Diana Walsh Pasulka: Aliens, Technology, Religion & the Nature of Belief | Lex Fridman Podcast #149

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Diana Walsh Pasulka, a professor of philosophy and religion at UNCW, and author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology. This book is one of the most fascinating explorations of the interconnected nature of technology, belief, and the mystery of alien intelligence. Quick mention of our sponsors: LMNT Electrolyte drink, Grammarly writing plug-in, Business Wars Podcast, and Cash App. So the choice is health, grammar, knowledge, or money. Choose wisely, my friends. And if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say, as I did in the recent video on how many intelligent alien civilizations are out there, that the nature of alien life, intelligence, and how they might communicate with us humans, is likely stranger than we imagine, and perhaps stranger than we can imagine. What is most fascinating to me is how the belief in the communication with such civilizations changes people's understanding of the world, and, as Diana argues, the technology we create. Technological innovation itself seems to manifest the mythology in our collective intelligence that turns the seemingly impossible into reality in just a matter of years through the belief of individual humans that carry out that innovation. The nature and power of this belief in both technology and extraterrestrial intelligence is mysterious and fascinating, perhaps holding the key to us humans understanding our own mind, our consciousness, and engineering versions of it in the machines we create. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @LexFridman. And now, here's my conversation with Diana Walsh Pasulka.

Lex Fridman 2:03 You are a scholar of religious belief, or belief in general. So the fascinating question, uh, what do you think is the difference between our beliefs and objective reality? What is real, period?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 2:17 Sure. What is real? Easy question. (laughs) So first, let me start with belief. So belief is generally ... There are different definitions of belief, just, just as there are different definitions of what is real. Okay? So for belief in my field, it would be attitudes toward something that dictate our actions. Okay? So we believe the sun is gonna rise tomorrow, therefore we act as if it will rise tomorrow. All right. Beliefs can be wrong. For a long time, people believed, and actually some still do, that the Earth was flat. Okay? Well, that's obviously an erroneous belief. So beliefs can be wrong. Uh, now the, the bigger question that philosophers ask is, um, does ... Is this belief accurate toward what we consider to be objective reality? So now let me go to objective reality. So what is real? I don't think we can actually obtain a correct understanding of what is real. And in that sense, I have to refer to a philosopher again, and that would be Immanuel Kant. So Immanuel Kant is one of the ... He was a, a ... Basically in the 1750s, he wrote Critiques of Reason and things like that. So he's a ... Well, if you're a philosopher or have any kind of understanding of Western history, you know who he is. Um, he had this idea that we can actually never get to the thing in i- in itself. Okay? So, and he called that the noumenal, the thing in itself. He said, "This ... Let's take this table, for instance, that you and I are talking across. So this thing is a table. You and I both know that. We assume it's real. We believe in it because we put our water on it and then our water stays on it." Okay. Um, "However, can we know this thing, um, in and of itself as a table?" Um, so that would be what he then would call, um, the phenomenal. How do we know that that phenomena exists as we know it is? Okay? How, how do we know? Uh, we use our faculties. So we use our senses and things like that. But again, even our senses can be wrong. So I've been on committees just recently, this year, last year, for hiring professors in my department who are philosophers. And every ... And we're hiring metaphysicians and, you know, people who are thinking about the nature of reality.

Lex Fridman 4:36 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:37 And basically, what, what I've learned from them-

Lex Fridman 4:40 That's so great.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:40 Yeah. They're very, very-

Lex Fridman 4:40 I'd love to attend those faculty talks-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:43 ... (laughs) of metaphysics professors.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:45 What's funny is that-

Lex Fridman 4:46 It's so great.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:46 ... for each one of them, I'm convinced each time. They all say different things, but they're so convincing, I'm like, "Yes! Hire that one!" Right?

Lex Fridman 4:54 Is it like historical philosophy, like a particular talk?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:56 No. No. What they do-

Lex Fridman 4:57 Or do they have-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 4:57 No. They're just-

Lex Fridman 4:58 Do they have an actual belief? They're practicing metaphysi- (laughs) metaphysicians?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 5:02 Metaphysicians. Yes.

Lex Fridman 5:03 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 5:03 So what they do is they come and they're usually excellent philosophers from Harvard or, you know, uh, USC or whatever. You know, they come and they give what's called a job talk. That's what phlos- ... Well, all, every academic does a job talk in order to get a, um ... They talk to us about a department about what they do. And so it so happens that we need a medi- metaphysician and now we're hiring again for one. And so I've loo- I've learned a lot about metaphysics in the last year, and this is what I've learned. Um, that they use physics as a basis for understanding what we can know about what is real, and what is real is really difficult to pin down. And so your question is, what is belief? Well, belief, does it correspond to reality? That's the question I would ask. And first, we don't even know what, what is real. So the table, they would say, how do we know that the table even exists? Well, how do we differentiate it from the floor, for example? So these are the questions that philosophers are asking. No one else is, of course. But philosophers are asking these questions, and they have different answers for it. So I would say that it's very difficult to know what is real, and in fact what I do usually is I-... paraphrase my friend, um, and colleague, Brother Guy Consolmagno. He's a Jesuit priest who's also an astronomer, and he's the director of the Vatican Observatory. And so, he says this. He's a very smart person. He says, "Well, truth is a moving target." You know, so, so basically to know what is real out there, like gravity or something like that, you've got to approximate it. And as human beings, you know, we have, um, senses to tell us what, at least so we don't get hurt, you know, we're not gonna fall off a building or something like that. We have eyes to see and things like that. So, we can approximate what reality is, but we're never gonna get to it, um, unless we develop better senses, okay? And I think that that is what we are in the process of doing. We're developing better senses. We have telescopes, we have microscopes, we have, you know, extensions of ourselves, which are now called technology. And we can get to a better understanding of what reality is and what the objective world is, and therefore our beliefs can be honed. So, we can get better beliefs, more accurate beliefs. But can we get beliefs that actually correspond to reality? Um, not in any precise way, but in approximate ways. So, I hope that's not, like, too big an answer to your question.

Lex Fridman 7:32 Well, do you think beliefs are, in themselves, can become reality? I mean, so, so you've now adapted the, in this little bit of a conversation, adapted the metaphysician view of reality, which is the physics.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 7:45 Yes.

Lex Fridman 7:46 But, you know, we humans kind of operate in the space of ideas, very much so. Like, we've kind of in the collective intelligence, as human beings, have come up with a set of ideas that persist in the minds of these many people, and they become quite strong and powerful. Like, in terms of, like, impact on our lives, they can have sometimes more impact than this table does-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:10 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 8:10 ... than the physics.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:12 Yeah. I agree.

Lex Fridman 8:13 Oh, yeah. And in that sense, is, is there some sense in which our beliefs are reality-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:19 Oh, yes.

Lex Fridman 8:19 ... even if they're not connected to-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:21 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 8:21 ... the physics-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:22 Yes.

Lex Fridman 8:22 ... of th- uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:22 Even if they're not real. Yeah. Even if, okay-

Lex Fridman 8:25 (laughs) .

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:25 ... so yes, absolutely. So, um, our beliefs are tremendously ... They, uh, they create social effects. Absolutely. Um, there was a belief that ... I'm gonna use this example.

Lex Fridman 8:38 Uh-oh.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 8:38 There was a belief back in the day, and we're talking about, when I say back in the day, I'm a historian, so I'm talking about like 1,000 years ago, right? That women had no souls, okay? So, look, I don't know if human beings have souls. I can tell you this though, that if human beings have souls, probably animals do too. That's my own personal belief. That's not a professor belief there. Um, but there was this belief among the Catholic, um, magisterium, which is, is, runs Europe, that women had no souls. So, they had to have this big meeting about it, you know? Did women have souls? But that belief had consequences for women. I mean, women were treated and-

Lex Fridman 9:15 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 9:15 ... have been treated as if they didn't have souls. Um, okay, so there's-

Lex Fridman 9:19 And the soul was really the essence of the human being.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 9:22 It was. It's the, it's called the animus, right? It's what is the, the essence of what is e- it's eternal. You know, wom- w- women were eternal. Here's another example, okay? This is an example from my own research. All right. So, there, in the Catholic tradition, there's this idea of purgatory, hell, and heaven, and these are three destinations that people can go to when they die. And if you're great, you go to heaven automatically and you're considered a saint. If you're okay, you go to purgatory, right? And you suffer for a time and then get back into heaven. Um, if you're terrible, you go to hell, right? Okay.

Lex Fridman 9:57 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 9:58 Well, there was a place that the Catholics determined, and this h- this was a belief for a long time, like 1,000 years or more, um, and it was called limbo, all right? And limbo comes from the Latin limbus, and it means edge. And it was either on the edge of hell or on the edge of heaven. No one really could determine which it was, you know? Historians are like, "Well, this person says it was on the edge of heaven." Well, listen, um, this was a terrible... First of all, there is no limbo anymore. In 2007, um, Benedict, the then Pope, got rid of the idea that there was limbo, okay? So, Catholics kind of went crazy 'cause they didn't really know. They forgot that limbo existed and they thought it was purgatory.

Lex Fridman 10:39 Okay.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 10:39 And they said, "How could you get rid of purgatory?" But actually, he just got rid of this idea of limbo.

Lex Fridman 10:43 Oh, so that's a distinct thing from purgatory. But-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 10:45 It i- it was. It was like-

Lex Fridman 10:46 And by the way, people should know you have a book on purgatory that came before your, uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 10:50 American Cosmic. Yes, I wrote a book on purgatory, yeah (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 10:52 Anyway, so limbo is a distinct thing from purgatory?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 10:55 Yeah. And the, the, the types of people who go to limbo happen to be virtuous pagans, okay?

Lex Fridman 11:04 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:04 Like Socrates or somebody like that. Um, and children who weren't baptized. So, think of this. Think of for thou- like, more than 1,000 years, mothers and fathers gave birth to babies who weren't baptized and couldn't be buried with their family in these burial ... And, you know, they, then they couldn't be reunited with them in heaven. Think of the pain and suffering that that caused. And that was nothing.

Lex Fridman 11:30 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:30 Limbo's nothing. Yet the belief in it caused untold suffering. And that's just a small example.

Lex Fridman 11:37 And that was as real to them-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:39 It was absolutely real.

Lex Fridman 11:40 ... as anything else.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:40 I mean, the effects were real. Let's put it that way. The place itself, not real. Okay?

Lex Fridman 11:44 But the families themselves, do you think they really believed it as-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:47 They totally believed it. I read-

Lex Fridman 11:49 ... as much as the table is real?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:50 Yes. I've read ... But listen, we have trigger warnings today, right? So, don't read this. It's gonna make you upset, okay?

Lex Fridman 11:57 Yeah (laughs) .

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:57 History, primary sources-

Lex Fridman 11:59 (laughs) .

Diana Walsh Pasulka 11:59 ... no trigger warnings, okay?

Lex Fridman 12:01 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 12:01 So, you're going through, like, you know, somebody's diary from 1400 and you hear the suffering and pain that they went through. There were times in my research where I'd have to put my primary source down, you know, and just basically go outside and take a walk because it was so horrific. I knew it was true because they wouldn't write something, you know, they're not gonna write in their diary something that's not true, and it was horrible. So, yes. These people went through untold suffering for nothing.... for, you know, they, because they had an erroneous belief. But they didn't know it was erroneous.

Lex Fridman 12:32 So it was real to them.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 12:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:35 Uh, so I don't know if you're familiar with Donald Hoffman. He has, uh, this idea that, uh, in terms of, uh, the distance we are from being able to know the reality, which is there, the physics reality, is we're actually really, really, really, really far away from that.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 12:52 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:52 So, like, it's... Uh, I think his idea is that we're, we're basically, like, completely detached from it.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:00 (laughs) Yes.

Lex Fridman 13:00 Uh, what, what's your sense, how close are we to the reality? We'll, we'll talk about a, a bunch of ideas about our beliefs in technology and, and beyond. Uh, but in terms of what is actually real from a physical sense, how close are we to understanding that?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:18 Pretty far. I'm gonna use examples from what I do. Okay, so this idea that w- we're suspicious of what we actually think is real is not new. Of course, it goes back a long time. Thousands of years, in fact.

Lex Fridman 13:33 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:33 And philosophers, I- I'm not actually technically a philosopher, but I was one. (laughs) I'm a, I'm a professor of religious studies.

Lex Fridman 13:43 Yeah, but what do you introduce yourself at, like, a, at a bar when the bartender asks, "What do you do?"

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:48 I never tell people what I do. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 13:50 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:50 Especially on airplanes.

Lex Fridman 13:52 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:52 It's a bad idea.

Lex Fridman 13:53 Okay. (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 13:53 So, generally if they push, though, I say, you know, "I'm the Chair of Philosophy and Religion. Although I stepped down last year, so I'm no longer the Chair." But, um, I- I've, I have, like, a master's degree in philosophy, and I was a philosophy major, and I've studied phlo- I still f- study philosophy. So I integrate it into my research. Um, all right, so this idea that we can't know... Uh, we're suspicious of what we know. It's called external world skepticism. That's the official philosophical name for it. Um, our faculties and our senses don't give us accurate perceptions of what is there, okay? Especially at a quantum level or a molecular level. I mean, that's just obvious. So, yeah, so I think that your, uh, the person you mentioned is correct in that I think we're far away from it.

Lex Fridman 14:38 I think you're talking about our direct senses. But, you know, we have tools, measurement tools, from microscopes to all the tools of astronomy, cosmology, that give us a sense of the big universe and also the sense of the very small. Do you think there's some other things that are completely sort of other dimensions or... There's ideas of panpsychism that consciousness permeates all matter, that, that's, there's, like, fundamental forces of physics we're not even aware of yet. Like...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 15:14 Oh, absolutely. I do think, and this is why I write about technology, and, um, I, I mean, that's actually what I specialize in, is belief in technology with respect to religion. So, in my opinion, thank goodness for thi- for technology, because where would we be without it? I mean, frankly, I think that it's... Like Marshall McLuhan was the person who said technology is, is like a- an extension of our senses, and I absolutely believe that to be true. I think that we're lucky that we, you know, that Prometheus gave us technology, okay? And that we use it, and we're making it better and better and better and better, and that makes us more efficient, it makes us more efficient as a species, um, and, like, m- my point is, is that I think that our instruments, I mean, I don't want to be a religious technologist, you know, but our, our, uh, our instruments will save us. I mean, they're already making life better for us.

Lex Fridman 16:19 Do you think it's important that they also help us understand reality more directly? More, more deeply? What-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 16:24 I think directly is, uh, is better than deeply. I think directly, more directly is probably a more accurate term for what you're trying to, I think, ask

Diana Walsh Pasulka 16:33 me. You know, can we actually... I mean, I think you're asking me that question that Kant basically was trying to get at, was c- can we know the thing in itself? Can we know that? Can we have, like, some kind of, like, intense knowing of it? It's almost mystical. Um, and I would say that that's where religion comes in, okay? That's where we talk about religion. Um, and if I may also go back to Immanuel Kant, this idea that he, just before he died, just as he died, he was working on... He did this Critique of Reason where basically he believed, he m- he basically, um, talks about can we know what's real, and he basically has this long, you know... The question, "Can we know what's real?" And then, you know, 1,000 pages later, "N- no." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 17:21 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 17:21 I'll just give you the rundown, okay? So, okay, no-

Lex Fridman 17:23 Spoiler alert.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 17:24 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, then he does this other, uh, critique, and, um, okay, so he does, like, three crit- critiques. Then he does this Critique of Judgment, okay? Well, judgment is this other thing altogether, and I think that that's what you're getting at. So, how do we know things, how can we know things really intensely and intimately? And I think that he thought that judgment was the idea that we can actually, um, know the thing in itself and he was working on that as he died, and then he never finished it. Hannah Arendt, uh, another philosopher of the 20th century, took it up, took up the Critique of Judgment, and tried to finish it.

Lex Fridman 18:01 Uh, why the word "judgment"?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 18:03 Because judgment, think about it, when you see a work of art, who judges that to be decent? Okay, so there's a, there is, um, a group of people who come to the decision that that's rotten or, you know, that's pretty good. You know, like, um, I notice that you like to play guitar.

Lex Fridman 18:21 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 18:22 Well, you choose music that I happen to like too, okay?

Lex Fridman 18:25 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 18:25 So you and I both have a-

Lex Fridman 18:26 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 18:26 ... you know, sense of judgment. There's a sense.

Lex Fridman 18:28 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 18:29 So he said there's a sense that some people have-... why do certain communities have a similar sense? What, what dictates that? And so he was working on that. He s- he thought it had something to do with the knowledge, the intimate knowledge of the thing in itself. Um, yeah. So a- another, um, philosopher that philosophers actually don't like at all, but religious studies people do, is, uh, Martin Heidegger. So Martin Heidegger, um, has some great essays. One is called What Is a Work of Art? And again, he gets to, you know, he talks about Van Gogh and Van Gogh's Shoes. You know that picture? The, the painting Van Gogh's Shoes? It's really a really intense picture. It's just shoes. It's, you know, it's ... but it's a m- it's an amazing painting of shoes. And I think everybody can agree that's a cool picture of shoes, right?

Lex Fridman 19:18 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:18 And so why? You know, the question is, why is that a cool picture of shoes?

Lex Fridman 19:22 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:22 You know, what kind of knowledge are we accessing to determine that indeed that, that works, right?

Lex Fridman 19:29 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:29 And in fact, we still like it.

Lex Fridman 19:30 So basically the, the nature of knowledge and what does it represent that can operate in the space of as detached from reality, or can it ultimately represent reality? I guess that's the ... Is th- is that the space of metaphysics? Is that th- is that the ...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:46 Um, yeah. So what can we know is actually called epistemology.

Lex Fridman 19:49 Epistemology.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:49 But metaphysics is, um, the-

Lex Fridman 19:51 They intersect, I guess.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:52 ... is basically what is the nature of reality.

Lex Fridman 19:55 Right. And those intersect.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:57 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 19:58 Right?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 19:58 Yeah. A lot of things intersect in philosophy. We just have fancy names for them.

Lex Fridman 20:02 Another non-philosopher that may be considered a philosopher, since we're talking about reality, is Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 20:12 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 20:14 What are your thoughts on her sense of taking this idea of reality, calling her philosophy objectivism, and, uh, kind of starting at the idea that you really could know everything, and it's pretty obvious. And then from that, you can derive an ethics about how to live life, like what is the, what is the good ethical life and all the virtue of selfishness, all that kind of stuff. Uh, (laughs) so you talked to a lot of academic philosophers, so I'd be curious to see from the perspective of like, is she somebody that's, uh, taken seriously at all? Uh, why is she dismissed, as I see from my distant perspective, by serious philosophers? And also, like your own personal thoughts of like, is there some interesting bits th- that you find, uh, inspiring in her work, uh, or not?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 21:12 Okay. So Ayn Rand ... Um, I've had so many exceedingly intelligent students basically give me her books and basically say, "Please, Dr. Posolka, read this book." And I'll tell them, "Yes, thank you. I've read this book before." And then when we engage in, you know ... L- let me put it this way. They're religious about Ayn Rand, okay? So to them, Ayn Rand represents some type of way of life, right? Her objectivism. Um, now, why is she not taken seriously by philosophers in general (laughs) ? Well, let me put it this way. Um, philosophers in general tend to get pretty ... I guess you could call it they're, they're s- kind of scientists, but with words. I always call philosophy, when I describe it to someone who's gonna take a philosophy class, I say, "It's basically math problems, like word math problems, okay?" So that's basically what it is.

Lex Fridman 22:14 So they take words very seriously, and they're very formal phi-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 22:16 And definitions very seriously. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:18 Yes.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 22:18 So they all want to get on the same page, so they're not ... so there is no confusion. So for Ayn Rand to basically say you can know everything and, you know, and establish ethics from that, I think philosophers automatically say no. Now, that doesn't mean I say no. Um, in fact, uh, we have an c- we have, at my university, a wonderful business school. And when you walk into the, the, uh, dean of the business school's office, Ayn Rand is everywhere. So it's ... (laughs) So I want to say that not all academics are anti-Ayn Rand. Um, and in fact, I don't think philosophers are either, except that they don't teach Ayn Rand, okay? So it's one, one sense you could say that because they don't teach her, they're being e- exclusive in what they teach, or very particular, perhaps, is another way to put it.

Lex Fridman 23:07 Yeah, it's hard to know where to place people like her, because, um ... You know, do you put Albert Camus as a philosopher? So s- I guess ... What's the good term for that, like literary philosophers? Or whatever the term is, i- it's annoying to me that the academic philosophers get to own the word philosophy, 'cause like it's just like people who think deeply about life, is what I think about as-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 23:30 Y- yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:30 ... as philosophy. And, like, to me, it's like, all right. So I know Nietzsche is another person that's probably not respected in the philosophy circles, because he is, uh, you know, full of contradictions, full of, uh ...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 23:44 I love Nietzsche.

Lex Fridman 23:45 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 23:45 Nietzsche's my favorite philosopher.

Lex Fridman 23:47 Oh, really?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 23:48 Yes, I absolutely love Nietzsche.

Lex Fridman 23:49 So he's def- y- you know, I- I love people that are full of ideas, even if they're full of contradictions, and Nietzsche is certainly that.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 23:54 Absolutely. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:55 And Ayn Rand is also that. I'm able to, um, look past the obvious ego that's there on the page, and, uh, the fact that she actually has, in my view, a lot of wrong ideas. Uh, but there's a lot of interesting tidbits to pick up. And, uh, same, same goes with Nietzsche, and, uh ... I'm, I'm weirded out by the religious aspect here, on both the people who like worship Ayn Rand, and people who completely dismiss her. I- I just kind of see it as, oh, w- can we just read a few interesting things and get inspired by it and move on (laughs) as opposed to-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 24:32 No. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:32 ... have a dogmatic take about everything? Is there something you find about her work that's interesting to you, um, or her personality, or any of that?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 24:41 Oh, I think she's fascinating. Um, I don't dismiss her. Um, she was a woman who reached a level of success with her mind at a time when that was difficult. So, I mean, she's definitely, um, worth looking at for, for even that reason. Um, but also, um, her idea... I guess part of the situation with Rand... First of all, I think that, um, her work is, you have to... It's misinterpreted, okay? And I think that's the same with Nietzsche. Like, a lot of people think that... I mean, and, in fact, it is the case that... Nietzsche's writing before the 20th century, so he's got the- you know, he's somewhat... His rhetoric is (clears throat) sexist and racist, and, you know, of the time period, right? He was a educated philosopher of that time period. However, um, his books are amazing, and Nietzsche's philosophy is incredible. And I think that, I think that's what you're saying about Rand too.

Lex Fridman 25:49 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 25:49 And I agree. I mean, I think that, that, um, we get caught up. I mean, likely we should, and we should contextualize these thinkers in the time period within which they are. We should not forgive their... You know, 'cause there were people during Nietzsche's time that were, you know, uh, feminist and-

Lex Fridman 26:08 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:08 ... and not racist, and things like that. And, you know, so... But, uh, each has m- merit.

Lex Fridman 26:15 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:15 I mean, I would say Nietzsche is an- I- you did ask me to talk about some of the books that made the largest impact on me.

Lex Fridman 26:23 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:23 And, uh, Nietzsche's Gay Science is one of them. It's one of the best books ever, in my opinion.

Lex Fridman 26:28 I do think Nietzsche was, uh... I don't know about exactly sexist. He certainly was sexist, but it felt like he didn't get laid much in his life.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:40 No (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 26:40 It f- it felt like he was extra sexist. I was like, his theories on women are like, all right, man.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:46 He's pretty angry (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 26:47 He seems frustrated.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:49 Yeah (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 26:50 I was like, all right, calm down, buddy. Uh (laughs) -

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:52 Ah, the, the fate of philosophers (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 26:55 (laughs) . I just ignore everything Nietzsche says about women.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 26:59 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 27:00 So, can we, can we talk about myth and religion a little bit?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 27:04 Yes.

Lex Fridman 27:04 I mean, can we start at the beginning, which is, like, myths, how are they born? There's this collective intelligence amongst us human beings, and we seem to create these beautiful ideas that captivate the minds of millions. How is such a myth born?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 27:21 Great question. Okay, so that brings us to terminology again. In, um, in my field, we, we definitely, I think, try not to distinguish between religion, uh, this is going to be controversial, I think-

Lex Fridman 27:36 Uh-oh.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 27:36 ... between religion and myth, because we call other cultures' religions myths, right? And then we call our myths religions.

Lex Fridman 27:46 And I guess myth has a bad connotation to it, that it's not-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 27:49 It's not true.

Lex Fridman 27:49 ... somehow real.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 27:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:50 Right?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 27:51 Yeah. Now, what's interesting is that, um, people like Plato, who lived thousands of years ago, 2,500 about, um, basically made this distinction himself within his own culture, which was Greek, right? So, Plato is a very famous Greek philosopher, and he would say things like this. He would say that, um... He would make a distinction between the reality of the one God, or the one. He would call it- he didn't call- use the word God, but he's referencing a divinity of... Okay? And he believes in the soul. Okay? So- but he would also say that the gods and goddesses of the Greeks are just myths.

Lex Fridman 28:32 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 28:33 So, even he would make that distinction. Again, you know, he would say, "The population is not too bright, so they believe in these gods and goddesses." But he himself is talking to his students, and he's basically talking about forms, you know? So, you know, they're- that live in- seem to live in these other dimensions. Like this table, let's go back to this table that we're talking, um, around right now. He would say that th- this table is the instantiation of the form table, and that there is this table that actually exists somewhere. It's where- this place where numbers exist-

Lex Fridman 29:05 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 29:05 ... like the number two, okay? So, there- we use the number two mathematically, therefore it exists. But have you ever seen a real one? Have you ever seen the real two? No.

Lex Fridman 29:15 No.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 29:15 Okay. So- but where does it exist? So, he says that tables... So, he was also talking about things that, you know, he says are real, making a distinction between the people and- and by the way, he got this from Socrates, his, his, um, mentor, who was killed by Athens because he would say such things. People don't like to be told that they- what they believe in is not real, right?

Lex Fridman 29:38 Yeah. By the way, his idea of forms is just- you're just making me realize how, like, incredible it was that somebody like that was able to come up with that. I mean, that idea became a myth that- uh, the idea of forms, right, that permeated, uh, probably the most influential set of ideas in, in f- in the history of philosophy, in the history of ideas.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 30:00 Yes. Yeah. H- I mean, Plato, we know him for a reason, right?

Lex Fridman 30:03 Yeah. So, let's say that we're not, uh, it's a gray area between religious and myths, and maybe not even-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 30:10 It is gray.

Lex Fridman 30:11 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 30:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 30:11 Uh, s- so what- how's that idea with, like, little Plato start and permeate through all of society?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 30:18 Okay. Oh, oh, how does it happen? Okay, so there are different ways that religions work. Um, so a lot of people would call the UFO narrative today, like, uh, uh, and this is what I talk about in my book, like a myth, right? The UFO myth. But a lot of people believe in it, okay? So, how do these things work? Well, what I did was I took, um, there's a- Ann Taves at, um, UC Santa Barbara, she's a pretty well-known academic who studies religion. And she has this building block-... definition of religion, like it builds, okay?

Lex Fridman 30:50 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 30:50 And so she says there are, there are no religious experiences or mythic experiences. There are experiences, and then they get interpreted as religious or mythic, okay? And so I s- I use that with the UFO narrative. So I take, um... And I compare it to the religious narrative. So basically what happens, um, what happens is this, is that a person generally has a very ex- uh, intense experience. Um, it could be with something that they see in the sky, a being, you know, that they see. Um, you know, like Moses and the burning bush or something like that. They tell other people, okay? And those other people believe them because they say, "That guy..." Let's take you, okay, Lex. Okay, so you're playing, you know, some of your music. Jimi Hendrix-

Lex Fridman 31:40 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 31:40 ... shows up out of the blue. So Jimi Hendrix who's, who does electric church stuff, right? The electric church movement. So he shows up.

Lex Fridman 31:47 I was, uh... Sorry for this small tangent. I was... I'm not aware of... I apologize if I should be. I just know how to play all of his songs. Uh, electric church. Is this a thing?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:00 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:00 I didn't know this was a thing.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:01 It's Jimi Hendrix's thing. Yeah. So-

Lex Fridman 32:03 That- that was like a philosophy of his or what?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:05 Yes, yes, yes.

Lex Fridman 32:06 What is-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:06 So he thought he was-

Lex Fridman 32:07 Oh, wow.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:07 It was like a mission for him, like a mi- like he was a missionary. And he was, like, doing the electric church. It was through his mission of music that he was actually impacting people spiritually. And I, I think you have to agree that his music is really-

Lex Fridman 32:21 Oh, that's interesting.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:21 ... spiritual, yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:22 Wow, that's so cool to know that there's like a philosophy there.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:25 I wonder if he's ever written anything. Uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:27 He's spoken about it many times.

Lex Fridman 32:29 Interesting.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:29 I need to actually do some, some research here. Wow, that adds another level of depth. That's awesome. Okay, so...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:35 Okay, so say Lex is playing-

Lex Fridman 32:38 Yeah, Hendrix.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:39 ... one of his son- songs.

Lex Fridman 32:40 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:40 He shows up.

Lex Fridman 32:41 What's your favorite Hendrix song, by the way?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:43 Oh, g- that's a hard one. I like Castles in the Sand. It's a sad one, but-

Lex Fridman 32:47 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:47 ... I, I like it.

Lex Fridman 32:48 So I'm playing something-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:50 Yes.

Lex Fridman 32:50 ... and then I show up.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:50 And all of a sudden, boom, just like Elvis does for people-

Lex Fridman 32:54 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 32:54 ... Hendrix shows up, all right? And then you're amazed, and then he tells you something that's very, very significant, and he says, "You need to tell other people this," okay? So then, like, okay.

Lex Fridman 33:04 (laughs) I go on social media. (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 33:06 Right, yes. And you start... And because people believe you and because you are a person of, um, you know, credibility-

Lex Fridman 33:14 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 33:14 ... people believe you. And so all of a sudden a movement starts, okay? And it's the Hendrix movement. It's Hendrix 2 or something like that.

Lex Fridman 33:21 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 33:21 You know, we call it something, uh, the next iteration of Hendrix.

Lex Fridman 33:24 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 33:24 Right? Hendrix lives, but he lives as this vibration, and only Lex can, like, you know, can, can manifest-

Lex Fridman 33:31 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 33:31 ... this vibration, okay? So, like, this is, this is how religions start ex-

Lex Fridman 33:35 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 33:36 ... you know, excuse your audience who are religious. I'm actually a practicing Catholic. So, um, this is how religions start. They start with, first off, a contact experience. Uh, not, I mean, not all of them, but a good portion of them. Um, peop- some person has an experience that's transcendent, sacred to them, and they go and they tell other people, and then those people tell other people, and then something gets written about it, okay? And then it becomes, because it's a charismatic movement, people become affected by it. And if, if too many people are affected by it, um, an institution steps in and tries to control the narrative. Uh, so this is what you'd call the beginning of a religion or a myth, a very powerful myth. And so it's almost like a star, right? A Star is Born.

Lex Fridman 34:21 A Star is Born.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 34:21 Okay, yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:22 When you say institution, do you mean s- some other organization that's already powerful-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 34:27 Yes.

Lex Fridman 34:27 ... that doesn't want to become-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 34:28 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 34:28 ... uh, overpowered by this new movement?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 34:30 Yes, absolutely. The- Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:31 Is this usually governments or-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 34:32 It's usually... Yeah. So, uh, I have a couple examples of... I use the example of the Christian church in my book, because I'm most familiar with the history of Christianity. And, you know, Christianity w- you know, was started by this Jewish man, and it was a movement that, you know, he was a very powerful, charismatic person. Other people believed in him, and then his followers talked about him, and then other... Then, you know... Usually early Christians before the 300s were generally people who were disenfranchised, because he had a pretty radical idea that, you know, humans should have dignity, and this was pretty radical during that time. So women, who didn't have dignity, and, you know, slaves, who didn't have dignity at the time, um, converted to Christianity in droves. And so what happened was that all of a sudden, um, it became this belief system that was undercurrent. And then, uh, Constantine, um, who was an elite, uh, had an experience and made Christianity the state religion. Um, by that time, there were different forms of Christianity, probably hundreds of them, well, most likely. And Constantine and the people who were powerful with him decided that their idea, this is the Council of Nicaea now, decided that there was one form, and they called it universal, so the one form of Christianity, and this should be it. And so they, they kind of took out all the other denominations of Christianity and different forms of it. So you can see that a very, very powerful set of beliefs put a culture on fire, right?

Lex Fridman 36:14 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 36:15 And so how did they... They had to deal with that fire somehow, and so they narrativized it. They decided, "How do we interpret this?" And they interpreted it as they wished, but that wasn't the only interpretation of Christianity. I have another example. Um, in the Catholic Church, um, a lot of times, and I'm gonna use the, uh, example of, uh, Faustina. Um, she's, um, she's a nun, and she's Polish, and, um, I think it was in the early 20th century, if not the 1800s, that she had a very powerful, uh-... many experiences, actually, of- of Jesus. And she saw Jesus with rays coming out of his- his heart, and basically she called this his divine mercy. And it became a devotion in Poland, and it spread.

Lex Fridman 37:04 Hm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 37:04 The Catholic Church was not- not into this at all. Okay?

Lex Fridman 37:07 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 37:07 And so they did everything they could to try to suppress Faustina's influence, which was growing and growing and growing and growing. Okay? And so they were very successful in trying to keep her quiet, and she died. Okay? Years later, John Paul II, Polish, sainted her and created the Divine Mercy Devotion, which is worldwide now, and millions and millions of people. But do you see how they-

Lex Fridman 37:34 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 37:34 ... they, you know, completely controlled her here.

Lex Fridman 37:36 It's so fascinating that it, uh, that it just starts with a single sort- like you said, contact experience.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 37:42 Yes.

Lex Fridman 37:42 And experience is the key word. And d- is your sense that those experiences are legitimate? So it's not...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 37:50 Yes. Uh, for the most part.

Lex Fridman 37:51 ... somehow artificially constructed?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 37:52 Yeah. I think for the most part, they're legitimate experiences that people have. Why would someone want to put themselves through what they go through? Like, why would Jesus want to get crucified? I mean, that's a pretty nasty way to die. Um, you know, why would Faustina bring this upon herself? Um, the people that I meet who've s- said that they've seen UFOs, th- most of them don't want to be known, because of the ridicule that goes along with it.

Lex Fridman 38:15 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 38:15 So I honestly think that, you know, there are people who are maybe not stable and would like the attention, but for the most part, normal people don't want this attention.

Lex Fridman 38:25 So you mentioned building blocks. Uh, you didn't mention the word God, um, or sort of the afterlife. Are those essential to the myth? So there's a contact experience. Is there some other aspects of myth and religion which makes them viral? (laughs) Which makes them spread and captivate the imagination, uh, of, uh, people?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 38:51 Yes. Is there a pattern to them? I think that for each era, it's different. And people have... First, let's talk about the definition of religion, if that's okay.

Lex Fridman 39:00 Yes, yes.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 39:00 Because most people assume the definitions that we in the West are familiar with, which is that, you know, that of Christianity, Islam, um, Judaism, you know, monotheistic religions. And there are... That's not... I mean, those are just some religions. There are so many different types of religions. Some religions have no God at all. Uh, Zen Buddhism, for example, is a religion that asks you to take away your belief structures, like to kind of like... In fact, I would call that a Kantian type religion, right?

Lex Fridman 39:33 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 39:33 In that it's- it's basically telling you to get rid of your concep- concepts of what you think about things, so that you can actually have the experience, like you were talking about earlier, of the thing in itself. And they call that Satori. So there are people who believe... You know, they try to... They call it meditation, Zen meditation. Um, and it's fairly radical actually, um, in some monasteries. I don't know if they still do this, but they'll whack you on the head-

Lex Fridman 40:01 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 40:02 ... if you appear to be, um, not focusing and, you know, that kind of thing. You know, they do things to- to basically take you away from your conceptions of reality and bring you into a state of all that is, which is what they call Satori. And that has nothing to do with God.

Lex Fridman 40:22 Uh, I like this religion.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 40:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 40:23 And anything that involves sticks and whacking-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 40:26 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 40:26 ... in order for you to focus better, I'm going to have to join a monastery. So okay, so the- so, uh, digging into definitions of religion, so like what is- what do you think is the scope that defines a religion?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 40:41 Oh, okay. So in, uh, my field, we have a- a- but- a few different definitions of religion, as you can imagine, just like philosophers have different definitions of what is real. Um, so I take this definition, and it comes from John Livingston, and it's, um, religion is that set of beliefs and practices, um, that deter- that is inspired by a transformative, what is perceived actually to be a transformative and sacred power.

Lex Fridman 41:08 Can you say that again?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:10 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:10 So religion is a set of, it's not just belief, it's also practices, it's both belief and practices, because you won't have the practices without the belief.

Lex Fridman 41:18 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:18 So you have those together, okay? And it's inspired by what is perceived, because we don't know if it's real or not, what is perceived to be of sacred and transforming power.

Lex Fridman 41:29 So perceived by the followers?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:31 Or is this connected to the original sort of experience?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:33 No, no, well, it's- it's perceived by the followers.

Lex Fridman 41:36 That's a really good definition. So and that's the governing idea is that there's something of great power-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:45 Yes.

Lex Fridman 41:45 ... perceived to be of great power, which you can connect yourself either emotionally or intellectually, somehow, in order to explore the world that is beyond your own capabilities.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 41:56 Yes.

Lex Fridman 41:58 And is there communication also involved? Or-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 42:00 Generally.

Lex Fridman 42:01 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 42:01 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:02 That's a great definition. Okay. So within that falls everything that we've, uh, we talked about so far, including technology and, um, alien life and

Lex Fridman 42:13 so on. Do you think ultimately religion is good for human civilization? L- let me, uh, maybe phrase it differently is, what's religion good for?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 42:28 Okay. Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for asking that. Most people don't ask that, and I think it's the question to ask. Why do we still have religion? That's the question, right? Because scientists and others, scholars, um, humanists even, uh-... thought that there's this thing called the secular-secularization thesis, and it's this idea that the more, um, we progress rationally and we have better instruments for understanding our reality, the less religious we will be. But that's been found to be untrue. (laughs) We're still very religious, okay? So why, why is it around? Well, it's adaptive in some way, in my opinion, most, uh, many people would not agree with me, but I kind of see it as an evolutionary a- adaptation. Now, think about religions, okay? Think about Christianity again, for one. Um, here comes this idea, when you have this ruthless empire called the Roman Empire, which litters its- its roads with crucified bodies to let you know, "Don't mess with us," okay? All right. Here all of a sudden you have this guy saying, "God is love."

Lex Fridman 43:37 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 43:37 Okay? All right. Well, that's weird.

Lex Fridman 43:39 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 43:39 Okay, so why? Why does this take off? Well, it takes off because we're becoming a, um, a colonial power. That means we're going into other countries. We're conquering them. We are, you know... How do we survive together as- as cultures that don't clash? Well, we have to have a belief structure that allows us to, and I think religions function that way, frankly.

Lex Fridman 44:05 So, so the- so religions help us in- from a... so the Richard Dawkins meme idea, it allows us to explore a space of ideas, um, and that in itself is the, um... so it's like evolution of ideas.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:22 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:22 And religion is a powerful tool for us-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:24 It is.

Lex Fridman 44:24 ... to explore ideas.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:25 Yeah. Because, you know, if- if I believe that men have souls (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 44:31 Do they?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:31 (laughs) Yes, they do. Okay.

Lex Fridman 44:33 (laughs) Wow.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:37 Um ... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 44:38 (laughs) Um-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:38 We're gonna get into trouble here-

Lex Fridman 44:38 I'm still trying to figure that out.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:39 ... you know? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 44:41 Well, I still, in terms of souls, do believe cats don't have souls, but uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:44 (laughs) That's hilarious.

Lex Fridman 44:45 ... we'll never- we'll never, uh, we'll never be able to confirm that.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:49 Maybe if we get better instruments, you know, the soul instrument. You need to come up with that one, please. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 44:54 Oh, for cats?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:55 Yeah, not just for cats, but for all animals and people in general.

Lex Fridman 44:59 For sure.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 44:59 You- you could put them in, like a little, you know, soul machine and find out what's the status of their soul. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 45:07 That's funny. I hope we'll become a scientific discipline of consciousness, and consciousness is in some sense connected to maybe what the meaning of the word soul used to be.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 45:18 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 45:19 And I- I think it's a fascinating open question, like what is consciousness and so on that maybe we'll touch on, uh, uh, in a little bit. But yeah, anyway, back to our ...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 45:28 Religion being adaptive. I think that Christianity probably helped us, um, become better people to each other as we moved into a more global society. And I also ... this ... it goes along with my book, which is basically making the argument that belief in non-human intelligence or ETs or UFOs, UAPs, whatever you want to call them, is a new form of religion.

Lex Fridman 45:52 And how does that work with the- the scientific method? Do you think there's always this role of religion as being, in its broad definition of religion, as being a complement to our sort of very rigorous empirical pursuit of understanding reality? Where there's always going to be this coupling, will always define-redefine new eras of civilization of what that religion actually looks like? So you talk about technology and so on being the modern set of religious, um, beliefs around that. Is- so is that always going to ... is relig- is religion always going to kind of cover the space of things we can't quite understand with science yet, but we still want to be thinking about?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 46:38 Oh, I see what you're saying. That's a great question. When you say religion, I would- I would use the word religiosity, uh, because I think that we're moving out of the dogmatic types of religions into more of a, I hate to put it this way, but an X-Files type religion where we can say, "I want to believe," or, "The truth is out there."

Lex Fridman 46:57 Right.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 46:57 But we don't know that it's out there, or we don't- we don't know yet what it is, but we know it's out there.

Lex Fridman 47:02 Right.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 47:02 So there's this, um, this kind of built-in, um, capacity for belief in something that we don't have evidence for yet, and that's a sort of faith. So I would say yes to that question, absolutely. I think it's adaptive in that way. We're moving into a new f- I mean, heck, we're move- we've already moved into this culture. Most people have not caught up with it yet. Uh, I see that in the school systems, you know, and I think that, um, I'm hoping we can catch up fast (laughs) 'cause really it's moving faster than we are.

Lex Fridman 47:34 So I mentioned to you offline that I'm, uh, finishing up on the, uh, rise and fall of the Third Reich. I'm not sure if you have anything in your exploration interesting to say, but the use of religion by dictators or the lack of the use of religion by dictators, whether we're talking about Stalin, which is mostly a secular ... I apologize if I'm historically incorrect on this, but I believe it's a secular, and Hitler, I think there's some d- controversy about how- how much religion played a role in his own personal life and in general in terms of influencing the ... using it to manipulate the public. Uh, but definitely the church played a role. Um, do you have a sense of the use of religion by governments to control the populations, by dictators for example? Or is that outside of your little explorations as a religious scholar?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 48:40 It's not outside of my framework. Absolutely not. Um, I think that it's done routinely.... um, propaganda is done routinely, um, especially, there's nothing more powerful than religion to get people to act, I think. Um, I ha- my mother's Jewish and my father is w- was Roman Catholic, okay, from Irish extraction.

Lex Fridman 49:06 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 49:07 And so both, um, members, um, both great-grandparents came here under duress, because they were being, um, what would you call it? Uh, there was an active genocide on both sides, (laughs) being done by other cultures, okay? So on the one hand, obviously we know about the Holocaust, okay? So they came, the great-grandparents came here to avoid that, and they made it. Um, on the other hand, uh, there was an English, um, genocide a- we just have to say it, of the Irish, um, it was called a famine, but it wasn't one, it was a staged thing. And so, um, millions of Irish left Ireland on coffin ships is what they called them, because they usually wouldn't get here. Mine happened to get here. Okay, so those, that's the context that I'm coming from. So in each case, for one thing, the Irish weren't considered, you know, uh, there was, uh, Catholics weren't considered, they were considered to be terrible, and there was a lot of anti-Catholic rhetoric here in the United States. Uh, which is kind of strange, because one of the, in fact the most wealthy colonial family were the Carrolls in Maryland, and they were Catholic.

Lex Fridman 50:17 Mm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 50:17 So, when you look at the United States, uh, our history, and you see the separation of church and state, do you want to know where that came from? That came from those guys. They convinced George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I mean, they couldn't vote, yet they had the, they had, they have their names on the Constitution. Is that not a strange contradiction? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 50:40 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 50:40 So here, here you can see how, you know, propaganda works. There was anti-Catholic propaganda, there was anti-Jewish propaganda, um, and all of, and a lot of it was that, you know, these people weren't human, they weren't human beings. Um, another thing I'd like to say is that when the Irish did come here, um, they were indentured, a lot of times indentured servants. Um, but that's a, that's terminology. Inde- what is an indentured servant?

Lex Fridman 51:11 Slave.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 51:12 Pretty much.

Lex Fridman 51:14 (inhales) So in that sense, religion can be used, uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 51:18 Derogatorily. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:19 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 51:19 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 51:19 Derogatorily as a useful grouping mechanism of saying, "This is the other."

Diana Walsh Pasulka 51:24 And, you know, it's powerful too, because behind it is a force of, um, you know, what people contend to be sacred, a sacred force, right?

Lex Fridman 51:33 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 51:33 So, you know, it's up to God to, you know, decide who's, you know, so you have to go along with what God says, of course. Well, that's basically, um, that's not the contact event, you know? The contact event is, is usually some type of very specific, legitimate event that a person has with something that is non-human or considered divine. Um, but when, when religions become, um, narrativized, I would call it, by different institutions, that's when you're in danger of getting propaganda.

Lex Fridman 52:07 You said Nietzsche, one of your favorite philosophers. He said, uh, famously, one of the many famous things he said is that God is dead.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:16 Yes.

Lex Fridman 52:17 Uh, what do you think he meant? Do you think he was right?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:21 Okay, good. I love this question. No one asks me about Nietzsche. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 52:27 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:27 And I love Nietzsche.

Lex Fridman 52:28 Awesome.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:28 Okay, so, um-

Lex Fridman 52:29 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:29 ... first actually I do think, and I could be corrected, and probably will be in all the comments-

Lex Fridman 52:34 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:35 ... Ni- well first, Nietzsche, it's true, wasn't the first to say God is dead. I think Hegel said it, okay? No one reads Hegel.

Lex Fridman 52:41 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:41 He's like so difficult to read that it's impossible, yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:44 Yeah. Same with Heidegger, as you mentioned, I feel like.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:46 He, yeah, he, I love him, but yeah, he's really hard to read. Um, so Nietzsche's basically said God is dead. And let me give you the context for him saying that. He also said this, he said there was only one Christian and he died on the cross.

Lex Fridman 52:57 Mm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 52:58 Okay? So, um, he despised Christianity, and he said that...

Lex Fridman 53:03 And r- and the people who practice it.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 53:05 Absolutely, yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:06 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 53:06 But again, he believed in Jesus, and he believed Jesus was g- n- he didn't believe he was a divinity, believed Jesus was a good man-

Lex Fridman 53:12 Mm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 53:13 ... and he died on the cross, okay?

Lex Fridman 53:14 So he believed in the morality espoused by Jesus.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 53:16 Yeah, he absolutely did. Yeah, he did. Um, and Nietzsche basically was making a historical statement about God is dead. He sa- and he was right. He was basically saying that in this, in the century in which he lived, um, and he died I think in 1900. Again, I could be wrong about that, so I just want to say that. I believe he died in 1900.

Lex Fridman 53:36 Right.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 53:37 Okay, so, so he's writing in the 1800s, and he's basically saying, um, God is dead and we killed him, okay? So he's making a historical statement that at that point in time with science just kind of getting better and industrialization-

Lex Fridman 53:52 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 53:52 ... happening, um, the idea of, um, this, this thing beyond what we know as material reality is dead. So this, the substrate of Western civilization is dead. That's what Nietzsche s- Nietzsche is saying.

Lex Fridman 54:12 Mm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 54:12 If that makes sense.

Lex Fridman 54:13 Yes.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 54:14 And he basically says with that comes the ubermensch, okay? Which is the superhuman. And he says there aren't many of them, he says, but they're gonna come. And he also talks about the philosophers of the future. And he's speaking and writing to them, is my belief. So he's basically telling you and me-

Lex Fridman 54:33 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 54:33 ... because we are now the philosophers of-

Lex Fridman 54:34 Of the future.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 54:35 ... his future, yeah. He's basically telling us, "This is what's happening now, and look what it has done." He says now everything is, is possible, all manner of, of terrible evil, because no one has the belief in God anymore. The belief that there's, uh, that there is an afterlife. You asked about an afterlife. So with this kind of belief in an, a morality comes this belief, you know, and you can have morals without God, okay? People do. But what-... Christianity is this idea that you will reap what you sow. So, if people don't believe that anymore, what will happen? And so that's what he's basically saying, is that the- the basic anchor for Western society is now gone.

Lex Fridman 55:18 Do you think he was right?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 55:19 Absolutely. Absolutely right.

Lex Fridman 55:21 But then again, what do you think if we brought him back to life and he read American Cosmic, your book, um, and he wrote ... he tweeted about it, w- writ-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 55:32 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 55:34 ... r- r- writing a review maybe for the, I don't know what they post, for New York Times. He'd be an edi- editorial writer, um, with a blue check mark on Twitter. Um, what- what do you think he would say about this idea that you present that's a grander idea of religion and, you know, that-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 55:52 Like religiosity, like this new form-

Lex Fridman 55:55 Religiosity, yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 55:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 55:55 Wouldn't that kind of reverse the idea that God is dead?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 55:59 Yeah, because it would bring up this idea of external intelligences that are not human, which is basically, a lot of religions talk about that, right? There are Bodhisattvas, there are angels, there are demons, you know, there's all these types of non-human intelligences that religion makes space for. So, what I'm basically saying in American Cosmic is these new things are within the realm of UFOs and UAPs. So would ... No. I think that, well, I think Nietzsche would say that that's a progressive adaptation of religion, is what I would hope he would say. Nietzsche, however, is unpredictable, I think. I- I couldn't predict him. So, I would say that it would be my hope that he would say this is an accurate representation of a move into a new type of religion, and it's adaptive, therefore progressive.

Lex Fridman 56:58 He would probably be uncomfortable reading a book by a brilliant fe- uh, female professor.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:02 Who happens also to be short. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:06 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:06 I don't know if you s- you read that-

Lex Fridman 57:08 No. I-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:08 ... bi- yeah. Oh, he s- (laughs) he says some pretty nasty things about short women. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:13 Oh my God.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 57:15 Oh, Nietzsche. He should be canceled.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:18 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:18 No, no, please don't cancel Nietzsche.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:20 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:20 We have to take people in the context of their time. Although I'm pretty sure in his time he was also an asshole.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:26 He was. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:28 (laughs) But assholes are people too. Okay.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 57:31 Just bad ones. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:33 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:35 Uh, you wrote the book American Cosmic: Uh, UFOs, Religion, Technology. What was the goal of writing this book? What, uh ... Maybe we'll mention it, we have already mentioned it many times, but in this little space of a conversation, can you say maybe what is the key insight that you found that lingers with you to this day from the process, the long process of, uh, putting this book together?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 58:04 Sure. Just like with my book on purgatory, um, I went into the research thinking that it would be something that it was entirely not. It ended up being something completely different. And I think that's good. I think that people who do research need to n- are very excited actually when their research surprises them.

Lex Fridman 58:22 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 58:23 So, I was happily surprised by my purgatory book to learn that it was a place, you know, and ... And so, um, I went into American Cosmic being a non-believer in UFOs entirely, and I came out being agnostic, okay? Kind of believer. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 58:48 (laughs) Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 58:50 So, um-

Lex Fridman 58:51 But agnostic, sort of, uh, open to the mysteries of the world.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 58:54 Yes. And I didn't think that ... First of all, I knew that the government was i- was part of the situation. I just didn't know how much.

Lex Fridman 59:06 Mm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 59:06 And so I learned that quickly and acclimated to it, um, accepted it, and noted that indeed, Horatio (laughs) the world is much more mysterious than we think it is. It's more myster- there are more mysteries in this life than your philosophy provides for.

Lex Fridman 59:34 So is the sense American Cosmic is about the mysteries of the modern life as encapsulated by this- the- the realm of technology and the realm of alien intelligences?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 59:47 Yes. I think that, um, I think that ... I mean, I'd have to go off record as a professor and talk personally. As a person, I do think that, um, there are mysteries of which we have an inkling. And if it's something as powerful as non-human intelligence, whether or not it's from another planet, extraterrestrial, or it happens to be from like another dimension or something else, I think that this is going to, um, get the attention of institutions of power. And indeed, I think that's what has happened. And, um, although probably h- people have had interactions with these things, it- it appears to me, historically, uh, for a long time, as long as humans have existed, I would imagine that indeed, um, this is something that's quite powerful and could change the belief structures of our entire societies, our civilization basically.

Lex Fridman 1:00:58 So, it's the same way that you're t- talking the belief structures were strongly affected by religious beliefs throughout history.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:01:04 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:01:04 In the same way this has the potential, uh, th- it- it- it, uh, serves as, um...... a source of concern for the powerful, because it can have very significant effects on the-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:01:19 Huge effects.

Lex Fridman 1:01:19 ... the populous.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:01:20 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:01:20 Is there some broader understanding of how we should think about alien intelligences than, um, like little green men-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:01:29 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:01:30 ... that, um, that you could maybe elaborate on-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:01:32 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:01:32 ... and talk about?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:01:34 Yes. This comes directly out of my research in Catholic history. What I found was that, let's take for instance this idea of an angel. Okay, so we all think we know what an angel looks like. Why? Well, we've been told what an angel looks like. We see what an angel looks like. Uh, throughout history, people have painted angels and they all look pretty much the same. Um, but actually, if you go to the primary sources on, you know, either in Hebrew or in Greek, or, you know, in whatever language, and in Latin, and you look at experiences that people have d- talked about, you know, where they've written down their experiences about angels, um, angels don't at all look like what we think. They, they don't look like little cherubs with wings. They don't look like tall, you know, strong, anthropomorphic, you know, human-looking things. They don't. They look really weird. And sometimes they don't look at all l- humanoid.

Lex Fridman 1:02:32 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:02:33 And they look like strange spinning things, right?

Lex Fridman 1:02:37 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:02:37 With, like, you know, eyes and things like that. They, they communicate telepathically with us. Okay, so what does that mean for the idea of, of extraterrestrials or what we consider to be aliens? Like, um, I do think that there... First, if we are, if... Listen, it's, I'm not the first to say this. If we're in contact with non-human intelligence, we're most likely in contact with its technology. Because think about us. Um, do we send human beings to Mars yet? Some people would say yes. But let's put that aside.

Lex Fridman 1:03:14 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:03:14 So, no, we don't. We use our technology. We send our rovers to Mars, okay?

Lex Fridman 1:03:19 Okay.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:03:19 Okay. So, if there's an extraterrestrial civilization, is it sending... Are they coming by themselves? Are they coming to see us? Or are they sending their technology? Most likely, they either are technology or they are sending their technology.

Lex Fridman 1:03:34 Yeah, there might be a gray area between what is technology and what the aliens are.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:03:38 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:03:39 So, but you're saying, like, uh, basically a robotic probe that would be the equivalent of us, our human civilization created technology.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:03:46 Way more m- way more, uh, advanced than what we could believe to be a probe. All right? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:03:52 It's kind of funny to think about, like, if, uh, whatever, uh, sort of, uh, extraterrestrial creations have visited Earth, that we're, we're interacting with some, like, dumb, crappy drone technology.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:09 Yeah, it's true. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:04:12 And we're like, like... (laughs) We're like building these, like, myths and so on from, like, an experience with some-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:19 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:04:19 ... like crappy drone-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:04:20 ... made by some-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:21 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 1:04:21 ... crappy startup somewhere. (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:23 That is correct. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:04:25 When the actual intelligence is, like, something that m- much grander. Um, that's, that's, that's the more likely, uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:33 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:04:33 ... situation. That is correct.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:34 That's what I like to s- tell people.

Lex Fridman 1:04:36 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:36 I'm like, "No, it's probably a lot weirder than you think."

Lex Fridman 1:04:39 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:40 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:04:40 Oh boy. So, uh...

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:42 Another, another-

Lex Fridman 1:04:42 But, but what forms can it possibly take? So, like, uh-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:04:45 Yeah, okay.

Lex Fridman 1:04:45 I really love this idea that, um... I tend to be humble in the face of all th- that we don't know, and I tend to believe that the form alien life forms would take and the way they would communicate is much more likely to be of a form that we can't even comprehend or perhaps can't even perceive directly. So, like, you know, uh, it could be in the space of, you know, we don't understand most of w- how our mind works. It could be in the space of whatever the heck consciousness is. Like, maybe consciousness itself is communication, uh, with aliens. Or, like, I don't know, uh, it could be just our own thoughts is actually the alien life forms communicating. Like, I, I know all that sounds crazy, but I'm saying, like, I'm just trying to come up with the craziest possible thing that doesn't make any sense that could very well be true. And you c- can't say it's not true because we don't understand basically anything about our mind. So, it could be all of those things. Uh, everything from ha- hallucinations, all the things that are explored through, uh, through the different drugs, uh, that we've, uh, talked about in this podcast in general. Joe Rogan loves to talk about DMT and all those kinds of hall- hallucinogenic drugs. All of it, including love and fear, all those things, that could be aliens communicating with us. Memes on the internet, that could be... I'm pretty sure humor is alien communication. No, I don't know. But, uh, so is there some way that's helpful for you to think about beyond the little green men?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:06:30 Oh, absolutely. It, um, it accords exactly with how I think, actually. Um, so I'll explain. Um, I liked... In American Cosmic, I'd attained the status of full professor. So, I was like, "Okay, I can pretty much write this book like I want to do it." And I did. So I used a lot of quotes from cool artists like David Bowie. Okay? So, David Bowie opens the book, okay? And he basically says... And so does Nietzsche, by the way. David Bowie and Nietzsche, boom, two, two awesome quotes right together. That's how I opened my book.

Lex Fridman 1:07:01 There's no better opener.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:07:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:03 Do you remember the quotes?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:07:04 Yeah, of course. So the first, the quote by David Bowie, and that's what I'm going to concentrate on, in response to what you just said, which I think is absolutely correct. Um, David Bowie said, "The internet is an alien life form."Okay? And if you've not seen David Bowie's interview where he says that, I highly recommend it. He's so brilliant. Okay, so David Bowie is actually quite brilliant about the idea of UFOs. He's also brilliant about the idea of technology, okay? And most people wouldn't think that, but, I mean, he's pretty darn smart. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:07:35 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:07:35 Okay? So, all right, so I started to think about it, and, uh, I also, early on in my research, met Jacques Vallée. Okay, so he's a technologist. Uh, he has a PhD in information technology from computer science, basically, from Northwestern, and he got that back in the day. You know, when I say back in the day, I'm not talking a thousand years ago. I'm talking like in the '60s, okay? So he's-

Lex Fridman 1:07:55 Back when computer science wasn't really even a field that you can get a degree in.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:07:59 Yeah, it wasn't even a thing. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:59 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:08:00 He has a PhD in it. And he's French. He's from France, but he lives in Silicon Valley, and he worked on ARPANET, which is the proto-internet.

Lex Fridman 1:08:07 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:08:08 Uh, he mapped Mars. He's also an astronomer. I mean, he's just this all-around brilliant guy, right? And he's also interested in UFOs. And most people take those two interests of his as separate interests. And I remember being at a very small conference and listening to him, being in awe, of course, because he's an awe-inspiring person, and then thinking, "Wait a minute. Why do people compartmentalize those two things about him that are one and the same?" Okay? So when we talk about UFOs and UAPs and stuff, we have to talk about digital technology and things like that. Now, if we're going back to what I... So if I were to say what... If I were to believe in, and I, like I said earlier, I was agnostic bordering on belief, most likely a believer, in these- this extraterrestrial or not extraterrestrial, let me put it another way, non-human intelligence that's communicating with us, I'm going to tell you how I think they communicate with us.

Lex Fridman 1:09:02 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:09:03 And I go back to the Greeks again, okay? And the Greeks had this idea of muses. You know, the muses?

Lex Fridman 1:09:09 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:09:09 So, okay, so there are these things called muses, and we tend to think of them as metaphors, right? But what if they're not? What if they're actually non-human intelligence trying to communicate with us, but we're so stupid we can't, like, understand. Like, so only people with, like, you know, in- super amazing, um, capacities, like poetic, creative, you know, intelligent, mathematical, whatever, you know, 'cause they tend to do this symbolically. They tend to communicate with us in symbols form. And so music, you know, symbols, we've got math that are... You know, it's a symbolic language. And so what... So, okay, so muses are probably a good idea for me of what this would be. Now, would muses have spaceships? You know, or those things that we call physical counterparts to what they are? Um, that's another question altogether. But if, you know, I, I... Now, why would I think this? Because

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:10:03 if you look at the history of our space programs, both Russian and American, you're gonna find some pretty weird stuff. Pretty, pretty weird history there, Lex. Um, so you want to get an idea? Go back to Jankowski and read a little bit about what he has to say. If you look back at the history of our space programs, the viable space programs are both Russian and American, and each has an amazingly strange history, because, uh, the founders of the calculations that got us up into space, the rocket scientists basically, were doing some pretty weird rituals and doing religious things, right?

Lex Fridman 1:10:40 Hm. Wow.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:10:40 They weren't necessarily like... Jack Parsons on our side, uh, was out in the desert with people like L. Ron Hubbard and doing-

Lex Fridman 1:10:47 Oh, wow.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:10:47 ... really intense rituals, believing that they were opening stargates and things like that, okay?

Lex Fridman 1:10:53 That's awesome.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:10:53 And they were really doing that, okay? So then you go to, um, the Russian side, and they had a very specific, non-dogmatic, according to Catholics or Orthodox Christianity, idea of what Christianity was, and they believed that they were interacting with angels, okay? Non-human intelligences. So if you look back and you see muses, you know, you c- can contextualize them within this tradition. And so when I started to talk to people who were actually in the space program and who were in these programs that now the government has said, "Oh, yeah, we do have those programs," um, they have the same belief structures. They believe that they were also in contact with these non-human intelligences and they were getting what they called downloads of information and creating, sometimes, with Tyler D. in my book, creating technologies that were real and they were selling them on NASDAQ for, you know, a lot of money, like, you know, say $100 million or something like that, undisclosed amounts. Um, but a lot. And these things are viable technologies that we use now and, and they make our lives better and we progress as a species because of them. Now, that has nothing to do with the scientific method, as much as... I know, as much as anybody's going to get angry at me for saying that. But, you know, sorry, those were strange encounters that created our ability to go into space. I, I don't know if they're real or not, but these people believed they were real.

Lex Fridman 1:12:20 Right, so there, there's a... They have a power in actually having an impact on this world, in, um, ins- inspiring humans to create technology which enable us to do things we haven't been able to do before.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:12:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:12:34 And these... I, I like how we- we're putting, like, angels, alien life forms, aliens, and technology all in the non-human intelligence camp, which I, I really like that 'cause this... That's very true. It's this other source of, uh, wisdom, intelligence, maybe a connection to the mysterious.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:13:02 Yes. I was really surprised by it. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:13:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:13:06 Can you speak a little bit more to the connection between aliens and technology that, uh, Jacques Vallée had in, in his own one individual mind that's very tempting to kind of separate as two...... separate, uh, endeavors. Why did you come to believe that they are one and the same? Or at least part of the same, uh, intellectual journey?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:13:37 Thanks for asking that again, because nobody asks me that question. And it's central to my project. So, Jacques was a huge influence, is a huge influence on me. Um, he taught me a lot. Um, I had... He gave me access to some of his information that's, um, that he keeps. Um, but a lot of his information is actually there, out there for everyone to read. Um, he has an academia.edu page, and he just-

Lex Fridman 1:14:08 Hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:14:08 So, he didn't have this, unfortunately, when I was doing my research in 2012 and 2013. So I had to go back and do microfiche type stuff, you know? What I did was I began to read everything that he wrote. And he actually gave me a lot of his books too. And he told me, I, I remember, um, he dropped me off from... This is actually quite interesting, if you'll allow me to tell you a little story.

Lex Fridman 1:14:29 Please.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:14:29 Okay. And it also includes ayahuasca, so (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 1:14:33 (laughs) Great. Every story that includes ayahuasca is a great story.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:14:36 Okay. So, I was at a conference and, um, it was a small conference, um, of very interesting people in California, on the Pacific Ocean. And Jacques was there. And, um, this is actually... It opens my book. This is the book, this is the... I, uh, go, uh... It's the preface to my book. I go on this ride. He takes me through Silicon Valley. I've lived there (laughs) , right? My grandparents grew up in the same place that he raised his children, in Belmont. And so, um... But we were there with Robbie Graham, who's a great ufologist in his own right, and, um, and film theorist. I highly recommend his work. Um, so we were together and he was taking us to San Francisco where I was going to meet my brother, who was going to take me home. And so, he took us on this long journey, and he talked to us. And as we got out of the car, um, he gave me several of his books. And one in particular he gave me and he said, "Read this first." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:15:34 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:15:34 And I was like, "Okay, I definitely will read that first." Okay, so this is how the ayahuasca figures in. So, um, we were... I, I didn't take it, nor have I taken it. Okay, so we were at this place and, um, in California. And Alex Grey and his wife were there, and they were talking about, um, their experiences with psychedelics. You know, he's an amazing visionary artist, okay? So, he w- he believes that there's this place that you can enter, and he and his wife would enter this space with either, you know, ayahuasca or LSD or something like that. And they would not talk to each other, but they would be having the same exact experience. So they would t- It was almost like having the same dream, right?

Lex Fridman 1:16:15 Wow.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:16:15 Okay. So, so somehow, that whole event with Jacques there, ta- and them talking about their experiences in these realms, of which religious studies people are quite familiar, by the way, because visionary experiences are what we study.

Lex Fridman 1:16:30 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:16:30 So, all of this seems super familiar to me. And I recognized that immediately that Jacques ... that it hit me, like, you know, very obvious that UFOs and these experiences and technology all seemed... They were all, uh, meshed together. And I knew that I had to take them... I knew I had to read everything Jacques ever wrote. And the best stuff he's written, by the way, is the stu- his little essays that he wrote in the 1970s, and they were peer-reviewed essays about the beginning of the internet, and how a lot of it was based on, um, basically, like, n- um, neural connection with the internet. Like, somehow psychic connection through the internet with others and things like that.

Lex Fridman 1:17:16 So, the mind... The brain is a biological neural network. There's a, uh, there's connection between division neurons and so on, and that's what ultimately is able to have, uh, memories and has cognitive ability and is able to, uh, perceive the world and generate ideas. And those ideas are then spread on the internet, even from the very early days, to other humans. So, it gets injected or travels into the brains of other humans, and like, goes around in there and then spits out other stuff, and it goes back and forth. So, it's nice to think of the network that's in our mind, individual mind as, I mean, um, very much even deeply connected to the network that is the connection between humans through the internet.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:00 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:18:00 And so in that sense, Jacques saw the internet as this, as this powerful, um... As a source of power and wisdom that is beyond our own.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:11 Exactly. That's external to us, like a non... Like, you know, if you could call it autonomous AI.

Lex Fridman 1:18:16 Right.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:17 Right?

Lex Fridman 1:18:17 It's non-human intelligence-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:18 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:18:18 ... in a sense, even though humans are a part of it.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:21 Yes, or we're invaded by it, or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Okay. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:18:25 (laughs) Yeah. Whoever... Right. It's the chicken and the egg. Right.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:28 So, if I can go on-

Lex Fridman 1:18:29 Yes, please.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:30 ... the ayahuasca experience thing.

Lex Fridman 1:18:31 Oh, yes. Yes, yes.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:31 I have, I'm not done with that.

Lex Fridman 1:18:33 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:33 So, and this is... So, this is where I come to this idea that, um, we're in this space. We're in now a new space of religion, of religiosity. So, what happens is then I... And it's like a biosphere, and I'll talk about that in a minute. So, we... So, I... So, Jacques takes us back. We get to San Francisco, and my brother, who is your straight-lace person-

Lex Fridman 1:18:56 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:18:56 ... you know, army guy and everything like that. Um, I get into his car and the first thing he tells me is, "I took ayahuasca."

Lex Fridman 1:19:03 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:19:03 And I was like, "What?" And he goes, "It's going to save humanity." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:09 (laughs)

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:19:09 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:09 That's great.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:19:10 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:10 As I mentioned to you offline, I talked to Matthew Johnson. He's a Hopkins professor on, uh... He's a really a scholar of most... He's, he's studied most drugs. He's also really deeply studied cocaine, all those stuff, the n- negative effects. And, uh, he's focused on a lot of positive effects of the different psychedelics. It's kind of fascinating, so...I'm very much interested in exploring the science of what these things do to the, to the human mind, and also personally exploring it. Although it's like this weird gray area, which he, he's, he's masterful at, which is, he's a professor at John Hopkins, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and, and doing large-scale studies of this stuff.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:19:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:58 And i- until, until he got a lot of money for these studies, even in, uh, Hopkins itself, there's not much respe- it's not even respect, it was like, uh, people just didn't want to talk about it, uh, as a, as a legitimate field of inquiry. It's kind of fascinating how hesitant we are as a little human civilization to, uh, legitimize the exploration of the mysterious, of whatever the definition of the mysterious is for that particular period of time. So for us now, there's like little groups of things, like I will say consciousness in the space of, like, computer science research is something that's still, like, mm, I don't know, maybe we'll have philosophers kick it around for a little longer.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:20:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:20:43 And then there are certainly extraterrestrial lifeforms from, um ... In most formulations of that problem space, uh, is still the other, it's still the source of the mysterious, except maybe like SETI, which is like how can we detect signals from far away alien intelligences that would be able to, um, perceive? Yeah. It's, uh ... And psychedelics is another one of those that's like we're starting to see, okay, well, can we, um, try to see if there's some medical applications of like helping you get, uh ... Like he does studies of help you quit smoking, or help you in some kind of treatment of some disease, and he's sneaking into that. I mean, it's like openly sneaking into it, he's doing studies on it, of like how can you expand the mind with these tools, and what can the mind discover through psychedelics and so on.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:21:42 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:21:42 And we're like slowly creeping into the space of being able to explore these mysterious questions. But it's like, it sucks that sometimes a lot of people have to die, meaning, sorry, uh, they have to age out. (laughs) Like, it's like faculty have, uh, and people have a fixed set of ideas, and they stick by them. And in order for new ideas to come in, then the young folks have to be born with the pos- with an open mind and the possibility of those ideas, and then they have to become old enough and get As in school and whatever to, to, uh, to then carry those ideas forward. So, you know, the acceptance of the, uh, exploration of the mysterious takes time, and it's kind of sad.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:22:28 It is sad. I agree.

Lex Fridman 1:22:31 Maybe to go into my source of passion, which is artificial intelligence, what's your sense about, um, the, the possibility, uh ... Like, Pamela McCorduck has this quote that I like, I've- I talked to her a couple of years ago, or I guess already on this podcast, that, um, that, uh, artificial intelligence began with the ancient wish to forge the gods. So, do you think artificial intelligence may become, uh, the very kind of gods that, uh, were at the center of our, the religions of most of our history?

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:23:18 Yeah. There's a lot there. So I'm gonna start by addressing this idea of artificial intelligence being separate from human beings, okay? So that, I don't think that's actually ... That might happen, okay? I mean, it's already happened, but let's put it this way. Like, you're talking about super artificial intelligence, like autonomous, conscious artificial intelligence?

Lex Fridman 1:23:42 Yes.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:23:42 Okay, yeah. Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:23:43 Something with artificial consciousness.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:23:45 First of all, I, I think she's correct, okay? But I also, it's awes- an awesome quote. Um, I'd also like to bring up this, uh, writer of fiction actually, um, Ted Chiang, and his, one of his essays, he writes short essays. One of them was the basis for the movie Arrival.

Lex Fridman 1:24:04 Mm-hmm.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:24:04 Which if you haven't seen it, it's a really great movie about, uh, (laughs) UFOs. Uh, and, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:24:11 And it has a very creative way of proposing an idea of how they might be able to communicate, how, wh- wh- first of all, how they appear to us, and second of all, how they may be communicating with us humans.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:24:23 Exactly. Um, the author Ted Chiang has a lot, I recommend his, his writings, his short stories. Um, one is very short, and it appeared as, it appeared in Nature about 20 years ago, and it is called, I think it's called Getting, Eating the Crumbs from the Table or something like that. And it's basically this short essay. And I hate to, to do, you know, to, to do a spoiler here, but it, if you don't want to know what it's about, don't listen right now for five minutes.

Lex Fridman 1:24:53 Yeah, spoiler alert.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:24:54 Yeah, okay. So this is what it's about. So basically it's about human beings, uh, becoming two different species, okay? And one of them is created, they're called meta-humans, and they start bio-hacking themselves with tech, okay? Sound familiar? (laughs) So they do this, and they become meta-humans, and s- another species, right? An- an- you know, just kind of, of another fork, um, such that humans can barely understand them, um, because they're so far removed. So in a sense, are they gods, right? No, they're meta-humans, they're superhumans, they're enhanced humans, okay? I see that.Hopefully on the horizon, frankly. I hope so. Not that we have two species, but that we can use our technology or we can, we can become so integrated with our technology that we can survive, okay? We can survive the radiation in space. We can't go places now because of the radiation in space. Perhaps we can develop our bodies such that we can survive the radiation in space. So there are, there's this idea of these meta-humans. Now, there's also this idea that technology is just another form of humans. We've created it, right? And so maybe it is bent on surviving, thereby using us, you know, kind of as a meme or a team.

Lex Fridman 1:26:18 Yeah.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:26:18 Some people are calling them teams now, these self-generating, uh, they're replicating themselves through us, okay? I see that also, and I don't think that's terribly bad. Maybe it's just the way that we are evolving. It doesn't mean that the ... You know, we're evolving all the time. Like, we're taller than we used to be, you know, we have different skills. And, you know, so I don't see that as, as a bad thing. I think a lot of people see it as if we're not how we are now, it's a tragedy. But it's not a tragedy. How we are now is actually a tragedy for most people alive.

Lex Fridman 1:26:51 Yeah, and that we might be evolving in ways we can't possibly perceive. Like you said, that, uh, th- the humans have created Twitter, and Twitter may be changing us-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:27:01 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:27:02 ... n- in ways that we can't even understand-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:27:04 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:27:04 ... now, currently. Like from a perspective of if you look at the entirety of the network of Twitter, that might be an organism, that this net- the, the organism understands what's happening from its level of perception. But we humans are just like the cells of the human body. We're interacting individually, but-

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:27:26 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:27:26 ... like, we're, we're not actually aware of the big picture that's happening.

Diana Walsh Pasulka 1:27:29 Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:27:29 And we naturally somehow ... Or