EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,042 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- AMAmjad Masad
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. (drumbeats)
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) What's up? How are you?
- AMAmjad Masad
What's up, man? Good.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, uh, having this, uh, big Counter-Strike tournament in town, does that give you the Joneses?
- AMAmjad Masad
Totally.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AMAmjad Masad
Totally. You know, it's like, your ... So, your- your- your- your guy, Jason, um, was telling me about it. Uh, 'cause y- you know, in- in addition to driving, he also, uh, flies the, uh, uh, helicopter. And he told me, like, the Red Bull guys were, like, flying off, and there was, like, this big tournament. I looked it up. It was like, "Oh, Counter-Strike." So, I used to be a bit of a pro player myself.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, uh, how do you get out of pro playing? 'Cause the problem with like playing games is that it's essentially like an eight-hour-a-day thing. Like, it becomes a giant chunk of your life, right? And I would imagine if you're playing pro, it's even more of a commitment.
- AMAmjad Masad
You know, I- I take a different view on- on- on games. You know, a lot of people kind of view it as a- as a sort of somehow like a negative thing, especially for kids. Actually, my- uh, I got my kid- my 4-year-old like a Nintendo, uh, Switch early on. We're playing together 'cause I feel like, for me, it helped me a lot with like strategy thinking, with reaction time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AMAmjad Masad
I think like gamers tend to be- can- can think really fast.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- AMAmjad Masad
And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you seen the- the studies that they've done about surgeons?
- AMAmjad Masad
No, tell me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Surgeons that play video games regularly are much less likely to make mistakes.
- AMAmjad Masad
I totally believe that, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's- it's something in the neighborhood of 25%. Is that what it is, Jamie? Something like that? No, uh ...
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
But so much so that I would say you should teach video games to surgeons.
- AMAmjad Masad
100%. 100%.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, it sh- it should actually be like a required thing, like cross-training.
- AMAmjad Masad
Right. Isn't the Army also recruiting from gamers today as well? That's what I heard.
- JRJoe Rogan
I imagine like drone-
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... pilots.
- AMAmjad Masad
Right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Right? I mean, that would make a big difference.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you- Especially if you can get them used to like the same controllers.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Mm-hmm. …
- JRJoe Rogan
off-
- AMAmjad Masad
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and stuff like that, and yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, and that- that's another thing that I think is healthy about gaming, is like a gateway to programming.
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- AMAmjad Masad
Gateway drug to programming.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
And so I got- I got into th- into, like, modding, like Counterstrike and things like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AMAmjad Masad
Th- Those were fun. And then, just like the feeling that you can make something is just, like, such a profound-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
... such a profound feeling, and that's really kind of what I carried through my whole life and became sort of my life mission now with my company, Replit. What we do is, like, we make it so that anyone can become a programmer. Um, you just talk to your phone or your app, sort of like ChatGPT, and it starts coding for you. It's like a program software engineering agent.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. So it's like the- the AI guides you through it?
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, not only guides you through it. Uh, it codes for you. So you're- you're- you're sort of, you know- you know, programmers typically, you know- you know, think about the idea a little bit, about the logic, but most of the time, they're sort of wrangling the syntax and the IT of it all, um, and I thought that was always, you know, additional complexity that n- doesn't necessarily have to be there. And so when- when I saw, you know, AI- GPT for the first time, uh, I thought this, you know, this could potentially, like, transform programming and make it accessible to more and more people, uh, because it- it really transformed my life, you know? The reason I'm in America is because I invented a- a piece of software. Uh, and I thought, you know, if you make it available to more people, they can- they can transform their lives.
- JRJoe Rogan
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- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, so my dad, uh, my dad is a Palestinian refugee.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you were telling me the story-
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and I, I wanna get into that-
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause it's kind of crazy. Like, put, tell m- tell the whole story of how this wound up happening.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, my family is originally from, from Haifa, which is now in Israel, uh, and they were expelled as part of the 1948, uh, Nakba, uh, where-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- AMAmjad Masad
... where Palestinians were, were sort of kicked out. And they went to, like f-
- JRJoe Rogan
How does your dad describe that? How old was he when that was going on?
- AMAmjad Masad
My father was born in Syria, uh, so my, uh, uh, my, uh, grandma and my grandpa and my uncles, uh, were, were, were kind of kicked out. And, and the way they would describe that is, uh, th- they, they tried to fight, they tried to, like, keep their home, but, uh, it was, like, this overwhelming force. They, they weren't organized, there wasn't, they were just, like, people. It wasn't, they didn't really have an army, at least in that, in that place. And, um, and eventually, at gunpoint, they, they took their homes and, and told them to go. Uh, if, if you're down south, you went to Gaza, and that's why, like, 70% of Gazans are refugees from Israel. Like, the, the people that are, you know, getting massacred right now, uh, are originally from Israel, from the land that we ca- that people call Israel today. Um, and then, uh, if, if you're in the north, like Haifa or Jaffa or whatever, uh, you went, you went, like, to Lebanon, you, or, or to the West Bank, or to, um, or to, to, uh, or to Jordan or Syria. So, my family went to Syria, my father was, was born in Syria, but my grandfather was a, like, a, uh, rail, uh, road engineer, uh, so, so they were, like, you know, s- they were, like, city people, they were urban. They, so they couldn't, like, l- you know, they wanted t- to, you know, have a place where, where they can, you know, there's, there's, uh, uh, they wanted to live in a city. Um, and so originally, the West Bank didn't work for them, uh, and they ended up in Syria, but then Amman, Jordan was kind of coming up and there was a lot of opportunities there, so my father was born in Syria and then moved to Amman when they were six years old and built a life there. And they really kind of focused on education and trying to kind of rebuild their life from scratch. Uh, so my father, um, and all my uncles kind of went and got educated in Egypt, Turkey, uh, places like that. And so my father, uh, uh, got an engineering degree, a civil engineering degree, uh, from, from Turkey, uh, and he was always interested in, in technology. And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) That whole thing, we're kicking people out of Palestine is, is such an inconvenient story-
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... today, when, when people are talking about Israel and Palestine and the conflict, they, they do not like talking about what happened in 1948.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, and, and I think it's important. Like, I think-
- 30:00 – 45:00
Mm. …
- AMAmjad Masad
and they implicitly collude because they have the same owners.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AMAmjad Masad
And all of that is, is sort of anti-competitive.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
Um, so the market has gotten, uh, less dynamic over time. And this is also part of the reason I'm excited about our mission at, at Replit to, to make it so that anyone can build a business. Uh, actually, on, on the way here, your, your driver, Jason, is a, a, is a fireman. And so I was telling him about, um, about our business. And he does, he does training for other firemen, uh, around the country. He, you know, flies around, and, and he does it out of pocket, and, uh, just, just for the, for the love of the game. And, and he was like, "Yeah, I- I've had this idea for a website so I can, like, scale my teaching. I can, like, um, you know, make it known when w- where, uh, am I gonna be giving a course, put the material online." And we were, like, brainstorming, potentially this could be, could be a business. And I feel like everyone, like, not everyone, but, like, a lot of people have business ideas. But they are constrained by their ability to make them. And then you go, you try to find a software agency, and they quote you, uh, sort of a ton of money. Like, we have a lot of stories. You know, there's, there's this guy, his name is, uh, John Cheney, he's a, uh, uh, user of our platform. He's a serial entrepreneur, but whenever he wanted to try ideas, he would, like, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to, to kind of spin up an idea off the ground. And now he uses Replit to, to try those ideas really quickly. And, um, he recently make an app in, like, in a number of weeks, like three, four, five weeks, that, that made him $180,000. And so on its way to, you know, generate millions of dollars. Um, and, and because he was able to build a lot of businesses and try them really quickly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, without the big investment.
- AMAmjad Masad
Without the big investment.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
Without other people, uh, which, you know, at some point, you need more collaborators. But early on in the brainstorming and in the prototyping phase, you want to test a lot of ideas. And so it's sort of like 3D printing, right? Like, 3D printing, although, you know, people don't think it had a lot of impact on, on industry, it's actually very useful for prototyping.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AMAmjad Masad
Um, I remember talking to, uh, Jack Dorsey about this, and early on in, in, uh, Square, they would, um, you know, they, they had this, uh, Square device, and it was amazing. You would plug it into the headphone jack to accept payments. Do you remember that?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AMAmjad Masad
Uh, and so they, uh, a lot of what they did to kind of develop the form factor was using 3D printing, because it's a lot faster to kind of iterate and prototype and test with users. And so software, you know, over time, like, when I was, you know, I explained how when I was growing up, it was kind of easier to get into software. 'Cause you boot up the computer and you get the MS-DOS. You get the... It, it immediately invites you to program in it. Whereas today, you, you know, buy a, you know, iPhone or a tablet or, and it is, like, a purely consumer device. It has, like, all these amazing colors and does all these amazing things, and kids get used to it very quickly. But it doesn't invite you to, to program it. And, and, and therefore, we, we kind of lost that sort of hacker ethos. There's le- less programmers, less people who are making things, uh, because they got into it organically. It's more like they go to school to study computer science because someone told them that you have to study computer science.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AMAmjad Masad
And I think making software needs to be more like a, like a trade. Like, you don't really have to go to school and spend four or five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, uh, to, to learn how to make it. Um...
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, what I'm hearing now is that young people are being told to not go into programming. Because AI is essentially going to take all of that away. That you're just gonna be able to use prompts. You're just gonna be able to say, "I want an app that can do this."
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I want to be able to scale my business to do that. W- you know, what should I do?"
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, this is, that's, that's, that's what we built.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
That's what Replit is. It automates the, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
But do you agree with that, that young people shouldn't learn programming? Or do you think that there's something very value about, valuable about being able to actually program?
- AMAmjad Masad
Look, I, I think that you will always, uh, get value from knowledge.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AMAmjad Masad
I mean, that's a timeless thing, right? Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a wise thing. Right. That's just a wise thing to say.
- AMAmjad Masad
You know, it's, it's like, it's like, you know, you and I are, are into cars, right? Like, um, I don't really have to, you know, tune up my car anymore. But, like, it's useful to know more about cars. It's fun to know about cars. You know, if, if something happens, if, you know, if I go to the mechanic and he's, you know, doing work on my car, I know he's not gonna scam me because I can understand what he's doing. It is, you know, knowledge is always useful. And so I think people should learn as much as they can. And I think the difference though, Joe, is that when I was coming up in programming, you learned by doing. Whereas, you know, it became this sort of, like, very, um, sort of traditional, uh, type of learning, where you, you know, it's like a textbook learning. Whereas I think now we're back, with AI, we're back to an era of learning by doing. Like, when you go to our app, uh, you see just, you know, text prompts. But couple clicks away, you'll see the code. You'll be able to read it. You'll be able to ask the machine, "What you did there?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Ah.
- AMAmjad Masad
Teach me how this code, piece of code works.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, that's cool.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. …
- JRJoe Rogan
you're left with this very stale, flat, one-dimensional way of describing something that is i- incredibly complex.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So it always feels, even in descriptions, even like the great ones like Terence McKenna and Alan Watts, like-
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... their descriptions of it fall very short of the actual experience.
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's nothing about it makes you go, "Yes, that's it. He nailed it." It's always like, "Kinda. Yeah, kinda that's it."
- AMAmjad Masad
Do you still do it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Not much. You know, it's super illegal, unfortunately.
- AMAmjad Masad
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's- that's a real problem. It's a real problem I think with our world, the Western world, is that we have thrown this, uh, blanket- this blanket phrase. You know, we talk about language being insufficient. The word drugs is a terrible word to describe everything that affects your consciousness, or affects your body, or affects, you know, performance. You know, you have performance-enhancing drugs, you know, like steroids, and then, you know, you have amphetamines-
- AMAmjad Masad
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and then you have, uh, opiates, and you have highly addictive things.
- AMAmjad Masad
Like coffee.
- JRJoe Rogan
Phenibutal, things that give coffee-
- AMAmjad Masad
You have nicotine.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nicotine.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then you have psychedelics.
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think psychedelics are drugs. I- I think it's a completely different thing.
- AMAmjad Masad
It's really hard to get addicted to them, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, well it's almost impossible.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, you could s- get- you could certainly get psychologically addicted to experiences and I think there's also a real problem with people who use them and think that somehow or another they are, just from using them, gaining some sort of advantage over normal society. And that's- that's, uh...
- AMAmjad Masad
You don't think that's true?
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it's a spiritual narcissism that some people-
- AMAmjad Masad
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know what I mean?
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah, yeah.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
I'm really hoping the…
- JRJoe Rogan
corruption and the theft of resources and, and power and influence, it's crazy that this is still happening.
- AMAmjad Masad
I'm really hoping the internet is finally reaching its potential to start to open people's minds and, and, and, uh, remove this, like, veil of propaganda and, and ignorance, uh, because it was starting to happen in, like, 2010, 2011, and then you saw-... YouTube start to, to, to close down. You saw Facebook start to close down, Twitter, um... And, and suddenly we had like this period of, of darkness.
- JRJoe Rogan
Censorship.
- AMAmjad Masad
Censorship between-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
... you know, definitely ramped up in 2015.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I think with good intention, initially.
- AMAmjad Masad
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think the people that were censoring thought they were doing the right thing.
- AMAmjad Masad
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
They thought they were silencing hate-
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and misinformation, and then the craziest term, malinformation.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Malinformation is the one that drives me the most nuts because it's actual factual truth that might be detrimental to overall public good.
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is like, what does that mean?
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You, e- are w- are people infants? Are they unable to decide-
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that whether this factual information h- how to use that and how to, uh, how to have a, a more nuanced view of the world with this factional- factual information that's inconvenient to the people that are in power?
- AMAmjad Masad
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's crazy.
- AMAmjad Masad
That's crazy, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's, it's in... W- you're turning adults into infants.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're turning the state into God.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's... This is the secular religion. This is the religion of people that are atheists.
- AMAmjad Masad
The West was never about that. The West, uh, was about individual liberty. And, uh-
- 1:15:00 – 1:18:36
Mm-hmm. …
- AMAmjad Masad
conspiracy theory, but I'm finding that, you know, there's evidence to, to, to this, this theory. Uh, so that's one way to do it. But another way I was thinking about is to simulate, like a, like a debate, like a Socratic debate between AIs, like have, uh, like a, you know, society of AIs, like a community of AIs with different biases, different things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AMAmjad Masad
And just like-
- JRJoe Rogan
And like, once they start talking, they start talking in Sanskrit.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They just start abandoning English language and start talking to each other and realize we're all apes. (laughs)
- AMAmjad Masad
I, I, I-
- JRJoe Rogan
We're controlled by apes.
- AMAmjad Masad
This reminds me of a movie. Did, have you seen The Forbin Project?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- AMAmjad Masad
I really like classic sci-fi movies, like from the '60s and '70s.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- AMAmjad Masad
Uh, a lot of them are corny, but still fun. Uh, this one is basically, uh, Soviet Union and the United States are both building AGI, uh, and they both arrive at AGI around the same time.
- JRJoe Rogan
What year is this?
- AMAmjad Masad
1970-something, if you get looking for The Forbin Project.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- AMAmjad Masad
Uh, and then, um, and then, and then they bring it up at the same time and both of them sort of go over the network to kind of explore or whatever, and then they start, uh, link- linking up and they start kind of talking, and then they invent a language and they start talking in that language and then they merge and it becomes, uh, like a sort of a universal AGI and it tries to enslave, uh, humanity and that's like a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- AMAmjad Masad
... p- plot of the movie. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't think AGIs can enslave humanity, but I think it might ignore us.
- AMAmjad Masad
Yeah?
- JRJoe Rogan
Ignore... And, and shut down any problems that we have. Is this a scene from it? Wow. This is just the trailer I put on. This is... Oh, let me hear this. The whole movie is on YouTube.
- NANarrator
(music) The activation of an electronic brain exactly like ours, which they call God. They built Colossus, super computer with a mind of its own.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- NANarrator
Then they had to fight it for the first time.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AMAmjad Masad
Trailers used to be fun, man.
- NANarrator
(music) The missile has just been launched. It is heading towards the Cheyenne CVS Oil Complex. Guardian has retaliated. Retaliated? It may be too late, sir. Oh my God.
Episode duration: 2:52:03
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