can be made in a high-speed. blender but basically i eat the same. thing. every day veggie bowl as in the form of.

pudding. and then a bowl in the form of nuts. and then i have vegan vegan yes vegan. and so. that's fat and that's like uh there's. fat and carbs. and protein and so on everything tastes. good. i'd love it i i love it so much i dream. about it. yeah that's awesome this is uh and then. i have a third dish which is it changes. every day. uh today was kale and spinach and sweet. potato. and then i take about 20 supplements.

that hopefully make. constitute a perfect nutritional profile. so what i'm trying to do is. create the perfect diet for my body. every single day. or sleep as part of the optimization. that's right you're like one of the. things you're really tracking me. can you well i have a million questions. but 20 supplements like what kind or. like would you say are essential because. i only take i only take uh. athletic athletic greens.com.

that's like the multivitamin essentially. yeah that's like the lazy man you know. like. like if you don't actually want to think. about shit that's what you take and then. uh fish oil and that's it that's all i. take. yeah you know alfred north whitehead. said advan uh civilization. advances as it extends the number of. important operations it can do. without thinking about them yes and so. my objective on this is i want an. algorithm. for perfect health that i never have to. think about.

and then i want that system to be. scalable to anybody so that they don't. have to think about it. and right now it's expensive for me to. do it it's time consuming for me to do. it and i have. infrastructure to do it but the future. of being human. is not going to the grocery store and. deciding what to eat. it's also not reading scientific papers. trying to decide this thing or that. thing it's. all n of one it's so it's the it's. devices on the outside and inside your. body. assessing real time what your body needs. and then creating closed. systems for that to happen yeah so right.

now you're doing the data collection. and you're being the scientist it'd be. much better if you're doing just that. if you just did the data collect or it. was being essentially done for you and. you can. outsource that to another scientist. that's doing the no one study of you. that's right because every time i spend. time thinking about this or executing. spending time on i'm spending less time. thinking about. building kernel or or the future of. being human and so it's. we just all have this the budget of. our capacity on everyday basis and.

we will scaffold our way up out of this. and so yeah hopefully that what i'm. doing. is really it serves as a model uh that. others can also. you build that's why that's why i wrote. about it is hopefully people can take it. and improve upon it. uh i hold nothing sacred i change my. diet. almost every day based upon some new. test results or science or something. like that but. can you maybe elaborate on the sleep. thing why is sleep so important. and why presumably if like.

what does good sleep mean to you. i think sleep is a contender for. being the most powerful. health intervention in existence. it's a contender i mean it's uh it's. magical what it does if you're well. rested. and what your body can do. and i mean for example i know when when. i eat.

close to my bedtime and i've done a. systematic study. for years looking at like 15 minute. increments on time of day on where i eat. my last meal. my willpower is directly correlated to. my to the amount of deep sleep i get. so my ability to not binge eat at night. when rascal brian's out and about. is based upon how much deep sleep i got. the night before yeah and so. there's some there's a lot to that yeah. and so i just i've seen it. manifest itself and so the i think.

the way i summarize this is in society. we've had this myth. of we tell stories for example of. entrepreneurship. where this person was so amazing they. stayed at the office for three days and. slept under their desk. and we say wow that's amazing there's. that's amazing. and now i think we're headed towards a. state where we'd say. that's primitive and really not a good. idea. on every level and so. the new mythology is going to be the.

exact opposite. yeah by the way just to sort of maybe. push back a little bit on that idea. uh did you sleep under your desk. collects. well yeah a lot i'm not a big believer. in that actually i'm a big believer in. in chaos and not giving and like giving. in to your passion. and sometimes doing things that are out. of the ordinary that are. like not trying to optimize health for. certain periods of time.

in uh in lieu of your passions. is a signal to yourself that you're. throwing everything away so. i think what you're referring to is. how to have good performance for. prolonged periods of time. i think there's there's moments in life. when you need to throw all that away. all the plans away all the structure way. so the. i i don't this i'm not sure. i have an eloquent way of describing.

exactly what i'm talking about but. it all depends on different on people. people are different. but there's a danger of over. optimization. to where you don't just give in to the. madness. of the way your brain flows. i mean to push back on my pushback is. like. it's nice to have like where the k. where the foundations. of your brain are not messed with so you.

have a fixed foundation where the diet. is fixed. where the sleep is fixed and that all. that is optimal and the chaos happens in. the space of ideas as opposed to the. space of biology. but you know i i'm not sure if there's a. uh that requires real discipline and. forming habits. there's some aspect to which some of the. the best. uh days and weeks of my life have been. yeah sleeping under a desk kind of thing. and i don't i'm not too willing to.

let go of things that empirically worked. for things that uh work in theory. and so i'm i'm again i'm absolutely with. you on sleep. also i'm with you on sleep conceptually. but. i'm also very humbled to understand that. for. different people good sleep means. different things. i'm very hesitant to trust science on.

sleep. i think you should also be a scholar of. your own body again. experiment of n of one i'm not so. sure that a full night's sleep is great. for me. there is something about that power nap. that i just have not fully studied yet. but that nap is something special. i'm not sure i found the optimal thing. yeah. so like there's a lot to be explored to. what is exactly optimal. amount of sleep optimal kind of sleep.

combined with diet and all those cousins. i mean that all maps the sort of data at. least the truth. exactly what all everything you're. referring to here's a data point for. your consideration. yes the progress in biology. over the past say decade has been. stunning. yes and it now appears as if. we will be able to replace. are organs xenox transplantation. and so we probably have a path.

to replace and regenerate every organ of. your body. except for your brain. you can you can lose your hand and your. arm and leg you can have an artificial. heart. you can't operate without your brain and. so when. you make that trade-off decision of. whether you're going to sleep under the. desk or not and go all out. for a four-day marathon. right there's a there's a cost-benefit.

trade-off of what's going on what's. happening to your brain in that. situation. we don't know the consequences of modern. day life on our brain. we don't it's the most valuable organ. in our existence and we don't know. what's going on if we in how we're. treating it today with. stress and with sleep and with dietary. and to me then if you say. that you're trying to you're you're. trying to optimize life for whatever.

things you're trying to do the game is. soon with the progress in anti-aging and. biology the game is very soon going to. become different than what it is right. now. uh with organ rejuvenation organ. replacement and. i'm i would conjecture that. we will value the health status of our. brain. above all things yeah no absolutely. everything's you're saying is true but i. we die we die pretty quickly life is.

short. and i'm one of those people that uh. i would rather die in battle than uh. then stay. safe at home it's like yeah. you you look at kind of there's a lot of. things that you can reasonably say that. this is the smart thing to do. that can prevent you that becomes. conservative that can prevent you from. fully embracing life. i think ultimately you can be very. intelligent. and data driven and also embrace life.

but i er on the side of embracing life. it's very. it takes a very skillful person to not. sort of that. hovering parent that says no you know. what there's a. three percent chance that if you go out. if you go. by yourself and play you're going to die. get run over by a car. come to a slow or a sudden end. and uh i'm more a supporter of. just go out there if you die you die and.

that's a you it's a balance you have to. strike i think long. there's a balance of striking long-term. optimization. and uh short-term. freedom for me for programmer. for a programming mind i tend to over. optimize and i'm. very cautious and afraid of that to not. over optimize and thereby be overly. cautious. suboptimally cautious about everything i. do. and that's the ultimate thing i'm trying. to optimize for it's funny you said like.

sleep and all those kinds of things. i tend to think this is uh you're being. more precise. than i am but i think i tend to want to. minimize stress. which everything comes into that from. your sleep and all those kinds of things. but. i worry that whenever i'm trying to be. too strict with myself then the stress. goes up. when i don't follow the strictness and.

so. you have to kind of it's a weird it's a. there's so many variables in an. objective function as. it's hard to get right and sort of not. giving a damn about sleep and not giving. a damn. bad diet is a good thing to inject in. there every once in a while. for somebody who's trying to optimize. everything that's. but that's me just trying to uh like. it's exactly like you said. you're just a scientist i'm a scientist. of myself you're a scientist of yourself. it'd be nice if somebody else was doing. it and had much better data. than uh because i don't trust my. conscious mind and i pigged out last.

night at some brisket. in la that uh i regret deeply it's still. uh there's no point to anything i just. said. what what is the nature of your regret. on the brisket is it do you wish you. hadn't. eaten it entirely is it that you wish. you hadn't as much as you did is it. that i think uh. well the most regret i mean if we. want to be specific i drank.

way too much like diet soda my biggest. regret is like having drank so much diet. soda. that's the thing that really was the. problem i had trouble sleeping because. of that. because i was like programming and then. i was editing and so i stayed up late at. night and then i had to get up to. to go pee a few times and it was just a. mess and the mess of the night. it was well it's not really a mess but. like it's so many. it's like the little things i know if i. just. eat i i drink a little bit of water and.

that's it and. there's a certain all of us have perfect. days. that we know diet wise and so on that's. good to follow you feel good. i know what it takes for me to do that i. didn't fully do that. and thereby because there's there's an. avalanche effect where the other sources. of stress. all the other to do items i have pile on. my failure to execute on some basic. things that i know make me feel good and. all that combines. to uh you know to create to create a.

mess of a day. but some of that chaos you know you have. to be okay with it but some of it i wish. was uh was a little bit more optimal. and your ideas about eating in the. morning are quite interesting. as an experiment to try can you. elaborate. are you eating once a day yes. in the morning and that's it can you. maybe. speak to how that you spoke. it's funny he spoke about the metrics of. sleep.

but you're also you know and you. run a business you're incredibly. intelligent you have to. most of your happiness and success. relies on you. thinking clearly so how does that affect. your mind. and your body in terms of performance so. not just sleep but actually like mental. performance. as you were explaining your objective. function of for example in the criteria. you were. including you like certain neurochemical. states like you.

like feeling like you're living life. that life has enjoyment. that sometimes you want to disregard. certain rules to. have a moment of passion of focus. there's this architecture of. the way lex is which makes you happy as. a story you tell. as something you kind of experience. maybe the experience is a bit more. complicated but it's in this idea you. have this is a version of you. and the reason why i maintain the. schedule i do. is i've chosen a game to say i would.

like to live a life. where i care more about what. intelligent what people. who live in 2000 the year 2500 think of. me. than i do today that's the game i'm. trying to play. and so therefore the only thing. i really care about on this optimization. is. trying to see past myself past my. limitations. using xero's principle thinking.

pull myself out of this contextual mesh. we're in right now and say. what will matter a hundred years from. now and 200 years from now. what are the big things really going on. that are defining reality. and i find that if i. were to hang out with diet soda lex. and diet soda brian were to play along. with that and my deep sleep were to get. crushed as a result my mind would not be. on what matters.

in 100 years or 200 or 300 years i would. be irritable. i would be you know i'd be in a. different state and so. it's just gameplay selection it's what. you and i have chosen to think about. it's what we've chosen to. uh work on and this is why i'm saying. that no. generation of humans have ever been. afforded the opportunity to look at. their lifespan. and contemplate that. they will have the possibility of.

experiencing. an evolved form of consciousness that is. unidentifiable it would fall in a zeroth. category. of potential that to me is the most. exciting thing in existence and i would. not trade. any momentary neurochemical state. right now in exchange for that i would. i'd be willing to deprive myself of all. momentary joy. in the pursuit of that goal because. that's what makes me happy. that's brilliant but i'm uh i'm a bit i.

just looked it up. i just looked up braveheart speech and. william wallace but. i know you've seen it fighting you may. die run and you'll live. at least a while and dying in your beds. many years from now. would you be willing to trade all the. days from this day to that. for one chance just one chance picture. of mel gibson's saying this. to come back here and tell our enemies. that they may take our lives.

with growing excitement but they'll. never take our freedom. i get excited every time i see that in. the movie but that's kind of how i. approach life. uh and do you think they were trying to. sleep i did we're not tracking their. sleep and they ate way too much brisket. and they were. fat unhealthy died early and. uh were primitive but uh there's some. there's something in my eight brain. that's attracted to that. even though most of my life is fully.

aligned. with the way you see yourself and part. of it is for comedy of course but part. of it is like. i'm almost afraid of uh over. optimization really what you're saying. though if we're. looking at this let's say from a first. principal's perspective. when you read those words they conjure. up certain life experiences. but you're basically saying i experience. a certain neurotransmitter state. when these things are an action yeah. that's all you're saying. so whether it's that or something else. you're just saying you have a selection. for how. your state for your body and so if you.

as an engineer. of consciousness that should just be. engineerable. and that's just triggering certain. chemical reactions. and so whether so it doesn't mean they. have to be mutually exclusive you can. have that. and experience that and also not. sacrifice long-term health and i think. that's the potential of where we're. going is. we don't have we don't have to assume. they are trade-offs that must be had. absolutely and so i guess for my. particular brain. it's useful to have the outlier.

experiences. that also come along with the uh. illusion of free will where i chose. those. that make me feel like it's freedom. listen going to texas made me realize i. spent so i was. i still am but i lived at cambridge at. mit. and i never felt like home there i felt. like home. in the space of ideas with the. colleagues like when i was actually. discussing ideas but. there is something about this the. constraints the. how cautious people are how much they.

valued also kind of uh. material success career success. when i showed up to texas it felt like. i belonged that was very interesting but. that's my. neurochemistry whatever the hell that is. whatever whatever. maybe probably is rooted to the fact. that i grew up in the soviet union it. was so. such a constrained system that you'd. really deeply value freedom and you've. you always want to escape the demand and. the control of centralized systems i. don't know what it is.

but that's but at the same time i love. strictness. i love the dogmatic authoritarianism of. diet. of like the same habit exactly the habit. you have i think that's actually when. bodies perform. optimally my body performs optimally so. balancing those two. i think if i have the data every once in. a while party with some wild people but. most of the time eat once a day. perhaps in the morning i'm going to try. that might be very interesting. but i'd rather i'd rather not try it i'd.

rather have the data that. tells me to do it but in general you're. able to. eating once a day think deeply about. stuff like this. concern that people have is like you. know does your energy wane all those. kinds of things. do you find that it's especially because. um. it's unique it's vegan as well so you. find that you're able to have a clear. mind. a focus and just physically and mentally. throughout. yeah i find like my personal experience. in.

thinking about hard things. is like oftentimes i feel like i'm. i'm looking through a telescope and like. i'm aligning two or three telescopes and. you kind of have to. close one eye and move it back and forth. a little bit and just find. just the right alignment then you find. just a sneak peek at the thing you're. trying to find but it's fleeting if you. move. just one little bit it's gone yeah and. oftentimes. what i feel like are the hot the ideas i. value the most. are like that they're so fragile.

and fleeting and slippery and elusive. and it requires. a sensitivity to thinking and a. sensitivity. to maneuver through these things if i. concede to a world where i'm on my phone. texting i'm also on social media i'm. also doing 15. things at the same time because i'm. running the company and i'm also feeling.

terrible from the last night. it all just comes crashing down and the. quality of my thoughts. goes to a zero i'm just a i'm a. functional. person to respond to basic level things. but i don't feel like i. i'm doing anything interesting. i think that's a good word sensitivity. because that's when you. that's that's what uh thinking deeply. feels like is you're sensitive to the. fragile thoughts. and you're right all those other. distractions kind of dull. your ability to be sensitive to the the.

fragile thoughts. it's a really good word out of. all the things you've done you've also. climbed mount kilimanjaro. is this true it's true. uh what do you uh. why and how and what do you take from. that experience. i guess the backstory is relevant. because. that uh in that moment it was the.

darkest time in my life i was. ending a 13-year marriage i was leaving. my religion i sold braintree and i was. coming. battling depression where i was just at. the end. and i got invited to go to. tanzania as part of a group that was. raising money to build clean water wells. and i had made some money from braintree. and so i was able to. donate 25 000 and it was the first time. i had ever had money to donate. outside of paying tithing at my religion.

it was such a phenomenal experience. to to contribute something meaningful to. someone else. in that form and as part of this process. we were going to climb the mountain and. so. we went there and we saw the clean water. whales we were building we spoke to the. the people there it was very energizing. and then we climbed kilimanjaro. and i came down with. a stomach flu on on day three. and i also had altitude sickness but i.

became so sick that on day four. we were summoning on day five i came. into. the camp base camp at fifteen thousand. feet uh. just you know going to the bathroom on. myself and like falling all over it was. just i was just a disaster uh i was. still sick. so stomach flu and altitude sickness. yeah and i just was destroyed from. the situation and plus. what psychologically one of the lowest.

points yeah and i think that was. probably a big contributor i was. i was just smoked as a human just. absolutely done. and i had three young children and so i. was trying to reconcile like. this is not a whether whether i live or. not. is not my decision by itself i'm. now intertwined with these three little. people. and i have an obligation whether i like. it or not. i need to be there and so it did it felt. like i was just stuck in a straight. jacket. and i had to decide whether i was going.

to. summit the next day with the team. and it was a difficult decision because. once you start hiking there's no way to. get off the mountain. and midnight came and our guide came in. and he said where you at and i said. i think i'm okay i think i can try and. so we we went. and so from midnight. to i made it to the summit at 5 a.m. it was one of the most transformational. moments of my existence.

and the mountain. became my problem it became. everything that i was struggling with. and. when i started hiking it was the pain. got so ferocious. uh that it was kind of like this. it became so ferocious that um. i turned my music to eminem and it was. you know eminem was. is the he was the only person in. existence that spoke to my soul.

and it was something about you know his. anger and his. vibrancy and his multi-bench way he's. the only person i who i could turn on. and i could say ah. like i feel some relief i turned i. turned on eminem. and um i made it to the summit uh after. five hours. but just just a hundred yards from the. top i was with my guide ike. and i started getting very dizzy and i. felt like i was. gonna fall backwards off this this cliff. area we were on i was like this is. dangerous.

and uh he said look brian i i know where. you're at. i know where you're at and i can tell. you you've got it in you. so i want you to look up take a step. take a breath and look up take a breath. and take a step. and i did and i made it and so i got. there and i just. i sat down with him at the top i just. cried like a baby broke down. did just i just lost it and uh. so you know he'd let me do my thing and. then we pulled out the.

the pulse oximeter and measured my blood. oxygen levels and it's like it was like. 50 something percent and it was danger. zone so he so he looked at it and i. think he was like really alarmed. that i was in this situation and so uh. he said we can't get a helicopter here. and we can't get you emergency evacuated. you've got to go down you've got to hike. down to fifteen thousand feet to get. base camp. and so he we went around the mountain. i got bound back down to base camp and. um. again that was pretty difficult and then. they put me on a stretcher this metal. stretcher with this one wheel.

and a team of six people wheeled me down. the mountain. and it was it was pretty torturous i'm. very appreciative they did also the. trail was very bumpy so they'd go over. these big rocks and so my head would. just slam. against this metal thing for hours and. so i just felt awful plus i'd get my. head slammed every couple seconds. yeah so the whole experience uh was. really a life-changing moment and that's. it that was the demarcation of me. basically. building a new life of basically i said. i'm going to. reconstruct brian my.

my understanding of reality my. existential realities what i want to go. after. and i try i mean as much as that's. possible as a human but that's when. i set out to rebuild everything. was it the struggle of that i mean. there's also just like. the romantic poetic. it's a freaking mountain. it's a man in in pain psychological and. physical. struggling up a mountain but it's just.

struggle. just uh in the in the face of. just pushing through in the face of. hardship or nature. too something much bigger than you. is that was that the thing that just. clicked for me it felt like i was just. locked in with reality and it was. a death match it was in that moment one. of us is going to die. see you were pondering death yeah like. not surviving yeah. and and it was and that was the moment. and it was uh the summit to me was.

i i'm gonna come out on top and i can do. this and uh giving in was. it's like i'm just done and so it did i. locked in. and uh that's why yeah. mountains are magical to me uh. i didn't expect that i didn't design. that i didn't know that was gonna be the. case. i and not it would not have been. something i would have anticipated. but you are not the same man afterwards.

is there advice you can give to uh young. people today that look at your story. that's successful in many dimensions. um advice you can give to them about how. to be successful in their career. successful in life whatever path they. choose. yes i would say listen to advice. and see it for what it is a mirror. of that person and then map. and know that your future is going to be.

in a zeroth principle land. and so what you're hearing today is a. representation. of what may have been the right. principles to build upon previously. but they're likely depreciating very. fast. and so i am a strong proponent. that people ask for advice but they. don't take advice. so how do you take advice properly.

it's in the careful examination of the. advice it's it's actually you. the person makes a statement about a. given thing somebody should follow. the value is not doing that the value is. understanding the assumption stack they. built the assumption and knowledge stack. they built around. that that body of knowledge that's the. value it's not doing what they say. considering the advice but digging. deeper to understand the assumption. stack. like the full person it's almost i mean. this is deep empathy essentially.

to understand the journey of the person. that arrived at the advice. and the advice is just the tip of the. iceberg that's right that ultimately is. not the thing that gives you. that's right it could it could be the. right thing to do it could be the. completely wrong thing to do depending. on the assumption. stack so you need to investigate the the. whole thing. is there some are there been people in. your. startup in your business journey. that have served that role of advice. giver.

has been helpful or did do you feel like. your journey. felt like a lonely path. or was it one that was of course we're. all. we all are born and die alone uh. but uh. do you fundamentally remember the. experiences one where you leaned. on people at a particular moment of time. that changed everything. yeah the most significant moments of my. memory.

for example like on kilimanjaro when ike. some person i'd never met in tanzania. was able to in that moment apparently. see my soul. when i was in this death match with. reality yes. and he gave me the instructions look up. step and so. there's magical people in my life. that have done things like that and. i suspect they probably don't know i.

i probably should be better at. identifying those things and. but yeah hopefully them. i suppose like the wisdom i would aspire. to. is to have the awareness and the empathy. to be that for other people and. not a a retail.

advertiser of advice of tricks and. for life but deeply meaningful. and empathetic with a one-on-one context. with people that. it really could make a difference yeah. i actually kind of experienced i think. about that sometimes you know you have. like a 18 year old kid come up to you. it's not always obvious it's not always. easy. to really listen to them like not.

not the facts but like see who that. person is. i think people say that about being a. parent is. you know you want to consider that. you you don't want to be the authority. figure in a sense that you you really. want to consider. that there's a special unique human. being there with a unique brain. that may be um brilliant in ways that. you are not. understanding that you'll never be and. really try to hear that. so when giving advice there's something.

to that so both sides should be. deeply empathetic about the assumption. stack. i love that uh the terminology what do. you think is the meaning of this whole. thing. of life why the hell are we here. ryan johnson we've been talking about. brains and studying brains and. you had this very eloquent way of. describing life on earth as. uh as an optimization problem uh. of uh the cost of intelligence going to. zero. at first through the evolutionary.

process and then eventually. through building through our technology. building. more and more intelligent systems you. ever ask yourself. why is doing that yeah i think the. answer to this question again the. information value is more in the mirror. it provides of that person which is a. representation. of the technological social political. context of the time so if you asked this.

question a hundred years ago. you would get a certain answer that. reflects that time period same thing. would be true over a thousand years ago. it's rare it's difficult for a person to. pull themselves out of their contextual. awareness. yeah and offer truly original response. and so knowing that i am contextually. influenced by the situation that i am. a mirror for our reality i would say. that in this moment. i think the real game going. on is.

that in evolution. built a system of scaffolding. intelligence that produced us. we are now building intelligent systems. that are scaffolding. higher dimensional intelligence this is. developing. more robust systems of intelligence. in doing in that process with the cost.

going to zero. then the meaning of life becomes. goal alignment which is the negotiation. of our conscious and unconscious. existence. and then i'd say the third thing is if. we're thinking that we want to be. explorers is. our technological progress is getting to. a point where. we could aspirationally say. we want to figure out what is really. going on.

really going on because does any of this. really make sense. now we may be 100 200 500 a thousand. years away from being able to. poke our way out of whatever is is going. on. but it's interesting that we could even. state an aspiration. to say we want to poke at this question. but i'd say. in this moment of time the meaning of. life. is that we can build a future state.

of existence that is more fantastic than. anything we could ever imagine the. striving. for something more amazing. and that defies expectations. that we would consider bewildering. and all the things that that that's and. and i guess the last thing if there's. multiple meanings of life it would be. infinite games you know james karst.

wrote the book. finite games infinite games the only. game. to play right now is to keep playing the. game. and so this goes back to the algorithm. of the lex algorithm. of diet soda and brisket and pursuing. the passion i'm what i'm suggesting is. there is a. there's a moment here where we can. contemplate playing infinite games. therefore it may make sense to err on. the side of making sure. one is in a situation to be plain. infinite games if that. opportunity arises so just the landscape.

of possibilities changing very very fast. and therefore. our old algorithms of how we might. assess risk assessment and what things. we might pursue and why. those assumptions may fall away very. quickly. well i think i speak for a lot of people. when i say that. the game you mr brian johnson have been. playing. is quite incredible thank you so much. for talking today thanks lex. thanks for listening to this. conversation with brian johnson and. thank you to.

four sigmatic netsuite grammarly. and expressvpn check them out in the. description to support this podcast. and now let me leave you with some words. from diane ackerman. our brain is a crowded chemistry lab. bustling with non-stop neural. conversations. thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time. you.