Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #2521 - Aravind Srinivas

Aravind Srinivas, PhD, is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, creator of the AI-powered search and answer engine Perplexity. https://www.perplexity.ai This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/JRE

Joe RoganhostAravind Srinivasguest
Jul 1, 20262h 31mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:02

    Intro

    1. JR

      [upbeat music]

  2. 0:02 – 3:56

    Mahabharata’s “Brahmastra” and the ethics of mass-destruction weapons

    1. JR

      Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat music] Hey, man. Good to see you.

    2. AS

      You too. Thanks for having me.

    3. JR

      My pleasure.

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      How many podcasts have you done?

    6. AS

      [laughs] I, I don't know. I don't know the count, but maybe 10s.

    7. JR

      Well, when we were talking, we were talking in the lobby, I was like, "This gu- dude would be a good guest," because we were talking about ancient Hindu scriptures, where you were talking to me about something that sounds like a nuclear bomb.

    8. AS

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      And I was like, "Oh-

    10. AS

      The Brahmastra

    11. JR

      ... I need to know more about this."

    12. AS

      Yeah, yeah. So, um, the Brahmastra is part of the Mahabharata. I mean, you-

    13. JR

      Yes

    14. AS

      ... you've talked about Mahabharata in a bunch of-

    15. JR

      Yeah, the Ramayanas and-

    16. AS

      Yeah

    17. JR

      ... yeah.

    18. AS

      Yeah. So the Mahabharata is one of the two Hindu epics. Uh, the other one is Ramayana. But Mahabharata's more interesting. It's more complicated. It's, like, a lot of different stories interleaved together. And, um, the Brahmastra is the equivalent of the hydrogen bomb.

    19. JR

      And how is it described?

    20. AS

      It's described as a weapon of, like, mass destruction, gonna annihilate, like, human population. Should not be used at any cost. There's, like, a moral contract. Like, you, you clearly have to be, like, you know, violating so many things at, at a deeply moral level to even, like, wield it. And, um, it's not actually a lo- it- it's not actually ac- accessible to most warriors. There's probably, like, two warriors in the world in, in, in, in that era who are allowed to use it. And, um, and it, it, and it has to be passed through special access. Like, a teacher has to, like, pass it on to you, the secret to use it. Almost like a nu- think about it as, like, the equivalent of the nuclear code, right?

    21. JR

      Yeah.

    22. AS

      And, um, Arjuna had it. Uh, this, this, this, uh, particular character in Mahabharata called Arjuna, um, he was allowed to use it. Um, and then this other person was this... Basically, Arjuna had a teacher named Drona. And, um, Drona had a son named Ashwatthama. And, um, Ashwatthama was always jealous of Arjuna. Arjuna was not Drona's son, but he was his model disciple. And so Drona passed on the secret of the Brahmastra to him. And, um, um, Drona's son also wanted it, but because it was his son, he also passed on the secret to his son, even though the son wasn't as good as Arjuna. And at a... There was... The... During the war, Arjuna and Drona fought on the opposite sides. It- it's, it's just, uh, you know, circumstances. And, uh, and, and, and his, and his dad died. Ashwatthama's dad, the teacher, died in the war. And so the son got mad and, like, unleashed the Brahmastra. And, uh, Lord Krishna had to come and save, save the planet to not, not get that destruction for us.

    23. JR

      How old is the Mahabharata?

    24. AS

      Um, again, it's, uh... There's a lot of different opinions on this, so I don't actually know for sure. My understanding is, is at least 8,500 to 2,500 years old. Like, like, 1,500 years ago is the minimum, 2,500 years ago is the maximum. So it happened in some period in, in that 1,000-year timeframe between that. And, um, there is still, like... It's, it's still unclear if, like, a lot of it is just, like, you know, been mythologized. Um, and what actually happened was just a war between kins. Uh, there were two groups of people, the Pandavas and the Kauravas. And, um, you know, each side thought they were fighting for their own rights and justice. But, um, at, at the end of the day, you can crudely understand it as, like, essentially fight for the kingdom. Um, basically, there were, like... There, there was a previous generation and two brothers. And they w- and both the brothers had a bunch of kids. And those kids were warring to get

  3. 3:56 – 6:42

    Autonomous mythic weapons, battlefield formations, and “too detailed to dismiss” storytelling

    1. AS

      the next in line. And, um, that ended up being, like, a massive war, and a bunch of other allies fought on each sides. And, um, um, so many amazing weapons were used as part of the war. And a lot of these weapons are, like, extremely... Like, like, describe an extreme level of detail that is pretty in- in- incredible. Like, the, there's a lot of detail around, like, targeted weapons. So you could precisely identify a target and just shoot at that. Um, and then, uh, Lord-

    2. JR

      Does it explain, like, what the weapon is?

    3. AS

      Yeah. So there's one weapon called the Divyastra where you can just specifically target a t- uh, any, any particular person or a group, and it would just automatically direct itself and do it, almost like a semi-autonomous weapon. And then Lord Krishna had this, um, weapon called the Sudarshan Chakra. It's basically a discus. And then you can just release it, and it'll go and specifically identify somebody and chop off their head and come back to your, y- you [laughs] Right? It, it self-directs itself. So my... What I was amazed by is how, um, interesting it is in terms of, um, all the autonomy in the weapons, semi-autonomy or autonomy, where the weapons could just be directed at people or, like, directed at, you know, a group of soldiers, and it would just go and do its job and come back to the wielder. And, um, um, there were so many different astras. Divyastra, Varunastra, Nagastra. Brahmastra was obviously the ultimate, the, the hydrogen bomb equivalent. And all of these are, like, described in a lot of detail, and, like, who has access to it. And of course, it's, it's mythologized, so it, it's described as this, like, these arrows in your [laughs] like, in back of your, uh, shoulders. But you could, you could understand it as, like, you know, somebody having just access to a lot of weapons. And then, um, whoever was powerful would go capture and colonize and, like, gain power. And, um, essentially a g- a, a fight between a group of cousins. That, that, that, that's the bottom line of that story.

    4. JR

      Now, if we think of history as this linear progression from caveman to us-

    5. AS

      Yeah

    6. JR

      ... and we hear about autonomous weapons that were written in the Mahabharata somewhere around 2,000-plus years ago, we go, "Well, mythology."

    7. AS

      Yeah.

    8. JR

      But if not If there's been some sort of rise and fall of civilization-

    9. AS

      Yeah

    10. JR

      ... if there has been catastrophic, whatever it is, asteroid impacts-

    11. AS

      Yeah

    12. JR

      ... shifting of the poles, whatever it is-

    13. AS

      Yeah

    14. JR

      ... that's caused great disasters, you can imagine that these people are remembering a time where there was some sort of very advanced civilization, and this is what they're describing. Like, if you knew for a fact that there had been a, a great advanced, technologically advanced civilization... When we have evidence that they had some technology, like the Pyramids of Giza and

  4. 6:42 – 9:28

    How old are these texts—and what’s history vs. myth?

    1. JR

      stuff, like how did you do that?

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      I don't know how-

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      There's some technology involved, right?

    6. AS

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      But we don't have evidence of the technology.

    8. AS

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      But if we did, if we knew for a fact, you would look at the Mahabharata and go, "Oh, this is history." They're just explaining it in a, a kind of crude, contemporary way for the time. Arrows instead of, you know, semi-autonomous drones-

    10. AS

      Yeah

    11. JR

      ... with exploding heads on them.

    12. AS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      I mean, that's what we have now, all those things that they're describing. Hydrogen bomb, semi-autonomous and autonomous drones. I mean, they have, they have autonomous fighter jets now. Like, they don't need people anymore. Like, this... We're, we're in that area right now. So when you read about something like that from the Mahabharata, you go like, "Okay, what, what was really going on?"

    14. AS

      Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that, that's always been my fascination with, with, with those epics, and, uh, the level of detail with which they described all these weapons and who had access, uh, different levels of access, the status required to have access and, um, uh, how it was used in the wars, um, different formations of the soldiers. Like, they had all these, like, crazy formation structures like forming the army like a lotus, forming the army like a, um, you know... There's something called a Chakravyuha, like a, like literally like i- it has to have concentric circles. So you cannot, like, actually get into the innermost circle without going through the outer circles, and then you can get killed by each of the flanks whenever you're trying to enter in. And the secret of how to actually break into these vyuhas, vyuhas means formations, uh, was only known to a few people. And, um, it, it's, it's, it's, it's incredible. Like, you could say, okay, like, somebody had to be extremely, um, skillful to have that sort of like visualizations and imaginations of describing a story like that and, and obviously, like Tolkien has done an amazing job with "Lord of the Rings," you know, in creating so much detail. At the same time, like, a lot of it actually coming through in real life in some form, again, not exactly the same weapons, but similar style, makes you wonder was there actually something around then? And, uh, people have tried excavations in all these areas. There's like two main areas in the Mahabharata. Hastinapur was the name of the kingdom, and people have done excavations around there and have, like, found some artifacts that might date back to those years. But, uh, there are also some details that are described in the epics that don't quite align with reality. For example, all the men, all the main warriors in, in that era were described as like very tall, very big, um, seven, eight feet, whatever. You know, I don't even know exact numbers. But, um, but, um, our

  5. 9:28 – 13:01

    Vedic math, computation in ancient texts, and the shared flood narratives

    1. AS

      hist- uh, uh, studies by archaeologists also say that people who lived in those years in, in those regions were probably not more than six feet tall. So it's, it's not clear exactly like what happened, what was correct, what was not correct, and, you know, we just have to keep probing more. But I find the idea fascinating to think of like what could have existed in sacred texts that was only partially communicated to the next generation and having a lot of like reinterpretations. Another thing that is very interesting to think about is Vedic math. So, um, the... Basically, Vedic math is like a branch of mathematics that, you know, some people in India are growing up learning. Like I, I, I read it myself too. And, uh, some people actually practice it just to be sharper at mental math for doing their exams like GMAT and things, things like that, GRE. And, um, um, it has like a line in the Vedas that says, oh, like one from the last digit, two from the first digit, whatever. You know, so many different ways of multiplying two different numbers, like 97 times 96. Oh, like subtract the last two digits, put it in the right. Multiply the first digits, put it in the left. That's the, that's the result. And, um, then you, you wonder like, oh wait, the Rig Veda is so old. It's as old as... It's, it's the oldest sacred text out there. How is it describing computation? That feels-

    2. JR

      Right

    3. AS

      ... very unreal. Like, do they actually know or understand advanced forms of computation even back in those days? And, um-

    4. JR

      And how old is Rig Veda?

    5. AS

      Um, I don't exactly know how old it is. Um-

    6. JR

      Why don't we put that into Perplexity?

    7. AS

      Yeah, let's do that.

    8. JR

      [laughs] Let's find out.

    9. AS

      Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it is technically the oldest sacred text out there.

    10. JR

      And so what's interesting is I wonder how old the stories were by the time they were written down. Like how much of it is relayed person to person for years and years, just like the Bible, before it's ever actually written down. Scholars usually date the composition of the Rig Veda to about 1500 to 1200 BCE, so its oldest layer is roughly 3,200, 3,700 years old today. Like I... If there really was, like every, uh, ancient culture has a story of a flood. Ev- everyone-

    11. AS

      Yeah

    12. JR

      ... they all have an apocalyptic story.

    13. AS

      And Ma- Mahabharata had the same thing.

    14. JR

      Was it-

    15. AS

      Mahabha- Mahabharata had the same thing where there was a big like, almost like a tsunami-like thing. I don't exactly know what it was called, but that was the collapse of Lord Krishna's kingdom, Dwaraka. After the war, a lot of people died, but some people survived, and even those who survived got wiped out by a calamity or, or like some kinda like a, a fight among themselves. And, um, most of the people who participated in that era actually died.

    16. JR

      Here it is.

    17. AS

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      The primordial m- how do you say it? Manu?

    19. AS

      Yeah.

    20. JR

      Manu flood. Classic Hindu great flood myth where the righteous King Manu is warned by a divine fish about an imminent deluge that will destroy humanity. He builds a boat, loads it with his family. [chuckles] It's, it's like Noah and the Ark. It's the same thing. With seeds and animals, ties it to the horn of the god in fish form, which tows the boat to safety until the waters recede and the world is repopulated. They all have the same story.

    21. AS

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      That's what's really crazy. But-

  6. 13:01 – 22:20

    Yugas, deep time cycles, and pre-flood “kings who reigned for millennia”

    1. AS

      There is a, there is a concept in, um, Hindu, uh, philosophy called the Yugas.

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. AS

      So-

    4. JR

      I'm, I'm reading a book about it right now

    5. AS

      ... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, there's like different Yugas, and Yugas are like thousands of years, and the concept is that the Yugas keep cycling around. And so, like, uh, we are in the Kali Yuga right now. Uh, and before that it was a Dwapara Yuga. That's when most of Mahabharata happened, and before that there was a Treta Yuga where the Ramayana happened, and before that there was another Yuga.

    6. JR

      What is next after Kali Yuga?

    7. AS

      It... No, there is nothing next after Kali Yu- it, it, it goes back to the first one. I forget the name of the first Yuga.

    8. JR

      'Cause the w- the interpretation that I'm reading is that we're not in Kali Yuga anymore, and that-

    9. AS

      No

    10. JR

      ... Kali Yuga ended in the 1900s and Dwapara Yuga started then.

    11. AS

      No, no. K- we are in Kali Yuga right now.

    12. JR

      100%.

    13. AS

      100%.

    14. JR

      So why do people have different interpretations? Like, there, is, is there a-

    15. AS

      Is that true? I, I-

    16. JR

      Yeah. There's like a guru interpretation. There's like one specific guru-

    17. AS

      I see

    18. JR

      ... that has this interpretation that Kali Yuga ended in the 1900s.

    19. AS

      Okay.

    20. JR

      And that we're moving on.

    21. AS

      Interesting.

    22. JR

      Yeah. But I don't know who's right 'cause it's, it's an enormous cycle, right?

    23. AS

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      The cycles of humanity.

    25. AS

      Yeah, thousands of years.

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. AS

      Thousands of years. And, uh...

    28. JR

      So-

    29. AS

      Yeah. So these are the four Yugas. Um, and, um...

    30. JR

      So why do people have different interpretations? One, those... Um, I'm gonna tell you the book I'm reading.

  7. 22:20 – 25:55

    Rise-and-fall civilizations, lost knowledge, and the puzzle of megalithic engineering

    1. JR

      There's a ton ... No, thank ... Well, it's good to, good as any. How about these temples that they find in India that are carved entirely out of one piece of stone? What did you do?

    2. AS

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      How did you do that? How long ago did this happen? How many of them were buried and then they had to uncover them and then, like, figure out, like, what is this? Who made it? There's no timeline. No one really knows. There's no evidence of tools that were capable of doing this kind of work back then, and they're huge and beautiful and perfect, and they have, like, acoustic properties, and the geometry is fucking fantastic.

    4. AS

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      It's nuts, man.

    6. AS

      It's nuts that they, all of these temples were actually just built, uh, not just ... Th- th- they were specifically, the locations for them were picked out so that you get the right, uh, seismic vibrations over there in terms of, like, uh, proximity to the ocean, the gravitational waves from the sun and the moon.

    7. JR

      [laughs]

    8. AS

      People actually made that level of, like-

    9. JR

      Look at this, man. Imagine the undertaking of carving that temple out of the side of a fucking giant piece of rock.

    10. AS

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      You screw up one thing and it's over.

    12. AS

      There's no simulations. You just have to, [laughs] like, build it.

    13. JR

      Well, what did they have? This is the question. Like, imagine today if we had to do this. Look, it's possible. This is a possible endeavor. It can be done.

    14. AS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      But imagine what kind of technology would we, we have to need to map it out, to make sure that it was all precise, that it all ali- I mean, it's precise within, like, millimeters from s- point to point, and everything is done out of one piece of stone. Like, what did they do? Was it chisels? Did you do that with chisels? That's crazy. How many times did you have to sharpen your fucking chisel? That's nuts. Or did you have something completely different? Because some of the more intricate ones, see if you can find these, some of the crazy ones, inside these temples, there's sculptures that are three-dimensional, and they're carved, like, inside of the sculpture. So there's, like, an outer area, and then there's these, all these openings, and then inside it's highly detailed. Like- How'd you even reach in there?

    16. AS

      Um, it just says they used chisels and hammers, and I don't think that's possible. [laughs]

    17. JR

      [laughs] And careful geometric-

    18. AS

      People have tried

    19. JR

      ... point on the crook line. Yeah

    20. AS

      I've seen videos of people trying to do that. They said, like, "This is how much work someone could do in, like, 12 hours with a h- a hammer," and they get nowhere, let alone, like, perfect and looking good.

    21. JR

      Yeah, it's nuts, man. And there's a lot of evidence of stuff like that all over the world, which is really weird. You have the stuff in Peru, like Sacsayhuamán. When you look at these stones, and it looks like they're melted into place, and they're 900 tons. Like, what did you do?

    22. AS

      Yeah. How did you even get it up there?

    23. JR

      How'd you... Where'd they get it? How'd you get it there? How'd you align it perfectly? Built in only 18 years. How do they know that?

    24. AS

      [laughs]

    25. JR

      How do they know that? 'Cause it's, uh, attributed to one king.

    26. AS

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      So King Krishan I, 756 to 77s- uh, 3 CE. Maybe. I mean, how do you know, though?

    28. AS

      Yeah, they said... Archaeologists said it would've... They calculate it would take them 100 years to do it.

    29. JR

      Psh. Yeah.

    30. AS

      Yeah. I mean, this is where, like, you know-

  8. 25:55 – 29:07

    Curiosity as the compounding advantage: relationships, success, and why questions matter

    1. AS

      But yeah, it goes back to, like, the thing you were saying, right? You know, what is one thing that's common across all these different ages is human curiosity. So, I mean, that's something that, you know, I, I would love to get your take on this. Um, like I, I, I've been toying with this idea called the curiosity premium, which is the most effective people, the most successful people, have always been the most curious people, the ones who have been good at asking the best questions, and they tend to do better in every aspect of their life. And, uh, you're, you're a good example of that, so that's why I would love to get your take on this. And the reason I believe that is because, um, long term, people who continuously ask questions tend to do better. They make more money. They have a higher quality of life. They're happy. They have c- more compounding relationships. People find them more interesting, and so they compound their relationships over time. And so, uh, naturally, they end up succeeding, but their spirit of inquiry, their intrinsic curiosity, doesn't actually stop once they succeed. It only, they just channelize it even more, and so that's why it keeps compounding. And I would argue that, like, it's the only quality, it's the only, like, quality that makes us really human. You know-

    2. JR

      Mm

    3. AS

      ... in, in this world where we can seek a lot of information and get information way faster than ever before, it feels like that's that one universal human quality that's existed since ancient time, since the oldest texts. Like, in fact, in, uh, in the Rig Veda, um, you're explicitly encouraged to seek wisdom more than wealth. And it's not just an idea specific to Hinduism. That specific idea exists in the Bible, it exists in the Quran, it exists in the Torah. It's not that seeking wealth is admonished by religious texts. It's actually that it's more important to seek wisdom. And, um, you know, like, you can... That, why I said you're a good example of that is, like, sure, you have a very, very large podcast, but the way you're running it is like you're just curious about a lot of things and asking a lot of questions, and I think that's that one quality that's very important. So, um, and I feel like it's the oldest thing. It's the only thing that we have known since ancient time, being curious.

    4. JR

      Well, I, I, I think it's stimulating to people, and genuine curiosity is stimulating to other people. When, when someone is genuinely curious about something, I become curious about it.

    5. AS

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      I think it's contagious. And I think that it's, it's also an authentic quality, and I think there's, there's something about really wanting to know something and being interested in something. And if you're curious, generally you're gonna ask more questions about something, so you'll have a deeper understanding of it. So if you're trying to do, uh, whatever you're trying to do, a sport, a game, you, you'll probably get better at it because you're more curious. 'Cause instead of just assuming things, you'll ask more questions. You'll reexamine things. It's genu- It's, it's one of the most important human qualities, and to me, it's one of the most attractive human qualities. It's always been. When I meet curious people, I'm, I'm always interested. I'm always like, like, "Tell me what you're curious about, and I'll tell you what I'm curious about. Let's talk." You know, it's, it's, um... And this podcast started out genuinely because of... Well, a lot of it was just talking shit with friends.

    7. AS

      Mm-hmm.

  9. 29:07 – 35:40

    Modern discovery reshaping ancient timelines: Göbekli Tepe, pyramid scans, and precision artifacts

    1. JR

      But it also led into, like, one of my very first guests, actual guests, was Graham Hancock.

    2. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      And it's just 'cause I was curious, 'cause I had read "Fingerprints of the Gods," and I'd seen him talk. I'd seen speeches, and I'm like, "I wanna know," like, "what do you know? What do you think's going on?" And, uh, he's another guy, incredibly curious and absolutely fascinated with his, his takes on ancient history. He has been talking about this subject a long time, and when he first, when he first wrote "Fingerprints of the Gods," I think that came out in, like, I wanna say it's, like, '97 or '98 or something like that. And I remember reading it, and so many of my friends, uh, uh, you know, educated friends were like, "That is horseshit. Why are you paying attention to this?" More and more and more, as time goes on, it's been proven that he's correct. The timeline's shifted back, and from the publication of that book, the discovery of Göbekli Tepe and the surrounding area. Like, it's like, okay, now we realize, well, there was some crazy shit going on at the very least 11,000 years ago.

    4. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      So we pushed civilization back 5,000 years. So, like, and this is just what we've found now, and we keep finding things. Keep digging, keep looking. And then you see the stuff that they're finding underneath the pyramid with this radio tomography where they're looking under the pyramid that it seems that there's structures under the py- You've seen that stuff?

    6. AS

      I haven't seen that.

    7. JR

      I had the scientist that's involved in it, he's an Italian guy, Filippo Biondi, and he came on the podcast. Wonderful accent.

    8. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JR

      Almost as good as yours. It was, uh, amazing. Uh, but he's describing the use of this stuff, and that they've used it successfully on known areas in, uh, pyramids and other structures, and they can det- det- in f- for... In fact, they, um... There's a, in Italy, there is a, a particle collider that is underneath a mountain.

    10. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      And using this technology, which is satellite-based technology, they get an accurate de- description of this particle collider that's, I think it's 1,200 meters underground. Like, how, how far is that thing underground? We'll find out. But it's, like, deep under stone.

    12. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    13. JR

      And they find that they, they can get an accurate... Like, and they can actually give you the dimensions of this particle collider. They have, like, an image of it. And this same technology is showing that there's these columns underneath the pyramid in various places that are 20 meters wide, and they have coils around them. They don't know what the hell they are, and they, the whole structure of this thing, it's not small. It goes almost a kilometer into the ground. There's, like, this enormous, like, bottom of it, and it seems like it's something that's constructed.

    14. AS

      Wow.

    15. JR

      And so they're like, "Okay, well, the pyramid is crazy. It's crazy enough, but if there's something underneath it that's a, a man-made, or someone made it-

    16. AS

      Mm-hmm

    17. JR

      ... that's a kilometer deep into the ground, like, what the fuck are we even talking about? Like, who made this? What, what did they have?"

    18. AS

      1.2 kilometers in, 4,600 feet. That's-

    19. JR

      1.2 kilometers into the mountain. That's nuts.

    20. AS

      Fuck. Yeah.

    21. JR

      It's a half a fucking mile in it, plus, into the mountain.

    22. AS

      Wow.

    23. JR

      And this thing can see through all that and get this accurate depiction of this particle collider, and it's showing, with multiple scans, not just one, multiple scans and different technology, the same exact images, the same exact structures underneath this fucking immense 2,300,000 stone structure that almost perfectly aligns to true north, south, east and west. Like, what, what was going on? Don't tell me pulleys. Don't tell me copper tools. Like, what the fuck was going on? Something crazy. And I have a feeling our simplistic explanation of it is just doing no one any justice. It's doing no service to history.

    24. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    25. JR

      It's doing no service to our understanding. They've gotta be a little bit more open in the fact that they are perplexed.

    26. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JR

      And not just p- perplexed by stuff like this. This is a 3D print of an actual vase that exists in Egypt that they found that is p- they found it in tombs of the old kingdom. This thing was somehow or another, it's made with diorite, so it's incredibly hard stone.

    28. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    29. JR

      And made to, like, a thousandth of a human hair in, in its-

    30. AS

      Man

  10. 35:40 – 55:11

    Fragile digital civilization: what happens if the internet vanishes?

    1. JR

      Well, think about what we're doing, right? So all of our knowledge is essentially stored on hard drives and paper.

    2. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      Those are the, the two things that are gonna deteriorate the quickest. [laughs]

    4. AS

      May- maybe we should, like, take a dump of the internet and-

    5. JR

      Put it on a rock

    6. AS

      ... go preserve it somewhere.

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. AS

      So that even if our, our civilization is wiped out and all the data centers are, like, gone or whatever-

    9. JR

      Right

    10. AS

      ... whoever comes next can go figure it out.

    11. JR

      Well, I mean, and then you've gotta always assume that even if they found a hard drive, that they would... Like, how long would it take for them to back engineer what we did and figure out what these ones and zeros actually mean?

    12. AS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      Y- that would, is, which is one of the most bizarre and fantastic accomplishments-

    14. AS

      Yeah

    15. JR

      ... of modern civilization, is that, like-

    16. AS

      Yeah

    17. JR

      ... this is a terabyte.

    18. AS

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      Which is nuts.

    20. AS

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      Like, I don't know what your first computer had.

    22. AS

      I don't remember. Definitely not, not even a gigabyte probably

    23. JR

      No.

    24. AS

      Yeah

    25. JR

      Like a few hundred megabytes-

    26. AS

      Megabytes, yeah

    27. JR

      ... was your hard drive.

    28. AS

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      Yeah, I mean, I remember when they first came out with gigabytes, I was like, "This is nuts."

    30. AS

      Yeah.

  11. 55:11 – 1:42:50

    Roswell-to-transistors: fun conspiracies, secrecy incentives, and why disclosure is hard

    1. AS

      The transistor. Like, you know the story-

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm

    3. AS

      ... of the transistor?

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. AS

      So Bell Labs was basically employing as many, like, like history adjusted, as many telephone engineers back then as the number of software engineers today. But only three people cared enough to question whether you should use these really hot giant vacuum tubes for amplifying telephone signals. So vacuum tubes were very big, power hungry, and, uh, very hot. And so they were not fault tolerant, and it's very expensive. And so three people questioned the need for that and came up with the idea of the transistor to, to, to amplify current, and that, that was the Nobel Prize winning discovery, and not just that it was useful to amplify telephone signals, it basically led to the rise of modern computing, and we wouldn't have an iPhone like this today to, if, if not for those three people.

    6. JR

      Do you know what the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory about transistors is?

    7. AS

      No.

    8. JR

      It, that they are back-engineered from the Roswell crash along with fiber optics.

    9. AS

      Tell me more.

    10. JR

      So, uh, we read this on the podcast. Remember Jamie, there's the two scientists that were attributed. There's this one scientist that said they weren't even remotely exceptional guys, and that they gave them the credit for this so that they didn't have to reveal the true nature of where this technology came from.

    11. AS

      How they came from. I see. Interesting.

    12. JR

      So again, tinfoil hat securely on our heads.

    13. AS

      [laughs]

    14. JR

      This is not something I believe.

    15. AS

      Okay.

    16. JR

      This is just something that's fun. Um, there's a few inventions that came out of that time period, roughly after 1947-

    17. AS

      Mm-hmm

    18. JR

      ... that are weird, and one of them is fiber optics and one of them is a transistor-

    19. AS

      Interesting

    20. JR

      ... and these are supposedly attributed to back engineering programs.

    21. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JR

      So the Roswell crash, I don't know if you ever paid any attention to it, it's a real weird one-

    23. AS

      Mm-hmm

    24. JR

      ... because the cover of the Roswell Daily Record said that the government has a crash disc that landed in the desert.

    25. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    26. JR

      Bunch of witnesses, bunch of people saw it. It's also people that saw, um, supposedly saw physical bodies of these creatures, uh, and a l- a supposedly, uh... Again, who knows what's true?

    27. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    28. JR

      But Truman went to the site, he visited it-

    29. AS

      Mm-hmm

    30. JR

      ... and then the planes, two separate planes, were flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Uh, which was, uh, I think it was just Wright Base back then. I don't think it was Wright-Patterson. But they, they flew them out, and the idea was this material was so important, they didn't wanna risk one plane crashing, so they flew it in two different planes. And that this stuff has always been known to be stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. That's what Rayos talks about.

  12. 1:42:50 – 1:49:58

    AI eroding secrecy: local models, individual sovereignty, and curated information risks

    1. JR

      One of the big fears that people in America have, uh, about technology in particular is that without being aware that this was going to take place, everybody gave up their data, everybody gave up their data and didn't recognize it was a commodity. That in turn made these corporations immensely wealthy and powerful-

    2. AS

      Mm-hmm

    3. JR

      ... and then they have the ability to shape narratives

    4. AS

      Yeah

    5. JR

      And that, that concerns people because using their ideological position as leverage to try to push that through technology that has immense control and influence over people, and that We didn't see technology and corporations as having that much control over how society views itself-

    6. AS

      Mm-hmm

    7. JR

      ... and how we interact with each other. And w- there's a real, real concern that these companies got so big and have so-- Like, there's a guy named Robert Epstein who's done a lot of work on, um, narrat- or curated search engine results-

    8. AS

      Yeah

    9. JR

      ... and how much that can aff- Have you read, seen any of his stuff?

    10. AS

      I think I've seen this, yeah.

    11. JR

      How much that can affect elections.

    12. AS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      How much that can affect, uh, p- people's perceptions on any societal issue that's coming up.

    14. AS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      And it's concerning. It really is. Because they do curate s- search results. It's not simply, you know-

    16. AS

      Yeah

    17. JR

      ... you just run it out there, and you get this as the data. No, you get-

    18. AS

      Yeah

    19. JR

      ... you know, if you look for specific political figures, depending upon where they fall on the right or left spectrum, and depending upon which way the company forms, the, the, the corporation forms f- uh, falls rather, th- you'll get different results, and that sucks.

    20. AS

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      You know? That's, it's very concerning that people don't recogni-- they don't, they don't have the ability to see how that is dangerous for all of society-

    22. AS

      Yeah

    23. JR

      ... to have that kind of power and wield it in that way, where you're not being honest about accurate, objective information. You're pushing particular ideologies.

    24. AS

      Yeah. So I think it, it's kinda like, um, th- th- this is almost an effect of the asymmetry that exists between the amount of AI power that centralized systems and centralized companies have, and the amount of AI power as you as a sovereign individual has. So when you don't have the AIs to just go judge for yourself, like, what you should be reading in Fed, you're obviously, like, under the influence of what, you know, whatever big tech company's controlling the information for. But when you have access to all those AIs, you can actually just customize what you wanna see by telling the AI like, "Hey, this is what I think you should actually question and tell me." Until now, you never had that power for yourself. You're finally getting it.

    25. JR

      Right.

    26. AS

      And eventually, we'll, we'll be able to have our own LLMs, like our own models that we would be able to host in our own hardware. We don't have to rely on, like, one centralized model given to us by, like, any specific, um, model company. And, uh, using that, you can shape it to your, your beliefs, your custom, y- you know, your, your, your custom data and, and, um, so when you're consuming a search result, you can actually task that AI that you control and you run, so nobody can shut off access to it, to tell you like, "Hey," like, "can you actually, like, give me a contrarian perspective on this?" Or like, "Can you tell me if these search results are actually biased?" So I think we need to give individuals more sovereignty with more access to their own AIs that they own and run on a piece of hardware they own themselves. And this is the whole, like, this is gonna be leading to the whole rise of local AIs. So as AI models, like today, they're very power inefficient. They're running on large data centers. But in, in a year or two from now, whatever capability that exists in the most power-hungry data centers will be, you'll, it'll be possible to run it in some box that you own. May not-

    27. JR

      Really?

    28. AS

      Yeah. It's already happening. It's already happening that, like, there are, like, interesting hardware projects like the Apple Mac mini, NVIDIA DGX, where you can actually host a reasonable size model and, and put it in a box and have it run, and you don't have to pay for all the tokens it c- it, it produces you. You just have to plug it into your power cord and it works. And-

    29. JR

      I know Duncan, my friend Duncan Trussell, he does that.

    30. AS

      Yeah. And, and, and today, the capability of that model that can run locally is not quite there, so you would still prefer to use something that runs from the data center. But eventually, this is gonna be a spectrum. There's gonna be some percentage of tasks that you, you would, you would start delegating to this local system. It'll be a hybrid model. And over time, it could end up being the case that you could buy something that feels like a refrigerator for your home, which is your own AI box, and host a model that you control. So nobody can arbitrarily shut off access to it one day. And then you can, you can have that be your weapon against what the big tech wants you to be, fed or believe in.

  13. 1:49:58 – 2:02:40

    Algorithms vs. curiosity: social media brain-rot, AI slop, and the “unregretted minutes” metric

    1. JR

      Yeah, and cer-certainly pushing narratives. Um, what do you think happens with social media? Because social media and as you were talking about before, like algorithms-

    2. AS

      Yeah

    3. JR

      ... like it's one of the biggest problems-

    4. AS

      That's right

    5. JR

      ... in terms of the way people view the world.

    6. AS

      Yeah. I'm curious what you think like, you know... Like my, my opinion is that it's not good for the kids.

    7. JR

      It's terrible for them.

    8. AS

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      But I think they should have some exposure to it because I think it's good to know that it, it's a thing.

    10. AS

      That's good. Yeah.

    11. JR

      And I think children are fairly resilient and they learn. But the anxiety levels of kids is much higher than ever before.

    12. AS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      Suicidal ideation's higher.

    14. AS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      Self-harm.

    16. AS

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Yeah.

    18. AS

      I'm a little-- uh, my belief is that, um, when you're just fed a feed and, and, and, and the algorithm of the social media company decides what you're gonna see next, it, it curbs your curiosity. And I, I don't, I don't think things that curb human curiosity should be encouraged.

    19. JR

      Yeah, I agree.

    20. AS

      And so i-if the app is designed in a way where it asks you what you're interested in and helps you to come up and find things that, that are very related to what you're interested in-

    21. JR

      Right

    22. AS

      ... that's awesome. But that's not how it works. It, it's literally like it starts with something, you start doom scrolling, and then starts showing you what you just scrolled, and then you end up in an echo chamber. And, and that's not, that's not necessarily good.

    23. JR

      Well, you can get trapped.

    24. AS

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      You can get-- I'm in a trap of schizophrenics lately on Instagram.

    26. AS

      [laughs]

    27. JR

      Where it's just mostly schizophrenics, like people that telling they're, they're the rightful president of the United States, and like the... You tell the guy hasn't showered in days, and, you know. And if you have a phone, you can create an account-

    28. AS

      Yeah

    29. JR

      ... and you can just start uploading nonsense. And then for whatever reason, I've watched a couple of them, so now they just keep showing them to me.

    30. AS

      And it's full of AI slop right now.

  14. 2:02:40 – 2:15:22

    AGI/ASI, jobs, and education: from memorizing answers to learning how to question

    1. SP

      Is it this channel?

    2. AS

      Yeah, yeah.

    3. SP

      20 million subscribers?

    4. AS

      Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    5. JR

      Ooh, okay.

    6. AS

      Yeah, so-

    7. JR

      20.9 million subscribers.

    8. AS

      Yeah, it's pretty good.

    9. JR

      Obviously, a lot of people agree.

    10. AS

      It's pretty good. So they make all these very interesting videos about, like, um, stuff that [laughs] you know, you would be curious about, but you never actually bothered to ask that or learn more about. And, um, explain some of the most under-understood companies, um, or, like, phenomena and, um, I just love watching it. You know, I'm, I'm... This is kind of like [laughs] my idea of doom scrolling. Like, I like, I like watching, like, 20 videos at once and then-

    11. JR

      Yeah, I am going to subscribe to it right now.

    12. AS

      It's pretty cool.

    13. JR

      Veritasium. There it is. Got it, subscribed, bam.

    14. AS

      And explains all these, like, fun concepts that are, you know, you take it for granted. Like, okay, why is Google Maps really fast? Like, okay, it'll tell you what's going on, how the data is used across so many different people at once, and all these different-

    15. SP

      About the heart murmur thing.

    16. JR

      CIA's new tech doesn't make sense. Exactly.

    17. AS

      [laughs]

    18. SP

      We were talking about it yesterday.

    19. JR

      We were just talking about that yesterday. We were doubting it. You know the heart murmur thing? Do you know about that?

    20. AS

      No.

    21. JR

      So the pilots that were downed in, uh, Iran-

    22. AS

      Uh-huh

    23. JR

      ... they said that they have this technology that allows them, I think they could use it up to 70 miles, and they can detect a very unique heart rate. Like, your heart rate is different than my heart rate. They could know it's you. You could be hiding in the mountains, and they could find you from 70 miles away with this technology.

    24. AS

      Wow. Wow.

    25. JR

      But a lot of people are like-

    26. AS

      Is it like-

    27. JR

      Yeah

    28. AS

      ... beams or waves or something and-

    29. JR

      Well, it's called quan- What is it called? Quantum magnetometry? Is that what they call it? I think that's what it was. Remember we looked it up yesterday? I th- th- they're using the word quantum and not explaining what they're doing, like, how they're doing it, and you're like, "Okay, is that real, or is this some invented horseshit to cover the fact that they have some very sophisticated satellite imagery where they can have a, a detailed map of literally the entire surface of the world? They know exactly where people are, but they don't want our enemies to know that they have this capability, so they're making up something."

    30. AS

      I see.

  15. 2:15:22 – 2:31:07

    Government modernization, compliance bottlenecks, UBI-like dividends, and AI companionship risks

    1. JR

      What do you think about this idea that universal basic income is gonna be required?

    2. AS

      Some form of it is good. Some-- It's like a dividend. I almost think of it as a dividend. If a lot of spend that most companies are currently doing today on, like, payroll, which is paying a knowledge worker for a certain task. Think of knowledge work as basically taking information and transforming it into an artifact, right? And it's, it's messy and complicated. Let's assume that's being done by AIs. So obviously, companies will start spending more on compute instead of payroll. It's just a reallocation of, like, spend or budget. Similar to, like, what happened in advertising industries where most of your advertising budgets went, went to, like, television and, like, billboards, and then now it's sta-starting to go to Google and Instagram and YouTube and all that. So, um, when that happens, um, obviously, like, the AI companies are gonna make a lot of money, and, uh, people who helped be part of creating it, or in either directly or indirectly, would want to have some role to play in that ecosystem. And a good way to involve them is through giving them some ownership in the company. So as shareholders, you c- if you get dividends from the profits generated by the AIs, it's not a bad thing. But, but that's, that shouldn't be the only thing.

    3. JR

      Right. So this is similar to, like, people that live in Alaska, they get a check because-

    4. AS

      Correct

    5. JR

      ... they, they-

    6. AS

      Alaska, Alaska get-- Alaska does this, and it's not a bad thing as long as they are doing some other things-

    7. JR

      Right

    8. AS

      ... alongside.

    9. JR

      It could l-lessen the burden.

    10. AS

      Correct.

    11. JR

      Yeah.

    12. AS

      Yeah. And, and, and if people are interested in still being part of the AI industries, they go do things that AIs are not able to do today. And that's, that's been the case before. Like, when Industrial Revolution started, um, the, the United Kingdom actually started, like, pro- like, like, projects around building railroads, and that gave a lot of people who were in the cottage industries new jobs. So there are gonna be a lot of new projects to just, okay, like, what if we wanna reimagine the government itself where the government runs largely on AI?

    13. JR

      Yeah. That was, that was my next question. [chuckles]

    14. AS

      Yeah. So then we need people for that.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. AS

      Because it-- th-this is a legacy industry. It's not, it's not about the capabilities not being there. It's about working through the legacy and bureaucracy to, like, actually deploy and implement this inside the most, like, like, largest institutions in the country. And, uh, that's gonna need a new set of skilled workers to go do that. So some people who might be working at Microsoft or something today might actually end up working for the United States government because, uh, Microsoft may not need them, especially for, like, you know, internally deploying AI or selling AI to their customers, but the government needs them. And, and, and if the government can pay them well, and it's a fulfilling job to find some meaning for, like, doing something good for the country, it's not a bad thing. So I, I, I think, like, just like in the Industrial Revolution where we had n-new projects because the demand for AI was so big, we're gonna start seeing some new projects being created in AI as well when the capabilities advance enough that they can replace knowledge workers.

    17. JR

      That's the rosy scenario.

    18. AS

      It's not as rosy. Like, m- real world is messy. A lot of things are still done through trusting other human beings. Nobody's, like, blindly trusting AIs. AIs still make a lot of mistakes.

    19. JR

      I know a lot of people are hesitant to the idea of AI running government, and I get it. But also, look at what the people are doing. Look at how much corruption there is and how much-

    20. AS

      Yeah

    21. JR

      ... fraud and waste. Imagine if all fraud, waste, and corruption was instantaneously eliminated.

    22. AS

      Yeah. I mean, that was what Elon tried to do with Doge, right?

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. AS

      And, and then I think the bottleneck there was just discovering how slow it is to do things. He, he's not, he's not used to [chuckles] running that slow.

    25. JR

      Yeah.

    26. AS

      And, uh-

    27. JR

      Also how much resistance.

    28. AS

      Yeah, resistance.

    29. JR

      Because there was so much grift.

    30. AS

      Correct. Yeah. So honestly, like, more than AI, the government is running on a lot of legacy software stack because a lot of these legacy enterprise companies just have created these multi-decade or, like, year contracts that are hard to get out of. And the way they do that is to sell it at a much larger discount. And like, you know, like, if you're on, on, like, a specific OS, you're not allowed to change this for, like, 10 years. You have to use the same set of software. All these, uh, people you hired only know to use that tool. So it takes time to actually change and implement new things, leave alone AI. Just, if you just wanted to, like, move everybody from Windows machines to, like, Mac machines [chuckles] Good luck with that. It's gonna take a lot of time. That's the state of the, the system, and so that has nothing to do with technology. And so to do things in such messy systems, you still need people. You still need people to navigate all these changes. Um, it's not about the capability of the technology, it's more about how the system is structured, and that's why I still feel there will be new jobs. That maybe the, you know, there's a lot of new projects to be done. Maybe some good leader actually wants to change the system and is willing to be patient about it. Like, you know, over a five to 10-year horizon, if you take 10 years to actually, like, run majority of the government processes on AIs, it may seem slow to you today, but in the grand scheme of things, it's actually good for the country. And that's still gonna need a lot of nice engineers to go work on these projects. So they're not gonna lose all their jobs. There's gonna be some displacement, there's gonna be some new projects, there's gonna be new priorities, but it'll, it'll keep going. The system will keep going because that's just how historically things have been.

Episode duration: 2:31:09

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode fOLu-pWQssQ

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOSAndroidClaudeChrome