Rob Reid: The Existential Threat of Engineered Viruses and Lab Leaks | Lex Fridman Podcast #193

the following is a conversation with rob. reed entrepreneur. author and host of the after on podcast. sam harris recommended that i absolutely. must talk to rob. about his recent work on the future of. engineer pandemics. i then listened to the four hours. special episode. of sam's making sense podcast with rob. titled. engineering the apocalypse and i was. floored. and knew i had to talk to him quick. mention of our sponsors. athletic greens volcano fund rise.

and netsuite check them out in the. description to support this podcast. as a side note let me say a few words. about the lab leak hypothesis. which proposes that covet 19 is a. product. of gain of function research on. coronaviruses conducted at the wuhan. institute of virology. that was then accidentally leaked due to. human error. for context this lab is biosafety level. 4 bsl4. and it investigates coronaviruses bsl4.

is the highest level of safety. but if you look at all the human in the. loop pieces required to achieve this. level of safety. it becomes clear that even bsl4 labs are. highly susceptible to human error. to me whether the virus leaked from the. lab or not getting to the bottom of what. happened. is about much more than this particular. catastrophic case. it is a test for our scientific. political. journalistic and social institutions of. how well. we can prepare and respond to threats. that can cripple. or destroy human civilization if we.

continue to gain a function research on. viruses. eventually these viruses will leak and. they will be more deadly. and more contagious we can pretend that. won't happen. or we can openly and honestly talk about. the risks involved. this research can both save and destroy. human life on earth as we know it. it's a powerful double-edged sword if. youtube and other platforms. censor conversations about this if. scientists. self-censored conversations about this. would become merely victims.

of our brief homo sapiens story not its. heroes. as i said before too carelessly labeling. ideas. as misinformation and dismissing them. because of that. will eventually destroy our ability to. discover the truth. and without truth we don't have a. fighting chance. against the great filter before us. this is the lex friedman podcast and. here is my conversation. with rob reed i have seen evidence on.

the internet that you have a sense of. humor. allegedly but you also talk and think. about the destruction of human. civilization. what do you think of the elon musk. hypothesis that. the most entertaining outcome is the. most likely. and he i think followed on to say a. scene from. an external observer like if somebody. was watching us. it seems we come up with creative ways. of progressing our civilization that's. fun to watch. yeah so he exactly he said from the.

standpoint of the observer not the. participant. right and so what's interesting about. that this were. i think just a couple of freestanding. tweets and and delivered. without a whole lot of rapper of context. so it's left to the mind of the. the reader of the tweets yes to infer. what he was talking about but. so that's kind of like it provokes some. interesting thoughts like first of all. it presupposes the existence. of an observer and it also presupposes. that the observer wishes to be. entertained and has some mechanism.

of enforcing their desire to be. entertained so there's like a lot. underpinning that. and to me that suggests particularly. coming from elon. that it's a reference to simulation. theory that you know. somebody is out there and has far. greater insights and a far greater. ability. to let's say peer into a single. individual life. and find that entertaining and full of. plot twists and surprises and. either a happier tragic ending or they. have a. incredible meta view and they can watch.

the arc of civilization. unfolding in a way that is entertaining. and full of plot twists and surprises. and a happy or unhappy ending. so okay so we're presupposing an. observer. then on top of that when you think about. it you're also presupposing a producer. because the act of observation is. mostly fun if there are plot twists and. surprises and other developments that. you weren't foreseeing. i have re-read my own novels and that's. fun. because it's something i worked hard on.

and i slaved over and i love. but there aren't a lot of surprises in. there so now i'm thinking. we need a producer and an observer for. that to be true and on top of that. it's got to be a very competent producer. because elon said the most. entertaining outcome is the most likely. one so there's lots of layers for. thinking about that. and when you've got a producer who's. trying to make it entertaining it makes. me think of there was a south park. episode. in which earth turned out to be a. reality show yeah.

and somehow we had failed to entertain. the audience as much as we used to so. the earth show was going to get. cancelled et cetera. so taking all that together and i'm. obviously being a little bit playful and. laying this out. what is the evidence that we have that. there we are in a reality that is. intended to be most entertaining. now you could look at that reality on. the level of individual. lives or the whole arc of civilization. other lives you know levels as well i'm. sure. but just looking from my own life i.

think i'd make a pretty lousy show. i spend an inordinate amount of time. just looking at a computer. i don't think that's very entertaining. and there's just a completely. inadequate level of shootouts and car. chases. in my life i mean i'll go weeks even. months without a single shootout or car. chase. that just means that you're one of the. non-player characters in this game. you're just waiting. you're an extra that waiting for you one. opportunity for a brief moment to. actually interact with one of the main.

um one of the main characters in the. play just saying okay that's. that's good so okay so we'll rule out me. being the star of the show which i. probably could have guessed at. anyway but then even the arc of. civilization yeah i mean there have been. a lot of really intriguing things that. have happened and a lot of astounding. things that have happened. but you know i would have some. werewolves i'd have some zombies. you know i would have some really. improbable developments like. maybe canada absorbing the united states. you know so i don't know i'm not sure if.

we're necessarily designed for maximum. entertainment but if we are. uh that will mean that 2020 is just a. prequel. for even more bizarre years ahead so. i i kind of hope that we're not designed. for maximum entertainment. well the night is still young in terms. of canada but do you think it's possible. for the observer and the producer to be. kind of. emergent so meaning. it does seem when you kind of watch. memes on the internet. the funny ones the entertaining ones.

spread more efficiently they do i mean i. don't know what it is about the human. mind. that soaks up on mass funny. things much more sort of aggressively. it's more viral like. in in the full sense of that word is is. there some sense that. whatever this the evolutionary process. that created our cognitive capabilities. is the same process that's going to in. an emergent way. create the most entertaining outcome the. most memorable outcome.

the most viral outcome if we were to. share it on twitter yeah that's. interesting. um yeah we do have an incredible ability. like i mean how many memes are created. in a given day and the ones that go. viral are almost uniformly funny at. least to somebody with a particular. sense of humor. right um yeah i have to think about that. we are definitely great at creating. atomized units of funny like in the.

example that you used. there are going to be x million brains. parsing and judging. whether this meme is retweetable or not. yes and so that sort of atomic. universe atomic element a funniness. of entertainingness etc we definitely. have an environment that's. good at selecting for that and selective. pressure and everything else that's. going on. but in terms of the entire. ecosystem of conscious systems here on. the earth. driving through for a level of.

entertainment. that is on such a much higher level that. i don't know if that would necessarily. follow directly from the fact that you. know atomic units of entertainment are. very very aptly selected for us. i don't know do you find it compelling. or. useful to think about human civilization. from the perspective of the ideas versus. the perspective. of the individual human brains so almost.

thinking about the ideas or the memes. this is the dawkins thing as the. organisms. and then the humans as just like uh. vehicles for briefly carrying those. organisms as they jump around and spread. yeah for propagating them mutating them. putting selective pressure on them etc. yeah um i mean i found um dawkins. interpret or his his launching of the. idea of memes is just. kind of an afterthought to his. unbelievably brilliant book about the.

selfish gene like. what a ps to put at the end of a long. chunk of writing profoundly interesting. i view the relationship though between. human and. humans and memes is probably an. oversimplification but maybe a little. bit like the relationship between. flowers and bees right do flowers have. bees or do. bees in a sense have flowers and the. answer is. it is a very very symbiotic relationship. in which both. have semi-independent roles that they. play and.

both are highly dependent upon the other. and so. in the case of bees obviously you know. you could see the flower as being this. monolithic structure. physically in relation to any given bee. and it's the source of. food and sustenance so you could kind of. say well flowers have bees. but on the other hand the flowers would. obviously be doomed. they weren't being pollinated by the. bees so you could kind of say well you. know bees. you know flowers are really expression. of what the bees need. and the truth is a symbiosis so with.

with memes and human minds. our brains are are clearly the petri. dishes. in which memes are either propagated or. not propagated get mutated or don't get. mutated if. they are the venue in which competition. selective competition plays out between. different memes. so all of that is very true and you. could look at that and say. really the human mind is a production of. memes. and ideas have us rather than us having.

ideas but at the same time let's take. a catchy tune as an example of a meme um. that catchy tune did originate in a. human mind. somebody had to structure that thing and. as much as i like elizabeth gilbert's. ted talk about how the universe i'm. simplifying but you know kind of. the ideas find their way in this. beautiful ted talk it's very lyrical she. talked about. you know ideas and prose kind of. beaming into our minds and you know she.

talked about needing to pull over the. side of the road when she got. inspiration for. a particular paragraph or a particular. idea and a burning need to write that. down. i love that i find that beautiful as a. as a writer as a novelist. uh myself i've never had that experience. and. i think that really most things that do. become memes. are the product of a great deal of. deliberate. and willful exertion of a conscious mind. and so like the bees.

and the flowers i think there's a great. symbiosis and they both kind of have one. another ideas have us but we have ideas. for real. if we could take a little bit of a. tangent stephen king on writing. you as a great writer you you're. dropping a hint here. that the ideas don't come to you that. it's a grind. of sort of it's almost like you're. mining for gold. it's more of a very uh deliberate. rigorous daily process so maybe can you. talk about.

the writing process how do you. write well and maybe if you want to step. outside of yourself almost like give. advice to. an aspiring writer what does it take to. write. the best work of your life well it would. be very different if it's fiction versus. nonfiction. and i've done both i've written two. works of not two. non-fiction books and two works of. fiction two works of fiction being more. recent i'm gonna focus on that right now. because that's more. toweringly on my mind there are amongst.

novelists. again this is an oversimplification but. there's kind of two schools of thought. um some people really like to fly by the. seat of their pants. and some people really really like to to. outline. to plot you know so there's plotters and. pantsers i guess is. one way that people look at it and you. know as with most things. there is a great continuum in between. and i'm somewhere on that continuum but. i lean i guess a little bit. a little bit more toward the plotter and. so.

when i do start a novel i have a pretty. strong point. of view about how it's going to end and. i have a very strong point of view about. how it's going to begin. and i do try to make an effort of making. an outline that i know i'm going to be. extremely unfaithful to in the actual. execution. of the story but trying to make an. outline that gets us from here to there. and. notion of subplots and beats and rhythm. and different characters and. and so forth but then when i get into. the process. that outline particularly the center of.

it ultimately. inevitably morphs a great deal and i. think if i were personally. a rigorous outliner i would not allow. that to happen. i also would make a much more. vigorous skeleton before i start so i. think people who are really in that. plotting outlining mode are people who. write page turners people who write you. know spy novels. or you know supernatural adventures. where you really want a relentless pace.

of events action plot twists. conspiracy etc and that is. really the bone that's that's really the. you know the skeletal structure. so i think folks who write that kind of. book are really very much on. the outlining side and i think people. who write um. what's often referred to as literary. fiction for lack of a better term. where it's more about you know sort of. aura and ambiance and character. development and experience and.

inner experience and inner journey and. so forth. i think that group is more likely to fly. by the seat of their pants and i know. people who start with a blank page and. just see where it's going to go. i'm a little bit more on the plotting. side. now you asked what makes something. at least in the mind of the writer as. great as it can be. for me it's an astonishingly high. percentage of it is editing as opposed. to the initial writing. for every hour that i spend writing.

new pros you know like new pages new. paragraphs stuff that you know. new bits of the book i probably spend. i mean i wish i i wish i kept a count. like i wish i had like one of those. pieces of software that lawyers use to. decide how much time i've been doing. this that but. i would say it's at least four or five. hours and maybe as many as 10 that i. spend editing. and so it's relentless for me for each. one hour of writing. i'd say that for wow i mean i i write.

because i edit and i spend. just relentlessly polishing and pruning. and sometimes on the micro level of just. like did the does the. rhythm of the sentence feel right do i. need to carve a syllable or something so. it can land. like as micro as that to his macro as. like okay i'm done but the book is 750. pages. long and it's way too bloated i need to. lop a third out of it. problems on you know those two orders of. magnitude and everything in between. that is an enormous amount of my time.

and i also. um i also write music write record and. produce music. and there the the ratio is even higher. of. every minute that i spend or my band. spends. laying down that original audio it's a. very high proportion of hours that go. into just. making it all hang together and sound. just right so i think that's true of a. lot of creative processes i. i know it's true of sculpture um i. believe it's true of woodwork my dad was.

an amateur woodworker and. he spent a huge amount of time on. sanding and polishing at the end. so i think a great deal of the sparkle. comes from that part of the process any. creative process. can i ask about the psychological the. demon side of that picture. in the editing process you're ultimately. judging the initial piece of work. and you're judging and judging and. judging how much of your time. do you spend hating your work. how much time do you spend in gratitude. impressed thankful for how good the work.

that you will put. together is um i spend almost. all the time in a place that's. intermediate between those but leaning. toward gratitude. i spend almost all the time in a state. of optimism. that this thing that i have i like i. like quite a bit. and i can make it better and better. and better with every time i go through. it so. i spend most of my time in a state of. optimism.

i think i i personally oscillate much. more aggressively between those two. where i wouldn't be able to find the. average i i go pretty deep. um marvin minsky from mit. had this advice i guess. to uh what it takes to be successful. in science and research is to hate. everything you do. you've ever done in the past i mean. at least he was speaking about himself. that the key to his success was to uh.

hate everything he's ever done i have a. little marvin minsky. there in me too to sort of uh always be. exceptionally self-critical. but almost like self-critical about the. work but grateful. for the chance to be able to do the work. yeah that makes sense. it makes perfect sense but that you know. each one of us have. have to strike a certain kind of a. certain kind of balance. but back to the uh destruction of human. civilization.

if humans destroy ourselves in the next. hundred years. what will be the most likely source. the the most like the reason that we. destroy ourselves well let's see. 100 years it's hard for me. to comfortably predict out that far and. it's something to give. a lot more thought to i think than you. know. normal folks simply because i am a. science fiction writer and. you know i feel with the acceleration of. technological progress.

it's really hard to foresee out more. than just a few decades i mean comparing. today's world to that of. 1921 where we are right now a century. later it's been so unforeseeable. and i just don't know what's going to. happen particularly with exponential. technologies. i mean our intuitions reliably defeat. ourselves with exponential technologies. like computing and synthetic biology and. you know how we might destroy ourselves. in the 100 year time frame. might have everything to do with.

breakthroughs in nanotechnology 40 years. from now and then how rapidly those. breakthroughs accelerate. but in the nearer term that i'm. comfortable predicting let's say 30. years. i would say the most likely route to. self-destruction would be synthetic. biology. and i always say that with the gigantic. caveat. and very important one that i find and. i'll abbreviate synthetic biology to sin. bio just to save us some syllables. i believe synbio offers us simply. stunning. promise that we would be fools.

to deny ourselves so i'm not an anti-sin. bio person. by any stretch i mean sin bio has. unbelievable odds of helping us beat. cancer. helping us rescue the environment. helping us do things that we would. currently find imponderable so it's. electrifying the field. but in the wrong hands those hands. either being. incompetent or being malevolent. in the wrong hand synthetic biology to. me. has a much much greater odds has much.

greater odds. of leading to our self-destruction. than something running amok with super. ai which i believe is a real possibility. and one we need to be concerned about. but in the 30-year time frame i think. it's a lesser one. or nuclear weapons or anything else that. i can think of. can you explain that a little bit. further so your concern. is on the man-made versus the natural. side of the pandemic front here so we. humans. engineering pathogens engineering.

viruses. is the concern here yeah and. maybe how do you see the possible. trajectories happening here. in terms of mo is it malevolent or is it. um. accidents oops little mistakes. or unintended consequences of particular. actions that are ultimately lead to. unexpected mistakes. well both of them are in danger and i. think the question of which is more. likely has to do with two things one.

do we take a lot of methodical. affordable. four-sided steps that we are absolutely. capable of taking. right now to first all the risk of a bad. actor. infecting us with something that could. have annihilating impacts. and in the the episode you referenced. with sam we talked a great deal about. that. so do we take those steps and if we take. those steps i think the danger. of malevolent rogue actors doing us in. with sin bio.

couldn't plummet but you know it's. always a question of if and we have a. bad bad. and very long track record of hitting. the snooze bar after. different natural pandemics have. attacked have attacked us so that's. variable number one. variable number two is how much. experimentation and pathogen development. do we as a society decide is acceptable. in the realms of academia. government or private industry and. if we decide as a society that it's.

perfectly okay. for people with varying research agendas. to create. pathogens that if released could wipe. out humanity if we think that's fine. and if that kind of work starts. happening in you know one lab. five labs 50 labs 500 labs. in one country than 10 countries then 70. countries. or whatever that risk of a boo-boo. starts rising astronomically and this. won't be a spoiler alert.

based on the way that i presented those. two things but i think it's. unbelievably important to manage both of. those risks. the easier one to manage although it. wouldn't be. simple by any stretch because it would. have to be something that all nations. agree on. but the easiest way the easier risk to. manage. is that of hey guys let's not develop. pathogens. that if they escape from a lab could. annihilate us. there's no line of research that. justifies that and in my view. i mean that's the point of perspective.

we need to have we'd have to. collectively agree that there's no line. of research that justifies that. the reason why i believe that would be a. highly rational conclusion. is even the highest level of biosafety. lab in the world biosafety lab. level four and they're not a lot of bsl4. labs in the world. there have there are things can can and. have leaked out of bsl4 labs. and some of the work that's been done. with potentially annihilating pathogens. which we can talk about. is actually done at bsl3 and so.

fundamentally. any lab can leak we have proven. ourselves to be incapable. of creating a lab that is utterly. impervious to leaks. so why in the world would we create. something where if god forbid it leaked. could annihilate us all and by the way. almost all of the measures that are. taken in biosafety level. anything labs are designed to prevent. accidental leaks. what happens if you have a malevolent. insider and we could talk about the.

psychology and the motivations. of what would make a malevolent insider. who wants to release something and not. annihilating. in a bit i'm sure that we will but what. if you have a malevolent insider. virtually none of the standards that go. into biosafety level. one two three and four are about. preventing somebody hijacking the. process i mean some of them are. but they're mainly designed against. accidents they're imperfect against. accidents and if this kind of work. starts happening in lots and lots. of labs with every lab you add the odds.

of there being a malevolent insider. naturally increase arithmetically as the. number of labs goes up. now on the front of somebody. outside of a government academic or. scientific. traditional government science academic. scientific. environment creating something. malevolent. again there's protections that we can. take both at the level. of sin bio architecture the sin. hardening the entire. sin bio ecosystem against.

terrible things being made that we don't. want to have out there by rogue actors. to early detection to lots and lots of. other things that we can do to. dramatically mitigate that risk. and i think we do both of those things. decide that no we're not going to. experimentally make annihilating. pathogens in leaky labs. and b yes we are going to take counter. measures that. are costs going to cost a fraction of. our annual defense budget. to to preclude their creation then i. think both that. both both risks get managed down but if.

you take one set of precautions and not. the other. then the the thing that you have not. taken precautions against. immediately becomes the more likely. outcome so can we talk about. this kind of research and what's. actually done and. what are the positives and negatives of. it so. if we look at gain of function research. and the kind of stuff that's happening. level three and level four. bsl labs what's the whole idea here is. it trying to engineer. viruses to understand how they behave.

you want to understand the dangerous. ones. yeah so that that would be the logic. behind doing it and so gain a function. can mean a lot of different things. um viewed through a certain lens. gain-to-function. research could be what you do when you. create you know gmos. when you create you know hearty strains. of corn that are resistant to pesticides. i mean you could view that as gain of. function. so i'm going to refer to gain of. function in a relatively narrow sense. which is actually the sense. that the term is usually used which is.

in some way. magnifying capabilities of. microorganisms. to make them more dangerous whether it's. more transmissible or more deadly. and in that line of research i'll use an. example from 2011. because it's very illustrative and it's. also very chilling. back in 2011 two separate. labs independently of one another i. assumed there was some kind of. communication between them but they were. basically independent projects one in. holland and one in wisconsin.

did gain a function research on. something called h5n1 flu. h5n1 is you know something that. at least on a lethality basis makes. kovad look like a kitten. you know coveted according to the world. health organization has a case fatality. rate somewhere between. half a percent and one percent h5n1 is. closer to sixty percent. six zero and so that's actually even. slightly more lethal than ebola. it's a very very very scary pathogen the. good news about h5n1 it is. that it is barely barely contagious.

and i believe it is in no way contagious. human to human it requires. um you know very very very deep contact. uh with birds in most cases chickens. and so if you're a chicken farmer and. you spend an enormous amount of time. around them and perhaps you get into. situations in which you get a break in. your skin and you're interacting. intensely with with fowl who. as it turns out have h5n1 that's when.

the jump comes. um but it's not there's no airborne. transmission that we're aware of human. human i mean they're. not that way it just doesn't exist um i. think the. world health organization did a. relentless survey of the number of h5n1. cases i think they do it every year i. saw one 10-year series. where i think it was like 500 fatalities. over the course of a decade. and that's a drop in the bucket kind of. fun fun fact. i believe the typical lethality from. lightning. over 10 years is 70 000 deaths so we.

think getting struck by lightning pretty. low risk h5n1. much much lower than that what happened. in these experiments. is the experimenters in both cases um. set out to make h5n1 that would be. contagious. that could create airborne transmission. and so they basically passed it i think. in both cases they passed it through. a large number of ferrets and so this. wasn't like. crispr there wasn't even a crisper back. in those days this was relatively. straightforward you know selecting for a.

particular outcome. and after guiding the path and passing. them through. again i believe it was a series of. ferrets they did in fact come up with. a version of h5n1 that is capable of. airborne transmission. now they didn't unleash it into the. world they didn't. inject it into humans to see what would. happen and so for those two reasons we. don't. really know how contagious it might have. been. but you know if it was as contagious as. covid. that could be a civilization threatening.

pathogen. and why would you do it well the people. who did it were good guys. they were virologists i believe their. agendas they explained it was. much as you said let's figure out what a. worst case scenario. might look like so we can understand it. better but. my understanding is in both cases it was. done in by bsl3 labs. and so potential of leak uh. significantly non-zero hopefully way. below one percent but significantly. non-zero.

and when you look at the consequences of. an escape in terms of human lives. destruction of a large portion of the. economy etc and you do an expected value. calculation. on whatever fraction of one percent that. was you would come up with. a staggering cost staggering expected. cost for this work so it should never. it should never have been carried out. now you might make an argument. if you said if you believed that h5n1. in nature is on an inevitable path.

to airborne transmission and it's only. going to be a small number of years. a and b if it makes that transition. there is you know one set of changes to. its metabolic pathways. and you know it's genomic code and so. forth one. that we have discovered so it is going. to go from point a which is where it is. right now to point b. we have reliably engineered point b that. is the destination. and we need to start fighting that right. now because this is five years or less.

away. now that'd be very different world. that'd be like spotting an asteroid. that's coming toward the earth and is. five years off and yes you marshal. everything you can to resist that but. there's two problems with that. perspective. the first is in however many thousands. of generations that humans have been. inhabiting this planet there has never. been a transmissible form of h5n1 and. influenza has been around for a very. long time. so there is no case for inevitability. of this kind of a jump to airborne. transmission so.

we're not on a freight train to that. outcome and if there was inevitability. around that. it's not like there's just one set of. genetic code that would get there. they're just there's there's all kinds. of different mutations. that could conceivably result in that. kind of an outcome. unbelievable diversity of mutations and. so we're not actually creating something. we're inevitably going to face. uh but we are creating something we are. creating. a very powerful and unbelievably. negative card and injecting in the deck.

that nature never put into the deck so. in that case. um i just don't see any moral or. scientific. justification for that kind of work and. interestingly. there was quite a bit of excitement and. concern about this when the work came. out one of the teams was going to. publish their results in science the. other in nature. and there were a lot of editorials and a. lot of. scientists are saying this is crazy and. publication of those. papers did get suspended and not long.

after that there was a pause put on. u.s government funding nih funding on. gain of function research. but both of those speed bumps were. ultimately removed. those papers did ultimately get. published and that pause on funding. you know ceased long ago and in fact. those two very projects my understanding. has. resumed their funding got their. government funding back i don't know why. a dutch project's getting nih funding. but whatever. about a year and a half ago so as far as.

the us government and regulators are. concerned. it's also systems go for gain of. function at this point which i i find. very troubling. now i'm a little bit of an outsider from. this field but it has echoes of the same. kind of problem i see. in the ai world with autonomous weapon. systems. nobody in my colleagues. my colleagues friends as far as i can. tell. people in the ai community are not. really talking about autonomous weapons. systems. as now us and china are full steam ahead.

on the development of both. right and that seems to be a similar. kind of thing on getting a function. i've uh you know have friends in the. biology space. and they don't want to talk about gain. of function. publicly it and i don't that makes me. very uncomfortable. from an outsider perspective in terms of. gain of function it makes me. very uncomfortable from the insider. perspective on autonomous weapon systems. i'm not sure how to communicate exactly. about autonomous weapon systems and i.

certainly don't know how to communicate. effectively about. getting a function what is the right. path forward here. should we seize all gain of function. research is that. is that really the solution here well. again i'm going to use gain of function. in the relatively narrow. context of overview because you could. say almost you know anything. that you do to make biology more. effective is gain a function so within. the narrow confines of what we're. discussing. i think it would be easy enough. for level-headed people in all of the. countries level had any governmental.

people in all the countries that. realistically could support such a. program to agree. we don't want this to happen because all. labs leak i mean and you know an example. that i. i use i actually didn't use it in the. piece i did with sam harris as well. um is the anthrax attacks in the united. states in 2001 i mean talk about an. example of the least likely lab. leaking into the least likely place. shortly after 9 11 for folks who don't. remember it and.

it was a very very lethal strand of. anthrax that. as it turned out based on the for. forensic genomic work that was done and. so forth. absolutely leaked from a high-security. u.s army lab. probably the one at fort detrick in. maryland it might have been another one. but who cares. it absolutely leaked from a high. security u.s army lab. and where did it leak to this highly. dangerous substance that was kept under. lock and key by a very security-minded. organization. well it leaked to places including the.

senate majority leader's office tom. daschle's office. i think it was senator leahy's office. certain publications including. bizarrely the national enquirer but. let's go to the senate majority leader's. office. it is hard to imagine a more. security-minded country than the united. states two weeks after the 911. attack i mean you it doesn't get more. security-minded than that. and it's also hard to imagine a more. security. capable organization than the united. states military. we can joke all we want about.

inefficiencies in the military and you. know. 24 000 wrenches and so forth but pretty. capable when it comes to that. despite that level of focus and concern. and competence just a. days after the 9 11 attacks something. comes from the. inside of our military industrial. compacts and ends up. you know in the office of someone i. believe the senate majority leader. somewhere in the line of presidential. succession. it tells us everything can leak so again. think of a level-headed conversation.

between powerful leaders in a diversity. of countries. thinking through like i can imagine a. very simple powerpoint revealing. you know just discussing briefly things. like the anthrax leak. um things like uh this this foot and. mouth disease. outbreak that or leaking that came out. of a bsl four-level lab. in the uk several other things talking. about. the utter virulence that could result. from gain of function and say. folks can we agree that this just. shouldn't happen.

i mean if we were able to agree on the. nuclear non-proliferation treaty which. we were. by a weapons convention which we did. agree on we the world. for the most part i believe agreement. could be found. there but it's going to take people in. leadership. of a couple of very powerful countries. to get to consensus amongst them. and then to decide we're going to get. everybody together and browbeat them. into banning this stuff now that doesn't. make it entirely impossible that. somebody might do this. but in well-regulated you know.

carefully watched over fiduciary. environments. like federally funded academic research. anything going on in the government. itself. you know things going on in you know. companies that have. investors who don't want to go to jail. for the rest of their lives. i think that would have a major major. dampening impact on it. but there is a particular possible. catalyst. in this time we live in which is. uh for really kind of raising the. question of gain of function research.

for the application of virus making. viruses more dangerous. is the question of whether covid. leaked from a lab sort of. not even answering that question but. even asking that question is a very. it seems like a very important question. to ask. to uh catalyze the conversation about. the whether we should be doing. gain of function research i mean from a. high level. uh why do you think people.

even colleagues of mine are not. comfortable asking that question. and two do you think that the answer. could be that it did. leak from a lab i i think the mere. possibility. that it did leak from a lab is. evidence enough again for the. hypothetical rational national leaders. watching this simple powerpoint. if you could put the possibility at one. percent. and you look at the unbelievable. destructive power that covet had.

that should be an overwhelmingly. powerful argument for excluding it. now as to whether or not that was a leak. some very very level i don't i don't. know enough about. all of the factors in the bayesian. analysis and so forth that has gone into. people making the pro argument of that. so i don't pretend to be an expert on. that and i i don't have. a point of view i i just don't know but. what i. what we can say is it is entirely.

possible for a couple of reasons. one is that there is a bsl4 lab in wuhan. the wahan institute of virology i. believe it's the the only bsl4 in china. i could be wrong about that. but it definitely had a history. that alarmed very sophisticated uh u.s. diplomats and others. who were in contact with the lab and. were aware of what it was doing. uh long before covid uh coveted. um hit the world and so there are.

diplomatic cables that have been. declassified. i believe one sophisticated scientist or. other observer said. that wiv is a ticking time bomb and. i believe it's also been pretty. reasonably established that. coronaviruses. were a topic of great interest at wiv. sars obviously came out of china and. that's a that's a coronavirus that would. make an enormous amount of sense for it. to be studied there. um and there is so much opacity. about what happened in the early days.

and weeks. after the outbreak that's basically been. imposed by the chinese government that. we just don't know so it feels like a. substantially or greater than one. percent possibility to me. looking at it from the outside and. that's something that one could imagine. now we're going to the realm of thought. experiment not. me decreeing this is what happened but. you know if they're studying coronavirus. at the wuhan institute of virology. um and there is this precedent of gain. of function research that's been done.

on something that is remarkably. uncontagious to humans whereas we know. coronavirus is contagious to humans. i could definitely and there is this. global consensus. you know certainly was the case you know. two or three years ago when this work. might have started this. seems to be this global consensus that. gain a function is fine. the u.s paused funding for a little. while but paused funding they never said. private actors couldn't do it. it was just the pause of nih funding and. then that pause was lifted so. again none of this is irrational you. could certainly see the folks at wiv.

saying gain a function interesting. vector coronovice. virus unlike h5n1 very contagious. uh we are in a a nation that has had. terrible run-ins with coronavirus why. don't we do a little getting function on. this. and then like all labs at all levels. one can imagine this lab leaking so it's. not an impossibility and very very. level-headed. people have said that you know who've. looked at it much more deeply. do believe in that outcome uh why is it. such a threat.

to power the idea that leaked from a lab. why is it so threatening i don't maybe. understand this point exactly. like is it just that. as governments and especially the. chinese government is really afraid of. admitting. mistakes that everybody makes so this is. a horrible mystery like. uh chernobyl is a good example i come. from the soviet union. i mean well major mistakes were made in. chernobyl. i would argue for a lab league to happen.

the the the scale of the mistake is much. smaller. um right there the the depth and the. breadth of rot. that in bureaucracy that led to. chernobyl. is much bigger than anything that could. lead to. a lab leak because it could literally. just be. i mean i'm sure there's security very. careful security procedures even in. level three labs but.

it uh i i imagine maybe you can correct. me it's. all it takes is the incompetence of a. small number of individuals or even. one yeah one individual on a particular. a couple weeks three weeks. period as opposed to a multi-year. bureaucratic. failure of the entire government right. well certainly the. magnitude of mistakes and compounding. mistakes that went into chernobyl was. far far. far greater but the consequence of. kovitt. outweighs that the consequence of.

chernobyl to a tremendous degree. and you know i think that that. particularly um authoritarian. governments. are unbelievably uh reluctant to. admit to any fallibility whatsoever. there's a. long long history of that across dozens. and dozens. of authoritarian governments and to be. transparent. again this is in the hypothetical world. in which this was a leak which. again i don't have i don't personally.

have enough sophistication to have an. opinion on the. on the likelihood but in the. hypothetical world in which it was a. league. the global reaction. and the amount of global animus. and the amount of you know. the decline in global respect that would. happen toward china because every. country suffered. massively from this unbelievable damages. in terms of human lives and economic. activity disrupted.

the world would in some way present. china with that bill. and when you take on top of that. the natural disinclination for any. authoritarian government to admit any. fallibility and tolerate the possibility. of any fallibility whatsoever. and you look at the relative opacity. even though they let a world. health organization group in you know a. couple months ago to run around. they didn't give that who group anywhere. near the level of access it would be. necessary to definitively say.

x happened versus y the level of opacity. that surrounds those opening weeks and. months. of covet in china we just don't know. if you were to kind of look back at 2020. and maybe broadening it out to future. pandemics. that could be much more dangerous what. kind of response. how do we fail in the response and how. could we do better. so the gain of function research is. discussing.

which you know the the question of we. should not be. creating viruses that are both. exceptionally contagious and. exceptionally deadly to humans. but if it does happen perhaps the. natural. evolution natural mutation is there. interesting technological responses. on the testing side on the vaccine. development side. on the collection of data or on the. basic sort of policy response side.

or the sociological the psychological. side. yeah there's all kinds of things and. most of what i've thought about and. written about and again discussed in. that long. bit with with sam is dual use. so most of the countermeasures that i've. been thinking about and advocating for. would be every bit as effective against. zoonotic. disease a natural pandemic of some sort. as an artificial one. the the risk of an artificial one even. the near-term risk of an artificial one.

ups the urgency around these measures. immensely but. but most of them would be broadly. applicable and so i think. the first thing that we really want to. do on a global scale. is have a far far far more robust. and globally transparent system of. detection. and that can happen on a number of. levels the most obvious one. is you know just in the blood of people. who come into clinics. exhibiting signs of illness and there.

we are certainly at a point now with. we're at with. relatively minimal investment we could. develop. in clinic diagnostics that would be. unbelievably effective at pinpointing. what's going on. in almost any disease when somebody. walks into a doctor's office or a clinic. and better than that um this is a little. bit further off. further off but it wouldn't cost tens of. billions in research dollars it would be. you know a relatively modest and. affordable budget in relation to the. threat.

at home diagnostics that can really. really pinpoint. you know okay particularly with. respiratory infections. because that is generally almost. universally. the mechanism of transmission for any. serious pandemic. so somebody has a respiratory infection. is it one of the. you know significantly large handful of. rhinoviruses coronaviruses and other. things that cause common cold. uh or is it influenza if it's influenza. is it influenza a versus b. um or is it you know a small handful of.

other more exotic but nonetheless. sort of common respiratory infections. that are out there. developing a diagnostic panel to. pinpoint all of that stuff that's. something that's well within our. capabilities that's much less. a lift than creating mrna vaccines which. obviously we proved capable of when we. put our minds to it. so do that on a global basis. and i don't think that's irrational. because the best prototype. for this than i'm aware of isn't. currently rolling out.

in atherton california or fairfield. county connecticut or some other wealthy. place. the best prototype that i'm aware of. this is rolling out right now in nigeria. and it's a project that came out of the. broad institute. which as as i'm sure you know but uh. some listeners may not is. kind of like an academic joint venture. between harvard and mit. the program is called sentinel and their. objective. is and their plan and is a very well. conceived plan a methodical plan. is to do just that in areas of nigeria.

that are particularly vulnerable to. zoonotic. diseases making the jump from animals to. humans. but also there's just an unbelievable. public health benefit from that. and it's sort of a three-tier system. where clinicians in the field. could very rapidly determine do you have. one of the infections of acute interest. here either because it's very common in. this region. so we want to diagnose as many as things. as we can at the front line. or because it's uncommon but. unbelievably threatening like ebola.

so frontline worker can make that. determination very very rapidly. if it comes up as a we don't know they. bump it up to a level that's more like. at a fully. configured doctor's office or local. hospital and if it's still it. we don't know it gets bumped up to a. national level and. that and it gets bumped very very. rapidly so. if this can be done in nigeria and it. seems that it can be. there shouldn't be any inhibition for it. to happen in most other places.

and it should be affordable from a. budgetary standpoint and based on. sentinel's budget and adjusting things. for things like you know very different. cost of living larger population etc. i did a back of the envelope calculation. that doing something like sentinel in. the u.s would be in the low billions of. dollars. and you know wealthy countries. middle-income countries can't afford. such a thing lower income companies in. income countries should certainly be. helped with that. but start with that level of detection. and then layer on top of that other. interesting things.

like you know monitoring search engine. traffic search engine queries. for evidence that strange clusters of. symptoms. are starting to rise in different places. there's been a lot of work done with. that. most of it kind of like academic and. experimental but some of it has been. powerful enough to suggest that this. could be a very powerful early warning. system there's a guy named bill lampos. at university college london. who basically did a very rigorous. analysis that showed that symptom.

searches reliably predicted coveted. outbreaks in the early days of the. pandemic in given countries. by as much as 16 days before the. evidence started to crew at a public. health level. 16 days of forewarning can be. monumentally important. in the early days of an outbreak and. this is. you know a very very talented but. nonetheless very resource constrained. academic project imagine if that was. something that was done. with a norad like budget yeah yeah so i.

mean. starting with detection that's something. we could do radically radically better. so aggregating multiple data sources in. order to create something. i mean this is really exciting to me the. possibility that i've heard. inklings of of creating almost like a. weather map. of pathogens like basically. aggregating all of these data sources. scaling. many orders of magnitude up at home. testing and all kinds of. testing that doesn't just try to test. for the particular pathogen.

of worry now but everything like a full. spectrum of things that could be. dangerous to the human body. and thereby be able to create these maps. like that are dynamically updated on an. hourly basis. of the of how viruses travel throughout. the world. and so you can respond like you can then. integrate just like you do when you. check your weather map. and it's raining or not of course not. perfect but it's. very good predictor whether it's going. to rain or not.

uh and use that to then make decisions. about your own life. ultimately give the power information to. individuals to respond. and if it's a super dangerous like if. it's acid rain versus regular rain. you might want to really stay inside as. opposed to risking it. i mean that um just like you said if. i think it's not very expensive relative. to all the things. that we do in this world but it does. require. bold leadership and there's another.

dark thing which really is bothering me. about 2020 which it requires. is it requires trust in institutions to. carry out these kinds of programs. and it requires trust and science and. engineers. and uh sort of centralized organizations. that would operate at scale here. and much of that trust has been um. at least in the united states diminished. it feels like. not exactly sure where to place the.

blame but i do place quite a bit of the. blame into. the scientific community and again my. fellow colleagues. in speaking down to people at times. speaking from authority it sounded like. it dismissed the basic human experience. or the. the basic common humanity of people in a. way. like it almost sounded like there's an. agenda. that's hidden behind the words the. scientists spoke. like they're trying to in a. self-preserving way.

control the population or something like. that i don't think any of that is true. from the majority of the scientific. community but it sounded that way. and so the trust began to diminish and. i'm not. sure how to fix that except to. be more authentic be more real. acknowledge the uncertainties under. which we operate. acknowledge the mistakes we've that. scientists make. that institutions make the leak. from the lab is a perfect example where. we have.

imperfect systems that make all the. progress you see seeing the world and. that. being honest about that imperfection i. think is essential for forming trust. but i don't know what to make of it it's. been uh it's been deeply disappointing. because i do think just like you. mentioned the solutions. require people to trust the. institutions with their data. yeah and i think part of the problem is. it seems to me as an outsider that there. was a bizarre unwillingness.

on the part of the cdc and other. institutions. to admit to. to frame and to contextualize. uncertainty. maybe they had a patronizing idea that. these people need to be. told and when they're told they need to. be told with authority. and a level of definitiveness and. certain certitude that doesn't actually. exist. and so when they whip saw on. recommendations like. what you should do about masks you know. when the cdc.

is kind of at the very beginning of the. pandemic saying masks don't do. anything don't wear them when the real. driver for that was. we don't want these clowns going out and. depleting amazon of masks because they. may be needed. in medical settings and we just don't. know yet. i think a message that actually. respected people and said this is why. we're asking you not to do masks yet. and there's more to be seen would be. less whip sawing. and would bring people like they feel.

more like they're part of the. conversation and they're being treated. like adults. than saying one day definitively masks. suck. and then x days later saying nope damn. it wear masks. and so i think framing things in terms. of the probabilities which most people. are easy to parse i mean. a more recent example which i just. thought was. batty was suspending the johnson johnson. vaccine for a you know a very low single. digit number of days. in the united states based on the fact.

that i believe. there had been uh seven-ish clotting. incidents. um in roughly seven million people who. had had the the vaccine administered. i believe one of which resulted in a. fatality and. there was definitely suggestive data. that indicated that there was a. relationship this wasn't just. coincidental because i think all of the. clotting incidents happened in women as. opposed to men. and kind of clustered in a certain age. group but. does that call for shutting off the.

vaccine. or does it call for leveling with the. american public and saying. we've had one fatality out of seven. million. this is let's just assume substantially. less than the. likelihood of getting struck by. lightning um. based on that information you know and. we're going to keep you posted. because you can trust us to keep you. posted based on that information please. decide whether you're comfortable with a. johnson johnson vaccine. that would have been one response and i.

think people would have been able to. parse those simple bits of data and make. their own judgment. by turning it off all of a sudden. there's this dramatic. signal to people who don't read all 900. words in the new york times piece that. explains why it's being turned off but. just see the headline which is a. majority of people. there's a sudden like oh my god yikes. vaccine being shut off and then all the. people who sat on the fence or sitting. on the fence about whether or not they. trust vaccines that is going to push an.

incalculable number of people that's. going to be the last straw. for we don't know how many hundreds of. thousands or more likely millions of. people to say okay. tipping point here i don't trust these. vaccines so by pausing that for. whatever it was 10 or 12 days and then. flipping the switch. as everybody who knew much about the. situation. knew was inevitable by switching. flipping the on switch. 12 days later you're conveying certitude. j and j bad to certitude j and j good. in a period of just a few days and.

people just feel whipsawed and they're. not part of the analysis but it's not. just the the whipsawing. and i think about this quite a bit i. don't think i have good answers. it's something about the way the. communication actually happens. just i don't know what it is about. anthony fauci for example. but i don't trust him and i think that. has. to do i mean he's he did he's. he has an incredible background i'm sure. he's a brilliant. scientist and researcher i'm sure he's. also a great.

like inside the room policy maker and. deliberator and so on. but you know uh what makes a great. leader. is something about that thing that you. can't quite describe. but being a communicator that. you know you can trust that there's an. authenticity that's required and i'm not. sure. maybe i'm being a bit too judgmental but. i'm a huge fan. of a lot of great leaders throughout. history they've they've communicated.

exceptionally well in the way that fauci. does not. and i think about that i think about. what has affected science communication. so. you know great leaders throughout. history did not necessarily. need to be great science communicators. their leadership wasn't. in other domains but when you're. fighting the virus you also have to be. a great science communicator you have to. be able to communicate uncertainties. you have to be able to communicate. something like a vaccine. that you you're allowing inside your.

body into the messiness into the. complexity of the biology system. that if we're being honest it's so. complex we'll never be able to really. understand we have. we can only desperately hope that. science can. give us sort of a high likelihood that. there's no. short-term negative consequences and. that kind of intuition about long-term. negative consequences. and doing our best in this battle. against. trillions of things that are trying to. kill us.

i mean being being an effective. communicator in that space is very. difficult but. i think about what it takes because i. think there should be more science. communicators that are effective at that. kind of thing. let me ask you about something that's. sort of more in the ai space that. i i think about that kind of goes along. this thread that you're. that you've spoken about about. democratizing. the technology that could destroy human. civilization.

is uh from amazing work from deep mind. alpha fold to which achieved uh. incredible performance on the protein. folding problem single protein fold. folding problem do you think about the. use of ai. in the syn biospace of uh. i think the the gain of function. in the virus-based research that you. refer to i think. is natural mutations and sort of. aggressively mutating the virus until.

you get one that like uh. that has this both contagious and um. deadly but what about then using. ai to through simulation. be able to compute deadly viruses or. any kind of biological systems is this. something you're worried about. or again is this something you're more. excited about i think computational. biology is. unbelievably exciting and promising. field and i think when you're doing. things in silico as opposed to in vivo.

um. you know that the dangers plummet you. don't have a critter. that can leak from a leaky lab yes so i. don't see any problem with that except. um i do worry about the data security. dimension of it. because if you were doing really really. interesting and silico gain of function. research. and you hit upon you know through a. level sophistication we don't currently. have but you know. synthetic biology is an exponential. technology so capabilities that are.

utterly out of reach today will be. attainable in five or six years. um i think if you conjured up. worst-case genomes of viruses that. don't exist in vivo anywhere they're. just in they're just in the computer. space but like. hey guys this is the genetic sequence. that would end the world let's say. um then you have to worry about the. utter hackability of every computer. network we can imagine. i mean data leaks from the least likely.

places. on the grandest possible scales have. happened and continue to happen and will. probably always continue to happen and. so that would be the danger of doing the. work in silico. if you end up with a list of like boy. these are things we never want to see. that list leaks and after the passage of. some time certainly couldn't be done. today but after the passage of some time. lots and lots of people in academic labs. going all the way down to the high. school level. are in a position to you know to make it.

overly simplistic. hit print on a genome and have the virus. bearing that genome pop out on the other. end then you got something to worry. about. but in general computational biology i. think is incredibly important. particularly because. the crushing majority of work that. people are doing with the protein. folding problem and other things. are about creating therapeutics about. creating things. that will help us you know live better. live longer thrive be bit more well. and so forth and the protein folding. problem is a.

monstrous computational challenge that. we seem to make. just the most glacial project on i'm. sorry progress on for years and years. but i think there's like a there's a. bi-annual competition i think. uh for for at which people tackle the. protein folding uh problem. and um deepmind's entrant uh both. two years ago like in 2018 and 2020. ruled the field. and so you know protein folding is an. unbelievably important thing if you want. to start thinking about. therapeutics because you know it's the.

folding of the protein that tells us. where the. where the channels and the receptors and. everything else are on that protein and. it's. from that precise model if we can get to. a precise model. that you can start barraging it again in. silicon. with you know thousands tens of. thousands. millions of potential therapeutics and. see what resolves the problems. the shortcomings that a you know about a. misshapen uh pro. protein for instance somebody with. cystic fibrosis. how might we treat that so i see nothing.

but good in that. well let me ask you about fear and hope. in this world. i tend to believe that um. that uh in terms of competence and. malevolence. that people who are maybe it's in my. interactions. i tend to see that first of all i. believe that most people are good. and want to do good and are just. better doing good and more inclined to. do good. on this world and more than that.

people who are malevolent are usually. incompetent at uh building technology. so like i i've seen this in my life that. people who are exceptionally good at. stuff. no matter what the stuff is tend to. maybe they discover joy in life in a way. that. gives them fulfillment and thereby does. not result in them wanting to destroy. the world. so like the better you are at stuff. whether that's building nuclear weapons. or plumbing. it doesn't matter they're both the less.

likely you are to destroy the world. so in that sense with many technologies. the ai especially i always think that uh. the the the malevolent would be far. outnumbered. by the ultra competent and in that sense. the defenses. will always be stronger than the. offense in terms of the people trying to. destroy the world. now there's a few spaces where them.

that might not be the case and that's an. interesting conversation where. is this one person who's not very. competent. can destroy the whole world perhaps. synbio is one such space. because of the uh exponential effects of. the technology. i tend to believe ai's is not one of. those such spaces. but do you share this kind of view that. uh the ultra competent are usually also. the good. yeah absolutely i absolutely share that.

and that gives me. a great deal of optimism that we will be. able to short circuit. the threat that malevolent synbio. could pose to us but we need to start. creating those defensive systems. or defensive layers one of which we. talked about far far far better. surveillance in order to prevail. so the good guys will almost inevitably. outsmart and definitely outnumber the. bad guys. in most sort of smackdowns that we can. imagine. but the good guys aren't going to be.

able to exert. their advantages unless they have the. imagination. necessary to think about what the worst. possible thing. can be done by somebody whose own. psychology is completely. alien to their own so that's a tricky. tricky thing to solve for. now in terms of whether the asymmetric. power. that a bad guy might have in the face of. the overwhelming. numerical advantage and competence. advantage that the good guys have. you know unfortunately i look at.

something like mass shootings as an. example. you know i'm sure the guy who who was. responsible for the vegas shooting or. the orlando shooting or any other. shooting that we can imagine. didn't know a whole lot about ballistics. and the number of. you know good guy citizens in the united. states with guns compared to bad guys. citizens i'm sure is a crushingly. overwhelmingly high ratio in favor of. the good guys. but that doesn't make it possible for us. to stop mass shootings.

an example is fort hood. 45 000 trained soldiers on that base. yet there have been two mass shootings. there and. so there is an asymmetry when you have. powerful and lethal technology that gets. so democratized and so proliferated. in tools that are very very easy to use. even by a knucklehead when those tools. get really easy to use by a knucklehead. and they're really widespread.

it becomes very very hard to defend. against all instances in. instances of usage now the good news. quote unquote about mass shootings if. there is any and there is some. is even the most brutal and. carefully planning and well-armed mass. shooter. can only take so many victims and. same is true as there's been four. instances that i'm aware of. of commercial pilots committing suicide. by downing their planes and taking all. their passengers with them. these weren't boeing engineers you know.

but like an army of boeing engineers. ultimately were not capable of. preventing that. but even in their case and i'm actually. not counting 911 and that 911 is a. different category in my mind these are. these are just personally suicidal. pilots in in those cases. they only have a plain load of people. that they're able to take with them. if we imagine a highly plausible and. imaginable future. in which some biotools they could be. that are amoral that could be used for. good or for ill. start embodying unbelievable.

sophistication. and genius in the tool in the easier and. easier and easier. to make tool all those thousands. tens of thousands hundreds of thousands. of scientist years. start getting embodied in something that. you know maybe as simple as hitting a. print button. um then that good guy technology. can be hijacked by a bad person. and used in a very asymmetric way yeah i. think what happens though.

as because you go to the high school. student from the current like very. specific set of. labs they're able to do it as we get as. it becomes more and more democratized. as it becomes easier and easier to do. this kind of. large-scale damage with a with an. engineered virus. the more and more there will be. engineering of defenses against these. systems. is some of the things we talked about in. terms of testing towards the collection. of data. but also in terms of like uh. at scale contact tracing or also.

engineering of vaccines. like in a matter of like days maybe. hours maybe minutes. so like i just i feel like the defenses. that's what human species seems to do. it's like we hit keep hitting the snooze. button. until there's like a like a storm. on the horizon heading towards us then. we start to quickly build up. uh the defenses or the response that's. proportional. to the scale of the storm.

of course again certain kinds of. exponential threats require. us to build up the defenses. way earlier than we usually do and. that's i guess the question. but i ultimately am hopeful that. the natural process of hitting the. snooze button until. the deadline is right in front of us. will work out for quite a long time for. us humans. and i fully agree i mean that's why i'm. fundamentally may not sound like it thus. far. but i'm fundamentally very very. optimistic about our ability to.

short-circuit this threat. because there is again i'll stress. um the technological feasibility and the. profound affordability. of a relatively simple set of steps that. we can take to preclude it but we do. have to take those steps and so you know. what i'm hoping to do and trying to do. is inject a notion of what those steps. are you know into the public. conversation and do my small part. to up the odds that that actually ends. up happening. um you know it's the the danger with.

this one is it is exponential. and i think that our minds are. fundamentally struggle to understand. exponential. math it's just not something we're wired. for our ancestors didn't. confront exponential processes when they. were growing up on the savannah. so it's not something that's intuitive. to us and our intuitions are reliably. defeated. when exponential processes come along so. that that's issue number one. and issue number two with something like. this is. you know it kind of only takes one you.

know that ball only has to go into the. net. once and we're doomed which is not the. case. with mass shooters it's not the case. with you know commercial pilots run amok. it's not the case. with really any threat that i can think. of with the exception of nuclear war. that has the you know one bad outcome. and game over and that that means that. we need to be unbelievably serious about. these defenses and we need to do things.

that might on the surface seem like a. tremendous. over reaction so that we can be prepared. to nip anything that comes along in the. bud but i like you. believe that's imminently doable um i. like you. believe that the good guys outnumber the. bad guys in this particular one to a. degree that probably has no precedent in. history. i mean even the worst worst people i'm. sure in isis. even osama bin laden even any bad guy. you could imagine. in history would be revolted by the idea.

of exterminating all of humanity. i mean you know it's just that's a low. bar. and so the good guys completely. outnumber. the bad guys when it comes to this but. the asymmetry and the fact that. one catastrophic error could lead to. unbelievably. consequential things is what worries me. here but i too am very optimistic. the thing that i sometimes worry about. is. the fact that we haven't seen. overwhelming evidence of alien. civilizations out there.

makes me think um well there's a lot of. explanations but one of them that. worries me is that. whenever they get smart they just. destroy themselves oh yeah. i mean that was the most fascinating is. the most fascinating and chilling. number or variable in the drake equation. is l at the end. at the end of it you look out you see. you know one to 400 billion stars in the. milky way galaxy. and we now know because of kepler that. an astonishingly high percentage of them.

probably have habitable planets. and you know so all the things that were. unknowns when the drake equation was. originally written. like you know how many stars have. planets actually back then in the 1960s. when the drake equation came along. the consensus amongst astronomers was. that it would be a small minority of. solar systems that had planets or. stars but now we know it's substantially. all of them how many of those stars have. habit. have planets in the habitable zone it's. kind of looking like 20. like oh my god and so l which is.

how long does a civilization once it. reaches technological competence. continues to last that's the doozy. and and you're right it's it's. all too plausible to think that when a. civilization reaches a level of. sophistication that's probably just a. decade or three in our future. the odds of it self-destructing just. start mounting astronomically no pun. intended. my hope is that that uh actually there.

is a lot of alien civilizations out. there and what they figure out in order. to avoid. the self-destruction they need to turn. off the. thing that was useful that used to be a. feature now became a bug which is. uh the desire to colonize to conquer. more land. so they like there's probably ultra. intelligent alien civilizations out. there they're just like chilling. like on the beach with the with the. whatever your favorite alcohol belt. beverages but like without sort of. trying to conquer everything. just chilling out and maybe.

exploring in the in the realm of. knowledge but almost like. appreciating existence for its own sake. versus uh life as a. progression of conquering of other life. like this kind of predator prey. formulation that. resulted in uh us humans perhaps is. something we have to shed in order to. survive i don't know. yeah that that is um a very plausible.

solution to fermi's paradox and it's. it's one that makes sense. you know when we look at our own lives. and their own archive project. of technological um you know trajectory. it's very very easy to imagine that in. an intermediate future world of. you know flawless vr or flawless. you know whatever kind of simulation. that we want to inhabit. it will just simply cease to be. worthwhile. to go out and and expand our.

our interstellar territory and. but if we were going out and conquering. interstellar territory wouldn't. necessarily have to be predator or prey. i can imagine. um a benign but sophisticated. intelligence saying well we're going to. go to places we're going to go to places. that we can terraform. and use a different word than terra. obviously but we can turn into habitable. for our particular. physiology so long is that they don't. house. you know intelligent sentient creatures. that would suffer from our invasion. um but it is easy to see a sophisticated.

intelligent species evolving to the. point where interstellar travel with its. incalculable expense and physical. hurdles just isn't worth it compared to. what could be done. you know where one already is so you. talked about. diagnostics at scale as a possible. solution. to future pandemics what about another. possible solution which is. kind of creating a backup copy you know. i'm actually now. um putting together nas for backup for.

myself for the first time taking backup. of data seriously. but if we were to take the uh the backup. of human consciousness seriously and uh. try to expand throughout the. solar system and colonize other planets. do you think that's an interesting uh. solution one of many uh for. protecting human civilizations from. self-destruction sort of humans becoming. a multi-planetary species. oh absolutely i mean i find it. electrifying first of all so i got a. little bit of a personal bias when i was. a kid.

i thought there was nothing cooler than. rockets i thought there was nothing. cooler than nasa. i thought there was nothing cooler than. people walking on the moon. and as i grew up i thought there was. nothing more tragic than the fact that. we went from walking on the moon to. at best getting to something like. suborbital altitude. and just i found that more and more. depressing with the passage of decades. at just the colossal expense of. you know manned space travel and the. fact that it seemed that we were. unlikely to ever get back to the moon.

level on mars. so i have a boundless appreciation for. elon musk for many reasons but the fact. that he has put. mars on the incredible agenda is one of. the things that i appreciate. immensely so there's just this sort of. space nerd in me that just says god. that's cool. but on a more practical level we were. talking about. you know uh potentially inhabiting. planets. that aren't our own and we're thinking. about a benign civilization. that would do that in in planetary.

circumstances. where we're not causing other conscious. systems to suffer. i mean mars is a place that's very. promising there may be microbial life. there and i hope there is and if we. found it i think it would be. electrifying. but i think ultimately the moral. judgment would be made. that you know the continued thriving of. that microbial life. is of less concern than creating a. habitable planet to humans which would. be a. project on the many thousands of years. scale but i don't think that that would.

be. a greatly immoral act and if that. happened and if mars became. you know home to a self-sustaining group. of humans. that could survive a catastrophic. mistake here on earth. then yeah the fact that we have a backup. quality is great and if we could make. more. i'm sorry not backup colony backup copy. is great and if we can make more and. more such backup. copies throughout the solar system by. hollowing out asteroids and whatever. else it is maybe even venus we could get. rid of. three quarters of its atmosphere and you.

know turn it into a tropical paradise. um i think all of that is wonderful now. whether we can make the. leap from that to interstellar trans. transportation. with the incredible distances that are. involved. um i think that's an open question but i. think if we ever do that. it would be more like the pacific. ocean's uh channel of. human expansion than the atlantic oceans. and so. what i mean by that is uh when we think.

about. european society transmitting itself. across the atlantic. it's these big ambitious crazy. expensive one-shot expeditions like. columbus's. to make it across this enormous expanse. and at least initially. without all any certainty that there's. land on the other end right. so that's kind of how i view our space. program. is like big you know very conscious. deliberate. efforts go from point a to point b if. you look at how.

pacific islanders um transmitted. you know their descendants and their. culture and so forth. throughout polynesia and beyond it was. much more. you know inhabiting a place getting to. the point where there were people who. were ambitious or unwelcome enough. to decide it's time to go off island and. find the next one and pray to find the. next one. that method of transmission didn't. happen in a single. con swift year but it happened over many. many centuries.

and it was like going from this island. to that island and probably for every. expedition that went out to seek another. island and actually lucked out and found. one. god knows how many were lost at sea but. that form of transmission took place. over a very long period of time and i. could see us. you know perhaps you know going from the. inner solar system to the outer solar. system to the kuiper belt to the oort. cloud. you know there's there's theories that. there might be you know. planets out there that are not anchored. to stars like kind of. hop hop slowly transmitting ourselves at.

some point we're actually an. alpha centauri but i think that kind of. backup copy and transmission of our. physical presence and our culture. to a diversity of you know. extraterrestrial. outposts is a really exciting idea i. really never thought about that because. i. i have thought my thinking about space. exploration has been very. atlantic ocean-centric in the sense that. there will be one program with nasa and. maybe. private uh elon musk spacex or jeff. bezos and so on.

but it's true that with the help of elon. musk. making it cheaper and cheaper more. effective to create these technologies. where you could go into deep space. perhaps the way we actually. colonize the solar system and. uh and expand out into the galaxy. is basically just like these like. renegade ships. of of uh weirdos. it's just kind of like like home like. most of them like quote-unquote homemade.

but they just kind of venture out into. space and just like. like you know the android the initial. android model like. millions of like these little ships just. flying out most of them die off. uh in horrible accidents but some of. them will. will persist or there'll be stories of. them persisting. and over a period of decades and. centuries there'll be other attempts. almost always as a response to the main. set of efforts that's interesting. yeah because you kind of think of mars. colonization as.

the big nasa elon musk effort of a big. colony. but maybe the successful one would be. you know like a decade after that. there'll be like a ship from like some. kid. some high school kid who gets together a. large team and does something probably. illegal. and launches something where they end up. actually persisting. quite a bit and from that learning. lessons. that nobody ever gave permission for but. somehow actually flourish. and and then take that into the scale of.

uh. centuries forward into the into the rest. of space that's really interesting. yeah i think i think the giant steps are. likely to be nasa-like efforts like. there is no intermediate rock well i. guess it's the moon but even getting the. moon ain't that easy. between us and mars right so like the. giant sat steps the. the big hubs like the o'hare airports. yeah of the future probably will be very. deliberate efforts. but then you know you would have i think. that kind of. diffusion as space travel becomes more. democratized and more capable you'll.

have this sort of natural diffusion of. people who kind of want to be off grid. or think they can make a fortune there. you know kind of mentality that drove. people to san francisco i mean. san francisco was not populated as a. result of. a king ferdinand and isabella-like. effort to fund columbus going over it. was just a whole bunch of people making. individual. decisions that there's gold in them thar. hills and i'm going to go out and get a. piece of it so. i could see that kind of fusion what i. can't see and the reason that i think. the specific model of transmission is. more likely.

is i just can't see a nasa-like effort. to go. from earth to alpha centauri it's just. too far i just see lots and lots and. lots of. relatively tiny steps between now and. there and the fact is that there is. there are large chunks of matter going. at least a light year beyond the sun i. mean the oort cloud i think. extends at least a light year beyond the. sun and. you know then maybe there are these. untethered planets after that we won't. really know till we get there.

and if our cloud goes out a light year. and alpha centauri's. or cloud goes out of light year you've. already cut in half the distance. you know so who knows but yeah one of. the possibilities. probably the cheapest and most effective. way to create. interesting interstellar. spacecraft is ones that are powered and. driven by ai. and you can think of here's where you. have high school students be able to. build a sort of a hal 9000 version uh.

the modern version of that. and it's kind of interesting to think. about these uh. robots traveling out throughout perhaps. perhaps sadly long after human. civilization is gone. there will be these intelligent robots. flying throughout space. and perhaps land on uh office entire bee. or. any of those kinds of planets and uh and. colonize. sort of humanity continues.

through the proliferation of our. creations. like uh like robotic creations that have. some. echoes of that uh intelligence hopefully. also the consciousness does that make. you sad the future. where agi super intelligent or just. mediocre intelligent ai systems outlive. humans yeah i guess it depends on the. circumstances in which they outlive. humans so let's take the example that. you just gave.

uh we send out you know very. sophisticated agis. on simple rocket ships relatively simple. ones. that don't have to have all the life. support necessary for humans and. therefore. they're of trivial mass compared to a. crude ship a generation ship. and therefore they're way more likely to. happen so let's use that example. and let's say that they travel to. distant planets at. you know a speed that's not much faster. than what a chemical rocket can achieve. and so it's inevitably tens hundreds of. thousands of years before they make.

landfall someplace. so let's imagine that's going on and. meanwhile. we die for reasons that have nothing to. do with those agis diffusing throughout. the solar system. whether it's through climate change. nuclear war you know syn bio rogues and. bio whatever. in that kind of scenario the notion of. the agis that we created outlasting us. is very reassuring. because it says that like we we ended. but our descendants are out there and. hopefully some of them make landfall.

and create some echo of who we are so. that's a very optimistic one. where is the terminator scenario of a. super agi. arising on earth and getting left let. out of its box. due to some boo-boo on the part of its. creators who do not have super. intelligence. and then deciding that for whatever. reason it doesn't have any need for us. to be around and exterminating us. that makes me feel crushingly sad i mean. look i was sad. when my elementary school was shut down.

and bulldozed. even though i hadn't been a student. there for decades yeah you know the. thought of my hometown. getting disbanded is even worse that's. the thought of my home state of. connecticut getting disbanded and like. absorbed into massachusetts is even. worse the notion of humanity is just. crushingly crushingly sad to me. so you you hate goodbyes i i certain. goodbyes yes. some goodbyes are really really. liberating but yes. well but what if the terminators um. you know have consciousness and enjoy.

the hell out of life as well they're. just better at it. yeah well the have consciousness is a. really key element. and so there's no reason to be certain. that a super intelligence would have. consciousness. we don't know that factually at all and. so what is a very lonely outcome to me. is the rise of a super intelligence that. has a certain optimization function. that it's either been programmed with or.

that arises in an emergently. that says hey i want to do this thing. for which humans are either an. unacceptable risk their presence is. either an unacceptable risk or they're. just collateral damage. but there is no consciousness there then. the idea of the light of consciousness. being snuffed out by something that is. very. competent but has no consciousness is. really really sad yeah but i tend to. believe that. it's almost impossible to create a super. intelligent agent that can't destroy. human civilization without it being.

conscious. it's like those are coupled like you. have to. in order to destroy humans or. supersede humans you really have to. be accepted by humans i think this idea. that you can build systems. that that destroy human civilization. without them being deeply integrated. into human civilization is impossible. and for them to be integrated. they have to be human-like not just in. body and form but. in in all the things that we value as.

humans one of which is consciousness. the other one is just ability to. communicate the other ones poetry. music and beauty and all those things. like they have to be. all of those things i mean this is what. i think about. it it does make me sad but it's letting. go. which is uh they might be just better at. everything we appreciate than us and. that's sad. and and hopefully they'll keep us around. but.

i think it's a kind of. it is a kind of goodbye to uh. like realizing that we're not the most. special species on earth anymore. that's still painful it's still painful. and in terms of whether. such a creation would have to be. conscious let's say. i'm not so sure i mean you know let's. imagine something that can pass the. turing test. you know that something that passes the. turing test could over text. based interaction in any event um.

successfully mimic. uh you know a very conscious. intelligence on the other end but just. be completely unconscious. so that's a possibility and that if you. take that up a radical step. which i think we can be permitted if. we're thinking about super intelligence. um you could have something that could. reason its way. through this is my optimization function. and in order to get to it. i've got to deal with these messy. somewhat illogical things that are as. intelligent in relation to me. as they are intelligent relation to ants.

i can. trick them manipulate them whatever and. i know the resources i need i know this. i need this amount of power. i need to seize control of these. manufacturing resources. that are robotically operated i need to. improve those robots with software. upgrades and then ultimately mechanical. upgrades. which i can affect through x y and z. that doesn't you know. that could still be a thing that passes. the turing test. i don't think it's necessarily certain. that. that optimization function mass.

you know um maximizing entity. would be conscious see i so this is from. a very engineering perspective because i. i think a lot about natural language. processing all those kind of from. so very i'm speaking to a very specific. problem of just say the touring test. i really think that something like. consciousness. is required when you say reasoning. you're separating that from. consciousness but i think. consciousness is part of reasoning in in. the sense that.

you will not be able to become super. intelligent. in the way that it's required to be part. of human society. without having consciousness like i i. really think it's impossible to separate. the consciousness thing. but it's hard to define consciousness. when you just use that word. sure even just like the capacity the way. i think about. consciousness is the important. symptoms or maybe consequences of. consciousness one of which is. the capacity to suffer i think ai will.

need to be able to. suffer in order to become super. intelligent. to feel the pain the uncertainty the. doubt. the other part of that is not just the. suffering but the con. the ability to understand. that it too is mortal in in a sense that. has a self-awareness about his presence. in the world. understand that it's finite and be. terrified. of that finiteness i personally think. that's the fundamental part of the human.

condition is this. fear of death that most of us construct. an illusion around but. i think ai would need to be able to. really. have it part of its whole essence. like every computation every part of the. thing that generates. that does both the perception and. generates the behavior. will have to have i don't know how this. is accomplished. but it i believe it has to truly be. terrified of death. truly have the capacity to suffer and.

from that. something that would be recognized to us. humans as consciousness would emerge. whether it's the illusion of. consciousness i don't know the point. is it looks a whole hell of a lot like. consciousness to us humans. and i believe the ai when you ask it. will also say that it is conscious. you know in the full sense that we say. that we're conscious. and all of that i think is fully. integrated like you can't separate the. two the. idea of the paper clip maximizer.

that sort of ultra rationally would be. able to destroy. all humans because it's really good at. that at accomplishing. the um a simple objective function. that doesn't care about the value of. humans it may be possible but the number. of trajectories to that. are far outnumbered by the trajectories. that create something that is conscious. something that. appreciative of beauty creates beautiful. things in the same way that humans can. create beautiful things. and ultimately like the the sad.

destructive path for that ai. would look a lot like just better humans. than uh than like these cold machines. and i would say of course the cold. machines that lack consciousness. the the philosophical zombies make me. sad. but also what makes me sad is just. things that are far more powerful and. smart and uh creative than us. too because then then um in the same way.

that. alpha zero becoming a better chess. player than the best of humans. even starting with deep blue but really. with alpha zero. that makes me sad too one of the most. beautiful games. that humans ever created uh. that used to be seen as demonstrations. of the intellect which is chess. and go in other parts of the world have. been solved by ai that that makes me. quite sad. and it feels like the progress of that. is just pushing on forward.

oh it makes me sad too and to be. perfectly clear i. i absolutely believe that artificial. consciousness. is entirely possible and it's not. something i rule out at all i mean you. if you could. get smart enough to have a perfect map. of the neural structure and the neural. states and the amount of. neurotransmitters that are going between. every synapse in a particular person's. mind. could you replicate that in silica at. some. you know reasonably distant you know. point in the future absolutely and then.

you'd have a consciousness i don't. rule out the possibility of artificial. consciousness in any way. what i'm less certain about is whether. consciousness. is a requirement for super intelligence. pursuing a maximizing function of some. sort. um i don't i don't feel the certitude. that consciousness simply must be part. of that. um you had said you know for it to. coexist with human society. would need to be consciousness could be. entirely true but it also could. just exist orthogonally to human society.

and it could also upon attaining a. superintelligence. with a maximizing function very very. very rapidly. because of the speed at which computing. works compared to our own. you know meat based minds very very. rapidly. make the decisions and calculations. necessary to seize the reigns of power. before we even know what's going on yeah. i mean kind of like. biological viruses do yeah don't. necessarily they they integrate. themselves just fine with human society. yeah without technically without.

consciousness. without even being alive you know. technically by the standards of a lot of. biologists. so this is a bit of a tangent but you've. uh talked with sam. harris on that four hour special episode. we mentioned. and um i just curious to ask because i. use this meditation app i've been using. the past month to meditate is this. something you've integrated as part of. your life meditation or fasting. or has has some of sam harris rubbed off.

on you in terms of his appreciation of. of meditation and just kind of from a. third person perspective analyzing your. own mind. consciousness free will and so on you. know i have tried it three separate. times in my life really made a concerted. attack on meditation. and integrating it into my life um one. of them the most extreme was i. i took a class based on the work of john. kabat-zinn. uh who is you know in many ways one of. the. the founding people behind the mindful.

meditation movement. uh that required like part of the class. was you know it was a weekly class. and you were going to meditate an hour a. day. every day and having done that for i. think was 10 weeks it might have been 13. however long period of time was at the. end of it it just didn't stick as soon. as it was over. you know i did not feel that. gravitational pull i did not feel. the collapse in quality of life after.

wimping out on that on that project and. then the most recent one was actually. with sam's app. uh during during the lockdown i did make. a. pretty good and consistent concerted. effort to. listen to his 10-minute meditation every. day and i've always. fallen away from it and i i you know. you're kind of interpreting why did i. personally do this. i do believe it was ultimately because. it wasn't. bringing me that you know joy or inner. peace or. better confidence of being me that i was. hoping to get from it.

otherwise i think i would have clung to. it in the way that we cling to certain. good habits like i'm really good at. flossing my teeth not that you were. going to. ask lex but that's one thing that. defeats a lot of people. i'm good at that see uh herman hesse i. think. uh if you know which book or maybe i. forget where. i've read everything of his so it's it's. unclear. uh where it came from but he had this. idea that anybody who is um. who truly achieves mastery in things.

will learn how to meditate in some way. so it could be the. that for you the flossing of teeth is is. yet another. like little inkling of meditation like. it doesn't have to be this very. particular kind of meditation maybe. podcasting of an amazing podcast. that could be meditation the writing. process is meditation. for me like. there's there's a bunch of there's a. bunch of mechanisms which take my mind.

into a very particular place that looks. a whole lot like meditation. for example when i've been running. uh for the over the past couple years. and um. especially when i listen to certain. kinds of audiobooks. like i've listened to the rise and fall. of the third reich. i've listened to a lot of sort of world. war ii. which at once because i have a lot of. family who's lost in world war ii and so. so much of the soviet union is grounded. in the suffering of world war ii.

that somehow it connects me to my. history but also. there's some kind of purifying aspect to. thinking about how cruel. but at the same time how beautiful human. nature could be and so you're also. running. like it clears the mind from all the. concerns of the world and somehow it. takes you to this place where you're. like deeply. appreciative to be alive in the sense. that as opposed to listening to your. breath. or like feeling your breath and thinking. about your consciousness and all those.

kinds of processes. that uh sam's app does well this does. that. for me the the running and flossing may. do that for you. so maybe herman has these onto something. so yeah i hope flossing is not my main. form of expertise although i am going to. claim a certain expertise there and i'm. going to claim. somebody has to be the best flosser in. the world that ain't me i'm just glad. that i'm a consistent one i mean there. are a lot of things that bring me into a. flow state and i think maybe. perhaps that's one reason why meditation. isn't as necessary for me.

um i definitely enter a flow state when. i'm writing i'm definitely in her flow. state when i'm editing i definitely. enter a flow state when i'm mixing and. mastering music. um i enter a flow state when i'm doing. heavy heavy research. to either prepare for a podcast or to. also do tech investing you know to make. myself smart. in a a new field that is fairly alien to. me. um i can just the hours can just melt. away. while i'm you know reading this and. watching that youtube lecture and. you know going through this presentation.

and so forth so maybe because there's a. lot of things that bring me into a flow. state. in my normal weekly life not daily. unfortunately but certainly my normal. weekly life. that i have less of an urge to meditate. you've been working with sam's app. for about a month now you said um is. this your first run-in with meditation. it's your first attempt to integrate it. with with your life for like. meditation meditation yeah i always. thought running and thinking. i listened to brown noise often that. takes my mind. i don't know what the hell it does but. it takes my mind immediately into like.

the state where i'm deeply focused on. anything i do. i don't know why so it's like you're. accompanying sound. yeah really what's the difference. between brown and white noise this is a. cool term i haven't heard before. so people should look up brown noise. they don't have to because you're about. to tell them what it is. oh because you have to experience you. have to listen to it so i think. white noise is uh this is this has to do. with music i think. there's different colors there's pink. noise and i think that has to do with uh. like the frequencies like the white.

noise is usually. uh less bassy brow noise is very bassy. so it's more like like. versus like like the. if that makes sense so yeah it takes. there's like a deepness to it i think it. everyone is different but for me uh. i i was it was when i was uh i was a. research scientist at mit when i would. especially when there's a lot of. students around. i remember just being annoyed at the. noise of people talking.

and one of my colleagues said well you. should try listening to brown noise. like it really knocks out everything. because i used to wear your earplugs too. like just see if i can block it out. and one like the moment i put it on. something. it's as if my mind was waiting all these. years. to hear that sound everything's just. focused in. at least it makes me wonder how many. other amazing things out there. they're waiting to discover from my own. particular. like biological for my own particular.

brain. so that it just goes the mind just. focuses in it's kind of incredible so i. see that as a kind of meditation. maybe uh i'm using a. performance-enhancing uh. uh sound to achieve that meditation but. i've been doing that for. for many years now and running and. walking and doing uh. cal newport was the first person that. introduced me to the idea of deep work. just put a word to the kind of thinking. that's required to sort of deeply think.

about a problem especially if it's. mathematical in nature. i see that as a kind of meditation. because what it's doing is you're. you have these constructs in your mind. that you're building on top of each. other. and there's all these distracting. thoughts that keep bombarding your. from all over the place and the whole. process is you slowly let them kind of. move past you and that's a meditative. process it's very meditative that sounds. a lot like what. sam talks about um in his meditation app. which i did use to be clear for a while. of just letting the thought go by.

without deranging you derangement is one. of sam's favorite words as i'm sure you. know. um but uh brown noise that's really. intriguing i am i am going to try that. as soon as this evening. yeah to see to see if it works but very. well might not work at all so yeah yeah. i think the interesting point is and the. same with the fasting and the diet. is uh i long ago. stopped trusting experts or maybe taking. the word of. experts as the gospel truth and only.

using it. as a an inspiration to try. something to try thoroughly something so. fasting was one of the things when i. first discovered i've been. many times eating just once a day so. that's a 24-hour fast. it makes me feel amazing and at the same. time eating only meat. putting ethical concerns aside makes me. feel amazing i. don't know why it doesn't the the point.

is to be. an n of one scientist until nutrition. science becomes a real science. to it to where it's doing like studies. that deeply understand. the biology underlying all of it and. also does. real thorough long-term. studies of thousands if not millions of. people. versus uh versus a very like small. studies that are kind of generalizing. from. the very from very noisy data and all. those kinds of things.

where you can't control all the elements. particularly because our own personal. metabolism. is highly variant among us so there are. going to be some people like if brown. noise is a game changer. for seven percent of people yeah there's. 93. odds that i'm not one of them but. there's certainly every reason in the. world to test it out. now so i'm intrigued by the fasting i i. like you. um well i assume like you i don't have. any problem going to one meal a day and. i often do that inadvertently. and i've never done it methodically like.

i've never done it like i'm going to do. this for 15 days maybe i should. and maybe i should like how many how. many days in a row of the one day. one meal a day did you find brought. noticeable impact to you was it after. three days of it was it. months of it like what was it well the. noticeable impact is. day one so for me folk because i i eat a. very low carb diet. so the hunger wasn't the hugest issue. like if there wasn't a painful hunger. egg like wanting to eat yeah so i was.

already kind of primed for it. and uh the the benefit comes from a lot. of people that do intermittent fasting. that's only like 16 hours. of fasting get this benefit too is the. focus there's a clarity of thought. if my brain was a runner. it felt like i'm running on a track when. i'm fasting versus running in quicksand. like it's much crisper and is this your. first 72 hour faster. first time during 72 hours yeah and. that's a different thing. but similar like i'm going up and down.

in terms of. in terms of hunger and the focus is. really crisp. the thing i'm noticing most of all to be. honest. is um how much eating even when it's. once a day. or twice a day is part a big part of my. life. like i almost feel like i have way more. time in my life right. and it's not so much about the eating. but like i don't have to plan my day. around. like today i don't have any eating to do.

it does free up hours or any cleaning up. after eating. yeah or provisioning of food but like or. even like. thinking about it's not a thing like so. when you think about what you're going. to do. tonight i think i'm realizing that. as opposed to thinking you know i'm. going to work on this problem or i'm. going to go on this walk. or i'm going to call this person i often. think. i'm going to eat this thing you you. allow. dinner as a kind of uh you know when. people talk about like the weather or. something like that.

it's almost like a generic thought you. allow yourself to have. because uh because it's the lazy thought. and i don't have the opportunity to have. that thought because i'm not eating it. right so now i get to think about like. the things i'm actually gonna do tonight. that are more. complicated than the eating process. that's that's been the most. noticeable thing and to be honest and. then there's people that. have written me that have done seven day. fast. and uh there's a few people that written. me and i've heard of this. is doing uh 30 day fasts and.

it's interesting the body i don't know. what the health benefits are necessarily. what that shows me is how adaptable the. human body is. yeah and and that's incredible and. that's something. really important to remember when we uh. think about how to live life because the. body adapts. yeah i mean we sure couldn't go 30 days. without water that's right. um but food yeah it's been done it's. demonstrably possible you ever read. um franz kafka has a great short story.

called the hunger artist. yeah i love that great story. you know that was before i started. fasting i read that story and i i. admired the beauty of that the artistry. of that actual hunger artist. yeah that uh it's like madness but it. also felt like a little bit of genius. i actually have to reread it you know. what that's what i'm going to do tonight. and i read it. because i'm doing the fast because. you're in the midst of it yeah it makes. me very contextual i haven't read it. since high school and i'd love to read. it again i love his work so. we'll read it tonight too and part of. the reason of.

sort of i've uh here in texas people. have been so. friendly that i've been non-stop eating. like brisket. with incredible people a lot of whiskey. as well so. i gained quite a bit of weight which i'm. embracing it's okay. but i am also aware as i'm fasting. that like i have a lot of fat for for. to run on like i have a lot of like um. natural resources on my body you've got. reserves reserves. yeah and that's that's really cool you.

know there's like a re this whole. thing this biology works well i can go a. long time. because of the uh the long-term. investing in terms of brisket that i've. been doing in the weeks before so it's. all training. it's all true prep work prep work yeah. so okay you open a bunch of doors one of. which is music. so i gotta walk in at least for a brief. moment i love guitar love music. you founded a music company uh but. you're also a musician yourself. let me ask the big ridiculous question. first what's the greatest song of all.

time. greatest song of all time okay wow it's. it's gonna. obviously vary dramatically from genre. to genre so. like you i like guitar uh perhaps like. you. although i've dabbled in in inhaling. every genre of music. that i can almost practically imagine i. keep coming back. to you know the sound of bass guitar. drum keyboards voice. i love that style of music and added to.

it i think. a lot of really cool electronic. production make something that's. really really new and hybridy and. awesome. but you know that kind of like. guitar-based. rock um i think i've gotta go. with won't get fooled again by the who. um. it is such an epic song it's got so much. grandeur to it. it uses the synthesizers that were. available at the time this has got to be. i think 1972-73 which are very very.

primitive to our ears. but uses them in this hypnotic and. beautiful way. that i can't imagine somebody with the. greatest synthetic. conceivable by today's technology could. do a better job of. in the context of that song and it's. you know almost operatic so i would say. in that genre the genre of you know. rock um that would be my nomination i'm. totally. in my brain pinball wizard is overriding.

everything else but who's so like i. can't even imagine the song. well i would say ironically with pinball. wizard so that came from the movie tommy. and in the movie tommy uh the rival. of tommy the reigning pinball champ was. elton john. and so there are a couple versions of. pinball wizard out there one sung by. roger daltrey of the who. which a purist would say hey that's the. real pinball wizard. but the version that is sung by elton. john in the movie. which is available though to those who.

are ambitious and want to dig for it. that's even better in my mind yeah the. covers. and i for myself i was thinking what is. the song. for me um. i think uh i think that changes day to. day too i was realizing that. but for me somebody who values. lyrics as well and the emotion in the. song. by the way hallelujah by uh leonard. cohen was the close one but the number.

one is. the johnny cash's cover of hurt that. is um there. there's something so powerful about that. song. about that cover about that performance. maybe another one is the cover of sound. of silence. uh maybe there's something about covers. for me. so who's cover sounds because simon and. garfunkel i think did the original. recording yes right. so which cover is it that there's a. cover by. a disturbed it's a metal band which is.

so interesting because i'm really not. into that kind of metal but. he does a pure vocal performance so he's. he's not doing a metal performance. is i would say is one of the greatest. people should see it. it's like 400 million views or something. like that. it's a it's probably the greatest live. vocal performance i've ever heard is. disturbed covering sound of silence. and then do it as soon as i get home and. that song came to life to me in the way. that simon gothanka never did there was.

no. for me it was simon and garfunkel. there's not a there's not a pain there's. not an anger. there's not uh like um. power to their performance it's it's. almost like this uh. melancholy i don't know well there's a. lot i guess there's a lot of. beauty to it like yeah objectively. beautiful. and yes i think i never thought of this. until now but i think if you put. entirely different lyrics on top of it. unless they were joyous which would be. weird.

um it wouldn't necessarily lose that. much it's just a beauty in the. harmonizing. it's soft and you're right it's not it's. not. it's not dripping with emotion right the. vocal performance is not dripping with. emotion it's. dripping with with you know harmonizing. you know technical harmonizing. brilliance and beauty. now if you compare that to the disturbed. cover or the. johnny cash's herd cover when you walk. away. there's a few it's it's haunting it's uh.

it stays with you for a long time. there's certain performances that will. just. stay with you to where. like if you watch people respond to that. and that's certainly how i felt when you. listen to that. the disturbed performance or giant cash. hurt. there's a response to where you just sit. there with your mouth open. kind of like paralyzed by it somehow. and i think that's what makes for a. great song to where you're just like.

it's not that you're like singing along. or having fun that that's another. way a song could be great but where. you're just like. what this is you're in awe yeah. if we go to uh listen.com. and that whole fascinating era of music. yeah in the. in the 90s transitioning to the arts. the so i remember those days the napster. days when piracy. from my perspective allegedly ruled the. land.

um what do you make of that whole era. what what are the big. what was first of all your experiences. of that era and uh. what were the big takeaways in terms of. piracy in terms of what. what it takes to build a company that. succeeds. in that kind of in in that kind of. digital space in terms of music but in. terms of. anything creative well um so for those. who don't remember which is going to be. most folks. listen.com created a service called. rhapsody which is much much more. recognizable to folks because rhapsody.

became a pretty big name for reasons. i'll get into in a second. so um for people who aren't you know. don't know their early online music. history we were. the first company so i founded listen i. was alone founder. and um rhapsody was we were the first. service to get full catalog licenses. from all the major. music labels uh in order to distribute. their music online and we specifically. did it through. a mechanism which at the time struck. people as exotic and bizarre. and kind of incomprehensible which was. unlimited on demand streaming.

which of course now you know it's a. model that's been you know appropriated. uh by spotify and apple and many many. others so we were a pioneer on that. front. what was really really really hard about. doing business in those days. was the reaction of the music labels to. piracy which was. about 180 degrees opposite of what their. reaction. quote unquote should have been from the. standpoint of preserving their business. from piracy. so napster came along and was.

a service that enabled people to get. near unlimited access to. most songs i mean truly obscure things. could be very hard to find on napster. but most songs. with a relatively simple you know. one-click. uh ability to download those songs that. have the mp3s. on on their hard drives but there was a. lot that was very messy. about the napster experience you might. download a really. god-awful recording of that song you may.

download a recording that actually. wasn't that song with some prankster. putting it up to sort of mess with. people you could struggle to find the. song that you're looking for you could. end up. finding yourself connected with. peer-to-peer you might. randomly find yourself connected to. somebody in bulgaria doesn't have a very. good internet connection so you might. wait. 19 minutes only for it to snap etc etc. and our argument to well actually let's. start with how that hit the music labels. the music labels had been in a very very.

comfortable position for. many many decades of essentially. you know having monopoly. you know having been the monopoly. providers of a certain subset of artists. any given. label was a monopoly provider of the. artists and the recordings that they. owned. and they could sell it at what turned. out to be tremendously favorable rates. in the late era of the cd. um you know you were talking close to. twenty dollars for a compact disc. that might have one song that you were. crazy about and simply needed to own.

that might actually be glued to 17 other. songs that you found to be sure crap. and so the music industry had used. the fact that it had this unbelievable. leverage. and profound pricing power. to really get music lovers to the point. that they felt very very misused by the. entire situation now along comes napster. and music sales start getting gutted. with extreme. rapidity and the reaction of the music.

industry to that was one of shock. and absolute fury which is. understandable. you know i mean industries do get gutted. all the time. but i struggle to think of an analog of. an industry that got it got gutted that. rapidly. i mean we could say that passenger train. service certainly got. gutted by airlines but that was a. process that took place over decades and. decades and decades it wasn't something. that happened. you know really started showing up in. the numbers in a single digit number of.

months. and started looking like an existential. threat within a year or two. so the music industry is quite. understandably. in a state of shock and fury i don't. blame them for that. but then their reaction was catastrophic. both for themselves and almost for. people like us. who were trying to do you know the. cowboy and the white hat thing. so our response to the music industry. was look. what you need to do to fight piracy you. can't put the genie back in the bottle.

you can't. switch off the internet even if you all. shut your eyes and wish. very very very hard the internet is not. going away. and these peer-to-peer technologies are. genies out of the bottle and if you. god don't whatever you do don't shut. down napster because if you do. suddenly that technology is going to. splinter into 30 different nodes that. you'll never ever be able to shut off. what we suggested to them is like look. what you want to do is to create a. massively. better experience to piracy something.

that's way better that you sell at a. completely reasonable price. and this is what it is don't just give. people access to that very limited. number of songs that they happen to have. acquired. and paid for or pirated and have on. their hard drive. give them access to all of the music in. the world for a simple low price and. obviously that doesn't sound like a. crazy suggestion i don't think to. anybody's ears today. because that is how the majority of. music is now being consumed online but. in doing that. you're going to create a much much.

better option. to this kind of crappy kind of rickety. kind of you know buggy. process of acquiring mp3s now. unfortunately the music industry was so. angry about napster and so forth that. for. essentially three and a half years they. folded their arms stamped their feet. and boycotted the internet so they. basically gave people who. were fervently passionate about music. and were digitally modern. they gave them basically one choice if. you want to have access to digital music. we the music industry insists that you.

steal it because we are not going to. sell it to you. yeah so what that did is it made an. entire generation of people. morally comfortable with swiping the. music because they felt quite. pragmatically well they're not giving me. any choice here it's like a. you know 20 year old violating the 21. drinking age. they do that they're not going to feel. like felons. they're going to be like this is an. unreasonable law and i'm skirting it. right. so i make a whole generation of people. morally comfortable. with swiping music but also technically.

adept at it. and when they did shut down napster and. kind of even trickier tools and like. tweakier tools like kazaa and so forth. came along. people just figured out how to do it so. by the time they. finally grudgingly it took years. allowed us to release this experience. that we were quite convinced would be. better than piracy. we had this enormous hole had been dug. where lots of people said music is a. thing that is free. and that's morally okay and i know how.

to get it. and so streaming took many many many. more years. to take off and become the you know the. gargantuan thing the juggernaut it is. today. then would have happened if they'd made. you know pivoted to. let's sell a better experience as. opposed to demand that people want. digital music. steal it like what lessons do we draw. from that because. we're probably in the midst of living. through a bunch of. similar situations in different domains. currently we just don't know there's a. lot of things in this world that are. really painful.

like uh i mean i don't know if you can. draw perfect parallels but. fiat money versus cryptocurrency there's. a lot of currently. people in power who are kind of very. skeptical about cryptocurrency. although that's changing but it's. arguable it's changing way too slowly. there's a lot of people making that. argument. where there should be a complete like. coinbase and all this stuff. switched to that there's a lot of other. domains. that where a pivot. like if you pivot now you're going to.

win. big but you don't pivot because you're. stubborn. and so i mean it's like is this just the. way that companies are. the company succeeds initially and then. it grows. and there's a huge number of employees. and managers. that don't have the guts or the. institutional. mechanisms to do the pivot is that's. just the way of companies. well i think what happens i'll use the. case of the music industry. there was an economic model that had put. food on the table and paid for.

marble lobbies and seven and even. eight-figure executive salaries for many. many decades. which was the physical collection of. music. and then you start talking about. something like unlimited streaming. and it it seems so ephemeral one like. such a long shot. that people start worrying about. cannibalizing their own business. and they lose sight of the fact that. something illicit is cannibalizing. their business at an extraordinarily. fast rate and so if they don't do it. themselves. they're doomed i mean we used to put.

slides in front of these folks this is. really funny. where we said okay let's assume rhapsody. we want it to be 9.99 a month. and we want it to be 12 months so it's. 120. a year from the budget of a music lover. and then we were also able to get. reasonably accurate statistics that. showed how many cds per year. the average person who bothered to. collect music which was not all people. actually bought and it was. overwhelmingly clear that the average cd. plot buyer. spends a hell of a lot less than 120 a.

year on music. this is a revenue expansion blah blah. blah but all. they could think of and i'm not saying. this in a pejorative or. or patronizing way i don't blame them. they'd grown up in this environment for. decades. all they could think of was the. incredible margins that they had on. a cd and they would say well if. this cd you know by the mechanism that. you guys are proposing. you know the cd that i'm selling for. 17.99. somebody would need to stream those.

songs we were talking about a penny a. play back then it's less than that now. that the record labels get paid. but you know would have to stream songs. from that 1799 times it's never going to. happen. so they were just sort of stuck in the. model of this but it's like no dude but. they're going to spend money on all this. other stuff so. i think people get very hung up on that. i mean another example is really. the taxi industry was not monolithic. like that like the music labels. it was a whole bunch of fleets and a. whole bunch of cities very very. fragmented it's an imperfect analogy but. nonetheless. imagine if the taxi industry writ large.

upon seeing uber. said oh my god people want to be able to. hail things. easily cheaply they don't want to mess. with cash they want to know how many. minutes it's going to be they want to. know the fair in advance and they want a. much bigger fleet than what we've got if. the taxi industry had. rolled out something like that with the. branding of yellow taxis. universally known and kind of loved by. americans. and expanded their fleet in a necessary. manner i don't think uber lyft ever. would have gotten a foothold yeah.

um but the problem there was that real. economics in the taxi industry. wasn't with fairs it was with the. scarcity of medallions. and so the taxi fleets in many cases. owned gazillions of. medallions whose value came from their. very scarcity. so they simply couldn't pivot to that so. you think you end up having these vested. interests with. economics that aren't necessarily. visible to outsiders. who get very very reluctant to disrupt.

their own model which is why it ends up. coming from the outside so frequently. so you know what it takes to build a. successful startup but you're also an. investor in a lot of successful startups. let me ask for advice what do you think. it takes to build a successful startup. by way of advice. well i think it starts i mean everything. starts. and even ends with the founder and so i. think it's really really important to. look at the founders. motivations and their sophistication.

about what they're doing. um in almost all cases that i'm familiar. with and have thought hard about. you've had a founder who was deeply. deeply inculcated. in the domain of technology that they. were taking on. now what's interesting about that is you. could say you know wait how is that. possible because there's so many young. founders when you look at young founders. they're generally coming out of very. nascent emerging fields of technology. we're simply being present and accounted.

for and engaged in the community for a. period of even months. is enough time to make them very very. deeply inculcated i mean you look at. mark andreessen. and netscape um you know mark had been. doing visual. web browsers when netscape had been. founded for what a year and a half but. he created the first one. you know and in mosaic when he was an. undergrad. and the commercial internet was. pre-nascent in 1994 when that escape was. was founded. so there's somebody who's very very deep.

in their domain mark zuckerberg also. social networking very deep in his. domain even though it was. nascent at the time lots of people doing. crypto stuff i mean you know in the. you know ten years ago even seven or. eight years ago. by being a really really vehement and. engaged participant in the crypto. ecosystem you could be an expert in that. you look. however more established industries take. salesforce.com salesforce automation. pretty mature field when it got started. who's the executive and the founder. um mark benioff who spent 13 years at.

oracle and was an investor in siebel. systems which. ended up being salesforce's main. competition so you know more established. you need the entrepreneur to be very. very deep in the technology and the. culture and the winter. of the space because you need that. entrepreneur that founder. to have just an unbelievably accurate. intuitive sense. for where the puck is going right and. that only comes. from being very deep so that is sort of.

factor number one and the next thing is. that that founder needs to be. charismatic. and or credible or ideally both. in exactly the right ways to be able to. attract. a team that is bought into that vision. and is bought into that founders. intuitions being correct. and not just the team obviously but also. the investors. so it takes a certain personality type. to pull that off. then the next thing i'm still talking. about a founder is. a relentlessness and indeed a mono mania.

to put this above things that. might rationally you know should perhaps. rationally supersede it for a period of. time. um to just relentlessly pivot when. pivoting's called for and it's always. called for i mean. think of even very successful companies. like how many times did. facebook pivot you know news feed was. something that was completely alien to. the original version. of facebook and came found. foundationally important how many times.

at google how many. times had any given how many times has. apple pivoted you know that. founder energy in dna when the foundry. moves on the dna that's been inculcated. with a company. has to have that relentlessness and that. ability to pivot and pivot and pivot. without. you know being worried about sacred cows. and then the last thing i'll say about. the founder before i get to the rest of. the team and. that'll be mercifully brief is the. founder. has to be obviously a really great hirer. but just important a very good fire.

and firing is a horrific experience. for both people involved in it it is a. wrenching emotional experience. and being good at realizing when. this particular person is damaging the. interests of the company. and the team and the shareholders and. you know. having the intestinal fortitude to have. that conversation and make it happen. is something that most people don't have.

in them. and it's something that needs to be. developed in most people. um or maybe some people have it. naturally but without. that ability that will take an a plus. organization into b minus range very. very quickly. and um so that's all what needs to be. present in the founder. can you just say sure how damn good you. are rob that was brilliant. the the one thing that was kind of. really kind of surprising to me. is um having a deep technical knowledge.

because um i think the way you expressed. it which is. that allows you to be really honest with. the capabilities of. what like what's possible. like of course you're. often trying to do the impossible but in. order to do the impossible you have to. be. quote unquote impossible but you have to. be honest with what is actually possible. and it doesn't necessarily have to be. the technical competence it's got to be. in my view. just a complete immersion in that.

emerging market and so i. can imagine there are a couple people. out there who have started really good. crypto. projects who themselves aren't right in. the code. but they're immersed in the culture and. through the culture and a deep. understanding of what's happening and. what's not happening they can get a good. intuition. of what's possible but the very first. power higher. i mean a good great way to solve that is. to have a technical co-founder. and you know dual founder companies have. become extremely. common for that reason uh and if you're.

not doing that and you're. not the technical person but you are the. founder. you've got to be really great at hiring. a. very damn good technical person very. very fast. can i can i on the founder ask you is it. possible. to do this alone there's so many people. giving advice on saying that it's. impossible to do the first few steps not. impossible but much more difficult to do. it alone. if we were to take the journey saying.

especially in the software world where. there's not. significant investment required for to. build something up. yeah is it possible to go to the uh. to a prototype to something that. essentially works and already has a huge. number of customers. alone sure um there are lots and lots of. low f. loan founder companies out there that. have made an incredible difference. um i mean i'm not certainly putting. rhapsody in the league of spotify we. were too early to be spotify but we did. an. awful lot of innovation and then after.

the company sold and ended up in the. hands of real networks and. mtv you know got to millions of subs. right i was a lone founder. and i studied arabic and middle eastern. history undergrad. so i def wasn't very very technical but. yeah loan founders can absolutely work. and the advantage of a loan founder. is you don't have the catastrophic. potential. of a falling out between founders i mean. two founders. who fall out with each other badly can. rip a company to shreds. because they both have an enormous.

amount of equity an enormous amount of. power and the capital structure is a. result of that. they both have an enormous amount of. moral authority. with the team as a result of each having. that founder role. and i have witnessed over the years. many many situations in which companies. have been shredded. or have suffered near fatal blows. because of a falling out between. founders and the more founders you add. the more risky that becomes i i i don't.

think there should ever. almost i mean you never say never but. multiple founders beyond two. um is such an unstable and potentially. treacherous situation. that i would never ever recommend going. beyond two but i do see. value in the non-technical sort of. business and market and. outside-minded founder teaming up with. the technical founder. um there is a lot of merit to that but. there's a lot of danger in that unless. those two blow apart. was it lonely for you unbelievably and.

that's the drawback. i mean if you're a lone founder um. there is no other person that you can. sit down with. and tackle problems and talk them. through who has precisely. or nearly precisely your alignment of. interests. your most trusted board member is likely. an investor. and therefore at the end of the day has. the interest of preferred stock in mind. not common stock. your most trusted vp.

who might own a very significant stake. in the company. doesn't own anywhere near your stake in. the company and so their long-term. interest. may well be in getting the right level. of experience and credibility necessary. to peel off and start their own company. or their interests might be aligned with. you know. jumping ship and and setting up with. another with a. with a different company whether it's a. rival or one in a completely different. space. so yeah being a loan founder is a. spectacularly lonely thing and that's a. major downside to what what about. mentorship because you're a mentor to a.

lot of people. can you find an alleviation to that. loneliness in the space of ideas. with a good mentor with a good mentor. like a mentor who's mentoring you. yeah yeah you can a great deal. particularly if it's somebody who's been. through this very process and has. navigated it successfully. and cares enough about you and your. well-being being. to give you you know beautifully. unvarnished advice that can be a huge. huge thing that can disraise things a. great deal and i had a board member.

who who was not an investor who. basically played that role for me to a. great degree he came in. maybe halfway through the company's. history though i would have needed that. the most in the very earliest days. yeah the loneliness um. it's the whole journey of life we're. always alone alone together. it pays to embrace that you were saying. that there might be something outside of. the founder that's also. that you were promising to be brief on.

yeah okay so. we talked about the founder you were. asking what makes a great startup yes. and great founder is thing number one. but then thing number two and it's. ginormous is a great team. and so i said so much about the founder. because. one hopes or one believes that a founder. who is a great hirer. is going to be hiring people and in. charge of critical functions like. engineering and marketing and biz dev. and sales and so forth who themselves. are great hirers. but what needs to radiate from the. founder into the team that might be a.

little bit different from what's. in the gene code of the founder the team. needs to be fully bought in to. the you know the intuitions and the. vision of the founder. great we've got that but um. the team needs to have a slightly. different thing which is. you know it's 99 obsession. is execution is to relentlessly hit. the milestones hit the objectives hit. the quarterly goals. that is you know one percent vision you.

don't want to get. lose that but execution. machines you know people who have a. demonstrated ability. and a demonstrated focus on yeah i go. from point to point to point. i try to beat and raise expectations. relentlessly. never fall short and you know both sort. of blaze and follow the path. not that the path is getting i mean. blaze the trail as well i mean. a good founder is going to trust that vp. of sales.

to have a better sense of what it takes. to build out that organization what the. milestones be and it's gonna be kind of. a dialogue amongst those. at the top but you know execution. obsession. in the team is the next thing yeah. there's some sense where the founder. you know you talk about sort of the. space of ideas like first principles. thinking. asking big difficult questions of like. future trajectories. or having a big vision and big picture. dreams. you can almost be a dreamer it feels. like.

when you're like not the founder but. in the space of sort of leadership. but when it gets to the ground floor. there has to be execution. there has to be hitting deadlines. and uh sometimes those are attention. there's something about. dreams that um. our attention with the pragmatic nature. of execution. not dreams but sort of ambitious vision.

and though those have to be i suppose. coupled. the vision in the leader and the. execution. in the in the software world that would. be the programmer. or the designer absolutely amongst. many other things you're an incredible. conversationalist. a podcaster you host a podcast called. after on. what i mean there's a million questions. i want to ask you here but. one at the highest level what do you. think makes for a great conversation.

i would say two things one of two things. and ideally both of two things one is. if something is very. is beautifully architected whether it's. done. deliberately and methodically and. willfully as. you know as when i do it or whether that. just emerges from the conversation but. something that's beautifully architected. that can create something that's. incredibly powerful and memorable. um or something where there's just.

extraordinary chemistry. yes and so with all in or go way back. you might remember the npr show car talk. oh yeah i wouldn't care less about auto. mechanics myself. that's right but i love that show. because the banter between those two. guys was just. beyond it without any parallel right. you know and some kind of edgy podcast. like red scare. is just really entertaining to me. because the banter the women on that. show is just so good. and all in and that kind of thing so i. think it's it's a combination of sort of.

the arc. and the chemistry and i think because. the. arc can be so important that's why very. very highly produced. uh podcasts like this american life. obviously a radio show but i think of a. podcast because that's how i always. consume it. or criminal or you know a lot of what. wonder he does. and so forth that is real documentary. making. and that requires a big team and a big. budget relative to the kinds of things. you and i do but nonetheless. then you got that arc and that can be.

really really compelling but if we go. back. to conversation i think it's a. combination of structure and chemistry. yeah and i've actually personally have. lost i used to. love this american life and for some. reason because it lacks. the possibility of magic. it's engineered magic i i've fallen off. of it myself. as well i mean when i fell madly in love. with it during the auts. it was the only thing going yeah they. were really smart to adopting to adopt.

podcasting as a distribution mechanism. early. um but yeah i think that. maybe there's a little bit less magic. there now because i think they have. agendas other than. necessarily just delighting their. listeners with quirky stories which i. think is what it was all about back in. the day and some other things. is there like a memorable conversation. that you've had on the podcast whether. it was because it was wild and. fun or one that was exceptionally. challenging. maybe challenging to prepare for that.

kind of thing is there something that. stands out in your mind that. that's uh you can draw an insight from. yeah i mean this. no way diminishes the episodes that will. not be. the answer to these two questions but an. example. of something that was really really. challenging to prepare for was george. church. so as i'm sure you know and as i'm sure. many of your listeners know he is one of. the absolute. leading lights in the field of synthetic. biology he's also unbelievably prolific. his lab is large and has all kinds of.

efforts have spun out of that. and what i wanted to make my george. church episode about. was first of all you know grounding. people into. what is this thing called syn bio and. that required me to learn a hell of a. lot more about sin bio than i knew. going into it so there was just this. very. broad i mean i knew much more than the. average person going into that episode. but there was this incredible breadth of. grounding that i needed to give myself. in the domain. and then george does so many interesting.

things there's so many interesting. things emitting from his lab. that you know and and he had he and i. had a really good dialogue he was a. great guide going into it. winnowing it down to the three to four. that i really wanted. us to focus on to create a sense of. wonder and magic in the listener of what. could be possible from this. very broad spectrum domain that was a. doozy of a challenge that was a. tough tough tough one to prepare for now. in terms of something that was just. wild and fun and unexpected.

i mean by the time we sat down to. interview i knew where we were going to. go but just in terms. of the idea space don hoffman. oh wow yeah so don hoffman uh as again. some listeners probably know because. he's. i think i was the first podcaster to. interview him i'm sure some of your. listeners are familiar with them but. he has this unbelievably contrarian. take on the nature of reality. but it is contrarian in a way that all.

the ideas are. highly internally consistent and snap. together in a way that's. just delightful and it seems. as radically violating of our intuitions. and is radically violating of the. probable nature of reality as anything. that one can encounter but an analogy. that he uses which is very powerful. which is. what intuition could possibly be more. powerful. than the notion that there is a single. unitary direction called. down and we're on this big flat thing.

for which there is a thing called down. and we all know that i mean that's the. most intuitive thing that one. could probably think of and we all know. that that ain't true. so my conversation with don hoffman is. just wild and. full of plot twists and interesting. stuff. and the interesting thing about the. wildness of his ideas. it's to me at least as a listener. coupled with uh. he's a good listener and he empathizes.

with the people who challenge his ideas. like. uh what's uh what's a better way to. phrase that. he is a welcoming of challenge in a way. that creates a really. fun conversation oh totally yeah he he. he loves a perry or a jab whatever the. word is. yeah at his argument he honors it he's a. very very you know gentle and. and non-combative soul but then he.

is very good and takes great evident joy. in responding to that in in a way that. expands your understanding of his. thinking. let me as a small tangent of tying up. together our previous conversation about. listening.com and streaming and spotify. and the world of podcasting. so we've been talking about this magical. medium of podcasting. i have a lot of friends at spotify at. in the high positions of spotify as well.

i worry about spotify and podcasting. and the future of podcasting in general. that. moves podcasting in the place of maybe. wild gardens of sorts um. since you've had a foot in both worlds. have a foot in both worlds. do you worry as well about the future of. podcasting. yeah i think walled gardens are really.

toxic to the medium that they start. balkanizing so to take an example i'll. take two examples. with music it was a very very big deal. that at rhapsody we were the first. company to get full catalog licenses. from all. back then there were five major music. labels and also hundreds and hundreds of. indies because you needed to present the. listener with a sense that. basically everything is there and there. is. essentially no friction to discovering.

that which is new. and you can wander this realm and all. you really need. is a good map whether it is something. that somebody that the editorial team. assembled or a good algorithm or. whatever it is but a good map to wander. this domain. when you start walling things off a you. undermine the joy of friction free. discovery. which is an incredibly valuable thing to. deliver to your customer. both from a business standpoint and. simply from. you know a humanistic standpoint of you. want to bring delight to people.

but it also creates an incredible. opening vector for piracy and so. something that's very different from the. rhapsody spotify. etc like experience is what we have now. in video. you know like wow is that show on hulu. is it on netflix is it on something like. ifc channel is it on discovery plus is. it here is it there. and the more frustration and toe. stubbing. that people encounter when they.

are seeking something and they're. already paying a very respectable amount. of money. per month to have access to content they. can't find it. the more that happens the more people. are going to be driven to piracy. solutions like to hell with it. never know where i'm going to find. something i never know what it's going. to cost oftentimes. really interesting things are simply. unavailable. that surprises me the number of times. that i've been looking for things i. don't even think are that obscure. that are just it says not available in. your geography period mister right. so i think that that's a mistake and.

then the other thing is. you know for podcasters and lovers of. podcasting. we should want to resist this wall. garden thing because it. a it it does um. smother this friction free or eradicate. this friction free discovery unless you. want to sign up for. lots of different services and also. dims the voice of somebody who might be. able to have a far far far bigger. impact by reaching far more neurons.

you know with their ideas i'll use an. example from it was probably the 90s or. maybe it was the oughts. of howard stern who had the biggest. megaphone or maybe the second biggest. after oprah. megaphone and popular culture and. because he was syndicated on hundreds. and hundreds and hundreds of radio. stations at a time when terrestrial. broadcast was the main thing people. listened to in their car no more. obviously. but when he decided to go over to you. know satellite radio if you can't. remember was xm or sirius maybe they'd.

already merged at that point. but when he did that he made you know. totally his right to do it. a financial calculation that they were. offering him a nine. figure sum to do that but his audience. because. not a lot of people were subscribing to. satellite radio at that point his. audience. probably collapsed by i wouldn't be. surprised if it was as much as 95. and so the influence that he had on the. culture. and his ability to sort of shape. conversation. and so forth just gotten muted.

yeah and also there's a certain sense. especially in modern times where. the walled gardens naturally lead. to um i don't know. if there's a term for it but people who. are not. creatives starting to have power. over the creatives right and even if. they don't stifle it. if they're providing you know. incentives within the platform to shape.

shift or you know even completely mutate. or distort. the show i mean imagine somebody has got. um. you know reasonably interesting idea for. a podcast and. they get signed up with let's say. spotify then spotify is going to give. them financing to get the things spun. up and that's great and spotify is going. to give them a certain amount of really. uh you know powerful placement. you know within the visual field of. listeners. but spotify's conditions for that they. say look you know.

we think that your podcast will be much. more successful. if you dumb it down about 60. uh if you add some you know silly dirty. jokes. if you do this you do that and suddenly. the person who is dependent upon spotify. for permission to come into existence. and is really different really wants to. please them. you know to get that money in to get. that placement really wants to be. successful. now all of a sudden you're having a. dialogue between a complete. non-creative some marketing you know.

sort of data analytic person at spotify. and a creative that's going to shape. what that show is yeah you know so that. could be. much more common and ultimately having. the aggregate. um an even bigger impact than you know. the cancellation let's say if somebody. who says the wrong word or voices the. wrong idea. i mean that's kind of what you have not. kind of what you have with film and tv. is that so much influence. is exerted over the storyline and the. plots and the character arcs and all.

kinds of things. by executives who are completely alien. to the experience and the skill set of. being a show runner in television being. a director in film. that you know is meant to like oh we. can't piss off the chinese market here. or we can't say that. we need to have you know cast members. that have precisely these demographics. reflected or whatever it is. that you know and obviously despite that. extraordinary at least tv shows are now. being made. um you know in terms of film i think the. quality has. has nose-dived of the average let's say.

say american film coming out of a major. studio the average quality and my view. is nose dived over the past decade is. it's. kind of everything's got to be a. superhero franchise but you know. great stuff gets made despite that but i. have to assume that in some cases at. least in perhaps many cases. greater stuff would be made if there was. less interference from non-creative. executives. it's like the flip side of that though. and this is was the pitch of spotify. because i've heard their pitch. is netflix from everybody i've heard.

that i've spoken with about netflix is. they actually empower the creator. i don't know i don't know what the heck. they do but they do a good job of giving. creators even the crazy ones like tim. dillon like joe rogan. like comedians freedom to be their crazy. cells. and the result is like some of the. greatest. television some of the greatest cinema. whatever you call it ever made true. right and i don't know what the heck. they're doing. it's a relative thing it's not from what.

i understand it's a relative thing. they're interfering far far. far less yeah than you know nbc or. you know amc would have interfered so. it's a relative thing and. obviously they're the ones writing the. checks and the other ones giving the. platform so they have every right to. their own influence. yeah obviously uh but my understanding. is it's. they're relatively way more hands-off. and that has had a demonstrable effect. because i agree. some of the greatest you know video. produced video content of all time. an incredibly inordinate percentage of. that is coming out from netflix in just.

a few years when the history of cinema. goes back many many decades. and spotify wants to be that for. podcasting and. i hope they do become that for. podcasting but. i'm uh wearing my skeptical goggles or. skeptical hat whatever the heck. it is because it's not easy to do and it. requires. uh it requires letting go of power. yeah giving power to the creatives it. requires pivoting which. large companies even as innovative as. spotify is.

still now a large company pivoting into. a whole new space is very tricky and. difficult. so i'm skeptical but hopeful yeah what. advice would you give to a young person. today. about life about career we talked about. startups we talked about music. we talked about the end of human. civilization. is there advice you would give to a. young person today maybe in college. maybe in high school. about uh about their life well let's see. i mean there's so many domains you can. advise on.

and you know i i'm not going to give. advice on life because i i fear that i. would drift into sort of hallmark. bromides. that really wouldn't be all that. distinctive and they might be entirely. true. sometimes the greatest insights about. life. turn out to be like the kinds of things. you'd see on a hallmark card so i'm. gonna steer clear that. on a career level you know one thing. that i think. um is unintuitive but unbelievably. powerful. is to focus not necessarily.

in on being you know in the top sliver. of one percent. in excelling at one domain that's. important and valuable. but to think in terms of intersections. of two domains which are rare but. valuable. and there's a couple reasons for this. the first is in an incredibly. competitive world that is so much more. competitive than it was when i was. coming out of school. radically more competitive than when. it's when i was coming out of school.

to navigate your way to the absolute. pinnacle of any domain let's say you. want to be. you know really really great at you know. python pick a language whatever it is. you want to be. one of the world's greatest python. developers javascript whatever your. language is hopefully it's not cobalt. um but by the way if you listen to this. i am actually looking for a cobalt. expert to. interview because i find the language. fascinating and there's not many of them. so please. if you're if you know a world expert in. cobalt uh.

or fortran but both actually or if you. are one or. if you are one please email me yeah so i. mean if you're going out there and you. want to be. in the top sliver one percent of python. develops a very very difficult thing to. do particularly would be number one in. the world something like that. and i'll use an analogy is i had a. friend in college. um who was um on a track and indeed. succeeded at that to become an olympic. meddler. medalist and i think 100 meter. breaststroke and. he mortgaged a significant.

percentage of his sort of college life. to that goal i should say dedicated or. invested or whatever you wanted to say. but he didn't participate in a lot of. the social. a lot of the late night a lot of this a. lot of that. because he was training so much and. obviously he also wanted to keep up with. his academics and at the end of the day. story has a happy ending and that he did. meddle in that. bronze not gold but holy cow anybody who. gets an olympic medal that's an. extraordinary thing and at that moment.

he was you know one of the top three. people on earth at that thing. but wow how hard to do that how many. thousands. of other people went down that path and. made similar sacrifices and didn't get. there. it's very very hard to do that whereas. i'll use a personal example when i came. out of business school. i went to a good business school and and. learned the things that were there to be. learned. and i came out and i entered a world. with lots of. harvard business school by the way okay.

yes it was harvard it's true. you're the first person who went there. who didn't say where you went. it was just beautiful i appreciate that. it's one of the greatest business. schools uh. in the world it's a it's a whole another. fascinating conversation about that. world. but anyway but anyway so i learned the. things that you you learn getting to be. an mba from a from a top program and i. entered a world that had hundreds of. thousands of people. who had mbas uh probably hundreds of. thousands who have them from you know. top ten programs. uh but so i was not particularly great.

at being an mba person i was. inexperienced. uh relative to most of them and there. were a lot of them but it was okay. mba person right newly minted uh. but then as it happened i found my way. into working on the commercial internet. in 1994. so i went to a at the time giant hot. computing company called silicon. graphics. which had enough heft and enough you. know head count that they could take on. and experienced mbas and.

try to train them in the world of. silicon valley but. within that comp that company that had. an enormous amount of surface area and. was touching very a lot of areas and was. had unbelievably smart people at the. time uh. it was not surprising that sgi started. doing. really interesting and innovative and. trailblazing stuff on the internet. before almost anybody else. and part of the reason was that our. founder jim clark went off to co-found. netscape with mark andreessen so. the whole company was like wait what was. that what's this commercial internet. thing.

so i end up in that group now in terms. of being a commercial internet person or. a world web. world wide web person um again uh. i was in that case barely credentialed i. couldn't write a stitch of code. but i got a i had a pretty good mind for. grasping. the business and and and cultural uh. significance of this transition. and this was again we were talking. earlier about emerging areas. within a few months you know i was in. the relatively top echelon of people in. terms of just sheer experience.

because like let's say it was five. months into the program there were only. so many people who had been doing. world wide web stuff commercially for. five months you know and then. what was interesting though was the. intersection. of those two things the commercial web. as it turned out grew into. uh unbelievable vastness. and so by being a pretty good okay web. person. and a pretty good okay mba person. that intersection put me in a very rare. group which was.

web oriented mbas and. in those early days you could probably. count on your fingers. the number of people who came out a. really competitive programs who were. doing stuff full-time on the internet. and and. there was a greater appetite for great. software developers. in the internet domain but there was an. appetite and a real one and a. rapidly growing one for mba. thinkers who were also seasoned and. networked. in the emerging world of the commercial. world wide web and so.

finding an intersection of two things. you can be. pretty good at but is a rare. intersection. and a special intersection is probably a. much. easier way to make yourself. distinguishable and in demand from the. world. than trying to be world-class at this. one thing. so in the intersection is where there's. a to be discovered. opportunity and success that's really. interesting yeah there's actually more. intersection of fields and fields. themselves right so. yeah i mean i'll give you kind of a.

funny hypothetical here but it's one. i've been thinking about a little bit. um there's a lot of people in crypto. right now it'd be. hard to be in the top percentile of. crypto. people whether it comes from just having. a sheer grasp of the industry a great. network within the industry. technological skills whatever you want. to call it. um and then there's this parallel world. an orthogonal world called crop. insurance. and there's you know i'm sure that's a. big world crop insurance is a very very. big. deal particularly in the wealthy and. industrialized world where people.

through sophisticated financial markets. rule of law and. you know large agricultural concerns. that are worried about that. um somewhere out there is somebody who. is pretty crypto savvy but probably not. top one percent. but also has kind of been in the crop. insurance world and understands that a. hell of a lot better than almost anybody. who's ever had anything to do with. cryptocurrency. and so i think that um decentralized. finance. defy one of the interesting and i think. very world positive things that i think.

it's almost inevitably we'll be bringing. to the world. is crop insurance for small holding. farmers. you know i mean people who have tiny. tiny plots of land. in places like india etc where there is. no crop insurance available to them. because. just the financial infrastructure. doesn't exist. but it's highly imaginable that using. oracle networks. that are trusted outside deliverers of. factual information about rainfall in a. particular area you can start giving. drought insurance to folks like this.

the right person to come up with that. idea is not a crypto whiz. who doesn't know a blasted thing about. small holding farmers the right person. to come up with that is not a crop. insurance whiz. who isn't quite sure what bitcoin is but. somebody. occupies that intersection that's just. one of gazillion examples. of things that are going to come along. for somebody who occupies the the right. intersection of skills but isn't. necessarily. the number one person at either one of. those expertises. that's making me kind of wonder about my.

own little. things that i'm average at and seeing. were. the intersections that could be. exploited. that's pretty profound so we talked. quite a bit about. the end of the world and how we're both. optimistic about us. figuring our way out unfortunately. for now at least both you and i are. going to die one day. way too soon. first of all that sucks it does.

i mean one i'd like to. ask if you ponder your own mortality. how does that kind of um what kind of. wisdom inside does it give you about. your own life. and and broadly do you think about your. life and. what the heck it's all about yeah with. respect to pondering mortality. um i do try to do that as little as. possible because there's not a lot i can. do about it. um but it's inevitably there and i think.

that. what it does when you think about it in. the right way. is it makes you realize how. unbelievably rare and precious the. moments that we have here. are and therefore how consequential the. decisions that we make about how to. spend our time. are you know like do you do those. 17 nagging emails or do you have dinner. with somebody who's really important to. you who haven't seen in three and a half. years. if you had an infinite expanse of time.

in front of you you. might well rationally conclude i'm going. to do those emails because collectively. they're rather. important and i have tens of thousands. of years to catch up with my buddy tim. but i think the scarcity of the time. that we have. helps us choose the right things if. we're. tuned to that and we're attuned to the. context that mortality. puts over the consequence of every. decision we make. of how to spend our time that doesn't. mean that we're all very good at it. doesn't mean i'm very good at it.

but it does add a dimension of choice. and significance to everything that we. elect to do. it's kind of funny you say you try to. think about it as little as possible i. would venture to say you probably think. about the end of human civilization more. than you do about your own life. you're probably right because that's it. that feels like a problem that could be. solved. right and whereas the end of my own life. can't be solved. well i don't know i mean there's. transhumanists who have incredible. optimism about. you know near or intermediate future. therapies that could really really.

change human lifestyle. lifespan i really hope that they're. right. but i don't have a whole lot to add to. that project because i'm not a life. scientist myself so. i'm i'm in part also afraid of. immortality. not as much but close to as as i'm. afraid of death itself so. it feels it feels like the things that. give us meaning. give us meaning because of the scarcity. that surrounds it agreed i'm almost. afraid. of um of having too much of stuff.

yeah although although if there was. something that said this can expand your. your enjoyable well spanned or life span. by. 75 years i'm all in well part of the. reason i wanted to. not do a startup. really the only thing that worries me. about doing a startup. is if it becomes successful because of. how much i dream how much. i'm driven to be successful that.

there will not be enough silence in my. life enough scarcity. to appreciate the moments i appreciate. now. as deeply as i appreciate them now like. yeah. there's a simplicity to my life now that. it feels like you might disappear with. success i wouldn't say might um. i think if you start a company that has. um ambitious investors ambitious for the. returns that they'd like to see.

yeah that has ambitious employees. ambitions for. you know the career trajectories they. want to be on and so forth. um and is driven by. your own ambition uh there's a. profound monogamy to that you know and. it is. it is very very hard to carve out time. to be creative to be peaceful to be so. forth because of. you know with every new employee that. you hire that's one more mouth to feed.

with every new investor that you take on. that's one more person who to whom you. really do want to. deliver great returns and as the. valuation ticks up. the threshold to delivering great. returns for your investors. always rises and so there is. an extraordinary monogamy to being. a founder ceo um above all for. the first few years and first in. people's minds could be as many as 10 or. 15. so but i i guess the the.

the fundamental calculation is whether. the passion for the vision is greater. than the cost you'll pay. right it's all opportunity cost it's all. opportunity cost. in terms of time and attention and. experience and some things like i'm i'm. everyone's different but i'm less. calculating some things you just can't. help sometimes you just dive in. oh yeah i mean you can do balance beats. all you want on this versus that and. what's the right i mean i've done it in. the past and. it's never worked you know it's always.

been like okay what's my gut screaming. at me to do yeah but about the. the meaning of life you ever think about. about that yeah i mean this is not going. to go all hallmarking on you but i think. that. you know there's a few things and um. you know one of them is certainly love. and. the love that we experience and feel. and cause to well up in others is.

something that's just. so profound and goes beyond. almost anything else that we can do and. whether that is something that lies in. the past like maybe there was somebody. that you. were dating and loved very profoundly in. college and haven't seen in years. i don't think the significance of that. love is anyway diminished. by the fact that it had a notional. beginning and end. the fact is that you experienced that. and you triggered that in somebody else. and that happened and.

it doesn't have to be certainly doesn't. have to be love of romantic partners. alone it's family members it's love. between friends. um it's love between creatures you know. i. had a dog for 10 years who passed away a. while ago and. you know experienced unbelievable love. with. with her um it can be love of that which. you create and we were talking about the. flow states that we enter and. and the pride or lack of pride or the. minsky case your hatred of that which. you've done but nonetheless. the the creations that we make.

and whether it's the love or the joy or. the engagement or the perspective shift. that that cascades into other minds. i think that's a big big big part of the. meaning of life it's not something that. everybody participates in necessarily. although i think we all do you know at. least in a very local. level by you know the example that we. set by the interactions that we have. but for people who create works that. travel. far and reach people they'll never meet.

that reach countries they'll never visit. that reach people perhaps that come. along and come across their ideas or. their works or their stories or. their aesthetic creations of other sorts. long after they're dead. um i think that's really really big part. of the fabric of the. the meaning of life and um. you know so all these things like you. know love and creation. um i think really. is what it's all about and.

part of love is also the loss of it. there's a louis. episode with louis c.k was a. an old gentleman is giving him advice. that this. this sometimes the sweetest parts of. love is when you. lose it and you remember it sort of you. reminisce. on the loss of it and um. there's some aspect in which and i have. many of those in my own life. that almost like the memories of it.

and the intensity of emotion you still. feel about it. is like the sweetest part is. you're like after saying goodbye you. relive it. so that that goodbye is what um is also. a part of love. the lawsuit is also a part of love i. don't know it's it's back to that. scarcity i won't say. the loss is the best part personally but. it definitely is an aspect of it. and you know the grief you might feel. about something that's gone makes you.

realize what a big deal it was. yeah yeah speaking of which. uh this particular journey we we went on. together. come to an end so i have to say goodbye. and i hate saying goodbye. rob this is truly an honor i've really. been a big fan. uh people should definitely check out. your podcast your master what you do. in the conversation space in the writing. space it's been uh. an incredible honor that you would show. up here and spend this time with me i. really really appreciate it well it's.

been a huge honor to be here as well. and uh also a fan and heaven for a long. time thanks rob. thanks for listening to this. conversation with rob reed and thank you. to. athletic greens valcampo fundrise. and netsuite check them out in the. description to support this podcast. and now let me leave you with some words. from plato. we can easily forgive a child who's. afraid of the dark. the real tragedy of life is when men are. afraid of the light.

thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time.