Bryan Johnson: Why Humans are No Longer Qualified to Manage Our Own Affairs | E1130

1. 0:00 – 0:45

   Intro

   1. BJBryan Johnson0:00

      (instrumental music plays) I'm fundamentally proposing that the human race is no longer qualified to manage our affairs. I made an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself. We can engineer the source code for life. We have the computational tools that have exceeded our native intelligence and abilities. The game I'm trying to play in life is how to be respected by the 25th century.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:24

      Brian, I mean, last time we spoke it was seven years ago. I look withered and old. You look like my 20-year-old self when we last spoke. (laughs) So it's lovely to see you again.

   3. BJBryan Johnson0:36

      It's wonderful to be here. Nice to see you.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:38

      Now, I would love to start... We were just saying beforehand, you've done many interviews, you've been asked many questions. My first one

2. 0:45 – 3:12

   Importance of Processing New Ideas

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:45

      was, what are you not asked about that you would like to be asked about?

   2. BJBryan Johnson0:50

      Probably how to process new ideas, new frames. There are new ways of thinking, and they challenge the status quo. And I make a rule for myself that whenever I encounter a new idea, I try to set up an alert in my brain that says, "Alert, new idea has landed." And when a new idea lands, the rule is I can't say anything or think anything to form conclusions for some duration of time, because the challenge is when a new idea lands, your knee-jerk reaction fills the open space, and it crams down your existing biases and beliefs and understanding, and it crushes the space for a new idea to breathe. And what I've noticed is the- it's a human tendency that we all have, and it takes it a- a lot of work to develop this habit, because the- the impulse to crush new ideas is so strong.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings1:53

      Can I just d- kind of dive in there? So you have a new idea alert. What does that post-alert look like? Do you then solicit feedback? Do you just ruminate on it? What does that kind of process look like, post-alerting?

   4. BJBryan Johnson2:06

      I try to watch what happens to my internal processes when the idea lands. So typically, we are threat response, and usually new ideas, usually, are a threat, um, to existing things. And so I watch my own self respond in all the ways where I feel threatened. You know, will this require change from me? Will this require that I do a new habit? Will it require that I have to overcome some existing belief system? What is it going to ask of me? And those things feel threatening. And in response to the threat, the body's like, "We're gonna shut this fucker down so we don't have to deal with the unpleasantness." Because that's just who we are and what we do. And so I just watch my internal processes, and it gives me clues, which version of me is trying to shut this down and why? And so that, to me, is more interesting. So, for me, uh, what's interesting, the new idea itself is interesting, and then the second layer of interesting-ness is what's provoking inside of me that gives me clues on who's

3. 3:12 – 5:38

   Exploring Different Versions of Self

   1. BJBryan Johnson3:12

      talking within me?

   2. HSHarry Stebbings3:13

      Are there commonalities in the who's talking within you in terms of the mindsets, the personas that you have, that it comes up?

   3. BJBryan Johnson3:21

      I built this off of the idea of the Evening Brian concept, where he overate and he couldn't control himself and that I separated myself into different versions of me, and I've really taken that to all wa- uh- all areas of life, where if, let's say, a person is dedicated to a life of martyrdom, like they're going to sacrifice themselves. Let's just say they're- they're a- a soldier in an army that's willing to give their life for country, and then a new idea comes up and says that this idea of nation states or countries may be lessening in its status in life, like maybe it's not worth giving life for this thing because it's changing. That eliminates the entire game somebody is playing. So if you're- if you already given up, say, "I find that I'm wi- I'm valuable in society because I'm doing this heroic act," if you remove the underlying layer, it's no longer heroic and valuable. And so it removes all other identity. And so your knee-jerk response would be to fight back and to justify what you're trying to do. But those are the kind of things that give whiplash to people and in the most significant ways that are most important too.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings4:38

      When you think back to the alerting system, what was the most recent idea that caused an alert, and can you share?

   5. BJBryan Johnson4:45

      Yeah, I think the- the most significant one, when I was personally challenged with... (pauses) that m- the religion I was born into may not be the explanation of reality, and that was so uncomfortable because my entire existence had, I was born into a religion. That's I- that's all I understood reality to be. And then I started thinking maybe it wasn't true, like maybe this wasn't the explainer of reality, and that is the most uncomfortable thing I had ever encountered in my life because every single bit of my reality, my family and my children and my community and my identity and my ambitions, everything was built upon that thing. And to encounter that, you have to basically size up and say, "I have to redo myself

4. 5:38 – 7:07

   Impact of Leaving Religion

   1. BJBryan Johnson5:38

      entirely," and that's so much work, it's- you, like, almost want to just bury your head back in the thing and be like, "I'm just going to avoid this, because it's so uncomfortable to think about all this change." Like you have to, like, get a divorce, become a divorced dad. You've got to be in different living conditions. You've got to, uh... It's so unpleasant to contemplate that change, it's just easier to duck your head back in.... and that's what most of us do in life, is we encounter something that is so unpleasant, we'd rather not deal with it. We just go back into the habit.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings6:08

      Can I ask a weird one? Is it worth dealing with, when you think about the divorce there, the being, you know, a divorced father? For the awareness that actually it may not be the answers for the realities of life, can you actually just get comfortable with that and recognize it, but not actually deal with the unpleasantness that comes with it?

   3. BJBryan Johnson6:27

      I mean, change is hard. I mean, I think we all maybe try to do our best to make change fun and rewarding. I don't know, uh, th- it, to me, it just feels like so much of life is inevitable pain and suffering, and it's not a negative. It's just a different experience, and I don't know if I would even try to minimize it. I'd probably just say, "It's just part of the journey."

   4. HSHarry Stebbings6:52

      What's been the most painful change to go through, if you don't mind me asking?

   5. BJBryan Johnson6:55

      Yeah. It was leaving my religion.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings6:57

      Do you worry about being liked? Leaving religion, it's leaving social security as well. It's leaving friendship groups. It's leaving communities. Do you worry

5. 7:07 – 7:57

   Challenge of Change & Meaning of Life

   1. HSHarry Stebbings7:07

      about being liked?

   2. BJBryan Johnson7:08

      When I left the religion, I, I had to go through this process and rethink every aspect of my existence, and one of those things was the idea of being liked. Because in the religious setting, you're constantly vying for the approval of those in the community. You want to be liked. You want to be respected. You want to obey the rules so that you have status, and with that status, uh, you get, uh, certain privileges in a tribe. And so I wanted to confront the idea head-on and say, "What if I didn't, uh, desire to be liked? What would that do?" Now, in somethi- in some scenarios, being liked is a necessity of life. If you go into work each day, and you're an awful human,

6. 7:57 – 10:25

   Desire to Be Liked

   1. BJBryan Johnson7:57

      and no one likes you, that's not gonna do you any favors. Like, you, you need to have some kind of baseline likability to qua- to operate in society. But there's also a different place to play in, where if you play for likability, in, for example, the new ideas space, that's a path for conformity, because likability is conformity, and new ideas oftentimes disrupt that. And the liberation for me was the thought ex- the basically flipping it and saying that I care about being liked by the 25th century, and specifically, do not care about being liked by the people in this time and place. That, to me, was the most liberating thought experiment of my life, because then I could say, um, "I'm no longer limited to the approval of my peers. I can explore the imagination space of what the 25th century might respect." And being, being able to do that, I mean, it is, it feels good to be respected by in time and place. It feels good to have status among peers, and I was willing to forego that because I want to play, that game to me was so much more exciting than pandering to what, whatever is the current zeitgeist of people's, uh, approval systems.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings9:26

      As a VC, I constantly pander to founders and to LPs, so this is a whole new concept for me, Brian, but, uh, I'm learning. Can I go back to the idea process though? 'Cause you ruminate on it. You sit with it and understand the different personas and how they interact with it. What then determines whether you act upon an idea and really pursue it versus disregard it and put it to one side?

   3. BJBryan Johnson9:50

      So there's the idea as the information in itself, and then there's all the things around the idea that can't be seen. And so when I look at the idea, I don't try to identify what can be seen. I try to identify everything that can't be seen, and those are basically the unknown unknowns. Those are like the zero principle concepts. And so for me, new ideas are not something to accept or reject. New ideas are something to excavate, and you're trying to fill this thing out as broadly as possible,

7. 10:25 – 14:59

   Process of Acting on Ideas

   1. BJBryan Johnson10:25

      because yeah, new idea may be just the tip of the spear. You know, it may be something, uh, the iceberg. It may be something much, much more, uh, expansive. And so to me, it's the, the possibility of finding new primitives to work with.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings10:41

      What's the most challenging part of that? Because the, the challenging part to me is, the unknown unknowns are infinite, and so it could-

   3. BJBryan Johnson10:48

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings10:48

      ... be this never-ending quest that actually leads to inactivity. Do you worry about that, and what's the most challenging part of that segment?

   5. BJBryan Johnson10:56

      Yeah. I pressure test with a few questions. Uh, if a new idea lands, I can pose a question: What must remain, what must be true for this to be true? What must remain true for this to be true? And then, uh, what would change which would make this untrue? And so you're trying to move throughout time, and you, you're moving horizontally and vertically through time and space, pressure testing it. So you could say a given thing that may be true in this moment, but it may be entirely untrue in three years from now. And so for example, I was talking to a friend last night, and I was explaining to him, uh, the concept of don't die, and he's a smart person, and he predictably said, "Well, I disagree with blank because I think super intelligence is blank, and MM models are blank." And so he, he basically put forward the argument of the skepticism around whether or not we will achieve super intelligence, and so I, I wanted to reframe, 'cause I, I understand his arguments. They're legitimate. They're well-reasoned. I understand them. Fine.I said, "Cool. What I'm trying to do is, I'm trying to reframe the problem and say, if you look at our moment from the 25th century, that's the framework which invites to- w- how to, how to think about what to do in this moment." Because if you can say, "Are we going to develop super intelligence?" You're going to have hundred... you know, thousands of different opinions about where algorithmic progress is, whether we have enough data, whether the algorithms can do this or that. Like, you're- it's just gonna fracture into no one knows. If you look at it from the 25th century, assuming that we still exist around then, it's reasonable to acon- to assume that on some timescale, computational intelligence is going to improve substantially faster than we can imagine.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings12:54

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BJBryan Johnson12:55

      Now, if you say, "That's okay," that's reasonable-

   8. HSHarry Stebbings12:57

      Yeah.

   9. BJBryan Johnson12:57

      ... that you're given that kind of timescale. So, then, you come back to the moment and you say, "Okay. Given that we can make that general, uh, conclusion that it's going to improve at some rate and probably be unfathomable to us in many ways, what then do we do right now?" And that framework opened him up to say, "Ah, I understand why 'Don't die' might be relevant to this moment, because you're trying to basically nail the philosophical, economic, political, social underpinnings of reality on a multi-hundreds-year timescale." But it takes that finesse to get that clarity of thought. Otherwise, you're buried in that moment. And so, unless- unless you ask those three questions of what must be true, what m- what must remain true, and what would change, which would make that entirely untrue, you don't pressure test the ideas well enough and you're stuck in this very narrow band of thought. And so, to me, you have to go through those thought processes. Otherwise, you're rendered in the bubble of this moment, which just makes you up against a wall of fog.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings14:00

       How do you r- retain intellectual purity? And what I mean by that is, like, what must be true, what must remain true. Uh, you can have biases towards what you want to really be true, but maybe not be true. It could be religion that, uh, makes one bias, in terms of their perspective. There are many different things that can bias how you feel about what those three answers are. How do you retain that purity to be objective?

   11. BJBryan Johnson14:24

       It begins by being skeptical of all things, and I learned this when I left the religion. You know, I had this authority structure saying, "This is how reality is." And then, I learned about behavioral psychology and about biases, and 188 proven scientific, you know, biases of how my brain distorts reality to help me understand a complicated world. Now, it's- it's doing me a favor, because the world is extraordinarily complex, and my biases help me understand the reality. At the same time, I'm hypocritical. I'm, uh, I'm blinded to certain things, you know. I'm a disaster of cognition.

8. 14:59 – 22:28

   Retaining Intellectual Purity & Overcoming Biases

   1. BJBryan Johnson14:59

      So, when I found out that my own mind was just as deceptive and unreliable as other authorities in my life, and then I kind of walked through society, and every source of authority or truth I thought might be durable is not, including myself. And so, I enter all things with this deep skepticism of anything trying to be ultimate truth. And so, if you accept that as the opening bid, then you walk into the contemplation in a much more humble way to hold things very lightly. And so, then, you're trying to say, "We probably... We can probably know immediate things with high certainty, and we can probably know long-term things with reasonable certainty, but in the middle, we just have fog, and everyone plays in the middle of fog." And so, when you're trying to make these big decisions on the future of the species, you've got to figure out some way to navigate those thought processes to come up with some kind of clarity.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings15:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BJBryan Johnson15:57

      And so, if you say, "What could we say about the 25th century that it may be different than what we do now?" Now, you could say general things, like, "It probably will have... Probably figured out how to be more energy efficient. It will probably have figured out, you know, computationally, to be much more robust than we have now." It will... You can make these general statements assuming some rule of progress, and, uh, also excluding annihilation-type scenarios. And if you just put those general rules, you can start, uh, walking back into, "Okay, then what might that mean for this moment?" But it's really a game of trying to manuf- manufacture clarity of thought above all.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings16:41

      Do you accept anything today as an endurable truth? Given the skepticism you bring naturally to- to everything to get that purity, is anything an endurable truth?

   5. BJBryan Johnson16:50

      This is why I arrived at "Don't die." It is the only thing in existence that I know. Is there an afterlife? I don't know. You know? I... Like, when- when death is inevitable, then you really can maintain any opinion you want, 'cause you're g- we're all gonna die, so it's like doesn't matter. But when... if death is not inevitable, then you have to reconsider all of your existential scaffolding, and that's why "Don't die"... If- if you've- if you use a frame like, "Live long, live great, be great, (laughs) explore the stars," like, whatever you wanna say, people hear that and they're like, "Fuck yeah, I'm doing it." If you say, "Don't die," the person has to reconcile with existence from zero. Because if- if you don't die, or you're not going to die, or you're going to live in some unknown time horizon, every game you're playing in existence may be called into question. All of your beliefs, all of your assumptions, all of your en- endeavors, everything about you may be called into question.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings17:55

      Can I ask you a weird one? But it's like... And this is as meta as I've ever bloody asked a question, Bryan. Um-

   7. BJBryan Johnson18:02

      (laughs)

   8. HSHarry Stebbings18:03

      ... life isn't about existence, is it? It... And w- what is the meaning of life to you? Is it about existence, or is it about fulfillment, or is it about love?

   9. BJBryan Johnson18:12

      That question yields...No truth. That question yields a mirror of time and place. So if we had a recording of people being asked that question for the past 500 years, every year that that question is asked of, you know, 50 people in society, you would see it evolve over that time period into unrecognizable stories. None of it's truth. And this is the thing, we don't know what the meaning of life is, we just run our mouths, and we run our mouths to try to fill the space that the question creates, but we do so and we're- we aren't- we aren't discerning, is this a question meant to create social cohesion or is this a question to establish truth? It's not truth. It's to establish social cohesion that people are trying to get along, trying to exchange views, they're trying to be human, understand reality, they're dealing with their own stuff internally, so it's- it's, you know, how do you reduce the pain you're experiencing in this moment? The meaning of life, to me, is- is, like, is this, that when intelligence reaches a certain level of capability, which is right now, like after 4.5 billion years on this Earth, in the past few years we have reached a critical point after 4.5 billion years for the first time where intelligence can say the only thing intelligence cares about is continued existence. And not through the- not through the process of having babies, not through work, you know, the immortality of work or contribution, but through actual existence, and this is why this moment is so critical, and so the meaning of life is, for me, continued existence, as it's the first moment that we've re- we've achieved that ability.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings20:06

       Given it being the first moment we've achieved that ability, as specific as possible, what is it that we've achieved, as specifically as possible, that has allowed human intelligence to be at this specific juncture?

   11. BJBryan Johnson20:17

       Do we have the intelligence to keep, uh, to maintain, to contain disruption, to- to, um, eliminate disruption of our existence? And then you say, okay, what would possibly be required to do that? Well, we are biological systems. We're each about 35 trillion cells, but, you know, like, we can swap in and swap out. Like, you can- you can print an organ or get an organ from, you know, a pig and, like, put a new organ in your body. There's two things, there's things you can do to re- replenish your system, but we can- we can now reliably engineer atoms and molecules and organisms. We have the ability. We have the source code for life. We can engineer the source code for life. We have the computational tools that are, uh, that have exceeded our native intelligence and abilities. So we actually have every primary piece of technology required to continue existence. Now, do we know how to do it yet? We're making progress. The answer is no, but from a first principles perspective, we have everything necessary to figure it out.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings21:29

       How do you think about the core underlying threats to human existence? Climate change being worse than ever, bad global actors with nuclear weapons threatening in ways that we haven't seen in many years.

   13. BJBryan Johnson21:41

       Yeah.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings21:41

       Are those not questioning our continued existence in a way that makes this challenging?

   15. BJBryan Johnson21:47

       I'm fundamentally proposing that the human race is no longer qualified to manage our affairs. I started with myself. I said that I, Bryan Johnson, am not qualified to manage my own well-being. I make- I do things that lessen my life. I overeat. I eat bad foods. You know, (laughs) I'll make bad decisions. Now, I do these things that threaten my existence. That is an inferior form of intelligence that would inflict upon itself harm. Now, our minds create these really pretty stories of, like,

9. 22:28 – 25:59

   Core Threats to Human Existence

   1. BJBryan Johnson22:28

      live fast, die young, we're all gonna die so what does it matter, but that's a s- that is a compensation for what is inherently an inferior form of intelligence doing something to itself that shortens its conscious existence, no matter how we want to say in the story. Now, as a species, we're doing that to planet Earth. We're doing that to each other, and we do these- we have these really pretty stories about we're competing for dominance, for ideology of nation state. We're doing this for- for capitulation- uh, capital improvements. We're doing it for progress for humanity. But we're a species that is self-destructive. And now that we're bringing online new tools of computational intelligence, it's this possibility to bridge ourselves to a new form of intelligence that is not self-distructive. And so don't die is don't die individually, don't kill each other, don't kill the Earth, align AI with don't die. And so if you stitch this together from the 25th century, what do they see? They say, "God, those homo sapiens were self-destructive. They were idiots. They did these things that shortened their conscious existence and how, how insanely precious is conscious existence?" And they told stories about h- why they're doing it to live their best life and have all the experiences. They're gonna look at us like cavemen. It's gonna be so ridiculous that we would do that, that we would take this precious consciousness we have and be so flippant with it.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings24:00

      Sorry. If we're no longer capable of managing our own affairs, and you said there you took yourself as the first test case, who do you hand your affairs over to? And I'm a big follower of David Goggins, who obviously talks about mental discipline a lot, the ability to do the uncomfortable even when your body screams another thing-

   3. BJBryan Johnson24:19

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings24:20

      You are still human, Brian. (laughs) There are things that just require intense discipline. How do you think about who you hand over to and how to manage discipline in the hardest of times?

   5. BJBryan Johnson24:30

      I made an algorithm that takes better care of me than I can myself. I measured every organ in my body, and I then referenced scientific literature, and we made an algorithm that determines what I eat, when I eat, when I go to bed, and I can't deviate from that. And so I've agreed... Now this is an analog version. This is not like I've got computational systems inside my body making the decisions for me. So I'm saying yes to this algorithm, but I'm explicitly saying no to myself.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings25:00

      How do you know the algorithm isn't based on imperfect data? Scientific literature changes over time too. If we look at it in 20- the 25th century compared to the 18th century, it'll be vastly different. Smoking used to be good for you as soon as a hundred years ago. How do you think about imperfectness of literature that guides your algorithm?

   7. BJBryan Johnson25:19

      We reference truth based upon hundreds of biomarkers of using the best science that the human race has generated that contributes to health span and lifespan. And we use those data markers to say, is this protocol working or not? Could it be wrong? Yes. Is it wrong? Likely. Is it better than me and what I was doing before? Yes. Is it... Basically is it saying (laughs) , is the algorithm saying, "You know what? You've had a tough week. Curl up on the couch, get those two bags of potato chips and your favorite cookies and then some (laughs) ice cream, and watch

10. 25:59 – 28:16

    Managing Discipline

    1. BJBryan Johnson25:59

       your favorite show until 3:00 in the morning." That's something the algorithm is not yet suggesting. Like maybe it will, it hasn't yet, but it's definitely, uh, steered me away from self-destructive behaviors and tuned my body where I've become the most measured person in history, and the data is pretty interesting.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings26:17

       (laughs) I have so many questions to ask. My, my first is like, I get all of that, submit to the algorithm, but, but you are a cognitive functioning human, Brian, and you still have feelings. And so when the feelings arise of "I am tired, I don't want to fucking do this"-

    3. BJBryan Johnson26:34

       Yeah.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings26:34

       ... what do you say? Like how do you overcome and computerize your mind?

    5. BJBryan Johnson26:40

       Yeah, so that, that is an idea that is introduced to me of you are hungry and you should eat. And so I... The same with a new idea, I watch the idea land, I watch who responds, and I just witness and observe the whole thing.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings26:56

       (laughs) I mean, I'm a disciplined guy, but fuck, I don't. Um (laughs) -

    7. BJBryan Johnson27:01

       (laughs)

    8. HSHarry Stebbings27:02

       What was the most, what was the most surprising truth you revealed in this exploration of yourself as the first true algorithmic guinea pig, respectfully?

    9. BJBryan Johnson27:12

       I individually and we as a species are transitioning from being stewards of knowledge, being stewards of knowledge to not knowing anything, or rather not being the... Yeah, moving into a frontier where we are no longer in that role, where AI is going to be a much better steward of knowledge. It's going to know all things. All things that have been discovered, AI will know it, and AI is also going to do a new discovery, and it's gonna do so at a speed that will be, uh, we'll be unable to, to keep up. In that scenario, AI is knowledge of record. So it's no longer that a person maintains the superior knowledge, and so that calls into question everything you understand about being human, is you're going from knowing to not knowing.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings28:02

        How do you think about the core element of permission? You know, you willingly gave yourself over to this algorithm believing that it manages yourself better than you do and humanity does. Is there a point where

11. 28:16 – 31:10

    Overcoming Feelings & Surrendering to Algorithms

    1. HSHarry Stebbings28:16

       humans don't have the permission to do so? And if not, how do you think about tipping points of human acceptance of algorithms as the primary?

    2. BJBryan Johnson28:25

       We already do this. So these ideas, a lot of people listening to this, uh, their knee-jerk reactions are going to be something like, "This guy's nuts. This is dystopic." You know, like (laughs) the majority of people listening will have those thoughts because they're gonna... They... Even though we've talked about the process of new ideas landing and trying to be open-minded and not doing, even though that's the entry point for our conversation, people are gonna wanna hate on these ideas so fast because they threaten everything about our existence. So with that, with that (laughs) ... Now having, having said that, (laughs) the opportunity is to see those response, breathe into it, and then explore it.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings29:11

       Brian, what's, what scares you today when you look at everything that we have in front of us, when you look at the data that you have on your own body and you lie in bed at night? I'm sure you go to sleep pretty quickly (laughs) because I don't imagine your scores da- to go down at all. But what does scare you?

    4. BJBryan Johnson29:29

       I really don't wanna die, and I'm here on this planet with a bunch of people who do.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings29:39

       Does that stop you doing everything? I was, I was thinking about this, you know, before this. I was like, "You know what, Brian? I res- I have so much respect for you, but like, dude, a car could come. You can't get on a plane. Like the house could set on fire. The negative externalities are infinite."

    6. BJBryan Johnson29:58

       This is what I'm talking about. When you look at this from both ends of the timeframe, so let's just say, what do we know immediately? We can make the observation that life is fragile and it may be taken from us at any moment. And then people will say that and say, "Well, if your life can be taken at any moment for any random reason, it doesn't make sense to do anything other than to live life to its fullest. Live fast, die young."And so, you're in that, right? That's the immediate observation of, like, that's concrete, we know that, and it leads to a very rapid conclusion. If you go out to the far end of the spectrum of the 21st century, you get clarity again, where it's not that we Homo sapiens don't have the risk of death, it's getting the gist right in the larger context. Okay, after 4.5 billion years of, of Earth's existence, we're baby steps away from super intelligence. The only thing that matters in this moment is our continued existence into this future. Nothing else matters. But do you see how, like, you even, even your question, uh, comes at this thing

12. 31:10 – 34:34

    Fear of Death & Fragility of Life

    1. BJBryan Johnson31:10

       rejecting the idea of don't die, filling it with the moment of, um, "Well, if life is, is, is so prec- you know, uh, can be taken at any moment, we might as well."

    2. HSHarry Stebbings31:19

       Mm-hmm.

    3. BJBryan Johnson31:19

       And so, then you just, you eliminate all the open space for the new idea, and this has primarily what's been happening, uh, to me over the past few years, is people dunk on me so hard, but they're, they're actually not able to reach outside of this, this very narrow moment of time and to understand this larger context in which we exist. Now, to, to give you a framework that will make this much more tangible, travel back in time. We're hanging out with Homo erectus, has an ax in their hand and we say, "Where's food? Where's shelter? Where's danger?" We listen. If we say, "Homo erectus, tell us the future of the species," we laugh. So we, in this moment, are Homo erectus. We know where there's danger, we know where there's food, and we know where there's shelter. We know nothing about the future of our existence. We don't know what we're going to care about. We don't know what life is gonna be like. We don't know what our values are going to be. We're just as blind, if not more so, than Homo erectus, and this is the humility that we're invited to have in this moment. And this is why it's so challenging for all of us, because we fill the air with our opinions before we have any time to breathe into the new i- breathe in the new idea. We just, we shut them down so fast.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings32:35

       Can I ask you, how does the willingness to submit in this way impact your, your parenting? Uh, I know you obviously have a son. Um, how does that change in this enlightened Brian?

    5. BJBryan Johnson32:48

       I think my children and my friends and family would say this is the best version of me I've ever achieved. I'm more sober-minded. I have better clarity of thought. My emotions are much more stable. I, I'm, uh, I'm just I've, I've never been a better human than I am right now, in every characteristic, and so I think that they appreciate that I, I work very hard on myself to try to be the best form of a human I can.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings33:24

       Do you impose it on them?

    7. BJBryan Johnson33:27

       No.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings33:29

       Why?

    9. BJBryan Johnson33:29

       I've been, I've been very clear with them that I will teach through example. I'll offer my perspective, but it is their choice, uh, what they do, you know, on a moment-to-moment basis.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings33:43

        (laughs) Does it hurt when you believe in the right path and you see them choose a different path, which is natural, especially as you grow up and you learn yourself? Does that hurt you as a father?

    11. BJBryan Johnson33:57

        I'm happy that they get a go at this specialness of conscious existence. And the way I frame this with them is I say, "I'm going to act in the role of your future self." So for my son, Talmage, I'll say, "If you ever wanna talk to your future self, if you wanna talk to your 46-year-old self or 42-year-old, I'll fill in for that role and we'll do role play, and we'll talk about, you know, what do you value for decisions made in college and how would you think about, you know, the following things." And it's a way for him to have this dialogue, because if you think about right now,

13. 34:34 – 39:17

    Impact on Parenting & Personal Growth

    1. BJBryan Johnson34:34

       one of the most sacred beliefs we have about existence is that we, the you or I in this moment, get to decide what we do, how we do it, and why we do it at any moment. So if you set your alarm for 6:00 in the morning, at 10:00 at night, and you wake up at 6:00 in the morning and you wanna snooze, 6:00 AM you gets exactly what they want. They get to hit the snooze button.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings34:59

       Mm-hmm.

    3. BJBryan Johnson34:59

       So present you always has the authority to do whatever it wants, no matter what it's said in the past, and no matter what future you would say, present you dominates. So imagine a future where you are basically a, uh, your present you is one vote among thousands of future yous. You're like a, a democracy of sort for yourself. Now, that of course challenges some of the things we consider most sacred about our existence, but why is that idea not feasible or even a good idea? I, I certainly have a relationship with my 20-year-old self and the decisions that he made in that time and place, and I would definitely change many things about my former self that I'm now dealing with the consequences of that.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings35:41

       Sorry to be personal, and do say if it's too personal. Do you have a partner now?

    5. BJBryan Johnson35:46

       I don't.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings35:48

       Do you get lonely in this existence? 'Cause it, it is, you know, you mentioned the, the pushback that you get online. I see it and I'm like, I always think it's a reflection of other people, you just make them feel shit because you do things that they probably wouldn't be willing to do. It's why people hate on people when they post about, like, running marathons. It's like, dude, it's just 'cause you didn't do it. (laughs) So like, fine. But like, do you get lonely in this existence?

    7. BJBryan Johnson36:08

       I've, uh, no, I don't. I've recreated my social life, my community. I've, I've gotten... It was, growing up in a religion, community is solved for you.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings36:17

       Yeah.

    9. BJBryan Johnson36:17

       Everyone is there for you. They're all similar. You all have the same beliefs. It's easy to have friends. It's easy to get along. It's all just solved for you. And then as you, um, if you leave that community, you have to basically create community of your own...And so, I've gotten really good at that over the past few years, and I feel satiated.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings36:35

        Do you not think, in many ways, humanity needs religion to form social cohesion, to form bond, to form companionship in a way that really, uh, may be artificial, agreed, but it's needed to form those social bonds?

    11. BJBryan Johnson36:50

        If you look at the data, I think it might be fair to observe that religion has been the most powerful and effective and durable technology in all of history. It has outlasted nation states, it's outlasted technological trends, it's outlasted every other, e- e- every other form of human organization. It's the most durable technology in the species.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings37:18

        Does religion outlast AI?

    13. BJBryan Johnson37:20

        It's so hard to tell. Uh, I mean, at this point, where we're up against a wall of not knowing, uh, I don't know.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings37:27

        How do you think about the statement that's often said, we will always overestimate usage or adoption in the short term and underestimate it in the long term?

    15. BJBryan Johnson37:37

        Yeah.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings37:37

        When you think about implementation, progression, adoption of AI, how do you think about timescales associated? It's a shit question, so forgive me for it.

    17. BJBryan Johnson37:46

        Yeah.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings37:46

        But the timescales associated and whether we are overestimating or undermes- estimating it in one or the other.

    19. BJBryan Johnson37:52

        Yeah, this is a question that, again, triggers thoughts of the moment and to me, it just creates a fog for everybody. Because then, if you're genuinely interested person about this question, you hear dozens of, of the top experts in the world all express different opinions and for good reasons. Like, they all have well-reasoned arguments. And so then you say, "What... How do I discern who's correct and who's incorrect and in what ways?" It's impossible. And that's when I say, "Okay, if I can't discern truth in this moment, I have to fast-forward a h- a few hundred years 'cause otherwise, I can't deduce truth in any way." So, how do you come up with co-... So, if you try to basically generate coherence of thought, because the question is basically inviting an answer of what do we do now? Because, uh, presumably, knowing whether we're one year away from super intelligence or 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or never, it informs something about reality. Like, it somehow, it informs the next step we have in this present moment. So by playing on these timescales, you can work with yourself to create coherence of thought and that's, that's ultimately the best tool we have as a spec- as, as a individual is, um, overcoming, uh, overcoming the noise of the moment and finding

14. 39:17 – 41:27

    Uncertainty of AI

    1. BJBryan Johnson39:17

       signal.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings39:18

       What's the biggest enemy to the coherence of your thought still today?

    3. BJBryan Johnson39:22

       Whether or not I slept well last night. A poor-

    4. HSHarry Stebbings39:27

       Do you ever s-

    5. BJBryan Johnson39:27

       ... night-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings39:27

       Do you ever sleep badly? Uh, 'cause I s- I saw the tweets of yours a while ago and you

    7. NANarrator39:32

       (laughs)

    8. HSHarry Stebbings39:32

       ... was like four months of perfect scores and I was like, "God-

    9. BJBryan Johnson39:34

       Yeah.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings39:35

        ... does this guy never have a siren that goes off or a plane that goes overhead?" Like, talk to me about that.

    11. BJBryan Johnson39:40

        Yeah. Last, uh, two nights ago, I had a terrible night's sleep. I just started a peptide and I took it before bed, I did an injection and it wrecked my sleep and I woke up the next morning, yeah, feeling absolutely awful. And the entire day, I was ornery and foggy and I was, um, I was more emotional and it was just, like, the worst day. And last night, I had a spectacular night's sleep and now I feel like I can do anything. After doing this for years, when you sleep poorly, you do normalize to it, but you normalize to a blurred state of reality. You don't remember what the clarity of good sleep feels like. And so, what's my biggest enemy? Poor sleep and a bad diet and no exercise. That creates cloudiness that remains invisible because you can no longer see it. It's lethal.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings40:32

        Sleep, sleep condition wise, what is that for you in terms of hot room, cold room, light, dark, pillows, duvets, um, travel, you name it?

    13. BJBryan Johnson40:45

        Yeah. My life is engineered around sleep because, yeah, I'm, I'm trying to basically p- the game I'm trying to play in life is how to be respected by the 25th century. And that game to me means clarity of thought, because when I go through history and I read biographies, it was those who had clarity of thought, who could see the inevitable things and then did those things which I admire. And to do that, you've got to play game, you gotta be your best self. You can't be getting four hours of sleep a night and having a poor diet and exercise. You, you're gonna render yourself, you can't overcome that level of intoxication. You're legitimately intoxicated

15. 41:27 – 44:55

    Importance of Sleep & Self-Care

    1. BJBryan Johnson41:27

       by mind and you're just impaired.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings41:29

       What do you say to people who say, "It's too late for me. It's too late for me to submit myself to this. It, I've already done the damage of drinking, of smoking, of being overweight." Is there ever too late? How do you respond to them?

    3. BJBryan Johnson41:44

       Yeah. I just say, "Give up." No. (laughs) But, uh-

    4. HSHarry Stebbings41:49

       Incredibly supportive. You should be a therapist, Brian.

    5. BJBryan Johnson41:52

       (laughs)

    6. HSHarry Stebbings41:52

       That's wonderful.

    7. BJBryan Johnson41:54

       My, my dad, my dad is 71. His life expectancy based upon how he's lived his life is 68. He's been obese and he's done har- uh, hard drugs and so, uh, I've been working with him on Project Keep Dad Alive and he's been doing all the advanced therapies I have. He's on blueprint, we talk, you know, I work with him very closely. We're trying to keep him alive until the next thing comes along. But his ferociousness of wanting life is so inspiring to me. He wakes up every day and he appreciates his consciousness-... with a fire that I j- I find infectious. And, you know, like, then you take, like, somebody who's, like, 20, 30, and they're healthy, and they're just like, "Yeah, we're all gonna die," but you say that when your body feels nothing of the ravages of aging. You start losing function, aging is awful, and you get there, you know, like, no one's talking, no one's running, uh, running the same lines there.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings42:56

       I was struggling the other day with something, and my friend said, "Do you know what? A healthy man has 100 wishes, but a sick-"

    9. BJBryan Johnson43:03

       Yeah.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings43:03

        "... man has only one." And-

    11. BJBryan Johnson43:05

        Exactly.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings43:06

        That, that struck me. F- f- final thing before-

    13. BJBryan Johnson43:09

        Yeah.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings43:09

        ... we, we do a quick-fire. How do you just think about the societal, um, breakages that happen with Do Not Die? Don't laugh, but pensions are relatively upholding of large nations. Suddenly, you have overpopulation. You have pensions breaking. You have an inequality of age distribution. Does society not need to fundamentally reshape to structure to Do Not Die as an existence?

    15. BJBryan Johnson43:34

        It does, yeah. Once you get... I mean, Don't Die is the most played game in existence. No, there's no game on planet Earth that intelligence, all intelligence plays more than Don't Die. Every second of every day, all of us are playing Don't Die, and it's played even more than capitalism, played- it's played more than any religion. Don't Die is the number one most played game. And so, in that context, (laughs) once you say, "Don't die," and you step one layer above it, then we fracture into a billion different games. Some of us try to make money, some pursue religion, some pursue, you know, a monk life. Like, people go down a different path, but they're all based upon a Don't Die disposition towards reality. And so, just like democracy, when democracy was a new form of government- governance, it was this basic idea that you have these new representation structures that replace a monarch, and you have these new processes on deciding what to do. And once you establish that basic idea, like, Hey, this is a better thing than a monarch, you've got thousands of questions. So, we're now 200 years into the process of figuring out how to do democracy. The same is true with Don't Die. If you just get that basic concept right, you've got an infinite number of follow-on questions of

16. 44:55 – 47:27

    Reshaping Society to Do Not Die as an Existence

    1. BJBryan Johnson44:55

       what about. And so, this is not the que- the case of this is meant to solve everything. It's meant to say if we solve for the primary operating system of existence, then we can get at the game of solving the thousands of questions that then follow after. But right now, we're, we're bringing super intelligence into the world, and we're doing it in the games we play now, which is go to war, become more effective at killing people, acquire more wealth. Like, we're playing games of violence and death, and if we do that, we're probably increasing the odds that we annihilate ourselves.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings45:27

       Does the only way to succeed, though, not mean everyone agrees? 'Cause you can have one nation that doesn't agree to this and goes, "Fuck you," and presses the button. Like does, is- is it not a world of entire conformity or none of it works?

    3. BJBryan Johnson45:44

       I think to, to generate, try to generate clarity of thought, I see the future as a computational mesh of goal alignment. And so, for example, if you... Like, previously, the analog version of Brian would look at a menu, order something, and eat it. Now, this algorithm runs me, where it's measuring me, looking at the evidence, and then it, the protocol is in place. I can imagine that systems are inside my body and outside my body, and they run like the stock market. You're looking at transactions with my DNA and my proteins in a millisecond, you know, in the second timeframe. It's just running without my awareness, and so I'm an autonomous human, and everything's just running. Now, that autonomous reconciliation of how to keep Brian to not die is running in you as well and everyone else and then also with the planet and also with AI, that these systems are going to run faster than our minds. They're more efficient than our minds. They'll have more data than our minds. So, the future is us in this autonomous network of computational goal alignment among all intelligence. Now, that sounds unfathomable to us. It's also inevitable. Give me an argument, like, d- tell me where we won't inevitably do this. Now, an example is Ozempic is an algorithm. If people are overweight, and they're having problems with, with, uh, overeating, you take a pill, and it turns off hunger. Let's put side effects aside for a moment. It is an algorithm that changes your hunger profile, and it gets you this desired outcome of having less weight on your body.

17. 47:27 – 50:06

    Challenge of Goal Alignment in a Changing World

    1. BJBryan Johnson47:27

    2. HSHarry Stebbings47:27

       Do you like Ozempic? 'Cause you've shown ultimate discipline. The ability to just eat less is discipline.

    3. BJBryan Johnson47:33

       I wouldn't do Ozempic myself. Uh, I'm also now 350 pounds, and I know what it feels like to be overweight, so I'm pretty soft on this. Like, there are some serious side effects, but man, like, being overweight and overeating is a miserable existence, so I'm very soft. Like, I understand why somebody would want to take Ozempic. I understand that they just can't stop themselves, but it's an algorithm, and so this future is inevitable and the faster we can reconcile with it and overcome ourselves, but this is why the- these ideas are, are, are, um, provocative, 'cause they invite you to understand, to reassess everything about your own existence.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings48:07

       I could talk to you all day, but I'm aware that you probably have windows that you need to observe, so I wanna do a couple of quick-fire questions. Uh, is, is that okay?

    5. BJBryan Johnson48:15

       Sure.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings48:16

       What's been the most expensive test that you've run on your body and how much was it?

    7. BJBryan Johnson48:20

       Probably MRI. I get a lot of MRIs, they're, e- each one is like a- $1,000 or two, two, $2,000, somewhere in that range. It's not like one test is, like, $100,000. It just, they're all... I do hundreds of tests, and they're all some amount, which stacks up.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings48:37

       Sorry to ask. Is sex better?

    9. BJBryan Johnson48:42

       Yes.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings48:44

        How so?

    11. BJBryan Johnson48:45

        My team and I... Okay, so one day we were talking and we- we'd quantified my organs, like, we will look at my heart and say, "How do you quantify the function and anatomy of the heart to a bio agent?" And when I asked my team, I said, "What would it take for me to have the most quantified penis in the world?" And then after we quantify my penis and my sexual function, how do you rejuvenate the penis? And so, one marker we looked at was nighttime erections. It's a significant indicator of co- uh, of, um, physiological, cardiovascular, and sexual health. And my baseline measurement was two hours and 12 minutes. I did all the baseline measurements, I did some therapies, and then I achieved just under three hours, which is better than the average 18-year-old. So in that regard, I've quantitatively improved my sexual function.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings49:35

        Wow. (laughs) Good for you, Brian. Jesus Christ.

    13. BJBryan Johnson49:40

        (laughs)

    14. HSHarry Stebbings49:40

        You make... Three hours? Dude, you could watch Titanic in that time. What is... (laughs) Is there anything that you would not be willing to do if the algorithm said it?

    15. BJBryan Johnson49:51

        It's a new idea, I'm open.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings49:54

        Do you get hurt by the critique that you see online?

    17. BJBryan Johnson49:58

        No. It makes me endlessly happy.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings50:01

        Do you ever do holidays?

    19. BJBryan Johnson50:02

        I do, yeah. My son and I went to Singapore over the break,

18. 50:06 – 54:05

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. BJBryan Johnson50:06

       we went to New Zealand last year. Uh, yeah, so we do... Oh, we went to Utah and rode bikes around the desert for a week. So yeah, we do a lot of outdoor adventure.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings50:16

       For someone listening today that wants to improve their sleep, what one piece of advice would you give them?

    3. BJBryan Johnson50:21

       Reframe your identity that you are a professional sleeper. So in the same way that each one of us every day shows up to our meetings on time, if we're two minutes late, we apologize. So set your bedtime and show up on time. And if you're two minutes late, apologize, but respect yourself as much as you respect others for being on time.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings50:50

       What seemingly healthy thing is actually bullshit?

    5. BJBryan Johnson50:54

       Uh, debauchery. The, the stories that people tell of their favorite vice, you know, it's like the, the glass of wine and the bowl of pasta with friends late at night talking about blankety-blank, um, as their most special moments. They treat it as though that's the only way that state can be achieved, it's the only way it can be configured, and they just justify the debauchery, um, as, you know, healthy. They, they're, they're... It's a, they're masquerading that as healthy.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings51:31

       Penultimate one for you. Who do you most look up to and respect?

    7. BJBryan Johnson51:35

       People in the past. I, I'm so fluent in biographies. I can, at will, have a dialogue with them in my mind.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings51:46

       Which is the best biography or the most revisited in your mind?

    9. BJBryan Johnson51:50

       They're all unique. Political figures, scientific inventors, philosophical, religious. Like, they're, they're of such a, a variety. I enjoy all of them, and there's no one that, you know, be as, most dominant in my mind. It's just this fluid conversation.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings52:08

        The final one, Blueprints in 10 years. Where do you want it to be then when we revisit this in 10 years? Where is Blueprints?

    11. BJBryan Johnson52:17

        Just did a, a photo shoot where I posed as the, um, Vitruvian Man, da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, you know, arms out.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings52:27

        Mm-hmm.

    13. BJBryan Johnson52:28

        And I'm going to share that on social media, and I'm going to call it the Autonomous Man. So in that moment, da Vinci was charting new territory with dimensions and, and ar- uh, the dimensions and sketch of the human body, and he did it with this level of perfection that nobody had done it before. And if you take that and you say, "If you were to redo that now, what would be the modern interpretation?" And I'm suggesting that is the Autonomous Man, which is where we're walking towards this future where what we do primarily as humans today will be automated by our algorithms. And we are going to love it, and we're going to comment that we can't believe that we humans ever existed in the current state we're in.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings53:22

        Brian, I've done m- 2,700 interviews. I mean, this has been 10 years. Uh, I, I've never done an interview quite like this. I mean, A, I had a schedule and then I just asked the first question, and that was the only question that we really got to. Um, which is fantastic, by the way. But thank you so much for joining me. I so appreciate this. And I, I wanna say, I, I have so much respect for you. I think it's incredible, and the discipline is immense and inspiring.

    15. BJBryan Johnson53:48

        I appreciate you walking with me. It's... As an interviewer, I know it's hard because you have preconceived ideas about what you wanna talk about, and to go and flow is challenging, and you did it. So thank you for the fun dialogue.

Episode duration: 54:05