Duncan Trussell: Comedy, Sentient Robots, Suffering, Love & Burning Man | Lex Fridman Podcast #312

1. 0:00 – 1:16

   Introduction

   1. DTDuncan Trussell0:00

      If this is a super intelligence, if it's folding proteins and analyzing like all data sets and all, whatever they give it access to, how can we be certain that it's not gonna figure out how to get itself out of the cloud?

   2. LFLex Fridman0:14

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DTDuncan Trussell0:14

      How to store itself in other like mediums, trees, the optic nerve, the brain.

   4. LFLex Fridman0:20

      (laughs)

   5. DTDuncan Trussell0:20

      You know what I mean? We don't know that.

   6. LFLex Fridman0:22

      Yeah.

   7. DTDuncan Trussell0:22

      We don't know that it won't leap out and like start hanging... Like, and then at that point, now we do have the wildfire. Now you can't stop it, you can't unplug it, you can't shut your servers down, because it left the box, it left the room using some technology you haven't even discovered yet. How fucking cool would that be for like the Men in Black to come to you and be like, "Listen, I need you to infiltrate the fucking comedy scene."

   8. LFLex Fridman0:47

      The following is a conversation with Duncan Trussell, a stand-up comedian, host of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, and one of my favorite human beings. I've been a fan of his for many years, so it was a huge honor and pleasure to meet him for the first time and to sit down for this chat. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Duncan Trussell.

2. 1:16 – 21:07

   Nietzsche's eternal recurrence

   1. LFLex Fridman1:16

      Nietzsche has this thought experiment called eternal recurrence, where you get to relive your whole life over and over and over and over, and I think it's a way to bring to the surface of your mind the idea that every single moment in your life matters, it intensely matters, the bad and the good. And he kind of wants you to imagine that idea, that every single decision you make throughout your life, you repeat over and over and over, and he wants you to respond to that. Do you feel horrible about that or do you feel good about that? And you have to think through this-

   2. DTDuncan Trussell1:51

      Right.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:51

      ... idea in order to see where you stand in life, how you, what is your relationship like with life. I actually wanna read his, the way he first introduces that concept for people who are not familiar: "What if some day or night a demon..." By the way, he has a demon introduce this thought experiment. "What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, quote, 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more, and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small and great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence.' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'" So, are you terrified or excited by such a thought experiment when you apply it to your own life?

   4. DTDuncan Trussell3:00

      Excited.

   5. LFLex Fridman3:02

      Excited.

   6. DTDuncan Trussell3:02

      Oh.

   7. LFLex Fridman3:03

      Even the dark stuff?

   8. DTDuncan Trussell3:04

      Oh, yeah. For sure. Definitely. I mean, also that thing you're talking about, it, he, uh, he kind of leaves out, maybe on purpose 'cause the thought experiment starts falling apart a little bit-

   9. LFLex Fridman3:16

      Yeah.

   10. DTDuncan Trussell3:16

       ... the amnesia between each loop. So, you know, the whole thing gets wiped. Now, if the amnesia wasn't there and yet somehow you were witnessing the non-autonomy implicit in what he's talking about, so you have to kind of watch yourself go through this rotten loop, then, yeah, that's a description of Hell.

   11. LFLex Fridman3:36

       There's probably a boredom that comes into that so you don't experience everything anew.

   12. DTDuncan Trussell3:41

       Exactly.

   13. LFLex Fridman3:41

       So the bad stuff, the good stuff, the newness of it is really important.

   14. DTDuncan Trussell3:45

       That's it. Yeah. This is the, uh, in the, in Hades when you die, you, there's a river, I think it's called Lethe. You ever heard of this, L-E-T-H-E? You drink from it and you don't remember your past lives, and then when you're reborn, it's fresh and you don't have to... I mean, just think of like the amount of psychological help you would need to get over all the bullshit that happened in prior lives.

   15. LFLex Fridman4:10

       (laughs)

   16. DTDuncan Trussell4:10

       (laughs) You know what I mean? Can you imagine if you're still resentful of something someone did to you in the 14th century? But it would, it would compound, so.

   17. LFLex Fridman4:19

       Well, if you repeat the same thing over and over and over, it, there would be no difference. Maybe you would start to appreciate the nuances more, like when you watch the same movie over and over and over.

   18. DTDuncan Trussell4:29

       Yeah.

   19. LFLex Fridman4:29

       Maybe you'll get to actually, um, let go of this idea of all the possible, all the positive possibilities that lay before you but actually enjoy the moment much more.

   20. DTDuncan Trussell4:41

       Right.

   21. LFLex Fridman4:41

       If you remember that you've lived this life a thousand times, all the little things, the way somebody smiles, uh, if you're been abused, the way somebody, like the pain of it-

   22. DTDuncan Trussell4:50

       Yeah.

   23. LFLex Fridman4:51

       ... the, the suffering, the down that you feel, the experience of sadness, depression, fear, all that kind of stuff, you get to really, uh-

   24. DTDuncan Trussell4:58

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman4:58

       ... you get to also appreciate that that's part of life.

   26. DTDuncan Trussell5:01

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman5:01

       That's part of being alive.

   28. DTDuncan Trussell5:02

       Now, also in his experiment, if I was gonna... And I love the experiment from the perspective of like just where technology is now and simulation theory and stuff like that, but in that, in that thought experiment, if this rotten demon immediately killed you, then within that it's a little more horrifying because even in the... First of all, you're trusting a fucking demon.

   29. LFLex Fridman5:28

       Why are you talking to a demon?

   30. DTDuncan Trussell5:29

       Yeah.
3. 21:07 – 49:37

   Artificial intelligence

   1. DTDuncan Trussell21:07

      This is what I love and is so creepy about, like, the, uh, uh, the current AI chatbots, you know, is that it's like, it's the relationship between you and the thing and the way that it can via whatever the algorithms are... And by the way, I have no idea how these things work. You do. I just, you know, speculate about what they mean or where it's going. But there's something about the relation between the, the consumer and the technology, and when that technology starts shifting according to, uh, what it perceives that the consumer's looking for or isn't looking for, then at that point, I think that's where you run into the, uh, you know... Yeah. It doesn't matter if the, if the reality that you're in is like photorealism for it to be sticky and immersive-

   2. LFLex Fridman21:56

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DTDuncan Trussell21:56

      ... it's when the reality that you're in is via cues you might not even be aware of or via your digital imprint on Facebook or wherever, when it's warping itself to that to seduce you, holy shit, man. That's where it becomes something alien, something... You know, when you're reading a book, obviously the book is not shifting according to its perception of what parts of the book you like. But when you imagine that, imagine a book that could do that, a book that could sense somehow that you're really enjoying this character more than another, you know? And depending on the style of book, kills that fucking character off or lets that character continue. I mean, that, that to me is sort of the where AI and VR, when that, when those two things come together, whoa, man, that's where you're in... That's where you really are gonna find yourself in a skinner box, you know?

   4. LFLex Fridman22:58

      So the dynamic storytelling that senses your anxiety and tries to... There's like, uh, this, in psychology, this arousal curve. So, there's a dynamic storytelling that keeps you sufficiently aroused in terms of... Not sexually aroused. Like, in terms of anxiety, but not too much where you freak out. It's this perfect balance where you're always-

   5. DTDuncan Trussell23:19

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman23:20

      ... like on, on edge, excited, scared, that kind of stuff.

   7. DTDuncan Trussell23:23

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman23:23

      And the story unrolls. It breaks your heart to where you're pissed-

   9. DTDuncan Trussell23:27

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman23:27

       ... but then makes you feel good again.

   11. DTDuncan Trussell23:28

       That's it.

   12. LFLex Fridman23:29

       And finds that balance.

   13. DTDuncan Trussell23:30

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman23:31

       Uh, the, did chatbots scare you though? This, this... I, I'd love to, to sort of hear your thoughts about where they are today 'cause there is a different, uh, perspective we have on this thing 'cause, uh, I do know and, and I'm excited about a lot of different technologies that, that feed, um, AI systems, that feed these kind of chatbots. And, and you're more a little bit on the consumer side. You're a philosopher of sorts. They're able to interact with AI systems, but also you're able to introspect about-

   15. DTDuncan Trussell24:06

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman24:06

       ... the negative and the positive things about those AI systems. There's that story with a Google engineer saying that-

   17. DTDuncan Trussell24:12

       Had him on my podcast. Blake Lemoine.

   18. LFLex Fridman24:13

       You did. What was that like? What was your perspective of that s- looking at that as a particular example of a human being being captivated-

   19. DTDuncan Trussell24:24

       Yes.

   20. LFLex Fridman24:24

       ... by the interactions with an AI system?

   21. DTDuncan Trussell24:27

       Well-... number one, you know, when you hear that anyone is claiming that an AI has become sentient, you should be skeptical about that. I mean, this is a, a good thing to be skeptical about. And so, you know, initially when I heard that, I was like, "Ah, you know, it's probably just, who knows, somebody who's a little confused or something." So when you're talking to him and you realize, "Oh, not only is he not confused, he's also open to all possibilities," you know? It doesn't seem like he's like super committed other than the fact that he's like, "This is my experience. This is what's happening. This is what it is." So to me, there's something really cool about that, which is like, "Oh, shit, I don't get to like lean into like..." I'm not quite sure your perceptual apparatus is necessarily like, uh... I don't... You know, it's, uh, in, in the UFO community, I think I- I just learned this term, it's called, uh, instead of gaslighting, swamp gassing, which is, you know what I mean? People have this experience, they're like, "It was swamp gas!"

   22. LFLex Fridman25:28

       Yeah.

   23. DTDuncan Trussell25:28

       "You didn't see the thing."

   24. LFLex Fridman25:29

       Yeah.

   25. DTDuncan Trussell25:30

       And, you know, uh, skeptical people, they, we have that tendency.

   26. LFLex Fridman25:33

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DTDuncan Trussell25:33

       If you hear an anomalous experience, your f- your first thought more than likely is gonna be, "Really? It could've been this or that or whatever." So to me, he seemed, he seems really reliable, friendly, cool, and like, he doesn't really seem like he has much of an agenda. Like, you know, going public about some thing happening at Google is not a great thing if you wanna keep working at Google, you know? It's a, it's a... I don't know what benefit he's getting from it necessarily. But all that being said, the, the other thing that's culturally was interesting and is interesting about it is the blowback he got, the passionate blowback from people who hadn't even looked into what LaMDA is or what he was saying LaMDA is, which they were like saying, "You're, you're talking about..." And you should have him on your show actually, but-

   28. LFLex Fridman26:27

       There's com- complexity on top of complexities. Uh, for me personally from different perspectives that I also... I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your flow.

   29. DTDuncan Trussell26:35

       Please interrupt.

   30. LFLex Fridman26:36

       (laughs)
4. 49:37 – 58:10

   Joe Rogan

   1. DTDuncan Trussell49:37

   2. LFLex Fridman49:37

      You and, uh, Joe had a bunch of conversations, and they're always incredible.

   3. DTDuncan Trussell49:44

      Thanks.

   4. LFLex Fridman49:45

      So, in terms of this dance of conversation, of your friendship, of when you get together, like what is that world you go to that creates magic together? 'Cause we were talking about how we do that with robots.

   5. DTDuncan Trussell50:00

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman50:00

      How do these two biological robots do that? Can you introspect that?

   7. DTDuncan Trussell50:04

      I met Joe because I was a t- I was the talent coordinator of The Comedy Store, this club in LA. And my job was to take phone calls from comics. And so, at some point, I don't know, Joe... I ended up on the phone with Joe, and we just started talking. And, you know, I looked up, in like 30 minutes had passed.

   8. LFLex Fridman50:25

      Yeah.

   9. DTDuncan Trussell50:25

      We'd just been talking for like 30 minutes. That's what friends are, you know?

   10. LFLex Fridman50:28

       Yeah.

   11. DTDuncan Trussell50:28

       We're just like... We're having fun talking, and then he would just call and we would talk, and we would basically... I mean, it was no different from the podcast. Like we... The, the conversations we, we have on the podcast are identical to the conversations we had before he was even doing a podcast. So, I think, uh, people are just seeing two friends hanging out, who like talking to each other.

   12. LFLex Fridman50:52

       Yeah, but there's a, there's this weird... Like you're, you, you serve as catalyst for each other to go into some crazy places. So it's like, uh, it's a balance of curiosity and willingness to not be constrained, uh, to not be limited to the constraints of reality. (laughs)

   13. DTDuncan Trussell51:10

       Yeah, that.

   14. LFLex Fridman51:11

       In your exploration of life's system.

   15. DTDuncan Trussell51:13

       That's a very nice way... That's a very, very nice way of saying that. (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman51:15

       Then you just like build on top of each other, like, uh, you know, "What if things are like this?"

   17. DTDuncan Trussell51:21

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman51:21

       And you build like Lego blocks on top of each other, and it just goes to crazy places. Add some drugs into that, and it just goes wild.

   19. DTDuncan Trussell51:27

       Yeah, and you know, he... Like it's so cool because it's like a... You know, it's a, it's a, it's a... For me, it's like a really... Like sometimes maybe I'll throw something out that he will take, and the Lego building blocks-

   20. LFLex Fridman51:40

       Yeah.

   21. DTDuncan Trussell51:40

       ... you're talking about, they lead to him saying like the funniest shit I ever heard in my life. So it's... That's a cool thing to watch, is just like some idea you've been kicking around, you watch his brain shift that into like something supremely funny.

   22. LFLex Fridman51:53

       Yeah.

   23. DTDuncan Trussell51:53

       I really love that man. That's just like a fun thing to like-

   24. LFLex Fridman51:56

       Yeah.

   25. DTDuncan Trussell51:57

       ... see happen. He knows that I fucking hate the videos of animals eating each other.

   26. LFLex Fridman52:03

       Mm-hmm.

   27. DTDuncan Trussell52:03

       Like I don't like that. I don't wanna watch it. I hate watching it. I, I don't think I've even articulated on his podcast how much I dislike it when he shows animals eating each other. But he knows 'cause he knows me (laughs) .

   28. LFLex Fridman52:18

       (laughs)

   29. DTDuncan Trussell52:18

       And so he, he tortures... Like when he starts doing-

   30. LFLex Fridman52:21

       Yeah.
5. 58:10 – 1:14:58

   Facing death

   1. DTDuncan Trussell58:10

   2. LFLex Fridman58:10

      You've had a brush with death. You had cancer, you survived cancer.

   3. DTDuncan Trussell58:14

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman58:14

      What have, uh... How has that changed you? What, what have you learned about life, about death, about yourself-

   5. DTDuncan Trussell58:21

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman58:21

      ... about the whole thing we're going through here, from that experience?

   7. DTDuncan Trussell58:24

      You were just in the Ukraine.

   8. LFLex Fridman58:26

      Yes.

   9. DTDuncan Trussell58:26

      And you were making observations on this, what could, if you heard about it and weren't there, seem like it doesn't make any sense at all.

   10. LFLex Fridman58:36

       Mm-hmm.

   11. DTDuncan Trussell58:36

       Which is, people there are connecting, they've lost everything but they're just happy to be alive, they're happy their friends are alive. So, you witness this like, you know, when you get in a cancer club, and you're hanging out with people going through cancer or who have survived cancer, you see this, uh, beautiful connection with life that can, can easily sort of... You can kinda lose that connection with life if you forget you're gonna die. Forgetting you're gonna die is... Or that you can die, is not just... I think from an evolutionary per- perspective where survival is the game, (laughs) not, not gonna improve your survival chances, you know, if you think you're immortal, you know? But, but also forgetting that you're, you're gonna die, and that everything is around you, and everything... Your, your clothes are probably gonna last longer than you. Your, your equipment is gonna be around much longer than you, you know? Like, so forgetting these things, um, it can lead you... And I know why people don't wanna think about death, 'cause it's scary as sh- it's fucking scary. It's terrifying. So, I get why people don't wanna think about it. But the idea is if I try to pretend I'm not gonna die or just don't think about death, or don't at least address it, uh, then I'll f- I won't feel scared. But it can have the opposite effect, which is you can end up like, missing a lot of moments. You could for... Or you s- you're, you start doing the old kick the can down the road thing, where you're like coming up with a variety of ways to procrastinate, making it work now.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:00:16

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DTDuncan Trussell1:00:17

       Uh, because you, you know, this fucking human lifespan idea, man, it's really caused a lot of problems. When they started saying, "On average, this is how many years you're gonna live, if you're a human being," man, that is like really bad, 'cause a lot of people hear that and they like feel like that's a guaranteed number of years in some temporal bank-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:00:37

       (laughs)

   15. DTDuncan Trussell1:00:38

       ... that, (laughs) you know, are gonna, that they have access to.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:00:40

       Mm-hmm.

   17. DTDuncan Trussell1:00:41

       And when you get cancer, you know, that's like when you get the alert on your phone, where you're like, "What the fu- wait, what?" (laughs)

   18. LFLex Fridman1:00:48

       Yeah.

   19. DTDuncan Trussell1:00:48

       "Oh, shit. I d- I... Like, I have like... Either I don't know how much money is in that bank account, or I have way less than I thought." And so, at that point, you get to be in the truth, 'cause that's... Ultimately, I think that's what it is.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:01:02

       That's what it feels like, 'cause it feels like truth.

   21. DTDuncan Trussell1:01:05

       It's truth.It's the truth. It's the truth. Like, the whole bubble of ignorance that you subconsciously built around yourself to avoid experiencing the terror of your own mortality just... It's like a meteorite in the form of your doctor talking to you, just shatters that thing. And now, you're like... Especially with, I had testicular cancer, so... (clears throat) When you get the diagnosis, um... It's just like the movies. They... The mother... The doctor took me in his office, and you just know, "I got cancer." It's like, you don't even have to say. It's like, "I know what you're about to say. I'm in the office. I know how this goes."

   22. LFLex Fridman1:01:48

       Yeah.

   23. DTDuncan Trussell1:01:48

       But you, you go in there, and what you was, you were thinking, "Oh, you know, probably just have some weird thing in my ball, that's why it's swollen up like that." Any time I've gone to the doctor, you always leave like, "Oh, cool, I'm fine."

   24. LFLex Fridman1:01:59

       Mm-hmm.

   25. DTDuncan Trussell1:01:59

       But no, that's not how you're gonna leave the doctor. You're gonna (laughs) leave the doctor in a completely different universe than the one you grew up in. You're gonna go from... Talk about multiverse, you just popped into a brand new multiverse. So...

   26. LFLex Fridman1:02:13

       What was the conversation with the doctor like? Was there, like... From the perspective of a doctor, boy is that a hard conversation. I feel like you need to build up philosophically to do that conversation. (laughs)

   27. DTDuncan Trussell1:02:25

       Oh, no! Oh, no, there's not time!

   28. LFLex Fridman1:02:28

       (laughs)

   29. DTDuncan Trussell1:02:28

       He's busy. He's got other appointments, you know? Also, if you're gonna get cancer, testicular cancer is, you know... Not that there is a great cancer to get, but that's, you know, that's a good one. Because it moves slowly, uh, the treatments they have for it are really advanced now. And so if you, if you catch it early, then, uh, you know, generally it's, i- i- i- it's good, you can survive it. So...

   30. LFLex Fridman1:02:56

       (laughs) So he could offer at least some glimmer of hope?
6. 1:14:58 – 1:21:49

   Bhakti yoga

   1. DTDuncan Trussell1:14:58

      you ever... you've heard of... have you ever heard of something called Bhakti Yoga?

   2. LFLex Fridman1:15:01

      I think so, yeah.

   3. DTDuncan Trussell1:15:02

      It's the yoga of love, and there's all kinds... ver- there's forms of it. You... the, the most... the one people know about the most is the Hare Krishnas, but the Hare Krishnas are like, uh, you know, the way in Christianity you've got the Episcopalians, the Catholics, the Baptists? In Bhakti Yoga, you have various deities that are the object of, uh, love. And so Bhakti Yoga is the... is like... and what's really cool about it is it's a... an analysis of love. And so... and it's the- the- the supposition being, like, lo- love is the way to commune with the divine. Now, a distinction is drawn between, like, two big wor- world views that are spiritual. One i- is the concept of sort of unit of consciousness, the... I... which you'll- you'll run into in- in a- a lot of forms of Buddhism, if not all. A sort of, uh, a way of deconstructing the identity or understanding th- that you might not be anything at all, that in fact you're part of everything. And in that, there's a, uh, a potential relief from suffering in that. Not just, like, intellectually knowing it, but be- becoming it. Now, um, whereas in Bhakti Yoga, there is this idea of, like, the- the best thing is to be the individual, because individuals are required for love, this... for love to work. Embodied love. And so the quality, the thing we call, you know, the- the- the experience of love is something that can be cultivated. It doesn't just have to be for another person. It doesn't have to be for the stranger on the bus, it doesn't have to be for sweaty Bruce Springsteen's lover. That you could actually tr- you can actually shift that love to the divine, to God. 'cause, you know, obviously it's... Hare Krishnas, it's a theistic religion. They believe in Krishna, who is the... from the POV of Vaishnava Bhakti Yoga, the Godhead, the source from which everything, uh, flows into the... into time and space. So, th- they're all these, like, fascinating stories of Krishna. Th- it's not just... most people are familiar with Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita. They're about to be more... what's cool about it is 'cause it's like they're making that Oppenheimer movie, and he famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita when the- they split the atom. But, um, uh, there's all these stories of Krishna that are not just in the, uh, Bhagavad Gita. Uh, and these stories, they could seem very simple when taken literally, but in Va- Vaishnava Bhakti Yoga it's a very advanced, theistic, yogic system. So, they take these stories, and from these stories, they extrapolate this incredible analysis of what love is and how to connect with the universe. So like, Krishna has a lover, uh, Radharani, and so, um... sometimes they're getting along, sometimes they're fighting, sometimes they're separated. And so each of these ways of feeling about Krishna are modes of love. So, longing actually is considered one of the highest forms of love. The idea is the longing is the grace, the longing is the love. So when you find yourself in a situation of longing and heartbreak, it is identical to union.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:18:50

      Yeah.

   5. DTDuncan Trussell1:18:50

      You know?

   6. LFLex Fridman1:18:50

      And perhaps more intense- more intensely representative of the essence of what is love.

   7. DTDuncan Trussell1:18:56

      Yes. And- and they call it pining. So there's the... and- and it's pining for Krishna. And there also... there's... the other ways you could be with Krishna is as a friend, so this is another form of love. Or, uh, you know, as a mother, you know, uh, 'cause Krishna has a mother. So there's, like, all these ways of, like, looking at the various forms of love, and it's a really beautiful, uh, form of yoga.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:19:20

      That's emphasizing the individual, and then the individual is a kind of channel to this universal love.

   9. DTDuncan Trussell1:19:27

      Well, yeah. They're- they, like... there's a lot of different, like-... uh, their answer to the question of what shows up in Buddhism as absolute and relative reality, like, that, uh, obviously there's relative reality. We're, we're not right now, you and me, are not unitive consciousness. Like, you zoom back far enough, and we're gonna seem like an atom or whatever the, the thing is, the trope is. Y- you zoom back far enough, and we're in a, whatever, we're in a piece of cheese or something.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:19:58

       (laughs)

   11. DTDuncan Trussell1:19:58

       Who knows? But, in that way-

   12. LFLex Fridman1:20:00

       Yeah.

   13. DTDuncan Trussell1:20:00

       ... we're like completely unified. Um, but s- simultaneously, we're individuals. Like, for sure, we're individuals. Like, you still gotta pay your taxes, you gotta know your social security number.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:20:11

       Yeah.

   15. DTDuncan Trussell1:20:11

       That's relative reality. So, you know, Buddhism is like kind of the balance, uh, uh, again, when I say Buddhism is, n- I'm a comedian podcaster. I'm not some Buddhist expert. This is just probably my confused idea of what it is. But anyway, in Bhakti Yoga, there's the concept, it, it's called, and I'm gonna mispronounce it, ad-synca-synca-beta-tatva. I'm sorry I'm mispronouncing it. Uh, which means, simultaneous oneness and difference. So-

   16. LFLex Fridman1:20:41

       Oneness and difference?

   17. DTDuncan Trussell1:20:43

       Yes. Simultaneous oneness and difference.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:20:44

       So that's why the, the oneness is the, what, part of the same piece of cheese, and the difference is we are still each paying taxes?

   19. DTDuncan Trussell1:20:54

       Yes. And in this case, the cheese is Krishna. So, you know, or, or other ways it gets described is like, you know, f- a photon blasting off the sun has qu- sun-like qualities. But it's not the sun. Humans h- have, being a, one of the many things, you know, flowing out of the creative consciousness of the divine, have qualities that are weirdly like, w- th- godlike, you know? Like we, it's in fact, we wanna control primarily. That's one of the problems, like humans wanna be con- in control.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:21:29

       Mm-hmm.

   21. DTDuncan Trussell1:21:30

       Where in, from there, the Bhakti Yoga perspective, Krishna is this effort, is effortlessly controlling everything. Uh, and so within the system, the individual parts of the system have that same quality. But you can't s- y- you're probably not God. You might be! I'm not!

Episode duration: 3:19:51